I’ve been knitting a lot of tiny little socks lately. A friend of mine, Samantha, is expecting her first child, and I just had to knit some cute baby socks using Cascade Fixation! Here they are, size tiny and not-so-tiny. (For reference, Alex can wear the larger pair, but barely):

And what has happened to poor neglected Hardangervidda???

As you can see, the first sleeve is coming along (sloooowly). I got some Addi Natura needles in 16" length to work on it with at this point. So much easier than DPNs.

Now that I’m done with all my deadline stuff for now (See tomorrow’s entry for pictures of quilts), I can get back to it! I’ve got lots of thoughts in my head for the next project, which seems to change every time I turn around. I’ve been hunting down some neat magazines called Tricotez Calin, that are now being printed in English. I ordered 4 Dale books with kid/baby patterns in them. I’m really attracted to knitting baby stuff these days because it goes SO fast to get it done! I also picked up the Wee Knits Too book at my LYS. I have Wee Knits and love it. The 2nd book isn’t nearly as interesting but I felt I needed the matched set for some reason. (Btw Camilla Valley Farm is a great place to order kits for any Mission Falls patterns. They show every pattern in every book on their website and the yarn requirements too)

I finished Katie’s socks. They are very cute - and I haven’t told her they are done. I just put them in her drawer for her to discover one of these days. Plus it’s a bit too warm to wear wool socks just yet. Maybe this weekend when it cools down for a brief two days.

Here’s the finished product:

And some progress on Hardangervidda’s sleeve:

This is an old picture, cuz I have the 2nd portion of the pattern done. I’ve ordered some more needles to do the upper part of it. Addi Natura’s in 16" and 24" length. Yes, MORE needles. I just love needles.

And remember that car I got? Well my husband got his too. We are now a super zoom zoom family. Here the cars are all tucked in to sleep in our garage. Mine is the blue one, and Mike’s is the black one (his is the Rx8)

Ain’t they pretty?

Taking Judy’s idea (see comments on this post), I decided to swap the colors around in the Bjerk sweater to try and get more contrast for the pretty flower pattern. When I laid out the colors, the spot color was wrong wrong wrong, so I had to pick something else. Given that it was about 9pm, I had to make do with what I had. I found some green in the same yarn I’m already using, and thought it wouldn’t look too bad.

Here are the results:

Not bad, eh? I like the contrast between the light purple flower & the two colors surrounding it: the dark purple & dark blue. When doing the swatch I assumed I would still keep the dark purple on the bottom; but it could really go either way. Before I start I need to go back to the LYS and trade out the yarn and get more of the blue. I’m not totally sold on the dark green spot. It’s a heathered green, and one I originally bought to be the accent color in Hardangervidda. With that one, the green didn’t show up at all against the dark dark heathered blue (and here you thought Hardangervidda was black!) background and the grey heathered yarn. It lost any punch with the green, so I went back to the burgandy-ish accent with Hardangervidda.

The spot yarn is the least amount of color in the whole sweater, but I think it’s important to get it right. I’ll take a trip to my LYS this week, swatch in hand to get more dark blue yarn and see if I can find a good spot color. I probably won’t get to starting the sweater for a week or so either - so I’m going to solicit my knitting group’s opinion this next weekend - does the green work? A different color? I won’t make another swatch, I’ll just use duplicate stitch to try out a different spot color if I need to.

Gauge
I took some time to measure Gauge on Hardangervidda’s body, now that it’s done :) I did it the “Right” way by measuring 4 inches, I marked the beginning & end of the four inches and then counted between them. I did this in several places on the sweater in the stockinette portion while the sweater was laying flat and not stretching it.

I wasn’t quite to gauge with the pattern (gee, big suprise), but close! I got 5.75 st/inch; and the pattern called for 6. This explains why my husband can wear the medium size when the measurements for the medium wouldn’t fit him.

I’m going to use this number as my gauge for Bjerk, since it’s using the same yarn (Falk) and I can use the same needles.

Now, we’ll see if I can keep the gauge consistent between one project and the next. *snort*

Sock
I’m ready to start the toe on my daughter’s sock. She hadn’t tried it on yet, until just now. She saw me working on the swatch for Bjerk and asked where her sock was. (Sooo cute!) The next pair I make her I’ll cast on a few more stitches. I hope her feet don’t grow too fast so she can wear these all winter:

I put off casting on for Hardangervidda’s sleeves for a few days (shame on me!). So what did I do in the meantime? A swatch for Bjerk:

I tried several times to get the colors to show up fairly true and not wash out because of the photo. Overall I’m fairly pleased with the color combinations on this. The contrast between the dark blue & the dark purple is a bit more subtle than I would like (We’ve got two colors that are exactly the same value). You have to have exactly the right lighting to really see it well. If you look at the 2nd colorway shown in the book (green/brown/green) the contrast is much higher. The contrast is more subtle in the first colorway (terra cotta/burgandy/red), but still higher than what I’ve picked out. The questions is: Will the pattern stand out enough, or be lost? The pattern is really the high point of the sweater, so I want to make sure and do it right. I’m wondering if I should do a larger swatch (also to verify the spot color isn’t too overwhelming). Hmm..

I did start Hardangervidda’s sleeve:

And here is Katie’s sock:

I have high hopes that both Hardangervidda and katie’s socks (a full pair!) will be done before winter hits us.

Step 1 of Hardangervidda’s body is complete. I stayed up late last night to finish the last 4 rows and put all the shoulder stitches on separate holders.

Front neck before steeking:

Front neck after:

I did steek the back neck, but it was only four rows, and no pattern (although one color change) so I should have just gone back and forth there. Owell. I ended up doing the tiniest steek here.

Back before steeking:

Back after steeking:

And here is the body, actually looking somewhat like a sweater:

Ain’t it gorgeous? I still have the 3 stitch wide steek to sew & cut for the zipper. I’m going to wait until I read through directions for that section before cutting. I wish I had made that one 5 stitches wide like I did the neck part. Owell - hopefully the sweater will survive my audacity to think I could handle a 3 stitch wide steek!

You might also have noticed that I left the back neck stitches on a holder - that should save time when it comes to picking up stitches along the back. I didn’t do that for the front because I knew I’d be cutting there again and wasn’t quite sure how the finishing would go.

I kept promising, so I just took a pretty horrible picture of my desk chair "modeling" Hardangervidda. I’m sooooo close to being done with the top. Another 15 rows or so and I can start the sleeves!

Also - do a good deed for all knitters and post a review of the yarn you’re currently using right now to this website: wiseneedle. I promise to add one of Falk (esp as I’m using it for two projects) as soon as I see how it washes up in sweater form. You, my intrepid blog reader, can help keep me to this promise. :)

So I figured out what happened. My error was twofold. First, I counted the # of stitches in the back portion of the sweater wrong. I had added 10 stitches in my head, but really there are only 137. Second, the pattern is written less than clearly in this section. I was fine as long as I had the chart to follow along. I could see where the decreases were supposed to happen, how many stitches, etc. But once I’m off the chart, all hell broke loose!

I stated before I couldn’t figure out why they put the "twice" word before the stitch count. I’m still not sure why they used that word as I can’t figure out which portion of the damn pattern it’s supposed to apply to. Here’s an example of how I’m supposed to decrease in the block rib portion:

… work 15 Rows of Block Rib and, AT THE SAME TIME, cont dec 1 st at the beg and end of every other Row twice (225 sts).

Written as exactly shown in the pattern except I spelled out Row instead of just putting in R. To interpret this poorly worded sentence, you have to realize that they have now split the sweater at the front neck opening and the beginning of the row is the right side of the neck (as you are wearing it), and realize that you should be working back and forth. No problem. So beg and end mean each side of the neckline (why don’t they just say that?)

So you decrease one stitch away from each side of the neckline, but here’s the kicker - how often do you do it?? Well, to get to the stitch count they’ve given (225) you need to get rid of four stitches total because according to the last row in the chart you have 229 stitches on the needles at this point. Going with the easy math that means doing two decrease rows over the 15 block rib rows. Easy! Not with how they describe it. If you assume that "twice" applies to the noun preceding it (every other Row), then it seems that you’d be decreasing every 4 rows?? That interpretation doesn’t work either, cuz you could decrease THREE times that way within the 15 block rib rows, and you’d be two stitches short of the count you need.

eesh.

I’m fully in favor of fully charted patterns at this point. Of course then everyone would see how easy it really is to knit a sweater and they wouldn’t be intimidated by patterns at all, and gee - wouldn’t that be a crime?

So the pattern does the "twice" thing again when describing the decreases for the back neckline, but since I know now I need 44 stitches for each shoulder I can just figure out how many decreases I need in that section of the pattern.

Whew!

Hopefully pictures tonite. I’ve made good progress on both Hardangervidda and Katie’s sock.

I have finished all the charts for the body of Hardangervidda. This doesn’t mean I’m done though - there is still some block ribbing and a small stripe at the shoulder. Since I decided to do a neck steek I wanted to make sure I understood how the front & back neck decreases should proceed. The pattern has you restart your round at the neck,where I’ve just left the beginning of the round at the side.

So I’m reading the pattern and totally confused for a bit. Then I realize that you are supposed to be working back and forth starting at one neck edge and ending at another neck edge. Fine, I adjust my head and figure out that if I do it how I plan to, I will end up with the same number of stitches they say to after the block ribbing section: 225. Yay, right?

Wrong.

I will now have 39 stitches on each front shoulder. That means I should somehow end up with 39 shoulder stitches for the back after casting off for the neck on the back, right? *sigh*. After redoing the calculations 2 times, I end up with 49 on each back shoulder! 39 != 49 in my book.

There is part of the pattern that says:
Working each side of the body separately, cont C OFF every other R at back neck edge, 1 st twice (88 sts)

I don’t know what the heck that stupid "twice" word is there for before the stitch count, but if I ignore it, I can come up with 88 stitches total for the front and back shoulder combined. You would think that somehow you’d have 44 stitches for front and 44 for back? Well, if I go with the 39 stitches for the front that I previously came up with, then I’ve got 49 on the back - so WHERE did I go wrong?

Ignoring their horribly written decrease schedule in the pattern, Let’s assume that they want the neck hole to take up approx 1/3 of the stitches across the body. There are 147 stitches across the back and front (before any decreases) so if you divide that by 3, you’d want 49 stitches for each shoulder, and 49 stitches for the neck. It even divides evenly! They have 49 stitches for the back neck if you are making an XL, but I’m not, I’m doing the M, which has 45.

So I take a step back and realize that I counted the #$^%@%$#$!^%@^% stitches on the back wrong (on the chart even!) and I only have one hundred THIRTY seven stitches not one hundred and FOURTY seven stitches.

::hang head in embarassment::

I’ll get back to you when I’ve redone everything, but I think it’ll work out now. :)

And I promise pictures soon too!

I finally had a moment to sit down with digital camera, computer and a few minutes to write about what’s going on in my knitting life. I started back to work this week and haven’t has as much time to knit as I’d like. I’m too tired in the evening to do much but get the kids into bed and then maybe knit a few stitches if I haven’t already spent all my awake time on boring stuff like chores. Even so, I’ve managed to make a tiny bit of progress.

I know you’re all anxiously awaiting to see what Hardangervidda looks like now. Well here he is in all his glory:

The picture is a tiny bit fuzzy, I had to turn off the flash and try to hold the camera very still while it took a long exposure. This sweater is better photographed with indirect daylight - but there wasn’t any around when I had time to take the picture. I’m very happy with how this sweater is coming out. I might start cursing again while I’m trying to figure out the first sleeve, but I have hope :)

I also previously mentioned my new project, Bjerk. My mom and I chose colors together, and here’s what we think will look just fab:

The dark purple is the bottom of the sweater, the lighter purple (going clockwise) is the top of the sweater, the blue is the "flower" pattern in between and the red/burgandyish color is the POW in the flowers, what I’m calling the "spot" color. I will be doing a test run of the colors soon so you’ll get to see the swatch. I’m worried the blue won’t be dark enough, but I think it will be pretty stunning overall.

Tipping update
I was able to talk to a friend of mine that knows people who work at one of the restaurants we frequently order to-go food from. To his knowledge, it’s the kitchen staff that prepares the food into the to-go containers and then the waiter/hostess person simply puts it in a bag and walks it to your car. In my opinion, that’s only worth like a buck tip if they are really friendly and don’t make you wait past the time they said it would be ready. Otherwise "No Tip For You!" (Think Soup Nazi from Seinfeld). As a side note, I always tip minimum 15% when dining in (unless they were inexcusably rude and then we’d ask for the manager) and 20%+ most of the time. Hooray for wait-people that understand you need your bread very quickly to keep the little ones happy while waiting for the rest of the food!

And then….
Tune in tomorrow to see what the wonderful UPS man brought me!

My husband saw this book on the counter:

and asked, "What next, Extreme Knitting!??!". I was fairly amused by the idea. We started tossing around things like Bungee jumping while knitting! Or maybe sky diving while knitting? All a bit crazy for me. I’m lucky to get in some knitting while sitting on my couch.

The book is pretty cool - it shows numerous edgings for sweaters/other stuff and really great pictures. I could have used this when I was designing Flashy Lace, as I originally wanted to do a lacy edging and then a more stockinette body. Owell - I think Flashy Lace came out ok anyway. I can’t wait until it gets cooler again so I can actually wear the darn thing.

Hardangervidda
I’m making superb progress on Hardangervidda. Of course I haven’t posted in forever, so you’ve got some catching up to do.
First there was this:

Then this:

And finally tonite:

Woohoo!!! I’m so glad I’m making good progress, and it’s much more interesting knitting the pattern part. I think once I get the body of this done, I’ll start up Ingeborg’s body. (My mom is visiting this week, so I can re-measure her to make sure I’m making the right size). I have also started a few sock projects but no pics on those cuz I’m all picture-d out for now.