Things I'm done with

Just a quick update:

Nixonland
Ripping out the Roses pullover.

I feel rather liberated.  But boring.  And nothing to take pictures of.
High ho.

Dude, we're breakin' up!

This is what my spouse says when I do something dumb.  And I do dumb things a lot.  (FWIW, my version on this theme when I'm about to die from the absurdity is to tell him "I quit.)

So, Roses and Ivy, it's over.  I screwed up the neck placket placement and was in the process of fixing it.  It was tedious and fiddly, but God hates a slackard, but then I thought "I'm not sure God's too pleased with folks beating their heads on a wall for no reason either". Then, I suddenly realized I hated this stupid thing.  The gauge is too loose (4's for fingering weight, I don't think it would wear without puckering), I was in fear it would be too square and wide to look good on anyone . . .  So what am I doing???????
Long story short it was like waking up one morning and wondering why in blue blazes you've been working so hard to keep that overweight social reject mouth breather with body odor and laundry issues from breaking up with you. 
Guys, your friends were right - let it go.

Another weekend

So, once again, we spent Saturday going hiking and then had BBQ for dinner.  Still slowly slogging along on Kinsale and October.  I also finished my bag - totally ripped out the embroidery I'd been doing and went with a new color palette, which is much better, I think.

The flower is a trillium, maybe?  It was a free form thing I did for fun.  I've been wanting to make a bag for a while.  It's a little Christmas-y for me, but someone will probably want it.

Now that it's hot weather, I should do that white peacock shawl and dye it before I don't have the sun to set the dye for me.  Sigh.  Good thing I never try to diet, I'd fail miserably!

Not sure I like this, but

My stupid mystery project!
I like the bag - 40 sts. cast on st. st. with Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride on 8's, folded over, sewn rogether with a strap on it.
It's the embroidery I'm not sure about..  Tough to do on knit fabric.
After I go for a walk maybe I'll rip it back out and try a cross stitch design instead.  It's not a bad little bag, but I want to make it not quite so, well, charcoal.

This must be a metaphor for something

All I can say is this sweater looks like how I've felt a few times in my life.
And it (and those times) is not pretty.  But I'll Steve Austin this puppy, you'll see.  I'll take action photos so you can see progress.
Sort of like one of those horrible reality TV shows about people getting plastic surgery . . .
. . . only for knitting, and not really gross, and without all those scary issues.
So actually, not really like one of those shows at all.  Which is for the best, I don't like reality TV or elective surgery at all.

But you'll get to see progress.
And this little number down here - it's not a swatch and it's now about half done.  Well, the main knitting is half done.  Mystery project!

Oh my word, I'm an IDIOT

So, first of all, lovely weekend.  Hiking and BBQ yesterday, today we played outside.  Watched some movies, very nice and low key.
And this morning I finished off the body of the roses pullover.  I was all proud of myself, then I noticed it - points if you can see what I've done wrong:

Yup.  Bad math on the side panels to either side of the neck placket.  The left side is about 15 stitches wider than the right.
Swearing, sighing, hair pulling, none of these things adequately express my annoyance with myself.
So, rather than rip out the whole yoke, I'm just going to fix my math and rip down the middle of the front, recenter the neck placket and fix it that way.
I'll take pictures on the work in progress so everyone who reads this can laugh and be psyched they're not me.
I'm also playing with a quick side project, we'll leave it a mystery for tonight.

Yarn diet - or what do you do when the romance dies?

So I'm thinking that this yarn/new project diet I've been on is getting me down.  When you get into that space of looking at your knitting in the evening and go "meh" and then watch Mythbusters or something silly all night without knitting a stitch.
But my resolution to use up my yarn is really weighing on me.  All that random yarn that I have and it's hard to get inspired to plan a new Fassett sweater without wanting to buy a ton more stuff to flesh it out.  And that's just counterproductive, now isn't it?  You're really taking it too far when your attempts to use up older yarn results in purchasing almost as much new yarn. 
And I'm me, so I have these issues where I'm prone to creating strange, arbitrary rules for myself - seriously, my family thought I was kind of touched as a kid (they weren't wrong, I just have learned to hide it better in public now).  My excessive devotion to self created games makes me turn this using-up-yarn-exercise into a dare with myself where buying new yarn is NOT ALLOWED - read, failure.  So there's all my old yarn, taunting me with it's boring-ness.
Then last night I saw this.  Vivian Hoxbro, you're really COOL.  I love this sweater!  The shape, the cables, the small amounts of bright color against the stony neutral panels.  And the shape, I really like that.

I've never done modular knitting, but I'm reasonably sure some research and I'd be up and running.  Now I have a fire going to finish my three before I can start something new.
Thanks designer-I've-never-met, you made me excited to knit again.

Sorry I've been out of touch

Yes, it's been kind of hectic.  Mostly that pesky kid thing.  Soccer has started, we had to work on a school report about Cesar Chavez, I'm currently cleaning smooshed banana out of his backpack (so nasty, just oh so gross), and much of yesterday's afternoon was taken up with a conversation that started like this:
"Mom, what's a lesbian?'
2 heartbeats.
"Sure I'll tell you about that, but first, where did you hear that?"
"One of the fifth graders called me a lesbian."
"Gotcha, okay . . . "
It was a long conversation.  He took it very seriously.  He even raised his hand when he needed to interject (that's the second time he's had that mom/teacher cognitive dissonance, not sure what to make of that).  He doesn't like people being mean, but ended up concluding this bully was not much to worry about.  Prejudice he worries about.  I was proud of him.
I have no confidence life will get any simpler any time soon.
Thank god for knitting, even if it is too slow moving to provide camera fodder.
Soon though.

Slow progress

It would go faster if I would stop doing 3 projects all at the same time but here's a photo of Ivy and Roses.  It's the only interesting thing to take pictures of at the moment.  October and Kinsale are both coming along too, but slow . . .
I love the colors (maybe not on me, so I may give it away) and I really like this neckline.  That leaf pattern works well both direction.
I'm just making this one up as I go.

Flowers

Moss agate with green and purple size 6 beads.  I'm not sure I'm happy with the length of the second strand, they hang together pretty closely.
  This second one was a total random play thing.  "Darling buds of May" is pretty corny, and it's not May, but you get the idea.  I can imagine a girl 8-16 liking it:

I cheated

So, you know what I in the face of my new knitting project embargo?

I won on a technicality.  Made jewelry instead.  
Which is harder than it sounds with Indy around.  The necklace is more me, sodalite, pearls, sterling and glass beads.  The earrings are gold plate, glass beads and dichrioic(bi-color) glass.  The sweater with cat face below is the next project in my sights to get finished with.  Wish me luck!

Strange feeling

Maybe I'm a shark, you know, something that dies if it stops moving forward.I have these projects in progress and I feel like I've wandered into a cocktail party full of people I don't like much and find rather boring.
Seriously, this must be some kind of nameable condition, this storming thing I do.

Yeah, wait, diary entry

Fun ideas, combine fun fabric (Balis, batiks, etc) with knitting - you see, I love fabric but kinda suck at sewing:

1.) Use some of that leftover Cotlin to make small shoulder bags lined with something fun, maybe use heavyweight interface for a structural part dividing compartments?

2.) A coworker has been working on these childrens' dresses with knit tops and fabric skirts. Maybe with some very lightweight fabric, silk or rayon or even cotton, for an adult?

The good, the bad and the ugly

Well, the little one was acting like a real pre-teen tonight re: listening skills and not acting like a dolt.  So I guess these are all more like "the ugly". 
Or  "the dorky".
But it's hard to imagine Clint Eastwood doing a movie called The Good, the Bad and the Dorky.

And that hair.  (Actually, I LOVE his hair - child of the 70's, can't you tell??) 

But as for knitting - it's a great pattern - to use Cotlin I just added one stitch for every 20 and the gauge worked out just fine.  I'd recommending doing this for any kids you have 8 and under.  Since we live in the South, this won't fit by the time it's cold again.

Almost done

Just eight more rows!

Using a 3 needle bind off to attach a sleeve

Like I've said, I think this is a nice way to attach arms, esp. if you're working with cotton or a cotton blend that seems prone to pulling or sagging and so not looking nice on your finished product.

• First, don't bind off your sleeves, even for the shaping at the edges.  Do this more like short rows, or as you "finish" with the stitches you're supposed to bind off, just place them on a holder of some kind (scrap yarn, safety pins, etc.).  When your sleeve is done, place all stitches back on the needle.
• Next, pick up the stitches along the body where you want to attach the sleeve.  
• One helpful tip is to NOT use the very last stitches, skip over those and pick up outer edge of the second edgemost stitich (I've marked it here with the head of the crochet hook).  This will give you a more stable and much nicer looking seam. You can see this in the second picture where I'm binding the two edges together and you can see the edgemost stitches make a selvage. 
• Second helpful tip is to pick up one half at a time, join that and then pick up the other half - that is start from the should seam and pick up down to the armpit.  Doing this will make it easier to pick up the right number of stitches at the best (most even) ratio.  Obviously, using circular needles for this works best. When I pick up for a perpendicular join I find that picking up 3 of every 4 rows usually gets me within a stitch or two of the right number and keeps the distribution of stitches from one piece to rows of the other piece correct.  You can see this in the third picture.
• Next you hold the two pieces of work right sides facing and just knit them off together - a 3 needle bind off.  I use a crochet hook to do this. See the second picture again for an action shot.

The final picture is of the finished joined seam.
I'll take some more pictures of the finished piece and post them tonight.

Sorry, no pictures yet - soon tho'

I have made a promise to myself that if I can finish some (I'll say 3) of my current things on needles I can start one of the other things I have waiting for me in the "walk in closet of temptation".
I finished the back of the eponymous October and have started the front and I'm a couple rows short of finishing the sleeves on Rolfe.  It's funny, I start these plain, straight stitch projects thinking that they'll be so easy and I'll blow through them while doing other things . . .  but then I get bored of them and they languish on the needles.  Too much straight stitch makes my fingers tired.
I'm going to knit on the Rolfe sleeves, which means my last few rows where the set in shaping is done aren't cast off, more like wierd short rows.  I'll take some pictures of the attachment process, as I'd highly recommend it for those who don't like gap-y joins of sweater pieces and fear heaviness and pull on cotton knitwear (which this is). 
I'm sad it's going to be too small for him, it's a lovely pattern.  He wants me to do it over in a larger size for next winter in orange and black.  I'm planning to stall and see if he doesn't tone that down in the next 6 months or so.
And finally - my spouse was listening to NPR during the Friday commute (I wasn't, I was listening to the warm and fuzzy biography Nixonland) and he came home and downloaded Here comes science.  If you're like me (I will leave it to your individual judgment if you think that would be a good or a bad thing) something that brings together science, one's kids and They Might Be Giants is quite the happy mash-up.  My favorite so far, "How many planets?". 
Man, I was so fond of Pluto . . . .

While I'm at it - River Stole

Flash on, flash off, you get a slightly more developed sense of the colors with the flash off.

More stuff

Because, dang it, I'm going to wrap some of these bad boys up.

Bunny blanket charts

Need to actually work the prototype before I can publish this pattern though it's basically done.