AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

the dreaded cast on

I think the Frog Camisole might be living up to its name.  I'm not quite certain yet, but I might end up picking up a smaller size 0 circular.  I just can't tell with the very long and twisty circular if I managed to twist the stitches or not.  It's a perennial problem.  A problem that can be solved by going to Windsor Button.

Unfortunately, if I did twist the stitches, I'll need to take out about 7 rows of stitching and recast on 288 stitches.  Fortunately, my gauge swatch believes that I do not need to cast on 348 as called for in the pattern.  Very nice.  I'm currently trying to do some strange pseudo-Magic Loop, but it hasn't made it any easier to determine if I twisted them.

This won't be the only time I've had to rip out a project for something like this.  Last time I did about an inch of knitting (well, it was the ruffled skirt, so more like the first 12-17 rows) before working in the round.  I don't think that will work as well for this pattern (there are about five purl rows in the beginning, but that doesn't provide a large non-twisty surface).

Of course, because I'm a goober and one new project on the needles isn't enough of a good thing, I've been exploring Ravelry to see what I could make with 3 skeins of Euroflax.  I am pretty sure I didn't have a plan in mind for it when I bought it, so now it's just trying to find something that will work.

knitting daily

I'd write about the knitting I'm doing, but the cast on is really only exciting for the person casting on.  Suffice to say that knitting is happening, and cross-stitch is happening (I'm finally done the border).  Heck, even blog refreshing is happening, though only because my hubby didn't know that I had more photos in my finished object gallery than 2006.  Whoops.  Didn't even think to change that image, so no more dated images for me. 

I just got the email about the Spring Preview for Interweave Knits.  I love how the blurbs about the projects now tell you for many of the projects how much ease is in the garment on the model.  This will make it much easier to choose projects that will be flattering, rather than starting something and wondering midway through if it is going to make me look dowdy or misshapen.  And Bonne Marie has a pattern in the issue which is being moved up my list of must-make knits!  While the preview is great, I still need to wait until I have the magazine in hand to decide on what I want to make.  I have about 4 or 5 things I want to make from the Winter Knitty that I haven't gotten around to and tons more in my queue, so there will have to be some pruning.  I just don't have time to make them all.

A knitterly weekend

This weekend was a lovely expanse of knitting (I didn't stay inside all weekend and knit, but I made such great progress that it felt like I stayed in all weekend to knit).

I finished my Koolhaas.  I used a partial skein of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride, pulling apart a swatch to finish the last 4 or so rounds at the top.  The Lamb's Pride is a little bit hairy (and itchy, but it is a hat and warm is more important), so the stitches don't show up quite as well.  I just needed to finish something this weekend, so I was happy to make it a hat in time for some more snow (I was out in the snow for a little more than an hour walking all over Somerville and Medford).

I even made more progress on the Tangled Yoke.  I attached the sleeves, which was a bit fiddly.  I've assured myself that the sleeves are on the right way and have about 2 more inches of straight knitting before I get to the cables.  I'm am so excited to get to that part of the sweater, because it's the part I've been waiting for this entire time.  If things go as planned this weekend (more knitting and figure skating Saturday evening and lots of Super Bowl knitting on Sunday) then I might get past the cables and into the real home stretch. 

Unfortunately, Tangled Yoke is a little too big to cart around on the T, so I started something new.  I decided that the 4 balls of Vintage Cotton in my stash would make a great Frog Camisole.  Of course, that means I blithely cast on 348 stitches on the train and started knitting.  I mean, what idiot would cast on that many stitches without making at least a rudimentary swatch.  Oh, right.  Me.  So, I ripped it all out last night and am doing a swatch.  I can't start the lacy dress until I finish the Tangled Yoke (I need those 4s for the lacy portion at the bottom), so I have told myself that it is OK to start something new instead of finishing something that has been languishing.  That probably makes me an idiot too, but it makes me a happy idiot.

photography lessons please?

Well, obviously I need some help.

That is a sleeve and the the body of the Tangled Yoke.  It's red, and while I've been told red doesn't photograph well this is beyond bad.  I took 5 of these pictures this morning, fiddling around with the settings and this (sad, pathetic) picture was the best of the bunch.

I'm on the second sleeve, working my way as quickly as I can through the proverbial Sleeve Island.  Thankfully, I'm not finding sleeve island as onerous as most of the blog tales would have led me to believe.  Maybe because I know that as soon as this is all in one piece again I'm might be able to sort of try it on. 

I thought I was going to have some overtime this weekend cutting into my knitting time, but it has been postponed.  Part of me is really happy about that, because it gives me about 5 hours of extra knitting time to the weekend.  I might not use them all for knitting the Tangled Yoke, but I would love to be able to say I've finished something this month other than my unphotographed Fetchings.

tangled yoke...

I'm on ball 4 (or close enough for government work) of the Silky Wool.  Just need to finish winding it into a ball rather than the big fsm it is trying to become and I'll be good to go.

For a 3-day weekend I got precious little knitting in.  I blame Harry Potter, which caused me to reread book 4 and 5 and nearly finish book 6 over 3 days.  The fact that I'm nearly done sleeve 1 at all is a minor miracle.

So, pretend that there is a picture of a completed sleeve to the left (I have about 33 rows left, but who's counting) sitting on top of the sweater body.  You can even see the second sleeve started, with some nice understated garter rib on the dpns.  And while I'm dreaming about the knitting I meant to have done, that lacy dress?  It's over in the corner, finished, just waiting for a photo shoot (or might be in July once I've finished this sweater and started the dress).  The Koolhaas hat?  It's on my head (rather than in exactly the same place it was 2 weeks ago when I decided I needed a warmer winter hat).

I had such big plans for my knitting weekend.  Instead they are being moved to Saturday, where I am going to do my overtime work (yeah, extra moneys for yarn?) and then go home and knit while watching figure skating (and the site has fantasy skating which strikes me as way odder than fantasy football). 

Voter registration (nothing to do with knitting)

I'm never certain if I'm registered to vote, a strange feeling.  I have voted in most of the recent elections, and have only missed one presidential election since I became elligible to vote.  With all that, I don't vote in the primaries.

Massachusett's primary is February 5th.  It's not very far away, and I could vote in it if I decided.  However, I don't vote in primaries because my ballot is blank.  I'm a Libertarian (I sometimes call it social libertarian, when I want to emphasize my beliefs in smaller, more accountable government and more liberal social doctrine).  It's something I'm a little wishy-washy on, because there are not really a lot of good Libertarian candidates.  Around election season, there are a number of people who call themselves Libertarians.  However, their stands on the issues don't reflect very much of the party platform. 

Last election, I took a look at a number of the candidates who self-identified as Libertarian on the NPAT (I think it is now called the Political Courage Test).  A huge number of them took the standard Libertarian stance of lower taxes all across the board, but increased spending on programs, the military, etc.  Not a true test.  The current list of candidates for the Massachusett's primary include the Democratic ballot, the Republican and the Green-Rainbow.  Nothing for Libertarians.  In the last presidential election, I was one of 77 people in my town who voted Libertarian.  It kind of makes me want to get together and see if I can find these people and start something together.

Libertarian has been associated with crazy for so long that it is like mining for gold, searching for a candidate that is not too extremist and still looks like they can get the job done and done well.

It's not all just knitting

I've been working on this pattern off an on (mostly off admittedly) over lunch breaks for about a year.  I had a number of long hiatus when I decided I'd rather knit than work on this.

In the past year, I've gotten most of the border done.  For 2008, I decided I needed to finish a cross-stitch project, any cross-stitch project.  This was the one I had at work, so I am plugging away at this.  It's a little odd getting back into cross-stitch even if it is only from about 1-2 each weekday. 

My colors aren't the same as the ones in the picture.  I decided that the blue wasn't true-blue enough for me when I bought the chart, and instead the fish will be in shades of purple and shades of yellow.  Maybe in a week or so, I'll finally be using colors.  I only have about 100 stitches or so left in the border (I'm in that lower right corner).

Today I got to work on it a bit, and I realized how close I was.  It wasn't my best choice to do the border first.  But now that I'm nearing the end, I want to work on this a lot.  Still not quite as much as knitting, because no matter how long a sweater will take me it is still hours upon hours faster than this simple design.

Off I go back to the gym and a mini (free) nutritionist consult.  But I'll be thinking about the craft projects all the time.  If I could knit and run on the treadmill at the same time, I would.

a little running fun

I've been getting back into running, something that is much easier since I decided that I wasn't going to run outside (in the cold and slick) until sometime closer to spring.  I've been easing my way with a variety of low-medium intensity workouts on the treadmill, including one that involves some combined speedwork and inclines.  I'm hoping that a relatively consistent workout will make it easier to get back to my quicker pace (I'm pretty slow, but I did manage to break a 10-minute mile last September for a 5 mile race).

So, I signed up for this year's Boston's Run to Remember.  It will be my second half marathon, but this time I'm going to start my taper much later.  Last year I tapered so early (I was using a 12 week training guide that ended about 3 weeks before the race), that I felt like I lost a lot of my stamina.  Probably not completely true, but another week or so of getting used to 12+ miles at a whack would have been good for me.

Boston's Run to Remember allows you to run with your iPod (or at least they did last year), so I will be using my cute little shuffle full of interesting music to help plow through the miles.  Last year part of my problem was a lack of real hills in my area and the other part was I just got a little preoccupied with how long I'd been running.  The iPod will help me fix the last problem (and hopefully a month with hill workouts will fix the rest).

Goal?  Finish the half marathon in 2 hours.  I'd love to be able to maintain a 9 minute mile the entire time.  (I'm using Active.com to help with logging the training.)

36 rows

I'm nearly done the body (up to the sleeves) for the Tangled Yoke.  The last time I worked on this, 36 rows marked the breaking point.  The point where I realized that my gauge was horribly off. 

36 rows until I know for certain that I have eliminated the row gauge problem, because I'm not knitting a tent.  It's a cardigan and I don't need it to go to my knees even if I get cold.

I'm pretty confident that I will be within my margin of error (I'll be happy as long as the length is in the small-medium range), though I won't get all of the rows done tonight.  It will probably take me two or three nights to get to the first finish point.  Then I'll get to see if I can find all of my dpns to start on the sleeves. 

Swatchings...

I've finally finished my swatches for the Lacy Dress and they are drying, pinned to a towel on the floor.  In the end, I did a separate swatch using some yarn I had lying around (KnitPicks Shine) to get a better idea of how the lace pattern was formed, which was a good thing.  I kept losing inches of yarn when I had to rip my attempt at the lace.  It's very light.

As long as the lace pattern on the bottom blocks to gauge (it measures about 6 inches now, which is the size I need but I want to make sure it doesn't change much when washed), I can start the dress.  The lace pattern isn't hard, but it is much more difficult to see what you are doing with such thin yarn.  I think I've managed to forget that since my last lace shawl. 

It would be great if the top swatch blocks out to the right gauge.  It's a little off now (I believe if I recall correctly it is off in row gauge, my eternal nemesis).

I'm pretty sure that I'm going to want to do the lace portion in whole repeats (14 rows at a time) just to make it easier to keep track of where I am.  It's going to be at least an evenings work to do one repeat, because each side is a fair number of stitches.  To keep track when I was working on the pattern I used a post it note above the pattern row.  The odd-numbered rows are worked left-right on the chart and the even rows are worked in reverse (right-left).  The post it note helped me keep track of what direction I was going.

After doing the lace pattern in cotton, it was much easier to follow the pattern in the lace weight.  The pattern is a simple 1-1 rib in between yarnover sections, so after a while it just flows naturally from the needles.  The pattern curves a fair amount allowing this interesting scallop at the bottom of the dress.

I am going to Woolcott today to pick up knitting needles.  I am working on Tangled Yoke and am slightly off on my row gauge (but only in the stockinette section), so I am going to pick up a size 3 needle so I can knit in one size needle and purl in the other.  I am pretty sure that if I do that, I will equalize the size of my rows and come a lot closer to row gauge as I'm only off by a tiny amount.  Until I get them, I'll go back to working on scarves or something else more portable.

The lace dress makes the 9th thing I've got on my Ravelry WIP list.  It's kind of scary how much the projects add up.  It's definitely one of the things keeping me from casting on for a pair of socks (even though I have a pair of socks on the list - I appear to have misplaced the first sock done except for the afterthought heel).