12.28.05
Posted in General, Yarn and Tools at 9:20 pm by Rachel
I hope everyone who celebrated Christmas this week had a great one. Mine was terrific, thanks for asking! As my parents are divorced, we tend to celebrate Christmas Day Observed with one or the other, either the day before or the day after the actual holiday. So it’s always 48 solid hours of Christmas Eves and Days, and the nice thing about that is that you don’t feel like the whole thing went by so fast that you barely got to enjoy it. By the time we’re driving home after the festivities of Christmas Number Two have drawn to a close, I usually feel pretty thoroughly Christmased.
This Christmas was a particularly good one, and one of the highlights was the set of four gorgeous scarves that my mom knitted for me, my sister, and our respective Matts.
Mine is a cashmere silk blend (I’ll ask my mom to provide the exact name of the yarn in the comments) and it is luscious. It is so soft and drapey, not to mention warm. I have had it off for all of about two waking hours since receiving it. I like to think it’s a good around-the-house scarf, but then, I am the sort of person who thinks nothing of having an around-the-house parka or around-the-house snow pants, so pretty much any winterwear is “around the house” acceptable to me (not to Matt, but no matter). Still, this is a particularly exquisite scarf to wear any time.
Speaking of scarves as Christmas gifts, I was absolutely thrilled by my boss’s reaction to the Ruffles scarf I gave her. I had such misgivings about it, to the point where I came very close to giving the scarf to Goodwill and giving her a box of chocolates instead. Well, either she loved it or she did an Oscar-deserving performance of loving it. It was my most gratifying knitted-gift-giving experience yet. I also got a good reaction to my many mini sweaters, and my sister loved her bag. This positive reinforcement will probably result in an even more insane slate of knitting next Christmas.
I also received a few knitting-related gifts, including a couple pattern books, the Yarn Harlot’s latest, the premiere issue of Knit Simple (I’ll try to do a review at some point), two gift certificates to two of my favorite local knitting stores, and, best of all, a ball winder! This is a seriously fun knitting toy! I spent a large chunk of yesterday winding whatever unwound skeins I could find. I’m a dork.
It’s not that I really hated spending time winding balls of yarn by hand, but there is something deeply satisfying about the compact little yarn cakes that a ball winder makes possible. Hooray for yarn cakes!
So now that the Christmas knitting is over, what’s next? Well, I plan to stick pretty closely to the “on deck” list over on the right over the next couple months. The priority right now is the Reversible Rib Shawl, which with hard work and a genuine miracle will be done for my mom’s birthday on January 30. Once that and a couple more gifts are done, I am committing to a couple months of selfish knitting. It’s time for me to make an adult-size sweater for myself and one for Matt — I’ve planned to do it for ages and have always been derailed by other projects. But now I’ve made them New Year’s resolutions, so let’s see if that does the trick.
One final interesting note: Minty Fresh alerted me to the fact that someone nominated me in the “Best New Knitting Blog” category over at the inaugural Knit Blog Awards at Queer Joe’s Knitting Blog. This is surprising and flattering in equally (huge) measure. Whoever nominated me, thank you — I would kiss you on the lips if I could. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it from nomination to finalist, so you can’t vote for me. Actually, it’s probably good that I’m not in the voting-for tier, or I would have to put the entire rest of my life on hold so as to devote all day every day to hitting “refresh” to check the standings, ultimately becoming profoundly depressed when I fail to reign supreme over all the other new knitblogs. Just knowing someone out there likes me is good enough for me!
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Posted in Finished Objects at 5:50 pm by Rachel
Pattern: Felted Lunch Bag from Knit One, Felt Too
Yarn: Wool of the Andes, held doubled
Notes: I was looking for a lunch bag pattern, and this fit the bill pretty much perfectly. (Thanks to the folks over on the Knittyboard for pointing me to the pattern.) I wound up sticking to it pretty closely except in four ways: 1) I made the bottom of the bag in the contrasting color, 2) I added a stripe of the contrasting color at the top, 3) I added a column of purls along the edge that folds in, to encourage said folding, and 4) I am a huge freakin’ idiot.
That last bit is the conclusion I reached after a misguided effort to “improve” the handles. The pattern calls for a length of seam binding – whatever the heck that is – to be sewn inside the handles (which are knit as tubes – more on this later) so as to keep the handles from stretching way out with use. Genius that I am, I concluded that if seam binding would do a good job at this, a big fat piece of ROPE would do even better! What possible consequences could there be to completely deviating from the instructions in this way?? Well, I’ll tell you. A knitted tube attempting to felt around an obstacle as thick as a rope is a sad thing to watch. Especially once you realize your own stupidity but can do nothing to set it right since the first pass through the washing machine rendered the rope unremovable (since you cleverly basted everything in place using feltable yarn). All you can do is watch as the handles grow more and more kinked and tortuous with each cycle through the washing machine, praying that your sister has positive feelings toward what we will generously call “funky” accessories.
Other small notes on this project: First, the handles are made by provisionally casting on 96 stitches, knitting for 10 rows, removing the provisional cast-on yarn and picking up the live stitches, and then grafting the whole thing with kitchener stitch. Nearly 200 stitches of tedious kitchener stitch had better yield, in my opinion, something more exciting than a long skinny tube, especially one you are fated to ruin with your big ideas for incorporating nautical rope into the pattern.
Second: I reinforced the bottom of the bag by gluing together a double layer of needlepoint canvas, gluing a layer of quilt batting over that, and finally gluing a layer of fabric over that. It helps keep the bottom from bulging out when the bag is filled. The glue made the bag smell like an industrial toxic waste dump for a while, but it seemed to have dissipated by Christmas morning.
Third: Wool of the Andes felts great. Hardly any stitch definition, and hardly any fuzz. I held it doubled on size 15 needles and the fabric came out wonderfully thick after three cycles in our front-load washer.
Fourth: Wool of the Andes felts great when you are doing a felted join. I know this because I completely ran out of the orange yarn after everything was knitted but before I had sewed the handles on, which required about 6 feet of main color yarn. I created this yarn by rummaging through the living room trash can and fishing out about 40 pieces of yarn averaging 3-4 inches each – the yarn I had trimmed off after weaving in ends. I felted-joined all of these scraps together to create a piece of yarn long enough to attach the handles. Allow me to say that this was not the highlight of the project.
The good news is that my sister really seemed to like her bag. And that, as always, made everything worth it.
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12.12.05
Posted in General at 9:58 pm by Rachel
Christmas is upon us! Until this weekend I wasn’t really feeling it, though I did finish my holiday shopping record-breakingly early this year (nearly a week ago already). Nothing like trimming a tree to get into the holiday spirit, though! Even Sadie got into it.
Fluster, who is our too-cool-for-you teenager cat, chose to remain on the sidelines and watch the proceedings from atop the refridgerator. We were in such good spirits that I deviated from my typical response of yelling obscenities at him to get the gosh darn golly heck off the rootin’ tootin’ fridge, my anger steadily rising as he lazily and arrogantly ambles down from his perch, willfully indifferent to my rage. No, in honor of Jesus or whatever motivates the spirit of the season, I good naturedly snapped his photo instead.
We had a really great day picking out the tree, fretting over how much pine sap we were getting on the upholstery of the still-new car, and wrestling it into the stand (I firmly subscribe to the “straight enough” school of tree adjustment). Then that evening we fired up the “Holiday” genre on shuffle on the iPod (the first song that came up was “Erev Shel Shoshanim” from Robin Spielberg’s American Chanukah album, but we’re not picky) and decorated that baby up right.
It’s the largest tree we’ve ever had by a significant margin. Given that Christmas takes over the whole country this time of year (if there is a war on Christmas, it seems pretty evident to me that Christmas is winning), I don’t feel the need for it to take over my whole house, too. Plus it only seems right to be sensitive to my Jewish husband by not totally Christmafying everything in the home. I’m perfectly content to enjoy that at others’ homes. So in the past we’ve always gotten a five-foot tree, decorated it beautifully, and set it in a tasteful corner. This year, though, when we were both drawn to the lovely shape and fullness of a particular seven-footer at the Christmas tree place, Matt said, “What the heck, let’s go for the big tree!” So we did, and now it’s in the middle of the living room. While I never missed having a big tree in years past, it’s kind of fun.
Not only did Matt okay the bigger tree, but once we were done decorating it, he kicked the Christmas festivities up a notch by making Christmas cookies and mulling apple cider. The cookies were from The Best Recipe, and they were delectable. (Unfortunately, this morning when I left a note for the woman who cleans our house, I included a postscript indicating that she should help herself to a couple of cookies from the container on the counter. Her English, while impressive for someone learning as an adult, is not perfect, and she misunderstood my meaning. When I arrived home there was an effusive thank-you note and she’d taken the cookies with her. Oh well. Each one had about a tablespoon of butter in it — it’s probably for the best that they’re out of the house.) Anyway, on Saturday night with my plate of cookies, mug of cider, array of knitting projects, and charming husband and three kitties dozing beside me on the couch, it was pretty easy to feel that all was right with the world. Happy holidays, everyone!
Oh wait, knitting content! I knew I was forgetting something. Three new mini sweaters have come down the chute since last time. Just three to go! (The one with the J is for a friend whose son James is experiencing his first Christmas.)
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12.11.05
Posted in Finished Objects at 6:24 pm by Rachel
Pattern: Cabled Hooded Pullover from The Baby Knits Book by Debbie Bliss
Yarn: Knitpicks Shine in “River”
Notes: Some of you may remember when I launched my line of clothing for misshapen babies this past summer. Well, I’m pleased to announce the addition of cold-weather wear to that line. If your one-year-old is broad-chested, twig-wristed, and has a head the size of a college linebacker’s, this is the sweater designed just for him!
Okay, it’s probably not as bad as all that. And it definitely came out better than I was expecting when I was about 3/4 done. Once I added the ribbing around the waist to keep it from being a cabled, hooded crop-top, it seemed to look a little more normal. Still, this should teach me that when I knit a gauge swatch and don’t get gauge, my response should not be to say “screw it, I’ll make adjustments as I go along.”
The things I’m happy about with this sweater: the yarn is soft and springy and a beautiful color; I would definitely use Shine again. And I do think it’s a cute pattern, even if I did not execute it expertly.
So who is this sweater for? Oops, what I meant to say is, so, for whom is this sweater? Well, originally I was making it for our friends who are expecting their second baby in April. The plan was to make this to fit their two-year old for a short time so it could be a hand-me-down to the second baby (sorry, as a firstborn I probably don’t have the appropriate sensitivity to non-firstborns’ need to have their own new things occasionally). However, due to a huge variety of factors, this sweater came out sized for about a twelve-month-old (I base this on standard measurements as well as on holding it up to a five-month-old and trying to extrapolate how much he needed to grow to fit into it). The problem is, the baby for whom it was intended will be one year old just as the weather is getting warm. That, combined with the undeniable imperfections in the sweater (which make me less proud to give it as a gift), leads me to consider putting it aside for either a) children of my own someday, or b) someone I like less. Yes, I said it.
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12.03.05
Posted in Finished Objects at 3:09 pm by Rachel
Well, finished except for the blocking that is, which I’m hoping is going to make a world of difference in this scarf. The rows where I knit all the short-row wraps are so bumpy and ugly! I tried everything I could think of to try to reduce the bumpiness: SSK instead of knitting the wrap and stitch together, wrapping more loosely, wrapping more tightly, swearing more loudly…nothing seemed to make a difference. So now I can look forward to blocking each of the 300 short-row sections with special, loving care. Yippee.
The other problem is the yarn. While wonderfully soft and a beautiful color, it definitely has a bit of a fuzziness problem. I mean, I’m sure part of the problem is that the air in my house is 35 percent cat hair, but even so, there’s a kind of hairy look to this scarf that makes it look, well, not new. I’m even a little hesitant to give it to my boss because I think it looks more dumpy than anything.
So yeah, I’m not thrilled with this finished object. I’ll see what happens when I block it. (Matt is so cute — he knows very little about knitting but always reassures me that blocking will fix anything. Any time I moan about a mistake or a disappointing result he says, with complete sincerity, “Well, you’ll block it!”)
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Posted in Works in Progress at 2:41 pm by Rachel
I’m halfway there! I have been cranking out mini-sweaters at a pretty respectable clip over the past couple weeks. My biggest problem is that I get tired of doing the exact same pattern over and over, or I feel as though I ought to be challenging myself more, or I think of some design element that would be just TOO CUTE if miniaturized, so I keep changing things around. This results in a lot of variety but also some imperfect sweaters. Not all of my experiments were equally successful. Here are the four additions to the collection since last time:
These were designed as something of a complementary set. Sorry that you can’t see the red one very well — it was quite breezy when I took these pictures and I didn’t realize the red one had blown sideways in a gust just as I snapped the picture. I like the idea of the design of the red one, but I really screwed up the stripes in the yoke. I could do it better if I were to do it again, which I might.
The blue and orange striped one is my favorite so far. The cardigan was a figure-it-out-as-you-go brainstorm last night, and it definitely has issues. Not sure if I’ll try another cardigan. The biggest change in my next sweater is that I’m going to stop including shaping in the sleeves — I think it’s making them look wonky. I figure it’s worth seeing how it looks, anyway.
I made the little hangers today with some aluminum wire I picked up at the hardware store. I definitely got the hang of it as I went along (compare the hanger of the blue and orange sweater to the hanger of the red and white “fair isle” sweater, for example). I think they’re maybe the cutest part of the ornaments…which is a little sad given that each sweater takes two hours to make and each hanger takes only two minutes. I’m guessing my gift recipients wouldn’t be too thrilled by stand-alone mini hangers, though.
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