Acquisitions

Hey Flan,

I hope the meetings are satisfactorily finished and everything went well.

Last weekend was the Library's annual book sale. Last year I found an out of print knitting book for $0.50 and this year I was hoping for similar success.

First, there were cookbooks:

Then there were knitting books:

The Hubby insisted on showing up to the preview sale and being early to that so we were some of the first people in. True to the spirit of comptetion and greed I headed straight for the craft section and grabbed everything I thought I might be interested in.

This was one of them:

Not so fabulous really. All the patterns are 80s fabulous and I really don't know what I was thinking- must have been the frenzy of it all.

Later, I sat down to cull through what I had rashly shoved in my bag and started flipping through the above.

This is what I found:

Oh yes, an original "Wool Gathering" from March of 1988! I couldn't believe it. These aren't even on ebay. Somehow, the person who donated the Vogue Knitting paperback didn't realize they had left a pristine copy of the newsletter within.

Got to love that book sale.

Quite a Week

Hey Flan,

Last week was one I was estatic to bid farewell to. The one bright spot was that I acquired a new EZ book! The Opinionated Knitter has been added to my collection and I am beyond thrilled. I think that leaves just one book (Knitting Around) that I do not yet have. I don't knit that much from the delightful EZ, but reading her books makes me feel smarter. Two things I'm very excited about in regards to her are the pictures found on Ravelry- the other is mr.brooklyntweed who loves her patterns and shows us all how it's done. My brain is not nearly gifted enough to imagine what the final product will bring, so the photos are indespenisble. Also, did you know the Schoolhouse Press website sells YARN!?! I was trying to figure out what 10 oz of Sheepsdown meant in "regular" terms, googled it and there you go. So exciting.

Other news... Let's see... The main part of the knitting for The PPC is finished! Well, that would be exciting if I were any less bumfuzzled about how to put the whole thing together. I checked out practically the entire knitting section from the local library in an effort to figure out how to put it together. The winners are: The Ultimate Knitting Book from the nice people at Vogue, and Knit Fix. They both had suggestions for what to do with reverse stockinette. HOWEVER, there is NARY a word about what to do with reverse stockinette on a diagonal. I decided The PPC and I needed some time apart and shoved the whole blessed thing in a bag where it will remain until Knit Night when I'm planning on pleading with the more expert knitters for guidance.

Thoroughly besotted with my new book and equally as thoroughly disgusted with the making up of a blanket (which EZ would have had the good sense not to have started), I decided that the world really did need another Baby Surprise Jacket and have cast on in a delightful combination of slate gray and "willow leaf". The ladies at the yarn store looked slightly askance when I combined gray and nearly puce green, but I love it so far.

Hope you're staying warm and that M had a nice birthday.

BSJ

Kathleen-
On Wednesday evening, I carefully cast off the Baby Surprise Jacket, thus removing any impediment of H having the baby (the baby won't come till the knitting is done). Sure enough, as I finished a crazy day at work, I got voicemail from Mike telling me that Harmony had been born! Woohoo!

So here's the completed jacket (needing ends to be woven in and buttons attached) that will be off to E&H on Monday.
Having completed the current baby knitting emergency (more to come of course, as there are more pregnant people in my life, including a baby due at the end of October), I cast on for Henry from the newest Knitty.

Tracy from Knit Night had contributed to me falling down and buying yarn two weeks ago, when she draped a hank of this lucious yarn around my neck. Baby Alpaca and Silk? What could be better? Next think I knew, I'd bought two skeins. Thursday, I used it to cast on for Henry.
(Ignore the dark blue, it's the provisional cast on). So far, I like it a lot. I'm hoping to finish it for my trip to Oregon in a couple of weeks- I think it should look smashing with my new brown jacket.

Brain Disconnected

Hey Flan,

I don't know if it's the heat or too little caffiene or too much, or working too much or what, but I am pretty sure that my brain has come disconnected from the rest of me. It started a couple of days ago at Knit Night. I decided to work on The Hubby's Sweater. This is my first major EZ project, and I thought it had been going alright. The sleeves and body went fine and I thought I was doing alright with understanding the instructions.

Apparently not.

It seems the sleeve/ body raglan shaping is not at all going according to picture. You're supposed to decrease so there is a diagonal line from underarm toward collarbone. At some point you work back and forth on each edge, creating a straight line along both sides of the top of the shoulder.

Um...

Yeah, the decrease line mine is making is, well, straight. Not diagonal. I am perplexed by this and have started searching the internet as well as re-reading Kw/oT for an eleventy-billionth time to try and figure out what on earth is going on. To top it all off, these rows are about eleventy-billion stitches long. They are the entire sleeves, PLUS the entire body. The Hubby likes his sweaters a bit loose and he has some mighty fine shoulders, but that all translates to a 48in chested sweater. A 48 in sweater means eleventy-billion stitches when all are combined and the prospect of having to rip makes me want to rock back and forth and chant "happy place, happy place".

I'm contemplating checking out every single Knit Fix type book from the library and try and figure out a way to make it all better w/o having to rip back to where they were connected. Fingers crossed.

Slogging Along

Hey Flan,
Thank goodness you're alive, doing well and survivied The Event! It sounds like you had a fantastic trip with your mom and had some amazing yarn finds. I'm so jealous.

Monday I finished The Hubby's socks. It was a happy day. All ends are woven in and the pair is safely ensconced in the bottom drawer of the yarn storage area, hidden until his birthday. I cast on for the Broad Street Mittens. I was going to do two on one long circular, got 2 rows in and absolutely hated it. I'm headed out to find some dpns and hope that they will make everything better.

The Hubby's sweater is also coming along. I finished the body!! 48inches around x 15 inches long = a whole lot of knitting. Oh yeah, I now have an excuse for not having any photos- The Hubby has the camera so for the next little bit there will be no photos. I worked on the first sleeve, faithfully increasing until EZ had said to stop. However, that only got me to half of the total length. The calculations seem correct according to the recipe, but I got out the sweater upon which I'm basing the calculations and decided to increase some more.

Artyarn supermerino is the best damn yarn there has ever been. Period. Inspite of my undying love of alpaca even it cannot beat this yarn. Best Ever. I'm working on EZ's February Sweater for E&H's baby (as I've decided they're having a girl or a boy that will have to wear purple). I did have to rip out a couple of rows- apparently I can't count to 7 repeatedly- but this yarn makes me smile. It's just that fabulous.

I did it. I actually told someone in the knitting community that I didn't like something. In the world of knitting I try to keep everything positive. People might make something that makes me cringe, but I try to remember that not everyone's asthetic is the same as mine and that at least they are contributing to the Knitting World. There's usually always something nice that can be said about the knitting (the knitters however are sometimes a different story). But the new IK layout is something I just don't like. I tried to keep an open mind with the first edition of the new layout, but the second edition came in the mail last week and I just don't like it. I actually emailed them about it. I know that I welcome change the same way mothers-in-law welcome daughters-in-law, but I rarely tell the people about the stuff I dislike. Something made me email them and they emailed one sentence back, thanking me for my feedback.

I'm off to prep for a meeting. Tomorrow is Friday and I'm trying to keep that in focus.

The Story of a "Hat"

Hi Flan,
I hope you had a really nice weekend, even though it was tragically shortened by an hour. I hate daylight "savings" time w/ a passion. Even though Congress had nothing better to do 2 years ago than tinker with the damnable thing I don't see why we have to suffer. To top it all off, after having several enraged "discussions" with the nice npr people on the radio about their multiple stories about the change, I neglected to move my clocks forward until Sunday morning. Stupid clock moving.

This weekend I completed my first EZ pattern! Woohoo. I was thumbing through Kw/oT and came upon a little section behind all the sweaters. There are hats and socks back there! Who knew?? Having an assignment from the Harlot, I grabbed some needles and some Lana Grossa Due Chine (leftover from the KO, also thanks to the Harlot) and swatched. We had a bit of a problem, with EZ calling for 2.5 sts/in and I was swatching at 3.5. Fearlessly, I pulled out my calculator. This was the turning point.

There are at least two different hats in Kw/oT that call for 2.5 sts/in (one cleverly disguised as calling for 7sts/3"). One tells you to cast on 36, the other 50. That's an extra 5 inches. The other "quirky" aspect? The one that is 36 sts is a rib, which would hold tighter to the head, the one with 50 tells you to then increase to a number that is truly astonishing (somewhere in the vicinity of 100 if I remember correctly). Far be it from me to question the authority of EZ, but I was a bit nervous.

I cast on and after the band part I increased a mere 15 sts (one pattern repeat) and merrily went about the pattern. I would like to say that the pattern is brilliant. It creates a spiral effect and has the most intelligent decreases known to man. I love it despite of my inability to grasp the numbers.

A few short hours later and I was getting to the point of cast off. It was looking big. Really really big. Seriously large even. I consulted with a Norwedian knitter. She thought it looked pretty big too. Not one to be swayed by experience and consultation, and reluctant to rip it out and do more math, I kept going.

It turns out this, um, "hat" could double as a tea cozy. If the tea pot in question were the size of the nice gatorade coolers players douse coaches with at the end of the game. I tried it on. My bathroom mirror laughed. My head is about a women's medium and my hair is not at all fluffy. I am waiting until The Hubby returns from TN so that he can put it on his much larger head and we can see if there is ripping that needs to happen. I am hoping that the recipient has both a larger head and an inordinant amount of really really fluffy hair. The Hubby currently has the camera because something is lost when you take rocks out of their natural habitat w/o photographing. There will be pictures upon his return because this is truly something to behold.

Do you know if we're supposed to mail them to NY or should we wait to deliver them in MN?

"Grab a Jacket...

... the high is supposed to be only 58* today"- actual quotation from this morning's public radio weather forecast.

Hi Flan,

I hope your father's recovery continues to go well.

The yarn arrived yesterday! "UPS tracking" was almost classified as an official sport after the amount of time I spent clicking the "track now" button. The (long suffering) Hubby had to endure 2 hours of me asking "where's my yarn" in 5 minute increments. It has arrived and is beautiful and all is well. I was a bit surprised when I pulled out the gi-normous cone of yarn and was a bit befuddled as to what to do next. Aafter realizing that the entire two pound cone would not fit on the ball winder and would thus have to be cut into smaller pieces, I skeined, tied, washed in Dawn and then in Eucalan and took over the bathroom as the yarn drying area. I wanted to make all the skeins about the same size, so the winding and then counting each one took awhile. I'm not completely done, but 3 1/2 hours of sitting on the floor pulling yarn off a cone took it's toll and my back hurts. It's almost dry but I think it needs one more washing just for fun.

Yesterday while awaiting the arrival of my yarn I experienced a fit of start-itis. The Mommy's socks are going well, but I had started them the day before so needed something new. I had read part of EZ's Knitter's Workshop during lunch and was completely entranced by her pattern for a baby blanket. It's utterly brilliant. While in WA visiting last April I picked up an obscene amount of pink baby yarn. It's from Austrailia and called "Heirloom". Machine washable and wonderful in many ways. The only place I have ever seen it is the Wool Station (sadly website-less). I had purchased enough for a baby blanket in garter stitch. I don't know exactly why I felt that I would realistically knit a 30" square blanket on size 3s, but I purchased the yarn nonetheless. Casting aside all fears, I cast on and after a grand total of 3 rows I'm loving it. I have decided to keep it in the car for some entertainment. The pattern is completely stress free and there is no time limit. Pretty much the perfect mindless knitting.

The Hubby is going camping as part of one of his class requirements this weekend. I'm planning on a fantastic weekend of watching DVDs and knitting. Hope your weekend goes well.