Ahhhh....

That's better.



I added 3 more repeats, bringing it to a grand total of 14. I think it's just right now. I blocked it this time with the blocking wires, I bought some U-shaped pins so that the wires couldn't just pop over the pins. I think the blocking looks a lot better, although the edges still aren't 100% straight - there are all these loops where the wires went through. How do people get such perfectly straight edges when blocking lace, especially with pins? I don't get it.

Anyway, onwards and upwards to something else. I'm sick of working on this stole.

River of Malabrigo

Mmmm, I'd like to go swimming please:



Pattern - My So-called Scarf
Yarn - 2 skeins Malabrigo worsted, I forget what the colorway is called.
Needles - 11s? I think? I just cast off the other day but damned if I can remember.
Changes - cast on 36 stitches instead of 30.

I just kept knitting until all the yarn was gone, it's definitely a double wrapper. Of course now it's in the 70s here. Oh well.

Conveniently hides the zits on my chin (all from my thesis talk, baby):



Flickr is doing this annoying thing all of a sudden where it is turning the small sizes of some of my pictures sideways, and I can't figure out how to make it stop. I usually don't like posting the medium size ones because they seem huge, but I guess it's better than sideways.

This is how much yarn there was leftover:



I don't think of myself as a very anal person, but I love when a project uses the amount of yarn I have exactly. Because anything more than like 10 yds I can't bring myself to throw out. Maybe it's my pack rat nature more than an anal nature.

Suddenly plagued with doubts

Is the stole too short? IS IT???? I think it might be.



Look, it hardly goes past my arms! Also, I think the edges look really horrible! HELP!!!

I have NEVER spent so much preparation ahead of time for my appearance for one day, and I'm starting to have the sneaking suspicion that I'm not really going to look that different from how I normally look, except that I don't normally wear a dress, or white things.

Fret fret fret.

Less blob, more stole

Someone wants to meet you.



Come out, little stole!



It's shy.



There we go.

I was feeling the model vibe, here are some more shots:





Hee hee, my feet look funny in that one.

Specarinos:
Pattern - Baltic Sea Stole
Yarn - Jaggerspun Zephyr Wool-Silk blend in Sage, approx. 900-1000 yards
Needles - Addi turbos size 5 (started on size 4s and couldn't see what the hell I was doing, going up a size made a huge difference).
Changes - In laceweight instead of sportweight, so I added a few pattern repeats and used smaller needles.
Reason for being - to wear in my wedding! Finished a whole 5 weeks ahead of time even!

Between the waiting for blocking wires to show up and a surprise trip to Vegas from little sis, there was a long time between knitting the last stitch and getting to take these pictures today. As it turns out, blocking wires suck. They make it sound like, or I thought that, it would be so much faster than pinning, but it's not. For one thing the ends of the wires are flat, not tapered, how retarded is that? It seemed to take just as long if not longer to thread the wires through the edge stitches as it would have to just pin every edge stitch. It was much more awkward than pinning, and I had to lift parts of the stole up while it was still wet which seemed like a bad idea. And then once I got the damn things threaded through, I couldn't figure out how to actually stretch it out, the instructions say to put a few pins to hold the wires in place, but the wires kept popping right over the pins as soon as I stretched it even a little. So I ended up just yanking them out and pinning the thing instead. It took me so long that the stole was dry before I'd even gotten most of the pins in so I spritzed it before continuing. I don't know if that was necessary or not.

I realized once I was close to the end of this that it was my first real lace project - I've made lacey patterned things before, like Ella and Branching Out, but this was my first with real laceweight yarn, and where every row had funky stuff to do on it instead of getting a purl row for resting. I think it's good I didn't realize that earlier, I might have chickened out and picked an easier pattern. But this one wasn't too difficult at all and I'm glad I picked it. I think it turned out quite well, if I do say so myself. The only part that bugs me is the edges, they aren't very even and I'm not sure if this is because I was too fed up to do a good job pinning or if I stretched it too hard. I definitely had a much harder time getting straight edges while pinning this than with other things I've blocked in the past. I don't know why that is exactly.

Now it is wrapped in tissue and sitting in my closet where it will stay until the wedding. I will not take it out to wear before then as much as I am tempted to, knowing me I would spill ketchup on it.

Oooo.... sparkly

Picked up my wedding ring today.
Here it is with my engagement ring:



Holy crap, I'm getting married in 6 weeks!!!

Baltic Sea Blob

Done done done!



Blocking wires, hurry up and get here! Added to my impatience is the fact that the blocking wires are bringing along with them this, this, and this - those last 2 are KP palette, for doing some colorwork with the green palette I already have. Endpaper mitts, perhaps?

11th verse, same as the first

Hello little blog! Long time no see.
I have not felt very bloggy this month. Partly because I've just been manically plugging away at the wedding stole, and kind of in a not so fun, hurry up and finish sort of way. Partly because I've been manically plugging away at my thesis and thesis talk, most definitely in a not at all fun kind of way. But the good news there is that the stole is almost done (just a 9 row seed stitch border to go! yay!). I have ordered some blocking wires so it won't be presentable for a while, until those show up and I block it. I'm excited to not have to deal with putting in ten thousand different pins. I've ended up doing 11 repeats on the stole, which kind of bugs me. As I was going I thought it would be either 10 or 12 repeats, now I'm at 11 and it seems like the right length but 11 seems like such an unsatisfying number.

I also feel like so many bloggers seem to write entertaining and informative posts about the process of working on whatever project they have on the needles, but I can't find that much to say about the stole. It's on the needles, I'm pretty much following the pattern as written, I already showed you the first few repeats, I really don't feel like I have anything unique to contribute about it.

I thought to keep you entertained in the meanwhile (I haven't been around for weeks, surely I owe you some entertainment!) I would show you a non-knitted crafty thing I made a while ago. My wedding invitations that I did on my brand spankin new Gocco:



And reply card:



For some reason these are photographing as the same color, which is accurate for the reply card, but the invitation is actually sage green.
The Gocco has neat results I think, but is kind of a pain in the ass to use, and once you get started (if you are taking over the whole living room as I did, and don't have some kind of separate craft studio room) you pretty much have to keep going until it's all done and cleaned up, or else your cats will walk all over the wet prints while you are not looking, and I hate any kind of project where you can't put off the clean up stage. I'm not sure that I'll really be using it again - maybe it will show up on Ebay.

In other news, I keep craving small, quick projects (like Calorimetry (and I feel kind of pathetic that that little headwrap is my only finished object for 2007 so far)) that I can churn out mindlessly. I have started (and almost finished) a My So-Called Scarf in Malabrigo:



This is my first Malabrigo - yum.
Fuzzy squishies:



I want a whole blanket/pillow set made out of this stuff, then I would never get out of bed.

Like California, hell must have recently frozen over

Because get this - not only did I use the specified yarn for a pattern, I even used the specified color. I think this might be the only time I have EVER used the called for yarn, which could explain why I run into gauge problems so frequently. Although maybe using KP shine sport for Picovoli counts, since that was one of the suggested subs.
Of course, this using of the specified yarn was a total coincidence. I had 2 skeins of Filatura di Crosa 127 Print sitting around for a year, and then the Winter Knitty came out with the Calorimetry pattern in it in the same color as I had bought. I don't think I would have looked twice at that pattern otherwise, but when I saw it I thought, hey, I have that yarn! Here it is:


This pattern is really cute and creative, but as many people in the blogworld have noted, the instructions as written will make a really gigantic headwrap. I'm so glad I have the internet community to do my work for me! I used size 7 needles instead of the called-for size 8, cast on 90 stitches instead of 120, and knit 24 rows instead of 40. I think it could stand to be even a little smaller, but it's not too big as is either. I only used 2/3 of 1 skein and I have another skein, so I can make a few more until it's just right!


Verdict - cute, comfy, and fast (took me a few hours, I'm sure actual fast knitters could churn it out in much less).

A day late and a dollar short

Ashley informed us that the 23rd was National Pie Day. January strikes me as an odd time to have National Pie Day - I always think of pies as a summer thing, when all the fruit is around. I guess apples are still sort of in season, but apples are always available. Anyway I wanted to make some pies too! But I didn't get around to it until last night.

This one is half margherita, half tomato-sauce-olive-spinach-mozz.

I don't think this is exactly the kind of pie The American Pie Council had in mind. In fact, I'd be willing to bet there is a separate American Pizza Pie Council.


This one is potatoes, onions, and rosemary. I was trying to recreate one of my favorite snacks from when I lived in Rome - pizza rustica alle patate. Italian pizza is justifiably famous, and I'm sure most foodies even know the difference between typical Roman pizza (really thin, almost crackery crust) and Napoletan pizza (thicker and chewier). But there is another kind of traditional Roman pizza, pizza rustica or pizza a taglio, made in giant rectangular sheets and sold in little take away type shops in slices. You ask for it by weight, which I always thought was hilarious - "I'll have 150g of cheese pizza, please". My favorite was just a totally simple crust with delicious super thin slices of potatoes on it. But I think the traditional version must be made with buckets of olive oil - mine was good but nowhere near the potatoey ecstacy I remember.

Not much knitting has been happening around here. Yes, the thesis is partly to blame, but this new addition to our household has played no small part itself:


It's so little and cute! You could almost put it in your pocket!

Thesis shmesis

Wedding shmedding.
It's cold outside (and inside) and I want to knit a sweater.



Hmm, maybe I will.



The upshot of my horrible week of last posting is that I get to start writing my thesis. This is a really good thing, because it means I'm almost done. (The bad part was the crap I had to take from my advisor to get him to agree to it.) But it also means I am to be trusted sitting at home in front of my laptop all day with buckets of yarn and projects sitting just feet away. Who are we kidding? If there was yarn in lab, I never would have got anything done.

Anyway once the temp dipped into the 30s here in San Francisco (gasp! shield your pets and children!) the lure of the unknitted sweaters was too hard to resist. I started this sweater from the 2006 Holiday VK a week ago and have already finished the back and a few rows of the front, which seems very fast for me. At this rate, I'll be done just in time to start panicking about how I have so little time left to finish my wedding stole. Or maybe I'll just start that panicking right now.

I'm doing it in Cascade 220 in Lichen, one of the heathered colors, so pretty. I originally bought this yarn for a simple cowl neck sweater but apparently that is not to be. Do other people ever really use yarn for projects it was originally bought for? I seem to change my mind pretty quickly after buying the actual yarn.



These cables are so solid and organic looking. I feel warmer already. (That pets and children comment wasn't actually a joke, well on my part it was, but the news around here has been ridiculous recently - one news show the other night said "Freeze warning is in effect for the Bay Area! Protect your pipes, pets, and children!" Come on. I may have become wimpified after living here for a few years, but I still remember what it's like in parts of the country where freezing is a normal winter event. Although I do feel sad about all the ruined citrus.)