Knitting Update - The Blunder Edition

Being we were celebrating the clearing off of the junk on the kitchen table, I decided that today I would assemble the pieces of my Shawl Collar Sweater. Remember it? I started it in October of 2008, had a fight with the directions, put it in the bag for a year, just took it out to finish and ...it was all set to be seamed up. I knit the lovely collar on it last Saturday, all those short rows, big needles, went relatively fast. I was SO HAPPY that it was done. All I had to do was seam the shoulders, sides and sleeves, block and go. YAY!

Today, being I'm off for a week, I took it out to do a bit of seaming in daylight. I beautifully finished one shoulder and sleeve cap seam. Loved it.

Then, when I turned around to do the other side.....

Egad, all those stitches are sorta curved into the collar instead of going straight up the front. Who knit that??!! Furthermore, how on earth could I do that and not notice??? I picked up the stitches and vaguely remember carefully marking it all out and STILL I messed up.

To the pond the collar goes...this is all going back in the bag until I finish my lovely shawl. SIGH.

Snow, Snow and More Snow

We were able to not get snow last Saturday but we were hit by latest blizzard and received a bunch of snow. I don't know what the official amount was but it was certainly more than a foot. It was up to my knees in the backyard and it's partially fluffy and partially wet.

The kids were ecstatic to have a snowday and didn't care too much that it was cutting into their Memorial Day vacation. That would be the one where I was planning on taking extra time and doing Ocean City, Maryland....In fact, they had TWO snowdays. Plus, they're getting so big...sigh...my babies aren't babies any longer. Today she told me that she doesn't like Hello Kitty as much because it's 'baby-ish'. :(

I love the way the snow looks agains the blue sky and I couldn't resist using the macro lens.

There may be more snow on Monday! I hope we get 10 feet.

On the knitting front, I finished this pair of socks way back when. I know I used size 2 needles, Socks that Rock Midsummer's Night in lightweight and it's a Schurch pattern but I can't remember which one. I absolutely adore this colorway and may make him another pair from the leftovers. I'll remember or look in my notebook and then put it on Ravelry.

He picked out the yarn at Rhinebeck but I happened to have some in my stash so I got something else instead, one of the Raven ones, then, I knit these for him. I love, love, love them! They look good with anything.

Last week, I decided on my Ravelympics project: Kiri Shawl. It's a challenge for me because I haven't done too much lace knitting and I have never made a shawl. I was drawn to pink for some reason, a color I rarely wear. I bought 3 skeins of STR lightweight in Rosebud. Much to my dismay, one of them had a knot in it. I HATE that. You pay all this money for yarn and then they give you the dregs?

Any ol' way, I wound up two balls and will swatch tonight with size 7 needles to see how it goes. To pass the time in the meanwhile, I decided to knit a Clapotis. I am one of the few people who actually haven't knit one. It's a really fun pattern, very interesting and very easy. Piece of cake, in fact but the end result is very nice. I'm trying to stay away from socks and stay away from green so I chose Navy Blue for a change of pace. I'm about a third of the way done and will put it down to knit the Kiri and pick it back up if I finish Kiri in time, which I do expect to, of course. I will use lifelines, just in case. No need to have to rip and rip if I .... darest I say it? Make a mistake.

On the UFO front, thankfully, I have very few of these, I picked up the Shawl Collar Sweater. It is just about finished, just sewing it together now. Stupid directions. I will have pictures of it and the Clapotis next time. Then, I'll have a blocking party. Shawl Collar Sweater, Pink-a-Boo blanket, Clapotis and Kiri. YAY!

November Knitting Rut

I'm in a rut.

Can't knit when in a rut.

What happened, you ask? Well, sometimes, there is just too much on my plate. I had to clean the house. Now I have the upstairs in a somewhat acceptable order, bathroom is clean, everyone's clothes are put away, rooms are mostly tidy. Downstairs kitchen is today's project, being I have the day off from work. I would love for my house to look like a model house. I have neighbors that have houses like that. Why do I have so much clutter? Where do they put their toys?

Yesterday, I spent the day balancing my checkbook. What happened, you ask? Well, back in November of 2007, I was off. I neglected to get around to balancing it for ... uh...awhile. I found the error, which was due to a store transaction that I logged correctly that the cashier messed up. I then proceeded to go through a year's worth of statements and bring everything up to date. Amazing. To the penny. Thank you, Quicken.

So, upstairs and finances somewhat in order, I sat down to knit. I remembered that I had a knitting accident the other day while working on my slipped stitch rib sock. The Harmony US 1.5 snapped. Knitpicks is sending me another, along with a new cable which also broke (40") and a new metal DPN, also size 1.5 which has a broken tip. Good customer service, no!? Being a sport, I picked up two skeins of that Kettle Dyed Essentials in Ivy, green of course. I can't wait. It's on its way.

I decided to make DH a hat, being he placed his order for one. He wants Jared Flood's Koolhaas. This is a gorgeous hat and is suitable for a male or female. So, I'm going to make him one. I wanted to use my lucious STR Woobu....one of my Rhinebeck souvenirs....

However, it won't work. The yarn is just too skinny to get the right gauge, the hat will be too lose and airy. I think I'll use Cascade 220. While I'm out today, I will pick some up.

So, I can't work on my little sockie until my needle arrives. Although, I do have a 1.5 needle in metal, I'm afraid that I knit tighter with it and the gauge won't match. So, I'll wait. Also, I messed up the front of the shawl collar pullover, so I have to ripit, ripit, ripit and reknit it. I can do that today while the kids are out of the house. Stupid directions counts rows instead of gauge so my front and back aren't the same. I have to fix the entire collar shaping on the front to match the back. Tix me off. I'm home today and I'm telecommuting tomorrow so I can stay up late and at least get that done if I can psyche myself up for it. So, sock and sweater are on hiatus. That's the cause of the rut.

For the same reason that I can't clean my kitchen, I can't finish my projects. Can you say procrastination?

Time to start the hat...yeah, that's what I need. Another thing to do!

I Am Sick Today...Blah!

I got sinus cooties, guys. Yesterday, I went to work but I was in a fog all day. I have pain over my left eye somethin' fierce. I woke up last night and, as one of my kids would say, "Only one of my noses worked". I used that Simply Saline stuff and Claritin-D before, during and after bed but I'm still clogged up. So, I used sick day #5 for the year. I hardly ever call in sick and it's better to call in sick than to go to work and do something wrong that will come back to bite me later.

I don't know how restful today will be, school is closed for the Jewish Holiday and the kids are home. The world doesn't stop when you're the mommy. There's still homework, scout meetings, baking, karate, piano lessons. laundry, cooking dinner. There's still the ongoing series: Trying to find the Kitchen Counter. It should be, like, a game show. A bunch of women, their kitchens and their mess and seeing who can clean off their counter the fastest and most effectively. Put away things that you have no idea what they do.

I must show you these pictures....awhile back we took down a giant oak tree. It was simply too close to the house after we added the extension and, sadly, had to go. It must've caused some weird spores to come alive from the rotting roots and these hard mushrooms grew. HARD, like tree bark. They weren't smooshy at all.

There's three ugly clumps of them. At first I was blaming the dog for ripping up something but, alas, she was behaving herself. They don't look hard so I tried to remove them but I couldn't budge them at all. DH had to get a spade and dig them out.

Ok, finally, knitting time. I must make some today! Look at my Shawl Collar Sweater, nearly done and shaping up very nicely. Should be done in time for Rhinebeck without a hitch.
I'm being summoned by DD...she wants me "now".

More History Lessons and my Shawl Collar Sweater.

I think I've been in a knitting rut. Maybe I started this sweater a little too early in the year. When I was a kid, you'd wear your school clothes to school the first week and sweat. After that, it would cool down and you'd be comfortably dressed. Nowadays, summer lasts until Thanksgiving. It's 6:30 in the morning here on Long Island (we live "ON" the island, not "IN" and we only say that about ourselves. People live IN Staten Island, ON Long Island. Peculiar) and it's 65 degrees. It's damn near OCTOBER and I'm in a tank top and shorts wondering why I'm dripping sweat. I'm getting ready to start roasting meats, baking and the like and it's warm to turn on the oven. So, it must be warm to start knitting a sweater. I should've made one last pair of socks.

Anyway, I haven't really showed you this sweater that I've been working on for over a month. The sleeves are completed and I am now knitting the back and front, two pieces on one circular needle. In the process of knitting with the baseball bat size 11's on the Knitpicks cable, one of the connectors came right off. I had another cable and I will e-mail them to replace it soon. I also have a metal DPN from them that needs to be replaced, the tip came off. So, that caused a delay of game. I like knitting with the bigger needles because I have no problems seeing them; however, my hands hurt if I do too much. The 9's don't bother me but the 11's are really, really fat!

Here's the sweater taking a rest on my table, a WIP that I'm trying to finish in time for Rhinebeck but it's not looking all that good. No worries, he can wear his Wallaby, DD can wear her poncho and DS can wear his Weasley. That's if it's cold enough!

I really truly love that k2,p2 cast on. It takes longer but it's worth it. I will definitely do it on my next pair of socks.

On Saturday, we got a visit from Elizzabetty. DD, who has a very long attention span for a five year old, has decided that its time for her to knit. Quick story, she had bugged me for piano lessons since she turned three. I did one summer of Suzuki school, stopped for a little bit and she asked at least once a week to do it again. In February of last year, I started her privately in our house and she loves it. She's sailing through her piano book. It has given her an edge with reading (words, not only music, she has that left right thing going on) and also has helped her with math. So, if she can do that, she can certainly learn to at least do the knit stitch. She got a little private lesson.

and, in no time, was happily on her own, showing alot of glee here!

At 15 or so, when she's yelling at me for ruining her life because I won't let her go on car dates or to the mall alone or stay out late, she now has something else to add to the list. "And, you didn't even teach me to knit continental".

To tell you the truth, I don't know how I learned to knit but I believe it was continental. I remember learning to crochet, vividly. My grandmother took out some red yarn and taught me the chain stitch. I got that in one week and made a chain that could go around the block. Then, the next week, she got out another ball of red yarn and taught me the single crochet stitch. Oddly, she did it in a circle. She made a small disc, apparently increasing as she went. Say, the size of a mini DVD, then she went home and left me to play with it. I didn't know how to increase so when she came back the week after that, we had a tube. She then showed me double crochet which flared out the edges and we had a little upside down vase. Then, she gave me the "Learn to Crochet" book which has been reprinted years later but there are so many other books out now. It had tons and tons of different stitches in it, sc, dc, hdc, waffle stitch, shells, v-stitch. I spent hours with that book and became an expert before fifth grade. I made an afghan in elementary school. In sixth grade, I learned how to make granny squares and I was on my way to Olympic Crocheting. My grandmother and my left-handed-do-it-backwards mother both knitted. My grandmother taught me on DPNs, she must've been working on a sock or a mitten when she showed me, and it blew my mind. My mother taught me on enamel coated skinny long needles and I was getting the hang of it. I knitted continental and my mother threw. I don't know how that happened. I guess because I learned to crochet first and it just seemed natural. Throwing is too slow, takes way too long to knit. Nothing against you throwers, some of you can knit very, very fast; however, it is clearly not as fast as continental knitting. It wastes motion. The purl stitch continental is a little weird and even people who knit continental sometimes wrap that. I sort of half wrap it. I'll have to make a video one day for our viewing pleasure.

Well, its time for a little stroll on the treadmill, shower, get the kids up and off to school and then off to work....

K2, P2 Cast On

Even though I haven't been actively knitting as much the past few days, I did finish up the sleeves on the shawl collar sweater. I used normal long tail cast on on them. It's always bothered me how ugly the edge of that is when you use ribbing so I started thinking about a way to cast on 'in pattern' the way that you can cast off in pattern.

Lo and behold, there I was one morning, reading one of Elizabeth Zimmerman's books and she talked about the k2, p2 cast on. So, I figured I'd try it. It's ingenious! It worked great and it'll work even better when I try it on socks.

That's the bottom edge of the sweater. Pretty, isn't it? No bumps on the knit stitches that don't belong there.

I googled it and found this link on Purlwise's Blog.

Try it out on some scrap yarn and knit a few rows. It's fun and I'm so happy that I learned another cast on.

Here's another shot of how the front and back look from further away. This is a light gray and charcoal combo sweater. Check out that lovely ribbing again! Wrong side on top, right side on bottom.

In other news, DD turned 5. :(

I can't believe it's been five whole years with my little bundle of love. I remember when I brought her home from the hospital and my neighbor said, "You don't know what love is until you have a child". And I completely understand that now.

My friends at work told me:

"A daughter is a daughter for the rest of your life, a son is a son until he takes a wife. "

I say, "I am raising my daughter to be a responsible member of society. I am raising my son to be...well, MY son."

So, shoot me. He'll be a mama's boy.

Shawl Collar Sweater

It has been awhile since my last post. I haven't really been knitting all that much. I have started the shawl collar sweater from Knitting for Him and I like it very much. I am using Cascade 128 and these GIANT size 11 needles. After knitting a quadrillion pairs of socks on little sticks, these feel like baseball bats. Here's an older picture of the sleeves so you can see the colors. I started with the sleeves in case the gauge was way off, which it wasn't.

I knitted up past the armpit, did the decreases and did part of the sleeve cap when I realized that I lost two sts each needle. I couldn't find out where I missed a decrease and then I discovered that I missed an INCREASE so I frogged back a few inches. Not a big deal when the stitches are like 1/4 of an inch each row and there's only 54 sts each sleeve. These two sleeves are less work than a sock, believe you me. This is an older picture and the sleeves are nearly done. They should've been done awhile ago but I've been slacking. I have been busy with a few things. and they've been taking away from my knitting time.

1. Kids are back to school and I have trouble with First Grade math homework. It took ME about 10 minutes to get FIVE problems last night. ME, who got a 790 (back when an 800 was a perfect score) on the math SAT. Me, who can really do this stuff. This is FIRST GRADE work. We had to work on shapes, squares, triangles, circles, rectangles. We had to draw them, big and small in various colors. That was fine although he didn't differentiate in his drawing what was big and what was small but understood the concept. The second part was hard. It had a picture of one shape, say, a large circle. Then, three other shapes. "Circle the figure that is different in two ways". And the choices would be circle, triangle, square. The circle and the triangle would be large and the square small. The answer is the square because its small and it's not a triangle. This was originally blowing my mind. I am not so sure I will do well in math this year. This is only the beginning of this book. Not only do I have to get it but I have to work with him to get it. Tonight, I will cut various shapes out of colored index cards and make my own problems to try to drill this in his head. Once you're lost in math, you can stay lost, sometimes for years.

2. Little girl has Kindergarten homework. Nothing hard yet. We have to make her face out of macaroni, glue, yarn, crayon etc. That's a weekend project. I can do that, it's a crafty thing.

3. Last week, in order to avoid the Christmas rush, I bought a Wii. We don't have a Wii. In fact, we don't have an LCD monitor for our PC. We don't have an HD TV. I still use my wonderful Sony Trinitron from 1983. It works great! It's 27" so I need a bigger one now that we have a Wii. DH and I go bowling at night instead of knitting. I want to buy more games but I'm poor. Why you ask? I filled the oil tank (yeah $3.39 a gallon, on sale or something!) and both gas tanks so I could still pay $3.65 a gallon just before Ike came. So, I spent alot of money last week.

4. Work is busy. I don't know why, it always gets like this after the summer is over. I had a brief lull there for awhile and now we're all back in full swing.

5. Dieting. Dieting is a full time job. You can't slack or else it shows. The other day, what did I do? I slacked I went to the sushi buffet. The sushi is ok, not all that great, but I ate too much. I was thrilled that I could eat the seaweed salad now that I got my braces off and don't have to worry about it being stuck there. I always think of Rosanne Rosannadanna, "And there she was, with a little piece of spinach, stuck to her tooth, and a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her shoe". Watch a tribute to her on youtube...classic pictures, awful song, might make you cry. So anyway, more time on the treadmill or more time playing Wii. Maybe I'll get Wii Fit next time I have some cash. Then again, it's STILL exercise and not necessarily as fun as playing Pac-Man or something like that.

6. I DID clean my house! I have two rooms to go but the upstairs, the basement and the Living Room are clean. Even the kitchen counter is starting to show.

7. My back hurts for 10 months now. It goes away (well, turns from EXCRUCIATING I CAN'T WALK PAIN) to tolerable during the day, comes back at night and weekends. I am beginning to think that the hard tile floor in my kitchen and sunroom are killing it. I bought an area rug and a thick pad to put in there so I can have some relief. I have been seeing a chiropractor and spending even more money. I go back to the regular doctor in November. I guess we'll do an MRI next to see things that only MRIs see. Something HAS to be there, right? Must be a squished disc.

8. I have started Christmas shopping. No time like the present! (Pun intended)

9. I am enjoying DH not teaching this year. Instead, he is self employed and can make his own hours. I have less of a daycare expense (more money for other things) and he actually helps with dropping kids off, picking them up, doing the wash (sorta), feeding the kids, bathing the kids, food shopping and vacuuming. Furthermore, we have more family time and can analyze First Grade Math together. It's like, well, it's like I have a wife. Everyone should have a wife! You don't know what you're missing until you have a wife.

10. I am still learning to sew and actually take out the machine from time to time. Imagine that.

I hear the pitter patter of little feet and have to do some treadmill walking now so that's it for a long winded post about nothing. Didn't Jerry Seinfeld make alot of money doing that on a show? Well, I feel that I'm doing the same thing, except I don't make any money at it. I just, blog about ... nothing!

More photography and more knitting soon. I promise!

Low Hanging Froot

Look at this:

Just wanted to show you a picture of my Froot Loop socks after washing. They grew and grew and grew. Next time I use Smooshy, I will knit them smaller. They seem to fit ok although they went from mid-calf to ... stockings! They looked normal size here, no?Odd. Oh well....I must say, they do feel nice and soft and I still do really love the colors.

My son is completely enamored with his blue socks and tries to wear them everyday even though it's been hot enough out that we can still swim in the pool. Next time, I'll make cotton or cotton blend socks.

Also, I wanted to tell you about my new project. I am making the Shawl collar sweater from Knitting for Him. It's huge. I am using Cascade 128 tweed, gray and charcoal and I have the gauge exactly right but it seems like it is gargantuan. I was going to knit it in the round but didn't because then I couldn't neatly make the seams big to take this in if need be. Pictures will be posted soon, maybe Saturday morning when I have time to blog.

I have to go out and take a picture now so I'm all ready for eye candy Friday and don't miss it this week!