Follow Instructions? Never!

So it turns out that I fail at following knitting instructions.  Despite the fact that I wrote said knitting instructions.  Why, yes, I may have had to just rip out a whole weekend's worth of work because I forgot to increase in one location.

Since this is a pattern I am eventually planning to write up and most likely sell, I won't show you much, but here's a teaser (after I ripped out most of it):

What makes this even more...well, I guess what makes it make more sense is that this is the second reproduction of this pattern. Story goes like this:

1. My sister is having (now has) another kid.  It's going to be another girl. Yay, make all the things with the yarn I got on the NYC Yarn Crawl because I got suspicious and so bought baby-appropriate yarn.
2. Start a blanket with yarn I had from last baby making spree, pick all the patterns out for all the yarn I can think of.
3. Promptly get nothing done because get assigned insane work project in the middle of capstone project for grad school.
4. Hit winter break, go on vacation to Iceland (was awesome), get one sweater done for baby over vacation.
5. Realize that all the yarn I bought is wool and baby is due in spring.
6. Find out WEBS is having a sale.
7. Find out nice colored cotton yarn is on sale as well.
8. I can do matching dresses in two different colors of this yarn for both my nieces, right?
9. Realize I don't like any of the patterns again for the style of dress I like to give kids.
10. Make up the pattern by coming up with the start, getting half way through the top, deciding I don't like my plan, futzing around until it works out, quickly scrap write it down with calculations, and continue knitting body of dress.
11. Start grad school again. Tons of schoolwork this semester again. Get to work all the hours again because nor'easters. Knitting? What's that?
12. Realize baby is due in a week.
13. Quickly finish up dress, writing rest down on paper.
14. Baby born, yay! Realize I am not going to see baby until I'm out of school, damnit.
15. Finish grad school. Get to work two nights right after. Somehow finish baby blanket same time.
16. Get to see sister and nieces. Give the sad pile of stuff I actually got done to sister. I tell her 'I'm going to make this dress for the other niece', and she goes 'the dress you made her before still fits. It actually fits both of them.' I think 'going to do it anyway; need to test pattern'.
17. Clean up notes made before, print them out, and start second dress.
18. Don't actually read notes carefully because I think 'ah, I see what I did here' and forget to do one increase, which screws up the whole pattern.

And here we are. Back to almost the beginning because I missed one last increase needed for the pattern to work.

Oh well. At least I have time to knit again.

So this was just the last year's worth of crap going on that lead me to end up abandoning the blog for...two years, yikes!.  Grad school is completely done, work is ok at the moment, and everything else is not where I thought I would be when life went crazy, but it's now stable, so I should be getting back into the swing of things now. There's a lot of catching up to do so I may not get there right away, but I'll try to start blogging my mishaps and future projects again.  There should be a number of those shortly.

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.

In the Random Celebration Department

Happy Pi Day!

Hope you had some pie:

Ok, so it's the frozen kind.  It's still pie.

Mmm, blueberry pie...

In other news...naw, won't bore you with another got nothing post.  I have a real one planned, but I can't get it done tonight. It's in the works though!  I haven't given up yet!

But today, it's pie time.

Radio Silence and More Knitting with Tolstoy

Yes, I know, I haven't been updating this thing.  There's a reason, and unfortunately, this reason will continue for at least two more weeks (damn the real world getting in the way).  I am working on things (slowly), but I haven't had time to take pictures, nor the inspiration to write about them here.  Maybe next month I'll update on my June project progress.

So this isn't an excuse post, I do have an update on the book quote thing from my last random post.  You see, I finished War and Peace...oh, about a month ago?  It took me a month to read, I know that.  Not bad, but that's another write-up entirely.

No, what really caught my fancy was two more knitting-related quotes that really stood out from the numerous references to yarn craft that Tolstoy throws in his books. The first one is a good 80% into the book, and oddly, has an unusual character praising the activity of knitting (note, still have the Project Gutenburg version of this book on Kindle):

"She [Natasha] was sitting in an armchair placed sideways, screening the light of the candle from him, and was knitting a stocking.  She had learned to knit stockings since Prince Andrew had casually mentioned that no one nursed the sick so well as old nurses who knit stockings, and that there is something soothing in the knitting of stockings" (loc. 21291).

I think most of us who do yarn crafts can attest that doing such crafts is soothing...well, when you don't want to throw it across the room, at least.  And I can imagine a more relaxed person is a better caretaker (do note that these books take place around 1812, and were written in the same century; hence the assumption that caretakers are female.  The sexism is a product of the author's time, though I find that Tolstoy handles the characterization of women very well for a man writing in the 19th century).  Anyway, given the next line mentions clicking needles, I presume that Prince Andrew had ulterior motives for this suggestion to Natasha. I think he found watching and listening to someone else knit relaxing, more than suggesting that Natasha would find it relaxing.  If you know the context of this scene...well, the request and Natasha's compliance are quite understandable. 

The second is one of the last chapters of the first epilogue (the one that ends the story, not the essays):

"'Two, two!' they [the children] shouted.  This meant two stockings, which by a secret process know only to herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the same time on the same needles, and which, when they were ready, she always triumphantly drew, one out of the other, in the children's presence" (loc. 21857). 

What I really want to know is 1) what process is being described here, because I  haven't got around to knitting socks yet, and therefore don't know the techniques or the history enough to be able to guess it, and 2) how the hell Tolstoy knew that some weird way to knit two socks at a time existed back then.  It's not like he could just Google it.  Maybe he knew how to knit?  Or maybe his wife?  I don't know much about the author, so I can't say.

There are other quotes I bookmarked, but they're all standard 'so and so was knitting x'.  These two were a lot more thought provoking.  Who know that I could (or would) read War and Peace and geek out on the knitting references?

Anyway, as I need to get some sleep (have to get up early on a Saturday, *sigh*, though it's my own fault), I will sign off.  Hopefully my life will be put back in order by the middle of next month, but I can't make a promise on that.  Until then I most likely won't get around to posting.

The Milk Maiden Write-and-Dash

Since I can't seem to actually sit down and write something when I have time on the weekends, here's the promised notes from my experience with making the Milk Maiden pullover, plus some other observations.

The Sweater
Well, it was an interesting knit.  It came out nicely, but I ended up winging a lot of little changes, despite the fact that I actually took the time to sit down and plan out how I was going to shorten this sweater.  This is because it has an odd construction in the sleeve area and is shaped.  I don't have much of an issue with shaping.  I was worried about screwing up the sleeve construction, having never done something like it before (it involves doing half the sleeve, and then attaching the sleeve to the sweater by decreases, which creates the sleeve cap.  It also means that the sleeve width is the height of the sleeve, something I figured out a tad too late).  However, I did manage to get the sleeves on mostly right.  Yay me.

Oh, and while I was stupid and didn't write every change I made down, I did get a good chunk of them onto my Raverly for this project (the details may be a little lacking, but heh).  But since I'm being lazy, I'm not linking.  My profile link's on the side bar if you're really interested.

The Yarn Used
Madelinetosh yarn....oh, I love your colors, I love the way the color looks in this sweater, but you bleed, and bleed, and bleed!  I set you in vinegar three times, I put so much into the water that it had to be half vinegar, but every time I took you out of the vinegar, you still bled!  How do I set your pretty colors?  How?  Three times I've had to block projects made out of you, and all three times I couldn't stop the yarn from bleeding. Oye.

Other Observations
1) I actually saw someone knitting on the subway a week or so ago.  I've never actually seen someone else knit in public, and here was this woman sitting on the crowded subway, merrily knitting away.  I tried taking a sneaky picture (yeah, I know, it's a little creepy), but the camera in my phone sucks and the subway was too crowded.  (I should note that I don't knit on the subway since I have a very short ride on it).

2) I then finished a hat (it is a present) and a short scarf (probably will be a present) with the alpaca from Rhinebeck.  I now have another hat to do (another present), maybe another project that will also be a present, and a bunch of baby stuff since I now have another relative that's expecting.  I would usually be 'yay' happy about the baby stuff, but I was kind of hoping to start on a cardigan for myself.  You know, so I stop wearing the same store-bought one to work every day.  Oh well.  It'll give me a chance to clear out some of the baby yarn in my stash, given that I'm not over-estimating my knitting abilities again (Which I am.  Can I really do two sweaters after a hat and [retracted] before buying some nicer yarn to make a nicer baby sweater?).

3) I really want to know where the phrase 'sharpen your knitting needles' came from.  My mom said it to me when announcing the baby news.  I've never heard that before, and I've never heard of being able to sharpen your needles.  Probably because I use metal ones.  A web search for another day.

Ok, So I've Decided to Actually Blog on This Thing

Originally, I created this blog for the sole purpose of putting my first original pattern somewhere online.  It was easier for me to stick the patterns on a blog and link back to it on Raverly, than trying to create a Raverly download.  I was also naive enough to think that I'd have more time and willpower than I do, and that I'd have a ton of patterns to share with the world.

Yeah, didn't happen.  What a surprise. 

Anyway, I've been thinking.  I've been putting all my trials and tribulations with my projects under my Ravelry entry for them.  While this allows issues and other changes associated with the pattern to be easily found, some of my other...um...issues have been lost under some random project that ended up associated with it.  As well, I've been inspired by reading a couple of established knitting bloggers in that maybe, just maybe, by posting my adventures in knitting and crocheting that someone will not make the mistakes I did, or at least be entertained.

Or it'll just give me an avenue to gab over where no one will really be listening.  One or the other.

So I'm going to try and actually blog on this thing.  I will try not to rant (I have a habit of rant-blogging; it killed another blog of mine).  I will try to help.  I'll try to post once a week.  I will do my first post after this one.  Worst case, I stop and this blog will again just be for my patterns.  Best case, maybe someone will be educated, I'll make more patterns, and also find the time to edit this blog's layout.  In between my long commute, 8-hour work days, my current apartment search, and the projects I'm working on.  Yeah, that's it.