reading is hard

First, an update from yesterday: Nadja actually made the pendant, not her husband. I think of her work as primarily metal but she is branching out! She has an Etsy shop which she will hopefully fill with pendants for you to buy.

On to my reading issue. I realized at knit night last night that my sleeve was a bit long. They are elbow length and the pattern said to increase a certain number of times and then knit straight until the whole thing is 8″ and them start the yoke. (This is one of those patterns where the sleeves are knit side to side and then you pick up on the edges for the body.) So, I was happily knitting along, not bothering to measure the length of the piece because I hadn’t finished the increases. When I was getting close to finishing, I figured I would check on the length and it was 13″ long.

Five inches longer than the length it was supposed to be! And I wasn’t even done increasing!

What?!

i went back to the pattern to do some math and figure out where I went wrong. I was increasing every 1½ inches. It said I should increase a total of 10 times. That is clearly more than 8″. This pattern has three sizes. I am knitting the largest one. What the pattern actually says is “increase every 1½(1-½) inches”. I read the stuff in the parentheses as 1½” for the largest size. Really I should have been increasing every ½”.

I am forging on, though. This is not a very structured sweater and it is just the sleeve. I just need to remember to mess up the same way on the other side. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Right.

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NaBloPoMo Day 21: good news, bad news

Good news: The kids were off today so I got to sleep in a bit.

Bad news: The husband wasn’t so I didn’t get to go for my morning walk.

Good news: I managed to sort through the between sizes clothes and move out some outgrown things from the kids’ drawers.

Bad news: We left the house later than planned and it took two hours to drive what usually takes an hour.

Good news: I started, and made progress on, a hat!

Bad news: I just discovered that my gauge is off again so I need to rip back and start over again.

Good news: It’s bedtime so I can just go to bed and think about that tomorrow! (After all the cooking, baking and eating, of course.)

knitting angst

I have not had much success with my knitting recently. I finally got my act together to finish Liesl.

And I packed it up but it’s been sitting in the envelope, waiting. (Sorry, Christine!)

I am determined to make it to the post office today… that should solve that problem. But, there are more knitting problems going on.

Instead of finishing Liesl and sending it, I was working on my Dipped Infinity scarf and enjoying the soft yarn and how the colors were turning out…

But I kept looking at the ribbing and wishing I had used smaller needles and/or done garter stitch instead. So I decided to rip it back from the cast-on and fix that.

When I started ripping back I thought I had to pull each strand of yarn through each stitch because of the knitted on cast-on but then I got past the cast-on and realized that I had to do that for each stitch. UGH. might need to actually start the whole thing over. The thought is too annoying to contemplate.

So, I decided to knit something quick and easy and instantly gratifying so I used the rest of my Ty-Dy cotton for some mitts. The first one turned out great. I loved the color changes…

Then the second one was ALL one color. The color changes are a little too slow in this yarn, I guess. I ripped it out and reknit it using the blue part I had left and half of the one color mitt. The color change still isn’t as nice as it is in the first mitt but it’s not awful.

The thumb hole is a problem, though. I made it big because the cotton yarn was really pulling around my thumb but now it’s too big and I tried to knit a thumb on and it didn’t work. I think I’m going to just weave in the ends and call them done. Cheating? Maybe…

I finished knitting those and gave up on the thumb while visiting Kristi in Reno so I decided to cast on the other project I brought, the Yvaine Shawl.

It looks nice so far but I had to cast on three or four times and ended up having to borrow needles form Kristi. It’s lovely yarn and I like the pattern but I’m not convinced that there will be enough yarn to make a shawl worth wearing. For now, I’m just knitting (and knitting).

Oh, and while I was visiting Reno we went to Jimmy Beans Wool and I bought some yarn, of course.

I talked myself out of buying a Namaste wallet, though, so one ball of sock yarn shows restraint!

did you ever…

Did you ever start a top-down sweater and get about 7 inches into the knitting of it before you bothered to check if a normal human neck would fit into the neckhole and then discover the answer is a big fat no and have to rip it all back?

Me either…

NaBloPoMo Day 14: why I shouldn’t be too clever

I took Niels to see Megamind today. The review in the paper was not good. (Yes, I still get the paper, shush.) I decided that just in case I was miserable, I should take some knitting with me so the time shouldn’t be a total loss. I took my niece’s sweater with me since that’s just flat stockinette with a seed stitch border.

Simple, right? Maybe.

First the tail from the cast-on got tangled with the working yarn. I managed to untangle it in the dark (without even cheating and using my cell phone for light) and I managed to knit a few rows after the popcorn had been finished. I was very pleased with myself since this was the first time I knit in a dark movie theater.

When the movie was over I was the last person to leave the theater and walked out to find a trashcan for our popcorn bag. I saw a line from the door in the corner of my eye but thought it was light from the movie. I don’t know how far I would have gone without realizing what I was doing because a theater employee said, “Ma’am, you’re trailing a string, and it goes back into the theater.” (We will ignore for the moment that he called me “Ma’am”. That is my lot in life these days, I suppose.) Niels ran back in and retrieved my ball of yarn and I wound it back up feeling slightly less pleased with myself.

At least I didn’t lose my Signature needles in the theater somehow. That would have been a real tragedy.

NaBloPoMo Day 12: let’s not talk about the sock

I wasn’t sure what size needles I used to cast on for the wedge sock, but they “seemed” right.

Lesson 1: don’t go by how things “seem” in knitting.

They were not right. They are 2.5mm, or US size 1.5. Sounds small, right? Not small enough. I was getting 7 sts/in when I needed to be getting 8. Plus, the stitches were big and open, which is not good for a sock that is supposed to hug your foot. I ripped back and cast-on again with size 2.25 mm, or US size 1. Let’s hope that works better.

Now let’s not talk about the sock anymore.

N, my older son, had a day off from school for a Staff Development Day and it wasn’t my work day at S’s preschool so I decided to take them on a field trip to the California Academy of the Sciences. We bought a membership there in April and I feel like it’s not worth buying unless we use it. It was a fun day, in spite of it being more crowded there than I expected.

We saw Moon Jellies.

And, of course, visited the living roof.

You certainly can’t argue with the view up there.

it’s all seasons cotton all the time around here

You saw that I got All Seasons Cotton for my birthday and I have been knitting Manon in All Seasons Cotton. Since I finished the knitting portion of Manon I cast on for another sweater for Niels in All Seasons Cotton. It's a cream and green striped cabled sweater with a hood and a kangaroo pocket. That's a lot of knitting. Good thing he's relatively small, and I love him lots. The back is coming along nicely. I think I need three more stripes before I'm ready to shape the underarms.

stripes and cables in progress

I've been sort of completely ignoring Manon. I sewed in the first sleeve and it stinks. I need to take it out and redo it. I think I need to practice more on my sewing in of set-in sleeves. Rogue worked nicely but so far I haven't found it that easy or fun to do. Bah.

manon’s sucky sleeve

I also tried to crochet a hat for my friend's daughter this week and it was enormous! I'm having an off week, other than Niels' sweater, which continues to be lovely, I think.

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some days it doesn’t pay to knit

I was trying to convince myself that since I finally came out of the knitting black hole with the body (I swear it was 16 inches forever and then jumped to 20 inches), that I could finish Erik's sweater by Thursday, our anniversary. To that end, I took the three pieces of it to BobaKnit this afternoon, prepared to join them and start decreasing for the yoke. On the plus side, I did actually manage to join them and begin the decreases. On the minus side…

d’oh!

I know, you're looking at it wondering what the problem is, right? I'll give you a hint, look at the decreases on the sleeves. Yes, they are both facing the same direction, to the left. Now look at your arms, do your thumbs both face left? I thought not.

We decided that it must be Janice's fault for not noticing that I was doing it, since she has an eye for detail. Oh, and she left early, so we all got to blame her. It's good to have a scapegoat.

Now, if you need me, I'll be on the couch, disconnecting the sleeves and trying to at least reconnect them tonight so that I will have made some progress on this sweater tonight.

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the heelless footie

Here's the heelless footie picture, thanks to Jill! Um, the picture is thanks to Jill, it was certainly not her fault that I was foolish enough to do the i-cord bind off before actually knitting the heel. Actually, she was the one who opened the bottle of Pinot Noir that I drank, so maybe it is her fault, in a weird way.

look ma, no heel!

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bombshell is on time out

I think my Bombshell tee is another dud. Before we went on vacation last week, I had finished the knitting and just the weaving of ends and the sewing of the very short arm seams was needed. I took it with me to BobaKnit today so that I would have someone to talk to while I was doing the dreaded weaving. First, I sewed up the arm seams and that was fine. Then I started to try to figure out how to weave in the ends with the Bamboozle. The yarn is so slippery and stretchy that I didn't think just weaving it would work. I had done the "weave as you go" thing in the garment and when I put it on at one point to show Mary how it looked she noticed that the woven end was pulling on the bust. Also, the cast off edge is too tight. And, I somehow missed the working  yarn for two stitches one row before the seed stitch edging.

What on earth is going on?

I can't decide if the fault here is with the pattern, the yarn, the combination of the two or just me. In my complete and utter insanity, I am tempted to set this one aside and knit one in All Seasons Cotton and see if that yarn would work better. It worked very well for my Rogue, a sweater designed in wool as well.

I'm nuts. NUTS.

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