A handful of yarn

Posted on 27 August 2005 by Kris

I finished the collar for Eris on Thursday night. I’m blocking it out right now, as I want to try and even out some cable wonkiness before I get to the body, and as the room I’m blocking it in has absolutely no natural light sources, a picture will have to wait until the collar is dry,

The momentary project monogamy was good while it lasted, but I have a new WIP in my life.

I bought some size 2 DPNs yesterday and cast on for this:

This is the cuff and most of the hand of a glove. I’ve only got a few rows left until I start on the fingers – my hands are pretty small, so it’s going rather quickly. I’ve decided that I do want fingers for my gloves after all, just no tips (as they would make typing a tad difficult…).

It’s a tad wonky at the side there, because that’s where I’m carrying up the strands of yarn – no, that’s not self-striping yarn – but blocking should even it out. And at least the striping prevents boredom.

No pattern for this. I’m using the Progressive Gloves article from IK Winter 2003 as a starting off point, but I’m including asymmetrical gussets, and I plan to start the pinky earlier than the other fingers. I might also start the ring finger a couple of rows before my middle and index fingers, but I haven’t completely decided on that yet.

It’s probably too optimistic to hope for completion by the end of the month, but I definitely want to be done within two weeks. If it’s not done by then, I just know I’ll lose interest and not finish for months.

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One goal down, several more to go

Posted on 24 August 2005 by Kris

The goal was to finish Falling Leaves this weekend. And I was well on track before Whistlestop, except then I forgot to decrease somewhere and didn’t notice it until four rows later, and by the time I unknitted and fixed it, I was too tired of working on the sock. I still could have finished on Sunday night, though, had I not gone over to Rich’s. Oh well.

So I finished knitting the sock last night. Considering how bad I usually am at keeping to self-imposed deadlines, the fact that I was only two days behind is somewhat miraculous.

The sock is blocking right now. I might post a detail or two later, but I’m thinking that a picture of the whole pair can wait a bit.

Yay for socks!

The only other goal I’ve made progress on so far is Eris. I’m more than halfway through the left-hand side of the collar, so assuming I stay faithful to this one WIP of mine, I should manage to finish the collar by the end of the week. That is one hell of an assumption, though, so we’ll see.

I need to pick Shimmer up again. I’d like to finish it sometime in the next couple of weeks, but we’ll see what happens.

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Current and future projects

Posted on 20 August 2005 by Kris

This is what the collar for Eris looks like so far. I’m pretty happy with the cabling.

The one thing that irks me a bit, though, is that you can totally see where I picked up stitches. (The way the pattern works is that you knit one half of the collar, then pick up stitches from one end to do the other half.) Of course, I could have avoided that if I’d just done a provisional cast on in the beginning. But since I sort of just skimmed over the first couple of steps before getting started (note to self: read patterns more thoroughly!), it didn’t really hit me until I was already done with Chart B. Oh well. It’s in the back of the sweater anyway, so I can definitely live with it.

Once I’m past the collar, this will be good TV (okay, DVD) knitting for awhile. It’s hard for me to actually get anything out of a foreign language DVD when reading a cable chart. But once I get to the stockinette section, I can actually read subtitles.

I’ve had one hell of a case of second sock syndrome with Falling Leaves. Other aspects of my life got in the way for awhile, so even if I didn’t already have a problem with FO commitment, I wouldn’t have gotten this done any earlier. So, I wasn’t the best test knitter for this project. But oh well.

I don’t have much more left. Two repeats, a bit of ribbing, and then blocking. (The first sock was already blocked, as Jess wanted to take a picture of it to send to Knitty.)

I totally plan to wear these socks, even if they’re a bit loose. See, Jess, I’m not maligning them! :-P

Of course, I’m already thinking of cheating.

About a month and a half ago, someone brought some back issues of IK to a knit together, and I acquired three of the four 2003 issues (Jess took the fall one). I leafed through those again a few days ago, and while several of the patterns from that year were already on my list, a couple of them just got bumped up a bit in the “Future Projects” queue.

Socks are on my list, and I’m also going to be knitting a rug or two for my place at some point, because I can never have too much color in here. (Not that I have a whole lot yet, but that’s because I haven’t had much time to paint.)

I’m kind of a selfish knitter. Though I might still do some holiday knitting, I haven’t fully decided yet. But, the projects I have in mind for this are on the small side, and I’d only be knitting for three people, so as long as I decide and start by late September, it’ll all be done on time. I hope.

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Low FO count

Posted on 19 August 2005 by Kris

I’ve generally been pretty poor at documenting my projects. I’ve gotten a bit better at it, but still.

I mean, I have few enough FOs as it is. I started knitting a year and a half ago, but I’ve taken several hiatuses, including a three-month one due to fieldwork (too exhausted by the end of the crazy long work days to do anything) and extensive traveling. And out of the few projects I’ve done, I have basically no record of half of those. No pictures and minimal, if any, blogging.

I’m hoping now that I’ve moved my blog, I’ll be posting a little more regularly. Using a more appropriate tool for this blog should help this considerably.

Still no pictures, because I’m posting this during my lunch hour and don’t have my camera on me, but the plan is to finish Falling Leaves by the end of the weekend (just a couple of repeats left!), and I’d love to get the collar for Eris done next week. I’m going to be ordering the Lotus Blossom pattern soon. That covers most of my goals for this month. The last goal is just starting the fingerless gloves, which requires new size 1s (since I’m using sock yarn, and I keep breaking DPNs like they were toothpicks).

Yeah, I’m thinking the FO count’s going to grow in the next couple of months. :-)

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Finally moved!

Posted on 18 August 2005 by Kris

I’ve been saying I’d move my knitting blog for awhile, and I just now finally got around to it. It would’ve gotten done a lot sooner if I hadn’t been so anal-retentive about the layout. I’m still not 100% satisfied, for coding reasons slightly too geeky for this blog. But finally I decided it was time I stopped mucking around.

My old blog title was lame, and so I’ve got a new one. Because as the title implies, I can’t commit to just one project (or just one hobby, which is why I’m on knitting hiatus every so often).

I imported all of the entries from my old knit blog and some from my personal journal, so you can poke around those, if you like.

In knitting news, Jess reminded me about Claire de Lune, so she and I walked over there last night. It was fun times, as usual. I worked on Falling Leaves and Eris while I was there, and made good progress on both. Pictures to come later, but for now, it’s time to get away from the computer and actually knit.

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