FO: BSJ

I finished one! Well, if you count it as finished before the buttons are on. But it could be years before the buttons are on.



Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket from The Opinionated Knitter (though I think it's in one of her other books too). In Araucania hand-dyed 100% wool. One skein of each color and I have a significant amount of each leftover, probably plenty for booties. I love how it has a kind of samurai look to it - which is much more pronounced if you look at it from the back. [Kate slaps herself on the forehead for forgetting to take that picture, too]. Will try to show you the back view next time.



And of course I started another WIP. Actually, I started a Marilyn sweater but decided that even though I had matched the gauge perfectly, the color was all wrong for me, so I started again on an EPS hybrid sweater for Hubbster using the same yarn (Canadian White Buffalo 3-ply that I got from Elann dirt cheap a year or so ago). I mis-calculated the gauge outrageously (i.e., I used the number of sts in 2" as if it was the sts in 1") and somehow didn't notice that this couldn't be right until I'd knit a couple inches, pulled it off the needles, and realized I had a hem for a house cozy. I can only blame the fact that my head is still all stuffed up with my endlessly lingering cold. So I frogged that, started again, and now I have two inches of an EZ EPS sweater for hubbster. It goes really fast on US10 needles, but I'm worried about the yoke/neck shaping being alright in this huge gauge. I'm thinking maybe I should just rip it all out and make it into a blanket instead. EZ has a nice garter-st blanket design in Opinionated Knitter that called for fluffy, bulky, wooly yarn just like this. Plus, I really don't like the color. Not only did I not get a very good sense of it on the computer monitor when I bought it, but I also bought it in one of those yarn-lust frenzies where all reason goes out the window in the fact of such a low price for 100% wool. I also like the idea that it's just three strands of pencil roving that get slightly twisted as you knit, not really a proper yarn at all. It's delicate to work with but very, very fluffy. So I told myself it was a pure forest green and that even if I didn't like it or look good in it, Hubbster would. Actually, it's a yellowy-gold forest green and doesn't really look good on either of us, I think. But Hubbster says he likes it, and now that I've told him I'm making him a sweater he'd be very disappointed to hear it's going to be a blanket instead. Even if he'd like the blanket more (after all, it'd be deliciously fluffy and warm and who cares if it makes you look a bit sallow when you're cuddling on the couch?), he so much enjoys knowing that I'm knitting something for him that I'd hate to tell him I'm frogging it now.

So it looks like I'll throw it in the basket and start something else instead. Argh. Feel free, all of you, to use me as an excuse for your own startitis (as some of you already have). Insanity loves company.

You can also vote on what I should do with the chunky 3-ply:

The blogpoll thingy doesn't seem to work, so we'll do it the old fashioned way: put your vote in the comments:

What should I do with my dark green White Buffalo unspun 3-ply?

1. Make EZ's seamless hybrid, plain
2. Make EZ's seamless hybrid with a big cable going up the front
3. Frog it and make EZ's chunky garter-st blanket, also from Opinionated Knitter
4. Frog what I have and put the yarn away again, until it tells me what it wants to be
5. Leave the 2 inches of ribbing I have now in the WIP basket until it calls to me again
6. Something else, which you'll explain in the comments

Meanwhile, I'm revising. And revising, and revising. And temping, because we gotta pay the rent. This makes revising rather more difficult, but so far not disastrously impossible. Luckily, I was able to swing a temporary, flexible job at my regional institute thingy here at my university, so not only are people fairly tolerant of my bringing a draft printout with me everywhere I go, but I'm working for all the same sort of people who can help me get jobs and postdocs and that sort of thing. Not a bad idea to spend a little time helping them organize their brown-bag talks and Lacanian conferences, no?

Heel Trauma and Lessons Learned

I have 533 feeds on my bloglines. If you haven't seen me in the comments much, that's why. But I have a feeling I'll catch up.

On the other hand, the chapter is progressing. Almost to the point where I kind of like it. Almost.

I've been really, really frustrated with my knitting lately. So frustrated, that I've been mostly reading with what spare time I have. So frustrated that every time I walk past my WIP basket, it growls at me. And I growl back.

I've been thinking about what to do with the peacock sock, and receiving all your wonderful, generous, sympathetic responses with great gratitude. I'm working myself up to facing the fact that some frogging will have to happen. I've decided that while I'm okay with a little eccentricity in my knitting, total madness will irritate me, so I'm going to go with a suggestion that was not in my poll because it came from the brilliant minds of several of you, my genius commenters. I'm going to rip back enough of the toe of the finished sock to make them evenly unfinished, and then I'm going to finish both the same way, with another yarn. I haven't decided which other yarn yet. Since both feet will at least match each other, I might just go with the alpaca (I kind of like the idea of the extra warmth at the toes, since it will be both toes). I would ideally like to use Kroy, but even though there are two sources that I know of for it in NYC, both involve a train trip, which means it costs $4 and is almost the same as shipping anyway. Since we only have to be on campus 3 times a week (between the two of us!) we can no longer justify an unlimited metrocard, and when you start to think about how much each trip costs...well, it's just nutty. Anyway. I can't think of any other errand to do near P&S or Smiley's to justify the trip, plus P&S has only a small selection of Kroy and may not even have a tolerable solid color. Crazily enough, I didn't even ever realize that Smiley's is here in NY (thank you, anonymous!!), but again, I can't quite justify the trip when I have a huge stash...not to mention that if I went to Smiley's, there's just a little itty bitty chance that I might come home with extra sock yarn, not to mention some more Paton's Classic Wool, my felting yarn of choice that I can never have too much of. So, no, that wouldn't be a safe trip right now.

So that's pretty much the result of my endless pondering of all your comments since my last post, at least in terms of these socks. I've also learned tons, and been pushed to think a lot, about the whole nature of socks and what I want out of them.

While I've been pondering all this, I was working here and there on my first toe-up flap sock, using the Widdershins pattern as modified for 64 sts by David Demchuk.



You are looking at the just-finished Heel v.3.0. Yes, while agonizing over the future of the peacock sock, I was knitting this heel THREE TIMES. And this is after, mind you, David did a lot of re-knitting and figuring out for me, so that it shouldn't have been nearly this hard. What I've learned is that Hubbster's not the only one with weird feet. I think the big secret that the cotton/elastic commercial sock conglomerates have been hiding from the world is that everybody has very different feet, requiring different socks. And since this is of course the point of knitting them yourself, I really want to get it right. So even though my first version, following David's directions but -- ahem -- accidently screwing up a little could technically be pulled over my heel, it was really too tight, so I did it again, and this time got the instructions right. But the heel was still too short to fit me well. While Hubbster has wide, very flat feet, I have long, narrow feet (I knew this) and, I believe, tall, narrow ankles (hadn't so much noticed this before). So, Hubbster needs both height and length in the gussets, to get the sock over the enormous ankle part of his foot, which lacks an arch. I need lots of height in the gussets and flap, but not so much gusset length, as my foot gets really skinny really quick on either side of the ankle.

Meanwhile, I have also learned, with ya'll's help, a great deal about the Yarn Harlot's square-flap formula. When I first did it, I thought to myself, "well self, I'd better not do my usual 'knit until square' thing where I fold it over and if I can stretch it to the other side I decide it's 'square' only to find out after I've done the next part of the knitting that it's really a short, squat kind of 'square'." No, I thought to myself, I'm knitting on bloody #0 needles, I'm going to do this right. So I got my measuring tape (digging it out from the couch cushions) and I measured, and even checked to make sure I was measuring in a straight line, and that damn peacock sock flap was precisely 3.5 inches each way. And look where that got me.

So what I decided was that I needed to figure out the perfect proportion of gusset to flap for me and for Hubbster (nobody else gets socks on #0 needles, no way!), and just always use that proportion, ignoring the word "square" altogether.

I figured out that Hubbster's sock could have done well with 6 fewer sts in ea gusset, but no fewer than that (that's why I'm not ripping back that far - I won't save enough yarn for it to be worth it). I figured out that I need a bit more than 25% of the total number of sts (which, judging from the comments, is what most of you do, and which I see in most general sock patterns), but not as much more as Hubbster. This also affects how far in from the toe you need to start the heel, which was a factor in my trouble with the Widdershins pattern, among other things (also, that Widdershins has you increasing for fewer gusset sts than will eventually be attached to the flap - the extra sts needed beyond that are increased at the center heel section, when you "turn" it).

In the end, my formula is: a PGR toe (which I like because it's less pointy than the traditional one), then, after 2.75" for me or 4" for Hubbster, start gusset increases. Mine need to add up to 29% of total sts on each side, 41% for Hubbster. Then, I do the Widdershins short-row heel turn, but simply skipping the increases. This doesn't make it quite as rounded, but it's rounded enough for my foot:



Then, you just knit up the flap, which is the usual 50% of total sts, consuming the gusset sts as you go, at the same rate as a top-down sock. The sock you see here, v.3.0, still has only 25% of total sts for the gussets, and is still a little on the strained side, which is why I made my ideal 29% (based on measuring how many more sts I wish were there but aren't). And I think I'll be sticking with the regular slipped-st heel rather than EOP, just because EOP takes up too much yarn. Although since Hubbster's socks will clearly always require more than the usual amount, I might as well do them on his, if I'm going to have to always buy three skeins anyway!

So, in sum, I've had a traumatic couple of knitting weeks, and neither pair of socks is remotely done even now, but I have learned a hell of a lot, and I know now my own absolutely perfect sock formula and how to get there.

Which has now been added to a little project I've been working on...a 6-page knitting cheat sheet, containing everything I ever need to know to keep knitting for the rest of my life. Seriously. I actually made one a few years ago, but it was lost when my laptop got stolen, along with a lot of other great knitting stuff (which just goes to show, you can't just back up "work" stuff, you must backup ALL docs, everytime). I gave up on the project for a long time after that, then came back to it recently. I put in it all the technique tips and reminders I'm always having to run to a book for (like the order for kitchener stitch, or which decrs to use in what order for v-necks vs raglans, etc), plus the essential points for the most versatile patterns - EPS with all the shoulder shaping options, my own (new!) essential sock formula, wash cloth, slipper, mitten and wrist-warmer patterns, the pi shawl. The instructions for the basic lace and cable motifs that I like best. I put this all in columns in 10-pt font with tiny margins so that it all fits on 3-dbl-sided sheets that can be folded like a book. Right now, I still have room for 2.5 columns, and I swear I could happily knit for the rest of my life using only the info here! The only pattern I use regularly that isn't there is the Galeskas felted clogs, and I'm not sure I can fit that into the remaining space. I type everything up in my own abbreviated way, leaving out the things that are no-brainers for me, and adding in reminders for the things I always screw up (ahem, kitchener). The real point of this is to take it with me to Russia next year, so I don't have to take a whole suitcase full of books, but I also like to have it on shorter trips. So far I've taken versions of it on trips and it's always missing the one piece of info I want, but now that I've been through that a few times I think I've added almost everything - this year's xmas trip to Georgia should be a good test, as there will be plenty of knitting time and I plan to bring only the 6 pages, yarn, and (hopefully! if Santa has been good to me!) the KnitPicks options needles.

Here's a slightly blurry pic of the socks, the only one taken without flash so you can see the colors and the pretty pooling. It's in-house cashmere sock yarn from School Products, with a little nylon. It's spun with little curlicues like boucle, which makes the socks very soft-looking and soft-feeling, but also makes it tough to see the sts when you're ripping back.....



And because I can't resist a good meme:





(click to make it legible)

Peacock Sock Emergency

I regret to tell you all that the peacock socks have reached a state of emergency.



I'm out of yarn. What you see is what I got. I'm not sure how this little problem managed to sneak up on me like this, but I think the cause may be those pretty eye-of-partridge heel flaps. They seem to take twice as many rows to reach squareness as other stitch patterns. This is no doubt why it's so firm and sturdy, but it also means that it takes a lot of yarn. Then, since this was my first foray into heel flap socks, I took the Harlot at her word when she said to just pick up one stitch for every 'V' on the flap and that would be the perfect amount for the gusset. I really did slip the first stitch of every row, but I still ended up picking up 36 sts on each side (on a 72-st sock). Now, I did see fairly quickly that this looked like way more stitches than a "normal" sock, and that it was taking way too long to get back to the baseline number of stitches at the rate of 2 decreases every other row. But I tried the first one on Hubbster's foot at this stage and discovered that while the "widest part of the foot" that I had been measuring (where the toe-knuckles are) is wide, the part of the foot in front of the ankle - the highest part of the foot - is actually well over a half-inch bigger around still. Probably because poor Hubbster has flat feet. (Honestly, I never imagined I'd know his feet quite this well.) So, the huge, odd gusset actually fits him marvellously well, and he says it's better than any sock he's ever put on. Although a slightly smaller gusset - say, halfway between normal and this one - would probably work just as well, this one is already knitted, now on both socks, so I'd really hate to frog and re-do it because of the yarn shortage.

Another option would be to frog the ribbing on the legs, and use that yarn. I am missing 30 rows plus the toe, and the ribbing is 20 rows on each sock, so that's probably about the right amount. Then I could just rip the last 4 or 5 rows of the remaining legs and knit them back up in 1x1 rib to finish it off. But I think this would seriously diminish the beauty and comfort of the socks - this is not the right colorway or pattern for anklets!

I could, of course, hunt down another skein of the yarn, which is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock merino. Two problems with that - 1, I'm not sure of the colorway or its current availability, and 2, if I'm going to spend real money, I've got a huge list of things I want, and I'd rather get something new and different and have these socks done already.

Or, I could finish it with another yarn entirely, and when Hubbster wears them in shoes no one will notice. Hubbster gamely declares that he is totally fine with this plan. But what yarn? The whole point would be not to spend money. The cheapest option I could find online was Paton's Kroy (in plain navy blue) for $4.50, but shipping was $6 (!!). I do have a plain brown yarn in the stash that would probably get the same gauge or close enough and not clash. But it's alpaca, and much fuzzier/hairier than the Supersock.

I cannot resolve this dilemma, not even after tossing and turning for an hour last night. Help me! Log your verdict in this poll:

How should I finish the peacock sock?
	Buy another skein of matching yarn.
	Unravel the ribbing and make ankle socks.
	Frog and re-knit the feet with smaller gussets.
	Finish with a matching Kroy yarn
	Finish with the miscellaneous brown alpaca.
	Stick it in the closet and cry.
View Results

In the meantime, I am continuing with the first pair of Widdershins. Did I mention that I have vowed to never, EVER, ever ever ever knit socks from the top down again???!! I have. Except maybe for EZ's moccasin socks, and even those I prefer to start just above the ankle with a provisional cast-on and then finish two at a time on one magic loop. I get better chances of having two legs of equal height that way, plus it makes the boring part a little more adventurous.

I also worked out some of my angst by whipping up these suckers in one evening:



Fuzzy feet, in orange alpaca, inspired by Aija's. It occured to me that since I'll be felting in suburban comfort over the holidays anyway (when I felt the in-laws' new clogs while we're visiting them), I might as well felt a few other things. I figure I might have time to do one or two more of these before we go. We can never have too many tapochki in this house.

P.S. I'm behind on my email. I know. I will catch up...eventually.

Survey: Future of the Hat

First, the good news.

The Fair Isle sweater continues to go along swimmingly:



It gives me endless color-joy, and never fails to provide a much-needed respite following upon either the diss, or the lace.

That said, however, the lace has also been behaving itself lately (knock wood):



It grows so fast, and now that I've got the pattern down to the point where I can tell where I am at a glance and can get that hmm,-something's-wrong-here feeling when I make a mistake, it's actually quite easy. Now I can relax enough to enjoy how wonderful this yarn really is (rowan kidsilk haze, of course). It's my first time using it, and now I can see what all the fuss is about.

But you knew there was bad news coming. Hard as it is to believe, it was the red hat. The simple, stockinette-stitch red hat that I was knitting for therapy during my early issues with the mohair. Look what happened:



Sigh. I'm getting really good at frogging.

But I have to ask - has *anyone* made anything from the Handy Book of Patterns without running into trouble? This is only the second project I've done from there, but the previous one, a mitten for Hubbster, came out all wonky and out of proportion THREE TIMES until I finally gave up and stuck the yarn back in the stash. I thought I couldn't go wrong with the plain tam, and indeed it seemed to go along swimmingly until I got to the decreases at the top and realized that if I followed instructions it would take something like 8 inches, instead of 3.5, to get down to 6 stitches. I figured my row gauge (which is not specified in these patterns, and that's major problem in just such a case as this) was way off from what Ann Budd got, and I adjusted accordingly. This worked out fine, but by the time I got near the end and tried it on, as you can see, it hit home that the main part of the hat was also way off. I knit it shorter even than the pattern said to, and it was still at least an inch too long, not to mention too wide.

So I'm taking votes - please tell me in the comments what I should do:

1. Start over, doing the same thing but just casting on fewer stitches

2. Start over, making a tam but making up the measurements as I go along because it would probably work better than this

3. Make something else with the yarn
3a. If so, what?

I have two full hanks of Peace Fleece worsted weight. I did the tam really tightly, on US4 and getting about 5 sts/in. On US5 I got 4.5 sts/in. It's a chunky worsted, though, so in anything other than a hat I'd knit it at a looser gauge. The tam seemed to only require one hank, so I was thinking of making a pair of fetching fingerless gloves with the extra, using a little scrap Peace Fleece in blue for accent color on the cuff if I ran out. Maybe I should make the wrist-warmers first, and if there's still yarn left, then I can worry about a hat?

I already have a red scarf, in gorgeous cashmere, so I'm not going to go that route. I bought the yarn in red for me and blue for Hubbster when we got engaged (it's half-Russian, half-American yarn, nudge-nudge, get it?), and I already made him a hat-to-order with the blue, so that's kind of why I wanted to make a hat out of the red. Anybody have any favorite sure-fire hat patterns out there? Preferably not stocking caps or skull caps, as they make me look hideous. I need a hat with body.

In other news, the finishing up of my chapter has been slightly derailed by a migraine, but I expect to send it off to my professors tomorrow. Ura!! Thanks so much for all your support, guys, and I'm so glad you liked the excerpt! The Purloined Letter cracked me up, pointing out that more people have now read that excerpt than are ever likely to read the diss, which is so true. If only I could write the whole thing about knitting! Sadly, the misguided faculty at my venerable institution of higher learning don't give out PhDs for that. Even though the diaries that provide one of the main sources for my diss mention knitting on almost every page!! I promise I will gather that material into an article sooner or later, though, because it's too wonderful not to expose to the widest audience my writing will ever have!

Glad you all liked the pictures, too. I absolutely fell in love with that village in Russia -- the manor house still exists, too, and is being used as the village school -- and when I learned you could get a house there for about US$1,000 (a little house, NOT the manor house, alas)....well, we're keeping the idea in the back of our heads, let's say that much!

The yellow leaves, though, was a shot taken in the wilds of New Hampshire last year. We're going again this year in a few weeks, by which time I hope the foliage will again be spectacular. I adore New England!

In other news, despite a very excellent suggestion from Beth about transport, I think I'm not going to make it to Rhinebeck. Even if I could get there, and could also justify the hotel, I really don't think I could trust myself amongst all that fiber not to go on a spending spree! We're on an extra-small stipend this year because I'm not teaching, so I can finish the diss, so I'm really trying hard to keep myself on-task. My husband pointed out that once my PhD is done and we get jobs, I can spend all my time and money in the pursuit of fiber, for many long years to come. It's a good point. That said, I'm SO going to be at the Knit-Out in Union Square and I'm going to see the Yarn Harlot in person, wa-hoo!!! And I'm totally going to at least some of the knitty-related events at The Point. So if you're going too, let me know, and let's find each other!

Speaking of harlots. Just this morning, I happened to say to my husband (in the context of talking about how education should be free and Canadian schools), "You know what The Yarn Harlot said?"

...and my Soviet-born husband cracked up, and said, "you know, that sounds just like, 'You know what Comrade Stalin says?'"

Hm. He may have some small kind of a point. I tend to quote the Harlot a lot, and sometimes, like this instance, it's not even about knitting. What can I say, she's a wise woman.

I'm going to take advantage of having to wait anyway to edit my draft with a red pen for Hubbster to return from campus with the print-out (at 97 pages, I'm not about to print it at home on our little Dell McPrinter) , to knit for a while and fully recover from the migraine. Absolutely justifiable, n'est-pas?

Frustration

And now: The Most Frustrating Evening of Knitting Ever (or, Never Frog from the CO Edge Up)



These two sleeves are not identical. Can you spot the Problem Row? (Click on the picture to see a bigger version)

Okay. So, there's this brown Fair Isle sweater with a gauge problem (scroll down to the bottom of the post). I had one sleeve, the bottom third of the second sleeve, and the body done. The gauge was all mis-matched in the main color parts, but the Fair Isle parts were fine, and after blocking and becoming enamored of the Fair Isle in the body, I *really* did want to rip any of that out (I was also slightly afraid that doing so would create a gauge problem there, too). So, I decided to frog the top few inches of the body, and the top and bottom few inches of the second sleeve. If I could re-knit this in the gauge I was originally getting to match the bottom of the body and the first sleeve, all would be well.

Since I had no idea what got my gauge off in the first place, I had to take a couple weeks off, working on other projects before I could deal with this.

So, two days ago, I frogged the top part of the second sleeve. I re-knit, up to where I'd stopped, and beyond, all the way to the top of the sleeve. Huzzah! - no problems. It knit up just as it should. The secret, I believe, is to NOT THINK ABOUT KNITTING WHILE KNITTING. This seems to keep my gauge right on track. I recommend watching Sopranos re-runs as the best way to achieve this Zen-like state.

So, all proud of myself and convinced that the Bad Knitting Voodoo had vanished, I set out to frog the bottom couple of inches of the sleeve, which had been too tight. I had started with a provisional cast-on, so I didn't even have to laboriously pick apart the edge.

Now, I know that when you start knitting down from the bottom edge of a piece, you're really knitting the loops *between* the loops you were knitting upwards before, so that you end up with once less loop, and so a careful eye will spot a slight difference at the start of the row/round.

I had full confidence that I could handle this. I've read Montse Stanley cover to cover - I can do anything.

I planned to rip only to the last row in the main color, so that the switch wouldn't affect any of the Fair Isle section, and I didn't particularly care if the round join looked a little odd, since it's the underside of a sleeve. I started ripping, and...something strange happened. The loops all obediently popped right out of their places until I got to the beginning of the round, and then I found that the loose end of the yarn went right *through* the loop, instead of being looped through, if you know what I mean. It was a knot, not a loop. Like the last loop on a bind-off, when you put the end through by itself to secure the last loop. Except it wasn't a bind-off row. As far as I understand knitting, it ain't got no business having a knot (that is, anything but a loop inside a loop) anywhere but the first or last stitch. And it's not like this even happened just where I had made my M1 increases -- those were every 5th row, and I found this knot thing 2-3 times at the beginning of every round. Yes, 2 to 3 times. Sometimes it was 2, sometimes 3. This *really* makes no sense, since every row should be the same, at least.

I began to contemplate how the cuff bottom that I vaguely remember having knit myself in the usual way had, in fact, been knit by aliens in some weird alien way that makes no sense and is very bad for frogging. I ran this theory by my husband, who made sensitive, supportive noises.

So, I frogged each row by pulling the entire length of the unravelled yarn through those 2-3 loops at the beginning of every round. Normally, frogging a couple inches of cuff should take about 5 minutes, if not less. This took a good hour, and the closer I got to the Fair Isle section, the more the wool MC yarn started to stick to itself or catch little bits of the alpaca I'd used for the Fair Isle, so that it didn't want to rip out.

I had planned to frog for five minutes, get the needles into the last row of MC, ready to re-knit down those few inches, then take a break and have a shower before dinner, since I was sweating like a loon under all that wool and alpaca. Suddenly, Hubbster was saying (gently, so as not to provoke) that dinner was kind of ready already, and I was sitting there with a huge, knotty pile of kinked wool all over me, and only half the cuff frogged. I found myself unable to pull words together to respond to Hubbster. I could only make noises, and gesture.

Hubbster is a very clever boy, and offered me beer. Not regular beer, which I despise, but green-apple flavored imported Belgian beer, which is something else entirely. A drink. This one thought penetrated my flummoxed, wooly brain and I flung away the whole mess and drank my beer. Also ate, and did all the other necessary things, so I could return to my cuff with renewed energies. Hubbster asked, conversationally, over dinner, as if this was something normal people discussed, what had gone wrong with the knitting. I explained my alien theory. I worked myself up into believing that if I could just get to that last row of the MC and pick up the loops (the loops between loops, I remembered, because I'm so clever), then all would be well.

I went back to frogging, but all of a sudden, for reasons I am completely unable to explain, the last MC row was already more than half gone, and I had a big fuzzy knot that included both the wool MC and the alpaca CC, and the knitting that remained still in place was totally unrecognizable as knitting. I would have taken a picture of this for you, if I hadn't been completely hysterical.

This is when I started to laugh and cry maniacally, and to grab my scissors and start hacking at random. This is when Hubbster started like a frightened deer and hovered nearby, ready to help but making sure not to get too close to the scissors.

I hacked off the MC yarn -- in the process making all that laborious frogging a complete waste of time, since I could have just snipped the yarn at that point in the first place. In the emotional state I was in by this time, this was enough to make me weep. Now I was left with the first Fair Isle row instead of a plain row to pick up. It was a simple one, just one-by-one stitch in the MC and CC. But the stranding, being so short, was indistinguishable from the loops, and here I was trying to find "loops between loops"! I tried several times, and each time the expletives got louder, and more sacreligious.

Okay, so I wasn't thinking all that clearly. But finally it did sink in - trying to pick up stitches in this row was probably REALLY STUPID. That maybe trying to pick them up in the next row, which was plain CC, would be easier. It was. I picked them up, I knitted down. Miraculously, my gauge when I knit down was fine. The row where I picked up is a bit tight, and of course the frame-shift caused by picking up the bottoms of loops and knitting in the opposite direction is much more noticeable this way than it would have been if I'd managed to do it in a plain MC row. And yes, I'm well aware that it would have been MUCH easier to have just ripped out the whole second sleeve and started from scratch, since we're only talking about a few inches of knitting here. But pray keep in mind that, having decided I want to keep the Fair Isle bit and blithely believing that frogging from the CO edge wouldn't be any harder than frogging from the top, I had already frogged the top part and re-knit the entire top of the sleeve. In the right gauge. If I tried it a third time, clearly, the gauge would have gone back to Bizarro-world gauge again. Everybody knows that's how the Knitting Voodoo works; you can't mess with it.

So I showed the sleeves to Hubbster, the intended recipient of the sweater, and asked him if he could see the difference. Not that he really had a choice at this point, but he claims in all honesty to be completely oblivious to even the slightest imperfection in the sleeves, or indeed in any of my knitting. Nice Hubbster. He grew up with the sort of grandmother who never, ever swore except while knitting, at which point she sometimes became quite colorful, as I'm sure we can all imagine. So he's well-trained.

Last night I frogged the top part of the body -- no alien invasions here -- and am now re-knitting it, apparently at the correct gauge.

Clearly, the Sweater Gods have had it in for me lately. Equally clearly, the Sweater Gods were called in for vengeance on behalf of the two unfinished sweaters sitting in my closet for about a year and a half now. I let too many sweaters sit in the closet for too long, and now they're ganging up on me. Maybe I've read too much Harlot, but I fear my own knitting. Honestly, I've never seen anything like that frogged cuff, I don't understand it, and I think Other Powers have to have been at work.

The smart thing to do, here, would be to finish those last two sweaters in the closet before I start the new, really exciting one using the KnitPicks Palette Sampler. But I'm afraid, so afraid. Plus, I stuck them in the closet in the first place because they didn't seem to be quite living up to their potential. Does anybody know any sweater exorcisms??

Next post: I use a power drill. And yes, it's related to knitting. Muhahahaha.

Transition Projects

Lots of things on my knitting mind lately, but I haven't been able to post for a few days as I had a run of nasty migraines. This post will be bare-bones, too, because hubbster won't let me stare at the computer screen for more than 30 minutes, as this kind of web-work tends to make my head worse. Oddly enough, writing at the computer (as in, dissertation chapter writing, in Word) doesn't seem to be a problem. Er, that is, my back starts to hurt before my head does, in that case. Gawd, I'm getting old. Anyway, in addition to some minor brainless knitting while the headaches were mild, and some total inactivity while they were really bad, I also managed to write 6 decent pages of the diss and do a lot of data-entry. Ura! So, feeling pretty good. Here's an accounting of the knitting done. Little bits of things, as a transition and resting period between the Great Icarus and my next biggish project - fixing the gauge problem and finishing my husband's Viking Sweater.

So, been doing some more Mason-Dixoning:

This is their eponymous warshrag, minus a few rows which I deleted because I like small dishcloths. My husband called it eggy, and I realized only then how close I came to accidently making a fried egg - so lucky I didn't reverse the colors! I actually intended to make the center pink (I thought the color combo kind of flowery), but I got to the center so quickly that I missed it.

This, I feel quite certain, is the world's ugliest Dishcloth:



I made it blind, while watching Nosferatu with the girls on knit/movie night. I just picked whichever color came to hand at any given moment, and couldn't really see what I was doing in the semi-dark. But blame the horrific results on the film...



It's slightly better looking from the back. Which isn't saying much. Oh well, at least this one may actually get used as a dishcloth - hubbster wouldn't use the other ones because they were too pretty.

Then there's the baby bib:




Another stab at random colors, this time with the lights on, and the results are infinitely better. I decided that since the whole point of this article is to get spit up, drool, and already-chewed food particles all over it, that I wasn't going to waste an hour of my life sewing in ends. Tied 'em up and cut 'em. So there.

Note also the presence of a burp-cloth on the needles, pattern also courtesy of the fine ladies at Mason-Dixon. I find that the variegated yarn comes out interestingly in this pattern.

Here's a better shot of the bib colors, taken in-progress, but also in sunshine:



Note the purple plastic needles, with red tops. I got a whole lot of brightly colored plastic needles on Ebay a few years ago, these among them. Normally, I don't use straight needles. But I make exceptions for small projects, when the nature of the needles adds substantially to the fun of the knitting. Like the short tortoise-shell needles that I just adore, for knitting a panel of lace, and like these brightly colored ones for bright-colored knitting. Ya-hoo!

I should mention here that I come from a family of hand-made warshcloth users. Here's my supply from Grandma:





These are, obviously, crocheted, as that's Grandma's forte. I find they're too big for dishes, but just right for wiping counters. So, crocheted cloths are for counters and spills, knitted ones are for dishes (and must be small enough to fit inside a champagne flute!) I have so many of Grandma's, though, and they keep coming, so I'm thinking of sewing some matching pairs together to make little back-pillows. Thus to prevent lower back ache when writing the dissertation...all things are related, all things are useful.

Speaking of Grandma's crocheting, I recently inherited some of her huge collection of hand-made doilies. I've adored these since childhood, because my mom used to have them, on our antique oak furniture, and that combo with oil lamps equals home to me. So now I just need the oak, and the oil lamps. Anyway, here are the doilies, because they should be shown off somewhere:



The one in the middle, if you can't tell from the picture, is knitted. Which means it was made by my Great-Grandma Annie (because Grandma didn't take to knitting any more than I took to crochet). Grandma couldn't tell me whether she or her mother, Annie, crocheted the others, as they both made a lot of doilies in their time. Great-Grandma Annie also used to embroider edgings on pillow-cases and those thingies you put on top of your dresser to set your brushes and perfumes on. I have a pillow-case and the thingy still from my childhood bedroom, and mean to cut off the embroidered edge and re-sew them on new, fine linen fabric as the original cotton is worn to bits. I love this stuff.

But anyway. Back to business. Father's Day has come and gone, but one dad, mine, hasn't gotten his present yet because it still isn't dry. Here it is, unfelted:



And as they look now:



They're the Felted Clogs by Bev Galeskas, courtesy of Fiber Trends. I've done this pattern before (though I forgot to photograph those) and really, really love it. The pattern is so clever the knitting of it is kind of like lace - each moment you've discovered some new aspect of how it all comes together. I don't even mind having to do the sole pattern FOUR TIMES (because they're doubled), even though I normally can't deal with socks or sleeves because of the whole doing-the-same-thing-twice thing. They don't take long, and they're interesting. Cool. Plus, they make great slippers. This from me, who wears them Russian-style, i.e., constantly, and therefore has worn through every other slipper I've knitted remarkably quickly (my beautiful Fuzzy Feet turned to dust and ashes - well, okay, they just wore disastrously thin - after only 3/4 of the winter in Ivanovo). Will be making still more of these. But these, in the picture, are dry now, except for the puffy-paint traction I put on the bottom. 12 more hours, and they can go off in the mail at last.

Oh, and yes, the interior sole is dark green stranded with a lighter green, whereas the trim on the parts that show are just dark green. I didn't have *quite* enough of the dark green, so sue me.

HO-kay. There's no more avoiding things. Must face facts. Deal with it. Grow up, already. Must accept the Gauge Problem, and Take Measures. Literally, and figuratively. Here's the aforementioned problem (scroll down) made pictorial:





I don't know what's wrong with me - it's some of my worst knitting, ever. And I know, I forgot the upper plain stripe on one of the sleeves. Whatever. The whole main-color part has to be ripped out and re-knit on three of the four parts shown here, as all four of them are now different gauges. Argh. But, for once, I'm not going to give up, if only because the color pattern part on the body is SO gorgeous. I have faith the sleeve parts will also look nice when blocked. Sadly, blocking did nothing for the main-color gauge problem, though. Sigh.

Not that it isn't tempting to continue my tour through Mason-Dixon land by starting a log-cabin blankie (I've got it all planned out, now), or to knit those "quick" panels for the skirt I'm planning, or to start that whole new Fair Isle sweater with 27 colors....Sigh.

Oops, my online time is up. Email will wait for another day. Web browsing will wait some considerable time.

Maybe just a little more mindless knitting before bed....