Leap into Insanity

Well it's been quite awhile since I last posted anything, I just wasn't in a real creative mood; but now one of my favorite seasons is in full swing and so likewise I too should get back into the swing of things.

So I'm kicking it off by digging out the baby blanket I was supposed to have done in September, I'm calling it the Quilt of Insanity because it's slowly eating away at mine.  The fault lies with me though the pattern New Traditions Baby Blanket is clearly written, it's just very repetitious and I have attention issues.  This is where I am right now.



I decided to knit all the squares for each design at the same time, which while more efficient because I only have o carry one or two balls of yarn with me, and after the first square or so I no longer have to think about what I'm doing.  It also means that I'm doing the exact same thing 4 or 8 times per square times 6 all at once, this has the rather off effect of making it seem like you're not making much progress even though you've been knitting quite diligently.

But I've had a nice break from it now and as the mother of the intended recipient will be back at work in a couple more months it's time to pick it back up and finish, hopefully.

Of Hibernation

I've been feeling pretty unproductive lately, even with the Ravelympics because I haven't really gone out to any events, I've also been letting the clutter build up and now it's at the point where I just want to take big plastic bags rake it all up and with an elegant flourish loft it onto the back of the nearest dump truck.

I would of course take enough care to make sure I didn't toss out anything important, like yarn, clay, or paint brushes. As I've been mired in unproductiveness and haven't made all that much knitting progress, and have been watching too many movies, and spending FAR FAR too much time on FB (evil evil thing created to consume entire evenings) I've not blogged anything in a while.

Yesterday I realized that it's already halfway through March and it kinda freaked me out a bit because that means OFFF is in about 6 months and I have WAY too much yarn in my stash to even consider going because there is just noway I can go and not come home with another skein or six. It being March also means that I need to kick it into high gear because my Relay for Life team the P-Town Moseying Stitchers (PMS) will need crafty things to sell at local fairs & fund raising events this summer.

So, I'm completely grounded from event setting foot in a yarn store because I can't seem to visit one without a skein or two following me home until after OFFF. Next I have a time-line, the giant Ikea bag of finished items that just need the ends woven in will be done by the end of April. My WIPs Rollin' Eye, Fingerless Evenstar, & the Cloche I promised to make for AV in December (I got the test knit done & ended up changing patterns but more on that later) all need to be finished by mid May. Once that's done it's time for some serious stash burning, I'm going to set my goal at completing one project a week, but not anything too complicated.

It's kind of an insane goal but even if I only manage to complete a project every two weeks, it's the attempt that really matters.

Oh yeah, I'm trying out a new name on the blog the other one was a bit unwieldy, not that this one is any better but I thought I'd at least try it out.

Ravelympics Off the Starting Line! Kinda...

Six 'O clock on Friday evening found me happily ensconced in a booth at one of my favorite places, the Cornelius Pass Road House. Enjoying a really lovely light fruity beer by the name of Imperial Purple Haze; so named for it's color bestowed upon it by the generous amount of Boysenberries used in the brew, and casting on the Evenstar hat by Cathlyn Robinson. As I was prowling about that evening I didn't manage to get more done than the first couple rows, finished while waiting for my Hamilton burger and Cajun tots to arrive (they were delicious by the way).

The next day I picked it back up and really got to working on it and noticed something very upsetting...



Along the edges were I was supposed to have the start of a beautiful pair of left & right spirals, there was instead a pair of twisty thicker sections of fabric.

So I tore it out and double checked the pattern, it says to use P1-C4B-Main Cable-C4F-sl1 with no other cable band instructions other than those for the main cable. I was most puzzled and since I hadn't used a cabled pattern before I thought maybe I'd missed something so I pulled out my trusty stitch dictionary 365 Knitting Stitches a Year. There are two four stitch spiral cables in the book one works on a six row pattern and the other on four, which gives a tighter spiral.

Since the main cable works on a 24 row repeat either would work, I decided to use the six row repeat because I thought the spiral looked closer to the one in the pattern pictures.

I cast on again and this time worked the pattern as follows...
Row 1: p1-c4b-main cable-c4f-sl1
Row 2: p1-p4-main cable-p4-sl1
Row 3: p1-k4-main cable-k4-sl1
Row 4: p1-p4-main cable-p4-sl1
Row 5: p1-k4-main cable-k4-sl1
Row 6: p1-p4-main cable-p4-sl1

It was looking pretty good until...



The outer arms of the main cable made solid contact with my now properly spiraling outer cables. GRRRRRRRRRRR...

After frogging once again, I consoled myself with some Chocolate Dazs before taking on the pattern once more. To make sure I had enough space between the cables I added two stitches to either side of the main cable, making the sequence...

Row 1: P1-C4B-P2-Main Cable-P2-C4F-sl1
Row 2: P1-P4-K2-Main Cable-K2-P4-sl1
Row 3: P1-K4-P2-Main Cable-P2-K4-sl1
Row 4: P1-P4-K2-Main Cable-K2-P4-sl1
Row 5: P1-K4-P2-Main Cable-P2-K4-sl1
Row 6: P1-P4-K2-Main Cable-K2-P4-sl1

This time though I went ahead and charted it out to make sure it looked like there would be enough space between the outer arms of the main cable & the cabled edges.



I have to say that so far I'm most pleased with the results and hope that I can finish it by the weekend.

ETA:  I only did seven repeats and though the pattern doesn't specify how many stitches to pick up, if you go by the first decrease it would need to be a number divisible by 10.  I made mine divisible by 8 and changed to 1 row between decreases a couple decrease rows early.

Once in A Blue Moon Sale & Cast-on

So yesterday in honor of the New Year's Blue Moon & Lunar Eclipse, Tina of Blue Moon Fiber Arts had the Once in A Very Blue Moon Sale and Open House.

At 11:13 Pacific time a magic button would appear on the BMFA site that when clicked, would deliver unto you a choice Air, Earth, Water, or Fire. Now as I was at work at the time and using my break to order yarn(for which my cube mate rolled her eyes at me) I didn't have much time to deliberate, plus my budget is still suffering a bit from Christmas. I picked up 1 each in medium weight of Water, Fire, and Earth.

I can't wait for them to arrive and I know they'll be gorgeous. I also think that since I have a tendency towards blues, greens, and purples having surprise colors that I may not have ever picked for myself, will be fun.

The Open House ran until 10pm and my cousin A-chan and I were able to go visit after work. I was kinda weird for me on the drive out, because my family had lived out there for years, and we weren't that far from Mollenhour Rd. I learned to drive on those back roads, but I hadn't been out there in years, and I just had the most eerie nostalgic feeling, I think it was because I was going somewhere I'd never been but knew the roads(if that makes any sense).

Anyway we made it up the hill and found the place without too much trouble, the GPS did lead us a bit astray at the end but it wasn't too big a deal.

The studio was amazing, there were boxes of wonderful yarn on just about every available surface, and a wall of sock yarn that ran almost the whole length of the barn. It was great fun to sit around and visit with the other ladies, and Tina put the bobbin of yarn she'd just finished up to her nose and started sniffing it, it was the cutest thing. I didn't take any pictures though because it just didn't feel like the place for it, ya know?

It was really hard to decide on what to get without going totally overboard and completely blowing my budget for the next month or two. I did manage, barely to remember that I have 3 skeins on the way. With that in mind I stuck to the rare gems since that's what the sale was all about, and even though I got a lot, only three of the ones from the studio are for me.



The four on the left are light weight, and the 2 on the right and one along the bottom are all medium weight. Trying to get a good picture was a little frustrating, I first tried it outside, usually the abundance of natural light gives a truer color, but since it's winter and I live in NW Oregon, the skies are perpetually heavily overcast. This means the pictures came out on the blue side, a little washed out, and the third skein from the right is too dark to see the color, it's actually this gorgeous dark purple with bits of teal. I tried later that evening inside with all the lights in the vicinity on to try to get a photo with warmer tones and better color.



It worked in that I got better color saturation & truer color in all but the dark purple skein, I just don't have a big enough light source right now to get true color on dark items. I should probably look at getting a couple of freestanding adjustable lights with flaps so I can get sufficient light levels for pictures when it's nasty outside.

Oh, I almost forgot the Eclipse Cast On, I decided to go with the Openwork Eyelet Scarf by Jennifer Pace, here's the link for it on Raverly. I'm really liking it so far, the pattern is easy to remember, and it has a cool nubbly look.



I'm using STR Heavy Weight in Rolling Stone, at least I think it is because it's a mill end.

Happy New Year, everybody!

Mitered 2

I got it done in time! Yay!

I really like making blankets from the center, because they grow so fast at the beginning and it's really encouraging, I also love the way the stripes look when worked in the round, and you have the freedom to just BO when you're sick of it. Knitting those last 3 to 5 skeins though, feels like you're not getting anywhere, I mean once you get to the point where each row is taking about a half hour to complete and it's taking close to 8 hours to complete each stripe, it's just not fun anymore.

I thought it'd be cool to take a picture each day I worked on it to show the progress, and that worked pretty good for awhile but then I had to switch to every few days because there just wasn't that much of a visual difference.
12/7



12/8



12/9



12/10



12/13



12/17



12/24 Finished!



The end product, totally worth it. I got the blanket done Christmas Eve giving me just enough time to wash & block it. Later my sister-in-law said the blanket was Pooh Bear colors and that Lorelie loves Pooh, so the color choices worked out well.

The one thing with it for me is the line made by the beginning of row color changes, I'm not real sure if maybe I made a mistake or if I could have prevented or hidden it.

I'll Be Mitered!

So I'm mired in Christmas projects right now and am currently working on the one that will probably take the longest, a blanket for my nice Lorelei. When I first started looking at patterns I knew for sure that I didn't want to do another Pinwheel Blanket as I've already made two of them but I still wanted something that lent it's self to being multi-colored and could be made from yarn already in my stash.

I found the Mitered Square Afghan Project and really liked the look of it, and the fact that it was modular, so I immediately copied it onto the back of an old receipt, grabbed the oh so delightful Knitpicks Shine Worsted, cast on, and voilà it was done.



I was really impressed that it only took me a couple hours to complete, and while I was sitting there musing at my own speediness when a few things occur to me that A) it kind of looks a little long in one corner, B) looks like a bee, C) is really not all that large and D) has an awful lot of strings hanging off of it.



I lined it up on my trusty cutting mat to find that it's roughly 8 1/4" square though the one corner does kind of curve it's way up to 9".

I kinda stared at it for a while and did the math for a descent sized blanket I'd need 36 squares which would give me a blanket roughly 48"x48", with nine complete squares. The other thing I realized is that I only have 3 colors in this yarn and for the sake of not messing up the gauge & care instructions, I decided it would be best to use all the same yarn. As I sat there contemplating the square and fiddling with the 18 loose ends, it started to dawn on me that I was going to have 36x as many ends to deal with. In addition to sewing all those squares together into bigger squares and then sewing them together into an even bigger square.

Oh boy, am I in big trouble. I really tried to think of a way to knit the 1/4 squares together as I went, but as of right now I can't think of a way that will give it the same look. SO, new plan...

I remembered that in the Knit-A-Long book there is a pattern for a mitered square using sock yarn called the Barn Raising Quilt. I thought that it would work just fine on bigger needles and I could just keep going until it was the size I wanted, as for the hole a the center I could knit or crochet a flower to sew into it, if it still bothers me when the blanket is done.

I started it last night, and got a decent amount done.



Today I was able to move it off the DPNs and onto my 24" circulars, and lay it out to see how it's looking. Right now it looks pretty yellow, but I don't think that will last all that long and I think that so long as I sandwich the Terracotta colored yarn between two bands of the Fedora it wont clash.

I Completely Forgot to Post This...

Ok so a few weeks ago I was working on stuff for the first craft bazaar of the 2010 Relay for Life fund raiser. I'd taken pictures of everything before I sent it off but forgot to actually write the entry.

Ok so here it all is pined out to dry, the picture kind of reminds me of a bug collection, and all those poor little creatures impaled and placed on display for the delectation of others. Gah, what a macabre, wasteful, and depressing thought.



I also took individual pictures of everything...


1x1 rib black sock yarn held double along with ladder yarn.

garter stitch with Fun Fur.

1x1 rib with 6" fringe in Brazilia Pompon.

I actually used a pattern for this one it's Mary Jane Booties by Lucie Sinkler, though I didn't knit them flat like the pattern calls for.


These hats were also from a pattern it's the Sweet and Simple Baby Hat by Debbie Bodmer. I only did a row of the I-cord though so they have just a slight point.


The same pattern was also used on these hats, though they are in a smaller size & I actually made the little sprout like the pattern calls for, well mostly anyway, I didn't make mine long enough to tie a knot with. The booties and hats were all made with Tahki Cotton Classic.


Stocking knit made with cotton tape(I think).


These were a test knit item I finished back in March, and as far as I could tell the pattern worked fine but the designer still hasn't made it available, and as of today it's still listed as being in the test knit phase. I used Simply Soft on it, and have to say it was probably not a great choice.


I think I may have missed getting a picture of them once they were sewn together, the pattern is Double Nickles Wristwarmers by Jessica.

It was kinda sad that give up the warmers as they are made with a really interesting felt yarn. The texture was a bit on the rough side, but not itchy, and because it was felt there was no spring to the yarn other than what the stitch pattern lends to the item. I thought it was ideal for gloves and mittens because, I wouldn't expect it to stretch out much, or be as prone to snagging & getting damaged as a plied fiber.

I haven't really had any luck in finding more of it, and it was a de-stash item that most unfortunately didn't have a ballband so the manufacturer is a mystery. I tried asking the gal I got it from what it was but she couldn't remember because it had been on her stash for quite a while.

NwRSA Spin-in

Well I'm not a spinner but yesterday I attended my first spin-in. It was pretty low key and there was a rather impressive number of vendors there considering the small size of the event.



I got a couple skeins of Super Sock from Abstract Fiber, the green one is Sweet Pea and the other is a Limited Edition.



It was really something to watch some of those ladies spin, almost like magic. I mean I've tried to use a drop spindle once or twice and to see these ladies pulling a fine, even thread from a clump of roving with extremely deceptive ease, was awesome.



Oh yeah, and a dog named Gladys was there too. She was so sweet!

One Row Sedona Scarf

I was browsing through patterns on Ravelry a couple weeks ago and came across the pattern One Row Lace Scarf by Turvid, and I really liked the look of it. I also thought it would be a really great choice for my donation to the Community Support Silent Auction at work, because it looked like a really fast knit.

I used the skein of Blue Moon Fiber Arts STR medium weight in the Sedona colorway, that had been floating around in my stash for the last year or so. I think it looks pretty good but I really want to try it out in a dark color with a more subtle variegation.

I was really impressed with how quickly this knit up, it only took me a couple days, and after the first row or two of the lace pattern, didn't even need to think about it anymore.



Blocking things is usually a bit of a pain but the gauge is so loose on this that, it went really quickly.



Once it was blocked the dimensions were 63 1/2"x6 3/4", and I have enough yarn left over that I can definitely get another scarf out of it, or a nice sized mitered square(if I was to have aspirations of making a barn raising quilt).



The scarf it's self is light and airy and I think it'll work great for wearing indoors or during the summer. I'm even thinking of using bigger needles and worsted weight yarn, to make a wrap with it.

What A Fantastic WWKIP Day!

The KIP I went to was at the Glenn & Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center in Hillsboro, and I have to say it was a lovely location. There was a nice big parking lot, and we were all camped out on the lawn in front of the main entrance, plus we were able to use the restrooms inside. There was a pretty darn good turnout too.

I must say that the host, Tami Hawes really went way above and beyond what I expected, she got the space, was able to get 3 of our local yarn stores involved, Knitting Bee, Kathy's Knit Corner, and All About Yarn. There were two separate raffles for wonderful goodies from the stores, and the first forty of us to arrive got a project bag of swag.




The bags are by Rhiannon's Gate and in it was a mini skein of MightySock from Abstract Fiber, sampler skeins of Flocculent from Frog Creek Fibers, Tight Twist Superwash from Fearless Fibers, and a little bit of roving from The Cupcake Factory.





There was also a small crochet hook from Kathy's, stitch marker from Girly with a Twist, Cabled Wristband pattern with Buttons by Cindy Abernethy, and Moving Day Scarf and Up & Down Fingerless Mitts patterns by Kathleen Fajardo.






We also had the chance to pet and purchase fiber from StitchJones, Frog Creek Fibers, and there was a drop spindle spinner selling her beautiful fibers there as well. I've since been told that her company name is The Cupcake Factory.

A few blocks away was the Saturday market, that had fresh Oregon grown strawberries, and they were absolutely delicious. There was also a place called Veraci Pizza there that had some of the best pie ever, C picked up a chicken alfredo, it had a super thin crispy crust, mozzarella, chicken, mushrooms, tomatoes, and fresh oregano, it was very delicious see...



There were also a couple of charity things going, one was hats for preemies we had a contest the first three people to finish got a skein of some really wonderful fibers. V was the only one of us to try, but more to just make the hat, than for the yarn. Unfortunately she had some technical difficulties with the yarn. What was odd about it was that it was a factory produced skein, but it gave her more trouble than I've ever seen from commercially produced ball. She was able to finish it, and it turned out pretty good. The other charity was squares for a barn raising quilt.

We also had a yarn swap going which was pretty great, a lot of people were unloading their acrylic and eyelash. I'd forgotten about that and hadn't brought any to exchange but enough people brought big honking bins of stuff that by the end of they day they were pretty much begging people to take it. I ended up with a couple skeins of Poodle and 3 of Fun Fur.




The weather was pretty much perfect for it as well, because it was overcast so it wasn't too hot but it wasn't raining. Meaning that I did not end up with knitters burn, like last year. Yay!

I Have Registered!

Well, kinda I haven't been checking my e-mail so I didn't know that the registration for Sock Summit 2009 opened on Tuesday. A fact I was not aware of until Friday when I was trolling around on the Sock Summit forum on Ravelry and came across a thread about Stephanie (Yarn Harlot) Pearl McPhee and Tina (Blue Moon Fiber Arts) Newton getting hate mail because the server crashed a little while after registration opened.

Needless to say this news startled me greatly because I've been keeping up with their blogs and know that they'd gotten a server they were told they wouldn't need and set it up to handle a high volume of hits. I went to check out their respective blogs, to see if there was any information and as it turned out they'd gotten 30,000 simultaneous users trying to get 4,000 class spots. This of course caused the server to just roll over an play dead. The rest of the issues appear to have occurred because people panicked and hit buttons they shouldn't have or entered their data incorrectly.

But as far as I could see they were pretty on top of things they posted about the issue quickly and have been giving updates, so I couldn't believe that they were getting hundreds of threatening and hateful e-mails.

Anyway, needless to say by the time I looked at it on Friday only a couple of classes still had spots available and they aren't ones I'm interested in, luckily the Luminary Panel still had tickets available so I am going to get to attend that event. Other than that I'm thinking I'll just spend my time in the market place watching demos, inhaling the yarn fumes, and BSing with other knitters. I might even go on a yarn crawl or possibly a knitting photo walk, I'm hoping to have my Holga by then so I could take some arty photos.

Bruised Ribbon Complete!

Well it took about 4 months to complete, that's a really long time for me, but it was because it was on size three needles. The other attempts at lace that I've actually finished were done on size nines. I did also put it down a couple of times in favor of quicker projects, because I was sick of looking at it, but still.

Ok so the pattern is Lace Ribbon Scarf by Veronik Avery and it was published in the Spring 2008 issue of Knitty. The pattern calls for 2 skeins of Classic Elite Yarns Alpaca Sox but since I'm on a yarn diet in preparation for Sock Summit and OFFF, I decided to use BMFA STR lightweight in Knitters without Borders that I'd gotten from their 2008 Earth Day event with The Yarn Harlot as guest speaker. Don't have any pictures from it though as I hadn't started blogging yet, and wasn't obsessively taking pictures of everything.

I used the backward loop method to cast on so it has a pretty stretchy end. I'd say that if you haven't attempted lace in the past because it just seemed too complex or the repeats too hard to memorize, this would be a good one to try. The repeats were very easy to memorize, which if you look at the pattern notes, is what the designer was aiming for. Another great thing is that there are written & charted instructions, so you can use which ever you're more comfortable with. Personally I do better with the written directions, I don't know why but looking at all those little boxes with symbols in them make my eyes go nuts.

So while the pattern isn't all that complex and I think the instructions are clearly written it is inevitable that I made many mistakes that involved ripping the sucker out to my last safety line, so I could make sure it was properly fixed. I seemed to have issues with remembering to do 2 yarn overs. As it was I ended up with 2 mistakes that I didn't notice until I was a good 12 inches past it, and so I left them there because they weren't going to run, and I really didn't feel like doing all that work over again.

It was after one of my frogging sessions that I decided to take a timeout and test knit this cabled scarf. The Pattern is Christina by Adanna Smith and is available as a free download on Ravelry. The scarf was designed to go with the Evangeline fingerless mitten pattern by Michelle Szeghalmi that at the time was free but it now costs $3.00 CAD through the Ravelry store.

The pattern called for Plymouth Yarn Encore Worsted, but I've used it before and I don't really like how it wears long term, and that's probably due to it being 75% acrylic. Instead I used the BMFA Worsted Ware(discontinued) I'd picked up at the Barn Sale before Christmas. I didn't knit any farther than what in the picture and frogged it, because I wanted to make the gloves to go with it first, so I could just keep going on the scarf until I ran out of yarn. I was also toying with the idea of adding more of a border so the scarf would be wider.

I'd gotten to about here when it was pointed out to me by a friend's girlfriend that it looked like argyle. Up to this point I'd just been seeing it as pooling with a zigzagging heathered effect.

Yeah, observant that's me. I'm going to claim though that the reason I hadn't noticed it, was that I wasn't spending much time stretching it out and ogling it. I was too busy actually working on it...

So to celebrate finishing off the 1st skein of yarn, I decided to test knit mittens!


Ok, so I think it should be pretty clear by now that I am not a one project woman. I'm pretty good about getting distracted by other ideas and at any given time I have between 3 and 8 different things in progress. This ensures that my living space is perpetually cluttered with partially finished THINGS.

Anyway, these little guys are the Pointy Mittens by Adrienne Ku, last I checked she hadn't made the pattern available publicly yet, it's still in testing. I sent her my final feedback on it in the end of February/early March though, and haven't heard from her since so I don't know if maybe there were some issues that came up. Pattern not available as of 5/16/09

As for the pattern, it went fast though I think I need to do it again with better yarn. In my quest to burn my stash I used some mystery black yarn that I think was Caron Simply Soft, and I can tell it wont hold up long term, but I like the pattern.

After the mittens I decided it was time to really get serious and finish the scarf because if I didn't I'd still be working on it in May. I actually managed to stay focused long enough to pull it off too.





Ahh, what a nice evening it was, with a big pile of damp wool in my lap, and the painstaking task of gently weaving the wires along the edges.










And then stretching and pinning the sucker out, in revenge!

It turned out really pretty though, one of these days I'll have to nab a person to model it for me.