today at boot camp...

So have you ever seen that early Buffy episode where Amy's mom switches bodies with her daughter and tries out for the cheerleading squad and hexes another competitor to spontaneously combust? Yeah, kinda like that.

Total exercise time: 56 minutes
AVG HR: 168 bpm
Peak HR: 230 bpm (I think this must be an error)
Time within 155-175 bpm: 31 minutes

In other news, I'm heading out of town for another couple of days, but I wanted to make sure I finished lengthening Hopeful before heading to Seattle. I'd seen on Jenna Adorno's blog that she sometimes goes to the Purlygirls meeting, so wouldn't it be cool if I wore one of her designs there and got to meet her? I think it's a much more wearable length now and looks like it flares less even though it's still the same shaping. I like it even if I'm having a bad hair day and can't take a reasonable picture...


I'm pointing at where the shirt used to end.

bonnie sweater

Okay, thanks everyone for your votes. It looks like Icarus is officially going to be blue. As Karen correctly pointed out, the last time I asked for a vote about the W-day, I managed to completely ignore the overwhelming majority and go with my own feelings. Thankfully, this time it matches what you guys think! Now, when will I actually be able to cast on for this? Oh yeah, I'm waiting for stitch markers before I can get started on anything remotely lace.

In the meantime, remember that Hopeful sweater I made last fall? The one that went through 8 incarnations of sleeves (and makes me wonder about my idea of picking up sts around the armhole and knitting the set in sleeves directly onto the body on the current VK hoody)? Well, I decided that it was definitely too short, so last night... off with its hem! I was too scared of the effect that the scissors were having to take a picture, so unfortunately, no images of knitting massacre to show here, but I think it will turn out just fine. Ask me again next week.

In more pictureless news- I went to WWKIP day outing in the park on Saturday. I'm of course a horrible blogger, so you'll have to visit Rain, Teresa, Janet's blogs to see what it was like. I should also warn you of the dangers of KIPing... you might get a really BAD sunburn! Of course, in true spaz fashion, I managed to burn just my knees and left shoulder and produced a nice defined line of sunburn along the side of my thigh. Which of course, is exactly why I'm not showing you.

Lastly, the title of this post. Go check it out. Apparently Eunny gets her inspiration from Go Fug Yourself, too! Ok, not. She's probably a whole lot more sophisticated than the spaz (C'mon... the words "Oh, I guess the New Yorker is probably a bit more highbrow than my US Weekly" actually came out of my mouth) as she actually has SEEN the Faye Dunaway movie from which this picture was taken. Her version is BEAUTIFUL in concept, but for this lazy knitter, out of reach at 8 sts per inch and cabling from waist to bust. i think if I actually get around to doing this sweater, I'll stick to the original inspiration and try in a chunkier yarn. As if sport or DK is all that chunky...

Hopeful

Pattern by Jenna Adorno: http://www.thisgirlknits.com/tgbb.html
Materials: Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool (65% wool, 35% silk, 175m). <3 skeins in color #13, light blue. Size US5 Denise. US5 DPN.
Gauge: 20 sts and 32 rounds = 4x4”
Finished Size: bust 29"- waist 23.5"- length 20"(yes, that's a lot of negative ease!)

Started: September 18, 2005
Frogged: September 22, 2005
Finished: October 19, 2005

Notes:
Cast on 12 fewer stitches than bust measurement and incorporated eyelet row of K2tog, YO for picot hem after 0.5". Started waist shaping 2" after eyelet row and worked shaping gradually over next 6.5". Worked neck shaping on front with the back to eliminate side seams then worked back, left front, and right front separately but simultaneously. Worked neckline with short row shaping at shoulder seams. Worked sleeves by picking up 3 stitches for every 5 rows and completing short row shaping 2 stitches earlier on either side of armhole than pattern calls for. Decreased evenly by 2 more stitches than pattern calls for before bind off.

Discussion:
Well, I do believe that this one has been discussed to death, so I'm not going to get into it. I absolutely love the design and would do it all again. Hmm, sounds like childbirth. There are definitely signs of it being "homemade", but overall, I'm pretty happy with the results.

Next time, I would probably lengthen the top a bit and go ahead and do the banded bottom since whipstitching the hem up was a royal pain. The bottom flares a bit as my gauge seems to have expanded on bottom only as the bust and hip measurements are equal after blocking despite the 12 fewer stitches at the hip. Ah the magic of selective gauge expansion. I just don't get it. Anyway, I would probably also shrink down the circumference to avoid the slight flaring (is that what bottom ribbing is for?!?!) which while barely noticeable, doesn't seem to match the fit of the rest of the top. Don't give me any ideas about cutting off the bottom and reknitting it to fit better...

Thanks Jenna for the brilliantly understated but flattering design, and I wish you all the best with your fundraising efforts.

Previous posts about this project:
Excited on 8/18/2005
Weekend knitting on 9/19/2005
Silky Wool on 9/21/2005
Just once on 9/22/2005
Back in the Saddle on 9/23/2005
I'm not a Spaz! on 9/28/2005
She-Ra on 10/4/2005
Opinion Poll on 10/5/2005
Shout Out on 10/11/2005
It's not the OCD on 10/19/2005

It's not the OCD

So it’s amazing what you can learn from a session of SNB. As a corollary to #30 on my 100 things list, I have never used any other recreational substances either. Like I said, square. Anyway, at last week's SNB there was a long story involving Faith’s neighbor that ended with, no joke:

*knock, knock knock*
Occupant: What do you want?
Police: It’s the police. We need to talk.
Occupant: Go away!

Pause

*knock, knock knock*
Occupant: Who’s there?
Police: Police sir, please open up.

Another pause

*knock, knock knock*
Occupant: WHAAT!!?!?
Police: Land Shark!

Hmmm, so it seems that said neighbor was displaying suspicious behavior involving broken plate glass windows. But the conversation naturally turned to other signs of recreational drug use that made me somewhat suspicious of myself. One of the side effects mentioned was super-productivity in a non-productive way. What's that mean? Well, it's like taking apart your Jeep bolt for bolt and neatly organizing all of the bolts by size in boxes in your garage. OR knitting and re-knitting the same sleeve 10 times. It's not the OCD, really, it's the crystal meth that DF has been secretly pumping me up with in my sleep!

But the exercise in frustration has FINALLY ended (I hear a collective sigh of relief from the audience). I bound off the latest incarnation of sleeve v4.2 last night at SNB and modelled it for the ladies. I still haven't turned the picot hem up, so the picure is forthcoming.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering what rock I've been hiding under for the past WEEK, DF and I went to a wedding in Sarasota, FL. It was at 10:00 AM on FRIDAY. My head's still not screwed on correctly from the red eye flight we took out there and the 3 days in a row of 4 hours of sleep. Amazingly, no knitting the entire trip, but I did finally finish HP5. No, not Half Blood Prince, it was Order of the Phoenix. Yes I know, most 12 yo children finished that one 2 years ago, but I'm not like most 12 year olds. Not sure if that's a good thing when comparing reading speeds...

Also, I got an email from KnittingUniverse announcing the registration opening up today for Stitches West Feb 16-19. Is anyone going to this event? I've heard so many people talking about it on their blogs and mentioning the classes that they offer, I'm curious, but it falls on a Wednesday to Saturday. If it weren't for the vacation I'm hoarding to take a 3 week honeymoon in New Zealand (!), I'd be all over going to Stitches West. Hmm... what to do?

Shout out

Ah-hah! No pictures today, so that means I can use Word to write my post, and Blogger CAN’T EAT IT. HA! Take that.

Why no pictures? Well, honestly, it’s because I have absolutely nothing to show. I’ve been stuck in this knitting Groundhog’s Day for almost two weeks. I think I’ve finished the sleeves on Hopeful, and then my OCD kicks in and the sleeve gets frogged and reknit. I think I’ve knit about 5 sleeves now. So instead of torturing you with yet more pictures of the same thing, or at least mostly the same, I’m just going to wait until the end. Thanks everyone for your comments on tourniquet sleeve vs. flaring sleeve.

Unbiased is almost done. It’s in the process of being pieced together and then the straps need to go on. Note that I didn’t say that I was in the process of piecing it together. Turns out I have a conveniently located finishing service at my disposal. And I don’t mean Jennifer Knits. The DF! Thanks DF for seaming the bag…

On to the meat of what I have been thinking about saying for a while. Like a lot of you, I really enjoy blogging. I don’t think I mention other people’s blogs near enough though I read them almost every day. Well, except on weekends. Mondays are therefore scary days when I wonder how I’m going to read 50 posts over lunch. I digress. So I wanted to take a small detour and out my bloglines list here. I really like clicking on the links to other blogs that people show on their sidebars to see what other people are talking about. Unfortunately, I think I might have a bit of a commitment phobia to actually show these as permalinks on my sidebar. Yes, need more therapy.

Anyway, I wanted to give a shout out to all of the people whom I read regularly, whether they know it or not. In order of appearance on my bloglines account:
Kim at A Knitted Frenzy
Laura at Affiknitty
Keohinani at Aloha and Oreos
Lizzi at Amimono
Chris at Bits of Knits
Alison at the Blue Blog
Laurie at CrazyAuntPurl
Carrie at Every Word’s a Purl
Stephanie at Glampyre Knits
Kathy at Grumperina goes to local yarn shops and Home Depot
Jessimuhka at Jessimuhka Knits
Theresa at The Keyboard Biologist Knits
Wendy at Knit and Tonic
Chrissy at Knittin’ Mom
Winnie at Knitting Escapism
Lucia at the Knitting Fiend
Christine at Knitting for Boozehags
Caitlyn at Knot without my Knitting
Marnie at Marnie Talks
Julia at Mind of Winter
Karen at Musings of a Mostly Self-Taught Knitter
Nona at Nonaknits
Jess at Penelope’s got Nothing on me
Jillian at Sknitty
Kym at Stix and the City
Wendy at Wendyknits
Stephanie at Yarn Harlot
Karen at Yarn is my Metier

Whew! I know that a lot of these are on everyone’s must read list or appear in various knitting magazines, so these are actually on the bottom of my list to check when there are too many posts to sift through. For all the others you don’t recognize, go by there and check them out.

So who do you check in with on a regular basis?

Opinion Poll

OMG, I hate Blogger! Blogger ate my post AGAIN. Is it time yet to start paying for my blog habit?

Anyway, thanks to everyone who commented on my post yesterday about my one-armed Hopeful. It’s nice to hear praise even if I’m not completely happy with it and continuously banging my head against the wall trying to make everything just so. I’m a perfectionist, I can’t help it. I just hope that being a perfectionist at least yields things done well. I do wonder if this Type A thing I’ve got going on is bad for me. The October 3 Newsweek has a little article on Type D personalities and how it increases your risk for heart disease. Type D, in case you’re wndering as I was, is a person who worries all the time and is socially inhibited. Hello?? Over here!!! Type D is a follow on to the definitions of Type A (perfectionist), Type B (laid back), and the little known Type C (outwardly pleasant, but avoids confrontation by bottling up emotions). Wait, all those are me. I guess you can’t really put people in a box.

Digress much?

So I did make the second sleeve and I did it a bit larger this time. I picked up 2 stitches for every 3 rows, and as luck would have it, I managed to come up with a stitch count that matched one of the sizes in the pattern. Which is good because if I had to recalculate… whoo boy! So, what do y’all think? Does the second sleeve look good as is?
I realized that I could at least get rid of the tourniquet effect on the original smaller sleeve edge if the second sleeve looks wonky. I’d omit the final round of evenly spaced decreases since I can’t figure out what these decrease do anyway then bind off on larger needles. However, I don’t think this approach would fix the overall snugness. It certainly won’t fix the armpit creep either. I realized the pit creep is pulling the body up so that the waist shaping doesn’t fall along my natural waist anymore. The mismatch would nag at me after all of the time I spent calculating. So unless the second sleeve looks like hell, I think I’ll rip the first.

Of course, I didn’t knit the larger sleeve just once. That just wouldn't be me. I followed the directions exactly as written for the number of sleeve stitches I had, but the picture at the left showed the final result of that effort. The sleeve edge flaring just plain annoyed me, so I ripped back to just after the short row shaping and threw in some more decreases there. I think that took away some of the flaring, as seen in the first picture. I’m contemplating a few more decreases to get rid of more flaring, but…

Quick, distract me before I frog some more!

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...

I'm not a spaz!

No, I didn’t throw Hopeful out the window in sheer frustration. I may have spazzed, but I think it worked out okay in the end. I finished the body section last night and tried it on to see if I went overboard. Thankfully, it looks just fine now, and I didn’t even have to hold my breath to get in. Turns out, the fabric is a whole lot stretchier when knitted up than you could imagine from just feeling the yarn. Anyway, I’m pretty happy with how it’s turning out so far.

I only have this picture to show for now. This is fresh off the needles, so you can see that the armhole and neckline edges are curling a bit. I’m blocking it now so that I am not quite so frustrated with the picking up stitches bit. I would show you the picture of trying on the body section, but as you can see, the neckline is a bit on the open side. Let’s just say that despite being a member of the IBTC*, I wasn’t exactly comfortable showing that to the world.

So what I’m wondering right now is, how far am I percentage wise? I have the neck border to apply and cap sleeves to add. I started out assessing my progress based on the number of balls of yarn I needed, but I think that's probably inaccurate given my adjustment. In my size, I was to need 3.87 balls of silky wool. This is how much I have left of the three balls I showed last week as of today. So I'm guessing that I've used about 2 balls, most likely less. I know that I took out a significant portion of stitches around the waist and hip area, but geez! I didn’t think it would amount to a whole ball of yarn difference… So what to do with the other 7 balls of silky wool in this pack?

* I didn’t come up with that acronym… DF’s college friend did. It just rhymes so well. Stands for “Itty Bitty T-- Committee”. You get the idea.

Back in the Saddle

After yesterday’s rant about spazzing by not swatching beforehand so I wouldn’t make things too big, I think I may have spazzed again. So you know in high school where they were telling you about designing an experiment and they told you to have a control and only vary one item at a time against the control so you could see the effects of that one variant? Yeah, well despite majoring in Chemistry in college, I decided to completely ignore my education and just spaz.

How so? Well, I decided that the nature of the fabric was not stretchy, so I’d size the whole garment to zero ease to get the sleek look envisioned by the designer and achieved by more than a few knitters out there who are apparently less of a spaz than I am. Oh yeah, and then on top of that, I’d downsize a needle and block to the correct dimensions. That would be not one, but two modifications affecting size at once.

I’m wondering if that was a good idea after all because now I’m looking at my progress through the waist decrease section and wondering what small child is going to fit into this t-shirt. I do still think it’ll block to my body measurements (wishful thinking?), but I’m sort of wondering whether I’ll have to wear a corset and refuse to eat in order to wear this shirt.

You should be proud of me however. I didn’t spaz in the middle of my spazzing today. I was having second thoughts about making a garment to my exact measurements. So I started to tink back. Then I thought, to hell with it. If I’m going to overcompensate, I might as well go overboard and drown in it.

On other project news, I pinned Charlotte out last night to block. I learned a great lesson about blocking as this is my first lace blocking project. In case you need to block out a lace triangular shawl, it’s a bad idea to block one side and then the other. Better to block from the middle out. In this case, I’ll probably block from the middle neck and then open up the lace in triangular sections towards the edges.

Something else I learned from this, I should have bumped up a couple of needle sizes to bind off extra loosely. I thought I had bound off loosely, but apparently not enough. As I tried to block out my triangular shawl last night, I noted that the not loose enough bind off was preventing me from getting a nice point at the middle. Oh well, next time.

Just once...

… I’d like to just follow a pattern, get the right gauge and have a beautiful garment that fits without some major disaster.

So here are some before and after pictures of last night’s knitting effort:


No, they’re not in the wrong order. I assure you. And the progress bar on the left that used to say 25% but now says 2%? Also correct. I just want to point out that those balls of varying sizes on the right? Yeah, that’s one hank of yarn. That I didn't cut. Can we curse Elsebeth Lavold right now for distributing hanks of yarn with multiple knots in them?

Back to the disaster. So energized by a couple of comments that indeed, the wonky gauge thing probably wouldn’t be all that noticeable, I pushed on. I was initially skeptical about the measurements written into the pattern. I didn't think they could possibly achieve the results I was hoping for and the designer had planned. So I took the liberty of taking out an additional 2” in the waist than what the pattern called for, but it was still 4” of ease with respect to my actual waist measurements.

I pressed on believing in the designer.

I decided against working the top in 3 sections when I got to the beginning of the neck shaping which would have yielded a 1.5” seam to sew up later. I decided that if I was going to ignore the designer’s instructions, I should place a lifeline. That's the white line in the picture above. What I didn’t know, was that I should have placed one at the beginning, but I digress.


I got as far as the above picture and because I was so skeptical, I decided to try it on, finally. Yeah, this is where the disaster hits. That wonky gauge that didn’t look all that different in the picture and in person makes a world of difference in fit. Plus the 4” ease in the waist was not working with me here to give a svelte fitted garment that the designer had intended. I pulled out handfuls of extra fabric around my lower back.

So yet again, I frogged. Sigh. It may sound like I'm mad at the designer, but actually I'm pissed off at myself for making such a bad yarn substitution. I think in a yarn that has the properties the designer intended, I wouldn't have these issues.

When will I learn to anticipate these things? I mean, I tugged on the Silky Wool when I first got it and noted that it didn’t stretch that much. Jenna had warned against using anything like 100% cotton that wouldn’t stretch much or else you wouldn’t achieve the desired effect. But I thought, apparently errantly, that cotton and silk are both pretty non-stretchy, but the wool/cotton blend called for in the pattern had a higher percentage of cotton than the silky wool had of silk, so I should be fine, right?

No. I should have realized it when I swatched. I should have realized that my gauge would be affected by the nubbiness of the yarn and that I’d need more tension than normal. I should have realized that the fabric doesn’t stretch much, so there will have to be some adjustments made. Swatch swatch swatch! Maybe if I repeat it to myself, next time I’ll listen.

But I still think that Hopeful will work in Silky Wool. You’re laughing at me now, but I have admitted already that I’m stubborn, so I’m ignoring you. I am fully believing that if Tivoli can fit me in 100% cotton, then this wool silk blend will fit too. With a few adjustments...

I’m downsizing significantly through the hip as the top is cropped a bit and my hips just aren’t that big where the top ends. I’m also working with 0 ease through the bust, waist and hips. I saw on a Knitty article that a woman swatched until she met gauge, and then went down a needle size so that she could block the piece to the correct measurements when she was done. I guess you can’t block a piece smaller…

Something else I randomly learned: if you insert a lifeline, make sure the lifeline is much smaller in diameter than the working yarn. Otherwise, you'll get a noticeable line where you had inserted it. I'm sure that it would block out mostly, but I don't want to take that chance in the future...

A positive way of looking at this though... I do swatch on every garment. I just swatch full sized.

Anyway, I’m now on row 7 after the eyelet row. I’m too depressed to show you pictures of my current progress. Sorry for the ranting, but I just needed to get that off my chest. Now off to find some chocolate...

Silky Wool

So I'm having mixed feelings about the Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool. It works up into a beautiful tweedy fabric that seems to have pretty good drape and is much softer than you'd expect it to be from just touching the hanks. But it's a royal PAIN to work with!

Let me see if I can explain: the heathered appearance of the yarn comes from the little flicks of what I assume to be white silk that is attached to the wool base. It's sort of spun in, but it's certainly not even. So when you're knitting with it, there's lots of extra "catch". I'm not a tight knitter, so when I first started working with it, the fabric looked like I had knit it on needles 2 sizes too large. I realized that the nubs were catching on the loops so that normal tension would not take out the extra yarn automatically when inserting my needle into the next stitch. I have to actually PULL the extra yarn out being careful not to pull too much so that it's overly tight. Now the fabric behaves more like it should. This is even more of a problem around decreases, or at least mine anyway, as it looks like the decreased stitches are creating gaping holes! I'm hoping that blocking will even out the stitches a bit.

As a side note, I discovered this 11 rounds into Hopeful and initially looked at it and decided that the difference wasn't really that noticeable. The gauge did change from 20 sts x 24 rows to 20 sts x 28 rows per 4x4" square. I had to recalculate my waist shaping, but I didn't want to rip out entirely. Does anyone else think this looks weird enough to rip out?


Anyway, I'm certainly going to continue on with Hopeful in Silky Wool, but I'll just have to pay closer attention to my tension, especially around shaping areas. I couldn't find much information about this yarn out there, and I actually purchased it sight unseen since it sounded like such a great idea and it was a good value. Did anyone else have a similar experience with this yarn?

EDIT: I couldn't get blogger to upload images last night (I hate blogger!) so I continued on. I finished my first ball of silky wool, and my oh my is the yardage good. I'm 1.5 rounds shy of my last waist increase. I know it's not an exciting picture, but here is progress with one ball of yarn.

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!

excited

I just saw on the Knitty boards that Jenna Adorno has made a new pattern available. Well new to me, it's been available for a couple of weeks already. It's called Hopeful and is super cute. Best of all, she's donating 120% of the proceeds to the Susan Love Foundation. She gives details on her page of her journey with this pattern, so I won't steal her thunder. At any rate, I can't wait to start the pattern. I just have to find the right yarn to do it...

In other news, I'm about to cast off Tivoli, so I'll have a full write up soon!