UFOver

Today is the last day of October, meaning it's also the last day of UFOctober. Here's how I managed to perform on my goals:

1. The #$%(! Jailwalkers. I wanted to figure out whether it was worth knitting the second sock. It was not. The first sock went into the garbage where it belonged, and the second skein went to a friend with small children who enjoy wearing handknitted socks.

Status: Goal met.

2. The SOS07 Gypsy Girl Ominous Skies socks started for the Summer of Socks '07. Much tinking and frogging, and one or two practical jokes played by my yarn, and these are in the FO column. I've even worn them twice already, and am getting close to forgiving them for their obstinacy.

Status: Goal met.

3. Jojoland Cashmere blend socks/Bears socks. My goal was to finish one or the other pair with the ultimate goal of having only one pair of socks OTN again. Well, the Bears socks were frogged. The Jojoland second sock is living on my desk at the family business, where I knit it in fits and starts when I can be roused to go into the shop in the first place. Because I forgot to rescue the Jojoland from my dusty, barely used desk, and because the Bears sock was frogged, I ended up taking different sock yarn on the airplane to Denver. I knit the cuff and part of the leg, and haven't touched it since. The Jojoland needs to be finished first. Also, the Bears sock yarn is being reincarnated as a clapotis for my mother. It's on the needles, but just barely.

Status: We're going to have to call this one a draw. Not a complete failure because I did work toward the ultimate goal. But certainly not a complete success, either.

4 and 5. Secret knitting parts one and two. The secret baby yoga pants and the secret baby cardigan are done. (Romance authors reading this are giggling over the names of these projects -- "secret babies" being a hackneyed but omnipresent plot device in romancelandia.)

Status: Goal met.

6. The crapghan. Well, I managed to purchase another hook to replace the one Miss Six hid in an undisclosed location. I pulled out the crapghan and found the remaining three balls of Red Heart a/k/a Dead Fart yarn and crocheted less than a full row before allowing myself to wander away. My definition of heaven? A place where cheap crappy yarn evaporates instantly before it can pollute the environment with its awfulness. And Grandma, I'm sorry, but if you're in Heaven According To Me now, you'll be able to grasp why I resist this little part of family tradition so much. I will do the afghans in your pattern and your yarn to honor you and continue the afghan tradition. But I won't like the yarn.

Status: Goal met. Very grudgingly. I've got to figure out a way to finish this damn thing.

In addition, I knit the aran watchcap and 8.75" on Fulmar. Which makes for a pretty durn good UFOctober. Thanks again to Heather for organizing this. It really motivated me to make some progress on KIPs that might otherwise still be stuffed in the bottoms of bags.

FO: Another Hat Bites the Dust

The aran watchcap is finished but for some weaving -- you can still see the needles holding the last crown stitches up top. I'll knock that out later today, and then this one will officially go in the FO column. Dreamsweaver, that speedy little prodigy, finished her red version of this hat almost two weeks ago. Hers was knit very loose, and mine was knit with my usual death-grip tension, and I hope to have side by side pictures soon to show you the difference gauge can make. The two hats are equally beautiful, but different. Hers has a lacey, feminine look to it. Mine is definitely a boy hat.

But the best part of all? She learned how to do cables and how to read a chart, and even though there were moments of frustration, she has one textured knitting project under her belt now. The first one always feels hardest.

Anyway, here are the FO stats:

Pattern: Aran watchcap from Charlene Schurch's "Hats On!"
Yarn: Cascade 220 Superwash, one full skein. There are maybe three yards leftover.
Needles: Size 3 Addi Turbos. This is a small needle for this yarn, but I wanted a sturdy hat.

Comments: Great, easy pattern. The finished hat is dense enough to keep winter wind out, but doesn't have that bombproof, inelastic feel you sometimes get when you drop down a few needle sizes. The fabric stretches but doesn't drape, if you know what I mean.

If I had to do it all over again, I might use size 4 needles instead of 3s. Also, I would do the crown shaping differently. The pattern has you do 4 rounds of p2tog and nothing else. I might work some preliminary decreases into the seed stitch panels first, maybe also in the cables, and then do the final rounds of p2tog. Or perhaps in k2tog or ssk to avoid the purl bumps on the right side of the fabric.

All in all, though, this was a good knit. More interesting than your usual hat, but still a hat -- easy, speedy and fun.

Fulmar Progress

Yes, the blue really is this vivid. I love it.

This is a very slow knit, but oh-so-satisfying. What we have there is three pattern repeats of the ribbing, topped by two chart repeats of the body cables, measuring around 7.5" in length. That's a whole lot of hours of my life there, folks. Some of the back rows only take 15 or so minutes, but row 5 with all it's crosses can take as long as 50 minutes. That's for one measly row.

Of course, there are 262 stitches in a row, so maybe "measly" isn't the word we want to use here.

At my current rate of knitting, this sweater will take around 9 months to complete. I'm hoping to pick up the pace now that I have the pattern more or less memorized -- I still have to check the charts sometimes, especially for Chart C which is the saxon-braid-ish thing in the center and which is the hardest to work with it's three-over-one crosses. For the other charts, I can usually just look at the rows below and know what I'm supposed to do.

Chart C is the troublemaker in other ways, too. Last week, I noticed I had moved a column of stitches in the wrong direction and couldn't work the next cable cross. So I decided to ladder down that column -- it was only two rows -- and reknit just those stitches. This is a fix I've worked on other patterns with some anxiety but little real difficulty. It just takes time and courage.

Except for in this case.

I laddered down and knit back up, and things looked a bit too loose on the needles. So I counted my stitches and realized I was short a purl. Hmm. Checked the back of the work, and there was my lonely little dropped purl, now about three rows lower than the point of the original miscross. Working with that section had caused it to run a little.

So, not being a quitter, I laddered down again (further this time) and reknit the column a second time.

At which point, I realized I had somehow managed to drop two other stitches, a different purl plus a knit.

After much bad language, I called it quits on this particular fix and placed the two dropped stitches on safety pins so they wouldn't run. Then I tinked back, stitch by painstaking stitch, to the point where I could pick up the safety pinned stitches. Then I reknit all those rows.

Tinking and reknitting those rows took four hours. I watched "The Godfather" on A&E, with commercials, while reknitting those rows. That doesn't include the time I spent on the original "fix" a/k/a mess.

All of which is to say, Chart C is not currently my bff.

Skinny-4-Stash

I've been dwelling on two facts lately. One, the knitter's conundrum, that I have plenty enough yarn but still enjoy buying more. Two, that after over a decade of medical problems resulting in tremendous weight gain, I've been finally given the all-clear to go on a reducing diet.

Seems I'm not the only one dwelling on this pair of thoughts.

KniftyRed came up with a great idea. We're going to get skinny for stash. We're setting diet and workout goals, and get to "pay" our stash budget for each goal met. And we get to pick our goals and our payouts. Not a bad plan.

So here goes.

I, Knitterary Gargantua, to further the goal of becoming Knitterary LaPetite, will take the following measures.

1. For every day that I stick to my food plan, I get to add a quarter to the stash jar.

2. For every day that I avoid animal fats entirely, I get to add a bonus quarter to the stash jar.

3. For every mile walked on the treadmill, I get to add a quarter to the stash jar.

That's it. Simplicity. In the course of a week, I have the potential to add ten dollars or so to the stash jar. No gimmicks, no complicated plotting or scheming. Just eating right and exercising, which is at the heart of a good reducing plan.

Some others are tying their goals to pounds lost. I thought about doing that, but that's when reality jumps up and pokes me in the eye. I have a metabolic disease. In the past, I have gained weight on 700 calories a day. We think that my body can tolerate this diet now and won't go completely fucking haywire again. But we don't know it for sure.

But independent of the ultimate goal to lose weight, this eating plan and exercise plan is a good thing. The diet takes into account some new science about the way our metabolisms work, and I probably should be following it (or something close to it) regardless of total calories taken in. If I put my focus there instead of on the scale, I will know that I'm doing right by my body.

I can't control the outcome, but I can control the process. So that's where my focus will be.

I've Been Spooked!

Well, lookee at all this batty stuff. I think I hit the motherload in the spookage defartment. Bookmarks and a book by some Melissa James type rioter, a horrid silver and turquoise wrist shackle, batty pumpkin toe covers, a spooky scrapbooking kit, chocorat drops, and -- gasp! -- two luuurvely garter stitch dishcloths from somebatty who thinks she has knitting talent. Show-off! Hang your head in shame right this minute! Not a single dropped stitch, the most even gauge ever, and one of them is (lowers voice to a whisper) pink. Those dishcloths might be too pretty to use, so therefore I will use them every day. Especially to wash my armpits.

There was also a rather large bag of pumpkin chocorats. I thought about showing you the crumpled wrappers. They were orange. The wrappers, I mean, not the chocorat, which can now only be seen by peering deep down my throat. See? U-u-u-u-urp. Ooops. Hexcuse me.

Crank you very little, Satire. I hate my spookage most thoroughly.
Bugs and hisses, blunder.

ps. It takes a bat to comprehend this post. Non-bats, please disregard. This blog will become comprehensible to knitfolk again soon. Or as comprehensible as it ever gets, anyway.

Buh-Bye, Bears Socks!

I've been knitting this sock with the intent to give a pair to my dad, a big Bears fan. The cuff made me happy because it wasn't a barberpole but a cool speckly pattern. And then I switched to straight stockinette for the leg, and poof! Like magic, it barberpoles. Or maybe that ain't magic so much as a curse. Because with me at the needles, you know this will never come out right.

Sure enough, every 3/4 inch or so, the barberpole cuts back in on itself and kills the spiral pattern. Curse? Totally in effect.

And all I could think was, oh no, not again.

I tried to make myself think other things. Really tried. Things such as, Maybe he'll like it. Or, It doesn't look *that* much like Cincinnati Bengals stripes. Or, Who says socks have to match anyway. (That final thought springs from my dead certainty that no matter what I do, the second sock will never match the first until I've knit it and frogged it a dozen times and absolutely abandoned hope of a good outcome. Curse of the barberpole and all that.)

I showed the sock to lots and lots of knitters in the hope that one of them would say something to convince me that everything would be okay. Most of them were sort of baffled, I think, by the intensely emotional way I shook my sock under their noses.

"Do you see this? Do you?" I would grit out from between clenched teeth while I tried to keep my eyes from popping clean out of my face from the stress.

"Um. Uh. Yeah. Lookit that," would be the response, accompanied by puzzled frowns and the sudden realization that they were late for something, anything, somewhere far away from me and my sock.

Some of them -- familiar with the profound curse I labor under, witnesses to the insanity provoked by other barberpole misadventures -- would try to soothe me.

"Don't worry," they would say. "It can't happen again. It just can't. Nobody's luck is that bad."

Ha. Yeah, right.

The sock has been frogged. Eventually, it will become a clapotis for my mother, who sometimes accompanies my dad to the home games. It's great yarn, really it is, and she'll enjoy the scarf it will make. Plus, like most of us, she has only the one neck, so I won't have to worry about knitting a second scarf to match the first.

This is a great relief. I feel liberated. But do you want to hear the real shocker?

This means I only have one pair of socks OTN. And :::drumroll::: all but one of my UFOctober goals have been met. That last lingering goal? All I will say is -- watch out, crapghan. You're next.

...edited to note that this post was written last week, but due to technical errors and time constraints, I couldn't get the damn thing to actually post before now...

Two Secrets Revealed

Today was Becca's baby shower, and her bump agreed to model the little outfit I made. Isn't that a gorgeous bump? Not to mention, a gorgeous mommy!

What we have up there are a cardigan and matching baby yoga pants out of Sirdar Dreambaby, a fingering weight and one of the few acrylics I've ever knit that I would willingly knit a second time. Yarn was purchased from Ivelise's in Benton Harbor, Michigan. It's a wonderful little shop with a great selection of quality baby yarns.

No real patterns for these items, though I did use existing patterns as jumping-off points. For the pants, I started with the baby cargo pants from knitty. I did a rolled hem, doubled the yarn for extra softness and warmth, and used an elasticized rolled-waist trick I learned years ago from a knitter in Indianapolis. Basically, you take 1/8" elastic and thread it through the live stitches as you would a lifeline. Sew it closed as you would a regular elastic waistband. Knit stockinette for one round, then bind off. The extra little bit of stockinette before the bind-off rolls over the elastic and hides it. Or mostly hides it. I used two rounds of elastic for extra security and I think the bottom round shows a little. But it still should be very easy to wear and comfy, certainly more comfy than a fold-over waistband when the yarn is knit doublestranded.

The cardigan was combined from two different baby cardigan patterns. I wanted a contrasting seed stitch border and a very loose shape through the body. Easy on, easy off. It's knit at about 8 stitches and 10 rows to the inch. You know how everyone always talks about how quickly baby things knit up? The exception to that rule is baby things knit at sock gauge.

The seed stitch buttonband gave me a bit of trouble. It's hard to increase seed stitch in pattern to round the curves formed by the V-neck. I fooled around with it a little and, because of one thing and another, ended up with a buttonband that extends a bit below the cardigan hem, almost like the point on a waistcoat. It wasn't what I was going for, but it looks good, certainly better than earlier attempts at the buttonband that curled inward from too few stitches at the curve.

Anyway, I fell in love with that cheerful, sunny yellow, so much perkier than your typical baby pastels. Initially, I intended to go for a green yarn -- Becca is a big fan of green for the baby -- but the yellow really spoke to me, so the yellow came home. Baby should fit into these items around February or March (if she's a big baby) or next fall (if she's a small baby). Just think how uplifting that yellow will be during the Chicago winter gloom. The little Froebe babe will be a ray of sunshine in more ways than one.