Fork report

Another opportunity to stick a fork in a project 'cause it's done. Introducing the Striped Raglan Pullover, aka Design #1:

Cripe, even without my mug in the shot, I am the most unphotogenic person on this planet...

Most surprisingly, I'm actually thrilled with it. I didn't like it much to begin with, but it really did grow on me. I adore the colors and the neckline, plus it fits like a dream! And it was fast with a capital "f"! I'm usually on size 3 needles lately and this one, with 4.5 spi just seemed to fly by. I did some modifications by the seat of my pants including changing the edging from a 2x1 rib to seed stitch (and the needle size change, etc. that goes along with that) as well as making it longer. Originally, I had planned a sweater that landed at the top of the hip but since I had a lot of this yarn and it would have been more than a little awkward to return it, I decided to use more of it and make it tunic-length, replete with side slits:





Of course, as soon as it was completed, I decided to putz with it and, naturally, add some length to the sleeves. But, since this is knit top down, there was no need to break out the scissors. All that needed to be done was to un-do the cast off edge (the cuff), rip back, add another stripe and re-knit the seed stitch edge. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

I can definitely tell that it is going to be a warm weather favorite. All that remains is a light block and Design #1 will have successfully emerged from the pile-o-worsted weight-stash!

What a haul!

I celebrated another birthday last weekend and, if I do say so myself (and despite me saying repeatedly that I really didn't want anything other than a nice day), I made out like a bandit. In addition to a multi-year renewal to Interweave Knits, I scored some PDC (pretty darn cute) stuff from Little Miss Matched (the tights that I wore this winter were always good for total strangers starting a conversation). BH ordered some over-the-knee socks plus this too-cute-for-words sock coin purse:

Little did I know the whole story behind these 2 gifts :-) Just another reason that I love him so.

Then there was a tin of Alterra's Starfire Anise Tea. I first had a cuppa this a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. With many of my most favorite tea ingredients, it sure is a wonderful treat with dinner.

Mark & Nancy, Washie & Maddie's original People, sent me this print. If you have read their blog, you'll know how perfect this is, beyond the fact that one deer is knitting and the other is reading. I pretty much bawled when I opened up the package. Where the heck did they find such a thing?!?

In cycling news, our pre-dawn commutes to the gym and back have begun. I had forgotten how lovely it is to be pedaling up Lake Drive as the sun rises and the birds chirping madly away. It does, in so many ways, get the day started out on a high note, especially being able to cruise up the big hill at a good clip and barely breathing hard. It's just over 11 miles round trip so it is pretty easy to incorporate the ride into our workouts when we do get there (even this morning's 60 minute spinning class). I finally cashed in my Wheel & Sprocket gift card from Christmas to get a new bike computer so I can start getting an accurate read on the mileage (nearing 200 already). This new model also has a thermometer and, as we passed through several micro-climates lakeside today, it was interesting to note how just a few degrees' fluctuation really feels like much more.

Knitting-wise, I'm just doing the very last bits of finishing on the Striped Raglan and I like it quite a bit. I'll have a photo of it this weekend as well as a picture of a new sock in Dream In Color Smooshy in the Dusky Aurora colorway for a class I'll be teaching this summer!

A piece of cake

Ravelry puts a cute little birthday cake on your avatar:

Photos of the birthday haul (got wonderful gifts!) and the nearly completed striped raglan coming soon...

It's growing

The striped raglan top down sweater is growing both in size and on me.













This week I finished one sleeve and will probably finish the 2nd tonight and - as it looks more like a sweater and less like some misshapen rectangular mish mashery - I'm liking it a bit more. The colors, as I mentioned last week, really rock my world.

Other than that, I'm afraid, there's not a whole heckuva much to say. I guess, no news is good news, as "they" say. Given that, here's a brief list of the things I'm looking forward to this week:

1. The weather should be cooperative for a cycle tomorrow morning
2. The National Spelling Bee
3. The lilacs are finally blooming

William's got a fork stuck in him

Among many knitterly and non-knitterly to-doings this week, I did finish Sweet William:

The process went quite smoothly. I am a putzy finisher and tend to do and re-do seams ad nauseum, especially those for set-in sleeves, until is as perfect as can be. On this sweater, though, both sleeves were set in on the very first go:

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it and even the modified neckline will work just fine. All it needs is one final steam and it'll be ready to make its worldwide debut.

With one sweater project off the needles, it was time to cast on for a new one, of course. A few weeks ago, I was plotting my first - albeit simple design: a striped top-down raglan with a v-neck. I was really anxious to start it back then, but now that it was time to do so, mmmm...not so much. It probably didn't help matters that my first day with it was a bumpy one. With a new day, I decided to give it the ol' college try. The initial increases are almost complete but, sadly, the jury is still out.

The colors, though, rock my world - apple green is a perennial favorite and I'm extremely fond of having blue and brown together. This is my first top-down sweater, so it looks so odd to me. Perhaps once I get past the armholes and it starts looking more like a sweater, I'll be more pleased with it.

This week's happy news brought to you by the weather, which allowed for lots of around-town bike commuting and our first ride of the season on Saturday. We just took a shortie of about 15 miles or so (must get a new bike computer - I hate not knowing our mileage and mph!), but it sure felt good to put in some road time. We rode up to the Schlitz Audubon Center with a few meanders thrown in and the hill on Lake Drive was easy for us both despite a relatively brisk NW wind. It's always reassuring to get that first hill out of the way and to be assauged that a winter's worth of work at the gym wasn't for naught! We should be on our way to our 30+ mile rides in no time...that is, if the weather cooperates!

Knitting invention?

Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some Cookie A. sock patterns. They are brilliant and beautiful. But, while knitting in the car on the way to visit my mom, with the Pomatomus heel successfully turned, it was time to embark on the gusset which meant the dreaded Chart B:

Call me crazy, but the middle of the chart had me absolutely flummoxed. The blank square usually means "no stitch" of course, but what the heck was I supposed to do? Re-position the stitches on the needle? The pattern instructions only read: "While Chart B may seem confusing and neccessarily complex, the modifications are necessary to make the top of the foot rectangular..." Ok, yeah, I get that - but how do I modify it and still make the pattern flow?

I was stuck. In the car. With no knitting! I haven't been this bored in a long time and I swear, time stood still. I just wanted to stop at the nearest public library, get online and do some searching for clarification.

Within minutes of getting home and after typing in "Pomatomus Sock Chart B" into Google, I found this helpful little thread. A ha! You just keep knitting the pattern and actually ignore the blank boxes. I've said this to my students and this totally confirms my belief that the innernets wasn't invented by Al Gore...unless he is a knitter.

With the clarification in hand, my Pomatomus continues its growth in typical Cookie A. fashion, brilliant and beautiful.

Knitting associations

I'm sure this is rather common and not just limited to knitting, but I've always closely associated movies (which, I should mention straight away, I tend to watch a few favorites over and over and over again!), television shows, books, or life events with whatever I happen to be knitting at the time.

When I started to knit seriously again in the '90s, I had just purchased the special edition of Gone With The Wind (on VHS!) and watched it nearly everyday while knitting BH my first ever stranded knitting hat (which, incidentally, was so tight that the poor dear could barely keep it on his head...but he wore it nonetheless) during a two-day snowstorm that left Ann Arbor buried under nearly 20" of snow. I can still see that nasty little hat, with yarn I bought at a craft store as Ann Arbor had no yarn shops at the time, watching our German Shepherd, Mingus try to jump through the snow in the yard, smelling the yeasty aroma from the kitchen as bread was baking in my brand new bread machine.

My first Starmore sweater was undertaken after we moved to Milwaukee, living in our "little cabin by the river" and when I was particularly enamored of Impromptu and Immortal Beloved. Meadow (sorry, just have a link to my Ravelry project page) a sweater I knit last spring, will forever be associated with Pan's Labyrinth. I still laugh at myself for some very silly mistakes I made while so engrossed in this amazing movie, trying to read subtitles and decrease properly in the midst of a lace pattern all at the same time. That's something I certainly wouldn't advise...unless, of course, you really enjoy ripping back.

My Selbuvotter mittens are Christmas 2007 and listening to The Golden Compass audiobook. Even Sweet William has its associations which aren't altogether good - when I started the sweater during this late winter, I was watching Away From Her and dealing with a very nasty bout of some sort of stomach virus that laid me flat for a few days. Unfortunately, even now that Sweet William is almost done, each time I pick it up I remember how tremendously queasy I was, too! While knitting Jack, I was listening to the audiobook of World Without End which I didn't exactly enjoy. Even after I finished the book, I still couldn't work on Jack without thinking of the characters and the plot of the book.

So, I find it rather poetic that my last completed sweater, Jack - a sweater of "firsts" was immediately followed by the super brilliant Cookie A's Pomatomus socks...a project which - in direct contrast to Jack and for reasons I shall not discuss - will be one of "lasts".

It got me thinking, though, that I and probably very many knitters out there, knit with more than just yarn, needles, notions and patterns. I knit a piece of my life into each article. I guess that's why it is so hard for me to give away what I knit. Each sweater, each amazing pair of socks, even a really bad attempt at a hat takes a snapshot of my life at that time. For better and, in this instance, for worse. Impressions, memories, life events become as an indelible part of the knitting as the yarn itself.

I began the Pomatomus socks on a very bad day - a day that I finally made a very hard realization about myself before 6 a.m. followed a few hours later by something equally as difficult to bear.

As I've worked on the socks this week, I'm pouring into this beautifully envisioned lace pattern all the complex emotions I've had to contend with both events. A simple stockinette pattern at this time wouldn't do the trick at all. Like figuring out the logic underlying the pattern, I'm figuring out the logic - or lack thereof - of my life at present.

To be sure, each time I work on the socks, or wear the completed pair in the future, I will be reminded of these very difficult times. I hope, though, that the association will become more bittersweet and that I will be a better and happier person because of my self-realization and the other event...just as one enjoys wearing a pair of beautiful lace socks that are well knit even though mistakes were made and re-dos were necessary in the process. It is my hope.