29.89% completed. I feel like my training has paid off, and if I keep my focus on the goal, I might just make gold.
(p.s. did anyone else watch the women’s moguls? Talk about a down-to-the-last-minute competition! We almost had our first gold on Canadian soil too…)
(p.p.s. Henri says “Go Team Canada!”)
These are my standings at the end of day 1. 13.58% completed. I wonder if I can keep up this pace?
Here’s a photo I took Friday evening before the opening ceremonies. My equipment was assembled and I was ready to go!
I’m going to be knitting Franklin Habit’s Prairie Spring Tunic from the premiere Fall/Winter 2009 issue of St-Denis. I’m knitting it size 2, using the same colors as I needed it to be neutral- it is going to be a baby shower gift for my cousin’s wife. They have a chinchilla as a pet (and used to have my chinchilla too) so I will be adapting the white blips in the Fair Isle section to be chinchillas. If I have time I plan to knit a stuffed chinchilla toy as well. It is an Olympic challenge for me partly because of my time constraints, and partly because to date I find my Fair Isle colorwork sucks. I rock at intarsia, but I’m not comfortable with stranding the yarn without puckering or pulling.
The above is a video I made quite a while ago. Some of you will recognize the project in my hands – it’s Kate Gilbert’s Papa Bunny that I had made to send to a friend’s daughter in 2008.
This video shows what to do when a pattern asks for a common technique – but you don’t have the right equipment with you. The last row of the directions said to “thread the live sts onto the working yarn with a tapestry needle and pull tight to gather”. The only problem was that I didn’t have a tapestry needle with me. I didn’t like the idea of pulling the stitches open with my fingers so I could get the yarn through easily, as it would distort them. I came up with this idea instead. It might be familiar to some of you, or it might be new to you. Either way, it helped me and I hope it helps you too! If you’d prefer a photo tutorial (vs the video above) let me know in the comments and I’ll make it happen. 🙂
How many mistakes can one knitter make in one project? Let’s outline below.*
Remember Kayla’s Lace Cardigan? This is the project that my friend Julie picked as a birth gift for her daughter. Who will be turning 2 later this year. Anyhoo…
I’d started the cardi last year after translating it from Norwegian. Yeah. I got about 4″ into it when I found an error in the stitch counts that I couldn’t work out. I emailed the publisher and had to put it aside to work on something else. At some point I slipped it onto smaller needles so I could work other projects, and it languished in my knitting bin.
This year, once some health issues and timing and sleep and such were worked out, I knew that I needed to regain my focus and get back to work. It’s not fair that Kayla is almost 2. (Although lucky that I was always going to knit the size 2 size).
I’ve been working on it steadily for the last 3 weeks. The pattern is written by dimensions, not rows, as in “when the work reaches 10 cm work a decrease”, or “when work reaches 25 cm BO 2 sts at markers” and so on. I’d already worked out that my gauge gave me X rows per 2cm, so I had gone through my working copy and written down the row I should be at for each of the length notations.
Tuesday night I’d knew I’d have the whole body finished by the end of the night. The body is worked in one piece up to the armpits, then the right front, left front and back are worked separately. Early on in the evening I’d finished the right front, my first of the fronts. I eagerly laid it flat on my couch to measure to ensure I’d reached the required 44 cm.
It was 38 cm long. I couldn’t believe it. I measured from the bottom up to the first button hole which should have been 20 cm – it was. I remeasured the length – still 38 cm. What? Ok, I thought, it was my fault for measuring on a couch. I went and got a foam tile and my pins, laid it out and remeasured. Even with SEVERE blocking, there was no way it would reach 44 cm. I realized maybe I’d counted my gauge on the couch last year. Stupid me for not pinning it out! That will teach me. I patiently wrote out my current (supposed) gauge, then remeasured a section down towards the cast on and wrote down the number of rows per 10 cm that I got.
They were exactly the same. WTF??? How could I have the same gauge but not have it work out? I remeasured a 3rd time – spot on. Ok, enough of this. I’d had enough trying to figure out where I’d screwed up.
I would have to rip. I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong, but I assumed I must have fudged a row count somewhere.
The easiest spot to rip back to and know what row I was on was the armpit row, since it had the easy-to-find bind offs. (Remember, it’s an allover lace pattern). I yanked out the needle, ripped back to the armpits (over 60 rows) and painstakingly reinserted the needle into 197 tiny lace sts, decs and YOs. I worked one row to reorient my stitches properly on the needle and pick up any accidentally dropped stitches, and had enough. My eyes were going squinty, my head hurt, and it was late. I went to bed.
Wednesday I kept picking it up to work on, but suddenly something new was bothering me. The bottom of the cardigan, from the cast on upwards, is worked in an allover eyelet lace pattern. Then after about 4″ of work, you insert markers where the armpits will eventually be, and a few times over another 8″ you decrease at the markers “keeping pattern going across”. Well apparently I’d interpreted that rather loosely. On rows where the pattern fit into the remaining number of sts on either side of the markers, I’d worked lace. On rows where they didn’t quite fit, I’d worked stockinette stitch. For some reason it never occurred to me to work the lace across the markers. Anyhow, looking down at my work I now had these unsightly panels under each armpit, with a mix of half-formed lace and stocking stitch. Not pretty, and not what I wanted for Kayla when she finally got her sweater.
It was staring me in the face- I had to rip back. I called Maaike and told her of my plans to rip. She convinced me to wait until I saw her later that night and not to rip in the heat of the moment. I managed to wait, but she agreed with me- it just didn’t look good.
Yesterday I brought the knitting down to my ball winder. I knew I’d be ripping back the better part of a ball and a half of sock yarn, and wanted it properly wound, not just wrapped around the ball band. I ripped, and ripped, originally intending on stopping just before the first set of bind offs. That way I could at least salvage my original 4″ of work.
In the end I just ripped the whole thing out. I figured that I must have made some mistake somewhere to wind up with such a difference in total height, so I would be better off just starting over from scratch at this point.
This afternoon I put Henri down for his nap and made a glass of tea and settled down with recordings of So You Think You Can Dance (both US and Canada) and my knitting. I cleared my mind and glanced at the pattern to see how many hundreds of stitches I needed to re-cast on.
My translated notes read: CO 197 sts w/3mm needle
I grabbed the needle I’d been working with (an Aero) and started to cast on. Then I thought “hmm…I don’t remember owning a 3 mm Aero needle”. I pulled out the needle slip bags from my larger knitting bag. There were 3 in there from way back when I’d been in the swatching stages. There was an empty 2.75mm Aero bag, an empty 3mm Addi Turbo bag, and a full 3.25mm Addi Turbo bag.
Oh crap.
Anyone want to guess what screwed up my knitting? Did you pick it up already? I mentioned it way up there…
I’d started the cardi last year after translating it from Norwegian. Yeah. I got about 4″ into it when I found an error in the stitch counts that I couldn’t work out. I emailed the publisher and had to put it aside to work on something else. At some point I slipped it onto smaller needles so I could work other projects, and it languished in my knitting bin.I can’t believe it. I never put it back on the proper needles. My gauge, that I’d remeasured in the bottom 5″, was from my original knitting. So it was spot-on. Everything after that, everything I’d knit in the last 3 weeks had all been done on the 2.75mm Aero that I’d used as a stitch holder so I could use my 3mm for other projects. Had I left myself a note, had I even looked at my needle properly, I would have switched and by now had been done the entire body and be at least halfway through the sleeves. Had I even looked before ripping I could have ripped back to that 4″ point to at least save that much reknitting.
Sigh. I didn’t look. I didn’t notice. And now I’ve got an entire project to start over. At least I can restart my “start date” in Ravelry.
….grumble grumble….
*Yes, I’m ignoring the loooong delay in posts, and all the missing posts on the boys and knitting in the last 2? months. They’ll come when they come- if I didn’t get this post up I would just not bother. To make up for it, here’s a mosiac of my boys, both at 8 months. Can you tell who is who?
Ever since he’s been in his big bed, Jakob has been asking for pillows. I won’t let him use our regular pillows because I find them too thick or fluffy for him, and my searches at local stores for “safe” pillows found only one- a pillow marketed for infants, of all things, that is just as fluffy as our pillows, and has a tag, inside the packaging only, stating that it is for decorative purposes only. Sheesh!
I decided to make my own pillows for him. I had some white fabric already, and bought a bag of quilt batting for flat stuffing. I wanted to make pillowcases and looked for fabric with fish on it, ‘cus that is his favorite thing.
I found a cute panel that had some fish, and planned to cut it up. I went back and found a nice rainbow print for the back of the pillows. I prewashed all the fabrics in case they would bias or shrink, and I was good to go.
Before Henri was born I had brought my old sewing machine (like, 40-50 years old) to be repaired and cleaned, and this past weekend I had the woman who had done the embroidery on Jakob’s blanket (remember?) come over and do a mini lesson with me, teaching me the basics of making a pillow case.
These are the pillows I made. They are completely sealed and while the finishing isn’t my best, it was a learning experience and they will get the job done.
My only regret is that they are slightly smaller than I’d wanted, as I’d forgotten to include a seam allowance in the measurements. I’d only realized this after cutting the pillowcase fabric, so they are a little too small for the pillowcases. Not a big deal, and they still fit Jakob’s head perfectly.
This is the first pillowcase, using the section of the panel with the duck in the boat.
…and the back with the rainbow lining.
This is the second, using the area with the worm, fish, clam and shrimp.
…and the back of the second pillow. Did you notice I made them each open on opposite sides?
When I was done I had quite a bit of fabric left over. There were 2 cute areas of the original panel left (the sun and the fish with glasses), as well as all the cute checkerboard trim (that I had wanted to use for backing but they don’t make that as an all-over print). I decided to take advantage of being in a sewing mood, dust off my memories of vague quilt-making from high school, and make 2 little quilted panels as mini throw pillows. I used some scrap black for the corner squares.
These are the throws before quilting.
These are the throws after. I had planned on hand-quilting them to get the stitching perfectly outlining the graphics. Then I remembered I still want to knit sometime, ever, and not carry around a little quilt square to hand quilt when I could find spare time. So I zipped through it on the machine instead. My lines don’t line up, but I like the free-form look.
I quilted the sun block by going around the spokes and center of the sun, and then for the border I quilted the black squares only.
For this one I quilted (very haphazardly!) around the fish, and for the border I did the checkered areas instead of the black squares like before.
Ok, so they look more like hot-pads then throw pillows. Whatever- he can use them for whatever he wants. I just didn’t want to waste the cute images.
At least the pillows were successful- he’s been sleeping with them for the last few nights, and in the morning his head is still on them. Yay! I like seeing my handmade stuff actually being used!
I know I said I couldn’t get on the computer at home until after the weekend, but I HAD to take advantage of the time my in-laws are out at dinner to hop on and post a quick photo. I’m so proud and I just had to share it!
Nope, it’s not knitting. Jakob came home from daycare today with a bag full of craft projects he’d made for us!!! I feel like bursting! I know he obviously had help, and I know it’s just scribbles and glue, but this is the first crafty thing he’s ever done that I haven’t been a part of…and I’m touched.
…Mondays in my house are for knitting baby hats.
Last Sunday night I decided that I wanted to knit something girly. We still don’t know the sex of the baby, and everything I’ve knit so far has been unisex, on purpose. But what if we have a little girl? I was really struck with the idea of having something frilly and feminine that I made for her. I knew just the project- a lacy little bonnet from a book I already owned.
As soon as I’d grafted the toe on my father-in-law’s first sock I ran upstairs to my office to find the book, because I knew there was no way I was doing anything else the next day but knitting a girly hat. Only- I couldn’t find the book. I’ll spare you the recap of my repeated mad dashes through the house, but suffice it to say that after searching my office 10 times, the basement 6 times, and various other rooms in the house 5 times each, I finally found the book, 2 minutes before I collapsed into bed, in the office of all places.
My original yarn choice was a vintage ball from my grandmother’s stash. I liked the idea of my grandmother’s yarn adorning my (possible) daughter. I wound and measured a few options but single, unmatched ball only had 120-140 yards, and the pattern called for about 240 yards. I had to give up on a wool blend and dove into my cotton bin. That’s where I found this Tahki Cotton Classic yarn that I’d won in a blog contest a few years ago. I had 2 full skeins, each had about 108 yards. I also had a few other colors, so I knew that if I ran short at the very end, I could bind off with another color of the same yarn. Perfect!
I didn’t want to use ribbon ties like the original pattern, so I went through Ravelry looking for cute knitted flowers. I chose these flowers from a free online pattern and deliberately left enough yarn lengths for the tails so that I could work a twisted cord from them without having to reattach yarn (and have a possible weak point). I made the twisted cords about 7″ long so they would be long enough to tie under baby’s chin but still be shorter than the 12″ safety standards for cords and babies.
Strangely enough, even with working the flowers and ties with the main yarn, I only used 3/4 of 1 skein. I have no idea how that happened.
I didn’t block it because it’s 100% cotton and is going to adapt to the baby’s head anyways, so why bother. I’ll wash it with the other handknits shortly before the baby’s birth, and if we have a boy then this will go in the gift pile. Someone will have a girl, someday.
I love the flower on the back of the bonnet- too cute!
Pattern: Lacy Bonnet by Erika Knight (Ravelry link), from Knitting for Two. I used Flowers in Bloom by Alison Reilly (Ravelry link) for the flowers.
Size: one size. My guess is about 6 months, which will put this at a perfect cotton summer bonnet (if we have a girl)
Yarn: Tahki Cotton Classic, 100% mercerized cotton, about 3/4 of a ball.
Needles: 3.75mm and 3.5mm
Dates: November 10 2008 – this took under 4 hours including finishing
Modifications: I added the twisted cord ties with the flowers on the ends, instead of using a ribbon.
As usual you can find my finished (and unfinished!) projects in my “projects” page by clicking the tab up at the top of every page on my blog, and I also have this project in my Ravelry notebook here for the hat, and here for the flowers.
Look- I made a hat!
Jakob is officially in daycare. Last Monday was his first day, and while there are still some kinks to be worked out as he gets used to them and they get used to him, all-in-all it has gone very well. Some mornings he runs into the class before realizing he’s not with me and starting to cry, and other times he cries and clings and reaches out so pitifully when the teacher manages to pull him away, that my heart hurts for a few seconds. When I pick him up he’s quick to adapt, crying at first as he runs to me, but the second he’s in my arms he turns on the charm, grinning and waving good-bye and blowing kisses to everyone around. He’s also been more cuddly than usual but I would never complain about that!
At his “school” there are cubbies for each kid where the parents leave changes of clothes, outdoor shoes, sippy cups, etc. I need to leave a hat for him. It occurred to me that I didn’t have a hat for him! Sure, he’s still got some baseball-style caps that fit him, plus that fisherman’s looking thing, but all his “Winter” hats he grew out of last year. So last Monday I went to spend some knitting time at Maaike’s and swatched for a simple ribbed hat.
Note to self: listen to Ann Budd. Ann Budd knows from what she speaks.
See, I’m a cocky knitter. Wait-that came out wrong. What I mean is, I’m adventurous. I’m bold. I’m daring. I’m not afraid of trying new things. I’m also not afraid of whipping up a pattern if it will be faster than trying to find what I want online or in print. So when I decided to knit Jakob a hat I didn’t go looking in Ravelry or in my vast collection of patterns to see what I could find. Instead I just swatched, made a plan, and cast on.
Let’s forget the fact that my first attempt had too many stitches cast on because I’d forgotten how rediculously stretchy a simple 2×2 rib is. I remeasured, restarted, and fixed the problem. I even tried the new version on him when it was about 2″ high, to make sure of the fit. He kept pulling it off and making angry faces at me, but the width was good, so I settled down to concentrate on the length.
This is where I should have listened to Ann Budd. A quick glance at the hat page in A Knitter’s Handy Pattern Guide (or whatever it is called) showed that for my gauge, and for a hat of approximately the same size, for a toddler of 18-24 months, I needed to knit until the hat was 7″ long, and then I could begin the crown shaping. However, my kinda-careful measuring of Jakob’s head told me that from the ears I only needed 4″ to get to the top of his head. So why would I knit an extra 3″? Especially in worsted-weight, mindless 2×2 rib?
Turns out, I should have. My hat is waaaaay too short on Jakob. I’d knit a 2″-ish ribbed cuff, then a double turning row, then knit until the hat was 4″ long. I did some funky decreases for the crown then gathered the last 8 sts and secured.
You can see here that the hat just doesn’t fit. This photo was taken with the brim folded down, and it is still too short. He also still hates it, and it took a lot of squirming, crying and trying to keep his hand away from pulling it off to even get this one crappy photo.
My original title for this post when I started typing up the draft last week was “an (un)finished hat”, because I had planned on cutting off the turning rows and brim, knitting downwards to get the extra 3″, then redoing the brim. I’ve since decided not to. Jakob really hates the hat. He won’t tolerate it on his head, and I’m not going to subject myself to knitting any more navy rib if he won’t end up wearing it. Instead it will go to the new baby, and if the baby is a girl then I’ll embroider some flowers on it or something.
I’m pretty sure it will fit the baby.
Pattern: Baby’s Blue Ribbed Hat, my own design
Size: Whatever you get with 108 sts. Around 18 months, but the ribs pull it in to fit a smaller baby, and stretch out for a custom fit.
Yarn: Patons Decor in Rich Country Blue, about 3/4 of a ball.
Needles: 3.5mm
Dates: November 3 – 4 2008
Modifications: Um…everything, since there was no pattern to begin with. I did a double turning row to give the fold room to fit up around the thick ribbing. I also did a custom arrangement of crown decreases to get a star-type shape on top.
As usual you can find my finished (and unfinished!) projects in my “projects” page by clicking the tab up at the top of every page on my blog, and I also have this project in my Ravelry notebook here.
Pattern: Pinwheel Baby Blanket by Genia Planck (Ravelry project page), available for free from the Knitlist’s website here.
Size: With this blanket you start at *k1, yo, rep around and keep adding (k2, yo, rep, then k3, yo, rep, etc). I kept going until I had (I believe) 47 sts between YOs, which would be 480 sts on the needles. I didn’t want a huge blanket for the crib, I wanted something I could wrap the baby in or tuck over the stroller without having too much excess. I keep forgetting to measure it, though, to know how wide it actually is. (I also haven’t blocked it, and don’t plan on it).
Yarn: Bernat Softee Baby in White, 1 ball. I ran out of yarn at the last eyelet row before the border, so while you can’t actually tell, the last 2 rows and the border itself are all knit with the same yarn in the White Sparkle colorway (white with a silver thread wrapped around it).
Needles: 5 mm
Dates: July 24 – September 17 2008 (until I got close to the end, this was my take anywhere/mindless knitting project, so I didn’t often work on it at home).
Modifications: 2 major ones.
First I added the eyelet roundss. After seeing Tara’s Pinwheel Blanket I remembered how badly I’d wanted to knit one, and I decided to knit one for the new baby. I couldn’t knit it plain, however, as I’d knit Jakob a Debbie Bliss Alphabet Blanket (Rav link) and I wanted to have something that looked at least somewhat as impressive as all those eyelet letters. I decided on the eyelet rounds and at first I had planned on putting them in on every doubled row. So, for example, when it was time for an eyelet row, instead of working the pattern row, then one row plain, I worked the pattern row, then one row of *k2tog, yo, rep across. Then I jumped back into the pattern on the next row. The doubled row theory had me placing them in the plain rounds after the “k2, yo” row, then the “k4, yo” row, then the “k8, yo” row, and so on. However, I quickly realized that once I got to “k16, yo” my next doubled row would be “k32, yo” and that would leave a large expanse of stockinette stitch without any eyelets. Also, I didn’t plan on knitting enough more rounds to be able to go on to “k64, yo” or further. I decided to work backwards instead, and after completing the “k16, yo” row, I worked until 8 more rounds had been done, threw in the eyelets, then did 4 more rounds, then the eyelets, then 2 more, then the last row of eyelets before the border. I’d already calculated how wide I wanted the blanket, and thus how many sts I would have, so I was able to plan it out that accurately.
My other modification was for the border. I knew from the beginning that I’d wanted something that went with the circles and spiral and eyelets, without being too severe (like a garter or moss band, much as I like those) or too fussy (like a sudden lace triangular border, or something). I knew I had to have seen something like what I was looking for, and sure enough I even had it in my stash- Lucy Neatby’s Faroese Flower Shawl pattern (Rav link). The border was fun and easy to adapt to this blanket, and gave me the exact look I was going for, plus is something fun for baby to stick its fingers through later.
Oh, and even though this was knit, instead of CO 10 sts and going from there, and tightening the center later, I used the Magic Adjustable Ring technique from Crochet Me and got a perfect, round center start.
Notes: I’m really, really pleased with how this project turned out. It was a fun chance to “spruce up” an existing pattern with my own ideas and I’m really happy with the end result.
As usual you can find my finished (and unfinished!) projects in my “projects” page by clicking the tab up at the top of every page on my blog, and I also have this project in my Ravelry notebook here.
jeloca.com 