Mikknit

I’ll have a new pair of socks to wear tomorrow - the Gentleman Socks are finally done! I don’t know what it was, if it was just my winter malaise or the twisted stitches or what, but these socks seemed to take *forever*. Probably no more than 3 weeks, but long enough. I’ll have a picture tomorrow, as it’s too dark for a proper picture right now.

What’s next? Well, another pair of socks is pretty likely. I’ve got my bin of sock yarn sitting in a place where I look at it every time I go past the sewing room, and the bright orange Silja is calling my name. It’ll undoubtedly be another pair out of Sensational Knitted Socks, for me of course. If nothing else, I *definitely* deserve more handknit socks.

I *think* tomorrow will be the night to get back to work on the Peace Fleece sweater. It’ll be nice and quiet here and I’ll be in charge of the remote, so I can just turn it off if I need silence to concentrate on math and frogging. Plus, I’m meeting a friend for coffee on Wednesday, so I’ll have someone to commiserate with.

In the meantime, though, I’ll drag out the dishcloth in progress if I need to do a few rows. Nothing like quick progress on something so useful to make one feel accomplished.

I bought my sweater drying racks at the evil Wal-Mart last summer, but when I went back to pick up a couple more yesterday they didn’t have any and not even a tag on the shelf for them. Great. Now I’ve got to track some down at another store. Haven’t gone to Target yet but maybe I’ll do that this weekend when I can leave the kids home with Chris. Arlo is in a screaming phase and it’s just too much to handle right now. I suppose I could look for one online and skip the trip to the store, not to mention the impulse purchases! Not to say that I’m immune to online impulse purchases, but it’s a little easier to abstain when there are shipping charges involved, for some reason. (Let’s not mention how many times I’ve increased my order to get the free shipping from KnitPicks!)

I did come home with a 1# cone of Peaches & Creme, though. It’s white, nothing terribly exciting, but good enough. I had an idea to make myself a bathmat out of it, á la Mason-Dixon Knitting or One Skein, but one uses a heavier weight of the stuff and the other is crocheted with a double strand of yarn. I didn’t feel like winding off half the cone and finding a size J crochet hook, so I cast on for one of the dishcloths from the Monthly Dishcloth Knitalong Yahoo group. I’m about 2″ into it already, hooray for speedy, just-mindless-enough projects!

I left my sock in the car and haven’t felt like going out to get it, plus it’s just too much concentration right now. Hence the mostly-mindless knitting being a very good thing. Sleep hasn’t exactly been in high supply here this week. Lots of movies for the kids, too. We’re watching Shrek tonight for the first time, hopefully it’s as good as I keep hearing. If not, they’d be happy to watch Charlotte’s Web 923409810 times a day.

I use LiveJournal for my personal blog and today, when I actually want to post something, LJ is down. Nice.

In other news, Kerry recommended a fiber processor to me the other day. I still haven’t gotten the fleece I bought in May done - I washed it and carded one batt, then stopped. It had a lot of grease left in it after washing, it turns out, making it difficult to run through the drum carder. I re-washed a batch of it last night after emailing with someone at Morning Sun Fiber Barn - she told me that Corriedale (it’s a Corriedale x Lincoln fleece) has a lot of grease and she’d prefer that I wash it again to remove the excess. I washed one batch of the wool last night after the kids went to bed, hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to wash the other two bags this week. I suppose I’m going to need some more sweater racks for that, though… (sound of displeasure at the idea of going to Walmart or Target for those today). I wonder if it’ll be easier to card after re-washing and if I might want to put the drum carder to work instead of sending it out. I’m sure I could rope Grace into helping with that - last time I carded a fleece she had fun laying the locks on the intake tray while I turned the crank (only after her fingers were out of the way, of course!)

I made some good progress on the second Gentlemans Sock yesterday. I’m only a couple pattern repeats from the heel now and should make it to the heel today if the kids cooperate.

I get in a funk every winter, and here I am again. I’ve been knitting, but have been generally dissatisfied with what I’m turning out. I got the Peace Fleece sweater down to the bottom edge, bound off, and realized that it was way too big in the chestal area. After some consultation with Abby at Borealis, I’ve decided that I need to take another inch out of the armscye before the underarm increases start. I’ve ripped it all the way back to the underarms (boy, was that fun), but not any farther. It’s been about a week and a half and I just don’t want to think about touching the sweater still. I’d planned to work on it on Sunday but when I went to my spinning group I got caught up in spinning sparkly wool and forgot about the sweater. So there it sits. Maybe I’ll get to it sometime this week.

I also whipped up a new pair of the Fiber Trends Felted Clogs, a pattern I love. My old ones were apparently being held together by the dirt on them and fell apart when I washed them. Bugger. So I made new ones out of purple and lime green Cascade 220 and I just don’t love them. My old ones were made in Lamb’s Pride and they were thicker, cushier, and just looked nicer. I suppose part of the problem could be that I’m felting in a front loader, but I’ve worked out a wash routine that works well for felting. I’m going to take these to someone else’s place and give them a wash in a top loader and see if they’re magically perfect afterwards, but if they’re not I’m going to make a new pair in LP.

It hasn’t been all dissatisfying projects and bad outcomes here, thankfully. I’ve finished the first Gentleman Sock and it fits and looks wonderful. I’m about 3″ into the second one, but it’s going slowly. I like to read blogs while I knit, but this isn’t good knitting while reading material - I have to pay just enough attention to it because of the twisted stitch pattern. Chris is going to be out of town a bunch over the coming month, so I suppose there’ll be plenty of movie-watching time to work on it. I just need to pick out some good, semi-brainless movies to watch!

I’ve also been doing a little sewing - Grace wanted a new dress, so I whipped up the t-shirt dress out of Kwik Sew’s Sewing For Children (I love this book, as well as their Sewing For Babies and Sewing For Toddlers). The style’s a little outdated, a dropped-waist dress, but I shortened the bodice a bit so the bodice would at least land at her waist, but I prefer the look of an empire waist on this sort of dress. So I’ll be making her a new one (or several! Her other dresses in this style get a lot of wear), and probably an outfit for her birthday (less than a month, oh my gosh!). I also hemmed a bunch of stuff that’d been sitting since September - flannel pants for both kids, stripy velour shirts for both of them, and velour pants for Arlo to match his stripy shirt. Yes, I do indeed have a lot of velour, why do you ask? Gods, you don’t want to see my fabric closet. Or maybe you do? I don’t know. My sewing room’s a mess, but I can at least see the desk now. I got some shelves from IKEA to mount on the wall behind the desk, maybe I can get some stuff up there and out of my way, then clean up a bit before posting a picture.

Today, though, the kids and I are going to the fabric shop with my mom. She needs to pick up her sewing machine from the repair shop and I need some PatternEase (interfacing for pattern tracing), as well as some elastic and maybe some more fabric (shut up. I DO need more fabric!). And lunch at my favorite Vietnamese place for sure. Mmm, Pho. My tummy’s growling now.

The Peace Fleece sweater finally got put in timeout. I’d gotten to the end of the bust shaping while watching Little Miss Sunshine (loved it!) and started on the body without thinking about decreasing for waist shaping. Of course I had to rip it back again, then set it aside while I thought about the rate of decrease needed. I let it rest for a couple days to give myself time to think over things, then picked it up again this morning to see if I could figure things out. I took it off the needle and tried it on to see when/where the waist shaping needed to go in, and noticed that the front of the sweater was *significantly* lower than the back. Hmm, that’s not supposed to be how it works out. I immediately realized I’d done my math wrong *again* and started frogging. Got it ripped back to the start of the bust shaping and set it aside to think about its behaviour.

I sat down with my copy of Big Girl Knits and redid my math (I’d used their section on short-row bust shaping for the first attempts, too). First of all, I had my row gauge wrong - it’s 5 rows/inch, not 6 like I’d originally figured. Then, I took the tape measure to my body - usually a rather discouraging thing to do. But I did it with all honesty in the interest of getting the perfect sweater out of it. Turns out my boobs aren’t quite as big as the numbers I’d originally come up with indicated… how that works is beyond me! I’m glad I double-checked my math this time, because I made another stupid mistake that would’ve caused yet another redo. But I’m happy with the numbers now and I’m starting on it again. Wish me luck!

While the sweater was in timeout, I started Kristi’s Gentleman Socks pattern in purple Trekking XXL, color 109 (I think). Since my gauge is slightly looser than what she calls for in the pattern, I had to do a little figuring to see what numbers to follow on the pattern. I asked Kristi for advice and she suggested I go up a size, since her socks knit from this pattern had come out quite snug. I took her advice and cast on following the numbers for the next size up. When I started in on the twisted stitch pattern, I was very careful to not make them too snug. Of course, the sock was coming out WAY too big. (My luck with knitting lately is not so great, it seems.) I ripped it out and cast on again using the numbers for the next smaller size, then got started on it at the Stitch & [You Know What] this morning. It seems like it’s coming out just perfect this time - goes on over my foot without a problem. I’m enjoying the pattern immensely and I love watching the gradual color changes in the Trekking - this is one of the ombre colorways that changes colors one ply at a time. Very fun to knit with!

Okay, I think I’m going to go back to the Peace Fleece sweater now - I’m cold and it was nice and warm when I tried it on. I really, *really* want a nice warm sweater ASAP. Plus, I’ve threatened it with competition - I’ve been drooling over the yarn at Beaverslide Dry Goods all week. I think I need ALL of the colors and yarns they sell. All of them.

Thank you all for your kind and supportive words. It feels so weird to not have my grandma around anymore, even when we knew it was coming and had prepared ourselves for that. Here is her obituary, if anyone’s interested in reading. She was an incredible person, as was my grandpa (his obituary). It’s hard to imagine how they packed so much into their lives, but they did.

And now for the knitting content:

I can finally reveal the mystery project I teased you with a couple weeks ago - it was the Mittens from Halland from Folk Mittens, by Marcia Lewandowski. They were a gift for my mom and she was totally surprised, so I’m guessing that maybe she didn’t happen to come across my blog post showing them.

I used Cascade 220 and size 3 bamboo DPNs, which was a lovely combination. I was a bit worried about knitting worsted weight yarn on such small needles, but there wasn’t much trouble with splitting yarn (a problem I tend to have with bamboo) and the fabric wasn’t insanely stiff. Just perfect, as a matter of fact!

I found the little bit of snow around my parents’ house for this picture - it’s ridiculous that we had more snow in the Twin Cities than they did up in Ashland!

I knit her initials into the cuff of one, she thought that was pretty cool!

Since I finished the mittens, I’ve been a little aimless. I finished DH’s maroon & gold U of MN Gophers socks on Christmas Eve and cast on for the first knee-high out of the grey handspun. That’s still on the needles - I’m cutting it close trying to use as much of the yarn as possible and first I started the ribbing too soon, then too late. I may go back and undo some of the calf increases since the fabric is stretchier than I’d anticipated, or I may go all the way back to the ankle and decrease some there to help it stay up better. My ankle has the same circumference as the widest part of my foot, but what’s snug on my foot is loose on my ankle. I don’t understand that one bit!

I’ve also been working on my Peace Fleece sweater and finding out that Peace Fleece holds up really well through repeated frogging. I’ve been learning a lot about how to fit a sweater to my body, which is great, but I’ve been re-knitting the same yarn over and over again. First I did the front and back down to the underarms and that came down to the bottom of my bra band, a little too low. Went back and took out an inch or so before the armsceye increases and redid the increases, still way too long but I didn’t try it on before doing the short-row shaping for the boobage. Screwed up the math on that part pretty badly on the first attempt, didn’t center my short rows properly on the second attempt, and got it right on the third attempt. I promptly tried it on and took a look in the mirror and oh boy did it look bad. After much consideration and consultation of other patterns, I ripped back to where the front and back were each about 6″ narrower than the desired width and increased those stitches at the underarm. Voila, perfect! Barbara Walker tells you to increase until your work is 1-2″ narrower than the desired width at the underarm, and that just makes the armhole way too sloping for what I want. Now I’ve got about 2.5″ to knit straight until I start the bust shaping (which I thankfully don’t have to recalculate), then after hours of short rowing (again) I’ll get to do some decreasing for some waist shaping. Or maybe I’ll do a sleeve, just to get it out of the way and to break things up a bit - I don’t think I want to do both sleeves one right after the other, just for the tedium.

I’ve been wanting to break this up with a little sock knitting but I don’t want to work on the knee high handspun sock. I *did* get a ridiculous amount of Trekking XXL for Christmas (love you, mom and sister!) as well as the gorgeous yarn included in the last installment of the Scout’s Indie Swag club; plus there’s my slightly obscene sock yarn stash. I may break out the Schaeffer Anne that’s been marinating since 2004 - it’s got the sort of eye-searing colors I love and God knows I need more handknit socks! I suppose we’ll see what happens. I want to at least get to the point of starting the bust shaping before I get sidetracked, but we’ll see. I do need a portable project that doesn’t involve counting.

But first, the sweater. I’m hoping that I’ll have it to a point where I can show you a modeled picture soon. But only if you promise not to laugh at me, okay?