It's called progress, people!

woohoo, i actually get to make a post! and it's a much-needed one, too. i have made--dare i say it?--progress.

in fact, mom's perfect sweater is finished. i think. i have a feeling it could use a couple inches of length, but i can't say for sure until mom tries it on. if i'm right, i'll just undo (or, more likely, cut off) the hem, pick the sts back up and knit a couple inches of ribbing.

i'm not entirely satisfied with the finished product. luke says it looks fine, but he's biased. and he's a guy who knows and cares absolutely nothing about women's clothing. i will say that i like it much better after washing. i soaked it in the sink with detergent, rinsed it clean, and then let it soak for a while longer with fabric softener and rinsed lightly again. then i squeezed out the extra water, put it in the dryer for one cycle so it was just barely damp, and hung it up to dry the rest of the way. before doing all that, the stitches were uneven, there was a visible crease right across the center of the bust, it was very holey, the neck didn't lay flat and the hem kept flipping up. after washing, most of those problems have been solved. the stitches are even and theevening-out of the stitches eliminated the bust crease. the neck lays much more evenly and flatly now (at least as much as a ribbed turtleneck can) and the hem stays put...mostly. it still pokes out a bit more than i'd like, but it's probably not noticeable to anyone but me. the yarn also fluffed a bit and the sweater's a little less see-through, but still more open than i had hoped. she'll have to wear a camisole or something underneath.

as for what i don't like, aside from the openness, the increases and decreases along the side are very visible. that's not really a problem because i doubt anyone will see or care, especially since they're along the sides and the inside of the sleeves, but still. i notice. also, i wish the neck was knit more tightly. i wanted to knit it on size 5 needles, but i couldn't find them, so i knit the neck on the same bamboo 7s as the body and just tried to pull tightly. unfortunately, it is entirely impossible for me to knit tightly on bamboo needles. as a result, since it's ribbing, it looks more loosely knit than the rest of the sweater. and the ribs look huge. that would be cool if the sweater was bulky and oversized, but it's not. at least it's not supposed to be, and i don't think it will be. so the neck looks a little out-of-place to me. but the good news is the picked-up sts around the neckline are spaced evenly and make the neckline a smooth curve.

now i just have to give it to mom and have her try it on. there's still a possibility it may not fit. the neckline is not as stretchy as i had hoped it would be. it fits over my head just fine and i can't imagine her having much more trouble than i, since there's only about an inch of difference in our head sizes, but it doesn't have a lot of give. more importantly, it's large on me...but not too large. honestly, it fits me about the same way most of her sweaters fit me, but 2" shorter. but...most of her sweaters are ribbed or cabled. this one is not. it may stretch out more across the bust than the ribbed sweaters, or at least look more stretched out. and since it's already a little bit loosely-knit, stretched-out is not a good look for it. but hey, i guess i'll see when she tries it on. if it doesn't fit her i'll just shorten the sleeves and keep it for myself.

i'm going to try to convince luke to model it for me tonight. hehe. that's gonna take some convincing. but that way i can see it on another person, which is entirely different from seeing it on myself in a mirror while standing on a stool. besides, his chest is about the same size around as mom's bust, it's just...his is that size all down the length of his chest, not only in one section. that shouldn't be a problem since i ended up cutting out the short rows anyway.

i'll try to get pictures. not of luke modelling. he'd kill me. but of the sweater hanging up and then, later, on mom. assuming it fits her and she likes it.

whew. okay that was long. in other news...now that the perfect sweater is finished, i have taken rogue off hiatus. i don't think i'll get to finish it before it goes back on hiatus though. the perfect sweater took longer than i had expected. i still have to finish mom's serrano so she can wear it this spring, so i need to get back to work on it pretty soon.

but i can't hold off on rogue any longer. i still love it. it's re-active as of last night. i have worked the first 8 rows of the hood. maybe i'll complete the hood and then put it back on hiatus, finish serrano and then do the sleeves. it'll mean no rogue for me at all this winter. but that's okay. this is me. i'll wear it in the summer. i probably wouldn't finish in time to wear it in winter anyway. i'm slow at sleeves.

i'll update the project progress bars on the right as soon as i have access to a computer that doesn't suck like this one does. i'm lucky to even be updating.

i'm finished for now, i promise! back to knitting...

-pixie

Rogue Disaster

My Rogue is a complete disaster right now. I'm on row 9 of chart A and I'm about to pick up a lifeline back on the turning row, pull everything out and redo it. My cable doesn't look right at all. It actually isn't even anything at all. It just looks horrible. I think since I knit left to right I have to put more thought into this or something. Something I'm doing just isn't right at all. I've never had a problem with this before and I've always been really good at cables, but for some reason this looks like complete crap. it just looks like a mess of purl bumps. you can't make out any of the knits really (thus no real cable). The part that really sucks is that I'm pretty sure the reason I was iffy about the yarn before was because I'd knit with some that had been frogged. And now I'm about to frog and reknit again. I'm not sure this is even going to be worth it at all. sigh

~Rose

Rogue update

So I went ahead and continued to knit Rogue. I'm still iffy on the yarn, but its a lot better now. I think it was a problem at first because I was knitting with some that had been frogged. Its still pretty fuzzy and I'm sure it will fuzz and pill like crazy after a couple wearings but, you get what you pay for. I'd love to make this again in some cascade superwash. That would be awesome. I'm not very far into the pattern (I'm on like the 4th row of the first chart) but I don't want to put it down. I think (like Pixie) this is going to go a lot faster than I originally thought.

Just thought I'd post a quick update before I force myself to put it down and head off to bed. Oh and I did finish the first sock of the pair for Justin. I had him try it on the other day to check if it was going to be 1/2 inch short like I thought. It actually fit him like a dream (well thanks to the ribbing. I really should have put in a few more gusset increases, but he loves it and it fits and that's all that really matters). I was knitting away and asked him how tall he wanted me to go (since I originally planned to just knit until I ran out of yarn). He insisted on getting to try it on again and then decided it was the perfect legnth for ankle socks and told me to just stop where I was. I knit a couple more rows then did a sewn bind off. If I can force myself to put Rogue down long enough I'll knit up the second sock (it shouldn't take much time at all). And since I stopped before running out of yarn I think I have enough to make Nathan a matching pair *grins*.

~Rose

Rogue Yarn

So the more I knit Rogue the more I realize that perhaps my yarn choice (although affordable) isn't really the best yarn for this project. My other affordable option was knitpicks. But I haven't exactly heard good things about knitting with that for sweaters (of course I hadn't exactly heard good things about knitting with this yarn for sweaters either). So now I have to decide whether I want to go ahead and knit it with this yarn, or whether I want to try to find a more suitable yarn for the project. And then if I decide to use a different yarn there is the finding the different yarn and deciding what to knit with a sweaters worth of this yarn.

~Rose

Sock update and pictures

ok I'm about 40% done with Justin's socks (which means I've just finished the heel turn on the first sock (50% would be first sock completely finished and these are anckle sock)). But they might be 1/2 inch to short *frowns*.

Oh and treat I got tired of waiting on Justin to take pictures of the socks so I took some today. Now its not the easiest to take a picture of your own feet so bare that in mind when you see the pictures (although I think I did a pretty decent job). Without further ado Autumn Socks:



As I mentioned before the stripes dont exactly match up. But I dont like to concern myself with that. That detail has never really bothered me before. I know some people get really picky about that. But not me (remember Nathan's mismatch socks). Anyways they aren't that far off from each other and I like them.

Also a added little treat a wip shot of Justin's socks


I can't wait for Justin to get home and try them on again. I really hope that they aren't 1/2 inch short like I think they are going to be. I dont really mind picking up a lifeline and frogging back, but you know if you can avoid it *shrugs*. I want to keep knitting on them but since I'm nervous about them being short it would just be more frogging.

In other news I joined a knitting group "Yarn For Breakfast" (found on meetup.com) I missed the first meet up. But I made both the superbowl one and the one this morning. I love it. Its great to finally have some local people to knit with. All the ladies are really great, we had a ton of fun this morning. I even picked up some pink sock yarn. One of the ladies brought sock yarn back from Germany and offered it to us for $10/ 100g skein. I was hoping to grab some more boyish colors. But more pink for me is always great *grins*. I might take some yarn porn pictures later, but for now this entry already has enough pictures.

Happy knitting everyone
~Rose

not-so-perfect sweater

i've finished the body of the perfect sweater. which isn't really a perfect sweater, for multiple reasons. 1, because i've made a lot of mods to the pattern. surprise, surprise. the most major modification is that the pattern says to knit flat in two pieces and seam together at the end...yeah, right. i hate seaming. so i'm knitting it all in the round. as much as possible, anyway.

i also added a few short rows to the bust section because, well, mom has bigger boobs than i do. not really big, but big enough that i thought some short rows may help keep the sweater from riding up, since even my boobs make sweaters ride up in the front and i'm pretty small.

well i was wrong. yeah, short rows might've helped with that...but the execution of these is not good. we have a sort of...prism shape sticking out of the chest of the sweater. not exactly a good look. it's just a bit pointy. good for madonna maybe, but not so much for mom. and of course i couldn't tell this until i was several inches past the short rows, almost finished with the front, so i wasn't about to frog. instead i'm gonna finish the sweater, then put lifelines in just above and just below the short row section, snip one row, unravel to the lifelines, and graft it back together. i may try a different set of short rows, but probably not. i think it'll be okay without them.

so the body is finished (except for that correction i have to make) and i just have the sleeves left. i'm about 6 inches into the first one...so about 1/3 of the way finished with it. it's going much more quickly than sleeves normally do for me. i'm using new bamboo dpns and i give them credit for the speed. normally i prefer aluminum dpns, especially with acrylic yarn, because bamboo is just too slow...but not these. these aren't clover brand like most of my bamboo needles. they're crystal palace and they are NICE. i love them. expensive too, but i'll probably end up buying more anyway. i think i even prefer them to aluminum. i highly recommend them.

i also found another very inspirational blog the other day, http://www.streetsandyos.com. i want to try to recreate her hourglass sweater v2.0, which is her recreation of the last minute knitted gifts hourglass sweater. the fit is just perfect and i love the way it looks...casual, but since it's a sweater, it can also be dressy. and it's a style that looks good on me. i also like her variation of glampyre's minisweater and i'm going to recreate that, without the silk strand. i already have brown wool just waiting to be used, so why not? i really like her style, it's a lot like mine...and, like me, she tends to modify patterns to suit her own style.

completely off-topic, but i adore bitty, luke's cat. she's sitting in my lap right now and she's just so sweet. i love her.

i want a kitten!

-Pixie