Time for Candor

One of the things I like most about myself is the fact that I'm honest at all times. This can sometimes get me into trouble, usually because people apparently don't want to hear the truth when they ask for it, but in the overall scheme of things it has served me well and simplified my life greatly. Without having to remember what I've said to which people I'm spared the worry of slipping up.

Unfortunately, it would seem that I've been less than honest with myself about my UFOs recently. Remember those two black, blocking sweaters? Well, after they had dried thoroughly I tried them both on to see what I had to work with. The lace one immediately went to the frog pond, being both too short and ridiculously boxy (also, the fucking armholes were too tight again), but the embellished v-neck went into my project basket with a mental note to restitch the armholes a bit looser and go ahead with the lace trims.

Eight hours and one very long, boring shift at work later, I've had plenty of time to let that almost-finished sweater simmer in the back of my brain and sometime today I realized that, honestly, I will not wear that sweater if I go ahead and finish it in its current state. The armholes are too short (MOTHERF&#%) and the deep v-neck that looked so structured and secretary-hot on the b-cup model is so deep that it slips open and towards my armholes, thanks to my irritatingly large d-cups. For future reference, v-necks that end near my navel and whose edges are supposed to lay across my nipples are a bad idea.

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I'm still working on my third sweater-for-me, although the realization that I'm going to have to rip out the neckband, shoulder seams, and cap shaping of the finished sleeve in order to make the fucking armholes taller is less than encouraging. I'm not too concerned with finishing any of my socks-in-progress (all........er......6 pairs of them) at the moment, which leaves three projects on my WIP list.

The first, a zip-apart colourblock pullover for Sarreyn, needs just one more zipper to be complete, but we figured out that he'd be more likely to wear it with the pieces joined directly to each other, rather than with all the zippers in place. I'm not up to ripping out tons of teeny black machine-stitched seams any time soon, so that's just going to stay where it is for now. The second, Colchique (for me), is waiting on me to translate the sleeves from French and then rewrite the pattern for them so that they can be knit from the shoulder downward. This is stalled for much the same reason as the first WIP. When I'm working six days a week the last thing I want to do is come home and do something I dislike even at the best of times.

The third, also for Sarreyn, is the irregular rib raglan from Loop-d-Loop. It's actually completely knit, but when he tried it on for a final fitting it was discovered that his upper arms had, well, gotten bigger. To get it to the point where he can wear it comfortably I have to rip out the collar, undo the underarm seams, rip back both sleeves to about the elbow, reknit them with added increases, and then reknit the ridiculously tall collar. And attach a toggle. This sounds much more feasible to me than with of the other WIPs, but I just don't feel like doing it right now. Chalk it up to laziness, but what I really want to do is knit one of the fantastically constructed patterns from the Domiknitrix's new book. I swatched for the Little Red Riding Hoodie, with limited success, but also have my eye on about five other patterns. If it so happens that I can't make anything without going yarn shopping (it's a distinct possibility. much of her stuff is in bulky weight.) I have a backup plan that involves the VK Winter 2006.

Note to Self:

Always, always, ALWAYS make the armholes of sweaters taller than you think they need to be. >_<

Proof of Progress

Albeit very poorly shot proof.





That first one is based on the Lace Pullover (Pattern #1) from VK Winter 2006, but I'm sort of making it up as I go, so it could turn out to be a disaster. The second one is my fresh-out-of-surgery-and-a-bath Embellished V-Neck. The fit was a little off when I tried it on pre-blocking, so hopefully once it's dry it'll be more like I want it to be. That contrast thread you see in there is a guideline for the placement of the lace trims that I may end up omitting altogether.


We'll come back to those later. In the meantime, I have another past FO for you.



These are my first foray into the world of fair isle, and, while they do have some errors, I'm very pleased with how they turned out.



One of the most notable errors is that when I did a tubular cast-on I accidentally cast on 2 extra stitches. I of course didn't realize this until I started the first set of those neat little diamonds, at which point I had to stop for a few hours and agonizingly plot out a new motif to run down the front of the leg. It's still diamonds, and therefore not glaringly obvious, but it's different enough to stand out at a second glance. I call that creative license, damnit.



Pattern - Arched Shaped Stockings from VK Fall 2006 (do you get the feeling that I loved this particular issue?)

Yarn Source - Cervinia Calzetteria purchased at a ridiculously low price from smileysyarns.com. I used almost 2 skeins each of Black and Naples, worked up on size 3 bamboo dpns.

Modifications - Well, other than my......er......creative license usage with the colourwork, I think I lengthened these a bit, used a tubular cast-on with elastic threaded through it instead of plain ribbing, and did some sort of creative license thing with the first repeat of the arch shaping.

Thoughts - I'm pleased with these in so many ways. They're a successful first fair isle, first tubular cast-on, and first pair of knee socks, they're incredibly squishy and warm, and they're machine washable. I can't even express how much the thought of handwash-only socks annoys me. Any other knit item, sure, but socks? Hell no. Those things get washed every time I wear them, and I'll be damned if they're going to get special treatment on every laundry day.

Bloody Hindsight

I've sort of forgotten what I finished after those four disasters, so instead of past FO reports you get current knitting progress. I'm not going to show you all of my WIPs, because that's a level of embarassment I'm saving for another entry, but you can see my current favourite project.



This is the Embellished V-Neck from VK Fall 2006. I've loved this pattern from first sight, as is usually the case with me, but was so busy with holiday gifts at the time that all I got to do was buy yarn for it (Wool-Ease. Nothing special.) and make a little swatch. A couple of weeks ago I fetl the urge to start it, so I quickly freed my US 7 circ from the potentially disastrous lace v-neck I'm also not quite done with and read through the pattern. It was somewhere around the sleeve instructions that I noticed the lack of a hem anywhere in the pattern. The entire thing is knit in St st from the cast-on upwards, with nothing whatsoever standing between the edge and a massive amount of curling. Looking at the pattern picture confirmed it, but luckily for me I had recently read something about tubular hems. An hour later, I had knit 12 St st rows with a purled turning ridge in their midst, folded up the bottom half of the hem, and k2togethered across the whole thing. Lovely!

It was only much later, after I'd done all four hems and started seaming things together, that I read something else about tubular hems. Apparently the rows of St st before the turning ridge are supposed to be worked with a smaller needle, and I immediately understood why.



You see how my hem flips up like that? If I'd knit the first six rows with a US5 instead of a US7 the slightly greater tension of the fabric would have held the hem flat, but as it stands now, the only way that's going to get fixed is if I painstakingly snip and unravel, stitch by stitch, my entire lovely hem and reknit it. Fortunately, because the portion I have to reknit won't be seen, I can knit it down from the turning ridge and it won't matter that it's obviously going the wrong way. Unfortunately, I am very, very bad at tacking down hems and am all sorts of worried that I'm going to end up with something inflexible and ugly in place of my almost-perfect expanse of cleverly joined stockinette.

Learning the Hardest Way

First of all, I think it's time for another FO report.



I'm sure everyone is familiar with this pattern by now. After all, Cookie A. does for socks what Eunny Jang does for, well, everything. Her patterns are simultaneously functional and cleverly beautiful, and the instructions are written so well that even someone who is knitting socks for the first time (me) can follow them.





Surprisingly, once I got halfway through the first pattern repeat, I could do the rest without even consulting the chart. The stitch pattern for these is one that truly looks a lot more difficult than it is.



Pattern - Pomatomus, available on knitty.
Yarn - Silja sock yarn, 2.5 skeins
Modifications - I made these taller than specified and used the 2 socks on one circ method, but wasn't comfortable with modifying my first pair of socks too much.
Thoughts - I used this same yarn to knit my first pair of gloves, but when I tossed them in the washing machine without thinking about it they came out completely destroyed. In hindsight, I would have made these out of a machine washable wool, because damnit, I don't really have time to handwash my socks. It is precisely for this reason that I have yet to wear these.

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Have you ever come across a pattern and been completely and suddenly smitten with it?







Somewhere in the back of your brain a small voice tells you that it's a bad idea, even while you merrily go about the process of yarn selection and sizing math and swatching, even when you try it on halfway through knitting and think to yourself that it's going well.















It's only when you've completely finished it, blocked it, and stroked it in anticipation that you try it on again and realize with a sudden looming sense of horror that you should have never knit it because it looks horrendous on you.

Have you ever done that FOUR FUCKING TIMES IN A ROW?

Apparently, somewhere in the midst of knitting Butterfly, Butterfly, and Butterfly, I got the idea that knit camisoles would be good on me. It has now been made painfully clear to me that Butterfly, being a laceweight cobweb of a thing, is an exception to the rule. Knit camisoles are a very, very bad idea for me. I love the details of these, the construction, the yarn, everything except the way they look on me. The ballet tee at least I will definitely reknit, for it is comfortable and I love that it's just one continuous spiral, but the other three have taken up permanent residence in the frog pond. Some things were apparently just never meant to be, but at least I've learned my lesson.

I Feel Stupid

Soooo........apparently my blogger comment settings were set to, without my knowledge, "comment moderation on" and "do not notify me of new comments." This means that all this time I had no idea anyone was actually reading my blog, let alone leaving comments. Had I been aware of an audience I wouldn't have let this thing linger for so very very long, but now that I know, well, let's just say I went ahead and published the mass of comments waiting for moderation and am ready to update everyone on my knitting accomplishments over the last almost-year.

Oh, whoa. That's a lot more than I thought. Okay, we're going to do this in smaller chunks. I'll just pick up where I left off and make a point of updating every day or two.

FIRST:


When last we spoke I had just started the IK Prairie Tunic and had a few other things in progress. Since the Prairie Tunic is the only one of those things I have completed and photographed, it's the first thing you get to hear about.







Oh shit. I've forgotten the format for an FO report. O_O

Um..er.....uh...oh.......Pattern? Yes, that sounds like a good starting point.

Pattern - Prairie Tunic from IK Spring 06
Yarn Source - Oh, hell if I know. I recycled it from something or other. It's just some random 4-ply black cotton.
Gauge - AHA! HAHAHAHAHA! Not what the pattern called for, clearly.
Modifications - Racerback changed to straight back, boob cups enlarged as much as I could without destroying the original look of them, extra waist shaping added.

Is that all I need to write about it? I think I'm supposed to say something about my thoughts or feelings regarding it, but I'll save that until after I have a shot of it on me. Remind me if I forgot anything else, you who may or may not still be checking in on this.

A Knitalong

Oh yeah, I joined a knitalong. The Amazing Lace, to be exact. There's a button over there if you're interested.

In which guage issues bite me in the ass again

Before we get to the tale of my guage woes, I just have to share this with you.






Please ignore the loose ends and lack of a proper closure and don't even speak of the need for a wash and blocking. The important thing is that the Lace & Ruffle Cardigan now has 1)lace and 2)ruffles. It is gorgeous and purple and I will finish and model it for you in the next few days.

Of course, now that the knitting portion of the cardigan is over with, I needed another project to keep me occupied. Sifting through my to-knit folder yielded nothing, but then I realized that I hadn't scanned in any pictures from the spring issues of Vogue Knitting or IK. A quick flip through those brought to light the inexplicably named Prairie Tunic, which satisfied my need for lace and something cool enough for summer. Besides, I had some nameless, thin black cotton in my stash that would work perfectly.

So I swatched it. You hear that, people? I SWATCHED.

Then I did some quick math and chose the second-smallest size to knit on 3s because my math told me it would work out to be the right size for me. A couple inches into the front it occurred to me that there was something wrong. The needle I was using was 29" long and when laid flat the edge stitches tended to pop off the points. To put that into perspective, my hips are 39". At the width this thing was working up I'd end up with almost 20" of ease. Yeahhhhh no. So I frogged, reswatched on 2s, did a bit more math, and started the second-smallest size again. Things appeared to be good, but 8" and four decrease rows into the front it was still coming out 23"-22" wide. Better, but that resulted in 12" of ease around my waist. Not good. I frogged again, spent the better part of an hour hunched over a piece of paper and a calculator, and came up with some numbers that weren't even a stated size but worked for my measurements. By this point my tendons were screaming bloody loss-of-feeling murder at me and it was close to dawn, so I called it a night.

I found time during my lunch break the next day to gingerly cast on 108 stitches (the size I was originally trying out called for 124) and work a few rows. Things looked good, but without a ruler I couldn't be certain. Later measurement confirmed the front piece width as 19.5" at the hem, decreasing a lot more sharply than the pattern intended to what will eventually be 16" at the waist.



Score.

Who wants this fluff?

The fluff is done blocking. The good news is that it turned out well. It retained its unbelievable softness despite being drenched and then handled excesseively, it's a gorgeous colour, and is warm without being completely stifling.



The bad news is that it looks like total crap on me. It looks so awful, in fact, that I refuse to take a picture of it on me. Something about that much material hanging right at boob level results in a very unflattering garment.


So does anyone want this fluff?

Who cares if it's perfect?

I finished that blasted capelet last night and it still looked like, well, as one person put it, "like it was just cut off the sheep. A purple sheep at that." Said person doesn't exactly understand what unblocked lace looks like, I think. Anyway, for all of you skeptics out there who claimed ignorance of any such lace pattern, here you go:





SEE? LACE!

Also, I know it's not perfectly symmetrical. I'm too lazy to go back and shift all the pins and felt that the slight imperfection will give it character. Because, you know, a bright purple fuzzy capelet is utterly devoid of personality until it's blocked into a slightly lopsided shape.

Gauge Check?

I am awful about doing gauge swatches. I tend to just dive right in with a yarn that seems close enough to that recommended and hope for the best. This usually works out, thanks to lots of mid-knit fittings and the forgiving tendencies of knit fabric, but occasionally I start knitting and reach a point at which I want to beat myself over the head with my oversized monstrosity of a Spiderweb Capelet. Seriously, I think this needs a picture.



Click it. You won't understand how ridiculously long it is until you notice how long my worktable is and the fact that the fluff will not fit onto it without dangling over the edges. You see that smaller fluff on the spoon handles over there?



That is fluff 2.0. It is about half as long as the original fluff. Specifically, 52 sts to the original version's 92. Of course, it didn't occur to me until I was almost done with the capelet and noticed that I was about to run out of yarn that this thing was perhaps a bit too long. You'd think running out of room on the needles would have given it away first, wouldn't you? Damn, I should have taken a picture of that.



Just in case you were skeptical about the existence of any sort of lace pattern in all that fluff, well, you can sort of see it there. In the large version. Okay, well, you can see YOs and YOs indicate lace, right? >_<


I think I just about used an entire year's worth of "fluff"s in this post. Remind me to never use that word again after this thing is done.

I am a project whore

I'm more than halfway done with one sleeve for the Lace&Ruffle Cardigan and I suddenly had the urge to start a new project. Something was drawing me towards the bag of fluff in my stash. The bag of fluff, otherwise known as Joann Sensations Angel Hair, that I purchased only for its softness and sale price, and with a vague notion of a sweater of some sort. I realized later that the yarn is much too thick to be even remotely flattering on me in sweater form, but that I definitely wanted it to become something that would spend much time against my skin. Seriously, this stuff is obscenely soft and fluffy. I looked around for a bit, fondled the yarn, swatched the yarn, fondled the swatch, started a thread on craftster to milk project ideas from other people, and eventually managed to google my way into the blog of someone who had used the fluff to knit up the Spiderweb Capelet from SnBN.

It was obviously fate that that very same capelet was in my to-knit folder, so I promptly grabbed the closest to size 15 needles I own (they're actually a size 17 16" bamboo circular) and dove in. For the record, I hate these needles. They are like sharpened spoon handles and my tendons absolutely hate manouvering them, especially in and around ridiculously slippery yarn, so I go slowly. Very, very slowly and with many breaks to work on the cardigan. Despite my slowness I think I've already done close to half of the capelet, although it's hard to tell with all the fluff.

I did warn you about the neglect

But holy hell, I had no idea it had been almost 2 months since my last entry! Damnit, why don't people point this sort of thing out to me?!

It's okay, I understand. Nobody actually reads this blog anyway. ^_^

~

Just in case they do, however, it's time for an update.

When last we spoke, I had finished up Butterfly No. 2 and was working on some other things. Since then I've continued to work on said things but have also finished two more items, neither of which are for me. First we have the Petit Chou lingerie from the sexy issue of Knitty, made for a swap. For someone with a bra size identical to mine. For the record, the Petit Chou bralette thing is designed to accomodate up to a C cup. This is not terribly helpful when the person you are knitting it for is a 36D. At least I got to make the knickers without any modification.



Yes, I know it looks awful just laying there on the table. I blame the elastic. Since I hate lousy unmodeled pictures of my FOs I just had to take a slightly better one.



If you never wanted to see me wearing lingerie, well, don't click that. Also, shut up, this never happened.


MOVING ON.

My second most recent FO is yet another Butterfly.



Mods for this one include more beads and a double-stranded tonal frill, picot edging, and straps.





Yes, I know. I'm very pale and do not look great in orange. Good thing this one's not for me either, yes? When it gets to where it's going and I have been sent pictures of it on its recipient I shall post those and tell you a bit more, but until then it's a secret. SHHHH.


In other project news:







That was, in order,

-I have finished the back, fronts, and part of a sleeve of the Lace&Ruffle Cardigan.
-I have finished the back and front of the Colchique sweater and am stalling because I don't want to have to figure out how to convert the sleeves to be knit from the shoulder down because I know that I'm going to run out of yarn but want to use up as much of it as I can.
-I am halfway done with the Pomatomus socks, which I love, but have run out of yarn and thanks to my yarn ban cannot go get more for them until I have destashed enough.


I think I need to start a new project.