Knitathon FO #2

Ok, I just finished it up, so I'm posting it:



The stats:

2.25 skeins of Patons Grace in color 60603 (apricot). Three-quarter sleeve garter-stitch cardigan, size 6-9 mo. Pattern from Simple Knits for Cherished Babies by Erika Knight. Probably fairly obvious, but I haven't blocked it yet.

I can't say that I'm in love with it. I'm probably going to donate it somewhere, but
I have to find an organization that will take cotton. All the ones I currently work with only take animal fiber. Issues I had:

As stated before, the knits are simple, but the patterns aren't specific enough for beginners. They don't specify cast on, increase, or decrease methods. (I used a long tail cast on for the back, cable cast on for the sleeves, a m1 for the increases, and k2tog bind off for the sleeves and front.) Also, the pattern relies on measurements to guide you through the pattern, lulling you into the false sense of security that your vertical guage isn't so very important. But then when it's time to pick up stitches for edgings, the directions switch to specific stitch counts. So, if your vertical guage doesn't match hers, then your pick-ups along the garter stitch sides will look odd. It also will make a difference in where the button holes fall. I think it would have been better to just switch to picking up one between each ridge and then worked out the buttons spacing myself from there, but I didn't realize how much of an issue it was going to be until after I'd bound off, and I was already not in love with the sweater and didn't want to revisit it.

The buttons are from the button box, 3 floral shell and 2 round shell. This project fullfilled it's purpose--I was just looking for something I could work on in the near-dark. And it was a learning experience, because now I know how to approach the other patterns in the book that I do want to make for others. So, even though I'm not squeeing at the finished project, I don't think it was a waste of time or energy. And, of course, I'm very glad to move this one from my UFO column to the FO side.

Weekend Progress

I was a productive little soul this weekend. My first FO to share is a hat made for a friend from knit club. Linda has been learning to crochet and this hat reared up and bit her on the hiney. So she loaded me up with yarn and Harmony Guides and asked me to make it for her. And, you know, for yarn and Harmony Guides, a girl will do just about anything.



The pattern is Crocheted Cloche with Tie from Vogue Knitting On the Go: Crocheted Hats. I liked this pattern. There is a mistake in it, though. In round 15 (16), they omitted a “ch1” before the “repeat from *.” Other than that, it was a very clearly written, beginner/intermediate pattern. I like how the designer worked the “headband” in to the pattern. The way the stitch pattern works, she just has you change colors for a row and the result is that it looks like you have a band woven in and out of the hat. Cute.

Made with Cascade 220 in a purple for the main color and a marled purple for the accent color. (I don’t have the ball bands, but it looks like the marled purple has been discontinued.) The color is very off in this shot. I took it under an ott light, but it looks more blue than purple in the photo. It took one skein each, but there is enough to make the same hat with the colors reversed. Or, it looks like enough to make a baby hat with the main color if you’re not in the mood to have two hats in reversed colors.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t on my UFO list, so no effect there. But it did give me one more for the FO list. w00t!

In addition to the cloche, I’m about 45 minutes away from finishing the baby sweater I posted about the other day. I just need to sew up the seams and attach the buttons. Also, the iPod cozies have all been seamed and are ready to be lined. I’m going to try and get all the things that need lining done and then do a sewing day and get them all done at the same time. So, most likely, the last two days of the UFO knit-a-thon will be a lining-a-thon.

Thank you, Soren-love.

Do you see that thing up there? That's a new, spiffy header made just for me by Madam Soren. Soren is friend and artist back in Massachusetts where I hail from. (From where I hail? Where is Grammar Girl when I need her?) Her art dolls are amazing. I have 3 and I love them so much. You all need to go be in awe of her creativity. Now. Really. You won't regret clicking on her.

Thank you, Soren!!

CaaaAAAaaashmere...

For UFO number three, I would like to introduce you to the Backyard Leaves Scarf designed by Annie Modessitt and featured in several publications by Interweave Press, including Scarf Style and the 2006 Holiday issue of Interweave Knits. The latter is where I first noticed it and fell in love. I'd been wanting to learn to work lace from a graph, and the design just called to me from the pages. And, if ever there was a scarf pattern made for cashmere, a fiber I'd been dying to work with, this was the one. Surely, it would be mine.

The tragic twist to our little love story is that by the time I saw the magazine in late October, I had already made the decision that my epic yarn stash needed some major culling and was trying to avoid adding yarn to it. And, of course, Christmas was fast approaching and I didn't want to spend money on some yummy yarn to make a dream scarf for myself when there were so many other gifts to be bought. I bought the magazine to get the pattern, but I was fully prepared to wait a year or two to start it, so that I could both get the stash under control and hope to be in a position where buying enough cashmere to make it wouldn't be such a financial stretch.

Well, that pattern burned a hole in my soul for weeks. I would take the magazine out and check the photo to make sure that, yes, it really was my dream scarf, and yes, it really was there waiting to be made. I knew that with all the Christmas knitting I had to get done there was no way that I could even think about casting on until the new year, even if I did have the yarn. But one night when I was bored and too wired to sleep, I did what all sleep deprived and cashmere-starved knitters do. I went trolling through eBay.

And, that night, my friends, the eBay gods were smiling. For yea, verily, there was someone in New York City who apparently had a stash of cashmenre that they didn't want (shocking, I know) and had posted it in 5 different lots, sorted by color. One of the colors was a beautiful dark forest green. And this wasn't just any cashmere. No, this was Filatura di Crosa. Normally retailing for $50 a skein. The lot of 4 skeins was still under $10. Ten. Dollars. Granted, there were still a few days to go, so I put in a bid and kept checking in. I was always the high bidder, and I hadn't even cracked $20 yet. The last few minutes before the auction closed, I parked myself at the computer and watched as people bid the price up a dollar or two at a time. There were 3 people fighting over it. In the last few seconds, I entered a hail-mary bid at the highest amount I could justify paying and won. With the shipping, $45.

FORTY-FIVE! Less than the cost of one skein got me 4! Unfortunately, the person only took checks, so it took nearly a month for the yarn to arrive, but ooooooOOOooh, when it did... And, yes, I still have too much yarn and, yes, Christmas was coming fast, but when was I ever going to get such perfect yarn for such an amazingly low price, I ask you? It was still a few weeks before I could cast on, because I was in the last few days of Christmas knitting when it arrived, but when I did finally cast on? Oh, man. Cashmere. I'd knit sheets out of it if I could.



It took 2 tries to get used to working the lace from a graph, but I'm doing well now. As you can see, though, I'm not too terribly far along. I have to pay very close attention to what I'm doing, and so it's not conducive to working on while the kids are awake. On this third time casting on, I'm only one and a half times through the repeat. I certainly don't expect to have this project done by the end of the the UFO knitathon, but I do hope that by finishing off a lot of my simpler UFOs, I'll be more inclined to pick this one up in the evening instead of working on something I don't love as much because I'm closer to finishing it.

Todays UFO is brought to you by the letters "F" and "O"

I just finished today's UFO. So, you get to hear it's whole story in one go!

This UFO was born from a very vintage skein of yarn that I got from my Mom's uber-stash. I don't remember, to be honest, what the yarn was called or even the fiber content. What I do remember is that this particular skein of yarn had been floating around in my mom's house since I was a wee little one in the late 70's, early 80's. When my mom had me cull her stash for her about 5 years ago, I grabbed a bunch of these ye olde skeins that I could remember from my early childhood, thinking that if she hadn't used them by now she wasn't going to. And, they had a sort of vintage appeal to them at that point, too.

The yarn appears to be 100% fuzzy acrylic, but part of me wants to say that it also had some wool or mohair mixed in. It was billed as a tweed yarn, and was 2 contrasting colored yarns that were worked together to create the tweed effect. In this particular skein, the strands were a peachy-apricot and a peachy-brown.

Since I only had one skein of this to work with, and the colors weren't suitable for me to wear, my options were fairly limited. In the end, I decided on a purse. It was knit in two pieces: a large rectangle for the body, back, and bottom; and a long, thin piece for the strap. All the knitting was done in stockinet, and I really liked how the "tweed" worked up. I got the bag all assembled and the top kept curling because it was stockinet, so I worked 2 rows of single crochet around the top and that fixed that. In the process, I also added a loop to hold the bag closed. I still had a bit of yarn left, so I seperated the strands and made 6 crochet roses for the lower front corner of the bag.

With the bag all assembled, I moved on to lining. I got all the pieces sewed together fine and then when I put the lining in place to check for size, I noticed that when I sewed the strap of the bag in place, I'd twisted it several times. Oh, dookie. I didn't have enough yarn left so I could remove the strap and reattach it properly, so it just stayed that way. I used the little bit I did have left to sew the edges of the strap together to make it a tube so the gaff was less noticable. But the strap still neaded to be lined for stability. In the end, I just hemmed the edges of a narrow strip of fabric and ran it through the tube and connected it to the bag lining.



And then, it sat.

And sat. And any time I straightened up my craft area, I'd come across it and wonder why I hadn't sewn the lining in yet and it'd get cast aside again to be overlooked for a few more months.

So, today, the first day of the UFO knit-a-thon, I pulled it out and threaded a needle. It took all of 15 minutes to sew the lining in place and another 10 minutes to pick a button for the front and sew that in place, too. And, voila, I give you my first FO of the knit-a-thon:



Cue the trumpets!

The UFO saga continues...

This fine day, I bring you the tale of another UFO. Also one that has languished for months and months, but, thanks to the stash-busting knit-a-thon starting in just a few hours, should be finished sometime in the next 26 days.

This UFO comes from Simple Knits for Cherished Babies by Erika Knight. The book certainly lives up to its name; the trickiest pattern in the book is a pair of basic booties. I’ve already used the monogrammed baby blanket as inspiration for a blanket for my new niece. (I double stranded DK weight yarn to make it, so I had to do a little math.) The only issue I have with the book is the “It costs HOW MUCH?!” factor of the yarns used. I’m sorry, but I will not be knitting baby pants out of cashmere. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is that I don’t particularly want to spend $50 to knit a baby garment that will likely have poo leaked on it. I know I can't guarantee that anything I make won't, in time, come in contact with poo, but pants for an infant is pretty much a sure thing. I would like to think that my cashmere scarf project is never going to come in contact with poo, but who knows what the future brings? I could be wrong. Finding suitable replacement yarns has sometimes been an issue, but for my current project from the book—the garter stitch cardigan—Patons Grace was a perfect substitution. (And I’ll be using less than 2 balls, so if I remember correctly, it’s $10 worth of yarn instead of $40. Much more realistic a price tag for an item that will be worn for 3 months and will most likely be doused in regurgitated lunch at some point or another.)

To be honest, I wasn't all that in love with this particular sweater when I first saw it, but I cast on out of necessity. When my youngest turned 18 months old, she started climbing out of her crib. And, my then 3.5 year old started climbing into the crib. So, fearing a crib collapse or a serious smooshing incident, we moved Abby into a big girl bed. We had been putting the girls to bed 30 minutes apart so Abby would be asleep by the time it was Kai’s turn to pass out, but in a big girl bed, it’s much harder for Abby to wind down, and in no time we had given up on spacing bedtimes and went to putting them to sleep together.

That’s when chaos sprung forth in our home.

Bedtimes turned into 90-minute affairs on good nights. In an attempt to curb the more outrageous bedtime behavior, one of us would stay in the room with the kids and enforce the “stay in your own bed” rule. When it looked like things weren’t going to improve anytime soon, I hauled the kids to a second-hand store and got myself a small, rocking recliner to sit in on my nights as Enforcer. Sitting in semi-dark repeating, "Lie down and close your eyes," for 90 minutes got old fast, so in no time at all, I followed the example of the old lady whispering “hush” and had some knitting on my lap. The garter-stitch cardigan was the perfect project. Not only is it all garter, but there was no increasing or decreasing for the first half of the project. I made it halfway through and realized that I’d made a counting error way back when I cast on, so it all got frogged one night. After another few nights of knitting, we decided to change tack with bedtimes and went to just telling 1 story and singing 2 songs and leaving them after that, and the project was set aside at that point in favor of projects that were more demanding now that I wasn’t working on them in the dark.



I picked up the project again last night. You can see how quickly it knits up; three-quarters of what is done in that photo was done last night while getting caught up on The Black Donnellys and fast-forwarding to the performances in American Idol. My only complaint thus far about the pattern is that it's very unspecific. Fine for an intermediate knitter, but you would think that a book called Simple Knits Anything would be geared toward beginners. Not so. It tells you to cast on for sleeves after getting to a certain point of the body, but doesn't tell what method. I imagine that a newbie would assume long-tail cast on, but a cable cast on would be more flexible and leaves no more ends to weave in. Likewise, the pattern calls for increasing to form a v-neck, but doesn't say if you should k1fb or work a m1 or what. Plus, for some reason, instead of including the sizing info with the pattern, all the sizing info for all the projects are at the back of the book. It probably made the patterns fit in their allocated space better, but it's a bit annoying to have to flip back and forth. Anyway, for an intermediate or adventurous-beginner knitter, it is a very good book. Simple, relatively mindless projects in classic looks that will be just as stylish for the recipient's own grandbabies 50 years from now. You need to be willing to make some construction choices on your own, but worth looking into.

It's a "thon," not a "thong"

One of the links you'll find to the right on my blog is a link to a community on LiveJournal that hosts "knit-a-thons." Twenty-six days to pursue a challenging project. This month's knit-a-thon starts March 15th and the theme is stash busting/UFOs. I'm already on the no-yarn-for-a-year bandwagon, so I'm going to concentrating on the UFOs.

The UFOs... Wow... Taking a look at the list to the right, my UFOs total 17 at this point in time. Seven. Teen. That's just not right. The oldest is at least 18 months old and is a bag that just needs to be lined. The next oldest is about 9 months old, so that's not so bad, right? And, again, it's a bag that needs to be assembled and lined. (Sensing a trend?) My goal is to knock that list down by at least 10 items during the knit-a-thon.

As I happen to find myself between projects in these last few days before the official start, I've gotten a jump on things and finished the knitting portion of a pillow cover. This particular project started it's life as a woefully complicated entrelac purse. The YSO who was teaching the class picked it as the project for a beginners class on entrelac. It involved 2 different stitch patterns for the entrelac pieces, increasing and decreasing in those 2 different patterns while working the entrelac to form a hobo-bag shape, and I picked a boucle (Patons Canadiana Boucle, 97% acrylic/3% Nylon in color 7078) as my contrast yarn so the stitch pattern in those levels were next to impossible to keep track of anyway. While teaching the class, the YSO kept getting up to help customers, and for some reason my class members kept asking me for help, so I had very little chance to make progress in the class as it was. By the time I got home, I had decided a few things:

1. The boucle was way too stretchy on its own.
2. The stitch patterns were making everything way to complicated.
3. The stitch patterns in the boucle were impossible to see.
4. Turning the project every 9 stitches was insanely annoying.

So, I decided to rip back and start over. Only the boucle was such a pain that I could only rip back so much before I finally just cut the yarn and threw away the bottom level and a half of the project. When I restarted, I ran a thread of black size 20 crochet cotton with the boucle to give it more stability. Also, I threw the stitch patterns out the window and just went with stockinet. And, now that I'd changed over to stockinet, I looked up a video on how to knit backwards so I wouldn't have to turn the project constantly. I finished one half of the bag and set it aside for months while I took on other projects that weren't the fiber equivalent of dealing with a bloated government beurocracy. When I finally picked it up again, I discovered the final, and ultimately project-killing, point:

5. I really, really didn't like it.

The increasing and decreasing were still an annoyance, but I could live with that with the other modifications I made. But the bag itself? It's shape and construction? I just didn't like it. And I didn't know anyone who would like it. When I looked at the photo that came with the pattern, it just said "60-year-old phD candidate with an unhealthy obsession with India." I couldn't think of a single person in my life who would enjoy the bag. So even though I was more than half done, I frogged it all back again.

This time, I decided to just go square. There was one row of the original pattern that didn't involve any increasing or decreasing, and from that row and the directions for the starting and ending rows of triangles, I was able to extrapolate how to get straight-sided entrelac to work. And, hey, it did! I managed to get a square done relatively quickly. However, due to all the cutting and frogging and throwing-out of unfrogable pieces, I was going to be tight on how much yarn I would have left. When I started this final reattempt, I was thinking I'd do a small tote bag. But in the end I decided to do a pillow cover. So, using the main color (The Leader, 100% acrylic, color 601) I knit a 2-piece stockinet backing. The smaller of the 2 pieces has a garter edge with button holes. When it's all sewed in place, I'll be able to open it up to remove the pillow form for washing. A plus, given the 2 toddlers who roam wild and free in our house.




In my new-project frenzy, I finished the front and the larger back piece and left the smaller back piece with 2 inches left to be knit. And there it sat. So, last night, I picked it up again and finished the knitting. I have about 3/4 of a yard left of the acrylic, so it's all going to have to be sewn together on the machine or by hand. But all the bits are done for now and I'm sure it will sit undisturbed for several more days until the UFO-busting knitathon is well underway and I have nothing else to do but weave in ends and assemble pieces.

Welcome, welcome!

Well, it appears to be as good a time as any to go live with this thing! My old blog's name didn't accurately reflect what I do. Sure, I still crochet and love it to bits, but since starting that blog, my interest in knitting and spinning have blossomed, too. And, while I am most greatful to the good folks at Crochet Me for providing such an excellent service, I was having a difficult time editing the blog's look and feel myself. So, I opted for blogger, which is much more WYSIWYG in it's design.

My old blog has been DOA for the last three months as I got this one ready and then had to put it on hold while life happened. I'm hoping to be much more on top of things now that this blog is officially "live."