My Life is Baby Projects

Jeez, where do I start? Well, I guess that one of the reasons I haven't posted any of my projects in half a year is that my life is currently baby patterns, and for awhile I couldn't even talk about it.

I was merrily carrying along up to the end of last year working on things like the sweater pattern I swore I'd create and the sky shawl when one of my sisters announced she was pregnant.  In my family's house, that goes quickly from 'yay!' to 'oh, shit now I need to buy yarn and make stuff!'

Well, maybe that was just me.  But other members of my family are also making stuff.

Anyway, so for the past 6-8 months or so, almost all of my projects have been baby stuff.  I made this sweater:

I have to credit the woman who works at the button section of the notions store I go to.  I'll be looking at something that would work, and then she'll come up with completely different buttons that work perfectly.

and a matching hat and booties:

and then started this blanket (haven't finished it yet, though):

and then got this out of the way:

and then started another, cooler weather sweater, for which I have no picture yet.

We're not going to talk about the amount of yarn I bought for this (more than I've used, certainly). I always get into this 'I can make all the things!' mode when it comes to special things like having an excuse to make really nice baby items (since this is my niece).  However, it turns out that, no, when you work full time and go to school part time and have to do things like keep up with an apartment and get distracted by my fiance and my attention-whore of a cat:

Who then proceeded to attack the sweater.  He's already claimed the extra, wrong-sized, baby bootie.

, let alone all the scheming and planning I've done for various things, one being the baby shower, you in fact cannot make all the things.  I can barely make the baby stuff; I haven't even touched the other projects in months, and I'm still in the middle of it.

My niece is due next month.  Oops.

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.

Circles and Windows Wrap

A quick but interesting couch shawl or blanket to keep you warm. Two sizes are given so you can choose how much wrap you want.

The highlights of this pattern are listed below. To get the actual pattern (pdf), please click here to download it (the pattern's free, don't worry).

Circles and Windows

Craft Type Crochet Skill Level Easy+ (need to be able to double crochet and do or learn shells and clusters) Finished Size Shawl size is 24" W x 73" L Large shawl/small blanket size is 36" W x 73" L Gauge One pattern repeat (7 st and 3 rows) = 3" Yarn and Yardage Shawl: 6 skeins Loops and Threads Charisma (Bulky, 109 yards) or 590 yards of a compatible bulky yarn Large Shawl/Small blanket: 10 skeins of Loops and Threads Charisma or 1090 yards of a compatible bulky yarn. Hooks US N/P (10mm)

Happy crocheting!

* * *

If you find any errors in this project, please e-mail CompileYarn[at]gmail[dot]com, or leave a comment  here or on Ravelry.  Copyright (c) CompileYarn(), 2013.

The Importance of Dye Lots

This is why you buy enough yarn of the same dye lot (or at least visibly match it when you buy more than one dye lot):

Now, for this project I both knew this was going to happen (you don't buy yarn two years later expecting to match dye lots) and don't really care that it did (it's a couch wrap small blanket that will live in my apartment).  However, I still wasn't expecting the color to be that off.  This isn't just slightly different, this is whole 'nother color of blue different.

In other news, I finished the couch wrap I was making up the pattern for.  Which isn't a wrap.  It's not even a big shawl.  It's as big as the fleece blanket I was trying to replace.  Somewhere, I had a math fail when I calculated how many chains to do.  So when I get around to writing up this pattern, I have to re-do all my calculations so it is a couch wrap.  Since you got two patterns last week, I'm not in a rush now.  Especially since I now get to work on a sweater for myself:

The pattern is the Professoressa Cardigan by Connie Chang Chinchino.  This will replace a store bought work cardigan I always wear (the temperature in my office is not consistent no matter what time of year it is).  It's been my plan to replace it for awhile, or just add some variety, but now it has to be done since the current one has a small hole in the sleeve.  Oye.

I'm using Blue Moon Fiber Arts' Woobu in, believe it or not, the Smoke on the Water colorway (look it up on their site.  It shows a dark purple color.  Mine is gray).  I just started this last week and I'm in love with this yarn already.  By far one of the best yarns I've work with, and hopefully it wears the same way.  Being that I found this yarn randomly at Rhinebeck, it was a good pick.

One point about the yarn though: I'm lucky I read up on it on Ravelry before starting this project.  All the comments were along the lines of 'this yarn rocks but my sweater grew'.  So I did a proper swatch and, yes, it grows and your gauge will change.  I'm using that to my advantage, actually.  Plan for it and you'll be fine.

I know it's pretty late for half the holidays now, but happy holidays everyone! 

Deadlines and Stupid Mistakes

Bad things happen when you actually start to think about deadlines.  Sure, we've all had them, for knitting or otherwise.  Sure, they're sometimes a good thing.  But it's nice when you can take your time with a project as well.

The latter was my first approch to Crazy Cable Blanket.  You know, this one:

This was mostly to preserve my sanity.  Imagine setting a deadline on that sucker...at best, it would have been so far into the future it'd been useless.  Anyway, a week or so ago, I sat down and calculated around how much I needed to knit if I wanted to get it done by next Hanukkah (which is in the middle of December this year).  A rough estimate concluded that if I knit 4 rows a day, I can get it done by November (which would maybe give me time to smack a border on it.  Because all this time-sink of a blanket needs is more work done to it).

Four rows a day?  How hard is that?

Well, pretty hard, actually.  For starters, there are some days I'm just not really home until late, and I have to go to work the next morning, so forget about staying up to work on it.  Despite what I did yesterday, it's not really a good project to bring to a bar, nor to travel with in general.  Some days, I just have other crap to do, or I just don't want to sit down for an hour and a half and knit, or I get distracted by other things (like now).  Despite this, I'm sticking to my goal of four rows a day, even if in reality it's more like 14 to 16 rows a week (about 2.29 rows a day)  This is because this is the most I've worked on it, and even if I don't quite make my deadline of Hanukkah, I'm at least making visible progress.  Also, I really don't want to be talking about it a year from now. 

Of course, attempting to speed things up a bit has it drawbacks.  Like noticing almost 75 rows later that you did this:

...and, even worse, this:

It figures.  Not only did I mis-cross the easiest cable in the blanket, I noticed it way after I did it.  Not like I'm going to frog half the blanket to fix it, so I'm pretty much stuck with this visible emblem of my stupidity.  Well...I did search for a way to fix it, and there happens to be another way.  However, I'm not so sure I want to try cutting just the right piece of yarn to re-cross the cables. Knowing me, I'll cut the wrong piece and ruin a year's worth of work.  A pre-teen won't care about a stupid mis-crossed cable and I'm just being anal, right?

P.S.: By the way, there should be no more interruptions in my life of the unplanned, life-taking-over, variety...at least for now.  That doesn't exclude laziness in posting, so I'll ask you to forgive me now for infrequent updates.

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.

I'm Still Here

It's just that I've been a little busy, and buses have been running a little late recently, so I haven't managed to sit down and write a good post.  I'll do it this weekend, I promise.

Well, not doing it last weekend was all my fault.  I was too busy trying to make progress on the Crazy Cable Blanket:

In which my brother informed me, after I made the point that I had only done 45 rows out of 420, that he thought I'd have it done by the end of November, and was therefore shocked I hadn't made much progress.  I pointed out that I had told him that I wouldn't be done by Hanukkah, so what made him think I would be done by November?  Really?  It's not that I'm a fast, well, anything, and they know that.  It takes me a couple of months at best to crochet an afghan, and that's a not-so-complicated, bulky weight, one.  Knitting crazy cabling in worsted weight?  Yeah, I'll be lucky if I have it done by the end of the cold season.

Anyway, if you ignore the rather icky cable job in one place, and the day I picked it up, proceeded to make 3 mistakes in two rows, hacked fixes for them, and put it down thinking it would only get worse from here, I'm making progress.  Slow progress, but progress.  Though I'm not using lifelines anymore, so if I really screw up I'm back to row 20. Yeah, maybe next year he'll get it as a Hanukkah present.  Maybe.

Internal Rules and Current Projects

I know I wrote last time that my next post would be on something different.  That was last week.  I'll get there at some point, I promise.

For now, however, I'll cover something that's currently on my mind, and in the meantime cover what I'm working on now (as well as a couple of past projects).  Therefore, I present the first set of my Internal Rules for Knitting.  These are some rules that help keep my knitting under control, which means they're broken half the time.  Anyway:

1) I will only buy yarn if I have a project in mind for it  After all, this is what I ended up with the first time I didn't do this:

Yeah, that's a current picture of some ugly Lion Brand Swede sitting in my stash

I told myself after that little incident that I would never buy yarn on a whim again.  I would wait until I had picked it for a specific project.  Especially if it was on sale or cost a pretty penny. This would keep my yarn spending under control, and make sure I use what I buy.

However, it also seems that it's quite valid to make an exception when I feel bad about returning yarn to my LYS because I was allergic to it and bought the substitute yarn online.  That's how I ended up with two skeins of this:

The yarn is Madelinetosh's Tosh Light in their Baltic colorway, which I am rather attracted to.  That shawl is the first skein, and came out of the fact that I bought this yarn on a whim.  This, of course, leaves the second skein just sitting there, because while I enjoyed the challenge of learning how to knit lace, I'm not touching it again any time soon. It's this pattern, no modifications. My notes on it here.

It also seems that I'll make an exception I find out some distance relative is having a kid, and I have lofty goals and loads of motivation that I'll make dozens of baby things.  That's how I ended up with all of this:

At least I got a project done for said baby, though it only took one skein of that grey yarn in the back (Bernat's Softee Baby in Gray Marl by the way, though if you can't stand acrylic, don't get it.  It works up like acrylic, though it softens up in the wash)  That sweater is a modified version of this pattern. For notes, go here.

2) I will not spend more on yarn for a project than it would cost me to buy the finished product retail.  This will make my knitting practical, and save me money.  Well, sometimes.  It turns out that an alpaca sweater can retail for $130-140 dollars, which of course is only a little higher than I spent on making this:

However, spending a year and making several projects while twisting your knit stitches is priceless. But that's another post.  This is a modified version of this pattern.  My notes here.

It was also a gift to my mom, so I really didn't care about that one so much.  Given that she's spent more than that making a crochet bedspread that I grew to not like pretty quickly, among other things.  However, it also seems that the rule goes out the window if I like the colorway, which is how I ended up with this:

Project notes are here

This is my current bus project.  The pattern is the Milk Maiden Pullover from Brave New Knits, and it's one of the only reasons I bought the book.  The yarn is Madelintosh's Tosh Sport in their (new?) colorway Fathom. I officially love this colorway. Look at it, my favorite color combination, just slightly variegated enough to be interesting. It's perfect for this pattern too. I had to get it. I don't care if I can get a sweater for $40 bucks and this cost me almost $70, it's worth it. And I'll break rule number 1 if a Madelinetosh Sock onesie pops up in this colorway. Or this colorway gets discontinued. Love, love, love.

And yes, I've modified it, since I modify almost everything.  Why I tend to modify everything is another post, though. Back to the rules.

3) I will use up most of my stash before buying more yarn. Yeah, never managed to follow this one:

Most of my stash. It's a combination of whim yarn and extra skeins from other projects. It lives under my bed and out of my mind for the most part.

The only thing that makes me feel better about that is that it seems that most people I read about online have much larger stashes.  Hey, mine (barely) fits in a Tupperware container. Then again, they seem to have much nicer yarn in their stashes too. Yay?

And now for a rule I'm actually not currently breaking:

4) I should only have one bus project and one at-home project at a time.

First, I'll define what I mean by 'bus project' and 'at-home project'. Bus projects are, obviously, projects that I can do mostly on on the bus. This means that they get worked up faster, but they tend to be simpler. Though 'simpler' is a bit relative, as I have no problem including some sweaters in this pile, as you can see from my bus project above. If it fits in my briefcase and doesn't require either being chained to the pattern or a chart or a lot of color-work, I can usually do it on the bus. Lots of stockinette or very repetitive patterns are a plus here, though I have done drop stitch lace, finishing off projects, and cables on the bus successfully. On the other hand, at home projects are usually things I want to make, but are way too big and/or complicated to work on on the bus. This officially started when I made that lace shawl above, as I realized that in order to make a lace shawl, I was going to need to be chained to the pattern and be able to finish a row in a sitting. I can't do this on the bus without really annoying my fellow passengers. I decided to spare them.

I'm now working on this:

My project notes are here

This is the pattern St. Ciaran from the new and expanded version of Aran Knitting. I'm not really mortifying it (gasp!), though I'm using Berroco's Comfort Worsted to make it instead of a wool-based yarn. This is because I'm making it for my brother, who's still a kid and still trashes things. Therefore, it had to be 1)washable and 2)not too expensive to make. I picked the pattern out, though he approved it. I like torturing myself, though I'm not finding it too hard at this point, just tedious. I should be working on it right now.

I'll go do that.