Sweater Quandry

I took my giant red sweater to a baseball game yesterday with my cousin and my uncle because, frankly, CC (my final nickname for this thing) and I are pretty good friends right now.  I was worried that the 1x1 ribbing on the collar would be time consuming, but 4 inches in and it's really just potato chip knitting, as Kathy would say!

But, I woke up this morning and realized...

... I don't know where the written pattern is.

I looked all through my bag, tore apart my mom's guest room, frantically texted the people whose living rooms I've been squatting in sporadically.  It was all to no avail! I went through every book that I had used, in case it slipped into the pages or got mixed up with the mountains of printed articles that I've been carrying around. Nothing.

What's the most annoying is that I clearly remember the last time I had the pattern.  Someone asked me what I was knitting, and I was sitting on a couch and I said "A shrug, here, it will look like this at the end."  I then unfolded the pattern with gusto and showed them the faded picture.  They looked at me as if I was insane.

If only I could remember when and where that happened!  I think I might just finish the sweater from memory.  Once the collar is long enough, I just have to graft the sides of the shrug together and then pick up stitches for the arms...

Or, CC and I can take a break until the piece of paper shows up? I'm sure that it's somewhere, and I will probably find it between someone's couch cushions or under the seat of my Dad's car.

Notice Anything?

I finally finished the gigantic swatch of stockinette stitch that is the cozy cocoon shrug.  Now, I've picked up the 288 stitches of the edging and am working them in K1P1 rib for 4(ish?) inches.

I actually really like this project.  It's strange, because even a year ago I would have looked at this project and scoffed.  "Too much boring stockinette.  And then, you get to do ribbing? For FOUR INCHES? Ugh."

But between working, fixing up my Dad's house, doing research for my graduate project, and fluttering from place to place as only someone that doesn't have an apartment can... I actually welcomed the endless stockinette stitch.  I worked on it while reading Game of Thrones and watching Battlestar with my new boyfriend and listening to an endless list of webinars and reading the thousands of pages of reports on electric power delivery.  Which is the topic of my grad project.

So, I think I'm going to finish my first sweater in four years before the end of summer! And I'm actually excited :)

My First FO in a While

Hooray! I finally finished these stress knitting socks for myself.

I love the yarn and the colorway - it's Regia Random Stripe that I got from Rhinebeck this year. 

All in all, they're okay socks - but they sag at the ankle and heel! It's hard to tell from these photos, but as I was wearing them I noticed it.  It sort of makes me feel like an emaciated old lady!

I guess my ankles are just skinnier than my feet.  Who knew? Next time, I'll decrease a few extra stitches at the gusset to make sure the sock sticks.  Another alternative (I think) would be to make the sock longer so that it hits the thicker part of my calf - but I really like the shorter height. 

And, if the socks bother me that much, I'll just give them to my mom :P

DAL Summer 2012 Mood Board!

Whoohoo! This took way longer than I thought it would.  I tried to get as many photos in that I could.  Anyway, you can download it as a desktop background, too, which I think is super cool.  You can click on the file for a larger image or click here for it.

I can't wait to see the mythology-themed ideas and designs!

Lilac Moves

I'm home for the summer, hanging about in my home town.  My mom's garden is in full bloom...

And look who has a new home!

My mom cleared up this space in the backyard, and her boyfriend built Lilac this outdoor pen.  Of course, I'm worried.  Will it be too hot? Well, despite the heat, it's cooler out there than in the house (which is like an oven).  Will she be lonely? What about bugs?

I also planted some seeds for her - arugala, cilantro, parsely, lavendar (okay, that one was more for me).  She also has a whole bed of mixed lettuce, too!

She snubbed me all yesterday evening, going into her little hut whenever I came by to offer her salad or clover or toys.  But this morning, I was putting laundry out and I saw her through the screen door, tossing her wicker ball up and down and generally being happy.  When I came out to give her some salad and a frozen banana, she hopped into the corner and glared at me.

Summer DAL Mood Board Submissions

Whoa, the past three months have been a blur! It's time for the next round of Design Along, a challenge which asks knit and crochet artists to make up a pattern from theme to finished product.  This round's theme is Mythology, and I have no clue what I'm going to (attempt to) make.  I have some pictures for the board, though.

I picked all my favorite myths :) I will admire someone who can recognize all of them!

Don't go to the forum and cheat before you guess - well, you should click here go to the thread and vote for your favorite submissions, because that makes making the mood board way easier.

You can also submit your own images if you feel inclined - the group is a lot of fun, though most of us haven't been able to make the deadline :X

Another WIP Update

Here's some more catching up to date with the projects that I have lying around. 

First off, there's this little monster.  I want to finish him fast, because he looks so lifeless and dead without stuffing or an armature. 

He's a gift for my best friend back home, Steph, who likes chameleons.  The pattern is Chameleon by Hansi Singh.  I really love it, but there are some errata which really frustrates me - I don't like finding errata in patterns, especially when I paid for them.  But thankfully all the fixes were on ravelry, so after I ran into my first snag I looked up any other errata and wrote it down in my moleskin. 

 

Anyway, it's coming along well but I want to finish it before I move home and see her again - so, by the middle of next week.  (My conscience is saying "good luck" here, but I believe in myself!)

There's also this kind of crazy thing:

I haven't been able to give it a good name yet, since most of the things I think of when I look at it could be mistaken for euphamisms.

The nickname "The Red Terror" was met with snickers and/or disgusted looks

It started out earlier this quarter when I saw that a sweater kit on knitpicks was on sale for $20.  The pattern was called Cozy Cocoon - which is about $5 in itself, so... I got a sweater's worth of yarn for $15.  This alone was incentive enough for me to buy it, since I've been telling myself I'm going to knit a sweater for years, and buying yarn for sweaters for years, now I finally get a pattern, with yarn, delivered to my door for about $25 when you factor in shipping?  That's too good!

It probably didn't help that everyone in Hooks and Needles has knit or is working on a sweater - Kay, Ash, Rebecca, Alysia... I just wanted to belong! So, I happily cast on, and kept knitting... and knitting... and knitting...

I'm not even halfway done. I just hope I don't get bored, or don't like it in the end.  I guess if I don't like it, I'll just give it to my mom.

So, that makes 3 out of 4 projects that I have to show for myself! The 4th one deserves a post all in itself, so I'll save that for another time I think.  I don't like having so many WIPs at once - I feel like nothing is getting done!