Because I Can

Dear Blog,

I was knitting on my Vampire Boyfriend socks at work yesterday, getting perilously close to the beginning of the heel flap, and I must have zoned out because I somehow managed to cross my cable the wrong way.





First off, how the hell did I do that? The center cable is always a C4B. Always. It's never anything else. And the pattern is pretty easy to read and not at all confusing so why for the love of wool would I suddenly start knitting a different cable?  Anyway. The point is I noticed the mistake 3 or 4 rows after the fact and I thought myself. "Huh. I could fix that." But continued to knit. Even though the thought that this cable thingy was a mistake that I could easily fix without that much effort kept creeping into my mind, I ignored it. Because, hey, it's just one lousy cable right? Who'd notice?  That's why hand knits are so lovable anyway. All those mistakes.

Maybe. Maybe if I were a new knitter and I seriously thought I would have to tink back those 4 rows, fix the mistake, and then knit those four rows all over again. Maybe then that kind of laziness would be acceptable. But not for me. I knew I was just being unreasonably sloth-like, so eventually I dropped those four offending stitches. Pulled out the bad cable.




And used the little ladder-loops to put the cable back where it belongs.  It only took a few short minutes and not a lot of fuss, it looks the way it's supposed to and no-one will ever know that it was once crossed the wrong way.

 

I did it because I can. And it's really that simple.

FO: NRS Sweater

Today's FO is the NRS - No Remorse Sweater.  It started out life hoping to be the Sideways Redux, but I realized that pattern was hopelessly too complicated for me and switched at the last minute. This pattern was pretty easy (Except for the whole button thing. More on that later ) and I would love to knit it again. Knit this with knit picks wool of the andes, which in hindsight is not really soft enough for a close-to-the-skien sweater. (Though fine for hats and the like.)



Yarn : Knit picks wool of the andes (about ) 4 balls
Needles : US5
Pattern : Safire
Cast on : Jan 2012
Cast Off : Nov 2012





Other than the slight itchyness, my only real complaint is that I managed to knit the top two button holes on one side of the sweater and the bottom two on the other side. No idea how that happened but it's making for some seriously awkward fastening. I may or may not ever put in the effort to figuring out a fix for this, since its really too itchy to wear anyway. The positive side of all this is that I can knit sweaters that fit me perfectly and that are good enough quality that I would wear them in public, so my sweater phobia is mostly gone now




obligatory boob shot?


Cheers
THEO

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

FO : Sunshine for Grandma

Dear blog,

I am pleased to announce that the sunshine shawl was completed successfully in time for x-mas! Actually, I finished it on December 30th, which gave me plenty of time to block it before giving it to my Grandmother when I visited her on New Years Eve.

This shawl was the biggest project I knit this past year, and the one that stayed with me the longest. I ordered the yarn ( 4 skiens! ) from a local yarn store when I first moved to DLI, and it took over two months for the order to come in! I started knitting it in June. I've been drooling over this pattern since I put it in my queue in 2008, and I was enjoying every minute of it! When I visited Hearst Castle? This shawl saw me through the long, winding car-ride.

No true epic is without it's trials. Chart H : The knitted edging.

I've knit several shawls before this one, but they all ended with a simple bind-off. A knitted edging is different, it involves creating a certain number of new stitches, and working a charted pattern on just those stitches (using a DPN ) knitting one stitch from the DPN together with a stitch from the main shawl every other row. Now that I've actually done it, it seems pretty simply and I think I can safely say I've tucked this technique under my belt. But friends, I have to admit, I am directionally challenged. The instructions for the edging confused the living daylights out of me. I googled it, I looked for youtube videos. I scratched my head and called my sister on the phone. All of that research ended with me knitting the edging chart as a pattern repeat - around the ENTIRE CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE SHAWL. Apparently, that was not correct.

If you are planning to do a lace edging soon, take this to heart. When instructions say "You are going to need a DPN for this" and you realize that it is very very easy to do it without a DPN, that means you are wrong. STOP KNITTING and figure out a way to follow the instructions that would be impossible without a DPN. Pro tip, the edging chart? Only one repeat of each row. So yeah. I tinked back upwards 600 stitches and pushed the shawl into a drawer where it stayed until Christmas break, where I had my sister show me step by step what to do. Twice. Yup. Makes so much more since now. I felt really really ridiculous and embarrassed, but I will never make that mistake again, and I think I learned something. Plus, four days later I got this shawl, which is gorgeous, and which I am very very pleased with. The next lace thing I knit I'm keeping :K

A cloud in my blue sky

Dear Blog,

In an attempt to speed up the knitting process, I've been taking the sunshine shawl to class with me. I knit on it during my ten minute breaks, and during my lunch break. Managed to finish chart D and this past week I finished the first row of chart E, only to discover that I was missing a stitch.

My row needs to end with 3 knit stitches and a YO, but I only have 2 stitches. Where is my other stitch? I've looked over the row for extra decreases, double checked that I knit 5 and not 6 in various places in the chart... but with upwards 600+stitches in one row, it really is like looking for a needle in a hay stack. Whats more, there is no guarantee that the mistake is in this row. The previous row was K1 YO around, I could have just as easily skipped a YO there. So what do I do? The perfectionist in me wants to completely tink back and start over..... but the practical side of me says I shouldn't work backwards unless I can actually find the place where the mistake is. If this were a normal project I would just increase a stitch and keep going as if nothing had happened, but lace isn't always as forgiving...... What should I do?

R.I.P

Riiiiiiiiiiiiip.

Shh. Did you hear that? That sound? Listen...

Riiiiiiiiiiiiip.

It's the scariest most terrifying sound....The stuff of nightmare's and knitter's ghost stories. A project moaning in it's last throes of death, as it sinks despairingly into the frog pound, unraveling at last, returning to it's base element. The dreaded R.I.P - I'm not talking about simply ripping back a little bit to fix a mistake, I'm talking about all out total unmerciful shredding. We're sending this thing to the stash and back.

At this point you may ask, what project has fallen prey to such an evil fate? Good question! Remember Hey Teach?

I knit it, I sewed it up. Yes I got gauge, but it simply didn't fit. Not going to lie, it was too big and nothing was going to change that. Rather than try to salvage the project, I've decided to completely frog it and knit something else instead. This isn't anything against the Hey Teach pattern, I liked it and may knit it again someday. but for now, I've been there, done that, and now I just want to move on.

The frogging process was hard. Harder than I thought, and I'm not talking emotionally here, I'm talking technically. I did way too good a job seaming - and for now on I'm TOTALLY going to go easier on the weaving-in, because I ended up having to just cut the yarn in places in order to get it to unravel. Yikes! Oh well. I've already cast on a new project with this yarn, fingers crossed it'll have more luck!

Stitch Counts.

Hello Blog,

I appoligize in advance for the rather longish length of this post. I have to rant to you about how much I really, truly dislike my swallowtail right now. But first, something a bit happier.

Progress on the Cursed Scarf:

Not even halfway done with the scarf. Hurray!

And, look what I can do now...

New skill achieved!

I have been given crochet lessons by several different friends in the past, and attempted to teach myself, but it's been slow going for me. Last night I had yet another lesson and met some well-earned success ^_^ Now I just need to learn the names of the stitches I've just made, and how to read those confusing crochet patterns, and I'll be good to go!

And now, swallowtail.

Let me explain what happened. I was supposed to do 14 repeats of chart 2 and end up with 195 stitches, but instead I ended up with 208. Not noticing I started chart three and found that I had 6 stitches left over at the end of the row. I ripped back to the end of chart 2, thought about the merits of ripping an additional 6 rows or enlarging the shawl, and decided to keep going until I reached 255 stitches before starting chart 3.

Right now, I only have 218 stitches. HOWEVER. I feel like I have a problem. Deep deep in my bones I know there's a problem. I have an even number of stitches and yet I'm not coming up with too many or two few stitches at the end of each row, despite the fact that the pattern - and every note that I've read on ravelry - tells me that I need an odd number of stitches. I can't find a flaw in my knitting anywhere, but the numbers don't add up, I don't want to keep knitting only to have to rip back again, but what else can I do? I'm struggling to find an answer - one that I'm sure will be very simple and obvious - but until I do figure it out. I hate my knitting.

Until next time

Theo

Field Report

Hey, blog.

No pictures today, just a brief update on the swallowtail. Had a bit of trouble with the end of chart 2, I missed the yarn over before the center stitch and had to rip back two rows, not once, but twice. Meh, I should learn not to knit at 1 AM. Anyway, I'm on chart 3A now, and something doesn't seem right. It's not lining up, and I don't even know if it's supposed to or not, just that it isn't and I'm uber paranoid. Anyway I've been avoiding kitting it trying to think what to do and working on the cursed scarf in the meantime. But I've decided to finish the row, and if I'm up or down a stitch I'll rip back and try to work out what's wrong, but if I finish the row even I'll take that for a sign that everything is going as it should.

Exorcism of a Cursed Scarf

I'd like to start today's post with a FO from last summer; my Dark Mark Scarf which I knit in a month to wear to the midnight showing of Harry Potter Movie the 6th. I love that scarf, I wore that scarf all winter and I have fond memories of knitting it. It was such an easy, pleasant, mistake-free project that this January I decided it was time to knit another one, this time for my brother.

I've been promising my brother, among other family members, their own dark mark scarves, so I went out and bought the yarn during winter break and cast on, only to discover that I had completely forgotten how to use the double knitting technique. What I failed to realize then was that the whole project had been seriously cursed, and what followed was not really my fault at all.

After frogging several times I hid the yarn in utter embarrassment. When school started up again I made several more attempts to start this project, I obsessively watched the double knitting tutorial at knittinghelp.com trying to spot what I was doing wrong, but without results. The scarf was cursed. Deeply, deeply, cursed.

I took some pictures to prove it.

Here after successfully casting on and starting the pattern (not as easy as it should have been ) I managed to switch the main color halfway through the row.

And here, you can see that what was supposed to be the start of the nose has become more of a staircase.

Today I finally wrangled the beast into submission, and have managed to get a whole 47 rows in without any major disasters, so whatever hex was on the scarf must finally have been lifted. Whew! To avoid ever experiencing this amount of pain again, here, for future reference, are the things that went wrong:

Gauge: Apparently, too tight a gauge is not good for double knitting, I went up from a US 6 to US 8

Stitch count : The original pattern says to cast on 31 stitches, since you're basically knitting two scarfs at the same time with double knitting, that number needs to change to 62. In addition, you'll be slipping the first stitch and purling the last stitch with both colors, so you need to add extra stitches. Final CO number should be 64.

Slipping the first stitch: It clearly says this in the instructions, but you need to slip the first stitch and then start the pattern beginning with a knit stitch. If you count the slipped stitch as your first knit stitch you will encounter serious problems. (Duh.)

Basic knitting/purling : When you knit, hold both colors in the back. When you purl, hold both colors in the front. Sounds simple in principle, doesn't it?

Now that that's been dealt with, I feel much more at piece with my Knitting.

Until next time,

Cheers!

Olympic Dream

Hello blog,

it's been awhile since I last wrote. The knitting Olympics started almost too weeks ago, and I cast on with ready enthusiasm. But my olympic dream quickly began to fade. I thought it would be a little hard, sure, but it's not a hard pattern. It's just big, that's all. I figured I could handle it. But I began to fall behind on my schedule, days behind. Between my homework and the endless-seeming pattern repeats I started to think that I would never see that olympic gold. Then, on monday I decided to pull an all -nighter and get something done. (A personal bout of insomnia initiated this idea, helped along with seasons 3-5 of Babylon five, available at theWB.com). I actually did 'catch up' to the place I wanted to be by that date, but knitting at 6 AM I dropped a yarn over, and in my attempt to fix that mistake, ended up dropping even MORE stitches. At first I thought I'd be all fancy and try to do 'yarn surgery'





But then I got over my delusions of grandeur, bit the bullet, ripped back 7 rows, and got on with life. Now I'm less than half way through the 6th repeat. I need to do 9 total and there's pretty much no way that I'll finish by the deadline, but I'm not going to let that get me down. The knitting Olympics is about challenging yourself, pushing boundaries and finding out who you are as a knitter. To that extent I feel as if I have succeeded, and I will have an extremely pretty lace shawl to wear once the weather gets a bit warmer, and that's what counts. For those of you who are still in the running: Hold in there, it's almost over.

Too tired to knit?

Hello blog,

I had planned to be able to post triumphant pictures of a finished Jaywalker sock, joyous accounts of how I had cast on to the second of the pair, and elegant rants about my other love The dark mark scarf. I fully intended to have started and gotten at least 15 rows into the scarf by now. However, things have not gone according to plan. The Jaywalker stills needs to be kitchener stiched closed. Despite a firm rational understanding of how to do it, and knowing full well that it's not really that hard or that scary of a thing at all, I still deeply deeply dread kitchener stitch. I thought that I would start the dark mark scarf instead. I love that pattern and it would take the edge off of toe-finishing. However I seem to have completely forgotten how to do double knitting since my last go at the pattern. One side still has the purls poking through and the other side just looks like an incomprehensible mess; you can distinguish neither purl nor knit stitches, but only a snarly swirl of yarn on the back side. I've read and re-read the instructions multiple times, printed them, and come within a hairs breadth of highlighting them (maybe I should.) And yet I still can not find that crucial step that I am so obviously missing. Nothing is more frustrating than failing so miserably at a task that, in the past, you did easily in your sleep. I have no intention of giving up on this pattern, and I'm sure I'll feel remarkably dumb when I finally do realize what I've been doing wrong, but until then I've cast on yet another pattern. It's the Stacked Eyelet Cowl by Ami Madison. I'm knitting it using knit picks comfy sport in the most satisfyingly winter shade of green. The color is most excellent and the yarn itself is soft, and ever so smooth. I haven't really decide where I stand on cotton, weather I hate is passionately or delight in it, but I'm certainly loving this yarn to bits. Oh, and by casting on this I ended up on Ami's blog, and ended up reading the entire archive. Well written entertaining knitting and fiber blogs are getting kinda hard to find, but I enjoyed reading hers ^^;; OF course all of this to say that I may possibly be too tired, or too bored to knit. I've been listless all day. I don't feel like reading, or studying. Listening to music or audio books gives me head-aches, and there is nothing interesting to watch on hulu. So I've spent most of the day knitting in complete silence trying not to doze off. Sigh.
With any luck I'll have pictures and more satisfying tales of progress for you in my next post. So until then,

Cheers.
Theo

What to do when things don't fit

Blog, it's been a long time coming :



I have finally finished Hey Teach. Sort of. It looks ok, right? I'm not digging the button bands so I'm actually going to rip them out and do them at a smaller needle size. However, there is more...



I should have realized that my abnormally narrow shoulders would probably not be accounted for in the pattern sizing, but I didn't. So I've got a chunk of fabric up there that needs to be taken in. Not sure what the best method for this will be, I'm going to take it to my LYS knit along and pole for advice.

In other news, the empress jacket is also coming along. But more on that in future posts ^__-
'cheers
THEO

Duplicate woes

So it's been awhile since I mentioned this swatch :





I thought I had the duplicate stitch thing all figured out. I mean, sure, it was a little ratty, but I did it while watching TV, so the real deal was bound to turn out better, right?





Wrong. OK, maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but this looks like crap. I'm going to take it out and re-do it, but first I'm trying to figure out just what the heck I'm doing wrong. I'm using this tutorial as my guide, and as far as I can tell I'm doing it right..... (except that some people claim that my stitches are twisted, no-one can tell me how to fix that, )

Gack. I'm knitting another swatch, will update later. If you spot some glaringly obvious thing that I'm doing wrong, by all means PLEASE speak up @__@

soul of disaster

Hi Blog. Theo here. I'd like to report to you a tragedy. Brace yourselves.






So, I 'turned the heel' today, I was really excited because it's a big step and all, I read and re-read the instructions (unfortunately they are a bit vague, the pattern has already been unfortunate in other places as well) . I even watched two different videos on how to do it first.
so I get to the part where it says "knit the instep in pattern, p1 k4" and (after desperately googling to find out witch part of the sock the instep is. Seriously, is that common knowledge among normal people? ) I notice that in order for the pattern to show up on the outside of the sock correctly, I now have to k1 p4 - directly inverse of what the pattern states. Now, I know what your thinking, little red flags should have gone up at this moment, that yellow triangle hazard sign should have flashed passed, but no, no, I had to wait until I had crossed the instep and picked up the other side of the gusset to notice.






Do you see how in the top photo, there's a little row of bumps? A rather attractive row that rises above the knit stitches? That is showing up on the inside of my sock. It should be on the outside. How did this happen? I'm sure I followed the pattern correctly, but at some point I must have turned the sock one too many or two few times, and now I get to experience the joy of tinking back all of those little stitches and starting from scratch. This is a mistake too huge even for 'good enough' person like me to ignore. However (and rightly so, I think. ) I am way too mad to start this task now, so I'll fume for the rest of the night, read my Kanji book, and day dream about picking up a more intrinsically easy and relaxing hobby.

Until next time
Theo