Sunday, July 20, 2008

Ravelympics Must Have (Been Outta My Mind)

I'm not a nervous knitter. Knitting is supposed to calm me. This is currently not the case.

I've had two Must Have nightmares now... in one week.

This project is making me a different kind of knitter. The anxiety is the first difference.

Generally speaking, I've determined I am an insanely casual, by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of knitter. Pretty much every project has taken the same route: either I get the urge to make something, or life circumstances dictate it (since most projects are gifts, birthdays, holidays, etc are usually the impetus).

I then go the my LYS with a project in mind (e.g., mom wants a sweater, she hates cardigans, so a pullover). I flip through patterns. I find the one I most love and skim the directions. If it seems remotely written in a language I can grasp, I choose it.

I then approach the LYSO, show her the pattern and ask her to show me what yarns might possibly work. From the options presented, I then get to examine, explore, touch, squeeze, caress yarns until I fall in love with a color and feeling. I buy.

Sometimes, I fall in love with a yarn and then have to work backward a bit. But still, it's all off-the-cuff and based on my impulses.

Occasionally, if I am very smart (read: rarely), I look at the pattern enough to ask the LYSO about any parts that are unfamiliar. But mostly, I take pattern and yarn home, grab needles and cast right on. No careful reading of pattern, no swatching, no planning at all. Just "oh, pretty! I buy and make!"

The inevitable kinks that spring up along the way, I've been able to get by through trial and error. I'm not afraid to rip back. I'm a pretty even combination of process and product knitter. I like completing things. I really, really like FOs. But, I'm also pretty okay with starting something over and over and over, while I try to learn how to do it. People who get knitted gifts from me understand that the birthday or holiday or gift-giving occasion date occurs for me like speed limits: I shoot for the best and try to stay in the ballpark.

But this Ravelympics experience is changing me.



I am swatching.....

I never swatch (bad, I know). But, I am nervous about sizing. I don't think I'll have time to incorporate the upsizing for the pattern, so I am hoping to create a more generous sweater through tension and needle choice. I needed to make some swatches to see if using different needles and trying to knit a little loosely would result in a somewhat larger project. Using US8 needles, I seem to be getting a little more and may get about an extra 1/2 inch per every four. That might work.

I needed to feel out the yarn. I don't tend to favor 100% wool yarns. I know a lot of people love 100% wool, but I like a little blend to soften things up. My very first project was 100% wool and I have sad memories of actually pulling it apart because I tended to knit kinda tight back then. Blends usually are my choice. But, through the magic of swatching I learned a little about how this yarn knits up and think I'll be okay. Also, I read this yarn softens quite a bit with washing.

I'm terrified of the pattern suddenly and reading it closely and obsessively. As I said, I'm not usually worried about the ins and outs of patterns. I generally knit along, trying to understand what the pattern means and just rip out what is clearly wrong and try again. This is fine when I have no time constraints. I most certainly have a time constraint here.

Plus, this pattern has more things happening simultaneously than perhaps others I've done. Some parts embody a four row pattern, others an eight or three row, and another comes in at twenty-three rows. All at the same time. I think I've had to do this before, but I can't remember how successful I was at keeping track and how much ripping back I had to do. Especially since, have I mentioned, I recently learned I cannot count? It is seeming more and more short-sighted to take this particular pattern on for a seventeen day project. But, I've put it out to the universe... So, I needed to try to learn the ins and outs, to minimize errors. To this end, I've made many, many swatches trying to both understand and learn/memorize the panels, etc.

This has also made me realize I am not an intuitive knitter. Patterns are completely mysterious to me. In most cases, they will eventually start to fall into place in my mind, but this takes an inordinate amount of time. Each time, I try to knit along exactly as the pattern is written (as much as someone as haphazard as I can) and just marvel that something resembling the photo emerges. I rarely understand how it happens. I'm just thrilled every time it does.

But, I don't want to take those fun chances here. There's a clock ticking, by golly! I need to arm myself by "getting" as much as possible before that torch is lit.

To this end, I've also for the first time ever, charted a pattern. I hear tell that someone else made an excel file of the Must Have pattern. I thought to try to get my hands on it. Then, following nightmare number two, at 3am, I decided it would soothe me to quickly make my own.

That's funny.

It took.... oh, forever. But I did it.

And know what? Eventually, parts of the pattern began to make sense! I'm not saying I have it cold or anything, but there was a point while making the excel chart when I started anticipating the next bit of stitches. Oh, happy day.

So, I now have swatches. I've learned the yarn and my tension. I've read the pattern eighteen ways to Sunday. I've made a bloody excel chart.

I need to really commit to a color, buy yarn and find buttons (though I may opt out of buttons altogether). Oh! And I've ordered what I hope are fun, speed generating new needles.

Nineteen days til torch lighting...

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Ravelympics

So, I signed up to participate in the Ravelympics. As per usual, I got excited about the idea of something and acted long, long before I thought it through. I joined two events - two events. One is the Sock Put and I'm waiting to hear whether mom's slippers can count toward that. Otherwise, those puppies are on hold until the Olympic torch is extinguished in Beijing. Also, I am kinda itching to get to Mom's Surprise Socks and so would gladly work those instead. The other event is the Sweater Sprint. There I publicly declared I would attempt to create the Must Have Cardigan (MHC).

In. Seventeen. Days.

This is a picture of BrainyLady's MHC. Isn't it gorgeous?
(And complicated looking?)









Thankfully, I found another brave soul taking the project on as well. Hootsister, I love you.

Another Raveler, RenaissanceWoman, has provided some tips. Her MHC is gorgeous and her project honed my desire for the sweater. She's suggested I spend some time working through the sweater panels so I can learn the basic gist of the pattern pre-Ravelympics. I'll be doing just that all weekend.

In the meantime, I had a dream last night. I don't remember all the details, but it ended with me sitting in a huge-mongous pool of mostly knotted yarn, sobbing while my mother made a bisque. I've no idea what the bisque could possibly mean, but the sobbing in a pool of yarn is hard to misinterpret.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Hmmmm....Slippers, eh?

So my mom sent me a link today with some slippers she'd like me to knit right up for her.

Let me repeat that with proper edification:

So my mom sent me a link today (my mom who struggles with most internet-y things beyond answering her work email and playing games)

with some slippers (slippers?!?!? since when did i start knitting slippers? oh wait. I haven't. Riiiiight.)

she'd like me to knit right up for her. (ummmm, okay-dokey. I'm so really going to drop everything [read: socks] and get right on that. I mean, it's like she hasn't even noticed the sock addiction. Despite me showing her each and every one. Repeatedly. And extolling the virtues or curses of each one. Endlessly. But slippers, oh yeah - that's what I meant)

On the other hand, she did give me life and all.

Le sigh. Next project: apparently slippers.


And that's all I can say about that right now.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Broadripple Done! (and "the ick")



I finished the broadripples today with mixed feelings. I didn't want to be done. I kinda don't want to be parted from them. I'd been holding out on the last few rows, knowing the toe shaping would come and end our time together all too soon. That only deepens my love of this sock/pattern. I know all about Second Sock Syndrome. And what, with socks being new to me, it's all I can do to finish one before the next sock yarn or pattern catches my eye and entices me. So yep, got that whole SSS thing.

But, I have discovered something even more insidious: I have Foot Finishing Syndrome (FFS).

That is to say, for me, most of the excitement is in the leg (discovering the pattern or how a yarn stripes, etc), the still nail-biting turning of the heel and the zippy fun of the toe.

The inches between ending the gusset and decreasing for the toe are pure, almost unadulterated sock unfunness for me. It feels slow, monotonous, tortuous even. This portion of each sock I've knit thus far is when I grow ripe for the next. It is when I put the sock down. It is when I net-surf for new patterns. It is when I start fingering the other sock yarns. Sometimes (thankfully), it is when I pick up the last sock abandoned to FFS and work on it a bit, just to break things up.

I've wondered if this doesn't suggest I should learn to knit toe-up. Well, obviously I should. I want to learn all the ways of the sock. But maybe with toe-up knitting I could avoid FFS? On the other hand, I really dig learning the pattern without stockinette breaking things up. I like kicking it all off with the leg. I like it a lot even. In any case, each and every sock I've knit peters off somewhere around the arch in my foot...

...except my beloved broadripples. Thus far this is the only sock I've still truly loved knitting through the foot. I thought it was a fluke on the first sock, but having (grudgingly) finished off the second, I noted that had a nice knitter's high straight on through to the zippy toe action.

Clearly the intersection of Rob Matyska's pattern and this yarn is knitter's Shangri-la for me. I think I should probably always have this on needles - you know, just because access to Shangri-la gets kinda limited in the world.

To that end:



I'm flat broke and don't even feel guilty...

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Oh no!

Today is my super sweet niece, Breanna's birthday. She's fifteenand a pretty excellent person. I love her dearly and can remember the first day I held her as an infant. The moment she was in my arms, she owned me for life.

When she first "became a woman" she called right away. I took her on her welcome-to-womanhood shopping/fun day as I had her older sister.

She didn't flinch even a little bit when I requested being her friend on Myspace. And she doesn't talk back or get huffy when I comment on the content of her page or comments. Sometimes, she even listens to my advice.

She calls (or texts) me every mother's day. Every year.

In the past few years, she's even remembered my birthday.

When I called her, she sounded off. Her friend who was supposed to take her for a manicure had flaked and so she had taken herself. I love, love that she took herself instead of sitting around dejected, but she did sound bummed. Then she reported her mother had not wished her happy birthday (it was early evening time) and did not appear to be throwing her the promised birthday party.

Not good.

I am five states away. I work more than fulltime. I am mostly broke. I am in the middle of a sock knitting obsession.

Wait - I am in the middle of a sock knitting obsession!!

I ask her favorite colors? She reports: reds mostly, maybe some pinks and oranges...

Holy mother of heck! Damn blast.

Goodbye, my beloved first Broadripples. You made me truly love socks. Your colors enchanted me. I even bled on you a little, through my finally broke through the skin Knitter's Stigmata. Just yesterday I pledged you to me, me, me....but well, I know how to listen when the universe hollers.

Happy Birthday, Bre - enjoy the socks.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Broadripple love



I am working on my 1st Broadripple socks. I say 1st because I love this pattern so deeply, it is clear I am going to make many, many, many more. I may never knit another pattern for socks.

This is the yarn I used:


It is one of the Cascade Fixations I picked up when the brightness of Mom's Crazy Socks rendered me unable to calculate color. But, guess what - I love it, too!


I'm about 75% through the 2nd sock and I am kinda... moved by them . This is the sock pattern that led to my "Knitter's Stigmata" and yet, I love it. It is the first sock I truly feel something strong about. I love the blazing color, I love the simple and yet, insanely wonderful pattern, I love the feel of the yarn (though I am not even the slightest bit sure I am knitting this elastic yarn 'correctly.'

It truly is my favorite - the one I most certainly will not give away. These are the oddly colored socks I will wear proudly on my own two feet. These socks I will pull from my feet and show others. I will proclaim, 'Admire these! I bled for these! I made these from brightly colored elastic string and metal sticks!'

These are the socks that truly passed me over into the "sock knitters" realm. I was sort of test driving this whole sock knitting thing - it's been pretty durned okay, I've felt satisfaction. But these socks? These make me want to knit more and more socks. Many more socks.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Woolly Ticks in July

Okay, my supervisor - who is a nature loving, adventure seeking kinda guy - got flippin' lyme disease.

That's so not okay.

I was moved to wrap up my First Socks Ever and gift them to him to wear during his recuperation.

Then I thought of two things:

-- it's July. No one, but no one is going to be thrilled by a gift of wool socks in Boston in July. I don't care if 1,000,000,000,000 ticks bit him - wool socks in July is just... uncool.

-- they're my First Socks Ever. I should hold on to these puppies, right? Mom always said, 'There's only ever one First.' Sure, she may have been referencing something else (who knows?) but, I'm sure she'd agree the adage applies to knitting as well as any other thing.

So...I needed other socks. Quick other socks. Not-wool other socks. But, I thought maybe he'd not get them right away...perhaps as Fall sets in (um, I do have to realize I am not going to complete a whole lot right now, what with the newness of socks thing going on).

I know lots of folks seem downright disdainful of acrylic yarns. I have many things I am a wee-bit snobby about. Part of me really wants to be a yarn snob. But really? Some of the newer acrylics are kinda lovely - some feel so good and are so farking inexpensive!

I'm not a yarn snob. But, I am a compulsive investigator. When it comes to something I am the slightest bit unsure on, I spend hours (many, many hours) asking about, researching online, etc. I usually feel pretty secure with the wools I buy from the LYS, but acrylics from the chain store not even dedicated in an exclusive way to fiber arts? Ahem, I'm gonna do a little research here...

And so it was that while visiting with mom, I accidentally touched some Bernat's Satin. This is about the yummiest acrylic I’ve touched in some time - maybe even ever. Sooo very soft, so smooth feeling. And it has sheen, for Pete's sake - sheen! I couldn't resist.

Umm, I bought 8 skeins, without doing any research at all!

I've settled on the pattern and now have a yarn. We'll see...