Here They Are!

And both fingerless gloves are finished! Well, finished except I haven't blocked them. I stayed up until 1 am the night before last knitting the fingers on the second glove and weaving all the millions of ends in.

Had to darn up a lot of bad joins between the fingers. I didn't really figure out where I should have been picking up until the last finger.

I have to admit they're kind of sloppy in that respect, but what the heck; they're designed for getting sawdusty in the workshop. And I was able to darn well enough that they're still comfortable--no bulky spots between the fingers. So I count this as a successful project.

Ooops!

Some of my knitting mistakes are caused by my lack of skill, and are part of the learning process. For example, a couple of areas between the fingers are loose and will need to be darned. I tried to keep everything tight and pretty, but in one place I picked up to cover the join in a funky way and didn't see it in time. I can learn not to do that.

Some of my knitting mistakes are just plain bonehead errors. Yep, I knit the tail of lefty to the middle finger of righty. How do you learn not to be stupid?

Everything's Either a Cat Toy or a Cat Bed

Another of the kitten. He seems to split his time between being naughty, being sweet, and being asleep. Here he is combining the three, purring, drowsy, and about to rack out on top of my son's current favorite stuffed animal.

Ta-Da!

The "ta-da" I'm referring to is getting the picture up, not the gloves. The gloves have stagnated a little, but I'm very excited that I can post pictures again! The problem was with the wireless router, and my darling man fixed it! Yea!

I haven't actually worked on his gloves much this week. I slipped all the stitches to another piece of waste yarn, and knit the second one up to a couple of rows of increases for the thumb gusset. I figured the fingers will be the hard part, so I'll do them at the same time. I messed up an increase row on the second glove on Monday night, put them down, went to bed, and decided to knit a sock on Tuesday. Messed that up at Stitch n Bitch, came home, fixed the heel, and finished that Thursday night. I knit nothing last night, spent the evening wrapping presents instead. We've got a couple of birthdays in the family, and I wrapped some Christmas stuff while I was at it.

So this is a boring, outdated post, but IT HAS A PICTURE!

I Have Kitchenered!

I DID IT!

I have taken my formerly s*$%%@ finishing work to the next level! Moc Crocs are KITCHENERED!

Sorry, still no photo, but this time it's because I can't wait even the five minutes it would take to snap a photo and, God and Google willing, upload the thing. I knew you'd want to know right away! I have kitchenered!

"Surprise!"

"Surprise", there's no picture!

I have been trying to upload a picture of Fingerless Glove #1 for 24 hours now, and I quit. I need to find a better way to handle the pictures, but I don't really want to learn anything new that's not related to knitting... Isn't that lame? It's uberlame, I know it. I have to overcome this!

The fingerless gloves were originally supposed to be a surprise Christmas gift for my husband, but he surprised me by asking me to make him a pair. It's actually better this way, although I'm down a gift, because he can try them on.

They are my first gloves, and they're going well. I'm using this worsted weight 50/50 wool/alpaca I got at Stitches West from Webs last year. I had the ball band out, but I can't reach it as Silver's in the way.

Speaking of Silver, our new kitty's doing really well. He's very friendly, playful, and lovey, an ideal kitty for a family with kids and lots of child guests. He's actually perched on my shoulder right now, purring in my ear and giving me a backache. Sweetie! Lance is dealing with the interloper by pretending he doesn't exist, and eating as much kitten chow as he can sneak.

Silver

Here's Silver, the new baby at our place. He's ORANGE, the best possible color for cats! We imported him from California, if you can believe it. A friend's involved in kitten rescue. How could we say "no" to that face? Plus, he's orange!

Moc Crocs Rock!

I'm very pleased with these Moc Croc Socks! After my Peds were so successful and fun, I decided I would just quit fussing about what to do with this pretty koigu and cast on already. They've been really fun to knit, and I will miss them when I've finished.

I'm trying to decide if I'll kitchener the toe. , which is why you see Lefty's eight remaining stitches on a holder. Righty needs to have her toe decreases finished as well.

The kitten is coming tonight! I'm so excited. I hope he isn't the yarn-eating type.

Lookit!

Thank you, Cindy, for the fabulous birthday present!

That's cashmere, grrlfriends. Can you believe it? It's amazing hand-dyed cashmere from a small farm in the Gunnison Valley, pretty blues and greens. I absolutely gasped when I opened the box.

This is my first cashmere, and it's so incredibly soft, beautiful, amazing, and just my favorite colors! It will be a lovely scarf when I can work up the nerve to knit it.

She also gave me the beautiful needles you see, size 18. They have nice, sharp points, are beautifully polished, and have adorable hand painted ends. Easily the prettiest needles I own.

Cindy also wrote a beautiful note thanking me for teaching her to knit, which might be the best part of the present. Miss you, Cindy! Keep knitting!

Scientific Sock Data

Since it looked as if I had an unexpectedly large amount of yarn left over, I asked my man to weigh the completed Fixation peds and the leftover balls of yarn on the mass balance at his lab. I knew he'd do it; practically the first thing he did after we got married was weigh his wedding band down to the thousandth of a gram. I know, he's adorable!

He "weighed" them on a Mettler Mass Balance, accurate to the 10,000th of a gram, and not dependant on STP for accuracy. I asked him specifically about STP, because Susan mentioned that yarn was weighed at the temperature and pressure wherever the mill is, and we're at very high altitude here in Salt Lake City. Good news, fellow nerds: apparently if you use a mass balance, STP is irrelevant. So I know, down to the 10,000th of a gram (or 100 micrograms, if you prefer) how much yarn I have.

You say you can't wait? Well, I have 24.9697 grams of ball A, and 25.8403 grams of ball B, for a total of 50.8100 grams remaining. The peds themselves weigh 26.5907 g and 25.0154 g, total of 51.6061. So that's almost enough to make another pair of the same size, and certainly enough to make a pair of child's socks, or a pair of peds for someone with short, skinny feet.

By the way, this means I started out with more than 50g per ball. But I don't fault Cascade Yarns for their generosity. Maybe they didn't have a Mettler Mass Balance.

My Cat Is Also Handsome

Here's our boy, looking like a little bun in his new cat bed. He's getting old; we got Lance a week before we got married, 13 years ago.

We're expecting a new kitty, though, an orange baby. My son's already named him Silver. It's a confluence of Cat Dreams: I want another orange cat, my son wants a cat named Silver, and my husband wants a kitty so small he can hold it in his two cupped hands. So we're all eagerly awaiting the new arrival!

In knitting news, my man took the finished Fixation Peds to the lab today to weigh them on the mass balance, along with the two balls of remaining yarn. It will be interesting to see how much yarn they took, and how much remains, and whether or not the totals add up to 100g. Well, interesting to me, anyway...

One Down!

One's done! And it fits me, so that's settled. I'm keeping them.

I was teaching a friend to knit this weekend, and a comment she made caused me to think about the charm of making everyday, useful objects.

I don't have any idea how these Fixation socks will wear, or if I'll like them long-term, or if they'll fit as well beyond the first wash, but I can say that I like them today. Today, I'm satisfied with my work. And I like that.

Sudden Change of Direction

Last night around ten, I was feeling tired and unwilling to think the Arrowhead project through, so I started a soap sock using the Fixation I blogged about earlier this week. It became clear pretty quickly that Fixation really wants to be socks, not soap socks. I must bow to the will of the yarn, O Sisters of the Skein! I ripped out the false start, ran to the computer, printed out the perfect pattern, and completed the gusset before finally going to bed, tired but happy.

So here we are: I'm making Teri's "Not Pedestrian" peds, and so far, they are fabulous! This is a very clearly written pattern, very fun and easy.

The socks may look huge, but so far, they seem to fit me. And if they're big and very stretchy, I know someone they'd fit perfectly. If they fit me, fantastic, because I love them. They are flawless and perfect, (so far, anyway) and I adore them!

Of course it's completely tempting fate to cast on for a project you only own half the yarn to complete, but the Knitting Gods indeed smile on me today--I found another skein.

Yes, hubris sets you up to be cosmically smacked down, but for now, I'm deliriously happy with this quick little project.

I'm such a ficle knitter...

Getting My Swatch On

I've been working on my Arrowhead Lace project. The pink worsted-weight yarn in the middle was to figure out the lace pattern. Would you believe I had to resort to doing only one pattern repeat at a time to get it straight? I added another after the first five or six inches, then decided I had it figured out enough to move on.

Next, I decided to try out my plan for the pattern in the brown yarn, some Silky Wool eventually destined to be a Branching Out scarf. You may remember that two skeins of Silky Wool in that blue-green color will eventually become my Arrowhead Swap Scarf.

My idea is, since the pattern's very linear, to try and do a bias knit scarf with a lace pattern running on the bias along the scarf. I added a vertical eyelet row along the edge. When the row of lace travels to the end of the scarf, it sort of blends into the eyelet row. I like it.

I've learned some things:

#1: When the pattern says "repeat of X plus 1", this means "plus one per row" not "plus one per repeat". Can you believe this was confusing me? Because "plus one per repeat" is the exact same as "plus one per row", so it couldn't be that. Duh. This insight is sort of irrelevant to the project, as there will be only one repeat per row, but was vital to the pink swatch. And, you know, to actually learning to knit lace.

#2: I really need to use a row counter or tally marks or something. I don't seem to be smart enough to either remember I'm on row 2, or figure it out from reading my knitting correctly. There are some pretty glaring lace errors on the brown swatch. And Little Arrowhead's a four row repeat, and two of those rows are resting rows. So my brain's not as big as I thought it was. But fortunately, I have several row counters!

#3: For me, increasing and decreasing for the bias on the wrong side row (rows 1 and 3 of Little Arrowhead) was much, much easier than doing it on the right side row along with the lace. I never forgot a decrease.

I still need to figure out how wide I should make this to a) use all the yarn, b) not run out of yarn, while c) producing a nice wide scarf with a good rythm.

This is fun!