Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Hi there!

Just a quick entry (with lots of photos, but not of what you really want to see, sorry!).  I'm leaving for California tomorrow, to teach at TKGA's Fall Knit and Crochet Show in Oakland this weekend.  I'm substitute teaching for Beth again, and I'm looking forward to diving into these classes:  Tips & Techniques for the Perfectionist Knitter, Intro to Aran Knitting, Aran Sweater Design, and My First Design.  The two design classes are six hour classes -- I'm wondering how the pacing should go, but there's lots to cover, so I'm sure it will be fine.

The Stitches people have posted the schedule for Stitches West in Santa Clara, California, in February 2008.  Have I told you that they selected three of my class proposals for me to teach?  Woo hoo!!!!  It's official!  You can see the schedule here.  Click on Stitches Events (I've been having to double click), and then on Stitches West, and then you can select my name from the teacher list to see what I'll be covering.  Yay!

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I'm sticking an extra class into my fall schedule.  October 6, 20 and 27 (all Saturdays) opened up (apparently no one wanted to knit toe up socks this fall!) and I filled them with an Easy Beginner Hats class at Lavender & Peonies in DeWitt from 10-noon.  That's VERY soon (like, next NEXT weekend!), so sign up now, or find a friend who needs to learn how to knit and get them signed up!

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I finished my Indigo Ripples skirt and wore it last Friday all day (I had witnesses!), but no photos were taken.  I need to get a slip before I wear it again, and I haven't had time to do that yet. 

I also finished Celtic Dreams, but it's been like a billion degrees so I haven't been willing to model that sweater yet.  You'll just have to take my word for it that it's done.

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I said there would be lots of photos, and I wasn't lying! 

I'm the coordinator for charity knitting for the Mid Michigan Knitters Guild this year.  We're meeting the fourth Sunday of every month at the cafe at Schuler's Books in Eastwood Towne Center, from noon to 4:00 p.m.  We had a great turnout last Sunday, see?

There are snacks available:

(and you can see Ann's military-scarf-in-progress).

Susan knit a preemie cap from a "pattern" I wrote up that morning:

(not a uniquely original pattern, but I did the math myself!).

Nancy started with a vintage crocheted piece from the Guild's stash and went to town with some log cabin-ing:

It looks like a framed landscape, doesn't it?

Nancy also made some adorable teddy bears for the Mother Bear Project:

And a funky hat for afghans for Afghans:

Emily's military scarf has some cool colorful effects going on:

Erin finished up the sweater from my Beginning Finishing class and turned it in to warm a child in Afghanistan:

Pretty good haul for one Sunday afternoon, eh?  All of the organizations mentioned above are linked on the Guild's charity webpage, as is the pattern for the little hat with the rolled brim and the i-cord knot on top.  Won't you join us for the next Fourth Sunday?  There's one every month!

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The only knitting of my own that I happened to take pictures of were the wool soakers that I made for a friend's new baby.

Front view:

Back view:

These were great fun to make, although I wimped out on the velcro closures.  Good thing the new mom is handy with a sewing machine!

I don't have the brain power to think of anything else to say.  It's late, and I still have to pack my clothes.  My knitting is ready to go, of course!  (I'm taking socks).  Good thing I don't leave until noon tomorrow!  Wish me luck!

Sarah

Sunday, September 2, 2007

At this point in my life, I am definitely a process knitter.  I'll work on the same project for a long time, re-knitting all or some of it over and over again until I'm satisfied with the end result.  I have no problem with taking a finished item which has not made me happy for one reason or another, tearing it apart, and re-knitting the yarn into something else.  Or returning it to the stash to await its next incarnation.  Or passing the whole thing on to some other knitter.

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Exhibit One:  Celtic Dreams, designed by Beth Brown-Reinsel

I started Celtic Dreams in 2004, although I fell in love with the pattern long before that.  When I finally went out to purchase yarn for this sweater, I was bound and determined to knit it in black, but when I got to the store, this shade of electric blue-ish black-ish purple caught my eye (the first photo is pretty accurate color-wise).  I knit the saddle shoulders, picked up and worked the front and back pieces from the top down, stopped just after joining the body in the round at the underarm, and put the sweater into hibernation for some reason that I can't remember.

Earlier this year I pulled the sweater back out of the marination chamber as part of the UFO Resurrection Challenge.  I added the neck border, determined that the armholes were too deep, ripped back the couple of inches of circular knitting I had completed and an inch or so of the front and back pieces, re-worked the armholes, and sailed on down to the bottom of the sweater.  And let the sweater fall to the bottom of the knitting pile again.

A week or so ago I felt up to the challenge of working the sleeves, and proceeded to pick up stitches around the armhole (including the live stitches at the end of the saddle shoulder) and work a row or two before I noticed that something was amiss.

See that saddle shoulder?  See how the larger central braid is aimed?  See how the same braid is aimed on the body?  While knitting the sleeve from the top down and continuing that braid from the saddle shoulder, it will be running in the opposite direction as the braid on the body.  That braid appears twice more in the sleeve, and I wanted everything to be matchy matchy as it was meant to be in the pattern (as per the photo on the front).  So the next thing I did was to go to bed, since it was late at night and I've learned (the hard way) NEVER to tear out my knitting in the wee hours.

Next morning I checked the pattern (I had done exactly what it said).  I saw a notation that the pattern had originally been printed in an older Interweave Knits magazine which I happened to have in my library.  The pattern was written differently in the magazine, using different symbols, and did not match the pattern that I had used.  Beth Brown-Reinsel's website has a correction for exactly this problem, but states that the text in the pattern is correct (but it's not).  Since I'm smarter than a piece of paper (you can't tell me what to do!), I decided to just fix the damn thing and get it over with.  Thank goodness there were live stitches for me to work with, even though the mistake was in the very first part of the sweater that I had knit!

I tore back the whole cable section and put the six stitches on a double pointed needle (the neckband is just below this photo -- the sleeve, if there was one, would be sticking straight up):

And I started knitting those six stitches back up, row by row, correctly.

Here it is at about the halfway point:

And here it is after the fix:

See how the braid on the shoulder matches the braid on the body now?

Since these photos were taken, I've finished that sleeve, fixed the braid on the other shoulder, and worked about three inches of the second sleeve.  I would say I'm definitely in the homestretch now!

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Exhibit Two:  Menehune Cobblestones Sock, designed by Adrienne Fong for Crystal Palace Yarns

I've fallen behind in my attempt to put a dent in my sock yarn stash by knitting a pair of socks a month, but not for lack of trying.  Although that doesn't explain why I purchased this Panda Cotton yarn a month or so ago instead of using something from the aforementioned stash.  Regardless, I cruised through sock number one without much of a problem, using the free pattern from Crystal Palace Yarn.  I did come across a small section of pooling at one point, but I just tore out the offending inches and knit them again at a more natural tension (I forget what had been going on, but I had been kind of tense) and the pooling didn't re-occur.

Sock number two, however, is fighting me tooth and nail . . .

. . . and is therefore currently residing in the marination chamber until I feel like tearing it out and restarting it to see if I can get rid of that weird pooling.  I am not a fan of pooling, in case you can't tell.

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Exhibit Three:  Bavarian Twisted Stitch Cap, designed by Meg Swansen (in the Fall 1999 Vogue Knitting):

I taught a class on Bavarian Twisted Stitch Sweaters at Stitches Midwest, and had started a sample hat featured in an article by Meg Swansen in an old Vogue Knitting magazine.  I finished it when I got home, but seem to have misjudged the size:

Aren't the cables pretty?  Too bad they cover my glass head all the way down to her mouth.  Back into the knitting basket this hat goes, until I have a spare evening to tear it back to a better length.  Good thing I like cabling with twisted stitches!

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Exhibit Four:  Springtime Purse, designed by Melissa Leapman (in Cozy Crochet)

Crocheted, yes.  I think it's single crochet, worked in two pieces, and sewn together.  I thought it would be a great idea to work it in the round after the initial couple of inches at the top that are meant to be separate, but I discovered that single crochet looks quite a bit different when it's worked back and forth and when it's worked in the round, so the transition was very apparent.  So this little bag got torn out after months of sitting in time-out and then was re-crocheted within just a couple of hours.  It's still in my knitting (crochet?) basket, though, because it needs a lining before it can be of any use.  Technically, I should put it down by the sewing machine in the basement, but then it may be lost forever.

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Exhibit Five:  My So Called Scarf, designed by Stacey

Same ball of yarn as the crocheted purse.  I certainly couldn't put something this beautiful away, so I started this scarf (which I made a year or so ago from another color of the same yarn).  It will be good knitting-in-company knitting when I clear out some of these other projects.

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Exhibit Six:  Faith Jacket, designed by Sally Melville (in her Color book)

No current picture, because there's really no point.  There's a photo a couple of posts ago of what it looked like before I sewed it completely together for the second time.  It's now in pieces again, because I'm just not happy with how the different panels are laid out.  I'm switching the sleeve yarn and the collar yarn, although I don't have quite enough of the collar yarn to complete both sleeves (but I have an idea about how I can solve that if it becomes necessary).  I'm fairly certain that after I make this change and sew everything together for the third time, that I will still be unhappy with the dark collar and the dark panel in the center of the back, and that I will re-knit those pieces in some as-yet-to-be-purchased yarn from the same dyer/spinner.  This is the project I had with me today when the conversation about process vs. product came about, which is why I've got the topic on my mind.

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Exhibit Seven:  Indigo Ripples Skirt, designed by Kat Koyle (in the Spring 2007 Interweave Knits)

After Kathy modeled her version of this top-down skirt, I knew I had to have the exact same skirt out of the exact same yarn. 

Version one was based on the scientific method, using a washed and blocked swatch knit from a ball of Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool -- the same yarn that Kathy used, and that I would be using for my skirt.  Version one turned out to be eight inches too big around.  Um . . . it didn't fit.  Why?  The only thing I can figure out is that the ball of Silky Wool that I used for the gauge swatch was an old one from my stash.  Maybe the yarn has been changed in the years between when that skein was made and when my current skeins were made?  That's probably not true, but it's the story I'm sticking with.

Version two, based on the seat-of-your-pants method, was about, oh I don't know, some huge number of inches too small.  Didn't fit.

Version three, based on a combination of the two methods, seems to fit just fine (I try it on after I finish each skein of yarn).  Good thing I like to knit miles and miles of endlessly boring stockinette stitch on little tiny needles, because that's what this skirt amounts to:

Not helped, I'm sure, by the fact that I'm making the stockinette stitch portion way longer so that the lace portion at the bottom doesn't showcase my glaringly white thighs.  You'll see a flash of knobby knee instead.  I am actually farther along than shown in this picture.  I'm about two thirds of the way through the lace, with about twenty rows to go before the flounce-y ruffle-y thing at the bottom.  And of course I just discovered the knit-along last night, which mentions some changes that I would have incorporated had I known about them earlier, but I've just been knitting happily around and around and around and around and around and around . . .

I think it's finally a keeper, though.  If not, well then hey -- I'll tear it back and knit it AGAIN, and can incorporate those changes I read about (involving sssks vs. sl1 k2tog pssos).

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Exhibit Eight:  Stay On Booties, designed by Christine Bourquin.

Remember the Baby Surprise Jacket I knit last month?  I knit these baby booties to match, using the same size needle I had used for the sweater.  The first bootie turned out to be enormous!  I tore it out and re-knit it using a much smaller needle, making them much more baby-sized. 

These booties have actually been given to an actual baby to put on his actual feet, so they are NOT currently residing in my knitting basket, unlike everything else I've mentioned here.

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What else is by my knitting chair?  Anything?  Let me take a peek . . .

Some wool soakers for another friend's baby (no do-overs there!), and -- oh yeah -- my Fair Isle Cardigan is still waiting for its bajillion ends to be woven in.  Joy.  Let me just stuff that back into the bottom of the bag again.

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You know, if I would post more often, these entries wouldn't be so long.  Food for thought.

Sarah

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