AMAZING

Top down sweaters that I can try on as I make them have changed my knitting life, I can't even.

I've already admitted that I don't make sweaters because they confuse me and take too long and I forget about them and all of the other reasons that I use to rationalize my laziness. I say that while wearing my ill fitting sweater beast that was supposed to be a Mrs. Darcy Cardigan, which is about to lose it's coveted spot as the coziest damn thing I've ever made.

While packing up all my stuff for the renovations I found yarn that had been squirreled away in the monkey box that Mater bought for me the first time I went knitting nutty. Which was years ago, and it was way past time for me to do something with it.

Does not contain actual monkeys.  Does contain wonder.

First up was the now discontinued Skacel Contrasto, a silk nylon blend in a taupe color.

I figured I only had enough for a sweater vest (something that's always been on the list of things I should make but hadn't gotten around to), found the Bramblewood Vest and went to town.

Well, after making gauge swatches because I have finally learned.

I assumed this was going to fall prey to the usual downfall of all my crafty projects that I can't finish in one sitting, namely, I'd forget about and start something new and shiny. But no! I actually sat down and worked on it almost constantly, mostly because every time I could try it on I got all excited and it was awesome again - pushing me through the, 'god, will the stockinette ever end?' phase.

So, here's the obligatory super classy bathroom mirror shot:


I turned it into a v-neck, omitted the back cable and decreased for the waist rather than go down a needle size as per the pattern.

And I'm so in love with it, it's a little sad. If I could wear this every day I would, but it's April in Texas so not so much.

Since I can't wear it every day and admire my handiwork, I've dived into another sweater vest. Because clearly, one could never be enough for someone who wears as many button-down shirts as I do.

The monkey box provided some Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk, the Vogue Stitchionary provided a dimpled stitch pattern and all I had to do was provide the magic sweater math. Since I've successfully knit two garments that fit as they should I'm clearly some sort of sweater master. A veritable Obi-Wan Knitobi.

If I'd stopped to think about my history with any sort of math, let alone magic math I'd have realized that perhaps the above list of assembled ingredients for the alchemy of sweater design was lacking a critical component. After some pretty pathetic attempts to extrapolate how many stitches I needed to cast on in order to cover me but not drown me in alpacasilky goodness were less than successful I went with the tried but certainly not always true method of 'eh, that looks about right.'

So far I seem to be doing all right, even if it's verging on sausage casing territory. The promising news is that it looks as though I may have enough for short sleeves, so that I don't have to wear it over a shirt. Which would be a definite plus because as close fitting as it is, layering might not work out so well for me.

And as the yarn was a gift from Mater it is an actual color.  An egg-planty purple which is refusing to be captured by the iPhone camera and The Boyfriend has absconded with the real one.  But if it fits (which, my god it had better, because really) I will wear it to pieces*.  Once December rolls around, naturally.


*I may mean pieces literally, unfortunately.  While the yarn is ridiculously lovely right now, all soft and shiny, I'm afraid that said softness may lead to a sweater that's covered in fuzz and pills after a wearing..  We will see.  I may go ahead and invest in a heavy duty sweater shaver right now because oooh, it's so soft..  It's gonna be mad cozy.

I Broke My House

Previously at Discovering Asterisms, I told you that we're redoing our downstairs nearly completely. And I showed you our paint swatches, and excitedly went on about how we'd chosen something that could actually be classified as a color for our walls.

Last night we headed out to the Home Depot and bought five gallons of paint all set to get started. I had already left the house once that day for the adoption event, something that doesn't seem like it would be terribly taxing* but it is, so when we got back home I decided to call it an early night even by my old lady standards.

The Boyfriend, being an industrious sort, wasn't put off by his lazy girlfriend and set to painting the entry way.

So when I came downstairs this morning this is what greeted me:




It seemed too dark, but I didn't want to believe it. I rationalized it by saying that the lights weren't on yet and it was an overcast day so surely it was fine. Went to start the coffee (maybe being under caffeinated had affected my eyesight) came back, turned on the lights and then rent my hair and covered myself in sack cloth and ashes.

You see, I was the one who had grabbed the paint chip. I had given it to the paint guy and had five gallons of paint mixed up. And while I really like the color, it's so not what we decided on I can't even

For reference, here's what we decided on, compared to the original wall color:





And here's what the Boyfriend painted last night, with the paint chip of our chosen color:





That really says it all.

How, just how I managed to confuse the two last night without being so drunk I couldn't spell my own name I don't understand in the slightest.

I guess we could've picked out a lighter floor color to avoid having the house look like a cave if we kept the darker wall color, but then we're entering 'if you give a mouse a cookie' territory.

So, another trip to the store today for another five gallons of paint and some primer, because hello, dark. The Boyfriend tried to make me feel better by pointing out that he bought the wrong sort of rollers, so that practically made us even. Somehow I don't think a hundred dollars worth of paint is really comparable to the wrong sort of rollers, but I appreciated the effort.

Feh. I'd better get to priming.

*Several hours in a pet store talking about cats is apparently enough that I need a nap afterward. I blame the petting zoo like atmosphere that comes about from the kiddie craft classes next door.

HA HA! Estoy Usando El Internet!

Click to embiggen

I'm not sure if this counts for blog week, since comics aren't exactly new here, though I haven't done a full page one in years.

Where Are They Now?

And day four (2KCBWDAY4) with this prompt:

Whatever happened to your __________?
Write about the fate of a past knitting project. Whether it be something that you crocheted or knitted for yourself or to give to another person. An item that lives with you or something which you sent off to charity.

It took a little bit of digging because most of my winter wear has been put up (and to be truthful, I don't pull this out much even then) but I have found my very first finished object.

Not pictured: All the giggling I was doing because taking photos of myself feels so silly.

Blog friends, people shouldn't be allowed onto the internet as teenagers.  They just shouldn't.  Not to protect their delicate sensibilities, but to spare them the embarrassment of going back ten years later to find the blog post they wrote about learning to knit.

The post itself isn't too bad (though I seem to have had an interesting relationship with spelling and grammar, my god) but having to go through all of My Very Important Adolescent Feelings to find it was horrifying.  Like, kid, some day you'll have bills to pay, stop whining about your English teacher being useless.*

I tried to clean up the typos and some of the grammar, though I left the frenetic run-on sentences because I still haven't grown out of those.  Here's what my seventeen year old self had to say about learning to knit:

I feel like Penelope, only I'm knitting instead of weaving.

Let me explain. 

Sometime today I decided I should learn how to knit, so I went to Michael's bought some yarn and needles and a how-to book and all afternoon and evening I've been learning how to knit. So I practiced casting on, until about three hours ago when I decided that my edge was good enough to start actually knitting so, I started knitting (while listening to "My Evil Plans" *heart*) and of course I keep pulling the entire thing apart over and over again so I can continue practicing. And my hands hurt from me making them move like they're not used to moving.

But all this pain, frustration and infernal clicking later what do I have to show for it? A slightly frayed length of yarn and an empty pair of knitting needles. That's right, I've undone it all. So this is where Penelope comes in. I work all day and carefully undo it at night, so I have nothing to show for my labors.

*whacks head on table* Somebody just kill me now. I haven't even tried to learn how to purl yet.

Shortly after learning how to purl I made the above scarf.  I remember it was Caron on 5mm needles and I hadn't learned the magic of tinking yet, so that when I made a mistake I oh-so-cleverly pulled out the needle and frogged back until I was past it.  Then I carefully put the needle back in and kept on keeping on.

Unsurprisingly, it has some quirks:

I've helpfully labelled my cast on edge (where I was still clearly in the 'ooh, knitting is hard' stage) and a row of twisted stitches where I yanked out the needle to fix a mistake.  I don't actually remember it, but I think it's safe to assume I was feeling pretty good about having this knitting thing down only to catch a mistake, curse in every language I could think of and then chuck it across the room.

Here's something I didn't notice until months later and I know I should probably fix (especially as I do still wear this from time to time) but I leave it out of a goofy sense of nostalgia:

Well, that was a fun trip back in time.  If only there were more DeLoreans and less teenage angst.

*Obviously he was if I was seventeen and still confusing 'their' and 'they're.'  Even if it was informal, off the cuff, internet-y writing.

Tidy Mind, Tidy Stitches

Here we are at day three of blog week (2KCBWDAY3) with the following prompt:

How do you keep your yarn wrangling organised? It seems like an easy to answer question at first, but in fact organisation exists on many levels. Maybe you are truly not organised at all, in which case I am personally daring you to try and photograph your stash in whatever locations you can find the individual skeins. However, if you are organised, blog about an aspect of that organisation process, whether that be a particularly neat and tidy knitting bag, a decorative display of your crochet hooks, your organised stash or your project and stash pages on Ravelry.

 Curse you new floors!  That bit about personally daring me to photograph yarn as I find it?  Two weeks ago I could have done that handily and proven that, truly, there are those of us who just don't have anything in the way of organization.

Well. That may be overstating things a little.  But only just.  I have a rather large chest in the corner of the living room next to my side of the couch (the one with my hard won butt dent) that has zip top bags filled with yarn.  But the likelihood of yarn making it from purchase to zip top to chest is pretty darn small.  And if I want to use the yarn right away or just look at it for a while then I don't even have the advantage of knowing which shopping bag it was in.  It could literally be anywhere I might have put it down.  Or hidden it from the cats after putting it down.  Or hidden it from myself because it got in the way.

Despite that my tendency to lose things is actually not that bad.  In fact, I'm more likely to lose something if I've put it away someplace obvious.  Which is why I can tell the Boyfriend that the shopping bag from the trip to the hardware store three months ago is beneath the chair in the dining room near his shoes.  Ask me to find my favorite black bra after I specifically announce to myself aloud, 'I am putting this in this drawer because I have just washed it,' and I'm tearing apart the house.

So, I know my Cascade Magnum was on the DVD shelf next to Zoolander*, the red variegated sock yarn was on the corner of the coffee table, bits and bobs of the cotton acrylic blend for the commissioned monkeys was behind the left hand cushion of the love seat, the Baby Ull and half a fingerless mitt that I really need to start over was in the magazine rack.... I could keep going but why?

Now all my yarn is in three places: the chest (which has no organizational system besides 'what will fit in this bag'), a box packed with all the crafty related shenanigans I could round up from downstairs (and my copy of The Wasteland, for some reason) and the freezer.  I guess, four places if you count the trash.

Why the freezer and the trash? Well, this:

If you see this bastard anywhere in your house just burn the place down and salt the earth.  Even then you'll have nagging doubts about whether it really, truly is this time gone.

I knew there was a point to all those zip top bags when I first started using them.

*Wait, that's a filing system that almost makes sense.  If you squint.

Skill + 1UP

And it's day two of blog week (2KCBWDAY2) and the prompt is:

Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet (can you crochet cable stitches now where you didn’t even know such things existed last year? Have you recently put a foot in the tiled world of entrelac? Had you even picked up a pair of needles or crochet hook this time last year?

 Hmm.  I rather wish I was better at keeping note of what I've made so that I could do a proper job of this prompt.  Frankly, I'm probably more curious about the answer than anyone else.

Pater's hat that I gave him for Christmas was both the first bit of stranded color work I did in the round and managed to keep even tension with so it didn't pucker and look strange.  Here's Pater's hat, what you can see of it because he liked it pushed back on his head:

I also bought a copy of Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard which has know convinced me that I can make sweaters that actually fit me in the way they're meant.  I haven't shown you a finished picture of Slinky Ribs (Ravelry link) here on the blog yet because it's still technically unfinished.  I still have the sleeves to do.  But, I know it fits and fits well because I might have worn it as a vest once or twice.

Ahem.

I've also learned quite a bit about shaping knitting when it comes to making toys.  I got the hang of making various geometric shapes (like Cezanne, I see toys as basic geometric solids that simply need to be put together in the correct way) and so have gone from Monkey Mark I, who I made after quite a few improvements when it came to thinking three dimensionally in knitting, I should add:

to the more appealing Monkey Mark IV (it was apparently quite the learning curve):

On the crochet front, I've finally jumped on board with granny squares.  It's not that I didn't like them, it was that it took quite a while to power through my mental block about crochet.

My great aunt made me this granny square afghan out of bits and bobs and it's one of my most treasured possessions.

Now, once I'd thought I'd gotten the hang of crochet one of the first things I did was make a basic granny square, so I can't say that this is much of a step up.  It just took me a while to get there.  But I think that I finally understand granny squares, enough that I can stop following patterns to the letter.  Now, I don't want to say that I've come up with an all new afghan block, I used motifs from several existing squares to get where I am now.

Unfortunately, all the finished squares have been packed up because of the impending new floors, but I can show the center of one of the squares:

Sorry about the dark photo, the red was making my camera have a nutty under the lamp.

If you could just imagine the usual granny square dc 'shells' in white around it until its about seven inches, then a black sc border, I'd appreciate it.

And that's all I can think of.  Aside from learning that I should use the project notebook on Ravelry more frequently because I like the time capsule into my crafting that it provides.  But as that's a lesson I didn't learn until today I don't think it should count.

Illustration Friday - Toy

This is George.  I don't know when I originally got George, or who gave him to me but he's been a part of my life almost as long as I can remember.  His little French knot eyes are unraveling, most of the paint on him (like his nose and toes and fingers) is gone, his whiskers have been replaced at least once and he has a sort of well worn and grimy look to him that comes from being a kid's constant companion, the sort that can't be washed away.

George went with me to my first day of school, my first sleepover, every trip to my grandparents' and was one of the first things I picked up from my parents' house when I moved to my first apartment.  He's been soaked in tears, flown in giddy circles in my hands and knows all of my secrets.

He no longer has a place on my bed right by my face but I don't think I could ever really and truly put away childish things if it meant that I couldn't have George.  As I get older I'm trying to be less sentimental and to accumulate less things and give more away, but George will never be on that list. 

As for the actual painting, it's pretty crap.  Enough that I want to redo it when I'm a little more clear headed, and a little less full of allergens and rhinovirus.  At least enough that I don't get distracted half through erasing my pencil lines before starting the water color.

If anyone deserves actual effort, it's probably George.