Why isn’t everything in the world exactly the way I like it?

Things would be so much easier if it was.

I have several pairs of INOX circular needles. Most of mine are nickel-plated, but I also have a couple plain aluminum, and one . . . nylon? I like them. They are nice needles, especially the nickel-plates. The cables are smooth and flexible, and the joins are pretty smooth, too. The problem I have discovered just lately is that in the larger sizes (I think the problem starts at size 8, for me at least), the points are too blunt. For the most part, this isn’t a problem for me. I’m not a speed knitter, although I’m not pokey, either (ha!). But I tried doing a cable cast-on for the Two Summer Sundress, and it was a bitch-and-a-half to get the yarn pulled through because the tip of the needle is really wide. I thought about switching to my interchangables, but they might have given a different gauge because they’re just aluminum (not that this stops me from using them as the second set of circs if I’m doing something in the round with one set of nickel-plated, I just like to complain and if you haven’t figured this out about me yet, you’ve obviously never encountered me before), and I didn’t want to have to do another gauge swatch. I finally managed it, but the cast-on edge is maybe a little looser than I would have liked.

I really like the way cabled cast-on looks, though.

I don’t have anywhere near a “complete” set of needles (as if there could ever be such a thing), but I’m wondering what sort I should get next time I buy needles. I know I like Addi Turbos, although I seem to have lost the few sets I had of those. I have one set of KnitPicks circs, which I haven’t really used because it turns out I’m knitting kind of loose again, even with wrapping the yarn around my pinky (I’m thinking of doing something like the woman in the remake of The Ladykillers, where she wraps it around each of her fingers, but I don’t know if I’ll like that), and I had to go up three sizes to get the right gauge for that project (and I think I could honestly have gone up another, but maybe some of it’s the yarn and not my knitting). I have one set of bamboo DPNs that I got to make the Shawl from Niflheim (which, Spricey, is still not blocked), and those are really nice to work with. My interchangable set is a Boye Needlemaster. I have several Susan Bates circs, too.

So, if anyone has any favorite needles they’d like to recommend — interchangables, straights, circs, DPNs, those really long ones they stick in their belts in the Shetlands, whatever — feel free to let me know!

Things I have done instead of posting.

1. I am almost finished with a gargantuan scarf I’m making for my friend Grace. I’ll be out of yarn sometime real soon now, and then I’ll have to find a stretch of floor long enough to lay it out and measure it. It’s got to be close to nine feet long (it’s long enough if I hold one end in my hand and stretch my arm way up, it still pools on the floor). And she keeps saying, “I knew we should have gotten another skein!”

2. I made Grace a womb. I’d teach her how to knit for herself, but she’s tried it and not done well, and has decided it’s not for her.

3. I made Little Cat Z a Summerlin dress. It’s very cute, even if I did run out of yarn and have to do the last row and bind off in a different yarn (and a different color). It turned out very big, especially the straps, and I’m not sure if that’s because of the yarn I used (KnitPicks Shine Worsted), but I think it might be. I was going to make one for my niece, but my sister-in-law has not sent me her chest measurement yet. I could always guess, but I think my SIL might be pissed at me, in which case, I’ll just make another one for Little Cat Z instead.

4. I started a Storm Cloud Shawlette for myself. I’m using the whole ball of KnitPicks Palette I had leftover from my Shetland Shorty. I had to figure out (yes, it was imperative) what rows would put me at 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 of the way done. I did a spreadsheet (I know, I’m a geek) to find the total number of stitches it would have after I do my last row (I’m doing the blue version with the ruffly bit, and I’m taking a cue from Ravelry member akabori and I’ll bind off on the wrong side with all stitches and yarnovers, to keep it really ruffly), and then see which rows would be the quarter-marks. I came up with 7227 stitches total, and row 43 is about 1/4, row 62 about 1/2, and row 76 will be about 3/4. I’m on row 48, so I’m over a quarter of the way done. (ETA: Yes, I probably could have used the formula for the area of a circle to figure it out, but I imagine this was faster.)

5. I took pictures of the patchwork afghan I made for my good spouse. I also took pictures of something else, I’m pretty sure. Yarn, maybe (which my good spouse thinks is hilarious). Now I need to finish that roll and take it and the one that’s sitting in the fridge to get them developed so I can post the pictures.

Eureka!

I’ve picked up the Super Secret Project again. After the day where I played Baron Munchausen, I realized that the last piece of yarn I attached to finish off the last panel was not, in fact, wool. The room I was in when I was doing the hunt-and-splice bit doesn’t have the best light, and I pulled this fairly long bit of yarn out of my scraps bag, and it looked like the right color (natural), and I don’t have any other natural-colored scraps of the same weight, so I just figured it must be the right thing, right? And it seemed to felt together nicely, so it must have been wool!

The next time I took it out of the bag, it was pretty obvious I was wrong. The very last bit was actually white, not natural, and the last bit of the wool had kind of felted around the white (which must be the cheap acrylic stuff I used to make Thing One’s Hallowe’en costume a couple years ago). Ooops. So, I took that out and added on some of my WOTA. It’s a prototype. It doesn’t have to be pretty.

Now I’ve got my panels all put together, but I have some more work I need to do with something non-felting, and I’ve been agonizing over how to go about attaching it, and how to get it to work right, and I just couldn’t figure anything out. This morning, when I should have been getting ready to go to work, I pulled out the project, cut out a piece of scrap fabric and pinned it where the non-felted knitting is supposed to go, and just looked at it for a while. Then I did some measuring and hemming and hawing, until I finally just thought, “Short rows!” Seriously, with the exclamation point and everything.

I’m sure I’d considered short rows already, but discarded the idea as unworkable. Probably because however I was thinking of using them then would have been unworkable. But I think I’ve got it now. I’m doing a sample piece, not attached to the project, to make sure I’ve got the idea right, but once I have my numbers correct and it all looks good, it shouldn’t take long to do these last little bits and then throw it some hot water and see what happens.

It’s perfect!

I am an inveterate and veteran web-surfer. I’ve been spending far too much time following links for at least fifteen (hmm, maybe fourteen) years. Ravelry does not help this. It starts out innocently enough. I look at my friends’ activity. Of course, the only person who has any activity on there is the lovely Triskellian, so that doesn’t take me long, even on days when she has a lot of activity. So then I look at her friends’ activity. And that’s when it all starts to get out of control. I start looking at patterns people I’ve never heard of have put on their queues, and finding new yarns that I just really want to get my hands on, and new on-line magazines and . . . two hours later, my queue and favorites pages well filled (in fact, I have completely emptied my queue in a fit of pique recently and need to refill it), I’ll have gotten absolutely no paying work or knitting done.

Another thing I really like about Ravelry (and yes, as much as I might complain about wasted time, I do like surfing the ’site), that I’ve had a chance to witness a lot with all this surfing, is the comments people leave about patterns. My absolute favorites are where someone will say, “Oh, I <3 this pattern! It’s faboo! Absolutely perfect! I’m going to make it in a different color, with a different yarn, and I’m going to make the ribbing an inch longer and turn it into a cardigan and I think I’ll add a cable detail to the neckline! It’s perfect!” Okay, so I exaggerate. But not by much. And you know it’s true.

Now, let me tell you about my new favorite pattern and how I’m going to do it differently . . .

Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I’m delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever.*

You know that scene from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen where they’re coming back from the moon, and they’ve run out of rope at the bottom, so the Baron ties on a new length, and Berthold (I think it’s Berthold) asks where he got it, and the Baron explains, rather huffily, that he cut it off the top, of course? (Insert a similar scene from a Warner Brothers cartoon if you haven’t seen Munchausen, and then go rent the movie.)

I kind of feel like I’ve been doing that.

I was almost finished with the last panel on the Super Secret project, and I ran out of the Bare yarn. So . . . I fished some cut off ends out of my scrap yarn bag, and did spit splices. (My good spouse was in the shower, so he didn’t have to be witness to me “doing something gross.”) Then I ran out of yarn. I cut off the long tails left from casting on and did some more spit splices. I’m finally finished, and I have two little pieces left I could have spliced on if I’d become terribly desperate. They’re about two inches and two and a half inches long. And it was a near thing, too.

I’m going to use the Wool of the Andes I have to join the panels and do whatever else I decide I need to do with wool. It’s a prototype. It doesn’t have to look pretty. Although I think it still will look nice, just not quite how I picture the actual finished project.

I’m pretty sure that a single hank of the Bare will be enough to do the whole project. I have four gauge-type swatches that were necessary for designing, but someone doing the project by itself will probably only need one. We’ll see. I like the idea that it could be a single-ball project. Even though it won’t quite, because it’ll need a ball of non-feltable yarn, too, but it’ll be close.

*From The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Progress

I’ve just finished the second panel of the Super Secret Project. Well, finished knitting. It needs to have ends woven in yet. That leaves two panels, and putting them all together, and adding the other part. Then I can felt it and see if it all works. Then, assuming it does, I need to get more of the Bare yarn and actually dye it and make a new one. So far, it seems to be going according to plan. I just hope it continues to do so.

I did use the smaller motifs. They work better in so many ways I don’t want to list them all. And I did remember to rip the first panel out and measure the yarn. It really made me wish I had a scale, because figuring total grams would have been a lot easier, I’m sure.

---

The ribbing on the legwarmers slipped down past my knees eventually, but that was it. The shaping of the calf kept it pretty well in place. The ribbing is very stretched out. I don’t know if increasing the ribbing — stitch-wise, not round-wise, of course — would solve the problem or exacerbate it. I have yet to wash them and see how the yarn holds up. I will do that this weekend.

Ta-da!

The legwarmers are on my legs, as I type. They’re definitely keeping my legs warm. I haven’t yet asked anyone here in the office if they’re appropriate for wearing in the office, at least as I’m dressed today — a skirt short enough that there’s skin showing between the tops of the legwarmers and the hem of the skirt.

I don’t like how fuzzy they look. I parked in my usual almost-as-far-away-as-you-can-get parking space this morning, and took the stairs, and by the time I got to my desk, they’d slipped down a couple inches. Hopefully neither of these things will get worse, either as the day goes on, or as the days go on.

Problems I had: somehow I did the extra stitch thing again. Twice. The second one, I started to drop the stitch, but after going down just two rows it was obvious the ladder left by that would have been immense, so I picked it back up and just purled two together. The last one I caught after only one row. Which would be the row after the one where I caught the second one. So while I was fixing one, I was making another one. Go me.

Then, I was on row 10 of the second to last Hauser Model repeat (it has ten rows), and I discovered that I was off a stitch. Either I’d dropped one (in the middle of a cable pattern, wouldn’t that be nice?), or something else screwy happened. So I dropped the entire cable (twelve, well, eleven stitches). I went back a full repeat of the cable before I found where I had somehow not done the last cable stitch on a round, so I dropped the next stitch down, and had to rework an entire repeat of the cable. The ladders are nasty. I was this close, ><, to ripping the whole damned thing out and starting over. Obviously I didn’t, or I wouldn’t be wearing them today.

Anyway, they are warm, they are fuzzy, and I’m not sure if I’ll be told to take them off. I couldn’t not wear them today, though, since tomorrow it’s supposed to be in the seventies, and I didn’t want to wear them with a long skirt, because then no one would be able to see them, and that might be too warm. At least, in the car. The office is cold enough usually that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to wear them under longer skirts.

Hopefully I’ll get pictures taken of them before they get too fuzzy and the cables disappear.

Now I will go back to making the Super Secret Project, and see about making a scarf for Grace.

Getting there.

Three inches of ribbing — even twisted ribbing — can be pretty boring. But at least I did it. The second legwarmer is finished. I tried it on and it fits nicely. I didn’t have to add on the third ball of yarn until I was a couple of rounds into the ribbing.

I got back to work on the first legwarmer . . . and I’m starting to wonder if dpns are better for this pattern. Or maybe it’s just that I’m never satisfied. Hopefully I’ll be finished with it this weekend. Now that I’ve got one done, maybe that will be the inspiration I need to just get this one done, so I can finally wear them!

In related news, I lost one of my dpns again. This time I know it’s in the car. I got stopped at the train tracks yesterday, and decided I could get a few more stitches cast off. I pulled the legwarmer out of my bag, completely forgetting that I had already cast off one whole needle, and then stuck the needle back into the legwarmer to keep it handy. Of course, it fell out, and is somewhere underneath one of the seats, I think. At least this time I won’t feel compelled to go shine a flashlight all over the gas station parking lot.

Still working

I don’t think I’ve ever knit anything before that made me doubt my abilities as much as these legwarmers.

Not that this will stop me from making another pair. I’ve had a subtle request (”I still say those would look better in this color,” “this color” being her favorite, not mine) for one and the yarn called for in the pattern (Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport) is relatively inexpensive (as is the KnitPicks Gloss, but I want to make it in the yarn used in the original, see if I can get my measurements to come out like theirs) and Brown Sheep is one of the brands The Yarn Exchange (which vaguely resembles a local yarn store, in that it’s only about thirty miles away) has carried since opening. So, I’ll probably be making another pair in the not-too-distant future, and I’ll be able to put all I’ve learned from this pair to the test.

I was almost done with the lozenge pattern and I counted my stitches to make sure everything was going as planned. Somehow I’d come up with an extra stitch. I followed it down, and it was ten rows back. So I dropped two stitches — the extra one and the one next to it that looked like the parent stitch — and followed them down. Of course, the one that I thought was the parent, wasn’t. In the course of finding that out, I figured out what happened, though. I’m pretty sure I wrapped the yarn around the needle to make a stitch, and then didn’t actually pull it through like I should have, so essentially, I slipped a stitch and did a yarn over. Then the next row I knit (well, purled) each of them. So, I dropped the parent stitch, picked up the yarn where I’d just slipped it, and worked it back up.

At some point in there, I started figuratively smacking my forehead because I really could have just purled two of those stitches together and left it at that. Now, I have a bit of a ladder problem there. Me, the person with the ladder paranoia, just gave myself ladders. Grr.

I have a quibble with the pattern. I don’t know if it’s just the way I read it, but it says:

The 8 sts rem from the Lozenge chart will look very similar to Rnd 3 of the Hauser Model chart, which is the rnd you are about to work on the front of the leg. Move the rnd marker exactly halfway around (31 sts each side of marker) and count the beg of the rnd from that point. . . . Work 6 rnds even in patt cont Hauser Model as established on front leg and Hauser Model above Lozenge on back of leg.

It goes on from there to explain the increases, which, after all is said and done, should leave you at rnd 10 of the Hauser Model chart.

I read the part quoted above as saying you move the marker halfway around and finish that round. Then you do 6 rnds in patt. That didn’t seem like it would leave you at rnd 10 after doing all the increasing, so I checked, and it wouldn’t. If you take the rnd where you move the marker as being the first of the 6 rnds in patt, that has you finishing the increases at rnd 10.

It’s not a big deal, but it just seems like it could have been better written (read, “how I would have written it”). And I still don’t understand why you have to move the rnd marker. I really think they could have added a row between the Open Twist chart and the Lozenge, or changed the Open Twist chart . . . something so that the front and back would have coincided at the end of the Lozenge chart, without the rigamarole of moving the marker. Not that I had a marker to move, as I’ve mentioned before.

Also, I checked the length of this one against the first, when I was finished with the Lozenge chart (which is where I left off with the first one), and they seem to be just about even, so that’s good. I am not going to rip out the first one. Even with the ladders, and the cables that go the wrong way (by the way, I did it with the second one, too, but I caught it after only a couple repeats this time), I think it will be fine. Besides, if I don’t rip it out and start over, I have a better chance of being able to wear these before it gets too warm.

Speaking of which, if I weren’t sitting at the computer, I could be knitting, and they’d be done that much faster.

The home stretch.

I’m on row 62 of the lozenge chart. There are 98 rows to that (so only 36 more), plus 38 more rows of the Hauser model (unless I’m misunderstanding the instructions, and there are only 34), plus three inches of ribbing. I do not think I will be able to finish this one without getting out the third hank. It’ll be close, though, so there will be plenty leftover for me to do something else with it, maybe a pair of gloves, with fingers, even. Of course, I have to finish the first one still, too.

I might even finish them before it gets too warm to wear them. I’ve decided that I’m not working on anything else until they’re done. I might not stick to that, but that’s the current plan. I think it’s conceivable that I could finish them this weekend. I’m not going to count on that, but I’m hopeful.