It’s Furious Balancing

Even though I claim that this isn’t a Knitting Blog, that’s where it appears to be headed. I’ve been thinking some about the appeal of knitting. Why does this intrigue me so? Is there more to it than messing about with sticks and string? And how much yarn, really, can one stuff into a single bedroom closet?

Knitting lets me tap into a creative process that is, for the most part, foreign to me. I’m not an artist. I can’t draw, paint, or sculpt. I’m not a musician. I can’t play a musical instrument and I certainly can’t sing. I’m not a chef. Not an architect. Not a programmer. Not a poet. Not an actor. I’m not an “anything,” really, in terms of creating.

This isn’t true with the knitting. I get to play with color, texture, and shaping. I can transform one thing (yarn) into another thing (something that vaguely resembles a sweater). I’m no longer a passive entity – I get to make stuff.

[My word, Laiane, your powers of observation are amazing. You must be the envy of your peers.]

Sarcastic and self-referential commentary aside, you can see where I’m headed. This “making stuff” business is new to me, and I’m getting quite addicted to it. I’ve got enough yarn and pattern ideas to last me a year — minimum. I’m still adding projects to my queue on Ravelry. I think I’ve come down from my last yarn buying spree, but I could be easily set off by a markdown on Malabrigo.

I have no willpower when confronted with a sale on good yarn.

Dear Mr. Bush:

Thank you very much for the Economic Stimulus Payment. It was a pleasant surprise to see it sitting, unbidden, in The Husband’s and my joint checking account.

I’ve since transferred my half to my ING Orange Savings Account. It will sit there, earning a whopping 3% interest, until there is a Democrat sworn in as President.

Well, this is not entirely true. I may relent and send some of it to Senator Obama’s campaign.

I haven’t done a meme in a long time, but this one caught my eye. I think the last meme I did rated my chances of surviving The Zombie Apocalypse. I was much better at this one.

70 words

Speedtest

I love mindlessly surfing the Innernets. I truly do.

I finished the Back-to-School U-Neck Vest from Stefanie Japel’s Fitted Knits collection. I do think that she is my favorite knitwear designer. I was able to wear the finished vest to the office in this lovely 60-degree spring weather. This is probably the last time I’ll be able to wear one of my handknits until October. I got a lot of compliments on my creation, even though I arsed-up the back neckline.

In any event, this FO is dedicated to Eowyn, Shieldmaiden of the Rohirrim. The styling reminds me a little of Eowyn’s dress in The Two Towers. I’ve been watching The Lord of the Rings (yes, again), but with the cast commentary audio instead of the regular movie audio. I did a lot of knitting while sitting on the couch watching those extended edition DVD’s.

It took about 3 weeks from start to finish. I only did minor modifications from the published pattern. The most important one was narrowing the shoulder straps. Many people commented on Ravelry that they felt they were too wide, so I reduced them down to 12 stitches. There were 14 in the pattern, so that’s not much; I was uncertain about making them any narrower than that.

I Kitchener stitched the shoulder seams instead of doing a three-needle bind off. I’ve done the three-needle bind off before, on the Tempting sweater, so I thought I should try something different.

I reduced the number of rows on the picked-up stitches for the neck and armholes. The pattern called for 3 purl rows, 3 knit rows, then 3 purl rows again. Way too much for my tastes. I did three purl rows only on the armholes and three purl rows and one additional knit row on the neck (just to spruce up the neck a bit and make it slightly different than the arms). I think all those additional rows on the neck and arms called for in the pattern would give it too much of a “Judy Jetson” feel — definitely not my style.

The final modification was the increases used for the bust darts. The pattern called for lifted increases, which are different from make 1′s (even though I find a lot of people who think they’re the same stitch). I wasn’t comfortable with my messy, miserable-looking lifted increases and used mirrored make 1 increases instead. Look! a close-up of Laiane’s tits!

I used two and a half skeins of Cascade 220 in Walnut Heather (Color # 8013, approx. 550 yards) and my size 7 and size 5 Knit Picks interchangeable circular needles in Harmony Wood

All in all, a good pattern, a somewhat flattering finished object, and something I can actually wear in public.

Forth Eorlingas.

As the weather warms up, I’m becoming more and more aware of how much I hate the summer and how much I am not looking forward to months of unrelenting heat and blinding sunlight. I can enjoy the milder weather we’re having now, the lilacs and forget-me-nots, but there’s this Impending Doom lurking just around the corner.

Michigan summers suck.

I’ve decided that the best way for me to cope with my Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder is with Wellbutrin and lots and lots of fall/winter knitting projects. I can stay in the house, crank the air conditioning, and play with yarn; before you know it the outside will be clean and cold again and it will be time to wear some lovely, bright, handknit hats and scarves with my austere black winter coat.

For now, you get pictures from the backyard. The one positive thing I can say for the warmer weather is there is better lighting for photographing the Finished Objects. As always, click the pretty pictures to make them bigger.

This is the One-Day Beret from Through the Loops done up in Noro Silk Garden Chunky. I finished the bind-off on the drive home from ThreadBear. It was a tad on the large-ish side, so I did a quick hot wash/cold rinse to tighten it up. That and a few minutes in the dryer did the trick.

Despite the “purple mushroom” comment, I do love this hat. It’s going to go hide in the sweater bags in the closet with the cedar sachets and the rest of the Yarn Stash until November or so.

I wish I could do the same. Pass the Wellbutrin.

I’ve been slogging along on the Back-to-School U-Neck Vest from Fitted Knits. I’m actually progressing through it fairly quickly, so slogging is not the most apt word to describe what I’m doing. Maybe I’m actually knitting. Really knitting, like with darts and shaping and everything! Who’d a thunk it?

I am, however, a crappy photographer and a crappy Paint Shop Pro user. /sigh

Click here to go see a larger picture, but I don’t think it improves much. I have been spending the last hour trying to get the text to wrap and make this look halfway decent on the page layout.  No dice.  If I upload this via “add media” in WordPress, there’s no way to remove the vest picture from the gallery with Chrissy’s pictures below (unless I delete the vest picture entirely) .  If I link to my uploaded image on Flickr, there’s no way to get the text to wrap since you have to “add media” to get the text wrap feature to work.

The orange markers are for the bust darts (which are somewhat visible), but it’s hard to envision the finished project unless you look at it on a real person.

I should be able to model it in the near future — depending on how much Cat Help I get. I’ve been picking cat hair out of this project for a while now. Predominantly brown cat hair with black ticking.

Who could that possibly be?

Christopher looks much better than the vest when you enlarge his pictures. More photogenic, he tells me.