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...

Hola from España!

So Spain is pretty chill on the knitting front-so far I´ve spent pretty much all of my time touring cathedrals etc. and/or eating way too much. I´ve also been sleeping on the bus, which cuts heavily into my prime knitting time (it also cuts into the time when I am supposed to be learning about the subjuntive tense, but something about our professor´s soothing voice and the motion of the bus and I am OUT. But come on, who tries to teach a lesson ON A BUS?). I did, however, manage to turn the heel on the second stripy sock on the plane on the way over, and now I´m done with the gussets and on to the foot. Maybe I´ll have a pair by the end of the trip?

Also, no yarn stores so far, although I haven´t looked very hard. Maybe in the city we´re getting to tomorrow, where I´ll take classes for a month.

Anyway, so I wanted to share this amusing conversation from the other night:
Boyfriend: So, your birthday´s coming up. What do you want?
Me: Oh, you know me pretty well. Get me something you think I would like.
Boyfriend: Aw, man, is this some kind of test or something?
Me: No, don´t be silly. Seriously, you know me better than just about anyone. You´ll come up with something.
Boyfriend: ...well, I´m not getting you knitting stuff.
Me: See, you DO know me!

Knitting on the Road

(apologies to Nancy Bush)

Well, I'm off to Spain tomorrow, so this little baby blog probably won't see a lot of action for awhile. In the interest of Minimalism and Reducing the Amount of Crap I Will Be Carrying Around Europe, my travel knitting for the summer will be...socks. And only socks. (chosen for their small size, portability, and the fine gauge, thus ensuring that they'll last me awhile). Therefore, the next seven weeks will see me doing a lot of this:

f0r awhile.

(socks: Lana Grossa Meilenweit, color #Ilosttheballband, 2.25 bamboo DPNs, "sock recipe" from here. I actually finished this sock and just started the heel flap for the second, but I thought this picture--taken in the Atlanta airport on the way back from Brazil earlier this month, and featuring a lovely Airport Carpet background--would give a nice idea of what I'll be doing.)

For my trip, I have the remainder of this pair, some Lorna's Laces in Tuscany (look at the colors, I want allll of them, precious) and some Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Red Tail Hawk. Yum yum. (and who am I kidding, probably some Souvenir Spanish Sock Yarn. I know myself well).

When I get back: the epic story of how this:

became this:

(excuse the dippy look on my face; I was probably thinking something along the lines of "Mom, take the damn picture!")

and subsequently this:

But first, a-traveling I will go. See ya.

Seven (Fourteen) Things

Seven Knitting Things About Me:
1) I learned to knit four times, at ages eight, fourteen, fifteen, and eighteen. The last time finally stuck.
2) My paternal grandmother was a prolific and talented knitter; I wish I had a heart-warming story about learning to knit from her, but in a fashion typical of the way my life usually works, my learning to knit (and really getting into it) coincided with her mental and physical decline finally stopping her from knitting. (on the bright side, I inherited a LOT of yarn, as well as a collection of Susan Bates aluminum needles from the 70s).
3) I am allergic to patterns. Seriously. And it's not like I start using a pattern and then branch off, it's more that I have trouble with patterns...conceptually. It makes a lot of sense, at least to me. If I want to knit, say, a cabled hat, I don't waste a lot of time looking for a pattern that will match exactly what I have in my head. I get out the yarn I want to use, make a swatch, and design a cabled hat. Period. (I am of course leaving out the part about my ripping back ten times while my knitting friends look up from their patterns and smirk at me).
4) My "stash," while smaller than most knitters (constrained by space and finances, mostly the latter), is nonetheless larger than my roommates think is reasonable.
5) I usually have two or three projects going at the same time--if I had a bigger stash it would be more.
6) My favorite yarns to knit with are generally bulky and wool (hence the blog title), though not always necessarily blue (although often). I buy other yarns if I have a specific project in mind, but if I go to a yarn store "just to look" (hah!) the yarn that I come away with is nearly always bulky and single-ply. I don't know why I do this.
7) I don't knit a lot when I'm in school (or rather, I do, but make very little progress), my time being taken up by...well, school. (this is not to say that I don't blow off schoolwork for knitting. I have a sock that I think of as "the sock that I made instead of studying for my music history final"). When I'm on break, I therefore try to make up for lost time by knitting A LOT.

Seven Non-Knitting Things About Me:
1) The people in my life are all very important to me, and thus will probably feature in this blog. They include but are not limited to:
Family: mother, father, brother, aunt, others. Mother is a particularly treasured victim recipient because she has the dual values of a) being my mother and having no choice but to treasure everything I ever make, from ugly Red Heart acrylic 'scarf' at age eight to an alpaca lace scarf and b) always, always, always being cold.
Friends, Roommates, etc: Some friends are more supportive than others; reaction to the constant knitting usually falls somewhere along the lines of indulgent bemusement. Roommates are pretty much resigned to the amount of yarn that I store in our room, although less supportive of my blocking sweaters on the couch, thus rendering it un-sittable until the sweater dries. They are, however, easily placated with colorful hats. Also included in this category is Boyfriend, who so far has proved to be an enthusiastic recipient: "Oh, man, that's so cool! Look, it has those little twisty things! And that thing where it changes to the other thing! Wow!"
2) I am a music major at a liberal arts college in the Northeast. Music is the other thing that occupies my mind when I'm not knitting. (the combination of this factors, of course, means that sitting around listening to Mahler and knitting is pretty much my perfect Friday night. I am nothing if not a huge geek).
3) Until six days ago, I had hair down to my waist. Now it's roughly an inch long. While shorter, it is still curly and red.
4) I don't eat red meat and I'm allergic to bananas and avocados, but other than that I am omnivorous.
5) I am not the best driver, and failed my driver's test--um. More than once and less than ten times, let's leave it at that.
6) I am old enough to vote and too young to drink
7) I think Questionable Content is pretty much the funniest thing ever.

Well, it's official. I've lost my mind.

Knitting is one thing. Buying yarn is one thing. Knitting A LOT (at the beach, at the movies, on the subway, etc) and buying a LOT of yarn and making sure to visit every yarn store that I come within 15 miles of is another thing.

And now I'm blogging about knitting. I've lost my mind, and I'm having so much fun.

-----------------------

To kick things off, here is a picture of me:

With some of my hand-dyed yarn. This is how I feel about yarn, knitting, and a lot of other things.