redhedlvr2

Life has been, well, life.  Knitting and other crafts have had their ups and downs as well.  Here's some yarn I dyed back in December and the socks I knit up.  Over on Ravelry we had a flurry of excitement wrapping yarn into balls, dyeing one color, then re-wrapping so the undyed section was on the outside and re-dyeing different color.  Mine turned out so-so but the socks have been really warm and comfy to wear.

Daughter-Type and Boyfriend are huge LoTR fans, as am I.  So I was browsing around on Ravelry and found several LoTR sweater designs.  Specifically A Cardigan For Arwen and Tree of Gondor Chart .  I see these as jumping off points.  The cardigan pattern as written, has too much fussy construction so I'll probably just use bits and pieces such as the cabling up the front and possibly the hood.  What ever design elements I use I'll be making some type of seamless pattern.  I really hate sewing up knitted projects.  Also for the cardigan, I plan to use dragoncrafter's charted tree.  Yes, yes, I know I've complained loud and long about how much I hate charts in my knitting, but this design is eating away at me and I must conquer my chart issues.

For Boyfriend's sweater, I will use another hooded pattern still to be determined.  Quite possibly the same as for Daughter-Type, but we'll see.  For his sweater, I'm going to attempt a color work tree.  My problem lies in that I'm not that great at stranded color knitting.  The directions say to go intarsia, but I'm not sure I won't make a big mess.  I'm thinking duplicate stitch with a lighter weight yarn, maybe sport weight on worsted.  Who knows.

Anyway, as I have six month, give or take a week or so, there isn't any reason I can't get these puppies done in time.  We'll see how that goes, lol!

I've been diligently working on Daughter-Type's shawl the last week or so.  Especially since I'm getting a huge back log of what I really want to work on next, which is never a good thing.

I love this pattern.  It starts with just one cast on stitch at the bottom right corner and builds from there.  And look!  Even still on the needles and unblocked, the lace pattern is there!



Now for the really cool part of this pattern.  I hate binding off, especially on a shawl where it just makes the bottom edge either too tight or lettuce edged.  But look at this!  A knitted bind off which I can see me adapting and using in lots of other projects.



This has been a very fun and quick project.  Even better, it's one of the free patterns from KnitPicks and I have used less than two skeins of lace weight yarn.  Will update when I get the bindoff done and have blocked it.

This pattern intrigues me.  I really love knitted things that use unconventional construction, and this sweater is just screaming at me to try.  The directions say it could be made as a cardigan, or sew the fronts together to make a pull over.  I was really hoping for some interesting pick-up and knit technique to make the left front, but that's how things go. 

My thoughts are that sewing the front together would make it very bulking and possibly uncomfortable due to the double layer right there in the front and just YIKES! I'm not so keen on sewing knitted things anyway.

So, any thoughts on what types of fastening would look nice on this beauty?

And while we're on the subject, take a look at these socks!

I'm a horrible photographer.

I've spent the last week knitting my wee knitterly fingers to the bone it seems.  And although I'm going to chalk this past week up to progress, I do have to say I have nothing to show for my efforts.  It has become obvious to me that HALF of the sock yarn I bought last week will not produce the incredible stacking and pooling effects that this afghan requires.

To be more specific, I started with this yarn.  The colors in this pic aren't true at all.  I find the yarn itself to be very pretty and will save for another SOCK yarn afghan I've been seeing around.  But for this project, it's just not working out.  And on the subject, tell me, what kind of masochist knits an afghan out of sock yarn anyway?

Here's the lowdown.  With a #2 needle, I cast on 64 stitches and worked the pattern, which is extremely easy and the swatch worked up quickly.  It did become apparent after about an inch that the desired pattern wasn't working so, as per the directions, I first increased by two stitches, knit for another inch, increased two more, knit for an inch.  Nadda.  I frogged the whole thing and repeated with a #1 needle.  Still no joy.  At that point, I ripped the whole thing out again and cast on with only 54 stitches, wash, rinse repeat as above.

My conclusion is this.  Sock yarn that will produce a "wider" solid stripe with jacquard patterning will not work.  It is possible that I have not hit the sweet spot, but I believe the nature of that thicker/wider stripe won't allow for the zig-zagging pattern that was intended.

Did I mention that I don't own any straight knitting needles other than double points?  Have I also mentioned that 64 stitches is too long to hold safely on a double point without some stitches falling off the back side?  My solution?  I rooted around in the kitchen junk drawer searching for a rubber band I could cut in half and wrap around the needles as sort of a point protector.  No rubber bands were in the drawer but there was an unopened pair of squishy ear plugs that I jammed onto the ends and have worked quite well.

The things we do for our craft, right?

I sent this from my phone to my yahoo email because for some reason I couldn't get it to go to my gmail email.  See what I mean?

I really want to get the Falling Stars Kit from Knitpicks.  I'm also terrified of doing steeks but feel compelled to buy the kit NOW because they might sell out.  Talk about pressure.   I know me, though.  Taking on new projects that are over my head is a bad habit  This sweater is just too pretty to have sit unfinished and collect dust.  So I need to get over my steek fear.  Has anyone on my flist made things with steeks?  I saw this technique, which is very pretty, but I have flashbacks to putting that zipper in my grandson's sweater a few years ago which are rather alarming.

I just sawthis sweater in the new Knitpicks catalog.  It has steeks, which I still haven't attempted yet.  But it's just so beautiful

I couldn't decide between this or this so I got them both.  I worked up one of their shawl kits last year and it turned out beautifully.  And one lesson I learned from last year is to buy an extra skein for that last color used.  I made it with what they sent, but just barely.   I can't handle that kind of pressure though, hee he.

Once again I've survived the annual audit.  Praise the lord and pass the peas.  They actually left half a day early, but who's counting?  They did take off with some of my original paperwork, which should be interesting to see if I can get it back.  Ugh.

On the knitting front, I'm making this.  Yes, it has charts.  Yes, it's supposed to be easy, even for those of us who are chart impaired.  It's pretty, and soft, and I'm really liking the picture alot but for the life of me, those damn charts are getting me down again.  For some reason, my brain keeps reading the chart from right to left.  Every row.  I've even drawn little arrows on the charts to remind me which direction I need to read the thing from, but the old brain only has one gear, right to left.  Then, to make matters worse, just when I got a rhythm going,  I had to switch to the next chart and they reversed the numbers on me.  Even on left instead of right and that means more left to right, not right to left.  There should be some magic chart reader out there that you can scan the stupid charts into and it will print out written instructions.  I'd buy it.

Movies - Saw Inglorious Bastards with my father over the weekend.  I figured it could be something we could do together since my step-mother passed last month.  They went almost every weekend and I usually go too.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.  What a mess.  The movie stunk and was so very strange in addition to being violent and bloody in the extreme.  And I think I have a fairly high tolerance for that kind of thing.  And Brad Pitt only had like four scenes anyway.  My father jumped up the second the credits started to roll and was out the door.  I had to wait for the herd to pass before I could follow him.  Guess I know what HE thought of the movie.  It reminded me of when he took me and a girlfriend to see the Dark Shadows movie waaaaay back when.  They showed it at the drive in with two other vampire kind of movies and, being the good daddy he is, he took us and sat through all three shows.  Poor man.  I guess he knows his daughter has sucky taste in movies no matter what her age.  (No pun on the sucky thing intended)

Torchwood - I'm loving this show.  Can't figure out why I didn't like it so much the first time I got it from Netflix.  Must have been in a strange mood, cause it so deserves all the great things everyone is saying about it.  Guess it's one of those right to left kind of things.