I’ve been afraid of intarsia for quite a while, and (despite a foray into colorwork with a fingerless mitt class) I haven’t forced myself to really face that fear. But, I think I may have found the catalyst for change: a Totoro baby outfit. (more…)
But apparently not dangerous, as I have no body. I speak of the sweater, of course.
I finished the second sleeve last night before I went up for dinner. (Smaug for scale.) (more…)
I’m not sure if I mentioned that G gave my dragons a friend, in the form of Sauron. I’ve got the little collection going on my table in the family room. They hang out with me while I geek and knit. But, Sauron has little feet (who knew?) and is very top-heavy. He tends to fall over unless he’s propped up by his dragony friends.
So, I have this incredibly goofy desire to build a dragon pen, complete with coin beds (pennies), and overseer (Sauron). And, in my brain, it’s made out of popsicle sticks.
Sometimes, my inner child is not so inner.
It was brought to my attention that I haven’t made my annual announcement that I have been designing custom planners (think DayRunner™ or DayTimer™ or Franklin Covey™, but based upon your designs) for more than 20 years. (That’s right. Since high school.) If you’ve been fighting to work within a system, instead of working a system, I might be able to help. Drop me a line, and I’ll work with you to design the planner of your dreams. (Or at least one that isn’t based in nightmares.)
After the “cuff too long” debacle, I ripped out the second sleeve and started over. I very carefully did not overshoot the length on the cuff this time, and switched to stockinette stitch, as required by the pattern.
This time, I was only 2″ past this point when I realized my mistake: I forgot to switch needle sizes (also as required by the pattern).
At least it’s tinking, and not frogging, I guess.
About 7″ into the second sleeve, I decided to check the cuff length against the first sleeve. (You know, something I should have done with the while I was knitting it.) Turns out, I knit 10 extra rows on the cuff of the second sleeve. There is much sighing and frogging taking place. Because this is going to help the second-sleeve syndrome.
I appear to be suffering from Second Sleeve Syndrome. This is, of course, the older brother to Second Sock Syndrome. (After having finished one sock it becomes difficult to go on and finish the second one to make a pair.) I am working on a sweater, and you start by knitting the sleeves. The first one just seemed to fly by, but man… this second one is taking forever. But I suppose that knitting a sweater with one sleeve would just be silly, right?
Since my Hitofude is on timeout, I’ve started a new sweater which calls for 1,470 yards of yarn. I am using a yarn that comes in 110-yard units.
SO MANY LOOSE ENDS.
Well, since the sleeping thing clearly isn’t going to happen, I might as well be up and knitting. Unfortunately, my Hitofude is in timeout for non-compliance issues. So, this leaves me with that favorite task of all knitters: swatching. But, since I’ll be working on a sweater, I figure I should actually make sure it’s going to end up the right size. As an added bonus, if there’s any knitting that will put me to sleep, it’s got to be swatching.
So, as you may remember, I’ve been working on the Hitofude cardigan. Things were tooling along, and, on Sunday, I got to the second and third tricky bits: Undoing the provisional cast-ons (2), and performing three-needle bind-offs for the sleeves. (The first tricky bit was the provisional cast-ons themselves.)
So, yeah. Finished the sleeves, and read the part of the pattern where it says how many stitches I should have: 290. (more…)