Finished...ish

So I cast of Tiny's Sweater today. I was about to weave in the ends and block it when I thought I should get him to try it on...especially since it's a sweater I designed and not from a pattern. Now before you think the worst, don't worry-it fit him fine and looked really good...except for the neck. The neck is HORRIBLE. It...doesn't work...I can't describe it...I don't want to think about it...
I drop kicked it across the room. I'm not even saying that for blog amusement-I actually drop kicked the sweater...
So now I have to pick out the cast-off and rip back the neck and find a new neck strategy. I am going to sift through a bunch of patterns until I find one that seems right...later...not now...sometime in the future...only God knows when...

Obviously I don't have time for blogging...

This is what I have been doing...

It's obvious I don't have time for blogging...I have a goal to finish it tomorrow...

Call Me Ishmael

Tiny's sweater has become my great white whale...
I have been kntiting it since September, and designing it since...time immemorial. I seem to have some kind of subconscious block in connection with it. There are always other projects I need to work on. Last week I decided to sit down and slog away at it until it is finished.
Slogging is an excellent word...I finished knitting it to the point where I can justify starting work on the sleeves. I almost faltered at this point, but yea verily, fate swung her fickle locks and threw me a curve ball...I made myself a secret deal that when I finished one sleeve I could cast on a sweater for myself, and maybe start knitting some thick wooly socks for my husband's coworker...I was just about ready to sneak off and start knitting something else, when upon review of the patterns I realized that everything used the same size needles! Curses!!! Foiled again!! I can be a pretty fickle knitter but even I can't justify pulling needles from a project that I promised myself I would finish sometime this century to start other projects.
So here I am knitting away at Tiny's Sweater-which isn't so Tiny-I am going to have to find some truly triumphant music for the completion of this garment. Maybe even throw a party. I'll invite a whole bunch of people over, cook lots of food to warm up the kitchen, turn the thermostat on as high as it will go, and then make him wear the sweater all damn night...yeah...that will make me feel better...

Happy December!

Wow, December already! I am doing a the Christmas at the Courthouse craft fair on Dec. 11 and 12th at the Old Courthouse in Kamloops and looking forward to it...I am trying not to get my hopes up because I haven't had much luck with sales at craft fairs, but I think I have some really fantastic items that people will want, so really it's all a matter of how many people actually go to the craft fair.
Today I came up with a list of what I have I already knit and what, ideally, I would like to knit before the 11th.

I have knit:
7 pairs of fingerless mitts
1 pair thrummed mittens
1 pair regular mittens
7 adult hats
1 scarf
4.5 pairs of baby booties
2 baby hats
1 pair socks
1 sweater

I will also have my handspun yarn available

I would like to knit before the 11th
1 pair thrummed mittens
2.5 pairs baby booties
3 baby hats
1 pair socks
1 pair regular mittens

Everything after that is gravy. I think this would be a very respectable inventory. I estimate it will take me about 8 days to knit what's left if I don't get distracted. This is very difficult because I have a bunch of things I want to finish up...liket he Pretty Thing, the other Rick Sock and Tiny's Sweater. I also got the Enchanted Sole and would like to knit something from there for myself. i am seriously jonesing for some selfknitting. After all the work I have done on kntiting for the craft fair I plan on knitting on one of my WIP's at the Craft show and maybe actually getting something fun finished.

I have managed to work out a system where I can scan photos for work while doing a little bit of knitting, but I can't do it too much or I start feeling seriously ADD...

Rick can be SO annoying...

Lately I have been fairly productive with my knitting. I have finished several small objects, as you can see from previous posts, and finally got back to work on the skull socks. I am not 100% happy with the design and I have a lot of tweaking to do, but they turned out all right.




I have finally got back to work on Tiny's sweater. I had to take a rather long hiatus for the sake of my hands. It was become extremely painful to knit it. I think a lot of it has to do with my refusal to use a cable needle. I knit contintental so it's really easy to slip the stitches off the needle and hold them with my right thumb and index finger while purling/knitting the next stitches and then slipping them back onto the left needle. This method is infinitely faster for me and saves me the hunt for the cable needle. But with this particular project, the knitting is very tight and the yarn is very inflexible so it requires a stronger grip on the slipped stitches, which consequently requires a stronger grip on the needles. I have found a decent balance that involves me relaxing my grip a little bit and only knitting 4 rows at a time (which ends up pretty close to and inch so that's not so bad) so progress is WAY slower than I am used to, but it's moving along instead of sitting on the edge of the couch looking accusatory.




The front is on the top. I still think the back looks like it is from a Klingon...



Turkey has been not at all supportive, nor impressed with my knitting endeavours.

I have also cast on the rick socks by cookie a. I am a huge fan of cookie a and I LOVE her sock patterns. I think they are beautiful and interesting, and unlike any other socks I have ever seen. I HATE knitting them. I bought the twisted flower pattern eons ago (they look like something the Loth Lorien elves would wear) and tried knitting it a couple times and was incredibly frustrated with it, after a few full froggings I gave up. I don't mind the occasional frog (such a lie, I HATE frogging) but having to frog the whole thing back to nothing multiple times is more than my delicate psyche can bear.
I bought cookie a's sock innovation this spring and I love the book. It's a fantastic combination of patterns and techniques and goes through some really great techniques for designing your own socks. I tried the rick pattern a few times...multiple frogs...guess what happened? I put the whole thing away for about 8 months. I didn't try any more of her patterns, I was too disheartened by the fact that I hated knitting things that I loved.
The other day I picked up the book again. I purchased a nice simple solid yarn and set about casting on rick socks...again. The level of frustration is not much lower but my knowledge of knitting has increased exponentially since the spring. I am now capable of knitting from complex charts. I can read my knitting in a way that I couldn't before-now rather than blindly follow charts and instructions I can watch what I am knitting to see if it is correct as I go (not infallible by any means, but a huge improvement). The socks still drive me mad.
I have figured out a few reasons for this. I didn't read the other projects on rick before I cast on. I shall do that from now on for ALL of cookie a's patterns. The first thing that was messed was that it says to cast on 60 sts, but most people need 72 (it's a 12 st repeat). This is not because of errors in gauge, this is because the socks were designed to be REALLY skinny. So skinny that 98.2% of the populaiton probably can't wear them. There were people that persevered with 60 sts and a stretchy yarn and ended up with socks that look terrible and distorted (like wattching 4:9 on a 16:9 TV) I got the ribbing done and 4 repeats of the pattern and realized they were WAY to small so ripped them back (there were quite a few mistakes as well).
I also learned that you need to use yarn that is amazingly unsplitty with cookie a patterns. There are a lot of stitches that aren't that easy so non-splitty yarn is a must (like ssk, or ktbl right next to purl sts...blech).
Another great thing I learned about cookie a patterns is they are not conducive to continental knitters. I thought it was just that I sucked, but it's the order of the sts and the ssk's next to yarn overs and ktbl's knext to purls that make me want to shred the knitting and then curl into a ball and suck my humb while weeping softly in the corner. After some serious thought I realized this pattern would be MUCH easier if i was a yarn thrower. This is one of the only times I will say something like this. In general continental is way faster and way easier (Elizabeth Zimmerman said so, and I believe her.) I even read in a few posts about rick that the left sock is way easier than the right sock for continental knitters (yes I am knitting a sock with different patterns on the left and right...le sigh).
And last but not least, switching the ssk's for sl1, k1, psso's is WAY easier and makes for better tension (for me)
...I also suspect that knitting with one of those tiny circular needles rather than dpn's might make for more even tension because there are yo's at the ends of the repeats, which means there are yo's at the very ends of your needles.
So after this in depth analysis of these socks, I am not trying to say the socks are bad, or the patterning is bad, or that cookie a is a sadistic designer. I still think her socks are incredible and I still LOVE the designs. They make you think and figure things out. So if they are approached in that manner, they are fabuluous. I would not reccomend them to anyone that wasn't an experienced knitter-I want to keep my knitterly friends, not have them egging my house screaming obscenities about 87 row, 88 sts repeat charts....

I Only Knit Tiny`s Sweater

Fall is here, and I must say I have never been so excited by the season! I have always enjoyed fall, I love the crisp air and how everything manages to smell clean and delicious, even in the city. But this fall in particular I am excited about. This fall I am a fully addicted knitter and spinner and I am nesting. What a perfect combination for the season. Lately I have been knitting a lot, spinning often and gotten back into dying now that it's not so hot that the dye pot turns my house into a vinegary sauna.
Tiny's sweater is coming along slowly. I knit the first ball of yarn in one day and that was a huge mistake. The yarn I am using is called Samband. It is a discontinued Icelandic Lopi. It is incredibly inflexible for a few reasons a) it is single ply so it doesn't have the boing of a 2ply. 2) It is Icelandic wool that hasn't been dehaired so the hair holds it together more than straight fleece does (think mohair). iii) This wool is at least 3o yrs old. Stored very well, but despite that it is very, very dry-which obviously lends nothing to the elasticity of the yarn. Add into that that I am knitting it at a firm gauge and it has cables...well that spells pain. The 2 subsequent balls of yarn have taken nearly a week each to knit. I can't do more than 4 or 5 rows at a time because it hurts.
Now I had vowed that I would knit NOTHING else until I was done this sweater. This is not an entirely unreasonable goal for me, I have knit other sweaters to the exclusion of all else. So while I was knitting only Tiny's sweater...I was knitting very little because I could only knit 10-15 rows day at most, and that was all I knit. That drove me pretty batty for awhile until I realized that spinning is not knitting. (C'mon...it's SO not cheating...) so I did a bunch of spinning. Then I realized that dying is also not spinning, so I did a bunch of that too. Soon I was nearly in the full throes of fibre induced euphoria, and still not knitting very much. it was great for a few days, until I got to the point where I realized that i was significantly increasing my yarn stash (good) but not decreasing my stash at all because I wasn't really knitting (bad..ish).
I knit an alpaca scarf out of roving. That doesn't really count, because it only took an hour and a half to knit, and everybody know that if you don't reach that critical threshold of several hours, it`s not really knitting.
Than I knit a pair of mittens. This also didn`t count because I knit it out of handspun that I specifically spun for mittens and I was experimenting with mitten design- i am trying to design a better fitting mitten both in the the thumb and the top of the hand. It`s going very well so far. It fits my hand fabulously...although apparently not everyone has hands shaped like mine...
Right now I am knitting a hat from some red and plum colour Blue Faced Leicester wool that is plyed with sky blue bamboo. this also doesn`t count because I am knitting it to donate as a door prize for the Kamloops Arts Council AGM on Tuesday.
So really...
I have only knit Tiny`s Sweater...

I don't need a picture to say a thousand words...

I keep putting of blogging because of a lack of photos. I could blame this lack of photos on a lack of camera, but that would be a lie…really it’s sheer laziness. I seem to believe that I can’t blog without photos, like my writing isn’t enough for my readers. I have lots of interesting things to talk about with very few photos, hopefully I can be descriptive enough to be interesting.
I went to the Fall Fair on Saltspring Island a couple of weekends ago, it’s something I try to go to every year. The Fall Fair is like a mini reunion, I get to see a lot of old friends and enjoy a fantastic event. My Mom is the poultry coordinator, so I spend a lot of time with chickens volunteering. The past couple of years I have assisted the judging of the poultry, I think it is possible that I now know more about chickens than a person who doesn’t actually own a chicken should…I also attended a breeding seminar so I could learn how to breed my non-existent chickens. However, 0+0=0, so I still have no chickens.
I entered a lot of things at the Fair, I entered a whole bunch of spun yarn and a sweater. Mom entered some yarn, sheep and chickens, and Mackenzie entered yarn. We all did very well and when we gathered all of our ribbons I discovered we had 30 ribbons, 3 rosettes, and 2 trophies, which was a pretty darn good haul! Mom’s cockerel got best chicken, which was awesome because it was a record year for entries!
Another great thing occurred at the fair. I met a lovely lady by the name of Alinka who had an angora rabbit she no longer wanted. This lovely bunny included a crapload of rabbit feed (I say crapload because honestly…that’s what rabbit feed turns into…) a beautiful hutch and all the accessories needed for a happy bunny. She is a delightful bunny but I am unsure of her parentage (which I don’t hold against her) I think she is a cross because her fur is not that long. She might be part Satin or French because she has no fluffy stuff on her ears or face…she could be a French and the lack of fluffy on face and ears is the result of crossbreeding. Either way she is delightful, her name is Liela-which I was sorely tempted to change because I had a boss named Liela who was HORRIBLE-but I can’t seem to make anything else work. I often call her Bunny-wei, which is what all the “Egyptians” in Stargate were yelling all the time. She is a fantastic smokey colour, mostly grey with just a hint of brown. And she is so incredible docile and polite. She likes crackers. The cats are undecided about her. Chase brought in a baby mouse and played with it and ate it in front of the rabbit. I think it may be a warning…
In terms of knitting, I have burned through a couple projects. I knit the Louisa hat and it turned out great (I gave it to Alinka). I designed a hat pattern that I test knit and need to tinker with a bit and get test knitters for-it’s a fair isleish style pattern of a dragon/phoenix. It looks really cool and is knit from a neutral colour and Noro.
I finally started knitting Tiny’s sweater. It took me 1 day to burn through the first ball of yarn and has taken me 5 days to get through the second!!! The yarn is…not stretchy…it makes my hands ouchy. Because of this I keep looking at other patterns and get to the point where I am pulling yarn and needles out of my stash and then have to throw them on the floor while yelling ”BAD CAROLINE!” I know because of the difficulty with knitting this yarn (an incredibly inflexible Icelandic Lopi) if I stop knitting this sweater, I will never start it again. I will say that I particularly enjoy the cabling in the back because it looks like a Klingon’s back. This sweater is a circular knit cable sweater with raglan sleeves. If it turns out well perhaps I will write the pattern down and have it on etsy. I may need test knitters!!!

Photoless

So my husband pointed out to me that I had not done a post in a while. This happens every time I kill the batteries on my camera. The camera shuts off automatically except when it is plugged in to the USB port. So about 50% of the time when I am uploading my pics, I kill the battery.
I resist posting when I have no photos, but this time I am going to break tradition because I don't foresee myself getting around to getting batteries anytime soon.
So...did I start knitting Tiny's Sweater? No. The whole plan is for it to be designed in time for our trip across Canada. I plan on taking about 3ish projects with me on the trip. The Tiny Sweater, something else (perhaps a horribly complicated lace shawl?) and socks/mitts which only count as one project even though I will probably do more than one pair. Our trip is going to take up most of August so that's a lot of knitting time!
My current projects are the Lady of the Lake Sweater in "Ruby" I special ordered it in that colourway. It's the most amazing shades of red.
I am also knitting the Triinu scarf (rav link) from Knitted Lace of Estonia. I am usually a hater of charted lace, but Estonian Lace makes sense. The charts are easy to follow and pattern in such a way that eventually you don't really need to chart because you know what happens next from looking at what you have already knit! It's very intuitive and I love it. I think it works this way because up until this century most Estonian Lace patterns were not written down and families had samplers of stitch patterns to use as guides. I am developing a somewhat unhealthy obsession with nupps (apparently prounounced to rhyme with soup, but I can't quite bring myself to say "noup"). A nupp is where you knit and yarn over several times into one stitch increasing it by 5-9 stitches. The next row you purl all those stitches into one so it doesn't really increase. It makes a lovely little blob and everytime I make one I feel like a freaking knitting genius!
So that's whats been going on in my knitting life...for all you people that missed me oh so much.

reCHARGE!

There is something about knitting, when I get it right, that makes me feel like a freakin' genius!
Seriously...it's the greatest feeling. Conversely getting it wrong makes me feel like a dumbass...but I digress.
I have been in a constant state of working/volunteering for several days now. Lack of sleep is making me stupid and tired. I am too tired to cast on anything and I am between projects.
I should have gone to bed but instead I did this:


Apparently I am absolutely insane despite the fact that I failed math three times in highschool I decided doing the maths for Tiny's sweater would be relaxing.

A little background on the Tiny Sweater. My husband decided that if I knit him a really complicated time-consuming black-hole-of-knitting sweater he would wear it. Basically he wants a sweater with cables. Not that cables are difficult, but they certainly aren't as fast as stocking stitch when you are doing mixed cables. I received 20 balls of beautiful icelandic wool as a gift. Which was fantastic because my husband is by no means a small man (we measured his chest to day, it's 53") and the idea of purchasing enough yarn to cover him made me feel faint. I started seriously looking at the "you are guaranteed for a loan" admail...I figured if I got decent yarn at a decent price the sweater would cost at least $150. So this gift of yarn was heaven sent.

I then could not find a single sweater that I could imagine him wearing. I surfed and surfed. I showed him a couple patterns with no interest on his part. I then decided (on the advice of the lovely Barb Brown) to do a "vanilla sweater" and add cables. So it took me a surprisingly long time to find a plain sweater for a man that was the right dimensions. I decided if I was going to the trouble of knitting this sweater I would do it in a style I like which means raglan seamless construction.

After much searching I found the perfect vanilla sweater, I then sat down with Tiny and perused a cable book with him. He was very obliging despite his lack of interest in looking at knitting books (after all the sweater is for him). He picked several, I actually made him pick more than I needed so I could have some design leeway.

Today I was too tired to knit so I sat down with some books and started to math things out. The yarn I am using is far heavier than what is called for in the pattern, so I started with that. I also want the ribbing to match the cable, this was the hard part...I also am doing way more cable on the front so the back actually has less stitches than the front to compensate (damn I hope that works...) It took me over an hour to figure out the math and the ribbing and I am proud to say I have written the first row to the first pattern I have ever written!

Here it is!
Cast on 108 stitches and join for knitting in round, pm at beginning of round.
Row1" *k2, p2* 4 times, pm, p1, k4, p8, k4, p1, pm, p2, k2, p2, k1, pm, p3, k4, p4, k4, p4, k4, p3, pm, k2, p2, k2, p1, pm, p1, k4, p8, k4, p1, pm, *p2, k2* 4 times, pm, *p2, k2* 8 times, p2, pm, p1, k9, p12, k9, p1, pm, *p2, k2* 8 times, p2.

Dudes, I lined up the ribbing on the first try.
Yeah...I'm awesome...You know...aside from the part where I have been working on this sweater for months and haven't cast on yet...

Oh by the way, I am going to knit this sweater with these...
Jealous?