I’m all confoozled.

I can’t decide which is better: keeping detailed project notes in Ravelry, or putting them here. I keep going back and forth.

Anyway, I got through the ten rows of ribbing on the Hallowig, and started the setup for decreasing. I think the pattern is a little unclear on a couple things. Are you supposed to do the first decrease before the second marker on the bangs side? I’m pretty sure that’s what it says to do, and it pretty much makes sense, since the second marker on the bangs side is actually right at the beginning of the round, but the way it’s worded makes it sound like the round should be starting in the middle of the bangs . . . I had to read it several times to make sense of it. Maybe it’s just me, though, since no one on Ravelry seemed to have that problem.

Then, reading ahead in the instructions, trying to figure out if I was right or not, I saw the line, “Work this round every round until 6 sts rem between markers.” This, to me, sounds like there should be twenty-four stitches on the needles at that point (there are four markers). Except, you only decrease between markers one and two, not between two and one (really, it makes sense, go look at the diagram). When I copied the pattern to print it out, I didn’t include the actual photos, just the text and diagrams, so I had to wait until our computer was not being used to check, and yes, you only decrease between one and two. It’s very obvious when you look at the aerial-view picture of the actual wig. So, just a little thing I would have worded differently. Or maybe I shouldn’t have read ahead (isn’t that what they tell you in school?) and then when I actually got to that point, I would have known what was meant. Or maybe this should be a signal to me to stop being so cheap about my printer ink and copy the photos, too.

A list.

The forementioned pile of projects on my plate:

The Purse
Hallowig for bibliogrrl, who is shaving her head for Gilda’s Closet in Chicago.
Shirt for Thing Two (almost finished, just needs buttonholes and buttons)
“Chain mail” tunic for Thing One’s Hallowe’en costume
Swordfish fin for Thing Two’s Hallowe’en costume
Trick-or-treat bag for Little Cat Z (thinking about doing a tutorial on how to make one, too)
Dress for Thing One (designing it for her)
Dress for Little Cat Z (based on dress for Thing One, but with different yarn and a much smaller size, seeing how well the pattern can be altered)
Cropped cardigan for me (heavily modifying Ravelry pattern Sweet Little Nothing)
Ripping out first Sweet Little Nothing and finding something else I can make with that yarn (maybe The Amanda Hat)
A skirt for Grace
A skirt for me
A skirt pattern I came up with the other day that may or may not work (although I don’t even have fabric for this, so it probably shouldn’t be listed here)
Finish the super secret felting project (needs I-cord still) and figure out what the heck I’m doing with it

I think that’s far more projects than I really need to have going all at once. Hopefully by the end of this weekend, I’ll have the first three done (although if the first Hallowig works well, I might make more, but we’ll see).

So much time, so little to do!

. . . Strike that. Reverse it. (Thank you, Willy Wonka.)

I have far too many projects on my plate right now. I probably wouldn’t if I wasn’t running into stumbling blocks every other day.

I’ve knitted and felted The Little Coco Bag. I used the KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in Pigeon Twist that I already had, instead of doing two colors, and I did 3-stitch I-cord instead of 2-stitch. Everything was going really well until it came time to get the grommets. My mom had some, but the largest she had were 1/4″ (which is what the pattern calls for, but my larger I-cord would have fit too snugly), so I had to go buy some 3/8″ grommets. They had the grommets at JoAnn’s, but not the setting tool. My good spouse was going to try to make one up for me, but before he got a round tuit, we found the setting tool at Michael’s. Of course, I didn’t have enough cash on me for all the other neat stuff I found there, so I wanted to write a check. Unfortunately, I was a bad girl and am driving on a ticket (I should have my license back this week, I think), and Michael’s won’t take a check without a picture ID. So we had to wait another week or so before we could go back (it’s a thirty mile drive, I wasn’t going back until I had more reasons to go than just the grommet tool).

I finally have both the grommets and the grommet tool, all in one place, and I can start working on getting the grommets into the bag. Poking holes into heavy felted fabric is not as easy as it sounds. I couldn’t get my size 13 needles (which is what they say to use in the pattern) through the fabric at all. (I don’t believe they actually used those dpns in the picture on the pattern to make the holes. They’d have punctured their hands. I think they made the holes then put the dpns in because they looked nicer.) I decided to start with smaller needles (10 1/2s), get the holes in there, then stretch them out with the 13s. This worked, but as soon as I took the 13s out, the holes shrank. So I decided to leave them for a day. That seemed to work better. But my troubles weren’t over yet.

When I got home that night, I decided I’d wait until the kids went to bed to set the grommets. In case you’re wondering, this is not a good idea. “Quietly hammering” is an oxymoron. I managed, with the help of my good spouse, to get one in place, but decided not to do any more until another evening, before the kids went to bed.

One thing my good spouse noticed was that there was a 1/4″ snap part in with my grommets. We joked about how they call the grommet parts male and female, so ha-ha, neither of us had to actually finish the thought. This continued to be funny, in my mind at least, until last night, when I finally went to set the last of the grommets.

I was still having trouble getting the grommets into the holes. I could have stretched them out further with 15s, but I didn’t feel like waiting any longer. Then the lightbulb in my brain came on. The size 13 needles are just the right size for the 3/8″ grommets to fit around. I slid a male-part grommet onto a needle, pushed the needle through the hole, and then, with a modicum of effort, pushed the grommet into the hole. It worked perfectly. The perfection continued as I worked my way around, all the way up to the seventh grommet, when I realized that I didn’t still have two male-parts that were just stacked tightly together. I had one, plus the little “baby” snap.

Of course, I don’t have the receipt from JoAnn’s anymore. I’m going to call before going out there (thirty mile drive, remember) and see if they will, without the receipt, take the baby snap part and give me a daddy grommet part, and then they can send the opened package back to Dritz as a faulty set.

I’m really looking forward to finishing this. I’m going to line it with a lighter shade of matching purple fabric that I happily found in my fabric stash (it is just the right amount), and then I’m going to try it out and see if it might actually be The Purse. You know, The Purse for which I have been searching for years. The Purse which will be the perfect size to hold everything I need, plus maybe a paperback book and a few other things I just want to carry.

Hopefully, once I get the correct grommet part (if JoAnn’s can’t do the little exchange I have in mind, I’ll just buy more grommets, seeing as how the package of eight was less than three bucks, anyway), that will be the end of my troubles with this project, and I can move on to solving the problems I’m having with others.

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.

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.

I don’t like the looks of this.

I think I’ve got my “panel” for the super secret project figured out, at least the basics. I felted it last night, and it seems to be a good size. Now, the problem is that I have some motifs I would like to add in another color. And I’m doing it in the round.

Intarsia scares me. I know it shouldn’t. I’ve been knitting for about thirty years. I have done intarsia plenty of times. I just have this irrational fear of creating puckered fabric. I have been telling myself for at least the last year that I need to get over it and just do some. I should probably do some Fair Isle, too. But that’s neither here nor there for this. This is intarsia all the way. I could do duplicate stitch, except that I have never managed to get duplicate stitch to actually work. I don’t know what I do wrong, but the duplicate yarn always slides to the side and gets lost or something. It’s very frustrating. Besides, I went through an awful lot of fussing around with geometry to figure out how to make this work so I could easily do the intarsia, and I would be really annoyed with myself if I wasted all that time. I could rework the pattern so it’s flat, but I really think this is something better done in the round. Plus, my goal is to have no seams.

Each motif is at most five stitches wide, and there isn’t a lot of main color inside the contrast color, so I think I will try out the method described at Moth Heaven. I probably don’t need to mention that I, too, like fiddly stuff. If that doesn’t work for me, there are also a few methods described on let me explaiKnit, so I’ll go there next.

I decided I’m not going to wait to actually get the other yarn. I’m going to substitute something else I already have, and if that works reasonably well, then I will buy more yarn. If it doesn’t, I’ll have saved myself time and money, and I need all of both of those I can get. Can’t everyone?

Loose tights. Tight slacks.

I’m having tension problems. I thought I might, with all the slippy/non-slippy stuff going on with the DPNs. I checked the second legwarmer against the first this afternoon, and the second one looks to be coming up a little short. I’ve had so many problems with these that I’d really like to be able to blame the pattern, but as I’ve faithfully documented all of my screw-ups, it would be really obvious that it wasn’t the pattern’s fault.

Since I’m much happier with how the second one is turning out, I’m going to keep going with it. I’ll try it on in a couple inches — once the bottom of the calf shaping is done — and make sure it fits properly around, and that the calf shaping doesn’t start too far down. As long as that all seems to be okay, I’ll finish it. Maybe I’ll change my mind, again, and rip out the first one and re-do it. I’ll have to see what I think when I get to that point.

In happier knitting news, I did wear (am still wearing) my Shetland Shorty today. I still really, really like it. I’m not so thrilled with how it looked with my camisole tucked into my elastic waistband skirt, but it looks okay with the shirt not tucked in, and it looked great with the shirt tucked into jeans. Elastic waistbands are nice and easy to wear, but they can look really crappy.

This yarn has gone to meet its maker!

(I put this in the Ravelry notes for my Broken Down Tara sweater, but I think it’s a little long and more post-like for that. So I moved it here.)

This is the sweater that made me decide I never want to let another person make yarn substitutions for me. My friend Heather really liked this sweater, but she’s allergic to wool. And she wanted dove grey, when dove grey was not an easy color to find. No one was using dove grey yarn. I went to the yarn shop (Jefferson Stitches in Naperville, Illinois) and asked for help finding a cotton replacement.

That’s how I came to have a bunch of dove grey Brunswick Rio in my stash.

I was almost finished with the front. It was gorgeous. It was beautiful. It had been a joy to work.

I had used almost half the yarn.

In the meantime, Brunswick went out of business. I searched and searched for Rio in that dove grey, going through closeout bins, asking people I knew to ask people they knew. The sweater is knit with two strands, so I didn’t even care what the dye lot was. No such animal as extra skeins of Brunswick Rio in dove grey existed. It was not pining for the fjords. It was an ex-yarn.

By the time I gave up, Heather had moved to Indiana, so I just picked another sweater (from a Vogue Knitting magazine I’m sure I have lying around so I’ll post it later) without her input and made it for her. I wound up with quite a bit of the yarn left.

One of these days I want to rebuild Tara. Maybe for myself, maybe for Thing One. For someone. But I’ll either use the yarn called for, or I’ll make my own substitution.

I should add that I don’t really blame the woman who made the suggestion to use Rio, and figured out how much I should have needed. Substituting yarns, especially when you’re using completely different fibers and looking for a little-used color, isn’t easy. I just would prefer that if something like that should happen again, I have only myself to blame.

Of course, a few years later, my mom bought me the yarn to make this absolutely gorgeous sweater (another VK find that I’ll have to add to Ravelry eventually), and my brother (who knits) found a substitute. I do blame him for that sweater not turning out right. How much of that is sibling rivalry and how much is deserved, I don’t know, and don’t particularly care.;-)

A needle in a haystack

I’ve hit a bit of a snag.

I’ve got about one and a half repeats of the front cable (Hauser model? I can’t remember) for the legwarmer done, but one of my DPNs has gone AWOL. Better call in the FBI, maybe put out an APB.

I know I had it when I left the office. I was knitting while walking down the stairs, and I stood outside the car to finish the last couple stitches on one needle. I think I had it in the car, because I’m pretty sure I was at a stoplight where I had enough time to knit. The only time I got out of the car between work and home was at the gas station. I walked down there and asked if anyone had brought it inside, and then looked in the lot by where my car had been parked. I’ve looked in the car, and on our driveway. Tomorrow I’ll look in the parking garage at work.

I have three options, assuming it’s lost for good. One, I can switch to knitting on four DPNs, which I’d rather not do, especially since I’ve already had trouble with ladders. Two, I can switch to using two circulars, one nickelplated, one nylon. Again, I’d rather not do that, since the two needles are different enough I worry what it would do to my gauge. Three, I can switch to using two circulars, one nickelplated, one aluminum, which would mean either waiting until I’m done with the body of the Shetland Shorty or setting it aside until I’m done with the legwarmers.

A fourth option is I can find out if my mom has a size 3 circular she’d let me use, but I’ll have to wait until I visit her on Sunday. For right now, I’m going to work on the Shetland Shorty. I’m almost finished with the back. The front shouldn’t take as long, and then I think it switches to the smaller needles.

I have rearranged the stitches on the DPNs. I was getting ladders within the front cable because three stitches of that pattern were on one needle, the other nine on the next. Now I have ten stitches on the first needle, nineteen on the second, fourteen on the third, and fifteen on the fourth. That keeps both cable patterns on one needle, with an extra stitch before them. Hopefully that will take care of that problem. I haven’t gotten far enough that I’m willing to say whether the backwards wrapping is solving the ladder problem, but it seems to be.

I’m still having problems dropping stitches because the needles just slide right out. If I ever make these again, and want to use DPNs, I’ll get a wooden set.

I am mispleased.

The further along I go with my legwarmers, the less happy I am with them. I was willing to overlook all the times I crossed cables the wrong way on one side of the lozenge pattern (the four stitch wide cable that crosses to the outside, I crossed six or seven times to the inside instead). I was even thinking I could overlook the huge (for me) ladders at the ends of my needles. But the cables aren’t lying flat on the left sides, and the stitches to the left of them are stretched out, and it’s too long, and I’m just about ready to rip it out. You know, now that I’ve only got three rows left to the lozenge pattern. I don’t know if it’s me, or the yarn, or the pattern, but I’m just not happy with it.

I’m not going to do that, though. I’m going to be good, and patient, and set it aside until I can take it to my mom’s and see what she thinks of it, and maybe by then I won’t think it looks that bad. But until then, I think I’m going to start working on the Shetland Shorty I have in my Ravelry queue.

I’ve enjoyed working with a fine yarn on a delicate looking pattern. It is a nice change from all the chunky yarn/large needle stuff that’s been so popular for so many years now. I just hope I decide to finish it.