Discontent

I am currently disgruntled. Long-time readers may remember a series of posts from last year in which I noted that I used to do a lot of cross-stitch, was possessed of the desire to pick it up again, and rediscovered that cross-stitch can be kind of boring.
I did continue to cross-stitch, however, mostly due to it being Really Freakin' Hot outside and not very suitable for knitting. I noted as much here, complete with a picture of my work. Then, it looked like this:


I put aside the project in the fall, secure in the knowledge that, although it was not nearly complete, I didn't have a deadline. After all, the friend who was engaged hadn't even set a date yet.

Fast forward to last month, when I got an invitation in the mail. For MAY. This is the current status of the cross-stitch:


It has advanced considerably, true, but it is still not done. So for the foreseeable future, all my knitting time is devoted to cross-stitch. Argh! My travel projects are still knitting, of course--cross-stitch doesn't travel well, owing to the need for complicated charts and lots of thread. But I haven't been putting in the work I usually do, and I'm really feeling it. At this point, I'd abandon the cross-stitch and knit something for the happy couple if it weren't for a few factors. Aside from being half-done with the damn thing, I don't know the woman getting married well at all (I'm quite good friends with her fiance), and I hesitate to knit something for someone I don't know well. Cross-stitch seems safer.

But I miss knitting, she whines.

Erm . . .

So, here's the deal. The sweater was done, complete, finis. And then I decided the sleeves were too long.

I realize that I perhaps should have paid attention to this before I finished knitting them, or before I sewed them into the sweater. But anyway.

This meant I had to remove the cuffs, ravel a few inches of sleeve, and reknit to my satisfaction. I did this, but the doing of this meant that I couldn't get any pictures taken. Furthermore, I haven't been knitting much else because, sweater.

I promise the next post will have not only more content but be substantially more interesting.

Pi are not square

It embarrasses me to post these photos, it really does. Here's the original pi sock, as photographed last year.


And here it is with its mate, as finished earlier this week.


I have NO idea what happened. Same yarn, same needles, same knitter . . . and yet. One thing that did occur to me is that the yarn stretched when I left it wound in balls for a year. This is certainly possible, especially since I hand-wind my yarn, rather tightly. I'm not sure, though. You'd think I'd get to be a tighter knitter as I knit more and gain more experience, but apparently not.

What I'm going to try to take away from this is that it was an incredibly valuable lesson in a lot of ways. I knit a lot in college, but more or less stopped when I went to grad school. I only picked it up again spring of last year at the encouragement of my then-boyfriend. And then . . . then I was obsessed. All of a sudden I was knitting all the time, reading knit blogs, and getting more ambitious by the second. But I still had a long way to go, and these socks demonstrate that. When I first got the idea to knit pi socks, I wouldn't have dreamed of doing a little swatching and writing my own pattern from scratch. I adapted someone else's. It was awful--the pattern didn't suit the concept, the yarn, or the way I knit, and the results were disastrous. Now I would just make my own pattern. (Which I would then proceed not to follow, but that's neither here nor there.)

The other thing was the yarn. I just pulled what I had from the stash without really thinking through what the pattern demanded or the qualities of the yarn I had (in this case, a cotton blend). Nowadays, I'd try to marry the yarn to the pattern.

Finally, I knew when I finished the first sock that nothing worked. But, stubborn me, I didn't frog it and dispose of it then and there. The stubbornness remains a constant, but now I wouldn't have gotten past the cuff on that first sock. I'm much more flexible and imaginative now . . . I only hope I'll continue to grow as I keep on knitting.

And in the meantime, these socks are pretty comfy.

A rant

I mentioned in my last post that I'm knitting a "Baby's First Tattoo" sweater (from Stitch 'n Bitch Nation).

Now, I'm not an inexperienced knitter. I don't need my hand held, particularly when it comes to the basics. But if I pay money for a pattern, I expect that pattern to be well-written, clear, thorough, and reasonably error-free. Free patterns are different. Frequently they're simply the designer's notes cleaned up a bit--in that case, I don't expect polish or even clarity. (You ought to look at MY design notes if you want obtuse.) Anyway, most of the time such patterns are easy to figure out, and I've always found the designers to be super-helpful if they're not.

But as I said before, if I pay for a pattern, I expect a little more. Particularly from a book. After all, books take months, even years, to put together. Someone has to test-knit the garments for the pictures, right? And I know there are technical editors whose very job it is to check accuracy.

And yet. The Stitch 'n Bitch books are particularly egregious offenders when it comes to poor editing and sloppy pattern-writing. Don't get me wrong; I like the books--they're fun to read and many of the patterns are cute and clever. This sweater, though, has me tearing out my hair.

I've finished the back and both fronts of the cardigan, and I definitely have complaints. First, there are a few errors. One is just grammar/typo type-stuff, irritating to the grammarian but of little account to the knitter. The other, however, is much more serious. There are no directions as to how to finish the fronts. If you do the decreases as written, you run into a problem for the last few stitches--it's logistically impossible to continue in the same way. So do you make up your own decreases and continue until you have only one stitch and bind that off? Or do you stop when you run into the logistical problem and bind off then? Or do you stop when you reach the suggested length for the piece, decreases be damned? I honestly have no idea--because the pattern doesn't say. (I ended up stopping the decreases and binding off when the length matched the back. We'll see how that goes.)

Which leads to my second problem--I hate lazy pattern writing. Yes, it may seem like overkill to write the directions out for each front when they're near-identical. But "near" is not the same as "exactly," and you know, the reason I plunked down my $15.95 plus tax is because I didn't want to figure these things out for myself. If I wanted to design my own baby sweater, I would. I don't want the people I'm paying to do it to cut corners.

I do understand there are occasionally legitimate reasons for not providing perfectly complete instructions. For example, for symmetrical lace pieces, it would probably increase pattern cost to print reverse charts, particularly if the work is big. But for a flippin' baby sweater (hint: baby = small), how hard can it be?

Finally, this is a problem I have with this series as a whole. They're putatively designed for beginners, and it's true many of the explanations (particularly in the first book) are wonderful. Yet the patterns sometimes assume that you know nothing and sometimes exclude details that would be of great help to the experienced knitter, let alone the novice. The inconsistency drives me nuts.

Okay, I lied, one more thing. And here this series is by far not the worst offender. Color pictures are expensive. Photography is expensive. But if you're going to have color photographs in your book already, why not put in a few very clear pictures of the garment from multiple angles? Yes, that baby is cute, but I bet his back is cute too, and I'd sure like to see how it looks. Please?

Anyway, while the sweater is shaping up to be adorable, I can't recommend it. Next time I'm going to make up my own.

This and that

After finishing several bigger projects in a row, I've been reluctant to start anything major. Spring fever! I did cast on a new scarf, however.

Over break, Aspen and I bought matching skeins of Colinette Tao (100% silk), colorway "Mardi Gras."

A browse through Ravelry didn't turn up anything suitable for 120 yards of DK weight silk . . . so I wrote my own pattern.

I knew I wanted something geometrical and simple, to suit the bright colors of the silk. And of course it needed to use as little yarn as possible, so I could get a good scarf out of it.

I charted the "Lacy Chain" stitch from the Harmony Lace and Eyelets guide, added some details, and went to town. By the way, again, this book: don't buy it. The written instructions were confusing, and, bitch, please--no charts? It takes all of ten minutes to chart something (I know, because I've done it), and don't most knitters prefer charts?

I'm quite pleased with what I have so far. It'll be plenty wide enough, and just long enough, I think--along the lines of Anne Hanson's Little Nothing series. The pattern is easy and fairly interesting to knit, and it doesn't fight with the colors. And oh my goodness but this yarn is yummy. It does have a tendency to split (tight knitters would want to use metal, I think) and fuzz (so no ripping back), but it's soft and has a lovely drape.

Cross stitch indeed: a rant.

This may come as a shock to you all, but knitting was not my first love. I didn't learn to knit until I was in college, but I'd been doing needlework for years and years. My big thing for a long time was cross-stitch.

Now, I haven't cross-stitched in something like ten years, but I got a hankering for it last week. Why not, I thought, and picked up a kit at what we'll call Craft Store A. At home, I dug out my needlepoint paraphernalia and set out to stitch. I noticed that the kit was missing the promised needles, but I didn't think that was such a big deal--I had some anyway. A moment of digression: this is the frame I use. The rods I have require that you sew your working fabric to the attached webbing. You then put the rods in the bars and use the knobs to hold everything in place. So I sewed the fabric on, put the frame together, and started to sort the thread . . . only there was no sorting list. Half the instructions were missing. Grrrrrr. No cross-stitch for me!

Fast forward to yesterday, when I went to the grocery store. I wasn't at my usual store, but another across town, which just happens to be next door to Craft Store B. I went in, and they had a ton of stuff on clearance--so I got another kit. I also grabbed another set of rods for my frame (I needed a bigger set, anyway), noting vaguely that the package said something about a "two-part" system. Since I had a frame already, I figured that was what they meant.

At home, I opened up my new kit, checking VERY carefully that all the bits were there. Success! Now to put the fabric on the rods. Um . . . Turns out that, since I'd bought my frame, the company has introduced a patented "no baste" system. Instead of my familiar webbing, attached to the rods is this weird cloth. I need the specific part for the fabric to make it work . . . which of course I didn't have. After a little (okay, a lot of swearing), I decided to go to Craft Store A and see if they had any of this magic no-baste crap.

Turns out, Store A does have the fabric part it--but they don't have it alone. It's all packaged in with rods and frames. More swearing. Facing the prospect of buying a whole 'nother frame just to get the stupid stuff, I take a closer look at it through the package.

It's just velcro. It's just motherfucking velcro.

Literally two yards away, I grab a package of velcro and proceed to buy it in triumph.

I get home, pick up my prize . . . and realize that it is iron-on velcro.

I believe this is the point when I lost my shit.

Anyway, I finally got my fabric in the frame (I will say this, iron-on velcro means business--that shit's not moving), sorted all the colors out, threaded my needle, and finally, at long last, began to cross-stitch.

And then I remembered why I'd quit cross-stitching in the first place. It's fucking boring.

Forgive me, knitting. I will never leave you.

(By the way, if you were under the impression that this was a family blog . . . I do apologize.)

Moar mittens

I finished my mittens! And today, taking advantage of the sun (!!), I went outside for a photo shoot.

They're North Star mittens, from Knit Mittens! in Rowan Cashsoft DK. I recommend the yarn without reservation--it's very smooth, in that cashmerey way, but the knitted fabric feels pretty sturdy, for all it's quite drapey. I think it'll wear well for mittens.

The pattern, though . . . oy. I mentioned in my first post about these mittens that the chart had an error and that the instructions were confusing. This pair was knit from a different chart (as it was in a smaller size) . . . but THAT chart had an error as well. I also discovered several more typos in the instructions, and once again was completely baffled by the decreases to the extent that I just did as I pleased. They're very nice mittens, but I can't recommend the pattern at all.

I knit these in the smallest size because my last attempt produced mittens too long for my hands. I should have looked at the given sizes--these are still too long for me. I'll wear 'em regardless, but if I were to knit them again, I'd just start about eight lines farther up the chart when I came to the stranded knitting. Which is, in fact, so easy a solution that now I'm depressed for not thinking of it before I made mittens too long for my hands . . .

The infamous Pi Socks

I got a brain bug this summer that I would knit socks with stripes. The stripes wouldn't fall in just any pattern, though, oh no. They would be pi.

Yes, I am a gigantic nerd.

So I cast on, adapting a pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks, and went to town. At some point, I decided the socks needed something on the heel, so I designed a "pi chart" and intarsia'd that sucker. (Yes, I also love terrible puns. Remember the "socks in great numbers" crack?)

Without further ado, then, I give you: a Pi Sock.

First and foremost, yes, there's only one. The other languishes with about three rows complete. That's because the first one pretty much sucks. The pattern was completely wrong for what I was trying to do. I'm going to have to start from scratch and design my own when I knit them again. Part of the reason the pattern was wrong for the sock (other than that I think Nancy Bush is perhaps on crack)* is that I was knitting with Fortissima Cotton I bought ~forever~ ago. (As in, they've since changed it to a completely different fiber composition--the stuff I used is 75% cotton, 25% polyamide--and they don't make these colors anymore.) I'm not as anti-cotton as a lot of folks, but it is a bitch to work with, and I think what I'm trying to do demands the elasticity of wool. There were also a few elements that I didn't have worked out before going ahead and knitting, and the result is a kinda crappy sock. So I don't really feel like knitting an identically crappy sock.** I'll get around to it eventually. But in the meantime, enjoy!

*Nancy Bush is a goddess among knitters, and I'm pretty sure the fault is mine. Nevertheless, this book has given me, shall we say, mixed results.


**Yes, I could use a different pattern for the second sock, or frog the first and do it all over. The thought of wearing socks made of two different patterns makes me twitch--because heck yes I'm wearing these, nobody else would!--and I'm too lazy for option two.

Lace and its discontents

For the first time ever in my life, I'm knitting lace.

It's supposed to look like crap before you block it, right? Right??

I'm using Schaefer Yarn's Anne, and I am deeply unsure. It's fingering weight and really intended for socks (hello nylon), but I had it on hand when the inspiration to knit lace struck. I was also unsure that the colorway would be anything anyone would want to wear on their feet. And now that I'm knitting it, I'm even more unsure about that. This is a problem I have with some variegated yarn--it looks lovely in the skein when the colors are in their separate spaces and the transitions are smooth, but kind of odd when you knit it up. Oh well, I'll persevere.

But I could use some reassurance about the "looking like crap" thing.