One Step Foward, Two Steps Back

So, remeber the Eton Sweater? And how it looked like this?


I haven't mentioned it for awhile...because I hit a bit of a knitting pothole with it. I tried it on and it was just not going to work. I mean, I have narrow shoulders and all, but I apparently had made a miscalculation at some point that not even Marilyn Monroe's tiny shoulders could squeeze into. So I made it wade around in the frog pound for a minute.


Not quite back to square one, just back to square September. Which sucks. And I need to recalibrate. But before I do that, I thought I'd cheer myself up by showing you exactly how much work has already gone into this puppy. Behold the original schematic:


Ok. Granted, it's not that much to behold. But, it did beget the Chart of Charts:


I know it's split into two pictures, but it's really one gigantic chart. The bottom half is most of the repeating body section, and the top part is how it splits for the neckline. and before you think I just crazily overcharted the damn thing, look at the detail in the middle - it means that the two halves are mirrored and thus worked differently. So just the once chart wouldn't do.

Ok. I feel a little better now. I will finish this sweater, because I made that damned mega-chart by god! Now I just have to figure out what went wrong with those sleeves.

Oh man.

What a horribly hectic week. Nothing really major happened classwise - I had a particularly tedious group project to do and some heavier than usual reading. It was pretty light research-wise too. So what was so bad? Probably some combination of a continued lack of sleep and the psychology graduate program recruitment weekend. I'll start at the beginning.

Monday went pretty well until I got another migraine. I spent the afternoon and a lot of the evening on the bathroom floor because it's the only room in our apartment without windows, and therefore the darkest and most migraine-friendly. Once I started feeling a bit better, I had to finish a problem set for stats, which meant I got to sleep far later than I was planning to. Oh well. Tuesday went well enough, except that I agreed to host a student for recruitment weekend (my research assistant on my honors project! Oberlin represent!), so I spent much of the day trying to clean up. During my questionnaire design class, I got really bored and scribbled some cable designs for a pair of socks I'm planning. Here's said charts all knitted into swatches:

(click for bigger)

I want to do a cable on the side of the sock that splits at the gusset, and half runs down the foot and half runs down the heel. See the little wedge of stockinette at the bottom? Those would be the half cables running next to it. And I really wanted a cable design that had six strands to it so the half-cables would be braids or braid-like and not just rope cables. Which one do you like? I'm leaning towards the first, I think, but I like the sharpness of the diamond in the second one too. Leave me a comment with your vote! And I'll draw the name of someone who voted for the winner and name the socks after you. How exciting.

Wednesday, I was in Oberlin! Yay! I gave a leadoff for the socialist group there for International Women's Day. Well, women's day was actually Thursday, but that's when the student I was hosting for recruitment weekend was supposed to come in, so we held it a day early. While I was there, I visited my favorite professors, wen to taco night at Dascomb....and the local yarn shop. Where I spent entirely too much money last year because it was on the walk home from campus.

(click for bigger)

The skein underneath the dinosaur is Andes by EA yarns in color 19 (blue/orange). Now, I'm generally not a fan of complimentary color combinations, but I've been loving me some orange and blue. Still not down with red and green or yellow and purple, though. I'm planning a slouchy cap...perhaps with wee cables? We all know I'm a fan of wee cables. The yarn with the wee people dolls (Texas Renaissance Festival, represent!) on the right is a skein of Noro Transitions in gold/blue/purple. I have been dying to knit with this stuff since I first heard about it. It was on sale, so I let Jon pick a color and have promised him a hat with it. Speaking of Jon, though he has a well-documented disinterest in the art of knitting, he loves him some yarn. He's taken to rolling unwound skeins into balls, and has developed a distinct yarn palate (if you will), with a taste for thicker, high quality yarn and a particular weakness for variegated colors. He's also taken to posing unwound skeins around our apartment for mini-photoshoots, so expect to see more pictures like those above in the future.

So, on Thursday, we scrambled around the apartment trying to make it guest-ready. We cleaned up and put stuff away, blew up the air mattress, jon even mopped the kitchen! All the movment startled the cats, and they ran for cover.


The rest of recruitment weekend went well. And I finally finished said tedious group project. hopefully life is all settled and ironed out now that I'm past the post-Spring Break adjustment period and I can start churning out some FO's again. Speaking of which, the body of Flair is done and about half of one sleeve! Stay tuned for more.

The dust has settled

Hallelujah! Finals are over, and even though I have to do pilot testing and data coding over Christmas break, I don't have any tests, or papers, or classes to go to until January! I have survived my first semester at grad school. Cheers to me.

So, how much knitting have I gotten done? Not too terribly much. I'm about halfway done with the second of the Red Herring socks, which is exciting. I really love this pattern, though as you can see in the photo, I did occasionally butcher the stranded pattern. But, it doesn't bother me enought to take it out, so I guess that's cool. I've noticed that I'm actually kind of a half-assed knitter when it comes to myself, and can deal with messed up stitches and decreases that aren't mirrored. But knitting for other people makes me a perfectionist. Weird, huh?






I also started designing a sweater for myself. Here's the sketchy schematic-y thing of it. I'm envisioning it as a kicky little bolero/cocoon shrug thing, all cozy and warm and fitted with a little shawl collar. I'm pretty excited about it.

I'm using Malabrigo yarn in Bobby Blue, which is really gorgeous. My Other bought it for me in New York months and months ago and I haven't been able to think of the right thing to do with it until now. I'm working it in a really basic twisted stitch pattern based on braided cables. If you look closely at the picture underneath the sketch, you can kind of see the wee little twisty braids. I like the texture, but it eats yarn like nobody's business.


The last picture shows you how far along I am. I'm attempting to knit it all in one peice because I hate seaming, so I'm using the raglan decreases from the top-down all-in-the-round sweater pattern here. But, I am knitting it flat since it's supposed to flare open in the front. I figured it was either knit it flat and shape it as I go (sensible), or knit it in the round and steek the bejesus out of it to beat it into the right shape (totally, utterly foolish). Anyway, I'm just past the armholes, so there's not much to show just yet.

And I have completely finished Sam's bag! I've washed all three bags and blocked them, but hers was the first to dry out, so it was the first to get lined and strapped and the like. Isn't it pretty? The final measurements are 10" wide x 12" long x 1" deep. I made it in the round and used the slip-stitch pattern from Via Diagonale. I made the flap by continuing the slip-stitch pattern for half the stitches flat. Today I sewed on the strap (a 1" wide, 6 ' long peice of black cotton twill), lined it with about 1/2 yard of pink cotton, and sewed on a big button to close it. I braided three strands of Lopi and sewed it to the inside of the flap to make a button loop. You know what I like best about it? The way the color shifts on the flap and the bag match up perfectly.
Yarn - 1 skein Noro Big Kuryeon (100% wool, 176 yards) in colorway 18 (purple/navy) and 1 skein Lopi (100% wool, 110 yards) in black. I ended up with about 1/2 a skein of each left.
Needles - size 11 bamboo circulars
Pattern - I used a simple common-sense bag pattern in the Via Diagonale slip-stitch pattern: knit in the round until your work is an inch or so longer than what you want the finished bag to be, turn it inside out and work a three-needle bind off, and make a gusset (described beautifully here). I prefer to sew straps on rather than knit them, especially if the bag isn't going to be felted, since knitted fabric stretches so much, and I definetly advise lining bags. It makes them prettier, and more durable. And if it's a colorwork bag like this one, you won't be catching your keys on the floats every six seconds. Pretty damn simple.