Frogfest 2011

When the first nip of fall hits the air, I know it's time to reassess my WIPs and UFOs and come to some decisions. Anything that was started, but not finished, during the year goes before the court and gets a verdict--finish or frog. Only one project escaped the frog pond this year, and I'm still on the fence about it. It has been a pain since day one, and if I decide to finish it, there will be a hideous amount of seaming in my future. Ordinarily, I would just frog, but since I held the yarn double stranded, ripping will be a bit more complicated, as I need to separate the two strands as I go. This is more effort than I wanted to expend this morning, and led to my decision to give it a temporary reprieve while I further consider its future.

Eve's Ribs was not so fortunate. I still love the design, and the yarn, but I was not enjoying the knitting of it. The pattern was not intuitive for me, and was too much work to be fun.

Vera didn't pass muster, either. It was a test knit for a Rav designer, and I'm pleased to report I was able to provide useful feedback on the pattern even though I did not finish it. The yarn was to blame in this case: I used hand dyed yarn, and when I changed skeins halfway through the body, discovered the colors did not match at all. This is not something I can live with, so Vera went on the shelf. She is now no more.

Carter was another test knit. Again, not finished, but I gave good feedback. This is also the pattern that made me realize I don't like test knitting. Too much pressure to finish when you realize you just don't like the design.

But the project that kicked off the whole shebang was this one. Ill-conceived from the start, I'm not at all surprised it ended up here. The best part is, I now have enough yarn for a sweater I've been considering for a while, but didn't have yarn to knit.



In addition to several sweaters' worth of yarn, I also reclaimed three sets of circular needle tips, five interchangeable cables, three row counters, and innumerable stitch markers. It's like getting a huge package from your favorite yarn shop for free!

Wipped

I'm generally a pretty monogamous knitter. I don't like to have a lot of WIPs going at once, because I find it distracting. A sweater, maybe a bigger project, like an afghan, maybe a sock--that's about all I can handle at one time.

Which makes it tough to explain what's happening around here lately.

I have had less time for knitting the past few months, since I started working full time away from home. You would think that would cause me to cast on fewer projects than usual. Oddly, the opposite seems to be true.

This is what's been going on:

This is Red Ruffles. I've blogged about it before (you can use the search box if you're interested--I'm not). It's been around for a while, and it went on hiatus after I discovered I had totally screwed up the right front. Eventually I got around to ripping and reknitting that front, sewed it on, and knitted the first sleeve. Which I then decided looked waaaaay too wide. So now the whole mess is sitting in the WIP basket waiting for me to accept that I'm going to have to rip and reknit that sleeve.

This is...something green. I know I blogged about it, and there has to be a pattern around here somewhere, but I don't have the energy to dig it up and figure out what's supposed to be happening with it.

This is the World's Easiest Lace scarf, which I blogged about here. As you can see, nothing has happened on it since that post.

This is my very first BSJ, knitted from some brilliant purple and pink Mountain Colors Bearfoot, my favorite sock yarn. It is for the same childhood friend who received Icarus as a bridal shower gift. She is due in May, so at least I have a while longer to procrastinate on this one.

And then there's this. This is Summer Solstice by Heidi Kirrmaier. Mine is a winter version made from 100% alpaca. And before you point out that I live in San Diego and don't need a 100% alpaca sweater, you need to come spend a day where I work. I don't know what's wrong with the ventilation system in that place, but I swear I saw icicles hanging from the vents on Friday. I don't like sitting at my desk wearing my suit jacket, although it's preferable to having my nose dripping all day. So I thought I'd make a basic grey sweater to keep in my office for when the temperature drops below freezing.

The construction on this is very interesting. I eventually gave up on trying to comprehend it and just followed the pattern. It seems to be turning out right.

There's an awful lot of plain stockinette, but that's not generally a negative for me. If I'm getting a little tired of it, well, I'm almost done. The best part is, the sleeves are knitted first, so when I'm done with the body, I'm really done! Oh. Except for the collar, which also runs down both fronts. Yeah. That could take a while longer.

Somewhere around here there is also a camisole waiting for straps, some black cashmere that wants to be a turtleneck, and half a lonely sock, hoping for a little attention, but I think you get the idea.

I'm not sure what's going on, but if you don't hear from me for a while, send help. I may be buried under the ever-growing pile of WIPs.

FOs!

April Fools! I don't really have FOs to show you. Well, I do have FOs--I just don't have pictures of them. But as I realize I haven't posted any knitting to this knitting blog in...a while...I'm going to share my current WIPs instead.

Yes, I did say WIPs--plural. I am usually a pretty monogamous knitter, but my attention span has been a little short lately. I don't know whether it's hormones, the weather, or just lots of distractions, but I've found myself casting on for multiple projects in the past few weeks. Here are some of them:


I know you've seen this one before:

This is Red Ruffles, which suffered the unfortunate accident with the left front--the one I somehow managed to knit as some sort of mutant half-right, half-left front. The offending section has been unseamed and ripped, but so far, I haven't been able to summon the enthusiasm to reknit it. A shame, that, since it has the potential to be a very nice sweater.

And then there's this one:

This was a test knit of Vera for Snowden Becker, and I love the design. Sadly, I stalled out when I realized the second skein of the hand dyed yarn I chose for this project was a completely different color than the first. I can't bring myself to rip it, and I can't stand looking at it. So it sits in limbo, waiting for a decision that may never come.

And then there's my Tweedy Aran Cardigan:

I've wanted to knit this for ages. I've had the perfect yarn in the stash for months. I don't know why I haven't cast it on before. So I did. I worked exactly 20 rows. And then...I don't know what happened. I only know that every time I pick it up, I put it back down again.

In fact, the only thing I want to work on is this:

Plain garter stitch log cabin blocks, but in a rainbow of gorgeous Noro colors. I think I'm finishing block 11 of 20 at the moment. I'm not sure I can explain the appeal of these. They are incredibly simple. No pattern, no fancy stitches, no cables, no lace, no nothing. Just garter stitch and Noro, around and around and around. It's mesmerizing. Addictive. It's all I want to knit these days. Just...around and around and around. I am ignoring the fact that, eventually, I will have to pick up and knit--and then graft together--all the borders for these squares. That will not be around and around and around and will not be at all mesmerizing. But for now...if anyone needs me, I'll be with the Noro.

F%#!

I've mentioned in the past my utter frustration with knitting instructions that read: "Work to correspond to left front, reversing all shaping." I mean, really. I'm paying for the damned pattern. Would it kill the designer to write out the directions for the right front? Does it really cost that much more to print an extra paragraph? Am I the only knitter on the planet who finds it confusing to change the ssk's to k2tog's and the "end of rows" to "beginning of rows", all the while keeping track of the number of rows and stitches and making sure to remember the "AND AT THE SAME TIME"'s?

I was planning to show you a Red Ruffles just about ready for its front edgings to be knitted on. I was working the post out in my head while whipping through the seams, considering pithy phrasings, imagining colorful expressions...when two inches from the bottom of the second side seam, something went awry.

I had already finished the right side, and it seamed together perfectly:

See that straight seam on the left, and the nice little curve on the right? That's how this cardigan is supposed to look. But as I reached the very bottom of the left side seam, the edges didn't match up. This seemed wrong to me, since I was careful about matching the seams, clamping them, and mattress stitching them up, but I figured I'd been distracted by one or more of the other inmates somewhere along the line and cheerfully pulled the seam to do it over.

Some time later, I reached the bottom two inches of the same seam again...and it still didn't match up. Now this time I was less than cheerful. I knew darned well I had matched the seams properly and sewn them accurately, and the other inmates were all in another room watching Spiderman. I pulled the seam partway out again and took another look.

This is the inside back:


See the straight edge on the right? That's where the side seam should be.

This is the left front:

See the nice curve on the left? That's the one that's supposed to be there. That one on the right? Not so much. And this is the result:

No way that seam is going to be straight. Ain't gonna happen. Because I somehow managed to knit curves into both sides of the bottom of this piece. And as this is a bottom up sweater worked in pieces, the only remedy is to take it apart, rip the entire left front, reknit it, and resew it to the rest of the cardigan.

Now, I would love to blame this little mishap on the instructions. I would love to heap invectives on the head of the designer for failing to write out the directions for both fronts individually. I would love to rant at the magazine editor for allowing such shoddy pattern writing. But the fact of the matter is...the front I screwed up is the one for which the directions are written out. The other one? The one that reads "work to correspond to left front, reversing all shaping"? That one I did perfectly.

F%#!

Red Ruffles

The day before yesterday I finished my socks, and yesterday I finished my current sweater (bringing the total of finished-but-unblogged sweaters to three). So today, I found myself in the unaccustomed position of having nothing on the needles (excluding those shawls and scarves that I do not consider either wips or ufos--because this works in my world).

I really wanted to cast on another pair of socks. (Shhh...you didn't hear that from me, and I'd just as soon the Knitting Goddess didn't, either.) I wore my new socks to Legoland on Saturday with my new clogs, and despite standing and walking for nine solid hours--it was the Southern California FLL Championships and Younger Son's team was competing--I came home with feet that were neither sore nor swollen. My socks stayed up and my feet stayed warm and it was just generally a lovely experience. So lovely, in fact, that I've decided I need more handknit socks, and I want them badly enough that I am willing to knit them. Unfortunately, I don't have much in the way of sock yarn stash, since I am a devoted non-sock-knitter. I am in the process of rectifying that (anyone have any favorite sock yarns that don't cost $25 a skein?), but while I wait for the postal service, I have no sock yarn to cast on.

So I chose another sweater pattern instead. I've wanted to knit this (Rav link) for a while now. I think it's been near the top of my queue for over a year, but I've never quite gotten around to it. In scrolling through my queue today, I thought, "Hey, that's what I want to knit!" And since I am nothing if not prompt, I immediately began mining the stash for likely candidates. The winner, much to my surprise, was a yarn I believe to be the oldest inhabitant of the stash. I know I bought it back before I even had a stash, so it's at least four years old. Back then I didn't even have a specific place for yarn, since I didn't have any to speak of. Oh, how the times do change!

The yarn is Dale of Norway Sisik. I bought it from Herrschners online because it was on sale. I didn't have a project in mind for it and didn't have any idea how much to order, so I just ordered a lot. Really, a lot. When it arrived, I thought, "Hmmm. That's kind of a lot of yarn. I need to find a place to put it." I put it in the guest room closet, and voila! The stash was born.

But alas, poor Sisik--there it remained, month after month, year after year, as the stash grew around it and newer, flashier yarns stole the limelight. There was Lorna's Laces, and Malabrigo, and Noro...they came and visited for a while, but never stayed long. And in time, Sisik was relegated to the back of the stash closet, next to the lime green kitchen cotton and the ill-advised hot pink acrylic.

Until today. Because for some reason, this yarn that never seemed quite right for anything is just perfect for this project. The problem I always had with it is that it is very light, almost airy in weight, but has a heavy tweed texture. It's too light for tweedy sweaters and too tweedy for light sweaters. But holding it doubled, as I am for this project, results in a fabric that is chunky without being heavy. It's surprisingly springy and soft, too. And the color is a rich, dark red with multi-colored tweed bits and a lovely sheen from the mohair content. (My photo does not even come close to doing it justice. Red yarn+indoor light+digital camera=bleah.)

And as an added bonus, the chunky gauge means that a hour of knitting got me six inches up the back, which is a nice change from sock yarn and size 1 needles. This one will probably be done pretty quickly, although I hear there is a dreadful amount of seaming involved. Perhaps that will keep me occupied until the mailman gets here with the sock yarn.