Tons of Knitting, but no Talking

I've been hibernating from, well, most of my life recently. I've been doing plenty of knitting, but I haven't been talking about it much. Some of it didn't even make it into Ravelry before I gave it away.

I finished the big Alpaca scarf, but the person I was going to send it do died. I had made her a very large alpaca Kiri (I think it was a Kiri, it was definitely some kind of leaf lace) and she loved it so much that I thought she might like something smaller to wear all the time. I didn't manage to finish it in time. (Although I suppose that's unfair to me, given how unexpected it was.) I was thinking of sending it to her daughter, but it blocked out a *lot* shorter than I thought it would, so I'm not sure it's a useable size for a full-size person.

I've also been doing some baby knitting -- my boss is pregnant, and doesn't apparently have anyone to knit for her, so I've been trying to make things. Unfortunately, I'm not so good at cranking out things to order and it's been slow going. I guess I'm just not cut out to knit to order, even when it's my *own* order. I've got about half a baby hat, but since the main body of it is knit in reverse stockinette on size 1 DPNs, it may be a while. It's a good thing I don't believe in giving baby presents before the baby is born!

To soothe my soul, I finally started my red Frost Flowers and Leaves, but I have no photo of that. It's gotten off the DPNs to the Magic Loop stage, but it still looks like a crumpled red ball of ramen. The color is gorgeous, though. I'm really pleased.

Since Seanan has to go to San Jose today and Himself is out of town, I restarted Shedir to have something relatively portable to take with me. It's currently on size 2 needles, so we'll see if that makes it small enough. I sort of refuse to put Calmer on size one needles, that's just... silly. Besides, my size one DPNs are in the baby hat. I suppose I could get a small diameter size one circ from KnitPicks and use that if I really have to, but since I'm staring down the face of some really expensive dental work, I'm not sure it's worth spending the money when I can just wait for the DPNs to be available.

So that's pretty much the state of my knitting. I'm sorry I've been so quiet recently. I shall try to be less neglectful.

Radio Silence

Wow, it really has been a while, hasn't it?

Part of this is that I've been depressed, but another part is that I've been busier knitting than I have writing about it. You see, I got involved in a design project, and it ate my entire knitting life for a while. (I suspect it will again when I get back to it.)

I'm attempting to design a traditional (i.e., bottom-up) Faroese shawl in sea-and-land motifs. Unfortunately, this means that the first line is "cast on 427" and every time I mess up, I have to rip the entire thing and start over. The good thing is that I bought a cone of green laceweight from Webs a while ago and I've got so much of it that when I really mess up I just throw the entire thing in the garbage and start fresh, without feeling too guilty about it. (Actually, being in Berkeley, I put it in the "organics recycling" trash, which reduces the guilt even further.)

No photos, because right now it just kind of looks like, well, a blob of green cotton that might or might not have a "Print O' the Wave" pattern forming. (It's the decreasing that's getting to me -- I picked out the patterns and all of them work but this one, assuming I've gotten my shaping decreases right.)

Other knitting... Well, my older (step)brother had a baby around Christmas, and I'm going to her naming ceremony next weekend. (It's like a christening, except they're Jewish. Same idea, though -- welcome to the community, meet everyone, get presents, etc.) So I've been knocking out baby things like there's no tomorrow -- I made a Mason-Dixon baby kimono out of some white acrylic I had lying around (amazingly cute), and a set of bibs out of the kitchen cotton I've been making my washcloths out of. (Handwash only does not sound like a good choice for the mother of a newborn!) I'm also making a set of matching burp clothes, just 'cause, and I've been spending hours and hours on Ravelry looking at patterns and trying to figure out what I can do with the yarn I already have. I don't know his wife very well, so I can't tell what her reaction would be to a nursing shawl or anything like that, although I still feel that I should make something for her as well as for the baby.

Everything else is pretty much stalled. I did some knitting on the alpaca North Star scarf (which is rapidly turning into the alpaca North Star stole, give how enormous it is), and I've been rather grimly knitting away on the Kinzel Daffodil thing. I need to remember that endless acres of "k/p into next stitch; k2tog" while very pretty is really fussy and boring. Sigh.

I keep going into Lacis, which isn't very good for either my determined yarn diet or my straightened wallet -- I've thusfar managed to resist *both* the $60 lace book full of beautiful patterns that I don't like very much in the book (although I love the ones other people have made) and the Yarn Place Grace laceweight, even if it does come in a really gorgeous saturated purple. Stash knitting is good for you, right? (Maybe things I buy for the baby don't count? I've already had to buy buttons and ribbon...)

I'm debating giving the baby the Baby Surprise Jacket. Yes, yes, it's a Baby Surprise Jacket after all, but it's also made of Cascade 220, which is gonna be a pain to wash. I'll have to ponder (and in my pondering, put on the buttons I bought a while ago, which are ridiculously cute). It's not like coats need all that much washing anyway, is it? Of course, I've only got a week to think about it and to figure out which side of things the buttons go on for girls. I think the buttons go on the right and the buttonholes on the left.

So yes. Baby knitting and ridiculous design projects. How are you?

When you forget to read your knitting...

But first, a quick meta note: I foolishly upgraded my computer to the beta version of Leopard (Apple's new OS) about a week ago, and have had incredibly flaky internet access since, which is why I haven't been around. They have now released the final version, so I should be upgrading to something a bit more stable soonish.

Meanwhile, in knitting news...

The grey Pi continues, sort of. I got through to the last 20 rows (thank goodness), but I screwed something up. You know, when you get to rows of almost 1000 stitches, it behooves you to pay lots of attention to what you're doing. Sigh. I got about halfway through row 98 (um, that's patterned rows, so it's actually row... 196?), cheerfully knitting away, only to discover that I'd gotten off my count and was putting my patterns in the wrong place. 400 stitches of tinking, here I come. I must admit that I'm tired of this project and kind of want to just pull it off my needles and put it in the trash and pretend it never happened, but I'm so close to the end that I can't quite bring myself to. Besides, I know that's only because the Mystic Waters KAL has started and I really want to knit the first clue on these needles.

Must not abandon almost finished project for new project just because I'm tired of it, right?

Okay, so I'm sure all you pi shawl knitters are looking at this entry a bit sideways and thinking "what kind of insane person gets to past the 6th increase row and still isn't done?" Okay, fair. I think it's that I like my shawls really long in the front, and when I stretch out the plain garter bit, it's only just going from shoulder to waist. Somehow I suspect the blocking gods are laughing at me, though, and when I finally finish, it's either still not going to be long enough, or it'll be enormous and I'll have to give it to A., who's a giant.

It would be a fair revenge on A., though, since I called her about a week ago to find out how big her head is and she still hasn't returned my call. I want to make her a Shedir hat out of the same grey Drops alpaca I'm using for the North Star scarf, but I know she's got a big head and I want to make sure it'll fit before I cast on. Huge grey Pi would be a suitable revenge, I think.

The North Star scarf proceeds apace. It's become my KIP project, much to the amusement of the Wednesday Stash ladies. I don't think I'm going to go to that knit night anymore, though. I rather like some of the people, but the group is really huge, and I think I talk too much for them (or perhaps it's just that I'm overly foul-mouthed). I had a lovely time until everyone showed up, though, so maybe I'll go for the pre-knit-night agglomeration and leave at 6:15... I'm trying to snaffle the people I really like for the Mondays At Starbucks, so we'll see. It was just sort of funny to see everyone saying "oh, you can't knit that in public!" Of course, since they said that, I managed to have to tink one row about five times (before figuring out that, like a good little idiot I'd managed to knit the wrong row), but I did finally get another four rows or so done.

Next week's Monday should be good, though, since I think the person who came last week (R.) and the person who came the week before (J.) will get along famously, and we'll have to see if anyone else shows up. Amusingly, R. and J. are both knitting projects out of the exact same yarn (well, it's the same brand and it looks like the same color), so I'll get to be envious of all the Smooshy Sock I've ever encountered all at once! Alpaca revenge shall be mine, though.

Anyway, now that I've gotten the Endless Bloody Pi rant out of my system, I shall go back to my tinking and watching "educational" TV while waiting for my weekend houseguest to show up. (Well, she's TG's houseguest, really, but since he's not here, being at the airport collecting her, I shall claim her for the moment.)

Confessional

I watch way too much TV, often during the day after it's been aired, so I can fast forward through all the boring commercials (although I have been known to stop and watch one if it's got something interesting going on).

One of the new shows I've picked up this season is Pushing Daisies. Sadly, it's got all the hallmarks of a show that's not going to make it. PD is the show that made me realize I needed a knitting blog, when they showed Chi McBride (who plays one of the main characters) knitting as a stress reliever. They even said that he was knitting in stockinette because he found it soothing, and made a point of saying he was on a purl row later when he had to put his knitting down. It even looked like he was *actually* purling at the time -- they showed him making more than one stitch.

At the end of the show, they show him in a knitted vest and two knitted handgun covers (he's a private detective), and I thought, "gee, I really want to squee about how knitting's gotten so popular that they can put it on new TV and expect everyone to take this for granted, guess I'd better get a knit-blog..."

In actual knitting content, last night was the inaugural meeting of the Berkeley North Starbucks knitting thing. It was just me and one other person, which I actually kind of liked -- we got to sit and chatter away and get to know each other without trying to connect to lots of people all at once. She can't make it next week, but the person who I was originally organizing it with (who couldn't come this week) can, so maybe I'll get to meet another nifty person solo.

Sadly, even though I knew J. (the person who came this week) couldn't make it before 6:30 due to Monkey-care issues, I went at 5 anyway just in case anyone else wanted to come. They didn't. On the other hand, I got 20 rows of my Arctic Lace project (the North Star scarf) knitted, so I suppose it was a net win. Once J. showed up, I switched over to the mini-scarf I've got going as a travelling project, since complicated charted lace doesn't exactly lend itself to conversation.

It might be worth pointing out that perhaps splitty alpaca yarn (Garnstudio Drops Alpaca) combined with slippery metal needles (the size 4s from my Boye Interchangeables kit) isn't the best idea ever. I managed to not drop any stitches, but I'm going to consider that a gift from the knitting gods. The yarn's not really that bad, but since I had to rip out my cast-on three times before giving up and doing a knitted cast-on, I got a bit frustrated with it. (I kept under- or over-estimating the amount of yarn I needed for my long-tail cast-on, because despite knowing all kinds of tricks for estimating it, I always forget them in the heat of the moment.) The pattern is showing up beautifully, though, so I'm quite pleased. I suspect that my scarf is going to be a lot wider than the 10" the book says you should be getting with quiviut on size 3s, but that's okay -- I like nice wide scarves.

The mini-cable is going well, just like it did last time. The seed-stitch edges are doing this neat thing where the stitches pull apart from each other, leaving a sort of lattice effect. (I know it's not supposed to do that, but since it's never done it in any other yarn/needle combo, I'm not too worried about my ability to do non-weird seed stitch, and it is neat looking.) I was thinking of giving it to TG's father for Christmas, but TG pointed out reasonably that his father is something of a giant, and that perhaps a scarf that I refer to as "mini" isn't the best choice, even if I do try to pass it off as a cravat. He was properly impressed by my cabling without a cable needle, though -- I don't think he's ever seen me cable before. I must admit that one of the things I like about cables is that they're almost as good as lace for acheiving the "how'd you do that" effect.

No pictures of anything at this point, because I haven't gotten around to digging out the camera -- even though I'm deeply enamoured of the whole "putting pictures on Ravelry" thing, using the camera with the broken screen in the back is just an unbelievable pain, especially since the break is spreading. I shall have to scrape up the money to get it fixed.