Friday, July 22, 2005
T. G. I. F. !
Well, my cotton candy pink turtleneck has progressed from turtleneck to dividing off the sleeves from the body .. quite an accomplishment considering I've only been knitting at it while riding the bus!
I hear there's a new yarn store in town, so y'all know where I'm going tomorrow (with my tuition refund for my cancelled Spanish class in my hand . . . )!
Have a good weekend everyone!
Monday, July 18, 2005
Frog it again!
Okay, I'm frustrated with socks! I don't want to knit any more socks for awhile! I tried starting a sock from the toe end, but couldn't find a method that made me happy. How the heck do you make the beginning really neat? (Uta -- what's the 2 circular needle method??) Why did I keep getting a pointy little toe perfect for malformed pointy little ballerina feet? Top-down socks don't look like that. WAIT! DON'T TELL ME! I don't want to know about socks right now!
I had an "off" weekend. I think I've been courting a flu bug or something, 'cuz I've had one of those headaches that's just behind my eyes, but won't fully materialize into a real headache. I didn't get much knitting done on current projects, but did have a good sort thru my stash basket, and actually bundled up a few odds and ends and donated them (shock!) to a couple of youngsters in my building looking for craft materials.
I discovered I had a dozen skeins of cotton candy pink cotton/acrylic yarn burie
d in the very bottom of the basket, which I had forgotten about. My friend Jalka gave it to me maybe 4 years ago, something she brought or had been sent from Europe. I remember at the time I thought I would love to make myself a sweater in that beautiful soft shade of pale pink, but it was 50 gram skeins, and I wasn't sure there would be enough. So Saturday evening (while listening to Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap on CBC radio -- great show, by the way!) I took a skein of that cotton candy pink cotton/acrylic, cast on 100 stitches -- enough for a turtleneck -- and knit a half dozen inches of mindless K2 P2 ribbing just to see how far a skein would last. To my surprise, by the end of the program I had knitted a complete turtleneck and started shaping shoulders and raglan sleeves, and had barely used half a skein! Sunday I kept knitting -- in between naps, still the half-headache half-nauseated yukky feeling -- and didn't finish the first skein until nearly 4 1/2 or 5 inches down the body. It's all cables of varying lengths and widths (I figured I might as well have a little fun before I ripped it out, as I was convinced I didn't have enough yarn for what I had in mind). That kind of pattern is not economical in yarn. However, it looks like there's enough to complete a cozy turtleneck pullover after all. Unexpected pleasure, or what? If I hadn't been frustrated with socks and feeling yukky, I never would have tried it!I'm still not totally over the half-headache thing today (Scared myself looking in the mirror this morning -- I was so pale my freckles looked 3-D!), but no time to spend the day napping what with class and work. At least its sunny outside finally!
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Oh frog it!
I started knitting some socks last weekend with leftover bits of chocolate brown, fuschia, and off-white -- a 'travelling on the bus' project. Last night, I decided my Neopolitan (like the ice cream!) Socks just were not stretchy enough, so rip it, rip it -- all the while reminding myself:
Self ... you KNOW you don't like plain-knit
socks! You KNOW you prefer rib-knit patterns!
I've never tried knitting socks from the toe up, and think I'd like to give this method a go. Since I'm using leftover bits of sock wool, I'm not too sure how far the wool is going to go, and would rather make shorter sock tops than run out before I get to the toes. Any suggestions anyone???
Monday, July 11, 2005
Romantic experience!
I had quite a shock this past weekend ... I'm in love!
Read about my romantic experience at Amber and Amethyst (my normally non-knitting blog) -- July 11th entry.
What more can I say? Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Long weekend knitting
Why is it that I always forget how much I hate knitting and sewing together tiny pieces of things??? For example, I had two tiny sleeves and one tiny left front of a baby cardi knitted and lying on the coffee table, and thought to myself:
"Self, you're really going to curse when you start sewing these tiny pieces together! Why do you always forget how much you hate knitting and sewing tiny pieces of things together?"So I frogged both sleeves and tiny left front, and started the baby cardi again with my favourite one-piece, raglan-sleeved, from-the-neck-down, permanently-recorded-in-my-head pattern. Much better! Finished the cardi and sewed on its buttons by mid-Sunday, and have a second little sweater nearly half done. I think what I like best about knitting neck-down is using this basic shape and adding my own design touches. I did baby cardi #1 in a stretchy rib & cable pattern, while #2 is in a lacey rib pattern.
do you do that?
There certainly are some fascinating projects to daydream about. For instance, I wa
s REALLY captivated by the Weekend Getaway Satchel but I don't know when or if I would ever use it (captivating put impractical). The combo of fair-isle and aran cables in the Fair Isle Hoodie & Cardi caught my eye. I can't think of when I've ever combined these two techniques in one project. Hmm
. But then, perhaps it was the colours that caught my eye. Gorgeous! The project that kept drawing me back repeatedly was the Felted Floral Collar/Capelet. Those ridiculous flowers did nothing for me (they look like misplaced miscoloured lily pads!), but I kept envisioning this capelet in black (previ
ous argument about black not being my favorite colour aside) with the I-cord braid loops transformed into Celtic knotwork in black and old gold. I don't know when or if I would actually wear this capelet, but I can't seem to get it out of my mind! Hmm . . . the model is done in Jamieson's Double Knitting 100% Shetland wool -- that's similar to some handspun I saw in Burnaby . . . which happened to be natural black . . .
Furl It