Caught up

I had the whole weekend off (woohoo!), which meant I had time to go to the huge yarn sale on Saturday (I left the house at 7:30am.  I don’t even get up that early for work!), where I scored a ton of yarn at 40% off.  Totally worth getting up for.  I’ll take some photos of some of my haul for a future entry.  Jamie and I then went to go put a deposit down on our new car!  Whee!  It looks approximately like this:

and it is going to be very shiny. It needs a name, though! Any suggestions? My front-runner right now is Sully, short for Sullivan, even though that was originally my plan when we were going to get a blue car, because Sully from Monsters Inc. is blue. But it’s a good name, and he’s kind of a silvery blue, right? Rosie, my current car, was named after a Pixar character, so I kind of like the idea of continuing that theme, but I am open to other possibilities. (I like the name Errol too, and Errol the owl in Harry Potter is grey, so it fits, but Errol the owl is a bit wussy, so I’m not sure if I want to encourage that kind of sentiment in my car!) Anyway, suggestions welcome. If I use your name, maybe I’ll send you some yarn! (Maybe.)

The rest of my Saturday was taken up with watching many episodes of Angel with Erin and finishing all the transcribing that I had to do, which greatly improved the rest of my weekend, since that’s been hanging over my head for ages. Once I finished that, I could spend most of the rest of the weekend doing this:

Pardon the crap-ass blocking job – I just stuck in a few pins to give you the general idea. This is the end of Clue 1. I finished it earlier today, although I got up to row 98 last night and was too sleepy to do the last row. I had to tink row 97 twice, so I didn’t really want to risk another row when I hadn’t put in a lifeline since row 70. (I put one in at the end of the clue, don’t worry.)

I love the colour of the yarn, and the Zephyr is gorgeous to knit with.  Karen lent me two seasons of Friends, which is excellent lace knitting tv, because I’ve seen all the episodes and know when to look up for the funny parts. 

On to clue 2!

So dull I forgot to give it a title!

Man.  My blog sucks.  All I’m knitting right now is baby stuff, and while I’ve finished a blanket and a sweater in the last few weeks and am well into the next blanket (almost done the third ball of six), none of those have been given away yet and many of the impending mothers read this blog.  I like to keep some element of surprise involved. 

 Life in general is pretty dull – not bad, just dull.  (Isn’t this just making you rush to your bloglines to subscribe?  Yeah, I know.  Sorry.)  The weather is gorgeous – I’m writing this from my back yard where my laptop and my knitting and I are sitting on a blanket in the grass.  God, FINALLY.  It’s so nice out that Jamie and I, after finishing up testing out Wii Play (which is pretty fun), went for a bike ride.  A brief one, because I’m trying to condition my butt in a gradual sort of fashion in the hopes of being able to ride my bike to work during the Fringe. 

 In the absence of any knitting to show you, I took a picture of my bike.  I got it last year as a belated Christmas present – Jamie and my mother bought me the same thing for Christmas so I got a bike a few months later as a replacement. 

It’s a very pretty bike. My two favourite things about it are the shocks in the front, which are so awesome I can’t believe I ever survived riding a bike without shocks, given the state of the potholes around here, and the fact that it’s such a nice shiny red. I like red bikes.

I didn’t ride it much last summer, because I’m a big lazy-ass, but this year I would genuinely like to try. If I can get to riding to work by August, I will be really happy.

It needs a name, though. I was going to call it Firebolt but that doesn’t feel like a proper name – it’s a brand name. (Yes, I’m a dork.) Any suggestions?

I promise there will be more interesting content soon. I’ve actually changed my knitting plans a little bit and am knitting non stop on the second blanket, because I’ve changed my mind about who gets which one and that really puts the pressure on. By the time I go to Cuba I should be working on me-knitting again, at least for a while. There are still three more babies to knit for after that but the next one in line isn’t until July (yes, that’s a new one), so I should hopefully be able to finish a few things before that and actually have some content. Really. I promise.

My so-called mojo

With the baby blanket off being snuggly with the cutest baby ever and my sock pal socks safely finished (and still not photographed or mailed, because I SUCK and had a crap day today and so didn’t go to the post office), the pressure’s off the knitting for a while. I’ve got a baby sweater that needs to be done in a month or so, but given that the last one took about three days I’m not too concerned. I started another baby blanket in the hopes of avoiding the panicked “the baby is here” knitting, which I thought was quite intelligent of me. It’s a Pinwheel, a pattern I’m enjoying immensely, knit in Swish in a variety of colours. No photos of this one in progress, though, as certain impending babies have nosey mothers. It’s very cute, though.

Monday, Karen and I went to see Music and Lyrics, and after a lengthy bout of indecisiveness on my part, I blew off Stitch n Bitch (sorry, SnB people, but I was too grouchy for small talk. You were better off without me.) and we went to the early show. However, that meant I had about fifteen minutes to eat and be ready to go when Karen picked me up, which meant I had about three minutes after I ate to figure out what knitting to bring. Because let’s face it, despite the immense delightfulness of Hugh Grant, that’s the kind of movie that needs knitting. Pan’s Labryinth? Not so much. The Queen? Could go either way, but I survived without it. (I have seen a lot of movies lately, for whatever reason.) But Music and Lyrics reeeeally needed some knitting.

Unfortunately, all that was on the needles was the baby blanket, which has just enough yarnovers to totally screw you over in the dark, and Rogue, which still needs a hood and sleeves. But if you’ve seen the nineteen page pattern for Rogue, you know those pages of charts are not meant for movie theaters. (I could barely keep track while watching American Idol tonight, but I’ll get to that in a minute.) I had my Gryffindor yarn already wound into a yarn cake, but guilt got the better of me. You see, I gave Rachel a skein of yarn for Christmas with the promise that it would eventually be socks. It is now almost March. I should really knit her some socks. So I grabbed the yarn and flung it up on the ball winder (incidentally, HOW did I ever survive without my winder and swift?), and was winding furiously when Karen called to say she was three minutes away. I posted Jamie on window duty and kept winding. She pulled up, I wound the last little bit, grabbed some needles, and dashed out to the car.

The movie was pretty mediocre, but I got the entire cuff of the sock knit, so I feel it was time well spent. (Plus it only cost us about four dollars each because we had several coupons.) Since then, I’ve made it to the heel of the first sock, which is pretty good for two days work. (I had book group last night – prime knitting time.)

Tonight, though, I actually had a free night, and after an insane day of work I decided that what I needed was American Idol and knitting. This plan was interfered with somewhat by Jamie’s purchase of Rayman’s Raving Rabbids for my new Wii. My god, that game is just obscenely fun. So I played that for several hours when I got home, showed Erin and Ashley how to play, and felt much better after shooting rabbits with plungers for a while.

Once my wrists were starting to give, though, I decided to really make my tendons suffer and pulled Rogue back out again. It’s been on the back burner for a few weeks, since finishing the body on February 6th. (Wow, I didn’t realise it had been that long. Sigh.) I left Jamie rampaging against the rabbits and went to watch last night’s AI.

I knit through the whole thing, got the hood stitches picked up and figured out what I’d screwed up (pretty minor – just cast off two too many stitches, so I just picked up two extra.) I was happily knitting away while zipping through Idol (which doesn’t take long – that show is all filler), when I realised I’d miscrossed a cable about four rows back. Again.

This time, though, I noticed, and it was only a little wee three stitch cable. I glared at it for a round, then, sighing about not learning my lesson, lined myself up over the offending cable, took a deep breath, and dropped the stitches.

I tell you, this Bartlett wool will take a serious beating before it loses its stitches. It’s perfect for cabling without a needle (which is all I do any more), and it made it quite painless to drop the stitches and recross the cable in the right direction. Man, that was satisfying. I was feeling pretty darn impressed with myself, let me tell you. I got up to the tenth row of the hood when I realised something was weird. I counted stitches several times, consulted the chart repeatedly, and finally gave up and tinked. (Progress for me – I would usually ignore it and work out some way around it. I hate tinking.) When I got back the two rows to where the problem started, I realised what I’d done. I’d slipped the two stitches to be cabled, knit the next two, and lined them up for cabling, but I forgot to knit the stitches that I moved.

Whoops. So much for my so-called cabling mojo. Oh well.

Pictures of the sock pal socks (SORRY, snowdrop!) and Rogue’s progress to follow soon. I’m taking my poor tendons to bed.

More FOs!

And this time they aren’t even Christmas presents! That’s right, both of these are 2007 FOs, although the socks were started back in December.

First! The last pair of socks. My brother-in-law got ordained last week, and when we started thinking about what to get for an ordination, we were kind of stumped. We looked at the official Church of England stores in England (seemed like a natural place to look!) but all the fancy stuff was really damn expensive. Like, insanely so. So that plan was quickly abandoned.

Fortunately, I had a brainwave shortly thereafter, and this idea was born!

They are socks with a little priest collar on the top. I had some help from the Knitty chat on these, and what I ended up doing (after several attempts) was knitting flat black ribbing for a while, then casting on another 12 stitches or so and joining it in the round. Then I did a hem turning row (reverse stockinette so it folded over nicely), then knit ribbing for several rounds. Except the newly cast on stitches, which I knit in white stockinette. I tacked down the folded over part when I finished the socks, and the collar looked like this when they were done:

Here is my brother-in-law with his new socks!

(Isn’t his outfit snazzy? He had the second nicest outfit out of all six people who were being ordained.)

So! Once I finished those I turned my attention to the five impending babies. This sweater was originally going to be for the April baby, but once I finished it I decided it was too warm for the April baby and it got reassigned to the February baby. Whose shower, conveniently, was today.

It’s for my friend who’s from Zimbabwe, who I’ve known since I was 13. My family went to Zimbabwe that year, and our dads worked together so we met and hung out several times while we were there. When we were 19, she moved to Edmonton for university. (Her dad did a degree here so she was born in Canada and has Canadian citizenship.) We started hanging out again, periodically, and our lives have been remarkably similar since then. Of course now she’s having a baby, so I told her she’s on her own for this one. (She tried to convince me otherwise, but then I pointed out that my babysitting skills will be much more useful if I don’t have my own kid, and she was swiftly convinced.) We don’t see each other often but it’s always fun when we do – she’s one of those friends that I don’t need to see often to have an awesome time with.

Here’s Mr. Bear’s closeup.

It’s the Hooded Sweater from Debbie Bliss’s Special Knits, and it’s kind of a stupid construction but the sweater is SUPER cute. Especially the little pointy hood.

So cute and elfy!

It’s knit in Mission Falls 1824 wool, which is superwash merino and deliciously soft. It was very quick to knit – I finished the actual knitting in about five days, and then just needed an hour or two of seaming. My seaming has definitely improved – the hood in particular looks really nice.

Incidentally, I’m really noticing my prevalent fondness for dark reds. I chose this one because it’s a great generic gender colour (and will look super cute on this Zimbabwean baby!), but trying to take photos of it on my…dark red furniture was kind of a challenge. My sister’s sweater? Burgundy. The shawl I’m knitting? Burgundy. The Kid Silk Haze I just ordered for my Reversible Rib Shawl? Burgundy.

Good thing I’m knitting my Rogue in Light Sheepy Grey. I clearly need to branch out.

Good weather for a knitter

It is really, really, really cold. So cold that when I came home for lunch today, I abandoned my jaunty Malabrigo hat and matching Socks that Rock mittens, and dug out my old but thick Wool-Ease hat and scarf set and put my fleece mittens back on. It was kind of depressing, even though I like the Wool-Ease hat because it’s enormous so my hair fits inside it. (I hate the feeling of hair smushed down against my neck, especially when it’s in a ponytail, so I just fold it up inside my hat.)

It is also cold enough that I’ve totally abandoned my shawl (what, are you kidding? A shawl is useless for at least four months. To the bottom of the basket with you!), have left the baby sweater with one sleeve left to seam up and sew on (I can’t wear it, therefore it is currently useless to me), and am not even looking at the socks I’m supposed to be knitting Rachel. (Sorry, Rachel.)

So what am I knitting? Rogue! That’s right, the long put-off sweater is actually on the needles. I was working on the turned hem tonight (k1p1, my least favourite type of knitting in the universe) while Jamie and I were watching Veronica Mars. I was grumbling about the endless rounds of ribbing and expressing my disbelief that somebody in my Stitch n Bitch knit a Rogue for the Knitting Olympics. (16 days!) And then I said, “mind you, she was skinnier. This wouldn’t be so bad if I was less fat.”

Jamie had the most hilarious confused look on his face. He was quiet for a minute, and then finally piped up. “How would it be easier to knit if you were skinnier?” Clearly he was wondering if my excess flab somehow interfered with my knitting technique somehow. He seemed kind of relieved when I explained that it actually just meant I needed a bigger sweater.

So Rogue is almost finished its turned hem (1.75 rounds of 12 left to knit), which means it’s approximately eighty million hours of knitting away from finished, which means it’ll be done right when the weather improves. But damn, will I be happy I knit it next year when the weather sucks this bad.

In the shorter term improvement department, I caved into something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Flush with the triumph of knitting my first mittens last week, but discouraged by the fact that they aren’t quite -30 kind of mittens, I stopped in at the yarn store to buy myself a thrum mitten kit. Fleece Artist, in lovely pinks and burgundys and oranges and blues. I am very excited about it – the roving is so soft I can’t wait for my hands to be all snuggled up with it.

Unfortunately, I want to knit them on my 3s. Which are currently in use for the turned hem of Rogue. So I continue to slog away at the ribbing, desperate for thrum mittens to protect me from the evil weather.

Think anyone would notice if my turned hem was only 11 rounds?

Babies

It’s been a whirlwind weekend and despite the fact that I’ve actually had several things to blog about, I haven’t had time to blog.

That’s actually a lie. Our company left at about 4:30, but since then I’ve pretty much been knitting solidly and barely talking to Jamie. (I need nice quiet time after having company. Fortunately, Jamie was happy to go questing or whatever it is you do in World of Warcraft and note that I don’t actually care.) We watched a couple of episodes of Veronica Mars over dinner, at HIS SUGGESTION and my god, the glee I am feeling at having converted not just Erin, who I knew would love the show (and does, and agreed that it’s better than Buffy after only 7 episodes, so just wait till it gets really good!), but JAMIE! Jamie doesn’t watch TV. Or at least, not in an orderly fashion. He watches quite a lot of tv, actually (more than I realised before we got married), but he watches things like the news, and a lot of sports (his one really stereotypically male behaviour, actually, is his surprising tolerance for virtually any sport. I have seen him watch a snooker tournament.), and random specials on the History Channel, but he only actually watches one show regularly. (That show may or may not be a soap opera that rhymes with Hays of our Chives, and it’s totally his guilty secret and is quite hilarious.) Anyway, Erin was up here the other night for the frequently postponed Veronica Mars marathon, and Jamie just happened to be around. And watched. Six straight episodes. (Erin and I made seven but Jamie went to bed before the last one.) Given how much he rolls his eyes about Buffy (despite having watched and thoroughly enjoyed Firefly), I consider this a major victory. Now that I have the DVDs, I have an elaborate plan for converting others. I did this with Firefly too (very effectively – every single one of my friends has now seen the entire series, I think, with a few exceptions here and there), and the advantage of VMars is that it’s still on, if difficult to watch here. Here’s hoping I can continue to convert!

Uh. I had a point, and this was not it. Oh! Right. Company left at 4:30, and I’ve been knitting ever since.

There are five impending babies in the next six months. Many people react to news of babies with delight or congratulations or what have you. My reaction to the news of another pregnancy is “oooh, what should I knit?”

I realise this is weird. (Although I’m willing to bet it’s the standard knitter’s reaction.)

Anyway, I have plans for some of these babies, who are conveniently fairly spaced out, but I don’t have the yarn yet for the most impending baby. (It is in the mail, though.) So when my sister-in-law and I went to St. Albert on Friday to check out their yarn store, I picked up some Mission Falls 1824 wool to make a super cute little hoody. (The baby that this sweater is for does not belong to any of the mothers who read this blog, so none of you get too excited, here.) It’s the hoody in the Debbie Bliss Special Knits book, if you’re so inclined.

My god, why have I been wasting my time with adult sized clothing? Baby sweaters! They rule! I cast this thing on at about 4:30 on Friday, knit for about half an hour before heading out for the night (to a two and a quarter hour ordination, for which a very special FO post is impending), and then yesterday I only had a few hours of knitting time. My father- and stepmother-in-law were in town for the ordination, and stayed with us last night, so I had a strenuous afternoon of pedicures (I have purple toes that match my purple shoes!) and a lengthy dinner took up most of the evening. (It was really freaking good, though. Edmontonians, I recommend Flavours Modern Bistro on Whyte, which we went to on Erin’s recommendation.)

So yesterday I finished the back (in a day! I love baby sweaters! Even better is baby sweaters knit in aran weight on size 8s – none of this fiddly little baby weight stuff on size 1s that my mother does. Although her sweaters are ridiculously gorgeous.), and then today, after going out for breakfast (yum), and then to Best Buy (to Wii-stalk), and then to a movie (Pursuit of Happyness – very good), I was in need of an evening spent knitting. (I didn’t knit in the movie, which is unusual for me, because I didn’t really have anything movie-appropriate. Memo to self, cast on a sock.)

So I have been knitting for a solid evening now, and the entire back and all the hood is done. I followed the pattern exactly even though it was kind of counterintuitive, and now I’m kind of regretting it. (Why am I binding off the back, then casting on for the hood, then binding off the hood, then seaming the bottom of the hood and the back of the sweater? Why didn’t I just pick up stitches, which I like, so as to avoid seaming, which I hate? I don’t know. It’s a mystery. I didn’t have the confidence in my understanding of patterns, especially as this one isn’t terribly well described and is accompanied by truly useless photos, but now that I’ve done all the knitting I see that I was exactly right and I should have done that. I need to have more confidence in my knitting. My mother even complimented me the other day! Was this a parenthetical aside? Oh dear.)

That means only two little wee sleeves are left to go. I was worried about running out of yarn (the Mission Falls yardage is a little shy of the suggested Debbie Bliss Cashmerino), but then I remembered that baby arms, like the rest of a baby, are teeny! And I looked at what I’ve knit and looked at the sleeve instructions, and I’m totally fine.

And while it is very, very tempting to just do the sleeves right now even though it’s 2:32 AM, I am going to be sensible and go to bed (and read my new book), and save the sleeves for my day off tomorrow. And maybe some of my other yarn will arrive tomorrow! And there will be much rejoicing.

And there will be the casting on of a sock, because I’m a little twitchy without one on the needles for the first time since, uh, I learned how to knit socks, I think. And these ones will be for me! For the first time since I figured out how to make socks actually fit human feet! Woohoo!

Reorg

I am not a neat person. This is an understatement of epic proportions. And with so many projects on the go over Christmas, the yarn situation got a little out of control. All the leftovers for all the projects were hanging around my knitting chair, along with the patterns, the accessories, and the needles. Never mind all the other crap that I seem to accumulate.

It was pretty out of control. Now, I’m posting these photos to make the transformation more impressive, but for god’s sake, don’t show my mother.

If you click through to that, there are notes on the photo explaining what everything is.

I know, I know. I am ashamed.

So today, I decided enough was enough. I spent an hour in there with a garbage bag, my needle cases, and my yarn tub, and I restored order.

I even put a pillowcase over the basket so that yarn would stop snagging. I’ve been meaning to do that for, oh, two years?

Once upon a time the whole table was done with the gold leaf style look, but it’s started to peel off. But look, you can see my new headlamp!

Man, I feel so much better. Except now I have to reorganize my stash, because with all the yarn that was hanging around here safely tucked into one of my bins, it’s a little overfull.

If you click through to that, there are notes detailing what’s inside.

Anyway, things are feeling a LOT better in my little corner of the living room. So now I can knit the night away guilt free!

The last of the Christmas knitting

Here they are! The last pairs of Christmas socks. I did also give away a felted purse, but I knit it months ago and forgot to take a picture.

Here are Melly’s pirate socks! They’re knit in Lorna’s Laces Black Purl (hence the name), and they’re just twisted rib all the way down.

They’re ankle socks, because I knew Mel didn’t like long socks.

Here are Jana’s Jaywalkers.

They’re knit in cmtigger’s Mickey Mouse yarn, which I couldn’t resist once I saw it. (Mickey’s pants are red, his bow tie is yellow, and he’s black, hence the colours.) It took me a couple of starts to get it to fit, and the final version’s legs are kind of pooly, but the feet striped REALLY well!

And here are Karen’s Broadripples.

My favourite thing about these is the ripply top. These are knit in the suggested yarn (which NEVER happens!), Cascade Fixation. I think the colourway is Denim.

Here’s all of my Christmas presents (except the bag), lined up and ready to be wrapped on the 23rd. (Look at all the time I had left over!)

But to get to that state, I had to weave in approximately a million ends. I actually feel like that isn’t much of an exaggeration. Here’s the aftermath of that:

They got me.

God dammit.

For months now, I have been resisting lace. I look at other people’s shawls, and I admire them, and I secretly wish I could own one, but I know perfectly well that I do not live a life that requires a lot of shawls, so why would I invest so much time into an impractical item like that? Besides, I like to knit while multitasking, so anything that requires that many charts just isn’t going to work for me.

But then, Pomatomus sucked me in. And I told myself that it wasn’t lace, it was socks! I have a long and loving history with socks, so that’s ok. Yeah, there was a chart, which I swore I’d never be able to understand, but look at Pomatomus! They’re worth learning charts for. And besides, Branching Out was a total bust, so clearly I’m just not meant for lace.

But then I finished Pomatomus, and the chart was suddenly making total sense. And then I picked up Branching Out again, and it worked! Well! It looked good! It took a little tinking and a little thinking, but I did it.

And then Beth gave me that gorgeous silk for Christmas and I got it into my head that it needed something really epic. 100% silk! How often am I going to have that? Not often. And the colours were so nice, so I started sort of casually looking at some lace patterns. But the scarves just didn’t really suit what I had in my mind. So I started looking at shawls. At first, it was just the straightforward ones, without too much lace. But somehow, in my mind, this yarn was something light and delicate and gorgeous and not at ALL me.

And then I found this shawl. Yeah. And it is all mountainy, and light and airy, and…gah. I thought about Icarus, or Swallowtail, but I kept coming back to this one.

So I bought it. And I printed it, and I read it over, and it made sense in my little brain. And I looked at the charts (all five of them. Five!) and I didn’t run screaming, so I cast it on. And I started knitting.

And now I’ve finished the first chart and am 22 rows in, and I love it. Even though I have to look at the pattern constantly, and have to count stitches and move stitch markers and focus like the dickens, I love it.

God dammit. Those tricky lace bastards got me.

My yarn for Rogue has shipped, but until it arrives, I’m going to finish up my project for later this week and work on my beautiful, beautiful shawl. Where will I wear it? I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want it to be mine. I plan to write about the experience, since I think I’m not the only one intimidated by these huge lace things, and I’m hoping to prove that it isn’t that bad. (Knock on wood.)

So. I’ll be here in my chair, knitting my insane shawl. I think all the Christmas knitting has addled my brain. Do I really think I can do this?

Yeah. I do.

Keeping it up

The last few Christmas FOs will be posted at some point in the next day or two. Photos of the post-Christmas projects (several of which are already finished!) will follow shortly thereafter. I’m hoping to stay in the updating habit a little better this year, unlike previous years where, post-Holidailies, I disappear off the edge of the universe.

In other attempts to keep updated, I’ve started posting to my booklog again. It’s here, and while I don’t pretend to have many insightful things to say about most of what I read, I do read quite a bit. So if you’re looking for book suggestions, that’s the place for you.

My knitting plans for the new year feature a little knitting for myself, a novel concept around these parts. When I was working on my Secret Pal questionnaire, I declared myself an Intermediate Knitter for the first time. That was a good feeling, because I genuinely meant it. I feel I have reached intermediate after years of being a beginner or possibly an advanced beginner. I have tackled a wide variety of patterns and styles and ideas. I’ve knit sweaters that fit, socks that work, and lace that actually looks like it’s supposed to. I’m feeling pretty good about my knitting these days.

Rogue will probably change all that, because to be perfectly honest, it scares the crap out of me. I keep reminding myself that when I started Samus, I didn’t know what I was doing. I’ll learn as I go. And the instructions are very clear, and everyone in the universe seems to have knit one except me, so I can pester people for help. (There are major advantages to being behind the knitting times.) Just one thing at a time, right? Right.

Of course, then I’ll tackle the Reversible Rib Shawl, which I am longing to own even though I have NO IDEA where I’d wear it. (Somebody get married so I can buy a dress to go with it!) It doesn’t look hard, but lordy, it looks tedious. Here’s hoping I find it soothing rather than boring. I’m not holding my breath.

Anyway. Photos will be up in the next few days. (Jamie has to go back to work next week so I can occasionally reclaim his computer.) The last of the knitted gifts were distributed yesterday, to warm reception. But more about that later on.