A finished Petrol

Sorry this is a bit late. I meant to post this earlier, honest I did, but I actually got a job (gasp!) so I haven’t had much time to even think about knitting (blasphemy, I know)

There it is. Sideways. Click for bigger, if you like.

I’d hoped to get more pictures, but the recipient (my dad) has gained a little weight since this was planned, so it didn’t fit so well. He says he loves it anyway, though (bless), and now he’ll just have to lose weight again so it’ll fit properly. 🙂

If I ever make this again:

• Definitely will do ribbing again, but next time use a provisional cast-on or tubular or something other than long-tail. I don’t like the way that turned out. Also actually do ribbing on fewer stitches or with a smaller needle instead of just planning to and then not doing it. (I would have snipped it off and redone it, but I was already 2 months behind on this thing)
• Use three-needle bind-off for shoulders. I had actually intended to do this but chickened out. Now I wish I’d just done it.
• Don’t do a slipped selvage on the neckline and armholes. You’ll need to pick up more stitches than that.
• Related to the above, do all decreases one stitch in from the edge. You’ll need to pick that up later.
• The center neck stitch ended up looking a little stretched out. Figure out how to alleviate this.
• Figure out how to make the garter ribs match up at the shoulders. This will drive me nuts for the rest of my life.
• FELTED JOINS. They make your life so much easier.

I learned a lot from this project, which was actually my first sweater. Actually, it was my first anything that wasn’t completely improvised. I think it turned out well, considering.

At the last minute (on Saturday night, before the three hour drive to visit him on Wednesday), he also commissioned a hat out of the leftovers. I managed to finish it before the birthday dinner.

I followed the decreases as instructed in the WWII-era pattern, doing a sl1-k1-psso instead of a more modern ssk. I like how they turned out, even if you can’t see them here. Also, my first time using felted joins (wish I’d thought of this ages ago). He plans to dye this one, so I have no idea how it’ll turn out in the end.

Oh what on Earth am I doing?

I still haven’t knitted on the neckband of my dad’s sweater vest, which I have to give him on Wednesday… And when I called him on Saturday he asked if I could whip him up a hat as well, out of the same yarn, which I haven’t started on either. Does anyone out there know how to knit and drive at the same time?

What have I been doing instead? Working on that shawl for my mom, of course. Why? Well, it doesn’t require me to pick up any stitches or use dpn’s, for starters. Not that I have anything against dpn’s, but I find them incredibly annoying for the first couple of rows. I even started my mom’s shawl on 2 circulars (since I happen to have a spare set of size 6 US circulars), but I can’t do that with the hat, since I don’t have enough circulars in the right size. Unless I want to knit the hat with size 6’s… Hmm… I suppose it would be warmer that way…

No, the vest is more important. Way more important, since I told him it was already finished (shh!). Ugh, I hate picking up stitches. Someone remind me not to pick patterns where I can’t do a provisional cast-on or something.

Here is the offending vest, which is a Petrol with ribbing added at the bottom per the recipient’s request, posing with the cat, who refuses to sit still long enough to be photographed unless I am actually trying to photograph something else. Cats, eh? 😉

Argh!

My mother, who, by the way, often borders on the impossible, is always asking when I’m going to knit her something. She does this every time I mention knitting, yet she won’t say what it is she wants me to knit for her. (Contrast this with my dad, who not only told me exactly what he wanted, but also picked out the yarn and bought it for me)

So I said, “Okay, how about a lace shawl?”

The reason I said this is because I wanted to knit one. She said a lace shawl would be acceptable. Provided it was knit in cotton/linen, and the color was tan or taupe.

…Taupe? You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Whatever. KnitPicks CotLin in Linen it is. She didn’t give me any suggestions as to a pattern, either, so she’s getting a Pi Shawl, filled with whatever lace patterns I feel like knitting.

I used Judy’s Magic Cast-On for the center because I didn’t feel like wrestling against this slippery yarn to do a nice circular cast-on. I guess it looks okay. My mom most likely won’t notice the difference.

If she doesn’t wear it, well… I wash my hands of it. I think that’s the worst possible color for a shawl (correct me if I’m wrong), but it’s what she wanted, so even if she doesn’t wear it (and who could blame her) I expect some effing gratitude.

Nobody else in my life is this difficult to knit for…

Impulse!

The other day I wandered over to The Woolie Ewe, intending to pick up some stitch markers, blocking pins, and a new measuring tape. Well, I didn’t find a measuring tape I liked, but I did pick up some nice stitch markers and blocking pins…

And of course I had to get some yarn.

I ended up with one hank of Farmhouse Yarns Lumpy Bumpy Yarn by Charlene (99% merino, 1% nylon) in Faded Glory (I swear that’s what the tag says. Looks similar to “Old Glory” on that page).

And here’s what I did with it: (click images for bigger)

Impulse Hat! Madge from Spring 2006 Knitty

Cheat’s Fingerless Gloves

Left Impulse Mitt!

Right Impulse Mitt!

That first image has the most accurate color. Yes, the left is in reverse stockinette while the right is in regular stockinette. The yarn is so whimsical it rubbed off on me. 😉 But if I decide that’s too much, I can always turn it inside out. that’s the beauty of it.

And of course these projects are both posted on My Ravelry Projects page so you can comment on them there if you like.

Why I’m up at this hour and posting so much

There’s something about being unemployed and living alone (well, more or less, I do have a couple of cats) that makes one tend to neglect to notice what time and/or day it is.

For example, you oversleep a little bit one day, then stupidly have a cup of coffee around 8pm, and find yourself up till 6am knitting and reading blogs (yes, I do both at the same time; knitting continental means you don’t have to drop the yarn to use the mouse 😀 ). You shuffle off to bed around 7am because you just can’t keep your eyes open anymore, only to get a phone call at 10am from your brother, who was in town visiting mom and wants to see you for a little bit on his way back home (3 hours away). He doesn’t quite remember how to navigate the big city, so calls you every 5 minutes on his way, then spends about an hour with you, after which you stand no chance of going back to sleep (if you went back to sleep now you’d be screwed up for the rest of the week anyway). So you stay up as long as you can stand to, which turns out to be around 7pm.

Fast-forward to 3am, when you wake up with a headache. You get up, take some Excedrin, go back to bed. Sleep? Nope, not happening. Around 5:30 you give up and decide to go start that damn knitblog already, then knit until it’s time to get dressed (job interview at 9, but it’s really close by, so I can probably knit until 8:30).

So you see, it’s simple.

My goal is to post here as often as I knit, whether that’s every day, or however often it is. I also hope to knit every day, but that doesn’t always happen. Watch this space, though. I have ambition. And right now, no job to get in the way. 😀

…and now for some actual knitting content

I have decided that it was about time I knitted myself a sweater. But it couldn’t be just any pattern. Mainly because there were too many things I didn’t like about every pattern I found that didn’t cost money.

So I’m making one up.

Based on the structure of Kyoto by Karen Stockton, but that’s just about where the similarities end. Rather than being 2 colors, I’m going for a solid color and loads of texture. Just in case I change my mind about the colors, I’m using an undyed wool, so later if I decide I want color, I can just dye the finished bits.

Pictures once I get enough done that you can tell something’s happened. 😉

Oh, and here I am on Ravelry.

Another knitblog?

Yes, another knitblog.

Yes, I have a personal blog, on LiveJournal, that I’ve had for eons, or at least since before it was so cool that everybody had one. I won’t be abandoning that one, but I will probably no longer be posting any of my knitting adventures there, instead putting them on this dedicated blog. This has the advantages of not bothering my LJ friends with so much knitting that they don’t care about, as well as giving my knitting friends a blog to read that doesn’t contain all the non-knitting stuff they might not want to read.

So yes, another knitblog. Take that as you will.