Trapezoid

The Hubs is knocked out; we think he's coming down with the flu (oink oink? No, not that flu, just the regular kind). So, while he's upstairs either sneezing or snoozing, I'm fiddling downstairs trying to get the apartment in shape for our guests (read: I'm cleaning).

But here's a problem, and I need a bit of input trying to solve it.

Heron is--drum roll--sewn together and has a left and a right button band. It's still missing lower arms and The Problematic Collar. The instructions for the latter read: CO, then increase at the beginning of each row for 16 rows, then knit in pattern until the collar is three inches wide. And then sew the collar to the cardigan.

After pondering for a minute to simply pick up stitches and knit a rectangular collar without increases, I decided to stick with the instructions. Having worked increases over just 12 rows (not 16), my collar already measures three inches and looks like this:

What puzzles me is not the width issue but how to sew the collar to the neckline. The collar obviously has the shape of a trapezoid (or trapezium, British English; or trapeze, Melanie English), and I'm wondering exactly which edge to sew to the neckline: the short CO edge with the two "wings" or the long BO edge. (???) The picture in the pattern is of no help whatsoever, since here the collar looks like a rectangle and not a trapezoid:

What to do? If I can't figure this one out, I'll revert to Plan A and pick up stitches and knit my own version...

This is what Heron looks like now:

I wish I had time to finish it today... but no. Cleaning comes first. Knitting will have to wait (I might have time to get three buttons, though).

Happy Halloween!

Of Peplum(s) and Other Things

thankfulgirl pointed out that I probably meant to say peplums, not pemplums, and of course she is right. (Now I am the thankful girl: thank you for the correction. My misspelling resulted in the habitual misnaming of this particular garment extension. I've been saying "pemplums" about three times a day for at least a week, without the Hubs correcting me once. This tells me he isn't paying much attention to my knit talk [and knitting blog!]. Well. Don't we have to pluck a chicken tonight! [=ein Hühnen mit jmd. zu rupfen haben]).

With its peplums finished, Heron now looks like this:

I doubt I'll finish the cardigan this week, since we're expecting two wonderful friends for the weekend and plan to be out and about most of the time.

After the Hubs met one of his heroes last week, I met one of mine today:

Wolf Biermann is one of Germany's most famous and most politically active singer-songwriters. When East Germany stripped him of his citizenship and refused to let him return home after a concert abroad (in 1976), hushed criticism within the GDR turned into open and radical activism against the regime. I very much admire him, and it was a great honor (and a lot of fun!!) to meet and then introduce him to an audience here in Boston.

I'll leave you with an autumnal picture.

Have I mentioned...

that it's application season for academic jobs starting August 2010? I have the distinct feeling that that's all I've been talking about for months now, but maybe I haven't brought it up here. Both the Hubs and I are in the midst of putting together our dossiers, a project that this week has turned into a full-time occupation taking up each and every evening, often late into the night or even early into the morning. I'll be sending stuff off after this weekend; the Hubs has another week. Do wish us luck! His postdoc is soon over, I'm graduating in May, and we really need to find a new home for ourselves to start the next phase in our lives.

Speaking of that next phase (and all its promises: a career, a permanent place to live, a house with a garden filled with happy dogs, and... and... and maybe little people): my previous two posts created quite a stir at the Hubs' childhood home. My MIL returned from her trip to France and, jet-lagged as she was, checked the blog, saw baby cardigans, read the word "bumpy," and immediately drew the wrong conclusions. :) (My mom, too, finds my baby-knitting highly suspicious.) No no no. Rest assured, you'll not learn that kind of news through the internet. (Although I'm sure plenty of people nowadays make announcement of that sort using twitter and facebook. [I facebooked three minutes before walking down the aisle that I'd be walking down the aisle. But all of our close friends and family were present, so no one dear to us had to learn the news through fb.])

In knitting news: Sean's LYS in Cambridge is closing its doors. I wasn't much of a frequent shopper there, but it nevertheless saddens me to see Sean go.

Despite little time this week, there has been some knitting. Heron is a very quick knit; I (almost) completed the main body:

Looks funny, doesn't it? But once it's folded over, it does actually resemble a wearable piece:

Of course, the cardigan is missing its pemplums (I had to look up the plural of "pemplum," and apparently, this is it) and sleeves. I will have to make the pemplums longer to adjust for my height. Since I'm substituting Cascade Eco Wool for Berroco Peruvia Quick and need to account for the difference in gauge, I'm making the cardigan one size larger than needed and hope for the best!

Look, it snowed here last weekend:

Yesterday it was in the 70s again. Tomorrow there will be icy rain. Perfect weather for staying home, sipping tea, and knitting working on my dossier.

The Hubs, who's been falling behind keeping his own blog (on cultural stuff) updated, wants me to tell you that we went to a reading by Jonatham Lethem last night (our one-hour diversion), and that it was awesome, and that the Hubs loves Jonathan Lethem. In fact, he loves him so much we even waited in line to get our copy of Chronic City autographed (the Hubs isn't much for waiting in lines and getting things autographed, so this is news). Lethem came to our favorite neighborhood, Brookline, reading at the fantastic Coolidge Theatre:

To my utter shame I must confess that I fell asleep during the reading; I had had 4 hours of sleep the night before and was exhausted, and sitting in a warm theater listening to a lovely voice telling stories... well, it did me in.

Today I feel much better and ready to roll... dossier, here I come!

Cute!

That's what I think this is:

Many thanks to Ivete, A-L, and Yarnhog for their comments about Bumpy. For my own peace of mind and in acknowledgment of the baby's current size (7 pounds, according to ultrasound, with one more month to grow) I frogged the cardigan and will redo it on larger needles and/or in a larger size. But to meet Monday's deadline I put aside this slightly more time-consuming project and cast on for a super quick baby knit: Jennifer Hagan's Baby Soft Cardigan, in Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton. The knitting took just one evening; sewing the itty bitty pieces together took the next morning. It was my first attempt at sewing (that's why it took so long), and I think the seams turned out alright. I think they are a bit chunky to be comfortable, but... but... but I just won't worry about it:

This morning I went to my favorite LYS to pick up buttons. Nice daylight pic, but without fastened buttons yet:

Slightly less well-lit picture, but with the buttons sewn to the cardi, all twenty (!) ends woven in, and a crocheted border:

I really, really like how it turned out. The Hubs responded with "pretty cute," which is his way of saying, "awwwww.... soooo cute!!!!!!!!"

Speaking of the Hubs: he went to the Head of the Charles Regatta this morning to hang out with old college pals. I would have joined him, except I had to get buttons. Upon my announcement that I would be going to the LYS by myself he made jokes regarding my yarn allowance, and he meant to tease me when he said that I could use all the quarters I would find in our house. I took the challenge and collected all the change residing in different jugs and bowls and drawers, and I took the quarters to the bank and exchanged them for crisp bills worth all of this:

That's enough Cascade Ecological Wool for Norah Gaughan's Heron. And a little bit of much-reduced Rowan Four Ply Soft to try my luck at color work (I'm going for Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mittens). Yeah!!! (Just to clarify, my husband isn't a miser or in control of my spending habits; the whole quarter thing was a bit of a joke, but a very lucrative one.)

As I returned home from the LYS, Clara's new book was waiting for me. I already have a favorite pattern (may have something to do with the color):

And by the time the Hubs got back from the river, he too had gotten a package: his new computer arrived that will make the math magic happen even at home, not just in the office. However, he lacked the energy to be all enthusiastic about it, because the poor fella suffered fairly badly from allergies and went straight to bed. Which is where I'm going now, too.

I Need to Borrow a Baby Arm

I've been invited to go to a baby shower, and what better gift than a hand-knit itty-bitty baby-something? Quick to make, cute to look at, something new to try. All good reasons to dive into searching for baby patterns. After a one-hour lunch break I declared f.pea's bumpy cardigan and hat set to be the winning design. (Ironically, it was this set that got me thinking about knitting for babies in the first place; I could have easily done something more productive during that hour than searching Ravelry.) The pattern calls for Blue Sky Alpacas Skinny Dyed Cotton, and before going online to order the yarn over the internet I checked with my LYS to see if they had this particular yarn in stock (I like the idea of doing stuff locally and keeping the dollar in the community, especially when it comes to yarn stores). And they did!! Or so I was told. As it turned out the next day, the store had Dyed Cotton, but not skinny Dyed Cotton. I was presented with Rowan's Cotton Glace as a perfect substitute, and once I did the comparisons in my head and it all seemed to add up nicely (weight, needle size, gauge), I went for it. I picked a lovely mauve taupe and a very nice beige (I think the colors were called damson and ochre): the gender of the little one isn't known, and I thought mauvish goes for boys and girls alike. The store lady thought differently and suggested a bright green as the perfect gender-neutral color, but since I dislike neon colors for babies I didn't go for it. However, now I had serious doubts about my color choice, and eventually I abandoned mauve/beige and went with gray and off-white, which, although a bit lame, seemed about as gender-neutral as it gets.

(My sixth sense--or whatever that nagging little voice in my head is--told me at this point to just drop the Glace, go home, and order Skinny Dyed Cotton in my preferred colors. I should listen to this voice occasionally.)

Home I went. And swatched to check for gauge. It was a bit off with #5 needles, so I went for #4 needles, which got me good gauge in stockinette stitch. (There was no gauge mentioned for the bumpy pattern, just stockinette stitch.) And so I started knitting!

And I knit and knit and knit, and I finished the neckline/upper body part, and then I put the sleeve stitches on a holder, and knit and knit and knit, and then I began wondering if those armholes weren't a bit small. All the babies I know (not that many) have fat arms. Cute arms. Cute fat baby arms. So I started worrying a bit: will those sleeves, judged by the armholes, really accommodate baby arms? Hubs and my knitting pal calmed me down: the expecting mom is little, her husband, too, is skinny and rather short, and therefore the baby will be little too.

So I knit on. I finished the body. I thought to myself, those armholes look really small, but they look this small because they are on a stitch holder. Once I finished the arms, the armholes will be bigger (???). So I finished one arm. Still it looked small. And I thought to myself, once I finished the button band, the armholes will be bigger (?????). And so I knit the button band. Despite silent prayers to the knitting gods the armholes did not magically grow. They were still very small.

And small they still are! Look:

They must be too small, right? How am I able to tell if I don't have a baby arm at my disposal? I tried the cardi on my very old baby doll that I finally found after I had been searching for it all morning:

Yes, it fits her, but will it fit a real baby? That doll is a small, mal-nourished Communist baby doll manufactured in the--then--Soviet Union. How does it compare to a well-fed, much loved, longingly anticipated, chubby little American baby? (If you have one of those around your house, could you please measure the arms? Thank you.)

Argh. I really have my doubts. I think what happened is that the yarn substitution didn't work: I should have done the bumpy pattern with #5 needles and the stockinette stitch part with #4's. I'm running out of time to redo it. I think I have to abandon this project for now and contribute to the cash pot my department put together for the baby shower. I'm so unhappy about this! The Hubs says I should just complete the cardigan and give it to the mommy-to-be and get over it, but what if the cardi won't fit the baby? I would feel so awful about it...

I don't want to finish and then gift it. Especially since I didn't put all that much TLC into the knitting once I finished the arm and it still looked too small. At that point I had serious doubts and began to work sloppily. My button band looks entirely wacko, mainly because I still haven't figured out what the best way is to pick up stitches.

(Serious questions, knitters out there: when picking up selvedge stitches, do you go through both loops, the one closer to you, or the one in the back? I went for the loops in the back, which left me with giant holes in the front it seems. Every picked-up stitch could serve as button hole on this cardi! Ugh.)

*Sigh*

In other news:

I received my yarn swift and ball winder in the mail last night. I played with the new toys this morning, and I love them! OMG--I love being able to wind yarn into balls!

My MIL got the swift and winder for me, and she sent them my way before she herself embarked on a trip to France (!!!) to paint at the Côte d'Azur (!!!). She left this morning... bon voyage ! (This reminds me: I picked up Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse last night and instantly loved it. I think I'm a bit too old to be this impressed by it, but regardless, I couldn't put it down but finished it in one sitting.)

I'd be green with envy 'bout J's trip to France, except I went to the live recording of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, one of my two favorite NPR shows. (The other one being, of course, This American Life), and that was quite awesome too. The last time I went Barney Frank was the guest. This time, it was Ashley Judd. Boy, do I like Frank better than Judd! Here some mediocre iPhone pics of the Wang Theater, the recording site:

At the time of the recording Barack Obama hadn't yet won the Nobel Peace Prize (Kudos!), but if you listened to today's broadcast you know that Peter Sagal mentioned this little fact several times. Hmmmmm... I wonder how that happened....

Night now!

Gnocchi

That is the name of this Lana Grossa creation:

A yarn with not-so-small pompons. I picked up three skeins last summer and "knit" up this scarf in two sittings.

Yes, I put "knit" in quotation marks. Why? Well, the yarn doesn't exactly glide around your fingers, and I ended up using my hands to form little loops and put them around the needles. The pompoms (or gnocchi) aren't knit, it's the little bars between them that are worked. The gnocchi then fall into place on their own.

The pompons are super soft (think fancy towels) and wearing the scarf this morning made me very happy (and a bit silly):

However, this one won't stay with me. I'm giving the gnocchi scarf to Hubs' aunt Sylvie. I have meant to knit something blue for her for a long time (and swatched for several different projects using different yarns), and finally I found something that has "Sylvie" written all over it.

Specs: 150 g Lana Grossa Gnocchi (three skeins), needle size 10.5. Cast on 10 stitches by putting loops around one needle (forget any other cast on method with this yarn!), then knit the bars between pompons in garter stitch.

Red Sox

I'm among the five percent of Bostonians who neither follow nor care to follow the Red Sox. There's nothing wrong with baseball, but I don't understand it. It remains one of those American mysteries that even Hubs can't solve for me, despite his many attempts at trying to explain. Judging by the noise both downstairs and across the landing, there's another ball game tonight. Guess who's wearing the red socks for real?

Tah-dah!

May I present: Wendy D. Johnson's Nanner Socks. I knit size L using #0 needles. I did 1x1 ribbing for the back of the leg for extra stretchiness. I tried to reverse the pattern for the second sock for it to become the mirror image of the first, alas, that didn't work out.

That concludes my SKA September KAL. I completed the mystery socks and a Wendy design. I had plans to join the October KAL because the challenge is a man's pattern and I want to make a pair for my dad. Now I'm having second thoughts though: I really do want to make progress on my sweater, and that requires a sock break. A short one at least.

Where might this lead...?

Feiertag...!

How odd, but I forgot that it is my home country's 19th birthday today! October 3 is Germany's national holiday, and while I wondered why Der Spiegel covered so many East-West stories today, I wasn't able to put two and two together and realize what day it was. Only in the evening did it dawn on me: it's Tag der deutschen Einheit, the day of German unification. We celebrated with a bottle of Italian wine, homemade eggplant pizza, and coconut sorbet. (Not your traditional German fare, I do know that.)

Here's one of my favorite pictures of Berlin, taken three years ago, a year after the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was opened to the public. It was the first time I visited the memorial, on a gloomy November night:

Behind the memorial you can see the American embassy (still under construction), the brightly lit dome of the Reichstag that houses today's parliament (the Bundestag), the German flag (on one of the corners of the Reichstag), some barren trees of Tiergarten, and a massive laser show coming from Tipi am Kanzleramt, a cabaret show housed in a tent next to the chancellor's office. For me, the picture shows Berlin in a nutshell: it's a party place, yes, but it's also the home of a strong democracy with a strong (at last!) cultural and historical memory.

But enough of that. Come November, I'll say more about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, a historical event I witnessed wearing my pajamas in public (thanks, parents).

Has there been knitting this week? Uhm... very little. But here are some knitting-related thoughts:

1. I can't wait until Clara's new book is out.

2. Clara reviewed Cat Bordhi's book Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters for Knitter's Review, and I'm entirely intrigued and curious and want to learn more. Sadly, the book's out of stock. (I wonder if this is what always happens after Clara's reviewed something...).

3. I've gotten a lot of wear out of my shawls. I can't commit yet to the grown-up-have-a-real-job uniform of blouse-cum-slacks, and I'm holding on to jeans and semi-casual tops. I decided that spicing up my grad student look with shawls and such would professionalize my outfit. It seems to work. My clapotis in particular has received many compliments. I noticed, however, that dangling earrings (part of the professionalizing-my-appearance-plan) do not work well with knitted neck things, such as clapotis. I have many pulled threads to put back in place.

4. I learned that Santa Claus lives in the South. Somehow a ball winder and a yarn swift are making their way up North. Now. In October. From Mississippi. 'Cause I mentioned my need for said items in the same sentence as I mentioned Santa Claus, and a certain someone read aforementioned sentence and decided to act. (Thank you, J.!!!! [Your son is devastated. You ruined his Christmas gift ideas. Not to worry, though, I'll think of something else to subtly place on the fridge door.])

5. Hubs decided we are officially an old couple. While I've been a member of Ravelry for six months, he now joined an online gardening community. His words: "You've got your knitting club. I've got my gardening club. We should ask for our retirement benefits."

(5a. Just in case you're wondering: we live in an apartment building and don't have a garden. We have three planting pots: one with mint, one with basil, and one with thyme. They live in our office. The mint is about to die.)

6. Unrelated but noteworthy: I broke one of our first wedding gifts. I'm very efficient at breaking nice things, and therefore we don't even use any of the stemware we got for our wedding. Just so I wouldn't break any. Who would have thought that the glass lid of our fancy (and much used) Le Creuset wok would be the first item to go? So unfair... the thing was hot... so I dropped it... it fell... but just 8 inches (we measured, trust me)... and it BROKE. Argh.

7. Knitting? Well then:

One and half pair of Nanners. I hope to finish them tomorrow.

Cheers!