Project Milestones

After spending some good, quality time with my knitting this weekend, I'm pleased to report that I've made it to some good milestones on several projects. I'm feeling good about making all of my deadlines and I'm considered switching the recipient of one project and doing something totally different for the original recipient. Aah, a great weekend!

German Baby Sweater

I've finished the back! It occured to me to check the gauge when I was mostly done with the back. I'd cast onto needles I felt like using, choosing the smaller size on the ball band, figuring the baby will be this size at some point, and hey, that's close enough. Well, it turns out that although I planned on the larger size, I actually got a tighter gauge and have the width for the smaller size (32 cm (12.5") around vs. 36 cm (14") around). I still did the length for the bigger sweater, so hopefully that will be ok, and maybe even allow the baby to wear it longer. That last bit might just be wishful thinking, though. I cast on for the front and did a few rows of ribbing before running out of my first 50 g of yarn. The rest is in my office, so I'll have to wait 'til Tuesday before I do more.

Lingerie

After finishing the body a couple days ago, I started and finished one cup yesterday and did maybe a quarter of the second one today. They look beautiful and I'm getting exctied about completing it. There's quite a bit of finishing work, though. Chain stitching for reinforcement, crochet for reinforcement and for the straps, sewing casing for elastic, putting in lingerie "hardwear," and sweing on buttons (hey, easy after all of that!). I'll have to go to some friends for a little crochet teach, but I'm feeling like this is completely achievable. If it's not indecent, I'll have pictures. :)

Mist

Mist has been sitting on the sidelines, but it made a good little-thinking, little-attention project at Knitsmiths today. I'm not quite up to the shoulder shaping, but it felt good to have that yarn in my hands again. It's not quite accurate to say that it's stiff or rough, exactly, but it's... firm, I suppose. I think it will be a great sweater when it's finished.

Test Sock

I also dutifully finished another pattern repeat on the sock I'm test-knitting for theknitter.com's Sock of the Month Club. I like this sock, and the pattern is getting easier as I go along. On commuting days I may not get more than my repeat done for the day, but maybe I'll get faster, too, as I move along. When I get to turning the heel, I think I'll pick up my Random Rainbow sock again and get that moving again. I was to lazy to look up turning the heel before, so now it will be easy with another pattern to work from.

That's all the news from here! Tomorrow is a work holiday, but I plan to stay home and work and earn some comp hours. Hopefully I can fit in a little knitting, too. :)

By Request...

So since Marta asked, I'll talk a little about Montreal. First I'll give my brief knitting update and then I'll dive in to the trip.

I'm facing a slew of baby projects so I'm trying to progress through those. The purple one is coming along nicely and the back is almost finished (despite having to rip an inch the other night because I found about 8 stitches of mistakes in one row). This is for a coworker whose baby is due in late March. She'll be down in our Boston office (from her VT farm) the first week in March, and I'd like to be able to give it to her then.* Mom also asked if I was having trouble reading the pattern in German. No, for the most part. Armed with my knowledge of knitting, a reasonable understanding of German, the chart, the picture, and my trusty German dictionary, I've managed to figure everything out. At least, that's what I think now. If I have a monstrosity at the end, sized to fit a 5-year old, I may have to take that back. ;)

I have the yarn (thanks Mom!) for the next project - a dress from the Debbie Bliss Easy Knits book in slate grey with a fair isle band in pinks, purples, and blues. It will be fun. and quick since it's mostly stockinette around. I think that baby is due in May. I also found out about another baby at work that I'd like to knit for (late April), so I'll have to think of something for that one, too. Not to mention the cable sweater I'm already thinking of for an already-born baby and the stalled baby blanket...

I've also finished the body of the lingerie, so I'm excited that I should be able to finish that on time, too. The cups should go quickly and then I'll pretty much just have to put it together. Yay!

Finally, I started a pair of socks, testing a sock-of-the-month pattern for my mom. That also needs to be done by the beginning of March. For now my plan will be to do one repeat a day (roughly an inch) before I can work on my other projects, and maybe that way I can make reasonable progress on everything. I hope!

Montreal

My trip to Montreal last week was... ok. What I saw of Montreal seemed nice and I would have liked to have seen more of the city, but those pesky meetings got in the way. I arrived Saturday night, and met collegues at registration for the conference. They had tickets to the hockey game that day, so I decided to go with them and we managed to get another ticket. I'd never been to a hockey game before, and as you can imagine, Canadians are... rabid about it. It was a good game (vs. Chicago) and Montreal won, which made it a nice atmosphere for a visitor. The only weird thing was that there was a French-Canadian sitting behind us who was amazingly loud and yelling in French for Chicago. A little incongruous, but it just enhanced the charm of hockey in Canada.

The rest of my time was generally spent in meetings or eating. We ate at some great restaurants (pizza, Thai, Italian, and a place called Marche that we actally have in Boston), mostly near our hotels and the meeting. The only part of the city I really saw was Rue Sainte Catherine, a big shopping street in the commercial downtown. There were a lot of mid-level fashion stores, several coffee shops, the obligatory Starbucks, and lots of restaurants on one particular side street. I really wanted to find Rue Saint Denis, visit Chinatown, and walk around Mont Royal, but I didn't have time and it was cold. Even snowed about 4", which was a shock to the Brits at the meeting. The city, of course, ran as if it were any other day.

That's about all I can say about Montreal. The only strange thing was that I hadn't really prepared myself for French. Everyone spoke English if I needed them to, but sorting out the menus when my brain wasn't ready for it was always a shock! Especially at "Oktoberfest" in the food court. Not a word of German to be found!

*This coworker and I have been assigned to several grungy projects together and have become good friends while working on them. In the last few weeks we had a project with a tight deadline and I helped her do a lot of analysis. To thank me she brought me a 2-lb box of gigantic, fabulous truffles. Wish all my coworkers were like that! (Andthat I had an extra two hours a day to go to the gym...)

The best kind of commute

I had a great commute today. I love walking into the station and hearing, "We're moving at this time, but with delays." More time to knit!

It was kind of like that Far side cartoon about what dogs really hear. The train announcer would say, "We appologize for the delay caused by an earlier disabled train. There's traffic ahead of us, but we should be moving shortly. Again, we appologize for the delay."

But I heard, "Good morning, Ms. Knitter. We're going to be moving slowly this morning, so you'll have lots of time to knit. Sit back and relax and make some progress. We'll get you to where you're going... eventually."

By Harvard (two stops) I'd finished one row -- that's what I can usually finish all the way to Park Street! One more stop, one more row. Then the pace picked up a little and by Park Street I'd done three rows. I changed to the green line and finished off the fourth row as we pulled into North Station.

Ah, what a glorious knitting morning! Four times the knitting, for free!

I've missed my blog!

I'm glad to say that I survived the meeting in Montreal and I'm home again now. Montreal itself was fine, but my meeting was quite bad (though not surprising). All the more reason to come home and knit!

Thank you, KarenK, for all of the information on the yarn stores! It turned out that I didn't have time to go anywhere and they were all far from where I was staying. Maybe I'll have another chance sometime... I also missed my plane, lost my new boarding pass, and generally had a long time getting home, but my cat was glad to see me and that made up for everything.

I did quite a bit of knitting on the flights there and back, in the airport, and in my hotel, and today I have pictures. The camera at work still isn't back, though. I don't know what the deal is, but I try to wait patiently. Today I went with the scanner, which I do like a lot because it shows off stitch texture so well. So here are my updates.

While I was gone I spent most of my time working on Mist. I got up to some part of the armhole shaping before I ran out of the yarn I'd brought with me. I really like this sweater and the rhythm of the seed stitch. Since I've gotten home, though, I've gotten excited about other projects, so this one is hold for a little bit.

Project number two is the Nicole lingerie. I didn't work on this too much while I was gone. I'd made a mistake somewhere and put it down for the better part of a week, and when I picked it up again I couldn't sort it out. So out it came. The whole thing. There wasn't a lifeline and I'd gotten sick of picking back a stitch at a time, so I ripped the entire thing on a mostly-empty flight between Montreal and Philly Thursday night. By late Friday night I had completed the first pattern and moved on to the second. It's a lot easier the... fifth? sixth? time. I think I'll stop counting; it will be healthier.

(Click for a view of a whole panel.)

But now I'm really happy with it and making good progress. There are some very small mistakes, but I've decided to adjust as I go and live with it if it's little. I've figured out that the mistake usually appears if I knit the yo in with the stitch adjacent to it if they'd gotten stuck together, so I've been able to watch out for that and it seems to be going well. I'd like to finish this before Someone comes to visit in early March, so it's been my main priority.

And finally, I started a baby sweater for a collegue. It's a pattern from a Diana Baby magazine that I bought in Germany in the fall. The back is deathly boring, (more on that in a minute) but I'm almost to the armholes, so that should help. Here's a little sample. I love the cast on in the contrasting color.

The front has this stitch at each side, cable patterns that remind me of leaves, and a center panel with a diamond with stems and flowers (in the contrasting color) in the center. Hopefully I'll get to that next week and you'll see what I mean.

So on the topic of boredom, the back of this sweater is more boring than seed stitch. One row is *k1, p1* and the other row is just knit. (Well, it's written as a row of purl, which is what you need on the front of the sweater, but for the back I decided to knit that row instead to maintain my sanity.) I don't understand why it's so boring. The only thing I can think of is that when I do the k1p1 row I'm working from a row of purled stitches, so checking the alignment is harder than with seed stitch. Maybe I'm just really into that silk-wool yarn and not excited about this baby yarn. (However, it really is fabulous. Super soft and superwash, and the color is darling.) I'm looking forward to the front, and even the sleeves since they have the leafy pattern up the center. Maybe I'll get to them by next week.

While I was gone I also made some progress on my Koigu hat, but only because I'd run out of yarn for Mist and was too worried about missing my plane (missed it anyway!) to count carefully enough for the lingerie. I'm not in any hurry for it since I think that my current hat is warmer anyway, so if it slowly matures toward spring that should be fine.

I think I have a pretty solid week of knitting ahead of me, so hopefully there will be more pictures soon. Have a good week!

Hello from Montreal

I don't have a lot of exciting news, but I thought I'd say hello from Montreal. I'm here for a meeting this week and it's kept me busy, so I haven't had a lot of time to go exploring. The little I've seen of the city is nice, but no yarn. Does anyone know where they hide it here? I've tried to find some hints on Jo Knits but haven't found any specifics.

Long days of meetings have kept me from knitting much, but I'm making some progress on the back of Mist. That's the easiest thing to work on at the end of the day when I'm tired.

Have a nice week! I'll be home on Friday and hopefully I can borrow the good work camera for a weekend of updates.