Knitting For Sanity

The chaos in my house continues unabated. This is day 45 (by my count) of the Great Flood of 2011. (Note: the name is ironic. For the amount of inconvenience it has caused, the bathroom leak really deserves a more dramatic name.)

Once again--as for most of the past month and a half--there are noisy things happening in my house. Today it is a plumber and a drywaller. I had thought the drywalling ordeal was over last week, at least downstairs, after the four days the drywaller spent putting my ceiling and walls back up, texturing everything, and painting the living room and dining room. Then yesterday the plumber came to put in a new bathtub, and that's where things started going sideways. He spent most of the day trying to get the drain to install correctly. When that didn't work, he said he would need to cut a hole in the freshly repaired ceiling to access the drain. So he showed up this morning with the drywaller, cut a hole in the ceiling...and couldn't make the drain work. After a couple more hours, he went out to buy a different drain. In the meantime, the drywaller is twiddling his thumbs, waiting to close up the ceiling. From the sounds in the next room, that is not happening anytime soon.

The drywaller also needs to put up drywall and paint the bathroom, but of course, he can't do that until the tub is in and the new pipes and faucets installed. Again, not happening anytime soon. Since the tile guy is supposed to be here Monday, the drywaller wants to come back tomorrow (Saturday) to finish the walls. There goes my weekend.

Worse yet, I haven't been able to get a tree or decorate for Christmas, or, heck, see the damned floor, and I'm getting really, really antsy about it. Every time I think we're making progress, another monkey wrench gets tossed into the mix. I detest chaos and clutter under any conditions, and being trapped in a house full of it for an extended period is making me more than a little crazy. I am so not cut out for remodeling.

So I've been playing with yarn. A lot. I wove a shawl out of Noro Silk Garden Sock, finished Snowbird, and cast on Tinder. But at the moment, I need the sort of comfort that can only come from gorgeous, squishy yarn and enormous amounts of plain knitting. I cast on this:

This is Malabrigo in Stonechat, and I have a lot of it. I bought it in a destash months ago, planning to make a sofa throw. The time has come. This will be a log cabin pattern, only super large scale. Each log is 12 inches wide, and the final throw will be a single giant block. All garter, size 8 needles. It doesn't get any more comforting than that.

Knitting, take me away! (Bonus points if you can name the reference.)

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...

Strips

Yes, it's true: now I have strips for real. As opposed to the strips that existed only in my mind. But more than that, in some sort of knitting miracle, I didn't use any yarn. Well, not any real yarn, anyway. Somehow, I managed to do all the strip assembly using only overlooked partial balls of yarn that I didn't count in any of my optimistic calculations for the rest of the blanket. And this has put me right back where I thought I was before that awful moment when I pulled out squares when I should have pulled out strips: I may actually have enough ancient, discontinued yarn for the rest of the blanket! (For the record, this is the solid purple boucle yarn in the picture, not the Noro. I looked on Ravelry and found only three stashes with this yarn, and none in the color I need. Nor was there any available anywhere else online. So really, this is more of a drama than I usually choose to engage in.)

Onward, knitting soldiers!

Cosmic Smack Down

So I was knitting along happily on my new sweater and finished the body and hood, and then I hit a snag. Not a major snag, but one that required me to take a little break. Feeling the need for a little mindless knitting, I pulled out the Noro Log Cabin blanket that's been waiting patiently for a while. If you recall--as I did--I had finished all the squares and assembled them into strips. No mean feat, that, since it required miles and miles of garter stitch and grafting. But I persevered and conquered and all that, and I distinctly recall the relief with which I put all those assembled strips away in a basket to await the final assembly, requiring more miles and miles of garter stitch and grafting. At some point, I even got the first two strips put together, with three left to go.

All this I remembered, and I pulled out the blanket with some sense that, if I couldn't yet see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least I was beginning to believe there might be a light at the end of the tunnel.

I knitted and knitted and knitted, with a growing concern that the ancient and discontinued yarn I was using for the assembly might run out before the blanket did. I grafted and grafted and grafted, and finally the third strip joined the first two on the blanket and it was good:

At this point I paused and assessed the yarn situation. After some thought and some calculating and a little bit of unwarranted optimism, I decided I just might have enough to finish the assembly and put on a border. Maybe.

With a renewed sense of purpose, I reached into the basket to pull out the fourth strip and found this:

Those are not strips.

Those are individual squares.

I distinctly remember strips.

This not only means I have to invest god-only-knows-how-many-more hours in assembling these b*&!^%$s into strips--it also means there is no-freakin'-way I have enough ancient, discontinued yarn to finish both the assembly and the border.

*&%!

WIPs?

What WIPs?

My kids got out of school yesterday. To celebrate what I have always considered the real start of summer, I cast on a summery sweater with a summery yarn in a summery color.

This is going to be "Hey, Teach!" The yarn is some Rowan Summer Tweed in a color I think of as "bug guts green." I've had this yarn in my stash for years. Every time I've swatched with it, I've stuffed it back in the stash. I don't like knitting with it. It's a heavy worsted blend of cotton and raw silk. In other words, heavy, dense, no give, no memory, unpleasant to knit. But it does make a satisfying finished fabric and should wear extremely well with no pilling. The gauge and material are perfect for this project. And I am partial to bug guts green.

It has what I think may be the perfect amount of lace for me. More than, say, a garter stitch log cabin blanket, but less that, say an heirloom shawl. (For the record, I seriously considered knitting one of these for my friend's bridal shower gift way back when. In my defense, at that point I had never knitted a lace shawl and had no idea what I was in for. I can't tell you how glad I am I chose Icarus for that little adventure. And if you want to read about what a snarled saga that was, just search "Icarus" in my blog.)

And so the kids could also celebrate the first day of summer in appropriate fashion, I took the neighborhood boy pack to the local water park today. I'm not so much for water slides. I enjoy being cold and wet about as much as your average cat. But the kids love it, and this particular park is small and quite pleasant when it's not crowded. Today was an absolutely perfect day. The weather was gorgeous and there was practically no one at the park! We got the best lounge seats in the place, the music was great and played at a reasonable volume, the restrooms were clean, and there was no line for the grill. I came prepared to spend the day indulging in my personal favorite activities, with the bug guts sweater and some reading material:

Um. Yeah. I did take all of those. And two extra skeins of yarn, too. For five hours at the waterpark. Before you laugh, think about the knitting you packed for your last overnight trip, 'k?

I bought several of Elizabeth Zimmerman's books last year but haven't gotten around to reading them. Today I read "Knitting Workshop" cover to cover. It's not that long a book and there are lots of diagrams. Oddly enough, it was really enjoyable. I don't really like reading technical knitting stuff, but her voice is so charming and sensible that it's like listening to your favorite aunt talking. When I was finished, I knitted for a couple of hours, then started re-reading that Yarn Harlot book. In a family first, the kids had to convince me to leave the park.

Here's hoping everyone else is enjoying the beginning of summer as much as I am!

Sabotage

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Last night I was working my seven-hundred-and-ninety-three-bazillionth row of garter stitch while assembling my Log Cabin Afghan. I finished the row I was working, detached the needle tip that I was using so that I could attach it to the cable that was holding the square I planned to attach on next, capped the end of the working cable, and went to pick up the needle tip...which was gone. It was in my lap one second, and the next...gone.

I did what any rational person would do and carefully shook out everything in my lap. Not there. Then I stood up, shook out my skirt and shirt, checked the floor, lifted the bottom of the sofa slipcover, and ran my hand under the edge of the sofa. Nope. I took off the sofa cushion and looked under it. I slid my hand under a dog lying on the sofa. Still nothing.

I paused, took a deep breath, and carefully walked the family room floor, looking for the needle. I checked the coffee table. Twice. I checked the kitchen counter, even though I hadn't been in the kitchen. (What...isn't that where things magically turn up in your house?) I went upstairs and interrupted the KH on a phone call to ask him, with barely repressed irritation, if he had taken my needle tip to drive me around the bend, because it was working. (Hey, he does that sort of thing. It was a reasonable suspicion.) I'd have interrogated the kids, but they were all in the swimming pool and I was reasonably sure none of them were telekinetic.

I went back to the family room, checked the floor and the table again. I made the dog get off the sofa and ran my hands through his fur. (You never know.) I pulled everything out of the gap between the sofa and the side table. I lifted off the sofa cushion again and ran my hands through the dog hair, crumbs, and what I think was a half-eaten cookie (not mine, though--I don't leave half cookies behind). Nada.

I lifted the sofa skirt and looked under with a flashlight. I checked the dining room, where I haven't been in two days. I looked on top of the piano in the living room. I checked the entry table. I looked in the dryer, because all sorts of strange things turn up in there. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

I went upstairs to get a different needle tip, cursing all the while. I returned downstairs, sat down--and there was the missing needle tip, lying on the sofa. On the cushion I had already taken off the sofa twice.

I managed a deep breath and carefully set it on the side table, well away from the edge, feeling the need for a little break. I had a snack, checked my email, and ordered pizza. Then I picked up my knitting, reached for the errant needle tip...and promptly knocked it into the no man's land between the sofa and the side table.

I got off the sofa--again--and dug everything out of the gap--again. No needle tip. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I ran my hand along the side of the sofa...and shoved the needle tip under the sofa so far I couldn't reach it.

I moved the side table (a huge, full steamer trunk), shoved the loveseat out of the way, and wrestled the nine foot sofa out of its spot to, finally, capture the needle tip.

After a little rest, I put everything back where it belonged, sat down again, and at last grafted the last square onto the strip I was finishing. I carefully wove in and trimmed all the ends. I laid it out on the table to admire it, and wondered why it looked...different. I pulled out the last strip and laid it beside the new one. All the squares were oriented the right way. The colors were in the right order. There were four squares in each...uh, oh. There were four squares in the first strip. There were five in the second. That last square I went to so much trouble to graft on? That square should have been the first square in the next row.

Sabotage. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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!

I Do Still Knit

Despite the lack of evidence here on the blog, I have been knitting.

This is the completed back of the Tweedy Aran Cardigan (Rav link). There are approximately 5000 ptbl's in this section. I used to hate ptbl, and was unable to execute one in under ten minutes. Now I just hate it.

I have to admit, though, all those twisted stitches make for a lovely textured fabric. I'm trying to get this one finished before the summer heat kicks in. I don't think I can handle a lap full of aran weight fuzzy wool in 90 degree temps.

And I've been gartering away on my Noro log cabin blanket, which continues to captivate me with its ever-changing colors.

This is perfect carry-along and/or tv and/or social knitting. I even worked on a square at the movie theater during Iron Man II (good thing I had something interesting to do).

I love this one from every angle.

Mmmm...can't get enough of that Noro!

Someone please remind me of that when I have to join all these things together.

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.

Noro Jag

Ah, Spring. The time when a knitter's fancy turns to thoughts of Noro...or is that just me?

I'm on another Noro jag. Happens every once in a while. Remember last year's must-have Noro Giant Granny Square? This year it's the Noro Log Cabin Blanket. The need to make one of these (Rav link) bit hard while I was in Lake Tahoe. And thanks to the internet, even though I couldn't make my intended pilgrimage to Jimmy Beans Wool in Reno (seems some of the males in my household don't see the necessity of driving two hours round trip to visit a yarn shop from which I can order yarn online in a matter of seconds--party poopers, all of them), I discovered that Noro Yuzen has recently been put on clearance by a number of my favorite yarn pushers...uh, suppliers. I ordered mine from WEBS here, but it's also on sale at Little Knits.

This is a round about way of explaining that I bought a blanket's worth of Noro last week. Wanna make somethin' of it?

And here's the current progress:

I started two days ago and have discovered, despite all the other projects on the needles, that these little squares are a lot like potato chips: I can't have just one. In fact, I'm not sure anything else is going to get done until I've turned my entire supply of ever-changing Noro colorways into log cabin squares.


(Don't mind the wonkiness. I haven't blocked any of them yet.)

I bought two hanks each of ten different colorways. Each hank makes one 11-inch square on size 7 needles at 18 sts/4 inches in garter. Don't be fooled by the gauge listed on Noro yarns. It's always wrong. I don't know whether yarn gauge is measured differently in Japan or whether it's just a Noro thing, but I find the yarn is always at least one size larger than listed; in other words, this "dk" weight yarn is really a worsted/aran weight yarn.

In case anyone is of a similar mind, these squares are wicked easy to make. After the first one, you don't need anything resembling a pattern to whip them out, and you may not even have to look at your hands, if you can resist staring at the color changes.

I worked this one sitting in Younger Son's academic awards ceremony today (honor roll-yay!).

He's the one on the far right. Congratulations, Goober!