Wasted Day

I was off work Monday - using up vacation. I ran some errands and planned to spend the rest of the day knitting socks for mom. I LOVED the Fargyle pattern when Knitty came out, so that's what I wanted to do. Boy, was I disappointed :( I haven't actually frogged it yet, because I'm just going to knit from it rather than reballing. Given mom arrives in just a few days, pair #2 will be a simple rib with a little cable thrown in for interest! The yarn is Worsted Loet Gems, and it is pretty FAB!

I have photos of a few other projects to share soon!

Hat no more

Well, not exactly what I had in mind when I pulled out the hat I was working on for Bob to try to finish, but it is being frogged. If you recall, I had the fantastic idea to make the hat two tone. There were two reasons. . . first being Bob is color blind, so having two tone camel/black he'd at least see the contrast; second being Bob lives in one of the coldest places I've ever been, so having the floats inside the hat would essentially make a dual layer hat, so extra warm! Unfortunately, the floats are seriously impacting the stretchiness of the hat and as it is, would not fit anyone much bigger than a 9 or 10 year old. So, I will rip it out. I'm not sure if I'm going to give it another go with two-tone and try to leave more slack in the floats, or if I should just go with a single color. It may go on the back burner for a bit, shooting down my attempt to finish it before they arrive next week. This leaves me down to 3 active projects.. Maude, which the body is three rows from being cast off.. . . Jake's socks, that I couldn't find reinforcing thread for the heel so it will have to do without, and my socks, that I got a new set of (overpriced) needles to continue working, since I broke one of the Size 1s.

The overpriced needles came from a trip to Richmond. Jess, Jen & I took a trip Saturday up to do some wedding dress and yarn shopping. It was a really fun day! We started out at a vintage shop where I found a gorgeous dress from the 30s. Unfortunately, it was big on me and due to the construction (or lack thereof. . it was mostly draped!) I'm convinced the alterations would cost at least as much as the dress and the owners of the shop didn't necessarily disagree (but did give me the name of a seamstress to get an estimate). We wandered around Carytown and stopped at the Yarn Lounge before a yummy sushi lunch. Then we visited the best bridal shop ever (they don't have a website, or I'd link!). The worker was so helpful in telling me how many ways you can modify a dress by ordering it without a train, without tacky sparkles, etc, etc. I found a dress I love there, but it's a smidge fancy. The back is gorgeous, though. The second bridal shop we stopped at was insanely expensive, but I found a bridesmaid dress there that I really really love. It's nearly everything I wanted, the only downside is it was SOOOO big (the sample sizes are big ones!) that I'm having a bit of a hard time picturing how the waist will fall on me in the right size. I'm also not sure it says 'wedding' enough. I truly wish I was more decisive! After dress shopping we stopped at two more shops - The Knitting Basket and Lettuce Knit. Knitting Basket had so much awesome yarn I hadn't seen before and Jess left with some gorgeous laceweight. I left with overpriced needles (that's what I get for picking up something without a price tag and not putting it right back down!) and some elastic thread for the cuffs of Jake's socks. Despite some very reasonably priced sock yarns, I resisted the urge to buy any actual yarn, and I was rewarded with a PRIZE skein in the mail yesterday! I won the April Mama Llama Yarn Club contest and got a skein of Perfect sock in with my club shipment! I'll show pictures of the prize and the shipment when I'm motivated enough to take a picture :)

Have an awesome day!

New England failed me

No no, not the Patriots. I had no vested interest in the Super Bowl, but oddly enough actually enjoyed watching it this year. Maybe that had to do with the fun group at the Super Bowl Party, though :)

The New England that failed me is the beaches of Maine. I didn't have much time for blogging or knitting last weekend because I was working on my project for my Interior Design class. We had to choose one of four beaches as the room inspiration. I chose Maine a) because I lived in New England and b) because I didn't like the other choices. Plus, I actually do enjoy the feeling of New England beaches. . . .you are never warm, even in the midst of summer, and there is something striking to me about the contrast of the coolness with the fact that it is still serene and romantic. Jake helped me construct a bead board box. . .. I stained my own Cape Cod shingles. I couldn't find the perfect fabric, but I made do. As I completed it, I thought the critique might be that it was too literal, but instead, the critique was that the proportion was off (which I can see, the box I built ended up a little too big) and that it was too outdoors-y. That is now where I'm struggling to determine how to redo, as I WANT it to be outdoors-y to covey the cool. I do need to figure out how to incorporate the comfort/coziness. . . . do I have time to knit a cozy sweater?? :)

So now I need to scavenge around some thrift stores and see what catches my eye. This, of course, impacts my February is for Finishing goals. Bummer :( All I've managed to knit is another 2 inches on Jake's 1st sock. I'm nearly ready to turn the heel. Sheldon is also completely knit and 90% sewn. . . he just needs legs stuffed and attached and he'll be able to ship off. I did purchase the lining for my felted purse and chose a button. That counts as progress, right? I also decided that my first attempt at design is going to be frogged. I like the design, but the more I look at it, I just don't think the yarn is doing what I want. Instead, the Silky Tweed will become this. Not until at least March, of course.

Fixing vs Frogging

While I consider myself a 'verging on advanced' intermediate knitter, I suck at fixing errors. Anything besides a basic dropped stitch/wrong stitch/wrong slanting decrease, I typically resort to frogging. I was working on my hat tonight, and started decreasing for the crown too soon. Once I tried it on again and realized this, I had to rip back an inch or so to where the increases started. No biggie. . .until I picked up all my stitches again and was one stitch short. I found the pattern repeat where the stitch was missing without a problem. Given there was no hanging loop, I was smart enough to realize I was missing a YO. Should be an easy fix, right? So I pick up a YO and knit around. When I knit the next pattern row on top of my 'fix' it suddenly didn't look right. No problem, I think, I'll just drop down and move the YO to the other side of the stitch. After I did that, the pattern still didn't look right. OK, I can still fix it, I'll just drop two stitches down the two rows and move the YO again. You can see where this is going, right?

I spent about 2 hours, all in all dropping the entire pattern repeat of 7 stitches trying to make it 8 stitches and it never looked right. Big bummer :( So I had to rip all the way back to the last place I could see all the right stitches, about 1.5 inches. I started to knitting again (undaunted, can you believe it?!?! but I really like the pattern!) and then it hit me. . . . I realized that where the pattern repeat landed straddled where I had started my decreasing. . . . DOH! I wasn't missing a stitch, it had been legitimately decreased and I just needed to tink back that one pattern repeat and I would have been good to go. . . . Knitting irony is much funnier when it happens to someone else. . . . so go ahead. . . have a good chuckle at my expense!

Visiting the Frog Pond (and belated birthday gifts!)

Well, first the fun stuff. The mailman brought me three boxes Monday. One was a crappy eBay purchase. . . so not picture worthy, so let's forget it. One was my destash from Carrie. LOVE the yarn, just like I expected! The pink/brown sock yarn will make me socks for my cowboy boots. This yarn
is the wool that I want to make a felted project out of, I think the colors will felt into each other so nicely (sorry for the poor pictures, it's rainy and dreary today!). The last box was a birthday present from my best friend Tricia. Tricia and I have been friends since 3rd grade, which makes her my oldest friend. This is no small feat, considering the many late night calls or home visits she dealt with from me (she was much more responsible than me, except for that whole taking her parents' car out before she had her license!) Anyway, she sent me a very thoughtful gift. . . a pattern of the day calendar for 2008 (which I am resisting the urge to open and read every one of right now) and a journal. The journal is to take with me when I'm travelling and can't readily blog, so I can keep track of what I want to tell everyone. THANK YOU, Tricia!! (btw, Tricia, knowing me for so long, is amazed that I have developed the patience to actually FINISH anything I try to knit. . he he he!! Apparently I've mellowed with age!)

I cast on for a Dream Swatch last night with some random mercerized cotton I had. I think I'll be giving it to Laura. The cotton is actually really soft, nicer than I expected. Thank you, random eBay purchase :)

Unfortunately, I frogged Lelah. Here she is now (on my lovely swift, of course!). I accidentally put a yarn over in the wrong place that I didn't catch until two rows later. I thought it would be an easy fix, so I dropped the three stitches down two rows. . . . and suddenly I only had 7 stitches in total when I should have had 9. One was the yarn over, but I couldn't figure out what the heck happened to the other one. So then I decided to frog just to the row BEFORE the error, to get back to the right stitch count. And, well, let's just say that didn't go so well, and the only thing left was to tear it out completely. It's not the end of the world, I really should work on knitting Christmas gifts, anyway. I also didn't like how my tension was working out on some of the purl stitches, so I can fix that when I start over.

I need to sit down and make the official Christmas list. . . . that is part of the plan at SnB tonight. I am slightly worried it may be an overwhelming list, but I need to see it to be able to plan it. We shall see. . ..

One final note, today is election day. I will be off to vote shortly (waiting for all the working folk to get to work so it's empty when I go vote). Who am I voting for? NO IDEA! I DO know that my state Senate seat is uncontested (Republicans gave up in my district a while ago, apparently) but I'm relatively certain there are House seats up for grabs. Since I have no idea from all the negative ads on TV who is actually running to represent me, I will likely go in the booth and vote for a Green Party candidate or some other person with no chance of winning. Or maybe I'll write myself in :) I think it's important to vote, but also important to not be an uninformed voter. In races where I know nothing, I find random 3rd party votes amount to abstaining rather than simply not voting at all. On the upside, this means all the campaign ads will stop tomorrow on TV. HALLELUJAH! There have been commercial breaks where EVERY AD. . . all six or seven of them, were political ads, negative ones, of course. I do believe only Dr. Somebody So&so (obviously not a good enough ad to make me remember his name) is the only candidate who even bothered to air a 'this is why I'm good' message. I'd vote for him based on that, except I think he's running out in Virginia Beach. Too bad. I never thought I'd WANT to see a beer commercial, but anything will help me not want to shoot myself from watching another ridiculous attack ad. I'm bracing for the presidential campaign, I think I shall have to give up TV!