That Was Quick

I started the second sock on Friday while getting my oil changed. I've worked on it almost nonstop all weekend, and managed to finish it up today. I'm pleasantly surprised at how quickly they came along, although I'm sure that's because all I've done is knit all weekend long.

I've been growing more and more irritated with daily responsibilities... laundry, dishes, vaccuming, or whatever else dips into knitting time. Work is the worst. 40 hours per week, during which I could be knitting, down the drain. Well, maybe not down the drain- it does provide me with yarn money. And I need lots of yarn money.

One down, one to go

I finished one sock today! The pair is for my husband, and this is the first adult-sized sock that I've made (I made baby socks once). I managed to knock it out in only a week, which is sort of funny because the hubby's been waiting since last November for them. Oops... better late than never, I guess. Hopefully the other sock will go just as quickly.

The yarn for the hoody won't arrive for a while- it's not due to ship until next week. I also ordered yarn for a sweater for my brother-in-law (plus a pattern for it), so I'm looking forward to that, too. In the meantime, I've been working on a sweater for my sister-in-law and a random scarf. The sister-in-law's sweater is here, and is being knit with a creamy colored angora/wool blend. The yarn is super soft, but it sheds like crazy and I have a tendency to breathe in the fuzzies. So the rest of the day I'm horking up the super-fine hairs stuck in my throat. And people laugh when I tell them knitting can be hazardous! I've only just finished the first two inches or so, so there will be more on that later.

As for the scarf, well... I had two hanks of this gorgeous stranded yarn, and nothing to do with it. When I bought it, I thought it would make great fringe or trim or something, but nothing's come up and it's been nearly two years. So a scarf it shall become!

Lastly, a bit of good news: There are only 696 people in front of me on the Ravelry list! Looks like I'll be getting that invite sometime next week... awesome.

So close, yet so far...

The hoody is almost done! This weekend I finished up the sleeves and knit the hood, then it happened... I ran out of yarn. Fuck. There is nothing worse, I tell you. I bought ten balls (exactly what the pattern stated for the 42" size- and yeah, I know, you should always buy an extra ball), but I should have only needed 9 (I wound up doing the 34" version). Yet even with the extra ball, I ran out. If I left off the crocheted edge, I'd be fine but then the stockinette will roll up all to hell.

The extra fun part is that I left off several rounds on the sleeves, and shortened the hood. I don't know if my gauge was off row-wise or what, but the sleeves called for an extra 10 rows, which would have lengthened the sleeves by about 5 inches or so. Same deal with the hood; I left off the last 4 rows. Although I admit, I only shortened the hood because I was running out of yarn, and after trying it on I knew I could get away with it.

Off I go, to order more yarn. The part that kills me is that there's so little to do- it's so close to being done! But I'm stuck, until the yarn gets here, maybe a week from now. Ugh! Guess I'll have to work on some other projects until then- and I have a lot of those!

Sheer boredom

Unlike many people, my boredom results in asinine (and dull) ideas. Last weekend I had the brilliant idea of interviewing my husband. I was hoping it would turn out brilliantly insightful, but it wasn't. However, it did remind me of how lucky I am to have such an awesome, awesome husband. The following is (mostly) a word for word transcription.

A = Amanda
H = Husband

A: What’s it like being married to a knitter?

H: I think it like being married to… a crackhead. Because you’re always thinking about knitting- there’s knitting shows on, there’s knitting stuff all over the house, and a knitter tends to disappear in the middle of the day and come back with knitting things. So it’s kind of like being married to an addict.



A: What do you like most about being married to a knitter?

H: I like that you have a hobby or interest that you truly enjoy, and spend time doing.



A: What do you like least?

H: The yarn stuff all around the house. I don’t like picking it up and I don’t like it hanging in weird places, because of my personality.



A: Do you think I have too much yarn?

H: That would be like me saying I have too many toys. If you’re really interested in something, then you really can’t have too much. If you’re just wasting time and money by collecting it and not using it, then you have too much. But if you plan on using it and making things out of it, then how can you have too much?



A: Is there any point at which you would ask me to stop buying yarn?

H: If your yarn purchasing cut into our food budget, or into our medical care money, or if I found that you were dipping into our future savings to fund knitting then I would probably say something.



A: What were your honest thoughts the first time I spent like $200 on yarn at one time?

H: My honest thoughts were “Wow, that’s pretty silly.” But then of course I think about the times that I’ve spent sometimes thousands on hobbies for myself, so it’s really nothing I can criticize.



A: Why do you think that other knitters’ husbands aren’t as understanding?

H: I didn’t know they weren’t. I didn’t know that knitting was something that somebody should be concerned about.



A: Does it annoy you when I talk about yarn and knitting a lot?

H: It doesn’t annoy me, it just goes right over my head. Not that I’m not interested in what you do, I don’t have any interest in knitting for myself. I’m interested that you like it, and that you enjoy it, and I’m interested to hear that but I don’t understand it.



A: Have you learned anything from my incessant babbling?

H: I’ve learned knitting terms like the difference between skeins and hanks, when before I didn’t know there was anything other that a ball. I learned that it involves tools, just like any other hobby, and that some of them are specific tools to do specific jobs, which is very much like the things I do. It’s just like golf clubs- I have specific golf clubs to do specific jobs. Before, knitting was just some sticks and some yarn, but now I know that apparently there’s more to it.



A: If I knitted you something and you hated it, how would you respond?

H: I would say thank you. Because I know that it makes a lot of work to make it. Being what knitting is, it’s not so much the object that you make, but the thought and time that you put into it. Unless it was horrible. If you knit me a thong, or if you knit me a vest, I’ll just give you the finger.



A: Is there anything specific that you want me to knit for you?

H: I would one day like a true winter sweater. The one that you made me is nice, but it’s not really a warm, outdoorsy sweater. So like a wool sweater, kind of along the lines of something I would wear normally. Some of the sweaters I had where the stitch was so dense, that it doesn’t really look like its knit- that’s the kind I like because they’re warm and functional. So one day I’d like a sweater that I could go outside and hike in.



A: Would it bother you if I started bringing my knitting everywhere with me? Like to dinner and the movies?

H: I would probably draw the line at dinner, because some of those times we should probably be having a conversation, and sometimes when you knit we’re not going to communicate. So I would probably draw the line at times when we’re going to interact. I you want to knit during a movie, I don’t care.



A: For wives whose husbands are critical of their yarn habit, what can they say to their husbands to get them to understand?

H: $%#@ off! Tell them to go look in the garage, and in the rec room and tell me that they don’t have an amalgam of stuff that equals that kind of money. That’s ridiculous. But also, I don’t know those women- they might have a serious problem for all I know.


What did I tell you? Awesome.

Frustration. It sucks.

I nearly finished the body of the Very Cropped Top Hoodie, and it just wasn't right... it was much larger than I intended. Now, I had made a swatch and I checked gauge again when I had finished several inches of the yoke, and both times my gauge seemed fine. Yet the sweater was large enough to fit two of me. Best I can figure, is that I just should have made the smaller size.

I made the 42" bust thinking that the 34" was just a smidge too small. Ideally, I wanted a 36-37" bust, but the pattern only gives 34, 42 and 50 inch bust sizes. I went up, knowing that it is much more likely that a teenage girl would grow rather than shrink. Especially in the boob area. Yeah, it seemed like that was too big... but I had hopes that since the measurements are of the finished sweater (not of the person wearing it), that it would somehow all work out. Not so. Once I had enough of the body to try on, I slipped the whole thing onto some waste yarn, and put it on. The V-neck went down to my belly button. Crap.

So I ripped the whole thing out. I really hate ripping, it's just the pits. On the plus side, I managed to knit the entire body in two days, so I haven't lost too much time. Could be a lot worse, I suppose. Guess I should get back to work. Ugh.

What was I thinking?

I don't know why I thought that going through all of my yarn would be an arduous task. True, I hate organizing, but this is yarn we're talking about. And I got to go through every hank, ball and skein. Mmm... yarn....

Anyhoo, this is what I started with: my glorious stash, flanked by some bags of recently acquired yarn. My main goal was to get it all into Ziploc bags, and make sure each yarn had a label of some sort.

My yarn was also a bit dusty from sitting on the shelf, so I tried to take care of that, too.



So here's my stash in it's entirety... what do you think? I think I need more yarn. More, more, more! I had to try really hard not to jump in the pile and roll around like a crazy girl.

It's funny how on the shelf, it didn't seem like much, but in a big pile it seemed like a ton. Maybe I just forgot how much I had?

And here it is all pretty! I stuck the wool for my next

sweater in the basket, since I ran out of room on the shelves. Guess it's time to get more shelves! I keep all my dpn's in a cigar box (donated by my husband), and all my straights and circs are in the needle roll behind it (barely visible). The basket also holds my nostepinne, measuring tape, and a small project bag (for socks on the go). Cleaned up pretty nice, huh? It will be fun to see how long it stays that way!

Uuggghhhh

This weekend brings a nasty project: organizing all that is knitty in my house. I've been leaving my yarn vulnerable to moths and dust, and it really should stop. So I bought large quantities of Ziploc bags with which to protect my precious wool.

I've also come to notice that I need more darning needles and measuring tapes. I don't know where those needles disappear to, but I think it might have something to do with a Needle Gremlin that may or may not reside in my couch. I like to imagine he parties with the Dryer Goblin and the Underpants Gnome when nobody's home. Today I bought four more needles, and I have plans to attach each on to it's own giant wooden stick (like a gas station bathroom key).

My measuring tape hasn't disappeared (yet), but it's super inconvenient to own just one. It's never in the place I want it to be- in fact, it's usually in the furthest place from me. So I bought two more: now there's one for my knitting bag, one for the living room, and one for the bedroom. Now I'm all set!

It's late now, so this project will have to wait until tomorrow. Right now it's time for bed!

Whoosh!

That's the sound my knitting makes with this yarn and size 19 needles.

I started my Biggie Print sweater last night, and it is going so fast it's silly. I blew through the first ball (of 10) in about half an hour. Okay, maybe it was more like 45 minutes, but it would have been half an hour if it weren't for my initial tension issues...

It turns out that knitting with crazy fat yarn requires some special love. I had to switch up my technique to allow for a much looser tension because the varied thickness kept getting caught up in my fingers.

I imagine that if I don't flake out and get lazy, I can have this sucker churned out in a week or so. Awesome.

Mmm... yarn

Ahh, here it is at last!

After much anticipation, my yarn arrived today- Rowan Biggie Print in Savage Black. And it's awesome! This stuff is so thick, you could knit it with broom handles.

It will eventually become this hoody for my stepdaughter. I'm really stoked, and I think she might actually not hate it. Very exciting.

I'm off to start swatching! Yay!

An Introduction of Sorts

It all started 7 years ago, in my Aunt Evelyn's kitchen. It was early fall, and I was already thinking Christmas-y thoughts. I was in the midst of my first longer-than-two-weeks-relationship, and I had big plans: I wanted to knit my boyfriend something spectacular.

My sister had suggested asking my aunt, so there I was. Aunt Ev was more of a crocheter, but was willing to help me out. She handed me a pair of ancient purple aluminum size ten needles- the tips were silver from wear, and they were a bit crooked. We sat in her kitchen for a mere hour or so, as she showed me how to cast on, knit and purl. I picked it up quickly, and churned out a couple of inches before she sent me on my way. Only that was using a skein of plain, beige, worsted yarn.

The yarn I bought was multicolor (but mostly black) bouclé. Not easy stuff for a newbie. The scarf I knit up over the next couple months resembled some sort of yarn abortion. It was too short, and the width varied as I accidentally increased and decreased randomly as I went. And in accordance with The Curse, my wonderful boyfriend later dumped me two days before my birthday. Nice.

I didn't think about knitting again until the following summer, when my sister got pregnant. I decided to try again, but I had only learned half a lesson from my scarf abomination. Once more I chose a foofy bouclé, but at least this time I had the sense to count my stitches. The blanket I made was better, but the cast off edge was so tight it more of a trapezoid than a rectangle.

Over the next couple years, I'd knit here and there. I made a handful of dishrags, a couple more scarves, and started an afghan (which I later gave up on and ripped out). I never made any attempt at getting better, or learning new things. Shaping seemed scary, and my locale (IL) was devoid of decent knitting resources. Then, two years ago, I found myself in Maryland. Being so far from home, and not being the social type, I found myself with a lot of spare time. I remembered knitting... ah, yes. Knitting. I made a scarf. Then another. I made a hat to go with the scarf (knit flat and seamed up). I started to broaden my horizons. I learned to knit in the round, then I learned about felting. Suddenly this whole knitting thing didn't seem so tough. I found a plethora of resources online, and a couple knitting shops nearby.

Now I'm up to sweater level. I still haven't conquered my fear of intarsia, and I'd rather eat poo than seam up a sweater (I knit them in the round). I've become mildly obsessed with knitting (especially yarn), and think about it all day at work. I'd like nothing more than to quit my job and knit all day, but I need the money for the yarn. A girl can always dream, though...

My aunt has since passed away, but I still have those old purple needles. I use them from time to time, even though I have since developed a love of bamboo. Aluminum feels so cold and hard in my hands, and I just don't like it at all. But somehow my aunt's needles always manage to feel warm and soft.

My Name is Amanda...

And I have a problem. I've started popping Motrin and sucking down coffee so that I can knit just a little longer. Sure, it may not seem like a problem now, but just wait... a few years from now I'll be chasing Codeine with Red Bull. And it's likely I'll be on cocaine as well. Oh well, such are the perils of knitting.

Knitting Rage

I can't be the only one to have experienced this: Have you ever gone to the yarn shop only to find that they're out of the one needle size you need? Another favorite: You're looking for yarn for a sweater for a loved one. You go to your favorite yarn shop, but of all the yarns you like, there are never enough hanks in stock for a sweater. I'm cheap, and impatient, so this always annoys me. Plus I want to touch and really get a good look at the yarn (sometimes dye lots vary so much it's scary). Sometimes it's enough to make me want to scream...