Knitter Monkey

I got totally sick of doing the sweater this weekend (I'm halfway through the last sleeve, and it's cruising along, and I never want to look at size 4 needles, Debbie Bliss cotton cashmere, or 5x3 ribbing again), so I decided to make my first hat out of my extra skein of Manos del Uruguay. I originally wanted to use the stitch pattern from my scarf so they would match, but that stitch pattern doesn't work in the round. So instead I just used a generic stockinette hat pattern.

SADLY I bought the holiday issue of Creative Knitting today, and what is there a pattern for but a hat worked in the round with the same stitch pattern as my scarf. I could rip it out but it's my first hat so I'd kind of like to keep it, if for no other reason than to remind myself that I should shape things to fit my head and not blindly follow a generic hat pattern that will end up giving me a square hat. Then I had a tiny amount of Manos left over, and Manos in Wildflowers is a terrible thing to waste, so I decided to knit a sweater for my monkey.

I used a bit of a ball of kid mohair I got for the Santa beards on the stockings I haven't made yet for the heart. He has a heart on his tummy normally, and I thought he would like to keep his heart even though he was wearing a sweater. Plus, I'd never done intarsia, so, practice time. I'm pleased with the results, though his arms were fatter than I guessed when I was knitting the sleeves in the car.

Posted by Erin at 08:21 PM | Permalink

I finished the front of Dan's sweater over the weekend and cast on for the first sleeve. Sweaters are a little depressing because when you think of a sweater, it's like the front, and the back, and then oh, whatever, the sleeves. So when you spend six weeks on the front and the back, you feel like sleeves ought to just be an afterthought. But the truth is, each sleeve is probably about two thirds of one half of the sweater - especially with Mr. Six Foot Seven - so I've got at least another two weeks of hard knitting to go. Still, I seamed up the shoulders and tried it on, and I think it is going to be good. I hope. It needs to be blocked badly, because of the ribbing, and I've never blocked anything before, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

In the mean time, I joined Yarn of the Month Club, like a dork. I'm kind of excited - maybe I'll make an afghan out of all of the swatches I like.

Posted by Erin at 01:40 PM | Permalink

So much fucking yarn.

I bought this today to try to organize the yarn that was threatening to take over our living room in piles around the couch. This isn't even all of the yarn, it's just the yarn that is allocated for a specific project. There's a whole other laundry basket full of cheap-o do-whatever-you-want-with-it yarn. And, oh yeah, I'm still getting like 18 skeins of Blue Sky cotton in the mail soon. Basically, no more yarn for the next year.

Posted by Erin at 10:38 PM | Permalink

To get off the yarn for a bit, I have a serious question. Why is it that every pattern for a knitted top (of any kind) is always ridiculously short? It's hard to pull off a sweater or a tank top that only comes down to maybe your belly button, unless you are a size 2 which sadly? I'm not. Which means that every pattern I use, I have to add at least six inches to, usually more, and it's easy enough to do but requires me to constantly be measuring it up against myself to see if it's long enough yet, and inevitably it's not. Both my tank top and my sweater were knit about eight inches longer than the pattern called for, and they're still too short much to my chagrin. It turns out I am really crappy and measuring on myself. With Dan's sweater, the pattern said to add armholes at 16 or 17 inches - I know Dan is a lankster, but I think there are more like 30 inches before the armholes even start, because this one actually fits.

Now I've got a pattern for a top I want to make, and it's knit from the bottom up, but you change stitches once you get to the bust area, and I am totally convinced that I am going to screw up and make it WAY too short again because that is even more vague than the point at which armholes ought to start.

Can't someone make a pattern for girls who like to dress normally?

Posted by Erin at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My order from KnitHappens came in yesterday, and I'm in love. I ordered eight skeins of Blue Sky Dyed Cotton in Espresso, and I guess I didn't really get the full experience in the yarn store since it was crowded and there was a weird situation going on inches from me while I was checking out this yarn. It is the nicest, softest, prettiest sensible yarn I have ever seen. Usually the soft yarns seem to be specialty yarns (or silk, at $21/skein, ha), more delicate yarns that would make something pretty but not something like, say, just a normal sweater, or a hat, or a scarf, or a blanket. This yarn would be perfect for any of those things, and, man, the softness. I promptly went and ordered a whole bunch more, because it is a good price and it is an awesome yarn, and I guess I'm still a little devil-may-care about the money from the raise I got last month.

The Lorna's Laces sock yarn is also incredibly soft and pretty, and I am imagining it will make fantastic socks (though first I have to learn how to knit socks).

So, now I have piles of this beautiful yarn, but before I can start working with it, I've got to finish Dan's sweater. No motivation like trying to get to the next project, I guess.

Posted by Erin at 09:09 AM | Permalink

I have a Problem - I am totally addicted to buying yarn. My living room is being taken over by piles of yarn, all of it destined for one project or another, meanwhile I am just plugging away at Dan's sweater unable to use most of it. I take an occasional sweater time-out, but a lot of this yarn is for much larger projects, ones I would never start until I've finished this sweater. And I just bought that Cascade yesterday. But then I was reading through the Knitty forums, and I read about the 20% off sale at KnitHappens, and when I went to the site I found out they had Blue Sky Cotton in chocolate brown. Which was exactly what I wanted yesterday when I went to the knit shop, but they didn't have chocolate brown and their color card indicated that chocolate brown didn't even exist. So I ordered enough for a sweater, and then I got some Lorna's Laces sock yarn, and then I figured I might as well get some DPNs for socks and a few more sizes of 12" Crystal Palace straights because now that I've used them I can't go back to the 18" straights they sell at Wal-Mart.

I've actually spent almost $300 on yarn, needles, and other assorted crafting goodies this weekend. Someone take my credit card away from me.

Posted by Erin at 11:23 AM | Permalink

This weekend I've been alternating between the sweater and some potential Christmas gifts, which are on size 13s. After knitting on size 4s for hours, it's amazing to spend an hour with the 13s and have a finished product. This sweater is going to be the end of my knitting career; so exasperating. I mean, I am pleased with what I'm turning out, and I'm happy to knit something Dan will find actually wearable (I hope), but seriously, so frustrating! I knit up 100 yards of yarn, and it's, like, three inches. Anyway. I'm hoping I can finish it by Christmas.

I dragged the boy down to the yarn shop this afternoon, where I purchased ten skeins of Cascade Pastaza in color 004. I bought them to make myself a cabled sweater (eventually), but now after a trip to the mall turned up nothing, I'm thinking it might be a nice yarn for this skirt. Just solid, no stripes - whose crazy idea was it to put horizontal stripes across a girl's hips? That's something I DON'T need. But in a nice buttery sort of brown, with a ribbon at the waist or something? That would be nice, and warm. It's hard finding nice winter skirts.

I also finally uploaded some pictures. This is the first knitting project I actually finished, a tank top based loosely on a pattern from Teen Knitting Club.

One night, bored, I made this knitted kitty for my cat, from a pattern I don't have the link to right now.

And, most recently, I finished My So-Called Scarf. I love the finished product, and plan to make a matching hat out of my leftover skein of Manos. In the process, I've fallen totally in love with Manos, in particular this color (Wildflowers, #113). My favorite knit shop carries it, and every time I am in there I have to talk myself out of buying more because it is so so so pretty. And soft. And delightful.

Posted by Erin at 07:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm knitting Leo flat on Crystal Palace circulars. On Tuesday, inches away from finishing the back half of the sweater, the needle popped right off the cord! I didn't notice and continued knitting, in the process dropping about twenty stitches off the needles into a sad gap in the middle. Considering that this thing has taken me a month of constant knitting to produce, this was about the most terrifying thing I could have seen. Luckily, the stitches were all recoverable, and I only had about ten rows to go so I just sort of continued knitting on the broken needles, carefully pressing the needle back into the cord whenever I put any pressure on it. And on Wednesday, the deed was done! I have the completed back. It is ridiculously long; it comes down to my knees. However, I am a little bit scared about the sizing. There's a whole thing with the width where I measured the piece flat and it's 22.5" wide, which is what I wanted, and then I test it on the fiance and it seems like it won't be wide enough. I am just going with it, though, because the same thing happened with the two sweaters I did for myself, and I tried to compensate by widening them and then they were way too big. I think I am just a crappy judge of what is the halfway-around point of a person.

But then there are the shoulders. For the shoulders, I followed the pattern pretty closely - bound off for the neck and then seven rows of shoulder. (Yes, I have the correct gauge.) But the seven rows don't go far enough, it needs another half inch or so to hit the point on his shoulders where his T-shirts are seamed. I hope it's okay, though I guess if it isn't, I can always compensate a half inch on the front!

A little industrial superglue, and last night I cast on for the front. Looking forward to another solid month of knitting that. Next time I decide to knit my man a sweater, maybe I ought to start on, say, size 8 needles, or something.

Posted by Erin at 08:44 AM | Permalink