Froggy!

Here's the thing about Froggy. I love her. She's beautiful and all. But I felted her just a little. It's not that bad. Really. The thing is, though, I was aiming higher than "not that bad." I give myself a B. Um, I learned a lot, and I suppose that's good. I've always been good at patterns and now I'm getting good at tidy increases and decreases, and I'm making real progress at seaming. I'm still working on blocking, but this time around I learned a really important how-not-to. If you have recently suggested that I teach you about blocking and would now like to change your mind without hurting my feelings, we can just pretend you never asked.

See? Not that bad. It even looks a bit chenille-ish, which isn't such an awful thing. I even confined my post-fuck-up tantrum to a few sniffles and an hour so of feeling a little sad, and then I moved on without any extra calm-making medication. That is also progress.

Here's a first (not really, but a first for Dirtbunny):

The classic knitblogger photo-of-self-in-bathroom-mirror shot featuring yours truly and a surprise guest.

I wasn't going to include this next one because of the glare from the flash, but I think it gives you an important insight into exactly what my life is like around here:

Dirtbunny, when at home, is never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER alone.

And what about the Elephant Blanket. Is it done yet?

Not yet.

Something you don't see every day

I finished the tiger socks yesterday. I put them out in the sun to take their picture, and Kirby decided to have a look, so I didn't get a very good picture.




Then he had a seat, and, if you look closely, a good chew.






Busted!





The socks are safe now.

In other yarn news, Froggy is soaking in anticipation of a good blocking. Here she is getting the Barbara Walters treatment:

She doesn't need it, though. She looks good even with an ordinary focus.

See all the ends I wove in and snipped? I'm pretty tired of yarn now, but when Froggy is done with her soak, I will have to mess with yarn again. There will be more photos later.

Finishing up

Last night, while watching a cable special on Fifa World Cup 2006, I finished the knitting part of Froggy. I was so engrossed in watching Forza Azzuri beat Les Bleus (again) that neither The Man nor I noticed Yarn Bandit taking a big dump on the rug not four feet in front of us, and less than 10 minutes after returning from a walk, I might add. What's a fuzzy little guy have to do to get any attention around here?


I went to the eye doctor today, and after an earnest but depressing discussion about bifocals (not yet, not yet), I hadn't the life force in me to sew seams. I could knit, but not seam. Still, I wanted a project that would give me great joy to finish, and so I completed...

...the blue mohair hat. This yarn is lovely. The photo isn't at all up to the beauty of the color. I do love the dyer at Mountain Yarns. However, I am not sorry to be done with this. I did not enjoy working with mohair. It was hairy and sticky and slow going, even with slippery needles. The pattern I used called for a band of cables to go around the bottom, but I ran out of yarn for that, so it's a plain 3x2 rib. Pretty, but not what I had in my head when I started.

The good news is have I have two more skeins of this mohair--one in a raspberry red and one in lilac. Maybe if I use one strand of the mohair along with one strand of a nice plain wool in a matching color, it will be easier to work with and give me better stitch definition plus some fuzziness. Maybe not. This is art, not science, and no one goes to jail if it doesn't turn out right. Still, though, I am done with the mohair for now. The rest can sit in the stash. I have some deadline knitting to do and Froggy to finish.

All Froggy, All the Time

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Froggy's fronts and back are finished, her shoulder seams are sewn, her sleeves are knitted, the fiddly little cabled bit around the neck is done, and all we have left are:

1. sewing the fiddly little cabled bit around the neck to the top of the back


2. picking up stitches around the front edge and knitting two inches of edging


3. sewing in the sleeves


4. weaving in ends


5. blocking

This is doable this week. I can do #1 and some of #2 tonight, finish #3 and #4 by Thursday night, do #5 on Friday, and it will be dry and ready to wear on Sunday or Monday. At last.

I will, of course, be working on smaller portable projects during the commute and at knitting circle on Tuesday, but otherwise, I am ready for Froggy to be finished, and so I am on a push to get her done.

By the way, a commenter asked about by use of the word "frog." No, it is not a made-up cuss word, although frogging puts knitters in a cussing sort of mood. Frogging is the act of ripping back knitting (because you rip-it, rip-it). That, and the answers to many other questions, as well as obscure ramblings that don't fit anywhere else, can be found here on Dirtbunny's FAQ page (including a bit on why in the world Bunny thinks she needs a FAQ page).

Uh oh. Kirby and The Man are back from evening walk a little early. It's trash day, so maybe there was some trash can trauma.

"Teal" sweater heartbreak

She don't fit. Her bodice is too short and calls inappropriate attention to The Girls, and not in a good way. (A boss of mine once expressed his discomfort with enforcing dress codes [particularly a pantyhose requirement] thusly: I'm looking at your legs, and I don't like what I see, is not a conversation I want to have.) I really want this sweater to work, and there was only a four-row bit where I could have tried to lengthen it, and four rows was not enough to block out the problem.

So I have frogged the goddamn thing. I've spent the last two days (on a yarn crawl and) frogging it back, then reknitting the four rows into about three inches, and I had hoped to divide the top for fronts and back but it turns out I can't read so I ended up with the wrong number of stitches and so now I have to frog a couple hundred stitches again and, well, I decided to take a little break. Her new name is "Froggy," which sounds better to me than "teal" sweater anyway.

Truly, the two days during which I convinced myself that it wasn't right and something had to be done, and settled on the decision to frog, was much worse than the actual experience of frogging and starting over from the half-way point. If only I could read everything would be hunky dory.

Update

Let's recap. I have washed the purple lace scarf and it turns out that it's a good thing I stopped when I did because it grew when wet and is plenty long by any standards. Also, not that you can tell from the photos, but it looks pretty good.

Also, this is done. Front:

Back:

The Man sez, uuuuhh, is that for Poppy? Isn't it cute how hard he tries? No, dear. Poppy might look good in it, but his father might object (I say, never having met Poppy's dad, but figuring it's a safe assumption given what I know about other dads and how they feel about their sons wearing dresses). It's for The Bean.

Und hier ist el tigre:

One down, one to go.

I've got half of the chart done on the Elephant Blanket, but no photos yet, and I got me a one-armed sweater that I might possibly finish this week. And I turned the heel on the March sock and engaged in plenty of lustful yarn activities, such as choosing patterns and researching yarn and such. I've got a pile of mohair in three different colors that I don't know what to do with. Hat, maybe. Possibly a scarf depending on yardage. But what I really want to do is buy yarn for all the sweaters I have planned in my head. I made a deal with myself. No buying sweater yarn until the teal sweater is done and the first bit of The Man's red sweater is on the needles. Yarn for socks and baby projects, as always, doesn't count.

Stash Enhancement

A few weeks ago, I noticed that I had a book that I hadn't read yet, so I, well, I read it. Wow. Fabulously boring sentence. Whaddaya know? Wendy knits has her a blog! Duh. It seems to start out as a blog and then becomes a book with many (at least two) of these knitbloggers. And so Ms. Wendy is also an employee of Uncle Sam here in Our Nation's Capital, and she likes the same LYS that I like. And so I look at her blog and I decide I like it, so I start back through the archives and, well, and I mean this in the best possible way, but Wendy sucks. Because of her, I now have this:



That's not entirely accurate. Some of that is "teal" yarn from the "teal" sweater. Let's have a better look:



Excuse me, Kirby. I love you too but I want to go play with my yarn right now.




That's my new yarn. In there is the Colinette ab-fab kit that I bought because Wendy did one and I thought it was purty. The kit is not in stock, so I had to order it, which means one trip to order and one trip to pick it up. There's a lot of strange and wonderful stuff in that Colinette bag. I'm a little afraid of it right now, but I'm sure you'll be hearing more about it later.

Also, there are four balls of Zephyr lace weight. Because Wendy did a Summer of Lace in 2005 and although I am still recovering from my little lace experiment, I somehow got it into my head that I ought to be doing more lace. Clearly and obviously in collusion with Wendy, the LYS had its Zephyr out in all kinds of pretty colors. Bunny's colors. So I suppose I will be doing some more lace at some point, like I need that kind of stress.

There is also some silly fuzzy novelty yarn that I am going to use to edge the felted dog bed I am going to make out of my leftover emerald Manos del Uruguay.

WTF, you ask? See, it's Wendy's fault. She knits kitty beds for her cat, and, hey, I could probably do that only I don't have a cat, but I do have dogs, and they are only twice as big as--I mean only a little bigger than--her cat and just because I said felting is stupid and pointless doesn't mean that maybe I intended never to try it out and it's only a dog bed so if my felting sucks, no one will care, and Manos isn't really that expensive.

Manos. The hands of fate. You knew you were thinking it, Food Guy.

There are also five skeins there that are going to be socks one day. That is also Wendy's fault, because everyone knows you can't go into a LYS without buying sock yarn. That just wouldn't be right.

So you can see why Wendy is both my new best cyber friend (even though she doesn't know it) and a great big hoser, all at once, and Bunny's on-deck circle is getting a little crowded.

But Never Fear!

Projects are nearing the finish line:



The Bean's dress needs a seam (although I finished most of it waiting for my photos to upload), a ribbon, a button, and a good blocking, and that's it.

I've got most of a tiger sock.




The "teal" sweater has a bottom, one and 1/20th of a sleeve, a back, and one and 1/3 fronts. It could possibly be finished before too much longer, depending on how interesting season 2 of Battlestar Gallactica is.



Does the Yarn Bandit help me take photos?

No. He's busy.

More thunder

It is time for El Puto to go for his evening walk. He does not want to go because another thunderstorm is passing near here--not enough for rain Chez Nous, but enough so he can hear the thunder. He has been dragged out with promises that he can come home as soon as he makes dookie. The last thing I heard The Man say to him was "Get ready! Think poopy thoughts!" Trust me on this: those words, or any like them, were not spoken in this house before the dogs came.



And that leave me free to catch up with what's on the needles. First, what's off the needles:





The dear, departed blue ribbed socks. They started out fun, but the love ran cold, man; the spark is gone. So they are done, and that's good.

Also, Poppy's sweater is off the needles, stitched together, blocked, and is drying flat. When I get buttons and sew them on, it will be finished, and then you can see.

The purple scarf is still chugging along, and the tiger socks are destined to become my new commuter sock knitting, so they won't take much longer. Here's the March sock club sock, aka "Leafling":

This is knitting that requires frequent consulting of the pattern, so it's home knitting for now.

And the back part of The Bean's lilac dress is done. Here it is modeled by handsome international porn star El Puto:

I have fourteen inches of "teal" sleeve, as worn here by Der Kirbenhund:

Plain stockinette stitch and not much worth seeing. I also picked up stitches along the lace panel to work the top part. That, plus the sleeve and the Elephant blanket, puts most of my size 7 circulars in use. I say "most" because I think I have another somewhere. That won't stop me from getting more in case of emergencies or something.

Oh yeah. The sweater. This time, I only got 247 stitches instead of 250. I did not rip it back. I increased three more evenly spaced along the next row. The hell with it. If i didn't blog about it, no one would ever know. (And since I have practically no readers, that means pretty much no one knows anyway).

There is also the Elephant blanket, but that's nothing to see yet either. All in good time.

That was Fun!

Sadly, Poppy's Sheep Blanket is finished. It was a kick to knit, and now it's over. Kirby helped me take a picture:



Oh, well. Plenty more going on in Bunny's knitting bag. I've got about about six inches a week going on the purple scarf. I've got the second blue ribbed sock started. I've got the March sock club sock started. I've got a tiger sock going. All of the pieces parts for Poppy's sweater are done and I could finish in a couple hours if I felt like sewing it up. I have a hard time sewing a nice seam. I normally just do it however, and it shows. But this is for someone else, so I want to do it correctly, so I'm going to have to teach myself some finishing techniques. Lucky for Poppy (not like he cares, but I do), I have something like 50 books with finishing demos in them. We'll be OK.

I tried to take a week off from the teal sweater, but I only made it five days. I am going to need some simple, portable stuff to do at some upcoming seminars, so I cast on a sleeve.

No, it is not rude to knit during these things:

1. It's a video, so I won't be distracting the speakers.
2. Nearly everyone there (I can say from experience) is going to be reading the paper anyway.
3. Those who are not reading the paper will be fooling around with their blackberries.
4. If you are not convinced, then please explain to me why knitting is more rude than #2 or #3. Also, since I have to go to get credits for maintaining my bar license, i.e., it's mandatory, and since none of it is going to be directly relevant to the tiny sub-niche of the very specialized area in which I practice (and no such courses are offered), please explain to me why I should suffer when no one else is.
5. I can't just sleep. I snore. That would be a distraction to everyone else.
6. If I wanted to pay attention, which I don't, I could knit and pay attention at the same time.

It's time to cast on something for The Bean. I haven't decided what, yet, but I have a shopping bag full of pretty pretty yarn to choose from.

And now we wait

So. My blocking wires came. I washed them in soapy water to get any traces of machine oil off, and I dried them, and I got the red lace scarf all wet in a clean sink full of cool water, and I squeezed out the excess and I threaded the wires through the edges of the wet scarf and I took some measurements and I placed my pins and I gave the whole thing a big ole stretch and here we are:

And when it's dry, we'll know. Nothing else to do until then. Still nothing to see.

I finished The Bean's seed stitch hat. As usual, it looks too big, but it's cute.

I wound the March sock club yarn so it's all ready to go:

We went to the yarn store last weekend to buy yarn for Poppy and The Bean, and I told my girlfriends I was sick of the teal sweater and I was going to take a week off from working on it. Then this thing happened and I needed to have some mindless and simple knitting to work on, so I picked it up on Thursday and, well, in taking a week off from it, I ended up finishing the bottom part:

Yeah. I'm a big ole liar. Poppy's sweater has two sleeves and a back, the blue sock has a heel and part of a gusset, the tiger socks have a cuff, and Poppy's sheep blanket has one slightly off-looking sheep. I'm grumpy and I hate everything, and I think I need to go to the yarn store to buy more yarn. I can't get into bed with chocolate and Pellegrino because the red lace scarf is on the bed. That may have been a bad choice in retrospect.

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.

Vaya Con Dios, Dirtbunny

Dirtbunny has completed 99 repeats of the cable and lace panel for her sweater. According to the pattern directions, she is supposed to do 124 repeats.

The point here is to end up with a lace panel that is long enough to engirth the Bunny while simultaneously ending up with a perfect 250 selvage stitches to pick up.

Bunny has a lace panel that is long enough, but only 200 selvage stitches.

[Bunny takes a long and nervous pull from her beer. Naturally, she dribbles some of it down her front.]

Now Bunny is no super-genius like her brother Aaron, but she is good at math. Bunny has calculated that if she picks up five stitches from every four selvage stitches, she will end up with a magical 250 stitches.

Or she can continue to follow the pattern and make a lace panel that will encircle the Bunny by about 130%.

[Bunny has some more beer.]

Patterns lie. Gauge swatches lie. Math does not lie.

[Bunny has some more beer and mulls over the options.]

Bunny decides to go for it and deviate from the pattern in favor of math. The worst that can happen is she'll fuck it up. There's no jail for bad row gauge.

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.