Hemlock Ring FO and other WIPs

The Hemlock Ring Blanket has been done for quite some time. But it's finally blocked!


Really, it's only marginally smaller than my queen sized bed. I'm actually somewhat surprised in that when it's blocked, the fabric is much thinner than it was when I was knitting it. I wonder why that is. But anyway, I think it came out great. I can't wait to use it.

What else have I been working on? I finally cast on for the Bog Jacket in the Pearl Ten Malabrigo Worsted.


I've found that knitting it while watching tv, movies, and horrible football games (seriously, I thought that Super Bowl game was horrible until the last two minutes) I've knit 17 inches of garter stitch. I've got 4 inches to go before I have to split for the arms. But it's feeling great, if a little warm. I think it's going to be really cozy to wear.

I've also been working on a pair of Jaywalkers.


I had forgotten how slow this pattern goes. It's taking forever to finish even just one sock. I really need a new pair of socks before winter's over. Especially since two pairs I knit last year are pretty much done. I also want to get through quite a bit of my sock stash this year, and if this pattern takes forever, it's never going to happen. My next pair need to go quicker.

I have a ton of books/magazines here that I want to review. Some of them might get done this week. Most of them probably won't. Work is kinda crazy. Speaking of work, though, if you're heading to NY Comic Con this weekend, stop by DK's booth. I'll be there all day every day!

On the Hemlock Ring Blanket and Apps

First things first. I pretty much finished the Hemlock Ring Blanket a bit ago.


The bind off kind of took forever and a day. But she's about 95% done. She needs to be blocked hardcore. I was going to do that this weekend. Stan and I are headed to the Poconos to learn how to snowboard and I thought it would be great to get it blocking so that it'd be dry by the time I got back. But I'm feeling somewhat lazy tonight, so I'm not blocking it tonight and instead am using my bed tonight (he's picking me up when he gets out of work, sometime before 8am). I just decided that I'll block it next weekend.

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So, I haven't really knit a lot this week because I got an iPhone on Monday (I named it stitches and my wallpaper is the awesome photo of the Monkey socks I knit out of Great Adirondak's Silky Sock). I've been staying up till 2am every night pretty much playing with it because it's fun. I was kind of suprised that there weren't all that many knitting apps. So here's my wish list for the worlds iPhone app programers out there. I think these ideas have merit, hell, I'd even pay for a few of them myself, and honestly, I don't have the capability to create them. I have created iPhone app type names for them for your amusement.

• iQueue: This app would let you import your Ravelry queue onto your iPhone/iPod touch. You could then use the queue as a guide at yarn stores and sheep and wool festivals to determine how much yarn you would need to create the project.


• Yarn Requirements: Pretty simple. You know those Yarn Requirement pamphlets you see at the register of your LYS? Digitize-em! Maybe even put in an estimate for a lacy version and a cabled version.


• Knitionary: A dictionary that takes knitting shorthand and translates it into English or the developer's preferred language (but really, English would be awesome!)

I felt like I had more than that but I can't remember any of them. What do you think? Anyone want to take a stab at them? Anyone have any further recommendations? Kinda makes me wish I knew more programmers, or even how to program. Unfortunately, the world has moved way beyond my rudimentary knowledge of BASIC and QuickBASIC, so everyone loses!

I Know Why They Call it the Hemlock Ring Blanket

Because it makes you want to drink Hemlock like Socrates.


What is this, you ask? It's the stitch count for the 8 different sections once i got to the second to last repeat of the pattern. As you can see, it's off by a bit. Four of those sections had the same number of stitches, but not one section had the same number of stitches it was supposed to have. This occurred the Saturday before Christmas. So I started tinking back. I didn't know how far I was going to have to go, and since my markers were all in the right spot, I figured that tinking was the best option.


I put the Hemlock Ring Blanket on a bit of a timeout and while I was tinking I made myself a cowl.


It's from Knit 2 Together. I absolutely love it. It's knit out of Malabrigo Worsted and it's the warmest thing. I could live in it for life. I might have to knit a couple more of them so I can wear it with each coat (I just bought a new bright orange snow jacket for when Stan and I go snowboarding in January).

Finishing the cowl gave me enough motivation to get back to the Hemlock Ring. In total, I tinked back 36 rows I think. Here's what my diagram looked like after the fact:


So, I moved inward every time I got back to a row that was right before a decrease row. Good thing I only had to tink back that much, otherwise I'd have to re-do the chart. You'll see there are three sections in the middle that are circled. They're all off by only one stitch so I said to myself "fuckit, I'm just going to fudge that one part." Fudge it I did, and I think it turned out ok. I've been on the right stitch count now for quite a while and I'm almost back to where I was when I noticed things were awry.



In the meantime, I've gotten a little antsy. I realized that now that I have this bright orange snowboarding jacket, I need a hat that will match. Something about light blue and sparkles doesn't seem like it will go well with the orangeness. So I stopped by Knit One, Purl Too in Wakefield, RI when I was home and scored some Elsebeth Lavold Classic AL to knit up into a hat. I found a Lucky 7 hat pattern on Ravelry and cast on. I've got two repeats out of 8 done, and while I was hoping to get it done yesterday on the ride from RI to NY, dawn was way too late and I didn't get a chance to. So I'm still chugging along on it.


So that's all I've got now. I'll leave you with some photos of the Red Sox Socks I knit for Beth. I've given them to her for Christmas so it's safe to post them! I'll probably post some sort of 2008 wrap up soon. It's the best way for me to keep track of what I knit every year. Then I can re-set the status bars on the sidebar.

I'm Made of Awesome

That's my "OMG Do you know what this means" face!

What does it mean? It means:

I'M DONE WITH ALL MY CHRISTMAS KNITTING!

That's what it means!!



They're the Urban Necessity gloves (Ravelry link) from old school MagKnits (the designer is offering the pattern on her website). I used size 8 needles and Misti Alpaca Chunky. I have a whole hank and a quite a bit of a cake left (I bought three skeins) and I'll probably use that to make a cowl out of.

I hated this pattern. It had nothing to do with anything. I just don't like knitting gloves and mittens. They turned out quite well though and I don't think you can tell how much I hated knitting them. I should mention that the pattern was quite easy to follow.

So this is the status (I just like showing that things have been crossed off, I'm not trying to gloat really):

• Socks for Stan's Mom
• Dairy Queen Hat for Stan's Niece
• Jacques Cousteau hat for Stan's Nephew
• Half Socks for my brother's girlfriend
• "Almost A Mystery" project for Beth
• Flap mittens for my boss
• Puff Daddy for Cousin Sarah
• Puff Daddy for Cousin Rebecca

Jenn vs. Christmas
Jenn: 8 Christmas: 2

JENN WINS CHRISTMAS!

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So what am I going to do with myself? Well, I'm preparing myself mentally for knitting with the luscious Malabrigo I picked up back in October. I'll be turning it into a nifty little Bog Jacket from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Around. I've been waiting so patiently to get done with all my Christmas knitting so I could get around to this project. Now I'll just make myself wait a bit longer until I can get the Hemlock Ring blanket to a nice size.

I took the Hemlonck Ring Blanket workshop at The Point. I'm way far away from being close to even halfway done with it, but I think it's coming quite nicely.







I wasn't sure if the marled colors were going to show off the design of the blanket, but I think it's turning out ok. I really couldn't decide if I wanted to knit it in grey or if i wanted to knit it in brown, so I decided to knit with a color-way that had it all.