Finally!

I don't know how many hats I've made for Husband over the years. He is like the Goldilocks of hats, I swear. This one's too tight, that one's too loose. This "weave" (he means gauge, but doesn't know it) is too big, this "weave" is too small. This brim's too wide, this brim's not wide enough. This color's too light, this color's too dark... I swear, I cannot get it right. It's a hat. But something in me (pride, probably) refuses to let him just go buy a stinkin' hat already. I mean, come on. He's married to a knitter! I will resent any hat he brings into our house that I didn't knit for him. He's a good and patient and kind and understanding man, so he puts up with me and my peccadilloes. Thank God.

Anyway, it seems I have finally gotten it right. This most recent attempt was sparked by desperation: my own. I was at this conference in Boston, seaming up the baby sweater for Meowkat, and finished the seaming sooner than I expected. A whole day sooner, in fact. I was faced with sitting in a conference with no knitting for an entire day. NOT AN OPTION.

This is one of those times that I'm grateful I come from an Iowan family. We're really nice folks, we Iowans. We don't know how to be otherwise. My wonderful sister drove me to the Boston neighborhood where the conference was taking place, and on the walk from her parking space to the church where we were meeting, with only 2 minutes to spare, I popped into Newbury Yarns. They have just moved to a new space and didn't have their hours posted on the door yet -- I walked in and asked, and I was there a half-hour early. But Aldrich (sp?) let me browse anyway. And by "browse," I mean "ask her for yarn to make a hat." She pointed me toward some lovely dark-gray Karabella Aurora, I grabbed some size 6 needles, and said "You might not recognize me. I'm Anne's sister. She'll probably be in a bit later." And Aldrich practically jumped over her counter to give me a hug. "How is Anne? She is such a nice lady. Please give her my best. Are you ready to check out now? Just let me sign in..."

And that, my friends, is how I bought yarn a half-hour before the shop is open. Aldrich is, herself, a very nice person and probably would have rung me up anyway without name-dropping my sister, but I'm sure it didn't hurt.

Anyway, I slipped in to the conference only a few minutes late, sat down, and cast on 72 stitches, joined in the round. Knitted a 1x1 rib for longer enough that I was ready to poke my eyes out with the needles, then switched to stockinette. Got most of the hat done during the day, then went back to my sister's house and knit more after dinner, let myself be talked into staying the night and driving back to Vermont in the morning. In the morning, I let myself be talked into staying pretty much until lunch... and I finished the hat. (Six k2tog decreases, evenly spaced on the round -- first every-other-row for a few sets, then switched to every row for the remainder.) My sister grabbed a ball of fluorescent-hunter-orange from her stash and suggested I add a tassel on the top, so I did. It looks hilarious and wonderful.

Husband loves the hat. He thinks it's just right. Now if it would only get cold in New Haven so he can actually wear it! And then I can take a picture of him wearing it.

(Just kidding. I would not wish winter on anyone. Even someone I don't like. Because I'm nice.)

Progress!

Due to a hilarious (well, maybe not "hilarious," but it's either that or "frustrating," so I'll take the former) series of events, both of our guest beds have been unusable for ... six months or so? Maybe only four. Whatever, long enough that I haven't been able to block anything sizeable for a very long time.

All that has changed now, and I've now got both guest beds functional again. Come visit! But probably not in the winter, as there's no heat in this room, and I want to rent out the one that has a radiator. But meanwhile, I can block things again!

This is the long-languishing lizard ridge. Soon, friends, I will be able to sew together those long strips and add the border (I'm just going to do a garter stitch border, not crochet the silly scalloppy one in the pattern) and then it will be done! This is a very exciting thing, you know. Warm is good, up here in Vermont. Particularly in guest bedrooms that don't have heat.

Action Shot

This is KnittingQueen's baby. Out for a walk on a fine October day (okay, so I've been sitting on this photo for a while), wrapped in the blanket I knit for her. Is she adorable, or what?

More babies on the way!

I'm at that stage in life where freakin' everyone I know is having a baby. Everyone. It's a baby-splosion up in here. Most recently, Meowkat has been the lucky mom-to-be. I offered to throw the Burlington-area knitters shower way back in the summer when I didn't know that this fall was going to be craaaaazy-busy, and we finally made it happen at the beginning of November.

The fall has been so busy, though, that I didn't quite have my gift for her finished for the shower. Eh, it happens. At some point, I just realized that I could either throw a baby shower or finish the baby sweater I was knitting her, but not both. So I threw the shower and gave her an unfinished sweater (which I immediately took back so I could finish it, of course). Well now it's done! I did the final seam at a conference in Boston the week after the shower. I think I was also knitting this sweater in Cleveland. And in New Haven, CT. So it's a well-traveled baby sweater, and there's not even a baby yet! He's due this week.

I figure as long as I got the sweater done before he's born, I'm still okay.

I'd been having a hankering to knit an aran sweater as fall came upon us and the pull toward cozy knits grew strong. I even went out and bought some beautiful and perfect yarn for just such a sweater. But seeing as how I'm still plugging away on Husband's monotonous stockinette sweater and it's taking me FOREVER (I've started the sleeves four times now! Argh!), and I've also got multiple almost-but-not-quite finished sweaters for myself, I just didn't feel right starting yet another sweater for myself yet. But given the baby-splosion...

I promptly went out and bought some gorgeous Malabrigo Rios (okay, okay, I was checking out The Knitting Studio's new location and gave in to temptation), and flipped through StrungUp's pattern library (mine doesn't have much baby stuff) until I found the Heirloom Aran Sweater (Rav link). Perfect! I cast on pretty much right away, and knit whenever I had a chance. It made for good travel-knitting on my Cleveland trip, but all my other trips this fall have been driving trips, so I didn't get as much done as I'd have liked.

A couple of nights before the shower, this is where I was, progress-wise:

The sleeves on this sweater are loooooong. Too long. But most baby sweater patterns have sleeves that are too short, so whatever. It just took a while to knit the sleeves. But it's a baby sweater, so that's totally relative.

Anyway, I plugged away and had the sleeves done for the shower, and finished the neckband during the shower itself. I got to the seams eventually and finished them during a conference-slash-visit with my sister in Boston.

And here's the finished product!

See, the sleeves were so long that I ended up folding up the cuffs. If I knit this sweater again, and I may very well some day, despite other Ravellers' complaints that it's a poorly-written pattern (I didn't think it was great, but it wasn't so bad I would bother to complain about it), I will shorten the sleeves about 3 inches.

Now I just have to find a time to get it to Meowkat, who's supposed to be having this baby...today. So, um. Yeah.

I cannot wait to see this on Baby Whatshisname someday. He'll be adorable! Congratulations, Meowkat and Meow-husband.




The obligatory Jared Flood-inspired artsy knitting photo. Although I'm not so sure my light is as nice as his.



Also, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! It's my favorite day of the year. I'm going to go hang out with the Most Awesome Nephew in the World now.

Catching up

Wow, I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted on this blog! That seems to be the situation this fall: I seem to think it's late September. How in the world is Thanksgiving this week? I am so not ready. I just cannot wrap my brain around the fact that Advent starts Sunday. Rather than being in a calm centered place of waiting, I am constantly hurrying to catch up.

I've been traveling a ton this fall, but haven't gotten as much knitting done as I'd like. I do have a few things to share, though. I'm on my fourth iteration of sleeves for Husband's sweater. I made a sweater for a friends' baby who is due any minute. I.... okay, I haven't done much else. But I think about it a lot! The closing of Borders, while sad, was good for the expansion of my knitting book library. And therefore my dreams.

I'm going to stretch my posting as much as possible over the next few weeks, so here's a sneak peek of coming attractions.

Malabrigo Rios has changed my life. Seriously. Not as much as my iPhone, but it's still it's own kind of quiet revolution.

Side Note

Remember how I bragged that Ty didn't mess with my knitting projects and I could sit with him asleep on my lap while knitting and he would ignore the yarn? That isn't true anymore.

He was particularly obsessed with the Emily Capelet. I had to take to hiding it. He couldn't even leave it alone while I was doing my Finished Object photo shoot. Sigh.

Now for Something Completely Different

I had to frog the sleeves of Husband's sweater. They fit me, but not him, and that's not so useful. I was frustrated, so I took a break from the sweater.

I was visiting Nido a couple of weeks ago, and Fiona asked my opinion about a pattern she'd picked for a sample. The next day, she called me and said that the woman who was supposed to knit the sample had backed out -- would I be interested in knitting it? Sure!

The pattern is Ysolda Teague's Emily Capelet. The yarn is Tidal Yarns DKish weight. It's kind of a light DK. I got gauge with a size 7 needle. I really enjoyed knitting with this yarn -- an alpaca/wool blend, and still very lanolin-y, and just pleasant under the fingers. And I like that it's local and natural and all that good stuff, too. It's got good drape, and isn't saggy.

I don't love the pattern. If I had been knitting it for myself and not as a shop sample, I'd have made a number of modifications. First, I'd do stockinette instead of garter stitch. (The yarn lends itself well to garter, I guess, but aesthetically I prefer stockinette, and I think the yarn would do well.) Also, the instructions specifically say not to pick up the wraps at the end of the short rows, which bugs me to no end. It just seems wrong. Those are the two big ones. I wasn't thrilled with the way the pattern was written, but that's more technical than aesthetic. I just knitted it as fast as I could. And grumped a bunch along the way. I did fourteen repeats of the pattern, and bound off. It took me two weeks to knit the whole thing, and then I put the buttons on last night.

(It must be said that I could not have survived this pattern if it weren't for the handy row keeper-tracker thingy that my friend Aubrey made and gave to me. You can see it in the top photo, that colorful piece of ribbon. Someday she will have her Etsy store up and running, and you should all get one. It's a lifesaver when it comes to patterns where every row is different and there's a lot to keep track of. Thank you, Aubrey!)

Now I can take it to the shop. Fiona is going to block it for me -- normally I'd be happy to do it, but I'm going out of town for a week and would rather give her the unblocked FO than make her wait until I get back to block it and get it to her.

And now I am eager to get back to Husband's sweater. Whew! I guess, much as I didn't enjoy the knitting of it, the Emily Capelet was exactly the kind of project I needed to get me back to being excited about... sleeves!

Adventures in Blocking on the Road

My friend LiturgyGeek had a baby. A daughter. BabyLG, we can call her. She was born a few months ago now, but I didn't rush to make her something because I knew I wanted to make a baby sweater for her -- and, well, she was born at Easter. She lives in Iowa and won't need a baby sweater until the fall. A six-month size sweater will be perfect for her. And I knew I would see her Mama in July. Sooooo I didn't rush to get anything done and in the mail.

Anyway, July is here. Seeing LiturgyGeek (and meeting BabyLG) involved a trip to Tampa, Florida (not because they live there, but because the United Church of Christ national meeting was there, and LG and I both had to attend). About a week before take-off, I put down the sweater I'm making for Husband, found a pattern I liked, and bought some yarn.

Side note: can I just take a moment to say how excited I am that Malabrigo is making a superwash worsted now? I'm surely the last person on the planet to have discovered this, but DUDE. Rios is an amazing yarn. I am totally smitten. I would use it for non-baby projects! I would make big-person-sized sweaters out of it! Hooray for gorgeous kettle-dyed superwash wool!

Okay. So I bought the Malabrigo Rios -- two skeins, just in case, but it turns out that I only needed one -- and cast on and had the body, like, a third of the way done by that evening. I knitted on the plane to Florida, I knitted in meetings whenever I could... At one point, LG said to me, "by the way, I haven't seen you knitting here! Are you working on anything? What are you making?" And I got a little cagey. I think I said something like, "Yeah, I'm working on something. I'll, uh, show you later." She got it, and did not push. This is the sign of a good friend-of-a-knitter.

Anyway, I finally finished the sweater about 3 or 4 days in to the meeting. And it totally needed to be blocked. Fortunately, I was staying in a fabulous Embassy Suites suite, and was therefore well-supplied with both space and tools. I pulled out the ironing board and iron, grabbed a washcloth, and went to town with a bit of washcloth-steam blocking. It's a sweet little sweater, but those leaves on the front don't stay flat on their own! (LG, now that the sweater is blocked, you shouldn't have to worry about this again.)

Also, I accidentally dyed the washcloth purple. Sorry, Embassy Suites!

It all worked out in the end. The blocking part, that is. I honestly have no idea if the hotel got the dye out of the washcloth, but I would assume they did. Hotels are generally pros at bleaching the towels.

And the finished product came out nicely. The Cascade pattern is really cute, and very simple to make. I didn't make any modifications this time, but if I were to do it again (and I might some day) I'd make a sixth leaf at the bottom of the placket instead of cutting it off at 5 for the seed-stitch band. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to add, although I understand why the author wrote the pattern the way she did.

I added on the buttons during the business meetings on the next-to-last day of the event. We introduced electronic voting this year, and it took a bit of experimentation to get the hang of sewing on a button and pressing the clicker-thingy at the same time (in the past we just had cards to hold up, which isn't as hard because it doesn't involve the same set of fine motor skills that sewing on buttons requires). It all worked fine, and the buttons looked good AND I voted for important stuff like LGBT human rights.

Most importantly, LG and her husband Backbencher loved the sweater. And I'm sure that BabyLG will look adorable in it this fall, when it actually fits her. LG has promised to send a photo of BabyLG in the finished product when it does fit. For now, just enjoy this Jared-Flood-esque photo of the button band.