Happy List

There are many things that are making me happy today. Most of them are knitting-related.

1. Online shopping yarn accidents. I blame Leah for this one. But I just love knowing that soon, there will be a package of yarny goodness to brighten an otherwise run-of-the-mill workday.
2. Friday. 'Nuff said.
3. The prospect of a new craft project. I got the new KnitPicks catalog yesterday and the chart keeper caught my eye. But I would want something larger--more like 9x12-ish--so I did some online searches. (I later noticed that the chart keeper unfolds to the size I'm looking for, but I still don't like that it's hinged in the middle. What good does the right size do me if it's not going to stay flat if I pick it up?) I found the Schoolhouse Press Magnetic Row Finder, which is more like what I want, but not quite big enough. Next, I stumbled upon this tutorial for making/embellishing a pair of flat magnetic strips to kind of sandwich your chart in, and I thought that I might be able to make do with something like that. I searched the Michaels website to make sure they have the materials, and I came across this--a magnetic sheet, 1'x2'! Perfect for my purposes. It can even be cut to size. I just hope my local Michaels carries it! And the metal strips mentioned in the tutorial, of course. I'm having fun planning this, and I really hope I can find all the materials so I can have fun making it!
   
4. Clearance yarn. I got the skinny from a coworker (who moonlights at Michaels) on their current clearance. I might not buy any of it, but I'll definitely enjoy looking at it!
   
5. Yarn swap. I mentioned the possibility to one of my fellow SnB-ers regarding all of my dishcloth cotton, and it looks like there's going to be a big Group Swap on Tuesday. I'll have to dig through the stash and see if there's anything else I'm willing to part with! I feel like dishcloth cotton doesn't give me much bargaining power. (So common!) Regardless, though, even if I just give some of it away, I'll be pretty happy. I have too much cotton. Seriously.
   
6. Friday. It bears repeating.

I hope everyone has a happy weekend!

Aftermath

Owie.

That's the only visible evidence of yesterday's ridiculous fall out of my desk chair. But standing all evening at second work, I could definitely tell that I had fallen. It was more a general stiffness than any real pain; I guess I'm getting old!

I am also a dumbass for falling out of my desk chair, and there's the mark of my dumbassery. May it teach me a lesson about... something. Growing longer arms, maybe?


In other news, I'm making progress on my Swiffer cover.


I'm hoping that this will somehow kindle in me an interest in cleaning the floors. ("Look, I get to play with my knitted thing! It's not like chores at all!") I have a feeling that I'm not that easy to manipulate, though. At least not when it comes to chores.

I wonder if it was a tactical error to use white as my solid color, and to use a variegated that also contains white... It'll probably just highlight the amount of dirt that comes off my kitchen floor. Yuck! Next time I'll have to pick darker colors.

Photo Goodness *Clumsy edit

You know what everyone likes? Pictures of my knitting!


Here's the round dishcloth I made this week in an effort to start destashing cotton. I need to sew up the last half inch of the seam after work--I cast off before I left the house this morning and brought it with me to seam at lunch, and my end just wasn't quite long enough. I needed to thread it through the center and gather it, which ate up some yarn--if I hadn't gathered it, there would have been a two-inch diameter hole in the middle!

I love this cloth. I'm amazed that the magic of short rows turned flat knitting into wedges, and then into a circle! And I like the way the variegated yarn worked with the pattern. I might need to make some more of these.


I'm also making some progress on my sweater.

It's not as wedge-shaped as it appears; it's just all scrunched on the needle at the top and spread out at the bottom. I also had to pin the edging to the carpet to keep it from flipping up. I really hope that problem is solved by seaming and blocking; if the bottom of my sweater is constantly folding up, I may never actually wear it, and that would be tragic!


I'm done with the waist shaping and I have about three inches to go before I can start the shoulder shaping. I feel good about my progress, even if I'm not sure I'll get to wear it before the fall. We'll see!

Edit: I just had something happen that was so completely absurd, I must share it, even though it is personally embarrassing. I reached into the Pharmacy Drawer (also known as the Secret Snack Drawer and the Tampon Squid Drawer) of my desk for some Tylenol a little while ago and opened the bottle. I then dropped the cap of the bottle onto the floor. So I leaned over and tried to pick it up. Through some bizarre combination of chair on wheels, chair that swivels, very short arms, and extreme clumsiness, I managed to fall out of my desk chair. In the process, I scraped my left upper arm along the edge of my desk, twisted my right ankle, pulled something in my back, and did something to my right wrist (in the course of trying not to spill the open Tylenol bottle in my right hand. I only dropped two!). Despite the fact that Tylenol is clearly a dangerous drug, I took some--I'm gonna need it! (Makes my headache seem... trivial.)

I Got the Sickness

It's a metaphorical, yarn-based sickness. I seem to be finally almost over the actual, germ-based sickness I had for three freakin' weeks.

So, my new sickness: It involves a desire to knit everything in sight. Like startitis, this new sickness makes me want to cast on project after project. Unlike startits, I have no desire to abandon the old ones--I want to knit everything. All of them. All the projects.

I've been lax in the Ravelry department, and I haven't been photographing and posting here, so here's a more or less current WIPs list:

1. Slippery Socks. I'm partway through the first sock. This is a labor-intensive project, one that requires quiet and concentration. Hence I am moving slowly on it. But it is not forgotten! No, it has a place of honor on the horribly cluttered coffee table, just waiting for me to have a chunk of time to devote to it.

2. Abby's Afghan. No link, no pictures--I want it to be a surprise! This is hanging out half-finished. It has not been abandoned; it's an at-home project, because I don't want to carry three colors of yarn with me wherever I go. Waiting for some quality couch time--perhaps tonight, after I do a sink full of dishes.

3. Trekking socks. These are the ones I've been knitting at Second Work, hence the slow going. I'm done with one! The pattern is basic, with a 2x2 ribbed cuff and top of foot.

4. Primavera socks. Why yes, I am a sheep, why do you ask? I'm making these in KnitPicks Gloss, burgundy. Lovely, and so soft! I'm nearly done with the first cuff. It's a pretty, easy pattern, and if I could reliably count to 6 I wouldn't even need to carry the chart around with me!

5. Swiffer cover. I cast on for this on Friday night. I've done one 12-row section. Pulling out the yarn for this out of The Stash reminded me that I have all of the kitchen cotton in the world, and gave me a strong urge to knit dishcloths until I use it all up. Therefore I have been searching for nice dishcloth patterns. I've found more than a few... and I want to make all of them. Now.

6. Perfect Sweater, from Mason-Dixon Knitting. This is the project I have with me today. I'm nearly done with the waist shaping on the back, which is the first piece I'm making. I think I'll do a sleeve next.

7. Wavy Feathers Wimple. You know how I've been promising pictures of my finished wimple for a while? Well... um... I sort of frogged it. Completely. My reasons? One, I have a huge head. One point five, I should have followed my instincts and added 11 stitches to the round. Two, I realized after I was finished that I used US4 needles when I should have used US6s, as the pattern called for, and that just really wasn't acceptable. (See point one re. huge head.) The yarn has been skeined and washed (to relax and de-block it). After work today I plan to re-ball it and perhaps cast on again.

Actually, this isn't a complete list--it doesn't include the several projects that I have hibernating. Or all of the dishcloths I desperately want to cast on. Or the socks that I will cast on on March 1, as part of the Sock Knitters' Pentathlon I joined.

Yep. I'm one sick woman.

But to go back to the wimple for a moment, I realized something as I was picking out the cast off. When I learned to cook, I was taught that you should follow the recipe pretty much as written the first time you make it, and then mess with it if you want to after that. It's an excellent strategy for cooking. I realized that I had been thinking of knitting that way--I didn't mess with the wimple pattern on the first go because I was following the recipe for the first time. But I think that I'm going to have to abandon that mindset when it comes to knitting and learn to trust my instincts, especially when it comes to things that are supposed to go on, over, or around my enormous head. Because with the investment of time and energy involved in knitting, it just doesn't make sense to go against things that you know for a fact and blindly trust a pattern that was written by/for someone whose gauge is totally different from yours and whose head (or whatever) is a totally different size. Of course! It was a "Eureka!" moment that actually made me feel a little dumber, because it's taken me so damn long to realize. Oh, well. At least I catch on eventually!

Snowflake

Over the weekend I made a pretty snowflake.

It's a dishcloth! You cast on 158 stitches and work from the outside in, then seam up the edges (center of hexagon to center of flat side). It's got nice texture--cables and traveling stitches keep it from being just a hexagon. Of course those are difficult for me to photograph with my middle-of-the-road camera. It's blurry, but the picture I took without the flash gives you a decent idea of the topography.

If I knit this pattern again, I'll be sure to use 14" needles or circs--10" needles were just not designed to hold 158 stitches!


Saturday night I finally cast on my first sweater.

There I go again, using needles that aren't quite long enough! I have no plans to switch needles, though--this isn't as tight a squeeze as the snowflake was, and it turns out I love Crystal Palace bamboo needles, which is what I'm using, so I'm going to keep on using them.

The yarn is Schulana Wolina, in Tuscan Slate. There's a touch of blue in it that doesn't quite come through in the small picture; click to embiggen. I'm making The Perfect Sweater from Mason-Dixon Knitting with the seed stitch hem and neckline. I had been planning to go all fancy and do the folded hem, but two things stopped me: one, I've never used a provisional cast on before and I was feeling too lazy to learn stuff when I cast on, and two, I have a store-bought sweater with that kind of hem and it tends to fold up and annoy me. Plus, she rationalizes, I think that seed stitch is pretty and it will add a small decorative element to what is otherwise a very plain sweater.


I've been missing Stitch 'n' Bitch for a while--second work has been scheduling me for Sundays, and the last few Tuesdays just haven't been in the cards. I'm determined to make it to at least one knit gathering this week. We're doing KnitFlicks again tonight, so I might go to that; otherwise, hopefully there will be a gathering tomorrow night that I can make it to.

Finish and Covet

I still don't have any pictures of my finished wimple, I'm afraid. Last night I was too busy finishing up one of my longest-running works in progress.

Done. David's Wedding Kilt Hose are done. All of the ends are woven in, even. Done, done, done!

After I finished them, I sat and petted them for a little while. These are nice, if I do say so myself. Now I just have to wash and block them, and they'll be all set for their big day. Actually, blocking these might be tricky; any suggestions?


We had an interesting winter storm last night. First there was snow, then freezing rain, then just rain. We ended up with 1/4 inch of ice on top of 1-2 inches of snow. The university even decided to operate on a two-hour delay! This is the first weather delay we've had in my four years here. So my office didn't open officially until 10--but I still got here around 8:30. Why? Because I had to drop my car off at the mechanic and then I had another doctor appointment at 9:40, so I just had my ride drop me at my office. I spent the time goofing off, obviously.

And I found something wonderful. Something I covet. Something that people who might give me birthday gifts might want to write down.

It's the lovely Creatures of the Reef lace shawl kit, found here. When looking for lace patterns I've been avoiding triangular shawls, but this one definitely turns my head. So. Pretty.

What colors am I interested in? Ruby, suede, jade, Aegean blue, pewter. That's not in order of preference--I would be equally happy with any of those colors, I think. Someone who didn't want to spend $40 plus shipping on my birthday gift might consider buying me one or both of the recommended needles. 'Cause you know that if no one else buys this for me, I'm buyin' for myself come July 14th. I want to knit this shawl.

Better-ish

I did finish my wimple over the weekend--hooray! Sadly, when I tried it on immediately after I bound off, I did have a leprechaun/nun thing going on. It was quite tight. I wish I had taken a picture of it then--it looked much more like a sleeve than anything that whould go over a human head. And I did attempt to block the hell out of it. I think I succeeded in blocking the heck out of it, anyway--it's not blocked as severely at one end as the other (because I tried to use a bloster-ish pillow for blocking, and the stuffing congregated at one end), so I'll probably try it again. But the difference it made was astonishing!

Post-blocking, my wimple doesn't make me think of diminutive mythical Irish clergywomen at all. It's elegant and lovely, just as I envisioned it. I would have worn it today (it's cold--below freezing, which is relatively unusual for a midday Kentucky February temperature), but I haven't woven the ends in yet. Too many ends--grrr! I used slightly more than one skein of yarn, plus I had my little moment of impatience when winding the first skein into a ball and wound up with two balls instead of one. One small (okay, large--my head is enormous) wimple, and I have six ends to weave! Ugh.

And I also don't have any photos of the finished wimple to show off. My brain has been a bit fuzzy lately.

You see, I'm still all sick. Super Fantastic Antibiotics have done little more than give me a mild case of Delhi Belly. My left ear is still all yucky, and my right ear is getting a little worse. My sinuses are still all clogged and hurt-y. My eyes are still watery. At least the conjunctivitis hasn't come back! That's one thing to be happy about. So I'm going back to the doctor--again--tomorrow, as directed. In the end they might conclude that this is something I have to suffer through, and if that's the case, I'll just have to toughen up a bit. But I really hope than can do something about my ears. I'd like to be able to hear again!

No Puncture Wounds

Yesterday's knitting lesson went quite well! My student was quick on the uptake and never once threatened to stab me with a needle. I really enjoyed the moment when she realized that she was actually doing it--"Would you look at that? I'm knitting!" More lessons will follow!

My knitting has been stagnant for the last few days, thanks to the recurrence of my nasty, stupid cold. I was starting to feel better (except for my ear infection, which was unchanged) on Wednesday morning, but by bedtime I was starting to feel rotten again. And yesterday I got hit with body aches, sinus pressure so bad it made my eyes water continuously (and was not moderated by Sudafed), and the beginnings of an infection in my right ear, too. Argh! It's hard to knit when your eyes are watering--makes it look all wavy. So I went back to the doctor and got some different, better antibiotics. Because I had been starting to feel better, it looks like whatever is in my sinuses is bacterial, so this new drug should do the trick.

I hope to finish my wimple by Monday, at which point I'll stop whining about being sick. Maybe.

Oh, and it was the tea cozy thing.

Knitting *Edit: Famous

There's one really good thing about working the register at Second Work: if it's quiet, and you've already sorted and counted everything that needs to be sorted and counted, you can actually turn the heel of a sock.

The colors are a bit off; the parts on the cuff that look coral are actually plum plied with/changing to a golden orange, and the heel is a darker plum than it appears to be on my screen.

Anyway, the point is that I did the entire heel flap, the short row shaping, and started the gusset, all while standing at the register (over several shifts). That's how quiet it's been lately. Not that I'm complaining! Getting to stand around knitting and every once in a while selling something--that's my kind of second job.


I'm getting close to being done with my Wavy Feathers Wimple.

I think I'm going to make it a bit longer than the pattern suggests. Instead of staring the garter stitch border now I'm going to add another half a repeat of the lace pattern. I very carefully tried it on this morning on the needles, and when it stretches widthwise it gets significantly shorter lengthwise. But even with the added length I might finish it tonight.


Today's the day that I'm going to give my coworker a knitting lesson. Let's hope that my next post doesn't end with, "...and then she stabbed me with a size 10 bamboo needle!"

Edit: A few weeks ago, a columnist at the Philadelphia Weekly took a swipe at Anticraft, the book written by two members of my Stitch 'n' Bitch group, in the course of swiping at knitting in general. (The column is here.) Someone posted the link to the group, and of course we all had some choice words for the columnist and his opinions. Somehow, mine made it into his follow-up column! I'm totally famous now. See if you can guess which comment is mine! (No points awarded to anyone who's on the list and already knows. Sorry, folks--fair's fair!)

Ear, Storm, Tree: A Non-Knitting Post

Well, this morning I took the last of my antibiotics, and my ear is still infected. In fact, I'm having a hell of a time hearing out of my left ear. I can't tell which direction sounds are coming from, or how far away they're originating. I keep having to ask people to repeat themselves. And on top of that, I've got a persistent ringing in that ear. Blech.

Because that ear also hurts, I've been sleeping on my right side. And with one ear gone deaf/ringing and the other pressed to my pillow, I slept right through the gargantuan storm that passed through Lexington last night. I woke up around 1:30 and noticed that it was raining really, really hard, but I went right back to sleep. It wasn't until I left for work this morning that I fully appreciated the magnitude of the storm. There were twigs and small branches all over the parking lot at my apartment complex, and in the road on the way to work, and even a few medium-sized branches in yards along the way.

I sometimes sneak into work the back way, going down a side street to an alley in order to avoid some of the worst campus traffic. Well, as I approached the side street, I saw that there was a police car with lights flashing parked crossways, blocking the road. There was half a tree in the road ten feet behind the car. So I continued down the street to go in the driveway of my office--only to be met with caution tape blocking the driveway. Crap!

There's no easy way to go around the block I work on, so I made a wide circle down some back roads and snuck through the parking lot of the seminary down the road. I finally made it to the alley and got to my office. This is what I saw:

The building on the right is my office. The poor building on the left is student apartments. Happily, it looks like the falling tree only damaged the roof and the gutters--it doesn't look like the actual structure was affected. It completely missed our building. This is not a small tree--if a person tried to wrap their arms around the trunk, their hands wouldn't meet on the opposite side. I have to be honest; I've been waiting for this thing to fall since I started here. It's always swayed alarmingly in the wind. But it's still sad to see it fall. Rest in peace, tree.

Progress

I am happy to say that this weekend I made it past the heel (teehee--I just typed "hell") of Ho the Second! I don't have any photographic evidence, but there were witnesses; I took it to SnB yesterday.

I've also been making progress on my wimple. On Friday I spent my lunch hour knitting on it, listening to part 7 of Don Quixote on Librivox.org. (It's even more entertaining than I expected it to be! That crazy Spaniard knew how to tell a story. I can even overlook the fact that one of the readers mispronounced the horse's name for two chapters--almost.) I stretched out my knitting to admire it, and... wait, where the hell did that giant hole come from? Apparently I had a yarnover accident a few rounds back and somehow didn't notice it. This was not a small, easily ignored mistake. But I didn't want to frog 6 or 7 rounds (!)--so I thought of Jessi, put on my big girl pants, and the next thing I knew I was holding this:

It's upside-down, but you get the idea. In the center you can see where I dropped down 10 stitches (!) several rows so I could fix the mistake. And d'you know what I did then?

I knit it back up!

Who's a knitting rock star? I'm a knitting rock star.

The second picture actually shows where I am as of this morning, one and a half repeats in, but it is the side I fixed on Friday. Can you see where I fixed it? I can't! (Did I mention that I'm a knitting rock star?) I'm supposed to go to three and a half repeats, so just two more to go!

This picture shows the lace a little better:


And of course, I neglected to swatch, and I'm a little worried that this is going to turn out ridiculously tight. I mean, I do plan to block the hell out of it--I'm just not sure how well it's going to work. This will definitely fit over my head, so I'm not worried about that. I just hope it floats delicately around my face rather than framing it with an iron grip that makes me look like a cross between a nun and a leprechaun.

Fingers crossed!

On Thursday I'm going to take a crack at teaching one of my coworkers to knit. She's convinced that she's going to suck at it, and I'm trying to convince her otherwise. Actually, I'm trying to convince her that everyone sucks at first. I just hope she doesn't psych herself out.

Ahhh!

I feel better now.

I didn't start the piggies yesterday, after all--I was too busy with my new, glamorous accessory. (In the end, I went with the Gloss, in "Woodland Sage.")

First my time was occupied by winding the yarn into a ball.

In my next life, I'm getting a swift before I get a ball winder, instead of the other way around. Or at least I'll be sure to learn the lesson that patience pays off. Maybe that way I won't end up with a huge tangle of beautiful yarn that I eventually cut in order to allow me to start knitting with what I have managed to ball, depending upon the kindness of strangers to untangle the remaining mess for me. Okay, not "strangers"--my friend Aaron. He's pretty strange, though. (Thanks, Aaron!)

This yarn is fabulous to work with, and I'm using my new ebony dpns. I'm so ridiculously satisfied by knitting this! I was sitting there last night, knitting along, all serene and pleased... and suddenly I noticed that I had finished the first round of lace, but my stitch marker was one needle ahead of where I was. Rats. But I refused to let that small setback damage my serenity--I just moved my stitch marker, and continued on. Peaceful. And suddenly, I had one too few stitches. Crap! Oh, well--I just knit that last one, instead of ssk-ing. On the next round, I had one too many stitches. Dammit! The solution? SSSK. Ta-da!

If anyone says a word about my promise to myself to go back and fix errors instead of knitting over them, I'll smack that person.

I figured out what I did to mess up, and I vow not to let it happen again. My feeling is that if someone is looking closely enough at my head covering to spot a small error in two rows of the bottom half of the first lace motif, that person is way too interested in my neck and should either get a life, or a wooden stake through the heart. So there.

Because the rest of this thing is going to be beautiful, error-free, and serene, dammit.