Thrope

Hi all,

So I've been getting some comments about my election hat, specifically people asking about the pattern.  Sorry about the long delay (and also that I didn't mention this in my original post), but the pattern is Thrope by Kristen Kapur  (rav link).  

Hope all is well, been bookbinding more than knitting lately, if I ever get myself together I'll post some photos!

Doily

So it's been a bad week.  Two tests and two papers, an interview and inventing a portfolio to go with said interview (yes, I graduated, yes I'm still taking classes, you just can't keep me away).  Said portfolio should show things like internship experience,  classwork, and hand skills.  The hand skills area was lacking so I decided to knit something impressive (at the very last minuet of course).  I went for Spiralen.  

I freaking hate lace. I never thought I hated lace, but I do.  Everything seems relatively simple: I read the instructions, I understand the instructions, I follow the instructions, and I end up with the wrong amount of stitches at the end of the row.  Also starting knitting in the round with only 8 stitches on size 3 needles was one of the hardest knitting things I've ever done.  Shouldn't have been, but it was.  But the good news is since I had to start over so many times (about 12) I'm now really good at knitting in the round with only 8 stitches on size 3 needles....

At first I came up with this, which only vaguely looks like the pictures in the pattern.  I was confused.  Then I realized that the "plain knit every other row" direction only lasted until row 12, yet I of course had continued it all the way through because I am so good at following directions.  

Everyone told me this was lovely.  It was fantastic and great for my portfolio.  I of course thought it was crap because that is not what it's supposed to look like.  So with little time left before I actually really needed a finished portfolio and when I actually should have been doing schoolwork, I made a new one, the correct way (and it goes a lot faster when you're not adding extra rows....)

Election Hat!

I have this thing with hats, namely that I hate them. Or let's say I hate wearing them. I think I look stupid in most of them, although I realize that they're really nice to have when it gets cold. So I keep knitting them, at least one a winter, in my eternal quest to find a hat I don't hate. While watching very exciting election coverage last night I knitted this (well, the vast majority of this, I started it Monday night).

Yes, I am a lazy blogger and instead of using a camera I use Photo Booth....

The yarn is some cone yarn I picked up many years ago from Webs. It's way bulky which I don't really like, and it's 100% wool so it's rather not so soft, and I have a ton of it that I don't know what to do with. I don't even know what the stuff is called.... The white is Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool. This is a lovely knit, very quick, easy, and I like it! We'll see if I wear it. Now to wait for this unusually warm weather to end.... no, I don't mean that, don't end, stay as long as you'd like.

innocent drinks

I'm sure many have heard about this from other place (ie/ Mason-Dixon Knitting, which is where I heard about, yesterday, so I'm probably way behind on the game here), but check out all the tiny hats that are going on innocent drinks!!  Oh, if I only lived in the UK, I'd drink an innocent drink with a tiny hat.  

I keep thinking of things to post and then I say to myself I need to take a picture of that so I can write a blog about it, but then I never take a picture so I never blog about it (excuses, I know), so perhaps I shall start a pictureless blog (which isn’t any fun, but I’m doing it anyway).
For the past month or so have had a burning (yes, burning) desire to finish a sweater. Any sweater. I’m usually a pretty monogamous knitter but right now I have three (three!) sweaters going, for various reasons, all of which refuse to finish. I was working on that blue thing with the cables from last post for a long while and then the sleeves would not end; I kept knitting and they kept not growing and I got frustrated. And I’m going to have to buy another skein of yarn anyway and redo the waist shaping because somehow I managed to make simple increases and decreases look like crap, so that has been put to the side for now.
So I started the Dutchess Raglan, because the only yarn I have in abundance enough to make a sweater is a random cone of Classic Elite Yarns Newport, which I got on sale at my LYS a year or so ago ($5 cone!). It’s way heavier than what I usually go for but I’ve had it forever and I felt I needed to do something with it. So I knit away on my dutchess raglan but was once again thwarted when I arrived at the sleeves as I do not own any size 9 double pointed needles which is exactly the size I needed to make the sleeves happen.
So what to do other than pick up kaleidoscope, which I abandoned last year not because of sleeves but because I chose to knit it in such a freakishly small gauge it just stopped getting larger (much the same problem as the sleeves from the first cardigan I mentioned).
So now I have size 9 double pointed needles but since kaleidoscope seems to be moving along now I think I’ll stick with that for awhile. And that’s the saga of my multiple sweaters right now, all of which are only half way finished. Perhaps when one starts to work out for me I’ll take a picture.

Hi,
So I'm not good at blogging, I'll admit it. For awhile there I was doing quite well, but recently (read: past year), not so much. I was upset about my procrastination for awhile (as I often
thinking about blogging), but recently I have embraced my sporadic and undependable blogging habits. And so I present to you: the baby sweater I finished in April:

If you think it's awesome and want to knit one too you can find the pattern here (http://wishingiwasknitting.blogspot.com/2007/07/baby-jiffy-knit-sweater.html). I made mine in Knit Picks shine DK weight. Soft, pretty and machine washable and dryable, no complaints here.
And I had just enough yarn!

Actually I didn't have enough yarn and the arms look slightly too long, although in reality the body is a little too short. So it goes.

I also graduated

Yay art cons for being nearly the smallest major in our freakishly huge university!

Then I started this sweater, which looks very crinkly in this shot.

I also am doing cables. I didn't use to like cables (in a how they looked sort of way, not in a how to knit them sort of way), but now I've changed my mind (good story). And cabling is really fun.

I'm just winging it, as always. This is my first real person (vs fake person or child) top down sweater. I'm enjoying being able to try on as I go but I don't feel too secure with this method yet. I'm using the four skeins of Green Mountain Spinnery's Cotton Comfort that I picked up at a sale last summer. So far this yarn is super great and you should use it. Will it be enough yarn to finish? Most likely not. Why do I always have this curse? Always There's an easy solution: buy more yarn the first time around, stupid....

Also, fresh chickpeas:

In a pod and on a plate

Bright green!

They're pretty good too :)

arts and crafts

So it’s been awhile, yes. But knitting has been happening. Well, sort of. Crafty things. As well as a lot of school things and plenty of freaking out over what is happening after school is finished. After four years of preparing to go into either history or museum studies I have finally decided on library conservation. So yeah, I wasn’t expecting me to spring that surprise on me. I think it’s definitely the right thing to do (how can repairing old books all day not be the right thing to do?), but seeing as I spent my undergrad career skimping on the art and chem classes I need to take a year off to catch up on that good stuff. And then I need to go to school for many, many more years. This in itself is not a problem, but I would at some time like to make some sort of salary so I can actually, um, move out maybe? Yeah, that would be so awesome right now.

Anyway, I’m sure you’re all enthralled, onward to arts and crafts:

Over spring break I drug out the sewing machine; the very old, very awesome, very avocado green sewing machine. Box bags were made. (http://dragoknit.blogspot.com/2007/02/box-bag-tutorial.html)

Directions confused me so much at first, but I caught on. You have to be very clever to come up with these sewing things, I would never have thought of this.

Originally I wanted to make an art supplies bag but the first one wasn’t big enough for paintbrushes, thus my only option was to make a second, larger one.

Sorry for the bad angle, the other one turned out blurry....

And since I was working on art supply storage, I made this thing to keep/organize/protect my brushes.

And it wraps up like this, how nice!

I also decided that I want to make an afghan, so I bought 12 balls of Lion Brand Jiffy yarn. I know! But I decided the acrylic was a good decision because a) I think machine washable is a must for all large blanket things and b) I’m too poor for superwash wool. And it’s working out alright, very soft and easy to work with. Does not rip out well. At first I made the whole thing too wide, and with only 12 balls of yarn it would have ended up not very long at all, so ripping out was necessary. The yarn sticks together and doesn’t hold up so well, so don’t make any mistakes with it and you’ll be fine. Oh yeah, and it’s crochet, I thought I’d give that a try. I will say that things are going a lot faster then it ever would with knitting!

And some knitting, yes. For a friend’s future child, it’s the Baby Jiffy Knit Sweater (http://wishingiwasknitting.blogspot.com/2007/07/baby-jiffy-knit-sweater.html). I don’t know what’s so jiffy about it, it’s not going so jiffy for me. I never seem to have the right number of stitches at the end of each row but everything still seems to look alright and it’s turning out to have a really pretty stitch pattern. Gage and size info on this pattern is also rather vague, so I really don’t know what size I’m making here. I chose size 4 needles with Knit Picks Shine Sport. I’m just hoping I don’t run out of yarn, I seem to have a habit of doing that.



And so that’s what I’ve been spending my time doing, along with writing papers about medieval architecture and doing tedious color mixing projects such as this

Later dudes