It’s 3:30pm. I’ve completed 5 bath puffs and washcloths, and have to crochet 5 soap saver sachets and a baby blanket by tomorrow morning. None of which are started yet. And I’m maybekindasorta high on pain killers (I’ve got strep AGAIN) and I’m also mildly allergic to them so I have to keep stopping to scratch. Woooooo…….
A- his wife gets fed up while knitting him socks!
I’m going to have a lot of knitting time on Sunday and need to finish the first sock of Yannick’s latest pair, or at least get past the heel, so I can have him try it on and make sure the length is good before I make the second one.
I had his basic sock recipe all figured out but I recently switched toe methods and don’t know if the new method has the same number of rows as the previous (figure-8 cast-on and increases for toe-up VS standard short-row toe-up toe with waste yarn. I like both methods but didn’t have waste yarn with me when I cast these on).
I think I’m at the heel point now…finally!
Ps: the yarn is regular sock yarn, Drops Fabel Superwash knit on 2.5mm Lace Addis magic-loop style. I bought this yarn deliberately for socks for Yannick on one of my first trips to the sadly-gone Ariadne yarn shop.
(This is getting posted after midnight but its for Wed).
I didn’t go to work today. Yesterday I visited my surgeon, and for the 4th time since April we played a little game I like to call “find the hernia(s)”. It involves him poking and prodding all parts of my belly while I either stand or lie down, neither position seeming to help in either finding the hernia, or hurting me less. I leave these visits feeling battered and bruised, and rather dejected.
I wasn’t able to sleep last night, so, tired, and still sore, I stayed home. (I picked a good day for that, cus Yannick only installed my winter tires tonight!)
I know I have projects on the go: my Linden only needs 1.25 sleeves and a border, the HABS cloth only needs a test knit of the medium size, etc…
But I wanted something else to work on. The crafty equivalent of comfort food. And I found it.
Meet Epic Granny 01.
I finally figured out what to do with my yarn ball!
The yarn ball is a big (6″ diameter) ball of yarn to which I tie on a new strand every time I finish a project, assuming there is yarn left over. I’ve been trying to think of a project for it, but nothing appealed to me. This is it!
I rewound the ball so the outer strand was the oldest yarn. I started knitting/crocheting again back in 2000, but the oldest yarn in the ball was a green placket neck sweater I’d knit for Jakob and finished just before he was born. I finished the project in May 2007, and my project list tells me that no other project was finished earlier in that May. Perfect!
I took a 4mm crochet hook, cus I know that I tend to work most often with fingering through worsted yarns, and cast on for a granny square.
I’m going to make squares about 12″ square. (This one is about that). When I have enough squares to make a blanket-sized rectangle I’m going to sew them together and to a sheet backing. After Yannick’s suggestion I’m going to embroider the backing with the dates of the projects contained within. So this blanket will say “May 2007-” whenever I finish it. Then I’ll start another one, and keep going.
The blankets will be a reminder of all the projects I’ve done. I’ve already had fun reminiscing about the different projects as their yarns come up.
I was worried about what the effect would be of all the different yarns together, but I really like it so far. It’s scrappy and colorful and reminds me of the scrap quilts Yannick’s grandmother had made.
So one day I will leave behind these scrappy blankets…my “epic” grannies. I call them epic because as long as I keep crafting, there will always be more scraps to attach, and this project will go on forever.
I like this much better. Tomorrow I get to duplicate stitch the CH. Woo hoo!
I’m so much happier with this!
I didn’t change anything in the chart except to add more rows above and below the text, to give the dishcloth (or at this size, towel, really) a finished shape of a square. It should be done in a day and then I’ll knit up the medium size, photograph the new samples and update the pattern.
Revisiting an old pattern tonight. I’ve wanted for a while to finally update this pattern with pics of the other 2 sizes, so I decided “Why not?”. Knitting along to The Sing Off…though I had to stop casting on during the Remix to Ignition, cus that was all kinds of funny/awesome.
UPDATE: I’ve finished the lower red section of the largest size, and either my gauge is off from when I originally designed it, or I had made a miscalculation somewhere. Either way, it’s coming out rectangular rather than square, as I’d intended. So I’m going to take the next few days and completely revamp the design so it matches how it looks in my head.
If you’ve already purchased the pattern I’ll be sending out an updated version, with the changes to the medium and large charts. (The small size remains the same).
If this post enticed you to buy the pattern, maybe hold off a few days for v.2. (Or buy it now and wait for the update).
Sorry to anyone this may have inconvenienced, and I will have a newer, better, stronger, faster version out ASAP.
My arms are in great shape after a week of winding.
I turned Veronik‘s 2 cones of St. Denis Nordique, last seen looking like this:
Into this:
That’s 2 swatches, and 40 mini cakes, ready for our November MKG meeting. I copied the gauge for a sample pattern using this yarn (Agathe, from the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of the St. Denis magazine), and knit 2 swatches using the required yarn and needles (with a moss stitch border). Our guild project will be to have everyone knit up the same swatches, and then to compare and see what a (presumably) vast array of actual swatch sizes we end up with, as a means to illustrating the importance of swatching. You know, that just because you use the yarn and needles called for in the pattern, doesn’t mean you’ll end up with anything near the pattern’s gauge.
Each guild member who attends will get a little cake of yarn and a copy of instructions that I printed earlier. It took me roughly 100 feet of yarn for my swatches, so I wound each cake to 120 feet to account for looser tensions eating more yarn. (My yarn meter works in feet, and I’m too lazy to do the math right now. Divide by 3 for yards).
My swatches will be used as examples by Veronik, who is bringing along her trusty steamer to show what a difference blocking makes. One swatch will be steamed and become the “after”, while the other will remain as-is, as the “before”, and silently simmer and fume.
I also wound up the yarn that Maaike wound for me so I can finish my Linden. I set up her ginormous wooden cake winder (because it winds ginormous cakes, not that it takes up a large desk footprint) and wound up (heh) with 2 BABs.
Yes, Maaike and I often speak in Three Letter Acronyms. These babies? They’re some Big A$$ Balls.
I didn’t mean to let so much time go by between posts, but the (Jewish) new year has been rather unkind around here. Starting the week between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, health and other issues around here went haywire.
There were some good moments, though, and some bust-a-gut, laughing-out-loud moments, like the night I went to check on the boys and walked in to find Henri asleep like this:
He stayed that way while I took the requisite pictures (a mommy’s right) and even slept through me cracking up.
This weekend brought these smiles, when we had a rare day all together as a family and spent some time at the park.
I’ve finished the back and both fronts of my Linden, and that bit up at the top is my first sleeve-in-progress. That was also all the yarn I had left, so I took a break while Maaike used her spinning wheel to spin up the single cakes into double-stranded skeins, and then hung them to dry. They’re currently in my basement, nice and dry, and I plan to spin them up tonight.
The break in Linden came at an opportune time, though, as my aunt had a hernia operation last Monday and I wanted to make something for her, so I’ve spent the last week knitting her a pair of cushy slippers. I’ve just got about 7 more rows on the cuff and weaving in a few ends to go, and I hope to finish that tonight.
I also hope to knit a swatch from one of these babies tonight too. Next month’s Montreal Knitting Guild meeting is going to be a swatching challenge, and Veronik Avery graciously donated these two cones of Nordique (in Carrot) for our use. I need to knit up a swatch to know how much yardage one would take, then wind off about 40 mini-cakes- one for each member at the meeting.
Luckily I’ve finished my studying for the night so I can devote the next few hours to knitting.
Last night I finished the left front of my Linden jacket. I remember reading on Ravelry that people said to not continue the cables in the collar shaping, so when I got to that part I was careful to pay attention, looking to see why so many made mention of the collar directions being difficult or to avoid the cable crossings within the shaping, etc.
End result? I have no idea why so many people had problems with it. The directions are all there, nothing is omitted or unsaid, if only you know how to read it properly.
Here’s how it works, and hopefully this will help others who haven’t knit this yet but wanted to, and maybe were nervous they wouldn’t “get it”.
After the majority of the front is complete, the st st portion of the front is decreased away then bound off completely, and the cable is worked on alone until it is long enough to reach up around the back of your neck. There are short rows worked 4 times to make the collar curve nicely over your shoulder and around your neck.
I don’t want to write out the actual directions here, because it’s part of pattern copyright. But I think I can be vague enough to not infringe, while still being helpful.
The cables are on a 16-row repeat, with the cable crossings themselves on rows 7 and 15.
The collar shaping instructs you to work 5 rows of short row shaping, then 7 rows in est pattern, and then to repeat these 12 rows 3 more times. Only the first 4 of the collar shaping rows are partial (short) rows, the 5th row (a ws row) has you working back across the complete row. The pattern also has you only start the collar shaping once you’ve done a cable cross row, either row 7 or 15, depending on the size you are knitting.
For my size, I started the collar shaping after working a row 7 cable row.
I think what’s throwing people off is that they are looking at the 12 rows you work 4 times, and are thinking it doesn’t work out within the cable crosses. What’s being overlooked is that you’re not working 12 COMPLETE rows in the cable. You can ignore the first 4, and only count the 5th row, because that’s the only one that is actually worked across the whole row.
Therefore:
Collar Shaping Row 1 – WS – doesn’t count with cable rows
Collar Shaping Row 2 – RS – doesn’t count with cable rows
Collar Shaping Row 3 – WS – doesn’t count with cable rows
Collar Shaping Row 4 – RS – doesn’t count with cable rows
Collar Shaping Row 5 – WS – counts as cable row 8 (or 16, but I’m working with my size here. You can adjust the row numbers for where you ended before “Shape Collar”).
Work 7 Rows in Est Patt:
Row 1 – RS – counts as cable row 9
Row 2 – WS – counts as cable row 10
Row 3 – RS – counts as cable row 11
Row 4 – WS – counts as cable row 12
Row 5 – RS – counts as cable row 13
Row 6 – WS – counts as cable row 14
Row 7 – RS – counts as cable row 15 – cable crossing row
And that’s the first repeat. Then you do it 3 more times.
How this works out is that you have some short row shaping (the first 4 partial rows), then 7 full rows of stockinette stitch, then a cable crossing row, 4 times total.
It’s actually really smart how the short-row shaping was worked into the cables without actually affecting them at all, and hopefully this will help anyone having trouble figuring it out.
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My mother-in-law called this weekend to say that we’d be celebrating Thanksgiving next Monday at my sister-in-law’s place, and wouldn’t it be nice if I were to surprise B with her long-awaited pillows? Hmmm. Subtle. So unfortunately I’m going to have to put Linden on partial hold while I work on the pillows. It’s frustrating because I’m seeing it progress so fast, but I think I’ve figured out a way to work on both, by bringing Linden as my “take-along-knitting” for the appointment I’ve got later this week, but keeping the pillows (and their accompanying “designing”) as my night-time knitting.
jeloca.com 