fall knits

Well, fall speeds right along chez Rita--I study, I write music, I play music, and I don't knit as much as I'd like. The math test is over, though, thank god. Did my self-imposed knitting moratorium hold out? Erm. Hey look here, it's a mitten glitten!


Cascade Pastaza, Brown Sheep Handpaint Originals. My own semi-ripped-off-from Ann Budd "pattern," as always. The idea is that these will be fingerless gloves with a mitten top, and the top of each finger will be in the Handpaint Originals, leftover from the mittens I made my mom last year. The first one is actually finished already, but I'm too lazy to go fetch my camera.

Aren't the colors pretty?

Nonrelatedly, here's the yarn I dyed awhile ago, and from which my blog header picture comes. Wow, this is a spectacularly blurry picture. I didn't realize that. You get the idea.

Brown Sheep (mmm, my favorite) Lamb's Pride Bulky, about 9/10ths of a skein leftover from another project. I found some old jars of paste food coloring from ca. 1970 that had hardened into chunks. I dumped the blue and a little purple in a pot of boiling water, added some vinegar (how much? Oh, you know, a bit. We're not real scientific around here), and cooked until the water was clear. The dye clearly wasn't distributed through the water evenly, and I think I had way too much dye for the amount of yarn I had (less than 4 oz.) but I really like the results:
Aren't the colors nice?

In other, non-knitting news, I got some sad news this week.

Calvin, December 15, 2005--November 11, 2007

Rest in peace, buddy. I hope you have lots of sheep to play with--you would like sheep.

Special Delivery

So I have a big math test next week. I did rather (well, rather excruciatingly) badly on the last one, so I should probably study a lot.

There's also a football game this weekend, and I, as always, am in charge of making sure that the band has lots of new music to play.

Also, I have some reading & transcriptions to do for my other classes.

The upshot of all this, then, is the following rule: I am Not Allowed to Knit, not a Single Thing, until next Tuesday when my test is over. This should be easy enough--it's only a week, right? Right. Except...

Look what came in the mail today.

A package!


Now, where is it from, I wonder?

(aka KnitPicks)

Oh, look, it appears to have ripped open. I don't know how THAT happened.

And look!

Oooohhhh...

This is the yarn, you see, that I ordered for the Anniversary Vests, a big project that has been percolating for quite some time. I was interested in KnitPicks yarn primarily because of, to be honest, the cost (attending a private college and working occasionally as a concert usher does not exactly rake in the big bucks, as it turns out), but I wanted to see what the yarn was like first. The colors I have in mind for the vests are purple and green, so I got a couple of shades of each to try them out.

And some others, just because, well, they're pretty and they're freaking $1.99 a ball!

But what about that math test, you say?

Yes. Well. If you'll excuse me...

Projects Past and Present, Plus Procrastination

...all alliterative, all the time.

But I'm not just being goofy-I really do have something exciting to show off--a real FO!



Noro Iro hat, finally finished on the third incarnation, after about ten months. The first version had fancy cables running up the earflaps and onto the hat-I spent a long time charting and fiddling to get the cables to get bigger as the flaps got bigger, and then knit half of it and realized it didn't work-the yarn colors and slubs obscured the cabling. I got bored and put it away, until last week when I finally fished it out, frogged, and did it for real.

But I really think it turned out pretty OK! The yarn is so gorgeous that the simple design shows it off well, I think.

Yarn: Noro Iro, 50% wool, 50% silk

Needles: Addi Turbo size 9 (love! so smooth, and I love the weight of the cable) and Brittany birch DPNs

Pattern: my own

While I was at it, I also frogged a sweater (well, "sweater"--does anyone remember the "Anthropologie Shrug" from Craftster?) that I never wore because it didn't fit. I'd sort of screwed up the YO increases (I made it last fall, when I was a much newer knitter) and then blocked it bizarrely so it was way too wide, and also too short because I'd run out of yarn.

Better yarn that I will use than a shrug I won't, I decided it, so I ripped it and ripped it good.

(taken when I'd already skeined half of it--there's actually about twice as much yarn).

For a skeining device, inspiration struck. My roommate was gone, and I didn't think she'd be too keen on holding still with her hands three feet apart for an extended period of time, so I devised a solution:

Stacking metal shelf by day, poor man's skein winder by night.

Next project: Bulldogs headband (made in my school colors), out of Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora and Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, my own pattern, ripped off from inspired by the famous Jaywalkers

...meh. I knit the two halves separately and then grafted them together in the middle, and it shows. I'm not thrilled, but I'm hoping a good blocking and especially adding a border will help neaten it all up a little.

There's more on the needles, and in my head, but for now, I'm going to bed-besides, look what I've been knitting instead of doing:

Sigh.

bad dreams

Last night I had a little bit of a nightmare. In my dream, I was looking through my yarn drawer when I came upon the yarn that Leslie dyed for me, the beautiful turquoise and green sock yarn (the yarn that is currently about three feet from me, and my camera is sitting right here, but I'm lazy so no picture right now). As I looked at it, I realized that one of the skeins wasn't sock yarn after all, but fuzzy mohair boucle--AWFUL for socks. I was very upset, and then I wondered whether I had enough of the other skein (which was sock yarn) to make ankle socks.

Very weird. I can't be the only person who's had dreams about yarn, though.

Anyway, more later (after the @#$&! Midterm of Doom later today), that will probably feature pictures of projects past (Iro hat, finally finished on the third incarnation), present (stupid headband, made negative progress last night after realizing that I'm a moron and having to rip a bunch), and future (mittens-to-be).

Later.

Sweater Stories: Finale (aka the Ugliest Sweater in the World)

They say (do they? they must) that there is no bad knitting. Some people say that there are no knitting police. That is definitely true. And true, too, that all knitting projects have value, that we can at least learn something from them. That is all kinds of true. And yeah, blahbityblahbityblah, everything is special and unique and wonderful.

But let's be honest, folks. This sweater looks like ass.

I mean, the knitting itself is not so bad. I'm actually a little proud of that (which is incredible, considering that I am seriously considering burning this sweater and denying all knowledge of it. Except that it's acrylic, so it would melt and make a big mess and then I would really sorry. Plus my roommates would kill me).

And yeah, I did a pretty good job of picking up stitches, and the raglan increases look pretty good.

But the rest of it? Oh dear god. For starters, the fit...I don't know what I was thinking, I really don't. It's way too big at the waist, and it sort of gaps goofily under the arms, and it's a really awkward length that is too long to be stylishly cropped and too short to be a real sweater.

Add that to the fact that this is the ugliest freaking yarn on the planet, and...

Yeah, so who wants a sweater?

Except no, I can't do that. Partly because I couldn't bear to inflict this monstrosity on anyone else, and partly because as ugly as it is, I did make and I'm (a little) proud of it. I guess it's condemned to to back of my closet, where I can bring it out and laugh at it occasionally.

I suppose comic value is better than no value at all.

I am a delinquent knitblogger

It would appear that despite my best intentions, this regular blogging is harder than it looks. With, you know, classes & activities & other things that cut into the knitting time. Sigh. Anyway, I'm back, celebrating this gorgeous Friday and also NO FOOTBALL GAME THIS WEEK, which, while sad, means that I get to skip my usual Friday morning ritual of frantically writing guitar parts and yelling at my printer (I write music for my colleges's marching band, which is fun but a lot of work).

At any rate, Sweater Story #2. Recall, if you will, the relative success that was my last sweater. How I spent hours and hours writing my pattern. How the yarn was the very best that I could afford. How I put all the time and energy and effort I could into ensuring that this was a quality product.

Not so with this one.

One day in Spain this summer, as I walked home from class, I happened across a little store called something that translates to "China Store." I walked in to one of the strangest retail experiences I've ever had--this place had EVERYTHING, from combs to shoes to home decor, all of it uniformly extraordinarily cheap and incredibly crap. I was on the verge of leaving when I spotted it. The wall full of yarn.

The details are a little fuzzy, but half an hour later I was walking out with a headful of sweater patterns and a bagful of this:

Now, this yarn...well, for starters, the brand is called Lana Para Labores, or Worker's Wool. This is pretty hilarious, because this yarn is wool the same way I am a nuclear physicist. It's acrylic, but not even good, soft acrylic that makes a passable imitation at being a natural fiber. No, this stuff is pretty much ropes of plastic. It's thick, oddly squeaky, and kind of rough. And have you seen the colors?

So why did I buy it, you ask? What mental illness could possible have come over me?

Oh. That's why.

I also came away with this (slightly dubious-looking) needle, necessary because all I had with me were sock needles.

And again:

Did it ever occur to me that there might be a REASON for these prices? Perhaps I heard my mother's voice in my head, admonishing me that you get what you pay for?

No, is the answer to that question. No, I did not.

As soon as I got home, I sat down and began scribbling, and after some swatching and calculations, came up with this:

My plan was for a fitted, cropped cardigan, knit top-down with yarn-over raglan increases, with deep ribbing at the sleeves and bottom, with half-sleeves. In my head, this looked pretty cute. A little colorful, true, but cute. I started knitting.

I kept knitting. The yarn was, indeed, horrible. It even had these weird little acrylic hairs in it, long and yellow-like doll hairs. Weird. I kept knitting.

Huh, this thing is getting kind of big.

I kept knitting.

After awhile, I started to notice something wet on my knitting, right at the point where the needle joined to the cable. I thought that was weird. I kept knitting, though, until disaster struck.

Maybe you didn't catch that.

DISASTER.

What will happen next? Will she soldier on, despite crap yarn, worryingly large sweater, and now this disaster? Or will she pitch the whole thing in the trash and reach for the socks?

Stay tuned! Next installment coming, as soon as I find my camera that has the rest of the pictures.

Sweater Stories, Part I

I'm back from my European adventures! Great fun was had, a little yarn was bought, and quite a bit of knitting was done. Now that I'm back and have time at my disposal, it's time to tell two rather contrasting stories. The first is the story of the first sweater I ever knit. I spent hours and hours dying and designing and knitting and getting everything Exactly Right. When I knit my second sweater, I knit it in about three weeks, with a pattern scribbled on the back of some old grammar homework that I whipped out in about and hour and continued to make up as I went along. The difference...well, let's just say the difference shows.

As we will see.


Anyway. Sweater #1. I'd been wanting to make a sweater out of beautiful handyed variegated wool, but everything I found was rather far removed from my unemployed-student budget. As in, I could afford the yarn all right, but I might end up with something that was more "bikini top" than "sweater." Since the hand-knitted hooker look isn't really cutting it at college campuses these days, I had to look for an affordable alternative. Enter the Post-Christmas Sale.


The place: JoAnn Fabrics, in my hometown. The players: me and my (long-suffering, eternally patient) best friend, who for a non-knitter seems to spend quite a bit of time in yarn stores. In the store "just to buy some sock needles, I swear!" I happen upon this:



...on sale, for $3 a ball. Nice and creamy white, all ready to be dyed. Just like the article I was reading about Kool-Aid dying just the other day, in fact. Inspiration strikes.

We hit up Safeway.

(at this point, some of us lost interest in the idea and skulked around the drinks aisle, trying to pretend they didn't know the girl arranging packets of powdered drink mix and muttering to herself. We remain confident that those people, whoever they may be, will continue to be supportive of all knitting endeavors, especially if they're enjoying their nice new warm mittens and would like a hat to match.

Once I got home, I skeined the yarn (after explaining to my mother just why I needed to take over the kitchen for a little while. She was very understanding. Ish.)

My Brilliant Plan involved mixing up all the dye I had in six different jars, one for each color. I would then dye all the reds at once, all the greens, etc. This worked pretty well, but the color distribution wasn't nearly as even as I would have liked, and it also bled a LOT. (In future, I wonder if it would work better with dry yarn? I'd washed and soaked all the yarn in lukewarm water ahead of time, and I wonder if having it wet made the color run up the yarn faster).

Things started to get a little chaotic, but more or less OK.

(my hands, meanwhile, turned progressively more colorful and I started to realize that the "wear gloves" instruction was perhaps not just a suggestion.)

And as I dyed the final color (purple, or at least as close as I could get with Kool-Aid), it was looking good! The colors turned out differently than I'd had in mind originally--brighter and more crayon-y, less rich and more neon. But still, I was happy.

After dying, the yarn was dried,

(with some assistance from the heating ducts in the house when I got impatient.

and skeined into pretty, colorful, fat little skeins for me to carry around and pet.

I was quite pleased.

Now that my beautiful yarn was all ready to be knit with, it was time to find the perfect pattern to go with it. Well, more accurately, it was time for me to find the real-life incarnation of the perfect pattern I already had in my head. V-neck, long-sleeved, very simple so as to show off the yarn, a little waist shaping, set-in sleeves...with the help of Ann Budd and Debbie Stoller and a lot of scribbling and throwing away drafts, I cobbled together something that was, as far as I could tell (having, you know, never knit a sweater or indeed anything at all that was knit in more than one piece) exactly what I wanted.

I hoped.

The result?

Well...the final result was delayed for quite some time, thanks to the intervention of my favorite knitting distraction, School. I trudged along, though. Milestones:

January-March: keep yarn on shelf in common room. Fondle occasionally. Show off to anyone who stands still long enough.

March: Knit back while comatose on couch during the first week of spring break, watching Grey's Anatomy and recovering from Midterms of Doom.

March: Knit front and 1 1/2 sleeves while on a road trip with girlfriends. Drop crumbs from Goldfish crackers, our staple food for six days, on sweater.

April: Get distracted. Knit mittens.

May: Finally finish second sleeve while watching Dodgeball with boyfriend. He is, surprisingly, less excited by this momentous event than I am.

Still May: Take final exams. Finish sewing up sweater just in time for the temperature to climb to 90 degrees and OM$&%TH ("oh my $&@ God that's humid!")

But seriously. The result?

(the colors aren't so accurate in this one, but it shows off the waist shaping and gives a good idea of how the variegation worked out)

(shown here after I finally did block it, after sewing up, which I suppose brings the actual finish date to June) (colors are most accurate in this, last picture)

Quite, quite pleased indeed.

Of course, were I to do it again, I would do about a zillion things differently. I would probably dye each skein individually, which would allow for a more even distribution of dye (as it was, I knit with alternate rows from two different skeins for the entire sweater, to even out glaring differences between skeins). I probably wouldn't use Kool-Aid, opting instead for some kind of food coloring or other dye that might give me richer, less fruit-punch-at-the-seven-year-old's-birthday-party colors. I would definitely block BEFORE sewing up. I would make the sleeves narrower (although granted I still don't know how to make that kind of adjustments to a pattern, so maybe I wouldn't).

But overall, though? For my first sweater? Not too shabby at all, say I. Not too shabby.

Now, if only the weather would hurry up and get cold...