Renovation Zone

In the coming weeks I hope to change this blog drastically. Since I no longer knit very much, the focus will change to a general blog and a place where I can show you all the cool stuff I'm into/making/growing/baking at the moment. I'm excited about the change and hope you are too!

So...

As you can tell, I've been a bit absent for a while, a lonnnngggg while. Life is too crazy right now with getting a new job, buying a new house, getting married, and continuing grad school (oh grad school how I hate you!) so I'm taking some time off. I have some new ideas for when I get back in the saddle, but for now, you can find me over on flickr.

Absent

Hey guys! I bet y'all thought I fell off the face of the planet didn't you? Well, I haven't I've just been too busy (and stressed for that matter) to knit. I know, it's blasphemous to say. Well, I can finally check one of the major stressors off of my list:




I've been accepted into grad school! This along with the whole job situation, and, oh yeah, the wedding I'm supposed to be planning has been causing me major, major stress. So much stress that I haven't picked up the sticks and string in literally weeks. I come home from work so emotionally and physically drained that I can't even think about being creative. It's a scary thing losing one's creativity. I think I'm on the upside of it all now and will hopefully have some things to show you soon. Thanks for sticking around!

A Month Late and a Sweater Short*

It feels like forever! Guys I'm so sorry for my absence in the last month. Life stepped in and took away all of my free time. In the past month I've been consumed by wedding plans, home redecorating, dieting, applying to grad schools and pulling together a portfolio, and putting together a totally different portfolio for a possible job opportunity. I've been swamped. In the little free time I did get some knitting done. Case in point:



Forecast from Knitty. It was all going very well. I had some lovely eggplant colored 100% wool from WEBS (their new Northampton worsted weight)a great pattern with some lovely mods up my sleeves, and lots of ambition to finish before it turns cold. Well, obviously the knitting gods did not have that in mind because I totally and utterly fucked up. First it was the charted pattern. This was my first time ever using a chart for cables (I've used a chart before for my first fair isle project, Knitty's Center Square but that was for colorwork not cables). I obviously don't know how to read a chart because I came out with this:

See how the cable is all elongated and very, well, not cable-y? Yeah, that's because in the instructions, on the wrong side rows you are supposed to just purl. Well, I didn't realize that the chart also takes this into consideration and charted the wrong side as well as the right side (I thought it just charted the right side). So I got a cable that was double the length specified. The resulting cable wasn't too bad looking, but it certainly didn't look the one in the photos attached to the pattern.

Now if it was just the cable that was messed up I might have been able to live with that, but there was another catastrophe brewing. When I got to the row count in the pattern where you put the sleeves on the waste yarn I was off on the stitch count. Wayyyyy off. So in light of all of the problems I had I decided my best option was to frog it back to the collar. This was my biggest ever frog, over a full ball was knitted that need to be frogged. So I'm back to the collar now and have done two full (correct) repeats of the chart and it is looking much better and way more cablelicious. Oh and I forgot to tell you, I finally finished Wicked! I finally frogged the crappy droopy sleeve and reknit it with more flattering decreases. I also reinforced the button holes and blocked it! I'm just waiting for a none cloudy, less than 100 degree day to photograph it properly. Hopefully, in the next post!


*OR FORECAST: Cloudy and Overcast With Huge F*ck Ups Likely

I'm Back - And With Knitting!

Well, I'm back from NYC and ready to show you what I've been working on. Y'all must have thought that I fell off of the face of the earth. Well I didn't, just too much to do around the house/work/life in general, but I do have a treat to show you...



The Retro Redux Shrug! It's been a month in the making, and has been finished for two weeks now, so I thought it was time for a proper debut. If you recall, I knit this for my trip to NYC. I knew we were going to try to catch a Broadway show, and I know just how cold theaters/restaurants/hotels can be, plus I've been eying this pattern up since I bought "Lace Style." It was a relatively quick knit, I worked on it when I could over about two weeks. Here are the details:

Pattern: Retro Redux Shrug by Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark available in the book "Lace Style" by Ann Budd and Pam Allen. The pattern is quite cool, instead of complicated shaping, it employs the use of four different needle sizes, US8 to US10.5. This allows the sleeves to fit correctly and taper like if you had knit them with increases (if knitting from the cuff up). Basically you knit a rectangle, sew up the two ends to a certain length (to create the sleeves) then pick up stitches around the perimeter and knit short rows to shape the collar. The lace pattern is super simple, it is a brioche lace pattern and very easy to memorize.



Almost too easy... there were a few times when I got distracted and forgot a yarn over or something similar and messed up the stitch count. It was easily enough remedied, but if you look closely some of the lace looks a little funky. This was my first lace project, although I wouldn't consider it a "real" lace project, that features lots of thin strands of yarn and tiny needles, something that I will get to eventually. Overall, the pattern is really simple, and lots of fun I definitely would knit this again.

Yarn: I used Knit Picks Wool of the Andes 100% worsted weight wool in "Cherry Blossom" a hot pink. I picked this yarn, well, because I had it in my stash (I still have about 12 skeins of the stuff, early in my knitting days I envisioned lots of felting). The good: It's wool so I was able to block it easily and it held the dimensions I blocked it to. The bad: It's July, and HOT. Maybe not the best yarn to use for a summer shrug, winter yes, summer no.

Mods: I did modify the size slightly to better fit me. For the sleeves I began knitting the largest version - 46" long, but once I hit the part with you knit with the largest needle size I shortened the length to 44" somewhere between the Large and Medium sizes.



Overall Thoughts: I really like this shrug. It's a cute addition to your wardrobe and can easily spice up boring outfits, plus it will keep you warm in the summer when you need to frequent over air-conditioned spaces. Things I would change, the yarn I used. I should have used a more season appropriate choice, perhaps a cotton blend. Also my collar came out a bit funky.



But I think that was more my fault than the patterns. I had a hard time blocking it correctly, and it could probably be fixed with another wet blocking. It was also a really fast knit. One could probably knit it in a weekend, I'm just a slow knitter and didn't have a lot of free time on my hands while knitting this shrug, so it took me two weeks.

In NYC

Hey Guys, I'm in NYC for the weekend but I'll be back next week with lots to show you. Hopefully I'll have nice photos of the retro redux shrug to show you in her element. I'm typing this from my new cellphone so we'll see if this whole mobile blogging thing works. See you next week!

Moving...Eventually

Well, I have taken the plunge and decided to move to wordpress and self-host my blog. Over the next few weeks this entire site will be totally overhauled. Until then I will still be posting here. Hopefully if all goes well, in a few weeks I'll have a shiny new website to show you. I'm totally out of my element right now as I have no web design experience so things are progressing slowly, but I have the utmost confidence that it will all turn out well. To access this site temporarily you might want to bookmark the blogger page instead of my personal domain. Here's the link. I have a few FOs to show you later this week when the photographer (read: Justin) has time. Thanks for bearing with me!