Still Alive

It's been a busy and tough couple of months. However, knitting has happened, amazingly enough. Blogging unfortunately, hasn't. It's been so long since I've even logged into blogger, that the platform has changed completely!

I finished my Cria cardigan, though I haven't had the wherewithal to weave in the ends or sew on buttons. I should probably do that one of these days.

I've knitted two hats, my first colorwork, and even managed to get some photos of one of them (they're both the same pattern, one for Bru and one for Georgia. Different colors). I haven't managed to figure out duplicate stitch embroidery yet, but I'm sure that'll come soon enough.

Anyway, here's Georgia's hat (my rav link):

Pattern: Los Muertos
Yarn: Cascade 220
Needle: US 7 (4.5mm)

Aside from the knitting, on the personal front, I'm feeling better, after a rough March, and part of April. I haven't had a head cold or sinus infection for either of those two months, so obviously, taking care of the other issue which-shall-not-be-named helped out on the entire health front.

We also bought a (cheapo used) car, which gives us a great deal more freedom. We drove out to Western New Jersey for a mini vacation at the beginning of April. Did some hiking and felt better about the world. We also had no idea how pretty that part of NJ is, given that most of our experience has been on the I-95 corridor, which is decidedly NOT pretty.

Also, my beloved cat, Beezer, fell ill, and we've been having a tough time with him. He keeps getting better, getting sick again, recovering, falling ill... it's been bad. Right now he's in an ok phase, however he's doped up on kitty morphine, and I feel like we're going through a feline version of trainspotting.

Georgia is doing great. She's a fabulous kid. I can't have possibly asked for better. Bruce is also doing well. I'm hoping things are on the upswing now. Incidentally, speaking of husbands and cats, here are both my husband and my cat in a video Bruce did for his work.

I shall post when I can, and will attempt to get caught up on everybody's blogs. It feels like forever since I've been able to check in with everyone.

Finished Object: Chinook

I got the Chinook (my rav link) as a kit from Knit Picks a while ago (actually, I got two, one in each colorway) and for whatever reason didn't knit it, even though I absolutely adore it.

It was a fairly quick knit, less than two weeks, even with some pretty huge breaks due to exhaustion. Easy, although there were some typos on the pattern which caused confusion. The finished product is HUGE, easily wraps fully around my body, and hangs down to my butt.

I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to keep it, as I already have a crap-ton (totally technical term) of shawls and one of my coworkers, who is moving to France next week, fell madly in love with it. It may be hers. I haven't decided yet. Many other people have also fallen in love with it. For now, I'm wearing it, and have no plans to take it off.

What do all you other knitters out there do with all your shawls?

Anyway, I think KP is still selling the pattern, and I've seen some gorgeous versions with other yarns out there.

Pattern: Chinook (rav pattern page)
Yarn: KP lace weight, various, held double throughout.
Needle: US 8 (5mm)

In other news, my Vermont Shawl from the last post did not hold its blocking AT ALL, and the maple leaves shrunk from my hand sized down to about Georgia's hand size. It went from being a fairly large shawl to a shawlette. I'm not sure what to make of this, as I wet blocked that sucker, pinned it out completely, and it is 100% merino wool. Go figure. Also, it is very hard to photograph. I tried again today. FAIL.

New FO: Happy Yellow

Here's my Happy Yellow (Rav link) shawl. I finished on Leap Day, and it's my one FO for February. However, it's a doozy.

Pattern: Vermont Shawl
Yarn: madelinetosh prairie in chamomile
Needle: US 6 (4mm)

The middle picture is closest in color to the actual.

And it's a crappy gray day, so I couldn't get enough contrast in my colors to get a good shot of the pattern, which is gorgeous. I'll try to photograph again in the near future.

The procedure yesterday went well. I'm fine, but in a little pain, however, it is manageable. I'll get final pathology results back next week, and will put up an update.

Radio Silence

2012 thus far has not been a banner year...

After being sick for most of January, I went to my doctor and discovered that I have some funky cells hanging out in certain areas of my body which indicate bad things (i.e. cancer), and will require minor surgery. It's not a big deal, should only involve a 20 minute procedure and local anesthesia, but still... scary. My doctor is not freaked out. I'm fairly not freaked out. We'll see when the secondary pathology reports come  back this week. By the way, I REALLY do not like the term "secondary pathology" as it is just effing scary. Anyway, the funky cells are very new, have not progressed, and are exceedingly manageable, so we're ok.

During the biopsy (which mind you, was done without anesthesia, yay), I tweaked out my right shoulder, which has caused me an IMMENSE amount of pain, and I haven't been able to knit (or type, really), or do anything except whine, pop advil and liberally ingest vast quantities of tequila... All with my left hand, as my right hand has gone numb off and on. And for those of you know me even remotely well, I am so ridiculously right handed, it isn't even FUNNY, and my left hand is fairly useless. Fortunately, I'm not too shabby with the getting-tequila-to-mouth thing with the left hand, so alls well that ends well, right?

Also, last night, my boss' wife passed away from cancer. It's a very sad situation, as she is survived by my boss and their two sons, who are 13 and 16. I'm currently helping my boss (and my office) deal with that...

Anyway. Sorry if I'm not around much. Maybe posting will happen at some point in the near future (I'm thinking March), but for right now, times is rather tough.

Hugs to everybody, I'm thinking about you, even if not commenting on your blogs, and I'm looking forward to being back in the regular swing of things at some point in the near future. Feel free to drop me an e-mail or a PM on Rav.

Failures and Successes...

While it may seem that I (among many other bloggers) sail through projects without any problems, need for lifelines, and never have to frog, I'm here to tell you, it ain't true.

Case in point: This January. Fail, fail, fail, fail and fail (with one or two successes along the way).

I already documented some of the fails (the ill fated slippers, which I even sent through the laundry and they still came out THE SAME SIZE), however, I've got a few more here.

1. Zipper insertion on sweaters. FAIL. I tried to do it myself. Failed miserably. Sent it off (with lots of trepidation) to our local tailors, who did an amazing job, but... used my beautiful attached i-cord as a folded under selvage and kinda sorta ruined the lines of the sweater. It's still wearable, and it looks totally fine, as long as you're not a knitter.

However, there is a silver lining here, as the attached i-cord looks really amazing around the top of the collar. And honestly, this is some of the best work that I've ever done. I'll have to get Bruce to model at some point.

2. Two major failures on Georgia's sweater. The first is the pattern. It sucked. Honestly. The second is my decision to put attached i-cord around the neck of the sweater. I thought that it worked out so well on Bruce's, that I'd put it on Georgia's. Not so much. (there is a third failure, but that was basically due to incompetence on my part, i.e. a really craptacular button band. Embarrassing.)

However, as I said on the above sweater, there were some high points. The steeking went really well. REALLY well. Totally not scary at all. Just make sure that you use grippy yarn. Here's a picture of the inside of the steeks (please ignore the embarrassingly bad button band):

3. I was completely felled by Ene's Scarf (by Nancy Bush). Totally. Yes, I can read charts. I absofruitly HATE them, however, because 99% are way too small and my eyes can't track across them very well. Even when I enlarge charts (or miraculously, they come REALLY big, thank you Jared Flood), I still have to mark them up pretty obsessively in order to be able to read them. I highlight every other row, I count all of the incredibly annoying little boxes and put the number of stitches in them so I don't have to put down my knitting and count 16 times just to make sure I'm knitting the proper number of stitches.

I knitted and ripped the first 15 rows of Ene's Scarf FIVE TIMES before I finally got the stupid stitch count right. It's supposedly a simple pattern, but it just didn't gel with my brain. Anyway, on try six, I finally got the stupid pattern right, and you know what? It still looked like crap. So I ripped the whole thing out and picked a new pattern. Which, by the way, I'm completely pleased with. It's the Vermont Shawl and I love it, and I'm already trying to figure out which yarn I should make my next one with.

Here it is:

Sunny and happy and just right for January (madelinetosh prairie in chamomile). The color also attracts the eye and I've had more people talk to me about my knitting since I've been working with this yarn than any other project I've worked on while riding the subway.

My next post will be with on January playlist, which I've been listening to all month while knitting. It's kept me out of the total emotional doldrums whilst being sick all month.

Hap Blanket and a Felting Fail

My husband commissioned me to make a Hap Blanket (my rav link) for our (well, more his, but I know them, and they're great) friends that are having a baby in February. I grabbed some Berroco Comfort from Knitty City and cast on, ending up with a lovely little (machine washable) gift.

Pattern: Hap Blanket by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Berroco Comfort in Breezeway and Tidepool
Needle: US 11 (8mm)

I also attempted to make some of the Children's Felt Clogs for my daughter, which was a total fail. As you can see in this next picture, they felted with one foot opening far larger than the other, and one foot far larger than the other:

We also attempted to felt this by hand, having no washing machine handy in our apartment. FAIL. It took hours just to get a little felt going, despite adding boiling water, felting it with rubber gloves, abrading it, putting it in cold baths, etc. And yes, this is a very feltable yarn. I checked ahead of time.

So I sent it off with our laundry to be done, hoping that it would felt more there. NOPE.

Here they are on Georgia's feet. Far too large and oddly misshapen.

Maybe I should not do felty things from now on, given the washing machine/control issue I've got at home.

And I started a Cria by Ysolda, from her new book, Little Red in the City. The sweater is simple, but has amazingly cool construction, and I'm definitely learning a lot from it (like how to knit set-in sleeves in the round). I've also had to rip back a few times because I simply wasn't paying attention to the pattern. Oops. Might also be a function of having been sick for a while and attempting to knit things that actually require my attention.

I'm using Classic Elite Fresco for this sweater, and it feels really lovely. Unfortunately, the sweater knits up on size 4 needles and it feels like it's taking forever.

Additionally, the steeking on Georgia's sweater was quite successful, however, one of the button bands really wasn't. I think I'm going to have to rip it out and do it again (which will now make either the third or fourth time I've had to rip out that SAME BUTTON BAND), and I decided not to put a zipper in, due to the disaster of Bruce's Brigade sweater, which I suppose I should write about as well.

Next post, I suppose, will be the two failed sweaters of this winter. Sigh.

Juneberry Tricolor

Now that I have returned (more or less) to the land of the living, I figure it's time to post again. I've got a few posts lined up in my head, due to some new experiences (felting and steeking on two totally different projects).

However, first, the Juneberry Tricolor.

I love this thing so much. I even bought a shawl pin for it, which is a first. I've been wearing it around and getting tons of compliments.

It wasn't too difficult to knit, however, I did have to plan extensively, take tons of notes and mark up the pattern a bunch in order to get through it. I spent probably two or three hours reading the pattern, taking notes, etc. Amazing how much of a difference that makes. (sarcasm).

Prior to doing this, I could TELL how much of a difference it would make, but somehow, never did it? Go figure. I feel like an idiot for not doing this before, but of course, I've totally neglected this step on subsequent projects, and have either failed (or frogged) as a result. DUH.

I used three 230-yard skeins for this project. The lightest color and the medium color both used about half a skein. The edging used a full skein.

Charts A, B and C of the pattern were done in the lightest color. Chart D in the medium color and the Edging chart in the darkest.

After having declared numerous times that I am a bobble hater (I really do hate them), I actually found myself loving them on this shawl. I like the way Flood set them up, although I wish he had said (or I had knew) that the bobbles would stand up better if you pull the slipped stitch all the way over the entire bobble (kind of like a tiny little bobble bra), rather than just passing it over the last stitch knitted.

When I make this shawl again, and I very likely will, I will not make the mistake of using superwash wool, as I'd like the blocking around the edging to be more dramatic. As it stands though, I love it! It is still not the most complicated thing I've ever knitted, although I guess it kind of looks like it. (most complicated honors go to the Cherry Fizz scarf, which forced me to leap forward in my knitting skills in order to complete successfully.)

Pattern: Juneberry Triangle by Jared Flood
Yarn: Periwinkle Sheep Merino Worsted in Suede, Truffle and Oxblood Lily
Needle: US9 (5.5mm)

Made from yarn purchased at Rhinebeck! I've been very good at using up my purchases this year.