What to do?

I’ve restarted the honeycomb baby blanket. Again. This time it’s working, but…

The “make one” increase is leaving holes at the corners. I’m wondering if a “knit into front and back of loop” increase would be tighter/neater looking. Chris thinks I should just keep knitting, but he always thinks that. I think he’s done with the drama this blanket has put me through, and just wants it to be over. But this is less than a tenth of the blanket, and I could easily restart it now, possibly with happier results. Isn’t it worth it if it turns out better? Or am I a never-pleased perfectionist and I should just let it go?

I’ve Never…

… dropped a stitch. I wonder what I will do when that happens. Maybe that’s why I’m such a slow knitter.

I think…

… pompoms and tassels should be outlawed in the knitting world. Unless you have some sort of kinky lingerie thing going on.

Imagine this made into a sweater. And forced over your head. That’s unconstitutional.

Maybe I should switch patterns…

After all the problems I’ve had trying to begin the honeycomb blanket, I’m thinking I should use my shine sport “butter” yarn on another pattern. Maybe this cradle me blanket would be a pretty alternative. But the pattern costs $7. And I’m not really allowed to spend any more on yarn/knitting for a while. I got in trouble. I could use this andean silk yarn for the honeycomb blanket instead. Maybe in “crimini” or “lettuce” for neutral colors. For some reason I’m not big on the alpaca silk used in the pattern. It’s a little too squishy and light. I don’t know, but if I spend much more time on this silly blanket, I’m going to end up in an asylum.

“I shall never knit again…”

These dramatic words were uttered quietly into Chris’s shoulder last night. Rewind two minutes and you’d find me whispering “No!”, followed by another “No!” worthy of Luke Skywalker after Darth Vader revealed his paternity. After what seems like a thousand mis-starts and hurdles on a simple center-out honeycomb baby blanket by Nikki Van De Car, I found that I’d thoughtlessly been starting and ending the rounds in the middle of a side of the square. My garter stitching was offset by a row in the middle. I’d promised myself this would be the last time I started this flippin’ blanket. This is getting ridiculous.

This is the first “fiber” piece I’ve ever tried. I’ve only knitted with acrylic before, so I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. The blanket pattern calls for KnitPicks alpaca silk DK weight yarn. It’s nice and squishy, fuzzy, and soft. Which I didn’t know to begin with. Instead, picked the cheaper KnitPicks shine sport in “butter”. It’s sleek, smooth, and kind of dense. Lovely, but definitely not squishy and fuzzy. So stretching the shine sport weight yarn to size 9 needles is like asking for spiders to come and live in your blanket. Seriously looked like a web. I tried going down a couple needle sizes, but size 7 needles still looked bad.

Ditch the yarn, I thought. I bought up skeins of different fiber content in the yellow color family, like the prospective mommy has asked for. I tried the alpaca silk in “oatmeal”, swish worsted in “sunshine”, shine worsted in “creme brulee”, double knitting my shine sport, and size 6 and 5 swatches for shine sport as well. The yellows and creams just didn’t live up to the beautiful, edible, banana yellow of shine sport’s “butter”. I couldn’t switch the yarns, I’d already fallen in love. So I settled on trying to adjust the pattern for my gauge on size 5 needles.

After all that hullabaloo, I’ve begun this blanket about five times, trying with all my might to get the double pointed needles to do my bidding. They don’t like me. I tug, I yank, I slip the yarn further down the tapered point of the needle to get a tighter stitch at the join, and it still looks like pieces of blanket held together by spider webs! This last start, which I promised myself would be the real “last time”, I manhandled the yarn into submission and got the joins looking decent enough.  Until I knitted enough to realize my stupid round-starting mistake, with the off-set garter stitch. “Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!”

“I shall never knit again.”

“At least for tonight,” says Chris.

Of course, he’s right. It’s just bang my head against a wall, scream into the night, and smash some ugly kitsch in our house kind of frustrating. I’ll give myself a break of a day or two while I switch to my super easy ribbed scarf.

Homemade Knitting Needle Case

Our budget is not tight exactly, but large purchases require a certain amount of time dedicated to saving up my spending allowance. So for a month or so, I was waiting to buy my KnitPicks harmony interchangeable needles, and had to pass the time somehow. I’d read complaints about the case KnitPicks includes with the needles, and although it looked alright to me (and is alright, now that it’s come in the mail), I decided to emulate some of the crafty knitting needle case creators on etsy and sew my own case. I looked at a bunch of the cases online, got an idea of the general form, and took a look at my needle collection (and prospective collection) to evaluate my own needs.

I wanted the Cadillac of knitting needle holders. All my needles must fit. After all, I’m not going to just tote around my circulars all by their lonesome. I probably won’t tote around any needles except ones used on a specific project. So this is my entire stash holder, with pockets long enough for 14″ straights, wide enough for interchangeable cables, fat enough for size 15 needles, and skinny and short enough for my size 4 interchangeable tips. I ended up with dimensions 19″ wide by 15″ tall and a 3″ flap at the top to keep the needles from sliding out. There are 42 (oh yeah!) pockets in three lengths, 3.5″, 6″, and 11.5″, and ranging from 3/4″ to 4 1/4″ wide.

I got to reuse the material I used to make a purple and brown lace jungle bedroom set for my 3 year old daughter, Isabel. Which is nice, because she’s decided that she’s no longer a purple jungle kind of girl. She’s an Iron Man girl.

I especially like my purple stitching and neat brass button closure. I was so very proud of sewing a button hole on a sewing machine. It was my first.

I would totally sew these up and sell them on etsy, but it took me over a month to work this one into my schedule with all that cooking, cleaning, digging up worms, running around the park, and chasing my 2 year old son around the house for the honor of changing his poopy diapers. I’m just not seeing that whole “cash cow” future my husband has planned for me in our golden years.

Options Interchangeable Harmony Wood Circular Knitting Needles Review

A few weeks ago my KnitPicks Harmony interchangeable needles arrived. My husband brought the mail in while I was busy at the stove, but I immediately abandoned dinner and eagerly ripped my package open. After using Boye aluminum needles and plastic cables, I was only too excited to see these puppies in action. But alas, dinner had to be finished. I was glancing over at them, counting the minutes until the children were in bed and I could grab my bag containing my in-progress Linux scarf (english) and switch out my Boye aluminum straight size 6 needles for the harmony 24″ circulars.

My aluminum needles were a little worn and sticking, so the change took a little getting used to. The harmony wood is smooth. The needles are pointy. I stabbed myself a few times before I altered my knitting habits to accommodate. At first I had to watch my knitting more carefully. The pointy ends were splitting the strands the way I was knitting. But several rows later, I was knitting faster and happier. First of all, knitting with circulars is much nicer if you’re sitting in a chair. The ends don’t stick out and hit anything. Also, the smooth wood lets even my crappy acrylic yarn just slide over. No sticking, no tugging. The gradual tapering of the needle makes it a lot easier to get the righthand needle under lefthand stitches close to the tip. The pointiness isn’t a problem for me anymore, it’s a precision tool plus. The cable-needle join is smooth, absolutely no complaints there. And I’ve had trouble getting the cables off, which is great. I don’t have to worry about them coming undone in the middle of a project. Not to mention, these are very pretty needles.

A couple of disappointments came with these lovely utilitarian needles, though. One is my own fault. I bought some longer cables since I didn’t see they sell a cable joiner separately. I thought they just didn’t make one. So now I’m sending the cables back and getting the joiner to keep my stash better organized. I think they should include this in the set, or at least include this on the item list page for circular interchangeables.

The next project I want to knit is a center out circular knit piece. With that in mind, I’m a little disappointed they only make 16″ circulars as fixed needles, though I understand they use shorter needle lengths to make a better circle at that size. I wouldn’t mind getting the fixed 16″ needles if I find myself making a lot of baby hats of a certain size, but I would love to have still smaller interchangeable cables, which makes me gaze longingly at the Denise Interchangeable sets. This review of the Denise needles suggests creating a tiny circular to work on sleeves, which would also be great for center out knitting or baby hats, since I hate double pointed needles. No matter how tightly I tug at the joins, there’s a big ole’ stitch there telling the world where it was.

So it seems my needle collection is incomplete. I still need double pointed needles of different sizes, and perhaps smaller fixed circulars. Except for the super-small circular knitting, these needles are fantastic to knit with. Of course, I’ve mostly knitted with aluminum, and have only tried bamboo for one project, but I still think the harmony wood needle set will be my favorite for some time.

My harmony needles in my homemade knitting case:

Finished Color Block Blankie

I finished the color block blankie before the baby was born! Wahoo! Of course, I didn’t actually get it in the mail until baby was over a month old. But I have two children at home and no car, I deserve a little slack. In the end, I liked all the colors, but blocking the squares didn’t quite get the goofy looking bumps and warps all out. I figure if they use it, the kid will stretch it to pieces anyway, and if they don’t, I shouldn’t bother blocking and re-blocking until I’m half crazed.

In progress:

I decided not to weave in any ends until I was done knitting, since I kinda suck at weaving in ends. It took me a few days to get all 208 ends weaved in, and after that, I’m an expert. The vines swinging from the backside:

The bumps and warps before blocking:

While knitting the border for this blankie, I found my circular needles looking like they had been chewed on by our dog, even though I’m pretty sure I did that the last time I was trying to man-handle the needle onto the cable.

Instead of spending $5 to replace my crappy Boye cable at Walmart, I knitted the border with it anyway. It was annoying getting the yarn over the connection, but I couldn’t justify spending any more money when I’d already planned my KnitPicks harmony interchangeable circular needles purchase. Now they’re here and oh so pretty! Preliminary review to come.

You may notice I haven’t included a picture of my finished blankie here. Well, the photos are lost in space and time. I take comfort knowing that the blankie is finished, is with the intended baby, and photos of it exist. When and if I find them, I will post.

One FO and one WIP

I love those acronyms. I especially loved the moment when I had a “UFO” (un-finished object) which went nicely with Stargate, my background knitting entertainment. I think I was snickering about that for a few days while the un-finished blankie dried on my makeshift blocking table. Word to the wise… when they suggest rolling up your piece in a towel before you block it, but you want to skip that step thinking you can just wring out enough water and it will be fine, go ahead and roll up the piece in a towel. It will save you a few trips up the basement and up the second flight of stairs getting a new towel to block on because the first one is sopping wet. I’ll have to figure out a different way to block the blanket I’m working on now, since it’s too big for the table I used on this blanket here.

This was my first blocking venture and I have to express my amazement at how lovely blocking made the pattern stand out.

But when it was dry, I had to give up my UFO, weave in the ends, and send off my FO (finished object) in the mail to my now 7 month old nephew. That blanket took a while to knit. Hope he’s still young enough to enjoy it!

Now I’m making incredibly speedy progress (for me, that is) on the color block blankie. I finished the previous blanket February 22nd and immediately began my WIP (work in progress). Now it’s a month later, and I’m two thirds done, as in I’ve knit exactly 66 out of 100 squares. Yes, I keep track. I didn’t get it done in time for the baby shower, which turned out to be at the beginning of March, but I should get it done by the time the baby’s born at the end of April. To my chagrin, the mommy told me at the shower that her husband insisted on a change of colors to blue and tan instead of green and brown. The half hour I spent laboriously picking colors, and the many crisis I’ve had since then, considering ripping out and restarting with different shades of green or brown, have all been in vain. I refused to start over after the blanket was over half done, but that hasn’t stopped my continual second guessing on the colors. And I did change one of the colors since I posted about them. I went with a lighter shade of brown.

So my final colors are:

I Love This Yarn buttercup

I Love This Yarn dark olive

Vanna’s Choice Baby sweatpea

Vanna’s Choice olive

Vanna’s Choice chocolate

And here is the blanket early in the process:

I’ve gotten the hang of mitered squares now, although I’ve many times forgotten to switch from the smaller needles to the larger ones. There’s a lot of places where it looks more smudged together than knit together with picked up stitches, but I think I’m getting the hang of that now too. I’m leaving all the ends to weave in at the end, after blocking, because weaving ends in is like some kind of voodoo that I don’t know how to do. They always end up popping out and my 3 year old daughter has told me that I’m making a blanket full of vines like on Tarzan.

So things are going mostly well with this project, except for the sad moment when I spent an hour working on a square, and realized I had knit it in the wrong order, and couldn’t pick up stitches on the square and get the diagonals on the blanket right. I had to cut it off, but couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I had the hubby do the deed. Very sad moment, and you can tell the hubby feels my pain.

Why a mad notion?

Because that’s the only time I ever knit. Seriously, I’ll go for weeks (okay months…) without knitting a stitch and then someone will have a baby and I’ll rush to finish my last project so I’m allowed to start the new project. Of course, this doesn’t stop me from buying loads and loads of yarn for the projects I’m certain I’ll be able to finish in no time at all. Like the first baby blanket I knit.

I had yet to learn anything other than the plain knit stitch that google taught me, but somehow figured this was plenty to go on to make a nice BIG blanket for my friend’s baby boy. Lots of blue yarn, well over 200 cast on stitches, some pretty satin edging, and 3 years later I had an oversized garter stitch blanket for baby. Since he was then three years old, she let me keep the blankie for my own baby boy. I’d finished with plenty of time for his birth.

The project after that, I decided to go smaller.

It was a cute lil’ posey toes hat for a friend’s baby boy, but I had to roll it up because I knit it entirely too long for a tiny baby’s head. Not my fault. If I had followed the pattern, it would have been several inches longer.

Then having mastered this perling and knitting combo in the round, I decided to do another for my baby boy. It’s a good knitting ego boost to not struggle occasionally. This time, I shortened it up, and as you can see, it turned out super cute and matched the blankie.

But then the nefarious stroller ate the blanket and it’s been tucked away in my closet for safekeeping after a foiled attempt at fixing the hole.

I googled, but, google does NOT know how to tell me how to fix the hole. I’m sure, someday in the future I’ll be able to redeem those 3 years of my life and yet again have a blankie to show for it. Someday.

Next up, another hat! My daughter (age 2 at the time) liked froggies, so I tried a cute frog hat pattern with poof and button eyeballs.

I had to wrestle it on to her to get this picture and she has refused to ever wear it again. This was a huge blow to my knitting ego.

I retreated from the knitting world for a year or so, except to look longingly at knitting patterns online, surreptitiously scribbling patterns I liked down on scraps of paper at the bookstores, and buying up lots of yarn for my future projects.

Then I had news of the imminent birth of a nephew. I rallied my spirits and dug through the baby blanket patterns I’d bookmarked over the years, picking the bunny hop pattern. That is my current project and after seven months, I’m 2/3 done with it. The good news is, I think I’ve finally learned to “read” the stitches and recognize where the pattern is going so I don’t have to reference my little print out sheet every few stitches. Goes much faster now.

There was a little issue where I forgot two whole lines of the pattern and didn’t realize it until about 20 lines later.

I figure that adds some kind of home-made charm to it. Along with the occasional sloppy stitching. I have high hopes that it will be complete and I will knit another baby blanket for a baby shower that is in March. Yes. I’m delusional. And I’ve already bought the yarn.

This is why my husband laughed when I was reading the Half-Assed Knitting blog. Unfortunately, since that name is already taken, I can’t use it, no matter how well he thinks it describes me. “Mad notion” will have to do.