Best laid plans...

Apparently posting regularly is something I just can't manage. So anyone who actually reads this is going to have to cope with my sporatic and erratic self. Granted, most people who read this already know this little tidbit about my personality quite well indeed.

Two weeks in the UK without internet was very good for knitting time. Two weeks home with net connection and right before Christmas is very bad for knitting time. The best laid plans of 'no knitting for presents' was shattered by a little Gosh wouldn't new hand knit socks be nice, I wear the ones you made for me every night comment from my mother. A week before Christmas. *sigh* So I'm madly knitting socks. Which can't be too tight, and must be plenty long enough (I am not grafting the toes until after I've given them and she tries them on). Thank goodness for worsted weight mohair blend that knits up on big needles. They should go fast if I ever sit down to actually work on them.

After the socks for Mom then I can return to my UK knitting. Mariah. Back is done, sleeves are done, one front is done. Well one front needs ripping back to where I want to put in short rows to let my fitted sweater fit my curves. Straight sweater + curvy figure = poorly fitting sweater.
I got on a roll and just knit right past where the short rows should be and I've been balking at ripping. I know I should, but really, I'm just being lazy. I'm good at lazy.

For anyone who's local, we're having a holiday open house on Saturday the 23rd. Email, comment, phone, whatever for details if you're interested in stopping by. Low key I promise! Come for 5 mins to escape the family if you like. *grin*

You gotta wear shades.

I did promise a photo of my brand new sock yarn and I did warn it was dayglo orange. Alright, so it's really orange and pink and red and yellow, but the overwhelming colour that most pull away from it is screaming ORANGE! A friend asked, after seeing all my socks on my blog, what it was with funny coloured socks. I like colour. I like bright zingy happy colours. I like stripes, I like varigated yarn. I like all the things that would make my ample self look like a circus tent designed by a colour blind lunatic if used in a garment. I'm a pretty confident fat person. Hell, I wear electric blue without blinking twice, but stripes are (nearly always) right out. I do not need to visually make my already wide self look twice as wide. I do, however, have these nice skinny little feet. Which get shoved into shoes. Hot diggety! Perfect spot for stripes and varigations with an added bonus of if the stripes are really ugly, well it was only a sock or two. Not a deep profound commitment of yarn and time. And you can just wear them in boots. Then no one has to see your shame but you.

The lace saga continued. The very next row after yesterday's photo was, to put it mildly, fubarred. 26 stitches on the needle. 24 stitches required for the next row. I know my math can be a little creative without sufficient coffee, but even I can spot that 26 != 24. Well. Damn. So lunch hour looked like this.


The one on top with crayon is my original rechart. (Hey, I cross off rows as I knit them, and during the train game on Sunday, all I had was my crayon. I'm always blue in train games. Just like I'm always SpinBot in RoboRally.) The one underneath is yesterday's rework of the last 6 pattern rows. I kept with what I figured was the original intent of the piece, but what the doily looked like and what the original char looked like had very little to do with each other. Yes, I did make sure that my original chart was correct from the website. Faithful copy. The little wee doily comes in at a mere 6.5" across, as blocked with push pins on a mouse pad.

Next post (whenever that may be), the never ending green shawl. 10 repeats down of 13 (it still looks awfully short), and then edging. Edging generally goes on forever.

Little hit of lace...

Hello, my name is Jazmin and I'm a lace junkie. Chorus of voices Hello Jazmin.

Shawl be damnned (why is it, exactly, that my lace shawl doesn't feel in my own bones like real lace? I think it's the purl rows.), I needed a doily. Just a little one.. take the edge off the lack of crisp cotton and teeny needles that has been my life. I'd say 'I can quit anytime', but I'd be lying and you all know it.

For scale because I stupidly left out the ruler, it's only 3.25 inches across at the moment. Just a little wee hit of lace. It's Bellflower, and I'm working it on 2 mm needles with size 20 cotton. A little smidge of my beloved six strand Coats and Clark vintage cotton that is long long since lost to this world. Crisp and sharp and lovely to work with. *Mournful sigh* That's 28 rows into the 38 row pattern. It will be itty teeny. I recharted it (badly I will add) because the original chart made my eyes cross.

Before I caved to the lace side, I did finish my socks.

I am going to give these some walking time to see how I like the fit of the short row heel and toe with my foot. So far, not bad, but so far I've only walked from house to car, car to office. Not exactly much of a stress test on socks. It doesn't help that I'm trying them in clogs, which equally isn't much of a stress test. Stuff these suckers into running shoes or docs and see how they cope then. Ha!

I stopped by our newest yarn store on the weekend (finally!), to have a wee look around. High end stuff, which actually is a feature and sensible. We have a discount store that has as much red heart and patons and bernat yarn as you can stomach and the wall of slaughtered muppet yarn is more than most can stomach. Trying to compete with slashed discount prices is retail suicide. You cannot, however, get Koigu or Noro or Debbie Bliss yarn or Philosopher's Wool (Yay local supplier!). I am glad to be able to have somewhere to go pick up high end yarns. It's a good compliment to the staples. In honour of a new yarn store, I felt a little more sock yarn into my stash wouldnt go amiss. I mean how can you go wrong with an extra ball of Regia in dayglo orange? I forgot to note the colour number, I'll take a picture of it tomorrow. Or just start it into socks. :)

Nothing grows in the shade..

I sat down at my desk this morning at work and thought 'Well, that whole post a day thing didn't last long, now did it' followed shortly by 'I meant to post about my killer socks' and a little bit of 'mmm, new to me boots'. So while mumbling to myself (It's a good thing I'm the only morning person in the tech alcove) and flipping the page on my page a day quote calendar I read this:

"I have little feet because nothing grows in the shade." - Dolly Parton

Well. My day is full of feet. Socks and boots and quotes, oh my! It's a common refrain in my house that I have small feet. I don't really, they're a fairly standard north american women's size 7 ish (like everything clothing for women, sizes are really only a vague guideline. But that's a whole other post). This is hardly ancient foot binding small, but when put next to the snowshoes that my best beloved tromps around the world on (size 13 mega wide), well they look pretty little. Little and covered in killer socks. Yes, it is true, after over 2 weeks in the loving *cough* grasp of Canada Post, my Sock Wars socks finally arrived.



I am finally dead, but dead with warm feet. And I got the socks I knit (I know! No pictures. Bad Jazmin, no biscuit.) into the mail before I died. Life doesn't get much better for a sock warrior than that. In honour of my death, I am working on my cotton socks. Because nothing says 'you need cotton socks' like snow waiting on the ground in the morning.


8 repeats of feather and fan down, 7 more to go. In theory, shouldn't be too much longer. I might even manage to finish today depending on if I get a seat on the bus or not.

Yes bus. Home again to wait for a furnace repair guy to come and not be able to install the part that I do not think will arrive today as it sure didn't arrive yesterday (as it was supposed to). At least we're starting to get furnace people to arrive. That was a challenge earlier in the week, and we do have heat currently, even if the furnace drains into a bucket rather than condensation getting pumped to where it's supposed to go. Heat is a Good Thing (tm).

A bribe..

Perhaps a cute cat photo will serve as apology for 2 months of silence. Whoops. Dalla was positive that we folded up the blanket and put it on top of the rodent cage in the living room Especially For Her. Then again, she's a cat. Everything in the world is Especially For Her.

I've been in a handwork slump of late, creativity slumps when I'm busy, and I've been busy doing.. not much of anything. Online game things, rattling around having my creativity in storytelling rather than handworking. I really need to find a way to have a second set of hands so I can type and knit simultaneously. Or spin, or embroider, or or or.

I did, teach a dye class at the Needlecraft Guild in late September. I totally forgot to get pictures of my sample skeins, hopefully tonight I can get some photos of my student's work if they remember to bring them. Pictures later this week. I promise. Kick me in the shins if I forget!

I did participate in Sock Wars, although my socks are MIA and this is, as best I can tell, not entirely unusual. I've sent mine off (*cough* perhaps a touch late on the mailing *cough*), but of course, I forgot to take a photo. Whoops. This is the story of my life. I make a terrible blogger. No photos!

I did dig out a sock that had been languishing and got back in gear on it. Alright, so perhaps the morning frost has been enticing me away from bare feet, but that's besides the point. A day of family reunion (my husband's) with other knitters (who think it's normal to dig out one's knitting when sitting around after supper eating cake) got me this far on a toe up sock.


I need a few more family reunion days to actually get this sucker done so my toes stop freezing. Amusingly enough, my sister in law had on socks from the very same yarn as I did. Ahhh, nothing like a family of knitters.

Malkie has the right idea...

 


We're home from GenCon and a week later, I think we're both finally not exhausted all the time. It was a blast, but damn it's tiring. We worked our tushes off, shopped 'til we dropped and in the end, Malkie is quite convinced that the box our swag came in was clearly brought home just for him. Dalla could take boxes or leave them, but they are Malkie's one true love. At least for the moment.

The handwork hasn't done much while I've been away. The shawl is not getting far, I worked on a sock in the car.. of course somehow I decided to do a sock at 8.5 spi, so it's slow going and will be bulletproof eventually. I finally went with the shortrowed feather and fan sock by Wendy. The toe was interesting enough, perhaps not ideal for working on in the back seat of a car moving at 80 mph on bumpy highways, but it seems to have survived. Photos when my knitting and the camera are in the same place at the same time. Tomorrow perhaps. 

Honest.. I do knit..

I've even been working on my shawl. Still the 3/4 Fir Cone shawl, it's coming along in that 'looks just the same but bigger' sort of way. I'm 7 and a half repeats through the 13 suggested. More than halfway by the numbers, but every row is longer than the last. Go back a few posts.. look at the shawl.. squint until there is more muted green yarn scrunched up and that's what it looks like currently.

I have, however, continued on the ooh shiney side. I've forgotten the earrings I've done at home, but I do have yesterday's necklace.

Ooh! Shiney!

Alright.. I'm a knitter at heart, but as I've commented to any number of people.. I have all the ooh shiney factor of a ferret on pixie stix. I like sparkley, shiney, glittery and colourful. So I suppose it was somewhat inevitable that I ended up coming to the bead side. I mean compared to lace, this stuff works up in a blink of an eye! I've done some stringing already, and I put that on the 'brain dead monkey' skill level. Armed only with bits of wire and some needlenosed pliers, I decided to get all the way to the 'raw beginner' level and play with little wire loops. These were my first try (that left the bead bin that is).


Last night I decided to knuckle down and do some more experimenting and came out with these. Now, this is on the order of a garter stitch scarf or 'hello world' in the beading scale of the world, but I'm still pretty pleased with myself.


Thank you thank you to S. for taking the photos for me. My poor little camera just couldn't cope at all.

Rambling into the breeze..

I realized as I was nattering heel and toe shapings to a (very patient) non-knitting friend, that I have this lovely blog that claims to be about knitting (nominally), and rambling there about potential projects would likely reach people who wouldn't necessarily need to draw upon reserves of patience to endure it.

I have projects coming out my ears. I was (briefly) a one at a time gal.. but that phase appears to have vanished as abruptly as it arrived. In the WIP queue currently is a green shawl for myself, and a pink (quit laughing all those who know me well) ladder yarn (yes, even out of novelty yarn. Go on, I'll wait for you to pull yourself off the floor.) top.

I pause here to reflect on a cruel cruel twist of fate. I am a large person. Big Girl. Ample Woman. Fat. Choose your phrase, they all fit as well as any. By extension, my clothes are large too. (Not too large though, big girls.. you listening? Sacks are for potatoes. Skim.. just skim.) To accomplish that skim principle, you need fine gauge knits. Bulky yarn skims much like a buffalo on ice skates. Ain't gonna happen. What happens when you combine a lot of square footage with a lot of stitches to an inch? That's a heck of a lot of knitting to get anywhere. Process knitters dance with glee, project knitters go back to socks.

So I decided to have a look through the sock patterns I've collected over the years to try out that cotton wool blend sock yarn I picked up on impulse in Ottawa. By a miracle, in spite of 3 days in my mother's house, the poor ball of yarn does not smell of smoke. Regia Cotton, Tip and Top Color for those keeping track at home. The two top contenders are Wendy's Toe Up Feather and Fan Sock or Lacy Scallops Socks. One is top down (Scallops), one is toe up (Duh. Did you /read/ the names?). One has a cute little picot top (Scallops), but Wendy's has short row toe and heel shaping which I've always wanted to try. I can also do feather and fan in my sleep. Which considering socks are usually my in car passenger knitting, is a feature, but having a look at the scallops, it's a simple simple repeat that I should have down pat in no time. Thoughts? Comments?

I did discover today that I can work on lace weight yarn while sporting an anime look at the eye Dr's office. Apparently I do work as much by feel as sight. The fir cone shawl comes along slowly, it would come along more quickly if I worked on it more. I've already got it memorized, and I'm on repeat 5 of 13 repeats before the edging. Like everything I seem to do, every repeat is long than the one before it, so to call me 1/3rd of the way through is laughable. Here's the obligatory photo for those of you who've skipped all the words up until now and just hunted for the pictures:


It's about 6.5 inches unblocked at the moment, and yes I sat it upon the side of a computer case to take the (blurry) photo.

What every office needs...

An office cat. This is Murphy. He's the cat of one of the deans (ex dean I suppose.. close enough) in our college who happens to live very very near campus. Murphy has claimed all of north end of campus as his own and today in the rain.. my office. He's chewed on my spider plant, investigated the fridge and made himself at home. I think we need an office cat all of the time. *grin* 

The end is near..

Well really the end is already here for some things, near for another and a long long way away for the last. But 'The end is near..' just made a much better title than all that.

I'll start with the finished object. We are, on the Charting Lace list charting a pattern from Nurhanne's site. Very descriptively called Small Doily, it's a good place to start playing with charts. I wrote up my chart on Saturday and then decided the best way to find all my errors was to knit it up. So, that's what I did Saturday afternoon.

I knit the pattern almost exactly as written (there was some oddities in row 21-23 that I went with what I thought they wanted, not what they'd written down), and if I was going to do it again (don't hold your breath), the purl rows on the outside would be gone. I knit in the round to avoid purling, not do 6 freaking rows of it in the round on dpns. Fooey on that. The poor little doily needs a proper blocking and a wash. That will happen eventually.

The nearly finished are the socks that have been my portable project forever. Thanks to meetings at work, I'm up into the ribbing (I work from the toe up). We will not discuss how much more sock yarn I have when I knit socks so very very slowly and go barefoot 9 months of the year. *ahem*

Finally, as with the doily done I was laceless and the Mystery Stole 2 doesn't start 'til the 7th, well.. I decided to start a shawl I've had my eye on for a while. Fir Cone Three-Quarter Shawl It's a lovely shawl, simple and all that good stuff and I really like the shape of it. I got it started on Monday and as of today I've gotten about this far. I need to knit like the wind to have it done in time to start the Mystery Stole on time!

I really do finish things..

And of late, it's been a flurry of finishing up things. Little things I grant you, but wow it makes my productivity look just great. :)

That dishcloth that was barely a few stitches a few posts ago is all grown up. Just needs the ends woven in. It will be sent off in an exchange shortly, once I get an envelope. It's a good ten inches across, which seems to me to be a huge dishcloth, perhaps I'm just skinchy.

I was in a foul mood the end of last week and my pi doily ticked me off for the last time. So I cast it off in a huff. For having caused me no end of grief all the way through, it's not a half bad little piece. Yes, I did use 2 different colours, and no it wasnt on purpose, and yes I am planning to overdye it. This is unblocked and unwashed and undyed and basically fresh from the needles.

In a moment of girly, I cast on for a top for me. Twice. *blush* Three times if I'm being brually honest. Swatches are for sissies, hunh? Well no. Swatches are good. Swatches are great. Swatches tell you when you need a smaller needle as not to produce a see through too big t-shirt. Even fat people can wear clothes that are too big. A lot of 'em do, and it just makes 'em look bigger. I'm not talking shoving into something a size too small.. no sausage casings.. skimming. Just float over the bits that don't need highlighting. Anyhow, now I know that a 3.5 mm needle is much better than the 4.0 mm needle the pattern asked for. This pattern to be specific. With short sleeves and a lack of fun fur edging. Even if I'm oddly fascinated by the fun fur edging, I want a summer top and fun fur + 35C + 100% humidity = EWWWW. No fun fur.

How does my garden grow?

My garden grows in a way that would make a druid's heart sing. Which is to say a wildly chaotic tumble of natural. Paths? For wimps! I do, however, have some blooms around the house and thought I'd prove it with pictures. I braved the killer mosquitoes to get these photos, I hope you all appreciate it. *laugh*

My irises, I can't get them to grow where I want, so I just accept that they're tucked in with the lilies.






The spiderwort is trying to take over a shrub rose. I think the rose is largely winning.



The primroses are nearly finished for the season. Poor things did not cope well with the recent heat wave.




I think these are call Jacob's Ladder.. I don't have any clue what the latin name might be, or even if that's accurate.




The poppies are just starting to open, and soon I'll have a sea of them going. These ones are tucked in at the side of the house.



And this is the first of my peony blooms to open, feels a smidge early to me, probably thanks to the heat wave.

Blah and double blah

I'm not quite sure why I'm all grumpy blah snarky, I'm going to blame the weather. It's a good excuse, but anyhow, a grumpy day needs mindless knitting. I forgot the sock at home *gasp* Yes, I forgot the sock, but I have the dishcloth.

Mindless, in my world, apparently translates to in the round lace. Hey, it works for me. It'd work better for me if I had a fifth needle, I'm out of space on these four. Oh well, only 3 hrs 'til hometime.

The pi doily got cast off in a huff last night, after the edging choice ticked me off. I'll get a photo tonight, ideally. Why yes, I was in a grumpy mood then too, how ever did you guess? :) 

It's all Stef's fault..

Yep, I've been crocheting. Any who know me, knows that I declared ages ago that it had to be a damn fine crochet project to tempt me away from my knitting, as it generally bothers my wrist. Well apparently 5 or more years of rest does the wrist a world of good. So Stef tempted me by sending me a doily pattern. I'm a doily junkie, this is a well known fact and suddenly I find myself working out how to read a crochet chart again, with french explinations. Took me just about exactly 2 weeks to do, and if you can find where I fudged a pretty big error, I'll give you a gold star. :)


 

See?

You didn't believe me Stef.. well proof is in the photo.



Yes, that is my monitor and desk in it's messy glory. :)

A blast from the past...

Well in the interest of keeping the wrists happy and in yet another misguided attempt to finish some things, I've picked back up a cross-stitch project. Embroidery is a whole different motion than knitting, so it provides variety for my hands and wrists. All good in the ever vigilant crusaide agains carpel tunnel.

I started this project in probably late 1995, although the actual date is lost to the annals of time. As you can see from a page of my webpage, (http://www.uoguelph.ca/~hbogart/craft/stitch/medieval.html)
the words 'I will finish this!' has come up often. So here I am again. I will finish this, although as I commented to a friend today, perhaps not until 2010 at this rate!

I've started dragging it in to work to put a stitch or three in over my lunch hour, and you can see the current sparse progress.
In 2003 it looked like:



Now as of today:

Not much of a change, but it's coming. More photos as I get more done. In theory.

Springtime and a girl's fancy..

.. turns to starting all sorts of things. This time of year seems to just breed the impulse to start start start and not so much the finish finish finish. I do, however, have incentive. The local Needlecraft Guild has its annual Open House in early May. If I want to sumbit things, I gotta finish them. So the race is on!

Anniversary Pi shawl

Started this in January, you saw it a few posts back. I'm on the last ball of yarn. *yay!* Finally. It feels like this sucker has gone on forever. I've done about 140 rows all told (I'm 40 rows into the section with 576 stitch section. In an ideal world, I'll finish all 96 rows of this section with this ball of yarn. Yeah, I'm laughing too. It ain't going to happen, but a girl can dream.

Mystery Pi doily

Well, alright, so it's supposed to be another shawl, but how many shawls does someone who doesnt wear shawls need exactly? Ergo with the choice of skinny cotton and skinny needles, it's become a pi doily. I'm not sure, exactly, how blocking will work out, so it's got some experimentation coming on that front. We got 4 choices for clue 1, so I rolled a d4. Got a 2, so choice B it was. Even if left to my own devices, I'd of picked something different. I shall leave the choices with the fates.

Good morning sunshine!

This is how my mornings nearly always start. Open eyes and see Dalla at that sort of distance. Isnt it cunning how I managed to take the photo so blurry to reflect my own atrocious eyesight? *snicker* I didn't capture the proper amount of licking that accompanies a calico at this range, or the tickle of whiskers on one's nose pre-dawn. If I didnt know better, I'd think she was in cahoots with my office to get me up in the mornings. :) 

Pi shawl

Someday, I really will have it all together and be wonderfully organized and scheduled and all the rest of it. I think that will also involve being composting in a pine box.. so irregular and sporadic updates will just have to do.

This is my pi shawl as of the end of March. Pi shawls, for the uninitated are an unvention of Elizabeth Zimmerman, the knitting guru of all knitting gurus. The shaping of the shawl is based on the fact that the circumference of a circle doubles as the radius doubles. Which in knitting terms means you've got chunks of no shaping and then a round of increases. In those chunks, it just begs for some lace.

I have since moved into the next increase section (576 stitches per round.. takes for damn ever), and a new lace pattern. It has to finish sooner rather than later, I only have about 70 grams of yarn left.. this is a finate thing! It will be done! Probably just in time to start another one. For a person who doesnt wear shawls, I seem to knit a lot of them.

 

See? I'm not dead. I figured opening with cute cat photos was a good bet. That's Malkie on top, Dalla curled up into the bottom on their new cat condo thing. Malkie does not fit inside, no matter how much he would love to shove his 15 lb self into it.

I'm giving this new blog a try. I think it might have better photo options and well, I'm lazy. :) See how this first photo and post goes and we'll see from there.