Boot Camp and Waiting Scarf

Hey blog!

Just wanted to pop in and give you a little update. I just recently graduated from Navy Boot camp, and got my first bit of knitting back. It's the boot camp and waiting scarf that I started the night before I shipped out and that I knit all the way to the inproccessing building at Great Lakes. It's knit in some super cushy acrylic yarn (probably my favorite acrylic brand right now ) Loops and Threads impeccable Ombre ^_^ No idea what size needles I'm using - generic circulars in case boot camp made me throw them out. They didn't even see me put them in the 'send home' box. ;)

Started with a square of garter stitch and then invented a little pattern based on threes.

Garter square

3 rows stockinette
3 three rows of garter and stockinette

square of garter

3 rows stockinette

three squares of seed stitch in between squares of garter

repeat.

I'm 2/3s of the way done. Aiming to do (of course) three repeats of the pattern.

My other yarn and needles are in the mail. I should be picking up my cables and lace scarf and starting a new pair of socks within the next week or too. Also hopefully there will be a camera somewhere along the way and we can get caught up on pictures.

Until then, stay chill :)
THEO

To Kindle, to Burn

Hey blog!

Just thought I'd drop in to say, Belated Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

I didn't get *all* of my christmas knitting done, but I feel good about how far I got. Next year I'll start sooner, lol.

I'm still working on my two yummy lace projects, but I had to take a break from them yesterday. I haven't been sleeping much and my eyes are...blurry and sore, making it pretty impossible to read the lace charts (Learned the hard way after ripping back the same row twice), so I went looking for a pattern for my new Kindle!




The Pattern is Kindle Cables I'm knitting it with KnitPicks Telemark from an old project that recently got frogged.
So far this pattern is a bit of a mixed bag; I got gauge on my first attempt, but Knitting this thing circularly on DPNS is super awkward, making it the most difficult DPN experience I've ever had.

One clearly brilliant aspect of the pattern, is that it introduced me to the miraculous cast on Invented by Judy Becker.
She is a mad genius and I can't help but wonder why It took me so long to stumble across her work.


It's hard to believe that 2010 is almost over! I've come so far with my knitting this year, and it's been great to be able to blog about my progress here on this blog. Next year is going to be full of even more changes and challenges; My blogging here will probably dwindle down to nothing over the next few months, but it will be a temporary lapse. I already have several exciting projects lined up in my queue for next year, so stay tuned!

Cheers
Theo

Provisionally

Yesterday I started a new project that required a provisional cast-on, which I had no idea how to do. Luckily, the internet is very useful in that department, and I quickly learned two new crochet cast ons; One in which you simply crochet a chain and then pick up stitches through the back loops, and one that involves a kind of contorted use of both crochet hook and knitting needle at the same time, pictured here ;

Despite quickly picking up these techniques in theory it took me an hour to actually successfully start my shawl. Maybe someone out there knows how to fix my problem, but my first provisional stitch was open (had the tail....) and I wasn't sure how to close it/ what to do about it, and so I kept losing it o.0;;

But every-thing's OK now. Despite how fun and exciting small projects like scarves, gloves (and especially) hats, are. They can be a bit wearing after awhile, so I'm really really excited about starting a new lace project ^__^

To do : Knit a blog entry

Hi.

Blog, I'd like to dedicate today's post as the first entry in a three part love letter to Patons yarns.

True story, I was working on finishing a pair of fingerless gloves last night, and I was really excited/relieved to be so close to being done. I turned to sixer and said "The end is so close I can almost taste it, I can feel the finish of this project...It's practically at the tip of my fingers!" Sixer promptly did her duty as my sister and let me know that puns of that quality were not only beneath me, but quiet frankly an embarrassment to knitters everywhere, and for that I apologize.

Allow me to offer this peace offering;

But lets not get distracted. The gloves in question (now finished, thank you.) were knit up with a single skien of Patons Kroy socks FX. I love this yarn. I have to tell you I was really excited when I found out that both Patons and Red Heart had sock yarn, and that my local craft stores carried them. Craft stores are just so much more convenient for me to get to than your typical LYS, but they have a tendency to lack decent yarns in smaller weights than worsted. In addition, I find drastically veriegated yarn to be a bit obnoxious at times, so the FX yarn, which merely has a slight color gradient, apeals to me a lot. It's soft, it knits up well. I only needed one skien to knit my gloves, and the best of all both gloves have matching strips! I don't know how they make it so that the color pattern repeats at the half-way point of the skien, but the important thing is that they do, which makes them awesome.

X-mas special

Dear blog....


So, I decided sometime around december 1st that maybe I should get started on those christmas presents that I wanted to knit...
probably a bit last minute, but that's what I've been doing ever since! I feel good about my chances of success.... Natrually I wont be able to knit stuff for EVERYONE, but I comfort myself that not all of my friends WANT hand-knit stuff anyway.... and if they do they can go on the top of the list for next year.
I'll tell you what though, after this month I don't want to look at a pair of mittens ever again. I've got five pairs in various stages of completion right now, which makes the idea of knitting hats, scarfs... or pretty much anything else very attractive right now. Brace yourself for a flood of FO posts this new years!


BWAHAHAHA,
THEO

Swallowtail FO

Dear blog,

Yes. The rumors are true, I have finished my Swallowtail shawl.

Lets have a moment of silence to commemorate this occasion.

I've been working on swallowtail for a little less than a year now. I first cast on in January 2009. The yarn (knit picks palette in the pool color-way), was a present from my Gandfather (knit picks gift card FTW!) and I cast on the moment it came in the mail. I loved the pattern instantly. It was challenging, but not hard. Fun, stimulating, exciting. It knit up really fast too, and I have NO idea why I sat it down. Probably it was school that distracted me, and by the time I went to pick the pattern back up my gauge had changed drastically and I'd switched to continental style knitting (learning how to do YOs the correct way at the same time, incidentally ). I knew I wouldn't be happy with the shawl if I finished it with these obvious changes, and that I'd have to frog it and start over, which I dreaded. Procrastinate procrastinate, until finally it's June of this year.

When I re-started knitting this shawl in June I initially didn't have any problems, but I got tripped up because I accidentally knit too many repeats of the budding lace chart. It took me an indecent amount of time to figure this out, but once I did finishing the shawl was pretty easy :)

I really want to shout out to testkitchen45 who has the absolute most straightforward and helpful notes on her project. Thanks to her I discovered that my choices where 1; rip out 6 or 7 rows of lace with out the help of a safety line or 2; do 19 repeats of the budding lace chart thus dramatically increasing the size of the shawl. I chose the second option and I'm glad that I did! I initially started with 3 skiens of palette and it *looked* like I was going to manage to squeeze by with that despite all the extra repeats, but I did end up having to order a fourth skein in order to finish the bind of. It was totally worth it though. I love the size, I love the way the yarn drapes, I think the nupps are charming. In general, I think this is the most awesome thing I've ever knit and I can't wait to get another shawl on my needles.

Before I go I do want to give sixer her due... both for taking the FO pictures once again and for not complaining *too* much that our room (allegedly) 'smelled of sheep' during the two days it took swallowtail to block.

Stalling

Hey blog!

No pictures today, but I wanted to do a quick update:

The brother's treads are finished. My gauge changed again when knitting the second glove, but overall I think they turned out OK.

Progress on Rasberry Twist has stalled because I ran out of yarn. On a different note, this was my first time working with Debbie Stroller's Full O Sheep yarn and I have to say, I'm not really a fan.

The upside to all of this is that I'm (knock on wood) working on swallowtail again. Yay!

I have this super-secret goal of finishing swallowtail before I ship out to boot camp In January, so we'll see how that turns out.

'Cheers

Theo