Crappity, Crap, Crap, Crappers

So, I finally got around to blocking the spiral shawl that I started last summer. I finished it sometime in the fall, but I was too lazy busy to block it until now.

All was fine and dandy, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself, until I stood back to admire it and whammo, I saw it. ARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH! A big fat mistake!

Can you see it?

How about now?

Can you see it now?

Yep, there it is.

(rollover the image for a lovely highlighted effect)

I knit across one of the segments instead of doing the yarnovers!

At first I thought, "Well, maybe it's not that noticeable." I had Uncool Guy look at the shawl to see if he could find the mistake. He didn't see it. I directed his attention to the general area. He still didn't see it. I told him which segment it was in. Nope. (The man must be blind.) I had to point it out to him. That was encouraging.

However, I then located Daughter#1 and challenged her to find the mistake. (sigh) She found it within 10 seconds. (She's got a touch of the persnickety in her, that girl.)

Maybe you just have to be a knitter to see it. Anyhow, it bugs me and now it's all I can see when I look at the shawl. I'm hoping I can fix it by cutting the yarn, picking out the one offending row in that section, and kitchenering it back together with some added YO's and K2tog's. Sounds fun, huh? I'll have to test that very carefully on a swatch. (big sigh) But not anytime soon -- I'm just not up for it.

What a big fat bummer. Anyone have any other ideas?

Cowgirls and some FOs

Do you know what these pictures mean?


Why, it's a semi-surprise cowgirl birthday party for Melissa, of course.

Here's a picture of the birthday girl herself, contemplating the number of candles on her cake. Wait a minute -- aren't there a few missing?

It was a fun celebration of "all things Melissa", with great margaritas to boot. I discovered that I suck at Pictionary (or, at least, I suck at drawing chicken- and baseball-related clues).

Daughter#1 managed to get a halfway decent picture of Sister#1 and me at the shindig. I'm the one without the cowgirl hat -- unlike Melissa and Sister#1, I'm not even a small part cowgirl.

For a laugh, go check out the funny picture of Daughter#1 caught eating wasabi peas at the bar.

In knitting news, I finished those Franklin socks for Melissa's book. I really like the yarn. It's not splitty at all, and it holds up great to lots of ripping (ask me how I know).

Here's a picture of the chutney color. It looks very different when knit at 72 sts (on the left) than it does at 60 sts (on the right). I really dig the diagonal flashing the yarn does when knit at 60 sts around. Too bad that size doesn't fit my foot. :(

I have also finished a pair of Trekking socks for my dad's birthday. These are color 62, done on US1 needles. I'm getting a little tired of Trekking yarn -- these are my 7th pair, I think. Yet, for some reason I just started another pair of Trekking socks for Uncool Guy. He has recently put holes in two pairs of his handknit socks (these and these), so I need to whip out some more for him.

Here's another FO that I need to mail off to its recipient. It's a pair of handwarmers/fingerless mitts for Sister-in-Law#1. This pattern is from Interweave Knits Fall 2005, in the Yarn Spotlight section. The yarn is Peruvian Collection Sierra Aran, used with US8 needles.

This is the fourth pair of these I have knit (see the others here). It's about time I tried a different pattern, huh? Well, last year Sister-in-Law#1 saw the ones I made for Mother-in-Law#1 and decided to knit herself a pair. However, she did not finish them before she decided to give up knitting (SHOCKING -- yes, I know), so I told her I would finish them for her.

I have a lot of other finished objects to show, but right now I need to get away from this computer and ride my bike. I can feel my butt expanding as I sit here...

Sugar Rush

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. I'm running on very little sleep today, since I spent a lot of last night trying to install my new blogger template (more on that later).

Uncool Guy has continued his customary Valentine's Day generosity and has showered me with flowers (tulips) and candy. These are the most wonderful fruit jellies from the Harbor Candy Shop in Ogunquit, Maine. Man, are they good. Plum is currently my favorite, but that could change because they are all just so lovely. If you are ever in Ogunquit, be sure to stop in at this store -- it is a chocolate/candy lover's haven.

In knitting news, here is the completed bowl that I showed you the other day. It came out pretty well for my first felted item, I think. I had a little problem with the edge though. I kept stopping the washing machine every 5 minutes or so to check on the progress of the felting, and I didn't notice until it was too late that part of the edge had started to curl in. By the time I noticed it, the edge was already too firmly attached in some places to unfold it. So I tried to curl the rest of the edge all the way around and felted it some more. It sort of worked, but the edge came out lumpier than I would have liked.

I based this bowl on the mancala pattern at Knitty, but I doubled the yarn and used bigger needles. Here are the specs:

Pattern:

I followed the instructions for the Large Bowl in the Mancala pattern at Knitty

Yarn:

Manos del Uruguay [100% wool],
color: 38 (dark purple), which I got from Windsor Button last year

Needles:

US 15 (used with the yarn doubled)

Gauge:

who knows?

Finished Size:

3" high by 6" wide

Comments:

I felted the crap out of this bowl and it came out pretty thick and sturdy. Interestingly, the felted fabric seems to have a sort of "boucle" surface. I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that this is a thick & thin yarn. I'm guessing that the thicker yarn sections turned into the boucle "bumps" when felted. Anyway, it's a cool effect.

I shaped the bowl by stretching it tightly over a glass bowl. The bowl had slight vertical ridges on the outside and a sharply defined bottom ridge. It's funny that I can kind of see the ridges in the dried bowl and I can definitely see an indent from the bottom ridge in the bottom of the bowl. So next time, I'll have to find a different bowl for the shaping and drying.

[Updated to add: It has been brought to my attention that the bowl in the mancala pattern has an attached i-cord edge. I did not make an i-cord edge on my bowl, because I, apparently, cannot follow directions. Anyhow, I bet if I had made the i-cord edge, it wouldn't have partially curled in like it did. I'll try that next time.]

Oh, and Daughter#1 made this little shrinky dink tiger for me the other day. Isn't he cute?

Back in Business

OK, I think the new template is completely installed now. I have a few more changes to make, but please let me know if anything looks funny. I'm going to bed.

Chaos

Warning: I am currently in the process of updating the template for this blog. Expect chaos, confusion, and general ugliness. You may want to just come back later...

A Book List and a Felting First

Well, I finally upgraded to the new Blogger, and I can see that it has caused some problems with my template. I'll be trying to fix those soon, so don't be surprised if this blog is a little flaky for a while. Also, I think it might be time for a blog design overhaul; it's looking a little cluttered around here.

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So what have I been up to lately? Well, I finished these sample socks in Trekking XXL, color 69, for Melissa's upcoming book.

I'll be knitting another pair of socks for her, as soon as the yarn arrives on Monday. It's going to be Webs' new sock yarn, Franklin, which I am excited to try.

Here's something I just made today. It's my very first felted object -- a bowl made out of doubled Manos del Uruguay. It's really thick so it will probably take forever to dry, but I'll post another pic when it's done. I hope it comes out well because I've got a skein of almost-solid red Manos that I think would make a cute bowl, or maybe a little box.

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Oh, and hey, check out what's in my personal knitting book library. I just created this list at Library Thing. If you have a list there, leave a link in the comments so I can check out what's in your library.

View my complete knitting book library here.

Discos and Fibonacci Stripes

Happy 2007, everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. I know I did. I was so busy there was not much time left for knitting, but I'm not complaining

We finally got a little snow on Dec 30th and Daughter#2 managed to scrape enough together to make this cute little snowman.

too cute

Unfortunately, he melted yesterday in the rain, but he did survive long enough to help us ring in the new year, which we did disco style. We set up a little discotheque at Chez Persnickety and had a dance extravaganza. In fact, I'm still sore from all the dancing.

I forgot to get a picture that night (too many Cosmopolitans?), but here's a picture the next morning, looking up at he ceiling of our "disco". Just imagine it with more balloons, strobe lights, and the disco ball going...

I just love to hang stuff from the ceiling.

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I did manage to get a few knitted items finished in December. One of them was a pair of socks that I made for myself with some leftover Yarn for Sox.

I usually hate stripes, but after reading an article on Fibonacci stripes in the Fall 2003 issue of Cast On I decided to give them a try. [The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers that starts with 0, 1, and then every following number is the sum of the two previous numbers. So the sequence is: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.]

Apparently, there are many, many ways you can make use of this sequence in knitting. I decided to use just two alternating colored stripes, but to let the sequence determine how many rows of each color to knit (up to a max of 5 rows). So my pattern went: 1 red, 1 blue, 2 red, 3 blue, 5 red, 1 blue, 1 red, 2 blue, 3 red, 5 blue (repeated).

Fibonacci-striped socks

To add even more interest, I used a two-color corrugated ribbing at the cuff, and I made one sock with a red cuff and toe and the other with a blue cuff and toe. Here are the specs:

Pattern:

my own

Yarn:

Accessories Unlimited Yarn for Sox [80% wool, 20% nylon],
color: Red Mix and Blue Jean (<1 skein of each)

Needles:

US 4?

Gauge:

4.25 sts/inch at ankle, 5 sts/inch on foot (hmmm)

Finished:

December 2006

Comments:

I loosely carried the yarn along the "seam" for the narrow stripes, but cut the yarn when I got to the widest stripes. There were still plenty of ends to weave in, believe me.
I used this technique to try to camouflage the color jogs at the end of the rounds. I've used this method successfully several times before, but it didn't work as well with such thick, rough yarn. Well, I think it still looks better than not doing anything, and it's at the back of my ankle and the bottom of the foot so it doesn't really matter.
I'm not a big fan of this yarn. I like that it is a worsted weight yarn that is made with some nylon content so it will wear well when made into socks, but it's just too rough and "au naturel" for me. It has bits of vegetation still in it that must be picked out (but not as much as a Noro yarn). It sure makes really thick socks though.

I like funky socks.

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I'm still working on updating my gallery. I'll let you know when it is up and running. I'm focusing mostly on the socks for now. It's taking me a long time because a) I am anal and want to have every project properly documented and b) I have knit a lot of socks.