Whew

I have just finished conducting an inventory of my stash, including partial balls of yarn AND sock yarn, and boy am I tired.


Anyone care to hazard a guess?

Give me back my nap

It is a Federal holiday, a day of remembrance and, for the cynical, a day of rest.  I'm supposed to have contractors here, but I don't.  The one doing outside work can't work because it's raining, and the one who needs to do some inside work just didn't bother to show, which means that numbers three and four may not be able to adhere to the schedule we have, and this project may never be bleeping finished.

Fine.  No work is to be accomplished today.  I'm tired, so I'll take a nap.  Only I can't because DingDong! someone shows up with a delivery for number two that I didn't know we were expecting.  (I'm rather pleased about the delivery, actually.  I was concerned they'd forgotten about that bit but the delivery means that they haven't forgotten, they just haven't been telling me everything.)   So good and I settle back down and then DingDong! contractor number five shows up to do some poking around and measuring.  He was not expected today.  My nap is blown.  Fuck it.  The only thing that can help me now is a trip to the yarn store, even though writing checks to contractors one, two, three, four, five, and six (oh yes, there is a number six) has left Mr. Bank Balance a little low.

But isn't this supposed to be the place where we discuss the knitting?  Fine.  Here is some knitting:

These are the Ilga socks.  Named for a woman but claimed by The Man.

How bout that fair isle, hmmm?  And the braid!  Do you see the braid?  I am awesome.

And then there are these:

The September socks.  All done as of last night.  They aren't for me either.  I'm working on a shawl and a scarf that are for me.  The shawl is black, which means it photographs like ass, and the scarf is lace and I fucked it up so bad I decided to rip it out and start over, which means it technically is not on the needles at this particular moment, but it will be once I put some time in on some secret deadline knitting and once I buy new short straight 4's to replace the now-broken replacement size 4 straight shorts that I got when I broke my short size 4 straights.  Or maybe I'll get a size 4 circular with lace points instead.  

Exciting Stuff

I thought I'd show you some of the stuff I recently finished, but the photos are crap and now the stuff is gone and can't be re-photoed.  So this is the best I can do.

2x2 ribbed scarf, in a melange of red Pam yarn and a dark grey yarn, plus a hat made from the leftovers.

Purple socks for my sister-in-law, from leftover Kimono shawl yarn, and already en route.

I've started a new shawl, but it's black, and there isn't enough pattern yet for it to be worth showing off.  I thought I had enough yarn to finish it, but now I'm not so sure, and that means going stash-diving to see if there's more.   Stash-diving is interesting, because I always find something I had forgotten about, and I usually end up distracted from the task at hand and going off in some unanticipated direction.  Since there is very little in my life that is not anticipated, that is a good thing.

Not Done After All

I thought I was, but I'm not.  Can you see the problem?

*going off to have tantrum now*

OK, I'm back.  Now, please check out these two photos of ADP:

that's David Trezeguet on the bench, and Lorenzo Ariaudo (with the ridiculous hair) in the background looking on

What lesson can be gleaned from these photos and applied to my knitting problem?

Figured it out yet?

The answer is:  Some of the most horrible, unthinkable mistakes (that hat, that awful, awful hat) can still, despite all appearances, be fixed (the hat is detachable).

I can fix this.  I'm not quite out of yarn.

Purple Lace

Today is Columbus Day, the best day of the year.  Athough we have cloudy, chilly weather this time, that just means that I can make soup and maybe when it's done it won't look like diarrhea to me.  I intend to enjoy myself today.  While The Man completes the vacuuming (Hey!  I dusted, and I did some vacuuming too), here is your periodic yarn-related update.

I have a use for the last of the Pam yarn:

I still have a way to go on this, but the colors are blending nicely, and the scarf is turning out both manly and cuddly at the same time.  I like this way better than stripes.  (oooh! speaking of stripes, I could start on some World Cup scarves now that more teams have qualified!)

And there are some plain brown socks:

This yarn was some kind of ugly in the skein, but it knitted up very well, and it's soft, too.

And there are a lot more socks as well.  These are the ones I didn't have to dig out of a drawer to photograph:

Those are some Ilga socks destined for The Man, the September sock club socks, and some purple jobbies from the leftover purple yarn for the Kimono shawl.

Speaking of which, this would be an excellent time to show you the kimono shawl:

Nope!  That is The Man sporting his lovely new Flit and Float scarf in lovely lilac Zephyr with the butterflies and the ruffled edge.  (Also, he is wearing the grey sweater I knitted for him two years ago.)


OK, here it is:

Oh yeah.  This might be the best thing I have ever done.  Or it might be the second-best thing after the crimson cardigan.  I can't decide.  I love them both.

Check it out:

Didn't I do a great job?  I am so proud of this and I love the color too.  The color, by the way, is Mel's fault, because she made a Baby Surprise Jacket for The Bean from this yarn.  I loved the color so much that I greedily snapped some up for myself.  I am not going to give this one away.  This one's a keeper.

This Blows

Ziggy sucked, so I killed her.  She is dead.  Let's never speak of this again.

Socks so nice, she made them twice

Remember these?  They were a sock club sock from last year in Bunny's favorite green.  I liked them so much, I used the pattern again for socks for my sister in law. 

And they are done.  And you can't see diddly from this picture.

So.  Why do I like them?  I like the heel detail:

I like the way the slip stitch pattern on the heel flap continues around the heel to the bottom of the foot.  Looks sharp and feels nice on the foot too.

And I like the double cable pattern down the front:

Pretty.  But they're done now (sigh) and I am determined to finish the stupid Kimono shawl this weekend.  Thus, although my next sock club sock is here, I am not starting it yet.  I really mean it this time.

La la la lace

I know, I know. Not lace. Those are socks for a nephew.




Now here's some lace:

The flit and float scarf, nearing completion. Well, about 2/3 done, anyway. Yeah. You can't really see it at all. It's based on stockinette stitch, so it's curling in on itself, but when I block it, everything will be wonderful, right?

Hey! What's that next to the flitandfloat?

That's a fair isle sock, baby, in a Scandinavian motif with a Latvian braid. I can do Latvian braids now. That means I can do Latvian mittens if I want. *cackles*

And the piece de resistance (I wish I knew how to make diacritical marks. That just looks wrong without them.):

The Kimono shawl is about 3/4 done. I am very proud of it, so far. When it's done and blocked, I'll have to show you the lace up close. Maybe The Man can be persuaded to model it.

The Undertoe socks for my SIL are also nearly done, and I've started some plain brown socks that I think are for my other nephew, but we'll have to see if I have enough yarn for a pair first, and I won't know until I've finished one whether I have enough for two. The brown yarn was yoogly in the skein, but it's knitting up very nicely. Plus, it's soft.

I hate the Ziggy socks. They suck. But I'll finish them or die trying, or my name isn't Dirtbunny and I don't spend zillions of dollars a year on therapy.

Running out of Pam Yarn

It's true. I am nearly finished will all of the Pam yarn. I had a fair amount of the Colinette Giotto in "Florentina" left over from the Giotto sweater, which I sent here (they need some money, so send them some), and so I made a scarf, which I also sent there, and I still had some left over. It occurred to me that I was giving away all of the Pam yarn and keeping nothing for myself, so I decided to make a simple garter stitch scarf with the last of the Giotto, and keep it for me. And here it is:







Nothing special there about the knitting; this one was about the yarn.





And Pam had started a baby blanket for Poppy, and I finished it after she died so Poppy would have it, and I had . . . . . .a lot of left over yarn. So I made another baby blanket. I finished too late to send it here, so I have put it aside for now. Another opportunity is bound to come up at some point. Badly photographed, but here it is:




That would be a delicate, pale yellow in there, not that you can tell. This I did from a chenille yarn in a traditional fan and feather pattern. I think I chose wisely. The texture of the yarn did not at all obscure the pattern, and the stripes set off the waviness of the pattern very nicely.





Now I have three balls of a beautiful fingering weight merino in red (colorway name is "honk." HONK! Isn't that great? That Pam....) left from the Pam yarn. I have had some angst over this





Angst? No..... Really? *snicker*








SHUT UP! I had some angst over this yarn because I had an idea and I couldn't figure out how to execute it. But now I have an executable plan and am almost ready to move forward.






And...... here are the Ziggy socks:

Umm, yeah. So the pattern said I could divide the ball of yarn in half and knit both parts of the zigzag from the same yarn if I started at different colors in the dye pattern. That did not work. There was not enough contrast to show off the zigzag. I needed another colorway, and how. So I went to my favorite website for discounted and discontinued yarn, and I looked to see if they had any Noro Kuryeon Sock. And they did. Now, if you didn't know, Noro does not name its colors. Noro gives its colors very unhelpful numbers. And the color combinations are odd (in the best possible way) so it can be really difficult to picture how anything made from Noro is going to turn out. And since it as going to be so hard to visualize the end result, guess what?

chicken butt

*sigh* *ignores* Guess which color I chose? I chose the one that said "image not available." I ordered yarn in a color sight unseen. How's that for the opposite of compulsive? *beams with pride* And it is turning out just fine. And Champions League Group Stage has started, so lots of awesome knitting time coming up.

Breaking News

The May sock club socks are finished:


I've been calling them the July socks, but I was confused because I worked them out of order cuz I wanted to challenge my rigid, compulsive belief that sock club socks must be worked in order. Nothing bad happened. Imagine that! Anyway, they are not July socks; they are May socks, and they are done.




I was a little worried that I was going to run out of yarn, but I didn't. (Whew!)

This means that, for the first time in the history of Dirtbunny's sock club membership, she has finished her sock club socks before the next one arrives (in about three weeks or so). Strange, but I don't feel any different. It must be all that yarn I bought this week.

Bunny is Forced to Clean Up Her Mess

This was the dining room table on Monday, after the weekend yarncrawl but before the new yarn came in the mail. My plan was to leave it like this until I knitted my way through it, and see how long that would take. Well NOW WE'LL NEVER KNOW because Mister MeaniepantsThe Man told me I had to clean it up so he could use the table for work. Snort! This is how it has always been. Dirtbunny spreads her wings and decides to live a little and the cruel cruel world gives her a smack upside the head [Southern pronunciation: Upsahd duh hay-ud] I am stifled and oppressed when all I want is the freedom to be myself. *sniffle*


So, I am not happy about this. Here's the stupid Giotto sweater, post-repairs. It turned out OK considering it was made by an imprisoned soul.

And here is the mohair cowl. It's fuzzy and kinda weird. But the mohair is gone.

And this is the only person who will ever understand Dirtbunny.

And this is a SIL Undertoe sock before I had to rip it out because I fucked it up by not doing the heel ribbing. You can't really expect someone whose spirit lives in a cage to do any better, can you?

And this is the flit and float butterfly scarf. Butterflies are free to fly away, but Dirtbunny will always be crammed into her little suburban careerwoman (Ha!) bullshit mold, suppressing herself so as not to disturb the sensibilities of others.

And here is the Giotto scarf, posed on top of the purple scarf thingy. It was supposed to use up all the Giotto yarn, but guess what?

I FAILED

*sigh*

Oops! I think I hear the warden coming. Better hide my spoon so he doesn't know I'm trying to dig out. Gotta go.

Giotto Woe and the Cure for Giotto Woe

"We have the technology. We can rebuild her."



But before we get to that, this is how The Man and I enjoyed the Peace Cup final, which the Bianconeri lost by trying to shoot penalty kicks with their heads up their butts. Even ADP. Especially ADP. We started out with a bottle of an Italian sparkling red wine and a July sock and when the wine made the July sock too hard, we switched to a Stitch and Pitch square. The sock and square are now done, and I don't remember what the wine was, which is fine because it was too sweet for us. We'll stick to Prosecco. Only 9 more days to the beginning of the Serie A season.

And that brings me to Giotto woe. Remember how one of the fronts was too long? I knew it was coming, but I decided to ignore it instead of fixing it while it would still be easy to fix it. Sometimes when you try to embrace the idea that not everything has to be perfect all the time, you get scrooed end up with something that the compulsive part of you cannot live with. So to fix the Giotto sweater, I had to disassemble the Giotto sweater:

Not fun. Not fun at all. But my new replacement front is one the needles and might be done this week if there's anything good on the toob I get around to it. I thought I was done and I almost put the pattern book in the recycle bin. I'm glad I'm such a fucking pack rat I didn't.

Instead, because I didn't use up all the Giotto yarn, I started a Giotto scarf, which I now can't finish until the Giotto sweater is repaired, because I'm worried that I'll run out of yarn. This is ridiculous, of course. I have ripped out something and am using the yarn to make something smaller which means it will use less yarn, even with what I'll need for the re-edging and re-seaming.

This means that the Giotto scarf is in limbo, even though it doesn't need to be. And how, you may ask, does Dirtbunny distract herself from all this needless mental suffering? Cmon. You know the answer.

She retreats to her boudoir for a long sulk, because she's a big baby.

WRONG! She gets a wicked case of startitis. And so, behold:

Haha! Just kidding. This is actually an old project, a lace mohair cowl, which is almost mindless monkey knitting, and it would be done already if I didn't hate working with mohair. This is the last of the ancient mohair from days of yore. I don't think we'll be getting any more of that at the LYS.

Psych again! This is the March sock club sock, which is another not quite new project. This is the kind of thing you do four or eight rows on right before you go to sleep (instead of reading which is what normal people do).

Let's get to some real startitis projects shall we?

Numero Uno:

Here we have a lace scarf in lavender with a butterfly motif. Really! Can't you see the butterflies? OK, well, I just started so it doesn't have butterflies yet. The hard part was gettting the provisional cast-on right. A provisional cast-on leaves you with live stitches that you can pick up and knit onto later, which makes it great for adding an edging to, say, a butterfly scarf, so the edging looks the same on both ends when the scarf is worn. And also, a nephew sock. What you see there is how much sock you can knit when mildly sedated and riding in the car around the Beltway to a futbol game while giving The Man directions (because Dirtbunny is presumed to know where everything is, even places she's never been to before.) I'll have to compare the newphew sock circumference to the nephew foot circumference I got in the email today to see if we have a match.

This is a Ziggy sock. It's a toe-up jobbie. I am using Noro Kureyon Sock. Everyone loves Noro Kureyon. I dunno. It seems pretty itchy to me. We'll see.

This is a SIL sock. She picked the yarn. (I think she picked this yarn.) I'm using the March pattern from last year. If I remember correctly, it was a fun knit, and this is good yarn, so yay.

Good gravy! There's more? Yes there is. This is a baby blanket from Pam yarn in a traditional feather and fan pattern, which mind end up being completely oscured by the yarn's chenille texture. What-ev. It's going to be stripey, and the stripes will show off the waviness of the pattern, if nothing else.

This is not the endof the Pam yarn. I still have three beautiful skeins of red merino in sock weight. I had intended to use the yarn to knit a seed-stitch scarf for Ray-Ray, because he loved Pam too and she was heavy into seed stitch and its variations, so I thought it might be nice for him to have something that was sort of hers. Problem is, I mentioned this to Ray-Ray (to see if he would be OK with it) before I realized that it was sock weight yarn and I don't have enough for a scarf. I could make him three red socks, but Pamie probably wouldn't have made him socks. I could make a pretty, girly lace scarf, but I don't think that's Ray-Ray's thang. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it now. Hat? Dunno. Red mittens? Maybe. I'll have to ask him.

Are you wondering about the kimono shawl? It's in the drawer. I'm at the point where I'm waiting for more yarn to arrive in the mail and when it gets here, I'm going to have to blend the new with the old to obscure any dye-lot variations.

And that's how Dirtbunny forgets about how incompetent she is her most recent major fuckup her little mishap with the Giotto sweater. And that brings us to Tiki Tinkle Time, so I have to go now. I'm going to hit "publish" without proofreading. What's the worst that can happen?

Bunny Learns the Hard Way

I finished the Giotto cardigan. I sewed the seams and knitted the edging and put the buttons on and it was done. But I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Something was wrong. One of the fronts was longer than the other. So much longer that creative button placement and seaming was not solving the problem. It was simply not good enough. So I stewed about it for a while, and now it is done.

Meaning, I undid the edging and some of the seams and ripped back the too-long front and I'm going to do it over. Next step is to take the buttons off the other side, realign them, measure them, and come up with a plan for the do-over. I plan to cast on by the end of the day.

Needless to say I am a failure sad. To prove I am capable of knitting sometimes cheer myself up, here are the recently finished July socks.

I think maybe today is going to be the kind of day where I cast on a bunch of new things and finish nothing.

Math trouble

So here's a question for you. If you are making a cardigan and want both sides of the front to be the same size, is it best to knit the same number of rows on each side, or is it more accurate to measure and knit the same number of centimeters?


The correct answer is: Neither. Both methods lie. The only thing you can do is some twisted combination of the two and hope for the best.

My buttonholes do not match my button places, so I am going to have to realign my button markers. I've stopped aiming for perfect accuracy. It will turn out OK in the end.

By the way, this is a cardigan from Pam yarn. You may remember it from swatch day. Also, I am showing you a completed blue Regia self-striping sock. I told you it was nothing exciting. The stitch and pitch squares are almost done, and I'm thinking about what my next project should be. I've got a few sweaters on the list, and a cookie box full of leftover sock yarn, and a closet full of new sock yarn, and three or four Knitty.com patterns printed out and waiting for me.

I hope you're sitting down

So I just finished the March socks whilst watching the exciting finale of the Tour de France. I've had my Lance Armstrong fix for the year, and now I'm just sad that's the end of my new secret Swiss boyfriend for a while. And so here are the March socks.



So, on to the May socks, right?







This is going to blow your mind.

I STARTED THE JULY SOCKS BEFORE THE MAY SOCKS.

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I STARTED THE JULY SOCKS BEFORE THE MARCH SOCKS WERE FINISHED.

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I AM WORKING SOCK CLUB SOCKS OUT OF ORDER!

The Earth is still rotating on its axis. I wanted to see what would happen, and all is well. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say all is normal.




So now my oldest project is boring old mindless monkey knitting socks. And my second oldest project is lace:

This is the kimono shawl, worked in sport weight sock yarn. I am not going to have enough, so I'm getting more, and working on a way to obscure any dye lot variation issues. I am pretty confident I'll figure it out. I really like this purple stuff. A buddy made a Baby Surprise Jacket for The Bean from this yarn, and I knew I had to have some.

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By the way, knitting lace with regular yarn is way easier than knitting lace with lace weight yarn. I highly recommend it.

Knitting Round-up

Lalala. So here's some stuff that's done or sortadone:



First, I have completed one of the March sock club socks. It is pictured here along with a mostly done Decimal cardi:


The Decimal cardi is now completely done. It lives in my office, where there is no good space for spreading it out for a full photo, but no matter:

And here's a detail:

Pretty? It isn't exactly what I pictured in my head, and I have to fuss with it to keep it on my shoulders when I'm walking around, but I like it.

By the way, this is my desk calendar from Uncle Sam, exhorting me not to be a bigot:

Because if I were inclined to be a bigot, a little message printed on my calendar would change my mind.

The Tatiana mittens are done. There are two pairs, one set of gloves with a cap that buttons over the fingers for when it's extra cold, and one set of fingerless mitts with cap:

They turned out kinda cute, but this pattern was not a keeper for reasons I've already mentioned.

And here are the Icehouse socks, finished a few weeks ago. They look better than I remembered. Good job Dirtbunny.

I have no photo of the plain blue Regia socks. They look like plain blue self-patterning socks. Use your imagination. I finished one this weekend. Because I have turned out some saggy socks in the past, I endeavored to make this one a little tighter. It was. The first one was so tight that my seven-year-old niece had trouble getting it on and off. I ripped it out and have started over on bigger needles. We'll see. If they suck, I'll never know, because The Man won't offer even constructive and useful and helpful criticism of the things I knit for him.

Aaaaaaand, I found an excellent pattern for a hat on Knitty.com, and I'm knitting a whole pile of Halfdome hats in leftover yarn. Hats are great because they are mindless monkey knitting (mostly, except for the occasional decreases) and because they are finished at about the same time I get sick of them. I have lotsandlots of leftover yarn that is going to become hats.

I have several sweaters planned in my head, but my next one is going to be a short-sleeved ribbed cardigan from Pam yarn. Pammie helped me get some work done today, and I want to do something beautiful with her beautiful Colinette ribbon yarn. We'll see how it turns out.