Buckle your knitted seat belts, y'all.

OHAI. I've sat down a couple of times to write this post, but then I think nahhh and then toddle off and cast on something else, digging that blogging hole deeper and deeper until I'm pretty sure that there will be at least one project left out of this post.

Really, I feel like I just went on a casting-on bender and now it's the next morning and it's time to fish the keys out of the toilet, screw the arms of my glasses back on, eat some crackers, put on some pants, and head out to try to find the car. (This is just a metaphor.)

Let's see. Okay. I haven't talked about these yet, the Socks = Love. This picture is sucky, but even more sucky is the fact that after I took it, I spent two hours locked out on my balcony in several layers of pajamas and my husband's sneakers when it was 25F. (This is not a metaphor.)


Knit Picks Stroll in Black, 72 sts, size 1 nickel-plated needles. These are taking freaking forever, a fact that's not helped by the fact that I'm knitting pretty tightly and therefore they have some significant negative ease going on, which Husband says he likes, but makes the length downright impossible to eyeball, and I've had to rip out THREE TOES (sock toes, not Husband toes) and I'm still going. The cuff length looks good, too, until he puts them on and then they stretch width-wise and get shorter length-wise. Grr. Note to self, try 80 stitches on the next pair, if you ever finish this pair.

Next: I might have mentioned that I spent a serious amount of time after Christmas giddy at the possibility of casting on any project I wanted and upon sharing my giddy indecision with Husband and him saying that I should cast on whatever I've wanted to knit the longest, I decided to cast on a Hemlock Ring Blanket. I'm not ready to claim that it's what I've wanted to knit the longest, because that would take an archaeological dig and some creative historicism, but three skeins of Cascade Eco in Natural have been in my stash since a WEBS sale, oh, at least three years ago for this project, so it has been marinating for plenty of time.

So then I spent about seven hours (I exaggerate) winding the ball, knit 25 rows, and then haven't come back to it. I also, while photographing this project, spent an hour (I do not exaggerate) getting a back window of the apartment cracked about 4 inches, then generally making a public spectacle of myself, straining various muscles and using distinctly unladylike language while perched on the ledge of the window before realizing that there were locks preventing it from opening any further. I bruised both of my palms and also got a wicked splinter. I didn't cry, though, mostly because I was afraid the tears would freeze.


So then I got a hankering for a pair of socks on the needles. Next up in my sock queue was a pair of Springgrass socks made from Sunshine Yarn Soft Sock in the Grassroots Overdye colorway. It's been in my stash forever, and when I saw the Springgrass pattern (also forever ago), I immediately planned that pattern and yarn would go together. So I balled the yarn, called up the pattern on Ravelry, and hit a roadblock: it was toe-up and I wanted to knit cuff-down. Well, whatever, I'll just knit it backwards. That's worked before. But it had taken me a bit to even figure out that it was toe-up and not cuff-down, and then the pattern was not charted, just directions. Well, whatever, I'll just follow the written directions, that's worked before. La la la. Knitting knitting knitting. After half a repeat it was clear that the pattern didn't look great with the level of variegation in the yarn, and also the yarn seemed to be a little too thin for it and would therefore yield too small of a sock. So I frogged, decided to go with about 5 rows of garter for the top of the cuff, added a purl stitch here and there, and tried again.

Got about a repeat and a half in when I decided that that wasn't working and put it aside. I went looking for a sock pattern that called for a higher cast-on number so I could go down a needle size. I also wanted to go with the garter at the top edge because I thought it looked smashing, but I ended up chucking that plan and casting on for the larger size of Pyroclastic, which is in the latest issue of Knitty.

And get this: I decided to use size 00s.

OOOOOOOh.


Isn't that a pretty picture? It'd better be, because the 00s let me down - I was hoping I could use one to pick the lock that automatically locks when the balcony door closes* but that turned out to be a pipe dream. Spending several hours contemplating the possibility that I would freeze to death if I had to spend the night out there, and calculating the odds that I could get a stranger to help me escape from my second-floor balcony/fire escape/but really fire cage, considering that the bottom of it was essentially a locked metal box, and cursing myself for figuring out that it is indeed possible to lock oneself on the balcony on the one weekend in two years that my husband was out of town for three days and not, say, sitting five feet from the balcony door -- all of those things were a small price to pay to prove that it is actually quite difficult to break into our apartment. Which it is. Well, it got a little easier when I did what it became clear was necessary and put a small gardening shovel through one of the panes and reached in to unlock that* lock. But then it got a lot harder, because with the big hole in the glass next to one of the locks, we figured we should fortify, and oh did we fortify.

Was I content with these new WsIP? I was not.

I made a shawl! The 10 Shawls in 2010 group is... making 10 shawls in 2010, and I got very excited to join them.



Really excited!



So! Very! Excited!


Well, okay, not that excited, I just wanted to show you those pictures. It's done, there was mis-counting and frogging and happy coincidences and all of the chicanery that is usually involved in me trying to knit things, but it's in the past and on the rav page and I prefer to leave it there.

Am I done? Sigh. I am not done.

I've also cast on for the Owlmittens by SpillyJane, which I'm loving and are awesome and I've only marginally screwed up so far, but I plan on missing the directions for the thumb soon and then having to frog about 15 rounds. Also, I haven't photographed them because Husband is back and there's no point in locking myself on the balcony again.

Alas, despite the four substantial new projects and four or so others that have been on the needles for awhile, there was still a small danger that I would finish something else this decade, so I went ahead and cast on for Juno Regina in Knit Picks Gloss Lace, the Malachite colorway. The plan for that, which I originally thought was genius, was to get it to the point where I could just midlessly knit the middle section on the train to and from Job-ish Thing. Instead, it has halted progress on everything else and had me seriously reconsidering my fitness for lace anything.

I am bad at lace. I miss yarn overs like it's my $80,000/year job, and can't read lace for shekels. There was some early talk in the group of non-lace shawls being not as challenging and therefore not as worthy of counting towards the 10 shawls, but it was eventually decided that any object that was significantly shawl-ish should count. Thank goodness, because while I've gotten to be a pretty proficient knitter and can generally turn out FOs to the approximate specifications of the patterns, I get through lace shawls on a combination of rage-fueled adrenaline, tenacity, and all my free time. And yes, of course I can see the benefit of challenging myself, but sometimes the rest of my life proves remarkably adroit at challenging me, and it's those times that a simple stitch pattern - or even, horrors, stockinette - is what I really need.

I can't think of anything else I've cast on. Let's get out while we can, shall we?

*dumb.

Back to it!

I thought I could finally sit down and write about the explosion of cast-ons that seem to have happened since 1/1, but it occurs to me that I'm not quite done with Christmas. Because, you see, my awesome family has given me many knitting-related gifts.

This is a straight needle organizer from my husband:



And here it is full of needles:



Very nice, huh? Pretty and practical. Much better than the jumble of needles held together with rubber bands I'd stuffed in a tupperware container. Then some of the rubber bands break down and leave sticky gunk on the needles, which are now no longer grouped together and then you have to take a needle sizer and go through everything again. No more! I might go through and add size numbers to particular pockets, once I figure out which slot should be for which needles.


Next, CotLin in Kohlrabi:



I'd been hoping to use this for Hey, Teach! for a long time, even though I think that pattern calls for worsted and this is a DK. Then Kohlrabi vanished, and I was sad. Then it reappeared as a Last Chance color, and my mom grabbed it for me. Yay! What a nice color.


Finally, this:



This is a gift from my brother, P. and his girlfriend. Yarn, yay! But it's more than just yarn; it's yarn from local alpacas and llamas. AWESOME. 10 oz, 600 yds. I've got to find something spectacular to do with it.

Matey Christmas, everyone!

My Christmas visit home involved a lot more visiting someone in the hospital than I'd initially banked on (which was actually none). Luckily, sitting in a hospital room yields a large amount of knitting time.

My theme of untenably-large gauge, plus foolish continued refusal to swatch or even measure gauge, continued to bite me in the ass this Christmas.

I planned to make for the males in my family (a father and two brothers) colorwork hats out of Telemark. The first hat I whipped out over about a weekend, not counting some subway knitting of the lining.

It came out pretty large (SURPRISE), so I decided that that one would go to my Dad, whom it would be most likely to fit.

Yarn: Telemark
Pattern: Ufserud
Mods: Took out one 10-row repeat and left off most of the bottom stripes.

Here is a positively terrible picture of it:



It does actually fit okay.

Second, I decided to make each of my brothers a We Call Them Pirates hat. Unfortunately, I made this decision after I'd knit the Charcoal and one of the Cream skeins into most of another Ufserud hat. Turns out sitting in a hospital room is also an excellent place to frog.

There was much more frogging of pirate-ness, but I ended up with these two (terribly photographed, and in one case, not yet blocked) hats eventually:



(Cream and Charcoal, pattern knit reading chart correctly)




(Cream and Black, pattern knit reading chart incorrectly)

Lessons learned:

1. Read the directions about which color represents which yarn in the chart before knitting the entire hat.
2. Try to finish gift knitting before the sun starts rising on Christmas morning.
3. I really need to just assume that I should go down a needle size or two with colorwork. Because it only takes three data points to indicate a trend, and I got about 17 data points. Use smaller needles, already, self, jeez.
   

Finally, the Christmas piece de resistance:



Pattern: Fireside Stocking, by Kate Gilbert
Yarn: Knit Picks Palette, held double
Mods: Knit cuff-down instead of toe-up

I started working on this around September, and was done with it before December, I think. I knit it on a 16" size 5 circular, although the pattern might have called for dpns.

Here's a closeup of what I did for the hanger:



The pattern called for a single i-cord, which seemed inadequate to the job of keeping this sucker up, so I braided three i-cords together in the lightest, middle, and darkest colors. It was kind of hard to anchor in the corner of the top. I didn't want it to distort the edge, or stretch weirdly, and it wasn't going to be completely flush with the body of the stocking, even with jamming the sucker through a stitch and then trying to sew it to the inside of the lining. I ended up doing that and then wrapping it tightly a zillion times with a strand of the bare yarn, and I think that actually worked pretty well.

I knew the instant that I saw the pattern however long ago that I would eventually make this for Mom.

Finally, a closeup of one square in the sunshine:



I'm going to go several months without thinking about Christmas 2010.

note:

Removing the extra rather precious rosewood dpn from the plastic bag I was storing WIP in: smart.

Not having any bloody idea whatsoever where I put it to keep it safe: stupid.

How can you knit while holding that crack pipe?

Christmas gift #1: A Selbu Modern for my Mom. Using the palette she got and didn't need for her purse (in pimento) and cream.



I worked dilligently for several weekends, listening to the same Burn Notice episodes over and over again. Would sneak in a round or two in the evenings that I didn't immediately crash into bed on returning home. By the crown shaping rounds, my tension was looking really good - barely any puckering to speak of.

Finished. Off the needles. Thing was... huge.

No! Not huge! Slouchy! Extra hip! It might make up for the beret that I made her last year that was more like a slightly loose beanie.

I had twisted the knits on the 1x1 rib, and used the size needles actually called for, so it stayed on fine. But -- and this is where it gets astonishingly stupid -- I had gone up a needle size for the body because I didn't have the called-for size in a 16" circ, but I did have a size bigger. What's .25mm between friends, right?

You can see where this is going. For a few days, I contemplated the only options I could fathom: felting it or going through every single stitch and pulling it a little bit tighter, ending with a long tail of unneeded yarn, thereby changing the gauge. Felting it would change the drape of the thing, possibly working and breaking records for the warmest beret ever, possibly ruining it. I have never heard of anyone actually going through and pulling every stitch tighter. Genius innovation, or utter folly? (That's not rhetorical -- I still haven't frogged my Wicked because I still might try that.)

Still hopeful that it might just be really, exceptionally cool, and maybe not even so huge as it looks, I considered blocking it over the recommended 10" dinner plate. Well, the hat ate the plate and then asked for a casserole dish and a mug of ale to wash it down. No go. So I frogged back to the ribbing and started over after a trip to the store for the right size needles. (Of course I didn't write down what size I needed, and had a moment of panic in the store when faced
with 2.25 and 2.75 16" circs. I guessed right, though. Phew.)

Coming up will be more Christmas knitting (and Christmas frogging) and presents of yarn and yarn-related things.

so...

Hey! I just flipped through my camera and I have literally no photos of knitting that I can show you right now. And that is kind of a bummer.

I do have this:



Which is a very lovely pile of swag that I got from the International Traveling Hoar Tin (tm?), which is essentially a nice way to trade yarn we don't want but that is still nice and worthy yarn. I've been "needing" 3 skeins of variegated Koigu for a pair of Diamond Patch Socks, a pattern that my dear Mom got me a couple years ago for Christmas, and which I promptly looked through, concluded were some Master-Level Uber-Knitter socks, and then hid from myself. Someday I will make those socks, and that day just got closer because here is a nice pile of three skeins of Koigu.

There's also some sportweight sock yarn, a set of five buttons that actually match (three more than any of the button sets I currently own, for some reason), and a lone stitch marker of awesomeness.

What I'm doing these days is pretty much:

a) frantically finishing schoolwork and yet another round of applications
b) freaking out over how incredibly close Christmas is, and how incredibly soon I'm leaving town to go be around the majority of my knitted-gift-recipients
c) reassessing my Christmas Knits list and concluding, over and over again, that there is no fat left to trim
d) working even more on the schoolwork that will not end
e) sleeping
f) considering with trepidation the need to order more yarn for gifts that are on the Christmas Knits List Bubble
g) indulging in dreamy reveries about all the things I'm going to knit just as soon as this Christmas knitting is done
h) knitting.

Progress is being made. Mom's Steering Wheel Cozy, matching Gear Shift Cozy, and matching Short Shorts* are done, blocked, and ready to be wrapped. One other gift is done, three are in progress, and one is waiting in the wings. When I list it out like that, the un-done part seems like a lot and I feel like I need to sit down even though I'm already sitting down. So perhaps we should move on.

The things I'm planning on knitting after Christmas include an Amanda Hat in green malabrigo left over from my My So-Called Scarf, Wavy in fingering-weight Woolen Rabbit and Sundara, striped (although this pair of yarns might go better in a linen stitch or even woven...), an Old Shale Smoke Ring in some KP Bare sock yarn that I dyed with soda ash before I found out that soda ash basically destroys wool, rendering the Bare probably unfit for socks but still nice for something else, and mittens with owls on them. Among other things.

I've noticed that not only do I not have knitted woolen items that appear to be part of a set that go together, nearly everything I have that I've knit clashes violently with everything else I've knit. Doesn't seem possible that so many things could all not match - shouldn't you reach a point where you've come full circle and run out of colors? - but yet, that's where I am with it. So my black Coronet hat (knit before Ravelry) gets a lot of wear. This year I'm going to try to turn over a new leaf of if-not-matching-at-least-coordinating-for-the-love-of-Pete. We'll see how it goes.




*with Fun Fur, of course, the kind with the little puff balls every 2-3 inches

In which I nearly Kinnear Ysolda Teague, but decide that I'm not a celebrity stalker and also I couldn't get my camera out fast enough.

Dude. I went to Rhinebeck.




And what do people do at Rhinebeck?



They take pictures of sheep to post on their blogs. (Check aaaand check.)

Other & I went on Sunday. There was not, in fact, a trail of bodies leading directly to the STR booth, but maybe we got there late enough that the dead had already been carted off. The booth was pretty wonderful, and I'm lucky that the only BFL sport they had was a variety of browns, because otherwise it would have been significantly harder to talk myself out of them. I did do a very good job of not gathering up a big pile of STR and burying my face in it for all those wool+vinegar fumes, if I do say so myself. It was very exciting to see all that Blue Moon in person.

I got some Corriedale from Wild Apple Hill Farm -- "Coral" is pictured below, and I got another skein of "Natural," which I wish were called just "Sheep," because that's what it is.


At the booth, I tried to convince myself that this was not pink -- no, no, it's a light red, see -- but in this picture, its pinkitude is undeniable. So be it. It is pretty.

My other purchase was some Malabrigo Sock in Solis:


And yes, it is probably kind of silly to get up at the crack of dawn, drive miles and miles and miles, and out of thousands of skeins of yarn, pick something that I could easily get off of the internet. (And theoretically at a LYS, although I've never seen this colorway at any of the ones I've ever gone to.) I overcame that very rational argument with the power of Sweet Holy Moses, This Yarn Is Gorgeous And Mom Said I Could Pick Out A Christmas Present Here. Merry Christmas to me.

I have plans for it - oh, do I have plans - but I cannot reveal them until several other things have been revealed.

Overall, I'm very glad we went. I've never before lived anywhere particularly close to any of the major fiber festivals, so we felt the need to jump at the chance to go when we could. It was cool to be in a place where handknit accessories outnumbered machine-made ones, and it was the perfect time of year to be outside at a fair. It probably won't hurt not to go to another one for awhile, because the allure of spinning is getting harder and harder to ignore.

Socks!

I've been making socks for my mom for about four years, at the rate of not very many per year. Her feet are a whole two sizes smaller than mine, so I was assuming that her socks should be a bit shorter than mine. That's not crazy, right? Shorter feet, shorter shoes, shorter socks.

So when I made her a pair that ended up fitting me pretty comfortably, and she still insisted that they fit her well, I chalked it up to Mom not wanting to tell me that they were too big and kept right on aiming for socks that were a little too short for my feet.

So, over the summer, I'm at home, and she asserts (yet AGAIN) that all the socks I've made her fit (and I'm like THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE THEY ARE DIFFERENT SIZES). She says No, Really, Listen to Me, They Fit, so I went up stairs, got a Regia cotton sock that I had knit for myself and made her try it on. And of course it fit.

So, making socks for my mom just got a lot easier.

This is her latest pair, which is RPM in Mini Mochi, colorway Whatever Number the Blue/Green/Purple one is. Here is an awful picture of them being modeled by me on our balcony, which gets absolutely no sunlight like ever:



I must say, usually I'll put up with a lot from a sock yarn, but I do not love Mini Mochi.



I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture, but there were a ton of stray fibers that stuck out at crazy angles from the yarn. They were very much like guard hairs in alpaca, which tend to drive me mad with itchiness, so for a while I was pretty convinced that there was secret alpaca in Mini Mochi. Later (like... awhile later), it occurred to me that those fibers were probably nylon. If these socks wear well, I would give credit to the nylon, but I'm not convinced that several inches of nylon sticking out every three centimeters will do the trick. Also, I pulled a lot of them out as I went along, so those fibers will not be helping them wear well at all.

However, the colors are nice and the yarn is very soft.

Secret, Secret

Holiday knitting is coming along. I've finished two gifts already - and one I finished twice. I'll tell that story in a few months. (Hint: my personal knitting motto is "gauge, schmage!") (Another hint: frogging fun fur is bad enough, but frogging fun fur held together with a strand of mohair is damn near impossible.) (That one was for you, mom!)

There's not much going on that's not gift-related. My Dippers are as stalled as ever -- the last two or three times I've taken them out to work on them, I've started in the wrong place on the chart and spent the entire time working on them knitting the wrong rows and then tinking them back. Not very productive. So those are aside for right now. I also sometimes get into these phases with socks where I feel like figuring out how to turn the heel is going to be a huge ordeal, so I avoid them until I can dredge up the energy to figure them out. Not once has the heel or whichever part actually been as bad as I was anticipating, but that doesn't stop me from letting it hang over my head.


Here's my pet ferret, Daisy:



Daisy did get put aside for a while, but I've found myself needing an occasional break from wrestling with the concentration-intensive gift knitting, and a row or two of double crochet breaks it up nicely. It's also quite warm already, so it's nice to hold in my lap while I'm working on other stuff. I've been trying to alternate light and dark colors, but at this point it's clear that this is going to be an object of more practical value than aesthetic.

Let's see what else is on my camera, shall we? Oh yes, here is a blanket I threw together recently:

Once upon a time, I got a new comforter for my bed. Along with it, I got the most beautiful comforter cover and sheets and pillowcases in the world. Time passed, the various parts of the bed set declined in health, and the new dog adopted a balled-up sheet that had come out of the laundry quite ripped.

I'm not big on throwing things away, and the dog seemed happy to rearrange this big ball of sheet and sleep on it every day, so aside from the occasional trip through the laundry, it stayed in this state for several years. Then, finally, I got around to washing it, cutting it up, and sewing it into a blanket. It's probably about 5'x4', and I did it envelope-style, sewing two equal pieces down on three and most of the fourth sides to a large piece of batting, then turning it inside-out and sewing the turning hole closed. Although I was able to get pretty big whole pieces out of the material, there were several places that already had holes or were about to, so I cut out simple patches from the remaining material, turned the edges under, and sewed those through all three layers. Voila! Quilting! I sewed 1/4" in from the edges, quilted some square shapes in random places, and then quilted some straight lines down the entire length of the blanket. All told it probably took about 6 hours, and I'm really happy with it. The dog still crumples it up and rearranges it, but it has a bit more of a backbone now.

Okay, I think that's it. I have grandiose plans to get my gifts finished wellllll before Christmas this year, so maybe I'll have some actual knitting to show before then.

Wicked Done

So. This is Wicked:



Started: Aug 22
Finished: Sept 6
Yarn: STR Twisted in Turquoise, just under 1 1/2 skeins
Pattern: Wicked, by Zephyr Style



I was very happy to cast it on. And knit it. And finish it. But even after frogging it about halfway through and starting it again, the neck/chest is just too big, and I probably won't wear it. (That's a risk I understood going into the whole sweater-making endeavor -- I'm incredibly picky about what I leave the house in, even though probably nobody would guess by looking at me.) (Also... It seems to me like the Wicked silhouette is one that can be pulled off by a portion of the population that does not include people shaped like me.)

So, meh, whatever, it was really fun and I still love the yarn. So about three seconds pass after the photo shoot and I notice the still-big ball of leftover turquoise yarn. About two seconds after that, I start scheming. Just Enough Ruffles? A little shrug? Is that maybe enough for another sweater? (No.) Hmmmmmm.

Around the same time, I start my Christmas knitting* and the whole issue becomes moot. There the nice turquoise yarn sits.

With the passing time, and with each morning the decision not to wear Wicked occurring, my perception is changing. It's looking less like a sweater and more like an excellent source of some really awesome yarn that I could use to make a sweater!

Hm.

Flair? Varese Hoodie? Lost in the Woods Hoodie? Probably I'd ditch the hood on either of the last two.

Does this make me a process knitter? I never thought I'd see the day. And maybe the fact that I want desperately to be wearing whatever new sweater comes out of this RIGHT NOW means that I'm still not -- I can just let go of a project more than I used to be able to.


*Mom, changed my mind. Fun fur 1/10th scale dinosaur is too big a commitment at this point. Will make you an intarsia steering wheel cover/gearshift cover/dashboard cozy instead. Don't despair, though, there will still be fun fur. Also, how do you feel about mushroom motifs?

What the note doesn't say is that even if you do, your family will be cursed with wool allergies for the next six hundred years.

So up until today, I was the picture of patience. Ordered on the 27th, shipped on the 28th. Delivered on the 2nd, which I learned when I finally gave in to impatience and went online to track the package. !@*%#!. KnitPicks was very kind to send out a duplicate order, so I guess the only thing I'm out is time, but still. That's a chunk of time. And some @##%### probably left the !$%# box in a dumpster, because what are they going to do with a box of yarn?

I'm also glad I didn't order everything I need for Christmas knitting, because that would have been a lot bigger order.

Now I'm off to sit by my mailbox with a sniper rifle.

The Saga of the Bag, Parts 5-180

Oh, the bag. I have made progress. If I had taken pictures, I would show you them as proof! (Crap. BRB.)

It's dusk, so the pictures are terrible. The bag is also kind of terrible, so, woo for truth in advertising, I guess.

O hai! I am a bag, lounging here next to a tiny patch of grass where dogs pee!

Here's the front.

Love that flash!


Here's a shot of the inside - you can see the cut-in pocket in the front, the inside lining, and the lining of the flap.




Looking down into the bag, the main compartment and the back pockets.


Action shot! Don't my clothes look awful? You should see my hair!

The best word for this is "unwieldy." It has been unwieldy since its inception. Putting the lining in was difficult for the simple reason that I don't have four hands. The walls of the bag are rather droopy and uneven, so coming up with a lining that fit took multiple attempts. Before I sewed the lining in, actually, the part of me acknowledging reality was rather baleful about the whole thing. (Luckily, the part of me in charge of moving forward with the project was still blindly optimistic.)

It actually looks a whole lot better than I feared it would before I sewed everything down. It helps that I really love how lining sewed with a blind hem stitch to felted fabric looks.

It looks okay enough, but really, it does not function well. I declared myself done, after a marathon, bone-crushing sewing session yesterday, and packed it up and walked to work this morning. About five seconds into that walk, it became obvious that by the time I got to work the strap might have stretched to the point where the body of the bag was dragging on the ground. Clearly, reinforcement is needed.

(As a side note, why is my stuff so freaking heavy? I was carrying a thin notebook, a thin novel, a digital camera, Pouchy Thing, a small frozen lunch, two pens, and a tiny first aid kit that consists of a few band-aids, and it felt like a dozen bowling balls.)

So, five seconds into the walk, I decided that a much longer strap would tip the balance and truly render the bag untenable and unusable, so I did what I had to do and walked for 35 minutes with the stupid thing tucked under my arm. There's a good way to look insane. At least on the way home I had the insight to take all the items out, put them in the plastic bag that held my lunch on the way in, and let the bag sag under its own weight only.

At work, I set it on the floor, and realized that even trying to get things in and out of the bag is difficult because I don't have four hands. It's a little too tall for its droopiness and the front flap gets in the way. It slumps onto whatever surface it's put on.

I suppose I'll soldier on and sew a lining to the underside of the strap in order to keep it from stretching out. I've had many happy thoughts of this being ready before I fly home for a week so I can take it as my carry-on, instead of the godawful North Face Twelve Pound, Four Pounds of Which Are Unnecessary Straps backpack I've been dragging around for three years.

Oh, and the Pastaza, even after felting and shaving, is so prickly that it literally scratches me through my clothes. I see on Rav that people have made and not immediately denounced scarves out of the stuff, so maybe I just got a particularly hateful batch, but I cannot imagine wearing this next to my skin.

So, to recap: Pastaza = bad, Bagorooni = unwieldy, slightly too big, and not done (whimper), me = still optimistic.

Ziggy! Zaggy! Read all about it!

Sooo, here's what the bag looked like when dry and after several hours' worth of shaving:



That thicker red part of the strap in the upper righthand corner is the cellphone pocket.

And I guess somewhere along the line I decided to keep it, because I did this to the lower left-hand corner of the flap:



This photo also happens to illustrate where the last 7" scrap of yarn went. Seriously. I cut off many 2" tails after felting and aside from that am officially and thoroughly out of this yarn. None left.

I decided to keep it mostly on the basis that if it took me two and a half years to muster up the necessary energy to make (and prioritize) this bag, it would probably take me that long to do it again. And I'd like a messenger bag a bit sooner than that.

Now I must regroup and work out plans for a lining and inside pockets. I still use the Pouchy Thing to hold the three essentials (cellphone, keys, and wallet (also a knit pouch)), so I would like some sort of place to stow that where I put it every time I use the bag and where I can get to it quickly. It's a little bit too bulky for an underside-of-the-flap lining pocket, and I didn't have enough yarn for an on-the-outside-of-the-body-but-under-the-flap knitted-on pocket, which would have been my first choice. So now I'm considering doing a slice cut in the front of the bag (under the flap) and making that open into a pocket that is separate from the main section. Having a zippered closure on that would also be ideal. This option is the most appealing theoretically, although it also would require the most stretching of my fake-it-'til-I-make-it sewing skills. Much potential disaster lies in that direction.

For the inside lining, I'd like one end to be sectioned off to hold a water bottle, and some flat pockets in the lining, perhaps along the back wall of the bag, also won't hurt. I've recently brought my sewing machine home (long story), so the only thing holding me back from working on it is my foot-dragging.

While the bag has been sitting there waiting for me to care about it again, I've been hard at color work. My Ziggies are done and I couldn't be happier with them.



Well. I suppose I could be happier with them if I'd followed my gut and removed that long section of yarn where the yellow transitions to black. But I'm still mostly hugely happy with them. They fit fine, although they're difficult to get over the heel, and they were very fun to make.

I substituted a shortrow toe for the one called for in the pattern (magic cast-on, I think?), and then substituted afterthought shortrow heels (over 39 stitches instead of 33 to make the heel deeper and hopefully easier to get on). I like shortrow toes and hate shortrow heels. That makes no sense at all, because they're essentially the same thing, but there you go. I'm not really in the market for learning a toe-up gusset at the moment, because I don't really love toe-up all that much.

Perhaps someone has thought of and written down good directions on how to manage the stitches above the afterthought heel, but I haven't found them. Mostly because I didn't look. So just take this as a warning: before acting on that seductive thought: "Oh, I'll just do an afterthought heel!" you might want to look into if it's possible/how to handle those above stitches neatly. This is what you might be faced with if you don't:



Well. You'll be faced with that anyway, but if you have a plan then it might not seem so alarming to you that what is one stitch in one direction is two in the other.

Every time I do colorwork, I'm immediately seized by the desire to do more colorwork. I've decided to go with that and declare 2009 the Year of Colorwork -- which basically means the Christmas of Colorwork* -- which means that I now have an excuse to pour over colorwork patterns and plan a long list of colorwork gifts and start knitting some colorwork right now in the name of Being Ready for Christmas, Dammit.

I've cast on some Dippers in STR lightweight Thraven, which I had earmarked for another pair of Pomatomi but I think of what remains in my stash, it's the best fit for the pattern. Which, actually, in some ways is similar to Pomatomus -- lots of twisted stitches, an undulating look.



Yeah, you really can't see it well, and there's not a lot to look at anyway. Nice yarn, though, eh?

*Except you, Mom. You are getting a gigantic knitted dinosaur. There may be fun fur. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Rrrrr! Hulk felt!

Felted the messenger bag today. It's drying, and I think we've made peace with each other, but I'm going on record now as saying that I will not be using Cascade Pastaza ever again, for anything, ever. At the height of the battle, I told it that I was going to finish it and sell it on Etsy, but I'm going to let it dry and reassess.

(last photo pre-felting)

Pastaza wasn't terrible to knit with -- a bit sheddy, and so prickly that when I was holding the work on my lap, it would poke me through one or two layers of clothes -- but felting it was just awful. I did it by hand, partly to have more control over the process and partly to not spend money on wash cycles, which cost $1.50 a pop in this building. It didn't shed so much at first, but once it started shrinking, it just shed and shed and shed. Brown and red fibers sticking to my wet hands, over and over again. I came upstairs and grabbed the drain protector we'd gotten for giving the dogs baths, and that seemed to work pretty well overall to collect the fibers. I think that sucker could have easily clogged up the pipes of a washing machine about three times over.

I'm pretty optimistic, and it takes a lot for me to go from thinking that something (a person, kind of yarn, particular experience, etc.) is great to thinking that it really sucks, so if all the awfulness of the felting experience yielded a perfect bag, then hey, whatever, it's good. But I couldn't get the damn bag to the point where all the stitch definition was gone. That's supposed to be possible, right? That's the point of felting?

Maybe it will look better when it's dry. That's going to be awhile, probably, so I'll have time to cool off and go over my options of what to do. Thoughts of a nice felted messenger bag in Wool of the Andes were dancing in my head, though, as I took my best shot at felting the bejezus out of this one.

Now it's time to try to figure out how to proceed with the Ziggy socks I'm casting on next. Actually, I've already got a solid black short row toe all ready. I'm planning on knitting both of them at the same time, as I normally do, on separate sets of DPNs, so I was going to split the skein into four equal-sized balls, but then while I was winding it, I found a break that leaves 40g on one side and 70g on the other. And it's not one of those breaks that continues the color progression. So, I've been waiting for some clever way of dividing up the balls for minimum joining and maximum color awesomeness. Hasn't come to me yet, but something's hovering out there, I just have to find it.

Ahhhhh...

This is another of those all-at-once-ers. I've been wanting a more open-looking template, so that my pictures don't crash through the teeny-tiny middle section. This seems to fit the bill the best, despite its "harbor" theme. Hey, I like harbors. They're cool.

So, what have you been working on obsessively?

I intend to answer that. But first: new socks!



These are my Comfort Socks.

Yarn: Araucania Ranco Multy (I swear it says Multy on the tag, even though this looks more like a solid)
Pattern: Party Socks for Little Girls, from a Patons pamphlet from 1968
Mods: knit over more stitches, using my own heel and toe and using 4x2 rib (I think) instead of 1x1 as called for in the pattern.

I think I neglected to blog about it last year, but for my birthday, my awesome husband compiled a gigantic binder of vintage patterns, many of which are sock patterns. I was casting about for a sock to start, and came across it again on my bookshelf. This pamphlet was the first one I pulled out, and the Ranco Multy seemed to go with it pretty well, so off I went. Normally I work off a list of pattern-yarn combinations that I've had going for many years at this point, so I should go through the rest of the vintage patterns and make sure some of them make that list.

The pattern was interesting in that it called for a sl 1, k1, psso left-slanting decrease, which I'd never done and which doesn't seem to be so common anymore. It makes a more visible decrease, I think, and I like how it looks paired with yo-s.

Here's a somewhat better shot of the pattern:



Next up, cabley socks for Sock Knitters Anonymous's May Knitalong.



Yarn: Oceanwind Knits Merino Sock in the Sweet Sheep colorway
Pattern: my own, a 4-cable x 2-purl plain sock

Oceanwind Knits is just incredibly wonderful. The plies are very plump, and I think I've used the word "nubbley" to describe it in about four different places - probably with different spellings each time - and I will continue to use it, because it just describes it so well. The colors are complex and interesting, and to top it all off, it's soft. I can't wait to wear these, but, along with the comfort socks, they've gone into a drawer until Autumn comes back.

And again:




New socks on the needles, because I probably should knit my summer sockyarn while it's still summer:



Panda Cotton, using the Broad Spiral Ribbing pattern from More Sensational Knitted Socks. Started with Nibblets, but the pooling was too much for me. This pooling is okay.

And for the main act: the Knitting for Peace messenger bag!

Several/many years ago, I made my mom a small felted purse. It's pretty beat by now, and also she's learned to knit in the meantime, so she asked if I would help her make one herself. We quickly got down to planning, and all the talk of felting suddenly precipitated a desperate urge to cast on for this messenger bag, which I've been planning on making - and had the yarn for - for a couple years.

I started knitting last Saturday, and here's where we are so far.


That maybe doesn't look so impressive, so here's my hand for scale:



Whoa, right? Right. (Please tell me right, this probably represents about 15 hours of knitting.)

This project is also exciting because it gives me the opportunity to dig out my fabric stash to make a lining. I don't really have much red that has the same bluish tint that the cranberry-colored yarn does, so I'm considering going with browns or tans.

Someone mentioned on a blog once that using light-colored fabric for lining makes it much easier to see down into the bag when you're looking for something, so right now my plan is to use the lightest fabric on the far left to line the inside, and then the brown and white flowers on the right to line the flap. The bottom one also matches well, but there's only a fat quarter of it. I'm strategizing for pockets in the lining and maybe a flat one on the inside of the flap, but don't have a solid plan yet, and probably won't until I felt it.

I'm getting a bit nervous about my supply of yarn, but I don't think it's a matter of not being able to finish. It's more a matter of having a short-ish strap and maybe not enough to add pockets on to the outside part of the bag under the flap. Outside pockets would greatly increase the usability, though, so here's hoping I have enough for all of that.

Okay, enough of my jibberjabber. Have a great fourth celebration, if you're in the US, and a great fourth if you're not!

Crochet!

You know how you go along thinking, oh man, I wish I had a pet ferret? And how it would be so great, and she would live in my apartment, and I would name her Daisy and we would watch TV together? And then you get a ferret and name her Daisy, and then about a week later you realize that Daisy the Ferret eats a *lot*?

Starting a gigantic crocheted afghan is exactly like a few very specific parts of that. Crochet takes a lot of yarn. I thought I had a lot of yarn to use for this particular crocheted afghan, but it turns out that most of my leftovers are actually fingering weight, and there is another Crazy Ferret now living in the house to deal with that.

After accidentally staying up really late getting this sucker started, I've done a row a day of the Vertical Vintage Stripes afghan.



aaaand I'm pretty much out of yarn for it, at least that's easily handy and not slated for some other project.

This gives me a good excuse to haul out the rubbermaid bins that hold everything and reassess. I really want to keep working on this, and there's got to be stuff that I'm not remembering that's left over from other projects. And there's a bunch of yarn I got pre-Ravelry that's not in my Ravelry stash that I'd like to put there.

Here's a question for any readers*: ought one combine superwash and non-superwash yarns in the same afghan project? My instincts say no, because when it inevitably gets thrown in the washing machine, half of it will felt and render the whole thing trash. If the whole thing felts, it'll become a floor mat or dog blanket, and if the whole thing doesn't, no problem at all.

The other half of me suggests that it's silly to think that it will ever be thrown into the washing machine to felt, because I wouldn't do that and thus far my husband has successfully employed the "Ask Before Washing" rule.

Erring on the side of caution and making two leftover blankets, one all superwash and one all plain wool, seems prudent here. However, it will take a really long time for either of those blankets to get finished. Hmm.


*Ireally do appreciate the answers I get to my various questions, even though asking a question seems to informally result in whatever the project is getting put aside for about 5 years.