Mosaic Madness Preview

Gratuitous blocking shot. FO post coming right up!

FO: Mom Blankie

Yes! It's actual knitting content!

I finished Mom Blankie today. It wasn't the ten days I so hopefully planned on Christmas Day, but I did finish it in just about a month.

The details:

Pattern: Zig Zag sock yarn pram baby blanket by Debbie Orr (free pattern here). Obviously, I used thicker yarn and bigger needles to get a sofa sized blanket.

Yarn: Noro Kochoran

Needles: Size 10 Knit Picks Options circs

Size: Before blocking (as in these pics), it was 48" x 60". After blocking, it is 52" x 64".

Mods: None, other than the size, and the fact that I used self-striping yarn instead of sock yarn scraps. Very easy and relaxing pattern, perfect for tv knitting! And now, perfect for tv watching, too. :)

Happy Knitting

ETA: I've tried to fix the pictures. Could someone please let me know whether they are now visible? Thanks!

I mentioned in my last post that my house had been torn up for 45 days. As it turns out, 45 days is the outside limit of my tolerance for having my house torn up. On day 46, I evidently become a raving lunatic who frightens husbands and small children and causes contractors to back slowly away while laughing nervously.

However, I apparently also become extremely energetic and efficient. My house is entirely put back together, with a new bathroom, new walls, new paint, and new living room furniture. It is beautiful. I am happy. All is well with my world.

My husband deserves (he insists) full credit for talking me off the ledge. He also deserves full credit for moving enormously heavy pieces of furniture all over the house and lighting a fire under contractors who clearly did not understand the importance of getting the damned project done already.

And now I am deeply engrossed in happy knitting. I got this (at my request, and to the accompaniment of much eye-rolling) for Christmas:


This is a full bag of Noro Kochoran, one of my all-time favorite yarns. I really wanted this to make a soft, fluffy sofa throw. I cast on Christmas morning and have been happily and obsessively knitting ever since.


Note the colors. There is nothing about these colors that would appeal to a male--ever--and that is the point.


Every afghan I have made has been confiscated by someone in my family. And while I am thrilled that they love my afghans, I am also cold. I want my own blankie, and this is it. It's like the hot pink flip flops I bought when my black and brown ones kept disappearing. I couldn't keep a pair of flip flops for more than a few weeks. I've had the pink ones for three years. So this is the knitted equivalent of hot pink flip flops.

The pattern is here, and it is free. I used the Kochoran instead of sock yarn scraps, obviously, and size 10 needles. My goal is to knit one ball of yarn per day, giving me a finished 48"x 60" throw in ten days. So far, I am on track. I don't normally set knitting goals, but this is an exception: I want my blankie, darn it!

Mosaic Update

I'm having trouble getting the colors to come out right, but you get the idea. Nothing like some bulky crochet for instant gratification!

Mosaic Madness

Victory at last! I have recovered the missing camera cable, but not without a lot of drama. I thought I had a solution that would allow me to circumvent the whole cable thing. Sophanne very gently pointed out to me what should have been obvious, which is that there is an SD card in the camera, and I should be able to transfer the images from the card to my computer with the use of a card reader. "Ah ha!" thought I. "I can do better than that! I have a built in card reader in my laptop!" And I eagerly popped the card out of the camera and attempted to fit it in the card reader on the laptop.

Alas, I was foiled. It seems the card in the camera is an XD card, and the slot in the computer is an SD card, and ne'er the twain shall meet.

"Not to worry," I thought. "I have a separate card reader. I know I do because I remember lending it to Older Son a few months back." Um. Yeah. Is anyone other than me surprised that it was not where it was supposed to be?

Not one to give up that easily, I thought, "Well, if the card doesn't fit the slot, perhaps I can find a cable that fits the camera." And I hied myself off to seek out every single flippin' mini- micro- midget- usb cable in the house. You know what I found out? They're all different, but not one of them fits my camera.

In the meantime, however, I found the missing card reader!

So I happily sat down and attempted to plug in the camera card. Guess what? It didn't fit.

At this point, I'm pretty sure I would have done something truly awful to the male members of the household (I had a whole slew of wonderful ideas), but just then, in waltzed the KH and tossed me the missing camera cable!

When asked, he eventually allowed it was "on the floor"--and that's all I could get out of him.

But I have my camera cable back, and so I have photo capability once more! Which means I can share with you my latest obsession, The Moorish Mosaic Afghan. This is not a pattern that would have caught my eye, except that I happened to see this version, and it was love at first sight.

I immediately downloaded the pattern and tossed the stash for yarn in the same colors. I have enough suitable yarn in four of the six colors I need, and of course, immediately ordered the other two colors from WEBS. They have not yet arrived, so you will notice a certain repetitiveness in the colors of my first mosaics:

And yes, if it had escaped your notice before, I am sure you now realize that I have crossed over to the dark side once again. This is crochet, not knitting. Or, as I like to think of it, a whole new craft to screw up. That one on the left? That is the third one I made. Somehow it took twice as long as the other two put together. It took three whole episodes of The Tudors to get through, because I think I ripped out a total of about 70 rounds to get this 14 round octagon. (By the way, The Tudors? Awesome. Definitely rated R, so no kids around while you're watching. If you're an Amazon Prime member, it's free to stream in HD!) Come to think of it, The Tudors may have had something to do with the ripping, now that I think about it.

The pattern calls for sport weight yarn (I think), and I am using worsted-ish weights, so my octagons are quite a bit bigger than the originals--about 12 inches across, pre-blocking. The pattern calls for 30 octagons, plus a bunch of squares and triangles that connect them. I suspect that will make a much bigger, heavier throw than I really want, so I may stop at 20 octagons. This will make for a somewhat different look in the end, but I think it will still work.

Now, if I could just get those yellow and orange yarns. I wonder if the mailman has come yet?

FO: NLCA

And here it is: The Noro Log Cabin Afghan!

I started this back in March and fairly quickly worked up all the very addictive squares. But then it took a while to plow through all the assembling, which involved miles and miles of garter stitch and almost as much grafting.

In the end, it was totally worth the trouble. The afghan is warm and colorful and lovely to curl up with.

I used 20 balls of Noro Yuzen--which is a wool/silk blend, labeled DK weight, but really a worsted--in 10 different colorways. I made the blocks using this tutorial, which was really easy. Then I picked up and knitted along the edges of the blocks and kitchenered them together to create strips. Then I picked up and knitted along the edges of the the strips and kitchenered them together to create a rectangle. (I used a different yarn for this, which I pulled from the stash.)

I should have made my strips narrower, since a) they ended up wider than the "logs" and b) I ran out of yarn before I could make the border as wide as I wanted. But calculating exactly how wide they needed to be to use all my yarn without running out too soon would have required...well...math. And I try to minimize the need for math in knitting, because, as I have proved time and again, math lies. I know there are those of you who disagree that math is inherently dishonest, and maybe even those who would suggest that I--myself--might in some way bear some responsibility for the way math has repeatedly failed to conform to my knitting reality, but I reject those arguments and repeat: math lies.

So, after much consideration, I decided to use the "ah, screw it" approach to making a border and just started single crocheting around and around the edge of the afghan until I ran out of yarn. Which, naturally, happened two feet before the end of a round. At that point, I extended the "ah, screw it" approach to its natural corollary, "ah, f*&! it!", ripped back to the end of the side (not all the way back to the beginning of the round, which would have made the border the same width on all sides but also narrower on three sides), and tied it off. I figure, no one will ever notice that one side is one row narrower than the other three, and I used up all but a few feet of my yarn.

Being familiar with the ways of Noro, I soaked this baby overnight in some water with a good dose of fabric softener, and it's now drying out on the deck. Since I've also finished Morgaine (modeled pics coming soon!), I am now without project on the needles! I will be remedying that situation in short order, as soon as I decide what I feel like knitting next. I am getting ready to start a new job in a formal office environment (more about that later), so I am trying to come up with a sweater I could wear in that setting. It's the sort of place you have to wear a suit every day. I was thinking a fitted shell or sweater for under a suit, but I been able to find any patterns I think would work. I'm not averse to designing my own, but I don't really have a vision for it. Any suggestions?

Make New Friends...

...but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold!

Was anyone else a Girl Scout? Did you have to sing that song every single meeting, too? The wretched Beatles medley after John Lennon was assassinated was almost a relief.

Here is proof that the FO parade was not just an excuse to cover the fact that I haven't been knitting. I have indeed been knitting. Here is the current state of the Noro Log Cabin blanket:

Yes, that is all the squares, edged and grafted together!

And here is the yarn I have left:

Although it looks like a fair amount, my calculations indicate that there is not enough to do the matching border I intended. My calculations consist of considering that it's taken me six and a half balls so far. There are three long strips and two short strips. I have two and a half balls left, and to do a matching border would mean knitting a bit more than two long strips and two short strips. Even in my math-resistant world, this equals not enough yarn.

I am taking suggestions. This yarn is discontinued and utterly unavailable (I've looked). It is impossible to match, being a wool/cotton/nylon baby boucle in plum (I've tried). So my options are to make a smaller sort of border, like maybe an applied I-cord (god save me), or to pick an entirely different yarn for the border. I am leaning toward the narrower border, but I'd love to hear other options. I have spent too long on this to give up now, no matter how tempting it may seem at the moment.

And this is Morgaine, which is what I am calling my version of this pattern--the one I didn't order because it was only available by snail mail and I am not that patient.

Instead, I just used the photo as a guide. And I've saved about as much time as you save when you get caught speeding and spend half an hour exchanging pleasantries with the Highway Patrol. I have ripped almost as much as I have knitted. Natch. But I think I have it worked out now. I had to set it aside for a couple of days when I ripped the sleeve cap for the second time, but I'm reasonably happy with the current version of the cap and I think it will end up perfect after blocking.
This yarn is Ultra Alpaca, so it will undoubtedly grow like crazy in length when it hits water. I am counting on it, in fact, since I deliberately shortened all my measurements to accommodate this growth. (Now watch; this will end up being the only non-growing alpaca in history.)

I gave it a hood, which will benefit from a good blocking.

I also did a shirttail-esque short row hem, which is longer in the back than the front. I was thinking sort of a medieval cloak shape. The added advantage is that it covers my butt without hanging to my knees in the front.

These are my only "real" WIPs right now. "Real" WIPs are those which stand a chance of being finished in the near future, as opposed to the other sort of WIPs, which are just UFOs in denial. (We won't discuss how many of those I have floating around.)

And you know what that means, don't you? It means I will be picking a new project in the next few days! Ah, the possibilities...

FO: Man Blankie

I finished the Feel Better Blanket a couple of days ago.


This was my first machine quilting project, and one of my first machine sewing projects ever, so be gentle.

If you look closely, you will see that there are literally hundreds of errors in both piecing and quilting, and I am quite certain that the experienced quilters among you are shuddering with horror at the way I resolved some of the many issues I encountered in making this.


For all that, I loved working on this project! I love, love, love the fabrics, which I got in the form of Freebird Charm Packs from Moda Fabrics. I did absolutely nothing fancy, just sewed the individual squares together as they pleased me.


The border is plain red cotton. I used a twin sized cotton quilt batt which I cut to the custom size of this quilt, and the backing is chocolate colored flannel to make it extra cozy.


I discovered that I really enjoy the feel of just sewing straight lines with my lovely old machine, and that playing with beautiful fabrics is just as wonderful as playing with beautiful yarns.


For the quilting, I winged it, ending up with an ad hoc plaid pattern. As you can see, I used contrasting dark brown quilting thread. I did this to tone down the bright colors a touch, since the KH declared them, "almost a little too cheerful." I think it worked well; I like the way the brown stands out against the bright fabrics, even though it makes every little quilting error jump out at you--and there are a lot of quilting errors.


I tried several methods to get the quilting to go smoothly. In the end, I found that I preferred using the original old edging foot that came with my 1962 Pfaff 360. I didn't like the even feed foot I bought, or the straight stitch foot, or the darning foot. But the edging foot has a guide that helped get the lines straight and even, or at least less wobbly and uneven than the other feet, and was smoother and quieter than the even feed foot.


To finish it, I cut off the extra batting and the wrapped the backing forward over the edge batting and folded the red edging backward over the batting and the backing and sewed it down by hand. (For the record, I do know how to make and attach bias binding, but I chose not to in this case.) As you can see, I'm no better at hand sewing than machine sewing, but at least I could do this part sitting on the sofa in front of the tv. I finished it off with a good machine wash and dry to make it all soft and crinkly.

The KH has barely let his "man blankie" out of his sight for the past two days. He carries it from the sofa to his upstairs office to our bed, depending on where he's hanging out. I have resisted calling him "Linus" because that be mistaken for criticism, when it fact it tickles and flatters me that he seems to love this blanket so much!

Stripping

Believe it or not, I've finished all twenty squares for my Noro Log Cabin Blanket and I've started assembling them into strips. I did the first strip this morning, and it was nowhere near as difficult or tedious as I expected. I laid out the squares on the floor and played with the arrangement until I liked the result, then stacked up the squares in order. I decided to attach them in horizontal rows first, then attach those strips together vertically.

To put them together, I picked up and knitted along the edge of each square for half the width of the strip, then grafted the strip halves together in the middle, as you can see above. The grafting line isn't invisible, but it's pretty good and there's no seam. It turns out grafting in garter is easier than grafting in stockinette.

The yarn I'm using for the strips between the squares is some prune colored baby boucle that's been in the stash for years. It's a blend of mohair, cotton, and wool--unusual, but quite soft. I swatched it a few times for different tops, but finally decided I'd never like it for a sweater, so this was a good use for it. The color picks up on the purples in virtually all the Noro squares and the solid makes a nice border for all the self-striping yarns in the squares.

I'm not sure how long I'll be able to maintain momentum on this (it's pretty boring), but I'd like to get this one finished, so I'll keep plugging along for as long as I can. More pictures soon!

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.

FO: Great Giant Granny Square Scrapghan Challenge of 2009

It's done!
(History here, here and here.)


The Details

Pattern: Purl Bee Granny Square Tutorial

Hook: size J (US)--because it's what I had on hand and it seemed to make about the right fabric with bulky yarn and worsted yarn doubled.


Yarns: A whole lot of different scraps, leftovers, and unallocated yarns from the stash, all bulky weight or doubled worsted weight.

Knit Picks Decadence (burgundy, brown); about 5 skeins each (1000 g total)
Knit Picks Andean Silk (olive--from traveling cables cardigan); about 4 skeins (200 g total)
Lion Brand Kool Wool (beige, dark green, red); about 9 sks beige/2 sks green/1 sk red (600 g)
Lion Brand Fishermen's Wool (brown--from Aran Cardigan); about 1/3 skein (75 g total)
Filatura Lanarota Puno (beige--from Mom's Christmas sweater 2007); about 4 sks (200 g)
WEBS wool tweed (banana); about 4 sks (400 g total)
Rowan Soft Tweed (green--from Tahoe); about 4 sks (200 g)
Debbie Bliss Luxury Donegal Tweed (green--from Mossy); about 4 sks (200 g)
Lana Grossa wool (green--from Knitting For Peace messenger bag); about 6 sks (300 g)
Araucania Atacama (green mix); about 8 sks (400 g)
Cascade Eco Wool (brown--from Not So Sahara); about 1/2 sk (100 g)
Elsebeth Lavold Classic Al (green--from Opulent Raglan); about 6 sks (300 g)
Malabrigo Worsted (dark green--from Central Park Hoodie); about 1 sk (100 g)
and
Cascade 220 Wool (burgundy); about 8 sks (800g)--just for the border!

If my recollections and my math are correct, this adds up to 4875 grams of yarn, or about 10.7 pounds! This is a biiiiiiiig blanket. I have a king-sized bed, and as you can see, the blanket drapes well over the sides. Although it's hard to get an accurate measurement of something so stretchy, it measures at least 108 inches--or nine feet--square.

Yes, it was an enormous amount of crocheting. It was also very heavy and unwieldy toward the end. The border took me a whole week to finish, and it's only six rounds of double crochet.

But it's soft and pretty and used up a whole lot of yarn I would never have used otherwise, so all in all, I call it a great success!

Now, where did I put my knitting needles?

GGGSSC* Update

*Great Giant Granny Square Scrapghan Challenge

I figure you're all waiting with baited breath to see how the Great Giant Granny Square Scrapghan Challenge of 2009 is shaping up. The 1984 Olympics ain't got nuthin' on me.

I didn't measure this when I laid it out, but it's in the four foot square range. It's at the point where I'm wondering whether two rounds a day is a reasonable goal. Each round takes a loooooooong time, and I do have other fiber projects, after all. The ever-changing colors keep it exciting, though. It's fun deciding what should come next and planning out how best to use those yarns I only have a little of.

I have determined that each linear foot of afghan takes about five yards of yarn (or ten yards if it's a worsted weight that I have to hold double). This is very useful information, since it allows me to calculate whether I have enough of a particular yarn to complete a round. Or it would, if I actually went to the trouble to measure out the yarn before I started a round. On the last round, I ran out of yarn about halfway around. As it happens, though, I had another yarn that was so close in color that I was able to complete the round without it being at all noticeable that I had changed yarns halfway through. One of the benefits of having a completely unreasonable stash, I guess. I got a little X-treme Needlework rush out of that victory.

Oh, and I must thank all of you who suggested weaving in the ends as I go. I stopped and did just that, and was immensely relieved when they were all gone. But my extra special thanks go out to Ruth and Crochetgurl, who both suggested crocheting in the ends as I go! Why the heck didn't I think of that?! It's simple, and much, much faster than weaving them in later. Now I have a nice, tidy afghan with no dangling ends.

The "Unmentionables" are coming along nicely, too. I have the body of the shorts completely done, grafted, ends woven in, and I'm working on the first leg ruffle. And despite Colin's comment--which made me laugh out loud, by the way--I still think they're cute! I was able to try them on once I bound off the waist, and they fit, which was a relief. I had to guess at the sizing, and ended up adding an inch to the length of the legs and another inch to the rise, both to accommodate my rather long frame. I think those were good choices. I do think they'll make great summer lounging pajamas with the addition of a camisole top. If I have enough yarn left, I may even knit one to match!