Tatiana

First: Koigu minis, crappily photographed.

Next, Tatiana mittens, in progress.

There are more pieces parts yet to do on these. I have decided that they are not fun, although they are kind of cute. And my colorwork is not very even or smooth. Those problems are my fault for not being a perfect knitter.

And the pattern turns out fairly big and loose hands, but tight and short fingers, and there isn't enough give on the cuff to allow for the rolling tendency of stockinette stitch, and this means the pattern on the cuff doesn't show properly. Those problems are the pattern's fault for not being a very good pattern.

I will, however, finish them as planned, because I am compulsive, because I want to get rid of the yarn, and because the hardest part is over already.

Third, the decimal sweater. I have moved on the the second sleeve. When I have about fourteen inches of sleeve, I join all three pieces together and start working a raglan shoulder. I am starting to think this will not be done in time for warm weather.

Four, odds and ends. The Noro scarf is half done and is going to be rather short. I have turned the heel on the second Icehouse sock, so that's in the homestretch. The Stitch and Pitch squares are great mindless monkey knitting, so they are great for TV, or would be, if there were anything on.

Ding Dong the witch is dead

It's true. The itchy, crappy self-striping yarn is gone. I have made productive use of my captive-audience time and used up the last bits by knitting a pair of blue stripey child-size socks. No pictures (the camera is not in Indianapolis).


I am never buying that kind of yarn again. Yuck.


By the way, the hotel coffee here is not that bad, although The Man's coffee is still the world champion.

Curse of the Economy Plan

Remember the Economy Plan? To recap, this is how Dirtbunny avoids spending money so she can pay for the 1.8 billion dollar yard she bought a while back. In yarn terms, the Economy Plan means knitting from stash rather than acquiring new stash. Sometimes this doesn't work very well. This week, it has worked atrociously.


As you all know, this week, we started carting Kirby out beyond the beltway every day for his radiation treatments. This has been upsetting and stressful, especially on the day that the vet tech called me all freaked out because Kirby was not making eye contact and trembling so they decided to keep him longer. She understands now that not making eye contact and trembling is what Kirby does. That day sure did suck, though, and a LYS is on the way to the vet, so I stopped there to see if they had a little somethin purty to make Bunny feel better. And they did:

What you see here is the beginnings of a scarf/stole from the leftover purple yarn whence came the purple cardigan from days of yore. Leftover yarn makes Bunny anxious. Using leftover yarn makes Bunny feel thrifty. But this leftover yarn is bulky weight and very tweedy. There's probably enough for a scarf, an extremely boring scarf, but not enough for a stole. What in the hell complements tweedy purple bulky weight yarn? What indeed. Dirtbunny hit the motherlode with this one. The LYS proprietor was determined to help Bunny out and before she knew it, two skeins of discontinued eyelash yarn in a matching shade of purple were located and purchased. Tweed and fake fur, baby. I can hardly wait.

And here is the felted dog bed:

It turned out OK, I guess. The sides are not stiff enough to stay up, but they fold over nicely. It looks pretty cute, but it's a little shallower than I wanted. Tiki shuns it. Kirby has tried it out, but he is not convinced. And--oh no!--you can see that I did not use up all of the emerald-green Manos. Therefore, I was forced, forced I tell you, to do this:

Two more skeins of Manos in complementary colors so I can use up the last of the green Manos, plus three skeins of sock yarn, because that's just what happens when you go to the yarn store. It's not like I could have avoided it. (I also got a size 4 needle that I need for my pink sweater:

which has been swatched and will be started imminently, and a size 13 needle that I'm sure I had a purpose for at the time, but the reasons have now become obscure to me. I really don't fancy working with the big needles. What on earth did I get that for?)

Speaking of socks, here is the current batch:

There's the November sock club on the left.

The Man: That's nice.

Dirtbunny: Thanks. It's a sock club sock.

TM: Who's it for?

Dirtbunny: I dunno. [I really don't, but I do know that these colors are Not For Dirtbunny (tm)]

TM: [side-eyes the sock covetously, but says nothing]

Dirtbunny: Do you have something to ask me?

TM: Huh? [he heard me]

Dirtbunny: I said, do you have something you want to say?

TM: Whaddaya mean? [being weasely]

Dirtbunny: If you want these socks, you are going to have to ask for them.

TM: What? [I've known him for 20 years. I know what he's thinking. Just spit it out for the love of Mike. I don't feel like playing games.]

Dirtbunny: IF YOU WANT THE SOCKS, YOU HAVE TO SAY SO. [Was there yelling? I don't remember]

TM: OK! I WANT THE SOCKS! CAN I HAVE THEM? [He was definitely yelling. That I remember.]

Dirtbunny: Of course you can, sweetie.

--end scene

There are also yet more stripey socks, this time in a blue-based self-striping yarn. I hate this yarn, and I am on a mission from God to get rid of it. Plus, I need mindless commuting knitting for the next three weeks of the Vet Shuttle Service. And there's the newest set of minis.



What else?

Oh yeah. Lace.

Behold, the nearly-finished potholder:

I have ten more rows of pattern, then twelve rows of edging, then a bind off. Each rows takes me about 30 minutes at this point--we are approaching 400 stitches per row--and requires my complete attention. I am almost willing to concede that, in the future, this will not look like ass. But right now, it looks like ass. Plus, the pattern said I was going to need something like 1500 meters of laceweight, so I bought accordingly, and I am probably going to finish it at under 1000, so I am adding to my stash of leftover laceweight, and that can't lead to anything good.

Bianconeri play the worst team in Serie A today, which means it's a good time to choke. I accidentally saw a live score that had them in a draw with Chievo Verona, but that wasn't a final, so maybe something good happened in the end. We''ll see. Futbol and lace do not mix, so I think we're looking at futbol, Soave, a mini-sock, and then some tweedy purple bulky weight.

Thanks for joining Dirtbunny. See ya next time.

Did you enjoy "Curse of the Economy Plan"? Then check out our Special Feature, "Behind the Scenes at 'Curse of the Economy Plan'":

Step one: pile up all the crap

Step two: contemplate magnitude of pile and wonder "why?" "What, if anything, is the point of all this?"

Step three: confirm that beagle has not run off

Nope. He hasn't, and he looks unlikely to move from that spot without the proper food-based incentive.

Step four: sort through pile and take photos

Step five: relocate crap to....

Have you been paying attention? Where does Bunny pile up all her crap?

[theme from "Jeopardy"]

Did you say "the dining room table"? If you did, you are correct.

Not a good day, again (sigh)

So it's a work at home day and I'm all jazzed because I think I've finished something and then it occurs to me, Gee, Bunny, the judge mentions all this stuff that wasn't on the tape and so I dig through the file and discover that THERE ARE SIX MORE TAPES and I am nowhere near finished. Also, it is cold and there are no cookies to go with my latte and Juve is late in posting the call sheet for tomorrow and no one seems to think that ADP will be called up to the Azzurri for next week's world cup qualifier against Montenegro.

Yesterday also had its problems. I had to do some travel stuff I DID NOT WANT TO DO and I got all worked up about it for no good reason. But I finished it, and then I cheered myself up by buying new glasses (more later when they are ready) and a new rug. However, in the process of melting my credit card on these enjoyable pursuits, I tromped all around the Golden Triangle in the WRONG SHOES and my poor Bunny toes are still suffering.

But Ima knittin'. So it's all good. (See how hip I am?)

Two weeks ago, I finished the crimson sweater. I have had a devil of a time getting a decent photo of it, so I haven't bothered to share, although I've worn the sweater a bunch already. At work, they are all probably already thinking "There goes that crazy bitch Dirtbunny in her red sweater again." I don't care. I love it.

So here's the best photo of me in the sweater:

The Man took this. I asked him to take my picture and he did. He didn't understand that the point was to show off the sweater and not the Dirtbunny. No need to notice the liquor bottles on the counter with the onions. (The creme de cassis has been deemed potable and so I'm poting it.) And, hey, I guess the white stripe on Kirby's e-collar is reflective.

Here's the best picture I have of the actual sweater:

My hair looks pretty good! And I'm sure if you disregard the glare from the flash, you can see the lovely cables. Bonus points if you can see the surprise guest over to my right.

That's right. Kirby. His motto: Whither thou goest, I will go. What a good boy. His birthday is coming up, so I hope you got him something nice that won't make him itchy.

My biggest accomplishment of the week is that I finished the September sock club socks, without running out of yarn. It was touch and go. I finished with about three inches to spare. Three inches, and that is all. Whew! Here they are sharing the sunshine with our little urinary monster and a pair of minis made from the leftover July yarn.

I'm pretty sure that my next big project is the Decimal cardigan from the current issue of Knitty. I already have a sweater's worth of pink cotton blend in DK weight that I bought for my birthday when there was no blue to be had and I've already knit and washed my gauge swatch.

I have ten repeats to go on the Flower Basket shawl--I mean potholder. I told The Man I was making a Flower Basket shawl and his brain managed to process that as "Dirtbunny is knitting a potholder" so now I call it the "potholder." You would not believe how smart and competent he is in the non-knitting aspects of life but "potholder" geez. I despair. Oh: the last repeat on the potholder took me about 2 hours to do, and it gets 20 stitches wider with every repeat, and it requires concentration so no TV knitting and no social time knitting unless I want to rip it back and weep a lot, so this is going to take a while. It's bigger than the last time you saw it, which means

~all together now~

IT LOOKS LIKE [MORE] ASS!

The March sock club sock is due any time. Wait! There goes the postman. Please hold while I go check.

[cue the girl from ipanema]

[Your call is important to us. Please continue to hold.]

[more the girl from ipanema]

Nope. Not today. Still, there is no chance I will finish November and January before March gets here. November is wound and ready to go, however.

Aaaaaannnnnnnnddd, it's been more than two weeks since I've been to the vet which must mean it's time to go to the vet, because they were so busy looking at Kirby's itchy feet that they forgot his biennial bordatella vaccination so I get to make another trip! Hooray! Kirby looooooves the vet. Off we go.

Killing time

The Man is not home from work yet, so I can't watch any of my Champions League recordings. Plus, I went to the eye doctor after work and got my eyes dilated, so I can't read. If I jack up the magnification on my laptop, take off my glasses, and lean in reeeeeeeel close, I can see well enough to blog. So here is what we have on the needles:




This would be the September sock club sock. These colors are Not for Dirtbunny, so I'm giving them to the Old Man when they are finished. The first one turned out all jacked up--cuff too short, foot too long--so the plan is to get the second sock right, then rip back the first one and knit it to match.





This is the Flower Basket shawl in lovely merino lace weight from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. It is lace and therefore it


(all together now)

LOOKS LIKE ASS!

But it is coming along nicely and will block out beautifully, I'm sure. I'm on repeat number six, and there are a total of seventeen, and it grows by 20 stitches per repeat so that's, that's ummmm a buttload more to go.

[Spellcheck thinks "buttload" should be two words, but clearly it is only one word.]





That should look familiar, because it is exactly like the grey stripey sock I did last summer because that's what you get when you have a leftover yarn compulsion-slash-fetish and you bought too much yarn. And next to it is a minisock from leftover July yarn.

And this, my friends, is the felted dog bed, which is not yet felted. The pattern calls for bulky weight and a finished diameter of 17 inches, but I'm using worsted weight Manos in green and scraps and I want a finished diameter of about, gee I don't know, beagle-sized or so. And of course it has to be bigger than that so there's room for it to shrink when I felt it. And then I'm going to edge it with the blue and green eyelashey stuff.

OK, I really don't know what the fuck I'm doing with the dog bed. But it's a DOG BED. Who cares if I fuck it up?

Guess what? I don't know how to felt either. Well, there was that one time, but it was an accident so it doesn't count.

Foiled

So here's a boring pair of mini socks in leftover Fleece Artist merino, colorway "mermaid."




I show you that first because I want you to know that I can knit, despite what you are about to see.




Q: Where do beginning beginners begin when they learn to knit?



A: Garter stitch scarf.




I don't believe Dirtbunny has ever made a garter stitch scarf before. She does everything the hard way. But I knit myself a Bianconeri scarf in lovely garter stitch.






Except, of course, where it is not garter stitch:

I call it the Bianconeri Scarf of Drunken Champions League Woe.

Sigh. They are playing Napoli today, and Napoli is in free fall, so it seems like a perfect time to (1) bench ADP on the ostensible basis of resting him and (2) pull off a surprising loss to a far inferior team. Oh well. And Camoranesi is broken.

At least there's Gigi. Maybe he'll wear his purple kit again.

I am doing the collar of the crimson cardigan. 24 rows to go. If I finish before, say 3:00, we are going to the yarn store to buy buttons. If I don't, then I'm going to the yarn store on Monday after work. It's pretty (hee hee). I can hardly wait.

I hope it fits

The sock club

I finished the March sock club socks a few minutes ago. The first one had its good moments and its bad ones, but the second one went much better because I knew, without measuring, that I needed five repeats on the leg and five repeats on the foot and I knew how to handle the migrating stitch markers during the heel gusset. Plus: green. So goodbye, march sock!







The July sock club sock arrived this week, so it isn't at all too early to be done with March. Here, by the way, is my famous cookie box full of leftover sock yarn destined to become mini-socks:

There's some good stuff in there, but the oldest is the Lorna's Laces in "camouflage" so I suppose we all know that means Bunny "has to" do the camo minis next.

By the way, I seem to have lost my badly bent size 1 metal KnitPicks DPN. It was so bent that I banished it, and yet now that I don't remember where I banished it to, I feel a sense of loss.

Yes, it's true. I go to therapy every week, and I take my meds faithfully. I'm still bonkers.

When the going gets rough, the Bunny gets startitis

So these are the mini-socks that saved me from quitting knitting forever:

The next mini-socks are from leftover Lorna's Laces in "Daffodil":

I finished the red lace scarf except for the blocking.

It still looks like ass:

When my new blocking wires get here, we'll find out whether this was all just a big honking waste of time.

The purple lace scarf, also Lorna's Laces, is about half done.

And sock number two of the stripey socks is about 45 minutes away from being finished:

This leaves the teal sweater. Here we have the seven-foot lace and cable panel being unraveled and knit into a Bunny-sized lace panel:

Then you may remember what happened next. I am happy to report that Dirtbunny successfully got 250 evenly-spaced picked-up stitches from the 99 repeats without spilling any more beer on herself. And so here we are now:

I am unhappy to report that the next step is to knit 15 inches of plain stockinette stitch, increasing four stitches every 10 rows, to end up with a whopping 290 stitches. Of stockinette stitch. Fifteen fucking inches worth. Paying attention to the row count required because of the increases. I fear this is going to take a while. I may not be done in two weeks after all, not that that was ever really going to happen.

If I were monogamous, which I am not, I would probably die of boredom. I might die of boredom anyway. When knitting gets boring, one has two choices:

1. Finish it.
2. Start something else.

I am a polyamorous knitter, so I decided to have an orgy, I mean, I undertook to begin a pile of new projects.

This is a baby hat from Ye Olde Yarne, to wit, leftover from Tiki's red sweater, which you saw here:

Let's all pretend that I have enough yarn to finish without having to frog it all and try again in a smaller size.

Further (my boss loves that word), some new ribbed socks in a light blue merino:

I have decided not to take into account that I am a loose knitter, and I am going for the 64 stitches on size 2s as the pattern demanded, pretending that the fact that it is ribbed will mean that it will not be too big for the normal human foot, or that there is a large-footed man out there who would love a pair of light blue socks.

Is that all? No, of course not. I have retrieved the leftover yarn from the fair isle dog sweater, and am poised to cast-on a fair isle hat to match it. Books of patterns for dog outfits also tend to have a selection of human outfits designed to match because some dog people think it's just too cute to go out dressed the same as the dog. Not so much around here. The fact that I've knitted dog sweaters is as far as I am going to go in that direction. Nevertheless, I like the fair isle pattern, I have enough yarn left to make at least one hat, and maybe two, and no one has to know that it matches a dog sweater.

But wait!

There's more!

We are expecting two new knitters, Bean and Poppy, who are expected to be born in October, and surely there is something in the stash destined for them.

Calm down, Mom. They are not expected to be born from me.

Anyway, here is 80% of a sleeve for Poppy:

This will be followed by more baby stuff, as we have two yarn shopping trips planned, and I have some ideas about some other stuff I already have. And I have two skeins of stuff that I need to do something with because they've been around a while and I'm sick of them. And I need a plain sock to knit once I'm done with the stripeys. And if the lace looks good, I've got 1580 yards of mohair lace weight that I bought long before I realized that lace weight is different from other yarn. And it's time for the May sock club sock to arrive, which means it's time to start the March sock club sock. And I have a sweater's worth of red yarn for The Man's next sweater. And plenty more brown crap for another beagle blanket.

I think I've just typed myself up into a frenzy. I need to take some deep breaths, and maybe I should knit a few rows on the teal sweater to put me to sleep, I mean, to calm me down.

Maybe Bunny won't quit knitting

So I quit knitting forever on account of the mendacious gauge swatches. But my life felt a little empty. So I went through my cookie box full of sock yarn leftovers and picked something out and made a mini-sock. While Kirby watched.....

I took a picture of it:

That's a pretty good looking sock. Nice yarn, nice even stitches, good mastery of teeny tiny size 00 needles. I felt some satisfaction and thought maybe I could knit another so I'd have a pair. That is going OK.

So I worked on the purple lace scarf. I've dropped three stitches so far and haven't been able to get them back, so it isn't perfect. But it's still nice.

And I picked up the red lace scarf. It's almost done. I could probably finish it today, but I don't think I will. It looks pretty crappy, but it'll come together when I block it. And I "can't" do that until I get some lace blocking wires because there is "no other possible way" to block lace. So, hardship of hardships, I need to go shopping at yarn stores and yarn websites until I find some.

And the stripey socks look pretty good, so maybe I'll cast on the second one.

Hmmmm. This is starting to feel not so bad. Maybe I don't have to quit knitting forever.

I know! Maybe I could knit the cable and lace panel on much smaller needles and switch to bigger needles when it's time to work the stockinette part! That'll work! And maybe before I've invested an entire week in it (like I did with the seven-foot panel--lordy was I in denial), I'll take some measurements and do some math to see if it's working! I can start with 5s and I can go down all the way to 000s, and somewhere in there is going to be a needle size that gets me the row gauge I want. At least I'm not the only one having trouble with row gauge this week.

Bunny starts kntting her sweater

It took a week, but Bunny has finally started her sweater. The yarn colorway is "teal," but this yarn is about as teal as The Man's red socks were red. That's fine. I love the color regardless of its name, and wouldn't love it nearly so much if it were actually teal.

So the pattern wants me to get 20 stitches per 4 inches on size 8 needles. Bunny already knows that she's a loose knitter ("loose" -- snerk), so she started her gauge swatch on size 7 needles and got 19 stitches. Sez Bunny, Hey! I bet size 6 will work! So she pulls out her size 6 needles and gets 22 stitches. And then she notices that her size 6 needles are really size 5 needles in the size 6 case, and that the actual size 6 needles are in the size 5 case, which means she has 19 stitches on size 7 and 22 stitches on size 5. This leaves room for the possibility of actually achieving the target gauge if I knit on actual size 6 needles, so I give it a try: 21 stitches. Here are my three gauge swatches:



See, I really want this sweater to turn out, and I'm taking gauge seriously. My choice is now between 7s, which will get me a sweater about 5% bigger than the target measurements, or 6s, which will give me a sweater about 5% smaller than the target measurements. Bunny chooses the larger. And so I cast on my 22 stitches with the long-tail cast-on method I taught myself from a diagram after I saw Megan do it at knitting circle and decided I should figure it out. And I knit three repeats of the cable-lace-cable pattern that makes up the band, the intent being to pick up selvage stitches from the band later to knit the body of the sweater. Only my selvage stitches look like ass, so I rip it all out and start over, only I manage only to get 21 stitches on the needles this time, so I rip it out again. That was yesterday. At this point, I have 14 repeats of the 4-row pattern done. It looks great. I love it. Only 120 repeats to go before I can actually start on the sweater itself.

I finished the birdseye hat from ye olde yarne:

I'm making good progress on the stripey socks:

and I finished the pair of tofu mini-socks. I still have enough tofu yarn left to make two more pairs.