The summer of Rachel

Remember that Seinfeld episode, with the summer of George?

I am officially unemployed. Wait, maybe I should frame that more positively. I am officially a doctor! And I'm also unemployed, as of about ten days ago. (To be clear, I have been in a PhD program for the last almost 5 years, and they paid me.) It's looking more and more like I'm going to be unemployed until September, when I'm heading down here. This is more due to laziness on my part than lack of hireability. I had something vaguely lined up and it fell through, and I haven't been inspired to apply for anything else. But I'm feeling really, really good about having this time off. It feels especially freeing to be out of school and unemployed in the summer months. I've had summer jobs (or real jobs, or school) since I was 16, so I'm kind of feeling like a kid again! J. and I just made s'mores over the burner.

What other cool summery things could I do? Besides knitting, obviously. I've been doing lots of baking. And some writing. And more knitting. Maybe when it gets hot enough again I'll run through a sprinkler.

I leave you with some hot girl on yarn action. I bought myself a little graduation prezzie:


I've been remiss in showing pictures of my yarn recently. Everyone needs to see a little yarn action now and then. This stuff is so amazing that I couldn't not show pictures of it. It's like the Elle Macpherson of yarns.





Yum.

When is an FO not an FO?

When it's ajar! Ha ha! Wait, that makes no sense.

Anyway, remember this guy?



Of course you do, I've been taunting you with pictures of it for months. Well, it's seamed, blocked, and dry, but it's too damn short.

Let me tell you a little something I figured out about negative ease. This is probably incredibly obvious, although it didn't occur to me until after I had already made the mistake. This sweater measures 36" around and 22" long when it's on the ground. 22" long seems just fine, I have plenty of sweaters that length and they fit great. I have a 38" bust. I like the 2" of negative ease, I think a worsted weight cabled sweater should fit a little snug on someone with my body type, so I don't look like a giant wooly ball. But here's the kicker. That 2" stretch has to come from somewhere. Hence the sweater being too short once I put it on. Doh. So now I will be attempting to rip out the ribbing from the bottom and reknitting the ribbed part longer. Eek! Scary.

You know how with some projects, you're so excited about knitting it that mistakes come along and you just rip right back and keep on going? Because you chalk it all up to part of the general knitting process? And you know that no project will ever come out right the first time through? And knitting puts you in such a zen mindset that little errors just roll right off your back? Yeah, me neither. I always think that every project will be perfect the first time, and every mistake or setback just pisses me off and I have to hide the project in the closet for a while until I'm calmer. Hence the fact that this sweater has been hiding in my closet for a few weeks. I'm almost ready to take it back out and fix it.

Socks seem to be the exception to this rule. They don't piss me off nearly as much as bigger projects. I don't know why that is.

I finished the first Koigu Monkey sock (toe-up) all on size 2.5mm needles, and the leg was way too tight. Somehow the sock managed to charm its way out of being chucked in the closet and I just ripped the leg out, reknit the ankle on size 2.75mm, and the rest of the leg on 3.0mm. Perfect!



I am totally converted to this whole toe-up thing. The miser in me loves using up every last yard of yarn. Now if I can only make myself cast on for the second sock.

Finally dry!

Take one monkey*


Turn it upside down


Add one pair of bare tootsies

(Excuse the bandaid, I ripped up my toe in yoga somehow. Sticky mats my bum, they should call them shreddy mats.)

What do you get?

One pair of toe-up monkey socks!


Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in Copperbeech, almost 1 skein
Needles: Knitpicks size 1 DPNs (2.5 mm)
I never have revealed the time it took me to finish a project, mainly because I usually find it embarassing how long it takes. But it occurs to me that it might be useful to keep track of this kind of thing, so I'll swallow my pride and start telling ya. But please keep in mind that I am very fickle and never work on one project exclusively.
Started: May 9, 2007
Finished: May 28, 2007 (I think?)
Pattern: Monkey socks from Knitty, of course!
Mods: Knit toe-up. They're upside down! I basically just took the toe-up pattern from the IK Summer 2007 issue and applied the Monkey chart to it.

Toes! Magic cast-on


Heels! Short row heel


I'm unsure of the short-row heel. These socks are kind of hard to get on over my foot, but once they're on they do feel like they're staying in place better than my other handknit socks.

Verdict: I love this pattern! I love these socks! With one giant, glaring exception. I hate this yarn. I was lured into buying it on impulse at my LYS because of all those pretty pretty colorways peering out at me. I didn't even realize the horrible yardage (less than 300 yds! For $21!) until I got home. But that's not the worst part. Here's the worst part.

Sock #1


Sock #2


Notice anything? Like how the colors on the leg of sock #2 are totally different? There was a knot about 3/4 of the way through the skein, and the colors were completely different on either side of the knot. For $21, such crappy yardage, and THE BASTARDS TIED TWO DIFFERENT COLOR LOTS TOGETHER. I'm not the only one this has happened to either. I've heard alot of stories about people getting skeins with tons of knots in them too. You better believe I will not be purchasing this yarn again. Y'all consider yourself forewarned. Needless to say, my messages to the US distributors have gone ignored. Luckily my LYS is awesome and the owner gave me the entire price of the skein back in store credit, without even asking for the defective skein back.

Anyway, pissiness about the yarn aside, I'm still pretty happy with these socks. Especially because I wear jeans almost every day, so the legs aren't even going to be visible.

Happy feets!


So happy that I started another pair immediately:


I'm being a copycat and am knitting all the stitches that are normally purled. I think it gives it a more subtle, smooth look, plus it's much faster. Yarn is Koigu KPPPM that I got with my aforementioned store credit from my awesome LYS.

*These monkeys are Capuchin monkeys we saw on a boat ride in Costa Rica. So cute! We got to feed them bananas. Probably breaking all kinds of eco-regulations about not feeding the wildlife, but so so cute! With their little human-like fingers! And their funny little faces!

I wish I lived in Arizona

If I lived in Arizona, I would have had FOs to show you several days ago. As it is, I wet-blocked some things AT LEAST a week ago and they are still not dry. San Francisco is unbelievable. It's a constant losing battle trying to find somewhere or some way to hang your towel so that it will be dry by the next day. You don't even want to know about the crazy prolific molds and mildews. Maybe I should stick to lace until I move somewhere drier. Anyway here are some previews. I promise I'll show you the real things as soon as they are dry enough to model (any week now...)

So Close.

The seaming is finally done. The collar is picked up and knitted. The sweater actually fits beautifully, it's not tight under the arms at all, I think the shoulders are just lower than I'm used to so I kept trying to hitch them all the way up. But if I just let them sit where they want to sit it feels great. Just one tiny problem:



Ick. See how floppy and sloppy that collar looks? Ick ick ick. I can't wait until I get to the point in my knitting skills where I can look at directions in a pattern and think jeez, that sounds like a horrible idea, instead of just blindly following them. The collar is K3, P3, except then the last round they have you K1, P1 all the way around.



Ick. I think this is mainly responsible for the sloppy looking edge, although I also somehow managed to bind off too loosely (which never happens to me). I'm picking that stupid K1P1 row out as we speak, then will try binding off a bit more tightly. Fingers crossed!

Oh and P.S., Costa Rica was beautiful.

Still no seaming

I have got a major case of startitis recently.

Some monkey socks:


My first toe-ups! The yarn is Colinette Jitterbug in Copperbeach. I really wanted to do Monkeys out of this, but I was worried about running out of yarn since the skein is under 300 yards (why is that? It doesn't seem any thicker than normal sock yarn, yet claims to be 100g. I don't get it.) I was doing mental acrobatics trying to convert the chart in my head to flip it over, but then I realized the pattern would look just fine upside-down. Hooray!

Started working on the Wedgewood blouse:


And finally, swatched for yet another cute summery top:


The Josephine top from Summer 2007 IK. In my defense, this issue didn't show up until after I had already swatched for the Wedgewood top.
The yarn is the SWTC Bamboo from this place, in Cobalt. It was an amazing deal, 10 skeins for $42.50, given that it usually sells for $13/skein. I was really excited when the yarn showed up, it seemed so soft and silky in the skein and had such a neat texture. Now I'm less sure. It felt really scratchy as I was knitting up the swatch. I hand-washed it and it feels a little better now, not scratchy anymore, but definitely not soft either. I can't decide if it's worth the effort or not. SWTC has changed their formula for this yarn, even though you can still find the old stuff for $13/skein at many places, but the new stuff feels amazing. Sigh. Why couldn't I have some of that for $4.25/skein?

Anyway, all this startitis came about because we're going to Costa Rica for two weeks for our honeymoon! Leaving in a few days. And I wanted to make sure I had plenty of knitting projects for the trip. First I started the Wedgewood top, then I thought maybe it was too much bulky yarn to lug on a trip, so I started the Monkey socks, then I realized they were on metal DPNs so I needed something else for the plane anyway, so I started the bamboo thing, then I thought maybe I would work some more on the Wedgewood top after all. I think I might end up bringing all of them.

The cabled sweater?



Banished to a corner to think about how difficult it has been.

New stuff

I'm actually procrastinating some real work now. Which means procrastinating with keyboards and internets, instead of sticks and thread. New look for the blog. What do we think?
The banner is some yellow Hill Country sock yarn I've had in the stash for ages. (Also the same stuff that went into J.'s temporary ring.)

A series of procrastinations

Not even excitement about the VK cabled turtleneck potentially being far and away the best sweater I've ever made for myself can induce me to finish the seaming.



What is it with seaming? Why is it so horrible? And why did just half of it take me the better part of a Saturday to do?
The good news is that I got far enough to try it on and realize that all the pieces fit almost perfectly. The sleeves are a little tight at the top, but I think I can block some extra room in there. More importantly, nothing is too long or too short, which seems to be where I have gone wrong in the past.

The other good news is that procrastinating the seaming induced me to finish these:



Boring stockinette socks that I started in December. I got serious second sock syndrome (SSSS?) on these.


Ooh la la.



Top-down, K2P2 ribbed cuff, stockinette socks. Instructions from Ann Bud's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns.
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Forest, less than 2 skeins.
Needles: Size 1s.

Even though they turned out OK, I think I'm going to be knitting from alternating skeins for handpainted yarn from now on. The spiralling doesn't bother me too much, but I would have preferred an even more random patterning. And there is a bit of pooling at the top of the instep, where the sock was the widest before the gusset decreases. You can see it in the top picture. I think it's kind of cute though how there were pools of about the same size but different colors on each sock. But it would have been cuter if there was no pooling at all.

What else could I do to procrastinate seaming? How about swatching for my next project?



Norah Gaughan's Wedgewood blouse from Summer 2006 IK. Cute cute cute! However, the whole thing is reverse stockinette in the round. I think I better learn that reverse knitting technique so I don't have to drive myself crazy with purling. Yarn is Takhi Cotton Classic that I had in the stash (which I accidentally forgot to flash, oops).

Ickle Wickle

I thought the ring pillow was the littlest finished object I would make. Well, here are some even littler ones:



Baby socks for a friend who just had an ickle wittle baby boy. (I hope they aren't too pinkish for a boy! I don't think they are, personally, but who knows what the parents will think.) Ann Budd's basic pattern, size 0 needles, Regia bamboo sock yarn (lovely stuff).

But wait! Things get even littler!



J. had to send his wedding ring back to be resized, so I made him this temporary one. I mentioned the idea as a joke but he really seemed keen on it. I didn't think he would actually wear it, but it took about ten minutes so I thought what the hey. But he actually wore it to work today. It's already looking quite a bit worse for the wear from going through a softball game. I guess there's a reason wedding rings aren't usually made out of yarn.

I got married!

Thank god for web-savvy friends with digital cameras, that we can have pics 2 days later!