Bunny Quits Knitting Forever

Remember the gauge swatches? They lied. My sweater starts off with a long, narrow panel of lace and cabling, then I'm supposed to turn it sideways so it creates an empire waist and pick up the selvage stitches to do the top and bottom. Bunny is a large person. Larger than she ought to be. However, Dirtbunny is not seven feet around the middle, which is what her 134 repeats of cables and lace were going to end up. The gauge swatches lied. They are evil. So I quit. The end.

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.

Something Different

Bunny has been depressed. Her friend Pammie is gone, and we can't open the windows to this wonderful weather because of The Man's allergies, but the real reason I'm depressed is that I have this brain chemistry thing that clogs my head up with shit thoughts like how much I suck and nobody loves me, etc. We are working pretty hard on this, and right now my only real job around the house is to get better, not that I was doing much around here anyway except keeping the whole damn household afloat by the sheer dint of will. Is "dint" a word? I don't know. But anyhoo, I am trying something new this month. I met my April knitting goals (here are the ribbed socks):





They turned out nice. But this month, my only goal is to work on getting better. You heard me.



NO KNITTING GOALS.



NO GOALS OF ANY KIND.



I'm not making any lists. I'm not even carrying my planner around. Just me and whatever the day may bring. Isn't that weird? Well, I think it's weird. I'm used to consulting at least two to-do lists every day.



This mindset has given me a wicked case of startitis. But first:

I finished my muppet stole. I started the second ball of yarn in the car on the way to Pam's funeral. I took one of my special new mellow-making meds, and I worked the muppet stole in the car and then I went to the service and sat with The Man and my boss and my boss's boss and I cried kind of a lot which freaked out my boss and then I went to the reception, which is not normal for me (normally I flee) and I actually stayed for about an hour and talked to people, which is pretty extraordinary for me what with the hearing impairment and the grief and all. I left the knitting in the car.

OK, I lied. I left the muppet knitting in the car. I put an emergency sock in my purse and took it with me just in case, but I didn't get it out.

But now the muppet stole is done. It's cuddly and comforting and I don't care if it makes me look like Cookie Monster's fat old homeless Auntie. Pammie would say, "Hey, Babe, whatever it takes." I really miss her.

And so I have a lot of stuff going on. I'm still churning away at the red lace scarf, and there's still nothing to see. I started a Birdseye Hat from Ye Olde Yarne, and I started a mini sock from the leftover tofu yarn after chucking some leftover Monsoon yarn having determined that it was not enough for a pair of mini socks. I've got something going from the purple lace weight, and I have a new pair of plain ole socks that I'm not bored with yet:

And today I got this in the mail:

A box full of new yarn. This is big news. A whole sweater's worth of yarn just for me! How serious am I about this new yarn?

A gauge swatch. That's how fucking serious I am.

Oh, I exaggerated a wee bit about what I do around the house. I haven't really done much of anything for months except pay bills, make out a grocery list every week, water the plants, and cook maybe twice a week. The Man does everything. I suck and no one loves me, etc.

Ding! Time for more meds!

Sloppy

Here are Bunny’s April knitting goals:


1. Knit one ball on the muppet stole.
2. Knit six repeats on the lace scarf.

1 and 2 are both done.

Yeah, not much to look at. The lace continues to look like ass, and it is probably going to take me several more months to finish. I’m using metal needles, size 2. The thing about lace is, if you drop a stitch, it’s hard to fix the mistake without it showing pretty obviously. The metal needles are really too slippery and make it more likely I’ll drop a stitch. I was resisting the urge to buy new wood needles on account of the Economy Plan, but my resolve waned on Sucky Wednesday, and I got some new wood needles. Also, it’s not so easy to tink if I get the pattern wrong, and frogging is out of the question. So, it requires more concentration than usual, which means I can work it while listening to music, but not while watching TV or listening to books on tape. So it’s going to take a while. However, when it is done, if that ever happens, I will just have to buy a fancy set of blocking wires, Economy Plan be damned, so that’s a plus.

3. Finish the ribbed mirror image socks. Check out this live-action photography:

That's a yawn, not a scream. See how nicely his hair is growing back? I don’t think I’m going to make it with this goal. Maybe. It’s simple knitting, but boring and tedious. They look pretty good, though, and I only have about three inches plus toe to go.

4. Finish the January sock club socks.

Done, packed, and going in the mail as soon as I feel like going to the post office. Off they go to someone who probably regrets not being able to think of a kinder synonym for “sloppy” to describe the fit of the socks I have been knitting for her. Perhaps if she had told me the first time I asked “How do they fit?” that they were a little loose on her narrow feet, then we could have avoided the whole “sloppy” incident. But she didn’t, so I have been sending her multiple pairs of socks in the same “sloppy” size because she told me they were fine.


This lovely purple lace weight was an impulse buy on Sucky Wednesday.

Unlike most of my impulse buys, I know exactly what I'm going to do with this. Also, I have bought yarn for a sweater. Naturally, the yarn I want is discontinued. Naturally. But I found it online.

The Man's "red" socks are done. I have decided that Regia sock yarn is too splitty and slippery to knit with metal needles. Bamboo or hardwood only from now on.

I have started over with the muppet stole. I'm trying 48 stitches wide. It's still too muppety.

The mirror-image ribbed socks are coming along and I have done anther repeat on the lace scarf. I should be knitting that with wood needles instead of metal, but I don't have any in the right size and I have fought the urge to go the yarn store for new needles because I know I would end up coming home with more yarn, and the stash is not ready for more yarn yet. It's only April and the stash already has a net increase this year.

Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Muppet Blanket Has to Go

That's right. The stole I was knitting from this:

was committing the double offense of being too muppety and I was going to run out of yarn before it was long enough. It's gone. I'm going to try again later.

I have other things in the works. Because I finished the December sock club socks yesterday, it is time to start the January sock club socks. I suppose I'll wind the yarn and read the pattern today.

Also, I'm getting somewhere on the mirror-image ribbed socks:

I'm also working on a lace scarf. I'm pretty sure I suck at lace, you know, the real stuff made from the super-fine yarn, but Yarn Harlot says all lace looks like ass until it's blocked. My lace so far looks like ass but it isn't blocked, so I am going forward blindly with the faith that it will all turn out fine in the end.

And here are some plain socks for The Man, with yarn he thinks is red, posed next to the daffodils, such as they are:

That yarn ain't red, but don't tell him.

Hooray, I mean, Damn!, I mean, Hooray!

And so we're sitting around the sunroom, loading some stuff on my IPOD, and there is a big thump. Kirby:

a) doesn't notice.

b) freaks out and flees the room to hide under something.

If you guessed (b), you are correct. The Man investigates, and in the process of that, discovers a package for me on the front porch:

I have posed it on the deck on top of the special dog poop can where, as you might have guessed, we keep the dog poop until it can go out in the weekly garbage. This reflects my non-joy upon receiving it.

What is it? Surely you can all see the sock club logo on the address label. It is the March sock club sock. I am not happy. I really wanted to finish the December sock club socks before the March sock club socks arrived. By half of one row and a frakking* bind-off, I failed:

So close. So very close. I was going to finish last night while we were watching Lost, but I was engrossed, and the last row is a ripply pattern that requires enough concentration to count accurately, which I cannot do when I am engrossed in something else. So I did not finish the sock last night, and, well, I guess I have another failure to add to my list. Sniff.

That's OK, I decide, because there is a lot of basketball today, which means good knitting time. My team is not playing, sadly, but the Blue Devils are. I have more than 20 years' experience listening to TV announcers fawn over the saintliness and perfection of the Blue Devils and the Very Large Ferret who coaches them (and the two sniveling ex-player assistant coaches, in which company I do NOT include Johnny Dawkins, who really is a god) ....... whew! long sentence! Where was I? ...... OK fawning, Blue Devils, oh yeah! nothing to get engrossed in there, so this is an opportunity to finish. I WON'T open the package until I finish the January sock club sock.

And so I finish the December sock club socks:

Pretty colors, hmmmm? Sock 2 is a little longer in the foot than Sock 1 because I couldn't read when I was knitting Sock 1. That explains why I ended up with the wrong number of stitches for Sock 1 when it was time to turn the heel. What did I do when I discovered my error?

a. Ripped it all back and started over, cursing that I had ever been born, and wondering how I could possibly have turned out to be so stupid.

b. Accepted imperfection and moved on because nobody will ever notice but me, and embracing imperfection is a triumphant step in the direction of personal growth.

You may now return to the top of the page to complete the quiz.

Nice wave pattern on the foot, eh?

Nice texture on the cuff and nice ripply edge, don't you think? Hey, I just knitted it. I didn't design it.

And now I am feeling more at peace with myself and with the United States Postal Service and I decide that refusing to even open the March sock club sock until the January sock club sock is finished is a stuppid idea that does not contribute to personal growth or my well-being. I opened it:

Green. My favorite color.

* I would like to thank the writers and producers of Battlestar Gallactica for giving the world a new non-dirty cuss word that I can use with impunity.