AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

FO parade

First up the Hoover Blanket from Knitty

It's done!  I'm ecstatic.  I mailed it to my MIL this morning along with a little card.  The finished blanket was poorly blocked but measures about 29 inches square (rather than the measurements in the pattern).  It's a good thing that blankets and babies don't care about gauge.

The pattern specs:
Yarn: 4.1 (or some other small amount) skeins of Encore Colorspun Worsted
Started: November 1, 2007
Finished: November 19, 2007

I washed the FO in the washing machine and the dryer on gentle, and it came out fine.  I was a little paranoid (because I should have done that to a swatch), but a baby blanket isn't that much good if it can't be easily washed and dried.

Also finished (I'd be proud of two finishes in one night, except that this item could have been finished months and months ago) the Cropped Bolero:

I knit this with SWTC Phoenix.  I had about 2 skeins I bought on sale from Woolcott (so long ago that I can't remember).  When I pulled it out of the closet to work on it earlier this week, I realized that all I had left was to weave in the ends, give it a bit of a wash and sew on a button.  I am going to probably going to get a different clasp and sew it on instead, because the button band isn't really strong enough for this stress, but I'm still psyched that it is done and wearable.  I was a bit nervous that it wasn't going to fit when I was knitting it (completely different gauge was one reason I was skeptical).

That said, I love the buttons I used so they won't go to waste.  I will find a top that will look stunning with these buttons (maybe the Sunrise Circle Jacket when I finally find the perfect yarn for it).

Now that I am done my deadline projects, I'm going to go back to working on little Christmas ornaments.  I had another idea this morning on the train, so I'm particularly happy to get working on those.

In the land of Adventure Kitty!

Last night I got the last ball of yarn I needed for the Hoover Blanket, knit through the beginning of my comp sci class (and still managed to take notes, so obviously I might want to do this more often) and got home and wove in the ends.  I wasn't sure I had woven them in enough so I tossed the blanket in a mesh bag and into the washing machine on gentle cycle.  Followed by the dryer on the same cycle.

Encore is good!  I spent the entire time the knitting was in the wash kind of nervous (it was keeping company with my socks).  When everything was done I came upstairs and put all of the knitting on a clean sheet on the floor, spreading it out like pseudo blocking.  Then I closed the door to the condo (maybe not quite in that order).

Apparently Saru-chan went adventuring.  She's not quite as skittish as when we first tried to take her out on a leash, but only recently has she decided that the entire condo building is her domain.  This morning I got up and realized that she wasn't in any of the normal places she likes to sleep (for a small condo there are still a lot of places), so I checked the basement and each floor of the building. 

Eventually she woke up and realized that my hubby was near her (in the basement where I first looked).  Apparently she was quite vocal, probably annoyed that she didn't have any food in the basement.

Whew.

But the blanket is finished, adventure kitty has returned, and I washed and blocked a few other things as well.  (Pictures up later today or tomorrow.)

When is there enough progress for a progress picture?

I signed up for the holiday bazaar yesterday, which means it is now Go time (and that green is probably not quite the right choice, but green for go right?). 

Go time means full speed ahead on the blanket.  No news there.  Go time means pulling out the beads and seeing if I remember how to do the peyote stitch.  I can go up to Lush Beads and ask L, but I'm pretty sure I remember.  Go time means knitting as much for speed as for pleasure. 

Go time means pictures.

These pictures:

The crocheted beaded wreath is really easy to work up.  I have other similar ideas and a lot of spools of wire that I bought either earlier this year or late last year.  The iCord braided wreath isn't hard to work up either, but it is much more time consuming.  The peyote stitch bail took me most of 2 football games (the standard time unit of the fall) for maybe 3 square inches of beading.  Of course, the reds are hard to photograph, so the stitch definition is completely missing.

I have one more of the knitted wreaths waiting for its decoration and probably a half dozen more crocheted wreaths I can do before the beginning of December.

(and just to be clear, I worked on these because I ran out of yarn for the baby blanket with about 12 rows left to knit - I'm going to pick up more yarn today.)

3 Days

Thanksgiving is Thursday, but I nearly always start cooking early.  Even when I'm not making a lot of food, I want to do as much cooking as possible in advance.  It just makes Thanksgiving a more pleasant and relaxing holiday.

Thanksgiving is definitely the cook's holiday.  Today I made pumpkin eggnog ice cream and eggnog spice cake (heavy on the spice) with eggnog spice frosting (heavy on the eggnog).  I might make the cornbread tonight for cornbread stuffing or I might make it Tuesday. 

Class is altering some of my normal cooking routines, but hopefully I will be able to mostly make the bird for the hubby (it's one of the only times a year that I cook meat), biscuits and mashed potatoes on Thursday. 

What's left to make in advance?  Pumpkin ice cream pie, but I need to use some of the stuff in the freezer first.  It's hard to prep for a holiday when you need two freezers and only have one. 

Oh, and the New England Revolution lost the MLS Cup.  Sadness.

I can finish?

I have woven in all of the ends of the Cropped Bolero, my November Project of Shame.  Of course, I want a hook style clasp similar to the one I used on the capelet I made a year or two ago.  For that I will need to wait until probably Wednesday. 

I'm thinking ahead to the December Project of Shame. It has to be something I've been close to finishing for a while.  Usually that means something that only needs a trivial amount of knitting or something that would be done with some finishing work.

I have the Choo-Choo Bear hat, which I started *cough* a while ago.  My hubby kitted it up for me, but it calls for one of those yarns that is really soft in the wearing but feels kind of scary and filmy (like oil) while knitting with it.  I think I have ears and a leg.  Whatever I have left is hardly anything, because the project uses large needles and has a fairly small amount of finishing (though more than normal for a hat).

I also have a bag (actually 2) that I was working on for my hubby.  One was going to be a prototype for my theoretical Etsy shop - a dice bag shaped like a beholder.  I have ends to weave in and some sewing.  Sewing is one of those activities that I seem to only enjoy when I am actively doing it.  Thinking about it just gives me the heebie jeebies.  The other bag was the monkey backpack that was my Knitting Olympics project.  The knitting has been done for *cough* forever, but it has a lot of finishing.  I even have monkey fabric to line it with, so I don't have any good excuses.  Three projects for shame, but I will only pick one for December.  I'm hoping by the middle of 2008 to not have any PoS left.  I'll be down to the normal collection of too many WIPs, but they will all be projects that I'm happy admitting to or am willing to frog to finish them off.

More holiday bazaar than you needed to hear about

So, I paid for my table for the Holiday Bazaar.  That means I need to knit.  Knit fast.  Knit well.

Or at least not forget my beading thread.  I have this image in my head of ornaments with beads and knitting.  The most basic one (and thus the one I started out with) is a wreath made out of icord braids and leftover sock yarn.  I have the braided wreath done, but that was going to be a little too simple and I thought the join for the two ends would be messy.  To cover the join, I was going to make a peyote stitch tube, like a bail, out of red and gold beads, seasonal.

Of course, this is not loom beading, which I am much better at.  I have only done peyote stitch once before over the summer.  It is slow, but that is OK.  I'm not making a lot of these.  The Nimo thread I left in the bag with some of my other beading supplies.  So, sadness is me. 

At least I had other knitting with me, right?

sometimes categories aren't very useful

I've been listening to Wicked a lot lately.  It's one of the only musicals currently on my iPod, because I need to finish reloading all of my music.  I loved the book, though it took me a couple of times to truly get into the story.  I love reading coming of age stories, so I needed to get to the school segments to really enjoy the book. 

But one of the things the music, specifically Defying Gravity, makes me think of is Mage: the Awakening (or whatever the latest edition is called). 

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes: and leap!

This lyric makes me think of the process of, well, awakening that a mage is supposed to experience in the game.  The idea that becoming a mage is a one way switch.  You are completely changed and you don't have any road maps to follow.

Of course, that doesn't really have anything to do with knitting.  But my inner geek was trying to jump out, so I gave it a bit of time away from mathifying¹ the baby blanket.

¹Mathifying: The act of calculating progress in terms of stitches or rows per inch in a fruitless attempt to explain why the last hour has not produced any appreciable or measurable progress to the goal of completion.

The last will and testament

I was chatting with my hubby and mentioned the last will and testament, which left us scrambling through our Dr. Demento (I have most often heard it with Tae Kwon Leap) to see what songs we actually had.  However, the power of the Internet brought us this:

Of course, I couldn't help but geek out over this for a bit.  After my geeking out, I went back to the couch with my pile of knitting and proceeded to work on the baby blanket.  After working on the baby blanket for over 2 hours on Tuesday and a bit this morning (it was an hour but it wasn't as productive as any hour yesterday), I have this to show for it.

I don't think the dyelots being different in this one section is  going to be that big a deal (crossing fingers), and I'm hoping that finishing the blanket with the original dyelot will mute some of the reaction I have to the blanket in general.  I'm enjoying working on it, though I'll admit that it does make me sleepier if I'm already inclined.

So, the current blanket stats:
I'm on the 4th and last ball of Plymouth Encore Colorspun Worsted.  It is currently about 28 inches wide and 22 inches high.  I have about 4-6 inches of knitting in the double knit section before I switch back to straight garter.  I think I will be able to block it to the size in the pattern, but if it doesn't become fully 27 x 33 (especially because mine managed to be wider anyway) as long as it is close to square and about 30 inches in at least one dimension it should be a fine blanket. 

Game plan?  Blanket in the mornings and once I've gotten home from work.  The ribwarmer (which probably won't get a picture until it is completely done) at lunch.  I have to fight myself to knit with the end of Puzzle Quest just around the corner (I'm playing my second time through as a warrior).

transferral (Namaste)

Namaste Everyday Knitting Bag  I loved my bag because it was professional enough to bring to work (otherwise I bring my backpack, which just doesn't look professional at all), but I had grossly overstuffed the bag.  The handles broke and I put the bag aside, thinking to email them or seek out recommendations for the repair, because the repair looked to be a simple one.

I'm pretty lazy, so I only got around to emailing them about the bag about a year after the handles gave.  But once I emailed them things moved quickly.  I brought the bag to the post office, sent it back priority and was sent a replacement.  I got my replacement last night.  So, I began the careful transferral of materials into my knitting bag.  Small project, check.  Smaller project, check.  Small trade paperback, check.  Games and other tech?  Check.  Of course, I forgot my thumb drive for homework, so obviously the transfer of stuff was not perfect.  C'est la vie.

I'm hoping to keep this bag in much better condition, so I figured I'd leave the blanket at home.  I put the ribwarmer in the bag and then tossed in the project I started last night (yup, another project - giving me random test Christmas stockings, the ribwarmer and the blanket as my big projects).

The new project?  Christmas ornaments.  Little bits of icord which I plan to braid together and hide the connecting area under a beaded bail of peyote stitch.  I have a ton of seed beads, and if these come together as I hope, then I will have a good item to sell at the holiday bazaar.  Every year I do this.  Try and find something interesting, but not too time consuming to knit for the bazaar.  Maybe this will be the year where most of it sells.

Craft

Yesterday I went to my favorite local, independent bookseller: Pandemonium.  Pandemonium was having a sale for their 18th anniversary. 

In more recent years they have branched out from selling the mainstays of gaming and sci-fi, and they now sell appropriately themed books and magazines in other genres (including some fantasy-styled romance novels, children's books, board games) including Craft.  I bought my first issue of Craft earlier this year when it was Japan-themed, because I am nothing if not predictable.  This time I picked it up because between my gift certificate and the sale, I could afford it.  Craft is a great magazine, but cheap it is not.

The latest issue is about paper, which is something I love.  Some of the crafts I've done.  Making paper beads (slightly differently) and making paper.  I learned to make the beads at Beadworks, but making paper was something I learned in an extra curricular activity in junior high a really long time ago.

Of course, as much as I love paper, I didn't buy it for the paper crafts.  I bought it because I want to make a dress, ideally without buying another pattern.  I hate pattern paper.  It is tissue paper thin, and I feel like I'm always tearing it.  I'm never sure that I've gotten all of the little pieces cut out correctly.  I used to be in the SCA.  While in the SCA I was not a champion seamstress, but I was adventuresome.  I bought fabric (lots of fabric), a lot of which I still have.  Most notably I made a houppelande before the Gods and Godesses Ball, which I worked on a with a friend.  No pattern.  No tailors chalk.  Just a penny, a couple pieces of fuzz and a thankfully stretchy fabric to make up for the depth issues.  But it worked.

Nowadays I love fabric no less, but I'm a lot more skittish about getting down to business.  I don't just cut the fabric with abandon.  I don't sew on a regular basis.  I have a skirt that is waiting for the waist band and the hem.  A skirt I've actually sewn the zipper into.  What am I waiting for?

So, I have a dress I made about 30 pounds and at least 5 years ago.  I am going to reclaim it for a skirt one way or the other.  The fabric is nice even if my finishing isn't, and I will use the inspiration from Craft to help show me the way.