Decided to work through the knit blog ring. Some nice new blogs out there, as well as, well, hemmm. Went quite a ways before I came upon a dead link, and I had sort of lost interest by then. Kind of odd to go through so many, and get sort of a cosmic global feeling for the cyber knitting world. Personal lives in transitions with moves, lost work and divorce and, oh yeah, knitting.

I find I don't give a rat what sort of yarn, needle or whatever I am, or anybody else is. I tend to loop at the pictures and move on. Lots of people in the blog or knot blahs. Then there is Rogue. I liked the pattern and ended up purchasing it. Will I knit along? Probably not, as I really want to finish the three projects that are on my WIP list - the vest, the blanket and Hank. The traveler will move along on his own, thank you.

And, did I mention that my husband is a weather god? The beautiful weather we had been having here broke into scattered rain and cold when the man got on the airplane. I've been working at home all day, and it's been really grotty. Shiloh has insisted in snuggling on my lap, which has restricted the number of rounds I've accomplished.

I've determined a solution to my yarn problem for the vest. I pathetically unraveled my swatches, and feel that I now have enough yarn to finish the front. That leaves one repeat on the back. I worked through my stash and found some purple wool that was close; just a bit more blue. Close enough that when I found it between the two colors in a swatch I had to look two or three times to determine that it was not the yarn I needed. That's close enough for me. So, I'll use it on the single repeat on the back. I'd be at that point if the dog wasn't using my lap as a bed.

Trying to transmute work frustration into positive activity. Two appoinments cancelled today. Three last week. So instead, I've snuggled up with some Voice over IP audio training, and am listening and knitting, and sometimes even browsing knit blog rings at the same time. How can I do this? As the speaker said today, there is a lot of redundancy in human voice. I also find that because of my past positions, I understand more of this particular material than some of my more traditional data only peers. That's the benifit of being an old lady in the industry.

I've not done the blog rings for a while. I find that Knit Kitty goes backward only three sites before hitting a dead page. Forward, it goes maybe twelve sites, and then comes to a site with no KnitKitty link.

Well, not a lot of knitting progress. Travel last week was to San Antonio, so I drove rather than flew. Got a speeding ticket on the way home too. Weekend was full of Girl Scouts and saying good by to hubby, who is going to Peru for another three weeks. Two and a half repeats on the "traveler" and approaching the armhole decreases for the vest.

The vest is troubling me. Since the first armhole, I've been anxious that when I cut it apart it will be a misshapen mess. Regardless of all my work with graph paper and swatches. I think I'm past that, and onto the fear that I will run out of one color of yarn. It was an e-bay purchase; Classic Elite Montara; label long lost; purple with some red in it when seen alone. It makes the "royal purple" look navy when placed against it. Once could call it "dark fuchia" I've looked all over the Montara color swatches on the web, and am not satisfied that I see the color there. 3852 looks too blue; 3827 is the hank I have and it's more purple and vibrant than that. On the other hand, I'm also comparing to a hank of Montara that I have a label for, and the screen colors aren't true. So, I could be in trouble, because the dye pot has changed a lot.

I'm also resisting shelling out $8.50 plus S&H for a skein that I may just need ten yard of. I spent some time this weekend finding all my swatches for this vest so I can unravel them and spit splice the pieces together. Pathetic.

Been a traveling girl, spending three days roaming around Louisiana last week. Hoping to go to San Antonio for a few days next week. Louisiana is starting to bloom, so I developed and came home with some very irritated sinuses. I can only hope that my allergy prescriptions arrive soon.

Traveling project has seen much progress. Even though it had to be torn back to the armhole decreases several times. I was three inches into it the second time when I discovered the pattern was a stitch off. Gag. Nice thing about knitting is that it can be torn back and re-done. The welt for the front is done, and I'm ready to start the body pattern for this week. Here is the back in it's curly refuse to block glory.

Regardless of the list on the right bar, I have two active projects. Both progress.

Now, for an old story. I usually carry my "traveling project" to work, and am known to work on it during the extensive conference calls that are a part of my corporate culture. I have a collection or rather rattty canvas bags that I use to carry the project. When I returned to the office from the holiday, I found this lovely bag, and a card. Problem. The signiture was un-readable. I spent three weeks wandering around the office showing it to people, and asking if it was them, or if they could read it. Very mysterious. Finally, a gal pal that I rarely see asked if I had received her gift. Of COURSE! Well, not really, I could attribute about three letters from the signiture scribble to her. Well, Thanks! I'm using it now, and it's lovely.

Not quite to the 50% mark on the vest. But, being four rows away, I'll update my bar to that mark.

Doing armhole decreases on the traveler sweater. At the library this weekend I picked up "A Knitters Handy Book of Patterns". Upon reading I find it is a compilation of the Interweave Knits "Grand Plan" patterns. I have these magazines, and was planning on pulling the sweater issues for this project. I notice that while the patterns shows set in sleeves and shoulder shaping, there is no back neck shaping. I want this to be a fully fashioned sweater, I guess I'll make it up as I go.

Hey ho, another comment. I feel so popular.

Well, yes, Liz, it is a Philosophers Wool graphic, adapted from their book "Fair Isle Simplified". They call this one "Southwest", not "Kilim". It's sort of the idea of their "Night Sky" colorway, done with yarns pulled from my stash. The stash which is way too large, as I sort of had a bad E-bay habit for a while, and was running my own stash redistribution project, with the yarn all ending up in my house.

My Mother in Law was a quilter, so my husband is quite comfortable with the notion of a stash that is larger than one's expected life time. I do love messing around with it.

The vest is still not quite at 50%, but I do have conference calls from 8:00a.m. until about 2:00p.m. so stay tuned.

I think my knitting mojo had come back. Didn't know it was gone, really. I've just been frustrated at the lack of progress on some projects. Making promises to myself, then not keeping them. Of course the projects don't progress unless one works on them, and I've just not wanted to touch them. I even put my purple vest in a pretty basket, and carried it around the house with me. Still didn't touch it.

Then, yesterday,
WHAM
Back came the mojo, and I could hardly put the vest down. Now, understand, it's a wierd thing. Side to side vest in the round? What was I thinking. But, here is progress in a strangely tubular sort of way:


I've been sort of guilty working on a new project when I have three that have been languishing. However, I rationalize it by claiming that I need a "traveling" project. The other three need too many colors, not to mention that one is hanging on a knitting machine. The pink vest and the machine knit blanket will be travelers when the time comes to attach their I cord borders, but not yet. So, I have this project, out of the frog pond, and about half way to the arm holes:


Usually, it's the dog I catch snoring, but yesterday, GingGong was the snorlax. She was snoring, and her little fangs were sticking out. I thought it was worth a shot to try to get it in a picture.

OOOOOOOhhh Comments. I get so few, it really excites me to see them there.

SO, Dave is a Disney guy, on the Disney channel, so those of you who don't get Disney won't see him for a while. As far a purling, I did notice he knit on straights. The cartoon artists didn't really clearly show the stitch patterns, so he certainly could have made a garter stitch dog sweater. Something tells me too much time has already been spent on contemplating Dave's cartoonish knitting skills.

In the mean time, I held a retirement party for a friend, and spent the weekend preparing for that rather than working on my project, so I've missed my first milestone on the "finish the stupid vest" goal. Urg.

A new knitting television star!

Dave the Barbarian. Not a great cartoon, and I find from reading Dave's background that gourmet cooking and origami are his lead hobbies. However, on the episode my daughter forced me to view, he did knit several dog sweaters, demonstrationg excellent design and shaping skills. I expect we can see better knitting interviews from Dave than Daryl Hannah, don't you agree?

Ahhhh, the joy of shopping with a pre-teen. Too young to go alone; too old to want advice from Mom. I notice that there are some nice sofas in the Junior depts these days, just fine for sitting with the purses, shopping bags and all important money. My daughter grew sooooo much this year that all relatives sent clothes in sizes too small, so we returned and exchanged this weekend. The traveling project made some progress:



And I found a picture of the pink vest. I really should work more on this. Especially if I want to have it done by the end of February:



OK - Deals with myself:
Jan 25th - 50% point.
Feb 1 - 75%
Feb 7 off needles and steeked

I have a silly secret.

Every morning, (before) I click on Wendy, I check out the comic "For Better or For Worse". It's a sweet soap opera of a comic. Well, she dropped a big romantic bomb on her readers today. Now, if you don't read the strip, you may have to go back about a year to figure out what the deal is, but for those who follow FBoFW, what do you think will happen next week?

Hmmmm......

SO, I think I have the camera thing figured out. Win98 and Win2000 are different in a lot of ways and I'm still adapting. So, here is the poor bit of yoar that went to the frog pond:

There is a bit of ribbing done again, but not enough to photograph. I found my swatch and measured it. I must have read the ruler wrong before, because the real knitting was the same guage as the swatch.

Now, I've gotten moving on the purple/pink vest. What was causing me trouble, I think is that I've gone off and started a rather creative construction method. I'm knitting side to side because the recipient is rather large and wants the patterns to go in the "slimming" vertical direction. Because of the trouble I had working the pattern back and forth, I'm also knitting in the round. So It's comaing out as a rather odd shaped tube. Again, due to the large size of the target, the armhole needs to be big big big. Her center back measurement was a normal 13". However, the finished size at the bust will be lose to 60". You do the math. The thing is going to be half armhole. Needless to say, the thing looks really wierd.

Now, with all the messing around trying to get the camera to work withthe new computer software, I've worn down the battery, so no pictures of this today.

Sniffy nose all around today.

I noticed my hit counter reset some time or other.

Comments are nice. Don't see any here, do I?

Well, no blog pictures for a little bit. I had to have my pc re-imaged, and seem to have lost the connections to the picture editing software. Maybe later in the week.

I'm guilty of not finishing some of the projects that are challenging me. The GS vest should be done by now. I worked on it some, and it's really not that annoying, and really does work up fast, as it's worsted weight. It should be interesting once it's cut open.

After that, I need to remember where I was with Hank. Once I start on him again, I think he will finish up quickly.

My husband is out of town for four weeks. Could I possibly finish both by then? He's anxious to see his Hank finished.

Lucky Mistake
In the mean time, I like to have a "travel" project. I started a sweater for our friend "M". However, a lucky mistake that caused me to take the piece off the needles to fix also caused me to measure. The guage was off by enough to have to frog and start again. Not a bad thing, thought. I was not happy with a few of the design choices I had made. I'm using a slip stitch pattern in the round. Because of the particulars of the pattern, I was concerned that the "seams" would be too tight. I've decided that this pattern would work out better done in pieces, so I've re cast on for the back. There we have the "lucky" mistake."

Happy New Year.

After a few weeks of vacation, not blogging, and really not knitting I'm back. At least I think I am. Did anyone miss me?

Here are some pictures from last year:
The blue vest if finished:

I brought it to our family Xmas party, and tried it on my aunt. She liked it so I gave it to her. I was thinking of someone else, but that someone can be picky, and I wasn't sure she would like it. Auntie did, so auntie wins.

Now, for those who pay attention, I did make some adjustments to the shoulder. I personally don't like vests with shoulders that extend over where a fully fashioned shoulder should extend. I think they look floppy and "home made" rather than "hand made." I doubled all the arm hole decreases in the pattern except the initial underarm decrease, and was happy with the results. I liked the pattern a lot, and will probably make it again, with another adjustment. I read so many positve remarks in the summer about waist shaping, and I see no reason not to put some into this vest. The way the garmet hangs, you can almost see it, but I think some more shape will be pretty nice here.

Also, if I neede proof, which I don't, that my husband loves me, look what he brought me from Peru:

If you can't tell, it's six bags of alpaca knitting yarn. Yum yum. Now, I need to get my WIP's finished so I can dig into that.

And, someone is really happy that we're home:

Back from a lovely Holiday trip to California to see friends and family. The house is a mess with stuff thrown all over, and the pets are almost calmed back down again. I'm currently watching a lady wipe goo out of my laptop so that it can be re-imaged to Windblows 2000. Ick. This is taking longer than I expected.

I finished the blue on blue vest, and it fit and pleased my aunt. She now has it, and I hope she is wearing it in good health. Pictures later if this re-image ever happens. I worked some on the pink and purple vest. Again, I got ahead of myself and thought I could get it done this holiday. It is too awkward to work on when I travel, so I will have to make some quality time for just it and me.

Happy New Year.

Is it the weather, or holiday blahs?

I've not done much knitting since the weekend. I'm in a funk about the I cord for the blue vest, and haven't touched the KM blanket or the pink vest. How's that for news?

I looked at my project bars, and updated them. I took out the bear sweater project, as that is done, and got real about making Christmas socks for various people. I really did intend to make socks for my FIL and his GF. GF's sister raises sheep and spins. I thought she was going to send me some wool from her sheep for the project - to make it sort of meaningful. The price was a little high, but the connections were there, and I was more than willing to pay. Well, GF moved, and sister has not communicated with me. I guess if she figures the relationship is off, I have no business bugging her.

On a more positive note, I think I heard the wood ducks return today. This is about a month early for them. It was too dark to look, so I'm not really sure if it is them, or me just hoping for them to be back.

Not so much knitting over Thanksgiving. A full airplane, reading, cooking, skiing, and surprise, some beading. I bought a bead loom for my daughter, but started a little project myself while I was waiting for her to do something else.


Ooooooh pretty.

Now, the blue vest did get finished to the sholders during some driving, but I'm not happy with the way the I cord edging is working out. I seem to have made some assumptions about the guage of the I cord relative to the twisted garter that were incorrect. So the I cord is too tight. I finished the arm holes, and started on the front before I really evaluated what was happening, so I'm ripping away. Quite an experience, as the brushed mohair is sticking to everything. This puts the RRRRRR into Rip.

Ooooooh a comment. I knew I put that link there for a reason. Just have to post a response.

Yes, that knitting machine looks scary, but bear in mind, I'm working intarsia with a bunch of colors. Eighteen color changes per row if you are counting. If you were hand knitting it would look scary about now as well. Unless you were the kind of wierdo that weaves in ends as you go along. Actually, the mess that is pictured is quite under control.

To learn, I started with one color, then moved to basic 2x2 cables, then tried stripes. After that I did an intarsia heart on a sweater front. Then I tried the chicken sweater from a book called "animal knits". It got scary. It became a mess. I left it on the machine for three month's hoping it would go away. It didn't. I finally ripped it off the machine and threw it into the trash. So, there's the answer to what happens when things turn into a tangled mess. Avoid, then destroy. This may be a deviant aspect of my personality.

This is the first time "back in the saddle" since the terrifying chicken incident.

My knit guild has an impossibly huge supply of craft yarn that is being used for charity projects. We just drop by one of the storage locations, pick what we want and bring back what we make. I took a good sized shopping bag home when we sorted it over a year ago. I am taking advantage of this to develop my skills and confidence with the scary machine cost free. Because of the abundance of the yarn, I don't feel the need to conserve, so tossing a mess away rather than picking it apart and re-using the yarn is an option I can live with. And sometimes, I even end up with something to donate. When I began I made several toddler child sweaters that were donated.

So, everyone in the United States, have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.