Checking in briefly

I haven't done anything craftwise in a couple of weeks because I've been a little distracted.

This weekend I managed three whole rows of the pesky fuzzy scarf. It's not easy and I might flee to a new thread project for a while during the chaos that is June.

I have like 15 rows done on this thing. Gah!

Done at last!

I had the great benefit of being home a couple of days last week while some workers came in to turn my bathroom from a tragic pile of squalor into a gorgeous sleek beauty of a room, and I also didn't have much going on at work, so I was able to power through and get the skinny silk scarf done!

I was a little concerned because there's no binding off in this pattern. I had to store the stitches on a dpn while I worked on the other end piece. Luckily no stitches fell off.

Then I knitted up the second end piece.

And then I grafted the two pieces together! I really took my time with this because kitchener stitch is the bane of my very existence. I'd do a couple of stitches and then walk away for a while. Worked out fine in the end, I'm happy to say.

And finally I was able to block. I'm so happy I have wire rods, which I threaded down the sides. I'm also happy for heavy-duty t-pins, because the little flimsy push pins I also have just were not doing the trick. I stretched the holy hell out of this thing.

But that's how we get from this ...

To this!

It was still slightly damp this morning, so I haven't taken the pins out yet, and I may block it again because it's not totally uniform, but either way at some point soon I will post a pic of this thing being worn by me.

I'm really rather pleased with myself.

Now I need to work up the courage to get back to this:

An unexpected gift

Back in December 2010 (I can't believe it was that long ago) I finished a thread tablecloth that I'd been working on for, literally, years. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it because, naturally, I don't have a table. Not long after I finished it we got some good news that an old family friend had beaten back Demon Cancer and was also about to celebrate a Very Big Birthday, so I packed up the tablecloth and sent it along to her. I have it on good authority that the tablecloth was well received.

Last week I got an amazing and unexpected gift in the mail as a direct result of that tablecloth gift. Another friend of my mother's had gotten wind of the tablecloth gift. She is a long-time crafter who, unfortunately, can no longer hold a hook, and who didn't have anyone to pass along her trove of books to. So she sent them to me!

Here's part of the letter that was enclosed in the box.

Some thread, some squares for a bedspread, and the bedspread pattern.

And all these books. Just look at them! Some are quite old.

I can't wait to leaf through them and see what's in my future.

The best part is that this woman is also clearly a huge fan of thread and doilies.

So there you have it. An amazing gift from a very generous woman. It has left me wondering though: who will I gift all my books and stash and hooks and needles and looms to when I can't hold a hook anymore??

Lazy days

I have been unabashedly lazy the last couple of weeks. Not a stitch was made! And then this past Sunday I was faced with some much coveted Alone Time and got another five repeats of the scarf done. So now we're up to 15 of 23 or 24.

Becoming longish.

And still really curly.

And I still don't have the pattern memorized.

Halfway there

I now have 13 of 24 repeats done. Woo! Things are going a little more quickly, but I still need to pay really close attention. I'm still occasionally ending a row with too many or too few stitches. I'm trying not to get to angsty about it.

It's starting to curl up like a snake. Blocking becomes more and more a certainty of this scarf's future.

OCD chart counting!

It's starting to look like something now

I did a ton of work on the skinny scarf this weekend. I now have 10 of 23 pattern repeats done. It takes me a couple of hours to do one repeat (which consists of 16 rows), so I suppose that means I spent most of the weekend knitting. When I wasn't reading or drinking Very Strong Beer.

You can't even tell where I messed up and lost count!

And I may just have enough yarn to knit the whole thing. I wasn't sure at first.

The obligatory closeup shot. I'm still convinced that this will look (a) totally different, and (b) way better after it's been blocked.

I kind of dig knitted lace

Things I like about knitted lace: (1) you only have to fret about the pattern every other row. (2) Watching the pattern emerge. (3) For a skinny scarf, only 49 stitches!

The edging and I believe 3 of 23 pattern repeats.

Things I don't like about knitted lace: (1) The alternating row is all purls (unless it's a sock, in which case it's all knits, which rocks). (2) Having to pay close attention to where you are in the row. (The Husband interrupted me this weekend, which made me lose my place, which made me mess up the pattern. I still don't know how to unknit a slip one, knit two together, pass one over.)

I think this should be really nice once it's blocked.

Smidgens of progress

I made a teeny amount of progress on the uber-fuzzy scarf. I hope to be less afraid of it as I get more used to working with the yarn and the needles.

I must be doing something right because there's a curve on the edge.

I also started a skinny scarf with a skein of silk blend yarn that's been sitting on my ottoman for months and months. This yarn was really expensive (but bought with a groupon, which is why I even bought it) so I wanted to wait for the right pattern to come along. Hopefully I found it, but it's kind of hard to tell this early in. It's supposed to be 9 inches wide, but at the moment it's more like 6. Maybe after blocking it'll be closer to what it's supposed to be. I will say this: it feels divine.

It's also way less scary to work with so I've kind of been concentrating on this one to the detriment of the fuzzy one.

Difficulties

I've been casting about for a new project. A friend gave me some scrumptious yarn a while back and I've been looking for the right pattern for it for ages. I was pretty sure I'd found it, but this yarn is ... difficult. It's SUPER fine, but also extremely fuzzy, which makes it hard to tell exactly where the stitch is (although it feels awfully nice), especially because lace patterns have tons of yarnovers, which are tricky to manage under the best of circumstances. I keep ending up with the wrong number of stitches (although I just successfully finished two rows with the right number, so maybe I've conquered that little problem).

I'm using Addi Turbo needles for the first time and I'm not entirely sure I like them. They are so damn slippery ... just this morning I was nine stitches into a row and somehow lost my grip on the right needle and it slipped entirely out of the row. After a brief moment of panic I managed to get the stitches all back on, but wow, I already have a love/hate relationship with knitting. I don't need the aggro. Plus the loop in the middle keeps getting in my way. I much prefer bamboo.

Eight rows and my OCD counting list. So far it looks exactly nothing like the pattern. I'm not sure how much that matters.

A closeup of the fuzz. The FUZZ!!

More mittens

I took it easy this week and started and finished one mitten and got about halfway through a second. This is the same pattern as the ones I made a few weeks ago, only with the colors reversed. I like making mittens ... they're quick and easy.

And since that's about all I managed to do this week, here's a little gem of gorgeousness for you to gaze upon. I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before, but it's too spectacular not to post about again.

This is a closeup of an amazing cape woven from spider silk.

Read all about it and view a video here.

Fingerless gloves!

They're not really my thing, but now that they're done and I've put them on I sort of see the appeal. They're fancy!

All done but the thumbs

Thumb stitches back on needles. Six stitches per needle ... awkward? Yes.

Thumbs done! I hardly even messed up at all.

If I can wrestle these things onto my giant man-hands, then my friend who has normal-sized hands will have no problems at all.

Some major pinnage happened to get them flat and blocked to the proper measurements.

Flat and blocked and fancy!

Not too shabby, if I say so myself.

Although my needles might beg to differ.

And I even had enough yarn left over for several granny squares and weavette squares for my seemingly never-ending other projects.

Hell on Needles

Apparently I practice Extreme Cruelty to Knitting Needles.

I finished the first fingerless glove, except for the thumb, and before I cast on for the second one I noticed that my needles are really quite far from straight anymore. I expect at any moment that one will snap right in half and then I will be displeased. I have to say though, that knit three together and SSSK are difficult. Like, really hard. That's why the bendage.

And really this doesn't quite convey the extreme bendiness of the poor things. Maybe I should try to find some steel needles.

Beads all lined up nice and pretty, ready to be threaded onto the yarn for the second glove.

Another genius thumb

I have become a big fan of the thumb gusset in knitting. It's genius! You add a bunch of stitches in a V shape, put them on a stitch holder for later, then put them on needles and continue knitting, and like magic you have a thumb.

From the marker to the left is the glove in pattern. To the right of the marker are the thumb stitches. There are 24 rows of thumb stitches, so if you travel down in a V shape you should be able to see where it diverts from the pattern.

Then you put the stitches on a holder (I only have monster-sized holders, which is a pain) and close up the gap at the top, and continue knitting in the pattern.

It's a little unwieldy at the moment, but I only have a few more rows to do before binding off.

Mittens!

Some friends asked me to make them mittens a couple of weeks ago. So we went back and forth about what they wanted and what I thought I was capable of. Joe picked some fairly simple knitted mittens that I thought I could just about manage. Turns out I can knit a mitten in a day, even with back-to-back migraines trying to keep me down! Who would have thought.

And they're fancy, with a folding cuff. Joe is color blind so he wanted black. I thought that was boring so made the cuff a light green. He'll never know the difference.

Because I don't knit that often I had no idea you could create a thumb just by adding stitches, but you can, and it's like magic.

But that doesn't mean I wasn't totally intimidated by the thumbs and left them until the last minute. Then after some YouTube surfing, I figured it out.

Putting 12 stitches on three needles is kind of an ungainly mess, but it really does produce a thumb.

Ta-da! Some straightforward buttons, and a single crochet edging around the cuff to finish them off. I have enough yarn left over to do another pair with the colors reversed. Those should look nice as well.

Should be nice and toasty. Now if the stupid weather would drop down out of the 60s, that would be nice.

Ilana wanted fingerless gloves, and now I'm feeling cocky, so I'm knitting them on size 1 needles and also included beading.

Because it means I get to do my favorite thing, which is work from CHARTS. Woo!