pepperknit

As always, most thankful for the food

But also for the friends!

Happy belated Thanksgiving, all!

The brick down here in Bay Ridge is different. It’s darker, or redder, or arranged differently—I can’t quite put my finger on it. But it’s distinctive and really pretty. And when I fell in love with this wall, I knew immediately I needed to knit something and take my FO shots in front of it. And now. The yarn I bought at Webs was the perfect color, and the geometry of Norah Gaughan’s Swirled Pentagon Pullover was perfect.

Totally perfect.

Swirled Pentagon Pullover (my Rav page)
Yarn: Valley Yarns Colrain in Steel, bought at Webs in October
Needles: US 8
Skeins: 10 (9.25 or so, I’d say)
Started: Sunday, November 2
Finished: Friday, November 14
Notes: I didn’t get gauge exactly, so I knit the small size to get basically the extra-small. I knit the body in the round, adding one purl stitch for a faux seam (I’m not sure why I wanted a faux seam, but I like it). The sleeves are semi-deliberately too long, which I like—makes the whole thing more cozy (I knit them in the round, so I worked 10 rounds in between decrease rounds, rather than decreasing on the 10th round). And the turtleneck part isn’t the 9 inches called for, because that was strangulating me; I think it’s more like 7.

Otherwise, I followed the pattern exactly. I will always trust Norah Gaughan—when picking up stitches for the neck, I initially didn’t trust the number given in the pattern for some reason. So I decided to just pick up what seemed natural, making sure it was a multiple of 4. And then I counted my stitches—92, exactly what the pattern said!

Oh, there is a small typo in the pattern—my trust doesn’t go too deep, apparently. The half-pentagon for the back yoke says something like “continuing in 2×2 rib” but that is wrong—it’s got to be 1×1 rib just like all the others.

I wore the sweater to my grandmother’s surprise 80th birthday party yesterday, and though I yammered on to anyone who would listen that I’d finished it the day before, the response was generally, “Wow, I thought you got that at a store!” Which, I have to say, was the best compliment I could have gotten. And now it’s in all the family portraits!

The new apartment is slowly taking shape, little by little and bit by bit, and I’m knitting like a fiend on a sweater I started a week ago Sunday when I needed some relatively mindless knitting to get me through the election. I am determined to have it finished and ready to wear by Saturday, so wish me luck.

But if you’re a fellow foodie, check it out! One of my pictures is the Photo of the Day on SeriousEats.com. I’m tickled that it caught Adam Kuban’s eye.

There are no words. Just the best game ever invented, and the best Halloween costume I have ever made.

I am not a Halloween fan, never have been. But Katamari Damacy? That I love. And when my friend Nanda suggested I be the Prince of All the Cosmos and she be the Katamari? And she was willing to dress up like this on Halloween proper, her birthday? Oh. Yes.

There’s a pattern for the earmuffs, which I read but mostly ignored, “unventing” the earmuffs myself. The sides of the prince’s head are really quite straight, not rounded, and I wanted accuracy! There’s a disc of cardboard in there to stabilize the edges.

I’ll put the full details on Ravelry. . . . Getting the band across to be flat was stupidly complicated; the pattern recommends double knitting, which would have made sense and solved it, but I thought I was going to attach it to a headband, but that wasn’t working right. Ultimately, I interfaced corduroy and lined it with that. Um, there is interfacing on my costume, which was supposed to be just an off-the-cuff knit. I had to find the iron in half-unpacked boxes (not to mention the interfacing and fabric!). But it’s worth it.

No one knew what the heck I was—but everyone smiled or laughed at me. People at the bar came up to ask. I was sitting in the front window of the bar, right at a busy corner on the Lower East Side, with my back to the street, and all my friends kept laughing as strangers did doubletakes. I got a lot of props from people when they realized that I’d made the costume myself. I also had a little visual aid, so people would see the prince in full—the small felt toy my friend Melissa made me!

The best moment was on the subway home. I wore the earmuffs because, being 100% wool, they are awfully warm and totally functioned as earmuffs (throughout the night at the bar I was saying “I’m sorry, what?” because I couldn’t hear anything). Pulling into one station, a throng of about 10 teenagers on the platform saw me and burst out laughing; one stuck his head against a window and howled in joy at me. They clambered into the subway car I was in, stomping and laughing, and one finally was like “Miss!!! What ARE you!” And I showed them the tiny prince and said I was the Prince of All the Cosmos, of course! He was like, “not the princESS?” And I said, “no, there isn’t a princess. there’s a queen, but the prince is cooler.” he then jumped up and started dancing around in front of me (awesome popping/locking). They caused such a ruckus that other riders were stonily irritated, but I was just enveloped into their fun times. It was so nice!