AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

Beautiful Stripes!

For Camp Loopy project 3, we needed to knit 800 yards minimum using our favorite colors. As much as I joke about black, the "color of my soul," I love blue. In the past few years I've become more of a fan of bright colors. When I saw Stripes Gone Crazy, I knew I wanted to make this project.

Less than one month later (I blocked it yesterday), I have a new cardigan with beautiful stripes that has a wonderfully soft hand. This was a super wonderful project. The short rows kept it fast and eliminated the boredom factor.

I did make one major mistake. I should have done the stripes on the other sleeves. I had already done about 10 narrow stripes when I realized I was knitting the left sleeve with the right sleeve pattern.

The sweater is nice thin layer that is perfect for an office or any other place with air conditioning.

I completely want to make another one. Maybe with the dark color being the main color. I don't think I've ever made a full-size sweater twice, so the idea of making this one twice on size 4 needles in sock yarn is a bit crazy.

Unrelated to the sweater, I cannot believe that it is only a single month until Q is a year old! I will be in classes for an entire month at that point, but I know I want to make cake and ice cream for his first birthday. I am learning more about time management than I thought I would ever know. It's all about speeding through those necessary things in the day, so I can spend more time on the homework and with my family.

Now that my last project for Camp Loopy is done, it is time for me to go through my stash and to pick quick projects I can do around my homework. The writing class has a large time commitment, and the programming class looks like it will ramp up to a similar level of work.

 

Finishing sweaters

I finished a second item in the beginning of June. Q needs replacement sweaters, because either they are shrinking or he is growing (I know which one it is) and the ones I made for him no longer fit his frame.

This one is the Offset Wraplan. I striped this with a random white yarn and all of the non-fingering yellow yarns I had in my stash. I mean it, there are at least two and more likely three different yellow yarns in there. A great stashbusting project.

Of course, the sweater doesn't fit him now. It is 12 month sized, and he has a few more months to go before I expect to be putting it on him on a regular basis.

One sweater down, and I still have the sweater I started at Squam left to go (also a 12 month sweater, but it is being knit on the 18 month plan). Not too bad for our little boy!

In June, I also made a couple of cakes. One of which didn't go quite so well. I tried to make the plum kuchen from Smitten Kitchen with cherries, but I didn't get the beautiful rise I got when I made it the first time. I will have to try again, because I love that cake.

I also made in June the Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake that Smitten Kitchen has on her site from the Sky High cookbook. I loved making that cake so much that I borrowed the cookbook from the library and hope to try another recipe or two from there!

Of course, now it is July, and soon it will be National Ice Cream Day. I have a staycation where I will hopefully make a ton of ice cream, knit a bunch on a shawl for Camp Loopy, and read a book. A most vacation-y of stay at home vacations.

some matchy-matchy action going on

Or there will be matchy-matchy action going on. The last of the Camp Loopy projects for 2013 was to use at least 800 yards of yarn. Now I had already made a baby blanket for project 2, so my options for making a baby item that used at least 800 yards were pretty limited if I didn't want to make a second blanket. So, instead I decided to make one of the more popular baby sweaters.... eventually.

But first I made Mama Vertebrae.

I made the next to last size, and as you can see it is a little big on me. It is supposed to be frontless, so the fact that so much of my baby belly is sticking out is fine. But the sleeves should be a lot slimmer in profile.

I think it will still be wearable with the extra room, especially once I no longer have the bump. It's still pretty awesome.

I started the sweater a few days into the month (it was sometime while we were traveling from Massachusetts to Kentucky) and finished on August 31st. It probably would have taken me longer if I didn't have Camp Loopy prodding me to a finish. The final ribbing was 447 stitches per row, which needless to say was enough to make me want to put down the project a bit more frequently.

I used Dream in Color Smooshy in the color Flamingo Pie, and alternated every two rows. Now this was definitely a good decision, because not all of the skeins matched quite as well as others. The back view (on Ravelry) shows a bit more clearly when I added one of the new skeins and the two rows alternated to actually make stripes.

I used 3 mm needles for the body and 2.75 mm needles for the ribbing, and I did twisted ribbing because I really like it.

September 1st, after giving myself a whole evening of not knitting this sweater, I started the newborn version in the morning. I'm already on the straight section of the body. It is such a relief to be working on something faster than a mostly stockinette sweater for an adult.

I should have a second matchy sweater in a week provided I don't work too much on my other project.

My other project is to cook. To cook a lot. Fine, to cook enough food for the freezer that if the baby comes when expected (not early) that neither myself nor my husband will need to do more than plop something from the freezer into the oven or microwave in order to still eat in the first month or so of being parents. If I get us past longer than that, then good enough for me!

Of course, that means things like vegetarian pot pie, vegetarian shepherd's pie, split pea soup, chili mac, vegetarian beef stew, twice baked potatoes and pretty much anything else I can research and make between now and the next pair of weekends. While I would like to think I can make more than that, I would like to be pretty reasonable after all and not bite off more than I can chew. Anyone have some good freezer meals? I don't care if they are vegetarian, because I can probably modify anything for that!

 

GOAL!

Hockey season has only been over for almost two months, but hockey is always on our minds here.

I'm due in late September, so there is a possibility (though these are sized bigger than a newborn) that our baby will get to see hockey on TV and watch their first game all dressed up to root for BU.

The baby sweater is the Baby Pullover, a free pattern from Bernat. I followed the lead of another BU alum on Ravelry who had done most of the grunt work for turning the sweater into a hockey sweater. What I did that was different? I decided I still hate seaming and so knit the entire sweater in the round. This mostly worked until I got to the neckline and had to coordinate instructions from multiple sections of the pattern at once. Definitely a spot where writing things out ahead of time would have been key.

Next up was the Baby Robitaille helmet, which was a quick knit though slower finish because I put off sewing on the single snap. Once I had the snap separated it was, well, umm. Yeah. That. I did have to have someone separate the snap for me, because I had just trimmed my finger nails all the way back. For once I didn't even sew half of the snap on backwards. Take that pregnancy brain!

Lastly, I made the hockey skates (it's a free pattern on Craftster). Now the skates look huge, and while we hid it for the photo, I need to resew on the blade portion on the back skate. I don't think the pattern had any sizing or gauge guidelines, and given I don't really know much about baby booties I knit away not thinking about their size. It's possible that they will fit fine. My husband has very wide feet, so this might be for the best!

Oh, and for the blades, I took my grey yarn and cast on 24 stitches using a size 4 needle. I knit the even rows as instructed, but when it came to separate for the upright portions of the blades, I knit 6, bound off 12, and then knit 6.

We bought two pairs of 14-inch white shoelaces for the sweater and the skates. If I had to do it over again, I'd buy the next size up, because these were too short to easily tie. 14-inches sounds so much bigger until you are actually faced with the reality of lacing a garment.

FO: the first baby sweater

So, this isn't the first baby sweater I started. Heck, it isn't even the second baby sweater I started, but it is the first one done and that has to count for something.

Now, I'm expecting a surprise (I don't want to know the gender beforehand), so I'm making a mix of unisex and girly and more traditionally boy-related garments, because babies don't really care about how they look. That is for us.

This is the Waffles pattern by Laura Chau. I made it with a single skein of sock yarn (Three Irish Girls Adorn Sock in Mairin) in the 6 month size, and I might have enough left over to make a pair of booties.

I started this sweater for Camp Loopy project 1. I intended to start it at the beginning of June, and work on it during Squam. However, I order my pattern very far in advance, and so Paypal was requiring the payment to clear from both banks. I didn't get the pattern until June 8th, so I did manage to start it at Squam. I finished it near the end of our Lexington, KY trip a little more than a week later. Definitely a speedy project in a small size, though I could completely understand how someone could get bored making the adult size.

Hopefully my next blog post will include the first baby sweater I started (not that I worked on that during Squam either) and maybe a sneak peak at the second baby sweater I started and worked on during Squam until I ran out of yarn!

there are no good titles

I'm away and then back again and then away. It's not that I don't want to write on the blog, it is that I don't have anything to say or rather don't have anything I think I should say.

And even that isn't true.

I'm almost 23 weeks along (one of the stupid pregnancy counters helps me remember). I am feeling kicking, which is awesome. I am assuming that at some point it will become onerous, but I have been waiting long enough that I am pretty sure that even onerous painful kicks will be super welcome.

I am knititng. Right now I am knitting the Breezy Cardigan and have been for almost 2 months. It is a top down, seamless cardigan by Hannah Fettig. Mine has been mostly a stash busting experience, so it is stripy. And feels huge. I'm on the second sleeeve and after that I have the ribbing on both the left and right front and then the collar ribbing. I am hoping to be done in time for Squam.

I love Squam. It feels weird that I might be having my last trip to Squam. I know people come from all over, but I've always been a few hours travel away. This time next year I will be in Kentucky, and travel will be more complicated. I have to wonder if I will be able to make that difference, or maybe I will be able to convince my husband that he can come with and we can make a family trip of it (well, sans Victor and Saru-chan. Dogs aren't allowed).

But rather than borrowing trouble, or at least borrowing that trouble, I'm entering into that low grade panic. Our home is still on the market. I know people are seeing it. The latest group included a couple with two daughters, and our house is definitely perfect for a family. I don't need it to sell right away, but constantly thinking about it selling is just not fun. It makes for strange(r) dreams. What felt like far away (house shopping trip in June) is now countable on one hand (weeks, on one hand!).

So, to manage stress. Knitting, baking and cleaning. More of the knitting and cleaning and a bit less baking, but my house has to be spotless for showings after all.

There will be pictures next post and it won't be 3 weeks or more I promise. I just want to finish the current sleeve!

other than knitting

I have a lot of goals for 2013. I want to knit multiple sweaters (there are babies to knit for, plus I, ahem, have outgrown a couple of my sweaters). I am moving, so I want to knit down my stash. I want to rediscover crafts I used to love, and do crafts that I bought the materials for and never got around to. I want to bake cakes and cookies and create delicious ice creams.

I want to make every moment I'm not at work.

Unfortunately, the moving thing puts a damper on some of those items. I have to spend some of my crafting hours being an adult. Cleaning mostly, but also weeding. I am going to Pints & Purls tonight and I have a small pile of roving in tow for one of the people who knits and spins. I hope it can find a loving home.

So, that said, I'm going to have a stash sale starting probably Monday (if I can be an adult long enough to take pictures of things). I have both sweaters lots of yarn as well as individual skeins of sock yarn. If anyone has a request (aka, a category of product that they would love to see - like are people interested in magazines), feel free to let me know. While I love my stash, I'm not super duper tied to nearly any of yarns and I have a wide range including some bulky weight and some scary fine laceweight.

Meanwhile, I am working on cross-stitch again. I stopped working on cross-stitch after we got Saru-chan. She snagged a piece I'd been working on for months, and while she was as rough on my knitting as she was on my stitching the repair time on the stitching was so much more that I balked. In the time since then, she has mellowed out a lot. She isn't allowed in my craft room, but when she gets in anyway, she doesn't do any scary rearranging of the stash.

Now that she isn't as interested in my crafting, I feel like I can go back to cross-stitch. This piece, a Mirabilia, is a gift from a friend, and I started it shortly after Christmas. I know cross-stitch is a slow process, but right now I'm enjoying the rhythm.

Of course, that might also be because the alternative is a sweater with unending raglan increases. Though I want that done too. So, has anyone finished that cloning machine. I obviously need 10 extra hours a day to get everything done!

it's sort of a work from home kind of day

While I am away from home and there is plenty to do, this is a lot of downtime too (It's just not always at a useful time to have it). I have knitting, which is well and good; a book, which is not really happening right now; and some work.

I did some transcription work for one of my friends (and after finishing it found a tool that should allow me to do it a bit faster next time), and my husband asked for some graphic design work for BMAG. While I haven't really started (two crops and about 10 pictures to download isn't starting), it is good to have something to do that is outside of the day to day.

The quiet spots of my days lately have been spent in far too much window shopping on my computer. Put a skein of yarn in the shopping cart and then leave the window up for an hour or two, mentally petting the pretty yarn, and then closing the window. It is my version of being good. I have a large stash and I should be knitting it down, using it up, so on and so forth.

I'm still knitting Sheer Beauty and while I did prove to my satisfaction a couple of weeks ago that I had not twisted the stitches when I joined into the round I still feel compelled to check. It is that basic paranoia, though if I only found out now when I am on Welt 15 (I know this probably means nothing to people who haven't at least seen the pattern, but suffice to say that I'm at least 58 rows in) I would possibly scrap the whole thing. I'm pretty sure that frogging Flicker would be trivial, but Party Angel is a mohair-based yarn. I'm glad that I don't need to drive myself crazy frogging that!

When I get back home, I'm thinking of starting $5 in Paris, a simple top down raglan sweater from my stash. It is designed to use those mediocre yarns that you buy from Michael's and similar stores when you are starting. I'm sure I have Caron Simply Soft in my stash. It would be great to turn it from dead weight into something!

sewing the dress

At the beginning of the month I was in this dress class at Gather Here: the Hazel Dress. The Hazel dress is a wide strapped dress with a fitted bodice, a gathered skirt and an invisible zipper. Now I'm not super good at the sewing. Lack of practice means lack of skill don't you know. But in 2 sessions, Virginia was able to coax a respectable dress out of me. It was fun to make and fun to wear and I will be making another one. (with something funky for the bodice).

(Yes, my hair is wet out of the shower. When your hair is this short there is no point in doing too much. Just a little gel or spray wax to spike it up a bit.)

The Hazel Dress is a Colinette dress pattern and I have to admit that I loved the format. The little booklet was a lot of fun, almost like reading a magazine, which is good when you feel a bit intimidated.

The first step was to cut out the pattern pieces and transfer them to Pattern Ease. Now, Pattern Ease is this thick paper-like material that is woven or extruded or something in a way that it doesn't mess with scissors like normal paper. It is also much sturdier than the tissue paper this is my bane for most commercial patterns. So, we cut around the pattern pieces at the largest size (and not cut out, just cut around) and then transferred our size to the Pattern Ease. Now, I am a rectangle. Almost no indentation at my waist and certainly not as much as the pattern required, so we graded the bodice so that the bottom would fit with a different skirt size.

Grading is kind of fun and kind of, well, terrifiying. If you don't love sewing then the idea that you don't know how it will turn out is a bit freaky, so we sewed a muslin of the bodice. My bodice came out perfect in the muslin (the grading worked), but others had to make adjustments there.

That was the first session.

Between sessions we were to cut out the dress fabric, sew the bodice, sew the straps, and sew the skirt. Attaching the sections, gathering the skirt, adding the zipper and hemming were all part of the second session.

My husband was away that weekend and it was hot! So, I mostly worked on my dress in the day before and the morning of the class.

This dress is awesome, because it has gloriously roomy pockets. However, my markings (or lack of markings) meant that one of my pockets was off and I ended up doing a lot of seam ripping. I also flubbed the bodice because I somehow had set my needle so it wasn't in the middle and had consistent 1/2 seams. Darn!

Despite those issues, I did end up leaving the class with a finished dress that fit, looked cool and was really wearable. However, for work I wanted to hide my back tattoo, so I plopped on my sweater (which I'm not sure I ever blogged about) that I finished before Squam. Cria is made out of the Riveting yarn, recycled denim, and is a great match for the dress!

finished knits

A couple of my friends are having a baby soon (like really soon), and last month we had a "shower" for them. The shower was way more like a regular party, full of adults of all family and marital statuses, and a horde of kids. It was potluck, and there were cupcakes (I was still not having any sugar at this point, so boo for me).

They didn't open presents, because it just wasn't one of those parties.

Which was fine, except that I had waffled on the button for so long that I didn't have time to take a photo before wrapping it up. Whoops for me. The proud parents to be sent me pictures this week, along with an inquiry about washing instructions. And here are the pictures, so I can officially mark this project as done.

Project Notes:
Patterns: Angle (rav) and Christine's Baby Booties (rav)
Yarn: Heritage Sock Paints (both green and brown/mauve multi) and Shibui Sock (white)

Angle took me most of a month, and then I was wishy washy about the button. The ideal button in my head was a wooden button that looked mostly like half an acorn. It would have been perfect and in keeping with the woodsy colors of the sweater.

Instead I bought an adequate button from Windsor Button in February and proceded to lose it. I rebought a button the same week I blocked it. I am the queen of procrastination!

The yarn called for in the sweater is a bit thicker, so I made the size large in sock yarn and came pretty close to the measurements for the newborn size. Of course, a newborn might not want to wear this in August, but thankfully the ribbing makes this entire sweater stretchy like an accordion. I mean, I can fit my arm in it (and very unflattering it looks when it is quite that stretched), so hopefully it will last throughout the first winter.

Because I had so much time to think about the extra yarn I had (I have some of all 3 colors left even at this point), I decided it needed to be a set with booties. Baby booties are perfect for the cute factor, but I needed them to be similarly gender neutral. Christine's baby booties are a little odd in construction, but I mostly used the pattern as a suggestion. I had to change the ribbing pattern to get the same effect as Angle.

Aren't they cute? There are tons of baby booty patterns on Ravelry. My favorite, which I've never made, look kind of like Mary Janes, but there are ones designed to be mostly socks, some that are a bit more structural, ones that look like Uggs. It's a crazy baby shoe world out there.

The booties were an afterthought. The leftover yarn ate at my mind and May 11th I cast on, and I was finished 5 days later. Sometimes I swear that if it weren't for deadlines I'd never get any knitting done!