Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Scintillating Summer

scin·til·late
–verb (used without object)
1.
to emit sparks.
2.
to sparkle; flash: a mind that scintillates with brilliance.
3.
to twinkle, as the stars.


I just bought the pattern for this little crochet top for summer. I was thinking initially that it'd be nice in navy blue, but then I saw that the crochet thread comes in metallics. It would be more scintillating in gold.

It's Galina Carroll's Anthropology Crochet Top. What do you think?

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Silly again


So silly... I made a quick little headband out of scraps to give to my friend Grant for his birthday. I think he'll get a kick out of it.
Thanks, Sooz, for this pic from knitting group.

Sooz says I'm silly



Ok, knitting!!

Here's a sweater I finished a while ago and never posted (yeah, surprise). I actually started it before my trip to Mexico, finished it to partway through the trim, and left it behind because it seemed complicated to travel with beadwork.
Shall I write down the pattern?






And Sooz says I'm silly for thinking I look ridiculous in photos.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Mighty Neighborly

I know I haven't posted about knitting in awhile. Why do so many of my posts start out this way? Sooz took some nice pictures at last knitting group, and I'll post those soon -- promise. Leisl turned out beautifully.

So if not about knitting, what am I writing? It's a shameless rant about a silly thing that has me momentarily riled up.

I met a neighbor today who I've wondered about for some time. Other neighbors have mentioned run-ins with this couple, but this was my first encounter. Let's call her "Red House Navy Blue Lexus SUV".

Returning my parents' minivan after dropping my dad at the airport, I turned onto the street where I usually park. How convenient, it seemed, that my neighbor was just walking out of her house and climbing in her car to vacate an ideal pull-in spot. I turned on my blinker and waited patiently, giving her plenty of room to maneuver. And I waited, patiently, waiting.... After several minutes I'd waited enough and pulled up along side to parallel park behind her. She sat in her Lexus SUV watching me.

Back up a moment, set the scene:
These neighbors have converted their garage into, it looks like to me, a home office. It is definitely not a garage, and the driveway is obviously not in use. Also, you should know that Red House Navy Blue Lexus SUV had helped herself to two parking spots with her one big car. There was about 3/4 of a spot in front of her and about 3/4 of a spot behind her where the last 1/4 of your car would block part of their unused driveway.

After Red House Navy Blue Lexus SUV watched me carefully park my old minivan behind her, she got out of her car to inform me that I couldn't block her driveway. I, of course, apologized, as I did not realize that driveway was in use. RHNBLexusSUV let me know that though they did not use the driveway it was still Theirs. She had checked with the city. I requested -- as politely as possible while staring incredulously -- that she might kindly pull ahead a few feet so that I could avoid impinging on the not-in-use-driveway. She, standing right beside her car with keys in hand, said that wasn't convenient because she wasn't sure she was leaving right now and walked into her house.

Right. So I got back in my car, realized with certainty that she hadn't left enough room to park in front of her SUV, and circled the block to turn around and park facing the other way across the street. As soon as I'd parked, RHNBLexusSUV came out of her house, hopped in her fancy gas guzzler, and drove off.

I'll write a nice entry about knitting tomorrow.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Liesl

I knit a Liesl yesterday.

Ok, you're right -- I didn't really knit an entire sweater in one day. I did knit the entire body in one day. I used some really lovely bulky weight Venezia that I'd bought on sale at Bad Woman Yarn. It's a beautiful deep, dark purple. I haven't taken a picture yet, but it's #128 if you follow the Venezia link.

I knit the size 30" with the low neckline, knowing that my gauge loosens when I knit and that the lace would block out a bit wider. Have I mentioned my new technique for sizing fitted sweaters? I just knit to fit my under-bust measurement and then add huge bust darts right under the arm holes. In this case, after putting my shoulder stitches on waste yarn, I added two YO's in place of one K2tog in the underarm. In the next lace row I again made only 3 k2tog's in the underarm and made YO's for all stitches in front of them. I began decreasing in the next lace row by still only doing 3 k2tog's in the underarm but, after my usual 4 YO's, making k3tog's across the extra stitches. I did the same in the next lace row, too, and regained my original stitch count.
This sounds like gibberish, I realize, but just get in touch if you want more details.

I knit 16 lace repeats total below the underarm, 5 rows garter stitch, and bound off knitwise on the wrong side.

Then I blocked it.

It grew.

It got longer. Donned wet, Liesl reached my knees.

I'm being a little melodramatic. I just pulled the lace width-wise and achieved more or less the sweater shape I'd intended. But know this! A Liesl in this yarn can be as loooooong as you want her to be. Save some yarn and knitting time by just blocking it to length. She could have stretched by almost double.

Now.
Now Liesl fits perfectly across my back...
But.
There are some other problems. The arm holes are HUGE. I can easily fit my head through the arm holes with room to spare. I remember this problem from the Cloud Bolero I made ages ago, which was the free version of this same pattern.
Related to this, the bust shaping below the saggy armpits now hits at my belly button. Shoot.

What to do?
To hike up the armpits and place the bust shaping back at my bust I'm going to cut off the top of the cardi 4 lace repeats above the shoulder opening. Then I'll knit on a garter stitch trim to finish the collar, probably with some decreases to draw in the neckline.

Ok, did it. There are 113 stitches on my needle after The Cut. I'll k2tog every stitch in the first row of garter. I'll let you know how it ends up!

Oh, and here's a picture to make this post more interesting (thanks to Sooz!). My finished "Favorite Cardigan":



Sunday, January 31, 2010

Confessions

OK, I have to confess some things here. Firstly, I made a resolution to post weekly, and in that I have clearly been remiss. I have not been posting weekly. Not even close. And that last post about my finished Koolhaas has no meat at all. I know, sorry. I'll edit it.
I have another thing to confess. It's included here as a sort of excuse for not writing about knitting. It's kind of juicy and personal... but I know that whatever I post here is practically private anyway because no one really reads it. ;)
Even though I've been knitting and knitting and knitting, the only thing on my mind is my friend Nelson. We kissed on New Years, and I'm so in love with him now. Shhhh! Don't tell him I said that.
I promise more knitting talk soon.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Koolhaus


Here's the finished Koolhaus hat.