Really it's better to knit in the summertime

I know that sounds crazy — after all, in the winter it's cold (well, mostly cold), and we want warm things, and it feels good to have wool in our hands, right?

Bear with me.

As you can see, I have my little Ravelry ticker-tapes in the margin, now, and they show that I have a lot of projects sitting between 80 and 95%. And mostly this means there is some sort of a finishing thing left to do — generally a finishing thing that I dislike. As you know, I love mattress stitch — that's not the problem. No, usually it's some sort of sewing. Like Kitchener, which accounts for two of the UFOs. And I'm starting to fear that Kiera's sweater will have a similar problem because of sewing up the picot hem — I tried it last weekend, completely mucked up the first 4" (which took about 45 minutes) and will have to try again with more alcohol, or something.

And here's why it's better to knit — or at least to finish things — in summer. A week ago Sunday we had unseasonable weather, about 80°F and sunny and gorgeous (it's still like that this Sunday, too). The cat luxuriated in the backyard all day, rolling and rolling in the warm dust. And in the nice bright light, feeling calm and not cold, fingers supple and not aching, I sat down and actually finished something — that Green Summer T, originally intended for my niece, which only wanted Kitchenering on ONE UNDERARM.

Since August.

Okay, so the other requirement for me to Kitchener is peace and quiet and solitude, and to get all those plus a sunny, gorgeous weekend day, I had to wait until January. Sadly I think this may mean the T-shirt doesn't fit Carson, and will have to find another little girl. We'll see when she tries it on....

Clearly I'm going to have to time my projects better.

Justification #1.. er.. maybe #24 or so... of 2009

I'm really great at justifying things. For anything I want to do, basically, I can come up with a reason why it actually has to be done, and done now.

This is, for example, how I somehow ended up lazily pasting stamp hinges on stamps, printing out pages for them from Stamp Albums Web (costs money to join, but cheaper than buying lots of stamp albums), and mounting them on printed-out custom pages today instead of working on Grasslimb, which is late as usual. After all, the stamps I'd been tearing off envelopes and saving had really piled up, and... never mind that the pile was only about 2" x 3".

So I wear boring brown or black socks to work, most recently procured from Eddie Bauer because they actually seem to stay up for more than 5 seconds, and though I've bought a lot of brown and black sock yarn, I haven't actually knitted myself any socks out of that, yet.

But on the weekend I wear more colorful socks. And most of my old socks look like the purple pair I wore this morning.

I believe this justifies the need to make myself some brightly colored pairs of socks in 2009.

Not that I've started any of them yet. I'm still clicking along on my small friend's pullover:



and my friend Elinoire's spring cardigan:



I'm also still trying to find spare yarn for Rob's pullover, but so far no one has the right dye lot of Chunky AL. I guess I'll just buy some random dye lot and try to mix it. But I'm far from happy or enthusiastic about the prospect.

Speaking of Rob, he had a tune-up on his Lasik yesterday and all went well; it fixed the slight undercorrection in one eye and he is happy.

Happy New Year!

I haven't been idle. We've had three sets of house guests, and entertained lots of other out-of-town and in-town guests as well. We celebrated Rob's birthday, went to my mom's for Hanukah, had a houseful over for Christmas pizza-making, and threw a New Year's party. I baked holiday cookies, pizza dough and bread. And I even did a little knitting — with mixed results.

I finished all the pieces of Rob's pullover, with a few yards of yarn to spare. But when I sewed in one sleeve and had him try it on, the dratted arms are still about 2" too short. And no, I do not in my wildest dreams have enough yarn left to make them longer. They are also too narrow. (Sorry, I was too disappointed to take a photo. Though it would have been funny. But sad.)

In retrospect I should have made the next size up, because the body is snug (but manageable). But I had more than enough yardage according to the pattern for the size I made, so I think it's one of those "we did our best at calculating yarn use for the other sizes" situations.

I couldn't find anyone who was selling the right dye lot on Ravelry, but I sent a message to one gal who has two skeins of a different lot for sale. Maybe I can alternate rows when I reknit the sleeves and kind of blend it, if it's not too different. The sleeves are so tight they will have to be reknit from the wrist, anyway. Remember how I already knit four sleeves for this sweater? Darn thing is cursed!

So I'm distracting myself. I owe a small friend of mine (who is nearly 3) a purple sweater. I'm making Briar Rose from Knitty, using some Magic Buttons yarn (lovely stuff that I've used in the past for kid's items). Here's a shot of the back:

I started it Dec. 30. I know that's crazy when I had house guests arriving AND a party to throw on Dec. 31, but I wanted something easy to knit while we had company, and it worked. I'm nearly done with the back and 1/4 way up the front!

Edited to add: Okay, I'm very amused by all the guesses about the colored dots above. I'm going to put all the folks who guess in a hat and pick one to win a copy of a new knitting magazine.

Taking shape...

You can see the leaves and vines starting to show up on the Spring Garden Cardi at last:

I think the acupuncture might actually be helping a little. I'm still trying to keep it to a few rows a day until I'm over the flareup. But this is fun to watch.

I realize I should be finishing Rob's pullover and I must admit the reason I haven't yet is I'm SCARED. I'm nearly out of yarn. Now, I realize putting it off isn't going to make me grow more yarn, but I keep hesitating to face the music. However, I'd better finish it before the cold weather quits for the year — after all, I started it before last winter!

A brief Thanksgiving note

This Thanksgiving, just want to say that I am grateful for my blogreaders, perhaps even more so in the last few months as my postings have become sparse. You have stuck by me, always cheer me up in rough times, and share your wisdom, humor and experience generously. You guys are great and I can't wait to get back to blogging more frequently -- reading your blogs and commenting more often, too.

Hugs to you all.

For your entertainment, since I haven't been knitting (I have started acupuncture for the arthritis and nerve damage problems, though), here is a picture of me in 2nd grade. (I had glasses starting at age 4 1/2.) I was 7.

I know, I know. CRAZY quiet.

I haven't posted in ages. The reason is twofold: One, my job has jumped from your standard 40-45 hours/week sort of thing to well over 50. And as you know, I'm still trying to do a bunch of other things in my 'spare' time: mediation training, singing in a band, publishing a literary magazine, and doing Cog Sci research. Oh yeah, and knitting..

Amidst all this, we had a house guest (my aunt) for a few days, and then another (my brother) for a few days, and we helped my mom throw a 70th birthday party for my dad. And we have more house guests arriving for Thanksgiving. Great fun, but not conducive to blogging :-)

Then there's the other bit. Either my arthritis or the nerve damage in my arm (hard to tell) has been acting up this month, so I haven't been doing all that much knitting. The funny thing is that often knitting per se isn't painful, but everyday things like holding the handle of a teacup, or carrying a book, are, making me feel this weird reluctance to do any other 'hand' activities — even if those activities wouldn't hurt.

But the hand/wrist is easing, and I have done SOME knitting. And I'm still trying to finish Madeleine! Most difficult is the choosing of buttons. Here are the four options I was considering.

At first, I really thought I was going to choose the top coral ones here on the right, with the bottom purple ones as my second choice. I didn't like those little cut-lines in the top buttons, but I kept thinking they were the best color match. Of course, that was when I was holding up the buttons to the garment while they were still on their little white cards.

But when I took them off the cards and took these pictures, I realized the first ones weren't the best. I ended up picking the light pink ones on top here on the left. I sewed two on, realized button two was in the wrong position, cut it off again, and put the whole thing in a pile on the kitchen table — oops. I'm not terrifically fond of sewing on buttons. Must take it up again soon, before that baby outgrows the sweater!

I'm also back to working on this pink cardi for a friend of mine. It's made from this lovely, soft Jaeger Roma, which I have to really recommend for the pure heaven of the knitting experience. Plus I think it's going to make a really nice garment.

Thank you so much for the advice!!

Haven't gone to get the buttons nor made the loops for 'em yet, but otherwise it is assembled, blocked and done. And a lot bigger than I had anticipated, as always — I'm infamous for making 6-month size clothing that is really closer to 18-month size. But wow! I'm so happy with it! And I couldn't have done it without you.



Here's a closeup of the neckline. Knittah and ampliflyer suggested picking up the stitches and either purling back or doing ribbing as an edging. What I did was pick up 1:1 stitches with a size 2 needle, knit 1x1 ribbing for a few rows, and THEN did 4-stitch i-cord. It still curled a little but blocked out great!

Here's a closeup of the bottom edge, where I used twistle's recommendation to knit a kind of gradual zigzag of stockinette into garter. This still flipped (and as you may be able to see, I didn't do a perfect job of knitting this zigzag), but it didn't flip as much or as hard, and a good blocking fixed it. Of course when it's washed by the recipient and probably hung to dry, I don't know what will happen, but I think it'll still keep the baby warm!

Thanks again for all the help. I'll hope to have a finished piece to show you in a few more days.

I got nothin' — so you get somethin'

I have done zero knitting this week owing to Jewish holidays, the Henry Rollins show (w00t!), and other nonsense — like going to see Roger Reynolds' Sanctuary Project tonight at the Salk Institute, which should be interesting.

SO! Make a comment and tell me this: what would you do if you unexpectedly had an afternoon off work — or, if you're retired, an extra 4 hours in your week — but no money to spend on it?

I'll draw a random comment from all those received by 6 p.m. PDT on Tuesday night, and the winner will get my Spring/Summer 2008 copy of knit.1, featuring "natural knits", some cute amigurumi animals, and other stuff. I've read it a few times now, but don't want to keep it.

The photo below is from our road trip this past summer. We went to Salt Lake City, and saw this unusual sculpture on a city street near the Tabernacle.

Not the achievement queen this week

Partly it's the Jewish holidays, partly it's a flareup of some hand/arm problems, but mostly I think I'm spending way too much time surfing the Web and not enough time knitting.

I appreciated all the suggestions on the curling edges. I'm trying them and we'll see what happens. I want to get this matinee coat done SOON before the baby is too big for it!

Speaking of which, I finished (finally!) sewing the buttons on Meghan's cardigan:

Yep, I went with the gold ones in the end. A tough call, partly made because of the ease of buttoning these. It'll be interesting to see, when I make a blue one of these with the same yarn, how the wooden buttons look on it. I think they'll both be nice.

I also made myself a washcloth using Tunisian honeycomb stitch. I make a couple of these a year, because I use them twice a day and they do wear out. Just standard dishcloth (Lily Sugar 'n' Cream, in this case) cotton and a size G Tunisian hook.



I love honeycomb stitch. Tunisian fabric is thick and stiff, and with the honeycomb texture it makes a wonderful scrubby washcloth. Tunisian crochet, especially with cotton, is kind of hard on the wrists, though, so I'm glad it's done.

Aarrrgh.

Garter-stitch bottom edge?
Flips up.
i-cord inner band?
Curls in (you can't even see it in this picture, it's so curled. It's on the right edge here).

Advice? I know there's a couple of ways to knit applied i-cord. I used the way where the stitch you grab from the knitted garment is actually knit together with the last i-cord stitch. I know you can also pick up a loop of working yarn with that stitch and then do the k2tog, which might change the way it lies. You can also do it from the back (but I think that looks sloppy, and it flips to the front). There might be other hints...

Baargh. This is SO close.