Driving by Again

We had an absolutely gorgeous weekend. It was warm, but breezy, so not too warm and we spent pretty much the whole of the weekend outdoors either walking the dog or lounging in the shade. I got my new outdoor beanbag bed thingy on Friday, which was perfect because it meant I could read and snooze in comfort. Got a lot of reading done and sleeping and playing with the dogs, and possibly a little imbibition of alcohol, but not much knitting. Still, since I last dashed by, I've finished my Spring Bandit


Yarn: Fluffy Cat in Morning Glory by Wanderingcatyarns
Pattern: Springtime Bandit by Kate Osborn

I love both the yarn and the pattern. The yarn is super soft and will be really warm. Even trying it on in this weather made me realize that you don't need a lot of weight to make something very warm. There's Alpaca, wool and cashmere in that there yarn, so it's bound to be warm. The pattern was insteresting to knit. Repetative enough that it was possible to remember the pattern without checking every few seconds but not enough to be boring. The only thing I had problems with was my own stupidity (again, so what's new there?). I tried using stitch markers to separate the pattern repeats, and it took me a while to realize that that just isn't going to work on a triangle like it does on a rectangular scarf. The increases take care of that. So, many frustrated hours later, I cottoned on and after that it was plain sailing. The only down side to the project was that I really didn't have enough yarn so it's a bit on the small side, especially as I had to stop before the pattern actually finished. It still looks fine, it's just a little small.

While waiting for the yarn for my next project to arrive (my aunt's Arwen in Knit Picks yarn), I'm working on what has got to be the world's most boring sock. It's a plain stockinet sock with a 2x2 cuff knit in Timber Knit Picks Kettle Dyed Essential sock yarn. The Timber flavour was on sale because they took it out of their colour range and now I know why. Most of it is just a coffee with milk coloured yarn with little to no variation, like the other kettle dyed yarns have. I'm not going to like these socks, but I have a sneaking suspiscion that my aunt will think they are the bee's knees.

Drive By Post

Just a quickie: I finally finished the Byzantine Bazic (with no further mishaps at all):





and have now started on Springtime Bandit recommended to me by Catbookmom of Ravelry in Fluffy Cat by Wandering Cat Yarns in the colour Morning Glory. No pictures as of yet, but I can tell you I now remember why I really don't like knitting lace. I don't get it, it confuses me and mistakes are harder to fix. You also can just ignore them because it will look like total, well, a total train wreck. However, I'm stubborn and the yarn is Wonderful and I will finish it.

Need Recommendations

Can anyone recommend a good, non-pilling, soft, 100% cotton yarn for knitting a sweater (Arwen)?

In other news, I'm sure Kathy Zimmerman would be very pleased to know that I've finished my first sleeve of the Bazic by following her very simple, straight forward directions and it looks really nice. Just like it should in fact. Nice, yes? Don't mess with Kathy, she's a Badass designer. I, on the other hand, am not.

D'Oh!

Dear Kathy Zimmerman, despite never actually having criticized your pattern and never blaming you for my inability to knit the Bazic’s sleeves, I feel the need to apologize. Would a little self-flagellation be enough to atone for my last post? I would offer to knit a few things for charity, but that wouldn’t be painful enough because as the saying goes, stupidity should hurt. It really should and not just to punish people for being stupid, but to warn them that, yes, you are about to enter the stupid zone, so please, turn back now before it’s too late. After all, pain does tell us that it’s really not very healthy to touch a hot stove, so why shouldn’t it be there to warn us that we’re about to do something we will probably regret and/or cause us public humiliation? (Ehem, as in blogging about said stupidity before realizing just how dense you really are.)

But I digress. I thought I had put enough effort into deciphering your instructions. I spent hours thinking about just how to work the sleeve increases into the pattern. I mapped them out in Excel, I knit and re-knit and still I wasn’t happy with the result. Then I decided to read the pattern again. I did that and still I was confused. I went back to thinking, improvising, knitting and again was baffled. I couldn’t imagine that you wouldn’t have mentioned it if it were going to be this difficult. Then, suddenly, in a flash of “OMG I am so stupid I should be jailed” illumination, I realized that I am my own worst enemy. In my bid to be a smarty-pants and avoid sewing up the sleeves, I knit them in the round, even though your pattern says, knit flat. Looking at the work in my hands, I was looking at a piece of round work and trying to make those increases somehow fit perfectly between the first and last pattern repeat in every row. Needless to say, this doesn’t work. They aren’t going to fit perfectly. Ever. Never ever even. I needed to be working these increases into the pattern as if the sleeve were flat. As soon as I figured that little gem out, I realized that I had been thinking too far with all of my concentric pattern diddling (at one point I’d even thought about changing the pattern completely!). So Kathy, in that instant, I realized that your pattern was so simple any child could have done it without blinking and that I should be hauled up in front of the knitting inquisition where I should possibly have my all of my needles revoked. Like I said, I would apologize for having blamed you, but I never really did. From the beginning I figured I was missing something, and I was. Oh boy was I! (possibly a few million brain cells). Still, I’m sorry anyway.

I am now working the increases into the pattern like you told me to Kathy and the results are lovely. They no longer look like a train wreck of the worst kind, but like a pattern that was meant to be.

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “D’oh!”

Conspiracy

Seeing as how my elbow hasn’t heeled yet, and indeed shows no signs of getting any better at all, I know I shouldn’t knit. However, seeing as how I haven’t been knitting and it’s made no difference one way or t’other, I figured I’d start up slowly again and see how I, or rather it, faired. Thus, I took up my Byzantine Bazic sleeve last night. It was never going to be easy getting this sleeve going again, not after having let it sit for a month in the middle of increases I was unsure of in the first place. So, I knew I’d have to take my time about it. I sat down, looked at it, realized I was on a stitch adding row and stopped to think. The pattern instructions read: inc. one stitch at end of each needle every other row 8 times and then every 4 rows 21 times, working new stitches into pattern.

Deceptively simple. Dear Kathy Zimmerman, I love your pattern. It’s a beautiful sweater, lovely to knit, it will be wonderful to wear and I just can’t say enough good things about it. Honestly though, not all of us have your brain and you’ve sent mine into overdrive with your deceivingly simple, working new stitches into pattern. If this were simple ribbing, it wouldn’t be a problem. If the pattern were totally regular and concentric, it wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, you, in your knitting wisdom, have chosen a pattern which is neither regular, nor concentric – or at least not with this stitch count. This means you really have to sit down and think about when to add which stitch and how to work them into the pattern without winding up with a lop-sided sleeve. It would have all been relatively simple if I could have just bunged in another 16 stitches in the middle of a repeat, but since the repeat starts and ends differently, this isn’t possible. Trust me on this one, I tried. If I had turned my brain off and continued knitting the way I had set up these new stitches a month or more ago, I would have wound up with one very uneven sleeve. One side would have dropped to the floor with the weight of the cables while the other tried to fly off the arm due to lack of balance. It did not look good.

On the other hand Kathy, I have to thank you for sparing my elbow by keeping me from knitting for at least another evening. As I sat down to knit, I looked at the train wreck of a sleeve I had in my hands and knew I must frog or face knitting a sweater I would have been too embarrassed to wear, unless I sold it as an M.C. Escher work. That might be just a tad difficult though, since I don’t think M.C. Escher ever wrote any knitting patterns. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong because they would most likely be brilliant and I would probably wind up knitting them ASAP, but I really don’t think it’s likely. So, returning to the subject at hand, I looked at the train wreck and frogged, re-wound the yarn and started to knit again. I got exactly one stitch on the needles before I realized that I still didn’t really know how to work the incs into the pattern.

It was time for the computer and a little bout with Excel. Two hours later, I had my increases mapped out and ready to be knit. I’m still not going to swear that these are going to work, but I think I have a better shot at it now and at least they look balanced, or they do on paper anyway. How they actually knit up, remains to be seen.

I do have to admit to another bonus in this lost evening for knitting. As I was winging my way through the incs on sleeve one, I couldn’t rid myself of the small, nagging feeling that I would never be able to recreate these stitches on the second sleeve. I could just see it coming that I would think I could wing that one too, and then finding out that, no, that just wasn’t going to work. Now that I’ve got them mapped out, that worry is gone and I can go on knitting without losing sleep over how I was ever going to manage to wing two identical sleeves. What a relief!

Life Without Knitting

Well, it's been a while. There's little to report in the way of knitting since my elbow is still not a happy camper. I had been really good about not knitting, alas, it's still inflamed and I finally gave up, or in, as the case may be. I just finished my Nordic Shorts, which, as the name says, were a little short. Not only in stature, but in yarn as well. I ran out of yarn just after starting the toe.

A normal knitter would have ripped back the toe of the first one and used a contrasting yarn to finish them so they would look the same. Or, they would have frogged both the socks and reknit even shorter. However, since I've never claimed to be normal and I'm fairly lazy, sooooo, I went and grabbed a similar yarn and finished the toe. Yes, it's different, no it doesn't have the nice blue bits in it, but in the light of the living room at night, which is when I'll be wearing the socks, it's not noticeable. Even if it is noticeable, it's not noticeable. I refuse to notice it. Refuse, point blank.

Actually, I think that it may actually endear them to me in the end. They're special and no one else will have a pair like it, ever. Of course, it might just be that I am thrilled that I was actually able to pick up the needles and knit without having to think about it. I was beginning to worry that I might have forgotten. It seems like it's the same as with a bike though, you don't forget. So, here they are, my lovely, non-matching, yarn disparate socks.

And should you be interested, I there's a a meme about blogging on my book blog. I'd like to hear everyone else's opinions too.

Crocheting and Math?

The elbow saga continues, so still no knitting. However, I did run across this today: "Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes" by mathematician Daina Taimina.

She won a prize for the oddest title. I think she was pretty ingenious myself. Of course, I think it might take a crafter, or maybe a crafter who understands math, to understand the book, but it’s an ingenious connection all the same. Crafts isn’t just crafts and math can be used everywhere.

Having said that, I use as little math as possible myself. The only mathematical principle I ever understood well enough to actually use in daily life is proportion. If I can turn it into a proportion, I can figure it out. I turn stitch counts into proportions all the time. Ok, so they don’t always turn out so well, but the math is usually right, even if the practical knitting is not. Theoretical Knitting is so much easier, don’t you think?

Still, even if I’m never going to understand hyperbolic planes (and frankly haven’t got the slightest desire to even try because when you’ve lived this long ), this is one math book I’d actually look at if I passed by it in the shop.