Almost famous

Remember a roadtrip a few months ago where I got some random guy to take pictures of me climbing? This, BTW, never happens because, DH is always spotting, so who's gonna wield the camera? Anyway, we're up at Bishop again a few weekends ago, and what do we find? I'm almost famous! Huzzah!



Yup, that's me front and off center and to the left a bit on page 72 in the new Bishop Bouldering Guidebook. The guidebook itself is beautiful and well photographed. Couldn't ask for more. I fully support everyone going out and buying a copy. And of course, bookmarking page 72.

First FO 2007

Before I get to any knitting content, I just have to say that today is my DH's birthday. Today he turns 28 and it seems only yesterday... Anyway, after all of the stress that we went through over the past year, I'm surprised he still married me. I guess it's a testament to his patience and understanding of me. He shows me every day what it is to love someone through thick and thin. And of course it doesn't hurt that I find him totally hott!

Triangle Edge Cardigan by Debbie Bliss
Pattern in Quick Baby Knits
Materials: Knitpicks Shine (60% Cotton, 40% Modal. 110 yards per 50 g ball) 190g in Cherry. Size 3 Addi Turbos.
Gauge: 6" sts per in.
Finished size: 23 in wide... I hope this is one perfectly round baby!

Started: December 24, 2006
Finished: January 15, 2006

Modifications:
Used short rows to shape collar instead of joining new yarn for each point. Omitted buttons.

Discussion:
Another basic baby sweater with a twist here. The triangle edging (which you can't see in this craptastic photo) adds a little bit of interest to this basic drop shoulder cardigan. I considered putting the buttons on, but frankly, I just didn't understand her instructions and I don't like YO buttonholes. So it'll be a little jacket type thing that will just be worn open. This one is for DH's cousin's as-yet unborn but due at any second now daughter. It's roomy enough so that this baby can spend then next 6-9 months growing into it. I'll once again voice my concern over Debbie Bliss baby sizing, but then again, I've never had a growing like a weed baby before either, so maybe the generous sizing is a good thing. Do tell if you have an opinion.


Lorna's Laces Quarter Socks
Materials: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport (100% wool, 200 yd per 70g) 1 skein in Mixed Berries. Size 1 Addi Turbos 24" and 32".
Gauge: 8.5 sts per in
Finished Size: 7.5" circumference, 8" foot length

Started: January 16, 2007
Finished: January 23, 2007

These were some quickie socks that I started while in New Zealand. I decided that they had been in my stash for long enough, but I didn't have any particular pattern in mind and knew that 70g was going to be a stretch. I didn't think it would be quite as short as they turned out, but I still think they're a reasonable length. I'd just have preferred that they were an inch or two longer in the leg.

I started these toe-up using a 24 st Turkish cast on. I increased every other round until I had a total of 64 sts on the needles. I worked one round of k4, p4 alternating with one round of all knits until the sock was long enough to reach the pointy bone on the top of my foot, which I guess to most people would be the start of their arch. I increased every other round until I was two inches short of my heel and then turned the heel a la Beaudelaire. From there it was knit in pattern until I was almost out of yarn, and then I started 1x1 ribbing until I actually did run out of yarn save a few yards. I cast off with the faux kitchener cast off.

Meh... the socks are a touch on the large side, but I have a tendency to slightly shrink my socks, so this isn't a bad thing. I was just surprised at the gauge I got with sport weight yarn. Do I really knit this tight, or is this typical for Lorna's sport?

I also finished off the MIL scarf on 1/27 and my grandmother's pink socks on 1/24, but I don't have a good picture of either of those yet. Maybe DH will be nice enough to take a picture for me sometime this week when it's not grey and raining out.

After having wiped ALL of my WIPs off the plate, I dug in for baby #2 of 5 for the year (that I know about). This one is for DH's soon to be godson! We were really excited to hear that DH's cousin wanted him to be the godfather, and this is DH's first time in that role. So I wanted a little something special for this baby in hopes of kissing up to the parents so they don't change their minds about making DH his godfather. I pulled out Barbara Walker's Knitting from the Top, and just went for it using her saddle shoulder sweater outline as a guide. I say outline because it really is just an outline. I cast on yesterday and the above picture was taken this morning, but I've already divided for the sleeves and body and have about 2 inches of body done. I love how small babies are...

I'll finish up with a quick update on the next leg of our trip...

Christchurch/Castle Hill Dec 27-28
We arrived in Christchurch after a long delay at the airport in Auckland late on the 27th. It didn't give us much time to look around the city, so we got up early the next morning so we could pick up the rental car and get on the road. Let me just say that adjusting to driving on the left side of the road took a while. The rental car did have a nifty reminder on the dash board in the form of a giant yellow arrow saying "stay left", but well, if you're looking at that too closely, you're surely not watching the road to see if the oncoming truck is in your lane or not.

But we drove out to Castle Hill and checked out the climbing. It's supposed to be a world class destination for bouldering, and I can see why. The entire area looked like a god had sprinkled giant boulders across a golf course. Or someone came by and knocked down Stonehenge. I can't decide which. Here's the two of us at the start of the day 50 yards off the road and about half way to the first rocks. Nice, short approach, eh?

The climbing itself wasn't my style. It's limestone and heavily climbed, so a lot of the rock was polished and at least for the problems I was trying, didn't seem to have much by way of feet. The style was also much more throwing for slick slopers, then beached whale mantling to top out. The boulder below was one of the exceptions to the yucky top out trend and the only boulder I got to the top of during my entire trip. Of course, I wasn't really trying either, opting instead to just enjoy the scenery. Fields of green, long grass blowing in the wind, and meadows of small wildflowers peppered with limestone of all shapes and sizes all with the southern Alps as a backdrop. Can you blame me?

No knitting pictures here!

Random post today since I don't really have a lot of knitting content to speak of.

DF's zippered raglan: thanks for all of the reassuring comments about ripping back. I still haven't managed to pick up the sweater again as I'm still a bit depressed about it, but Chrissy's post yesterday reminded me of one of the other pictures from that photoshoot that I didn't use. I'm putting it in here since there were more than a couple of comments about how hot DF is (which I agree about). DF reads every comment on my blog and could barely fit through the door his head was so big thanks to his adoring fans. So for all of DF's fans, a picture for you.

*hiding* I love you, DF!


We went climbing this weekend again, and wouldn't you believe it, an actual picture was taken of me in front of the camera! Turns out some guy is writing a guide book for the Bishop, CA bouldering areas and was out this weekend getting photos for the book. Who knows... maybe I can get in the guidebook!



Knitty: I was so looking forward to the new issue. I even gasped for glee upon return yesterday, and went right to perusing all the patterns to find my next project. All I can say is: meh. The only thing that I may add to my to-do list is the new pair of socks by Cookie A. as a quick project. I still have Pomatamus to do, so we'll see how that goes.

Final note, I went on a yarn buying spree with some birthday cash from my parents. I picked up some Debbie Bliss Aran Tweed for the Blissful Jacket from the Fall 2005 IK. I just love winning auctions... Also, I'm thinking of buying some Rowanspun Aran in red for the Sunrise Circle Jacket by Kate Gilbert in the Spring 2006 IK. Anyone interested in splitting the bag with me? I'll have 6 balls (1200 meters) left over which is enough for the size 41" jacket.

gotta love having a camera...

Okay, my picture taking skills suck, as evidenced by the pictures on my last post. But since there was a request, I did finally take a picture of the lovely stitch marker that Chris sent to me. It's true color, and the fabric in the background is much closer to true color of DF's zippered raglan than the hot pink version I posted yesterday.
Also, I got a better picture of the pink variation in the Jaywalker socks. It's really hard to tell, but if you look closely, there are actually two different shades of pink between the khaki stripes. One is more peachy and the other is closer to cotton candy pink.
Not that DF is at all embarassed to wear pink. He may be accused of being a bit metro for it, but I still think he looks kind of hot in pink.

Must say though, I'm much happier with blogging now that my camera's back in my possession. One of the last pictures we took on the camera before my parents hijacked it:

Just outside Red Rocks Canyon, NV; November 2005

She-Ra...

She may not be the master of the universe, but she does kick ass as far as I can remember. Seeing however as she never wore sleeves, she probably didn't run into the problem I'm currently having as a result of weekends spent doing this:

What problem might that be? Well, apparently my BIG HONKING DELTS (BHDs) don't fit into regular sleeves. Much to my surprise, I followed the directions exactly as Jenna had written them to add the set in sleeve onto a sleeveless sweater. I had a lot of fun with the short rows and not having to seam and everything until I went to try it on. The sleeves are quite abbreviated, so I had to tug and pull and stretch those suckers to get them over my upper arms. And my arms barely fit through there. Unfortunately, picking up one stitch for every two rows, while standard, apparenty doesn't accomodate my BHDs. Note to self, bind off with a larger needle next time. Oh yeah, and pick up more stitches.

The other thing I noticed was that it seemed that the seams for this style of sleeve don't appear to be that secure. It looks like the sleeve pulls away from the body a bit and looks just plain weird. I'm not sure if that will go away with a larger sleeve or what, but I'm sure hoping.

I'm betting that most people who read this are probably saying to themselves, anal much? First the wonky hip thing, then the neckline issue, and now this. Does she like to knit things up just to rip them out again? Well, I admit it. I do have serious anal retentive tendencies. I just like to think I hold myself to a high standard. There's nothing wrong with that. Really.

Oh wait, I just realized that I never mentioned the neckline issue because I was on blog strike towards the end of last week out of sheer depression due to this project. So I showed the body being done and mentioned that it was blocking, but that's the last of it since now. Well, I spazzed a bit between then and now. I started off doing the neckline as instructed using a K2Tog decrease to attach the ribbed neckband to the picked up stitches around the neckline shaping. I got halfway done and decided that I didn't like the right slanting decrease there because the left leg of the picked up stitches shows prominently. I had read that someone else substituted SSK here and tried it. Wow, the picked up stitch is hidden entirely underneath the neckband stitch. I like that better. RIP! I started over and again got halfway around the neckband and inspected my work. Eww, the last stitch on the neckband is slanting to the left (duh!) and so now the ribbing looks all broken there and just plain funky.

I took it to the WeHo SNB for a second opinion. I met Jillian for the first time (it's weird meeting people you already "know"!) and she also thought it looked a bit weird. Mostly because it was just loose, but I didn't think I could salvage it and still be happy with the end product. Thankfully, Jillian gave me the little push I needed to rip it out for the second time. Anyway, I was too depressed to deal with the neckline for a third time that night, but I did finally get to it this weekend. Now, I am actually happy with the fit and can finally show it without the IBTs making an appearance.


No, the sleeve is not staying on as is, or at least I don't think it is. I'm going to try it with more stitches on the other side just to make sure that I don't go overboard, then I'll rip this side out. Aha! Planning things out for once. Imagine that.

So what did I do at SNB if I didn't have the heart to work on Hopeful? Well, I did cast on for Unbiased finally. Man oh man, is recycled silk a pain to knit with. So much fuzzy stuff to navigate, but the end product is just gorgeous! One caveat, if you ever buy a ball of recycled silk and you have a chance to choose from many, make sure you inspect the thickness and try and find the ones that are fairly consistent throughout. The picture shows the panel where I changed balls right in the middle and while you can't tell from the picture, if you pick it up, it feels like I changed gauge or something when I changed balls. It's actually because the second ball is seriously thin in places and makes the fabric feel wimpy. Just a warning.

I finished one ball over the weekend and started a second ball. The entire second panel is getting frogged, but the third panel looks like it'll be fine. I'm keeping the two on the left. Vastly different colors in these two panels, huh? I hope that looks okay...

Weekend knitting

I hate blogger. I was just about ready to publish a post, and it ate my post. Sounds like the dog ate my homework excuse, but really, it did!

Anyway, here's what I think I wrote...

DF and I road tripped again this weekend, so this was the perfect opportunity to finish off CW completely under the guise of keeping DF company. On the drive up of course, DF wondered, what does DF stand for? I told him, Dear Fiancee of course! What did you think it meant? Well, Dumb F*** was what came to mind. Well, let's see if this works. On one hand, it can mean, Oh isn't my DF fabulous! He paints my toes, feeds me ice cream in bed, and is just absolutely dreamy! On the other hand, it can totally mean, I can't believe DF left 20 piles of last week's mail on every horizontal surface in the house, AGAIN! What an absolutely perfect acronym. Different meanings, but absolutley clear in context!

Oh, back to the knitting story. I did finish CW finally. If you've been watching the progress bars, you'll see that I made it 100%, but why not just take the progress bar off entirely? Well, neither BO or CW have been blocked, and I refuse to take a FO picture and write up a summary unless they're blocked. So the progress bars remain until I get around to blocking. Hopefully, that will be soon. Anyway, here it is in its full UNBLOCKED glory!


I did wrestle with binding off CW last night. I ran out of yarn before I could finish the last 3 rows of the last lace repeat. So I actually bound off early. Here's the closeup of the bound off edge. Hopefully it'll still look okay with blocking... Anyway, lesson to be learned here is that if you know that the pattern takes 600 yards of yarn and you have 300 yards of one color and many yards more of another, it's probably wise to use the color that you have more of for the sections that you expect will take more yarn. You know, apply common sense for once, right?

So you know how I argued about the logic of starting Spirit of Blaze (Thanks Chris for the apt name!) Well, that was before I started making mods again to the design. I decided that the all-over rib and cable pattern would be difficult to work into the raglan decreases neatly without the cables coming "undone" or rather unworked. I thought it looked okay, but not great. So I'm thinking about some other desgin.

But what that DOES mean is that I needed to start something that I already had the pattern and the yarn for. Since my Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool ($45 on ebay for a whole pack!) came in late last week, I could start on Hopeful! I did manage to cast on, but that was about it. Wow, 160 sts of DK weight yarn in labelled gauge looks tiny! I did get to knit a few rounds at the doctor's office this morning. What fun! Specula and stirrups! Why can't I start every week this way?

Anyway, you can see that I've already included a modification to this pattern. Marnie MacLean on the Hopeful Knitalong (which I swear I'm joining soon!) posted her finished Hopeful a few days ago. She even posted a how-to on the picot hem modification on her blog. Since hers was so beautiful and I didn't really like the ribbed hem on the original, I decided to give the easy mod a go. That eyelet round in the picture above is the turning row for the hem, and below is the closeup of what the picot edge will look like when it's turned.


Oh and back to the original road trip story. DF and I took the 4 hour car ride up to Bishop despite gas prices topping $3 the entire way for our inaugural bouldering trip together for this season . Yet again, I didn't manage to send anything, but I do have hopes of making progress on Action Figure (V6) and finishing Serengeti (V5), both problems at the Happy Boulders, this year. If we ever remember to take pictures while we're on these trips, I'll post some here. But this picture on Serengeti from last year will have to suffice until we get more!