Hello! It is so Friday, and I am in serious need of a weekend. Rob and I are off to the Robparents for some serious R+R in… New Jersey. Woo. Gifting of the shawl will occur, and I’m hoping for a jaunt into NYC if we can spare the time. Rob asked me what I wanted to do in the city if we do go, and I had a list already prepared. Now, Purl or Habu? Decisions, decisions. Habu is pretty cool, but I’m not supposed to be buying yarn, remember? Fabric is fair game, though.

There will be plenty of hanging out and car trip time this weekend, so I’m bringing all sorts of crafty goodness.

Petal! I have two sleeves and two bottom borders complete, and I’ve started the back. I may leave this home to motivate myself to work on other projects.

I really, really need to bust a move on the Sockpalooza socks. T-minus 32 days, and I haven’t even started them yet. The swatch is a modified stitch pattern from a japanese craft book, but I need to add about 4 more stitches per pattern repeat to make it doable. This swatch was truly a labor of love – every traveling stitch and double decrease was worked on the wrong side.

I have confirmed that the sock yarn doesn’t bleed – it’s Tess (just like the bleedy laceweight), a prize from Jess for winning her blog contest, yay!

Remember the Counterpane Clutch? Ugh, neither did I. This thing has been sitting around since August. At some point I grafted the bottom together (I had started with a provisional CO to avoid a seam), but the rest was unfinished. I picked it up about a month ago and made what you see here. You see how the zipper is pinned to a separate lining? That was version 1.0, which was about an inch too narrow. Practice makes perfect, right? All I need to do is hand-sew the thing together and I’ll be done.

Scene: Kelly hanging the shawl on a nail, awkwardly trying to finagle it to snap a good photo. Then, a sudden realization that the shawl sticks perfectly to the porch brick!

Pattern: Spring Things Shawl, by Susan Lawrence
Yarn: Tess superwash merino laceweight, in super-bleedy red

Pretty, huh? It’s a fairly small shawl, about 50 inches across the top. I may have felted the yarn a wee bit as I rinsed the yarn for the billionth time, but it’s still a good shoulder-warming size.

I ended up working 4 additional pattern repeats of the body pattern, but omitted the last few rows because I ran out of yarn and was too lazy to dip into the second skein. I finished the last edging chart and thought I was home free yarn-wise, but there were a few additional rows to knit, plus a bind-off setup row and the BO itself. I think I cut out 4 ending rows, so my points aren’t as pointy as they could be. I’m happy with their pointiness, though.

Besides that issue (and the bleeding saga), the pattern was well written and easy to follow. And so pretty. I totally love the edging chart.

Because I’m unable to knit a pattern without fiddling with it, I modified the body pattern to flow into the edging, rather than having a distinct line as in the pattern photo. I did this as follows:

• Copy chart B. Take the pattern repeat of chart A (in the box) and paste it onto the lower-left corner of the pattern repeat of chart B. You’ll end up pasting this four times, you’ll see where to do so – two of the repeats are in red boxes, the others are to the right of the red boxes.
• Convert all of the purl stitches in rows 1 and 3 of the modified chart B to knit stitches.
• In row 5 of the modified chart B, replace the k2tog with sl1-k2-psso, and replace the ssk with k3tog. This sounds backwards, but is not – the triple decreases will slope in the same direction as the outer decreases. Only replace the stitches in the pattern repeat section, not along the center line and edges.

Work the modified chart B once, then two repeats of the pattern chart B.

Some nupps are not like the others. Yikes, I didn’t notice this until I uploaded the photos!

The thing still bleeds like crazy, but I’ve officially given up! A gentile squeeze in the bath spreads pink dye everywhere, like an octopus ejecting ink into water. I called the ladies at Tess and they were very nice about it, suggesting dish soap (no change) and offering to send a new skein to me. I’ve now learned my lesson about the crazy reds.

I’ll be gifting this with a big caveat about the bleeding and an offer to knit another shawl in exchange. I guess this gives me an excuse to knit more lace this summer!

The time has come to block the Spring Things shawl. I was planning on having a good FO report today, but instead there will be a bit of whining and a lot of pink.

The first round through the bath was full of pink. My swatch bled a lot, so this was expected. No problem, we’ll rinse and repeat until the water runs clear. The problem is, the water never ran clear. Bath after bath was full of pink – the second I squeezed the shawl, it would inject dye into the water.

My google-fu brought me to this old post by Grumperina, who emperically showed that Synthrapol didn’t make much of a difference for the bleeding issues, but that vinegar did. I had some vinegar on hand (but no Synthrapol), so I gave that a shot. That worked fabulously – the shawl did not bleed at all while in the vinegar bath. Unfortunately the fix was temporary, subsequent baths to rinse out the vinegar smell brought back the pink.

Next I tried to set the dye by filling a dyepot full of water, bringing it to a simmer, adding tons of vinegar and the shawl, and cooking for a half hour. Dyeing without the dye. I baked banana muffins while I waited for the simmering to complete, which improved my mood slightly. The result?

The Tess laceweight is superwash, so I also tried repeatedly running water directly on the shawl and squeezing it out when saturated. The only thing that did was turn my hands pink.

So now what? I don’t think I can gift this as-is, poor Rob’s grandmother is going to turn her clothing pink when she wears it. I’m going to try buying one of those dye-attracting sheets, crossing my fingers that it will work for wool. Anyone have any suggestions? Also, I have one extra skein of the Tess laceweight, in the same color and purchased at the same time. Would it be fair to request an exchange, or is this standard behavior for intense red yarns?

There was one bright knitting event this weekend – I bought a bunch of $2 yarn on clearance from Yarntopia on Saturday. Some was gift yarn, and the rest were a few extra balls in a dyelot of yarn I already own. That doesn’t count as breaking the yarn diet, right?

If someone told me four years ago that I’d be a crazy knitter girl, I would have thought they were insane. That and the whole living in Texas thing. But here I am, tolerating the extreme humidity and fretting about my left-leaning decreases. I decided to do a Nona-esque swatch in the cotton so that I can get a good night’s sleep tonight.

Whoomp there it is, in all of its unblocked, un-neatened glory. From left to right:
1. Nona’s decrease – you swap the two stitches (I did my swap without a cable needle), then k2tog.
2. SSP – this one’s worked on the wrong side. Slip as if to knit twice, put stitches on left needle, then p2tog tbl.
3. Dave’s decrease – do a SSK improved on the right side, then ptbl the stitch on the next wrong-side row.
4. sl1-k-psso
5. SSK improved – a SSK, but slip the second stitch as if to purl.

Yesterday’s sleeve cap decreases were worked using the SSK improved method. I tried Nona’s stitch-swapping and sl1-k-psso, and they both looked equally icky when worked one stitch from the edge. I was already in a decrease-every-other-row part of the pattern, so I decided to try Dave’s neatening. And it worked perfectly! There is a twisted stitch every other row, but it is barely noticeable and is much less messy than my wonky SSK-improved stitches.

As Nona noted in her post, the SSP is the analogous decrease to a k2tog. I’ll definitely use the SSP in the body shaping of the sweater, my SSP’s look as good as the k2togs once blocked. You do need to remember to work the decreases on the wrong side – I speak from experience when I say that it’s easy to forget and just mindlessly work the purl rows.

Thanks a million to everyone for their suggestions, it’s so greatly appreciated! One last note about all of this – my decreases looked a million times better when worked in forgiving wool. It’s just this damn cotton that’s making me lose sleep!

I started Petal yesterday. You may think that knitting on teeny size 2 3 (tight knitters unite) needles would be slow going, but I’ve already finished a sleeve. How can that be? Well, I thought I broke my toe last weekend by dropping something very heavy on it, and my standby orthopedic appointment took two hours. Normally this would make me cranky (well, I was a wee bit crankola), but I was pretty psyched to get all that knitting done in the office. The ladies with poor bone density dug the knitting, too! And $20 later, I found out that my toe is not broken, just “colorful,” which is doctor speak for, “Ew. Gross.”

The edging is interesting, it’s knit sideways with these oddball picots on the one edge. You’re supposed to work the picots every right side row, but that was making my edging flare unattractively, so I’m working them every other RS row. My modification looks painfully obvious in this photo, but it’s really much less apparent when viewed in a non-macro way. Hopefully no one will be staring this closely at my upper arms, eek!

I forgot how rope-like the Rowan 4 ply cotton is. It really exacerbates any knitting wonkiness, like my hideous ssk’s. I’d love to hear if anyone has any advice on how to neaten them up – click on the photo to read some good pointers, including a link to this awesome ssk comparison. I think I need to go swatch some decreases now…

So the plan is to work on this sweater exclusively until it’s done, which is bo-ring blog fodder. I do have a few WIPS that need simple finishing details, so hopefully we can motivate a bit here in camp kelly to finish them. And then there’s sockpalooza – I seem to have misplaced my sock knitting mojo, and that August deadline is looming in the distance. I’m sure I’ll get sick of Petal soon enough and welcome the distraction of a shiny new pair of socks in soft, squishy, non-rope-like wool!

Whoo, I didn’t mean to be so Debbie Downer in the last post. Looking ahead, things are much greener and happier!

Sockpalooza

You know, knitting from stash isn’t so bad when your stash ROCKS! Rock on, little yarnys! I’m trying to decide on what yarn to use for my Sockpalooza socks, and I’m working my gemini indecisiveness to the max here. Top to bottom: Spirit Trail sock yarn, Yarn Pirate BFL in Merlot, and Brooks Farm Acero. I had originally purchased the Spirit Trail yarn for my sockpal, but I can see from her blog that she digs brights, so the Yarn Pirate might be a better choice. I plan designing something textured for these socks, where designing means pulling a stitch pattern from a book and knitting it in the round. I see lots of swatching in my future.

Speaking of swatches, I was looking for a flickr group to display all of my swatchy madness, and I couldn’t find one. Well, now there is. Show off your 4×4 inch squares of love!

Petal

So Petal has these beads. Lots of beads. I’m not much of an everyday bead wearer, so I’m going to replace them with purl stitches. However, the bead stitch in pattern takes up two stitches, and the purl bumps only take up one, so I have to regigger the chart a bit to make things line up correctly. The swatch has a sparser pattern at the top (one stitch wider than the original chart), and denser (one stitch smaller than the original) at the bottom. I think I like the sparser patterning better. I’m all ready to start the sweater – I decided to hold off until the big birthday since this is a gift from me to me. My 20’s are gone as of today, I bid them a fond farewell!

Garnstudio baby jacket

So. cute. I even love the waste yarn color with the greens, so I plan on buying sky blue buttons for the sweater. And also for Saarjte’s Booties, which are next on the list.

Ugh, have you seen that Destash has closed in the bitchiest way ever – no warning, no discussion about having someone else maintain it, all user info is deleted, nothing? So, so lame. I see that someone’s registered a new Destash on wordpress, hopefully this really useful resource can continue to exist.

Pattern: Airy Wrap Around Lace Sweater from Fitted Knits
Yarn: Lang Thema, 9 balls and some change

The Airy has-long-name is finished. Actually, it’s been finished for almost two months now – I wore it to MDSW way back when, then shoved it into my sweater drawer as the Houston summer approached. It doesn’t look half bad in the photo, but I think I’m going to frog most of it.

The main issue I have is with the ties – they are very wide, and create a lot of bulk when wrapped around you. I used a different yarn and slightly smaller needle size than the pattern calls for (US 10.5 vs US 11), so my sweater isn’t quite as airy and the ties tend to roll. Rolling, bulky ties aren’t exactly slimming, ya know? I love both the concept of this sweater and the idea of knitting this yarn on larger needles, but the end product just isn’t working for me.

I made a number of extremely nitpicky, anal modifications to the pattern:

• Used kfb rather than yo for the raglan increases.
• Worked the body decreases at the sides rather than the center back.
• Decreased along the arms so that they would be fitted.
• Changed the weird cable chart to a normal cable chart that transitioned into 2×2 rib at the edges (I’m convinced that the sweater in the book photo used a regular 3×3 cable, not the ribbed cable that’s in the chart).
• Replaced the wonky reverse-stockinette stripes with a single purl row.
• Worked a purl stitch between lace portions on the ties because it looks pretty.

All in all, I’m glad I used cheap yarn for this. Sigh!

Act 1: Confrontation

Blackie was on the bed, sleeping soundly, when Silver showed up. They sat like that for a few minutes.

Act 2: Rejection

Act 3: Resolution

One bed, two ok three, cats. So freaking cute! There will be some craftiness here soon, with optional sewing content. The sewing comes with swearing for free, whee!

I finished the knitting on my Spring Things shawl!

Blackie says that she would prefer to lounge on blocked lace. Maybe I’ll block it soon, maybe not. It’s a gift for Rob’s grandmother who we’ll be seeing in July, so I’m thinking that I’ll block it closer to our trip up north.

Also, I realized that I need a bigger ball winder:

This is the most recent handspun again, partially ball-wound and partially kelly-wound. That kelly’s quite a machine, I tell ya. I’m still kinda bummed about the spinning/plying job on this one, but I’m pressing on. All in all, it’s 109 grams and about 18 wpi.