Snow Days = Finishment

Since I've been trapped in snow of apparently biblical proportions, and freed from the necessity of earning a living during that time, I have had much more time than usual for knitting.  I was happily knitting away on the Viola scarf, and I finished it, but there were umpteen hundred ends to weave in, so I set it aside and picked up Juno Regina.  I worked the boring part mindlessly for a while, decided to take a measurement, and discovered I was finished with the boring part.  So's then I switched to the lace part, and I knocked off four charts of lace in a day, and then I blocked it, and then I took it outside, and that led to this:

Isn't that pretty?  Here's a detail:

Yeah, so close-up, those are only diamond-ish, not diamonds.  Who cares?


And then I thought, Man!  I am getting really tired of the Bird's Nest Shawl.  I want it done.  So I finished it:

As you can see, if you're into noticing that sort of thing, the Bird's Nest Shawl has fallen victim to Yarn Bandit's hair.  I know it was him because he likes to sit on my lap when I knit and this was a large item that kept brushing against him.  The washing and blocking helped a lot, but it's still hairy.  That's OK.  I tried it out this morning, and it works.

And then I thought, Crikey!  Champions League resumes next week!  I better finish the Viola scarf so I can wear it during their match with Bayern Munich and impart good karma!  So I wove in umpteen hundred ends and finished it:

That really is a nice shade of violetty/purple, just like the Viola kits, although it photographs blue.  And it also features the white and gold of their logo, and the red of their third kits, which they wore this weekend when they got clobbered by Samp.  I am concerned that the Viola scarf might be broken.  Either that or it's a bad karma scarf that makes teams lose.  Or maybe it's like the Bianconeri Scarf of Drunken Champions League Woe, which works sometimes, and other times not so much.

And then I thought, well, my oldest remaining project is the November sock club socks.  I hates it and I wants it to go away, and I'm a bit compulsive, so the way to make disagreeable knitting go away is to finish it:

The pattern is nice, but a little fussy.  The problem here is the yarn.  The dyer over at Blue Moon likes the effect when you take a multi-colored yarn and overlay the whole thing with black.  It's a nice idea, I suppose, but in practice, it creates a slightly sticky feeling yarn that turns your hands purple because the black dye rubs off.  I've had purple fingers for a week.  I hate that.  I want my hands to be clean!  I may grow to like these socks once they've been washed a half-dozen times and I find out what color they really are. 

And that's it for the sock club.  I decided not to renew this year.  Which is not to say that I am no longer knitting socks, cos I am.  Here is one that happened to be handy when I decided to take photos:

It's brown, and the dye stays in the yarn.  However, I dropped a stitch in the middle of a cable, so I've had to rip them back and inch or so.  Bummer.  Now I have to carefully thread the needles through the stitches again, get them all lined up and purty, figure out where the row begins (shoulda thought of that before I ripped it off the needles, huh?), and THEN figure out which row of the pattern I'm on.  Shudder.

Yup. Still knitting.

Still learning Photobucket and it's messing up my formatting.  Please be patient.


Anyhoo, Ima knitting socks.  Here are three very exciting pairs:

So you have here your plain blue sock in a child's size, the cuff of a plain self-striping sock in a grown-up size, and the November sock club sock, which is actually a variegated red/green/gray combo and which doesn't photograph well.

And this is La Viola scarf.  They are in the Champions League round of sixteen and their next match is February 17, so I have to be finished by then.   I kinda like them, so they get a scarf, which will be worn during matches for its positive karmic properties.   Now that Adi Mutu has flunked another a drug test, they're gonna need it.  I can't believe I found the proper shade of violet yarn!

This is the beginnings of a secret project for Bean 2.0, who we are expecting to see in June and who we have have recently discovered is a male child.  This yarn is lovely, the color of a ripe papaya (the insides, duh, not the peel).

So that blue bit there was an Azzurri WCS.  Get a good look, cuz I've already ripped it out and started over. And the gray bit is the beginning of a sleeve of a cardi that is going to require steeks.  Steeks are too monstrous to contemplate right now, so I will explain them to you some other time when you're older and can understand better.

And this here?  This here is the big boy:

The telescope is not mine.  No, he does not use it to spy on the Steinmetz daughters across the street!  Gross!  How could you think such a thing?  Plus they've all grown up and gone to college now.  And I don't think their last name is really Steinmetz.  Yup.  This here is the Juno Regina scarf.  I started out loving it.  Now I'm in the interminable monotonous middle section.  If I don't die of boredom, in about 8 more inches, I can go back to fun diamond-patterned lace!  Woohoo!  DISCLAIMER: lace looks like ass before blocking

And it's fucking freezing in here because when the guys took the furnace out of the sun room closet as part of the Hellhole Rehabilitation Project of 2009, they left behind a hole in the floor of the closet that opens directly into the crawlspace, with only a screen and an old furnace filter to block the minus 3* degrees air pouring in from outside.  We're going to fix it, but not this afternoon.  And because it's freezing, my fingers are getting stiff and my feet are starting to hurt and I'm getting really tired of doing this, and I started about 90 minutes ago and have been stumbling through the learning curve ever since. 

*I need to learn the Celsius scale, because all the good football broadcasts give the gameday weather in metric.  Weren't we supposed to convert to the metric system back in the 80s?  Goddamn Republicans.  Oh.  So the translation into Uhmurrican weather is 26 degrees Fahrenheit.

This post powered by cold green tea and the fear of ending up like that guy in "To Build a Fire"

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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?

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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.

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

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.

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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.

The Dining Room Table is a Disaster

It is. By now, you all know how oddly compulsive Dirtbunny is. I can't clear off the table to get to the good stuff until I put the finished stuff (and the stuff I'm not going to work on imminently) away. And I can't put it away until I write about it to my loyal four readers (plus occasional other non-loyal readers). And there's no sense in taking photos of what's there until I deal with the old photos that I haven't shown you yet. So, catching up:





That is a pair of completed January sock club socks (complete with bead work!) and one half-done Icehouse sock in the ubiquitous Jaywalker pattern. I did not want to mess with the beads, so it took a while to get started. Then there's the tedious stringing of hundreds of beads on the yarn before you can even start knitting. I will not be doing lots and lots of beadwork in the future, but these turned out to be a fun and beautiful project, so yay for me. Icehouse started out fun, but is fun no more. I may not finish them for a while.

And this may look familiar, because it is a larger version of the purple lace scarf I made last summer. I'm better at lace now, so this one is turning out better. It's an easy knit, but it is not a no-look knit, which means it requires more concentration than it deserves, so it isn't getting much attention. The idea was to make a wrap out of leftover yarn, and just keep going until the yarn is gone, since the pattern lends itself to that, but there is A LOT of leftover yarn.

LOTS of leftover yarn + concentration + boring = probably not going to finish this year.

Oh well.

Things I finished recently-ish

The wireless connection is fixed! Me so happy. I have a lot of catching up to do.

While I'm ogling that which I ogle, you may ogle--

November sock club socks:

Purple scarf thingy:

Yarn Bandit making use of felted dog bed:

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.