Wishful Thinking

I got carried away shaping the waist, and created a cardigan for a tall, skinny woman:

I'm tall alright, alas, not skinny. When I tried on the cardi, I was able to close the front only after some stretching. Not much stretching, just a little, and I'd probably get away with blocking the body into a wider shape (that's the cardigan's body, not mine. Mine I'd throw into the dryer and shrink a bit, if I could). But I'm not sure I still want a body-hugging cardigan. (The Hubs liked it: he mentioned "tight" and "chest" [he used another word] and... and you know what he was talking about.) I could wear it as is if I left the front open and wore a belt around the waist:

But that's cheating, isn't?

So far I've used just 4 of 12 skeins, and I could turn this into a large, tunic-length cardigan. I think I'll rip back to under the arms and start over, sans waist-shaping. I'll mull over my design choices before doing something radical.

We're traveling this weekend to be with my husband's family (you know why). We'll be in a rental car for many hours, and I'm taking two very beloved skeins of Noro Iro with me for comfort knitting.

With just 240 meters of bulky yarn my options are limited, and I think I'll make a lengthwise garter stitch scarf. Or a giant cowl? Something to wrap around my neck and show off at work.

Frank

The Hubs' ersatz-grandfather passed away last night. This did not happen entirely unexpectedly, but the news came as a shock regardless. Frank, né François, was the brother of the Hubs' grandfather, Charles, who, when the Germans invaded Belgium, led his family to safety in the U.S. He died many, many years ago, and Frank has been both a father-figure to Charles' son (my FIL) and a much beloved grandfather-figure to my own husband. The Hubs is sad, and I try to comfort him in small ways, making his favorite dinner and looking for photos of Frank. Here he is with his wife, Ginette, on Thanksgiving day last year:

#10

That's my new favorite needle size! Dude, double-stranded yarn on #10 needles--I knit one stitch and the project practically grows by a square centimeter. Love it!

What it is, I'm knitting? Well, since the EPS sweater turned out nicely I jumped at the chance to make a top-down raglan cardigan for myself. I measured, swatched, measured, and swatched again, spent an hour with graph paper and this apartment's walking calculator (=Hubs), and then I cast on, and several hours later I had this:

The motivation was two-fold. One: my mom is coming for a visit in February, and since she gifted the yarn (=Lana Grossa Baby Kid) I wanted to have something to show her (I figured this would encourage her to keep giving. Tee hee). Two: after months of failed attempts* at attending the local knitting brunch I decided that this time I'd definitely go. But I had just finished the pink sweater and nothing on my needles but a boring scarf in black (for the Hubs, to go with his boring hat), and since I didn't dare walk into a knitting group with a boring scarf, I needed a new project. Quickly. So instead of going to the brunch at 9:30 I arrived there close to noon, but at least I had a couple of inches of cardigan with me. (I was hugely nervous--I'm not good at introducing myself to a group of strangers--but the experience was great. Knitters don't bite. Instead, they give you Girl Scout Cookies.)

*The brunch is on Saturdays. I kept going Sundays. Thinking to myself, how nice, these gals are like me and rather knit than go to church! Then always wondering if church-going knitters knit in church, or if that is inappropriate.

Saturday was altogether awesome. Now that I'm on the wake-up-at-five-and-run-to-the-gym schedule, sleeping in on weekends means waking up at 6 am and seeing this an hour later from the knitting chair:

The weather was fabulous all day Saturday. The Hubs got our bikes in shape, and back we are on the road! None of this bus silliness anymore.** It feels altogether liberating.

(**Currently my clothes are drying. It was pouring all day today, and I got wet to my skin, and then some. Not just once but three times! Argh.)

FO: EPS Pullover

It's done, done, and done!* My very first Elizabeth Zimmerman sweater, for which I followed her percentage system as outlined in Knitting Without Tears. I wanted to learn basic "sweater architecture," and knitting this project did the trick.

I don't like crew necks and therefore decided to work a v-neck. EZ doesn't say a word about v-necks (at least not in this book), so I figured out how to do it on my own (obviously not difficult). Only after I was done did I read here that for a clean look of the v-neck, you knit the edge stitch before decreasing. Having decreased the very first stitch (the edge stitch) I ended up with an untidy edge to pick up stitches from for the neckband. But I decided I didn't care. The bind-off doesn't look pretty, and memo to self reads like this: improve v-neck shaping skills.

But overall I'm very pleased with the result. The yarn's GGH Cumba Print, which I bought while in Germany over the summer. I must have been suffering from some hormonal imbalance or the summer heat, or else I can't explain the color choice. (Pink? Moi? Pink??) Silly me didn't write this down: I believe I used #6 needles. Or #5? Whichever gave me a 5"/inch gauge...

I worked in some waist shaping and am truly happy with the fit.

I did have a bit of a meltdown last Sunday, after I had decided to undo the ribbing at the lower end in order to add some length. Yet I found it impossible to rip back starting from the CO edge, and in a moment of insanity I thus reached for the scissors and cut off one inch of ribbing. CUT! SCISSORS! Without first inserting a lifeline! Crazy! Somehow I had imagined it must be easy to pick up stitches. But it wasn't so. Not one bit. Not at all. I had to rip more and more, and eventually the pullover was some three inches shorter before I finally started knitting in the opposite direction to make it longer again. Alas, now it's long enough.

EZ says to knit plain for one to two inches after having joined arms and body, and before starting the raglan decreases (every other row). Being tall I opted for two inches, but this may have been a mistake: there's too much ease just above the line where arms and body join (as you can see below). In the future I'll try something else: knit plain for just .5 inch or so, then decrease slowly (every fourth row) for a couple of inches, and then decrease every other row.

*I must still wash and block the sweater. I hope this won't do a thing to the fitting, 'cause as is, it's perfect.

What else happened this week?

I had some computer trouble at work ('cause it's a PC!) and needed help from the IT person on call, who turned out to be a familiar face from the Common Cod Fiber Guild. He pretended not to recognize me, and I took that as signal not to enthusiastically greet him and discuss fibery things in front of his co-workers. Small world!

The Yarn Harlot's cry for help for Haiti inspired Ravelry to create the Help for Haiti pattern bank--or did the Ravelry team cook this one up on its own? (Don't want to hold back credit where credit is due.) In any event, it's a brilliant feature! I immediately purchased Villane, Pikkuveli, and Baby Cables and Big Ones Too (all by Suvi Simola): those are patterns I've been eyeing for some time now, and with 50% of my money going towards humanitarian efforts in Haiti, this was a no-brainer. (The Hubs did his part by giving a bigger chunk of moolah directly to Doctors Without Borders. He's good like that.)

Big Brown disaster in Mass! Many voices heard on the radio explained their decision in favor of Brown by saying that in Mass. "we already have universal health care" (mandatory health care is not quite the same thing) and "why should we care about the rest of the country?" The egoism infuriated, the ignorance shocked, the outcome angered me. Ted K. is spinning in his grave. Nuff said.

Zwei

That's "zwei" as in two Sideways: after the original one was hijacked by a passionate admirer, I had to make a second hat for myself to keep.

The Hubs took the photo as we were walking to our favorite bakery Sunday morning, Clear Flour Bakery in Brookline.

The visit inspired me to bake ginger scones, and since our grocery store was out of candied ginger I used chocolate covered ginger pieces instead. The result: heavenly (even if a tad too brown).

I'm about to finish the EPS sweater! Stay tuned....

Squares and Such

A while back I finished Allison LoCiero's Entrelac Scarf. Before posting any pictures I had to make sure that the completed project reached its final destination: the hands of my MIL, my most faithful blog reader (I think she reads it to get news about the Hubs:)). Now that the scarf has made its way to Mississippi, where the unexpected cold wave elevates a scarf from being merely fashionable to also being very practical, I can show it off to you:

Excuse the comparison, but knitting this thing was a bit like giving birth: painful. Absolutely painful. Entrelac, I discovered, is not my thing. But once the baby (=the scarf) was there, all pain was forgotten immediately. That's how much I loved the result. BTW, it's Noro Silk Garden, if you hadn't guessed already. :)

If I had knit this for myself, I would have chosen a different colorway. MIL and I were yarn shopping together, and I had already picked a Noro colorway of neutrals (grays, mainly, with a hint of brown and some black) when MIL remarked just how much she loved the bold colors. And that's when I decided to knit the scarf for her, as a Christmas early January present.

I realize that one of the beauties of Noro is the element of surprise. I'm all for surprises, but when one of the four skeins purchased contains only half the colors of the other skeins, surprise turns into disappointment. Here two photos for comparison, on the left a "normal" skein, on the right its misbehaving sibling:



However, my MIL seems to like the scarf, and that's really the only thing that counts.

Lastly, a photo of my favorite square:

Still Sticking to that Resolution!

You didn't believe me when I said I'd trade knitting time for exercising or, more importantly, dissertation writing time, and neither did I. However, the Hubs put me on The Plan, a schedule he devised in an attempt to do what normal people do: get up really early, work hard for many hours, go to bed entirely exhausted. All of this at the expense of play time. *sigh* As result I've been exercising every day (that's between "getting up really early" and "working hard for many hours") and gotten some work done (there's still room for improvement in executing that part of the plan), but have been too tired to pick up the needles (except on weekends). I feel super fit and productive, but haven't made much progress with my EPS sweater; this means that I'm totally on track in terms of new year's resolutions, even on day eleven.

In lieu of real knitting I've attended Julia Farwell-Clay's lecture that kicked off last weekend's Fiber Camp Boston. Sadly, I didn't go to camp (see above), but a lecture at MIT sounded academic enough to count towards time-spent-working. Julia, the Features Director at TwistCollective, gave us a very entertaining behind-the-scenes look at how the internet has changed working conditions for knit designers and allowed the audience to touch, sniff, cuddle, fondle, and try on sweaters featured in Twist. Alasdair Post-Quinn, designer of Four Winds (in the most recent Twist issue), was present as well, and I got a chance to chat with him about the prospects of men warming up to the idea of knitted ties. (Fat chance.)

Since I don't want to leave you without a photo or two, I'm posting three:

Wow. 8-inch circular needles, happily curled up in the Hubs' wedding band (he didn't volunteer for this photo. I made him sit still). I can't imagine knitting with these needles, that's why I had to have them.

The EPS sweater. Body and both sleeves are done, now I need to assemble it all and work the raglan/v-neck top. (Unfortunately, I can't find anything in EZ about V-necks... I'm experimenting and hope for the best.)

The Boston Commons on First Night (that's New Year's Eve). The parks were crowded with people, in spite of the cold. Rather than seeing the fireworks at the harbor at midnight, we retreated to our favorite French bistro and celebrated with the waitstaff.