A Tale of Two Sleevies

A friend of mine had a baby last year and the baby has been my balm to the political woes and distress on Facebook this past year.  I decided I wanted to knit him a sweater (because a baby sweater is a lot smaller than an adult sweater!) and found a super cute pattern and some fun yarn as well.

I like to knit sleeves first so that I can test the gauge without knitting a swatch, and because they're easy.  However, after knitting most of the first sleeve, I carefully read the pattern and discovered that I had made several errors in increasing along the way.  I decided it really wasn't such a big deal and went ahead anyhow.

Then I did the second sleeve properly and after blocking, there is a clear difference.  Bummer.  On the left below is the second sleeve.  On the right is the first.

I don't want the little one's arm to be constrained in any way, so I've decided that since I have an abundance of yarn, I'll just make a third sleeve, and do it properly like the second one.  It won't take too long once I'm able to sit for a little while (Middle School Dance Workshop volunteering, I'm looking at you!) and then I can sew everything up, put a button band on and send it off to an adorable little guy.  I am thinking about a little hat too, to match the sweater.  I wonder if I can make a smaller version of the hat I made for Jeff back in 2014.  Hmmm....

At any rate, after the sleeve, I am back to Christmas knitting in earnest.  I have three things planned.  Two are underway for Jeff's girls - an Alexandra's Airplane Scarf and the Purl Soho Lovely Ribbed Cowl in worsted twist.  The third thing will be Gully Gloves for Smallest.  I am hoping that with the school break next week, I can make a fair bit of progress on these.

Margie

Knitting, Unknitting, and Reknitting.

I think I've already used that theme in a post before.  Oh well.  It comes from the speech the University President made our first week at school.  He was talking about building, unbuilding, and rebuilding something.  We found it very amusing.

At any rate, Jeff and I went away for the weekend as the girls had gone other places and it was our anniversary weekend.  I took his sweater to work on, since I had finished Middle's hat and felt guilty about neglecting the sweater.  One the way home, I was working along and I stopped to look more closely at the sleeves.  I held one closed, the way it would look all sewn up, then I looked at Jeff's arm, and I looked back at the sleeve.  I had Jeff put his arm out, and there's no way that sleeve is going to fit comfortably on his arm.  Sigh.  So I unraveled the sleeves.  I will do some careful measurement and then start again.

In the meantime, I'm still working on the Bright Stripes blanket for Middle when we watch TV (up to season 5 of Game of Thrones), I still have the Swirl sock in the car for when I'm waiting for things, but I need something else to work on during dance classes and the like.  A friend of mine has an Extremely Cute Baby, who is huge and lives in Seattle.  Clearly he needs a sweater!  So through the magic of Facebook, I got his nanny to send me measurements and I bought some yarn.  With the Jeff sweater out of the way temporarily, I think it's a good time for a baby sweater!  Especially since the yarn for Xmas presents hasn't arrived yet.

Here's the pattern: the Kris Sweater, and the yarn is Schoppel Wolle Edition 3 in the Strandcafé colorway.  It was less expensive than the yarn recommended for the pattern, and I thought it looked cute.

I started on Sunday while Smallest was at her YAGP dance lesson.  I worked about an hour.  Today (Monday) I've worked about 18 rows during lunch.  It's fun to work on something cute and tiny, and on straight needles!  I'm curious to see what happens to the stripes when I get to the body of the sweater.

2 hours on this one.

Margie

Hat = Love

Don't tell Middle, but the hat I have just finished is secretly filled with hugs and love for her.  She is in the midst of teenagerdom and doesn't let me hug her much.  She's heading up to Canada this afternoon to spend the weekend with her dad, which gave me the perfect opportunity to make this hat (which she had picked out a while ago, and I bought yarn for also a while ago).

I started Tuesday during a class on writing grant proposals for non-profit organizations (I thought it would be more interesting.  I finished the folded brim during the class.  Then, it was parent observation week at Smallest's dance studio this week, so that's many hours of dance to watch and knit through.  Three hours on Wednesday night alone!

I have only been knitting a little at work, most has been done during proper hours.  However, last night I got to the end of the regular pattern and just had the decreases left to do.  It only took about 15 minutes to finish up and now it is complete!  I pick her up at 3:00 to head for the airport, so two hours to spare.

The pattern is Wurm, a free pattern on Ravelry!  It was super easy and the hat is really cute!  I am still amazed at the magic that is hats that fit, so that was fun to do.  I made the middle size and it fits both me and Middle just right.  The first picture is from Wednesday, from Lunchtime knitting.  The last two are the finished product.  The yarn is a Blue Sky baby alpaca-silk blend and it is soooo soft and squishy!  Now Middle just can't lose it.  That would be sad.

I know the modeling picture is rather stark, but I wanted to get the top of the hat, it's a little longer than it needs to be, so it smooshes down at the end.  Very hip.

Now I'm feeling guilty about all the things I've made for Middle without making anything for Smallest (except leg warmers).  I asked what she would like and fingerless gloves were the request.  I bought a pattern last year from Churchmouse Yarn & Tea for just such a thing!  How handy.

I wish I had kept track of the hours!  It went really quickly.

Margie

Stripes Away!

While Catherine is wheeling her way from Boulder to San Francisco, I have an update on the stripey blanket.  Oh, also, Catherine made this for the baby of some Boston friends:

Lucky baby!

I don't have a photo update, but we were driving up to Dallas this past weekend for Smallest to participate in a ballroom competition up there.  On the way up, I got some knitting in and finished the last of the four colored stripes.  I've also picked up the stitches for the last tan band along the edge, so once that's several inches long, I'll pick up stitches along the long edges and knit the final two tan bands.  I am very concerned about running out of yarn, so I might look into getting some more with enough time to blend old dye lot with a new dye lot.  

Smallest was the only one in her division at the competition, so she won, but she was uncharacteristically nervous about the competition.  In retrospect, she was wearing new shoes, a new dress and dancing choreography that they hadn't practiced as many times as they probably should have.  We'll make sure she feels more comfortable the next time around.  She also wasn't wild about her make-up, so perhaps we'll see if we can tone that down a bit next time.  

Here she is with her make-up on:

I'm off to Savanah this weekend with Middle to look at a college.  I am hoping for lots of knitting time.  I've switched from using the cable needle on Jeff's sweater to the trick stitch, and it seems to be going much more quickly now.  I'm almost half way through the increases on the sleeves.  I'm doing both sleeves at the same time.  Shortens the suffering and makes sure I do them the same way.

Margie

Slow Progress

Smallest started dance last week, which means she has class Mondays 4-5, and 6:30-9:15, Tuesdays 7:45-8:45, Wednesdays there's piano at 5:30 and then dance from 6:30-9:15, Thursdays 7:15-8:30, and Friday 4-5.  That doesn't include her ballroom lessons.  We're hoping the Thursday class will be temporary, which will free up the evening for her.  I'm hoping she'll find time to get her homework done.  We'll have to see how things go.

While she is happy to be back at dance, and was more happy when school started this week (late due to Harvey), it means our evenings are pretty busy with driving around now, and so there's been less time to sit and watch Game of Thrones and knit.  Alas.  My life is so hard.  I did get some time last night.  I'm hoping that I'm between 1/3 and 1/2 done with the last stripe.  I did notice that our young kitten chewed the on the yarn last night and broke it in two.  Humph.  That's annoying!  Bad kitty.  Here are the cats, the naughty one is on the right.

I took Jeff's sweater with me with traveling with Smallest recently, but we spend most of our time playing a mystery game, and the plane was too crowded to allow for a complicated project, so it has just been sitting.  Maybe this weekend there will be some progress.

At any rate, this morning I decided that I need a new travel project.  The blanket is too big, although not mentally challenging, but I am going to start riding the bus to work more and that's too much to haul around.  The sweater is too fiddly with all the cables and counting of rows and such.  I have tons of sock yarn to make socks for Middle, so I've cast on another pair.  This pair is the Swirl Sock and I'm using some lime green yarn that I bought somewhere.  It's from Morningside Road Fiber, a local dyer who sells out of Lucky Ewe Yarn Shop in New Braunfels.  That means I bought this yarn sometime this summer when Jeff and I were up that way.
The pattern recommends using Judy's Magic Cast On, but as I was watching the tutorial on the bus, I realized I couldn't do it because I didn't have a circular needle.  This is as far as I got before getting to my stop:

(I took the picture at work.  Shhh.....)  I think I would like to try the other cast on, but it will have to wait for the other sock.  I'm taking Middle to the orthodontist this morning (fingers crossed that she gets the all clear to get her braces off!) so I need something to work on while I wait.

That's all for now.  I will share if there is sweater progress!

Margie

Math for Knitting

I started on the back for the pillow after casting off the cabled front.  The front is 62 stitches, so I cast on 64 for the back and was making wide ribs.  I finished two rows and held it up to the pillow it is for, and it's about four inches too wide.  I guess the absence of cables is what makes the difference.  I was traveling last weekend, so I didn't take it along with me.  I was going to work on Jeff's sweater, but I didn't do that either.

I did finish the pajamas for Smallest, and she likes them a bunch.  They were pretty fast too.  Maybe she would like a flannel set for winter.

Other than that, there's been some helping of friends dealing with Harvey flooding and bored kids waiting for school to start.

Margie

Cables!

Back in June, I mentioned a cover for a pillow that I was working on.  It's been sitting for a while because I wasn't sure if it was going to be big enough.  This morning, while waiting for the flooding from Hurricane Harvey to begin (I live in Houston), I decided to block before casting off.  Happily, with a little encouragement, it is exactly the same size as the previous pillowcase, so I will stop there and then figure out the back.  I am hoping I have enough yarn to make a plain back, or maybe some wide ribs.  Perhaps I should weigh the two and see, although the cables take up more yarn than plain stitching will.

Here is what it looks like:

I've done some more rows of the lighter blue stripe on the blanket for Middle, and am hoping that perhaps I can finish that stripe off tonight.  Then there will be just one more colored stripe.  I'm a little worried about having enough yarn for the border, but I will just have to see how that goes.  Maybe a yarn inventory is in order.

I should probably work on Jeff's sweater once I finish the stripe, or maybe even before, since the blanket is so much easier to work on other places.  We'll see how it goes.  School on Monday has already been canceled, so there's another day off to knit, and Jeff's been asked to stay at a hotel close to work tonight so that he can go in on Monday even if there is flooding.  Lots of alone time with not much to do but filing papers or knit...

Hopefully all will be well here so that people can focus on helping folks where Harvey made landfall.

Margie

Progress!

A knitting blog I like to read recently talked about how, if you have a big project, if you just work on it a little at a time, eventually it will get done.

I have this blanket that Middle was going to knit when she had just learned how and was enamored with knitting (maybe 5th grade?).  That passed quickly.  I started on it back then, and it's been sitting and sitting because I thought it was such a huge project that it would take Forever to finish.  I took it with us as we drove to Colorado two weeks ago and what do you know, a couple of hours in the car is a good way to make some progress!  There are four colored stripes in the blanket (Bright Stripes Blanket) and I finished the second stripe on our trip.  I've made the blanket my TV knitting (we have free HBO for a month and are trying to watch Game of Thrones as I've never watched it) and now I'm about halfway through the second stripe.  This picture was taken during some independent dance practice that Smallest wanted to do.

I've also started taking Jeff's sweater with me to Smallest's ballroom lessons because they're all 90 minutes long now, which is enough time to get a couple of rows done.  I've started on the sleeves, and I have them both on the same circular needle so that I can get them both done at the same time.  Plus, if I make an error in one, I'll make the same error at the same time in the other!  Handy.

I'm hoping to get the blanket done soon now.  Once I finish the fourth stripe, there's just the three sides of the border to finish and I think that picking up stitches will be the most unpleasant part of that!

School starts on Monday and I am ready for that!

Margie

Scarf of Doom done!

I think I mentioned this scarf before (Khaleesi Shawlette).  I picked it up when traveling and as it was a local kit made where we were, I thought it would be fun.  It looked small and the construction was clever.  Looking at the Ravelry pictures, I think maybe I needed a larger needle size?

I started it a while ago and rapidly discovered that I do not like this type of project, so it became a Dreaded Project.  I was on the verge of frogging the whole thing and starting over to make it a rectangle when Smallest said that she really liked it and would like to have it.  Ugh.  So I trudged along and finished just before we went on vacation.  I still am not wild about it, but at least someone is.  If she loses it, I won't be sad that it is gone, but I will be sad that all the time I put into finishing it is lost.
Anyhow, here it is (pre-blocking):

I needed a good project for a car trip as we drove to Colorado and back for vacation, so I took the Bright Stripes blanket that I started for Middle a couple of years ago.  I finished the second colored stripe and am preparing to start the third.  I think it will also be a great project for TV watching.  I took the sweater for Jeff, but it requires too much attention at this point (I started with the sleeves), so it will have to wait for some other time.  Maybe dance class waiting.

I think that's about it for now.  I'm taking Smallest to a ballroom competition in LA over Labor Day weekend, so there will be more travel knitting to come!

Traveling Knitting

I recently returned from a work/vacation trip that had a good amount of travel time.  Plus time during seminars where I could lurk in the back and knit so that I wouldn't fall asleep.
The meeting started on Monday morning, June 26th, and I started on this sock that evening.  I worked on it a fair bit the rest of the meeting, but mostly Wednesday and Thursday.  We finished the meeting on Thursday, and then I had a long train ride on Thursday night.  More trains Sunday, and the following Tuesday and Thursday.  Then a long plane flight on Saturday and I'm back home.

The picture below is from Monday, July 3.  I texted it to Middle to ask her how she wanted the second sock - the same beginning or different.  She wanted it the same, and then we conversed about the length of her foot.  It turns out that the measuring tape I was using (from a free kit of knitting tools) had an error in printing the inches, and so my measurements were WAY off!  Fortunately we discovered this right in time for me to start finishing the toe of the first sock.  (And before you think I'm extremely clever with the pattern knitting, it's all the yarn - it was dyed to make the pattern.  How cool is that!?)

I've turned the heel on the second sock, and hope to have it finished sometime this week.  Middle is a big fan of socks, and I love how quickly they go!  I still have the Dreaded Scarf to work on for Smallest, but I think that will return to being the travel project.  The sweater for Jeff will still remain an at-home project because it requires too much thinking at this point.  I've started on the sleeves.  The body might be easier to cart around.  We will see.

I should have kept track of my hours, it would be fun to see how quickly the sock went.  We got sock yarn for Jeff on our trip, so perhaps I'll keep track for his socks.

Margie

Sooooo behind!

I have a bunch of blogs that I like to read, and I always get frustrated when day after day there is nothing new on the blog!  If there were lots of people actually reading, I might be more concerned.  If there were more people reading, we would probably be posting more...

Anyhow, I have a couple of projects in the works.  Here is a picture of one, it's a Khaleesi shawlette, which I bought in kit form when picking Middle up from her CTY class in Baltimore last summer.  I like the color of the green yarn, but I am not loving the idea of wearing such a curvy thing as much as I thought I would.  I contemplated frogging it and just making a striped scarf using the same pattern with the grey, but Smallest really likes it a lot and has proclaimed her intention of wearing it if I finish it.  So onward I slog with the neverending balls of yarn.

I also have almost finished a cabled cover for a pillow, I have to figure out how to finish it so that it actually goes on the pillow!  I will get a picture of that soon.

And now I am off to have a birthday lunch with my wonderful husband!

Where's the Hat?

I like to knit things for people, and it's easier to knit things for my stepdaughters than for my own children who live with me and see all the things I work on, so I knit for them for Christmas, but this seems to be the only evidence of what I did:

That's the brim of a hat for L, the younger daughter.  I also knit an infinity scarf for S, the older one who is off in college where it is cold.  Back in the summer, when we combined houses, S was looking through some of her old stuff and found yarn that she had acquired in elementary school, when knitting was cool and her friend's mom owned a yarn shop (great friend!).  She gave me the yarn, and I thought it would be great to make her something with it.  Alas, I thought I had a picture...

The hat was quick and easy, it's this pattern: Bankhead Hat.  It's the fourth hat I've made.  My first hat was so awful, I still can't believe that the others have all fit.  Magic.

That's all for now, but I have some swatches to share of MyFriend's sweater (I need a better name for him...) and I will try to post that soon.  Plus I will soon have two completed socks for Middle!

Margie

Slackers

Well, I am way, way behind in posting.  I have completed many things since last March, so I will try to spread them out over several posts so that there's more excitement.

I think that Catherine will need to post more frequently, as she is about to be off on an adventure!

I am trying to think of things I've worked on this year.  I've been trying to get a sweater to behave to make for MyFriend, who is now MyHusband, but I'm having trouble with the gauge.  I was trying to make it in cotton, as it is hot here in Houston, but I think that's just not going to work.  I'm planning to knit a swatch in the original Shelter yarn and we'll see how that goes.

I had started socks for Middle back in the fall - there was lots of yarn acquired this summer! - and I got halfway through the first sock and she tried it on and declared it too small.  I frogged it, and started over.  I had to pause for Xmas knitting - a cowl for one stepdaughter, a hat for the other stepdaughter, a Peace Project cowl, and slippers for my mother-in-law - so that slowed me down.  I finished the Peace cowl about a week and a half ago, so it's been full steam ahead on the sock since then.  I've just got a couple of rows left on the first one.

Over the summer and into the fall, I knit a blanket for my friend/boss's daughter's new baby.  Here's one of that.  I had the yarn and needed to use it.  The first pattern I tried didn't work well, but I found this pattern at Churchmouse Yarn and Teas and thought it worked pretty well.  This is pre-blocking, which I finally have started to do.  It makes a difference!