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.

The world is in trouble now

Say hello to Fuzzyhulhu.

He's going to eat me first for this.

My mom got tired of my griping about not having a digital camera, so she got me one for an early birthday present.

My biggest reason for wanting a digital camera is that I’d like to try selling some things I’ve designed, or have plans to design, and these days it’s kind of hard to do that without pictures. It’s hard to find someplace that does good film developing for a reasonable price in a decent amount of time. And I hate feeling like I’m possibly wasting film taking crappy pictures. So, a digital camera seemed like the best way to go.

Now my problem is to decide where to submit designs.

I like Knitty. Its submission guidelines are clear and easy to follow. The guidelines say, “This is what we want from you, and this is what you’ll get in return.” It doesn’t have a set style, either. It’s a knitting magazine. The patterns they publish range from stylish to silly and useful to purely decorative. There are very few things I want to design that I think would be out of place in Knitty.

Then there’s Twist Collective. This one, I think is more of a fashion knitting magazine. The layout and patterns are much more likely to be stylish. Some things I’ve designed or plan would not be good for them. I have a couple things that are pretty utilitarian or geeky, and I don’t think Twist would be interested. Some other things would maybe be better for Twist than for Knitty. They definitely fill different niches. One thing that bothers me about Twist Collective is the submission guidelines. I kind of like the idea of patterns being sold through the magazine instead of getting a flat fee for them, but I’d like to know before I submit something what I’ll be getting. At least a ballpark idea. Twist Collective doesn’t advertise that. You have to wait until your design is accepted before you get a publication contract, which outlines the compensation structure. I don’t like not knowing what I’m getting into. It feels vaguely shady to me. And before anyone gets their skein tangled in a knot up over this, I’m not saying Twist has abusive or exploitative practices. I’m saying I can’t tell what their practices are until after a design is submitted and accepted, at which point, sure, I can say no thanks, but how much time has passed since I finished work on it? Would it be a good time to submit it elsewhere? Or will I have to sit on it for most of a year, during which time fashions will change, possibly too much for my design to be marketable? If the guidelines said, “E-mail us for our current compensation structure,” that would be great.

And, of course, there’s Ravelry. With Ravelry, you don’t have to submit your patterns to anyone, you just put them up for sale (well, that’s oversimplified, but not by much). Of course, Ravelry doesn’t really advertise for you, either. It’s a marketplace, and you’re competing with every other designer to get people’s attention.

I haven’t looked much into print magazines, although I should. I like actual magazines. I like holding things that I read. The kick from having something published on paper would be great. (However, I’m not even going to think about Vogue Knitting. I’m not that fashionable, ever, and from what I’ve heard they expect you to give up your design’s first-born as far as copyright and reprint goes.)

I know there are other websites and internet magazines I can try, also, but for now, I’m limiting myself to these (plus looking into print magazines more).

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.

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.