Tuesday, September 23, 2014

YOP #2.11-12 or So Much For Progress and Mindless Movies Make Marvelous Progress

I didn't post last week. This is the main reason why:

Husband trying on glove.

After Husband tried on glove.
Yes, that's the correct order of the photos. It was too loose around his hand and then the distance between the end of the thumb gusset and the start of the fingers was too much. It measured out as the pattern said it should...it's just a tricky pattern because I'm making up a lot of things, like some of the gauge. I had a vague idea of the gauge but the knitting intarsia in the round has thrown things into a fun loop. So there's a lot of making things up. The thumb fit great but for some reason is going higher up the thumb than I think it's suppose to go. This hasn't been touched this week. At all. Currently, if I even think about this project, I start to cry a little on the inside.

This past week has been...special. I did manage to get a lot of knitting done on Girl on Fire.




This is the August club yarn. It's the first 2014 Cookie A sock club pattern I've cast on this year. I don't know why but this is a fun and relatively easy pattern. I was able to watch an...interesting movie (it's called "Dragonfyre" and it's like a badly written RPG...it's streaming on Netflix) and still make progress. I'm almost to the heel. I'm tempted to figure out the short row heel as I like the fit of that but I also don't want to mess up the pattern work. Odds are that I'll do the standard heel flap.

Browncoat has also been worked on. No new pictures as it's been spending a lot of time at work and in the car. It even went out to the Renaissance Festival. It didn't leave the car but it was there. On Saturday, as my friend and I tried to leave before the big rainstorm hit (we at least got to the car before it did), I knit about a row and a half before it looked like traffic might move (it didn't...we were there for over 2 hours before getting off site). My friend, who has knit before, was curious about my backwards knitting. I ended up letting her knit on the project until it was too dark to see. Apparently this isn't normally but I like that when this is done, it will have been a group project. There's a possibility that she might be moving down here this spring, which I think would be lovely as it would mean another friend to knit with.

It is late and I seem to have run out of things to say. I'm horribly behind in responding to comments and reading other people's blogs. I really mean to...it's been extremely chaotic recently. Maybe things will slow down in October. (How is it nearly October???)

Works in Progress






















Tuesday, September 9, 2014

YOP #2.10 or Wedding Travel Makes for Knitting Time

Most of this past week's knitting happened over the weekend. A cousin of Husband was getting married in California. It was a very last minute decision to go and only happened because we managed to find me a ticket that didn't cost and arm and a leg (or a sweater's quantity of quivet yarn). An affordable ticket meant 2 layovers round trip (one in each direction). I was smart and filled my carry on with knitting projects. Three of them came with me. I worked on two of them. Better to have too much knitting than not enough.

As Husband posted on my Google Plus posting of last week's blog about hoping the gloves would be finished before it got cold (I don't think it ever really got too hot), this was the project I worked on the most. On the first flight Friday evening, I crashed. For some reason, I usually get onto the plane and fall asleep. It's odd and sometimes I wake up just in time for the drink service, though not on this flight. It was a mad dash to catch my connection. The 45 minute layover was lost due to the first plane being lately. I thankfully made it. As I prefer a window seat (it's handy when you have a habit of falling asleep very easily), I found myself sitting in the back of the plane (I love and hate Southwest's seating policy). To avoid talking to the loud group of musicians (one of whom kept trying to hit on me), I pulled out my knitting and started to work on the thumb gusset. I was finished with the gusset when it was time to start packing things back up for the landing. Since we took different flights (he had rewards points and got to fly direct), I got to the hotel before he did and sat and continued to work on the gloves while watching bad TV. At that time of night, I think all TV is bad. I did manage to work on Browncoat as it required less thinking. I'm noticing that even though both yarns are fingering weight for the glove, one is slightly thinner than the other, so the stitch height is different from front to back.

Saturday I abandoned my knitting while we explored the city and then headed to the wedding. We took public transportation to the wedding and I pointed out that this would be the perfect time for me to knit. It wasn't practical (and properly not polite) to bring my knitting. I did meet the little girl who I gave Fuzzy to and she is adorable. I was even asked to watch her for a bit by her parents (who I was meeting for the first time as well) and it was fantastic. Nothing like a 2 year old to distract you for being overwhelmed at meeting a million people for the first time (it may have been less than that but it certainly didn't seem like it!). My Police Box shawl made an appearance as it started to get a little chilly at the end of the evening. One of the other guests we shared a table with loved it. They sat a group of Whovians together and it was fantastic.

It was a stupid early flight back on Sunday, so the first flight was another crash until we land experience. Once on the ground, I saw that my flight was going to be delayed. It ended up only being delayed 30 minutes, which was better than the 60 minutes it was originally going to be delayed. I pulled back out the gloves and worked on them for a few rows. Saturday night I had Husband (or was it earlier on Saturday...I don't remember now) try on the glove and it seemed a good fit. Now the real challenge is that I'm using two colors and making up the pattern as I go along. I'm using the Gloves Pattern Generator to get my rough numbers but I'm still making up a lot of stuff. Normally, one would just slip the thumb gusset stitches off onto the side and continue knitting. What does one do when there's a color change in the middle of it? Well, I knit to the first side of the thumb gusset and moved those stitches. Then I knit the rest of them in the new color and put them onto the same holder as the first set. I'm then suppose to cast on 4 stitches, so I cast on 2 with each color and I started to knit plain rounds. Well, now there's a problem.



That's yarn from moving stitches and then casting on. I thankfully had only done a few rows. I'm not entirely sure what to do. I think I'll frog back to that point and then knit the entire row and knit back to the spot where the stitches are slipped. Then I'll carry on. Hopefully that will work.

No work happen on Girl on Fire. I did look at it and pet it a few times but I was so exhausted on Sunday that I didn't feel like thinking.

I did work a bit on Browncoat during the week. The current section is simply stockinette, so it can travel with me to work. Of course, it's more fun to hack portals on my way to work some days..... Sunday I also had my first roller derby practice after taking last year off. As Husband dropped me off from the airport, I took the light rail back to where my car had been parked over the weekend. Yet another opportunity to knit and I didn't have any knitting with me. It would have helped the ride as I may have killed my phone's battery while hacking portals....

Looking forward to the first concert of the fall season (with knitting of course) and an actual "weekend" this week. Somehow I plan on doing everything and nothing in those two days.

Works in Progress

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

YOP #2.9 or Yarn Fixes Everything

I confess that I haven't knit a lot this week. I blame Ingress. As none of my knitting projects have been happy lately, it's much easier to play Ingress as I walk into work (when my phone decides that it knows where I am) than to knit.

I did find time to work on my new sock. It's called Girl on Fire and is one of the August Cookie A sock patterns. I'm using the club yarn which is very yummy and lovely. I had a doctor's appointment on Friday and they ended up wanting to draw some blood. I hate needles. I've nearly passed out watching blood being drawn from our llamas. Last year, I discovered that if I was petting yarn with the other hand, I didn't feel ill afterwards. So this year, Girl on Fire came with me and I plunged my hand into the bag when it came time to have blood drawn. It turned out that the tech was also a knitter! She asked me about how I organize my projects and when she was done, she asked to see the yarn. It definitely left me with a high note for the morning.

Browncoat has also been worked on. Sunday night, after that day's Renaissance festival, we sat and watched "Howl's Moving Castle" while I worked on the top. I nearly finished the lace section in that sitting even though I had to take breaks. Something about being really tired.

I also managed to sell 2 skeins of yarn this past week. One off of my stash page and another to a friend who was looking for a good gift for someone out at fest. And that's how I spent 30 minutes chatting about knitting at the Renaissance festival and was "late" getting back to my booth. I have another knitting buddy who I now plan to see outside of fest.

Thanks to everyone for their comments over the last couple of weeks. I've been a little extra ADOS lately so I've yet to sit down and respond to all of them. They make me smile to read though. I'm also impressed with myself for getting a post written every week even if it's not always on Sunday. Baby steps!

Works in Progress