A Nice Day for Brocade

YES! I finally started the Kyoto sash. That also means I finally finished the Kyoto sleeves. They are a little wide and a little short, but I think once I throw them in the washer and dryer they will be drapey enough that that won't really matter (right now the fabric is a little stiff, so it's sort of awkward).

I decided to pick up and knit the sash onto the fronts and back, rather than knitting it separately and seaming later. I'm already so happy that I did this, since the line between the colors looks pretty seamless. I think I'm going to cover it with an applied i-cord, though, so it wouldn't really have mattered much if it looked crappy (but I'm glad it doesn't!)



I'm using the King Charles Brocade pattern from Walker 1. Oh, did I mention I got the Second Treasury? YESSS! I feel like I will be swatching my way through 2007 with all the new patterns at my disposal. I love textured knitting.

Here's one recent swatch. I've had a certain lace project in mind for-e-ver and I think I finally worked most of it out in my head. I want to finish most of the Kyoto sash before I really get started on this project, though.



I also, ideally, would like to pick up some older projects and finish them, finally. I can't even think about them without this big guilt trip.

In other news, I was forced onto the new blogger. I knew it would happen at some point, I was just resisting because I don't like having to use my Google account. As one member of my SnB put it, "it's called, Google gave them a ton of money." The more corporatey Google gets, the less I like them. It's too bad. The China thing really ruined them for me.

OH! last but not least my mom and stepdad went to the L.A. peace march yesterday, and my mom met Cindy Sheehan and got a hug and a kiss on the cheek from her. She said she was just totally genuine and sweet. My mom was really moved. I'm really sorry I didn't go to one!

So Far So Good

I tried on the top portions of Kyoto today, and I think it's a pretty good fit. I had calculated my gauge (more sts/in than called for) and adjusted accordingly, but somehow it ended up an inch or two bigger around than I'd intended. Luckily I'd intended it to be a little tight, so at least I won't be swimming in it. It's kind of a boxy sweater anyway.


I need a haircut!

Don't forget, this is without the 1.5" seed stitch (yay..) edging along the neck.

The original instructions call for knitting the sash separately, then seaming it onto the upper parts. BLEH! I'm hoping I can just pick up the sts all the way around and knit it from the top down. I haven't blocked anything yet, and I'm wondering if I really have to. This is a machine wash/dry sweater, so shouldn't I just go ahead and sew it all up and throw it in the washer? Yeah, sounds good to me (don't know why I resist blocking so much).

I am almost done with the sleeves. Really, I could just bind off at any time and deal with whatever length I end up with. I'm not planning to do a full sleeve, as I think it would get dipped into my food far too often, being rather large in circumference. A 3/4 length would allow for most dining situations. I'm not 100% sure where the top of the sleeve will fall on my shoulder, though. Right now it seems to fall just below the top bone in my shoulder, but the heavy cotton might pull the fronts away from my neck, making the sleeves hit lower. I could just about gouge my eyes out with all the teal stockinette, though, so I think I'm going to stop soon, at around 14". I have really long arms, so that is about 2/3 length. Or so.

I'm so excited to start on the sash. A new COLOR! A new STITCH PATTERN! Finally! This weekend.

Broken CD Porn Friday

No new yarn, sorry.



This is (was) the cd that came with my Spanish textbook, which I ordered from a half.com seller. The book is softcover, but it came in a bubble mailer so it should have been fine. The USPS just decided to fold the package in half and shove it into my tiny mailbox. Nice job guys.

On the good news front, I'm halfway done with the hat, once again. I'm really getting sick of posting pictures of this thing. You're probably sick of it, too, but trust me it's going to be awesome. Yeah, Awesome!



I vow to finish this by early next week. Vow!

And Again!

I frogged the hat. Honestly, it's worth it to do it right because I know the better it fits the more often it will get worn - and that's the point of these things, right? So I started over with the hem today. I'm not using the provisional cast-on that would let me just knit it in later, for two reasons. One, since the hem is in a different color, I don't want any of it to show through on the outside of the hat (and there's a chance that it would, because of the k2tog element). Thinking about it now, I could of course have started the hem with a row of black to eliminate that problem, but it wouldn't take care of Two, which is that I want the ends and the WS ugliness from the knitted-on brim, which will be added when the whole cap is knitted, to be hidden inside the pocket of the hem, so I have to sew it down later. No biggie, only 160 sts around this time.

I am happy to say that the KnitPicks Essential sock yarn that I'm using stands up to ripping and reknitting. I'm really pleased with this yarn so far.

Though I'm happy to reknit the hat, I'm ashamed to say I still haven't finished the Kyoto sleeves yet. Also, I took my blue sweater to L.A. with me for winter break and never worked on it. I need to make some sort of goal for myself about that, or I'm pretty sure it will never get done. Maybe I can knit through my 3-hour class tomorrow evening?

Estimation is not my Forte

Boyfriend's hat, Take One.

Here we have the first incarnation of the brimmed cap. It looks a little bulgey because I haven't yet sewn the inner lining down, so it's just safety-pinned. I like the gauge, I like the stripes, I can fix the laddering from using dpns (I think). The only problems are that it's a little too big and a little too short. I had estimated that I needed a length/depth of about 7.5" to cover a good portion of Ear, but as I was knitting away, eyeing the decrease schedule I'd written out to match the remaining number of rows to get that length, I just kept thinking THIS IS WAY TOO LONG! I decided to do the last few decreases every two rows instead of every four because I could not imagine that it would really need to be any longer.

Gah. It does. Anyway, the last third of the hat only took me 2 or 3 hours, so it's no huge loss to frog and re-knit it. After all, I do want this hat to get worn, and often.

I've come up with a cheaty (read: might fail miserably) way to make it a little tighter around the circumference. Since I'm adding a brim (like a baseball cap, but shallower) on the front, there will be a section along the edge that won't stretch much, being connected to the plastic-mesh-filled brim add-on. I'm going to add this piece by picking up stitches along the center front of the hat, so maybe I can pass over a few/k2tog a few as I'm picking up, incorporating more of the circumference into the non-stretchy part of the hat. Make sense? More importantly, sound feasible? I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Here's the Secretly Green Hem, which I'm proud of for no good reason:



It rolls like nobody's business, unfortunately, so I really am going to have to sew it down all the way around. I had sort of hoped I could just tack it in a few places.

As a last resort to fixing the too-bigness, I could always insert some elastic at the bottom of the hat, in the pocket created by the hem. I really hope it doesn't come to that, though, because I think it would look a little...goofy.

Man, I'm not a sock knitter so I haven't really been following the popularity of the STR club, but this whole bank business (sock club = scam?!?) is nuts! Cara is right; knitters are/can be an amazing force? What next, people?

Dispatch from Sleeve Island

Kyoto sleeves, two at a time. Zero shaping. Totally rectangular. AHH! 4...more...inches...

I guess using the word "motoring" was really tempting the knitting gods. SORRY!

Totally sick of that, I started my boyfriend's brimmed hat, for REAL this time (I've frogged a few false starts). So far so good, though I am afraid it will be too big. He does have a rather large noggin, but I didn't build much stretch into my gauge calculations because I like the look of the non-stretched stockinette. Of course I could have omitted just a few stitches around, to ensure snugness, but I forgot. It will be a double layer down at the ears, so hopefully that thickness will help it stay on nice and tight.



This is in Knitpicks Essential superwash sock yarn, on US#2 bamboo dpns. Why dpns? Because I have them. I really like this yarn and would totally consider knitting something for myself (besides socks) in it. Very, very soft.

Hoping that our local thrift store would have a better knit sweater selection than the Berkeley Goodwill, I headed down there today in search of yarn to recycle for my next big blanket project. The selection actually sucked, but I did find one very dyeable white cotton sweater for $3, and this:



also for $3! My mouth was watering just reading a few recipes out of the Armenian food section. I grew up on recipes from the Enchanted Broccoli Forest, so I was glad to snag this for my own cookbook collection (rapidly growing).

Happy New Year, everyone. Let's hope for peace, prosperity, and grad school acceptance!