Riotous Vacation Day

Today was the first day of my three day weekend. When you work in a restaurant, holidays mean tourists and long hours, not time off, so I’m enjoying my Thanksgiving vacation a little late this year.

How did I celebrate?

Smiley’s Yarn RRRRRiot!!!

Here's some riotously colorful cheap yarn



And some of the other rioters



The line stretched around the store; the crowds were dense and moving fast. Most of the yarn was flammable. I’ll confess here and now that I cracked under the pressure and, after a brief scan of the pickings, fled to Philly Slims for a therapeutic cheesesteak. Maybe next year.

You may notice that I also did a little redecorating around here using a new template, hope it's an improvement!

A Handknit Holiday Season

There has been knitting of sleeves in the wrong places (oh, hello new parent, does your child have an arm extending from the center of his or her back? If so, I have the perfect sweater.) and soon there will be frogging of baby sweaters. I have not started the fair isle sleeve. I unfortunately went out and bought 18 tons of baby yarn in an overly ambitious project to knit sweaters for all of the babies due to arrive in the next six months (six, at last count). I am now sick of baby sweaters and want to knit something for my selfish self. Just in time for the holidays.

Last year I had a “No Knitted Gifts” policy. I didn’t want to make my hobby feel like a job. Last year I was a lawyer and I could afford to spend more than $36 total on holiday presents. This year I am a cook and my annual salary puts me well below the poverty line. I made so little that I don’t think I’ll owe any income tax. Lavish gifts are not an option. Family and friends – I bet your hands feel chilly, don’t they? I bet you wish you had some nice warm mittens. Don’t run out to the store just yet – Santa may have something special for you!

Flashes of Brilliance

Thank you all so much for the advice on the fair isle colors! I apologize for not responding to your comments, I had some email inbox craziness going on, so consider this a great big THANK YOU!

Those of you who suggested swatching are totally smart and right (although it does sorta eliminate the possibility of reusing the yarn). The truth is that I am a terrible swatcher, and I’ll hide the sweater under the bed rather than doing a fair isle swatch. Instead, I think I found a great solution. Here’s the sweater…



I’ll just start with the sleeve! That’ll be a nice test run for the fair isle, and not too painful to rip if it ends up being uuuugly. This solution was painfully obvious and staring me right in the face, but it took forever and a day for me to figure it out.

I’m also working on another EZ baby sweater for a friend whose baby is coming very very soon! As usual, I made it a little big. I just cant bear the thought of it being worn for only a month or so!

Advice Needed

I’m still knitting away on the bottom of the yolk sweater and am very close to starting the fair isle portion. I went down to Purl the other day and picked out some yarn, but now I’m having second thoughts.



Are these colors too bland for a brown fair isle sweater. Will the blues and grays just blend together into one cool color mess? I love the icy hues but I’m afraid they just wont show up. Do I need to exchange these for some peppy reds and oranges? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

NaNoWhat??

November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November, with a focus on quantity rather than quality. For those of us that just aren’t ready to commit to a whole novel, November is also NaNoBloPoMo . One blog post a day for the whole month.

Fortunately I learned of these two events today, November 2, blissfully too late to sign up for either. If I had learned yesterday, I may have done something rash while in a caffeine induced frenzy. For those of you participating – good luck! I’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines, and perhaps trying to post a bit more myself now that my schedule has calmed down a bit.

I continue to knit around and around on the Brown Tube, but it is not at all photoworthy, so instead I will share with you a knitting confession.

I do not save these little yarn repair cards that come with sweaters.



I am a knitter. I have a box in a drawer where I store these, perhaps by fiber or sweater type, so that I can reach in and grab the appropriate yarn in the event that I need to do some mending.

The thing is, I am not a mender. I do not mend. I will just wear a sweater with holes, the same way I will wear a shirt with wrinkles, because I don’t iron. I don’t even own an iron. I sold it at a yard sale in 1999 and haven’t looked back since.

Lots of Knitting, Not Much Swatching

Why am I knitting hats for bears? This hat is swell, from the summer Knitty. I was knitting it as a gift for an adult size recipient, but things didn’t quite work out as planned. You know how it’s really trick to judge size on circular needles, and things always come out a lot bigger than you think they will? Almost always.

Despite the size issues this was a delightful and easy pattern, perfect for my first fair isle project. As soon as the sting wears off I’ll be knitting it again in a much larger size.

A Little Sweater

It's finished (almost)! If you look carefully you'll see that the sleeve seams aren't sewn yet, but otherwise here's the final baby sweater.



The color problem ended up being far more significant than I originally anticipated, so I'm just embracing the two totally different oranges as a design element rather than pretending they may actually be supposed to match. Although the colors are gender neutral, I think the lace makes this sweater to girly for a boy baby, or am I just being silly? I don't know the gender of any of the babies I'm knitting for right now, but statistically one of them is bound to be a girl, right? As usual, I'm sure I wont get around to sewing on the buttons until the intended recipient is in his or her crib.

It's going to be a rough 10 days of work and travel around here. Hopefully I'll have plenty of time for knitting, but I'm not sure I'll be doing much blogging.

I Clearly Started Without A Plan

I wanted to knit the baby sweater in the Knitter’s Almanac without a major yarn investment, so I tried to use up some Zara I had hanging around from prior projects. Unfortunately, I ran out of orange…



I bought another ball but the difference was too noticeable, so I switched back to maroon, at least for a little Charlie Brown style stripe. Now I’m trying to decide whether to keep going in maroon or switch to the new ball of orange (and hope the difference wont be detected because of the distracting stripe) or switch to a third color (thus buying a second ball of yarn and thwarting the whole thriftiness aspect of the project). Ripping the entire sweater out and starting over is not an emotionally viable option at this point. Any suggestions?

Zimmermania - A False Start

Alas, my first Zimmermania project isn’t going quite as well as planned. I started the baby sweater in the Knitter’s Almanac using Knitpicks Andean Silk and something is amiss. The yarn is just too big, too fluffy, not baby-ish enough. The lacy pattern isn’t showing up well and I think the sweater will end up being toddler size rather than baby-size. As if that weren’t enough, I only have two skeins and I’m pretty sure I’ll run out of yarn before the end. AND, I already messed up the garter stitch button band.





Don’t worry, I got right back on that horse. I already started the new and improved (now machine washable!) baby sweater in Zara (possibly my favorite yarn ever) on slightly smaller needles.

Knit Your Own Stately Pleasure Dome – Save $388

In just a few hours on my day off, I managed to knit up my version of the Marc Jacobs Kubla Khan hat . Here’s his…



Here’s mine, gracefully modeled by Mr. Teapot…



And in the bathroom mirror…



I used Bear Creek Bulky (99% wool, 1% nylon), a bulky weight single ply that resembles roving more than yarn, and size 17 dpns.

I just sort of made it up as I went along. Here’s the pattern in case you’d like to make your own.

Gauge: Approx 2 sts per 1” but it doesn’t really matter, the hat is big and stretchy anyway. I didn’t even bother swatching.

Needles: Size 17 dpns (or two size 17 circulars, using two circs sock method)

CO 44 sts, join (don’t twist, although it wont show if you do, hooray!), knit around and around in 1 x 1 ribbing (k1 p1 ribbing) until the hat measures 8” (yes, this is very long, but you will fold it).

Knit 1 round as follows: *k2tog, k 9* rep 4 times. 40 sts remain.

Knit 4 rounds stockinette. (If you have a very small head, knit 2 or 3, a very enormously large head, 5 or 6. I have an average to biggish woman sized head, 4 worked for me.)

Decrease as follows:

*k2tog, k 6* rep 5 times.
*k2tog, k 5* rep 5 times.
*k2tog, k 4* rep 5 times.
*k2tog, k 3* rep 5 times.
*k2tog, k 2* rep 5 times.
*k2tog, k 1* rep 5 times.
*k2tog* rep 5 times. 5 sts remain.

Thread yarn through 5 remaining stitches and pull tight. Weave in ends. Roll ribbed portion of hat twice to get puffy brim. Don’t even bother blocking.

As you can see from the above photo, it’s sort of a goofy looking hat, but it is WARM, and it’s so fluffy that it doesn’t really mush down my hair (though in the winter I imagine it would pose a major static electricity risk).

Just Say No

One hit isn’t going to hurt you. Just try it, you’ll like it. It’ll make you have a really good time. All the cool kids are doing it.

These rationalizations, we learned in Sixth Grade Health Class, would be used later in life by “drug pushers” to entice us into a life of addiction and misery. Just say no, we were taught, no matter what they say, no matter how fun it may appear. I never found this teaching philosophy to be very compelling, until now…



Some are just too addictive to sample. Thanks to a certain knitter's recent post, I took my first hit, and now I fear I’ll be going back for more.

Knitted dishcloths? Preposterous. (Actually, mine is a washcloth for my round pink face; I just couldn’t bring myself to put handknit to pot crud.) Still, I have plenty of washcloths. There’s just something about the excuse to use garish colors, something about the pattern too, I just don’t think I can stay away.

Magic Mushroom?

The Yolk Sweater still looks like a brown circle, and continues to grow.



I am still knitting this damn brown alpaca round and round and round, with a keen sense of déjà vu because that is exactly what I did with the frogged Union Square Market sweater. It makes for fabulous late night knitting, when I get home from work and it’s 2am and I just need to wind down enough to realize that I’m really quite tired.

I was walking past Marc Jacobs on my way to work yesterday and I noticed something eye catching in the window…



The Kublakhan (mushroom?) hat. For a mere $400 this hat could be yours! I’m not even going to go into my little issues about spending $400 on a hat that does anything less than enable the wearer to fly and simultaneously turn handguns into prosciutto and cheese panini. Instead, I’ll just point out that this hat looks pretty simple to knit. I am tempted, but I worry that I'll look like a portobello.

Brown

So far the Equinox Yoke Pullover (I keep wanting to write Yolk Pullover) is trucking along nicely, but isn’t exactly prime blogging material. Just picture a big (hopefully not too big) brown 2” circle. Woo hoo!

It’s a lot of stockinette. I find myself really looking forward to every 10th row, when I get to make four increases. I keep telling myself that this does not make me lame, it is all part of the meditative zenniness that is knitting.

You may have noticed that I’m knitting this one in the round. The pattern instructs you to knit it flat, but I just couldn’t imagine doing a front then starting all over again with a big backful of stockinette. Hopefully this won’t cause some great disaster that I was unable to forsee when I started. I know I’ll have to separate it into two pieces later, but that shouldn’t be too much of a big deal. Now I have cursed myself forever.

Because I know myself and my fickle ways, I am not planning to purchase the fun multicolored yarns for the fair isle portion (Nay, I am not even planning to set foot across the threshold of the den of temptation that is Purl!) until I have finished the stockinette portion of the body. Hence I will have a little reward for my success. Hence, again, I will not be going to Purl for about 4 months. Fortunately there are plenty of other yarn stores in this city!

Ready for Fair Isle

The camo socks are finished, and are now a far more flattering knee length.



They really are even, I don’t know why one looks shorter than the other. Also, my knees really are that knobby. They’ve never been my finest feature.

I also made a practice fair isle swatch.



Actually, this is the start of manresa, which I promptly ripped out after taking this picture. I realized that the likelihood of me wearing green fair isle legwarmers is just about nil, despite my desire to wear flip flops year round.

With the #3 circulars freed up from sock knitting, and the assurance from my swatch that I can make a fair isle garment that will at least hold together and not crumble on the needles, I’m ready to start the Equinox Yoke Pullover (again). This time in a slightly smaller size.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

The first FO I mentioned in my prior message, the camo colored socks, are not quite as F of an O as I thought. I was about to bind off and tried one on, only to find that it hit my calf at a spot where it a.) made my normally scrawny lower leg look hefty and b.) was destined to fall down every 37 seconds.



I ripped out the ribbing and I’m knitting up as a proper knee sock now.

I started the Equinox Yoke Pullover, but that had to be ripped as well. I like a roomy sweater, but it was ridiculous.



I’m going to restart it in a smaller size just as soon as I get those size 3 needles out of the camo socks. I was a little worried about the fair isle until I realized I have 87 yards of stockinette to get through, so there’s clearly plenty of time for a little fair isle practice on the side (Norwegian stockings, perhaps?). Anyone know a yarn store in NY that sells Dale yarns?

In other news, guess what I did last night…



The crowd was solidly behind Agassi, including one particularly verbal fan next to us in the nosebleed seats. Definitely the best $18 I’ve ever spent on a ticket to a sporting event.

Back to the Blog

It’s not easy to come back after being away for so long. I haven’t been blogging, I haven’t been reading blogs, and I haven’t really even been knitting. Work and school and so on and so forth, but I’m back now. Blogless summer vacation is over. This morning I cleaned out my under-bed knitting storage boxes. I frogged a lone wristwarmer and, more painfully, nearly a full Union Square Market sweater.

It hurt. Hours of knitting down the drain, but it just wasn’t working for me. The silhouette was too clingy for alpaca, which makes me itch. The sleeves were too snug, and had to be redone anyway. The back had a weird poochy part that would have been useful in the abdominal region after a large meal, but did me no good right above the backside. Honestly, though, the motivating factor was the Equinox Yoke Pullover on the cover of the latest Interweave Knits. Perfect use for the Blue Sky Alpaca that was tied up in the USM pullover. Now I just have to head down to Purl and buy about 7 more balls in various colors!

I’m glad to be back in the blogosphere and I look forward to getting back to reading everyone else’s blogs and finding out what I’ve missed out there in the knitting world! I’ll leave you with a photo (see above) of what I anticipate will be my first FO since the hourglass sweater.

World Cup Knitting

Here it is – the secret mystery World Cup knitting project!



Yep, it’s the start of an Argentina World Cup Soccer sock! I originally wanted to finish the pair before my husband left for Germany to watch some of the games. Unfortunately, he left yesterday, so it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. He’ll be gone for ten days, so hopefully I’ll have them finished by the time he gets back (and hopefully Argentina will still be in the running)!

A Finished Hourglass

Thank you for all your kind words of suport during my knitless time! My hands are all better now (lots of baking, not too much cooking) and I’m back on the needles. I had a great time meeting up with the Spiders last night for a mini yarn crawl and some knitting at the Point!

The big knitting news around here is that I finally finished my hourglass sweater! Check it out…



And a closeup of the sleeve…



I used some very slubby mystery cotton purchased during my yarn binge in Argentina. My gauge was totally off and, instead of doing lots of nasty math, I just knitted the XS size (I’m normally a M) and hoped for the best. Amazingly, this resulted in a nearly perfect fit. I lengthened the sleeves to fit my monkey arms and added a few extra decrease rows to prevent the “Flashdance-shoulder” commonly experienced with this pattern. I’m already plotting my next hourglass, but not before I finish my secret mystery super-urgent World Cup knitting project, to be revealed shortly.

Oh, do I have a knitting blog?

I started knitting because I enjoy creating things; I love the feeling of turning raw materials into a very different looking finished product with just my hands and minimal tools.

Since I started culinary school, that need has been pretty well fulfilled. I spend hours chopping and sautéing and plating food. When I get home from school I often have just enough time to shower and grab a snack before heading off to trail at a restaurant for eight hours. After twelve hours of chopping and cooking, my hands are puffed like oven mitts and have all the dexterity of lobster claws. Knitting is not an option. I miss it – I miss the fine yarn running quickly over my fingers, the meditative row after row coming together to make something potentially wearable.

I hope I’ll be back soon. I’ve considered knitting with gloves on, so the yarn doesn’t snag on my roughened skin, but my knuckles cry out when I pick up the needles. I’ve resorted to petting my yarn and rearranging my knitting basket instead. I thought the holiday weekend would provide relief, but I took a sailing class – two full days of pulling ropes and trimming sails. At least the instructor was amazed by my aptitude for tying knots!

The Seven Sevens of MeBeth

Many moons ago, Amandamonkey tagged me for a meme. It took me much longer to complete than I initially anticipated, mostly because I got all excited about my favorite books and movies, and had to go reread/review all of them, and so I got a little distracted. But here it is…

Seven things to do before I die:

(I had a list of these things somewhere, but I think I lost it. Perhaps #1 should be to get organized, eh? I don’t like the whole “before I die” thing, so these are some things I’d like to do before the year 2006 dies.)

1.) Eat at Per Se.
2.) Do wheel pose (see below).
3.) Get paid to create food for other people.
4.) Write more funny stuff. Lots more.
5.) Have one of those dinner parties where everything seems effortless and I don’t end up getting red-faced, sweaty and flustered.
6.) Run another marathon. (Please read as if I put little finger-quote things around “run” -- I’m not afraid to stop and smell the Gatorade.)
7.) Learn to tourne vegetables really well. (A tourne is a bizarre football or barrel shaped seven-sided thumb-sized cut. It is really hard.)

Seven things I cannot do:

1.) Do a multi-day rock climb and sleep in one of those hammock things 800 feet above ground.
2.) Tree pose at yoga. I suck at tree pose.
3.) Also wheel. Why is everyone else at yoga class popping up into wheel while I’m stuck doing bridge pose with the 80 year old ladies and the really fat man in sweatpants?
4.) Be a foot model.
5.) Be an opera singer .
6.) Figure out how to make the stupid banner on my blog look somewhat more interesting. (I even checked out helpful books from the library!)
7.) Walk on any kind of tightrope, even if it’s six inches off the ground.

Seven things I say:

1.) Hot Behind!
2.) Carrots, hold still. This won’t hurt a bit.
3.) Just one more mile.
4.) Just one more bite/row/glass of wine/snooze.
5.) Oops, sorry, did I spill that on you?
6.) Can I have just a little nibble of that?
7.) I’m just going to read one more chaptzzzzzzzzz.

Seven things that attract me to my mate:

1.) He smells like dryer lint. In a good way.
2.) We have the same size feet.
3.) He can’t order food without asking the server eight million questions. Annoying, but endearing.
4.) After one drink he forgets that he can’t sing.
5.) Until he met me he didn’t know that pickles came from cucumbers. He didn’t believe me about this for a very long time, like, two years.
6.) He has great intentions to do work on weekends and exercise regularly, but he can be led astray with the slightest hint of cheeseburgers and the promise of a movie.
7.) He’s smarter than me, but thinks I’m smarter than him.

Seven books I love:

1.) James and the Giant Peach
2.) Anna Karenina
3.) The entire Susan Cooper Dark is Rising series. (As a matter of fact, excuse me while I go reread it all right now.)
4.) The Moviegoer
5.) Atlas Shrugged
6.) Franny and Zooey
7.) Frost on my Moustache

Seven movies I’ve loved:

1.) The Royal Tenenbaums
2.) The Usual Suspects
3.) The Holy Grail
4.) Pride and Prejudice (BBC – mmm, I love that proud Mr. Darcy)
5.) Shaun of the Dead
6.) The Princess Bride
7.) Spellbound

Seven people to tag:

Oh crap, everyone’s done this already. Have you not done this? Leave a comment and you are hereby be-tagged.