Too Good to Be True?

In the Riverside phone book, there are two yarn stores. One is within two miles of us! And I discovered that the US1 dpns I brought are actually 2 size 1's and 3 size 2's. Oops.

But there's a yarn store! Maybe they carry Brittanys. Too good to be true? The phone number is disconnected. I can find it listed on a lot of websites, but I can't talk to them. There are three other shops (including a spinning/weaving store!) on the other side of town, but it might be hard to take the only vehicle to go shopping.

Well, we went to the grocery store by that yarn store this morning, so I thought I'd look around. Turns out they closed up shop two or three months ago. Rats! Guess I'll have to borrow the car at some point.

With my two US1's, I did start my Sockapal2za sock! I'm doing the Summer Garden Socks that my mom designed. These are some of my favorite socks! I knit and then grafted the cuff of the sock, but I'll need more needles to pick up for the leg. And now that I stretched it out, I see that it's too small! Guess it's time to rip and go to larger needles, at least for the cuff...

But here it is, before being ripped out, just so that there's a picture here.

That was written at least three days ago. I haven't had time to complete it. The days are full and tiring, and I became the expert on how many particles we're losing in our sampling lines, so every time we want to move an instrument (seems like daily now, sometimes twice) I'm asked for my opinion about how to adjust the flows for maximum benefit. This is kind of good, but also kind of a pain.

On Saturday I went with the other knitter here to hope to find the spinning store or another yarn store. The short story is that the ex-spinning store is about 10 miles away (in CA traffic), is now a Mailboxes Etc.-type place, and the building had had a big fire moderately recently. Strike two (the previous store being strike one). We headed back to go to a store that was closer to home, but got there and found out that they close at 4 on Saturdays. Strike three.

Thankfully, mom's sending me some essentials anyway (my pillow!), and she'll throw in a couple sets of dpns. Yay!

The things I do for science...

Tubular Cast On -- Why bother?

I cast on for the Polka Dot sweater and have finally made it through a whopping four pattern rows after enduring the tubular cast on and seed stitch edging.

I've seen tubular cast on on occasion, but this is the first thing I've made that suggested it. You cast on half the number of required sts + 1 in waste yarn, then use the regular yarn and *K1 yo* and end K1. (You'll have an odd number of stitches, which might be a problem. Then you basically work double knitting for two rows -- *K1, sl 1 * end K1, then the next row *Sl 1, K1* end Sl 1. After that you can work 1,1 ribbing or seed stitch.

Why bother with all of the hastle of this cast on? It does seem to make a finer edge, but I don't think a regular edge would have been a problem for this sweater. The magazine recommended that the waste yarn cast on use the backward loop method. This doesn't pull out easily! Any insights?

California is darn hot, but we're getting our stuff set up. The days have been long (12 hours yesterday, 9 today, several on Sunday), so I'm still tired. I met another knitter, so as soon as things calm down a little bit, maybe we can knit together. At least there's someone out here who shares my addiction. :)

Leavin' on a Jet Plane

Where does the time go? I can't believe I haven't blogged in so long. Things have been really busy with school because we're going on a field campaign (out-of-the-lab study) for five weeks. I'll be flying out on Sunday and will drive the truck (with more tha $1million of equipment) back around August 18. But fear not! I'll have camera and computer, so there should be plenty the usual amount of blog posting.

So in the meantime, what have I been up to?

The big purple one is my Shapley Tank that I started last summer. The bust shaping ended up in the wrong place, so I ripped back this summer. (The instructions as written suggest that you do it at the armhole shaping, but the schematic is correct -- it needs to come before that.) I just need to pick up around the neck and armholes, and then ta da! new summer sweater. The first summer sweater, which is kinda sad, but I haven't been too inspired by tanks this year.

Ok, number 2 is the glove! This is from the Beth Brown-Reinsel class I took with my mom in June. I've been working on this a little at a time and I'm about to start the pinky. You'll notice that none of the fingers are actually finished, though. I put the thumb on first, but then we discovered that adding the index finger changed the fit of the glove enough to make the thumb too short! I've left long tails on the fingers and I'll finish them off after I've put the pinky on. They're very cute and fit well. I think they'll be my gloves for biking to work when it starts to get cold out. Maybe I'll start the second one by the time that happens...

Continuing somewhat clockwise is the back from High Tide, another project from last summer. I've also finished the front, so now I just have the sleeves. Somehow I'm not very inspired to start the sleeves. Maybe since it's summer I think I should be exempt from sleeves. If I don't do them soon, though, I won't get to wear this until next summer. I think it may work out that way, though. the first part of the sleeve will go fast because there aren't color changes. Changing out one little tencel strand every row or two gets tedious later on. Maybe I'll make progress if I take this to California...

And last but not least is most of one quarter circle of the knitted bike paniers from last winter's Vogue! These might turn out to be a ridiculous, crazy idea, but I think they're going to be fantastic. Unfortunately, I found a mistake in the pattern around row 48. There aren't any corrections posted -- probably because no one else has knit them to find the error! Only about six pattern rows look wrong and I could probably figure something out, but with long days at school, I'm too tired to think that hard about it. I'll take this to California, 'cause wool in July in Riverside just makes so much sense...

Is there more that didn't make it into the photo? I finished my Goddess Shawl a while ago, but I'm not sure how to blog about it and it's too hot to wear it for a picture, so that might just wait for a little while. I have a baby project in the works and I'm waiting for the yarn to start another one. I've been spinning some of the fiber I bought in Estes and it's really, really nice. (I don't think I can safely transport the wheel to California, so it's staying home.)

So what will I knit for a month in Riverside? A new place seems like a good excuse for new projects, don't you think? I need to start my Sockapal2za socks, so I'll take those. There was a Veronik Avery wrap-around top in the Spring 2004 Interweave Knits that I'm going to do in cotton floss from Webs last year. I'll also take the paniers, a baby sweater or two, maybe those tencel sleeves...

I bet this will be a lot more knitting than I can get to. It's not like I'm going on vacation -- this is going to be five weeks of 10+ hour days, fixing instruments and analyzing data. I might get occasional days off, but I'll probably spend them sleeping! My best bet for knitting is on the two-day drive back!

Well, if there's any knitting progress or instrument explosions, you'll read about it right here!

P.S. Deb, who wove the shawl that won first place in the Sheep to Shawl contest at the Estes.... ok, you get the idea... is no longer enormous, though her weaving ability is.
P.P.S. Di, I don't know why the photos don't like you. I'll try to do some investigating.