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I call this annoying collar flippage while trying to decide where to look and what to do with my hands.
The deets:
Pattern: Equestrian Blazer by Kate Gilbert, Interweave Knits Winter 2006
Yarn: the recommended Rowan Scottish Tweed in Claret (love that colour)
Needles: 4.0 mm I think but I’ve already forgotten. Whatever the pattern said to use.
Size: 40″
Started: September 15th, 2007
Finished: September 27th, 2007
On the pattern: I love short rows and the shaping was achieved using them so I was a happy camper. The collar and body edging kind of has a mind of it’s own, however. If I tug at the bottom to pull the back over my butt the collar rolls. The bottom right edge likes to flip inside out too. I should have added a couple extra edging rows I guess. I don’t think I did any modifications at all. It feels a bit weird to be wearing a jacket but have your belly exposed. For my size, it recommended 7 balls of Scottish Tweed, which I obediently bought at Romney Wool in Toronto, despite the fact that it was something like $20 a ball. Yikes! Turns out it only needed six with some of the sixth ball left over.
On the yarn: I love the colour and the tweediness of this yarn but I had two big miffs with it: 1) Lots of what do you call it, roughage? Little bits of twigs and what looked like shells of tiny dead worms. 2) It broke if you looked at it funny. Which made an already lengthy finished process pretty frustrating. It must have broke about a dozen times when I was tugging at the woven stitches during seaming. I painted the air a violent shade of blue, let me tell you.
Overall it knit up quickly and I think I will wear this lots and lots.
Interlude: Can I just take a minute to say how much I absolutely love the Winter 2006 Interweave? I’ve already made two projects from it, both Kate Gilbert’s (A Cardigan for Arwen and this one) and I plan on casting on for the Enid Cardigan soon. Every time I flip through it I find another pattern I want to make. I remember buying it at Kaleidescope yarns in Vermont on the knitting road trip Nat, Melina and I took last November and pouring over it when I got back to the hotel, completely enthralled by all the beautiful and wearable patterns. I hope the Winter 2007 Interweave is half as enjoyable.
Next up: I’ve cast on for the Shetland Shawl Turned Vest.
EB is almost finished.
I’m just waiting for the left arm to dry so I can seam and attach it and do it’s cuff edging. The collar edging is doing some annoying rolling and folding but I’m sure it’s nothing another round of steam blocking can’t handle.
As I spent about seven hours seaming and doing the edging today I pondered how much I hate finishing. Not really because I suck at it anymore but because I’m definitely and unabashedly a product knitter (the sleeve is sitting under a fan to speed up the drying) and finishing seems to always be an afterthought to me. I just find it tedious. I’m overcoming my hatred of picking up and knitting now that I know how to do it properly, thankfully.
Anyway, I was wondering, would you ever let a technique or process or too much finishing in general stop you from making a project, even if you really liked the design? For example, if you hated Kitchener Stitch and a sweater called it would you skip it?
First a recap:
I ordered nine skeins of Rowan Felted Tweed a month ago from the U.K.. Almost three weeks later I didn’t have any yarn and I hadn’t gotten a shipment e-mail or anything. So I contacted them and asked what was going on. Turns out they were out of stock. They offered to ship me another colour. After much deliberation, I decided that the Herb colour was much more appropriate for the Tangled Yoke Cardigan and requested that they send me that instead. But, they only had two ugly colours in stock. Again, something I would have appreciated being told. I decided that since I had to wait anyway I would switch to the Herb and notified them of that. I never got a confirmation of the change so yesterday I decided to e-mail and check that they had the change on record. They didn’t but assured me it would be changed. This morning I get a delivery confirmation e-mail notifying me that they had shipped 9 skeins of Bilberry. I’m not usually one to put up a big fuss but I was pissed and e-mailed AGAIN to ask if my shipment had never been changed. I was asked to let them know what colour I received because the customer service agent was “as confused as I was.” Needless to say I won’t be ordering from them again.
But let’s turn our attention to happier exchanges with online retailers. My Elann Peruvian Pure Alpaca Fina and yarn for my secret pal arrived today. I love it. This is my favourite:
The green is a bit washed out but this is truly my shade of green. I don’t like emerald or forest or puke but Peridot is my colour.
I’m not as crazy about the Oxblood:
I feel that I should have gone with Crimson, my first choice, as this doesn’t jive quite as well with the other colours, but I can always use it less than the others in the yoke of Enid. Plus the name is gross.
You can see all the colours I ordered on my Flickr page if you’re so inclined.
I also picked up a button from Daryl Thomas for EB:
I like it!
If you look over at my sidebar you will see that I’ve listed the Pomotamus socks as a WIP but I haven’t even mentioned them. Well, I started them a week and a half ago and only did one row.
They were intended as a travelling project but I forgot that I don’t go anywhere. The yarn is Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Black Purl.
I made a yummy breakfast this morning that isn’t really rocket science to come up with but here’s a recipe anyway.
Teaches of Peaches (tee hee)
Slice up a peach (or any fruit you like) and place in the bottom of a bowl, or if you’re feelin’ fancy, a tall glass. Cover with a few big spoonfuls of Silhouette Vanilla 0% yogurt. Sprinkle on some cinnamon and some hemp seeds (to make it a little more filling). Top that with some granola. I used PC Blue Menu Almond Raisin because I like lots of texture in my granola. Calories: 165, Fat:3 g., Protein: 7 g.
I feel like I spend more time amending old knits than making new things lately. But that’s probably a very good thing. I’m now a lot happier with Sesame, which was my first ever sweater. I hardly ever wore it because the collar and length bugged me. Now that they’re fixed and I also stitched the button holes smaller I think I’ll feel a lot better in it.
I call this my “Pre-tennis look.” It’s only slightly better than my “Post-tennis look.”
I’ve also continued fighting with the Phildar Jacket From Hell. I’m starting to feel that it’s a lost cause. I shoved aside in frustration today. Some day when I’m not so pissed with it I will take it out again.
EB is still going well. I’ve finished the back, both fronts and a sleeve. I anticipate having it done by the weekend unless I end up working.
Over the weekend I also used an awesome Aranzi Aronzo notebook I’ve had since before I left Japan but never used to sketch out some sweater design ideas. The notebook is even gridded! It’s such a daunting process to do a pattern for a whole sweater but I’m sure it would be satisfying at the same time.
Robyn announced the third SP contest today and I figure I better flash my stash now or never. I have two baskets which in some self-controlled past life fit all of my stash but are now inadequate.
This one’s nestled in my pretty but useless fake fire place, the mantle of which can be seen in the Sesame pictures.
Sorry this one’s so blurry. It’s under a table in the corner and trying to balance on my haunches after doing some quad stretches was not happening.
Here is my craft shelf.
Pathetically I have one tiny craft shelf. Not a room, not even a cubby, but one sad little shelf. I tidy it up every so often but it always ends up looking like this. The ugly green bag is stuffed with half used balls of yarn and all my circs.
Last night I made a fancy meal. Well, for me as of late. It was no Coq Au Vin but it was better than frozen tacquitos. I made some spaghetti using this tomato sauce recipe. Unfortunately, when I took the Pyrex baking dish out of the oven I had no where to put it in our tiny kitchen and decided to put it in the sink where it immediately shattered into a million tiny pieces. Irregardless, the consistency was great, I used an immersion blender instead of a food mill because I don’t have one, but it was a little sweet, even though I didn’t add the orange juice. Next time I think I would try red wine. I also made a tasty salad. The oil and vinegar dressing I use is very similar to Kate’s so go there because I’m too lazy to type it all out. I threw some spring mix in a bowl and topped with some chopped walnut, diced pear and crumbled blue cheese plus the dressing. We also had a crappy loaf of Italian bread from a nearby bakery with some oil and vinegar swirl. For once in my life I didn’t have dessert. I figured the bread calories was enough for my thighs. Can you tell I’m on my gazillionth health kick?
The Phildar Jacket is still wet. It’s like it’s sucking in any moisture from the air in my apartment and refusing to let go. Sesame is also wet and the right front of the Equestrian Blazer (heretofore known as EB because I’m sick of typing the long title) is also blocking.
It’s starting to smell like a sheep sauna in here.
I got my Cotton Fleece from ebay in the mail today. Again, the colour isn’t very similar to the light pink colour shown online.
I realize how difficult it is to capture true colour, hence the hazy shade of my EB above, but I think the seller should at least mention that the colour is slightly darker in real life, or link to a shade card or something. My days of online yarn shop may be numbered. That’s totally a lie, but at least now I know not to get too attached to a shade.
My Anne of Green Cables pattern was test knit by the lovely Shannon and proofread by Nat and is now as perfect as possible and available on my Etsy site.
I had to change the name of the pattern because apparently I’m not the only one full of literary puns and someone out there already had a knitting pattern by that name.
I’m excited and nervous. 2007 was my year to learn stranded knitting, last year it was socks, the year before it was circular knitting. 2008 might be my year to have a pattern published in a professional magazine, online or print. I hope typing it will make me do it! It’s such hard work, though! I couldn’t believe how much work it was to get a pattern for this little hat together. I have so much more respect for designers now.
The swing jacket is still wet.
I barely worked on the Equestrian Blazer yesterday but it is still going well. When I first cast on I thought I would again try to convert to Continental knitting. The knit rows went very well but my purl rows were horrific. They were so loose I couldn’t even fix them later. Plus I know I’m faster as of now with English so I’m a tough convert.
I got my order from Little Knits yesterday. Here are the colours I chose for Road to Golden:
Base Colour
Contrasting Colours:
I think for now I will have to try to control myself in regards to buying yarn. I won’t call it a diet because as we all know, diets don’t work.
I did get a few things done on my to do list yesterday. Not as many as I would have like, however, because the shrug I thought would take me five minutes to unravel took two hours. I did get to finally use my wool winder, though.
Magical.
It was also a lesson in how yarn can be deceiving because from one shrug I got:
Not sure what I’ll do with it yet.
Today I need to finally tack down the collar on my Sesame cardigan so it doesn’t flop all over the place and fix the sleeves on the reconstruction of my Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society t-shirt. Toodles.
The Phildar jacket is blocking again. I think the left side may be longer than the right and this is causing the button band issues. Damn me and my resistance to counting rows!
Last night I finished the back of the Equestrian Blazer.
I had to fool around with the image tools in iPhoto a lot to get a colour even resembling the actual one. I’m using the recommended wool, Rowan Harris Tweed (cha-ching!) that I picked up over the Easter weekend at Romney Wool in the recommended colour because I love it. It’s a bit more burgundy than shown here.
Just as I had finished it I checked my Ravelry account, as I do a couple hundred times a day and was delighted to find that Kate Gilbert had commented on my Cardigan for Arwen! We’ve been chatting back and forth. I love her! You really have to try one of her sweaters / cardigans if you haven’t yet. It’s never dull. I told her that she has a very EZ way of approaching shaping and I really think it’s true. She’s a very think-outside-the-box designer in a non “I’m going to make a sweater that looks like a bondage uniform” way. Love her.
Though I did finish the back pretty quickly I’m actually trying to ease up on my knitting. It’s actually more that I’m trying to stop my indolent, watching Bill Kurtis, sitting on my butt knitting all day, every day lifestyle that’s taken over lately. I know that may sound like heaven to a lot of you, and I have enjoyed it, but it gets a bit self-indulgent. I have a to do list to tackle. Some items are important; like cramming for a job interview that’s outside of my field on Thursday (shudder), and some are less important but still nagging; like sewing labels into the hats on my etsy shop or work on projects I screwed up at the finished stage or frog things I will never ever wear. Or read a book. I have an English degree and yet I’ve been reading the same library book for over two months.
No yarn in the mail today as of yet but here is the Jaeger haul from yesterday.
Extra Fine Merino Bulky in Midnight:
(it’s actually a bit darker)
And the disappointing DK in Coral:
(again, the colour is a bit darker).
Here’s what coral looks like if you ask me:
The yarn is more dusty rose to me. I don’t like it. I’m trying to like it. I’m telling myself it will be nice knit up. We’ll see.
The Elann Peruvian Pure Alpaca Fina was released today and here are the colours I chose for the Enid Cardigan:
I’m not sure what it will look like in pattern. Any opinions?
I put the last set of stitch markers, at least for now, in my shop yesterday:
Tomorrow will be an exciting Etsy day for me. Sorry to make you wait but it’s not quite ready!
Thanks to everyone for their kind words about the Deep V vest. I really couldn’t be more pleased with it.
I finally got the twill tape for the Phildar Swing Jacket and spent the better part of the day finishing it, which, like the rest of the project, was a nightmare. The snaps need to be redone again so the front lies flat but I can’t even bare to look at it anymore.
I sewed the twill tape by machine but it was very thin (about 1 inch, I think) so it took forever. Sewing it by hand was probably the way to go.
I also got my other order of Jaeger from Cumberpatch today. I’m not very happy with the pink. The perils of ordering online, I guess. I’ll try to take pictures tomorrow.
We bought some ground cherries at the Lansdowne market last weekend but Chris didn’t like them much so I made a tart with them last night.
It was really really tasty.
I love it I love it I love it!
Pattern: Deep V Argyle Vest from http://www.eunnyjang.com/knit/
Yarn: Rowan Pure Wool DK in Snow (3 balls) and Coal (5).
Start: September 7th
Finish: September 15th
Modifications: I bound off an extra 3 stitches on each armhole because many people complained of the shoulders being too wide
The black yarn bled like crazy. My fingernails looked like they belonged to a hobo for a week.
I finally learned how to pick up and knit properly. Turns out I’ve been doing it wrong for three years. I had been inserting the needle under one leg of the stitch instead of stabbing it right into the stitch.
I’ve already cast on for Kate Gilbert’s Equestrian Blazer and a pair of monkey socks.
The body is knit. The shoulders are joined. The steeks are cut.
But I think I might have screwed up a little bit because some of the stitches started to unravel. I decided to ignore that and move on to picking up and knitting the arm hole ribbing. I hate picking up and knitting. It looked like mangy crap. I frogged.
I am giving my vest the cold shoulder. I hope in the morning light I don’t want to quit knitting forever.
Whistlepea 