Persistent Knitter

Finally! I had two months worth of digital pictures to “process” (and there weren’t really that many considering we had a baby and all). I have been sick since last weekend (that’s the 22nd for those of you keeping track at home) and have felt like death warmed over literally. The lack of sleep due to being a new mom doesn’t really help either. Finally I feel a bit better; and wanted to get these pictures out!

I finished Alex’s roman shade, and I’m quite pleased with it if I do say so myself :) Here it is in the “up” position:

And the down position:

His room is getting there - I even managed to put the crib together too. He’s still sleeping in the basinette in our room; soon he’ll move into his own room and hopefully sleep a bit longer at each stretch at night. Who is this little devil that keeps me up and from being healthy? Why, here’s a picture of him:

Ain’t he cute? Good thing too.

Knitting???
For those interested - I ripped back Hardangervidda again. I’m knitting the size medium and had loosened up my gauge “just a bit” to make sure it wasn’t too small. HA! It measured at 52″ on the supposedly smaller part where the hem is. (The pattern says that the chest should measure 44″ across for that size) I ripped back and am reknitting it at my ’standard’ knitting style, not loose, not tight. I have about 3 more rows before I can measure it to see where it is. Someday this will be a completed sweater. I swear it!

My entire knitting work yesterday consisted of knitting two rows on Hardangervidda last night. I stayed up too late to do it (but had found this awesome show on PBS to watch: Colonial House. I think I saw the first or next to first episode as everyone was just getting setup in the Colony. It had another episode on after the first one, and I forced myself to use the VCR to tape it and went to bed. Given that daytime TV sucks, especially in the mornings, it’ll be good to watch during the day.

TLC?
Have you noticed a trend on TLC lately? (or maybe not so lately) What exactly are we learning? In the mornings the entire lineup consists of Baby/Wedding/Dating Stories. Bleah, Barf, Boring!! The afternoons are slightly better (in that I’m at least interested in these shows somewhat):
* Trading Spaces (a designer gets to design/destroy a room in your house while you help another designer do the same to your friend’s house. Why does anyone sign up for this show?)
* Clean Sweep (where as a viewer you get to feel better about your own house by seeing how cluttered other people live and laugh at all the crap they keep)
* In A Fix (where you get to blame one spouse for not doing their remodeling job, and the other gets sent to a spa or somewhere equally cool while a huge team of burly guys comes in and does the slacker’s work for them)
* While You Were Out (they get a designer who actually makes a good attempt to design a nice space for someone who is “out” at the time)

So I’m not sure what I’ve learned by watching “The Learning Channel” except I’d rather not let any of them into my house any time soon!

Non Knitting, but cool
I am going to finish Alex’s roman shade this week. The theory being that it’d be easier to do it this week while darling husband was here to help with the baby. It’s a good theory, but slightly flawed. Thank goodness Alex likes to sleep propped up in the boppy pillow on the couch while I putter away in the sewing room. I got the blackout lining put on yesterday - hoping to get the battens glued in today as that’s the most time consuming in that you have to let it dry overnight before touching it again.

Knitting? What’s that? Life has been busy with a new baby & a toddler. To be fair, my wonderful husband does most of the toddler chasing around, while I sit on the couch and try and fill the baby-boy up with breastmilk. I swear this boy is insatiable! He doesn’t sleep long enough for me to get involved in anything yet, and I try and rest when he does. That doesn’t always work either. I’m trying to figure out how to nurse and knit at the same time, but haven’t mastered it yet. :)

I did manage to make it to my Saturday knitting group this week, and did cast on 10 stitches for Hardangervidda while there. I managed to cast on the rest of them in very small bouts the rest of this weekend. I have decided to make the Medium size because the size L didn’t seem like it removed enough stitches to be of use. I was 6″ over in the size for the XL. Yes, this could come back and bite me - and be TOO small, but I’m willing to take my chances. The only place it might be too small is in the hem, and that won’t take that long to do and figure out.

The Ingeborg knit along officially started this weekend, and I’m already falling behind. Such is life!

One other random knitting related item. Recently I went to a not-so-LYS to buy some fru-fru yarn. They had problems getting their credit card machine to work. Fine, I paid cash. I got my statement and went through it tonite, and guess what - their stupid CC machine did work and charged my card. This is the most expensive fru-fru yarn ever since I’ve been double charged for it. I’m debating my options: 1) call the bank and tell them I was incorrectly charged - they should reverse it without too much trouble. 2) Call the shop and let them try and sort it out by crediting my account. This might be more hassle than it’s worth because they were pretty unable to get the credit card machine to tell them anything useful last time, I’d hate to be charged a third time for this yarn!

Well, most of my family/friends and local knitting group know that I’ve been off having the baby (finally!). I’m about two days behind on getting a picture of the little guy here on my blog since I got home on Sunday. There has been no knitting taking place at all, so you’ll just have to “suffer” with pictures of Alex. For the record:

Alexander Parker
Born: May 7, 2004, 1:47pm
Weight: 9lbs 11oz
Length: 21.5 inches

(click on picture to get bigger & better version)

And a picture of my two adorable kids together:

(click on picture to get bigger & better version)

First - the backward progress: I ripped out Hardangervidda. All the way. Down to the first ball of yarn. I had ripped out the sleeve a few days ago - didn’t want the yarn getting too crinkly. I had about 8" done on the body, and it just kept getting wider and wider and wider. I measured it and it was 6" larger than it should have been. I tried it on DH, and it was pretty gargantuan. I did measure my gauge and I was getting 6st/inch as I should have been for the most part. So WHY was it growing so much? It must have been a combination of the draw-in from the colorwork and me knitting loosely. My row gauge was a bit lower than it should have been (which is wierd for me), but then you’d think it wouldn’t grow in width - it’d grow in length right?

So - I ripped. And rewound into balls. And will reassess.

Ripping in process:

After ripping the body:

I realize I forgot to include the partial ball I had just started yesterday in this picture. Owell. So now I’m back to balls of yarn. When I re-start Hardangervidda - which I will restart it, and soon! I still really like the way this sweater looks. I will do one size smaller in the body (L instead of XL). I might decrease some stitches evenly around the body after I do the 2nd colorwork portion. This is where it seemed to substantially start growing and flaring out. Some growth in size isn’t bad - you’d expect the bottom hem to be pulled in a bit more than the body, but it was really doing it too much.

So what was my forward progress? Well, I realized I wasn’t going to be happy with the sweater how it was coming out. DH wouldn’t have liked it (too big!) and he wouldn’t have worn it. Yes it sucked to rip it out and I was not smiling while doing so. Hopefully when I restart it, all the stars will align and it will work better the second time around.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll take a slight break from it - and cast on for Ingeborg. I’m pretty set on my color combo; I’m pretty sure I have enough yarn (I need one more session of calculations to make sure). I’m excited to get started on it. I’m sure I’ll get sick of always having to follow the chart so closely on the body, and then it’ll be back to Hardangervidda with it’s much simpler pattern and lots of st.st. body. I also did a few rows on the critter blanket. I can’t wait to be done with it, it’s so tedious at this point :)

Also - No baby yet.

Nothing to update, and I still haven’t had the baby. *sigh*
Making progress on all my projects in small increments, mostly Hardangervidda. I’ll take pictures when there is really something to see :)

I have some corrections to make to my original calculations. I guess it was really late last night when I wrote up that post. After checking with the source of my yarn (theknitter.com), I realize I didn’t take into account how much yardage was in each gram or ounce of the yarn I’m going to use. You really get different numbers when you do it that way! Here are my new calculations, assuming that I use Cinnabar as the border band & hem part (CC1):

MC (Claret): 400g
Saftey net: 50g
——————
Total: 450g

450g/50g per ball = 9 balls of yarn
9 balls * 155 yds/ball = 1395 yds
Convert into Maine Line yardage:
1395 yds / 140 yds per ounce = 9.9 ounces

CC2 (Cinnabar): 350g
CC1 (Cinnabar): 100g
Saftey net: 50g
——————
Total: 500g

500g / 50g per ball = 10 balls of yarn
10 balls * 155 yds per Daletta ball = 1550 yards
Convert into Maine Line yardage:
1550 yds / 140 yds per ounce = 11.07 ounces

Hmm.. very different numbers!!
Note that if you convert 450g to ounces you get 15.873284627041304 ounces. I guess the yardage does really make a difference. :)

Yippee - this means I can actually cast on for this project now!!!

Btw: If anyone sees any errors in these calculations, you must let me know ASAP!

What do you do when planning a sweater? Find a pattern you like. Find yarn that works with the pattern requirements (think gauge here) in some pleasing color combination(s). This is what I’ve been going through with Ingeborg. I like the pattern, have decided it would make a great sweater for my mom. I found some yarn that is pleasant to knit with, and has a good range of colors to choose from. My swatch came out well and I’m ready to get started casting on. But WAIT! There are a few more steps here.

Gauge
Measuring your gauge on the swatch is pretty important, so I (finally) did that. I’m getting about 7.5 st/inch. The pattern calls for 7 st/inch. I didn’t really measure in a very accurate way, so I might measure again. The best way is to lay the swatch out without stretching on a flat surface, then using a ruler mark two inches apart (or four if your swatch is large enough) with pins. Remove the ruler, then count the number of stitches and do the necessary division. I have a few pet peeves with gauge. 1) I never seem to get the same gauge on the actual garment as I do on the swatch. 2) Unless you do your swatch exactly like you are going to make the garment, same needles, same relative circumference for items in the round, you end up with problem #1. With Ingeborg, I’m close to the pattern gauge that I could probably start the body, and then a few inches in measure it to see if I’m close to the finished measurement. If I am, I’ll keep going, if not, then I’ll probably rip out and change the number of stitches I cast on.

How much yarn?
Once you have chosen the yarn, you need to determine how much of it you need. You can do this easily if your gauge matches exactly that required in the pattern. If you’re off (especially in row gauge as I usually am) then you’ll need more or less yarn than the pattern says. Ingeborg is a Dale pattern, and I’ve heard they cut it pretty close for the amount of required yarn. I always like to overestimate because I hate worrying about having enough yarn for a project.

For Ingeborg, I’m only using two colors. MC + CC1 = 500g in the size I’ll be making. Add another 50g for saftey and I’ll need 550g total. That’s 19.4 ounces or 1.2lbs of yarn. I don’t think I’m doing the frilly edging, but I will need 350g + 50g saftey for CC2. That’s 14.1 ounces. The yarn I’ve chosen comes on 1lb cones. Currently I have a not-quite-full cone of the MC/CC1. I have a full cone of the CC2. Oops, I’m definately short on the MC/CC1 needed.
Looking at my swatch, maybe I want to do the button band/border in CC2 instead. Still - I would need 350g + 100g +50g, and that’s still over a lb of one color. I’ll have to ponder this, but not for too long, as the Borg-along is supposed to start May 15th!

Needles
I realized today that the Borg uses the same size needles as Hardangervidda. Strange in some ways as Hardangervidda calls for a sport weight yarn, and Ingeborg is made with fingering weight yarn. The stockinette on Hardangervidda is knit with 3.0mm, and the patterning on the Borg is on 3.0mm. I had a moment of panic thinking I’d actually have to finish the body of the one sweater before starting the other. Thankfully the borg sweater will be much smaller around than Hardangervidda and I can use my 32" length circular just fine. Whew!

A few things to ponder in the color department - I need to get in touch with my yarn source and find out how long it would take to get the extra yarn in (or maybe they already have some in stock? Hmm). I’m bummed I’m not ready to cast on yet, but glad I did the extra calculations now! I can’t imagine how demoralizing it would be to get done with the body and part of one sleeve only to run out of yarn.

PS
As of 11pm Mon night, still no baby. :/

I did however make some good progress on Hardangervidda. It’s coming along great now!

I’m in the boring part where I just knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and knit and … well you get the idea. Until the body measures 17 or so inches. At least it’s a totally mindless project for now.

I steeked my Ingeborg swatch, but I did it a bit backwards. After stupidly realizing my swatch wouldn’t fit over the sewing machine arm to stitch it in place before cutting, I decided to throw caution to the wind and cut first, then stitch (just so I wouldn’t have to worry about ends or being really careful with the swatch). Worked like a charm, and I didn’t even do any pre-steek-prayers or dances before doing it. Of course I knew this was only a swatch, so I wasn’t really even nervous about it. Here’s what it looks like cut open, then lightly misted with water and steamed with an iron:

It’s quite a sizeable swatch! I’m glad I did it though - and don’t feel that I wasted any time or yarn with this one. In addition to really letting me see what the colors will look like together, it gave me time to get used to doing two color knitting (one yarn in each hand) so I think I’m much more comfortable with it now than I was before I started. I think this helped when doing the 2nd color pattern on Hardangervidda as well. I know when it comes to cutting the real steeks on the real sweater, I’ll be much more nervous and measure a zillion times, but I have confidence that even if I just cut into the sweater without anchoring first it’ll stay put for a few minutes at least.

I have managed to aquire a Strickenfingerhut as seen on Kim’s blog. I haven’t tried it yet, as I got it right after I finished the borg swatch. I didn’t want to use it on Hardangervidda because I’m kind of in a groove with that right now doing the one yarn in each hand technique. I do wish I had this gadget for the one three color row I had to do; if I run into another three color row on the larger pattern I’ll give it a try.