Double Trouble photos

Thanks to my regular photographer, Bill, and Anna from Sunday's SnB, here are two photos of my completed 2 Socks, 2 Circulars project.

    

Baby Nolan came home!

An update to those who remember the preemie baby sweater I was knitting in August... Baby Nolan passed an intense-sounding round of hospital tests and was released Monday after 4 months in the hospital. He's up to 5 lbs, 5 oz and from the photos, seems to be adjusting to home life well - met the dog, sleep on Mom on the sofa, etc. I'm so excited for Nolan and his parents, that they can finally move on from hospital life! Three cheers!

Worth the wait? Yes! 2S2C finally finished!

At yesterday's SnB in Campbell, I actually bound off one of the Dschungel-colored Double Trouble socks from our summer "2 Socks on 2 Circulars" knitalong. This morning I finished the second. I didn't have time for a photo before work -- just stuck them on my feet and ran out the door. Credit for the success of these socks goes to Janice, both for kicking off the 2S2C knitalong and for helping me through the confusing tubular bind-off yesterday. Thank you, Janice! Here's the key concept I was missing: You work the bind off on two parallel rows of stitches - knit stitches in front and the purl stitches behind. Phew.

I learned new techniques in this knitalong:

• Crochet Cast-on - meaning crochet over the knitting needle
• Short row Toe and Heel
• 2 Socks on 2 Circulars - the Double Trouble pattern from Ingrid Knits
• Tubular Cast-off as described in Knitting Tips and Trade Secrets

It was so much fun working with Janice, Jeni & Ilona on these socks. Even though it took me 6 extra weeks to complete these socks, I love the results. I will definitely use all my new techniques again, especially the general concept of 2 socks at a time on 2 circulars. As a confirmed non-finisher of projects, I need all the help I can get to push through the end-game of a new knitting project.

The finished socks are *exactly* the right size for my feet, thanks to the Double Trouble pattern and the fact that I could try the socks on at every point along their creation. They are a lovely weight for our cooler fall nights. The only iffy part of these socks is the cuffs. Yes, my precious cuffs, cause of all the delay... they just don't rock my world. They're not evil or anything, just not as dreamy as I had hoped. Photos soon!

Progress? Not sure yet.

Well, for about 10 minutes last night, I thought I was a genius super knitter. Then I was brought low by the heels of the ASA socks. Now I'm wavering on the brink of ripping the whole foot of the sock out and doing something different with the heel.

Our story so far: I got special dispensation to work on A Step Above socks last night while watching Angel (thank you, sweetie!). In 1 hour, I managed to make it all the way through the toe on the first sock, hurray! The variagation on the toes turned out very nicely. And it was good.

Fresh from this victory, I started removing the waste yarn to insert the heel. Oh man, oh man, oh man. I have made mittens & gloves, I've done an afterthought heel before. I am not frightened of waste yarn. But I had not counted on the difficulties posed by the short rows that form the triangles surrounding the heel opening. I struggled. I hunched. I cursed. I picked up about half the required stitches and stopped for the night. Here's the progress photo showing the half-picked up heel:

[Edited at 5:00, forgot picture link]

At this point, I'm just short of deciding that there is no way to successfully get all the stitches. I am thinking of ripping back to the heel (No, Slippy, nooooooo!). It really seems like I ought to be able to do the same short-row "hour glass" heel we did for the 2S2C project in July. Surely that would be better than the nonsense I'm inventing now. And not only does picking up the stitches suck suck suck out loud... I also discovered a very bad split **right** at the corner of the heel opening, where the stretch will be the worst. And I have also turned against the toe decreases. Toe is really no biggie, I can do it up again in an hour or so. But the other two problems may spell doom for the foot. I'm just totally pissed off that the super genius knitter feeling only lasted about 15 minutes, between finishing the grafting and about the 10th stitch picked up at the heel.

This morning I did my make-up knitting on OXO, completing a second repeat of the pattern. 20 cm to go!

Sock and gansey photos

Didn't have these photos posted when I wrote the earlier entry. Here we have 10.25 tiers of "A Step Above", including the placeholder for the afterthought heel:

And the OXO Gansey, just a stitch detail of the pattern. Very hard to see the OXO cables in this dark denim yarn (see previous rant...):

Click the photos for bigger versions where you can actually sort of a little bit see the OXO pattern.

SnB, OXO, and entrelac progress

Stitch-n-Bitch group on Sunday was small-ish, just 5 knitters. We wrote a note to Jeff in the hospital and I'm putting it in the mail this morning. I'm still loving the Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock wool in FLAME. I worked on A Step Above - only 2.5 more tiers to go in the entrelac plus toe and heel.

Also I finally got to show my embellished swatch for Narcisse and everyone liked the colors. I've got choir rehearsal.. maybe I'll try to have the sweater done to hand off to our director. I just got the birth announcement Friday and the actual recipient's name is Lucy

In at-home knitting, I'm up to 53 cm of the back of the OXO Gansey and have completed one full repeat of the pattern chart. The first repeat involved a lot of mistakes that had to be either ripped back or dropped down.. but I think I've got it now. Progress should speed up now that I know what I'm doing.

I was knitting OXO last night while we watched season 3 of Angel, since I'm committed to putting some good time in on this one for Bill. The second disk in the set had terrible skipping/freezing/restarting problems. We managed to fast forward our way through the episode eventually, but, man, is that a disappointment when the DVD just plain doesn't work. The episode was Habeas Corpses and we kept accidentally revealing the next bit of action by fast forwarding to far. Oh, look, he escaped. Oh, look, that's how they found each other. Kind of turned out like watching Memento. Only not as fun.

Wednesday, meetup. Thursday, theater. When is sleep?

This feels like a busy week for social and cultural outings! Wednesday night it was knitting Meetup at Blue Rock Shoot. Some really fun projects underway. I made 2 more squares of ASA socks. Topics included the new Rowan mag, stash and doomed projects, beaded knitting, and sisters. I was totally thrilled that two people I invited showed up! Then (see previous post) i stayed up way too late knitting Bill's OXO gansey.

Thursday night spouse-o and I went to the first show of the season for A.C.T., The Black Rider. Visually, it's very Expressionist - angular, outsized, oddly colored scenery elements create the forrest. Tom Waits wrote the music and it shows (I like Tom Waits, but I know he's not for everyone.) The story is both a fairy tale and a metaphor for addiction. The piece is beautiful and very moving. Marianne Faithfull as Pegleg/the devil was impish and yet powerful. The cast seemed to have been chosen for their strong vocal talents and the willingness to use their voices in very weird ways - like odd yodeling bird noises or being a human vocal sampler echoing a text back in ways you would think required a tape player. If you have a bent for odd theatrical events, the poetry of William S. Burroughs, or Tom Waits, you will like this show. Be prepared to host weird images in your head for a while.

We've got the night off Friday, but Saturday spouse-man and I are planning a "big day" birding trip as a fundraiser for the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory, a research science organization monitoring bird populations around the bay. We have precisely 27 hours to shift from staying up too late to getting up way too early (for owling!). If only we could stick to one hobby at a time, we would get more sleep. Zzzzzzz.

Ugh. Who picked this denim yarn?

In June, I started work on a project that's been maturing in my stash for, oh, 6 years, called the OXO Gansey from a Rowan Denim leaflet. The sweater is for my spouse-o, who has been asking nicely for a sweater for several years now... call it 14. I put a bunch of obstacles in the way of this project (not sure what design to make, not enough yarn, worry about shrinkage...) which helped me stall for 5 years after buying the yarn. This year, I decided to force the issue by pledging that while watching Angel & Buffy on DVD, this would be my only knitting project. That way I could guarantee progress, right?.

We watched Buffy, season 6 in June and I started with the back. 41 cm later, I set it aside to ripen. OK, OK, I was stuck. But since we didn't have any Buffy or Angel to watch.. I was off the hook. Until this week.

Monday night, with a borrowed copy of Angel Season 3 in the house, I picked up the OXO. I've had three frustrating nights. This yarn is way too dark. There's a lighter color available.. why didn't I buy it?
I can barely see my stitches! Wednesday night I was trying to establish the actual OXO secion of the of the patterning. I knit exactly 4 rows in 2.5 hours, because I kept screwing up the pattern sections. Then I ripped out all but 1 row of my painful progress in the mistaken belief that I didn't have enough stitches. ARGH!

This morning, now that I know I have the pattern sections set up properly, I was able to do 6 rows of patterning in about an hour. Much much much better. Still too dark, but much better.

Entrelac progress in reds

Here are 4 tiers of A Step Above entrelac socks. The first tier is the base triangles and the rest are all rectangles, slanting either right or left. And here's the work so far:

Why the sudden swerve into socks when toddler cardigans are waiting to be delivered? I've been reading The Knitting Goddess just to see what it was like. I'm about 4 goddesses into the book (Grandmother Spider, Isis, Ariadne, the Moirae/Fates). Influence on my life so far: I dug out the Flames sock yarn after reading about Isis, who likes red thread, and I answered a question in the NYTimes crossword puzzle about King Minos's daughter. I love mythology, so reading the stories of the goddesses is very interesting/affecting, but I'm not feeling really touched by the book yet. We shall see.

Embellishments & entrelac

I bit the bullet Friday night & did my practice embellishments for Narcisse, using the guage swatch to practice the chain stitch embroidery. I know colors on the web are iffy, but I am interested in any opinions y'all might have about the colors of the leaves & flowers here:

While mulling over the embroidery colors and noting that there were 5 unfinished knitting projects in the family room alone*... I needed something to kill time on Saturday, so I started "A Step Above" entrelac socks from Knitter's K75 (Summer 2004). Hah! 6 unfinished projects in the family room!

ASA calls for Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock and I happened to have some in a color called Flames. I love the way this design shows off 3-12 inch color runs. Sheperd Sock is very delicate and soft on the hands. Working with wool is a huge treat after a month of cotton! I've done the skimpy ribbing and 4 "tiers" of entrelac triangles & squares, which makes about 5 inches of sock so far. There are just 4 entrelac squares in a row, each 12 stitches wide and 23 rows tall. Each square goes by really fast. I'm practicing knittng back without turning on about half the rows. Figuring out the yarn wraps makes my head a splode, so I often switch back to regular knitting for non-think knitting.

Update on Gram: surgery was Wednesday and by Saturday she was sitting up, talking, eating solid foods and figuring out how to get the vertical blinds between her ICU room and the hallway straightened out. I talked to Mom Saturday night and asked if the whole hospital experience was hard for her and she said it really wasn't, since Gram is doing so well. Phew! I can't believe how smoothly the whole heart attack experience has been so far. And I seriously hope I have inherited some of Gram's survival genes.

*5 unfinished projects in the family room:

• ancient vest finished except for installing zipper.
  
• Icelandic Beauty done except for ribbing around the leg openings.
  
• Narcisse needs embellishments, seams, buttons
  
• OXO denim gansey for Bill is only 40 cm of back
  
• Myosotis whales cardi. Half a back. I hate the intarsia I've done so far & can't get psyched for more
  

Grandma Grace recovering from heart by-pass surgery - send the love!

My 88-year-old Gran, Grace, is recovering from heart surgery in Gunderson hospital in LaCrosse. She had a heart attack on Tuesday, heart bypass surgery (triple, last I heard) on Wednesday and is recovering in the ICU. She's a very healthy octogenerian but surgery takes it out of ya. If you have spare energy, time, or prayers, please send a few good wishes her way.

Crocus - a preview

I'm trying to focus on the Myosotis cardi.. but it's officially a doomed object at this point and it's hard to get re-connected. All my attention is drawn to Crocus. This is the gauge swatch I knit last Saturday (too small. Need to try again with 2's), showing all 3 pattern stitches:

See the lovely flowers? Click for bigger image in exciting photo archive.

But really, both of these should be off-limits until I do the dang embellishments on Narcisse. Only 15 crocheted flowers, 4 rows of embroidered leaves and 2 seams between me and an FO. The non-grid nature of the crochet and embroidery is a little daunting, but I'm so close!. Wish me luck this weekend!

Almost.. too quiet

Well, it's true. The "quiet weekend at home" approach to Labor Day should have resulted in more knitting progress & something to talk about here. But it didn't.

We made a birding outing on Saturday with the Audubons. We had lovely sunny pleasant weather at Point Reyes and possibly 2 life birds. Sunday we lay very still in the heat until about 3 pm when we went up to Pichetti winery to take photos of peacocks. Monday was completely devoted to lying very still. Hence, very little knitting.

So Tuesday & Wednesday I was back at work on the Narcisse cardigan. I discovered a dropped stitch on the center front and spent some time dithering about whether to take the entire left front out (down to like 8 cm out of 29). I have decided to proceed with the button bands and use them to hide the problem. We'll have to see if they pass Janice inspection! I just couldn't go back 60 rows, re-do all the raglan seam shaping and re-block it. Just going to have to live with it.

So here is Narcisse with raglan seams, collar and one button band in place. The error is not visible here and won't be until I make the second button band. (Click for larger image)

The raglan shaping on this sweater is kind of cool, so I've included a detail of it. The seam at the top is so very regular, it makes the bottom part towards the armhole look a little weird. But the top part is just plain lovely to look at. Here ya go:

Remains to be done: one more button band, including the evil dropped stitch to be hidden, then embroidered leaves & 15 crocheted flowers

I've been itching to start the Crocus cardigan, for baby Clara to be born in October. But baby Will, who is supposed to get the Myosotis whales cardi, arrived on schedule August 20th. Now Myosotis was last seen on these pages in late May, when I had to rip out the tops of the waves because I forgot to make armholes and hated the intarsia joins. So its back to the Myosotis salt mines for me. Hang on, Crocus, I'm coming!

Narcisse's pieces

Thanks to a) staying up waaaaay too late and b) the kindness of my photographer spouse, I am able to bring you this progress photo of Narcisse: 5 finished pieces and no seams

All 5 pieces are even now being washed & blocked. It only remains to make a ribbed edging around the neck, along the fronts, and confront the dreaded embellishments. I have my hook out to try a few flowers this afternoon. Think happy fuschia thoughts for me as I wade into the world of embroidery & crochet with trepidation.