New Commercial

There are some really clever ad people out there and whoever came up with the new string they have for our local grocery store was a genius. This is the latest they came up with (It takes place on a Sunday and the point of the ad is "respect nature and it will respect you - it's for the groc. store's humane treatment of animals food brand)

Animal Farm on Sunday

Now, if I could just convince my neighbour's geese to do this, oh, and maybe get the cows to hold still at night so their bells don't ring, it would be great. Think it would help if I hauled the TV out and showed them the commercial?

Boyfriend Socks

For the first time in a long time, I tried something new in knitting. I decided I liked the Boyfriend Socks so much, that I would finally try knitting a toe up sock, which I’d been too lazy to learn up ‘til now. I’ve also always been enamoured with the idea of knowing just how long I can make a sock when I’ve got two 50g balls, without running out in the end. The fear of running out of yarn when knitting a normal sock has always restricted the length of the shaft since running out would be no fun at all. I know it can be fixed, but I don’t particularly like fixing, so I’d rather just not go there.
I found out two things with this experiment. The first being that my feet are too short to require more than about 40g of yarn to make a pair of socks. Finishing off the ball would have given me socks that were impossible to wear since they’d reach halfway up my calves requiring me to start increasing and then they’d just wind up falling down. Ergo, 40g is enough. The second realization is that I neither care for working the tow increases, nor the short row heels. I usually don’t mind short rows, but working that second round where you have to pick up two wraps and knit them with the stitch is a real bugger and made me swear six kinds of blue. They also wound up too long since I found it hard to gauge the length the other way around. I’ve decided that I will stick to shaft down in the future unless I’m desperate.

Now I have to admit that this would all probably be no problem if I just practiced them a bit. I tried to convince myself of this the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth times I knit the toe and heal only to find that they were too loose, or left holes, or I couldn’t get the needle through the wraps and the stitches. Alas, I failed. It didn’t help that I completely forgot that the cable pattern needed to be done on the back side of the shaft as well on the second sock and wound up having to frog half the sock, only to find that I had started the heel too soon and wound up with the cable pattern in the wrong place. That, of course, meant that I had to frog the whole heel, finish the pattern and then rework (for the second time) the d*%/ç* heal again. For the record, I didn’t like knitting it the last time either.

The upshot is that I will continue knitting my socks leg down whenever possible for the rest of my knitting career. But, at least I can now say I tried.

I do, however, love the socks despite being a little too long in the foot. I’m hoping they will shorten a bit, as so many of my socks have. Sod’s Law says they won’t though since I actually want this pair to. Whether or no, I love the pattern and the colour and the yarn and wish it were winter so I could wear them. Alas, it’s summer, the weather is humid and warm and wool is just not the thing to be wearing.

Knitting for MS

There aren't many things I tout on my blog, but this one is a must for me since my mother had MS and I’ve seen what it has done to many, many wonderful people over the years. Frankly, it’s not something that I would wish on my worst enemy and we need to come up with new ways to treat it and ultimately eradicate it.

Claudia of Knitters Against MS is riding for MS again this year. She’ll be accepting donations up to June 29th. Lots of lovely people have donated some really cool prizes (scroll down on her blog) like a copy of Tudor Roses by Alice Starmore, which will run you into poverty if you want to actually purchase it. However, for just a $10 donation, you could win it, or one of a number of other fabulous knitterly things. If you feel so moved, please donate.

Finished!!

OK, I need to finish weaving in a couple of ends, but other than that, I'm done. I'd left those ends just in case I wanted to resew the sleeves, but I think I'm going to leave them. They look better blocked and should be OK once the sweater has been washed a few times. So, enough chat, here it is...

ETA: See how nice and sunny these pictures are? That's because it's 90°F out today. Just in time...

Who ever said gauge swatches are pointless

OK, well, that might have been me. But I was right. They are mostly pointless as far as telling you what size something will be when you finish it. However, I have never been so glad in my life to have taken the time to knit a gauge swatch for Arwen.

Roll back to yesterday. Yesterday was a holiday here (Ascension) so I had time to knit. Being so close to finishing Arwen, I chose to work on it than something lighter, despite temperatures of 80°F plus and a relative humidity of 70%. As I knit, I worried. Was I going to have enough yarn to finish the sleeve? Would it work? Was I going to have to put the whole thing aside and wait until I could get more of that yarn? I knew from what I had in front of me that it would last until at least a few rows before finishing, but I dared not hope it would be enough to actually cast off. As it turned out, I was right. Hope was futile. 20 stitches. Yes, you heard me correctly, 20 stitches before I finished casting off, the yarn ran out (and probably did a little jig of joy at having buggered my day too). Did I really want to travel all that way just to get a skein of yarn to finish casting off? What would I do with one nearly complete skein of this yarn? I knew I’d get away with sewing it up with the left over yarn from my Linden, so even that was no reason to go buy more. So, I started searching.

The search for a piece of yarn just long enough to finish casting off 20 stitches took me through the garbage can, where the pieces were all too short for my purpose Then thinking I might have a single or partial skein somewhere in my stash, I went through all of my project bags, my stash boxes, my couch cushions, under the couch and even into cupboards which have never seen any yarn at all. Finally, I checked the box the yarn came in, filled with the knowledge that it would be empty, and it was. Except for my gauge swatch. Jackpot. I was able to both finish the sleeve and sew both of them in and still had left overs.

Arwen is finished, or it is for the moment anyway. It’s blocking as I type, but I’m not sure I’ll be happy with it. The sleeves are too big around to fit in the sleeve holes properly and I had to improvise. The look a bit scrunched in places, which is probably because they are a bit scrunched in places. I may have a go at fixing this, but I doubt it will work. I’d really need to reknit them, but I’m not sure where to reduce at. Width? Length? I dunno. Probably width really, but then I’m afraid the arms would be too tight and I hate that. Sooooo, I may just leave them or try and get all the scrunching in under the arms where it would be less visible. I’ll decide as soon as it’s finished blocking. When I think about how much work has already gone into this sweater, I’m inclined to leave it, but then why do all that work for something which is less than perfect? *sigh*, we’ll see.

I really need to take that course in sweater design/knitting.

Note to self

Feel free to stroll on by. These are just notes to myself which could come in hand one day. You might want to check out the cable grafting trick. It sounds really handy.

Source Tinker Tots

CABLE GRAFTING TRICK
I learned a great trick back when I was knitting Rogue for the first time to graft the cables. When done the main knitting (don’t break your yarn) - knit about four or five extra rows with a light colour dishcloth cotton. Knit or purl the stitches as they present themselves. Cast off. Bring the two sides together with your kitchen cotton folded in like a seam. When grafting you can follow the light coloured dishcloth cotton in and out of your stitches. When you are done you just undo the bind off and rip back the kitchen cotton. You end up with perfect grafting in knit/purl and you don’t have to think about which direction you are going in and out of stitches. Don’t have to worry about stitches falling off your needles or juggling all the needles. It makes it as easy as straight seaming.

LJ Knitting - Tree Graph

HA!

I finally finished the sleeve and I don't actually want to frog it this time! Oh the relief. I do believe that I've knit this sleeve at least 4 times in total. I've never frogged so much in my entire life. For a while, it seemed like I'd knit 2 rows and frog 4. I was beginning to despair and think of giving up. However, I persevered and this is the result.



It might not be perfect, the bit after the cuff could be straighter and the bit around the cable flatter, but frankly I'm not sure I'd have the skill to fix this, even if I did have the patience. I might be more bothered about it if I thought people would notice it when it's on, but I don't think they will, so I'm leaving it.

Oh yes, the cable bit is also not a "good" cable, as in it's not the way cables are supposed to work, but there wasn't much I could do without having the cable beginnings look really funky. I had to hide the behind the existing cables at the beginning and ends, so the rest of the pattern doesn't go under and over as it should.

Now I just need to knit the second. I also need to pray very hard. I have 3 skeins and a bit of yarn left. I weighed the first sleeve and it's 160g, which is 3 skeins and a bit. I'll also need to have a bit of yarn to sew the sleeves to the body. I hope there's enough. Funny, I usually have way too much yarn because I'm afraid I'll run out. I hope I don't run out and make my mania worse.