I wonder if they have a treatment center

I heard on the news the other day that they now have a treatment center for people addicted to gaming and the internet. While I wonder if that is a “addiction” like and alcohol, I also wonder about myself.

I may be addicted to any one or more of the following: knitting, crocheting, Ravelry, starting new projects,researching new projects, researching new yarns, using Ravelry to attempt a matching between yarns and projects prior to starting, and yarn in general.

Case in point: I’m in the process of adding some new pictures to my projects page when I happen across some of my older projects. That reminds me that I still have that Patons SWS stripey stuff in 2 coordinating colors, 3 balls each that I’m saving for a entrelac pillow. My plan is to do one side in one color and the other side in the other color. Then perhaps get a foam cushion or a pillow form and attempt a zipper closure. That’s parts still open for discussion. Any way, I remember that I had already looked at several of the Danica FO’s trying to count the # of squares and triangles (since I didn’t on the one I did) to see just how I need to make the square. I found out on one of my notes that indeed I did. So, I’m tempted to get started on that. But I don’t remember what size needle I used. I decide to go deep into my projects and look up the needle size I used for my Danica.

Then I look over in the bin where the yarn is; I don’t even open the bin, and staring at me from there is this lovely mossy green alpaca that a friend gave me. I had previously used it for a fantastic pair of fingerless mitts that I gave to the lady who cuts all our hair. I still have enough left to probably make me a pair of socks or fingerless mitts. Then I remember the pattern that same friend gave me for these neat socks. So, I think that would be cool; to use the yarn she gave me and the pattern she gave me to make a cool pair of socks. Then I think, wait, I probably need my size 1’s or 1 1/2’s to make the socks, and I think that all of those are currently being used in some other projects.

So, I either gently remove the needles from whatever they’re being used for to cast on yet another new thing, or I just scold myself and convince myself to finish one of the things I already have going.

Nevermind. I just checked my notes on the fingerless mitts, and I used a size 2. Thanks to finishing up those socks for Maureen, I have those available. Whew!

See why I need a treatment center?  By the way, the new fingerless mitts are coming along rather nice.

Update on some FO’s

Ooooh, look…pictures!

Here’s that Fake Isle hat, all finished up. The colors on this picture are way more accurate than the first one I took. Imagine a very fallish colorway, maroons and leafy greens and oranges.

I forgot about this one – it’s a bookmark my sister crocheted for me.  And it came in a book.  Cool, huh?

Lastly, are you ready for this one?  Take a deep breath and you may even want to sit down:

They’re done, they’re done, they’re finally done.  Oh my gosh, I still almost can’t believe it, but they’re actually already in the mail, along with the slippers that I finished months ago.  Black yarn is so boring, even in what would otherwise be an interesting eyelet rib.

Yay for FO’s!  More later!

Happy Fall!

I know, I’m a couple days late. And I don’t even have pictures loaded up to share either.

My dad is visiting, and we’re having more fun that I thought possible. He caught son #2’s cold and cough, and now my dad’s pretty miserable.

I finished up that fake isle hat, and even took a picture, but Dad’s staying in the spare bedroom where the other computer lives, and that’s the one I’d need to hook up the camera too. I don’t think about it during the day, only at night after he’s gone to bed.

I even finished up the black socks for Maureen, AND mailed them off! The picture’s on the camera too, so when I remember to, I’ll get that loaded on here as well.

I’ve been spending lots of time on David’s sweater, and I’m happy to report that after only 1 re-knit, the first sleeve is done! I’m about 3 or 4 inches in on sleeve #2. Then I’ll go back to the black hole of ribbing for the body. I don’t even remember if I took a picture of the sleeve.

I think that may sum it up for right now. I may have some exciting news to report, but it’ll have to wait a few weeks. Reminds me of an old joke my mom used to tell: Know how to keep an idiot in suspense? I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Guess who found the camera cord?

No, it actually wasn’t me.  Believe it or not.

Here’s some of the FO’s I’ve been waiting forever to showcase.  First off, the amazing bag my sister crocheted me for my birthday.  I picked out the greens, and she picked out the pattern.  Know what the cool thing is?  According to the pattern, the end round was a plain one, and she thought that looked awful, so she finagled a new end round that went more with the pattern.  Lovely no?

Here’s a close up of the square:

I love it.  It’s way bigger than my little project that I squeeze into my purse for waiting in lines, but smaller than my big Disney yarn bag, so it’s perfect for those times I want to have a project with me but it won’t fit in my purse.

What’s next?  I’ll go in order of the pictures I have loaded.  First up is the final finished product!  I present the Baby Surprise Jacket with matching heart hat for a college friend:

Believe it or not, this was actually knitted all up several months ago and it took me forever to seam it up and even longer than that to sew on the dang buttons.  Here’s a close up of the adorable little things that I still can’t believe I found at Wal-mart!

Are those not the most cutest ever?  And they match the yarn!

Next up some hats that I started on vacation in Canada:

This is the Gingerbread Hat that Patrick picked out, in orange of course.  It did turn out rather cute, but I probably should have made it a little longer.  It barely covers his ears.

That one doesn’t show up real well, but it’s the Trilobite hat from Knitty.  Very cool pattern and a quite easy knit.

Here’s another one from the side:

Well, that one doesn’t show up real well either, but trust me, it’s an adorable hat, as far as trilobites can be adorable.

An update on David’s sweater as well:

I’m still on the never-ending black hole of ribbing that’s the body of this thing.  I decided that I was not motivated enough to keep going with that, so I went ahead and did the collar.  It turned out too loose the first time, so I actually re-did it on size 4’s and it looks much nicer.  Now to make sure I remember that for the sleeves…

Now for a couple more things that don’t even have project pages yet, but hopefully I’ll get to them tonight.

First off, the Circle socks:

Remember that forked heel?  I did it!

Here’s a diagonal scarf that turned out cute:

Here’s the fair sock from hell:

I’ll perhaps go in for a close up when the sock comes out of time out.  There’s a miscrossed cable up there near the top that is really irritating.

This hat’s done already but this is the in progress shot.  I’ll have to go in later on and update the link when I the project pages up.

Whew, I’m exhausted now.  Think perhaps I’ll go knit…

Details of the Forked Heel

Alrighty then, here’s pretty much exactly what I did; from toe onwards:

I’m using size 2 needles, with Knitpicks Felici in Schooner.   It’s a little loose; I think I prefer 1’s with this yarn, but they’re all being used on other wips right now that I either don’t want to finish or don’t want to rip out the needles from.  So, 2’s it is.

I started with a crochet provisional cast on of 30.  I short-rowed down to 12, and back up to 30 again and joined up with the front and proceeded to knit 51 rows.  The pattern calls for a multiple of 8 st, so I knew I’d need 64 after the heel, so I thought I’d increase beforehand.

On R.52, I did an increase of 2 on each needle for the back side, making a total of 32 st on the heel portion.  I increased by lifting up the bar between the st and knitting into the back of it.  The front stitches remained at 30.

R. 53, I knit plain.

R. 54, I increased again, this time on the front needles, leaving me with 15 st on every needle.

R. 55, I knit plain.

R. 56, I began the heel.  I short rowed on the back 32 st only, short rowing down to where I had 8 pairs of st on either side of the plain knitted part.  I short-rowed (long-rowed?) back up to where I had 4 pairs total, including one extra YO in there, and then short-rowed back down to 8 pairs again.  On the way back up, I picked up that extra YO and treated it as the others, making my K3tog into a K4og, and the same on the purl row.

After finishing the short rowing, I did a few more rows of plain stockinette, at the same time, I picked up a st at the joining of the front and back sides, twisted it, and did a K2tog on a couple of different rows to help reduce what was becoming a horrible ladder due to the long duration of short rowing.

R. 61 I started the pattern st, so that 61 was my first purl row.  So far it’s looking really cool, but I can’t post pictures yet as we still haven’t managed to locate the camera cord thing.

Cool, huh?

Ode to the forked heel

I know I saw it.  I even think I know about when I saw it.  But I can’t find it, and apparently neither can anyone else on Ravelry.

I’m pretty sure it was when I was having the issues with the sock I was making for the fair, and noticed that miscrossed cable way up there, which I have a picture of but can’t load it on the computer because my wonderful hubby who’s in FL right now visiting his even more wonderful mom has somehow put the camera cord thing that connects it to the computer in a place where neither he nor I can locate it.  And believe me, that’s saying something.

(Side note – anyone want to diagram that first sentence in that last paragraph?  No, just little grammer nerd me then, huh?)

I am the finder of lost things.  Seriously, I need a tiara.  At times, hubby will even call me from work to ask if I know where the … and he doesn’t even finish saying what he’s looking for and I’ll tell him I saw him put it in his green bag.  Or more often that he left it at home and it’s sitting on his nightstand and does he need me to bring it to him over lunch.  I get quite a few nice lunches out of it.  Of course, he may be faking it, just so he can take me out to lunch.  Yeah, I’ll go with that.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I started looking on Ravelry for a nice cabled sock pattern that looked cool without looking too difficult.  I have no idea at this point what my search criteria were, or I’d sure do that again.  The other idea is that I was stalking group activity or friend activity and someone favorited it or started it.  Either way, I can’t find it.

What is it you say?  It was a sock pattern.  A free one with a quite unusual heel.  I really prefer the short row heel, mainly cause I feel really smart when I do one, unless I mess up, which I try not to do that often, and partly because I think it uses up way less yarn than the heel flap method.  Normally with a standard short row heel, you get a nice diagonal line going from the heel towards the ankle.  In this pattern, the line from the ankle splits off into 2 forks as it travels toward the heel.

As I looked at it, I thought, hey, that’s pretty cool.  And I thought it might help a problem I have with my short row heels: they stop too low on the back side of my foot.  When I’m done with the short rowing, I really feel like I want to start in with whatever pattern I’m doing all around the leg part, but I’ve found that if I start it right then, then the back of my shoe rubs against it in a most uncomfortable way.  So, I’ve resolved this in the past by going up around 10 rows or so and then doing the pattern.  It works, but it sure looks a little wonky.

This forked heel thing looks like it might do the trick.  I sat down this morning and tried it with some scrap yarn, and the details of what I did are here on this Ravelry thread.  At some point this weekend, hopefully tonight, I’ll reach the heel part on the sock I’m working on and hammer it out for real.  Stay tuned for updates.

Speaking of…I’m down to about a box a day.

Tissues that is.  Is this ragweed ever going to just die?

The startitis, and the ragweed, hits hard

I fought it off as long as I could.  Really.  Both of them.

In retaliation, I have started 2 new things in the past 2 days, which historically, isn’t that bad.  I’ve done worse.

I began a pair of mitered mittens, as written in the Knitter’s Almanac, except that I read somewhere on one of the project pages about someone doing a thumb that stuck out from the side instead of the palm, and I think that looks way better.  Sorry, EZ.

Then today, when I reached the point where I could put the thumb on waste yarn and just go up like an inch or so and then start decreasing for the top of the hand, I just couldn’t do it anymore.

So, I took out a pattern that a friend from my weekly Panera Bread sessions was working on, called the Circle socks.  It was really cool.  I started those tonight.  But, I’m going toe up, so at least I have to force myself to get through the boring foot part to get to the pattern part on the leg.  I thought about figuring out how to do the pattern part on the foot, but then I thought, naaah, I want this part to be easy.

Plus, then, I can watch my episodes of CSI that I recorded today.  I love me some Nick Stokes.  And Steve’s in FL, so I can drool without embarassment.    Sorry hon, if you read this.  I’m really watching it because I love the forensics.