Persistent Knitter

I have been neglecting my poor blog. I wonder if it feels sad?

Well, I have had an exciting week – about 4 pounds of to-be-spun fiber acquired. Lots of knitting was accomplished.  I need to take pictures! I did spend some time on pictures of a pattern I’m trying to finish up – you can see the thumbnail of it on http://www.knitfoundry.com/patterns

What have I managed to accomplish in the past week or so?

• Decided a sock pattern I was doing was NOT working. Tried three different ones. Settled on a fourth. Re-started sock.
• Knit 1.2 sleeves for the blue baby sweater
• Bought 2 lbs of Alpaca roving
• Bought 2 10oz bundles of Lorna’s laces Roving. Two different colorways
• Bought 8 ounces of a gorgeous blue Merino/Silk roving
• Did a very tiny bit of spinning of Alpaca (not the roving, the Alpaca for my p’cock shawl)
• Did some stash diving to pick out yarn for a sweater pattern I want to make
• Contemplated my Debbie Aran Sweater – thinking it might need to be at a tighter gauge
• Cleaned/organized my spinning area and computer desk
• Tested out some awesome new hand-turned Niddy Noddy’s (soon to be availble at The Knit Foundry)
• Ordered a bunch of cool new stuff to sell at The Knit Foundry

That’s all the fiber related stuff anyway.  I unfortunately didn’t really get to take any naps. But I did see the movie Little Miss Sunshine. (It’s hilarious. i recommend it).

I started the baby sweater (Setesdal, Dalegarn #124)) again, on the smallest size.  It still came out larger than it specified in the pattern, which is good.

A few days ago:

And after a serious session with the sewing machine for steeks:

I haven’t done the three needle bind off for the shoulders yet, but one shoulder is on DPNs ready for it.  I had 5 steeks total to do, and barely paused a moment before sitting down to stitch and cut them.  I don’t know how you’re supposed to do a fair isle pattern like this at the top near the necklines without doing it in the round. I almost almost decided to work back and forth, except for the problem that if I did that, I’d have to detach and reattach the proper color yarn at the other end.  No way do I want more ends to weave in, so I created steeks at both the front and back neckline.

Setesdal has knit on bands, that are folded in half with a picot edge, so they cover all bits of the neckline and front edges when you fold it over and stitch it down.  Now I need to decide if I’m going to do the front edges and necklnie next, sleeves or the matching hat.

More progress:

I finished the body, bound off the shoulders, and steeked the front and back necks. I do steeks there instead of having to knit back and forth with the color.  There are some adjustments you have to make for the decreases but for the most part it’s not too hard to convert from back and forth to in the round.

A friend was over the other night and we steeked the sweater she’d made for B. So while I was in the mood I went downstairs and sewed these steeks really quick.  I didn’t even baste or anything. The back was only over two, maybe three rows. The front was longer on about 15, but still very easy to see where to sew. Snip snip and now it can lay flat.

The next step is to wash and block it. I want to get an accurate measurement on it before I knit the sleeves.  That’s another reason i didn’t do a three needle bind off on the shoulders. I wanted to give it a good washing and didn’t want to be gentle with live stitches during that process.

Even though it’s not blocked yet, just for fun I took a picture of the inside:

So I have a friend who is due at the end of the year with a boy.  Yay! Time to start a baby sweater:

This was true bus knitting as I took the picture on the bus too!

So tonite, I think I’m almost to the armholes and put it on two circs to measure it both lengthwise and widthwise.  Hmm… it’s a bit big. Let’s see if it will fit one of the children I happen to have handy:

So much for "baby" sweater.

I asked her if she would wear it. She looked down and giggled and said "YES!". Now, that doesn’t mean the whim of a 4 (almost 5) year old will stay the same once it’s finished and she realizes it’s not going to magically turn pink.  For now I think I’ll set this one aside, and start the real baby sweater. 

The question is, which size? There are three sizes listed. The one I chose was the largest at 12-18mo size. Apparently that can also be the 4-5 yo size if you knit slightly off gauge. (I measured & I didn’t think I was _that_ off gauge).

If I choose the next size down, it might still be too big. I can go down a needle size, but I’m already on size 2.5mm, and the fabric it’s making with that size needle looks pretty good.  I can do the smallest size, but I’m afraid that will be way too small and the baby will only get to wear the sweater twice. 

So let’s do some math.

Current size is approx 28" around, on 208 stitches (204 body, 4 steek). That gives us 7.4 st/inch. Pattern gauge is 8st/inch

Here are the other sizes:
184 sts = 24.8" around
166 sts = 22.4" around

Hm. the small size says it’s for 0-3 month! Yikes!!  Time to decide…..

I’ve been in a symbol-adding mode with Knit Visualizer.  First there’s the nupp (an eight laying down), then k7tog (see pattern that uses a k7tog here  – Maple Leaf Socks).  Then I just got goofy adding ‘extra’ symbols for color knitting.  Ya gotta have some choices you know?  Here’s one that should make you happy:

Bonus points* to anyone who actually knits something with this chart :) 

There are now 18 different color symbols; and I think I need to just stop for now.  The Stitch Palette is getting so huge I might need to redesign it! I don’t have time for that I want to add color; and being able to create your own stitches from the symbols included; and a cheese grater, and a kitchen sink!

* Double double bonus points to anyone who can tell me what OS this chart was generated on

I’ve finished the body of the cow/pig sweater; and have moved on to using that needle for the new project I am starting (and hope to finish before the end of this month).  After knitting the ribbing, the pattern says to increase 26 stitches evenly.  Given my lack of kintting time, I thought it would be better to mark all the increase locations at once, and then just be able to knit across.  This is what you get when you do that:

It’s working except I didn’t have 26 sittch markers in the little saftey pin style. So I marked what I could, then knit across enough to move those sttich markers to the other side; replacing those with non-saftey pin stitch markers. Now I can count all the stitch markers (26) and know I should have enough increases. I’ll count the number of total stitches after I finish the increase round just to make sure I’ve got the right amount.

When my sister and I were kids (and not killing each other*), we’d often rearrange who was in which room in our house.  I’m not sure how we managed to do it all in an afternoon (before parents came home from work), or how we managed to move some of the stuff without breaking anything, or even how my mom didn’t absolutely go bonkers when she got home.  There were three rooms to work with – one was mine, one was my sisters’ and the third was the spare bedroom/sewing room.

Rather than "My bedroom", etc,  we would call them "The dark room", "The pink wallpaper room" and "The yellow room".  The dark room had these awesome 70’s style wooden shutters that made the room completely dark. It also had a parkay wooden floor.  This room was the preference if you wanted to sleep in late and ignore the rest of the world. 

The pink wallpaper room was obvious – it had pink wallpaper. But only on one wall.  Whoever owned the house before us and did the decorating was very trendy and before their time. Or maybe they could only afford one wall worth of wallpaper.

The yellow room, again obvious. It used to be painted yellow. And had yellow mini blinds.  *shudder*. We painted the walls white at one point, but the mini blinds were still yellow. I think they still are.

I think when we moved into the house I started in the Pink room, and my sister was in the yellow room.  I lived in all three rooms as the years went on.  One day, Mom & Dad would come home to find the furniture from the three rooms suddenly in different rooms.

Now that all the kids are gone, my mom has the house to herself and her two cats.  The dark room is her work-at-home office.  The pink room is still pink, and the guest/sewing room.  The yellow room is the "loom room" where she has her weaving loom and other various weaving/knitting related stuff. I think it took her all of 1 year after I was out of the house to take over.  Is nothing sacred?

Virtual Furniture Rearrangement
So, you’ll notice the blog looks different.  After building the new blog for the p’cock along, I realized my own personal blog was getting a bit drab and .. well, shall we say, boring?  I’m playing around with new formats.   Look for a new banner soon. I want something with more depth and color to it.  Something, different. I think I’ll try the Pink Wallpaper room.

* There was one occasion that the neighbors actually called my mother at work because my sister and I were being so loud at each other. Slamming doors. Threatening to kill each other. An occasional swing at each other.

Checking out the spinning wheel for a demo, I got a little extra help: