Progress!

I have only one sleeve remaining to be sewn in on my Hey, Teach!

OTOH, some of you know that sewing in sleeves is my least favorite part of knitting (I love mattress stitch, but sleeves are hard -- no matter how many times I count stitches and work the math so it'll go in evenly, somehow there's always more stitches on one side than I had counted). So it could take a few more days!

I also think I'm going to reknit the buttonhole band, which came out WAY looser than the button band. Unfortunately the whole back of the sweater is also more tightly knit than the front, but I think that'll block out. Or it'll just look slightly shorter in back. I'm not a perfectionist, just a pragmatist ;-)

I love this already (I've been trying it on as I go), but I wish the ribbing in the middle drew it in more. It makes me look more like a refrigerator with a head than my already more-than-chance resemblance. Middle age has left me without pretensions to a waist, and though I've lost some weight recently (lots left to go), I still have a thicker waist than I used to at the weight I'm at now, if that sentence parses. So having a sweater that sort of flies out widely right under the bust is perhaps less than ideal. I still love it, but some internal elastic may be beneficial.

Oh! I also finished a second pair (smaller size) of mittens from the pink monster yarn.



I can't decide whether they should go to Carson or go to Afghans for Afghans.

Duh...

My "Hey, Teach!" is coming along nicely...

... except for one little thing. I seamed up the right side (left side of the photo), and then I took a closer look at the shoulder:

Whoopsie! Yep, folks, that would be a twist. Almost a Möbius shoulder. Not exactly the world's most useful style (though it can be done on purpose, and does look lovely in an evening gown), and, at any rate, not what I was looking for in a sweater :-) Tee hee.

It's easy to fix, though. I closed the shoulder with a three-needle bindoff, so it'd be fastest to undo that and redo it rather than redo the seam.

What are you guys up to? I'm all ready for Halloween!

In a hurry

Afghans for Afghans has an emergency call for mittens, socks etc for 7-14 year olds! The trick is that they need them fast. They have a shipment going out in a week or two — they don't have the final date yet but close to end of October is the most likely time. So if you have a spare ball of wool (wool only!) in your stash, please consider knitting up a fast pair of mittens or socks to send. There's info at those links with the address, etc.

I used it as an excuse to cast on, even though I'm making great progress on Rob's gansey and on my Hey, Teach! I had a ball of pink Araucania Magallanes burning up in my stash, and I bet some pre-teen girl would go crazy for a pair of mittens in these. So here I go. Shouldn't take more than a few days and I can pop these in the mail.
To encourage you to at least check out A4A, I'm holding a contest. Just leave a comment on this post (you don't even have to commit to knit anything) and I'll enter you — drawing on Friday morning for this booklet that I got with a copy of the British magazine Knitting:

New and old...

I really do get itchy to cast on new things, hence the "Hey, Teach!". But cotton is hard on the hands, and my carpal tunnel's been yelling at me, so I needed something wool to trade off with. Rob's feeling cold lately (he's dieting), so I figured I'd haul out his felted Old Way Gansey and work on that.


The brown's actually much deeper than that, but I can't get it to photograph properly. At least you can see the lovely pattern here. It's going well (middle body is done, both sides; nearly done with the upper back, and then I'll finish the upper front and start the sleeves) but it's scarily huge. That, of course, is because it's due to be partially felted and this yarn shrinks a lot when felted (according to my swatch, anyway). But it makes me very nervous. And of course I'm also nervous I'll over-felt it and turn it into cardboard. It's so lovely and soft right now. But at the moment, so long it'd cover his butt. Not a manly look.

"Hey, Teach!" is not forgotten, though. I finished the back:
and started the left front. It's such a fun knit.

And to top it off, I finally bought buttons for Ysolda's Tiny Shoes. Sadly, these Shoes are now far too small for the baby for whom they were knit -- and may have always been, they really are preemie sized -- so I'll hold onto them until there's an appropriate neonate on the horizon. They're awfully hard to photograph so I tried stuffing them with napkins (serviettes for you UK and AU types):

Getting well means... less time?

It does seem like somehow I have even less time to blog since I got well, but I think that's because I'm putting so many other things back in my life at the same time!

I am knitting, though perhaps not as much as I was before because I'm not just sitting around every evening -- so that is good and bad :-) No regrets about getting well, though.

Thanks for the comments on ripping the star blanket. I totally agree and I don't really mind ripping it. In a way, I hoped everyone would say 'rip' because I was not at all happy with it. I'm a process knitter and I'm rollin' with it.

I am almost done with this hedgie -- I haven't photographed it in a while but I'm sewing on the eyes now.



And I started a "Hey, Teach!" on the 19th. I know I've got a lot of in-progress projects, but I wanted one that I could work on while chatting with friends and watching TV. The lace pattern on "Hey, Teach!" is pretty easily followed just by reading your knitting, and there's lots of stockinette. I'm really enjoying the knit, even though I'm using cotton and it does stiffen the hands. It's shocking just how many people on Ravelry are knitting or have knit this, but it's no surprise -- it's really a fun knit. No idea how it will look on me and I don't care -- if it doesn't suit me, I'll find someone who likes it!

What're you up to with your fall knitting?

Ok, tell me REALLY.

BTW, I realized that of course the reason I didn't take a picture of the eyes-on-butt hedgie was that I didn't have a working camera.

Dude. I am a little slow sometimes.

Okay, so here's the story: I fixed the star on the star baby blanket by dropping down and adding the extra stitch.

And then I found that WAY on the other side of the blanket... I had a star with one too many stitches.

I dropped down and fixed that too. But I think they both look like doodoo. And there's about 2 1/2 feet of knitting in between them:




I am really inclined to rip back and redo the stockinette at this point. I just don't think this will block out. What do you think?

Hedgies

There are so many things to blog about after not having a camera for a while! I think I'll try to do them one at a time...

As you know, I recently knit Ysolda's "Smith". Now you can see him (or her):



At first, like at least one other person, I thought I was knitting it front to back, and couldn't figure out why the spikes were going the wrong direction. Then, I thought I'd knit the eyes on midway through, and I knit them on the butt!

I really wish I'd taken a picture of that. It makes me laugh just typing it.

I had trouble with the French knot eyes, because it's been years since I've done embroidery and at first I made too many wraps, and the eyes looked like caterpillars hanging off the poor fellow's face. Fortunately I then looked it up online, realized my mistake, and redid them.

Whew.

Got the camera!

It's late, no time to really post right now. But the camera is awesome.

I'll be back soon!

My camera died, and it seems impossible to post a reasonable blog entry without photos. Since I spoke to you last, I've knitted one of Ysolda's wonderful hedgehogs, and fixed the problem I was having with the star blanket. I did end up dropping only two stiches all the way back, restoring the missing yo, and crocheting back up the three correct stitches. It's super-tight over that area, despite my yanking the knitted fabric around a bunch to try to even it out, but hopefully blocking will help (we'll see — it's a superwash wool, Lanett Superwash).

I also knitted part of the second glove, accidentally placed the pinkie finger in the wrong place, pulled it out, fixed it, and started on the ring finger :-)

I've ordered myself a Canon PowerShot SD780 Digital Elph, a camera that I've wanted for a while now. Aside from good Consumer Reports ratings, it boasts excellent low-light photography (ASA 1600 instead of the 400 of most digital subcompacts) and it has an optical viewfinder in addition to the screen, which is helpful in bright sunlight. I find that most of my knitting photos get taken indoors and I don't like to use flash, so the 1600 is good, and many of my people photos are outdoors in bright sunlight, where the optical viewfinder will help. I was going to wait a bit longer to buy a new camera, but the death of the old one pushed this up a bit. It should arrive next Monday.. and my posts will become more interesting again :-)

Glove love!

I think I've fallen in love with knitting gloves. Even more fun than socks! Fast, so you get that instant gratification thing. And so clever. I'm making the gloves from the 'red section' of the latest Vogue Knitting. I think they look even better in the sheeny grey of Sundara's "Lenten Rose" than they did in the mag in red:



The puppeteer effect is because I, personally, have very short fingers and I, personally, live in San Diego, where gloves are rarely required. So these are going to end up as gifts for someone who lives a bit more north, and has more normal-sized hands. I knit them with slightly long fingers, and I'm going to ask a local friend with a normal hand size to try them on; then I'll adjust the fingers as needed before sending them off.

These are really satisfying to knit (I'm partway through glove #2), and I heartily recommend the pattern. This issue of VK, as I mentioned, and the previous one both have things I'd want to knit, which is really, really weird. BTW the Vogue Knitting site has a video preview of this issue in case you want to see if you want to bother buying it.

Note that I haven't fixed my missing-stitch star yet. I am resolutely ignoring it. Don't worry, I'll fix it eventually. But glove love has me fixated for the moment.