FO: Dragon Melody Shawl November 9, 2009

Now, this is one FO that I’m really proud of. I’m getting a bit of a reputation at the shop. People are starting to ask me to make things that they want to have, but not necessarily want to make. Such is the case with this shawl.

Cathy at the at the shop comissioned me to make this shawl for her. I was in the middle of making that devil tank, so the yarn and pattern sat on my vanity for a few weeks before I even looked at it. Then, it took me a while to get into it after I started because it has a large stockinette bit at the begining and, as you all know, stockinette can get really boring pretty fast.

Then, after increasing in stockinette to over 300 stitches, I got to the fun lacey bit. I enjoyed that. It was an easy enough lace panel that I could read what I was kntting and know what was to come next without having to look much at the chart. The lace part went quickly and I thought I was close to being done.

Boy was I wrong. I didn’t realize until I got there that the lace border was knitted on. It was 35 stitches per row. The pattern was a 12 row repeat. I had to do the pattern repeat 93 times. Yeah, that’s 1116 rows total. When I scaned over the pattern at the begining, I olny saw this little 12 row chart and thought it would be a quick easy finish.

Not so much.

For at least the first 10 repeats I had to count and really pay attention to the pattern to remember where I was, and I was hating life. By repeat 30 or so, I could read the knitting pretty well and find my place a little quicker, bit it was still awkward. Boy, though, when I got up to repeat 50 or so, I was a master at the pattern and could knit it with my eyes closed. By that time, I was flying through the repeats and feeling fine.

And this is what I ended up with:

I was almost sad to give it to Cathy, because it came out so pretty! And the sucker’s big! I never realized how big it actually was going to be until I cast off. I knit the thing on 40″ circs, so I couldn’t ever really spread it out. But it’ll keep anyone nice and warm.

And the lace pattern, even that pesky border, came out so pretty. You know, I knit lace socks all the time, and I’ve done other lace things, but never something this big. In fact, this is my first ever shawl, so I double proud of it for that.

Project: Dragon Melody Shawl by Mary Young Smith (Rav Me!)
Yarn: Jojoland Melody
Needles: US6
Date Started: September 21, 2009
Date Completed: October 30 2009
Mods: None

I’m really glad I made this shawl, and the gals at the shop raved about it. In fact, I’ve got orders to make 2 more shawls now. Good work pays off. But those other shawls have to wait until I get my Christmas knitting done. I’m too far behind to pick up any other projects.

FO: Eton’s Scarf November 8, 2009

Well, prepare yourself, most of the next FO posts will be Christmas gifts.  That means that, in an effort to make everything in time, they may not be anything structurally spectacular.  They’re not going to be garter stitch washclothes, mind you, but they aren’t going to be fingering weight fair isle sweaters either.  And  a perfect example of this is the scarf I’d made for my FIL.

Last year, you may recall, I made my FIL a pair of fingerless gloves. I figured he could use them while driving truck in Oregon. He really seemed to like them, which made me feel good, of course. I had a hard time figuring what to make him this year. I knew I didn’t have to resources for a sweater, though I know he’d be very grateful if I made him one. So, it had to be something small, but also manly. That cut down a lot of things…like purses. ;o)

Finally, I settled on a scarf. I had some really nice blue cascade 220 and some leftover black from the dog sweater. But, I didn’t have very much, so I had to pick out a pattern that would be manly, interesting, and not need more than 400 yards of yarn. I found that in the Eton Scarf.

It’s really fairly simple, just a doubled moss stitch, but it changed things up enough that I wasn’t bored to tears to make it. Also, it was easy enough that I could knit it at the hospital with my MIL. It helped to have something that had rows that were short and no chart, so that I could just drop it if I was needed.

(BTW, for those of you wondering, my MIL made through surgery fine and, after spending 6 weeks in the hospital, finally got released about 2 weeks ago. She’s doing very well, amazingly well, actually. She’s living at home, on her own, and only needs us to drive her for errands. It’s a realy answer to prayer, I tell you, and I really appreciated all your prayers.)

Project: Eton Scarf by Jennifer Refat (Rav Me!)
Yarn:Cascade 220
Needles:US8
Date Started:October 12, 2009
Date Completed:October 18, 2009
Mods: Um, well, I guess you could say that using two colors was a mod, but it’s not much of one, really.

I’m thinking that if I get all my other gifts done in time, I may make a quick hat for him too. Not out of this same yarn, though. I used every little bit of it on the scarf.

FO: Chihuahua Sweater November 7, 2009

I have a neighbor, Peggy, who’s been a realy help to me. She’s a stay at home mom also and has been there to watch my girls in an emergency. And, as you kow, emergencies come all too often in my world.

Anyway, I wanted to do a little something to show my gratitude, and, being on the poor side, it needed to be something small. (are you catching the tiny refrences?)

Well, Peggy’s got an itty bitty Chihuahua. He’s a bitty teeny one too. His name is Thor and he’s adorable. I thought a dog sweater would be the perfect thing.

Thankfully, Peggy thought so too. Thor wasn’t too thrilled about putting the sweater on, but once we got it on, he seemed ok with the whole thing.

The pattern is almost more of a recipe, in that you can add whatever you want to it. I chose to do it in two colors and add a cable to the back. I wish I’d made it a bigger cable, but this works too. And, bonus, it only took a few hours to make.

Project: Chihuahua Sweater by Staceyjoy Elkin (Rav Me!)
Yarn: Cascade 220 for the black and Knitpicks Swish worsted for the red. (The red was left over from the Hemlock Blanket)
Needles: US 5 and US 7
Date Started: October 5, 2009
Date Completed: October 6 2009
Mods: Not really a mod, but I did add the cable to the back and did it all in moss stitch instead of stockinette.

FO: Wrenna November 7, 2009

Remember in the last post when I told you that I knit another porject out of French Girl Knits and totally loved it?

Well, this is it.

Meet Wrenna. My loverly orange cardigan. I love it. It’s perfect. And, it’s very, very orange.

The yarn is Lamb’s Pride Bulky. The shop got a few discontinued colors in for dirt cheap and sold them to use for $3 a skein. Well, how could I pass that up? This whole thing took only 4 skeins. You can’t say no to a $12 sweater, you just can’t.

Now, those of you with the book or who are familiar with the pattern will see that I made some minor changes….like sleeves. Well, I had extra yarn and thought sleeves would be good.

Just for the record, I think I was right.

Project: Wrenna: Leather-Laced Cardigan by Kristeen Griffin-Grimes (Rav Me!)
Yarn: Nature Spun Lamb’s Pride Bulky in Pumpkin
Needles: US17, yeah, one row was nearly an inch!
Date Started: September 23, 2009
Date Completed: October 1 2009
Mods: Well, as stated earlier, I added long sleeves, putting the lace bit on the sleeves. I also decided against the leather lacing and added a button band and buttons. I’ve got my mods for the sleeves on my Raverly page, feel free to steal them for your own Wrenna.

FO: Nadine November 7, 2009

Back in September I met my archnemesis. My total enemy. The bane of my existence. Wanna see it?

This is Nadine. Nadine is one of the patterns from the book, French Girl Knits. Now, I don’t want you to get a wrong impression of the book. The book is full of beautiful patterns and I would suggest that everyone buy it and use it. Just to prove that, I’ll tell you that, after Nadine, I made another pattern out of the book and totally LOVED it. So, definately, buy the book.

Just don’t knit Nadine.

I had thought that it would be interesting to make when the shop asked me to do it. I was even excited. But, as I got further and further along in the pattern, I realized that I would not be enjoying this particular knit.

I think it has to do with the kitchnering. I had to kitchner all the pieces together. In the front, that was 80+ stitches on each side. Now, we all know that I love to kitchner a toe. Love it, I do. But, that’s only 11 stitches on average and this was quite a bit more. And I had to do it four times! And, on a toe, all the stitches were on the needle. This I had to pick up half the stitches and I had to pick it up on the lace, so it wasn’t as straight forward as it would be on, say, stockinette. And, again, I had to do it four times!

And it wasn’t even that I could have just knit the pattern in the round, like I would do for most other patterns. I don’t know if you can tell in the photo, but the stockinette bits? Yeah, they’re knit sideways. Yup, sidways. So, I had to knit the whole thing in pieces and then k.i.t.c.h.n.e.r.it.all.together.

Not fun.

Not fun at all.

I do have to give some of the credit for my utter loathing of this project to the yarn. It’s linen. And it really, truly, honestly felt like I was knitting with twine. It even split like twine. Not fun for the hands.

I was so angry at this project that I only took one decent shot of it. And I’ve already showed it to you. Oh well, you don’t mind seeing it again, do you?

Project: Nadine: Tunic Tank by Kristeen Griffin-Grimes
Yarn: Louet Euroflax Geneva
Needles: US 7
Started: August 21, 2009
Completed: September 23 2009
Mods: None, but I seriously thought about throwing the whole thing away. Does that count as a mod?

As much as I disliked the making of this tank, I will have to say this. After it was washed and blocked, it did look pretty alright and the shop likes it.

FO: Lace Cardigan November 6, 2009

A few months ago, the shop came up to me and asked if I’d like to make another sample. They wanted to highlight a yarn that hadn’t been selling well and wondered if I’d make something out of it for myself and, when they were done using the sample, I’d get to keep it. It sounded like a good idea to me, I mean, this is bamboo yarn we’re talking about and it’s not cheap. But, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted out of the colors they had in stock. So, I thought instead I could make something for T. I mean, her birthday is coming up soon, so I could kill two birds with one stone.

So, I took 6 balls home and got started on this:

(She’s acting cold, you see, to show the need for a sweater)

The yarn was really nice to work with. It’s very soft and showed the stitch pattern really well. The pattern, however, didn’t make me a happy Cristi.

It wasn’t that it was hard, it wasn’t. I think that there was a language barrier or something. It just didn’t read out right. Let’s just say that it was a good thing I’m an experienced knitter. There was lots of stuff the pattern just assumed you’d know, and they went about things in the hardest way. If I’d tried this a few years ago, it would’ve probably put me off knitting. Needless to say, I won’t be making this again.

But, T liked it:

Project: Design B – Lace Cardigan by Sirdar Spinning Ltd.
Yarn: Schulana Sojabama
Needles: US 6
Date Started: August 26, 2009
Date Completed: September 2 2009
Mods: Well, I didn’t make any, but if I were forced to make it again, there’d be plenty…

You may be asking yourself why, if I was gifting it to T for her birthday, I would have her wear it for the picutres. Well, that’s the nice thing about 4 year old brains. Since I made this in September and it hung in the shop for 2 months, she’s forgotten all about it. And I got it back in perfect time for her birthday on the 28th. And, a bonus, in the past month T has decided that purple is her favorite color. Good thing I didn’t make it out of blue, huh?

I Promised Myself I Wasn’t Going To Do This… November 6, 2009

I told myslef that this year I’d be more prepared, I’d start earlier, I’d plan things out better. But, I didn’t.

Yes, I’m talking about my Christmas gift knitting. Last year, when I knit like a mad woman in odrer to get 14 gifts knit in time after starting in mid-October; I swore next year I’d do it differently.

Here it is November and when do you think I started knitting my gifts? That’s right, 2 weeks ago. Now, I don’t have quite the large number of gifts to do this year, I think I only have 10 or so, but I’ve got a full lace shawl as one of the gifts. And, you know, that’s like 2 or 3 gifts put together.

And it’s not like I couldn’t have started the shawl months ago. I knew I was making it for Christmas. I’ve had that planned since January. I’ve even had the yarn since late Spring, so I totally could have started it. But, no, I was a dunderhead and worked on other things, thinking I still had plenty of time.

And, now, Christmas is less than two months away. And me? Well, I’m back to knitting like a mad woman.

I’m such a glutton for punishment…

Frustration… October 7, 2009

I”ve recently been working on a Tomato. This is a perfect example of knitting because I want the end result, not because I want to do the actual knitting. I mean, except for the 12 rows of stranded work, the whole thing is stockinette. Not much of a challenge there.

But I love the way it looks and wanted to have one to wear. Plus, when Closeknit closed in May they had Mission Fall 1824 cotton and Cascade Luna on sale for a dollar a skein. How could I say no to that?

The only problem was that they didn’t have enough in any one color to make the thing, so I got three and have put them together. Here is a shot of it a little over halfway done.

I think the green, brown and tan go nicely together, don’t you?

I cast this on several months ago, but it got set aside with only a few rows done while I worked on stuff for the shop. Unfortunately, one of the shirts I was making for the shop misbahaved and needed to go sit in the corner for a while and I needed something a little simple and already started to build up some knitting mojo. So I grabbeb my Tomato.

It was just what I needed. The stockinette that I could do in the dark proved a perfect companion that week, especially since I spent that weekend at the Honda Center for the Women of Faith conference and they kept the lights off most all the time. Also, having nearly two full days with nothing else to do but sit and listen to speakers, I got a lot of knitting done. By Saturday night, I had cast of the last stitch on my Tomato and was looking forward to wearing it to church on Sunday.

Then disaster hit.

You see, the longest cord I had for my Knitpicks Option Harmony needles is a 34″. (I’ve since bought a 40″)  Now, that’s plenty long to knit the thing, but not long enough to try it on and I was too lazy to put it on waste yarn to do so. So I was taking a chance it would fit.

Bad idea.

It didn’t.

When I put it on, the top was at least a full size too big. But the bit from the standed band down fit perfectly. How does that happen, you ask? Well, it’s simple really. The top bit was knit back and forth, while the bottom was in the round. I purl rather loosely, so my guage was way off on top. But the bottom, being all knit, was right on in the gauge and so it’s perfect.

So, what to do, what to do? The idea of taking the whole blasted thing apart and starting all over made me sick, so I wracked my brain to find a solution.

What I came up with was this:  I would cut the yarn right above the stranded band, put the whole bottom on waste yarn, rip out and reknit the top, and then kitchner it back onto the bottom.  Here’s the top after I took it off.  You can see how big it is.  It’s would be rather indecent to wear it at this point.

I thought it was a good plan. I couldn’t wear it the way it was, I didn’t want to reknit the whole thing…so I saw this as a compromise. So, I took it apart…

And started reknitting. I wanted to make sure the thing fit better, so I not only knit the size smaller on the pattern, I went down a needle size. It was tedious, but I reminded myself that I was knitting smaller, so it wouldn’t take as ling at the first time. That seemed to help a bit.

Then, when the knitting was done, I had the daunting task of kitchnering it back together. That’s what I did while waiting for my MIL to make it through surgery. It was perfect because it was pretty much brainless, but still kept me occupied enough so that I didn’t worry as much.

And, with all the knitting, ripping, reknitting, and reattaching done…How does it look? It’s still not quite right! I’m so upset about it. I was really looking forward to having this for Fall, but it’s still not what I was hoping for. And now I don’t want to work on it anymore. It’s been put in time out until I can figure out what to do with it. WHat’s wrong with it, you ask?

It’s still too low cut! Though, I will admit it’s not as bad as it was before. Before it was so big that even an under cami wouldn’t have looked right. Plus, the sleeves didn’t fit right. Now the sleeves are perfect, so it’s definately an improvement. But not enough of one to satisfy me. And it’s not like I can sinch up the top bit, because it’ll make the bottom too short. I was really one skein short on the green yarn. If I’d had one more skein, I could have added a few inches to the bottom and then just sinched up the top. As it is, I’m thinking I might have to knit some kind of panel to attach to the top. But I don’t have any matching yarn, so I’d have to go with another color for it.  Is that a good idea, or do you have any other better suggestions?

An Anniversary…Of Sorts… October 7, 2009

I just noticed that today marks the 1 year anniversary of my blog. Yup, on October 7, 2008, I took my first step into the knitting web’verse. When I started, I thought I’d be posting every day and have hundreds of readers. But, well, I guess I’ve come short, huh? Oh well, life was a little bit simpler this time last year.

So, life. It’s getting complicated. Three weeks ago my MIL had a ruptured aneurism in her brain and had emergency surgery to fix it. She was very lucky to survive. The doctor told us that 50% of the people this happens to don’t even make it to the hospital. Of those that do, only 50% make through surgery. So the fact that she’s still alive and talking is a miracle. And we are very grateful to still have her. unfortunately, she’s not completely out of the woods. The doctors are saying she’s going to probably need 24/7 care for a year or more. They say it’ll be like taking care of a toddler. We’re not sure exactly what to expect because they keep telling us to wait until she’s had a few more weeks of therapy. Basically, it’s a plan for the worst, hope for the best kind of situation.

We are feeling pretty hopeful because she got up and went to the bathroom all by herself the other day when Ron was there. That’s a really good sign.

Anyway, as you can imagine, this is putting some strain on our world. Ron is pretty much the only family she has in town, and so he’s taking on a lot of responsibility. He’s at the hospital with her 4 or 5 days a week after work so she’s not alone all day. The only reason he’s not there 7 days is because he has school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We’re not allowed to take the girls to see her, so he’s having to go alone. Which means he’s getting no support on her bad days, and he’s missing out on seeing the girls a lot. They sure miss him. They get so excited when he walks through the door now.

And don’t get me started on the lack of time we get together. Our 11th anniversary was Sept 19, and, though we had dinner and saw a movie, we spent the whole time worrying and talking about his mom. It’s hard to enjoy a night out just a few days after something like that.

But you know what? God’s taking care of us through all of this. Everything we’ve really needed has been provided. Weather it be some gas money or a good night’s sleep. So, I’m not really complaining, but I wanted to let you all know what’s been happening.

But, through it all, I’m still managing to knit. I’ve finished some things and will hopefully be able to post about those soon. Also, I’m getting started on my Christmas knitting. I’m planning on having a smaller knitting list this year. Last year was a bit much, I think.

Also, I’m planning on posting some yarns on here to destash. We could always use the extra money and some of it is just stuff I’m not gonna use. So, keep an eye out for that, I might just have that yarn you need for your next project.

FO: Couvercle August 26, 2009

After making that beret for Carla, I was itching to make a hat for myself. You see, now that my hair’s short, I have to “do it” every morning, or I look a little…icky. Well, some days I just don’t want to do it, or I over sleep, or, you know, life happens.

So, I’ve been looking for a hat that I can wear on days like that. I haven’t been too lucky. The one’s I like I can’t afford, the ones I can afford, I don’t like. You know how it goes.

Well, Carla’s hat took one afternoon and one skein of yarn. Can’t get much better than that. Oh wait, it can.

In my stash I happened to have a gorgeous skein of Malabrigo Chunky. I’d gotten it back at the begining of the year from a swap partner. I hadn’t used it yet because I needed to pet it for a while and because I knew that this special yarn needed to become something good.

I love it. I love how it fits and how well the pattern worked with the colorway. I love how it feels and how easy it was to knit. I love everything about it. In fact, my only complaint is that it’s really warm. Since it’s in the hundreds here, a wool hat is a bit much. But, come Winter, I’ll be wearing this sucker all the time.

Pattern: Couvercle by Kira Dulaney
Yarn: Malabrigo Chunky in Stonechat
Needles: US 9
Date Started: August 12, 2009
Date Completed: August 12, 2009
Mods: None, but I did have a gal from the shop do the crochet bits for me. I’m just not a crocheter.

Ron took the pictures for me. I think he did a pretty good job, though he could he could have trried to make me look younger. Way too many wrinkles showing up lately. At least they’re laugh wrinkles…