rant, rave & squaredance: addi-led

bottom's up...again

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 21:33:18 GMT

I finished my second bottom's up hat, in Rowan's Summer Tweed this time around--and this one even fits me. I made one out of Classic Elite's Flash specifically for the March, but it was too big, so I gave it to A. (see picture below--she's on the far left, also the only one with a hat). I had to do a lot of futzing to get the fit right, and I still don't like the brim, so one day, if I get un-lazy, I'll redo it. Before Bonne-Marie came out with this pattern, and after the sartorial disaster that was the Bucket o' Chic (for me, at least--I donated that hat to a charity auction and the person who bought it loves it), I thought about making up my own pattern, but I was too lazy and never got around to it. Now I've had to rework BUP enough that I might as well have done it myself the first time.in the first place.

I'm a mess with my little China Girl

Sun, 28 Mar 2004 23:29:27 GMT

Another reason (if you needed one) to get rid of Bush: He steadfastly refuses to do anything about human rights abuses in China. Of course, if the man could cut off our internet access, he probably would. I feel as if I will never be done with my CG, partly because I may never find buttons. But really, she's just taking forever to finish. (Forgive me, but I feel compelled to say: just like a woman.) But she'll be real purty when all's said and done...if all's sewed and done.

knitter's block

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 19:37:37 GMT

So I finally got around to blocking China Girl. Of course, I did have to re-knit one of the sleeves--I didn't like the pattern for the first one, so I tweaked the second one and had to redo #1. And last night I spent much, much too much time deciding how I wanted to bind-off the red edges on all of pieces of the sweater. Knit two rows then bind off knitwise? Purlwise? Knit one row, purl one, then bind off knit- or purlwise? I finally settled on a kitchener stitch bind-off. I might rip off the knit/purl/purlwise bind-off I did at the bottom of the back if I get really tetchy about it. Just how long do I want to spend on this, anyway? But I do hate blocking. And blocking something with Lycra is almost--but not entirely--meaningless.

Look, I knitted California!

always such a disappointment

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 20:48:30 GMT

Spring Break, that is... I would put up pictures of China Girl, but at this point she's just curled-up panels of black. The falaise is rather tight with itself. Several weeks ago I ordered some of the discontinued colors from Rowan, and since Carolyn told me she usually waits a long time for her orders, I was prepared to wait. But the order showed up on my credit card statement right off, yet I waited...and waited...and waited. So this week I called them and they had no record of my purchase right offhand. After a little digging, come to find out that my order went to someone else. Obviously, that person isn't about to return the yarn, or she would've done so already, since it shipped three weeks ago. Which is terribly rude of her, I think--I mean, if she's a customer, she knows how much that stuff costs, and even I, with my questionable morals, wouldn't keep $70 worth of merch that isn't mine. People do it all of the time, though. Twice I've ordered stuff that got delivered to the wrong house (very nearby houses), and neither time did the people do anything about it--like cross the f***ing street or walk a few hundred yards. Plus, both times I had to go through lots of pain-in-the-ass stuff with the vendor and the shipping company. Airborne is very helpful; UPS not so much. Airborne at least delivered to the right address on the east part of the street, rather than the west (which was easy to do on a street that's three blocks long, if you don't know the street), while the UPS guy apparently couldn't read numbers and just dropped the box off wherever. Oh, and both times this happened it was with gifts. You know, it's one thing to steal from a large corporation, but it's completely something else to rip off some random person who's got no relation to your life whatsoever. And these people probably didn't think what they were doing was wrong. Maybe they thought of it like the coke bottle in The Gods Must Be Crazy, and decided to form a cargo cult. Oy.

for my next trick

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 17:54:43 GMT

I will make this lovely top from Rebecca #26. I'm using Falaise, but since it doesn't come in a nice red or gold, I don't have anything for the trim yet--I just did a provisional cast-on. So, if you know of a yarn that's similar to Falaise and comes in lovely colors, let me know.

Now, remind me again why we bother to have primaries.

2004: my accomplishments thus far

Sat, 28 Feb 2004 20:44:14 GMT

First project, from the Winter 01/02 Vogue, done up in a cone of mohair from Webs (this has to be the cheapest sweater I've ever made, and I thank my lucky stars that I had enough yarn to finish it--things were looking grim for a while, there):

The second project is a hat for my friend's new baby. She had him five weeks early, and I found out about it the day I went shopping for hat yarn for him--very rude, I thought. So, this is his hat, courtesy of Opal sock yarn:

Of course, by the time I send it, he'll probably have outgrown it.

for enquiring minds (well, one mind, anyway)

Sat, 31 Jan 2004 18:14:02 GMT

Maggi, this is the jacket:

From Rebecca Magazine's free online patterns. My jacket looks very little like this one, eh? For example, this one looks boxy, but the pattern is nicely shaped. I used Filatura di Crosa Blues, which I got on the cheap in Canada three Christmases ago--can't get it any longer. The trim is Filtes Ker, from this Christmas, purchased at the mind-boggling Romni Wools because I wasn't sure I'd have enough Blues to finish the jacket. I wish I had an entire jacket made of Ker.

beseiged by growing tapoles

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 00:31:15 GMT

Last night I had to do something quite painful. I'm making this lovely mohair sweater and I've just been flying along on the front piece (here comes hubris), so I bound-off for the armholes, counted the stitches, and oops! Here's one sweater where the front isn't knitted with the same decreases as the back. So I frogged about 13". I probably could have made a work-around, but I didn't. And frogging that much mohair takes forever. I don't care what Knitty says, frogging lacked its "true, joyous nature" this time around, even though I didn't have to keep track of anything. Alas. On the brighter side, here are some pictures of Fuzz, my last FO of 2003:

Can't have a picture without Sam and his devil eyes in it. (If I'm standing still, he wants to stand next to me, is the thing.)

I was debating as to whether I should add buttons or a zipper, but after a few consultations, decided to keep it closure-free. I know, lots of people can't live without closure, but I'm willing to try.

a real conversation from my first day of school

Thu, 08 Jan 2004 15:44:23 GMT

me: Did you knit that sweater yourself?

unsuspecting victim: Yes.

me: Did you use noro?

u.v.: Yes.

me: Debbie Bliss pattern?

u.v.: Yes. (waits a beat.) Are you a knitter?

me: Mwahahaha!

hello, Dolly

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 21:34:57 GMT

Here's Dolly in her angora tam (she bought the scarf from me, too--I made it last year with a skein of Portrait, but I've never worn it).

Angora is very fuzzy, but it gets even fuzzier if you use a blowdryer on it after you block it. I felt imminently allergic while working with it.

She just thinks I'm the most wonderful person. The first time I went over to see her (she runs a B&B with her husband, out of a huge old Victorian crammed with stuff) she kept asking if my mom knows how special I am. "Yeah, she had to put me on the short bus every morning..."

Actually, for a long time I did think that other people once thought I was retarded, because I remember being taken out of first grade once a week for some kind of tutoring, which mostly involved playing games of some kind and walking on Romper Stompers. Later, when I asked my mom about it, she said I was being tutored for having poor coordination, which I find hysterical. Plus, it didn't work; I'm still prone to being grabbed by sidewalk trolls. (Besides, what help would Romper Stompers be, really?)

warm hands and hellhounds

Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:31:59 GMT

I have pictures!

These are quite cozy and useful. I'm wearing them now.

Hear no evil...

I made these a couple of years ago, out of Regia sock yarn. The actual pattern called for using 20 different colors of Paternayan and was just crazy.

gobbledygook

Sat, 06 Dec 2003 22:11:45 GMT

The holiday chewed me up and only just spit me out as something vaguely humanoid today. I was all excited because I felt like going to the gym, but I promised my students I'd read rough drafts of their final papers this afternoon and didn't finish in time (gym closes 6pm). Last time I went I started to feel ill, and then the next day I became really, really sick. That was early in Oct.

On Weds. I had an interview for a Grad. Asst. position running a mentorship program for college women, and the first questions was "What does the term 'women's empowerment' mean to you?" This was followed closely by "What is the greatest challenge facing women today?" (The international price-fixing tampon cartel.) Then we moved into questions like "How would you describe your leadership style?" and "How would you go about building a team with people from diverse backgrounds?" Aside from being completely unable to answer questions like that, I am qualified for the position, and I was wearing my new long, plum-velvet blazer, which is so awesome I should've been hired for it alone. Afterwards, I stood next to Sharon Lawrence waiting for the light to turn. She's very short. Actors are always short in person. Of course, I suppose she'd have to be, to get with Dennis Franz.

Thursday I finished my Noro gloves, which I'll post pictures of soon. I decided just to make a thumb hole, so they can double as arm-warmers only. So, yes, they're tubes with a hole in them. The disappointing thing is that these skeins of Noro have really pretty purples in them, but that color is only on the outer end of the skein, so none of it made it onto my gloves. I'm thinking of giving a pair to L. for the holiday, though, so I could be evil about it...

opening a can of (silk) worms

Thu, 20 Nov 2003 17:31:16 GMT

Thanks to the new Interweave Knits, I've got a hankering to make a pair of long-cuffed fingerless (absolutely no fingers, just thumbs) gloves, with a long--what's it called? Shaft? Arm?--anyway, long thing at the opposite end of the glove to keep my arms warm. I am always cold. Always. I'm pretty sure I'm an ectotherm, because I get overheated when I'm outside in the summer, but the minute I'm in a/c, I'm shivering. And I spend the winter looking like a street person, I've got so many layers--and that's just around the house.

I've got these four skeins of Noro Silk Garden that my mom bought for me when I first started knitting and we went to this great yarn shop while I was at home. They seemed so expensive--$10.99 each!--so she treated me. (Little did I realize that one day I would spend $25 on a single skein of yarn. Heh.) After about a year I bought a book of Debbie Bliss/Noro patterns, but I only have enough to make a bag. Then I started thinking legwarmers. Now, gloves, and maybe short legwarmers with the rest of it. I mean, why hold onto it forever, right? I can't make a sweater with four skeins.

Speaking of not enough yarn, I will probably have not-quite-enough for Fuzz, so I'm thinking of making the collar and button band a contrasting color. My LYS has a yarn that's similar enough in composition to pull it off. The button band is supposed to be knit in-line, but I was thinking of not doing that anyway, because it would be a pain to keep track of, and I'm incredibly lazy.

So, plumbers come to put in the tub. Tub has a crack in it. From somewhere, a new tub arrives, although I somehow miss this exchange, probably because I've locked myself in a room with a loud dog. Plumbers leave without saying anything to me. Are they finished? I venture into the bedroom. It's...sorta installed. Everything is where it's supposed to be, but the shower walls don't seem to be attached to the tub, there's no shower head, and the shower walls aren't attached to the walls because the walls don't reach that far. Guess I'll wait to see if they're just at lunch or not.

Best of all, the tub looks incredibly flimsy, as if I'll break right through the bottom the first time I stand in it. jaysus.

Dolly and bunny

Sat, 15 Nov 2003 19:41:00 GMT

Yesterday I was at the LYS and overheard this woman asking if anyone who worked there could knit her a hat, and it turns out the woman who usually does that just had an operation on her hand, so she's not knitting anything this year. I spoke up.

The woman in need of the hat, Dolly, wants a white angora tam. Turns out her mother had one that she wore constantly for the last however many years, but when she died recently, Dolly's aunt took the tam and gave it to her cousin, who wasn't even close to Dolly's mother. Dolly was crushed, so she promised herself she'd go get one that's "even fuzzier, and even better, and I'll wear it until I die." So, my question is this: what do I charge her for labor, in addition to the price of the materials? I was thinking $15-20. Which one? Or am I in the wrong range altogether?

Speaking of selling hats, I was worried that my bucket o' leprechaun wouldn't sell at auction last week, which would've been embarrassing and made me feel terrible (the auction was a fundraiser for WXDU, coupled with a concert of local bands--it was our most successful benefit ever). The hat not only sold, but it went to someone I know, who zeroed in on it as the one style of hat that looks good on her (she didn't know that I'd made it). I'm friends with her husband, and he said they're impressed with how nicely it's finished. (Preen, preen.) Although tempted, I didn't ask the amount of the winning bid.

let 'er ripppppppp

Wed, 12 Nov 2003 14:18:03 GMT

I had about eight or nine inches done on my Fuzz Jacket last night when I noticed that I'd been increasing every other row, instead of just moving a marker every other row to count to ten and then increase. In fact, even after I ripped back, I was two stitches over. Since I'd done a cable cast-on that was too tight, and my supply of this yarn is just shy of enough (I'll cross that bridge when I get to it), I frogged the whole thing. This took a good long while, due to the hinky nature of the yarn.

drumroll, please

Mon, 10 Nov 2003 19:53:36 GMT

I should be working on the mod coat, but I'm looking for something easy & portable, so the new project is:

A free pattern from Rebecca Online. I started a swatch for this a while ago, while I was waiting for the mod coat yarn to come in. At 13 sts/inch, I think it should go pretty quickly. I'm using a fuzzy yarn from Filatura di Crosa from my stash--Blues, a discontinued style, which I'm too lazy to take a picture of right now. Bought a bunch on clearance in Canada a couple of years ago.

heap o' yarn

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 21:22:28 GMT

So, what do y'all do when you order one of those huge cones of yarn from Webs? Do you knit right off of it (not very portable), or make smaller balls? And speaking of balls, are yarn winders a frivolous thing to own, since you can always go down to the LYS, or a nice indulgence if you can get a good price?

so finished, I'm eating dried, salty fish

Wed, 05 Nov 2003 19:08:15 GMT

Monday night I only had half of Gypsy left to do--you know, sew on the sleeve, sew the seams, then sew on the buttons and weave in the ends. And although the hour was late, I was too close to the finish line to quit, so I stayed up until 4am (4:30am by the time I read over a student paper; papers are due Thursday and they're desperately sending drafts to me for attention). Once the ends are woven in, the piece starts to look normal--I think I noticed that for the first time; before that, it still just looks like a lump of yarn. I'm very, very pleased with how Gypsy turned out, and I have to say I've had nothing but good come out of my experiences with Classic Elite patterns.

I'm rather fond of the buttons, too:

I found them while I was away, at the Knitting Room in Birmingham, MI. Usually nice buttons are ridiculously expensive, but these were >$1. (Lovely store--drop in if you're ever in the neighborhood. I scored all of the lovely orange pima cotton/tencel Classic Elite yarn you can see in the suitcase while I was there--40% off, no less.)

And in even more finishing news, I found the answer to this question: What does one do with a bucket o'chic that makes one look like a leprechaun? Donate it to a charity auction, that's what. I frogged the top and reworked it, so that even I might be persuaded to wear it if I weren't sick of it.

I've made many hats, and given all but three away: the first one, which I made in a class that got me back into knitting, because I tried to do big diamonds of color without knowing how to do stranding across big blocks (sloppy!); a fuzzy one that I tried to invent as I went along, to look sort of like a Cossack hat, but never finished; and a really nice round hat that I was really excited about. The last one looks lovely, but like all of the other hats I've made for myself, looks hideous on me; however, I like it too much to give it away.

finishing school

Sun, 02 Nov 2003 18:35:03 GMT

I may not have been blogging, but I have been hard at work completing projects. Take a look at Phil and Charity (the scarf for Maggi, lazily named):

I worked on Charity while I was away--she's in a broken rib stitch (yes, I cadged it from my perusal of The Purl Stitch). Charity's eight or nine feet long, so what she lacks in creativity she makes up for in sheer volume.

Phil's collar is still a little wonky, and not all of the stitches evened out, but with a cardigan (or scarf) on top, or in an ill-lit place, who'll know? Blocking: get wet, roll up in towel and stretch to desired measurements, get tired of waiting, throw in dryer.

Next in line for completion: gypsy.

book 'em, danno...

Wed, 15 Oct 2003 19:20:00 GMT

...I made a collar.

That's right, Phil's finished. And as soon as he's blocked and not all wrinkly, I'll post a picture--in other words, after I get back. But at least I accomplished something.

I can't seem to get it together

Sun, 12 Oct 2003 18:08:22 GMT

Phil, that is. Look at him, all wrinkly and stringy...

His collar's all curled up, waiting to be "lightly ironed" and backstitched on, which won't be too hard, but somehow I'm just not there yet. Maybe his stitches will even out if I get him wet and, when he's almost dry, toss him in the dryer for a few minutes. I had to do that with his sleeves (prior to re-knitting them), and they got kind of fluffy and lovely.

Today would've been a perfect Phil-wearing day, too, at 75[infinity]. Poor Phil--I had such high hopes for him. Alas.

Also suffering from my inability to finish, but a different strain on it, is the scarf for Maggi's Art 180 charity auction. My plan was to do a DNA scarf like the ones in the last issue of Interweave Knits. Something like this, with pretty Cascade Yarn:

Lovely, no? But after I got through one rep of the pattern, I decided I wanted to go up a needle size, even though I'd swatched and was on gauge. So I bound-off (wasn't in the mood for amphibians) and started over one size up. Oh, and the second thing is that I wanted to use bamboo needles on this because I'm going out of town and I figure bamboos will get on the plane easier than addis. I get halfway through a pattern rep and decide I want to go even bigger, so I go up two sizes (three up from the original). Then I wasn't sure that would even be good enough for me, and my bamboos only go up to size nines (don't worry, Maggi, you'll still get a scarf out of this...), and what's worse: I haven't had a bit of fun the whole time I've been at this. I don't like doing cables. I've never had an interest in them before, but I liked the pattern, so I thought I should expand my horizons. And this pattern doesn't even have regularly repeating cables...I mean, it does, but there are six or eight variations and I have yet to memorize the symbols. I like to knit smoothly, without having to take a break to look at a pattern every row, so this was stressing me out. I don't mind a repeating pattern, and I don't mind occasionally referring to a pattern, but I don't want to be tied to one. This is why you will never, ever see me doing Fair Isle. I'm a simple girl--so sue me. So good-bye, Watson & Crick. I'll probably do something lacy/loose and more boring, now--there's a pattern in Melanie Falick's Weekend Knitting that's kind of nice, although I can't say much for the rest of the book.

Luckily, I didn't pay much for Melanie's book, because I joined that craft book club to get it--six books for $29 bucks. Melanie, Melanie, little knitted sweater egg cozies? A list of movies with even one glimpse of a knitter? Instructions on how to take a relaxing bath? No knitted cell-phone covers, though--a librarian friend mentioned to me that "if I see another knitted cell-phone cover, I'm going to puke." The only other book I got that wasn't good--that, in fact, really sucked--was a Better Homes & Gardens book that was bundled with the Falick book. Good books I got: Knitting Stitch Bible; Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques; Big Book of Knitting; Folk Bags. Like Christmas in October.

I've had my Phil(dar)

Thu, 09 Oct 2003 18:11:24 GMT

So, making up Phil is taking me forever. First, I had to redo the sleeves because they were too big, because I'd misread the instructions. Then I did them the correct way, and they're still too big, which made attaching them to the body of the sweater festive. (Much frogging.) Now I'm to doing the collar, which has to be done in this strange way that involves ironing and backstitch and more attention than I feel like giving the loathesome thing at this point.

Loathesome? Well, either I've become a terrible knitter, or the Licorne shows every single tiny little variation in stitching, because the sweater is far from smooth. I'm feeling a little traumatized, actually. Maybe I'll knit some nice legwarmers.

block party

Sun, 28 Sep 2003 20:35:58 GMT

I've been blocking Phil(dar) and finishing his sleeves this weekend, so he should be done by the end of the week (hopefully sooner). I'm also blocking gypsy, so she'll finally be finished up. I'm in such a wrap-it-up mood now--I guess it's because the future is somewhat determined, so I can relax a little. And, yes, this is a good thing.

a smooch for the latecomer

Sat, 13 Sep 2003 21:12:25 GMT

Well, I got the urge to knit it, so I picked me up some cheap Cotton-Ease (key word at this point: cheap) and here it is:

As I mentioned to Carolyn, is the kind of top that says "Hi, my name is _____, and this is my rack." In other words, it's a little form-fitting, which is why it's a good thing I decided to rip the whole thing out and go up a size when I was 2/3 finished. Knitting this top took a bit over two weeks, but if I hadn't had so many false starts to begin with, and then the re-knitting, I probably could've made two in that amount of time.

I really liked working with the Cotton-Ease, which is saying a lot, since I'm a total fiber snob.

Today I read an email from the head of our dept., detailing the departure of one of the few younger female professors...Okay, in and of itself, that's not only not a good thing, but also, for our department, an unremarkable thing. However, what really got to me was his signature file: Bruce Springsteen lyrics (identified as such)--and not even from a good song. They seemed to be apropos to the spirit of the email, but who knows--maybe he keeps it for all of his emails. In any case, I was afraid, truly afraid.