One step forward and two steps back

Sigh.

Here's the progress so far on the second take of the Reflection Aran Pullover for my lovely brother.


You may notice that this is radically shorter than the previous progress shot that looked something like this:


The new and improved sweater back is the right width for the finished product. Since I haven't been sitting in front of the TV this week knitting like I had been last week, what you see is what you get. Instead, I've been trying to dig myself out of a vacation hole work wise, and haven't been able to take a lunch break to knit.

I should rephrase that. I see these girls from HR all the time eating lunch in the pantry on my floor at work. They constantly see me knitting because that's what I do the most on my lunchbreaks. One of them emailed me to ask if I thought there would be enough people that knit in the company that would want to join a knitting circle. I told them there would probably be a lot more people than they thought that would be interested. So they sent out an invite to everyone in the company (I work for Penguin, so the comapany's pretty big). They got 65 responses back, which far exceeded the capacity of the room they had reserved. So while I went to that during lunch, I was mostly teaching two people how to knit instead of knitting myself.

However, I have been doing a decent amount of knitting on my Mountain Colors Jaywalkers. Mostly on the subways when I'm going somewhere and I don't want to carry a lot of stuff. The book I'm currently reading is Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I've only got about a hundred and fifty pages left, but it's kinda too big to carry around on the subway. Lo and behold the astonishing amount of progress reading Tolstoy has afforded me:



I just started the heel flap is where that gets me pretty much. These jaywalkers go so much faster in magic loop! Even on a size 0 Addi!

In an almost complete non sequitor but not really....I've bought the domain name www.knitternet.org. I can't really tell you what I'll be putting up there, not because I don't know, but because I kind of want to shock the knitting world with it. I think it'll be pretty cool. Right now I'm looking for server space (I'll probably be getting some from my friend at Ashpool) and a logo, and once I get that stuff, I'll be getting even more adept at this webpage writing thing. I might move my blog there, but I haven't quite decided yet. I've got time to figure it out at any rate. If you go to knitternet.org you won't find anything yet, but once I get something going, I'll let you know!

All for Naught

I got about 15 inches through my brother's sweater. He came home this weekend, and I told him to bring a favorite sweater with him. After having seen the sweater, and discussed its fit with my brother, I have to completely rip out the sweater. Good thing is that I can just follow the pattern for the measurements though. The sweater's 26" long, and 44" across, but he said he wanted a bit more ease, so I'm just going to knit it with the instructions written in the book.

A whole week worth of work wasted. At least I can make up for it a bit on the bus home today if I don't sleep the whole way.

A Little Vacay and a Lot of Knitting

Ayup. I've been in Rhode Island all week playing nurse for my dad who had knee replacement surgery last week. He's been looking forward to getting the surgery done, and he seems pretty happy. They sent him home earlier than they usually send people home because he's been recovering rather quickly. The physical therapist came yesterday and she seemed to be very impressed with the amount of movement and bendability that he's got, which is always a good thing.

So, since he's more or less self sufficient, taking care of dad has meant sitting in front of the TV all day watching Orange County Choppers or American Hot Rod (neither of those are as boring to me as you might think, I am after all a tomboy when you take my knitting away) or other sorts of documentaries. To keep my hands occupied, I've been knitting the back of my brother's sweater to beat the band.



I've got 13.5 inches so far. I need about 27.5 inches. This might not make sense at first. I'm kind of knitting a small. This has been a math intense project. The smallest size in Knitting Nature is for a 46" bust. My brother's got about a 35 inch bust (he plays baseball and is in pretty good shape). So I had to narrow the middle section a bit. There's less ribbing since I had to get rid of about 5" on the front and the back. Also, my brother's torso's a bit longer so instead of knitting the back for 26.5 inches as described for the small size, I'll be knitting it for 27 or 27.5 inches. I've sort of done the math for the front, but I'll have to make a nice little color coded chart for the cables in the front, which I'll also be shrinking a little to account for the 5 inches that need to be taken away from the front for the smaller bust. It's so much easier for me to figure out what I need to do from a chart with colors than a chart with symbols.

Oh, and have I mentioned that I'm knitting this on size 4 needles? Good thing I've got all this time to knit it before Christmas!

November first means more space on Flickr!

Which means more post for you!!!

Where to start? At the beginning! The weekend of the 21st was Rhinebeck, so I jumped into a car with blogless Ruth (who's a pretty good driver I must say!) and we worked our way up to the beautiful land of upstate New York. The trees were extremely pretty!


I didn't do a lot of picture taking on Saturday because I was too busy spending money on yarn and navigating the THRONG OF PEOPLE that suddenly all decided to go to Rhinebeck on Saturday. It was a gorgeous day! Warm, sunny, and the lines for lamb made me really glad that I had brought my own turkey sandwich. The line for the hot cider was waaay shorter!

I'm told that at Rhinebeck there were tons of celebrities. I only ran into Stitchy McYarn Pants. She looked pretty much the way I'd expect her to look. The only other celebrity I ran into was the lovely Nicole Forrester, of Guiding Light fame and most importantly, the cover of Greetings from Knit Cafe. She's in the front left of this photo.



That night found us at Jill's (she's the redhead in the above pic) parents' place in some town up north there. I was amazed when I stepped out of the car and found that I was surrounded by stars! Gorgeous stars could be see so brightly! You could pick out the milky way and all that! I've always been fascinated with astronomy. Oooh! That just gave me a great idea for a sweater. It would be navy blue with sparkles, like that RYC Soft Luxe stuff and then the yoke would feature a string of stars all the way around. That might be my next design venture!

Anyway...enough about stars...

We had a great night, woke up the next morning and went back at it. I followed a few people around, like Heather, who convinced me (so, fine she didn't actually say anything, just helped me along in line) to get some Mountain Colors sock yarn with great greens, yellows, blues, purples and *gasp* pinks! But that's ok, because I got this great picture of her trying to eat the yummy lime green mohair:



Having totally spent all the money I wanted to (and a bit more too!), I decided that some damage control was in order. It was time for me to get friendly with the sheep.


And friendly we got. This one in particular was quite photogenic. But there were others as well. One had the most sproingey fleece. He was fortunately wearing it so I didn't disturb him too much. Just petted him A LOT. This one had horns that reminded me of Rhody the Ram. Actually, the fact that it's a profile is also very Rhody like. Yes, I've some pride for my alma mater.


And then there was the fuzzy cute odd dwarfy looking sheep. I just thought it was too cute. And with the bandana it almost looks like it wants me to take it home with me and keep it as a pet!



After all was said and done, this is what I have to say for myself:


Some Morehouse merino Bulky weight yarn for the Weekend Pullover from Weekend Knitting by Melanie Falick.


A bit of Maple Creek Farm Superwash Merino that's destined to be an Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, some Mountain Colors Barefoot in Mountain Tango colorway that's destined to be a sock of unknown pattern, and a bit of Springtide Cashmere that will end up being part of some intarsia piratey cuffs. I cleaned up pretty good. Spent a bit more than I wanted to on account of the Morehouse Merino booth being there. I've wanted to knit that one sweater for forever. I just can't imagine knitting it with anything other than this yarn. It's just too sproingey, too weekendy to not knit with.


So that was Rhinebeck weekend. Last weekend I went to my friend's baby shower. I was very nervous giving her the Baby Bobbi Bear because its eyes and especially its nose weren't quite up to my standards (my standards tend to be pretty high though). But it was a hit! My buddy John seemed to really like it a lot (he mentioned something about bringing it to bed with him that night!), and I think he named it Molly. In all her glory, I introduce you to Molly. Molly, the world, World, Molly:



Molly was knit with size nine needles (though I probably should have knit her on 8s) with Blue Sky Alpacas Cotton yarn. It was quite easy to knit, though if you're going to knit this, I strongly suggest that you read the errata along with the pattern. Otherwise the pattern doesn't make a smidge of sense.

On the needles right now is the Brother's sweater. I've done most of the math...I just hope I did it correctly. I have to rip back about four rows of the back (not a big deal at all) because I think I misjudged the ribbing in the middle. I'm also working on a pair of Jaywalkers in Mountain Colors Barefoot but in a different color way than the hank I got at Rhinebeck. I thought I should use up that yarn before I use the new hank. To be honest, I'm having a hard time getting gauge. I think I'm on a size zero and I'm pretty sure that the smallest size is still going to be a bit big. I really love the yarn, and am afraid that if I use a different stitch pattern that's a bit more intense that either the color or the stitch pattern will get lost. So I'm in the hunt for another decent sock pattern. If you find one that looks hot with a bit thicker variegated yarn, pass it on over!

So, I hope that satiated all your needs for pictures and color and words! :)