Crack Me Up Saturday--"Rocket Balloons"?

Younger Son brought these "Rocket Balloons" home from the store the other day.

Am I the only one who's not seeing rockets?

Aran Angst

Bertha was kind enough to model the Aran-in-progress for me this morning. As you can see, the back and both fronts are done and sewn together. As you can probably also see, it is running a bit small.

It will still fit--I think--thanks to this:

That's a whole lot of ribbing, and fortunately, it's very stretchy. I've tried this on, and it will seems like it will close, but it's going to be a lot more fitted than I intended.

Other than the sizing, I'm really happy with the way it's turning out. I've planned all along to close this with a zipper, but I am debating whether I should add some sort of zipper band to give it a little extra width across the front. I think the fronts turned out about an inch narrower than they should have. It's surprisingly difficult to get an accurate gauge measurement over a cabled surface until it is finished and sewn up and blocked (I steam blocked these pieces before sewing them together). In fact, it's not all that easy to get an accurate measurement even after it's all sewn up, which is why I only think the fronts are somewhat narrow, and I'm not sure that I need a zipper band.

That little gap on the side seam is deliberate. It occurred to me as I was sewing that on-seam pockets would be nice. I love to wear sweaters, but it's a pain not to have pockets. This sweater is sturdy enough to handle pockets, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

To keep the pockets from gaping open and ruining the lines, I will insert zippers to close them. At least this is my plan. If it turns out to be too much trouble, I can always forget the pockets and sew up the seams.

Now I just have to work out the sleeves. The pattern calls for bottom-up sleeves, knitted flat and sewn in. This sounds like a lot of trouble to me, and ribbed sleeves are notoriously difficult to sew into the armhole neatly, so I decided to pick up and knit down, shaping the sleeve cap with short rows. This means no sewing, and I can get the sleeves exactly the right length. But it also means I have to figure out the short rows for the shoulder, and I do not excel at this. Actually, I'm kind of wishing I had another project on the needles so that I could avoid thinking about it for a while. But I don't, so if you hear swearing and whining from the lower left corner of the country tonight, you'll know I'm knitting.

Here We Go Again

Remember this?

This was my ill-fated Autumn Leaves. Great yarn, great pattern, not so great together. Like ketchup and peanut butter. After taking this picture, I buried it at the bottom of a stack of sweaters and moved on. But I find it difficult to accept failure, so I thought I'd try at least fixing the color. I threw it in the dyepot with some brown RIT dye. Oddly, the dye didn't cover the existing color; it just sort of darkened and toned it down. Here's the after:

I think it's...better. Here's a closeup of the new color:

I'm still not sure about the style. I can't decide whether it's sort of cute or really frumpy, like a housecoat.

Any thoughts?

The Aran Report

Is anyone else starting to feel that updates on the Aran Cardigan are becoming a regular feature on this blog? Most of my projects don't have such...um...staying power. Here's today's picture:

That's two fronts and an almost completed back. It's possible my love affair with rough brown yarn is beginning to wane. Ten million rows of 3x3 ribbing can have that effect on a person. Since the sleeves--all both of them--are also 3x3 ribbing, I'm starting to play games with myself to keep it interesting. Games like: "How many rows can I knit during the next set of commercials? How many rows can I knit without looking at my knitting? How many rows can I knit behind my back?" [Remember the scene in "Amadeus" where Mozart is playing the piano upside down and backwards? That's next.] But seeing the approach of the end of the endless back is heartening and may give me the strength to tackle the first sleeve, at least.

But while my urge to knit with rough brown yarn is fading, apparently my urge to spin with it is not. Check this out:

That is a lot of roving from my beloved Beaverslide Dry Goods. There was a reason for this, which seemed perfectly logical at the time. I was drooling over the various yarns on their website, as I am inclined to do on a regular basis, when I saw on the sale page that they were offering "natural black" roving for a truly amazing price. Being me, I quickly determined that I could buy and spin the roving and end up with about the same worsted weight yarn that they also sell on the website for a mere fraction of what it would cost me to buy the already-spun yarn. And I would get the added entertainment value of spinning it myself. Although I am (nominally, anyway) in a stash-abatement period, fiber does not count as stash, since I don't have any real fiber stash to speak of. I whipped out the American Express and ordered way too much roving.

Alas, when the roving arrived, I was sorely disappointed. It was a) not black at all, or even mixed charcoal grey, as described on the website, but rather a dark, chocolatey brown (which I love, but dudes, there is a limit to how much brown yarn I can possibly use); b) not even remotely like the the yarn I so love in texture, but instead coarse and very, very springy; and c) well, just too much.

But I decided it wasn't fair to judge it so harshly without even testing it, so I spun up the equivalent of a swatch:

I didn't much enjoy spinning this, truth be told. I am spoiled from spinning commercially-prepared super-soft merino, alpaca, and silk rovings. This is a much-closer-to-the-sheep sort of fiber. It doesn't slip easily through my fingers while I draft, and there is no way I could ever make this stuff spin up smoothly. But after plying and washing it, it's starting to grow on me. Although it's not as soft as Beaverslide yarn, it's no rougher than the fishermen's wool I'm using for the Aran Cardigan. It has a nice springiness to it, and I suspect I will eventually decide it's just perfect for some future project. I'm not in a great rush to spin up this monster pile of fiber, but I imagine it will gradually fill up my spinning basket.

I realize this post is getting much too long, but I do want to show you one more thing before I go:

This is the swatch I knitted up for Wisteria, from the merino-silk roving I've been spinning. You can see that even knitting it didn't completely tame the lumpiness of the yarn. I've decided to call it "character" and move on. The good news is, I am getting gauge! I had pretty serious doubts about that, since the yarn seemed significantly heavier than worsted weight, but perhaps it's just fluffy. The swatch has a nice drape, even worked up on size 6 needles to give me 18 stitches to four inches, so I think Wisteria is a go!

Winter in San Diego

Ever wonder what you do for fun in the winter when you live where there's no snow? No sledding, no snowball fights, no snowmen? Well, if you live in San Diego, you go to the Zoo.

(Note the t-shirts. It was warm and sunny.)

The San Diego Zoo holds a special place in my heart. I've been hundreds of times. When I was a kid, my parents took us every Sunday. In high school, I used to cut class and drive over with my best friend. When the kids were babies, it was a great place to go and walk, pushing them in the stroller until they fell asleep. Now they're old enough to appreciate the animals and the scenery. They like the Children's Zoo, where they can pet various animals, including this type:

Who says you don't need wool in San Diego?

These little girls seemed to be enjoying the goats. I was charmed by their winter attire.

I especially love the Zoo in the winter, because it's mostly empty (the summer tourists are notably absent) and cool enough that the animals are out and about. This Komodo Dragon usually hides behind the rocks, but not this time:

I'm not the only one who prefers the Zoo in winter. These are visitors, not full-time residents:

But the locals don't seem to mind sharing their space:

And neither do we.

Progress

You know it's going to be a rough day when you awaken to a child standing beside your bed, saying, "Hey, wake up! I have to be at the bus stop at ten 'til!"

I, in my sleepy stupor, could think of no response except, "Ten 'til what?" It seemed a perfectly reasonable question, even though the answer has been "ten 'til seven" for nearly six months.

Unfortunately, this was at 6:42. Fortunately, it was my husband's morning to get up.

The day didn't improve a whole lot after that, but at least I have yarn and fiber to turn to for comfort.

I am slowly making progress on the Aran Cardigan:

I know this looks the same as the last picture I showed you, but this is the second front! I also have about half of the back done. I am working it simultaneously with the fronts because it is flat 3x3 ribbing, and sometimes I don't have the concentration to work these cables, as evidenced by the four separate times I had to rip back the first front.

And I've finished the spinning for my Wisteria. Seven 100 gram skeins of worsted-ish weight two-ply wool and silk:

I still can't get a completely accurate picture of the color(s). It's mostly grey, with a purplish cast, due to the burgundy and green accents in the roving. I'm pretty happy with the way it has turned out, although I'm not convinced it will work for the intended pattern. If it doesn't, I have a backup plan for this yarn. It's a couple of projects back in the queue anyway. I need to finish the Aran Cardigan first, and then I have a very simple sweater project in mind for our annual ski trip, which includes 22 hours in the car. I learned my lesson about car knitting two years ago, when I tried to work a lace pattern with two kids and two dogs bouncing around in the back seat. Suffice it to say, I ended up ripping all 22 hours of progress on that one. Now I know: nothing but plain stockinette in the car. The added advantage is that I can knit stockinette in the dark, so even after the sun goes down, I can keep knitting. Obsessed? Of course not. Just...ah...determined.

I did mention that I'm not the driver, didn't I?

Ah...Now I Remember...

Why I haven't done a cabled sweater in a while, that is.

I love cables. I love the little magic that happens when you rearrange a few stitches on a knitting needle. I love they way they create shadows and hollows and depth in even the most boring yarn. I love the way they dance across the fabric, making something static look like it's in motion.

What I don't love is how. long. they. take.

This is my progress on the Aran Cardigan:


I think (with no modesty whatsoever) that it's just beautiful. The wool is as woolly as you could possibly get, still full of lanolin and springy and scratchy (in a good way), and it shows the cables perfectly. There is no way this stuff will ever stretch or pill or, for that matter, wear out. I am going to love wearing it.

But I think I've spent as long on the left front as I usually spend on a whole sweater. Part of the issue is that I don't have very good spatial orientation, so I have a hard time memorizing charts. Part of it is that I added seven inches to the length of this sweater (seven!), because the original is only 20 inches long, which would put the hem somewhere above my belly button. Part of it is that, for reasons known only to the designer, who undoubtedly does not suffer from the same degree of asymmetry-aversion as I do, the armhole shaping cuts into the main cable--but only by three frickin' stitches, which is just enough that it throws off the balance of the cable, but not enough that it looks intentional. [This could not be allowed to stand, so after working halfway up the armhole, I ripped back and reworked it to keep the cable intact. This will require a slight shortening of the sleeve cap, when I get there, but it's not a big deal. And it's important that I be able to look at the finished product without hyperventilating, so it's worth the trouble.] But most of it is simply that it takes a lot longer to stop and rearrange the stitches as you work them. (I can't even imagine how long this would take if I were using a cable needle. Please, if you like knitting cables--or are planning to do so anyway--take a few minutes and learn to cable without a cable needle! It's not hard at all, and it simplifies the whole process immensely. There's a link over in my sidebar to Grumperina's truly excellent tutorial.)

I'm not complaining. Actually, I'm patting myself on the back for having the cleverness and foresight to realize that I don't have the patience to knit an entire sweater covered in cables, and so choosing one that only has cables on the front. (It's all a lie, of course. It was completely accidental. Although I have made several all-over cabled sweaters--Death By Cables, anyone?-- including one in a 50 inch chest that I designed myself and had to have done in only three weeks--god save me from ever making that sort of choice again--I have a selective memory where cables are concerned. It's like childbirth. No matter how much it hurts while it's happening, no matter how clearly I remember the pain, it seems to have no bearing on my decision to go through it again.)

Fortunately, we finally got season four of Lost from Netflix, and we're trying to catch up before season five starts in a few days, so there is a lot of knitting time built into the next few days.