Winslow and a new week

We’ve been here, on vacation with our two dogs:

And, at night, watched these films:

• The Lives of Others (riveting and deeply moving on multiple levels)
• Primer (a non-traditional sci-fi indie by a guy who really understands what engineers are like; kinda fascinating especially if you happen to live with one)

I didn’t knit at all while on vacation, but now I am back in my knitting chair and working on Inside Outs, while dreaming about other projects (there are so many temptations — my Ravelry queue is up to 3 pages!).

 

Surprise, I’m back

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I posted. Gee, thankgoodness for bookmarks or else I probably would have been at a loss on how even to get to my blog admin page! So — let’s leapfrog over the usual excuses (work, travel, summer wedding, work, ennui, work, family mishegoss, travel, work) and just make a fresh start of it, shall we? Here’s my knitting rundown:

FOs:

• Yes! There is one! I went back and dealt with my SSS for my Grasshoppers. They are now finished and I’m very pleased. They fit a LOT better than the Inside Outs, even though I am slogging through my SSS with that project now (see below).

Projects upon which attention is being lavished (or, at least, paid):

• Inside Out SS: slogging through. This sock looks and feels awesome — once I tuggggg it on and break into a sweat that I’m going to rip it in half doing so. There is something about the cable pattern starting too early that makes the instep really tight over the ankle area. I know that others have complained about their difficulties with this aspect of the pattern and I’m sure there is a good way to rectify it. However, I am just not that productive a knitter to stomach ripping out an entire sock, oh god to think of it makes me want to cry!! So I am going to knit the SS just like the first — and, if I can’t deal with the traumatic sock-putting-onning, then I will gift them to my sister, who has tiny dainty feet and will surely have less trouble.
• Clapotis: I’ve used up all my project yarn (4 skeins of Noro SG) and need to order more — I am thinking I will order two skeins and then see where I am.
• Bricklayer: I have knitted another round of strips, gosh I love this project for a mind-clearing break!
• Sock Yarn blankie — another square knitted, this one out of remaining STR Silkie Walk on the Wild Tide. I don’t know how I feel about this project. One part of me loves the patchwork of it; another part of me worries that’s its going to look like — how do some knitters say — clown puke? I will make a post soon with a photo and consider further.
• Camisa — the front is FINISHED, I just need to do the back and the sewing up. I love the way she is looking, I’m just still a wee bit nervous over the fit issues.

Films viewed:

• Notes on a Scandal (delicious and thoughtful)
• Army of Shadows (Armee des Ombres) (pas de question, superb)
• Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby (weak, but for the performance of SB Cohen — hilarious!)
• Little Children (its accomplishment sneaks up on you; respectable and I’m glad its not my life)
• For Your Consideration (Fred Willard is hilarious, but overall it is not the best of the Guest oeuvre)
• Volver (totally perfect and wonderful in every way)
• Sherrybaby (interesting and honorable but not earthshaking)
• Casino Royale (wow factor — the truest Bond to the books, not better nor worse but a different Bond than SC)

Days away from home in August (projecting through the end of this month):

• Work: 12 days (days without Andy)
• Pleasure, with Andy (Blair’s wedding): 3

 

At the finish line…

Well, c’est la vie! Due to some incredible “mountains” along Le Tour, I didn’t finish Camisa, but I get pretty far on it and I also diverted some energy to my Grasshopper socks UFO. I finished the socks a couple of days ago and they are lovely! I would post a picture but for being away from home yet again tonight….

Hence, the mountains that burned me out on my Le Tour goal…Over the last few weeks I’ve been on two business trips and I have just begin another one! I am experiencing so many “firsts” on Camisa, it was not a project I wanted to take on the road. Let’s see, what firsts have I accomplished on this Le Tour KAL:

• First KAL, yes, true!
• First garment
• First adaptation of a pattern for fit
• First use of shaping
• First knitting “both at the same time”
• First marathon knitting sessions — I knit for looooooong period of time on this project!!

Anyway, even though I did not finish the entire garment, I have the front completely done and the lower back panel complete. So it is close! Plus I have a new pair of socks. Je suis content.

 

La Lanterne Rouge

I’m back from four days traveling betwixt Tucson and Gallup. NM (for work, sigh) and I’m feeling that I am La Lanterne Rouge in La Tour. I made a lot of progress on Camisa before I left, but I left her at home and so she been waiting at the pit stop for me to return. I didn’t want to take her on the trip because she has gotten quite big; I also didn’t want to her to have to depend on me to think and figure things out, especially size-related things, while I was on a stressful work trip. Here’s where I left her; the front piece is nearly done (when it’s done, that leaves only the upper back panel and the making up!!!):

I pinned the cap sleeves out so that they could be seen in the photo (they curl up otherwise). BTW, another first for me: First Knitting of Two Sides at the Same Time (I never quite grokked that pattern instruction until now!).

Bust darts mod:
I blogged earlier about how I have altered the sizing in this pattern somewhat. To deal with my bodacious curves, I have made the wait proportionately smaller than the rest of the piece. I knitted directional M1 increases in the lower panel, and for the upper panel I interpreted Knitting Daily’s post on the Tomato top to create bust darts in a pair on each side.

I picked up 81 stitches on the top of the basketweave panel (this number of stitches corresponded with the pattern’s instructions for the panel), and I wanted to increase up to 105 stitches, which is in between the two larger sizes given. I wanted to complete the increases within the pattern’s instructions of 5 repeats of a 6-row segment. So I worked out how to spread out the increases among those repeats, doing the bust dart increases first (with 4 darts for 4 RS rows, increasing 4 stitches per RS row, then continuing just 2 darts for 1 RS row, increasing 2 more stitches). These were done within the first 2 repeats. I then only did the increases at the sides over the next 3 repeats as per the instructions (6 more stitches increased). So, if you are still reading this, that’s a total of 24 stitches increased, and 81 + 24 = 105! Yay!

I placed the bust darts like so:
13 st | pm | 7 st | pm | 41 st | pm | 7 st | pm | 13 st

To made the increases for the darts, I just purled into the front and back of the stitch that was on the inside of each marker.

So, I took along the remainder of my STR Silkie Walk on the Wild Tide yarn and cast on for the second Grasshopper sock. This time, instead of the pattern way to cast on (it’s a toe-up sock), I used Judy’s Magic Cast On and it is so easy and gives perfect results. Merci, Judy. I made good progress on it; I turned the heel last night and next is to knit the heel flap:

So, now I am torn between Camisa and Grasshopper!! Today is my day to knit, because tomorrow I must go in to my office and catch up on some work. What to do, what to do?

 

Friday progress avec sauvignon blanc!

Hey, guess what–if you just think about it, nothing happens; if you pick it up, all of a sudden you get somewhere! I finished the second lower panel for Camisa tonight, yay! This was after a fun and indulgent evening that started when Andy walked in the door and I said, hey let’s go to Feast for dinner. Feast is a fabulous, causal epicurean restaurant. We had a great dinner–I had Dover sole and Andy had chinese-style chicken and noodles (with delicious bok choy). We also had a lobster bread pudding appetizer and a bottle of an Australian sauvignon blanc–I wasn’t thinking in particular about Robbie McEwan but it is fitting, non? We also went home with a bottle that Doug Levy (the owner) picked out for us–a Jermann (2001 Vinnae da Vinnailoi), blended white wine from northern Italy. Yumm, that will be for next Friday, or later perhaps.

We stopped off to see a friend’s band play and then headed home. Watched NOW and then the Bill Moyers Journal. I’m glad I had knitting to counteract all the bad news out there. God, this war and this administration are fucked up beyond belief. Bill Moyers discussed impeachment of both Bush and Cheny with John Nichols and Bruce Fein. Yes, yes, yes.

Anyway, beyond politics, here is richness and life and lots and lots of stockinette attached to those original basketweave panels:

 

Keep on keepin’ on with Camisa WIP

Last night, after making a bug tray of manicotti and getting ready to put it into the oven — our oven finally broke. Blech. It’s the original oven from 1957, a small wall oven (too small for a large roasting pan, as I have discovered in the past!) and it has been very temperamental in the past months. Well, it has lost its temper for good. I’m quite sure that when we pull it out, we will find a big scorch mark behind it, and we will count our blessings that we did not manage to burn our own house down while making peanut-butter cookies or something like that.

Anyway, my sister rescued us by letting us come over and cook dinner there, as well as watch Big Love.

When we got back, it was already 9pm, and a few glasses of vino had been sacrificed for the cause (of what? just ’cause), but I didn’t want to fall behind in Le Tour! So I did get some knitting in on Camisa.

I picked up stitches from the second basketweave panel and started knitting down — I think I did about 6 rows is all, but that’s some progress, non? My feeling is that I could make another big dent in it tonight — maybe get all the increases done at least…we’ll see.

Here’s my attempt at a Frida-inspired photo: (The freaky version! is at the top of the post

 

Camisa WIP — benchmark one!

Coinciding with the beginning of Le Tour and the Tour de France KAL, I reached a benchmark on Camisa! The first lower panel is complete!

I have some anxiety over sizing and fit, as mentioned previously. The photo shows the increases I did to combine the smaller waist with the larger belly/hips area. Oh I hope it works! A promising note: I laid the panel over a good tee-shirt to compare the size. I smoothed it but didn’t stretch it. The unblocked, un-bloomed cotton piece is pretty reasonably inline with my just-from-the-dryer tee. That’s a good sign, I think.

(Yes, this is the famous tee from Threadless!)

 

WIP update — Camisa

One of the WIPs on which I am currently focusing is the following:

Camisa by Kat Coyle (Knitscene Fall06). (This is my Tour de France KAL project)

Look, isn’t the yarn pretty:

Camisa Specs so far:

• Yarn (sub from pattern): Schafer Yarns Laurel, in Frida Kahlo colorway. (Is this being too self-referential? Since the pattern is pubshed in a story called “folklorica” and the models are styles to look very frida-esque?)
• Gauge notes: 5 st/inch with US 6 needles. I am a little concerned about gauge. I love the fabric produced using US 6 needles, which are smaller than recommended for the yarn (recommended sizes for Laurel are US 7-8; recommended gauge is 4.25-4.5 spi). Yarndex says that Laurel is a worsted weight yarn, but it seems lighter than that to me.
  • I must tell you that I first got a gauge of 4.75 spi using US 7 needles and I was busily rewriting the pattern before I decided to give US 6s a try — doh!
• Size: Here’s where it gets tricky and I become a nervous wreck. Since this is my first garment, I don’t have a lot of know-how to fall back upon. The sizes for this pattern have a weird jump from a 40.5 bust to a 46. Yoikes! Neither one of those is right. Plus, the basketweave panel (the smallest part of the garment) is too big at the 40.5 size. Plus I am aware of the tendency for a 100% cotton fabric to strtch and bloom after blocking. SO…I am paying careful attention to size and making decisions as I go along. We’ll see how good/lucky I am.
  • I have made the basketweave panels in a width that corresponds to the 36.5 bust size (foundational repeat plus 15 repeats)
  • For the lower panel, I have picked up the corresponding number of stitches (79, for a total of 80) and I am increasing to 106 stitches. (Increase rows are ever RS row; I am using directional M1 increases that I learned from reading Grumperina’s Tivoli pattern).
  • Also for the lower panel, I am increasing the length somewhat. Achieving the necessary number of rows to increase to 106 stitches makes the panel 4″ long before the side edging. I will make the side edging 2″ long.
  • That’s as far as I’ve gotten thus far — more notes as they come.

 

Ravelry mini update — the queue function

It’s fun being a beta-tester, especially for such a professional production! And when you have an immediate sense of just how useful the thing is, and that you will probably use it a lot!

Don’t forget to donate!! (Gotta give Jess and Casey some love!)

Wow! I have been spending much of the morning adding things to my queue on Ravelry. I (like many people, I’m sure) have a gi-normous collection of webpage bookmarks for patterns. Well how helpful is that? You can’t search it, can’t view snapshots at a glance, can’t make notes, further research must be collected into a traditional notebook, etc. Well, Ravelry has a handy “add to queue” function that lives in your browser’s bookmarks bar. “Click” when one a pattern’s webpage and your Ravelry queue opens up to add the pattern, and then the cool stuff starts to happen…

Things I love:

• I can collect patterns into Ravelry, where I can actually consider them and they stay in my mind, instead of gathering dust in as a mostly anonymous collection of bookmarks.
• There are an astonishing number of patterns in the Ravelry dbase – wow! This is really cool. For example, I had a bookmark that linked to a PDF for a “multi-directional scarf,” with only text, no pictures. Well, I had no idea what it was. When I put it into the queue, Ravelry offered a link to the scarf’s pattern in the dbase, complete with pictures from the people who have made it. Wow! Now I am interested again in making it, when before I might have tossed the bookmark in a fit of purging.
• Because of the note above, patterns that are in the dbase link up with yarn suggestions and other people who have made the piece. Neat!

Things that could be improved:

• As far as I can tell, the queue detail window doesn’t work in Safari, which is my preferred browser. All of the aforementioned bookmarks are in Safari, so I am dragging the bookmark over to Firefox and going from there (it’s not that hard). (WordPress.com WYSIWYG editing doesn’t work in Safari, either, so I’m kinda used to this already.) I think that Jess mentioned that they are already aware of the browser issues, so I won’t make a point out of repeating it unless they ask for input on browser cross-performance.

 

Tour de France KAL

I am joining the Tour de France KAL; it is too ingenious to pass up. The deadline to join in is July 7, 3pm London time — so that’s just about [blah] hours from now — I was trying to figure it out, but I am time-zone challenged.

I will be in the White Jersey category — which is for young riders in Le Tour, but in this KAL it is for new people, new challenges, new things — and since I am going to be working on Camisa, which is my first garment, it is appropriate I think. Mais oui!!! (Get ready for lots of random interjections in amateur French.)