One more tiny sweater

Here is the last of the 4 tiny sweaters I made to test the update of my 5-Hour Baby Sweater pattern (almost done, I promise!) and also for my friend Ann's new babies. They've been done a week (the sweaters, that is. Not the babies), and I still haven't mailed them out. I did gain a new job this past week, and lose a cat (*snif*sob*) so I've been a little busy. Mostly moping. I really loved that cat.

Anyway. The pattern has gone out to the testers for one final proofread, and I need one more photo and then it'll be ready to go. Good thing I've forgotten how to publish on Ravelry, eh? Oh well, I'll probably figure it out.

oops more sock yarn fell into my shopping cart

Hm, so looking over my previous post I see that I did not tell you to stop me from buying more sock yarn at Aldi. That was a serious oversight on my part, because I am sure you would've come through for me if I'd asked. But I didn't, so you didn't, and this happened:

Uh-oh.

tiny sweater update

Size newborn1, worsted weight

Size newborn2, worsted weight

Size newborn2, fingering weight

Four sweaters knitted, three photographed, none washed or blocked yet. I'll try to get that all done this weekend so I can mail them to their new little owners on Monday. 

I wrote out the pattern for four yarn weights and six sizes, and sent it to Arja(aaa), who invited, oh, 27 of her closest friends to a test-knit (for which thank you, Arja, because it got me moving like nothing else would) and there has been good feedback and now I am struggling to work it all in and rewrite the pattern like a real writer, you know, someone who can do stuff with words. Then there's pictures and formatting and such still to do. It's taking me ages, because every time I find a mistake anywhere I have to recheck all the math, which is a real recipe for crazy. Once it's done I will very seriously consider sending it to the MuKnit group for a second round of testing. Just to try being all rigorous for once. (It probably won't suit me.)

Then, too, other non-knitting related things are going on, which drag my attention away from What Really Matters (hint: it rhymes with "schmitting"). Don't know how I let that happen...

And oh, epic noes! Aldi is going to have sockyarn again next week! What'll I doooooooo!? Well, knit all the sizes of my pattern, for one. And many more socks. 

Which I will definitely blog about. There, I said it. Now I have to do it.

Oh! Right! Pictures!

... of socks, yay. For the record, I took the pictures when I said I would, and edited them and uploaded them to Ravelry, I just forgot to put them here. So here they are: six pairs of socks, received with various degrees of enthusiasm.

For the Sniglet

For Ignaz

For me!

Man, I have got to get a better camera...

from socks to sweaters

Again I am not posting because there aren't enough pictures - yes, I know: stupid. So here is my New Year's Resolution vis à vis this knitting blog: I will certainly try to post more often, because I actually do use this blog for documentation. Sometimes.

BUT ANYWAY. I bet you were wondering what it would take to break my sock obsession, and it happened about a week after my last post: a friend in NL had twin boys, so it's on to tiny sweaters! Which I actually already promised them when I visited them in hospital (eeee that was fun!) a month ago, so I should really get on with that.

Not that I haven't, I am knitting up a storm here. But I'm also designing/documenting the process, so I can properly publish the Five-Hour Baby Sweater pattern. The existing pattern is very specific and yields exactly one size, in one yarn. I know I can do better. 5hbs mk 2 has six sizes, in four yarn weights, and I've already worked up two of them. I should probably line up test-knitters as a next step.

The socks are washed and now drying and the light is gone, but I'll try for photos tomorrow, and then I'll get on to documenting the sweaters. Okay, now it's out there: instead of having a vague intention, I've actually written and published it, so that means it's more likely to happen, right? Right.

I got a picture !!11one!

As you can see, some of the socks are inside out. Yeah. That's because I had to tuck in the ends but I haven't snipped them yet because you're supposed to do that after you wash them, so I decided to wash them inside-out, then snip them, then right them. To save myself some trouble. Because turning socks inside-out is so hard.

It is just now occurring to me (not for the first time) that I may have some sort of psychological problem.

the problem is getting the pictures

Literally. That's the actual reason why I haven't blogged in nearly four weeks. Because night is when I think "ooo - I should blog, oh but I can't because I don't have pictures" but I can't take pictures of my knitting at night because my camera is kinda crappy and learning teh mad photography skillz will take up valuable knitting time. Maybe writing this will remind me to take the dratted pictures tomorrow morning? Though the next three months will probably be sucky photo-months because of the winter light.

I'm still in sock-nirvana, with nine socks in some stage of development but not sure how many I can count as finished. Ends are tucked in four socks, three are still pending, two are on the needles and none have been washed yet. So what counts as done?

Other Knitting News:
Gave up on various original designy-type things for the lavender silk and am settling for another Featherweight. Miles of plain stockinette, enabling me to read The Left Hand of Darkness on my computer.

Aliénor: the second sleeve is about 7/8 done and I am stalled, Stalled, STALLED. I've been revising the pattern and I'm at the proofreading stage, which is why I haven't even opened the file in maybe four months. Because I do not love proofreading, especially my own stuff.

Also stalled on another design that was rejected by Twist so I decided to self-publish, and I must say, it's a good thing they rejected me because I would nevar have gotten this done by the deadline. So yay them, right?

Stalled on the Rosita Mittens.

I need gloves. I bought three patterns by Laris. I have the yarn for all of them. Still have not cast on.

I designed some nifty stripey fingerless mitts and wrote up the pattern, it can be published as soon as I can get it tested! I have a potential testing crew on hand, and even a forum that I can use. I could start this up like flipping a switch. Am I making any move toward that switch? Um, no...

And Cassandra says I should open an Etsy shop! And she is absolutely right. Uh. Yeah, about that...

But! I gotta lotta socks!

sock obsession, probably temporary

Three weeks? Wow, it seems like I would've gotten more done in that time, since I've been neglecting every other project, even The Fat Squirrel's Squirrel It Away Knitalong which was SUCH a great idea and I signed onto it with immense enthusiasm, only to drop it like a hot rock when the grocery store stocked some cheap yarn. I am... a unique and special snowflake, I suppose, as long as you understand that to mean "bat-crap crazy."

The socks are a great accompaniment to listening to Mark read The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and watching football. Not to mention a super-awesome way to stall on some jobs I should be applying for.

(Side note, I really don't like Blogger's options for placing pictures. It shouldn't be that hard, folks.) Anyway, brown socks for Secondborn, nearly done. Teal/purple socks for MEMEME! Done! Started teal/green socks recently and have already turned the heel on the first one and started the toe on the second one. I think these are my favorite so far.

 

So yeah. We'll see how long it takes this one to wear off. And how many unfinished socks I have on the needles when the "meh" takes me. My prediction: seven. 

N K Jemisin socks

Augh, it is a struggle to put down my knitting to blog about my knitting. Is there irony in that? Nah, probably not.

So since my last post I have MOVED TO ANOTHER COUNTRY, which is only part of why the not-blogging. One of the ways in which I procrastinate is to involve every action in a complicated ritual which begins with a step that I can't take right now, e.g: before I get dressed I have to take a shower but first I should probably get on the exercise bike which means I need to summon the motivation to be bored and sweaty for 20 minutes OR I need to admit that that's not gonna happen today because I am a wuss. Both options take a long time to work up to, which is why I'm still in my PJs at 4pm some days.

The knitblog equivalent of this is "I can't post (or list the project on Ravelry) without pictures, and my camera sucks and it's dark out." Also, taking pictures with my phone, bluetoothing them to my computer, resizing in IrfanView and then cropping in MS Paint and then sharpening, resizing and fixing the colors in IrfanView again, takes up valuable time that I could spend working on my spiffy new project which I am so excited about that I had to cast on even though I have 8 WIPs already. I tell you, I am a deeply flawed human being.

Anyway.

Now that we're back in Germany we can shop at Aldi again, with their semi-weekly theme events (we are so stocked up on pasta after Italian Food Week we'll have no trouble surviving the Barilla boycott, I tell you what). And Aldi has noticed that knitting is hip again (as the magazines have been telling us for lo, these ten years now), so they had SOCK YARN last week. And there was great rejoicing (me) and rolling of eyes (Mr Husband) at casa alala.

I think I was very restrained. Sixteen skeins isn't much when you realize it comes in packs of four (two colors per pack), and there were two whole color pairings that I didn't actually buy. There would have been three, but Secondborn has recently decided he likes brown. Ooo, I wonder if he knows about Steampunk yet...

And here they are, in the pairs they were packaged in:
Yes. I bought yarn from the grocery store. We are living in amazing times.

And I've already knit almost half a sock, so I'm naming the project after author N K Jemisin. Today while knitting I watched Mark read Valedictorian, and read Mark's response to the first few chapters of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and also caught up on her blog, so now every time I wear these socks I'll think of her. Which is fine. I really like this author. She totally deserves some socks.

This is what I get for procrastinating on the blog

Hi, yeah, sorry about that. I've been doing lots of things, and managing to document most of them on Ravelry, anyway.

I'm on a secret test-knit right now, so I can't tell you anything about it except that I'm using this Tosh Merino Light I bought at the grand opening of Penelope Craft's new premises (EPIC cupcakes were had, you really shouldn't have missed it). The colorway is called Mineral, it was the last of its kind in the shop, and it just happened to be a perfect match for some beads I've had since... oo, probably 2005 or so. You see, if you just hold on to things for long enough, eventually they'll tell you what their purpose is.

I've also made it to the sleeves on Aliénor II, but apparently the last picture I took (that wasn't a super close-up detail of a gusset or dart) was this one. Maybe I should do something about that...

I finally managed to struggle through the Knotty gloves. I love the pattern, they fit perfectly and are beautiful, but dang that's a lot of fingers. I hate knitting tiny tubes almost as much as I hate tucking in ends. And I still have about a squillion ends to tuck, so I'm not listing the project as finished yet.

No progress on Namarië. Because I am the worst friend ever.

And finally, there was another test-knit, which is done so I can write about it. Adri from http://adriprints.blogspot.com designed this neato lace cowl and loop and I tested the cowl but loved the fabric so much that I frogged it and bought another skein so I could make the loop. That's it on the left - the Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend is a joy to work with, and I'd been wanting an excuse to buy the Wildflowers colorway since Harlequin first opened. So I worked on it until it was really wide enough, and I still had some yarn left over.

These make me ridiculously happy.

And yes I have to republish Aliénor (I've told too many people I'm doing it now) and I'm also working on a new pattern plus the aforementioned super secret test knit, but there was that extra yarn, so I picked up some needles and started noodling around and came up with matching mitts.

I'll fill you in on the new pattern soon, but first I have to take some pictures. I've just checked the folder and all I have is a couple of sketches and a scan of the swatch. How did I forget to take pictures of this? Duh.

Stripety Mitts

So here's what I made with that yarn I picked up at the Handwerkbeurs from Zeven Katten. I'm still trying to decide whether and how to publish the pattern. Probably should be free, since it's so simple. Do I need to find test-knitters for a free simple pattern? Meh, probably. This business of needing other people can be problematic.

and this also happened

 ... like, aaaaaages ago, before the bag from Petra even, Arja made me a yarn bowl in her pottery class. I think this is the first thing I've ever commissioned; she showed me some bowls and I said "One like this please," and I chose the colors, inside and out. And I paid her in yarn, but still! Real (functional) art! And I love it, even with a center-pull ball which should render such things unnecessary, this bowl is still the shizzle. The photos don't really do it justice. I'll try to add more, but dang, it took me weeks just to get these taken and uploaded. Probably because I was too busy oohing and aahing over my fab new awesome YARN BOWL, Y'ALL!

'Twas een mooie dag!

So I went to the Handwerkbeurs in Zwolle with my friend Patricia today! And it was fun, and all y'all who didn't come with us? You totally missed out.

For not intending to buy anything, I think I did fairly well - I really did need the beading wire, and here was a chance to look at it in person instead of buying from the internet. But then I got to the Zeven Katten stand, which was imperative, since we had to say hi to Arja (who wasn't there), and well. It's a single-ply! In semi-solid colors! With long repeats! Talk about your triple whammy. 

In order to justify the purchase I came up with a plan for the yarn right there on the spot, and I still like my plan, hours later. I will even publish the pattern, just to make it extra-justified. Because the world totally needs another wristwarmer pattern. Yes it does.

Look what Petra made me !♥!

Totally unsolicited! I have the awesome friends. The outside fabric? Is from Senegal. SENEGAL. Okay, I have a new mission and that is to buy fabric in every country I visit. You read it here first.

Outside

Inside

Finished the hats!

... and here's one of them! Mr. Husband's hat is also done, but I can't get him to hold still for a photo. His hat does have the button holes, just in case he decides later to go with the beard option, but so far he's pretty adamantly against it. Let's hope Mr. Secondborn is more open-minded.

Insert Title Here

 Right, so if I didn't have time to blog, it must be because I was KNITTING, right!? Yeah, sort of. Here is the final photo of Space Princess. I love how it turned out. And an old high school acquaintance (I wouldn't say we were friends in high school, because I wasn't really anybody's friend. I was kind of a bitch back then, and it's really nice of a lot of PTHS alumni to forgive me for that, I must say) has a nearly-two-year-old daughter who is hilarious and adorable. And while I was working on the dress it frequently mentioned that it would like to go live with Eleanor, so I wrote to her mom and asked if that'd be okay and she was all, OMG YES! Because she's a handknitter too, and therefore Gets It. It took me several weeks to get it mailed off, but it's finally out of my house and en route to my old home town - my old home street, even - to a very good home. This makes me happy.

You may also recall that the acquisition of a skein of Wollmeise DK weight made me happy as well, and I wondered aloud if I'd actually make the Flinders vest I was intending for it. Lo, less than a month later, here it is, and I am just so pleased with it. I was worried about running out of yarn, so I could have made it a bit wider, maybe - in the event, it was well long enough. The pattern, I'd give it an A and a B-. That is, the garment is fa-habulous and I love it a lot. The instructions are a bit ambiguous in places and I had to make a few guesses, but hey it was free, so one can't complain too much. This was also my first finished garment with bust darts, so there's another skill to add to my list, that's never a bad thing.

And then! Well, the inimitable, the amazing, the fantastic The Fat Squirrel did a particularly hilarious podcast featuring Faye Kennington's Lumberjack Hat, and I may have watched it a couple-three times because it was so fun. Not long after that, the Sniglet, away at boarding school, mentioned that it had started snowing in Bavaria, and I said "oh, yayfun?" and he said not really, his face got cold. And I said, almost with a straight face, "I think I may have a solution for that..."

Even better, Mr Husband grew a beard for Movember, spent a month clawing at his face and complaining about the itch, and finally shaved it off at the beginning of December, to my clearly stated disappointment. A week or so later, he asked me to make him a hat! He didn't actually ask for a hat with a beard, but it was clearly implied. So! Matching father-son beardy hats! There's no way that could go wrong, but I will make the beards detachable, just in case.

And finally, a pair of gloves, because I'm using the Sniglet's fingerless gloves and it's getting really cold on the bike. The pattern is Knotty, a free pattern by Julia Müller aka Laris (LOVE her work, LOVE. IT), and the yarn is a black/purple/turquoise Versuchskaninchen (a colorway she tested and ultimately decided not to keep, I'm pretty sure) from Wollmeise which I have dubbed Nachtfee/Nightfairy because I have a lot of Versuchskaninchen yarns, and I need some way to differentiate them.

No word from Interweave on my proposal yet. To be fair, I did kind of ignore their mood-board, so they may be wondering how to fit this into the issue - but it is a holiday gifts issue, and it was a very holiday-ish proposal. We'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, I'm putting another proposal together, this one for Twist Collective. Well, technically, at the moment I'm thinking of ways to distract myself from the proposal I should be putting together. I should probably get to work on that...

Space Princess!

I know I said I'd wash, block and properly photograph this, and I did the first two, but it's November in the Netherlands, and though the weather has occasionally been surprisingly nice, those were not occasions when I had the dress and the camera to hand. So here are some photographs. They're pretty close to the truth, except the truth is a lot more awesome.

And it's called Space Princess because I knit it while watching a lot of science fiction (well, Star Trek) and reading about things like asteroid belts and orphan planets and such, so that's on my mind lately. I don't know why the princess, maybe that's just because I'm not used to knitting for girls.

Finishing that gave me permission to cast on Clickertyclick's Flinders Sweater Vest, of which I do not yet have a picture but it looks fab on the pattern page and I really like it when I try it on. This is in the Wollmeise DK that I bought, and it's top-down and sleeveless, so I figure I can just knit until I'm out of yarn and then call it long enough. I'm loving this yarn, and! I may have knit my first-ever successful bust darts! Very pleased, somewhat bemused: this is a lot simpler than all those charts and tutorials make it look. And now that I've finished with the increases and sleeve shaping and bust darts, it's just miles of plain stockinette in the round, which makes it perfect for my upcoming trip to Munich. 

Yep, Munich. Again. Just a weekend, to visit the Boy and go to a job interview. No Wollmeise visits this trip, but if I get the job I'll be a lot closer to the shop... I'd better ask for a very big salary.

Mid-November knitting update

So! Where are we this week...

Namarië

... I begin to see that the green-pink-blue-purple may have been a poor choice of colorway, because even though I planned my color progression to avoid winding up at the same color on both skeins at the same time, I didn't notice that the purple is indistinguishable from the pink-transition-to-blue, so the pattern became invisible at some point and I had to rip back and re-calculate. And since I don't take this traveling and have to pack it up every time a potential buyer comes to look at the house, it's spent a lot of time in time-out, so while I've done a fair bit of knitting on it, I'm not actually much further (not much = about 5 rounds) than I was the last time I blogged about it. So, no new pictures. And much grumpiness. 

Acquisitions

Karbonz, y'all! Size 1.5mm, smaller than any needles I have ever owned because if you made DPNs this thin out of wood they'd break, and if you made 'em out of metal they'd bend and stay bent. These are carbon fiber, the stuff used to make space ships! I have space needles! Aren't they snazzy? 

Nearly Finished

The Space Princess Dress! It actually began with Georgie Hallam's Oriental Lily Dress pattern, with the usual minor modifications that I can never resist making, like the channel-island cast-on, and I don't like garter stitch so that waistband had to change. I used leftover yarn from the Kiila Baby sweater and started with texture stripes - a dark purl ridge (which requires 1 knit round and 1 purl round) alternating with a light knit round, and then widened the knit stripes as I started to run out of the darker color. This needed a fair bit of ripping back to get it just right, but I'm finally binding off the hem for what I hope is the last time - turns out, the picot bind-off needs even more yarn than you think it will! Huh. So I've gone and modified that and once it's finally done I'll wash, block, and properly photograph it. 

And then I can finally start some thing new! I've decided to use my Wollmeise DK weight to make a Flinders. Be interesting to see if that actually happens.

Oh, and! I submitted a pattern proposal to Interweave Knits! I am not nervous, I am not nervous, I am not nervous...