Helena Baby Cardigan

I finally got the chance to give the Helena Baby Cardi that I knit to my niece Phoebe. I got the yarn (Katia Alba) at a little yarn shop in Rochester NY while we were on vacation. The store happened to have just enough in the discount bin. The buttons were a serendipitous find at Joann's Fabric.





It's the middle of October and I'm watching out the window as snowflakes the size of my palm come down in front of the still mostly green trees and only a couple hours ago I was apple picking with Phoebe and her parents. It's a crazy year for weather!

Look, a knitting post!

It's a medium sized hobo-style bag based on shape and dimensional specs given to me by a friend. I didn't follow a pattern, I made it up as I knit. The whole thing started with a 2 x 2 narrow, ribbed rectangle for the bottom. I picked up stitches on both of the long edges of the bottom rectangle and knit the sides up as simple stockinette rectangles. The short sides and strap were knit in one piece from one end to the other, onto the bag, conceptually like a french braid, I picked up stiches along the edges of both sides and the bottom of the bag and knit the edge stitches into the cable as I went up until I got to the top, then knit a flat (5-stranded) cable across the length of the strap, and then used the same general process to knit down the edges on the opposite end of the bag. The only sewing up was the small cable details at the top side edges of the bag. I had planned to do a much more intricate cable on the top edge, but everything I tried was completely lost in the slubbiness of the thick cotton yarn. I started and frogged them about a million times. It is completely lined which should prevent any stretching and sagging of the knit, and it also allowed me to add the checkbook pocket that she requested. The lining is a woven cotton fabric in a slightly lighter shade of the same color (the picture color is pretty accurate). In the end I'm fairly happy with how it turned out, and it feels great to finally have it off my to do list.

A gift from Affectioknitter

Affectioknitter sent me this lovely package. It's a handknit dishcloth, vegan citrus soap (yum!), herbal tea, and personnally embossed notecards! So sweet, thanks Affectioknitter!

Oh my! It's almost Valentine's Day...

I'm somewhat shocked that it's been so long since I posted. This blog, though named for my love of programming and knitting morphed overtime into an almost full-time renovation blog. Since I haven't worked on the renovation in months, there hasn't been much to blog here. I have been blogging over here though. It seems that now that my kitchen is functional, I'd rather be cooking in it than painting the trim.

I have been knitting something, off and on, ...more off than on actually. I haven't posted pictures of it yet because it's a gift, and I have a long way to go on it.

On the programming front, I have been working on a little project in my free time that I hope will someday morph into something highly functional, at least for my own sake if no one else's, but I'm trying to limit working on it until I finish math stuff and raise my income level to something sustainable.

Knitting post

I've been feeling rather knit deprived of late due to the heavy workload for school and the final throws of the renovation. As a consequence, I had something of an attack of yarn fume gluttony last night. I spent a good deal of time updating my notebook on Ravelry and now I'm beginning to understand why it's so good. I've also experienced a lot of server errors over there :(

I was so inspired that I frogged the swatch I started over my mother's birthday weekend and started a headscarf/kerchief in the last ball of purple bamboo. I'm using the Candle Flame Shawl pattern on size 9 addi turbos.




In other knitting news, I've just now heard of Irish Cottage Knitting and stumbled upon this video of the yarn harlot knitting, first at full speed, then slowed down and explained using iMovie effects. Blows my mind, though I suppose I shouldn't feel too badly about my lack of speed since she has been knitting since she was a small child and she's enough older than me that she could have been my babysitter at the very least (Ms. Harlot, if you ever stumble upon my humble blog, I'm not saying you're old, just more experienced! :^)

FO: dice bag

I made this dice bag for Paul at his request with yarn that he picked out. He wanted a dice bag that was reminiscent of his very first dice bag that was lost years ago. The yarn is Bella, the chart is just the skull and crossbones from the arrrgyle chart. I knit it on dpns from the top down like a sock but without the heel flap.

Some of you know that I'm vegan, and while I would never buy silk or wool yarn for myself, I couldn't say no to Paul who bought this yarn (he's omni) for me to make him a dice bag. It's probably not a compromise many other vegans would be willing to make, and I'll say that I'll never use silk yarn again because I really didn't care for it's feeling in my hand.

Coachella FO

Two days ago I finished Coachella. I used a double crochet bind-off (J10 hook)so that it would be nice and stretchy, and then I went through with a matching sewing thread and stitched into and wrapped the yarn joins on the pearl side and then cut off the excess. I'm hoping that will keep everything securely in place through washing.

Yesterday I got to give Coachella to my sister-in-law as a very early birthday present. She immediately put it on and wore it the entire day, so I would say that was pretty successful. It fit great, I don't think I could have done better, which is a relief since the guage on the top came out tighter than the guage on my swatch! I just couldn't get a good measurement of the circumference until I'd knit almost halfway down, and at that point it seemed too late to go back to the beginning. Now I'm really glad I didn't, because I don't think I could have done better than it came out. The shaping was perfect, it fit her like a glove. And I think the fabric is stretchy enough that even if her weight fluctuates a bit it'll still look great.

Coachella progress

I'm glad that there are photos to prove that I haven't been spending *all* my time knitting because this project has gone by so fast that even I'm shocked that I'm going to be finished at my self-appointed deadline. I guess that's what happens when you sneak a few rows in here and there. Not to mention that it's such an easy knit, no complicated charts to memorize or lose track of. I'm glad I decided to use a row counter on this one. And no Mr. Mick didn't steal it. Somehow it managed to drop into the centar of the yarn spool and got stuck.

Coachella work in progress

Coachella from Knitty, being inspected by Mr. Mick, who is likely the row counter thief, though he will remain innocent until proven guilty :)

FO: socks, and Capecho progress

Here are the socks that I was working on. We went on a spur of the moment camping trip because everything just fell into place. That gave me ample time to finish these. Capecho is also making progress, now I just need to produce the sleeves and collar. I'm going slow on that one because It's too danged hot here to wear it any time soon.

I'm also going to start on Coachella from Knitty as soon as I get the yarn in the mail. I realized last night after swatching that I'd bought the wrong "suede" and there was no similarity between the two yarn brands. Sneeky naming..... So I ordered the right yarn online from WEBS and I'll be returing the untouched yarn from Michaels. Lesson learned.

Flashing My Stash

My mom and I went to see the yarn harlot Stephanie Pearl-McPhee at WEBS in Northampton. I think it was the first time I spent any significant amount of time in Northampton and it was a pretty good time overall. I didn't meet Stephanie up close in person because I had to come back to pick Paul up at a friend's house in Boston and I didn't want to be too late for waiting. Of course Stephanie was a great speaker despite her nerves and she mentioned stash a bunch of times. So my mom asked me how much stash I had. I think being allergic to wool and a fairly new knitter helps in keeping the stash "manageable", though as of late I've had a few episodes of "What was I thinking!" Also I've been knitting a lot more recently as I've been spending more time with my family and attending pre-events for my friend Dave's wedding. Knitting calms me and makes me more tollerant and hopefully more tollerable to others.

So here it is, my somewhat diminutive stash:



From left to right there are: the disturbing and unnecessary amount of yarn I bought for the Vogue Knitting cover Capecho. I'm not sure what posessed me to buy so much except for that fear Stephanie talks about that the world will run out. My sister said that she likes the color, so maybe I'll make her a throw blanket out of the leftovers once I'm done.



Next to that is the pile of leftover microspun from the Arrrrgyle hat I made my brother-in-law Deq. Just above it is the first start on the chart that I did as a warm up. I suppose I could make something of it, but I hate the yarn, it's so splitty it made me want to pluck my eyeballs out with dpns...



Next column at the top is the pair of socks I'm working on for myself out of Cascade Fixations. I'm working them both alternatingly so that they match fairly closely at each stage of creation. I did most of the cuffs while I was waiting at various pre-wedding events. I've been working on Capecho, but it's now too bulky to easily carry with me so I cast on the socks for traveling.



Just below the socks are two skeins of Jaeger Aqua Cotton that I got at Windsor Button along with the leftover bamboo and the leaves of bamboo scarf that will probably be gifted away once I block it. I have no idea what I will do with these 3 skeins, though the cotton will likely become socks. I was on a purple kick when I bought them.



Next over is a ball of red cotton that I bought for play and now have no idea what to do with :)

Below that is an assemblage of pink and cream stuff that I used to make a bunny hat out of for my niece Charlie, I've started several mitten/bootie projects which she has since outgrown :) and at the bottom near the pink pile of fun fur is a couple tiny balls of periwinkle cotton that are leftover from the cross-slung cabled bag that I knit as an interpretation of Tasha from knitty.com.



And lastly the two fuschia squares are the charity blanket squares we were asked to knit at the WEBS event out of cashmerino that they gave us *free* which I knit in my first foray into non-vegan yarn and surprizingly didn't break out in hives or even really itch too much. They knit up so quickly that I was truly depressed when the yarn ran out and I had none left. I just wanted to blog them before I mailed them off.

So there you have it, my current projects and stash. Not too bad...

leaves of bamboo

I decided to try my hand at knitted lace. This being my first foray, I went with knitty Branching Out. I'm using the purple bamboo that I got from my friend Hannah's shop: Windsor Button.

The knitting is amazing. It's definitely not something I can do without paying attention. But it's so magical to knit a jumble of k, ssk, k2tog, yo, and other stitches and then 10 rows later have a delicate pattern emerge.

In other news, classes start next week and the kitchen is far from finished. On Wednesday evenings I'll have 2 classes with a 1 hour break in between so I'll get a chance to use the lunchbox that my mom got me over the holidays. Unfortunately, it seems to only fit together right when the cold pack is between the 2 layers, which pretty much limits me to cold foods, which is not the most appealing on cold winter nights. Maybe I'll try to rig something up. My plan for this Wednesday night is wildrice and artichoke salad, and something else... maybe mixed greens salad and a protein, maybe green beans and carrots, maybe grapes, and maybe if I feel like it a chocolate soy pudding cup. The problem is that I'm not fond of very many cold protein options outside of nuts which can be a no-no food for me. We'll have to see how it goes.

Deq's hat finished

I ended up using Halfdome from Knitty for the decreases on the top and I worked downward from the provisional cast on for the ribbing. Hopefully it'll fit and he'll like it :)

On the needles...

This is a hat based on the arrrgyle chart from moth heaven. Instead of socks though, I'm making it into a hat for Deqlan. I'm planning to continue up past the chart in black on dpns, and sew down the seam in the back. The bottom is a provisional cast on that will get taken out and I'll knit ribbing from there down to get the arrrgyle pattern optimally placed on the front. This is my solution for just wanting to jump right in on the pattern before committing to it. I thought about knitting it in the round, but I'm really glad I decided against it. That's 20, count 'em, 20 separate bobbins of yarn to get the pattern. Once this is finished I'll feel like a super knitter. I'm just really glad that the pattern is mostly geometric :)

Holiday Booty!

Itching to knit...

I'm sitting here in my painting clothes looking at knitting blogs, procrastinating going back to painting the kitchen, wishing beyond hope that I had a little bit of sock yarn so that I could cast on and knit something. I want a pair of socks, for me not to give away. I'm wishing that I had some semi-exotic yarn, not too exotic, just something that can't be bought at Joann's or Michael's.

Lion Brand Microspun sucks...

I've started these socks several times and it's just not working out. The yarn is too thick and the splitty. The previous socks that I said I made with this yarn was actually a different yarn that I didn't read the label on very carefully.

This sucks and it's pretty much all that I have to work with right now. Boo hoo :(

long time, no blog...

I have since finished the second sock and presented them to my sis-in-law who loves them :) I tried to keep it on the down low that they were for her so that she would be surprised. And she was (or at least pretended to be). So I had all this microspun leftover and couldn't decide on what my next project should be so I started a pair of mini socks for the String Bean. Here's a picture of how far I got during our little weekend trip to Cleaveland, Ohio. We went to Bruce's Wedding. I wish I had pics but Paul forgot the camera ;-)

So here's a pic of the mini sock instead (dollar added for scale):


My next project will be a pair of arrrgyle socks for my brother-in-law for his birthday in September. That gives me just about a month. If I can find the right yarn I think that should be enough time. I hope he likes them :)

I finished the first sock!

I had gotten down to the toe on the way to my in-law's house on Tuesday and was just left with the grafting/kitcheners stitch to connect the front to the back which I accomplished today in my semiweekly needlecraft lunch hour at work. I even had time to cast on and work a little on the second sock. I'll share pictures when I get home to my digital camera tonight. I'm sort of psyched to be back to the fun part of the socks (the going round and round without dereases) again and this time I will be sure to remember all those useful life lessons I learned from the first sock. I'm sure they'll come out slightly mismatched, but c'est la vie! They're just socks!

In other news, it's been beautiful weather for motorcycle riding. A few showers here and there but not enough to dissuade me. Here's a cautionary note to non-motorcycle riders: Even though motorcycles are great at acceleration and getting up to speed quickly, they are lousy at braking. If I leave several car lengths between me and the car in front of me, that should not be viewed as an open invitation to pull out in front of me, especially if your caddy can't do 0-50 in any kind of reasonable time period. It's not nice. And don't ride my tail, that's not nice either.

Oh and last night Paul and I got fed up with the futon and went to BJs and got a memory foam bed topper for it. OMGs. I was rather skeptical that 2 inches of foam would make any real kind of difference, but we had slept on the one that Paul's parents have on their sofa bed and loved how it felt on that. Turns out it works just as nice on a futon. So for anyone who doesn't like their lumpy mattress, go get a foam topper!

Perling and Knitting Rules

I was perling today. The computer kind this time. Perhaps it was because I've gotten to the straight part of my sock and all I'm doing is knitting, so I have to find my perling (purling) elsewhere. It was just a little text manipulation script but it made me realize that I haven't done any perl in a very long time. I've been doing Java and XML and a smidgen of DOS batch files and that's pretty much it. It was not pretty. I had to google up some tutorials which are never really what I'm looking for, but I piece together a Frankenstein of what I'm looking for and see if it runs. Truth be told I have never really liked perl. I titled my blog for the alliteration :) Don't get me wrong, I Respect perl with a capital R. I know it's powerful, but the fact that it isn't obvious or second nature enough for me to not need comments is frustrating because no one uses comments. OK, so I'll admit. It's the regular expressions. They make me feel like I'm eating alphabet soup. Let's just string together a bunch of characters and see what happens. I've gotten better with them since using them in some of my Java tools, but since I've never really sat down and "learned" them the way I sat down and learned other computer concepts means that I have to look them up every time. I am not an intuitive programmer. I am a step by step methodical programmer. Probably why I have so much trouble costing future work: because I just don't know how long it will take until I do it. Anyway, that's what I did with my Saturday morning. Why? Because my checking account register is always off by $5. Almost always it's in my favor, but it still bothers me because I happen to have a degree in Math from an accredited University and while I know that no one is perfect, it still bugs me that my arithmetic is off, and that it's never consistent in the amount it is off by. It *really* bugs me. So I decided that I would download my bank history in a csv format. That's comma separated values for those not down with the TLAs. The problem came when I realized that none of the spreadsheet software that I own likes csv format... What?!? I thought that was the point of csv, that it was a generic format that you could import into any spreadsheet application, and presto, have the fabulous beginnings of every type A's dream. Nope, at least not on my machine. *sigh* So I decided to use a little perl script to convert it to a format that my computer would like and there was born my futile quest for the right perl script.

Then this afternoon I went to Barnes and Noble to finish reading Knitting Rules because I suffer from this disease that causes me to pick up books at bookstores and chew through chapters while sitting in the bookstore cafe, until I get a good ways through(let's say halfway), decide that I'd very much like to continue reading the book, pay for the book and bring it home only to never touch the book again, or read a scant dozen or so pages over the course of a month as the book languishes on my bedside shelf because once I get to bed there's pretty much no more brainpower left to fuel the concept of reading. So I devised this plan, to never buy a book at the store without reading it first. If I finish the book while I'm at the store and deem that I still want to buy it then great! But at least I *finish* it. There are a few problems with this plan. The first being that I can't read the book unless I'm at the store. The second being that instead of a bookmark I need some way of remembering where I was when I left the store so that I don't waste valuable reading time once I get back to the store. I've used chapter headings and page numbers both to somewhat good effect. The third problem is the most serious and that's what happened today: the book sells out and they have no more copies left at the store. This happened with Knitting Rules. I picked it up on a lark since I'm vaguely new to the whole knitting thing and found it hilarious and informative, so I kept reading. At about a third of the way through the book I thought it might make a nice gift to my mother-in-law for Mother's day. Something small and not too extravagant, but enough to let her know that I did in fact recognize that she is someone's mother and that I do bother to take note of her interests. But then I had my doubts. You see, she's been knitting for years and the tastes of a relative novice are not always to be trusted in the art of gift-giving, so I put it off. Then when I was about halfway through I realized that it would make a suitable birthday gift for my friend Kemper, and I decided to buy it for her and use the opportunity to finish reading it before I wrapped it to give away. You see I thought that by setting a firm deadline of the very next day that it would foil the book curse. It didn't. By the time I was finished running errands that day I was exhausted and mildly flu-ish, so I took my NyQuil and went to sleep. I wrapped the book without any reading the next day. I read about a quarter more the next time I was at the bookstore, and having read 3 quarters of the book I thought to myself, only 1 last bookstore venture and I'll have read the whole thing and know, for sure whether I want to own it. Today I went into the bookstore and ... It wasn't there. The book was no where to be found. There were a dozen or more copies on the Mother's day display the last time I was in and this time everything was cars and sports and stupid men books (ok, I know that's not fair, just not what I was looking for). I *scoured* the craft book section. I went book by book through the knitting and crocheting books. Then I branched out into the quilting and beading books. Not a single copy to be found. There was Stitch n' Bitch and Happy Hooker and even the One Skein book that my coworker brought in to show and tell. But not a single copy of *my* current read! I know I shouldn't be surprised. It is after all a bookstore's main purpose to sell books, not be a library, but it was still highly unnerving. So... I ended up going to Borders, reading it to the last few pages, and then buying it, because yes, it was that good.

I like the Yarn Harlot. I like her self-deprecating humor. I like that she admits to being disorganized and imperfect. I like that she doesn't take herself or her knitting that seriously. She gives loose general instructions and guidelines on how to accomplish the basic commonly knitted items. This above all else is why I bought the book. I refuse to follow a pattern exactly. I think it might come from living in Massachusetts where traffic laws are guidelines and speedlimits are suggestions. I hardly ever follow a cooking recipe exactly, because whoever wrote it up was either from the Midwest and likes their food bland or without enough vegetables, or they are a spice-lover who tamed it down for a "wider audience". So I guess that's it. Whoever wrote that knitting pattern isn't me. I'm not saying I'm better than anyone else, but I know I don't knit exactly like anyone else. And if I don't like the way it's coming out why continue on to have a finished product that I don't like when I can do something about it in the meanwhile? Why be complacent when I can be adventurous and customized. I guess that's maybe the real heart of the matter. I don't like the idea of being exactly like anyone else. I want to be unique, and if that means my socks don't match perfectly, so be it!