AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

Eeee!

It is spitting snow south of Boston. My favorite season is finally here!

Snow. I could squeal with happiness.

A man they call Jayne

My husband won't be afraid of anything tonight:

The hat is in a bit of a funky combo: Cascade 220 (orange), WoolEase (yellow), and Pastaza (rust/red). I really love the Pastaza. Soft, furry, llama! It didn't take too long to make. I finished it this morning, attaching the pompom and picturizing it. We need a new camera. I only seem to get one set of pictures - fuzzy.

See Jayne Knit

My husband doesn't ask for much. I made him an old-style Hufflepuff scarf for the premier of the 3rd movie. I have knit a hat, which was my first and didn't get much wear. I started a pair of socks, which have been ripped out a number of times - he just doesn't need the socks. And now this.

Jayne. Cobb. Hat.

It's a veritable masterpiece of the knitterly kind. Or in my case, a hodgepodge knit of different patterns and ideas combined with what I know of knitting and one better picture of the hat in question.

I started last night after emergency Halloween shopping at the Good Will. We then went to Porter, where a stop at Mind's Eye Yarns allowed me to procure yarn in the appropriate colors for The Hat. Almost ready for the color change, probably will be finished by 10p.m. tonight.

Knit, Jayne, knit!

I can't believe

I knit the whole thing. I finished knitting the Ravenclaw scarf last night before rehearsal. Because it is so large, I didn't have a backup project to work on, so I played with my DS and chatted a bit. Tonight I work on Halloween stuff (it's my favorite holiday, because I really like dressing up) and then fix the last cast off, weave in ends, and block. I should be able to wear it by next week provided it doesn't take forever to dry. I don't think it should be a problem, because I have been wearing the scarf almost all week in the horrible Boston weather while knitting it. It's kind of nice to working on something so huge that you can use it for its function before it is done.

Great yarn!

I have been rocking through the Ravenclaw scarf. I sort of started last Sunday during a trip to the movies, but I had to pull it all out. I made some progress that night and then on Monday went into overdrive. That was a little over a week ago and I am on the last repeat. I should be finished tonight.

I did a lot of my knitting on Saturday at Circles. I showed up on the wrong side of noon, and was graciously allowed in early. They have a lot of gorgeous new yarn and have done some reorganization. Now all of the hand-X yarns (dyed/spun/etc.) are in the first set of bins.

I was planning on buying some generic black yarn (tm), but my eyes were caught by the Carlisle Brook Farm. It's a sport weight gorgeous heathered wool with a pretty nice color selection. Umm, and beautiful yardage too - 372 yds for 10 bucks! I bought two skeins of this geranium color. A light peach-ish pink, but there were a few others (like 8 or 9) that caught my attention.

Circles has a pretty nice selection of Sheldridge Farms stuff right now. I was going to make a pair of fingerless gloves with it, but I didn't want to orphan a color. Instead I opted for the Brown Sheep Handpaint. I spent too much money on yarn (right now any money is really too much money), but it was worth it for such tasty items. Yum!

Sicky yucky

I have acquired a cold, which while not horribly bad does not readily respond to drugs.

See, currently it is 0405 EST, and while I took the full dose of the store-brand Nyquil, I am up. Very much up. I have read blogs and started more work on ye olde Ravenclaw scarf. I am nearly done repeat numero five and if I have many more days where I wake up well before the crack of dawn, I can see actually meeting my lofty goal of finishing Ravenclaw before next Wednesday?

Why Wednesday? There is no real reason. The scarf is easy, but boring, so I want to feel free to work on some of my other boring but easy things and maybe even something more interesting. Maybe I will take a picture of my progress tonight. If I was smart I would stay home and maybe even be able to say I was done tonight (but really it is over an hour to do one of the stripe repeats, so not terribly likely). Already I am thinking of my next project. Maybe Samus from the most recent knitty (or the felted pumpkin, because it is cute and both longer lasting and cheaper than an actual pumpkin). Evil suggestions for my next project are always welcome.

Simply Knitting

Simply Knitting is a little knitting rag from the UK, stocked by the Borders in Braintree (at least). The patterns seem to range from frightening to kind of bland. Normally there is one basic pattern I am grateful to have (so I can be lazy and not Google for it) and one less basic pattern I want to make. Most of the rest is just a little too much. Some of it is just too Thick and Quick for me and there is not nearly enough lace.

In this month's issue, however, they have a couple of free gifts. A set of 40 pins for blocking (hey, they aren't the best quality, but I definitely needed more pins) and a Rowan accessory magazine.

The magazine includes Birch.

I love shawls. I have made a lot (not as much as Stephanie, but hey, I'm not Superwoman). I wanted to knit Birch when I started seeing all of the gorgeous pictures out on the web, but I didn't want to pay the price for the Rowan magazine it came in. I settled for Kiri and then fell under the pressure of deadline knitting and had to put it aside. But now I can Birch and Kiri and maybe even knit a shawl or two from the last couple of VK.

Birch. Yum.

Weekend wedding

I meant to post this over the last week, but I couldn't seem to post any pictures.

Last weekend I went to my friends' wedding in Gloucester. The weather was damp and cold, and I wished that I had worn something a little warmer more than once. My I Do shrug was done and decorated, even though it wasn't the warmest thing I have ever made (it was still damp, because the humidity meant that it wasn't drying very fast).

For the I Do shrug, I decided to not do the sleeve decreases. Instead, I looked up how many stitches were in the sleeve at its widest point past the elbows and I did the shrug that width all the way through. I used Kertzer Super 10 in a beautiful deep teal. My gauge was off even using the size 5 needles I had lying around, so it was large when done. After blocking, the sleeves easily reached a bit past my wrists and the back was a tad over the 17 inches I was aiming for. Definitely a loose garment that should be worn best over a sleeveless top. The little sleeved-top I did wear it with did very little to actually make the shrug look its best.

I loved going to Lush Beads and finding something to work for decorating the sleeves and the back of the garment. Maybe someday when we have a better camera, I will take pictures for detail.

I need nothing but a size 5

There are days when I wonder why my gauge is so loose. Loosy-goosy even. Why?

Last night I started KSM's Weasley sweater pattern. Designed to be knit with any ole cheap worsted *cough*Wool-Ease*cough*, the stated gauge is 5spi with a size 8. I dropped down to a size 5 for the ribbing and then decided to keep the same size when I went to the stockinette for the sleeve.

The gauge is perfect.

For the Weasley sweater, I am using Caron's Simply Soft in Berry Blue. I plan on doing the initial in a gray Wool-Ease. This one, for my husband, will have a K on it for his Harry Potter character (a friend of ours runs a game), Keaton. Mine will be in a heathery pine Wool-Ease with gray and will have a P for my character. If I get all of the knitting I want to do in the next two weeks (fat chance), then we can both wear sweaters with appropriate scarves. Surely without sleep I should be able to pull off two sweaters and a Ravenclaw scarf, right? Umm, right, I thought so.

Grafting is the suck

If I did l33t speak, then I am sure I would have more colorful things to say about it. It definitely suxx0rs.

I have the I Do shrug. I have approximately 70 stitches of Kitchener to do (I started it this morning). I will have approximately 0 stitches of Kitchener to do about an hour after I get home tonight. I will not attempt Kitchener on the train.

Do not let the length of the word fool you, Kitchener is a 4-letter word. K-TCH-N-R.
Yuck.

Now, this is really all my fault. I have about 4 yards or so of the Kertzer Super10 left and so I threaded the entire thing on the needle and have to pull through hideous quantities of yarn for my Ktchnr activities. It gets knotted. It calls me names. And I forget whether or not I have done the pull yarn through like knitting on the backside and what not. If it doesn't look spot on perfect after I am done (especially as sleeve two required more fudging when I forgot a couple of critical yarnovers and recreated them without dropping stitches and actually fixing the darn thing), then there will be more beads in the decorating process. I will be going to Lush Beads on Saturday to finish this thing up. Wish me luck.