Stripes and the ways I loath them Part II

Hey blog.

I have a small, FO, that I'll be showing you later this week, but I thought I'd give you an update on my striped scarf first.



Still knitting it. Finished the 1st skien and now on a second. 1/3 of the way done. Woohoo!

I still hate this scarf.

Oh, I'm knitting a second scarf, for myself. I love it. I was showing it to a friend and gushing about how charming I thought it was, and he said to me. "I thought you hated striped scarves?"

Oh. 

Multiknitter

Dear Blog, 

Experts tell us that multitasking reduces our productivity. For some of us, that just sounds like common sense, but for others, we know it's just silly.

Knitters know that when their project is going slowly, one of the best ways to speed things up (barring an all-day TV marathon ), is to start another project. We don't really know why. Maybe the project you were working on was boring, and you just needed some space from it? Maybe you made a mistake and needed a confidence booster before going back and fixing it. Maybe knitting cables on size 1 DPNS isn't something you should do exclusively for two months straight. Whatever the reason, we can feel confidant that rather than detracting from our progress, starting something new can improve it.

When you hit a dead end, it's OK to back track and go around the problem. Forward motion is always better than standing still doing nothing.

Until Next

Cheers!

Stripes and the ways I loath them

Dear Blog,

This is the scarf I started. A month ago. Notice how it's barely a third of the way done. Normally in this kind of situation, I'd complain about how busy I am, how I just can't seem to find enough time to knit, or I'm so exhausted that I fall asleep at the needles. But no. This time, I'm the only one to blame. This time, because I should have seen this coming.

You see blog. I had this idea. I graduate soon and I want to knit something nice for some of my teachers. I saw this sock yarn and thought that it would be perfect, and I could get started right away without having to go to a speciality store that sells lace-weight. I noticed that it was variegated self-striping yarn, and I briefly remembered that I absolutely hate stripy scarves. But I reminded myself that striped scarves are a classic accessory and most people like them.

Then, you know what I did? I looked for a pattern. I really really felt like knitting lace, and so even thought I don't like variegated lace, I continued. "It's not for me, and lots of people like variegated lace"

The pattern I picked had a combination of lace and cables. I love lace and cables combos. I think they are neat.

I think vertical cables with horizontal stripes are kind of retarded, and that only a blind confused drunk knitter in a dark movie theatre would ever think that those two things should mix, (Not that I'm judging you, if that happens to be your thing.)

But I thought, no biggie, I'm not knitting it for myself, right?

I think we all know the moral of this story. If a knitter isn't thrilled with it, she isn't going to be thrilled to knit it. Part of me feels like I should keep going, since I've already come this far, and lets face it, what else would I do with this yarn?

And part of me feels guilty that I'd be willing to knit something for someone else that I have such clear personal objections to.

So blog, I leave it to you. Forward or Frog?

Small Haul

Hey blog!

We know the posts have a been a bit thin lately. Don't worry! I've been knitting hard on the blanket, and now that it's nearly done I expect a bit more momentum here. Which reminds me, with the blanket's eminent FO-dom, I've been thinking allot about what my next project will be (and I haven't forgotten the other WIPS, either. ) Here's a small taste of what to expect in the future :

Got these at a Joann's (nearest one is 45 minutes from where I live. Yeah. )

Since the stop over was unplanned, I wasn't prepared to buy buttons for my sweater. Had no idea what size or color to get, so I grabbed these kinda randomly. We'll see if they work out or not this weekend ^^;;

Until Next

Cheers

Armed and ready

Hey blog!

Just thought I'd post a brief blurb on the NRS sweater. Both sleeves are finished!

I actually finished them a few weeks ago.

Everything went fine for the most part. I did have trouble figuring out how to do the join when I first started, so I ended up with this pretty unsightly hole in the arm pit area. I put that sleeve on a stitch holder, started the other sleeve so I could figure out what I did wrong. Once I finished that sleeve I went back and frogged the first sleeve, and started over.

All I need to do now is the collar/ button band and then I'll be done!

Of course, I'm trying to finished the super surpise blanket first! ^_^

Until next

Cheers

Flutterby

A few months back, I got the flutterby pattern as a present. I looked at it, I looked at my calender and saw that christmas was coming up, and I thought to myself; "Yeah, I can knit that during my vacation!" I was so delusional that I even ordered the yarn and had it sent to my parents address, so it would be there waiting for me when I arrived. When the holidays actually came, several problems were quickly made obvious to me. The largest of them being the number off things and people I wanted to see while I was there, measured against the amount of time I had, and the degree to which drinking socially and knitting mix. (Which is, zero. Don't try it.)

The other problem, closer to most knitters hearts, was gauge. No matter what needles I tried, I could not get the correct gauge with the yarn I had chosen. (LOFT ). The closest I got was on these tiny uber size 0 needles, and when I cast on the recommended 72 stitches and started the ribbing, it was much much too big. Unable to go down to a smaller size needle, I opted to decrease my stitches to 52. After that the ribbing looked more reasonable and I finished that I started on the color work. It's probably obvious, but your gauge in sts will be drastically different from your color-work gauge, and my nice-fitting ribbing started to take on a drastic cone shape as my color work pulled and pinched everything together so tightly, that I couldn't even pull the whole thing over my knuckles, much less get it around my wrist.

ripping back and switching up to larger needles (0US ) for the color-work helped, but I think I'm going to rip back again and try it on 1s or even 2s.

I'm already resigned to the fact that these mittens are going to end up either too big, or too small, possible both, before I finish them.

WIP Woops

Dear blog,

I dedicated a huge chunk of this past weekend to my knitting, and as you may have noticed, I have a pretty decent number of WIPs floating around right now. I honestly, sincerely meant to work on each one of them in turn (especially the burnt frost hat, which really only has a few rows of decreases left. ) I also planned on starting the 2nd sock in my Vampire Boyfriend pair, so I'd have something a little more juicy to knit in class if the SHELTER scarf got 'too' relaxing. But I'm afraid I have been very weak.

From the moment I seriously started knitting my No Remorse Sweater, I became blind to all other projects.

The NRS sweater is the reincarnation of an earlier attempt to knit this pattern. It turned out to be way too complex for my current direction-reading skill, so it was frogged in favor of a simpler project. Namely, this one. Of course, I still want to knit sideways-spencer-redux eventually. Just not quiet yet. Anyway, this sweater has consumed me. I'm driven on by the one oh-so-important question : Will it fit? The other projects I know will more or less work out, but I have a lousy track record with sweaters, and I'm hanging by the seat of my pants here waiting to find out how things are going to go down.

Until next

Cheers