Persistent Knitter

Me, tough?
Thursday at work, I was called “One Tough Lady” by a co-worker. Why? Because I’m still going into work and today (Friday, April 30, 2004) is my due date. I know I haven’t really talked much about it here in my blog - but I’m pregnant with our second child (supposedly a boy according to the ultrasound) and due today. I’m huge, I waddle, I go to the bathroom about a zillion times a day (Yes, sometimes I take my knitting :)). I’m starting to scare people. The look on their faces when they ask your due date and you say “Friday” is really quite amusing. I wish I could capture it with a camera and show you.

Since I’m writing this on Thursday (I schedule it to be “published” the next day, and it gives me the evening to take pictures and update as necessary) it is remotely possible I will have had the baby by the time this hits the Information Superhighway. Oh I WISH I was having the baby. I’m a watched pot that refuses to boil. So many people are waiting for me to have the baby. My MIL is coming into town on Saturday for a week to help out. The idea was the baby would be here too (somewhere besides in my belly!). I adore my MIL and it will be great to have her here, but I will feel I’ve let her down a bit if the baby doesn’t make an appearance before she leaves. My nanny is on call (she’s such a sweetie!) to come watch our first child when we need to go to the hospital. I think she’s had less sleep than me as she keeps waking up in the middle of the night to check her phone to see if I called. Ideas for what to get her to thank her for this wonderful service are appreciated.

I never went through this with my first. She was breech and would not turn, so we had a scheduled c-section with her. Friday I left work, Monday morning I had a baby. Poof! We did go to a friend’s birthday party that friday night and it was fun telling people we were having the baby on Monday, but those looks were nothing with the ones I describe above.

To make matters a bit more annoying? Ironic?… a coworker who was due a week after me (notice the was?) with her first had her baby this morning. Hmph.

So, knitting
So I’ve made some progress on my socks - I’m decided about colors for the Borg - making progress on Hardangervidda. I’m so happy that things are going well at least in this area.

Ok, so the title is really cheesy - but I just couldn’t resist. I must be getting a bit loopy waiting for the baby to deliver :)

Today I had to sit through a 2 hour meeting at work. Luckily it was a large meeting with no participation necessary by me except staying awake and paying attention. I took my knitting and discreetly made great progress on Hardangervidda.

I put it on two needles tonite and measured it - it’s coming out at 48" around at the hem part. This is perfect! I’m aiming for a 50" chest, and that should give me enough room to loosen up as I get into the stockinette portion of the body. After I finish the block ribbing, I’ll be doing the second pattern of colorwork. The pattern says to switch to 3.5mm needles, but I’m thinking of doing it on 3.0mm needles and seeing if I get any draw in which would make it necessary to switch to the larger needle for the patternwork. I would switch back to the 3.0mm needle for the stockinette part of the body anyway. Hmm… decisions decisions :)

I finished swatching for Ingeborg. I am practicing my steeking techniques and thought I’d try a crochet steek first. Here’s what the results look like:

I don’t think it worked quite right because I have floats in the steek zone and after I cut through them, they aren’t anchored by anything. I think I was supposed to do either a striped or speckled steek so that there wouldn’t be any floats in the steek area. Good lesson to learn on a swatch, that’s for sure. I also realized because my swatch is so narrow I am not sure if I’ll be able to get it over my sewing machine arm to machine stitch it down. I wasn’t feeling gutsy enough to hand sew it tonite - maybe tomorrow.

Here’s the run down of the colors I tried:

You see at the very far left that I did Natural & Snow. I drew a line so you could see where the cutoff from one to the other is. I can hardly tell the difference between the two depending on the lighting so I decided I didn’t like either. Although I do like how it looks, it’s too much contrast for what I wanted this sweater to look like. I checked with the intended recipient (Hi mom!) and she said the colors I picked looked fine, and we think we won’t do the pointy lacy things on it after it’s finished with button band. Speaking of button band - I’ll be using the Claret for the border & bands on it. So it’ll only be a two color sweater - but still fabulous!

I haven’t measured gauge yet. Whatever the swatch came out as, that’s what I’ll use as the main gauge and adjust the sizing of the pattern from there. No more re-doing the sleeve a zillion times for me!

Comments on Comments…
Ingrid and Judy both suggested using a DPN for the provisional cast on stitches, and only doing about 20 at a time to make life easier. This is a great idea, except for the fact that I totally messed up my crochet chain and it undid from the wrong end (gee, did I forget to mention this small fact?). So I had to put all the stitches on a needle in order to get back around to where I could get to the starting point. It was a good learning experience, and I’ll try harder next time to get my crochet chain going the right direction!

So I’ve swatched and swatched, and as Ingrid says in the comments - I should start on the real sweater before I have a sweater’s worth of swatch! I have decided I like the tone on tone the best - with the brighter red as the floral accents. The white is too bright, and the natural, which I thought I would really like isn’t so much different from the white once it’s knit up with the red. I definately like the subtlety of the red on red. It makes for a very rich fabric.

So I have been perusing the shade card for the yarn I’m using, and can’t come up with a band color that I like. The example sweaters in the pattern book show more muted tones as the main body of the sweater and a brighter color as the band. I am going the opposite way (or so it seems to me) and doing the brighter colors as the main body, so I’m left with a band that isn’t so bright, and that doesn’t really appeal to me. I’ll mull it over for a bit, but I think I’m going to go with the darker red as the band color as well. The way the sweater is done, you get a break before starting the pattern on the bottom with a stripe of the flower color. There is some lacy texture in the band, so I think this will look fine even without a second color. I haven’t decided if I’m doing the lacy pointy things yet, those would be put on last, so I can put off that decision for now.

No pictures today - hopefully I can steek my sample and get a shot of that for tomorrow. Oh, and I still have to measure what my gauge is :)

Lest you think all I do is complain about gauge problems and needle problems on my blog, I must share some progress with you.

First, Hardangervidda!

The bottom edge looks so much neater now that the provisional cast on is attached back in. I ended up first trying to attach it during a two-color row. This was a bit too fussy for me to handle - so no problem, I just added one more row on the cast on side (after transferring all 310 stitches to a needle) and then I could attach it on a solid colored row. While having two 40" needles in it was a bit awkward, it was made worse by the fact that everytime I moved or breathed or even looked at it, stitches would start falling off one of the needles. All my point protectors were doing nothing to keep the stitches on, until someone at my knitting group mentioned using hair ties! Given that I have a daughter under the age of 3, I have a billion of these in my purse of varying sizes. I pulled two of the smaller ones out, wrapped ‘em around the needle ends, and VOILA! The best stitch-keeper-on device ever. You can see these in the picture as well, one pink, one blue.

I haven’t measured the size since the first inch or so, but I think it’s coming out ok. I really need to get it onto two needles and make sure it’s big enough :)

Purple Socks:

I’ve made pretty good progress on these socks. I’m almost ready to start the heel(s). These are actually great to work on - simple pattern, no worries about gauge at this point.

Ingeborg
I’ve done the next color test on the Borg, and I can’t say as I like it either. It’s snow-white with the Cinnabar color (that’s the brighter red). It’s a bit too much contrast for me, and makes me think of a Christmas sweater. Next color combo I’m trying is Cinnabar with Natural. I think this might be a happier light color as it’s toned down just enough to not be all brown-looking; but light enough to have good contrast (better than the greyish Arrowhead color). I’ll take more pics of that when I get a bit more done.

Mandela asked in the comments:
Hmmm. I think the tone-on-tone claret/cinnabar combo is my favourite so far. Looking forward to seeing the rest of the swatch. How’s the gauge?
I have refused to even check my gauge on this swatch yet!!! How’s that for daring? I’m really focusing more on the color combos. The swatch is giving me excellent practice with the 12" length circular needle. I feel a bit like a lady drinking tea while knitting with them - since the needles are so short I can only hold them with my thumbs and first two fingers - much like a lady holding a fancy teacup holding her pinky out. The tone on tone colors are growing on me too. At first I didn’t like them, but they do look nice now.

I have actually made quite a bit of progress in the past few days on all my projects (with the exception of the Critter blanket); but have been remiss in posting about it here. I won’t spoil it all by posting about everything in one day.

I have been playing with colors for the Borg. Originally I was going to do a bright red with a grey pattern, and deep red for the bands. Well, now I’m not so sure. Here’s my swatch (done in the round, so I can practice my steeking):

It looks a bit "fat" at the center.. that’s only because it’s propped up funny for the picture. (ha - that’s what I say about _my_ pictures too!). The bottom two colors are Cinnabar & Arrowhead. The contrast just isn’t what I envisioned it to be. The next color combo is Claret & Arrowhead. Better contrast, but doesn’t quite speak to me. Next I tried Claret as the Main Color with Cinnabar as the patterning color. (No idea what color the button band should be). I also have Ecru, Snow & Natural to try as the pattern color with both different reds. Since this sweater isn’t for me - I’ll need to get a final vote from the recipient on what she likes. So far the tone on tone isn’t bad - but I think I might like the bright red with the snow white pattern color. That’s next on the list to try.

New Yarn
This weekend I went to an LYS I hadn’t been to before. It was about the size of my master bedroom closet (no, my closet isn’t really that big) and it had lots of fancy yarns in it. I was looking for something to make a bonbon with; and found a few different options. I chose the Timo because the color was better than the other thing I was looking at, and it’s already in ball form. (The other was more variegated in colors I didn’t really like, and in a very floopy skein) The price was about the same (exhorbitantly high). I got two balls which should be enough to make one bonbon plus a little. I need to test the color fastness and softness of the yarn when it’s wet though.

Isn’t the blue purty? I have no idea what I’ll make if the bonbon thing doesn’t work out.

So I started working on a new-old project today. I was getting ready to leave the house, and wasn’t content with my Critter blanket (Too big for the purse now, and it’s very boring to work on. *yawn*), and Hardangervidda is getting to a part where I will need to concentrate for a bit to reattach the provisional cast on to make the hem. (Not to mention I broke a needle last night when I pulled it out to work on it. Grr!) I decided to grab a sock project as my new purse project. I went to my stash, and dug through my work-on-me-soon bin of yarn. Nothing in there called to me except stuff I would have to wind into balls before I could work with it, which I didn’t have time for. I thought I’d just grab the Summer Solstice socks even though I’m less than thrilled with them right now - but I couldn’t find them! I’m hoping the knitting elves have taken them off to finish them for me. I did find these socks, which I started last year sometime (and have since added about 2 inches to on Tuesday):

The yarn is Cascade Fixation, and I got it through theknitter.com’s SOTM club. The pattern was a very pretty tulip pattern that didn’t really appeal to me at the time. I decided to make Pretty Comfy Socks with the yarn instead. (My current theory is that I was in a fancier-is-better mood at the time). I’m really enjoying working with the Cascade Fixation yarn. I don’t remember why I set these aside last year, but I’m glad they were already started and in a little pack for me to pick up again.

As you can see from the picture I’m doing these on two at a time on two circulars. I was really into this last year, but this year I’ve been more inclined to use DPNs. So far it seems to be working ok for this particular yarn and pattern combo, but I might switch to DPNs when I get to the heel. I know I’m going to have to shift stitches around to line up the pattern with the instep (I shifted it the other way when I started so I wouldn’t start each needle with a purl stitch) and that’s a PITA when doing two at a time on circs. We’ll see how I feel when I get there.

I’m hoping to get Hardangervidda’s hem done and move into the body of it. Maybe pics of that tomorrow.

Somehow I missed the fact that my typepad trial subscription was over yesterday. I was figuring on staying anyway, but kind of thought they’d send me an email warning me. So now they’ve charged my credit card, and here I am! :)

Bags bags bags!
I love little bags. Well, I love big bags too. You should see the collection of backpacks/laptop bags/other bags I have in my linen closet. There was a discussion on Knitters Review Forums about small tool bags to hold things like crochet hooks, stitch markets, tapestry needles, scissors and so on. One person posted a link to Walker mesh bags. I see many possibilities for these bags (esp some of the larger ones down lower on the page) for use in knitting. A store sort-of-near-me-if-I-take-a-long-lunch carries them. Here’s what I picked up:

The Walker website doesn’t show all the different variations on the small mesh bag. The yellow one is perfect size for my knitting tools (size 4×7", and called the "Checkbook" style) The purple one would be great if you had to carry a bit more - as it has two pockets, so you could put a pattern or notecard in the larger space, or bigger tools (The whole bag is 5×7", with the smaller pocket the same size as the yellow bag. These are listed under "double zip cases" on the walker website). The red one I just had to have - it’s too cute (size 4×5)! I have no idea what I’m going to put in it. I thought at first stitch markers, but it’s a bit large even for that. The store I went to didn’t have any of the larger bags that might be good for sweater projects. The mesh on these bags is very fine - even my smallish tapestry needle wouldn’t fit through the mesh holes. The inside edges are all serged so they are smooth and wouldn’t snag on anything. I’m so pleased with my find - I may have to order a larger bag to try for a whole project!

So what the heck have I been working on since last Wednesday? Seemingly a lot and not much all at once. I have been trying to get the quilt top for a roman shade finished. I finally finished the piecing, now I just have to make it into a roman shade. Here’s just the top:

I need to line it, put the velcro on the top, attach hardware to the board (after cutting it down to size), put in the battens, sew on the rings and finally attach it to the wall. All that will take a few more hours, and an overnight wait while the battens’ glue dries. Maybe this week sometime. I’m using the instructions at this web site to put it together as a Roman shade. I ordered supplies from her for this shade and one for my daughter’s room. I really like the lightweight battens & the pulleys she provides. They really do the trick to make the shade go up and down smoothly.

Hardangervidda
I decided to cast on for the body and see what length the sleeves need to be made when it’s done. I’m going with the suggested needle sizes, and it’s a lot easier to deal with a 40" long circular than a 12" one or DPNs when doing fair isle. Here’s a shot of what I managed to get done lately:

You can see the purl ridge in the middle where I’ll fold over for the hem and get a nice crisp edge. I think I have another two rounds to do before I can attach the provisional cast on back in by doing a k2tog across two needles. I’m getting smoother with my two handed fair isle technique too. I’m definately better at it in the middle of the day when my dexterity is up, vs late at night. Oh - and this is almost one complete ball of yarn in the main color (size XL).

Cute Bag!
Another thing I did this weekend was work on my critter blanket, which is boring - but I picked up this totally cute little purse this weekend that is now holding my critter blanket project:

It’s really too small for the critter blanket, but it was the only project I had that would go in it right now. I think it’ll be a perfect sock-project bag.

I cast on for the body of Hardangervidda. 310 stitches. WOW, that’s a lot of stitches. I’m using a provisional cast on so that I can simply do k2tog over two needles to form the hem. This saves hemming later and the pattern calls for a purl row at the turned edge, which makes a nice crisp turning point.

Pretty unexciting, but I did take some pictures. Provisional cast on (I crochet around the needle using a contrasting color. I love this provisional cast on - as it is easily removable without cutting and very consistent and easy to count the stitches because you can use markers on your needle. I learned this method from the great pictures in Cool Socks, Warm Feet):

(bleah, bad picture because of the lighting)

Now I’ve used the real yarn and done three rows - not in the round yet though:

(Click image for a close up, which still doesn’t show you much)

I’m using Addi Turbos size 2.5mm, 40" length. The body should measure around 50" around.

What about checking gauge you might ask? Well, when I get a few inches in, I’ll hold it up to my husband and if it looks like it’ll fit around him, then all should be good. I might even go so far as to put it on two needles so he can slip it around his waist. Hopefully it won’t be too huge - I tend to loosen up my knitting on things like this (as compared to small circumference sleeves).

I felt bad for just whining and complaining on Monday, so I thought I’d post some pictures today! I started color-swatching for Ingeborg today. I don’t have much done, but I’m not wowed by the first color combo I picked out:

Maybe as the pattern gets more defined, it will look more striking. I’m planning on trying a few different combos, so we’ll see as it grows. It kind of looks like a sock right now - since I’m doing the swatch in the round. I will probably do a practice steek to cut it apart and let it lay flat later. You can also see my magnetic board and part of the chart for this in the picture. I’m really really really glad I’m using the magnets on this one. The chart is pretty intricate (did I mention somewhere I’d be able to memorize it? Uh, yeah, right) so keeping my place marked is going to be essential. I only have this one metal board, I’ll have to see if they make them in smaller sizes to fit my knitting bag better.

My critter blanket is my current purse project, so I don’t work on it too often. Soon it’ll get too big to be shoved in there. I thought I’d share a picture of the blanket with an actual kitty:

This is our oldest Kitty - Thumper. I got him way back when I was in college. He’s got quite an attitude, but doesn’t usually mind sleeping under blankets or clean laundry. There are a few other people in my knitting group doing critter blankets. Judy has already managed to finish 2 of them! Hers are much smaller and more reasonable sized. I should have taken pictures of them on Saturday, but I spaced it!