Stashing the stash...
So, I started a project tonight that I needed to start about a month ago. I was going to use a half skein of yarn leftover from a matching project. Find the two "just in case" skeins I was going to return from the project, but no half skein.
Found needles. Looked through my two stash boxes (flat and hide under the bed!). No skein.
Look through my bookshelves. Find:
1 size 4 circ
my huge stitch holder
3 crochet hooks
Remnant balls from
icylove
Remnant balls from the forsythia shirt
Remnant balls from my Crowns set
Remnant balls from
slutcom
A bunch of scrap yarn (too small to use, but could still be used as markers)
Assorted yarn needles
Set of size 7 DPNs
Set of size 8 DPNs
1 .5" button (perfect to replace that just too small 3/8" button on the
cellphone cozy
But no half skein. Put all of that crap where it's supposed to go, ball the remnants and put them where they're supposed to go, look both sets of dresser drawers. Find finished Crowns set and recycled shrug yarn, but no half skein. Go through stash boxes again and find half skein of yarn sitting next to the first two "just in case."
No real moral to the story, but I was just amused I had all that crap in random places in my bookcase.
Presenting...
Ripping Things to Shreds.
My opinions. Whether you want them or not.
Also, I added
the cell cozy to the
album pages. I'll add the Forsythia shirt in a bit, too.
I <3 Blogger.
Blogger now offers a syndication feed. Much more reliable than the last one. (It's also XML, not RSS. Don't worry. Different isn't always bad)
I've already created a
livejournal account.
Noro hat!
So, I finished my noro hat watching
The Cooler last night. And I didn't really need to see William H. Macy naked, either. He's not VERY naked, but he's naked enough.
Anyway, this is the hat. I'm still pointing at the top of my ear.
For the overly curious, it's a bunch of old Noro Iro from 3 years ago. No, I don't remember the colorway. The hat is just the
Kitty 62 hat without earflaps or kitten ears, and a longer head. And I only had
this much left, not counting remnants from cast on and thread through.
Christina is a happy knitting monkey!
Now I'm irked.
Not at my FTP or anything. They actually fixed it very quickly compared to normal customer service. I like my hosting. Yay hosting!
No, no, the problem is my
wonderful fry up hat to be.
I recently bought yarn for my aunt for a hat, who even more recently told me "You know, I don't think I need the hat to match the scarf. When I wear the scarf, I wear my black hat."
Faced with the daunting prospect of store credit, I racked my brains to see what I could find. The
fry up hat and
Hello Cthulu pillow came to mind. Both should be scrap yarn projects, but I'd need a larger base. I had a white in mind for the pillow (it may be in California, but it's still in my stash!), but I wanted a nice blue acryllic for the bag. (Yes, I know, I said a dirty word. I use acryllic because I'm cheap and I really don't think my handbag needs to be made out of high quality materials!)
So, I checked the pattern for approximate amounts. Despite being knit on size 8 needles, it calls for DK weight yarn.
Boo! Hiss! Unless it's some frilly pastel baby yarn, DK weight is expensive! I don't want to spend $15+ on my fry up bag! That's not counting the egg, sausage and other accent yarns. It's supposed to be both amusing AND cheap!
Poop!
Ah well, I'll probably just make it anyway. Baby blue is a good plate color, and I'll have some white, green and pink leftover from various DK projects. I just don't know what I'll do for the bacon.
WELCOME!
Sorry this is old! FTP decided it was time to die, and I haven't been able to update.
Welcome to Knitting Goddess #9's new home. Note the lack of pop ups, google ads, and other wonderful fun things.
I'm working on fixing the links, so if something's broken,
let me know and I'll fix it.
I wish I had happy fun things to post, but alas, my penelope syndrome has struck again.
I made myself a nice cap with
the Noro Remants. The problem?
I'm pointing at my ear there. And I have
this much left. (hooray pop-ups!) BUT, I just found another ball, so it might work.
Then, there are the
Rockin' God Gloves. I have one finished:
And it's faboo, BUT. Here's the two in progress side by side:
Yeah. I need to move that goddess intarsia down about six rows and over a stitch or two. And then, I just finished the thumb of the second glove and did 3 rows of the green shaping, which I think looks much, much better. I shortened the horned god symbol by 3 rows (which made it look more circular), which means I have room to add the flip top to convert to
hunter mittens (or
broad street mittens, whatever you want to call them), which would make them much more practical.
I also have to rip and reknit the right hand, because I pulled too tight on the intarsia,
as you can see
This means that neither of these projects will be done any time soon. Alas, alack.
But I promise to get the links working!
Curiouser and Curiouser...
Artichaut has shown that is indeed possible
to make sleeves horizontally instead of vertically.
This means I could now make that
Debbie Blis Scoop Neck Silk Garden Cardigan I've been drooling over. I stopped because I didn't like how the sleeves seemed to clash with the rest in their striping.
I could make myself one. Yes.
I feel a splurge coming on. But after I buy airline tickets to Ohio, I won't have any money left to splurge WITH! Old friends or yarn?
*whimper.
Clearly, I Rock...
Today, it's cold. It's very cold. I wore my
stash hat, and I got compliments! Whee!
A Deaf woman on the metro told me she liked it. (This is why it's good to know sign language)
But the BEST COMPLIMENT OF ALL was at Starbucks. The girl was getting my mochas together and said, "Where'd you get that hat? I really like it!"
"Actually, I made it."
"Name your price."
Ohh!!! Then Christina collapsed into a puddle of goo. I had to decline because I used most of my stash yarns for the hat, and the few remaining strands are in California, but there's no red, orange, green or blue, or the complimentary bulky, which leaves... yellow. But still. That made my day.
You begged, you pleaded...
I deliver.
Knitting Goddess #9 now has RSS feeds, visible below all of my netring buttons.
Go nuts, you crazy kids.
And then get your own crazy selves on the gravy train.
Edit: Yes, ok, it's a crappy feed. I'm working on it.
It's 12:50 am. Do you know where your yarn is?
It is rather late. Were I still in college, this would be early, but I'm not.
I should have gone to bed an hour ago.
Instead, I'm mentally plotting a skirt (tape measure in hand) that I'd like to make with my recycled shrug yarn.
There are three problems in this.
1) 700 yarns != enough yarn for a skirt (more like 1500)
2) it's wool and I want to make a summery skirt
3) it's nearly one in the morning.
For those of you slow of study, I'm a moron.
Gods fucking damnit.
I screwed up the waist shaping (on Jack and the Beanstalk). Did I mention I was almost finished with the back?
I swear, some projects of mine just don't want to be finished.
Edit: Wait, I take it back. Crisis averted. I just don't know how to measure correctly.
Re-Edit: Whoops. Different crisis. Too many armhole decreases. Son of a gun.
Alas, Alas, Alack...
Dearie me, dearie me.
I had a revelation today that's been slowly creeping up on me ever since the weather got cold.
My hat and scarf clash horribly.
Yes. Yes. They do.
The scarf is a Noro Iro yarn that I made about 3 years ago. Maybe two. No, three. At this point, I can't even remember what colorway it is. I started it to finish up my Noro leftovers from this:
This is the
Arachne shrug from the actual
Knitting Goddess. I was stupid enough to make it because I thought it was a cool pattern, neglecting to remember that I actually hate wearing shrugs. I hate the look of them and this particular one never fit right. Plus it curled like a bitch and a half.
So I frogged it tonight, and now I have a bit more Noro Iro. But I don't know if it's enough to make a hat.
Plus, what can I make out of 700 yards of NICE black wool? Too nice to felt, not enough for a sweater. Hrm.
Wow. That was unexpected.
You know you're an enabler when:
a) 3 or more friends have picked up knitting since getting to know you.
(extra points if they're male)
b) You teach those around you how to do more than just garter stitch.
c) you tell those friends NOT to buy that sweater for $25 because they could knit one for $75.
d) A friend who lives several states away calls you late at night to ask how to ssk. (I gave her psso instead, because the other is difficult to explain over the phone)
Christina: Proudly Enabling since 2000.
Of course, these are all completely hypothetical questions. I didn't just get off the phone with anyone from Ohio ::cough::kittenlid::cough:: or anything.
My gods! She lives!
Yes, indeed, she does. But barely.
I had a week chock full of activities only to have the cold I was nursing explode and cause me to sleep 13 hours last night and curse my birth. Needless to say, I didn't go to work today.
Jack is coming along. I was using my own stitch count, and then wondering about the back's armhole decrease, so I whipped out my KnitWare, ran a pattern through, and found that my calculations matched theirs almost exactly. In one place they had 4 and I had 5. This means that clearly, I rock.
Knitty's deadline is the 15th, and since I'm just finishing the back of this, I don't think I'll be trying to get this into the spring knitty after all. Never mind. I might try to get it into next winter's... but probably not.
Either way, I'll post the pattern for my oddly shaped 46"-39"-42.5" sweater, and I won't bother resizing it for normal people.
Normal people can just bite me.
Jack is going to require some serious finishing work. The intarsia will need stitching, the corrugated rib is rolling like no tomorrow, and I decided against making it in the round (after 6 hours of work). So, yeah, I will actually have to block. I will actally have to do mattress stitch. I will actually have to figure out a better way to knot my yarns and all that fun stuff.
I'm about two rows away from starting the body of my last fingerless glove. When I have then finished and everything and all the ends sewn in, I promise pictures.
Honestly, I've been making
livejournal icons and trying to find a good airline deal more than anything else lately.
Unfortunately, since I want to fly out on a Friday night and come in early Monday morning, all the deals suck. Even though the dates are for April.
Stitch 'n' Bitch
Well, like everyone else in the known universe, I got
Stitch 'n' Bitch for Christmas.
Here are my thoughts.
The instructions are fairly simple, the stories are compelling, and my gods, the woman talks about the Knit List and knitting blogs! I actually understood the demonstration of mattress stitch, and she has a better way to join yarns that I do. So, for that, she's cool.
I didn't find the patterns all that inspired. I found them interesting, but as usual, nothing I could see myself wearing. There was one sweater that had nice shaping and bell sleeves that I was going to use for something I was going to design for myself, but then I saw the sleeves were made a) out of super bulky weight yarn and b) from the top down. So, nix that idea. That's why I have the demo for
KnitWare! I don't need math!
Actually, I find sleeve caps to be of the devil and annoying, which is the main reason why I need knitware.
Anyway, back to Stitch n Bitch. Patterns. Spiffy, but not me. And then I saw
Mama Kate and
Annie were designers! Major sweater like designers!
Edit: I already knew they were major sweater like designers. I meant I was happy to see that they had designed sweaters for the book. Cuz, you know, that's cool.
And then I did a dance of glee and decided Debbie Stoller was darned cool after all.
HALLELUJAH!
(I tried to find an mp3 of the hallelujah chorus, but gave up after 4 links. This is far too exciting to care about an mp3)
First, to go with my secret santa scarf, I've created
a feather and fan hat. This was actually surprisingly easy, but difficult to size (it's a 12 stitch repeat, so!)
Here's hoping it fits my coworker.
I feel like it needs earflaps or somesuch, but I'm unsure how to do something like that and continue the wave pattern...
But more importantly...
I HAVE FINISHED 2 MAJOR
PROJECTS!
First, the forsythia pattern...
This is from some Patons vintage pattern book my mom bought at Costco and gave to me. This is also the second thing I've knitted from this for her.
There is a very long story behind this shirt. It was one of my first knitting patterns, back when I was a baby knitter. I didn't know that DK meant a specific weight of yarn and went out and bought my mother some nice sugar and creme worsted weight cotton. I knitted the entire shirt without swatching it.
It was HUGE.
So, I ripped, reswatched and reknit it on 2s and 4s instead of 4s and 6s. It fit her, and all seemed to be well, until I had a realization. Wait a minute! DK weight is the same as sport weight! No wonder I had so many problems!
I made the mistake of mentioning it to my mother, and offered to remake it. She said yes. I unraveled the old shirt, and plan to make it into a
Cherry Twist come springtime.
So, we went out to a LYS and bought some Jaeger Aqua on clearance. I knit her a shirt (after doing a gauge swatch), seamed at it, and then was extremely confused.
The pattern allowed for 10" of ease.
Ease has always driven me absolutely batty. Give me a finished measurement and I'll go from there. But don't tell me that it will fit someone with a 36" bust and have finished measurements be 46"! It's just mildly ridiculous.
So I ripped and reknit for the smallest size, a 41" final measurement for a 32" bust. Right. But still, it's done, and it even fits me!
Not that I would ever, ever wear this. It's for my mother. Go Mom. But as the picture illustrates, the ease is on extreme crack.
And last and nowhere near least,
SITCOM SLUT IS FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pattern is available. I'm guessing on the small, XL and XXL sizes, so if it's weird, let me know and I'll fix it.
I had to rip and reknit this, too. I worked on this at about the time I worked on the body of
icylove, when I was on CRACK this summer. For some reason, I decided that 2"-3" of ease was appropriate for a shell sweater. Did I mention I have ease issues? So, I completely finished the thing, handed it to Molly, the recipient, who tried it on and looked ridiculous. Then I cried. (No, not really) But I did have to rip out and knit again. And that was annoying.
But it's done, and as you can see from her modeling it, it FITS! It's done and it FITS! Of course, I left the 4th button in Washington DC, so it doesn't close perfectly, but YAY!
I've also redone my
pattern page and added charts for my wrist warmers and the caduceus from my
cell phone
Whew!
Time to read a book and rest my sore wrists!
