Archive for February, 2009

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

A sock for Clark

Just one so far. And I might pull back a couple rows to make the toe a bit more blunt instead of pointy. Yeah, I’ll probably do that. The other is cast on and a few rounds knit. His sock weighs 17 grams, and I have 20 grams of yarn left, which should be just about perfect.

I also worked a little on Clark’s sleeve last night (one project is in the living room, the other is in the bedroom so I pick up whichever I’m close to). I am officially starting the cap shaping next row. For real this time!

Clark doesn’t like his sock. He keeps telling me he doesn’t want it, and he wants it off. He hasn’t taken it off yet, but that may be because he thinks I don’t want him to. I’m hoping that if it stays on his foot for awhile, he’ll get used to the feel of it.

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

One down!

The arm warmers are done and are cute, cute, cute!

Perfect for my kid who refuses to dress like it’s the middle of winter.

On a roll, I picked up Clark’s sweater last night, to discover that all stitches were on holders and there were no needles anywhere. I couldn’t remember what size I was using, 5 or 6. I guessed 6, and put the stitches on a needle.

I was wrong.

So I looked around for a 5. There were none in my basket or needle case. I complained and whined. I noticed a lone needle sitting on an end table in the living room under a prayer plant. It was a 5.

I began knitting, only to realize that I’d cabled the edge stitches on the working sleeve, and not on the finished sleeve. I figured it’d be right under the armpit, so it wasn’t worth ripping. Then I couldn’t remember if I was still supposed to be increasing so I counted stitches. There were too many. I counted stitches on the finished sleeve in the same row. There were less.

So I ripped out a few cable repeats and had just re-knit all of the frogged yarn when it came time to turn out the lights and go to sleep.

So lame.

BUT, I’m ready to go. A few more rows ’til I start the sleeve cap that I thought I’d already started. Very fortunate for me, I had planned on editing the sleeve cap on the first sleeve and ended up knitting it as per the directions I’m sort of following from the Handy Book of Sweater Patterns. And bless me, I happened to scrawl down exactly which row I started the cap shaping on, and left it in the knitting bag.

The same knitting bag that ate my wedding ring last November, if you recall.

I hope to have this one finished up soon. I measured Clark’s little feet yesterday. They’re 5 1/2 inches heel to toe, and 4 1/4 inches to the start of his toes. I don’t mind Clark’s socks being an ongoing project though. They’re small and easy and make a great travel project.

As for the “To Ponder” list… I still haven’t decided if I’m going to finish any of those. Since the mosaic arm warmers fit Liv better than Abby, I might end up trying to finish those ugly pink and purple socks, turning them into mitts for Abby.

My dye came. My silk is soaked. I might get to that today.

Maybe.

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

HOW many WIP’s?

I have this sort of unwritten rule that I won’t have more than three “Works-In-Progress” at any given time. That would be WIP’s in knitting. If I counted music, spinning, dyeing, etc. I’d be in big trouble. But for knitting specifically, no more than three.

So, I was surprised the other night when I went to list my WIP’s and there were many. Now, some of them had fallen into the “have no intent to finish” category, and that’s ok. Those don’t count. But if that’s the case, I should get them off needles and rewind the yarn.

Here are the two lists-

To finish-

-Clark’s sweater. So close. Half a sleeve cap left.
-Clark’s tiny little socks. Half of one done, but how long can they take to finish? I really just started them so I’d have something easy to do at Nate’s Christmas party.
-the girls’ mosaic mitts. I have two rows of hem left, then I bind off, block, and weave in ends.

You can see that I’m really close here. What’s holding me up? It’s like there’s a brain-block or something.

The second list, entitled-

To Ponder-

-those stupid purple koigu fingerless mitts that I can’t remember how to make since I made them up and wrote pattern notes all over various scraps of paper that have vanished. One is finished, the other is about half done, and I’m an idiot.
-A red star hat with handspun that I made up. I didn’t like how it was turning out. I need to reclaim my needle and wind it back up. Why haven’t I done that yet? I think it’s because I love this little stitch and I want to find a use for it before I forget about it.
-those hideous pink chevron socks. I hate them. Abby loves them. I should just finish them up for her, or turn them into fingerless mitts which would be cute… But I feel no desire to pick them up again, and I’m not sure where that stitch pattern is anyway. I must reclaim that needle.
– Liv’s cable yoke sweater. Poor Liv. She wants my knits more than anybody, and she gets the least of them. But I have to frog all of what I’ve knit on her sweater so far because it’s turning out too small. And it’s cables, which aggravate my tennis elbows. I’ve thought about turning it into a long, cabled vest/jacket with a waist tie. Perhaps…
-Finally, there’s that horrible octagon shawl from Victorian Lace Today that I’ve wanted for-EVER. It’s only horrible because the yarn that I thought was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, isn’t. It was Colinette. It was expensive. I SO don’t splurge on stuff like that for myself. But this time I did, and it looks like I’m knitting lace fatigues.

$%^&*^%%$#%$#%^&*(***@@!!~!

Hopefully, I haven’t forgotten anything.

The reason I labeled that second list “To Ponder” is because when I wrote it out last night, I was thinking about just plowing through them all and making myself finish them. However now that I’ve posted it, and used words like “stupid”, “hideous”, and “horrible”…. I’m thinking that frogging it all will bring an inner peace that sounds very pleasant.

I have new things I want to work on that I cannot allow ’til those lists are cleaned up.

Tomorrow and Wednesday I’m hauling wool, batts, three spinning wheels, and possibly a carder into school to demonstrate and assist kids in spinning as a part of their medieval studies. This is the first set of three units in the next couple of months. Wish me well.

Oh, and I have a question…

I’ve been FREEZING cold. Uncharacteristically so. My fingers and toes will actually hurt from being cold. When we first get into bed at night, I’m always way warmer than Nate is, and he always puts his cold hands and feet on me to warm up. He calls me his space heater (Twilight reference). But not recently.

Additionally, I’ve had a solid week of vivid and extremely stressful dreams and wake up exhausted.

I’m exercising! This isn’t supposed to happen! I should have improved circulation and be getting more rest from my sleep! Those are the rules! Aside from the losing weight part, which isn’t happening, either.

And I don’t think I’m pregnant.

Any thoughts?