YES, another pic-less post. Sue me.

The state of the knitting:

SAMUS: I need to finish the i-cord edging on one cuff, do a little cable-mistake-camouflage, and add a zipper. Jury is out on whether or not I like it. I'll decide once I see it with the zipper on. I may re-block it as a unit, too. I do indeed hate the sleeves, because they are far too big. But that's life. :( My next sweater will be better.

OPENWORK SCARF: In my knitting bag now, getting the bulk of my not-at-home knitting time. I want it finished for the cold weather. I have about 3 feet done.

LACY TRELLIS SOCKS: I have one almost done. I put it aside in favour of the scarf, because the scarf will actually be NECESSARY before too long.

BREA BAG: Still awaiting a trip to The Fabric Place for more yarn. Bah. Sometimes, I DO wish I drove.

SPINNING (ok, not knitting, really): I have a bunch of n00b yarn (i.e., fairly uneven yarn with no real gauge) in white merino that needs to have its twist set, and needs to be dyed. I have 8 oz. of lovely red merino waiting to be spun, and a wee packet (1 oz. maybe?) of rainbow merino silk that is also waiting. Shiny.

Picking up where I left off!

I am so good. I am a GOOD little knitter. This past weekend, I finally got off my butt and...WORKED ON SAMUS. Yes. You heard me. I did NOT end up re-blocking her, but I realized I didn't need to. I sewed the shoulder seams, sewed the sleeves to the body, and started the i-cord edging, which is now about half done. YES!!! When that edging is finished, all I'll need will be a zipper! I'm so excited.

Some issues:

1) My seaming sucks. I mean, it really sucks. This thing is kinda going to look like Frankensweater. But I did my best, and I'll still bloody wear it.

2) The sleeves are a little bigger than I want, considering I made the body of the cardigan a little more fitted, but that's the pattern.

Other than that, I'm really quite pleased.

Now, the state of my other projects: I am nearly done with the first of the Lacy Trellis Socks. I'm almost done with the decrease rounds after doing the heel. My Brea Bag is still languishing for lack of yarn to finish the gusset. My scarf is big, but not big enough. I will have to get cracking on that soon so I have it when the really cold weather hits.

But Samus is almost DONE!!!

Back on the wagon!

Ok, my fellow knitters. It's hard for me to admit this, but...until this past weekend, I had gone for over a month without knitting. See, I'd been working on some pretty socks. My sock yarn was wound into a center pull ball. I was pulling from the center. Then it tangled. I tried to tease out the tangled bit from the center of the ball to fix it, but once I got it out of the ball and went to work, it only got worse! It sat on my desk for weeks, a symbol of despair. Finally, I decided that I'd bite the bullet: I'd just cut out the tangled part (unfortunately, quite a lot of yardage) and get a second skein to make sure I had enough to complete a pair of socks. To celebrate this decision, I wound some Malabrigo into a ball (by hand, since the skein was too big for my crappy swift), and started up work on my scarf again. But I wanted to get back to the socks, so I hit Windsor Button to get some more sock yarn and take up work on that cute little sock again that was coming along so nicely.

Unfortunately, that backfired when Windsor Button proved to be out of that colorway.

Now, I'd have simply ordered it online or something, but I am going on vacation (starting this afternoon!) and need a small knitting project that I can bring with me for the long car ride and for any lazy time sitting and sipping coffee with friends at the campground. I didn't want to bring something big and heavy, and I REALLY WANTED some socks. So I got a skein of the same sock yarn in a different (and actually, somewhat nicer) colorway, and cast on again. I have saved my half-sock and the rest of the old yarn, and will eventually finish them. But now, I'm starting fresh. I'll have something to work on for my vacation, and most important, I am back on the knitting wagon!

Incidentally, I also pinned up the shoulders of my cardigan body so I could try it on, sort of, and it seems to fit when I wear it over a shirt. This pleases me: I was afraid it would be too big. Then again, I DID purposefully make it sort of tight when I did my calculations, figuring in the possibility of weight loss. Rock on. Now I feel more confident that I will actually finish it someday. :)

To the ladies of the MIT Stitch 'n' Bitch: I will see you all NEXT Thursday at noon! I will be starting my new position that day, so I may be a little late if training carries over a bit, but I do have that hour free in my schedule. Yay!

I am really getting bad with this unfinished projects business.

Shame on me.

I now have:

1. Samus, who needs re-blocking, seaming, zipper-sewing-in, and applied i-cord edging
2. Brea Bag, for which I need more yarn before I can finish, and they don't sell that shade of Cascade 220 at Windsor Button
3. Openwork Scarf, which got too boring to motivate me to finish it, seeing as I won't be wearing it for several months yet

And then I went and started something else.

I really INTENDED to work on the scarf when I went to visit my parents this weekend. I popped the needles off the Brea Bag and put on stitch holder ends, and put the needles onto the cable holding the scarf. I pulled out a skein of the gorgeous Malabrigo I'm using for it. I packed the scarf in my bag...and left the skein sitting on my desk. Crap.

I also ended up missing my train due to construction on the red line route. The shuttle bus left me at Park Street right at the time my train was pulling out of South Station. It being a Saturday, I knew I had a good bit of time to kill before the next train. So I called my mom and told her I'd be getting on the next train...after stopping at Windsor Button.

Bad me.

I ended up deciding it was high time I made a very NICE pair of socks. I am always jealous of my fellow SnB'ers lovely hand-knit socks. I had no patterns with me, but I bought myself a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in the Dusk colorway and (another) set of the Susan Bates sock DPNs (sizes 000, 00, 0, and 1) and a set of size 2 DPNs. I hoped that would see me through a pair of socks. When I got to my parents' place, I was able to find a pattern online that was designed for that yarn, and which required size 0 and size 1 needles. Spiffy! I think it's rather pretty. I finished the cuff yesterday and was planning on starting the lace pattern body today, but silly me, I forgot to bring the size 1 needles that I need to change to. D'oh! Now I just have a pretty cuff sitting on needles in my bag. :)

Here's an image of the socks I'm making, in a different colorway:
At least this has really gotten me excited about knitting again. Recently, only spinning has been exciting, and knitting has been work. So there's a bonus!

Squee!

Oooh, my dear readers, the Wanton One has encountered a LOVELY book that seems like it was made for HER and HER ALONE! I have just bought Naughty Needles!

It's full of all kinds of adorable and fascinating patterns, for everything from lingerie, to a mermaid tail, to...well, let's just say there are some rather racy items in there. :) Sure, it's a novelty book, but these are novelties I like. One of the reviewers on Amazon seems to have been appalled by the very idea of some of these patterns. I found her reaction amusing.

Anyway, I have been a very distracted knitter lately. I still haven't been able to bring myself to unroll my old carpet onto the floor and use it to reblock my cardigan. I put my scarf aside because it was getting boring, and started working on a bag. I'm nearly done with it--got the front and back and part of the gusset done--but had to put THAT on hold to start working on a bouquet of knitted roses for my mom for Mothers' Day. They have knitting needle stems, and I'm giving them to mom with a copy of Stitch 'n' Bitch, since she's been talking about getting back into knitting. That would be cool. :)

A pic-less update, I'm afraid

So, last time we chatter, Dear Readers, I was working on blocking my cardigan and on knitting a scarf.

--I blocked both sleeves and the body of the cardigan. Sweet!
--I seamed both sleeves.
--I found that one of the sleeve caps was too big for the armscye. BUGGER.

So now, I have to re-block my cardi body. I don't have a blocking board, so I have devised a new method which I hope will allow me to stretch it out a little more than my previous attempt, which involved pinning it to a towel tacked to a table. This time, I will unroll a large and ugly carpet onto my kitchen/dining room floor and pin it to that. I'm still going to steam-block, I think, but with a REALLY wet cover cloth. Or I might even spritz the sweater itself. I just don't want to wet-block something that's going to be on the floor of an open room where I can't keep the cats away for long.

That's the Samus story. I'm also still working on the scarf. I finished the first ball of Malabrigo, and it's looking gorgeous. It was also starting to bore me, however. So I've decided to start a new project: the Brea Bag from Berocco. I bought the yarn last fall, but hadn't yet started. I have now cast on for this damned thing FOUR TIMES. I haven't finished the first pattern stitch row. Now, the pattern stitch is quite easy. I've just been having trouble because I forgot twice that I was supposed to keep the first and last stitch in stockinette (oops), and then I think I cast on the wrong number of stitches twice, in spite of counting. Having a dark-coloured yarn and using two strands held together can make that difficult, especially when I'm watching TV or talking to people at the same time. I will try again tonight.

I've also decided that I think I'd like to knit my boyfriend's mother a lace stole at some point. Eunny Jang's Print O' The Wave stole has stolen (hah) my heart. It's GORGEOUS. And now it's time for a meeting...

At last!

You all hate me. I know you do. Don't try to deny it. *dramatic sigh*

I'm so sorry I've been such a loser about this blog. It's not that I haven't been knitting (oh, I have, I have!) but that I've felt my latest efforts unworthy of sharing with the wider world. Really, how many times do you want to see a picture of Samus with another inch of stockinette...and another...and another? Not many, am I right?

Anyway... I have certainly been making progress. The knitting of the body and sleeves is completely done. Today, I blocked one of the sleeves and sewed the seam on it! Finally! Have a look, why don't you?



Ooh, shiny!

On March 3, I went to a Knitters' Breakfast at the Fabric Place in Framingham. The people doing the trunk show were from Classic Elite. It was a little disappointing. They were all older, which isn't always a big deal, but all the designs they showed also looked sort of old-fuddy-duddy-ish. Meh. The yarns weren't bad, though, and I managed to snag a bunch of mini-skeins of Summer Set yarn (cotton, alpaca, & synthetic) in a creamy white. I think it's probably enough for a 4" swatch per skein, so I may have enough for a nice pair of gauntlets! There were so many people crammed into the room for the breakfast that only about half got some kind of door prize (unlike last time, when EVERYONE got one.) I missed out. Whine. However, when the shopping started, I resolved to spoil myself.

I wanted hand-painted (or at least very pretty, interesting, and luxurious) sock yarn. Well, their sock yarn selection was a few skeins of rather ugly self-striping Sockotta and some boring solid-color wool from some Scandianvian country. Grr. However, the prospect of MALABRIGO at $10/skein plus 20% discount thrilled me. I paid $8 a skein for $12/skein yarn. Sweeeet. I picked out the colorway "Stonechat"--gorgeous dark reds, greens, and browns--to make a nice scarf. I've been needing a scarf I can wrap several times around my face in the coldest weather. I'm using a "knotted openwork" pattern (here) which they show as very lacey, but which I've seen done on worsted-weight yarn. That way, it knits up kinda nubbly and textured, and I love the effect with this color. Here, have a peek:



And a close-up for texture:



And now, you remember me talking about making a hat for someone for Christmas? Well, here are some pictures of him wearing it! Isn't he just adorable? Isn't the hat? :) I think they're a great combination. I think I need to knit this guy some more stuff. He just wears it so well.





Oh, and it strikes me that I have not yet taken a picture of my boyfriend M in his Christmas present: a Jayne hat, from Firefly! It's rather cunning, y'know. I will have to do that soon.

And there you have it, kiddies. That's what I've been up to lately. I hope to post more soon, so stay tuned!

Please stand by!

We are experiencing technical difficulties!

I tried to be a good little knitter last night and use my sick time to update my blog. However, it seems Blogger is having some ISSUES with uploading images to blogs! And I KNOW that what you really want is the pretty, shiny pictures, am I right? Well, the Wanton One will give you what you want. Promise. Just as soon as Blogger gets its head out of its behind and solves the problem.

The pleasures of gift-giving

This holiday season, I knit a hat as a gift for a special person in my life for whom I had never knit a gift before. It was a rather funky hat: two-toned with a royal blue base and a light blue top, with the top sewn into three little points sticking out. I was a little nervous giving it to him, since I wasn't sure whether or not he'd appreciate it. Well, as soon as he took it out of the box he was delighted. He immediately put it on and was grinning like a fool. He hadn't had a hat at all, and said that he'd been getting sick of cold ears. He loved the funky design too. When you get to see a six-foot-three guy in a black trenchcoat and a silly blue hat that you made him, grinning from ear to ear, it make the work more than worthwhile. I feel like I brightened his day a bit with the gift, since his holidays are usually a little blah and he has the added issue of being very broke this year, so making him smile warmed me from the inside out. He will definitely remain on the list of People To Knit For, that list that will only include those who appreciate the knit gifts I give them.

I have already become woefully bad with the updates.

Well. Since our last installment, I ripped Samus down to the band again and started her up again. It pissed me off no end, but I was determined to get it right. She's looking good now: I've done all the waist shaping AND I have the right number of stitches on my needles (can you say HALLELUJAH?) It's a little shorter than I'd expected it to be at this point, which is odd since my row gauge is absolutely perfectly spot-on at 25 rows per 4 inches, and the band width is exactly right as well. Eh. Anyway, no big deal: I think it'll fit me just fine as it is. I hope so!

My work holiday party is tomorrow afternoon. There's going to be someone there collecting donated gifts for local underprivileged kids. I hadn't bought anything, and was going to contribute to the canned food drive instead, but then I had the idea to knit some hats! I've done some hat knitting recently, and decided that with a bulky yarn, kids hats would knit up fast enough for me to have them done in time. I made two cute little beanies: one in a fuzzy pink variegated yarn with mohair in it, for a girl, and one in light blue Lamb's Pride Bulky for a boy. They should fit kids around ages 2-4. I put tags on them to say they're hand-knit and should be hand-washed, and wrapped them up. I'm really glad I did this. It feels good to know that my stash is going to a good cause! And I'm getting addicted to hats. I've knit myself a couple in the past, but they weren't very good. I think it may soon be time to make another.

In two days is the MIT Stitch 'n Bitch Holiday Party. We're doing a stash swap as a gift exchange, which should be fun. I'll have to see what I have that's swappable. I know there are at least a few things in there. I got a friend who works at MIT to agree to come, too. It's always nice to recruit folks, and I already know I like knitting with her.

I think that next up to receive some hand-knits from me as gifts are my boyfriend's parents. A wrap or shawl for his mom, perhaps, or comfy slippers. Maybe a nice thick cabled scarf and hat for his dad. Or something. But I don't have time for that before Christmas, and NO IDEA what to do for them this year. Oy. I'll figure something out. I am a creative little seed after all.