if she only knew

A quote: Mom, why are you taking pictures of your knitting?

(It was not pretty. Brainfart Raglan living up to her name. More ripping. More laddering. Back on track.)

Quote continued: You should start one of those freaky blogs you're always reading. You've got more than enough stuff for it.

heehee. Here she is, with two of her brothers, dancing in last night's hail storm with a bowl on her head.












TGIF, by gum.

I can't stop

I can't tell you how glad I am that I'm not George Allen.

well, blow me down

twice in one day??? Nah.

But at this moment I am watching a bit of The Thief and the Cobbler with my kids, and I am once again struck that I need to tell anyone who loves art and design and attention to detail and humor and classic films for children -- that's the thing, here, is respect for children AND the grownups who love them -- that you must see this movie, with or without your kids.

two steps forward, two steps back

It's a very good thing I'm a process knitter. Have I already said that somewhere here? I've been thinking it a lot lately. I'm also beginning to think of the linebacker raglan as the Brainfart Raglan. Yep, I capitalized it; it's official.

What I like:

Isn't that nice, how the knit stitches of the 2-by-2 rib of the neck band dovetail neatly into the two-stitch bar running between the yarnovers? I had no idea that would happen -- or, actually, that there would be that nifty bar there between the yos at all, actually. Gives me a little shiver. (I know, I'm easy.) Alas, it's the only of the four potential instances of that serendipity --






the rest of them all look like the photo to the right, with a dogleg from the neckband rib into the raglan bar. I considered yanking back (yet again) and redoing the math, but I don't want the neckband any bigger or smaller than it already is, and I couldn't figure out how to make it break correctly, and life is too short. At least the nice one is on the front. And then there's this:

See how the raglan bar thingie is only one stitch wide at the beginning? I don't quite have my mind wrapped around why yet, but I suppose it's because that's the beginning of the round. I'll use the Stephanie Pearl cheat method to create a faux stitch there later, when I'm doing the very nominal finishing that this thing will require.

I was less sure of myself when it came to what to do about this:

See that stray hole, low and to the left? I'm new at yarnovering, I don't know what the hell I'm doing or how to fix it, and I had doubts as to whether this thing would evaporate with blocking, but I was not about to frog a third time unless I had to. So I laddered down to the offending glitch.

Here, enormous gratitude to Elizabeth Zimmerman, whose words in Knitting Without Tears give me heart:

... contrary to superstition, a dropped stitch does not immediately zoom down the bottom of your work like a ruun in a stocking. At the most it will slither down one or two rows, and cling there, moaning piteously, and waiting to be picked up; if it is to descend any further, it must be helped. When you get it to where the trouble is, fix the error, and crochet-hook the stitch up again. Your intelligence will tell you when to hook it to the front and when to the back ....

But would said "intelligence" tell me what to do when yarnovers were involved? For a while, it didn't. And then, somehow, I knew that I needed to ladder down not one stitch but two.

'Twas an alarming sight. But I picked up stitch by stich, trying to figure it out based on what the opposite-side yarnovers looked like, and then I did the second column, and ta-da --














It came out just right, and now I'm roughly back where I was before the first frogging. And I don't really know how or why, but it's fine with me.

(This has just GOT to be the MOST FAScinating post in the history of blogdom. Makes me glad that very few people who know me know I blog.)

Here's the Vintage Velvet, felted:



I think it came out dandy, and I look forward to wearing it once I won't melt in it. Although I'm not absolutely sure I felted it enough, and it has a couple of weird sticking-out things that I'm not sure as to whether they are woven-in ends or worms. And am I supposed to see through it when I hold it up to the light and stretch it the teeniest bit? Still, it feels cool and sinuous and luxe. Ooo-lala. (Thankyou, hon'.)


And for anyone who thought the pooch shots were cute? You wanna see fo-real cute? I give you serious cuteness. Meet Florence Foster Jenkins.

Hour of the Wolf

Lately I've had a problem with waking up at ridiculously early hours with my brain going clackety clackety about all the things I haven't been getting done or doing well enough or dealing with or whatever, and it's always pointless, because in doing this I exhaust myself so that later in the day I don't remember all the things I was beating myself up at 4:30 a.m. about not remembering to do during the day and ... you see my problem. I've tried having a pen and a scrap of paper on the nightstand, but I've never been good at keeping track of notes to self.

So, these days, I'm working on this linebacker top-down raglan, right? And, if I may say, I'm rather pleased with the stand-up, 2-by-2 rib, inch-and-a-half-high, kind of loosey-goosey neckline I've done (tubular cast-on!), and I'm also pleased with the decorative, paired yarnovers marching down the raglan, and this yarn is yummy. So, this morning, at the usual ridiculous hour, I thought, oh no, I've done -- what -- 10 or so increase rounds? And each of those increases things by 8 stitches? With a 3 st/inch gauge and starting with 76 stitches, that means I've now got 156 stitches, which means 52 inches, and each increase round adds 2 2/3 inches, and I've got several more increases to go before I hit my raglan length of 11 inches ... I planned a linebacker sweater, not a tent, oh nooooooooooooo!

I was on the verge of frogging the whole thing yet again (don't ask), except I had 4 kids to get out the door to school and yadda yadda. Finally, a couple hours later in the shower, I made the connection that the whole terrifying number of stitches includes sleeve stitches, which will not be part of the body stitches, and all made sense. After work today, I frogged only the 10 rounds back to before the stray extra yarnover that I decided I wasn't willing to live with. (I love freaking my husband out by ripping back what he knows to be at least a couple hard-won hours of work.) Ready to rock and roll again, if I can just figure out where that 144th stitch went.

Mary, thanks for the tech help. On a less frantic evening, I may go back and fix that. (Heh. Who am I kidding? But at least I've got it for future reference.) And that scarf looks wonderful. Don't throw your back out or anything.

Mags, the pooch is Bogart, 3/4 chi, 1/4 poo. The wee man dog always seems to be around at those opportune photographic moments.

My Vintage Velvet scart is lovely, as expected. I've got some questions about it still -- may run it by my LYS (that would be Lettuce Knit, at Stony Point, nearest my neck of the woods in Bon Air). Pix later, when my dorter isn't hogging the laptop, wherein the pix reside.

Patience

So what do I do while waiting for a swatch to block? The coral-colored stuff draped on the Boggart -- Rowan Soft Tweed, Reading the Ball Band Involves Locating the Reading Glasses, 50-odd % wool, something % viscose, something % something, 10-ish % silk, ahh -- the color is Bramble.

(Bramble? Um, whatever.) I'm looking to make a top-down raglan linebacker sweater with an open-ish neckline, sort of a cross between this and this, with a bit of striping, Bramble up top, another color down below. I got the yarn at a seasonal sale at my LYS, enough for an abundant sweater ... not all in one color. I got one bag of the Bramble (sigh) and one bag of Blanket (grey, with blue fliths), each 10 balls of 87 m, and I already had one ball of a color I believe is called Sprig, although I can't be sure.

That lonely ball is how I discovered this lovely yarn in the first place. DH was given a wonderful hemp-wool sweater by the Outlet Shopper Queen, my sister (D in the last entry -- hereafter known as OSQ), and one day last winter it turned up with a horrific hole in the back, down low. Called the company, sweater discontinued, no idea where to get the yarn, yadda yadda; I went to LYS, which had no hempy stuff, but did have this in exACTly the right color, which was the Sprig.

As I made my gimpy attempt at darning, using probably 7 inches of the $9-ish skein, folks, I fell in love. Months later, when I saw said yarn at the LYS on sale, even though I was looking specifically for something for DH's first sweater from me and it just wasn't happening, and I saw a basket of the Rowan stuff and couldn't find enough in any one color for a sweater, by golly, I still had to take a bunch home. I do so look forward to wrapping myself in it. And DH, this man, he's just the kind of man who totally understands this kind of thing. He'll be getting a nice ... something-or-other for Christmas. (I managed to make him felted clogs without him knowing until he unwrapped the enormous things -- we felted them Xmas a.m., adding to 4-kid X-mas stress, but we're used to that.) (Suggestions, from the void? Something less than a sweater? I do have ideas, but I welcome help.)

So, for now, what do I do while I wait out the blocking? Maybe a few rows on Diamond (she needs a name). This, of course, involves a half-hour of trying to figure out where I left off, not to mention, you know, finding the copy I made of the chart, on which I wrote out my system. Which is to say, never mind.

Heh. Yeah, by the time all that happens, the swatch will have blocked, kids will have slept through a night, two football games will have been played, and I will have nailed down the specs for my partially self-designed sweater.

It's a good thing its gauge is 3 st. / in. ... Innnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnstant grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrratification!