Needed to sleep

I was too tired to write last night, so I traded blogging for sleep (still tired, though). I'll tell my other stories tonight, but I wanted to post three things here.

1. You might have been in the East too long if you find yourself giving directions which include, "I don't know the name of the street, but turn right at the Dunkin' Donuts."
2. I sewed the other sleeve into the purple sweater and wove the ends in, so all I have to is trim and sew in the buttons! Yay!
3. 10 points to the guy on the T last night who
   • knew I was knitting
   • complimented my work
   • said he was fascinated watching me weave ends
   • said knitting is becoming a lost art
   • asked about even tension
   • encouraged me keep up the good work.
   If you're looking for a friendly Sox fan, ladies, ride the red line toward Alewife with your knitting after the games let out!

Knitting and Knitting and Knitting - Oh my!

I realized that I promised a lot of updates, so I'd better get started.

First, one that I hadn't promised. I gave the baby dress to the expecting mother and she was thrilled with it. :) I told another coworker, who had been following my knitting progress that the mother loved it, and she said, "How could she NOT?! It is LOVELY and of heirloom quality to boot!" Aw, what a sweet thing to say!

A Baby Sweater with One Sleeve

Hey, that's significant progress! I went to a friend's knit-night on Monday and took this as my only project to work on. One sleeve was all I could handle, but it went in on the first try and I'm glad to be closer to done. Maybe I'll do the rest this weekend.

The Story of a Koigu Hat, Loved and FROGGED

I had a love affair with Koigu for a while. I'd go to the yarn store, be drawn, inexplicably, toward the Koigu. "I must have one. It must be mine," said the little voice in my head. And so the Koigu came home with me. I picked up a pattern for a koigu hat and designated one skein for this purpose. I wound my beautiful skein and took it with me on a business trip to Montreal. (You can read about in an entry called "By Request" on Feb 14, here.)

On the day I left, I bought a ticket for the airport shuttle and sat down to knit. I seem to recall that I was tired of working on the back of Mist, or maybe I needed to pay too much attention to shaping and was too worried about being late to have any attention left. So I decided to start on this koigu hat. It starts simply enough, four stitches on each needle, increase at the beginning and middle of each needle. Time passed. The bus didn't come. My koigu circle grew slowly larger and more beautiful.

When the bus did finally come and I did finally get to the airport, I'd reached the point where I needed to increase on every alternating row, and that was certainly going to require too much concentration. Especially since my plane had already left by the time I arrived at the airport. I put the koigu hat away.

(In this same evening, I somehow lost my boarding card and ticket somewhere between security and the gate, and almost didn't get on the plane. Which was going to Philadelphia (right on the way to Boston from Montreal, you'll note). I did get to Philadelphia, though, and at least I got a pretzel for my trouble; however, I was shocked to discover that you can't get a Tastykake anywhere in the Philly airport. If you can't get a Tastykake, what's the point of going to Philly?!)

The hat languished, untouched, for quite a while, but a week or so ago I decided to give it another go. I finished the alternating row increases and made a whole lotta seed stitch. And then I thought it seemed a little bit big, a little bit floppy. A little waste yarn confirmed my fears. I stuck on the ribbing and tried it on one more time.

How dorky do I look, huh?

Sure, it needs to be longer and cover my enormous forehead. But it's still quite loose and I didn't like the fit at all, so, RIP RIP RIP! out it came.

And here it is, all nice and pretty again, waiting for another day, smaller needles, and a better swatch. I'm a little worried that I'll never like this hat, but it was pretty quick to work up and I'll give it another go at another time.

Maybe that's enough storytelling for today and I'll save the others for tomorrow or Friday. And this way I can squeeze in a little knitting before bedtime. Perhaps I'll measure my swatches and cast on for Gyrid. Mmmm, silky wool...

Teaser for Lisa

A friend of mine is a contra dancer and caller who got a little bit of sock envy at a recent dance weekend. She asked me to comission a pair of socks, but wanted all cotton, no wool. She wants bright colors -- variegated cuff, heel, and toe and a solid foot. (Ok, maybe I pushed some of the variegated sections, but the yarn is cute and I like the effect. :)

I got some great Cotton Colori from my Mom (I have Colori 1) and did a little gauge swatch during the staff meeting yesterday. I promised Lisa a picture of her yarn, and here it is.

(Well, here it was about to be, except that I had a little camera software oops and deleted it. Grr.)

(I am (eventually) smarter than the camera.)

They're much closer to jewel tones in person. This is about 1" of ribbing. These are going to be some awesome socks!

Coming tomorrow...

A baby sweater with one sleeve...

Stories of a koigu hat... and its beautiful demise...

Buttonhole on Mist...

Elsebeth Lavold sweater swatches...

Guess I'm still knitting after all. :)

Maybe I should just quit knitting

Everything seems to be going badly. The lingerie didn't fit. The purple baby sweater really is huge. My koigu hat is too big. (Duh, shoulda swatched in pattern stitch, huh?) The sleeve I finished for Mist seems way too long. Putting in the buttonhole may require taking out a few rows of the front. Maybe it's time to quit.

Or maybe it's just time to start something new!

I want to start something simple, like a nice sock. Except that I should finish the random lacy socks, first, but I left the yarn at home and will get it back in two weeks.

But what's really calling to me is Gyrid from Elsebeth Lavold's Designer's Choice: Book 1 in her Silky Wool. Made a little swatch, will wash it, and then get started. This beautiful shell is primarily stockinette with a viking cable motif in a diamond in the center. Mostly mindless, with a nice little section of paying attention. Sounds like just the thing I need.

Grad School

Ingrid asked about my grad school plans. I will be attending Boulder for a PhD in Analytical Chemistry. I'll be working with Jose Jimenez and Aerodyne aerosol mass spectrometers to study the components of fine particles that make up air pollution. The instruments can examine particles as small as about 35 nanometers and the research goals involve understanding how particles form from gases. I'm excited to go work for a great advisor and with a great group of students. Just 9 weeks of work and three months total until I head out of Boston. There will be things I'll miss, but for the most part, I'm feeling ready to leave. It's been a long 10 years here, and I'm looking forward to going home.

Yarn in, Yarn out

I've been catching up on my blog reading and have seen the many posts about guilt and yarn acquisition. I've kind of been thinking about this in general, so I'll just give my personal 2 cents.

I try not to feel guilty about accumulating a stash. It's a nice resource, there's a plan for (almost) everything, so I figure I can sort of justify new purchases. When I buy yarn, I feel like I need to have a plan for it. This also allays my great fear that when I find a project for it, I might have way too much -- or worse, too little! And this way I'm not just accumulating stuff, it all has a Purpose.

However, I am also an impulse buyer, and I've been trying to curb my bad habit, which is even worse with yummy yarn temptations. Two days ago I would have said that I was getting better, being restrained. And then...

The two on the left are hand-dyed merino/tencel blends that I picked up at Minds Eye Yarns in Porter Square. (I don't know why I was drawn to the lime and bubble-gum pink one, but it called to me.) I really wanted to make a tank out of the teal one, but I'd need two hanks, and someone had already taken this one's mate home. They're nominally sock yarn, but I think the teal one is too good for socks. I don't know what will become of it, but the color was so fabulous that I had to have it. Green-and-pink, however, seems great for socks. Something with a cable, I think. I'll just.... put it in the pile with the rest of the sock yarn that's come to me on multiple occasions. The yarn on the right (dark teal varying almost to black) is Anne by Schaefer. I acquired this the other night when a friend was over winding yarn. She was going to trade this in for a purple one, but I decided to, uh, save her the trouble of returning it. Conveniently, I had cash on hand. It's even darker green/teal than the merino/tencel. Maybe I could put them together? I think I'd have to use two strands of the Anne... But what the hell am I going to make out of 60% merino wool superwash, 25% mohair, 15% nylon and (presumably) 50/50 merino/tencel?

And while I'm confessing, I also picked up three magazines in the past few days. InKnitters at Mind's Eye (horrendous patterns but good technical articles), Sandra (found it at Out of Town News in Harvard Square) and, shockingly, Family Circle Easy Knitting, because it actually had cute stuff. So much for curbing my impulse spending...

So if that's yarn in...

...this is yarn out!

May I present to you, the complete Debbie Bliss Dress with Fair Isle Border! I got one sleeve in on Thursday and finished up the rest on Friday night. It's darling, and the photos don't do it justice. You can also see close-ups of the fair isle border and of the collar and the darling button. I'll have the dress with me at Knitsmiths this week.

The only thing that bugs me about finishing this project is that I haven't finished the purple sweater for my other coworker, who had her baby this week. Since the sweater is plenty big, I don't have to be in any rush, but it seems kind nice to hand them out in order, don't you think? Just gotta put the sleeves in; hopefully that will be my Knitsmiths project.

Mist continues. Still in seed stitch. I'm almost done with the first sleeve and should finish that off in the morning. I picked up the button for the front, so I'll figure out the right size for the buttonhole and finish up the last front soon. One more sleeve and I'll hopefully get a couple days of wear out of this thing before it gets too hot!

(After all that, I forgot to respond to Ingrid's comment about grad school! I'll do it tomorrow, I promise, after I'm better rested. :)

Back to Blogging!

I'm home from my travels and am ready to blog again. I decided on Boulder and I'm getting excited about school. I'll be working with a great advisor and a really good research instrument, I'll be near my family and fabulous knitters, and my voice teacher even moved there. I'm ready to quit my job and move out there. Three months and counting...

In the mean time, Boston has actually been nice this week and it's nice to be back to my cat. I've made good progress up the first sleeve of Mist and will try to find a button for it tomorrow at Circles. I've still procrastinated the sleeves on my baby sweaters, but I'm hoping to tackle that tomorrow, too. Hopefully I'll something worthy of pictures soon, but just showing seed stitch for Mist seems too boring. Maybe I can photograph my Koigu hat, too.

I have startitis, but not for anything in particular. All this yarn wants to be made into something. I'm trying to hold off until I've finished those baby things. I'm going to start a pair of commissioned socks for a friend, but we didn't have time to do the measurements this week. I'm also excited about a bunch of Knitty patterns, including Anouk, jewelled, T3 (long version), rosebud, honeymoon, Devan, and cut your teeth socks. All that oughta keep me busy, huh? Maybe I'll need to buy more yarn...

Photos to tide you over:

(Baby niece Sadie (8 mo) in jacket made and designed my mom; Sadie again; niece Leslie (5 yr), who knows she's cute; Momma's baby kitty Max (7 mo); mountains, from a plane on a hazy day, somewhere between Colorado and California; rock formations, from the same plane)

Quick Update

My trip to visit grad schools has been good. I got to go home and check out Boulder and be home for Easter (first time in 10 years), and visit schools in SoCal where the weather is, of course, beautiful. I'll make my decision over the weekend and it will be San Diego or Boulder. It's now an issue of advisor personality and research instruments with different capabilities. I'm getting excited to go back to school!

While I was at home, I also got to go to my mom's knitting group. I met a few new people and got to see other people I knew and we had a good time. We also went to a Chinese buffet and some of us went to Hobby Lobby, which was fun with Rebecca's well-behaved little boy. All of our Easter gifts for my nieces were hits, but how can you go wrong with plush bunny purses?

On the knitting front for this trip, I feel like I've made slow progress. I brought my koigu hat with me and got through all of the increase section, but now I need a circular needle because the stitches seem to fall off the end of the dpns. It's still looking good, but it's hard to set up for a picture.

Mist was my other project for this trip, and I've completed the armhole decreases on the second front. I'm close to needing to make the buttonhole, so I'm back to my usual button-hole problem. I'd rather have a button and fit the hole than constrain my choices in buttons. I guess I'm going to put the front on hold at that point, then, and start the sleeves. When I'm home I can check out buttons and decide what I want to do.

I know before I left that I was going to put in the sleeves on the baby clothes, but it didn't happen. I tried to do the dress at the Borders group on Saturday, but it didn't work twice and I got tired of it and quit. I guess I'll try to do it again next week and hope it goes better.

Staying with my friend in SoCal I'm not getting a lot of knitting done, but I should be able to do some catching up at home next week. Maybe Mist will be done soon. Since it doesn't look like Boston will get warm any time soon, I should be able to wear it!

Baby Stuff, Almost Done

Got the baby stuff on the couch to block. I think my plan will be to take this all with me and seam it at home, then mail the finished things back East to their recipients. I bought a cute button for the dress and am looking forward to finishing it all up.

I'm ready to finish the purple sweater, too, I hope. It's time to complete something! Has it really been three months since I finished a project? I guess I'd feel better if the lingerie was all ok. Maybe when I come back in 10 days I'll be ready to tackle it.

I'm trying to decide what else to take with me on this trip. Mist will come; I'm making good progress on it now. But I'll also need to bring the back so that I can size the right front properly, and then I might as well bring the left front so that I can see how it all looks. I bought some bamboo needles to try to swatch again fro St. Brigid, so I might bring some of that, too. It looks like the weather in Colorado will be cool enough that I could work on that a little. Maybe my unfinished socks? Unfinished hat? That baby blanket that no longer seems to have a recipient in mind? Something... new? Very tempting, but maybe I should work on clearing my plate...

One Year Ago Today...

... I learned to knit. I was on a business trip in Seattle. My mom's friends had recommended that I visit Tricoter. Mom said that if I bought yarn she'd knit me a sweater. Hard to pass that up! So I found my way there and fell in love with some beautiful, shiny, Stacy Charles rayon yarn. They had a sweater sample that they let me try on. It was as if it had been made for me. I was in love.

My mom had recently taught my best friend to knit, and although I'd resisted, I had been thinking that maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all, that I could actually figure it out. So I stood outside the knitting store, called my mom, and asked, "If I learn to knit and someone else teaches me, would that be ok?"

"You want to knit?!" she said with glee. You could hear that there were tears in her eyes. Her baby, finally wants to knit, after only 27 years. I really am her daughter after all! She said that yes, it would be fine, and we talked about the yarn and the sweater and how excited she was. She called back a minute later and told me I had to learn Continental, since that's what she does. :)

It was almost closing time at the store, but they said that I could buy the yarn then and come back on Monday afternoon and someone would teach me to knit.

And that's what I did. Dinny and Carol taught me with some big fat cotton on a set of Crystal Palace straights (size 10 3/4!), and I worked diligently on my little swatch during the week of my business trip. The following Saturday I went back, seeking approval of my swatch and permission to start my sweater. I showed Carol my swatch, pointed out the mistakes I didn't know how to fix (twisted stitches, picked up the wrong direction when the needle had slipped out), learned how to go about doing it correctly, and I was ready to swatch for that sweater.

As you can see, I now have an addiction. I was hoping to have a gallery of my works assembled for this anniversary, but I didn't manage to finish. It's still a task on my list. For now, here's what I completed this year:

1. Stacy Charles shell, simple slip stitch pattern
   
2. Back-Button shell from Tricoter's Simply Beautiful Sweaters in Reynold's Gypsy cotton
   
3. "Vanilla Freeze" from the Summer 2003 Knitters in a lovely mecerized cotton whose name I don't remember offhand
   
4. Socks! Many as test socks for theknitter.com's Sock of the Month Club, including Reversible Rainbows, Tu-be or Not Tu-be, Textured Fair Isle, and Lattice Socks
   
5. 5 catnip mice for cats I know
   
6. "Lopi Lite Pullover" from the Fall 2003 Interweave Knits in Lopi Lite
   
7. "Mexicali Baby Ole" from the Summer 2003 Knitter's in Regia sock yarn
   
8. Penguin scarves (for better or worse), mostly in Cascade 220
   
9. "Flashy Lace" from the Fall 2003 Knitty in Classic Elite Flash
   
10. "On the Neutral Track" from the Spring 2001 Knitters in Berroco Glace Colors and Flax
    

The lingerie and two baby projects can almost go on that list, but didn't quite make the deadline to my satisfaciton. I'll conquor them soon.

On that note, I'd planned to block the baby dress and its sleeves last night, along with the last purple baby sweater sleeve, and to have fabulous pictures this morning. But I ran into an old friend on my way home last night and invited her over for tea. So instead of doing my blocking, we caught up on life, my cat (she has two of Sundae's kittens), and knitting, since she learned recently (also Continental!). We fondled my stash, looked through my books, and had an all-around good time. The new plan is to do the blocking tonight and have fabulous pictures tomorrow morning.

No progress, no pictures

Well, it's not quite tru to say there wasn't any progress. Just not as much as I'd hoped. The baby dress is all knit, but I need to block it and put it together. I finished the left front of Mist and started on the right front. i wanted to sew the sleeves on the purple baby sweater (ok, one still needs to be blocked), but I needed to trim the ends I'd woven in and then had a crisis about purple for boys and lost my motivation. I'm now hoping that I can put everything out for blocking tomorrow night and can sew on Wednesday and deliver/mail on Thursday. I hope I can be that diligent.

The five pairs of socks my mother (4 pair) and I (one pair) made for my relatives in Germany are drying on my ironing board. Picture tomorrow, hopefully, and then I can mail them off on Thursday, too.

The last concert of this run is tomorrow (Tuesday, so maybe today), and then I leave for Colorado on Friday. Yay, knitting on planes! Which projects to pack... What clothes to pack for potential snow and promised 70-degree beach days?

Rain, Rain...

Rainy days in Boston mean it must be time to do more knitting.

I finished the first sleeve for the baby dress last night. It's nice that they go so fast, shaping the sleeve cap at the end seemed to take longer than I expected. No photo yet (it's very curly st st and I was too lazy to pin it out last night), but hopefully I'll be blocking the pair tomorrow.

Knitting the sleeves with the correct hemline made me realize that I may have made a second mistake on the hem of the dress. I'm not sure I did my three-needle knit together in the right row. I think Nancy is right, though, and we'll be the only ones who know. I hope a good blocking or a little pressing will flatten out the curling hem.

This dress needs one button for the back closure. I'm thinking about a silver/pewter one with an edelweiss-type design. What do you think? I'll have to do some shopping at Windsor Button. I'm thinking of stealing an idea from a fellow Knitsmith, Anne, who gave a present wrapped in tissue paper and tied with yarn with a button on top. Maybe I'll use a larger size of the same button...

I'm sorry I overlooked replying to people's comments in my previous post. I was trying to hurry it up and get to bed. Thank you for the complments on the sweater. I think it's even cuter in person, but I don't know how to take a good photo of it. Kerstin, I hope you had fun at the Harlem Globetrotters! We missed you at Knitsmiths, too, but maybe you'll get to come this week? Ingrid, Flashy Lace is a great sweater and a great knitter, but it's done with faux-cables. It's clever placement of the yo and decreases (ssk in the body, k2tog in the sleeves) that make it look like cables. (Speaking of cables, I'm still looking for some sticky size 3-ish needles so that maybe I can get gauge for St. Brigid. Is there a Knitsmith who might loan me a set? Circs, if you've got 'em? I could bring my yarn on Sunday and swatch there...) I'm glad you were happy about pictures, Mom. I'll try to take more soon. The rain isn't very inspirational, and concerts tonight and tomorrow will keep me away from the house. And finally to Nancy, thanks for your vote for schools! I'm planning to visit home for Easter and look at schools that week. The familiarity of home is certainly a consideration in this decision. Now I need to figure out how I'm going to make up my mind!