Sara Skates

Wayback Machine Contest

KitKatKnit is having a contest - blog about what you were knitting a year ago, and post the link to her blog in the comments. You have to be old though - I'm pretty sure I qualify ;)  I spent 5 of my growing up years living out of the country so have large cultural knowledge holes when it comes to TV - but technically I was old enough LOL.

A year ago, I was finishing up a gift sweater which involved some steeking to fix a mis-count on where I had put the neckline - changing it from a V-neck to a U-neck with a band.  I was also just starting Poppy, which egads, I am finally getting around to finishing right now.  I have about 2/3 of the second sleeve done - then some minimal sewing and a finish around the collar I believe.  I would be done with the sleeve now except that it took me not 1, not 2, not 3, but FOUR tries to get the second sleeve to be the right number of stitches (the third time, I got a good 4 inches up before I realized i had cast on at least 10 too few stitches - the sleeve was 2 inches smaller in circumference than sleeve #1).  And, on this try of the sleeve, I knit an extra two inches following the pattern rather than the mods I had done to sleeve #1 - so rip the two inches I did.  I'm one inch back through those....and making steady if not slow progress.

It's totally time to finish Poppy IMO!

Nearly successful -

I started with this:

If you embiggen you may be able to see a line of sewing-maching thread - the plan with those scary scissors is to cut along the line, pick up stitches, and knit a U-shaped placket.

See the problem is that the V-neck is not centered.  While there are 6 columns of stitches between the raglan decreases and the V-neck on one side, there are 9 columns on the other side.  Ooops.

In an uncharacteristic moment of NOT being anally attentive to detail, note that I did NOT worry about the fact that the lower sewing line (the horizontal part) slants upwards. I figured that once I had cut, if I picked up following a row of knitted stitches, not the sewing line, I'd be fine - and the fabric would be malleable enough to fold back evenly with none the wiser.

That part worked.  See:

It's a little hard to see since the heathery yarn diffuses most detail, but the former V-neck is now a U-neck, with a perfectly reasonable placket.

I was THRILLED with the decreases at each bottom angle of the U.  While I was too lazy to get up and google or check a reference book, I guessed that knitting two together every other row at the corners would do it - and it did.  Perfectly.  I also like the placket garter stitch pattern.  I knit every row and it's purty.

That same laziness however bit me in the proverbial (non-anal) ass since I guessed wrong at the ratio of stitches to pick up.  There are too many - making the placket stretch up on the sides of the U.  It bothers me, so I'll rip tonight and re-do.  I picked up one stitch for every row - and my later checking of references suggest that picking up 3 for every 4 is a better bet.

Now that all the thinking and sewing and cutting is done, it should be a breeze.  I'll pick up a bit of gross-grain ribbon to cover the cut-edge inside and call it a finished-object.

Good thing, because Toby's last day of his intensive PT session this time around is Friday - it'll be a really nice thank-you/happy holidays gift for his wunder-PT Stephanie.

I'm going in...

Stay tuned for a picture post on slashing, cutting and fixing the neckline on a sweater for Toby's PT....the troubles of which were first blogged about here.

More later.  FX that all goes well.  Why does it seem so WRONG to cut what one has knit with one long (single) piece of string.

Right - that's why.  SINGLE piece of string.  Cut.  Severally.  Down I dunno - 40 rows?  Turning it instantly into about 40 pieces of string.

Ack.

But the silver lining:  The goal of making it wearable ;)

Ack -

Toby has pronounced the new hat and mitts "too itchy".

Some time adding a thin fleece liner could be in the future....

Hat tassles

Jenn asked how I made the tassle on Hannah's hat.   I'm in the throes of a fever/stuffy head/hit-by-a-truck cold, so apologies for any wacky descriptions that occur here.

*I finished the crown decreases of the hat - decreasing down to three stitches

*I knit I-cord using those three stitches - knit three stitches, slip all 3 back onto the left-hand needle, knit them again, repeat.  So the third stitch then has the yarn pull from behind and knit into the first stitch...it creates a skinny knitted tube.  When it was long enough, I pulled the end of the yarn through the three stitches, and left a length to attach to the tassle.

*Then I wrapped tassle yarn around whatever was handy and about the right size- I think I used a box of coasters.  I wrapped a bunch of times - then cut through all at one edge - so I had a bunch of equal-length pieces of yarn.  I tied/cinched them together in the middle, folded them in half at the cinch, and then wrapped another piece of yarn around about a centimetre down from the cinch.

*From there - easy peasy - I threaded the end of the i-cord throgh the tassle and attached it.  Voila, tassle.

Back to couging and wild temperature fluctuations.  Terry's a day ahead of me, I'll feel better tomorrow.

I'm around -

I'm working a lot, skating a lot, and generally just busy. We did go to Hemlock this weekend (The Fingerlakes Fiber Festival) - it was fabuous as usual although the fairgrounds were quite muddy.  We needed a little help getting our car moving from its mudspot at the end of the day.  I felt sorry for all the bemuddied spinning wheels...the mud will wash off but they were quite dirty.  The yarn was lovely, I picked up a few things (photos at another time) - some hand spun and dyed cormo yarn for a pair of mittens, a pound and a half of loverly peachy-orangey combed wool, and a bit of koigu KPPM and KPPM (which who knew - the only difference is that KPPM - or is it KPM? - is nearly solids, and KPPPM is the multicolored).  Oh, also a kit to make a scarf - where you felt small amounts of wool into a piece of silk - from Cloverleaf Farms (I can't find a link so you'll have to wait for photos). 

I'm barely managing to keep up with blog reading - I will undoubtedly get back into the swing of writing more in a bit - perhaps after the next work deadline or two on the horizon ;)

Knitting Blue

While the top-down raglan is in time-out while I decide what kind of collar to morph the assymetric neck slit into*, go see Trey's efforts to get gay/lesbian marriage equality in California.  And do what you can to force him into knitting lots and LOTS of rows of afghans, which when they're blankets will be donated to Afghans.

There are tons of grass-roots knitting-blog efforts to raise money and/or benefit those who need it.  One of the things I love about knitting blogs (in all their permutations) is how many different ways folks do stuff like this.

*It won't be hard to adapt it, I'm just faced with too many choices.  It's not assymetric enough to leave as is (looking just a little "off kilter" does not make an assymetric design choice), so something is in order.  I also think the torso might be too long, but that's another issue.

If you were a rainbow Toby-sized sock, where would you be?

A few weeks ago, Toby asked for a pair of rainbow socks.  Pronto, I cast on out of one skein of Regia Ringel (rainbow stripey goodness).  I finished the first sock within a few days, and it and it's mate have been traveling with me since.

The last time I rembember seeing it was on the airplane from Alanta to Rochester - where not much knitting progress happened b/c I kept falling asleep.  I needed it to gauge exactly where to start the toe decreases.

Since then, the toe is about done, and I tried to find both socks last night.  Sock 1 is gone.  Sock two needs only an afterthought heel.  Both have been inside a plastic baggie inside by little shoulder/hip sack...

Terry claims she saw both when rummaging through my bag to find a checkbook the other night.  But we all know how one long sock tube can really look like two socks if you're not (a) paying careful attention, and/or (b) really a knitted sock conoisseur.  (Terry doesn't knit is my point.) 

Fingers crossed that it'll come out of the woodword.  Right now, I'm betting that it's on a really good cross country tour of Delta Airlines flights.