Morass

No, I haven't abandoned the blog. It's just that I wanted my next post to be about my completed Ingenue and how much I was enjoying it. I kept thinking of other things to post, but then I'd put it off because I didn't want to waste time blogging when I could be knitting. Slight problem with that tactic.

It's never going to be done. It's just...I...it's so...how in the Hell do other people do it so much faster? I mean, I know I'm knitting two or three sizes larger than my size because my gauge turned out to be so tight, but that just means that I'm only knitting as much as someone two or three sizes up from me would legitimately be knitting, right?

Yes, I swatched. And washed the swatch. Twice. And I should have frogged and restarted once I realized that this was going to be a problem, which I did realize about three inches down from the neckline, but I didn't. I made the choice and committed to this gauge and the modifications I'd have to do in order to make it work.


I am further along than this now, but it feels like not very much further along. I have the body done, but I need to undo the lower hem and a couple of inches in order to lengthen it and move the pattern up a little bit. I've resisted doing it so far because the only thing keeping me going with it is my ability to try it on and see how cute it's eventually going to be. If I undo the hem, I lose the ability to even do that. One arm is knit to about the midpoint of my elbow, but I can now see that I've picked up too many stitches around the bound off area, so there's too much fabric there. It's bunching up in a way that I don't think I'm going to be able to accept. I really ought to undo that arm back to the lifeline and redo it for a closer fit.

I keep pushing out the deadline. First, it was the end of November. Then it was last Friday, because I was going to wear it to a coworker's going-away lunch. Then it was Christmas Eve. Then it became "I'll work on it on Christmas Eve and have it done by...now I'm just lying to myself." The current unrealistic goal is New Year's Eve. We'll see. Maybe I should put it away for a couple of weeks and make it January's sweater.

So much yarn out in the stash bins, and I'm still stuck on this one project. I really need to sit down and figure out how to use that knitting machine.

Chugging Along

I'm a few rounds below the sleeves. It feels like slow going. I keep reminding myself that this isn't a chunky knit, so it's going to take longer to see progress on it. Also? This thing's going to attract pet hair more strongly than a Furminator.

The Strange Public Lives of Birds, Part 2

Remember when there were only two of them?

Our office park has been overrun by turkeys. We stood in my soon-to-not-be-my-boss's office and counted them. Thirty-five birds had gathered on the patch of grass outside his window. They'd been out in the parking lot a few minutes earlier, a couple of the hens perched on the roof of a minivan, most of them wandering around the cars.


Of course, this meant that everyone in the building with a camera had to come out and take a picture, so then we had two flocks circling the parking lot, one flock of turkeys and one flock of people holding their cameras at arm's length to try to get the closest shot possible of a puffed-out tom.


The turkeys made a long circle through the parking lot and came back to the shaded grass. This might have seemed like a smart strategic move, because very few of us had cameras equipped to shoot in that light, so they'd found a way to be left alone. Then again, they're turkeys. I don't think they're capable of strategic thinking. Yes, I know, noble creature being underestimated by the arrogant humans and we don't understand animal intelligence and they probably evolved from dinosaurs so they've been around a lot longer than we have and blah blah blah, alright? Nothing against the turkeys, but it's not like they're going to form a war college or anything.


As evidence, I present this picture. This is what happens when turkeys turn and take flight and they don't see the five-story building in their path. This, friends, is turkey snot on a window.

"It literally smacked the snot out of itself. Why did Ben Franklin think that this should be our national bird?"

"Well, he (Franklin) was kind of heavy. Maybe he liked them because they were the only birds he could catch."


In other news, here's yesterday's progress on Ingenue. I'm halfway done with the increase section. It's not coming along as fast as KnottyGnome's, but it is coming along. I love the colors of hers. I wish I had more green in my stash.

Sun-Maid

Did I finish it on time? Yes, yes I did. Do I love it? Yes...sort of. It could be a wee bit narrower and a smidge longer in both the sleeves and the body, and it'll probably benefit from a row of crochet along the inside of the neck to keep it from sliding down my shoulders, but it doesn't NEED any of those things and everyone seems to love it as it is, so I'll probably never lengthen or tighten up any of the edges.

Did I wear it proudly to my dearest friend's wedding? Uh, yeah, about that. You know how Tulare in November is usually a grey, misty affair? Fog caressing the ridges of the fallow ground and all that? Perfect weather for a wool capelet over a heavy jersey dress? Funny thing about that. It was hot and sunny on Saturday. Record-breaking heat and surprisingly strong sun. I put the sweater on to shield my back from the burning solar rays, but it was back off again within seconds each time I tried. So now I have a sunburnt neck and cleavage, the itchiest kind of sunburn, by the way, but no modeled pictures of my little sweater.

Details
Pattern
Anthropologie-Inspired Capelet for the gauge and the number of stitches to cast on, but it's my own beyond that.

Yarn
Bouton d'Or Dandy in 'Raisin', Anny Blatt Victoria in 'Chocolate', probably no more than three hundred yards of each. Once I recount the Dandy left in my stash, I'll have an exact yardage measurement. Both yarns were from the stash, so it's another stash-bust quick hit. Woohoo!

Needles
Boye Interchangeables with the size 13 tips for most of it, Brittany 13s for the sleeves. I'd forgotten how much of a difference a sharper point makes when knitting certain yarns. The Brittany needles seem really blunt when compared to the Boyes. I used the Brittanys for the sleeves because it was easier than continually pulling the stitches up onto the needles from the Boye cable. The transition from the join to the body of the needle is really steep on the larger sizes, so my stitches kept tightening up as they slid down to the cable. I spent a lot of time grabbing them between my fingers and working them up to the end so that I could knit them.

Time
I started on Monday night, and I finished seaming the arms on Friday night. If I could string the hours together, I'd say it was about a ten-hour job. If I'd had a long, straight, aluminum 13 needle, it probably would have taken about half that amount of time.

Modifications/Design Notes
I thought I'd try something a little different, so I added short rows along the bottom of the whole sweater to give it a little cut-away action. I started wrapping and turning at six stitches from each front edge, then repeated at twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, and so on, until I'd done a couple of w&ts that would show up at the back. I didn't go all the way to the center of the back with them. In the flat picture, it looks like this would give me a little bit curved edge on the back. When I wear it, the edge looks almost straight. I have to imagine that this thing would ride up something fierce if I didn't add a lot of shaping to it.

The original Anthropologie capelet had short sleeves, but I thought my version would look better with at least an elbow-length sleeve. I knit twenty rows down on the sleeve, increased nine stitches evenly across the width, then knit another six or seven rows and a four-row garter border. Why'd I knit the arms flat? No needle suitable for knitting them in the round. I tried with the Boyes, but the stitches looked so bad that I had to unravel all of that sleeve and start over.

What else is different? I kept it stockinette-side out. There's no ribbing. The increases are kfb instead of yarnovers. It's not really an AIC. I keep trying to make it, and I keep making something else.

When I hugged the bride's father, he said, "Long time no see! Showing more chest than I remember!" Thanks, bride's father! That's just the kind of compliment a girl loves to hear. Realizing that I'd knit a perfect boob frame, I scrambled to find a way to make it more modest. As it turns out, the stitches on the front edge are so loose that one can easily thread the tie cords through them and lace up the sweater. The bride's stepdaughters suggested this modification. Thanks, bride's stepdaughters! I might crochet some loops to the fronts to make it easier to do this in the future.

Conclusion
There is one picture of the sweater and the dress together under the blinding rays of the unforgiving sun. Guess what? I don't have that picture with me. Guess what else? The colors of the sweater and the dress don't match under intense light. The two look like they were meant to go together under most other lighting, though, so the little sweater's still going to be permanently paired with the dress.

I'm sorry I don't have more FO pictures, but I didn't make time to take them so now I don't have them and I don't want to wait until I take more to post about the project because I just want to move on, you know?

If I'd known it was going to be ninety degrees last Saturday, and if I'd known that other women were going to be less dressy than I am on a typical Tuesday at work, I might not have bothered making this sweater. I put a lot of pressure on myself to finish it on time, and knitting under pressure makes me stressy.

And bitchy, the Woman. Don't forget bitchy. Where were my hours of soothing ear massages? Replaced by your screechings of 'Buddy, for Christ's sake! Shut your pie-hole! Don't get fur on that! Stop f$*king with the dog! JeeSUS!' I am distraught, the Woman. - Buddy the Cat

I'm sorry, Buddy. I know I wasn't pleasant to deal with last week.

I'm sorry as well, the woman. Sorry for what your attitude forced me to do on the bedroom carpet. You know that I have a nervous stomach. - BtC

Well, given that response, perhaps it wasn't worth it. But I don't know. Bird's been my friend since the fifth grade, and that's worth working hard to look a little snazzy. I'm so happy for her.


Bird and I have had some grand adventures in our time. Our nicknames alone would make great titles for children's stories. "Bird and Banana Beseige the Burger King" or "Bird and Banana Beleaguer the Bovines". No, not cow tipping, because that'd be cruel, and Bird and I would never have done anything purposely to hurt those cows. We loved them. Besides, cows don't necessarily sleep standing up. They spring to their feet pretty quickly when a camera flash goes off in their faces, though. And then, startled and confused, they pee. For several minutes. I don't know exactly how long, because we were chased back to our car by a ranch-hand shouting at us in Portuguese before they'd finished. I need to track down the pictures and find the time to tell the stories, but that's for another day.


Now I can get back to my NaKniSweMo project, Ingenue. I finished the yoke last night and I'm on the upper body and sleeves. Ahhh. Little needles and round after round of stockinette. Oh, how I've missed you.

third world hell hole spitting ground

The readers have spoken. Thank you, readers! Capelet it is.


I'm four inches into it, with another three and a half to go before separating the sleeves. It took a little less than an hour last night, with most of that time taken up by struggling to find the right needles to use with this combination of yarns. This is one situation where my beloved Brittany Birch needles are a bad choice. The yarns tightened up on them so badly that I couldn't get the stitches to move to the end of the needles. It's now being knit on Boye Needlemaster size 13 US, which is giving me three stitches per inch.

This is one strand of Dandy and one strand of Victoria. I like how it's turning out so far, shiny just often enough to give it some zing, but not all-over flashy.

I've already deviated from the pattern quite a bit. I did a garter neckline instead of ribbing, and I'm doing kfb increases instead of yarnovers. I'm planning on making it much longer, and it's going to have 3/4 length flared sleeves. All of these things might change as I get closer to the deadline.

What's with that subject line? I sometimes get bored and start reading through the comments in the articles on SFGate. This one was about the California State University system tightening up its enrollment process. Somehow, the conversation devolved to the point where one of the commenters began complaining, at length in several posts, about loogies on the sidewalk at SFSU. "It's not just on the ground! They'll spit on your car! People spitting everywhere! They'll spit on your shoes! It's DISGUSTING!" I'd almost believe that the comments are a joke intended to lighten the heated discussion, but what if I'm wrong? What if the campus is really overrun by serial expectorators? I just grossed myself out a little.