Dropped

Way back in November of 2009, on November 9, to be exact I started a little knitting project. A drop stitch shawl/scarf. I had been trying to recreate a store bought scarf, saw something similar at Stitches East, and decided to go for it. It required the casting on of one hundred and fifty stitches, which I did. While I was in labor. After I cast on the oodles of stitches, I was able to knit a couple of rounds before bellying up to the epidural bar. Then there was some dropped, not on purpose, stitches and a yarn break and I packed up the project and moved onto the having baby project. Since then I have worked on the baby project full time and am happy to report she is alive and kicking and learning to earn her keep modeling my knitwear.


The knitting project, however, was less full-time and more on and off. That being said, I finally finished it. The fact that a scarf took me almost a year makes me nauseous. I mean really. Ten months? For realz? In my defense (and yes, I do realize I am defending myself against myself, but whatever), I did finish a pair of socks and start a sweater and learn to crochet (poorly) so it's not as if I worked on it constantly. But still. Ten months!

The pattern was written by a yarn shop in Rhode Island called Unwind. Basically you cast on one hundred and fifty stitches, or one hundred and eighty if you are in labor (thankfully one hundred and eighty is divisible by five so it worked out perfectly) and then you knit those one hundred plus stitches, through the back loop, in the round, until the thing is eighteen or so inches. If you, like me, have a lot of yarn, you might go nineteen inches. Then you do this bind off where you are binding off five stitches and then pulling the yarn through a stitch and then knitting and dropping stitches and if this sounds confusing to you, you're not the only one. I am good at blindly following instructions, which I did, and it worked. But it was also a bit scary. Especially since I started it while driving in the car to Cooperstown (a city where I had no knitterly support) for a mini-vacation. I mean honestly, I was in the car with all this time to realize that for all intents and purposes I had knit the body of a sweater (read: LOTS OF WORK) and was doing some hinky bind-off which might be wrong and render all of that knitting USELESS.

Nonetheless, I did the cast-off and it seemed okay. I figured in for a penny, in for a pound and so I started dropping oodles and oodles of stitches. Seventy-five percent of the knitting I did? Dropped. Now not only was this sucky because all of my hard work was for naught. But also, I used alpaca which is basically like one big wad of self adhesive and thus, hard to drop. Really hard. In the end I did manage to get it done without breaking any of the long floaty bits (or anything else for that matter).


So then it was happily ever after right? Uh no. My nerves got another run for my money when it became obvious that the cast-on was WAY tighter than the bind-off. Now I figure that a slight difference in tension is normal, but when you throw in baby labor as part of your cast-on, you will, apparently, get the wholly mother of all tightness. Which in practical speak meant I could have a trapezoidal shaped scarfy wrap or take drastic measures. Those drastic measures? Cut the bars/dropped stitch sections for the cast-on row. Almost a year done of knitting and then I am faced with the prospect of hacking away at it. Which, me being me, I did. I went through and cut off the bars for the entire cast-on row. Then I gave the thing the evil eye and dared it to unwind or unknit. I did do a slight weaving of ends and kind of rubbed the ends figuring this and alpaca would put me in good stead. So far? So good.

After the cut-o-rama, I then had to block the thing as it looked like a pile of pasta. I was a bit scared of submerging it in water since alpaca has been known to turn into a wet rag of nothingness. After all I had gone through I decided to forgo my normal dunk and pin and got out the iron and a spray bottle. It was time consuming but, for the most part, I got all those drops looking smooth.

For the rest of its life, I will remember starting this scarf while I was in labor and having the anesthesiologist rip it when he went to put in my epidural. It is my Juliet scarf. For that reason alone I don't hate it. If I had to do it all over again that sucker would NOT be nineteen inches wide. I intended to make it a wrap but it looks TOTALLY stupid as a wrap and instead I wear it as a very fluffy scarf. I also am thinking the dropped bits would be fewer as I hate the fact that I undid so much of the work. But when all is said and done, I do like it and have worn it several times (like to ♥Rhinebeck♥).


Yarn: Schoppel Wolle, Baby Alpaka Naturbelassen, Color 98808870, Lot 1119344, 3 skeins
Needles: Susan Bates Circs, size 5 mm (US 8)
Pattern: Drop Stitch Wrap and Scarf by Unwind
Time: 10 months?!?
Care: Machine washable, gentle (hardy har har). Dry flat. Low heat iron.

Abduction

Oh Internet, I have knit the mostly lovely sparkly blue socks. Rumor has it the Yarn Harlot also knit sparkly blue socks that are scrumptious and probably a gazillion times nicer than my stockinette peds, but I care not! My socks are fabu and I want to hold them and kiss them and love them forever. I love this yarn and its sparkly glory to the point that I want to buy it in every color. Mind you that this is something I would totally do, if I had, you know, a job, or disposable income. I am the girl who goes to Webs for X and can't find it. I also can't find Y or Z, but I can find one of my favorite sock yarns. So I buy it, and by it, I mean the exact same yarn, in the exact same color (and probably dyelot) that I have already used to make socks because, oh, how those socks make me smile and one day they will die and I will need to replace them so I must have the yarn. Me = idiosyncratic (so sayeth the polite people, others might just say I am a nutjob).

Anywho, this blue sparkly yarn is like that other yarn. Instant love. I have worn my sparkle peds once and enjoyed them thoroughly. I suspect that my love runs so deep because of the bling factor. I love me some bling. And, I can honestly (as if I would lie, pushaw) say that I have not had blinged out socks before. I cannot, however, photograph them because my camera has been abducted by aliens. I hope its anus is okay. When ever it returns, I will take pictures and share the sparkly love. Normally I would wait to tell you about a finished object, even one as lovely as The Sparkletastics, until I could provide you with photographic evidence. I am changing my own policy though because I still have not blogged about Ellie. Who? I KNOW. Lady Eleanor. The shawl that goes on forever and I could actually use as a horse blanket. The shawl that is so bulky on, it adds about 30lbs. The shawl that my husband has used as a blanket. The shawl that was finished in February, or was it January, and has yet to be mentioned on this here blog o' mine. Mind you, Ellie won't be blogged about anytime soon as it is about three gazillion degrees too warm out to put her on. Also, she makes me look huge. I am thinking that I will wait until it is cooler, and I have a HUGE pregnant belly for which to blame the additional girth, to blog about her. Assuming the aliens return my camera.

Alternatives

Sunday afternoon I needed to do some work and had Lady Bean with me. I had left the house in a hurry and didn't have a blanket. In the car, however, was my Clapotis. I grabbed Clapotis as a "just in case" baby blanket, never figuring I would need it, as I planned for LB to sleep the entire time I was working. She, however, had other plans. Plans that were the opposite of sleeping. I still managed to get a lot of work done though because Clapotis, it seems, is brilliant in the rolling on the ground and amusing the baby category.




I'm not sure that Clapotis will ever be the same after its romp with Lady Bean and I'm really not sure how I feel about giving LB a hundred dollar baby blanket. But I am sure that she loved it, no, LOVED it, all caps, all the time, there was that much love.

A while back one of the woman we knit with had a baby and several people in the group knitted individual squares which were made into a baby blanket. I knit an anchor square, but had initially thought about doing a lacy square. To say this idea was frowned upon would be a HUGE understatement. One would have thought that knitting lace for a baby blanket was tantamount to child abuse. There was much concern for little fingers and toes and the lace holes. After watching Lady Bean cavort with Clapotis, I am going to go out on a limb and say that this concern was misplaced.




She loved the Clapotis holes. Her fingers and toes were drawn to the holes like white on rice. In fact, she amused herself for thirty solid minutes by slipping her fingers and toes in and out of the Clapotis holes. She screeched like a monkey at the holes (I found this a bit trying but she totally enjoyed it), she cackled like a loon at the holes, and she even cried when I took Clapotis and its glorious holes and put it away. So, my point, if I actually had one, which really, not so much, but whatever. My point? Don't be afraid of the lace blanket for babies. Obviously your don't want a hole big enough for the head (even I can figure that one out). But smaller holes? Finger and toe holes? Brilliant!

Constitutionally Required

So I've decided to supplement my income by pole dancing and have knit my pasties.



As if. Can you imagine? What if the yarn started to stretch out and then I got cold? That could be disastrous.

Actually, these are toes for a pair of socks I am knitting for myself. For some reason I like to spread them out and picture pasties and yarmulkes. I need more sleep.

F is for ...

Finished object! More specifically my finished Clapotis! I've been lax about taking fotographs (yah, yah, photographs ... I claim poetic license) of the finished Clapotis until this afternoon when Dogbert needed to go o-u-t. I mean is there anything more inspiring for a fotoshoot than a dog doing her bidness and cold, rainy, overcast weather?



Yah, as you can see, my first batch of photos didn't exactly capture Clapotis in all of her glory. Hardly any of that French panache that Kate Gilbert was going for. Aside from my own personal cheese, Clapotis was all bunched up AND clashed with my shirt. The pictures were, how you say, fuked. So I decided to give it up for my art and pose sans shirt. Mind you this isn't the first time I have paraded topless in my back yard. Only this time I didn't have an audience other than Dogbert.



I did, however, have a raging case of the giggles. There is something very funny about baring your big ole round pregger belly in the damp cold weather all in the hopes of getting a semi-decent picture of a handknit. Or maybe there isn't. Maybe it was my hormones.

Anywho, I did take several pictures in my skivvies which kinda show off the Clapotis (as well as the fact that I am one pasty white chick).



Since I was having so much fun with my photoshoot, I took one more of Clapotis in all of her glory.



Yarn: Blue Heron Yarns, Rayon Metallic, 2 skeins (550 yards/100 grams each), color Garnet
Needles: Addi Turbo, size 4.5 mm (US 7)
Pattern: Clapotis
Modifications: None.
Time: 44 days.
Care: Hand wash cool, dry flat.

Hiding the Hemorrhoid

Okay, I have to make the hemorrhoid thing go away. I could delete it, but, well, after three months at home with a newborn, I may need to remind myself of why life at work sucks big ole monkey balls. So, instead of deleting, I will honor Joan's request and provide inside pictures of the diaper bag ...

Bag closed, from the top:


Bag opened, from the top, with my belly intruding:


Bag opened, from the top, only lighter because black = hard to photograph:


I'll also give you an update on my pedicure socks ... just need to cast off! That wasn't much of an update was it? How about an update on Lady Bean who is weighing in at 5lbs., 10oz., but still has six more weeks to  cook  grow. Or, how about an action shot of my Clapotis which should be a lot further along than it is.



If you are familiar with the pattern, you will probably note that there are way too many ticks next to section two. That would be because me, I not so good at following directions. Or rather, not so good at reading directions. You are suppose to do SIX additional repeats. Not TWELVE. Just in case, you know, you are like me, and, um, blonde, you might find that helpful. It is too bad I didn't realize that I only had to do six repeats sometime before I finished repeat number ten.

C is for ...

Clapotis! I may be a day late and a dollar short, but I am still jumping on the Clapotis bandwagon.



The color of the yarn in that picture is a little off. The yarn has a lot more purple and pink to it. This is a lot more true to the color.



I suspect I will finish this right around mid-July. You know, when it is nice and hot and I will have absolutely no use for anything around my neck.

C is also for Cuisinart. Several months ago I bemoaned the untimely death of my Cuisinart. I had hoped to have it repaired or something. Well, something turned out to be me doing nothing until a Kitchen Aid food processor went on helluh huge sale and I bought a new machine as an impulse purchase. Since I am now a little lighter in the wallet and owner of a brand new Kitchen Aid food processor, I really have no use for all of my Cuisinart model CFP-9 blades and parts. I figure it is time to try and sell them .... now I just have to figure out how!