2007: A Year of New Techniques

A kitty in repose (on my yarn!)

Since I finally have a bunch of FO & WIP pictures, I think I'll ration them out over a few days. After learning how to do cables with "Fetching" (did I post those FO pics yet?) I decided to use my lone skien of Patons SWS in Natural Denim for the cute cabled hat in the SNB:Nation book. I decided to go for the pom pom, because really life's too short to live in fear of pom poms, as I have done in the past. Making the darn thing was much more difficult than I thought it'd be - don't stores sell pom pom makers? If so I'll have to buy one, because cutting my own of out cardboard got really old.

Behold my beautiful cables! I blocked this hat over two bowls in my kitchen - a smaller bowl set over a bigger one, which approximated the shape of the human head well enough. Thankfully Emma didn't decide to mess around with "that strange thing on the kitchen counter" since the bowls were balanced very precariously. I don't think picking glass shards out of wet wool is anyone's idea of a good time.

In case anyone's interested, I still only cable without a cable needle, and it's worked well thus far. After my first disastrous attempt with an actual cabling needle I wrote off cables for months and months, until I learned of this technique and decided I simply had to make a pair of Fetching.


To continue making this an SWS-only post, here's the beginnings of my Danica scarf, inspired by this lovely knitter, who's created quite a splash in blogland with her version. I'm rather annoyed - ok, VERY annoyed at the way the SWS is behaving. The pic on the left shows how much I was able to get from one skien, and though it's supposed to be a three skien scarf I'm a little worried. Not to mention the girl who's scarf is in the photo swears she didn't cut her yarn to make her squares solid colored, but for the life of me I can't get it to work. As you can see in the closeup, almost all my color shifts occur smack dab in the middle of a square. And to make matters worse, my first skien contained three (3!) knots and was missing an entire color. This colorway (Natural Earth - my favorite!) transitions into this really awesome deep navy blue, and instead all I got was a washed out dark grey. *sigh* Of course the second I joined my second ball, what color shows up? The navy. If this end of the scarf looks funny because of it I swear I'll chop it off and reknit it with a brand new skien. I keep consoling myself with the knowledge that very few people will notice any of this once it's done.

On a non-whiny note, I'm really getting a good short row workout. I've done them before in the artyarns tutorials, but it's amazing how easier it is to remember once you start. You don't even have to really count stitches, because you either decrease or increase one every row so you can visually keep track of where you are. I love seeing the entrelac come to life - you work a triangle, a square, another square, and a triangle, and then repeat backwards till you're back on the same side of the scarf you started on.

Ok, enough for now. I probably should get back to work :) Next update: I tackle fair-isle! Do I come out on top? You be the judge!

New Years Resolutions

I haven't posted in so long, I don't know where to begin. First, an explanation. On the last show I was on, I brought my laptop to work everyday. On this show, I have a mac in my office. It's much much easier to manipulate pictures when all you have to do is upload them at night and then mess with them (and post them) at work during your downtime. I find it hard to actually get on my computer when I get home at 8pm...I just want to knit and watch tv and relax.

Enough excuses. Here's my list of Knitting Resolutions for 2007:

1) Learn cabling. Oh wait, I figured this out right before Christmas - Ha!

2) Learn to do colorwork, both intarsia and fair isle. I think I can do intarsia, after using the basic technique on a pair of slippers for my mom for Christmas. Fair isle is another story entirely, and looks slightly difficult. That said, the end result is gorgeous!

2) Finish my $*&^#! poncho! Grr. I need to get to an lys and pay someone to help me get over this hurdle.

3) Stop buying yarn unless a) it's on super-duper-prices-won't-be-this-low-again sale b) it's one of a kind and I'll never be able to pick it up elsewhere or c) I have a project in mind that I'll be able to start within the next month. Leaving myself a lot of loopholes, eh? :)

4) The biggest and most important resolution: BE PATIENT!! SLOW DOWN!! DOUBLE CHECK!! It took me until after bind off and sewing in the ends to realize one 1/2 of my recently completed Fetching was one cable round longer than the other. How does something that big just pass me by? Oy. I believe knitting was put into my life to help me be more patient and methodical, and while I have definitely improved, I'm nowhere near where I need to be.

And just for fun, some pictures!

First, we have the winder I bought before Thanksgiving with a 50% off coupon from joanns.com. Winding without a swift is, well, difficult, but I have a strange system where I hang the hank off my left arm and wind with my right hand, veeeery slowly, occasionally unraveling or shifting the hank so the yarn doesn't get tangled.


And my Top Secret sweater - done!! This is a shot of it blocking. As you can see, the only flat surface in my apartment isn't big enough for my sweater, thus the arms hung off. I believe this is why the arms on this sweater are about four inches too long. *sigh* I'm going to cut and use lifelines (I'm scared!) and take off about 3 inches.

*drool* Patons SWS...I love it! Simple stockinette hat - forgot where I got the pattern. I didn't even bother blocking it, though it's only been cold enough a total of 3 times (all of which were in Florida over the Thanksgiving holidays) to wear it. Hence why I love hats, but have no use for them. Although this weekend it's forecasted to get into the 30's (eep!) in Los Angeles, so maybe I'll wear this one all day around my apartment. Actually, I have a geek*con to go to this weekend, so no hat for me. Geeks unite!

Aww, Emma's helping me knit! Ok, no she's not - she's getting in the way. This is my hideously expensive alpaca yarn that I used for my mom's scarf. Emma somehow a hold of one of the balls while I was gone for Christmas and I ended up being forced to cut out pieces of the yarn from the ball because she had ripped it with her kitty claws.




Projects in the works right now (No, my WIP bars haven' t been updated):
-V-neck sweater. I have the yarn, now I just need to wash it and wind it. (It's that "pre-treated" stuff used for machine knitters, so it's covered in some kind of oil).
-Scarf for my grandma. She requested one after seeing my mom's. Hers is pale pink and it's a "Joann's Exclusive" yarn, which really means next to nothing in the long run. Perfect color though :)
-Knitty's "Danica" in Patons SWS (different color than my hat, I think. Actually, I can't decide). I'm inspired by this knitter's recent creation which I saw in the Knitting Livejournal community. Beautiful!! And I got a $40 gift certificate to Michael's from my awesome sister, so maybe I'll use $15 of it towards the SWS.

Top Secret Sweater: A "Making of" Saga, Pt. 1

As sick as I'm getting of working on one project 24/7, I have to say I'm very excited to finally see my efforts taking shape...

Saturday was my last "Make Your First Sweater" class, and I attached the sleeves to the body (see left) and began working on the chest/shoulder area. I chose this project as a first sweater project because it's all in the round, with minimal seaming (just three needle BO under the arms). All I had to do was attached the live stitches at the tops of each sleeve to the appropiate places on the body (leaving a set # of stitches for the 3 needle BO) and then I just began knitting like normal.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, I had difficulty with casting on my sleeves. The first one I did was extremely tight (probably because it was my first time using dpns in a while and I was tightening a lot to make sure there would be no ladders) and the second one is the same gauge as the rest of the sleeve. I only hope blocking will fix this!

As I mentioned earlier, I modified the sleeves somewhat, so they wouldn't be huge and ballooning but rather a bit more subdued and somewhat form-fitting. I accomplished this using the highly technical process of trying them on while knitting them and looking at myself in the mirror. :) Somehow, in the midst of this highly technical process, one of them ended up lumpier than the other. *Sigh* I still don't know how, as I did take notes and measurements while adjusting the first (and more lumpy) sleeve. Once again, I'm looking to blocking to help me here... (sensing a theme, are we?)

Here's a pic of how it all looked pieced together, before joining all the pieces and working the chest. Hopefully sometime this week I'll post the pics of the whole thing on my needles, so stay tuned!

Look - Emma's "helping" me take pictures (by getting in the way).