Other knitting things...

My orange sweater is now blocked. It's sitting on the dryer in the laundry room, which will make D happy, because it is no longer sitting on his humidor in the living room.

I wet-blocked it. Actually, I wet-block everything....I've had better luck with that than anything else. And, I actually really like the smell of wet wool....weird, yes, I know.


I also have to mend my only pair of hand-knitted socks.
I love my Koigu socks. They were the first pair of socks that I made,(and the only pair that I've finished) and the heels are wearing out. *Sob*

Ok, so that may be because I wear them constantly. Or because I didn't use that reinforcement yarn/thread stuff on the heels. Or, possibly, because I have the roughest heels on the planet.

Luckily, I have a lot of extra yarn left, so I can darn it up, like I did on the other one.






Yup...I know how to darn a sock...one of those things I thought I would never do, but hey....it's Koigu....I am NOT throwing these out.

If he had thumbs...

...Spencer would give my green sweater two thumbs up for comfiness. I've started the neckline/armhole shaping, and I've only made one mistake. I couldn't figure out where, so instead of ripping back, and potentially messing it up even more, I added an extra k2tog at the neckline (on a WS row where it didn't call for one.) It'll be hidden under the collar...and no one will be able to tell.

Getting closer....

It's getting so that I hardly have to look at the pattern....whoo hoo!!!

I hate my insomnia...

I am an insomniac. It hits me every so often...like this week. I don't think I fell asleep much before 2 am most nights. (Yawn.) It really takes a toll on me, and today it really caught up with me. When O went down for her nap, I laid down beside her, and I think I may have fallen asleep before she did.

So, hopefully, I can get some more done on my sweater. I'm hoping to wear it to the next Knitter's Guild meeting.

Green sweater update

I did about 16 rows yesterday....with minimal mistakes to rip.

Today, I did one row. Arggh.

But I did actually exercise two (TWO!) whole days in a row. So...there's some trade-offs....

Pictures! Pictures!

It's been a while since I've posted some pictures...I was scared of the new camera. It really wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. I'm not too big on new technology...that's my husband's realm. He's determined to drag me (kicking and screaming) into the 21st century. He loveslovesloves anything new and techy. He just set up our new surround sound system, so that our HDTV channels are in crystal-clear perfection. He still shudders at my 'stereo' that I had when he met me. It was a portable CD player hooked up to $15 computer speakers. Ahh...the power that baby had....


So...anyways...there was a point to all that....oh yeah....the camera is cool, because now I can show what I've been working on. Like my Orange Sweater... it's basically a wool t-shirt. Boat neck...darts in the front and back....short row shaping in the bust area (so that looks like a dart too). The sweater is loosely based on
Grumperina's Picovili. Except, I made some changes. Like using wool instead of cotton. I wanted a winter sweater, to wear under jackets, so I wanted something short-ish sleeved, so I don't overheat. So, I had to change the raglan shaping to accomodate sleeves. Then, I had to experiment with the amount of shaping in the front and back...since cotton stretches way more than wool, I cut the amount of decreases/increases in half. And I lengthened it a bit. I like my shirts to be twelve inches from the underarm seam to the finished length...I'm kind of long in the body, and I don't like my stomach showing when I wear medium-rise pants. Now I have to block it.
And take my sweater shaver to it. I used Knitpicks Merino Style, and although I am kind of rough with things as I work on them (they have to survive being trucked around in my old University bookbag), this thing is looking like I've had it for years...I tried to capture it in all its unblocked, pilly glory...and it probably didn't help that I ripped out the same part twice...pretty hard on the yarn. Oh well...it's done, and I'm happy.


So...here's my other sweater...the green sweater coat. (I'm so original with the names.) Here's the back...all done, and the first half of the left front. Oh...the cables! And the twists! And the bobbles!
I've gotten a feel for the pattern, and I'm zooming along. Now if only I would stop admiring the bloody thing, I'd get more done....

I apologize for the craptacular colouring of the pictures...this is what you get from me taking pictures at night.

My Orange Sweater is Done!!

Yippee!!! I just have to block it, and it's completely finished! All the yarn tails are woven in (although, there weren't that many since I did the felted join when starting a new ball of yarn.)

We got a new digital camera, so I'm going to have to figure it out tomorrow, and take some pictures.

I'm back working on my green sweater coat. I only had to rip back one section tonight. I'm one of those people that tries to unravel stitches down to the mistake and fix it from there, instead of ripping out rows. Easy on stockinette...a little more challenging on cables. But I got it fixed. A third hand would have been helpful. I'm on my third sixteen-row pattern repeat on the left front. Then I get to do it all over again for the right front. I'm actually looking forward to doing the sleeves. Maybe I'll reward myself with a sleeve after getting the left front done. The sleeves are just 3x3 rib...my kind of mindlessness.

One sleeve down...

One to go. I'd be done by now if I didn't have to keep ripping the last few rows back I don't know how many times (I kept miscalculating how much the remaining yarn bit would knit up). After sewing the hem in place, I have about ten inches left from my Left Sleeve Ball. It's not elbow length, as I hoped, but more of a middle-of-my-arm short sleeve. It'll be good for spring. And under jackets.

I'm in...

So, I bit the bullet and joined the Knitting Olympics. There's only fifteen other Kims, but I'm the only one with a lower case K. I'm going to attempt to do the Gardener cardigan from Garnstudio...nothing like a little performance under pressure. But I randomly clicked on some other people's proposed projects, and WOW! ambitious. I was inspired.

Still no new sweater....

I am totally rethinking that whole Knitting Olympics thing. But, I'm currently not working on a deadline, and as a procrastinator to the bone...there's nothing like a looming deadline to get you motivated. I was thinking of making one of my Garnstudio cardigans as my project, but since EVERYTHING has to be done (finishing included), sixteen days may be stretching it. Still have time to think about it.

So, since Laura tagged everyone with the Four Things meme, that's what today's post is all about.

Four Jobs You Have Had In Your Life

1. Cook at a gas station/restaurant. (Oh, the food poisoning I probably caused....)
2. Museum tour guide.
3. Salesperson at a high-end menswear shop.
4. Salesperson/marketing at a commercial art gallery.

Movies You Could Watch Over and Over

1. The Sound of Music.
2. Scent of a Woman. (That tango scene....(sigh)...makes me want to learn to dance.)
3. What Dreams May Come. (Absolutely beautiful.)
4. Big Night. (Louis Prima music and amazing food....what could be better)

Places You Have Lived

1. Saskatoon, SK, Canada (first place I lived when I moved away from home.)
2. Calgary, AB, Canada (five minutes from downtown....that was nice.)
3. Pemberton, BC, Canada (30 minutes north of Whistler.)
4. Squamish, BC, Canada (30 minutes south of Whistler.)

TV Shows You Love to Watch

1. Anything Law and Order.
2. What Not to Wear.
3. The Monday night line-up on UPN.
4. Anything CSI.

Places You Have Been on Vacation

1. San Francisco, CA.
2. Scottsdale, AZ.
3. Ottawa, ON.
4. St. Louis, MO. Dang....I need to travel more. And get off the continent.

Websites You Visit Daily

1. See list on the right.
2. Hotmail.
3. Yahoo.
4. Elann.

Favorite Foods

1. Chocolate anything....especially dark.
2. Coffee....but it has to be good coffee...and strong. Nothing weak, or sitting on the burner forever....and nothing that comes out of a economy-sized can.
3. Fish tacos.
4. Fresh, warm bread. (I could never, ever do the Atkins' diet.)

I'm not tagging anyone.....but if you want to do this....that would be cool.

Happy Birthday to my Dad! He's 71 today!

Tired...very tired...

TMO woke up last night at about 1:30 from a nightmare. She was frantically asking for some tape (I know...very strange...but whenever she gets a tear on a page in one of her books, that's how I fix it, so she thinks that tape is the miracle cure-all). She calmed down when I got her a roll of masking tape from the office. After she completely calmed down, she informed me that a pony was 'broken' and needed tape. And then I told her that I would stay with her until she fell asleep. Some time around 4:30, I made it into my own bed. Yup...she was up until then. I'm scared for what we may be in for as she gets older...as a child, I had horrific nightmares and sleepwalked. My husband D sleepwalked also. He was one of those who would not only ramble about the house, but actually leave the house. Yikes...

Then, after being up most of the night, she promptly bounced out of bed at 8 am.

She is such a morning person, it kills me.

I am STILL working on my orange sweater. I'm sewing down the picot edges. I put the neck edge on a spare piece of yarn, and that was just torture to dig out the live stitch, and sew it. For the hem, I left it on the circ, and it was much easier. So I think I'm going to put the remaining neck stitches back on the needle. Then, I just have the sleeves to work, and I'm done. I'm just going to do elbow-length sleeves because:

1. I don't have any sweaters like that.
2. I'm seriously running out of yarn.

Hopefully, I'll be finished tomorrow. I'm really getting tired of working on this thing.

In lieu of one of my finished objects...

...I present to you The Totally Acrylic Shrug. I used the Girlfriend Shrug pattern from Knit and Tonic. I also made the Short Snort Tank to go with it (also found on the site). I still have some finishing things to do on it. I am not a finisher. Well, I am not a timely finisher. I'll do up a sweater, and then it'll linger with un-woven in yarn tails...or I have to pick up and knit a ribbed band. So anyways...the details on this... I used Red Heart Lustresheen. One hundred per cent acrylic. I am not usually a big acrylic fan...since it tends to pill if you look at it the wrong way, but this was surprisingly un-acrylic-y. I was even knitting with my yarn-store-owning friend, and she was surprised that it was acrylic. The pattern calls for sock yarn. At the local Ben Franklin's, they didn't have anything at that time that really called to me...so I started looking for sport weight. And I found the Lustresheen, hiding in the off-to-the-side nether region of the yarn section. The yarn version of the wrong side of the tracks, with its other acrylic cousins. But the colour was so pretty...a variegated turquoise/denim blue/light blue, and it matched the turquoise of the tank top. Plus, I didn't want to spend a huge amount of money on something that she may not wear too much.


So...since this is a sport weight yarn, I had to tinker with the number to cast on and such. Plus, it was written to be knit flat, and seamed up after...and I changed it to knitting in the round.

I also accomplished something else yesterday...O got her first 'real' haircut. Where hair from all parts of her head get cut (her last haircut, which was about two years ago, I just cut her some bangs. It took 45 minutes, and I hated how it looked.) But she did really well....she stood on her bench at the dining room table, coloured, and I proceeded to cut. Since she's never had a real haircut, it was all different lengths, and looking really scraggly. She lost quite a bit of length off the back, but now at least when it grows out more, it'll all be even. I even managed to cut in some long layers, so that it would curl up more. And, amazingly, it worked!


She was so done with this sweater....

Sunday again...

This week has just flown by, and I've been a total Blog Slacker. Like I've mentioned before, the more I sit in front of the computer, the less I do. Here's a handy little graph to illustrate my point. It's based on your standard Economics Supply and Demand Theory. I have a Commerce degree, so I've had to sit through my fair share of boring, awful Econ classes. I hated Econ. All of my notes looked a lot like this...scrawly writing.... lopsided diagrams...most of which were not really labelled. In my defence, it was at 8:30 in the morning. Not my finest hour. In contrast, I sat next to my best friend Laurie, who was/is a total morning person. She used a ruler to draw her graphs. Different coloured pens for labelling. And definitely never fell asleep in class.

But I digress...

So, I've actually been working on stuff.... my orange sweater that I started an eon ago...that I had to rip the same six inches back TWICE (!)....is almost done. I've also worked on some little outfits for O...oh, I love this age...I can dress her in whatever I want, and she can't do anything about it. Mwahahaha....I love it.

So, we're all better now...

TMO has one amazing recovery system...she was sick all day Wednesday...fever of 102, sniffly nose, and just really lethargic. She fell asleep around 7:30 pm, slept all night, and by Thursday morning, she was completely fine. I warded off a cold by taking a ton of vitamin C...so let's cross our fingers that it stays that way.

So, this afternoon, I was doing my normal stuff around the house while O had her nap, and the phone rang. It was my husband, D...

"Hey..hon, have you used the American Express lately?"

"Yeah...I put $13 on it the other day." (Wow...am I a big spender or what...)

"Oh...so you haven't made any big purchases? Like $3000 worth of stuff?"

"Um....NO.....I think I'd remember that."

Yup...somehow, somebody got ahold of D's credit card number and has gone shopping...good thing he's a little anal about checking the balances [we had a little snafu a few years ago where some data entry dude at a car insurance company transposed some bank account numbers and our chequing account was tapped]. Good thing we have fraud protection on all our accounts.

Hmmm...I wonder what $3000 worth of yarn would look like? ;)

I think I may have jinxed it...

You know how I wrote about this is the first birthday O isn't sick...well...she is now....poor girl...fever, sniffly nose, no energy...but she's still in a great mood. So I may not be writing for a couple of days. Just sitting on the couch with my sick little one, taking Vitamin C like they're Pez candies, trying not to get sick myself.

Great day had by all...

This was the first year O actually had an awesome birthday. Her first....she was sick with the worst head cold she's ever had (we had to cancel the party at the last minute and reschedule the next weekend). Her second...we were ten minutes away from the Seattle Aquarium when she got car sick and threw up all over herself. Poor girl...So this year, she made up for the last two. D took the afternoon off work, and we went to the Space Needle. We were in Seattle last Saturday, and she was just awestruck by it. She lovedlovedloved the elevator ride up...she kept proclaiming to the other passengers, "Look at me!!! I'm flying!!" We walked around the observation level about ten times. She could have gone in circles all afternoon, but we decided to check out the Pacific Science Centre. It's been a few years since we've been there (pre-child...so that would be over three years). We spent about two hours there. It is such a neat place, and has so many hands-on things to do. She was fascinated with the bug display. The cockroaches...the spiders...the maggots....and especially the seven-foot-long animatronic scorpion ("Hi scorpion....HI....HI....[waving madly]...See! Look! A scorpion!"). We finally dragged her past the scorpion to go into the Butterfly House, which is what I really wanted to see (not being much of a fan of cockroaches and maggots and all). Then we drove home, went to the grocery store, and she got to pick out her cake. (She'd been looking for and asking for her "pink cake" since before breakfast).

It took a long time for her to fall asleep tonight...she was telling all of her stuffed animals about her day...but she didn't ask for her Mimi once...maybe, maybe, we have it beat.

Happy Birthday TMO!!!

Today she is three years old!!! How time flies!

Finished another scarf

Yep...I finished my burnt orange Touch Me scarf. All I have to do is felt it down. You see...my knitting guild meets tomorrow night, and there's nothing like having Show and Tell to get you finishing up stuff. Plus...that whole New Years' resolution thing. Haven't broken them yet. I think this may be a personal best....usually I just abandon them on 3 January...I've made it to the fifth, and haven't cast on anything new. Even though it is killing me not to. And really...I can write in sentences...but tonight I'm in a sentence-fragment mood.

So...back to the scarf. It's in a lacy pattern I found on the Free Patterns section on Knitter's Review. I love me some free patterns. This one is gorgeous...it's from Stitchin Girl. Just look on the left hand side...it's the Dayflower Scarf in the Free Patterns section. It's a pretty easy pattern, once you get going. I did really well, except for the last repeat...for some reason, I had a lot of extra stitches that magically appeared for no reason. I would even rip back, redo, and it would still be there...so I added some extra SSKs in there...figuring, 'Hey....it's going to be felted...', and really, by that point...I just wanted to finish.

Twelve more rows down...

It doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a bulky knit, so twelve rows is actually about two inches. I didn't do a whole lot of knitting today. I've actually been doing stuff around the house (!) this week. You know...fun stuff...like cleaning the bathrooms. And organizing the ToysRUs that is currently residing in our living room. So I got a late start on nightly knitting. To top it off, we've decided to finally break O of her nasty sleep-time pacifier habit....or as she lovingly refers to it, her 'Mimi'. Yes, I know...this would have been soooo much easier to do back when she was, oh....six months old....(slapping back of hand as I write). But when it calmed her down so quickly, it was hard to give that up. So, tonight, for about an hour, all you could hear was, 'Mommy.....my pink Mimi, please'. But, she fell asleep without it. A few more nights, and we should have this beat. Cross your fingers....

The horror...the horror...

So this is the jacket that I am currently working on. I'm making it out of Gjestal Naturgarn from Elann in a dark loden green. I am finished the back, which was a snap...thirty-one and a half inches of p3/k3 rib. Now, I'm working on the front. With the cables. And the twists. And the bobbles. And four different blocks of patterns; two have a six-row repeat, and the other two have a sixteen-row repeat.

I am so much a plain knitter. Seventeen miles of stockinette? Bring it on. I am so there. In the round? Even better.

I knit at night, when everyone else has gone to bed. If you haven't noticed the times at which I mainly post....I'm pretty much a night person. I like to wind down...crank out a few inches of something, and call it a night. After about six rows of the cables, twists, bobbles, and flipping the page to see if I knit one through the back of the loop and then purl, or purl first and then knit one through the back of the loop, my mind is shot. Ack. Makes my head hurt.