Travel knitting
I have finished finals for what should be my very last semester EVER of undergraduate studies. As long as all professors involved get my grades in by December 30, 2007, I graduate and I am DONE. This means I have a LOT more time for knitting now!
We’re headed to France for vacation tomorrow, and I stood over my knitting boxes puzzling over what I should bring. I wanted Eris to be finished (it isn’t) so that I could wear it around freezing cold French countryside. Will suggested bringing it with me, but it still needs sleeves, then weaving in, then blocking, then adding the zipper. I don’t want to take that much time and that much yarn! At this stage, Eris isn’t exactly a portable project …
I’m thinking about frogging the “Sydney Socks” that I started to make while I was on an airplane for bazillions of hours going to and from Sydney. I think I want to do the Monkey socks (like everyone and his or her dog) but I can’t make up my mind. Whatever form or pattern it takes, that project will go with me. If I can find the socks I’m making for Mom, those will come with me too.
I think that I’ll take Something Purple with me, too. I’m still on the first skein of yarn, so this is definitely at the pack-and-go stage.
I’m just so glad to have time to knit again!
Eris: Hmm, ends not woven in.
While I had a two week break between classes, I pulled out some of my knitting projects and got started on them again. One of those projects was my much-loved but oft-neglected Eris. I meant to have Eris finished for my April 2006 trip to France. I missed that deadline, then got engaged and had a wedding to plan, so pretty much all knitting went by the wayside. So, about six months after our wedding, I pulled it back out. We’re planning an August/September trip to Sydney, Australia, and I think this could be a really nice thing to carry along for a bit of warmth in their early spring. (If I’ve done my math correctly. We shall see.)
I love Eris, though. I still don’t like wool very much because it makes me itch and sneeze. The teeny fibers hurt my eyes when they fly up after lots of knitting. I know that my yarn for this project (Elann’s Highland Wool in Raspberry) isn’t necessarily the best quality wool, but it’s good enough for me. It’s a beautiful color, and I like how the fabric looks. I’ve finally finished ALL of the body hem, so I only have sleeves and finishing left to do. That’s kind of hard to believe!
Eris: Another view of the cabled corner
Long time, no post, right? Well, I didn’t get Eris done in time for France, but it’s going pretty darn quickly now that I’m back. The first cabled corner wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but I did have to do some creative decreasing in order to hide the places where the garment edge stitches were wrapped. I’m whipping through the right cabled corner now, so hopefully I’m not too far from finishing the body and cranking out the sleeves. Woo hoo!
Post-cruise Eris!
Oh, what a wonderful and relaxing time for knitting and drinking, knitting and drinking. I’m glad I was at the pretty boring part of this sweater for most of the cruise. It certainly made it easier to knit while watching crazy dancers call bingo.
Anyway … here’s Eris with a good eight inches or so added to the body. I’m not quite believing it, but I’m almost at the point of needing to start the hem. If you click here, you’ll see a detail of the increases for the sleeves and the cabling for the waist shaping. I decided to do the cabling instead of the simple methods because if I’m going to spend this much time on something, I want to go all out.
I was also glad to have this cruise-inappropriate knitting with me for the flight home: the flight was freezing, and they didn’t have any blankets. Eris made a nice bundle of warmth on my lap.
Oh, and Clive is completely astonished by my progress. Yay, me!
Unlikely cruise knitting
I know I should probably take something smaller, cooler, etc., for my knitting on the cruise … but this is just too nice to quit knitting! I have to make my French challenge, too, and I don’t want to lose prime knitting time. I’m trying to resist the temptation to tuck a ball of sock yarn and some spare needles into my bag, too, but I probably will anyway.
Anyway, this is Eris as far as I got last night. Pardon the grainy photo … the real camera is packed and I’m making do with the cameraphone. I’ve just reached the point of knitting the body after putting the sleeves on holders. I’m liking how fast this thing goes, and I hope that I run out of yarn on the cruise because it knits up even faster!
Hasta, y’all!
I think he’s tired of modeling the knitting.
I’m doing better on my French Challenge than I did on the Knitting Olympics. I have just as much coaching assistance, but much less distraction. I was so exhausted tonight when I got home from work that I decided it was a knitting-only night.
So first I (and Clive) finished up the collar. I then puzzled through the proces of picking up the stitches from the collar — like the other picking up of stitches, new and complicated to me but definitely worth the finished appearance! Then I puzzled through the cabled raglan increases (I think I’ve got them down), and I started zipping through the yoke knitting. I still love this sweater, and I just love how the pattern is written so that things turn out so nice and neat with minimal finishing. Yay!!
Oh, but I forgot to mention the bit where I’d knit my stitch markers into the fabric of the collar and had to cut them apart with the kitchen scissors. Never mind that part, okay? Thank goodness they were the cheap plastic rings and not my pretty ones. Lord. I promise that some days I really am smart.
Eris is back!
Things have settled down enough for me that I can pick up the needles again. After the trip for Oma’s funeral I got sick, and let me just tell you how bad I felt: I didn’t want to bother picking up knitting while I lay on the couch all day. Yep. That’s some sickness, my friends. Nothing could tempt me, no matter how pretty or needed or easy it was.
But I’m back now! I watched Amazing Race last night — I boycotted that stupid “family” version they did last — and picked up Eris again. I want Eris finished in time to take it with me to France in April.
It’s a little hard to get back in the groove of reading the charts and dealing with the more complicated cables, but I’m getting there. I think I’m heading into the home stretch of the collar, and then it will be the fun of … whatever comes next. Adelle asked me about the next part of the pattern, and I realized I hadn’t reaad ahead at all. I guess I really should, but … I never do!
I’m also forgetting that I’m using straight needles. I kept putting down one needle, holding onto the knitting with my left hand, and doing something on the computer … and then losing the other needle. I almost always use circs, and I’m used to my darn needles staying put!!
Adventuresome
I’m a little concerned about this Knitting Olympics quest for the gold. Not only did I think it started on the 16th, not the 10th, I’ve now scheduled a trip to Finland in the middle of it. Did I mention that I’m doing a baby blanket? That’s not exactly the easiest thing to pack in a carry-on. There go four or five days of knitting right there! Rockin’! But this Olympics thing is supposed to be a challenge and a quest for excellence, not a guarantee that I’ll get something finished on time, right? Right. Onward and upward and all that. Team Texas, I’m not letting you down! (Do we have a website yet?) ETA: Okay, I can’t believe this wasn’t there already, but there’s now a Texas Knits Livejournal community. We rule!
This weekend I was visiting Dell up in Albany/Saratoga, and what do the two of us do any time we get together? Well, other than make fun of people? That’s right — we knit! We went to a yarn store in Saratoga and I got this fabulous deal on Artyarns Supermerino. Mmmm. I also got some 40-inch size 4 Inox needles so I could try this tricky two-socks-one-circular thing with the Supermerino. Let me tell you, that thing is a pain in the butt. I think it will be a wonderful technique once I get the hang of it, but I’m going to practice some more with yarn that I don’t care about before I mess with my beloved Supermerino. Dell was laughing at me because I kept caressing the strand of yarn I was working with and cooing, “Ohh … I love this yarn!” She also laughed at me because I sat there on her couch with about 80 pages from the internet printed out, trying to get what people are talking about with this cast-on and joining crap. She did say she admired me for not swearing yet, though!
In other news, I have dropped one of my classes so that I have more time for knitting. Okay, I’m not that addicted. It’s just a side benefit of moving one of my classes to the summer term and taking a different class at mid-term. So I have graphic design running now, a information age/ethics class starting after spring break, and a historical research class this summer. I like that pacing much better! Suits the Olympic knitting schedule better, too!
Eris, my beautiful Eris, is lounging in a basket right now so that I can knit it when I can concentrate on cables. I’ve rounded the first bend on the left half of the collar, and it’s just as pretty as the right half. Yay, Erin Eris!
Eris Collar — Continued!
Thanks for your encouragement on the cables … I decided to keep plugging at it and see how it turned out. I also looked around on Flickr and the Eris knitalong Yahoo Group to see pictures of other people’s cables at this point. Turns out that they ALL look this way. What do I know? I don’t cable, I don’t knit with wool, and the only thing I’ve ever blocked was a lacy wrap!
So I’ve kept going and have finished the right half of the collar and started on the left half. Now, if anything, this project will teach me to read ALL instructions in a step. You start the left half of the collar by going back to the beginning of the right half and picking up stitches. So what did I do? I immediately went and picked up stitches, only I couldn’t get it to work properly. Then I read the rest of the instructions, which tells you to not use the cast-on edge, but instead pick up through the middle of the actual stitches. Where do you think I was trying to pick up?
So then, after a frantic search through the KAL group again and a couple of “What the HECK?” IMs to Adelle, I figured it out and did just fine. And doesn’t it look pretty?
Frogs & Luna Lovegood-style
I think that the picture makes my cabling look better than it really is. Still, as I put to Adelle today in IM:
“I’M CABLING! I’M DOING SHORT ROWS! I’M READING A CHART!”
I was almost finished with the first chart of Eris’s collar when I decided that I really hated how my cables were turning out. I haven’t really done cables before, and I think I have unreasonably high expectations for how mine should be turning out. Whatever. I thought they were messy and uneven, so I frogged everything I’d done and started over.
This is the result as of 9:00, and I’m much happier. That’s Chart B right there, for those of you playing along at home. I’m seriously quite impressed with myself for sticking with it and mostly understanding what I’m doing. The thing I figured out with my cabling is this: I suck at knitting from the cable needle. The cable needle, in this case, is one of my short Brittany size 3s. It’s perfect for this, really. When it’s not holding stitches it’s tucked behind my ear, Luna Lovegood-style. I just can’t knit/purl the stitches off the cable needle. If I want my tension to be any kind of consistent, I have to move the stitches back on to the left needle after doing the twisty magic in the background (or foreground, as the case may be). I don’t know what the “right” way of cabling is (this is what comes from only learning from books/websites), but this works for me right now.
I even remembered to put in the row marker at the correct place. (Both times I reached that point.) Go, me!
P.S. I hate knitting with straight needles. Just wanted to share.
