Category Archives: Knitting

This Damn Hat is Cursed

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So, the hell that is Christmas gift knitting continues as I try, unsuccessfully, to mash two popular knitting patterns together. The idea is to take the bottom of Thorpe and hook it on to the Unoriginal Hat. I started at the bottom, knitting two little earflaps and a garter stitch hat band and then began working the chart for Unoriginal. I dutifully followed the directions, repeating the chart twice.

So then I frogged back one repeat:

Which I actually thought looked really good until I did the round of HDC around the edge.

Seriously, WTF?

So then that since the earflaps were too short anyway (because I got confused by the pattern and only worked the decrease section (which I did as increases)), and because the cabled section was too tight, I decided I would go ahead and frog it back to the beginning and make longer earflaps on a larger needle size.

Not only is the hat way too big, but the earflaps are way too long. Gah! If it weren’t something I were giving as a gift (and also if the yarn weren’t that baby-melting acrylic) I would throw the damn thing in the fire (if we had a fire). But no, it’s for my mom and so I persevere.

GAH

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Bad knitting mojo stinks. I’ve cast on, almost finished, and frogged the same hat five times, and then, for a change of pace, I knit almost the entire outer sole of a felted clog on the wrong size needle. Actually, it was the very needle I was trying to make the hat with. BLAAAAARGH.

How is your holiday knitting going?

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Big Day Today

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1. I finally got around to picking up a couch we ordered from Ikea back at the beginning of October. Now that it is in my house I despise the color, but I know I’ll get used to it. Also, I will be able to tone it down with some contrasting throw pillows and our gigantic sheepskin. We haven’t had a couch since June (or before, I can’t really remember when the last one gave up the ghost) so the cats are extremely excited to finally have something to sit on. I am too, I admit, even though the thing is rather a bit more orange than I had expected.

2. I finally succumbed to peer pressure and talked my husband into upgrading from our crappy little cell phones to iPhones! After I finished assembling the couch we packed up the boys and headed over to the Apple store. We had to wait in line about 2 hours, and then it took a while to get the account set up since we switched from AT&T to Sprint (sorry AT&T!). But now I has an iPhone!! w00t!! Follow me on Twitter (@kniterrupted) because, theoretically, I can now tweet the crap out of everything.

3. I continue the slow march through Catkin chart 1. Here I am, a little way past the halfway point where I am very nearly about to run out of orange yarn. I suspected the yardage would be extremely tight, but I took a gamble on it anyway. Needless to say I’m not thrilled. Option 1: buy another hank of STR and be guaranteed the colorways won’t match. Option 2: frog it and reknit without the orange garter stripes in the first section. The colorway will match, but reknitting. Neither option is particularly appealing.

4. I cast on a plain and simple sock, specifically for knitting abroad. Isn’t it purty?

These Clogs Are Made For Writing

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1. I made some slippers! Felted Clogs to be precise.

[ravelry]

I love this pattern and I’ve already committed myself to making two more pairs. One pair for the Mister and I think my sis might like a pair too.

2. I’ve been working on NaNoWriMo, but was unable to write yesterday because of some random family drama and didn’t write again today because of my arm is feeling all hurty again. I need to have a totally doable 6,200 word weekend to catch up, but am seriously considering just dropping out again this year. If my arm is going to be hurty, I think I’d kind of prefer to have some slippers at the end of it, if you know what I mean.

If you had to choose between NaNoWriMo and knitting, which would it be?

SnowtoberFest 2011

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So we are having a bit of a snow event here today. It’s been snowing steadily since about noon and we have about 8 inches on the ground as of this writing. It’s a wild and crazy early season nor’easter!

They are saying we’ll get about 15 inches of snow by tomorrow morning, which is pretty fucking wild, considering it’s only October and all the leaves aren’t even off the trees yet. I heard on Twitter that 2 trees are down on my street, making the street totally impassable.

My plan today was to carve jack o’lanterns with the boys, but it seems so out of place on a day where we are holed up inside hoping the power stays on and the snow just keeps piling up outside. Instead I am knitting:

Catkin is coming along. My needle is too short to spread it out for you, so you’ll just have to trust me, it’s gorgeous!

And, I started a pair of felted clogs:

I am trying to finish these up as quickly as possible because it is freakin’ freezing in here, Mr. Bigglesworth.

Frogged

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Remember this?

Yeah, I frogged that. I just had a hard time accepting the way the colors wanted to line up across a large number of stitches. So I frogged the crap out of that sock and cast on a baktus. Naturally, that was fine until I’d worked about an inch and then blech. So then I just wanted to see how many stitches I could get out of each color. It was something crazy tiny like 10 or 15 stitches per color. AAARGH. I am never ever going to make a long ass 15 stitch wide sock yarn scarf. And you know what I realized? This is just one of those colorways that looked gorgeous in the skein but that I hate knitted up. Once I got my head around that, I was able to just let it go. I balled it up and handed it to my friend Weaver at the park today. I’m sure that whatever she ends up making with it will be so fabulous that I’ll be pissed at myself for giving it to her, but at this point… Well, at this point it was all I could do not the throw the damn thing at her head.

So Many Plans

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Yesterday I cleaned the house. Really cleaned it, for the first time in a good long while, thanks to that dreaded fatigue I’ve been struggling with. I put stuff away, I pulled out appliances and wiped the counters behind them. The only thing I didn’t do, even though it’s long overdue, was clean out the fridge and wash it. I spent most of the afternoon and early evening on it, so by the time it was bedtime, I was pretty pumped, and bubbling with plans for today. As I lay awake, trying to fall asleep, I made a list of all the stuff I would do today:

Finish Laundry
Clean Bathrooms & Bedroom
Warp Loom
Wind off a bunch of yarn
Sew pants for Ezra
Sew some drawstring bags
Clean off my desk
Do some NaNoWriMo prep work

I’m pretty sure at this point that my list was over-ambitious. It took me a really long time to fall asleep last night, and I didn’t sleep well. It was one of those nights where I was aware of trying to sleep (or being asleep) for most of the night. I was too excited about doing moar stuff!!! To top it off, I got up early. Blargh. I did do most of the laundry, which helped a bit with the mess in the bedroom, and I managed to tidy up the bathrooms too. I spent the rest of today trying, rather unsuccessfully, to nap. Everything else was just icing, but dammit, I like icing.

Ah well. How about some knitting then?

[ravelry]

I love this colorway from the Yarn Pirate, but when I got it up to the right number of stitches for my toe, it became kind of muddied. See how pretty it is right in the first 3/4″ of the toe? I wanted my whole sock to look like that. Hence the slip stitch pattern. It helps, but not as much as I would’ve liked.

[ravelry]

Catkin is coming along too, but since it requires all of the concentration forever, I haven’t really worked on it in a couple of days. Furthermore, it looks all bunched up and lumpy there because, clearly, my needle is too short. You’ll have to wait for the finished product to see it in all of its orange and turquoise glory. Yes, I did just say orange and turquoise glory. IT WILL BE GLORIOUS I TELL YOU!

 

Random Monday

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1. I’m such a big fat liar. I never stopped by here this weekend to post pictures of my knitting. Mostly it’s because this weekend was kind of weird and partly because I haven’t taken any pictures of knitting in a good long while.

2. I have knitted the first section of my Catkin, the section with the garter stitch stripes, and have moved on to the textured section which is a single color. It’s extremely slow going because I have to pay attention to the chart and literally cannot do anything else. I can’t watch TV or even attempt to carry on a conversation. Must. Focus. On the. Chart. Ugh.

3. I still have not blocked my sister’s shawl. 2 weekends ago, she came over and we were going to do it together, but we pretty much forgot all about it. And, as I said, this weekend was kind of weird so it still isn’t done.

4. I want to do it on the weekend so she can help me with it, because that thing is enormous.

5. I suddenly realized that I may not have enough pins for blocking it. Crap.

6. The NY S&W festival is this coming weekend. I have to be honest, my enthusiasm for going this year is waning. There isn’t really anything I want (or have to) buy there, and I can’t eat the food, so there is a whole other level of schlep involved which makes the idea of going much less appealing. Hrm.

7. I’m pretty sure that even if I do decide to go, I won’t be wearing a finished Catkin as I’d originally planned. The damn thing just requires too much concentration.

8. Here is a picture of Doozer in a box.

In Which I Plan How to Utilize Good Results of Something Before Those Results Have Occurred

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I finished up My sister’s shawl while we were on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.

(We had a positively lovely time, by the way. The Mister took the boys fishing

and we drove all around the island to look at all the lighthouses.

It was fun.)

I don’t have any pictures of the finished shawl just yet, either, because I still need to block the damn thing, but it is done. Done done done. Well, mostly done. And yes, I do have plans to knit a second one, but not for a while. I have a few things I’d like to do first. Namely this, which I have been obsessed with since the Yarn Harlot tweeted about it last month. I ordered the yarn for it before we left for MV, but it didn’t arrive in time for me to bring it with me. The plan today was to wind the yarn into cakes and do the swatch, but I’ve spent most of the day internet shopping for buttons. Ahem. Why yes, I do I realize that this is the knitter’s equivalent of counting your chickens before they’ve hatched. Shut up.

Also in the works is a pair of socks, which I cast on and frogged in MV.

I really like this colorway (Sweet Pea from the Yarn Pirate), but I didn’t like how it looked once I got the toe up to 72 stitches. Last night I cast on again for a smaller number of stitches.

Other projects planned include Bird in Hand mittens for Sis, some felted clogs for me me meeeee, and a sweater for the Mister.

Too bad I can’t stop shopping for buttons. I’m thinking of something from here.

Slow Going

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Well, I’ve been working on the edge of the Blue Blossom shawl for a few days now. Man, oh man, is it tedious.

The thing is knitted on sideways and incorporates 3 of the shawl stitches into every repeat. I think that means I am doing 100 or so repeats of the edge (6 rows of about 9 stitches).

I’m trying hard not to stab myself in the eye.