Almost there

I am almost there!  Only fourteen hundred forty nine words left until I hit 50,000 words!  At this point, that’s not very many.  Of course, I’ve got less than an hour and a half until midnight, so I need to crank these words out pretty fast.

I realize that I never did write that post about lace knitting versus lace yarns, so I guess I’ll get to that here!  I love lace.  But when I say that, I mean that I love lace knitting.  I also love lace yarns, too, because they’re very delicate, and they really make lace knitting bloom in a way that other weights of yarns just don’t quite get to (except for fingering, which gets really close).

Yarn comes in different weights.  From the lightest weight to the heaviest weight, there’s Lace, Fingering, Sport, DK, Worsted, Aran, Bulky, and Super Bulky.  Sometimes Sport and DK are sort of lumped together, and sometimes (a lot of the time) Worsted and Aran are lumped (I almost typed “knitted” right there, haha) together as a class too.  It’s a subtle difference.  It’s not a difference that means much to me, so I don’t really care about the distinction.  My main groups are Lace, Fingering, Sport & DK, Worsted, and everything heavier than worsted (which I really don’t work with very often, if at all).

Lace weight is roughly half of fingering weight, which in turn is roughly half of DK weight.  If you use the ply system as a measurement of thickness, lace is 2-ply, fingering is 4-ply, DK is 8-ply, and Worsted is 10-ply.  (Ply is also the name for each individual strand which makes up the yarn, so it’s an imperfect term which, surprise!, is used for a number of things.  The English language is so precise, as always.)

Anyway, lace knitting is a technique.  It can be worked with any weight of yarn.  It’s definitely not exclusive to lace weight yarn, but lace weight yarn is probably the most common weight of yarn used.  Fingering weight comes next in terms of most commonly used for lace.

Lace knitting involves open stitches.  This is accomplished by incorporating eyelets — which are decorative increases, which create a hole in the knitted fabric.  By patterning these holes together so that they become “eyelets” (a form of decoration) rather than “holes” (a form of mistake), the fabric becomes lace.

However, if you were to only include increases, the fabric would get wider and wider, eventually spinning (ha, no pun intended) out of control.  So, in lace knitting, decorative increases are often paired with decreases, to control the number of stitches.  This is especially useful if you’re creating a shawl in the shape of a rectangle (where you cast on one side and knit across from it until you’ve made it as wide as you want it).

It can also let you form a shape by controlling where the increases happen — for instance, to create the point of a triangle, by pairing two increases in the center and one increase on each side.  By repeating this every other row, it forms a triangle by “pushing” the center of the fabric out and down, thus creating a triangle.  You can, similarly, form a square by doubling that and working in the round.  (You can also form a circle, but that can be somewhat problematic — you can create a shape that blocks into a circle but is really a very many sided polygon, or you can create a circle by knitting a “pi” shawl, and doing ringed increases on certain rows as you knit out into the circle.)

The most common shapes for shawls are rectangles (often referred to as stoles) and triangles.  Less common, but still readily available are squares, half circles, and circles.

I go back and forth between preferring to wear rectangles and triangles.  The key with wearing triangles is to figure out how to drape it across your shoulders and arms so that you don’t look prematurely elderly (no offense) by how you wear it.  I think I’ve finally got that figured out, so I’m feeling more ready to take advantage of some of the gorgeous patterns that are available for triangle shaped shawls.

Anyway, controlling the increases and decreases not only can control the shape of the finished garment, but it can also control the shape of the internal pattern — by pairing increases and decreases, you can create leaves, shells, waves, feathers, snowflakes…  The world is open.  The available room for creativity in a lace setting is fairly boundless, especially when looking to the natural world for inspiration.

And, yet, you don’t have to look at nature for inspiration for a lace project.  The lace tunic sweater Abotanicity in Knitty from a couple of years ago is lace, knit in fingering weight yarn, that doesn’t take any inspiration from leaves or nature.  And the lace pattern in it is gorgeous.

Lace knitting goes very well with beads in it, also.  The beads create points of interest that can be used to highlight certain parts of the lace pattern.

Estonian lace stitches often include nupps, which are sort of “bead” like protrusions of yarn created by looping the yarn around the needle a bunch of times and then going back and knitting all of those loops together, so that they form a sort of rounded protrusion coming out of the front of the knitting (but pretty, unlike my description of it).

Like I said earlier in the post, lace knitting can be done on any weight of yarn.  Not long ago, Jared Flood (a, gasp, male knitwear designer who is, frankly, brilliant when it comes to designing knitted objects) updated a vintage doily pattern into a lap afghan pattern using worsted weight yarn.  The Hemlock Ring Blanket is beautiful, as is his photography of it, so take a look at the link to his blog post.  It features a star shaped flower at the center, which eventually branches out into a feather and fan pattern (a classic motif in knitting patterns, which has both its adorers and its detractors — I fall into the former; I love it).  It’s the perfect lap blanket to give as a gift, as it is both warm and snuggly and eminently useful, and it would also size down nicely into a baby blanket (especially if you were to use a fingering weight yarn, it would probably size down perfectly).

There’s something about lace as a technique that speaks to me, above all other techniques in knitting.  Something about the way I can read a chart (that’s a knitting pattern presented visually, in a chart of little blocks with symbols that say what stitch comes when — it’s a visual representation of the knitted item, and when it’s done really well, you can sort of squint your eyes and actually see what the pattern will look like, just by the chart alone), and process it through my fingers, and create something gorgeous.  But it’s not even the creation of something gorgeous that’s what draws me to lace knitting.  It’s something about the stitches themselves — the yarn overs, the slip slip knits, the knit two togethers.  Or the knit six togethers, while holding the yarn over your head and hopping on one foot.  (Kidding!)  There are definitely some more exotic stitches that you come across, and there’s always a challenge to be found in a lace project.  There’s always something new to explore, something else to tackle, even in this one sub set of knitting.  I love it.  It has captured my interest to the max.  I’m looking for ways to incorporate lace knitting into my warm and woolly winter knitting, so that I can both have my cake and eat it too, as far as knitting goes.

I particularly like the idea of having usable lace that’s warm and snuggly.  (Which fits quite well into my quest to figure out a lace wool sweater.)  I find that the lace shawls I’ve knit, even the ones in lace weight wool, are quite warm once they’re on.  Wool is such a great fiber.  It’s warm, and yet it breathes very nicely.  It insulates well, even when it’s a very thin layer (with openwork stitches throughout).  I love it.

I guess that’s what this blog has been, all along.  I’d thought about it as a way to do NaNoWriMo without actually writing a novel, but it’s been something far greater than that.  It’s given me a chance to step back and think about my knitting and analyze it in ways I hadn’t had the opportunity to before.  In short, it’s been a love letter from me to my knitting.

Dear knitting, I can hardly remember what my life was like before I met you.  You filled a void in my life that I didn’t even know was there until you came along.  I adore you.  Love, Alex.

I think that says it all.

Countdown to 50,000 words

So, this is the last day of November, which is also the last day of NaNo.  Crazy.  I have no clue where this month went or how it managed to go by so fast.  Passing the bar exam definitely had something to do with it at the front end, and traveling (and getting sick while traveling) had something do to with it on the back end, but I don’t know what happened to the days in between.  Funny how that works.

And now it’s a countdown to 50,000 words.  I have… a fair amount still yet to write.  Oops.

Yesterday, I finished swatching for the Que Sera cardigan, washed the swatch, and let it sit out to dry while I did massive amounts of laundry and massive amounts of tidying.  The living room looks like a living room again, rather than a staging area that had since become a dropping area, and the dining room table looks like a dining room table again, rather than a smorgasbord of junk mail, papers, clutter, and a misbehaving netbook that had been put in time out.

By the time I got back to my swatch, it had dried nicely, and when I measured it for the gauge, I was astounded to find that my gauge was perfect and spot on.  Exactly.  I don’t think that’s ever happened before.  It’s always been a half a stitch or so off in either direction, or something, or a row or two off.  But not this time.  On size 8 needles, my gauge with the Gloss DK yarn was exactly 16 stitches and 24 rows in the lace pattern for the sweater.  Score!

I cast on last night while watching an episode of Two Fat Ladies (an awesome British cooking show, hosted by two hilariously awesome women).  The episode was “Fish & Shellfish” so it was perfect for focusing on counting the number of stitches I had to cast on (173 — do you know how annoying it is to count 173 stitches over and over again?), because I’m not really a fan of most seafood, and the idea of a dinner consisting of fish pie and monkfish with anchovies makes me sort of want to die inside.  So I don’t have to focus that much on the episode, leaving me free to focus on casting on 173 stitches, with still enough free brain space to listen to Jennifer and Clarissa banter back and forth.  Sadly, there was no streaky bacon in this episode.  I guess bacon doesn’t go so naturally with fish and shellfish.  I have higher hopes for the next episode in the series: “Meat.”  (Also, hearing them make comments about vegetarians is hilarious.)

Today I knit a bit further into the Que Sera sweater.  I noticed a couple of things.

First, I noticed that the yarn is so much happier being knit on size 8 needles than it was on size 6 needles.  The two swatches, when washed, both have a lovely drape and texture.  However, when the yarn was being knitting on the size 6 needles, it knit up with a fair amount of bulkiness and stiffness.  Now that it’s being knitted on size 8 needles, it knits up with that lovely drape and texture, with no bulk or stiffness.  What it means is that washing it doesn’t dramatically alter the texture of the fabric.  There’s no real difference in the texture between the swatch and the sweater in progress.  It’s nice, to have the enjoyment of knitting up something that wants to feel luxurious.  I think that might have been part of the reason that I lost interest in knitting the Peggy Sue sweater — because the yarn didn’t really want to be knit up at that gauge (although it relaxed into it once it was washed).

Second, I noticed that I really enjoy the lace stitch pattern.  It’s relatively short — only 10 stitches wide, so that makes each row easily memorized, and it flows very easily.  It’s also only twelve rows long, so it’s also easily memorized as an entire pattern.  After knitting the swatch, I felt like I had it down, and when I was transitioning from the double moss stitch hem (I don’t really like double moss stitch as a texture as much as I like moss stitch, but I think that the double moss stitch makes a nicer, softer hem) to the lace pattern, I only had to look down at the chart occasionally to double check that I was starting up the pattern correctly.

When I got to the first row where there would be a buttonhole last night, I had a moment of indecision.  Actually it was more like five minutes, where I ended up sitting stock still and staring at the wall, holding my knitting in my hands, agonizing over whether to follow the pattern blindly and do the buttonhole, or to risk shaking things up and not doing the buttonholes.  I sat there long enough that my husband noticed that something was off.  I decided to not do the buttonholes.  I can go back and add in a zipper, if I want to.  Or, I can use the hook and eye closures I was thinking about — it would avoid the more casual look that a zipper has, and I can always add in more closures if it gaps unattractively.

Also, not doing the buttonholes means that I really don’t have to keep track of what row I’m on with the lace pattern while I’m knitting.  All I have to do is knit in the pattern, which is obvious which row I need when I’m knitting it — it’s a very easy pattern in which to read your knitting — and I just keep knitting and knitting and knitting on.  Hilariously, it’s the double moss stitch border that makes me keep doing a double take to make sure I’m doing it correctly.  Stupid double moss stitch border.  It does look very nice, though, so I can’t be too annoyed at it.

We went to Barnes & Noble tonight — for me, to pick up my copy of the Winter 2010 issue of Interweave Knits; for my husband, to find the Family Healthy Cooking cookbook by America’s Test Kitchen Cooks Illustrated.  I might have mixed up the title a little bit.  It’s the green one.  The Family cookbook is red, and the Family Baking cookbook is blue.  The green one was really hard to find.  Barnes & Noble’s cookbook section was really poorly organized.  It was organized topically, but “healthy eating” was sort of mixed up into “Diet and Weight Loss” (a.k.a. “The ____ Diet” cookbooks, and, strangely, all the Cooking Light cookbook compendiums), “Healthy & Natural” (which pretty much meant all the raw food craze cookbooks), and “Vegetarian” (I think you can guess what those cookbooks looked like).

We were about to give up when we noticed that on the end of one of the aisles, the America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks had a little special display, and yes, it had the green one.  My husband was very relieved.  Oh, and it was 30% off, which was nice, because it’s in a nice binder format, which meant that it was kind of expensive.  Much less so, with the 30% off discount.

I wandered into the knitting section.  Well, I say that.  First, I wandered around the entire store three times trying to find the Crafts section.  And then I wandered around some more trying to find a person to help me find the Crafts section.  And then I found the Crafts section.

Most of the time, a lot of the knitting books don’t really do it for me when I’m just sitting in front of the book shelves (yes, I sat myself down and started pulling books off the shelves to look at) looking at the books.  But I actually found some interesting things tonight.  I wrote down the names of three books to go back and look at later (to check out from the library to give a closer look, or to buy… in a less expensive, non hardcover format).

1) Modern Top-Down Knitting, by Kristina McGowan

2)  The Art of Knitted Lace, edited by Potter Craft

3)  The Harmony Guides: Lace and Eyelets, edited by Erika Knight

I’m definitely not planning on running out and buying myself any of these books… yet.  There are a couple of different reasons for that.

First, Modern Top-Down Knitting.  Um, how can I say this in a very politic manner?  The patterns don’t appeal to me.  As my mother would say, they’re much too chick-y.  I really have no interest in knitting myself a dress.  Or multiple dresses.  Or a skirt.  Really.  I might change my mind on that some day, but that day is definitely not today.  Or tomorrow.  Or any day I can reasonably foresee.

So the patterns don’t appeal to me.  At all.  But I really want to check the book out of the library so that I can look at it some more.  Why?  Because it looks like there are about eight pages that are a really good reference for a top-down sweater technique that I haven’t used before.  Top down set in sleeves.

Eight pages.  Roughly.  Maybe ten, if you include the couple of pages on how to do short rows.  Definitely not worth buying a book for.  Most definitely not worth buying a hardcover book for, especially not at Barnes & Noble’s prices.  Not even on Amazon’s prices.

Eight pages.  I was very tempted to take out my camera and snap some shots of the four pages that I was really interested in, but I decided that 1) that was a little bit too crazy; 2) I was probably likely to get caught; and 3) the photos probably wouldn’t even come out very well, anyway.

I can try to find this book in the library, and then go and photocopy the eight pages I need for future reference.

The idea of doing a top down sweater with set in sleeves is a really exciting one.  It would mean that the fronts of my sweaters, starting from the shoulders and going on down, would be “seamless” — untouched by any diagonal line (say, from the raglan increases going from collar to underarm, which would form the sleeve).  It would make any sort of pattern on the sweater flow far more naturally, allowing for untouched straight lines down from the shoulders.

You cast on with a temporary cast on at the top of the shoulder, knit down, then pick up the cast on stitches again and knit down the other side to a point where you’re ready to join the two at the underarm, and then you can knit in the round (or flat, if it’s a cardigan).  Once you’ve joined it together, you can then go in and pick up the stitches around the armhole to create the sleeve.  You shape the sleeve cap with short rows, and then knit on down the sleeve.

It sounds awesome.

I’m really, really, really interested in this and excited about the idea of it.  If I hadn’t already cast on for the Que Sera sweater — and been really loving it so far — I would probably have tried to turn that pattern on its head and do it as a top down sweater with set in sleeves.

But that’s what the yarn that I have earmarked for my free form top down sweaters is for.  Playing around with techniques and ideas to create my perfect sweater.

The Lace and Eyelet Harmony Guide book caught my eye after I started contemplating all of the beautiful stitch work I could do in those beautiful open spaces that would be created by the flat fronts of a top down set in sleeve sweater.  So, of course, I started to think about joining my two knitting loves — lace and sweaters.  I flipped quickly through the Harmony Guide (which is a series of stitch dictionaries that’s pretty highly regarded and was just re-released a few years ago), and I think I’m going to pick up a cheap copy if I can find one, because it would be a good resource for this exact sort of thing.

At home, I’ve got Barbara Walker’s A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, which is another awesome stitch dictionary in a set, but it’s a bit dated — the photos are all black and white — and while there’s fantastic coverage of a huge variety of stitches patterns, I like the idea of a book just devoted to lace and eyelet stitches.  As an aside, Barbara Walker is the person who publicized the top down set in sleeve method of knitting sweaters, and the full title of Modern Top-Down Knitting is: Modern Top-Down Knitting: Sweaters, Dresses, Skirts & Accessories Inspired by the Techniques of Barbara G. Walker.

The Art of Knitted Lace appealed to me because there were a couple of lovely shawls and stoles in there, and my love for lace has most definitely not left me.

While I was sitting in front of the knitting shelves, my husband wandered over to collect me so that we could go.  He spotted a book on the next shelf over (the crochet section) entitled Cute and Creepy Crochet.  (It was really cute.)  I explained to him that amigurumi (except, I pronounced it wrong) was its own subsection of crochet, and that it was really, really cute.  And that actually, I thought that he might enjoy doing it.

Let me back up a minute.  He’s a really good spacially oriented thinker.  While he was growing up, his mom taught both him and his brother how to knit, and a few years ago, when he had this urge to try to learn how to knit again, all I did was put the yarn and the needles into his hands, and he was like, “Wait, I kind of remember this, let me see how much I can actually do,” and the next thing I knew, he was knitting away, with no help needed from me.

He also loves to do papercraft (but gets annoyed at how fiddly it is).  I saw amigurumi as being something like and hitting the same crafting urge as the papercraft stuff — creating something small and cute.

He immediately started flipping through Crochet for Dummies, but I talked him out of it.  I knew we had a good illustrated how to crochet book at home (which I had used to teach myself how to crochet… poorly, although that’s not a commentary on the book at all).  Maran’s Illustrated Knitting and Crocheting — I bought it after looking through every Crochet for Dummies type book there was a few years ago.  It was the only one that was fully illustrated with photographs, rather than artwork, or worse: line drawings.

When we got home, he put amigurumi into google (except, I spelled it wrong for him, so what he put in got only 41 results from google, which is actually quite a feat), and when he spelled it correctly, he started reading up on it, and then he got all excited.  It was really cute.

I found him some yarn to play with, and gave him my set of crochet hooks and the how to book, and he was off.

Sort of.  The yarn I gave him was a kitchen cotton — not very inspiring, somewhat splitty, and perhaps not the best to learn from.  So we ended up switching it out, and he’s working with some Red Heart Super Saver.  Also not the most inspiring yarn ever, but it’s a hardy, workhorse yarn, and it’s perfectly clear that if it ends up as a tangled mess, there’s no problem with snipping it off, throwing that bit out, and starting over again.

Also, it’s a royal blue, which is slightly more manly than the more pastel colors of the kitchen cotton…

Anyway, we ended up both at the kitchen table, because it had the best lighting, and we both did a test swatch of single crochet, back and forth and back and forth.  I feel like I actually know how to crochet now, and he’s amazing.  An hour later (he’s been crocheting still out there while I’ve been writing this up), and he fetched me to come look at his work, and it looks beautiful.  The stitches are all even, and it looks perfect.

He’s really good, once he can wrap his mind around something in a spatial manner.  If he can figure out the mechanics of how something works, he’s got it.  It’s really cool to watch.  I think he’s far more comfortable with crochet than he was with knitting — it’s less to work; each hand does something different in crochet.  One tensions the yarn and one works the hook.  And the architecture of crochet clicks better in his mind than the architecture of knitting.  (We both agree that if he went back to knitting after figuring out the mechanics of crochet and approached it in the same “let’s figure out the mechanics of this” sort of way, he might enjoy knitting better.  But if he’s happy with crochet, that’s fantastic.)

He’s on his computer right now, looking up all sort of amigurumi books on amazon and occasionally snorting with laughter.

All of this, just because Cute and Creepy Crochet had a little Cthulhu on the front.

Cyber Monday report

So, I woke up at three in the morning to check out the Knit Picks Cyber Monday sale.  It was… not quite what I was expecting.

It did not live up to the expectations.  But I ended up happy.  If they do this again next year, I will not wake up at three in the morning to see it.  But I’m glad I did this year, just because.  It’s good for me to be more spontaneous.  Sometimes I have to plan ahead to be spontaneous, which sort of ruins the effect, but it fosters more spontaneity, which is a good thing.

Anyway, here’s the story.  I ended up waking up at about 2:50, in advance of my alarm (which was my cell phone, set to vibrate, so that it would only wake me up — I ended up sleeping with it clutched to my chest with my finger on the dismiss button so that I could be sure it wouldn’t wake up my husband).  I was able to stealthily sneak out of bed without disturbing my husband’s sleep (yay!), although I was not quite so successful upon my return (boo!).

The sale (which is still going on) was only on select colors of yarn, which were marked up to 35 percent off.  That’s not bad.  But it definitely wasn’t as good a sale as I was hoping for, especially when compared to their twice a year 40 percent off all books sale, and the current 41 percent off sale on their swift (which brings their swift down to about fifty dollars — not a bad deal on a swift, but you can do better rocking a 60 percent off coupon from JoAnn’s Fabric, which is what I did a couple of years ago).

What was really frustrating about the way they set up their website to handle the sale was that the button marked “Cyber Monday Sale!  Click here!” did not, in fact, bring you to the Cyber Monday Sale yarn discounts.  It brought you to their regular sale page, where the same four yarn colors that have been marked down to 35 percent off have been sitting for the last three months.

In that moment, it was… shall we say… something of a let down.  My instant reaction, peering at my computer screen through bleary eyes (but with 20-20 vision, as I’d remembered to leave my glasses next to the keyboard so that I could easily find them at three in the morning), was, “Is this it?  You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”

Happily, that wasn’t it.  I would have been really pissed if that were the extent of the sale.

However, it was just yarn that was marked down, and only a couple of colors were marked down the full 35 percent, where a bunch more were marked down by 25 percent or so instead.  There really were 400 colors of yarn (not that I actually counted, but judging from how many sale tags there were under each header of yarn that had a sale going), but the vast majority were not 35 percent off.

No tools on sale, no books, no needles, no bags.  I would have picked up some extra Options cables, if they’d been on sale.  (I was hoping.  It’s always nice to have extra cables hanging around, because they make good stitch holders and they always come in handy.)

It was just yarn.  And, really, it was just some yarn, because not every yarn line had a sale going.  Capra, for instance, their new cashmere and merino blend yarn, didn’t have any colors on sale at all.  Not a huge surprise, but somewhat disappointing.  I definitely would have bought a few balls of Capra to play with, if it had been 35 percent off.  They’d make such nice, warm, snuggly, deliciously luxurious fingerless mitts, if the yarn is as nice as it seems and as I’ve heard.

I wasn’t thrilled with the sale at three in the morning.  I ended up putting a couple of shades of Gloss Fingering (the ones that were actually 35 percent off) into my cart, with the intention of going back to sleep and waiting to see if they were still there when I got up in the morning, and then letting my husband talk me into buying them.  (I didn’t plan on resisting too much.)

That’s more or less what I did.  They were still there when I got up, but I decided to take a second look at the sale and think a bit outside the box.  I thought, “let me look at what’s normally pretty cheap, and then see how appealing it is when it’s really cheap.”

A bunch of stuff went in and out of my cart (all at the 35 percent off mark).  I put in two sweaters’ worth of Wool of the Andes yarn (in Pumpkin, and in Currant), and then I took out the Currant, because I didn’t care for the color enough.  It’s a brownish red, but it wasn’t brown enough or red enough to really capture my attention for anything other than the fact that it was 35 percent off.  And then I took out the Pumpkin, because as fun as it would be to knit myself a burnt orange sweater, exactly when am I going to wear a burnt orange sweater?  School pride only goes so far.  Which is not very far indeed.  And, besides, I don’t look good in orange.  (Does anyone?  Seriously?)

I ended up with eight hanks of Gloss Fingering in Woodland Sage, eight hanks of Gloss Fingering in Dolphin, two balls of Stroll sock yarn in Pine (a pair of socks as a gift for my husband, probably for his birthday in June), and because I was 82 cents away from free shipping, I browsed through the tools and accessories to see what I could toss in on the cheap.  I ended up getting some plastic coils to hold needles together.  I think that would be really nice to hold the two needle tips together for my socks, inside my GoKnit pouch while I’m on the go.

I ended up dropping the Gloss Fingering in Porcini I’d originally put in my cart at three in the morning — I was imagining myself wearing a lovely neutral brown sweater, but then I realized that I would be much happier knitting myself a sweater that was not neutral brown, because that would probably get pretty boring, and I think it would be relatively easy to find in a store, (although I say that now, but I make a lot of wrong assumptions about how easy it is to find things in stores).

I’d also briefly put in some Stroll sock yarn in Terrain Twist, but then took it out.  It would have been another pair of socks for my husband, but I wasn’t sure that he’d like the brown and green twist.  I figured that Pine would be a safer color choice for him, because I know he really likes greens.  (I briefly considered the color Grass, but I figured it would be too bright a green.  Not manly enough.)

The eight hanks each of the two colors of Gloss Fingering are earmarked for sweaters.  That’s the amount that I’d picked up in Winter Night, which is also earmarked for a sweater.  I’ve been thinking about a lacy openwork sweater, which would definitely work well for one of them.  Woodland Sage is a really beautiful blue green, a deep teal shade.  Dolphin is a blue grey color.  I’d been admiring both of them since the colors first arrived on the panel of Gloss shades.  I thought briefly about using one of them (Dolphin, most likely) for the Shipwreck shawl, which I really do want to knit one of these days.  I might still hold that in reserve, as an idea.  I’d get more use out of a sweater.  But if I change my mind on that score, I can easily make the shawl and use the leftover two hanks to make a scarf, or some fingerless mitts, or something.

I’d really been hoping that Sea Spray would go on sale, less for a sweater than for a shawl — that color would look amazing in a lace pattern, something that evokes snowflakes or icy glaciers.

Oh, and speaking of fingerless mitts.  I had a really weird dream last night that I was knitting socks out of a skein of yarn I’d earmarked for a pair of fingerless mitts as a future gift for Maggie.  (Spoiler alert, Maggie.  There are more fingerless mitts in your future.  Not that it’s much of a surprise.  It is hilarious that I’m dreaming about it, though.)  I’d pretty much finished the sock in my dream before I realized my mistake, and I was beating myself up about it, like, “Damn, that’s X number of hours wasted.  What am I supposed to do with it now?  Make the second sock, or make the mitts?  ARGH.”  Never mind the fact that one skein of this yarn (which will definitely make two fingerless mitts; don’t worry about that, Maggie) would never be able to make a pair of socks.  Dream logic is not exactly normal everyday logic.

I think I had too much caffeine on the road trip yesterday.  I slept oddly.  I didn’t toss and turn, but I slept oddly — too lightly, and haunted by really odd dreams.

It’s probably pretty promising that I’ve pretty much already met my supposed “word count” for the day (the normal word count, not my accelerated word count numbers in order to meet my deadline by tomorrow night), and it’s only about nine in the morning.

I started swatching for the Que Sera sweater last night — which also might be the reason I had a hard time falling asleep, because I wanted to still be knitting on it.  I learned a long time ago that it’s best not to knit too close to bed, or else I’m either going to stay up way too late knitting, or I’m going to have to spend some time decompressing, because I’m going to want to still be knitting.  Knitting is like a drug.  True story.

I’m enjoying the lace pattern for the sweater, which is definitely a good thing because it’s going to cover pretty much the entire sweater.  If I didn’t like it, the swatch would have already been ripped out by now.  It looks like I’ve just about got gauge, but we’ll see what it does after it’s been washed and everything relaxes into the stitch pattern.  I might need to go down a needle size.  The lace pattern is pretty.  We can’t really tell if it’s supposed to be a leaf or a diamond, though.  My husband is voting for diamond.  I’m not sure, but it certainly doesn’t detract from the visual enjoyment.

NaNo update

A quick little NaNo update:

I may still be a little less than five thousand words behind where I’m supposed to be by the end of today, but I’ve broken the forty thousand word mark.  There are less than ten thousand words to go until I hit my fifty thousand words!

The NaNo website is oh so helpfully telling me that I can finish on time if I write a little over forty-one hundred words tomorrow and Tuesday.  It might be a big push towards the end (with a little bit of not really cheating but perhaps bending the rules a little bit in a helpful direction), but I’m planning on sticking it out as long as I can, until the end of this thing.

I’m almost there!  Where in the world did this month go?

Home again

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Bonus points, again, to anyone who gets the reference.  (It’s one of my favorite science fiction movies, and what I consider to be one of the best science fiction movies ever made.  I’ll give you a hint: my favorite line in the film, said by a young Edward James Olmos, is “It’s too bad she won’t live!  But, then again, who does?”)  Man, now I want to watch that movie again.

I should make it a goal, if I do this again next year, to start off more posts with references to either science fiction television shows or movies, or Arrested Development.  Good times.

Speaking of movies, I still haven’t seen the new Harry Potter movie.  (Also, related to knitting, Hermione always wears at least one woolly hat or scarf or sweater.  And, you know, she knits.  But, um, not really in this movie.)  We were flying in the night it came out at midnight, and then that whole weekend was taken up by the wedding, and the rest of this week was taken up by travel, being sick, Thanksgiving, and more travel.  We’ll probably go see it sometime this coming week.  I am not looking forward to a visit to our local movie theater.  We’ve had so many bad experiences there — idiot people texting on their cell phones during the movie; idiot people bringing their very young children into an inappropriate movie (Inception, at like ten o’clock at night) and then refusing to remove themselves, even when we called in the movie theater’s management (I quote, I kid you not: “It’s a free country”); and idiot people talking on their cell phones during the movie (that guy, when I shushed them, had the absolute, unmitigated gall to shush me back while he was STILL ON HIS CELL PHONE).  You might be able to tell I’m not a fan

It’s definitely times like these where I really miss the Alamo Drafthouse.  Aside from the awesomeness of being able to have food (and beer, if that’s your thing; it’s really not mine) and ice cream or hot chocolate (definitely more my thing), as the case may be, during the movie, they also don’t allow children under a certain age into screenings.  (Yay!)  People don’t talk during the movies, and if they do, it’s really easy to flag down one of the servers to shut them up.

And they have really awesome “don’t talk during the movie!” film clips.  Like one with Shepherd Book, from Firefly, doing his awesome Special Hell speech.  (“If you take sexual advantage of her, you’re going to burn in a very special level of hell.  A level they reserve for child molesters.  And people who talk at the theatre.”  Oh, Shepherd Book.  That’s another show I’d love to rewatch.)

They also had really fun off the wall movies, and sing along events.  Going to the Ladies of the Eighties sing along was a lot of fun.  (And even more ironic was the fact that we were all singing and dancing along to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” on the night before we were attending the Women’s Leadership Conference Symposium Thing or whatever at the law school.  While we probably should have been doing our “homework” for the leadership thing.  Oops.  Ha.)

For good measure, here’s the video, since now all I want to do is listen to the song:

Look at those QUALITY eighties haircuts.  They just don’t make ‘em like they used to and for good reason; seriously, if you don’t believe me, just look at those haircuts.  (Also?  I just noticed, when they’re all dancing and filing into the bedroom, there’s a guy in a blue shirt with a bow tie who vaguely looks like the Eleventh Doctor.  “Bow ties are cool.”)

Anyway, on the topic of this blog, I’m just about seven thousand words under where I’m supposed to be by the end of today.  I doubt I’ll make up anywhere near all of that difference in this post, so you can probably expect me to be a bit more long winded than usual in the next two days, before this month is over at midnight eastern standard time on Tuesday evening.  (I just went and double checked the time zone I had set for myself on the NaNo website, and it was all wrong — it would have given me an extra three hours.  I fixed that so it’s correct.  An extra three hours isn’t going to help much.  I don’t plan to stay up until three in the morning on the night of the end of the month just so that I can hit fifty thousand words if I’m not there already.  Or maybe I will.  Who knows.  Maybe my competitive streak will win out, and my husband will goad me into staying awake long enough to finish it with promises of sleeping in and chocolate and his good esteem forever.)

Now that we’re back home for what feels like the first time in weeks, it’s time to get our very messy house back into order, or at least what passes for order around here.  The living room has become a sort of staging area where the suitcases from the trip to Houston are sitting, half-unpacked, and the suitcases from the trip to the in laws’ house are now sitting, along with the brand new (used) Wii, assorted Christmas presents, two computers and two monitors that somehow managed to come home with us (I think my husband is going to fix them for his mom, but I also think we’re keeping at least one of the monitors? I vaguely remember hearing something about how she was getting a new monitor in this week and we were welcome to the old one?), and the jackets, scarves, hats, and gloves that we’ve accumulated up from a cross-country trip (in the fear that we might break down and then need them to keep from freezing to death on the side of the road).

If that isn’t enough, the kitchen is a total mess, there’s nothing left in the fridge (well, nothing that doesn’t look like a science experiment; must get on to that soon, too), and I’ve got so much laundry to do after a week and a half of being away.  I think I’m on my last clean pair of jeans.

But, believe me, I’m really happy to be home.  And to not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

I’m looking forward to swatching for the Que Sera cardigan!  While we ate dinner and watched this week’s Modern Family, which we’d missed while we were at the in-laws’ house, I ripped out what I had knitted on the Peggy Sue cardigan.  Two skeins of the Gloss DK have been rewound into balls.  Good-bye, Peggy Sue.  Another time, perhaps, but not this time.  I want to love my project most of the way through, if not all of the way through, and my losing steam halfway through the raglan increases did this sweater no favors.

I really want to get to swatching for Que Sera, so I want to finish this post in (relatively) short order so that I can get to that.  I’m finding it somewhat amusing that I’ve abandoned one cardigan named after a song for another cardigan named after another song.

I didn’t knit any on the drive back today, so my socks are still where they were at the end of yesterday evening.  I’m about two inches up on the ribbing for the cuffs.  It looks like we need to get the differential fluid flushed and replaced on my husband’s car, so I expect I’ll probably be taking it in sometime this week.  I don’t know how long that will take (but hopefully less than three and a half hours), but what it definitely does mean is sock knitting time (but hopefully not quite so much time as to actually finish the socks).  Hopefully I’ll be back up to my full, normal knitting speed, as opposed to this pretty sad, slow, somewhat spaced out knitting speed that I’ve been doing as I’m slowly gaining my energy and focus back.

I should wind more of the sock yarn I’ve got so that I’ve got plenty of choices for when I am ready to cast on for a new pair of socks.  Right now, I’ve only got the two hanks of the Imagination sock yarn in the Looking Glass colorway wound.  And I have one ball of the Enchanted Forest colorway wound, but not the other yet.

Some of the sock yarn I have is enough for a pair of socks, but it’s all in one skein of yarn.  So what I’ll need to do with that is break out my trusty yarn / food scale (hopefully trusty, that is; I’ve never actually tested it against gram weights or anything), and measure the weight of the skein (without the wrapper).  I’ll then have to weigh the ball I’m winding as I go until I get to half, and then snip the yarn before winding the rest.  I’m enough of a perfectionist that I don’t like the idea of possibly making a mistake and having two balls that aren’t the same, but I have to realize that it’s really not that big a deal.

Another thing on the horizon, knitting wise, is the upcoming release (on the newsstands, that is) of the Winter 2010 issue of Interweave Knits.  It’s supposed to be on the newsstands on Tuesday, November 30.  I’m really looking forward to that article about inserting zippers without sewing.  I’m hoping it’s as good as my amount of anticipation for it would warrant.  I’ll have to happen to find myself near a Barnes & Noble on Tuesday while I’m out and about, with one of my gift cards handy, just by accident…  That way I can check it out as soon as possible.

Also, at 12:01am on Monday (tomorrow!), the Knit Picks’ Cyber Monday sale goes live.  Since they’re not disclosing any details about the sale ahead of time, I don’t know whether anything I would want will be available on sale, or even whether the sale prices will be that great a deal.  But I could just stay up until midnight (well, a couple of minute past) tonight to see.  I’ll see how I’m feeling, tired wise.  And sickness wise.  I’m definitely on the mend, but I’m far from one hundred percent of the way back.

Oh, snap.  And I just noticed that the Knit Picks’ sale starts at 12:01am Pacific Standard Time.  That means that it starts at 3:01am in Eastern Standard Time, which sadly, is where I am.  Damn.  That timing really sucks.  Well, then, I guess I definitely won’t stay up late for it.  Not much is worth me staying up until three in the morning… but I might set an alarm for three in the morning just to take a quick look at what’s on sale, since they’re keeping all the details such a secret.  See if it’s worth it or not.  It’s not like I haven’t woken myself up pretty consistently at three in the morning the last few nights with a coughing fit, in any case.

I’m really wanting to go start swatching for the Que Sera cardigan, so I’ll wrap up this post.  It just means that I’ve got to figure out where my size eight needle tips are.  I don’t think I’ve got anything going on size eights right now, so they should be in my little needle tip case.  (I made a case for them out of a blue pencil case.  It works really well, and also there’s space for my options cables and a needle sizer.)

On the mend

So, I’m feeling somewhat better today, despite coughing in a more “productive” manner all day.  I woke up a bunch of times in the night in order to cough.  I kept apologizing to my poor husband, because he’s stuck with me, but in his half asleep state at three o’clock in the morning, he assured me that “it’s okay, because they’re productive coughs.”

I know that I’m starting to feel better because I have enough energy to actually knit today.  And knit I have.  It was slow to begin with, but I have started to gain some speed with it.  Not quite at my usual fast speed of knitting, but less hesitant and more focused.

I’ve been parked on the couch again, though not with a movie on today.  I didn’t feel like starting another movie marathon.  Because I had the energy to knit, it was enough to just enjoy the sunlight coming into the living room and quietly knit while everyone else bustled around for the day.

Apparently we were supposed to go out to dinner tonight to a really nice restaurant (my mother-in-law described it as fifty dollars a plate, lobster and fillet mignon type of restaurant) as a secret surprise “Congratulations for passing the Bar; we love you!!!” dinner from my in-laws, but because I’ve been so under the weather, we’re staying in tonight.  Instead, there was a special trip to Cosco made earlier today to pick up giant Hebrew National hot dogs (my absolute favorite brand of hot dog) and some other stuff.  There’s going to be ribs, which my brother-in-law is preparing, but I’m all about the hot dogs.

This is probably a good thing.  I have more energy and focus today, and I’m definitely more alive and chipper.  But it’s

My mother-in-law, my husband, and his little sister walked to the store — one last quick trip to the grocery store for rolls, a stop in at Sears to pick up a string of lights that works, and, oh yeah, a trip to Game Stop.

My husband came home with one normal sized bag and one giant bag.  I took one look at it, and I just knew we had just acquired a new piece of electronic equipment for our living room.  We now own a Wii.  He assures me it was pre-owned, in good repair, and a very good deal.  I might have him go look into what the Wii Fit stuff costs, because I might actually be interested in that if the Wii’s going to be hanging around.  (I’m definitely looking forward to making a Mii.  That’s my favorite part.  Well, that, and soundly defeating my husband at Wii Boxing.  I rock at Wii boxing.  The Wiimote is just sensitive enough so that it has the accelerometer, but it’s not sensitive enough that you can win by blocking.  So, I never block — I just keep pressing onward, and it’s TKO in no time flat.  And my Mii is the one whose arm is being held up for the audience’s cheers.  Just so that we’re clear on that.)

Now I’m being treated to watching him play Rogue Squadron on his little sister’s Wii.  I give it five minutes before he starts complaining that the Tai Fighters are cheating.

Oh, and now they’re playing Mario Kart again.  The race course they’re on is particularly trippy.   And I think that my husband just realized that his little sister totally hustled him on Mario Kart.  He was trying to handicap himself so that she wouldn’t feel bad or something, and he didn’t realize that she kills at Mario Kart (and especially on this really trippy rainbow raceway in space).

I spent a bit of time browsing through knitting patterns on Ravelry.  I opened up the advanced pattern search, didn’t put in any filters (which is unusual for me, normally I browse for specific things, or at the very least filter out any patterns tagged as “doll,” “newborn,” “preemie,” “baby,” “toddler,” “child,” or “teen” — you can tell what I’m not interested in — or I filter out any patterns that either aren’t free or aren’t already in my library), and I just browsed through the pages of pattern tiles.  It was soothing.  I clicked on the patterns that caught my eye and would open a few of them in tabs in my browser window to go through a few at a time.

I’ll say this about myself.  I have relatively consistent taste.  Most of the patterns I opened were already in my queue, and I’d just forgotten about them.  I use my Ravelry queue as a clearinghouse for patterns that catch my eye or that I find interesting or that I’d like to knit one day.

One pattern did make me sit up and take notice, though.  It’s the Que Sera cardigan, from the Spring & Summer 2010 issue of Knitty.

An aside about Knitty.  It’s a free online knitting magazine that releases issues quarterly.  (Recently, they moved from the standard Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter issues to a Spring & Summer, First Fall, Deep Fall, and Winter.  I’m not sure how I feel about that switch, but it certainly doesn’t affect the quality of the publication.)  Knitty is awesome.  It’s jam packed with lots of amazing patterns, with great photography.  It’s also got great staying power.  I’m always eager to look through each new issue.  I don’t always find a lot of patterns that immediately call to me, because I’m picky that way, but once people start making them and posting photos and comments on Ravelry, it’s amazing how many patterns start to gain appeal for me.  It’s a quality source for patterns.

And, like today, sometimes I’m just browsing, and a pattern from Knitty that I’d somewhat overlooked in the past starts to stand up and dance in front of my eyes.  That’s what the Que Sera cardigan did.

The pattern is free and doesn’t require any registration.  I’d highly recommend clicking on it to see the photos in the pattern.  The top photograph doesn’t do it justice.  Scroll down.  The last three are my favorite — the one displaying the back of the cardigan, the one displaying the side and sleeve, and the one at the end with the cardigan mostly buttoned up the front.  Those three photos are gorgeous.  (And that the sample is knitted in a beautiful lilac purple yarn doesn’t hurt it in the slightest.)

The pattern calls for a worsted weight organic cotton yarn.  I’m thinking that I can probably use the Gloss DK yarn that I have.  It’s currently being knit into the Peggy Sue cardigan, but I think I can use it for this cardigan instead.  I’m feeling more enthusiasm for it, in any case.

I can more than likely get the right gauge without too much fuss — it calls for 16 stitches in four inches on size 8 needles (in the lace pattern), and for the Peggy Sue cardigan, I was getting 18 stitches in four inches on size 6 needles (in stockinette).  I’ll have to swatch it when I get home.  I’m excited!  I’m not sure what it was that sapped my excitement about the Peggy Sue cardigan, but I want to make sure that I do this yarn justice, and that I end up with a cardigan that I’m thrilled with and genuinely want to wear.

I’ve been studying the cardigan to see what, if anything, I might want to change, before I start making it.

I might make the button bands a little bit wider, or maybe use a different closure, like a hook and eye.  I’ve never used one of those in my knitting before, but it might be nice — I wouldn’t have to knit in the button holes, and it would give me the option to leave it as two straight fronts if I wanted to.  And if I wanted to go the route with hooks and eyes, I could put in as many or as few as I wanted to, and it would be a very seamless look to closing the cardigan.  I’ll definitely have to look into that.

More than one person who made the cardigan on Ravelry commented that if they made the cardigan again, they would double the number of button holes, so that they were spaced closer together, because apparently the cardigan has the tendency to gap between the button holes.  I think adding more closures to the cardigan, whether buttons or hook & eye closures, is a good idea.

The 41.75″ size and the next size up (44.25″) both call for the same number of skeins of the original yarn — which adds up to 1200 yards of yarn.  I have just over 1100 yards of the Gloss yarn.  I think I’ll be okay, because most yardage requirements allow for enough yarn for a generous size swatch as well as the finished knitted object, but it does sort of make me a little bit nervous.  However, the 41.75″ size is actually 43.25″ because the pattern size takes into account the inch and a half of overlap in the button bands.  If I go for a hook and eye closure, or a zipper, or something that doesn’t involve overlapping button bands, the finished product will have more ease than if it did use buttons.

One slight concern — the pattern as written currently has no waist shaping.  The cardigan looks fitted to the model’s waist because of the way she’s wearing it buttoned.  She’s wearing it fitted to her waist size and open at the bust and hips.  Not a style that would work well on me, let me tell you.  Ideally, I’d love to incorporate a bit of nipping in at the waist, but I’m not entirely sure how to accomplish that in the all-over lace pattern of the cardigan.

One way that might work for a pattern like this is to decrease the needle size around the area that I want to nip in for at the waist.  This will make the gauge a bit tighter and pull the fabric in, without disrupting the lace pattern in any way.  I’ll have to give that some thought.  I don’t want the cardigan, with no shaping, to appear too boxy and totally cover up the fact that I do actually have a waist.

Switching gears back to the project I have at hand on the needles, my two at a time toe up socks.  I finished the heel gusset this morning, and I’ve started doing knit two, purl two ribbing all around the sock for the start of the cuff.  I’ve got inches and inches of ribbing to go, but it’s a nice feeling of accomplishment to finish one phase of the pattern and enter the last phase of the pattern.  Now it’s just a matter of making the cuffs tall enough for where I want them to be.

I made the slip stitch padded heel taller at the back of my heel this time, and I’m quite happy with it.  I think it will help the heel stay in place better than in the first pair of socks, but the heel is much better placed on these socks.  They feel really great trying them on.

Oooh, I think we might watch a Star Trek movie tonight.  This shows promise…

Sick, still

Still sick.  Haven’t been knitting.  I’m not good for much right now.  I wish I had the energy or the focus to knit.  We’re still at my in-law’s house.  We’ll drive home on Sunday.  (I wish I was home.  When I’m sick, I just want to be sick at home, on my couch, with my blankets and my slippers and my robe and my comforting BBC costume dramas.)

Right now, the cat on my lap is a little bit jealous that I’m giving more attention to the laptop.  He keeps hitting it in an annoyed fashion with his tail.  It’s pretty funny.  Meanwhile, my husband is playing Mario Kart on his little sister’s Wii.  I don’t quite get the point of Mario Kart.  He keeps complaining that the game is cheating mercilessly, and he’s cursing Luigi’s oily hide.  Direct quote.  (He’s playing as Bowser, so he might just have it coming, but you didn’t hear it from me.)

It’s always frustrating when computer games cheat.  The Xbox versions of Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride are particularly bad about that.  In Settlers of Catan, the computer is always able to roll for whatever resources it needs — or for the robber — and the computer’s characters are always all too happy to trade with each other, but when I want to trade for a resource, it’s always “No!” or “I’ll give you one wheat if you give me three bricks and a sheep.”  Damn computer.  Ticket To Ride is similar — the computer is always getting exactly whatever color card it needs for its characters, or it goes and buys up the sections of railroad it doesn’t need but which are crucial to your cross-country railroad line.

Anyway, I’ve spent today (and a good part of yesterday) laying out on a couch — generally with one of the cats staking out a claim on my lap (they have now fully recognized me as a willing and warm pillow, who is happy to scratch their ears or their whiskers, which makes me happy to have the kitties pile on me) — watching all three movies of The Lord of the Rings (extended versions) in succession, wearing a shawl crocheted by my mother-in-law’s great-grandmother.  It’s pink.

It’s slightly more than a circle.  When I fold it in half, it’s more like two-thirds of a circle, rather than a half circle.  It has fifteen wedges around, not that it really means anything.  It makes for a really good around the shoulders shawl — because it’s more of a semicircle than a triangle, it makes sure that my upper arms are covered as well, rather than just my shoulders and upper back.

It makes me want to knit myself a slightly ruffly circular shawl.  Ruffly in that it’s slightly more than 360 degrees, a little more than a circle.  In looking at this shawl, it looks like it was made from a fingering weight yarn, but because of the density of the crochet stitches, it looks like the finished product is more of a very loose, airy DK or sport weight.

I’m thinking that a fingering weight yarn would work for my shawl.  A feather and fan pattern would be pretty but probably a little bit boring to knit.  Actually, the Shipwreck Shawl (sans beads, probably) would be a pretty perfect shawl for this sort of thing.  I love it with the beads, but I think they might add too much weight for what I’m going for, which is a comfort shawl sort of thing.  They also sometimes feel cold against the skin, and since Shipwreck has a lot of beads, I think it might be better that if I want to make a comforting, warm, around the shoulders for when you’re feeling under the weather shawl, I should probably omit the beads.

There’s a temptation to use six of the many (thirteen?) skeins of Gloss Fingering that I have in dark blue for this shawl, but I think I’ll have to wait (and maybe see if Knit Picks has a really good Cyber Monday sale) because I did earmark that yarn for a sweater of my own design, and that’s what I really want to do with it.  I want that yarn to be a really gorgeous, perfect sweater, one that’s exactly how I want it to be.  Maybe some ribbing, maybe some cables, maybe some lace.  I’m not sure yet.  Definitely perfectly measured and proportioned to fit exactly how I want.

It was fun to rewatch the Lord of the Rings series.  I hadn’t in a little while, and it makes me excited that they’re making a movie of The Hobbit (with, swoon, Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield).  Guh, Richard Armitage.  Lately, North & South (the BBC version, not the version with Patrick Swayze set during the Civil War) has been my go to BBC costume drama when I’m feeling under the weather.  It makes me want to wear long dresses and large knitted wool shawls.  Or fichus.  Or both.

Lord of the Rings also made me want to wear long dresses, with utterly impractical sleeves and also be a shieldmaiden of Rohan because, seriously, how cool is Eowyn?  Seriously.  She’s awesome.

The more I think about putting the Peggy Sue Cardigan on hold, the more I think it’s the right thing to do for right now.  I’m not feeling a huge amount of enthusiasm for it right now, and I don’t want to not do the cardigan justice, because I really did fall in love with the pattern.  I think that brushing off my colorwork skills, such as they are, and diving into the Falling Stars hat and sweater is my better bet.

I phrase it that way, about my colorwork skills, because I haven’t really done much colorwork before.  Honestly, it’s not something that had really been much of a pull for me… until I saw the Falling Stars kit, and I knew I didn’t have any excuses to not learn, not when there was a kit, with a lovely hat and sweater (both of which I’ll need) that I can learn with.

I’ve knit a hat, in double knitting, which is sort of like Fair Isle, I guess.  It’s a two color knitting, but instead of just carrying the other color along, you knit a second piece of fabric along the back, so that the finished product has two “knit” faces.  I knit this hat in the round.  Since one face was entirely knitted and one face was entirely purled, it’s somewhat slightly essential that your knit gauge and your purl gauge are the same…

…and mine weren’t.

It ended up not being a huge deal, and the recipient of the hat was so thrilled with it that no one noticed a thing.  I noticed it, of course.  I notice pretty much any imperfection in my knitting.  It’s the curse of being both a perfectionist and a knitter.  One fabric face of the hat was more tightly knit, and the other was more baggy.  I have been assured by several people that it’s totally not noticeable to a non-knitter, and that the sheer awesomeness of the hat outweighs anything that might even be noticed.

Let me tell you about the hat.

I had this friend who I went to law school with.  He was a sweetheart.  Still is, obviously, but since we’ve all scattered to the winds, I haven’t seen him (or anyone) since graduation.  Anyway, this friend of mine went to our rival school for his undergraduate education.  And he was a very devoted fan of this rival school.  He would constantly dress in its colors, and I think he even started a club at the law school for law students who went to the school for undergrad.

It took about three years for him to be happy wearing our school’s colors, without feeling like it was an utter betrayal.

I found this whole thing pretty funny.  I also saw it as the perfect opportunity for a chance to learn how to do double knitting, while making something cool for my friend, who I thought was pretty awesome, and who had a similarly frustrating experience in law school as I did.

So I found a pattern for a double knit hat that wasn’t girly, and I set about finding the yarn in the two schools’ colors, burnt orange and maroon.  I figured that the best (and, also nicely, cost effective) way to go about matching the colors was by searching through the color catalogue for Cascade 220 — a great, workhorse, worsted wool yarn that comes in approximately ten billion colors.  I found what I needed, bought a hank of each at my local yarn store, and went home.

When I was out of town for a wedding last fall (two weeks after I purchased the yarn but, before I had wound it… or thrown out the receipt) I happened to check out a local yarn store near the wedding site.  Lo and behold, they were having an awesome sale on Cascade 220.  It was four dollars a hank.  They literally had too much and were trying to make more room on their shelves.  I was happy to oblige in helping them out with their problem.  I found the skeins I wanted, purchased them, was on cloud nine for the rest of the afternoon, and then went off to go dance around in a sari.  It was a fantastic weekend, and one of the happiest weddings I have ever been to.

When I got back to my apartment, I dug out the old yarn (and the receipt) and took it back to my local yarn store.  I got a store credit and ended up buying some gorgeous laceweight green silk yarn that later became a fichu (which actually blocked a little too big for what I wanted it to be, but not too big for me to not be happy with it — I wanted to slip it under the lapels of a suit jacket so that I’d have something knitted with me).

Anyway, I knit the hat a few months later, and I had a lot of fun with it, and I learned a new skill.

Because Fair Isle colorwork doesn’t involve two sides to the knitting — the other color yarn is held in back and ends up creating a “float” of yarn behind the fabric — I don’t think gauge will be as much of a problem for me as it was for that hat.  I still have the knitter’s thimble I bought to help with that hat.  I ended up not using it very much because it was easier to just drop and pick up the non working yarn, but it might be more useful in working a Fair Isle pattern.

I think the key with knitting is to just work on projects that hold your interest, and try to avoid the ones that turn into a slog.  (Yet another reason why I’m becoming something of an advocate for selfish knitting, or mostly selfish knitting — you get to pick your own patterns, and you can avoid them or hibernate them or frog them at will if you want to.)

Now, I think the cat on my lap is starting to get kind of fidgety.  He’s using his tail like a whip to hit the cushions of the couch next to me to communicate his desire for me to stop typing on the laptop and start scratching next to his ears.  I think I’m going to indulge him for a little bit, because I want to reinforce this whole sitting on my lap of his own free will thing.  Good kitty…