pepperknit

Mom and dad were here this weekend, and mom decided to go with a single button (which others in the knitalong have done, to great success) and very little overlap, though she could have. She picked the button placement, and I sewed it on then and there. It’s now in Maryland with her, no longer my responsibility. Unfortunately, temps are pushing 90 so she will have little to no opportunity to swath herself in wool in the near future. Still, it’s done!

She twirled around and swished her ass to show off the back of the jacket, presumably, so I snapped a shot of that, too.

The light was a little glaring but I just couldn’t make her step into the 95+ heat for the sake of the little blog!

Dad posed in his socks first, and without prompting did some fashionable front and back shots, but I turned off the flash and they were sadly dark and out of focus. The first shot, with the flash on, wasn’t nearly so styling.

P.S. Thanks for all the compliments on the socks for dad! You have probably already noticed that I’m a wee bit of a perfectionist, so there was no way I was going to let that single stitch be wrong! Oh, and the socks are a tiny bit too long—maybe 1/4 inch or so—and dad decided they were fine as is. If they bug him, I can still go back and fix ‘em.

This weekend was the wedding for which I knit Kiri. We drove down to Lexington, Virginia, super-early on Saturday morning and just returned yesterday afternoon, after a whirlwind of work by us in the wedding party: bridal shower, rehearsal dinner, wedding planning, organizing centerpieces, carting tables, doing hair, seeking the groom’s lost car keys, etc. (The keys were found by a bridesmaid, after hours of concentrated searching all over the property the morning of the wedding day, in a trash bag from the rehearsal dinner. Everyone cheered!) The wedding was atop a mountain in the Blue Ridge mountains and was positively gorgeous—the weather was unparalleled.

I did wear Kiri at the reception, and she provided warmth against the cool mountain air, but it seems no pictures of me with it on were taken with my camera. Of course, I was so sloppy drunk, I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to just ask for a photo. But it turns out when they were helping me down the hill after the reception, my boyfriend grabbed it for me, because I found pictures like this on the camera later. (Did I take this? I do not know, as I have absolutely no recollection of the walk down the hill.)

As for knitting while on the trip, I knit only a little on the way down (I drove the majority of the way). But on the ride back, despite being exhausted, I knit for a few hours. Here’s the progress I made . . .

What is it, you wonder? Why, it’s the third Sunrise Circle Jacket, of course! I couldn’t quite believe it when I made the decision to pack only it. (Wool of the Andes in Chocolate brown.) But it’s my most mindless project these days, and with straight-up stockinette, it couldn’t be beat for car knitting (since I don’t really have to look). I considered knitting the sleeve in the round to avoid that little bit of seaming later, but my needles aren’t big enough for either magic loop or lazy loop. I started it on Saturday, but I’m not sure how keen I am to keep working on it!

Both Goodkarma and Laura asked me about picking a size for the Sunrise. Here’s what I told them:

My mom is a 34″ bust, and the 33.5″ was so snug the jacket fronts wouldn’t have overlapped much at all. The 35″ will, hopefully, give her an extra inch or two of overlap.

My bust measures about 35″ around (with clothes on; bra is 34 band) and the 35″ jacket felt too snug to me; the fronts don’t overlap much and the sleeves are too tight (my arms are very average-sized). So when I make one for myself, I’ll make the 37″. This is a jacket, after all, and I’ll wear a shirt underneath it.

I hope this is helpful!

I’m sorry I’ve been relatively silent lately, at least as far as the knitting content goes. Because I was redoing the Sunrise Circle Jacket, progress shots seemed useless; they would look the same as the progress shots I took for the first one!

First let me thank you all so much for your kind words and sympathy over the bathroom crisis I had last week. When I got home from yoga, my boyfriend had mopped the entire first floor. I worked from home on Friday so I stripped the couch cushions of their covers and ran the covers through the wash. I ended up washing them twice; the first time they came out still looking dingy from the rusty water and years of accumulated grime. The couch is like new now! Nothing seems to have been irreversibly damaged, though the boy broke our lamp while mopping, so today we walked to Ikea and bought a new one. But back to knitting:

Knitting this jacket has taken longer than the first one I did, mostly because of other commitments. It’s all done except . . . I don’t want to put the buttons on without having some kind of fitting with my mom (for whom this is a mother’s day gift) directly. The sweater is still just a tad too small for me to wear comfortably (now I know what size to make for myself!), so I can’t really make a good guess.

Still, I’m very very happy with the results. (Sorry for the low quality photos; it’s late, our apartment is dark, and this is the best I can do.)

Pattern: Sunrise Circle Jacket from Interweave Knits; participated in the knitalong.
Yarn: KnitPicks’s Wool of the Andes in Fern
Balls: Bought 9, used all; have probably 1/2 ball leftover
Needles: US size 7; used a circular throughout
Size: S (35″)
Started: Monday, May 8
Finished: Sunday, May 21 (buttons will have to happen later)
Notes: This is, as I’ve mentioned, the second Sunrise I’ve made for my mom. The first turned out to be too small. I went up one size and made a few other modifications:

• The k2togtbls were all made as ssks, wherein I essentially slipped both stitches knitwise and then knit into the back loops. But I did it by wrapping the yarn backward on the purl row before each decrease row, so that I only had to knit into the back loops of the twisted stitches to get the same result. See my experiments with left-leaning decreases here. (I didn’t try slip 1, knit 1, psso, but whatever, I’m happy with these results.) The arc on the right front is now a million times nicer and more professional looking than the straightforward k2togtbl.
• I knit the two fronts first, mostly because it’s nice to have all that shaping to keep me occupied. (I did this for the first one, too.)
• When I knit the back, I did not do the double decreases (and double increases) the pattern calls for. I felt the result in the first sweater was too flared, so I did single decreases (k2tog then k2togtbl, in that order). I also knit more rows in the space between shaping, so I’d have the exact same number of rows for the back body as I had for the sunrise shaping on the fronts (72 rows). When I made the first one, the sides didn’t match up quite right; I had to fudge it a little to get it sewn up. In order to cut down on any flare as well as to make my life easier, I made sure to have the same number of rows for the back. It worked out great, and the seaming was a breeze.
• As before, I knit down the bottom hems as I worked, but I sewed the other hems post-blocking. I sewed the seams before I did the hems, and I think it was easier the other way around (to hem before seaming), but it was not a big deal.

I’m going to cannibalize the first Sunrise to nab those buttons for this one. I don’t know that all 4 are necessary—that top one would probably never be buttoned anyway. I’m debating sending the sweater to mom with the buttons and extra yarn for her to attach herself (mom is an accomplished knitter, after all), but that does seem a little crappy, to give her a gift that she has to finish herself! I’m not sure when I’m going to see her next, though, so if she wants a jacket with buttons, she may have to suck it up :)

In other news, my stat counter is broken—I spent all day astonished that not a single person had visited my blog. Now, I don’t fancy myself a biggie in the world of knit blogging—not by a longshot—but I get a standard, base amount of visits. So I turned off the cookie that blocks my own visits, clicked around, and woah! no activity present. I can’t figure out what has happened—the other blog I track has had activity today. I reinstalled the code and am hoping there’s just some delay in transmittal. I hadn’t realized quite how much I’d come to depend on seeing the little bar graph of visitors every day. I miss it. Sniff.

Edited to add a better photo, that better shows off the jacket’s color:

My daily commute is a whopping 1-mile walk. If I do the Gmap Pedometer (play with it, it’s fun!), it comes out to 1.03 miles, guesstimating from door to door. I walk with a coworker friend, who lives nearby, and we chit chat for the 15–20 minutes it takes. Needless to say, it would be impossible to get anything else done during this time.

My boyfriend’s commute, however, is significantly longer—approximately 1.5 hours door to door, requiring walking to the train station that’s about 1.5 miles away and then sitting on regional rail for another 50 minutes. He complains bitterly, but I can’t help feeling jealous sometimes. I know it would wear on me, but forced knitting time? I could go for some of that. (Occasionally I take the bus, but it’s generally so crowded I have to stand, and the trip is only about 8 minutes long anyway.)

Last night, I took the train out to meet the boy at his office, then to go out with some of his coworkers for dinner and to see the band of one of his coworkers play at a bar. I happily packed myself a little bag with the second sleeve of theSunrise Circle Jacket. (Yes, I finished the first sleeve and front already. I’m cranking away!)

A very nice woman sat next to me, and I couldn’t take a picture until she had gotten off the train—I didn’t want to have to answer any questions! I knit down the hem and just a few rows past it while on the train. I didn’t get as much done as I’d thought I would, since 50 minutes of train time doesn’t actually equate to 50 minutes of knitting time, but it was satisfying nonetheless.

I’ve seen people knitting on the subway in NYC, and it’s pretty amazing how they manage to keep their elbows in tight, keep the work right in their laps, and quickly shove the work in a purse when it’s the moment to get off. I have such a resistance to stopping in the middle of a row that I will decide how soon before my stop I need to stop knitting. But if I had something commuting-dedicated, perhaps I would be more lax about that.

Do you knit on your commute to work? What kinds of projects do you work on (if you have “commuting projects”). Do you wish you commuted to work? What would you knit if you did?

Now that I’m redoing the Sunrise, I’ve decided to work on all the little things that could have been done better the first time around. I’m also being as OCD as humanly possible—I’ve already taken part of the sleeve out once! (I forgot which M1 was R and which was L, but went ahead without checking, and turned out to have had them backward. This would have meant nothing in the grand scheme, but I wanted it to be right. My boyfriend gave me an intense ironic face and said “this is for your mother. are you going to settle?” :) ). So anyway, fixing the k2togtbls is a high priority, because they’re all fat and ugly in the original (look along the right shoulder of the jacket, to the left in the photo, here)—it’s a constant problem for me all the time with those ssk/k2togtbl decreases.

I knit up a swatch, and here it is:

I tried 4 different left-leaning stitches. They’re the stitches that are slightly ‘bigger’ than the others along the left side of the column, and they appear every other row—if you click on the photo you can see the Notes I made on the photo in Flickr. The right-hand side of the column are normal old k2togs. Starting from the bottom, we have

* A standard k2togtbl. I was trying to keep the stitches only on the tips of the needles, but I’m not sure how successful I was. This stitch looks big to me, and it’s exactly how all the stitches on my completed Sunrise look.
* An ssk. For this one, I slipped just the first stitch knitwise, then k2togtbl.
* A true ssk. Here I slipped both stitches knitwise and then k2togtbl.
* An off-standard k2togtbl in which I worked the purl row before differently: I wrapped the yarn backward on the two stitches that would be knit together, so that when I came to knit them they were already turned and the tension was taut. I got this tip from the Knitty boards.

I didn’t try an ssk in which I slip the first stitch purlwise and the second knitwise; I should have tried that. But I kind of doubt that it will fix the problem any better—it’s the first stitch that always ends up looking ugly, and this method 1) manipulates the stitch more than might be necessary and 2) doesn’t actually change anything about that first stitch.

I think the best two are the straight-up ssk (the 3rd from the bottom) and the off-standard k2togtbl (4th from the bottom), which are really just the same stitch but produced via different means. I think I’m going to use the method of the off-standard, mostly because it means less moving around of the stitches and because it won’t be hard to know where the two stitches that need to be wrapped wrong are. I could still use to finesse my purl tension vs. my knit tension for those stitches, but all in all this creates a nice, smooth, tight little decrease that I’m pleased with.

Maybe this experiment will help you, too, the next time you have to do a left-leaning decrease! I hope so.

I’m so happy it’s finally May, and the Project Spectrum color is green! My life is exploding with green. Orange and yellow made for a really tough month—it was a real challenge to find those colors in my world. Green, however, could not be any easier.

From the cushions on the couch to my work bag and nalgene bottle (even the bookshelf that I painted!), green is one of my main life colors. Heck, it’s even the color of my dishtowels (no photo of those) and the undies I’m wearing today (ditto).

I once went on vacation for two weeks in August, and I asked a coworker if he could stop by to water my plants once or twice. He said no problem. When I got back the first thing he said was, “My god! I came over to water your plants, and every time I turned around there was another one to water! Your apartment isn’t even that big!” Since then, the boy and I have moved into a far larger apartment and combined houseplants—plus bought more! This is a miniscule sample—there are at least a dozen more scattered around the house.

It seems a cheat to just take photos of trees and plants that are obviously green, but they’re just bursting with color right now. It was kind of gloomy today, which made the greens that much better. See the rest of my green photos here.

The best green thing in my house is this painting, made by a friend in high school:

He was my boyfriend’s best friend and, independently, a very good friend of mine. I was hanging out at his house one day and admired the painting. He immediately gave it to me. Inscribed on the back is: “To a woman I will never forget and will always love.” He was such a good guy, and we just recently go back in touch with him. I take comfort in his inscription, and this painting is always the first thing to go up on a wall in a new place.

In other green news, a package arrived today!

That’s Wool of the Andes in Fern to redo the Sunrise Circle Jacket, Wool of the Andes in Chocolate to make myself a Sunrise (I can only hope it’s as good as KnitAnnie’s), some Essential sock yarn in green to make socks for an old friend, and some Color Your Own sock yarn for Kool Aid experimenting!

There’s also a size 1 Addi circular in the box; it was all I could do to keep from casting on for socks during the middle of the day!

There’s been some movement on the redo of the Sunrise Circle Jacket. I considered carefully the persistent sage advice of Rachel, who emailed me more than once to encourage me to simply buy new yarn and start fresh rather than take it out. It might seem as if I’m making a joke (ha! this was advice I had to consider!), but I’m really not—I thought for a while about this. Buying new yarn wasn’t going to break the bank—just 9 hanks of Wool of the Andes is $16—and it would be a whole lot easier—but it seemed wasteful somehow, so I didn’t go out and buy new yarn right away.

I’ve since come to a conclusion, the conclusion that was obvious to everyone else: It was going to be waaaaay too much of a pain in the ass to take the jacket out. I couldn’t bear it. No, wouldn’t be able to go through it. I was super-careful with the seaming of the jacket, so dismantling it was going to require feats of strength that even my rigorous yoga practice wouldn’t be able to handle.

Tonight, I bit the bullet. Not only did I buy yarn for mom’s new Sunrise, but I said, “aw heck,” and clicked to buy the yarn to make myself one, too (in chocolate brown). Now the wait begins! In the meantime, I’m going to think about tweaking the back darts of the pattern a bit. I’m not sure they need to be quite so darty . . .

I mentioned in my last post that my boyfriend and I drove down to Maryland for a brief visit this weekend. Ostensibly we were going to the retirement party of our old high school track coach, but we managed to squeeze in a baby shower for a friend and some quality time with each of our families. (Yes, the boy and I went to high school together, though we were not technically a couple in high school; this is our 10th year together.)

The highlights of the weekend were definitely contained at the party for Coach, who is the bestest guy ever. Not a lot of former students had heard about the event, so I’m especially glad we were able to go. Every year the boy and I head over to Penn Relays, so we see Coach and all the assistant coaches, but that’s just once a year. They got the whole group of former students together for a photo–I’m in the green toward the left, and lucky me, I got to be next to Coach, who held my hand for the shot. Awww.

(In case it’s not obvious, he is not the cute white girl to my right–that’s my boyfriend’s sister, standing in front of her brother. Coach’s the cute black guy to my left.)

But back to knitting content, which is why we’re really here–it’s the not so pretty part of the weekend.

Deep breath, Minty.

I gave my mom her Sunrise Circle Jacket. It’s her Mother’s Day present. She was thrilled.

But it is too small. By the tiniest of bits! But still, too small.

Whimper.

Of course I’ll redo it–when have I ever balked at redoing something? But it sure is a bummer. I only have to go one size up, just to give her a little more room in the arms and to overlap the piece a bit more. It’s the unseaming that’s going to be the most difficult. The actual knitting was a cinch. Still, she seemed to like it a lot–loved the color–and she showed me how she dog-eared the pattern in the Interweave magazine, as something to make for herself! Do I know my mom’s taste or what?

In other news, the drive home from Maryland took more than 3 hours. This is a 2 hour drive, door to door. Traffic was horrible. I had had an allergy attack in the morning, and took some drugs, so I was tingly and sleepy, and managed to sleep through the first 2 hours or so. We stopped for gas at the Delaware rest stop, and discovered this:

Is it clear from the shot? There were looong lines for gas. Only 1/4 of the pumps were operating. The other gas station at the rest stop? Completely closed: no gas. We waited in line for more than 20 minutes. I became alarmed. People tell me how in the 70s there was a shortage. Are we looking at the same thing? Will food be delivered to grocery stores? Thankfully, I do not own a car. I’m sorry for those of you who do. I’ve asked around and have been told that gas stations were switching over to the “summer blend” and perhaps the changeover was responsible for the closures (dad reported a closed gas station in Columbia, too). It’s suspicious, whatever it is.

In order to calm my nerves, I pulled out Pomatomus #2. I finished the first sock in the early afternoon, while knitting with mom. So I started the second one in the car. Here’s the sock with Eagles stadium in the background (the Linc).

First off, a big thank you to everyone for the praise and kind words you had for my Sunrise Circle Jacket! Random funny: The cost of the buttons came to about 1/3 the cost of the yarn. Seriously.

Next, more thanks to all who weighed in on the needle size for Kiri. 6 seems to be the resounding favorite–tho I was happy to see that the 4s got at least some votes (via email & on the Knitty board), since I did like the look on 4s a lot too. Going with 6s will, as Candsmom pointed out, mean the whole thing will go faster! Never a bad thing. I need to get my brain in gear to go at the lace again; I’ve been happily Pomatomus-ing in the meantime.

Random bummer: The pretty stitch markers I bought are too small to be used comfortably on size 6s! It’s so not a big deal, but still. :)