Beats the Record

I finally finished my longest running project:

Recognize this?  No? That's the blanket I made out of all the garter stitch log cabin squares that I started back in January...of 2012.

Yeah.  Then again, I could have had it done months ago.  It's not that the blanket took forever, its that things don't get done if you don't work on them part that took forever. The squares, since I picked them up and put them down a lot, took a good two years on their own.  The border took a year, technically.  If you remember, I sewed up the blanket during the Olympics last year and almost finished the border a few months later.  But I ran out of black yarn.  So, to avoid buying more, I borrowed some.  Except it was Red Heart. Which, by the way, doesn't work too well as Red Heart is a lot thicker than Simply Soft.  So while the blanket was techically done, it flared out at one of the ends due to the other yarn.  So it again sat there, with a plan to get more Simply Soft and re-knit the last ten rows. 

I finally got the yarn about four or so months ago, and then it took me until last month to finally go 'this isn't staying here any longer on my couch like this' and do it.

Just in time for me to have to use it because throat infections suck. So, it's useful, at least?

The Scrap Project Paradox and The Law Of More Yarn Required

After finishing the lovely but long and complex shawl, I was trying to be good and go back to the stupid scrap project I've been working on for far too long (try two and a half years):

To remind everyone (though I've mentioned this project before), this is a simple log cabin squares put into a small blanket project that I started to get rid of all the Simply Soft I had laying around.  I've been working on it on and off, but during the Olympics I made a effort to get all the squares done and sewn up, which I accomplished.  I, however, only started the border before dropping it to do the shawl.  Priorities, priorities.

Anyway, this, of course, has gone the way of every scrap project, which is it fell for the Law of More Yarn Required.  The Law of More Yarn Required states that if you do something trying to use up random not full skeins of yarn, such as undertaking a scrap project, you will need more yarn to complete it than you have in your stash.  It isn't the worse thing in the world if you use all that extra yarn, but this goes hand-in-hand with the Scrap Project Paradox, which is any scrap project doesn't actually use up your scrap yarn.  It may change the dynamic or amount of such, but it never will use up all the scrap yarn.  You will always have some left.

Trying to avoid that for my scrap project, when I started the border I planned out the design so that I would use more of the yarn I had more of while still maintaining some semblance of a design.  I would not fall for this rule...and yeah:

I made the black sections way too big, and ran out of black yarn on the last side I had to do (I'm also log-cabining the border). Ten more rows of black I don't have the yarn for, nowhere, not even in my stash (for obvious reasons the half-skein of black wool I still have would not work, unfortunately).  So now I need more yarn for the scrap project I was doing to get rid of yarn. Sigh.

Not that I wasn't falling for this law even without the black yarn shortage (though, to be far, less yarn than I started with):

Best laid plans of mice and men and all that.  Next time I may do the whole thing properly; that is, weight the damn yarn and see how much area I can cover with it.  Maybe then I'll actually defeat the Law and the Paradox...or at least I can dream, right?

Crash Landing

Despite the fact that I have all this sock yarn that I should be using, I've been focusing my subway knitting time on an old project:

Yep.  Squares again.  I realized recently that I had technically started this project over a year ago, and hadn't touched it in months.  Of course, this UFO's whole role was to give me something easy to do when I was between projects.  Unfortunately, I've been lining up my projects very well, and so I hadn't done much with it until recently.  And the only reason I picked it up again is because I've been so focused on sewing (which, yes, I'm still doing.  It will never end!), and then my sweater got too big to do on the subway:

(It's being knit on...twice a week...and is starting to annoy me....it'll never end either).  So while I haven't got a lot of knitting done, I'm at least making progress on an old project. That's what I keep telling myself, at least.

Though, I kind of want to start a pair of socks.  Because all I need is another project.  Oye.

Procrastinating and Creating

For once, I should be doing other things such as packing and maybe trying to get some rows of Crazy Cable Blanket done, but instead I'm writing a blog post and making little pumpkin breads:

(I actually don't care for cooking, but I like fresh food and saving money)

But anyway, this weekend my ass is going to be upstate, a trip for which I even took a few days off from work for (yay limited vacation time). I've stopped packing because I'm trying to convince myself that, no, I don't need to bring my whole knitting needle set because I have enough projects going that I don't need to start anything from the yarn I plan to buy at Rhinebeck before I get back home.  I'm also trying to pack for four days in a small suitcase while leaving enough room for more stuff.  Over packing (which I always do, unfortunately) is one thing.  Trying to lug an over packed suitcase on the subway and a bus is a completely different story.  My trip involves at least six staircases, crowded subways, a long distance style bus, and a long hill, and yes, you count when you're lugging bags.

I probably don't need all my projects with me either, but they're going.  Crazy Cable Blanket (of which I have 30 rows left) is going.  The spatterdashers (halfway through the second one!) are going.  Those  Log Cabin squares I make when I can't do anything else are going.  That blue crochet thing from the last post is going:

That will be my fourth posted pattern, and I swear it, because I have the pattern written down already and I'm following it.  It's a long time coming; I haven't tried making my own pattern since the baby sweater, and haven't posted one since the baby hat I did.  I'd admit, for awhile I just wasn't feeling it.  I didn't want to deal with the creative process, and I had enough projects going I didn't need to.  After really gearing up at the beginning of the year I fell flat.  I think I was hoping to get going with the design thing, but got overwhelmed with life, then said screw it and forgot about it for awhile.

Reciently, though, something clicked. It started when I went on a yarn crawl and ended up with this yarn:

I bought the blue-green yarn with the idea of making my mom's Hanukkah present out of it.  It's alpaca, of course, and the plan was another hat.  But I wasn't sure if I would find a good pattern for it.  Then an idea hit me. I knew exactly what that hat's going to look like, and I sat down and charted out the cable I wanted and drew sketches:

Now, I haven't tested the design yet in yarn, nor written the pattern (I need to figure out how I'm doing the top still, and if I want to do a contrasting brim), but I figured after I get done with the Halloween stuff I'd get down to that.  I may need extensive modification, who knows.

Then I realized that the other yarn, which I bought thinking I had three skeins of it in my stash already, was the wrong color.

Oops.  I called the yarn store I bought the three black skeins from and asked if they had any of the charcoal color I actually have in my stash. No such luck; they didn't have it.  Now I'm stuck with three skeins of charcoal and three skeins of black yarn, which killed my first idea of what I was going to do with that yarn.

Then I realized I needed yarn for that class I'm taking at Rhinebeck.  Ok then, I'll try to come up with my first sweater pattern using that yarn.  Which may or may not happen, but that yarn's what I'm bringing to class.

I did sketch out some ideas of sweaters, though.  I'm not sure how far along this class wants you, but they mentioned bringing fashion pictures.  I don't really have any inspirational pictures right now, so I just sketched, and I'm hoping to wear the jacket I want to mimic in a cardigan pattern at some point (since, you know, it's already got a hole in it).

Finally, after setting out all these knitting projects, and knitting stuff like worsted weight yarn on size 0 needles, I decided I really needed a easy, bulky, crochet project. I also decided I needed a wrap because it was cold outside and the heat wasn't on yet in my apartment (because I was totally going to get it done before the landlord got around to turning the heat on.  Didn't happen; the heat kicked in a week ago).

Luckily I have tons of Loops & Threads Charisma in my stash that really needs to stop living there.  Out comes the big crochet hook, and I started crocheting a wrap.  Then I frogged it.  Then I crocheted a square.  Then I frogged it.  Then I searched Ravelry in vein and got sick of all the repetitive crochet blanket patterns. Then I found this stitch in a crochet stitch dictionary and thought, hm, that looks interesting.  So I charted out a repeat from memory (which meant it's different than the actual stitch dictionary version), figured out the arrangement I wanted, actually figured out my gauge for it, calculated the number of chains to do to start, and went at it.  I'm actually shocked it's coming out as nicely as it is in this yarn.  I was thinking that my pattern idea may be more suited for a worsted weight, or maybe even a sport weight, but I was doing bulky first because stash.  You'll see.  When I'm done with the bulky version, I'll post the pattern.  Then maybe I'll figure out a worsted weight one (though I would have to buy yarn for that one, oye).

But I really need to pack now.  It's amazing what you do when you have something else that needs to get done.

Distractions and Old Obsessions

I figured that my next post would be the results of the test.  Didn't happen.  I still got one more swatch to do, and then I got to record everything.  I should be done next week.

And why am I not done?  Couple of reasons.  One, I hate swatching, so I'm procrastinating.  Two, I got distracted by a thousand other things.  This post is about those projects.

First off, I spent my week 1)starting the baby sweater (having done all the math for the body of the sweater, at least), 2)realizing my choice of increase sucked and therefore frogging the sweater, 3)restarting it with a new increase, 4)noticing that it looked a little big, measuring it, realizing that it was in fact an inch too big, re-measuring the gauge, realizing that I had had a gauge accident, and therefore frogging the sweater again.

This was followed by an investigation as to why I had had a gauge accident, which was found to be due to my own stupidity.  My swatch didn't lie, in fact the first swatch I did for the baby sweater was at the same gauge I was getting for the sweater itself.  The problem was that I measured it wrong the first time, and therefore every bit of math and planning I did for this pattern was 100% wrong for the size I wanted.  Yeah.  Ripping out 11 rows and having to re-do all the pattern math was not what I was aiming to do this week.

Anyway, having done that, I did get it started again:

And it is in fact the right size this time.  I checked three times.

As well, as I was knitting a garter stitch square, I was thinking about how I really shouldn't be knitting a square for my Log Cabin Afghan, and should really switch the needles back to the Crazy Cable Blanket so I could get some of that done.  Except then another train of thoughts went through my head.  You see, the baby sweater needs to be done by June (as well as the one that still needs buttons. I haven't had any luck with that).  Also, I want to knit up a small shawl using my other skein of Merino Light, and that will also need to be done by June, as I wish to wear it to my brother's bar mitzvah.  Surfing for patterns for that, I realized that I need to get my brother a present.  But what to get him...hm...what did I get for my sisters...oh, shit, I made them crocheted kippot.

This needs some back story.  You see, I originally got interested in pattern design for one reason.  When I was in high school and actually not only considered myself Jewish but was a constant participant in one of the youth groups, I wanted to make myself a kippah. I tried finding a pattern online, but that didn't net me much back in the early 2000's.  I had a vision, and I wanted that.  So, I spent most of my high school years making and trying to come up with a pattern for the perfect kippah.  Two of my best efforts of this ended up going to my sisters for their bat mitzvahs, one of them actually being very good. Unfortunately, I crocheted it as I was watching the Columbia disaster unfold on TV and therefore didn't write down what I did, and never managed to recreate it.  I, after making a bunch of failed efforts, gave up when I went to college.  This left me with a shit-ton of crochet thread that I've, for some reason, always kept around but have not done anything else with.

So guess what made a reappearance recently:

Yay stash.  Anyway, in my time on Raverly, I've noticed that they had a whole category for kippot, so I went and clicked it.  Lots of free, basic knitted and crochet patterns for kippot.  Only one problem.  None of them are for crochet thread.  So, guess what I've been doing today?

I'm once again trying to create a kippah pattern so I can also make my brother a kippah for his bar mitzvah.  In June. Oye.

Of course you may look at the start of that effort and go, 'wait, doesn't that look a little feminine for a boy?' and you would be right.  That's because after my third time starting (and after buying three different sizes of steel crochet hooks...no wonder I sucked at making kippot last time, I didn't even have the right size hook for the yarn!), I got the ripple effect that I had achieved on my only good effort last time I did this.  So I started writing down what I was doing and went with it.  Not that this little side effort hasn't given me an idea of how to make a more standard kippah, but yeah, this isn't for my brother.  Don't know what I'm going to do with it, assuming I get something out of it.  Maybe give it to my mother, since I've never made her one either (when she had her (adult) bat mitzvah, I bought her a kippah).

Now I've started something else, this leave me with four projects in progress (where did my rules go?  Threw them out when I moved, it looks like), two active which need to be done by June, and one that needs to be done by next December (given this is Crazy Cable Blanket, this isn't a sure thing.  I have to get rows done every week to potentially make that deadline).  I also have another project that isn't started that I would like to be done by June (but honestly, if I don't get my shawl it's not the end of the world).  And yarn I just bought for a hat I was hoping on making before winter ended.  And eight done squares and one in progress for a blanket I don't need, but since it's a mindless project, it gets worked on more often than Crazy Cable Blanket does.  Oh, and that swatch for my test. Do you think I've bit off more than I can chew here?

Yarn Craft in Literature, or In Which I've Been Reading Tolstoy Instead of Coming Up with Good Blog Posts

Because I have nothing right now other than some pattern math and a couple of semi-defunct swatches for a certain baby sweater:

...rather expensive yarn I bought because I walked into a new yarn shop looking for buttons, couldn't find buttons I liked, and then felt bad:

....a story on how I managed to screw up the order of colors on one of my afghan squares because I didn't bother writing it down before going out and attending a knitting meetup, as well as my main idea of ordering these squares, which would mean I need to keep color orders the same:

...and very little actual knitting done, I'm going to instead mention that I've also been on a Tolstoy kick in books recently.  Being that I'm supposed to be saving money and own a Kindle (and have yet to claim the library card that got sent to my parent's house by mistake), I've been hunting around Project Gutenberg for free books to read.  If you don't know what Project Gutenberg is, click that link right now. You don't even need to own a e-reader to read these books; you can read them straight on the computer (this presumes, of course, that you can deal reading a book on a backlit screen. Personally, I can't stand reading long books and certain other things on a backlit screen, hence I was a semi-early adapter for an e-reader).

Anyway, to get back on point, I finished Anna Karenina recently (in two weeks. Yes, I can read fast when I actually decide to sit down and read).  I'm now reading War and Peace (because I'm nuts).

I really, really, recommend reading Anna Karenina.  It has a surprisingly addicting series of plots, despite the fact that they all meander.  Maybe has something to do with the fact that it's like reading a train wreck; you'll be horrified by all the characters' actions, but you just can't look away.  However, I will admit that I've never minded long wandering books as long as the wandering parts are interesting, well-written, and establish character, while I know others who hate any meandering. Tolstoy was the definition for the former on this site, so you have been warned.  War and Peace, on the other hand, I haven't read enough of it to pass opinion yet.  So far, while it has very little semblance of plot line, the characters and their antics have been amusing me.

You may be wondering what this has to do with yarn craft.  Well, one of the many details that pop up in these books is characters doing yarn crafts.  I found this more amusing than I should have.  After all, these books do take place in 19-century Russia, so of course people are crafting.  But it's how it's presented, and sometimes even who Tolstoy bothers to mention is doing such a thing, that makes it interesting.  That, and I know next to nothing on historical yarn craft, so all these references are interesting from that standpoint.  Anyway, I will provide quotes (though not page numbers since this is on a Kindle, sorry. I'll give location numbers for any other Kindle users out there, though note, however, that 1) I own the first version of the Kindle 2 (though if you have the newer Kindle Keyboard, the screen size is the same...and holy shit, you can now get it for less than $100. Can you believe I paid $320 for mine?), and 2) the version of Anna Karenina I have is the free Amazon download, but the version of War and Peace is this Project Gutenberg version.  There is a Project Gutenberg version of Anna Karenina as well).

First, you have your standard women knitting stuff, along with a case of a man not getting it.  However, I'll mention here that I think the male character not getting it is more due to the type of character he was. If you know Anna Karenina, the following quotes come from the part where preparations are being made for Kitty's and Levin's first baby, for which Kitty and her relations work and Levin doesn't want to get it.  So, yep, baby knitting:

"On the terrace were assembled all the ladies of the party. They always liked sitting there, after dinner, and that day they had work to do there too. Beside the sewing and knitting of baby clothes, with which all of them were busy..." (8996).

"He [Levin]...tried to turn away and avoid seeing the mysterious, endless strips of knitting..."(9702).

"She [Kitty] was sitting up in bed, holding some knitting, which she had been busy upon during the last few days." (11434)

"Kitty was walking about knitting rapidly and giving directions" (11453). 

I should note that the last two come from the part where Kitty is going into labor, no less.  Guess the knitting relaxes her, as this is the first time in the book Tolstoy mentions Kitty knitting directly.  Before this, she was always working on a type of lacework.

Beyond baby knitting, you also have a governess of Anna Karenina's doing some pretty standard knitting:

"The English governess...was sitting near the boy knitting a shawl" (6858)

As well as a main character (Dolly) consolidating herself with some knitting early in the novel:

"...she [Dolly] took up here work, a coverlet she had long been making.  She always set to work on it at depressed moments, and now she knitted at it nervously, twitching her fingers and counting the stitches" (1052).

However, they're not the only people knitting in Tolstoy's works.  In War and Peace, you have a man (granted, he was a servant) knitting:

"An old man...sat in a corner knitting a stocking" (1978).

Also, this isn't limited to knitting.  Turns out, Anna Karenina crochets:

"...and taking up the crochet work that was lying on the table, she [Anna] began drawing the hook out of it..."(5855).

Though I have yet to quite get what Anna is doing here with it (for background, this is the same crochet work as the above quote):

 "...pulled the hook at last out of the crochet work, and rapidly, with the help of her forefinger, began working loop after loop of the wool that was dazzling white in the lamplight, while the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously in the embroidered cuff" (5885).

So, now that I'm done whoring out literary references, I'll go back to this baby sweater now.

How Not to Wind a Hank, with Some Reflections on Designing

So, this weekend, I didn't get much knitting stuff done.  Did a couple of rows on Crazy Cable Blanket, worked on a couple of squares (partly while waiting in a waiting room; partly during the Super Bowl, though I didn't get nearly as much done during the Super Bowl as I thought I would.  Something about being at a party and being from NY, that kind of thing).  Oh, and decided I was going to swatch for this baby sweater/shirt/whatever that I can't really decide what I want it to look like, let alone actually sit down and do the math.  But anyway, that little side journey was thrawted by one of the hanks of cotton.  You see, I had these hanks:

And one, once a swift and ball winder were utalized, quickly became this:

However, the second hank quickly became this:

(Yes, that wooden thing is a swift.  It's an Amish-style swift, verses the more common umbrella type)

Yep.  A big, steaming pile of yarn mess.  Why did it become such a mess?  Well, whoever wound the hank up did a shitty job.  Both ends of the hank were tangled up with the other strands of the hank, making winding off a swift impossible.  I tried.  For awhile, I was weaving the ball winder in and out of the hank on the swift when needed.  Then, I got to a point where the space the yarn went through was not and could never be big enough for the ball winder to go through.  So, I took the partial cake of yarn off the winder, tried winding it by hand off the hank, watched the partial cake start to disintegrate while the hank tangles became more numerous, and therefore got frustrated and took the hank off the swift.  Which meant that it disintegrated into the mess in the picture above.  And that's after I spent an hour attempting to untangle it.

Ug, how hard it is to wind a hank, people?  Big circle of yarn.  Really now.  The last time I had this issue was also a hank of cotton, too.  Different company though.

I finally did get it untangled and wound up into a non-disintegrating yarn cake, though it took me at least two hours to do it, split across two days.  Which meant I got no swatching done.  Oye.

Of course, the whole swatching and knitting of this yarn is another issue.  I want to create the pattern for this baby sweater/cardigan/whatever myself and write it down.  I have some ideas, and some constraints (needs to be short-sleeved, gender-neutral, and I only have one hank of each color plus some black cotton from another FO), and no idea how the variegated yarn knits up, which is a problem I need to fix.  But what this also means is that I have to sit down, do the math for whatever I design (which will probably be way too complicated and will therefore have to be toned down), knit it, hack it, fix my math, and then figure out how to size it.  I've never done a sweater pattern before (well, I tried once, but while I did get a FO out of it, I did not get anything I liked or useful to write a pattern up with).  I have 'till June for the FO. 

Which brings me to another mistake of mine that I realized somewhat recently.  You see, when I first started writing my patterns down (back when I just crocheted), I thought that designers usually designed while knitting/crocheting, wrote down what they did, and then released it into the world.  So that's what I did, both successfully and not.  I BS'ed a pattern while I created it, tried to keep track of what I was doing and not do anything too crazy,  made it pretty and posted it.

Well, except that's not how it works in the real world.  Most designers write the whole pattern first, or at least most of it.  And, there are designers out there that never make the patterns they write.  They write the pattern, and then send it off to be tested by other knitters/crocheters.  This blew my mind.  Really?  You can design something before you make it?  How do you know it's going to work, or what it's going to look like?

Then I actually thought about it, and realized that I'm an idiot.  Of course you can write a pattern before you make it.  It's like writing pseudo-code or planning out a program to the function level.  If you know what you're working in and what it's supposed to do, you should know what's possible or not, and therefore write fine code or patterns without ever executing it or making the pattern.  Theory and thought will show you what will work or not.

Of course...I also plan a lot of my programs partly on the fly.  It's just the way I think; I need to see it working to really say 'yeah, this works'.  Now, don't get me wrong, I do plan the logic flow, gather requirements, do mockups of screens, and all the other fun planning steps that come with coding.  But I tend to plan the actual structure and/or some details of the program itself by just coding it and getting it up and running.  So is it really surprising that, knowing no designers or anything about the process, that's how I was designing as well? 

Except that, why I don't mind coding this way (to a point), on-the-fly planning in yarn craft is way more annoying.  See, to change something in code can be very simple (well, I should say in the environments and languages I currently work in).  You go, you figure out what you want, you write it (or copy and paste it), and you run it.  All the rest of the code you've written and tested is still there.  To change something while making it in yarn usually ends up requiring scrapping part of the project.  Or the whole project.  Or even the yarn you bought for the project.  You can't reuse stitches you knitted after the change, at least not usually.  And a different construction?  You can't just copy and paste what you want and piece it back together, you know.

Hence, I'm planning on writing down most of this baby sweater/cardigan/whatever pattern before I attempt to knit it.  I'll swatch to see what color and stitch combinations look good, I'll do the math and write down everything.  Sure, something will change after I start it.  But I won't be doing half-assed math calculations that lead to a too-wide neckline like my last sweater project.  Or a too-loose gauge that just didn't work, that I didn't bother pulling out because that meant losing everything I'd done before.

Famous last words, I know.

In Which I Learn the Importance of Researching Before Pattern Writing, and Get Addicted to Garter Stitch

So, my plans once again get made, and the fall into the dust.  I should be working on either the baby sweater to be made with my new yarn, or the crazy cable blanket, but I'm not.  Actually, I've managed to start another project in the meantime:

This is from a pattern in 60 Quick Baby Knits called "Log Cabin Afghan", except that I'm altering it.  The square is actually supposed to have two more blocks of color going around it, but I decided I didn't want to do that and stopped early (yes, I know that means more squares will have to be done.  But it also balances out color usage).  That, and since I'm using whatever yarn I have right now, which is mainly Caron Simply Soft with some Berocco Vintage for the middle square, the squares aren't all going to be the same color (though I haven't decided what to repeat or not yet, still thinking about it.  Also, I do not kid myself that at some point, more yarn will have to be bought to finish this).  As well, despite the pattern source, I doubt it's going to any baby.  My color scheme of worsted weight yarn in my stash isn't exactly baby friendly.  Thirdly, I really should learn to read patterns carefully before starting them.  You see the pile of center squares?  That's because I didn't realize that you didn't bind off on the first square, but kept knitting, and then turned.  I'm having to undo the bind off and then continue for all those squares because someone didn't follow instructions.

You would think I would have been driven mad by all the garter stitch done in those squares (and hell, I'm not even a big fan of garter stitch as a look), but I'm oddly addicted to it right now.  I guess my mind just needs something not complicated.  I've had better weeks.  At least it'll be a better project to work on during the Super Bowl.

In other news, I was pretty much done with the baby hat pattern I posted just now last week, except that then I actually bothered Googling 'Mistake Rib'.  You see, I learned a 1x1 version of mistake rib that wasn't reversible, leading me to decide to make a 'brim up' and a 'brim down' version of the pattern.  Then I found out that proper mistake rib is a reversible pattern.  Oops.  I could have saved my ass from having to do two hats (though doing the second hat reveled some other math-related mistakes in my pattern, so it still wasn't a waste of time).  However, changing it now would dictate a completely different pattern, as the math doesn't work out with my current stitch count.  So I apologize for that.  I could have made it easier, and I didn't.  I really should do my research before embarking on pattern writing wild goose chases.  It's because of this that I almost didn't post the pattern, thinking that it shows that I'm a bit of an idiot.  But I put a descent amount of work into it, so I decided to post it anyway.

However, between the pattern below, the squares, and some idea sketching for the baby sweater (which I'm most likely not going to use, but anyway), I haven't had time to do much else.  It's odd. I've gotten a lot done, yet it seems like I haven't done anything.  Oye.

Depressing post is depressing.  Will have to post later when I'm in a better mood.