FO: Flair

I give you my finished Flair:

(click for bigger)

I was sooo excited yesterday morning when I checked the temperature and it was 60 degrees. I mean, aside from the fact that 60 degrees is about my minimum temperature for comfort, it meant that I could finally wear (and blog about) this sweater. It's been done, blocked, and ready to go for the better part of a month now, but I wanted to wait until there was proper sunlight and warmth to present it. Which didn't really happen until yesterday.

I was in a good mood anyway because I was officially done with classes for the semester. No more classes to attend! No more papers to write! No more heinous group projects with crazy over-acheivers who don't play well with others! The day was made even better when I got an email from a professor I'm working with saying she swung it so that I could get SPSS on my laptop since I was going out of town and still had to do analysis for her! Things were looking up, so I got dressed in the outfit I'd always imagined wearing with this sweater, made Jon take a few pictures of me, and then headed to lunch with some friends.

The only downside to the day was that the SPSS install didn't go so well. Apparently, SPSS doesn't work on intel-based mac, like mine, so much incomprehensible computer-speak ensued between the three technicians. When they reached a conclusion, one of them turned to me and said that they could install SPSS if I allowed them to make it a dual-boot machine that loads both windows and OS X. At which point I balked a bit (because I got burned bad by my previous computer, a PC), and said I'd think about it and return Monday. I consulted my professor, and she said that there's a decent chance I can get a laptop on loan from the business school that already has SPSS on it. It's not the same as having SPSS all to yourself whenever you want, but it seems safer to me than turning my computer into some half-windows/half-mac Jekyll and Hyde freak.

But back to the sweater! Here it is without me in it:

(again, click for bigger....you know you want to!)

Yarn - about 8 1/2 skeins of Knitpicks Swish (100% superwash wool, 110 yards) in bordeaux. Now, this is certainly not the most luxurious yarn I've ever used, but it's definitely nice enough...especially for $3.29 a skein! When I was first thinking about this sweater, I decided to either make it out of good quality, but not particularly flashy yarn with awesome buttons, or really awesome yarn and plain buttons. I went with basic yarn and fancy buttons, which I think brought the total cost down to about $50.
Needles - 29" size 7 Inox greys for the body and a set of 4 size 7 bamboo dpns for the sleeves
Pattern - This is the first sweater I've made from a pattern, and I used Knit and Tonic's Flair. I did make a swatch for this one, and my gauge was a bit tighter than the recommended gauge in the pattern, so I knit the 1X (44") size instead of the L (40"). I knit the pattern as written except for these modifications:

• I added 6 stitch-wide (p1, k4, p1) cable panels that I crossed every six rows to both of the front sides and along the raglan seams.
  
• I added two extra buttonholes to the body of the sweater and didn't make one on the neckband (as I ran out of buttons).
• I added one set of body increases to give it more swing.
• I made the body about 2" longer that the pattern directed.
• I used snap tape instead of buttons for the inside closure. Man, snap tape is awesome!
  

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 end of spring break...

...but just the beginning of procrastination. I have a bunch of stuff I should really do tonight before re-entering society tomorrow: research for a socialist article, research for a project I'm working on, a problem set for stats, laundry, shower, etc. Instead, I've watched TV and been knitting.

Well, I did have a migraine earlier, and the recovery from one of those suckers can be quite long.

Of course, I did get it because I freaked myself out about having to go back to work (and normal life) tomorrow. So, maybe it's not really an excuse after all.

In any case, I just wanted to sum up my spring break with this:

(click any for bigger)

All my swatches knitted in the last week. This is really impressive given that I really never swatch, ever. They are, from top left to bottom right, the stockinette swatch for Flair (Knitpicks swish on US 7's), a lace swatch for a sweater I'm designing (2 strands of Karabella lace mohair held together on US 4's), the stockinette swatch for Jon's sweater (Knitpicks swish on US 9's), a swatch of the cable motif for Jon's sweater (Knitpicks swish on US 9's), and a lace swatch for Orangina (Alpaca with a Twist Fino on US 3's).

Ok. Back to the grindstone and the real world.

Jon's Birthday - Take 2 and other stuff

So, I planned on posting everyday this week, but I got lazy. To make up for it, here's a really, really long post. Enjoy.

Jon's Extended Birthday Shenanigans
As discussed in the last post, Jon's birthday got stretched over two days because of my inability to buy him presents ahead of time and wake up before noon. I'm happy to report that his presents came in! I got him a book and a computer game, Rise of Nations, and he's very happy with both. In fact, one of the reasons I haven't updated the blog is because he's been hogging my computer (which is faster than his) to play it.

I should have seen that coming, though. We have this game on my family computer in Texas, and Jon's been known to sneak off at random times to go play it in secret when he's down there. Seriously, one time we were watching a movie and Jon excused himself to go to the bathroom.....and never returned. After the movie was over (two hours later), I found him totally absorbed in some campaign against the Germans or something. Which he later lost.

Anyway, I did manage to take Jon out on a date. Tuesday night, after playing Rise of Nations for several hours, we went to go see Pan's Labyrinth. Which was fantastic and well worth seeing. Especially since the local movie theater only charges $2.50 for student tickets on Tuesday night. I don't know why I didn't know about this earlier.

In many ways, Jon's birthday has extended all the way to today. We're going to go see Amazing Grace tonight because it's got Horatio Hornblower in it, who Jon loves, and it's about the British, who Jon also loves. I also finished his socks, which makes them his last birthday present. I think he loves them too. Just full of love, that one.

_

Yarn - 3 skeins Artyarns Supermerino (100% merino wool, 104 yards) in color 119 plus some leftover Classic Elite Renaissance Heathered yarn (100% wool, 110 yards) in black truffle that I still had from making a hat for Jon's brother over a year ago. For the first sock, I ended up using 1 1/2 skeins of the supermerino by the time I needed to start the toe decreases, so I decided to play it safe and knit the toes in a different color. Turns out my instincts were right, because I only had about a yard and a half left of the last skein of the supermerino when I started the toe of the second sock.
Needles - size 3 addi turbos, worked using magic loop.
Pattern - Here There Be Dragon socks, upscaled version, just like these. I made a few modifications, though. I didn't do the fancy-schmancy toe and heel that the pattern calls for. I substituted the standard flap heel for durability and to give Jon more room in the instep. I knit the flap about 25% longer for him than I do for myself before turning it, which seems to have done the trick (see the pictures above for the freakishly long heel and gusset). I substituted a standard wedge toe because I had to use different yarn and thought it would look dumb to continue the pattern with contrasting yarn. Also, I figured Jon could use the extra durability considering his track record.

Other Knitterly Happenings
While Jon's been playing Rise of Nations, I've been surprisingly productive. In addition to finishing his socks, I finished knitting the second sleeve of the bolero I've been working on since forever.

_

Before picking up the stitches along the opening and starting the ribbing, I decided to block it to give me a sense of how long to make said ribbing. I pinned it out to let it dry and felt very productive and responsible. See the closeup above? That's what the braided slip-stitch pattern look like when it's blocked out. Nice huh?

I started the ribbing, but I've only got 3/4 of a skein left and I'm pretty sure that's not quite enough. The project's on hold briefly until the yarn and new needles (32" size 9 addi turbos) I ordered come in. The 16" bamboo circular is just not working for dealing with the hundreds of stitches that have to be worked in tedious 1 x 1 ribbing. Besides, I'll need them to make Jon's sweater, so I figured I should go ahead and get them sooner rather than later.

I also started Flair:


I'm about halfway done with the yoke. I'm basically following the pattern, but I decided to add a few cables because I can't seem to knit a pattern without altering some part of it. I wonder why that is.

I've been obsessed with this sweater since the pattern's been available, and worked on it with a hungry desperation all day yesterday. Usually I knit for the pleasure of knitting and my enjoyment of the resulting product is a fun bonus, like those toy prizes in cereal boxes. This time, I need that sweater. Here's hoping it lives up to my absurdly lofty expectations, right?

PS - Stay tuned! Jon's going to be authoring a guest post that you're not going to want to miss either today or tomorrow.

Hubris

So, I'm over my cold/flu now, and I've hit the ground running. Thing is, doing so much work to catch up with all I missed last week requires some serious downtime. Which means I'm knitting just about as furiously as I'm working. Witness the dragon socks:


Aren't they pretty? What really makes these socks wonderful, though, are the details. Check out the way the pattern flows out around the toes and heels:

And here they are with the shoes I bought the same day as the yarn:


Yarn - 2 skeins claudia handpainted yarn (100% merino wool, 175 yards) in passion fruit. I LOVE this yarn. It's so soft and squooshy, and the colors are brilliant (but, sadly, I couldn't get a good photo of them, so just take my word for it).
Needles - worked using the magic loop method on size 2 addi turbos
Pattern - Here There Be Dragon socks (upscaled version). No major modifications made.

But that's not all! Progress has finally been made on the wee braids bolero:


I finally finished the body section and made an entire sleeve! One more to go and I'll start all the ribbing around the opening. I'm worried I'll run out of yarn, though, and get stalled by having to order more online. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

In the meantime, I could work on this scarf I started for Jon. I'm knitting it with two strands of alpaca tweed, like his mittens, but using the cable pattern from his Glaistig hat and armwarmers.


But I digress. The reason I titled this post 'Hubris' is because in the last week or so, I've been craving big knitting projects. To date, I've completed one sweater, and that took me almost 6 months. But, I'm finding that finishing all these hats and socks and mittens in two or three days less satisfying than before. Blame habituation. I'm craving sweaters. Specifically, I'm craving this sweater. As soon as I saw the pattern for Flair was up, I had visions of myself sashaying down the street in my very own version with a kicky scarf wrapped just so around my neck. I would cut quite a figure....if only I could find 5 fantastic buttons. After some searching on eBay, I found these:


The white and black ones with the UFOs in front of the Eiffel Tower are for Flair. Aren't they amazing? And the seller also had the rocket buttons, which Jon liked. He only wanted one (I guess to keep in his pocket like a tiny pet rock or something) but I convinced him to let me buy him 3 of them plus about 16 skeins of yarn to make him a sweater. Which is quite an undertaking considering he's a big dude. I am fully convinced that I can whip up both of these fabulous garments by this time next year....I'm even considering making a tatami for my sister. I'm obsessed with it, but smart enough to know I'd look terrible in it, what with my thick-ish waist and narrow shoulders. My sister, on the other hand, would be able to carry it off wonderfully.

If convincing myself that I can knit 3 sweaters in a year on top of the ever-increasing amount of schoolwork I have isn't hubris, then I don't know what is. But I can say that 6 months from now when all I've gotten done is a sleeve and a couple of swatches that I'll end up in Icarus' support group.

In the meantime, before all my heady visions of knitted goodness get squashed, I'll revel in the fact that my boyfriend bought me the best Valentine's day present ever...


...more Claudia handpainted yarn! who could ask for more?