Done! Finally done!

Of the three sweaters that were on my needles, this is the one that I started most recently. The knowledge of those older sweaters, however, shall not dampen my sense of triumph over finally finishing! Sam's! Cobblestone!

I love this sweater. More importantly, Sam loves this sweater. It's pilling a little already, from him wearing it. Can pilling make me happy? Yes it can.

The details:

pattern: Cobblestone by Jared Flood (aka brooklyn tweed)

yarn: Di.Ve Zenith, 7 skeins

needles: US size 7 Knitpicks

mods: Quite a few. I used my gauge, Sam's measurements, and my mad math skillz to size it for him. I also (obviously) made it a "zip-up," as he requested. I omitted the short-rows, because Sam is a stick person and I was running out of yarn. Actually, I did run out of yarn. That's why there's the gray striping in the shoulders. When it became obvious that I wasn't going to make it, I looked for more yarn, but it was a Webs closeout so no dice. I had some of the same yarn in a light chartreuse so I overdyed it with black and used that. It didn't come out black, but I did two-row stripes with the dyed yarn and the last skein of the black and it came out pretty cool. Gotta love knitting's potential for flexibility and ingenuity.

The zipper was not nearly as scary as I thought it would be.

I have issues with sewing in a straight line on the machine, so I decided to hand-sew the zipper in, using backstitch. I also decided to use embroidery floss, for extra strength and because, well, I have a lot of it. The black floss matched the sweater really well; on the front of the sweater, you can't see the stitches at all.


It was actually impossible to see the stitches even as I was sewing in the zipper, so they meander a little. Ah well.

The last details Sam wanted were these holes for his thumbs:

I don't know that I really see the appeal, but he's been known to, um, add these holes to his other shirts. And I didn't want to have to harm him in some fit of knitterly rage (kidding! Just kidding!).

I'm so happy with how this turned out. And I have cast on Reese's sweater already - a top-down raglan in the same yarn in green. It will also be really boring knitting (damn these kids and their plain-sweater tastes), but hopefully it won't take me five months like Sam's did. Yikes.

Oh, and there are more pictures on Ravelry!

on the needles in 2009

Hmm. Looks pretty similar to what was on the needles in 2008.

In Bag #1:

Big Brother's Cobblestone, which was supposed to be the first of three sweaters I would make the kids for Christmas. Whoops. It's nearly four inches into the yoke, practically done, for Pete's sake. As the holiday drew closer and I knew there was no way the kids' sweaters were getting done, I put it down in favor of the smaller projects I had to finish. This will be the first thing I pick back up.

In Bag #2:

The Bubble Pullover. I've got just one more pentagon to go, then the sleeves, collar, and the ribbed section at the bottom. Man, those pentagons were getting boring. I remember writing when I first started this sweater that it wouldn't ever get boring. I've been betrayed by the Bubble. Or my own attention span. Whatever.

In Bag #3:

Oh, man, the seamless hybrid. I cast this on in - wait, let me check - holy crap, last January! That's just sad. If I remember correctly, I'm somewhere on the second sleeve. So I need to finish that, join everything together, and hopefully remember what the hell I had planned for the yoke.

And speaking of my short attention span, I've got a couple of new projects going too. The first is, well, another cowl. They're like a disease, I swear.

Pretty, though, isn't it? It's Plymouth Baby Alpaca Grande I got for Christmas (thanks, Nancy!). The pattern is this Spiral Cowl, with a couple of mods. Besides changing the gauge, I also substituted a regular hem for the picot hem, and kfb increases for the yarnovers. Both changes make it a little simpler and less lacy (though it is beautiful and not at all fussy as is), which I like better with the bulky yarn.

Lastly, I've also got a mystery project going:

I can't share this one just yet, but I'm putting it in for the sake of completing this public shaming project inventory.

And, well, I know I wasn't going to make any New Year's resolutions, but here goes: These will not still be on the needles in 2010!

works in progress

Reese got a magic kit for Christmas this year, and he's been doing a lot of practicing. He's got some good tricks, too - there's one he does with a pair of dice that's very cool. The part that's really a work in progress is his magician's patter. For example, he has this trick that consists of pulling a yellow rope out of an egg. Not much to it, so it's kind of all in the presentation. His first attempt was to hold up the egg, forcefully declare, "This has no openings in it!" then pull out the rope. Um.



We suggested he might add more drama by saying he has an ordinary egg, and oh my gosh! what's this? etc. etc. So he held up the egg and said, "I have an egg!" Then, pulling out the rope, "WITH A ROPE IN IT!"



Which is our new catchphrase. Even Jane can be heard walking around the house muttering "I have an egg with a rope in it!" to herself.



As for my own works in progress, I finished the February baby sweater:

So fun to knit. pattern: EZ's February baby sweater, from the Knitter's Almanac. yarn: Dream in Color Classy. needles: size 6 Addi Turbos. mods: None really. I screwed up on the first repeat of the lace pattern, and forgot to keep the border in garter stitch. Once I noticed, I was too chicken to drop the border stitches down because I had a buttonhole in there too, so I just kept making the same mistake. It's a design element now.

So now that that's done, I am officially Working On Sam's Cobblestone. But at this point, the rows are still really long, and I've got most of the sweater hanging off the needles as I work, and
I just can't do a lot of it without wanting to either fall asleep or bury the thing under the 5-foot snow pile in the front yard. So I've also . . . cast on a sock. Don't judge.

Besides all the knitting, another reason I've been sort of blog-absent is playing around with shop stuff. I've been spending some time (time when I should probably be sleeping, mostly) working on things like getting my pictures to look better, reading up on stuff in the Etsy forums, and, of course, making things. And I've got a little prototype to show you:

So what the hell is the picture on that? It's a ray diagram. I've been messing around with some embroidery, but I wanted to do something a little different, that would reflect a little more of me. I hit upon this idea of doing glasses cases with pictures on them of the ray diagrams that show how the lenses work. This one is a converging lens, used to correct farsightedness.

I've also done one with a diverging lens, for nearsightedness. What do you think - too geeky? I thought it would be fun to keep my glasses in a case that shows how the lenses work, but then I'm kind of a nerd.

Well. I don't even know anymore what the time stamp on this post will be, but it's actually about 12:30 on Friday night. I keep getting pulled away, pulled in every direction. Both Jane and Sam have had bouts of fever and barfing (that part was just Sam, thank goodness), I've had to pinch-hit and go into work two nights this week, and I have still not found out how to get the laundry to do itself. And life goes on . . .

The gifts, they do not stop. Also, a salamander pattern, sort of.

Remember the on-the-needles stuff I showed you?

Well, I haven't touched any of it, and not (entirely) because I am lazy. Following close on the heels of Christmas is more gift-giving, in the form of birthdays and new babies. Plus there was still some Christmas stuff I hadn't finished yet . . .

First, here's a salamander I made for Jess' Magic Boy.

You know how sometimes the Yarn Harlot talks about projects that make you feel clever? This was one of those projects. I started with a picture of a salamander that's found in this area,

then amused myself trying to figure out how to do each part - How do I get the shape of the head? How do I make a curvy body? How do I do the little legs and toes? I did absolutely no counting while I made this, but in lieu of a pattern I can give you the "pithy" directions:

Start at the head, with the Eastern cast-on (or Judy's Magic Cast-on from knitty). Increase like you would for a sock toe, 2 stitches at each side every other round, stopping when the head looks big enough. Knit a few rounds until the head looks long enough, then do some decreases for the neck and increases to widen it back up for the body. At this point, if you're knitting this via Magic Loop, move the stitches around so that instead of having the top of the salamander on one needle and the bottom on the other, you have each side of the salamander on a needle. That way, as you knit the body, you can do some short-rows on one side, then the other, to get the S-shaped curve. (I also was stuffing it a little at a time as I went, and it was starting to look rather obscene hanging off my needles. I ignored my husband's raised eyebrows and knit on.) Decrease a little at a time for the tail; the last inch or so is I-cord. For each arm, pick up 8 stitches (in two sets of four, across from each other) at appropriate spots and knit a little tube (I didn't bother to stuff these). For the hand, knit back-and-forth on just 4 of the stitches for a couple of rows, increasing to 6 stitches on the first row. Do a little picot hem-turning to make three little toes, then do a couple more rows. Decrease back to 4 stitches and graft these 4 to the other 4 arm-stitches. Embroider some spots and add little seed-bead eyes. Ta-da!

Another gift I made is a Thermis for my sister's birthday. I used this handspun (lots of stuff in that post; keep scrolling), and the only mods I made to the pattern were to use both fewer stitches and fewer repeats of the thermal pattern to accomodate the thicker yarn. It came out a nice size.

I don't want to give it away.

And last but not least, I'm making EZ's February baby sweater for my sister-in-law's baby shower next month. I was very happy to find out she's having a girl so I could do the lace! Not that another BSJ wouldn't have been fun, too . . .

That gorgeous yarn is Dream in Color Classy. It's superwash, and the color is just amazing.

I'm sorry to say J's birthday will be going un-knitted-for this year. But he's really not a knitwear guy, and anything he might wear I've already made for him. I'll replace stuff as it wears out, but for his birthday I'd rather get something he'll use. I guess that's just what happens when you pick your husband before you learn how to knit. :)

The baby sweater is the last immediate gift I'll have to knit for a while, unless there's something I'm forgetting. Knowing me, that is entirely possible, but with any luck I'll be polishing off that Cobblestone soon. Or maybe even spending some time with my poor neglected wheel. Imagine that!

odds & ends

Man, do I love the inventor of bullets. Well, not, you know, bang-bang bullets; I'm referring to the pseudo-organizational tool I employ way more than I ought to. And here I go again!

• Fall has arrived! Hurrah! This just makes me so happy. The cooler weather is mostly here, and the leaves are starting to turn. It's lovely. Expect to see leaf pictures around here soon; I know I will not be able to help myself.
• The cooler weather has brought with it the return of my morning walk with Baby Sister. We frequent the local bike path, which this year has been christened "Treewater." I was reluctant to use the word bike with Baby Sister, as her biking skills are not really ready for anyplace but the driveway, so I described it to her as, "you know, the place with the trees, and the water," as enticingly as I could. Hence Treewater. I like it, I think I should mention it to whomever runs the park. It's much more poetic and succint than the "Ten Mile River Greenway." Don't you agree?
• Said morning walk has been touch and go. Baby Sister is not always enthusiastic about riding in her stroller. If she would prefer to walk, I'd be pretty much okay with that, but she'd prefer to push the stroller. Or climb and stand in the stroller. These things tend to slow us down, and for a couple of weeks the morning walks were routinely ending in tears. (Hers, I swear.) It's been better for the past few days, and I hope that continues. I'm becoming increasingly aware that this hour of relative quiet and physical activity is a big contributor to my sanity.
• This is largely because work has been pretty crazy. See, my boss and his wife own five Sylvan centers, and the director of one of those centers is no longer working for them. Which means that two or three days a week, my boss is working at the other center and I'm all by myself here for about half the workday, until students start coming in. Most of the time there's some work to be done, but I've got a lot of downtime. It's also just weird to be completely alone for such big chunks of time. Now if I were at home and completely alone for a big chunk of time, I would love it, but it's just not the same here. I've done a lot of blog reading, not so much posting (except for, you know, now), and very very little knitting. I'm paranoid that somebody will walk in looking for help for their child and I'll be sitting there with my sock yarn. I'm thinking that would be somewhat unprofessional. At least the computer makes it look like I'm doing something work-related.
• I've also been doing some online GRE prep, and I'm thinking I'm going to register to take the test soon. What I will do after that is less certain. I like my job a lot, but I don't see my kids nearly enough. Also there are no benefits whatsoever. I don't need healthcare, J's job is actually really good for that, but some sort of retirement something would probably be good. I know very very little about this kind of thing, but the news lately has just freaked me right out. It's very frustrating to regularly hear and read about this stuff that I understand just enough to get that it is Very Bad. Add the lack of any retirement benefits in my job and it gets all the more anxiety-producing.
• I have to add, I hate the fact that I'm considering a career change for monetary reasons. Everybody knows you don't go into teaching for the money; it was never supposed to be about money. I love teaching. I especially love the way I teach now - all sorts of subjects to all sorts of kids, one-on-one where you make such a great connection. It's so gratifying to hear from kids and parents how much we've helped them, and in this job I hear it all the time. It's awesome, with the one exception of that gnawing ache of missing my family. This reality-rearing-its-ugly-head thing sucks.
• And because all that would be a crappy way to end, I'll talk about knitting! I've cranked out a couple of small projects in the past two weeks, but I plan to post the pattern for those, so they'll have to wait. They're cute, though. :) I also cast on a bigger project, a cobblestone for Big Brother. I've got this crazy idea that I'd like all the kids to get sweaters for Christmas. You can look forward to the slow but steady unraveling of that idea (no pun intended) over the next few months; it should be fun. I sized the pattern down to fit his measurements, which wasn't too tough, and I've got just a little of it done at this point. He also requested a "zip-up," which is a little scary, but I've got quite a while before I have to face the zipper part. Amy has steered me toward a tutorial, so hopefully it will all be okay. The other thing that might make this sweater tough is the color - Big Brother picked out solid black. So far it hasn't been as difficult to see as I thought it would, and the yarn - di.Ve Zenith, which is a wonderfully squishy superwash merino - is nice to work with. A bit splitty, but I'm using some very pointy Knitpicks circulars so I haven't had much trouble.

Well, I think that's about it for now. I plan on posting that pattern later this week. No, really. See you then.