Persistent Knitter

Is it monday still? It sure feels like it. I’m feeling quite random today so here we go:

• I hit “play” on my Tivo to watch a repeat of Gray’s Anatomy. Turns out the Scripps National Spelling Bee went long; so I’m getting to watch the last two contestents duke it out. These kids have to know how to spell non english words!! did you know that? I didn’t. The kid’s trophy is bigger than his head. I always wanted a trophy bigger than my head. (I can’t help picture it full of beer and having it dumped over his head. Maybe I’ve watched too many sports shows with trophies…)
• I’m cruising along with my Alpine Lace stole/scarf/whaddyacallit. It’s fun to knit, but hard to knit on with much else going on. I have no desire to knit on anything else than my lace scarf. This bodes well for finishing it.
• My house in Colorado still hasn’t sold. I don’t know why – it’s a beautiful house, in a great neighborhood. It’s the single biggest point of stress in my life right now and seriously pissing me off. Wanna see me twitch? Ask me how the house in Colorado is doing.
• We ran out of Harry Potter to listen to in the car. The Husband and I were listening to all the books on CD (actually on ipod since I put them on there) during our commute to prep for the latest book. We have both finished reading the last book. The Husband is re-reading the last book more slowly this time. The new book d’jour is Artemis Fowl. It’s entertaining so far; but much much shorter than Harry Potter. I already have the next book “Artemis Fowl, the Arctic Incident”; but wonder what we’ll listen to next. Any suggestions? Something light so I can listen to it while I knit and The Husband drives.
• Grey’s Anatomy finally started. I love Dr. Bailey. She’s awesome. I think I identify more with her as a working mom than I do with the frilly-overly-airheaded Meredith Gray. I also love Izzy. I wish I was as smart as she is, and as pretty. I like watching Modern Marvels too. I feel like I’m getting edumacated then.

Off to knit!

My knitting funk is officially over. I got my sea silk, I did some math, and cast on. I’m not making it as wide as called for in the pattern. I’ll find out in another 9-15 rows if I did my math properly for the center patterns. The yarn is so pretty and the variations in the colors are mostly subtle; exactly as I like it. I had to do a bit of reorganizing to get the chart into an easier to read and shove-in-my-bag format. So i scanned it in, put them next to each other and printed it on card stock. It folds over to protect the tape while it’s marking my place (tape available here); and lets me set it up as a little tent card while I’m knitting.

This arrived in the mail today: Sea Silk in the Woodland colorway. Wow. it’s so soft and pretty! I think my knitting slump might be over as I cast on something with this.

I was so excited to get started with the yarn, I threw it on the swift and started winding off. The family was trying to head out the door to meet friends for a concert in the park, and of course the yarn was tangling and not cooperating. I decided to throw caution to the wind, quickly retied two spots on the skein, yanked it off the swift, and took the ball winder with me in the car. It was a good thing the trip took about 40 minutes; I needed every bit of it to get it untangled.

Pattern: tulips sweater from Dream in Color Yarns
Yarn: Shelridge Farm Worsted weight (superwash); light blue : 1 skein, dark blue & green way less than 1/4 of a skein
finished size: Approx 6-9 months

The picture isn’t so good – the light wasn’t cooperating; but you get the idea. :)

Between the harry potter book arriving on Saturday (and me spending the next 24 hours reading it); and working on Knit Visualizer 2.0; there hasn’t been much knitting going on around here! Here’s a sneak peek at the toolbar. I’ve changed up the mode icons a bit to match more what they do. I know I said I was done before; but this time I think I am done with this particular bit.

There is also an option to let you choose to paint color (or not) when you’re in PAINT mode (that’s the pencil), and you can easily paint symbol or background color in COLOR mode (the three paintbrushes all in a row). Default is you’ll paint color in PAINT mode unless you change it.

I just today wrote a widget to show you a font and let you pick symbols out of it to create your own stitches. And such is the excitement here in the house of the Persistent Knitter…

I got this in the mail today. I’ve been waiting for it for a week!! My mom is in the same fiber club, and she got hers last friday. Turns out mine was shipped to Colorado first, and then forwarded on back to Washington. Argh! Something must have been messed up with my subscription; or the shipping labels get printed with the first address you sign up with? I dunno. I’m glad it made it.

Turns out it’s a totally different fiber than what my mom got. Her fiber was a brown and turquoise BFL (and still very pretty), while this has got to be mostly silk.

I also got new memory for my laptop and installed that.

And so we enter the mind of a crazy knitter…

• I finished the baby-boy-blue tulip sweater. It’s totally cute. I’m sick of people looking at me weird when I say I don’t know who it’s for. I am NOT pregnant, I’m not planning on getting pregnant, and I don’t know any pregnant people! I just wanted to knit a totally cute sweater. Eesh
• I haven’t spun anything since I did those small samples after winding the tangerine yarn. Nothing else seems worthy. I keep looking at the picture of the tangerine on flickr and it makes me happy. Partly cuz it’s totally cool to look at, and partly cuz I am happy with how my whitebox picture came out
• I’m taking tomorrow off for a pre-planned mental health day. I won’t be lounging the whole time – I’ve got lots to do on Knit Visualizer 2.0 (yay!!!) and I might play the xbox a bit. I told the husband he has to go to work and let me enjoy my day off
• A co-worker of mine calls me the Knitting Geek. He should have dubbed me that before I called myself the Persistent Knitter. Whaddya think?
• I ordered a memory upgrade for my macbook pro. I’m more excited than I should be to install it and open a zillion apps all at the same time.
• I just IM’d a friend these questions about Knit Visualizer 2.0:

1. Do you want to paint color at the same time you paint your stitches?
2. Do you want to set a preference that lets you choose between “always paint stitches with color” and “don’t paint color when painting stitches”
3. When painting color only, do you want to paint with foreground color only (change color of stitches)
4. When painting color only, do you want to paint with background color only (change color behind stitches)
5. When painting with color only, do you want to be able to paint with both background and foreground colors with one click?

• I’ve added two new modes into Knit Visualizer, now you can Select, Paint (stitches & color), Paint Color only, and pick a color from the chart (either symbol color or background color). I keep thinking of neat tools to make color stuff even more fun; but have to do the more tedious work to let you create your own stitches.
• My current knitting projects aren’t so exciting to me right now. Boathouse sweater, Peacock shawl (hard to work on anywhere but where I can concentrate. So nowhere), A sweater I started for the husband that I set aside. That’s about it. Anything else is so far gone on the project list it doesn’t count. (or has been ripped, like the Morning Glory shawl, and the green/yellow frog socks)
• I need to finish writing up the pattern for the Xander Gansey – and just the other day found the written out pattern notes in a pile of stuff. The sweater was only ever worn for the photo shoot – he didn’t wanna wear it and now he’s outgrown it. (make that TWO baby/kid sweaters I have with no current owners). It’s about time for me to design another sock, but I don’t have much desire to knit socks. I guess I’ll code on Knit Visualizer some more!
• I bought interfacing last night at the fabric store to make a Bagsket. I haven’t even unpacked my fabric yet!

It’s not in it’s final “something you can wear” state, but I did finish some spinning. I kept debating if I wanted to make this a 2 ply yarn or not, and Shiori had a good point – you can always ply it later if you want to! So I wound it off, and washed it, beat it up a bit, and here’s the result. It’s a little bit thick and thin.

Fiber is from Chameleon Colorworks, and is a superwash Merino and Tencel. The shine on this is amazing and it was the best fiber to spin. I’ll be getting more of this in a different color as soon as I can!

Here’s a semi-closeup with a dime for size comparision:

I have exactly 4 ounces of it. I think it would make a pretty shawl; but I probably only have enough for a scarf. Not that I’d wear this color – it would look horrible on me! But is sure is pretty to look at.

Congrats go out to Debbie H of Aurora, CO who won the bag and sock yarn. Debbie – I’ve sent you email so you can give me your address to ship to.

So lacking a new photo to show you of any interesting knitting or spinning, I’ll answer a few questions from the comments.

Judy asked, So, inquiring minds want to know, who is the sweater for?
Amazingly enough, I have no idea. There is no baby in my future, I don’t really know of anyone who is having a baby right now; but I know eventually there will be a baby that needs a sweater.

Libby said: That sweater is totally adorable. Has hints of the Baby Surprise Jacket from EZ, yes?
I kind of agree with her, but this one has always looked like a sweater, and the Baby Surprise jacket from EZ doesn’t look like a sweater until you do a bit of magical seaming. I’ve never knit a baby surprise jacket either. I think it looks similar mostly in the shoulder area where it appears more square; because of the way the shaping is done to leave room for the arms/sleeves. Has anyone made both sweaters?

My baby-boy-blue tulip sweater is done except for the sleeves. Probably only an hour or so left in all. It’s a really quick knit; and is fun to do. The finishing is minimal (although all the attached i-cord can get a bit tedious) and I think it’s one I’d make again, probably with a different set of colors. Maybe I’ll even buy the kit at some point; but only if I actually have a baby in mind!

Thursday was spinning night. I had a full bobbin of Tangerine singls. I skeined it using my niddy noddy, and today it got a bit of a wash after skeining at spinning on Thursday:

I couldn’t decide what to spin next , so I spun up a bunch of samples out of fiber I had brought.

Left to right: Merino & something in a grey green, Red superwash from Bonkers, Grey alpaca (from roving), Denim Blue 50% Merino/ 50% Tencel from Bonkers.

Nothing was as easy to spin as the Tangerine, and I didn’t find my next spinning project yet.

Reminder

Don’t forget today’s the last day to enter the Contest!!!