Sunday, February 28, 2010

End of Day 16



Lo, Verily. Behold!

Steeks! That worked!

I'll come up with a better post another time, but mostly...I'm exhausted, but happy that the sweater is (basically, I've got a couple of ends to weave in) done.

HOORAY! I DID IT! *happydance*

Friday, February 26, 2010

End of Day 15



Ta da! Collar and neckband! I'll deal with the sleeves...tomorrow. I'm terribly pleased with how this turned out. Ah, so you steek to get very crisp lines. Cool.

Still afraid of the sleeves.

End in sight. Knitting all done. Only cutting and sewing left. *crosses fingers* AH CAN DOOO EEEEEEEEET!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

End of Day 14 - Steeeeeeeeeeeek!

Sleeve/Crotchless leggings.


Pre-steeked body.


Post-steeked body.


And now that I'm set up to knit the collar tomorrow, I'm going to take Elizabeth Zimmerman's advice and have a nice lie down in a dark room.

Steeks are still scary. I hope it all stays!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

End of Day 13



Getting nearly out of time now. Though you can't see it, with the way the steeking and the bound off stitches work out...I seem to have knit some crotchless leggings. How unexpected.

I was off of work due to being sick today, which wasn't nearly as helpful to knitting progress as you might think, since the sick involved being incredibly disoriented all day and having no attention span. It was not fun, but I managed to get a reasonable amount of progress despite the fact that I was pretty darn brain dead.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

End of Day 12



Today was not a great day for knitting progress. I'll have to do better tomorrow. :/

Monday, February 22, 2010

End of Day 11


There is no sweater. There is only Zuul.

Or sleeve. One of those.

And now, there is only sleep.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

End of Day 10



Well, there has been no change to the body of the sweater, so here's an arm. I'm to the point where I need to cast on and knit my second sleeve, so the tops of the two sleeves can be worked at the same time, with steeks between them.

Somehow, I don't think the second sleeve will move *quite* as fast as the first one. Still lovin' magic loop, though.

Onward!

End of Day 9



So, the lion's share of the body is done, and the first sleeve is cast on.

Hilarious story. Apparently, when I ordered a set of size 5 interchangeable tips from KnitPicks, they sent me a pair in a size 5 container...but they're size 4. That means I knit the ENTIRE SWEATER in the wrong side needles.

Guess what? I. DO. NOT. CARE. There is nothing to be done about it, and at least it means that the poor thing is consistently screwed up. (OK, I care a little bit, but not enough to do anything about it. It does emphasize the fact that I need to order more *actual* size 5 needle tips, though.)

The fascinating part of today (because today was Challenging (tm)) was teaching myself the magic loop technique. Right, I'm a convert. I still love my DPNs, but I finally see what the fuss is about. I did the three inches of stockinette on the bottom of the cuff in what seemed like no time.

And whilst I'm cataloging my woes; you know that something has gone terribly badly when one's husband says "Uh...that's kind of ugly." in response to a portion of your knitting. Especially with my colour coordinated husband. For reasons that I do not understand, the kit wanted me to do a three needle cast off on the exterior of the sweater, with the teal'ish yarn. I was dubious, but by then I was so mentally fried that I just wanted to stop, so I followed through. Daven asked if that was a temporary cast off, and when he found out it was not, he made very unhappy noises. So, that means that I tore back the weird teal cast off and redid it with the dark blue. Much more cohesive. I think they meant it to be decorative, but mostly it just looked like poorly planned out crap.

The sleeve was an adventure, too. As I previously stated, I'm knitting the size 48 sweater. Well, the cuffs that go along with that are HUGE. Yes, I understand that you think that the person knitting the XXL is really enormous, but I've got tetchy little wrists. 6" wrists, people! Therefore, with the help of the handy husband-calculator, I figured out how fast my increases will have to be, as I'm making the smallest size cuffs, which fit just great, thankyouverymuch.

Here's to hoping tomorrow is less "beat my head against a wall" and more "tear ass through more stockinette on that sleeve". *fingers crossed*

Friday, February 19, 2010

End of Day 8



This is about the halfway mark for time. Eeek, I hope I can get this done. I'm a row or two away from casting off for the neck, so I'll hopefully finish the body tomorrow and start on a sleeve.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

End of Day 7



So, here I am, a week in. Not that I've really been able to use all of that time (see: worked a con last weekend that caused my elbow tendinitis to flare like crazy), but it is comin' along.

I will point out that this sweater has a mountain range right across the bustline. Real subtle, sweater.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

End of Day 6



Back to the colours! Fie on you, stockinette stitch of boring!

...Of course, tonight I was feeling pretty good about myself. "Yeah! I'm FLYIN' along!" You can see where this went. "So I need to cast off for the steek...2 rows ago." *cusses a lot* *tinks* I think I did more tinking tonight than knitting, between being mentally distracted and kind of crashy with waiting too long between meals. But, still, here we are.

I admit it. I have never steeked before. I am a little frightened. Let's hope that this totally normal thing that thousands of people do ALL THE TIME doesn't get totally messed up by yours truly.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

End of Day 5



2" left of blue stockinette to go!

Monday, February 15, 2010

End of Day 4



So much stockinette to go before the next patterned part. *groan*

This is also the 48" size, so, it's not going to exactly zip along. Hey, I've got a lot up top, and the pattern calls for it to be loose. Ha, good luck with that.

Day 4

Unsurprisingly, considering I had a con to work this last weekend, I am behind schedule on knitting. I'm most of the way through the bottom fair isle band on the body, and will have inches and inches of plain blue knitting very soon.

On the upside, today is a holiday, so I'm spending it mostly knitting and watching musicals, so I might get slightly less behind, though it'll be quite a trick to catch up. I might do end-of-day photos to document my progress and keep me motivated. Whee.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Oh, what have I gotten myself into?

I've gone and officially signed up for the knitting Olympics on the YarnHarlot's blog.

Well, hopefully I'll have a nice blue sweater to show for it at the end. Pity it wasn't this week, when I've been out of work due to snow.

Huh.

So, it isn't the pattern that bothers me here, though it isn't my thing.

What I'm looking at is the size of this woman's hands. Yikes. Those are some paws she's got herself.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Uhhh...

Yeah, two posts in one day. That's called being snowed in, babycakes.

So, this is horrifying. It appears that she has tripe, or possibly strips of a brain, draped around her neck. That is a really unfortunate colour choice for it. Maybe I'm just not a ruffle kind of girl.

We interrupt this radio silence with an important announcement.

Well, no. Not really. But I have been quieter than normal; nearly two months without a post seems a little excessive.

I'm going to try a new thing, though I'm not sure how well it'll work. I'll post everything that I've worked on/completed each month. Since I was a little slow out of the gates with this, these are the photos of everything I've done since around the first of the year.

Some of the spinning that I've worked on. I'm poking around at making more of the flame coloured good stuff.


Stuff That I dyed: Three hanks of sock yarn (the one with the red is a 10 yd hank, which was fascinating to wind off on my warping board, and will be an enormous PITA to turn into a ball once I start working with it) and three 100g hanks of ramboulliet fluff.


Adult Surprise Jacket. I'm not in love with the button holes so I'm putting some ties in to have it in more of a kimono closure. I also made the pockets deeper. There will be another photo of this next time, most likely.


Sweater for Daven. This has been slowly creeping along for the last couple of months. The front is done, and this is the back. I knit this in the round so I wouldn't have to do much finishing up, but going back and forth for the back is...boring. As Daven put it this afternoon "So long as it's done before next winter, I won't give you too much shit about this." OK, love. You'll have a sweater by then. Promise. :>


Socks! Yes, I've knit all of these since the first of the year.


I have a Sock Scheme (tm) that I stole whole cloth from the YarnHarlot, and I've set up a bunch of sock kits. And when I say "A bunch" I mean that I have more than 20 kits set up with the yarn and pattern matched up. The tricky bit was that every pattern is one that I have never knit before. I admit it, I'm a comfort knitter, which means I haven't been learning much lately. I'm sick of that, so, this is my new strategy. Also, because I'm a picky bastard and I didn't like any of the options available to me, I ended up merging several things together into an entirely new (to me) sock pattern. It is serious business when I drag things like Traditional Scandinavian Knitting out.

In addition to finishing the Adult Surprise sweater (I hate you, I-cord), I'm working on the second sock to match the solitary guy up above, I continue to plug along with the Daven Sweater (when that gets done, I'll probably have a nice image heavy post of it), and I've purchased a sweater kit that I couldn't resist. Though I'm not much of a social crafter, I think I'm going to try and make that sweater during the knitting Olympics. This would probably go better if I, oh, watched the Olympics (no telly reception, yes, on purpose), but such things have never stopped me before!

Unrelated to crafting: I am plotting about chickens when the summer comes. I'll probably ramble about that in the future, so be prepared.