Friday, October 17, 2008

What are you doing here?

uhoh

Those colors can be only one thing. Well, two things. A big mess o' color, or a Doctor Who scarf. This is the latter.

I really really really really really love Doctor Who. Well, I love Russell T Davies' Doctor Who. Watching old episodes of Doctor Who just mostly makes me fall asleep, which I realize makes me a heathen in the realm of Anglophilia. But I want a scarf.

Well, except for that I don't want a scarf, because that sucker is 15 feet long. No. I want some arm warmers or wrist warmers, and a scarf of moderate size. So I'll be heavily modifying the pattern. I'll be using smaller needles, less stitches, and I am halving the number of rows per color colour.

If there's one thing I'm really good at, it's looking at a guide or instructions or the rules and saying "Well I'm not doing it that way." The Doctor totally digs that. And, I think I did okay for completely forgetting the list of colors when I went to the store. Not only did I get pretty darn bloody close/close enough on all my colors, I actually did not even forget any colors! Er, colours. Colours!

Friday, October 10, 2008

New sweater!

Now that I've done two sweaters, each being sort of an albatross around my neck, I felt a little anxious about 12 hours into my new sweater-less knitting status. So I started another one.

jaali 1

It's a Jaali! I've knitted three gauge swatches, and none of them came close to what I needed for the row count. You know what, I'm just not gonna worry about that too much. Let's see what happens.

Monday, October 06, 2008

Fall is officially here!

batty-and-pumpkin-1

I've been cooking turkey in the slow-cooker, wearing lots of Samhain (and my vintage is from 2005; this stuff lasts and lasts, folks) and Holy Terror, drinking a little Octoberfest, and knitting a bat. And a pumpkin.

pumpkin

Ya gotta love that outside lighting! Overcast skies can be the perfect diffuser for glare.

Bat and Pumpkin. This pattern I found to be a little easier than a Hansigurumi pattern, but some things had me scratching my head anyway. For one, I'm not happy with the holes that M1s will leave, so I used a variety of knit-left-loop and knit-right-loops on the upper half. Seaming seamlessly still evades me to some point, so I just make it sloppy and figure that nobody will see those parts but me. The pumpkin was much easier and I modified it to make it shorter and plumper by running the brown strand through the center top and bottom stems and tightening. Squish!

My purple sweater is still blocking. I might get to wear it this week, though!

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Blockingks!

Vine lace cardigan is blocking! All ends woven in, armholes seamed up, soaked and now stretched out on some towels.

Possibly related, it smells like wet dog in here.

Friday, October 03, 2008

The Sweater in the Low Light.

picking-up-cast-on

Purple sucks and I am tired of trying to get it to photograph right.

picking-up-cast-on

Sometimes it looks like this.

Vine Lace Cardigan

This is probably most accurate.

COMPLETELY related, I do not like it when a pattern tells you to "pick up 5 sitches, then 58, then 5 more" on the cast-on edge, oh and also, the amount of stitches you cast on at that edge six months ago? 64. I guess this thing happens a lot! Because I see a handful of other projects in this pattern on the Ravelry, and nobody else mentions this problem. Like, it happens with every pattern and people just accept this? Or there is something glaringly obvious that I am not interpreting in these instructions! Finally I ripped the collar out and started over with just matching the stitches I had cast on originally. And now I have a collar which is JUST FINE, THANK U VERY MUCH.

Last night was spent around a little bonfire, and now Arwen smells kinda smoky. I KNOW the yarn is called "superwash" and I've gotten it wet once before to block it, and again, superwash, but the thought of washy-washing it is making me a little nervous. It's my first sweater! And I'm going to WASH it. Scary!