04.29.05
Posted in Knitty Secret Pal at 8:55 pm by Rachel
I arrived home today knowing I was in for a treat (my secret pal tipped me off — she has tracking information and saw that the package had been delivered), but I didn’t realize how much of a treat. The unassuming manilla envelope I found on my doorstep contained:
1) A funny card with a nice long message
2) Two delectable-looking chocolate bars from her (approximate) home city of Seattle (cool!) that I will devour the minute Passover is over
3) A fantastic book of knitting patterns for children — every pattern is adorable and classic and not at all cheesy (my typical complaint with kid pattern books). It has a sort of New England beachy theme, I’d say, which is perfect! I love it and want to knit about 20 things from it.
4) Two balls of Debbie Bliss alpaca silk. That’s what the label says, anyway. I actually have a hard time believing that it’s anything other than a cumulus cloud that has been spun into yarn and died a rich, luscious purple. This stuff is unbelievable. I am thrilled. She also very considerately included a scarf pattern I might want to use the yarn on. However, I think I shall just slowly accumulate a huge stash of this stuff and then sleep in a big pile of it.
I’m off to post on the Knittyboard secret pal thread, but in case my SP sees this first, thank you thank you thank you thank you! You have wonderful taste and I am blown away by your generosity.
By the way, I’m coming to Seattle in August…perhaps we could meet up if I guess your identity by then! (Or I’ll have to wander through the streets calling “Secret paaaaaal? Secret PAAAAAALLLLL!!!” until you are so mortified that you identify yourself so I’ll shut up.)
Here, by the way, is a more straightforward picture of my loot:
Permalink
Posted in Works in Progress at 9:09 am by Rachel
I am designing a baby sundress. I don’t really like to accumulate a stash, so when I finish projects I look for something to do with the leftover yarn right away (my recent opera scarf is a good example). For some reason I decided that a cute little infant tank sundress would be a good way to use up the ribbon yarn. This is the approximate extent of my planning for this garment:
96 st –> 48 st / dec 6 st. 8 times ev. 6 rows?
Then I just launched in. I don’t yet have enough done to know whether I’m setting myself up for severe disillusionment.
My main problem is that I don’t have a good sense of the approximate size and shape of babies, and I don’t know ANYONE with a baby girl. (It disappoints me that society is still at a point where the moms I know, progressive as they are, would probably be hesitant to let me try my sundress on their sons just for sizing purposes.) The secondary problem is that even if I did have a way to obtain baby measurements, recent evidence has demonstrated that gauge on Deco Ribbon yarn is not a straightforward size indicator. So, I resort to guessing. The nice thing about babies is that they are sort of blob shaped and pretty much anything will fit them at one point or another.
Pictures this weekend of my progress (with my new digital camera, due to arrive today!).
Permalink
04.25.05
Posted in Finished Objects at 9:06 pm by Rachel
I X-pected not to have any time this weekend to work on the X-back, so you can imagine my X-citement when I found some X-tra time and X-pediently went to work it. When it was finished, I tried it on, not knowing quite what to X-pect. I looked in the mirror. “It fits!” I X-claimed.
Turned out I was correct — negative ease was key with the Deco Ribbon. In fact, when I was knitting it I was sure it would wind up WAY too small, but it seems to have worked out well. If you can forgive the (X-traordinarily) crappy quality of these pictures, you can see how it fits.
From the back. The rolls of shoulder fat are mostly the unfortunate result of the lighting.
Permalink
04.20.05
Posted in Works in Progress at 8:55 am by Rachel
For those non-knitter readers of my blog who aren’t familiar with the term “frogging,” a quick explanation: it means ripping out massive amounts – sometimes all – of your knitting project. The reason? “Rip it, rip it,” is reminiscent of the sound we assign to the croak of a frog. (This is distinct from tinking, which is undoing one stitch at a time by knitting backwards — “tink” is “knit” backwards.) “Frogging” usage examples: “I had to frog all the way back to the waist decreases,” “I frogged the whole thing because it turned out too big.”
That last one is what I did last night with the Ribbon X-Back. Although I knit to gauge and the measurements seemed technically correct, apparently some yarn needs “negative ease” — that is, it has to be stretched out (by the wearer’s body) to fit correctly, so you knit it smaller than your actual measurements. That seems to be the case with the Crystal Palace Deco Ribbon. So now I’m knitting it much, much smaller, sort of on a wing and a prayer, and hoping it comes out a lot better. Stay tuned.
P.S. I was impressed by how maturely I handled the frogging of an entire project. The silver lining is that it’s rather cathartic to rip out knitting. There’s something vaguely satisfying about it.
Permalink
04.19.05
Posted in General at 3:20 pm by Rachel
Look, laptops with transparent screens!
Okay, not really. Just my most recent assignment for my photo class. Actually, the assignment was to make some sort of complicated representational alternate reality blah blah blah I couldn’t really follow, so instead I used photoshop to make it look kind of like my laptop has a transparent screen. Why not? I would have preferred to have been knitting, though.
Note: There are people who do this much better and much more impressively than I do here, because they don’t use photoshop — they take a photo, make it their background, and then photograph that. I tried to do that, but gave up quickly. Haaaaard!
Permalink
04.18.05
Posted in Works in Progress at 10:15 pm by Rachel
This is the “opera scarf” that I’m making with the leftover Honeymoon Cami yarn. It’s really easy to make (sl 1, yo, k2tog over and over again on both sides), but I’m disappointed by how uneven my edges are. I know blocking will help with that a little, but still, I wish they weren’t such a mess.
A good mindless project to use up extra yarn.
Permalink
04.15.05
Posted in General at 12:40 pm by Rachel
A post over on Peatbogfaery’s blog led me to this enjoyable time waster: www.typogenerator.com. You enter text and then it searches the internet for images based on that text, applies all sorts of weird effects to them, and then randomly lays out both images and text. Rather addictive. Here are some of my favorites based on – what else? – Lickety Knit.
Permalink
04.13.05
Posted in General at 3:02 pm by Rachel
Not knitting related. Just a photo I took this morning that I thought was cool.
Permalink
Posted in Works in Progress at 9:34 am by Rachel
The lighting is perhaps overly dramatic for these 3 inches of knitting, but it was early morning and that’s what the sun was doing. Anyway, I am very, very excited about this pattern; it’s knitting up quickly and is a lot of fun. The ribbon yarn is interesting to work with — very different (and not in a bad way). I just hope I ordered enough of it.
In other news, I washed and blocked my honeymoon cami and could not believe what a difference it made! My stitches are now much smoother, and the sheen and drape are unbelievable. I can’t wait to wear it! I’ll be sure to model it soon and do an official “finished object” post about it.
I am using the leftover Mystik yarn from the HC to make a warm-weather dressy scarf that may or may not ever be useful to anyone. We’ll see.
Permalink
04.10.05
Posted in General at 1:26 am by Rachel
Click photos for larger versions, if you think you can stand the cuteness!
Permalink
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »
