Procrastinators of the World Unite...Tomorrow

Today was early release at school (where I work). To meant to take my huge knitting bag with me so I could knit for 2 hours without worrying that the President might call and declare my apartment a disaster zone (it might need a little cleaning). However, I was rushing out the door because I was late (go figure) and I left the bag sitting neatly next to the door. Always prepared though, I picked up some yarn from my knitting class stash and worked on a 4th baby hat that I had cast on earlier this week.
Plain stockinette stitch baby hat with a 1" K2P2 ribbing at the bottom. US size 10 needles and some old skool yarn, I mean, seriously old. So old that I can't even tell you what it's called because the ball band is at work and I can't even find something remotely close on the internets (I think it was Krystal by Bernat or something along those lines). And dudes, this yarn is funky.
It's all fuzzy and I don't even think it's plied. It's just like someone pulled long lengths of fleece and then kind of bunched it into a skein. Weird.
And it is sooooooo split-y. Every time I go to pick up a stitch I have to be careful or I'll take half a loop with me and then make it look all wonky. It's turning out to be an ok hat. I ripped back to the ribbing twice because I was trying to use some cute stitches but they just weren't working for me (I think it was knitter error). I finally gave in and began some mindless stockinette. I wish I could do some cool snowflake pattern because that's what this yarn reminds me of. But I'm not that motivated to figure it out nor to write a pattern for it.

Tonight I braved the 30 degree (Fahrenheit) temps to do my Valentine's shopping (do not even lecture me on waiting until the last minute, that's just how I roll). After coming home I decided that tonight was for sock knitting.
I'm wearing one sock to motivate myself to finish the other one so I can have 2 warm feet tonight instead of just one.

Warning!

This blog post is not for the faint of heart. Please proceed with caution. If at any time during your reading, you feel dizzy or nauseous, please stop reading, put your head between your knees, and take a few deep calming breaths while chanting, "At least this didn't happen to me..." You have been warned.

The wonky sweater bottom got to me kids. I knew I couldn't let it go. I'm neurotic like that. I began searching the intraweb for some ways to fix a problem like this. And really, there aren't any. I began experimenting with a few ideas on some old gauge swatches (see they do come in handy). I unraveled from the bottom up. Time consuming but do able. I knit from the middle down. Thankfully this works because the sweater is all stockinette stitch. I cut. I sewed. I read more. The best advice seemed to be to cut off the offending part, re-knit, and then graft together. But since I can knit from the top down or the bottom up and get the same effect either way I didn't want to do any grafting. I'm anti-grafting. The following surgery was devised after a glass of champagne and a lot of positive self talk.

How to Fix a Wonky Bottom Half of Sweater:

Insert a lifeline where you want to rip out to. In my case it was the first correctly executed row of purl stitches.
Get out your Crayola scissors (I assume that other scissors will work, of course). Snip a stitch from a row below your lifeline. I cut this one several rows below but I went back and snipped directly below my lifeline and it worked fine. I just didn't want any more major problems. Better to error to the side of caution and all that.
Begin ripping out.
This took awhile because I had to find both ends of the yarn. The first row had to be carefully unpicked.
Allow your crazed cat to come and stand in the middle of your delicate operation.
Allow her to then lie on your arm so that you have to hunch over a half ripped sweater and continue to pull out your yarn.

Separate the good from the ugly (note that crazed cat hasn't moved yet and that you could also stand to get a better pair of socks).
Rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip...
Store ripped yarn neatly in a jug designed for holding yarn (this is optional, you could re-wind it).
Make sure you have ripped back to the lifeline. This may require more snipping and ripping. Insert a needle into the row with the lifeline. Pull out the lifeline. Knit on dudes.
It absolutely looks like nothing is wrong. Now I can re-knit the 9.5 inches until the bottom where I will add 2 inches of ribbing and then bind off. I slept much better last night knowing my sweater wasn't going to look like arse.

A Realization, A Dictionary, and An Explanation

Dear Friends,

I am willing to admit that I am shamefully out of the loop on a lot of things. I don't watch the news and I hardly ever listen to the radio. When it comes to the world of knitting I feel as if I am even further behind. I only got serious about this hobby about 6 months ago and since then I've been trying to play catch up on a lot of things that people have known about for years. This morning before school I was reading some Yarn Harlot (I call this research. I do teach a knitting class...) and I noticed that she mentions WEBS. I am woefully ignorant of WEBS so I clicked on the link. What happened next was mind blowing... It was like walking into a yarn mall so chock full of good things it was breathtaking... and then I saw the "sale" sign.

My pastor once spoke of people who only buy things because they are on sale. I am one of these people. I cannot resist a red (or blue, or yellow, or any color for that matter) tag proclaiming "I was once more expensive than this." The last time I paid full price for pants was when I was in college. But, dear friends, this was more than a sale. This was a good sale. Good yarns on sale for reasonable prices. Do not click on the WEBS link and buy things that are on sale unless you are buying them for me. Otherwise we could have a problem. My credit card would already be out if not for the fact that I have to browse all the yarns and pick out ones that look soft and have cool names before I will buy them (another caveat of mine).

Ok, :::breathe:::, moving on....This morning I had to leave my office for a bit and walk around to keep from feeling light headed at such a monumental occurrence.

The real reason I am writing this blog is because I have been told that some of my knitting terms need explanation for the non-knitters (aka muggles) out there reading this. Thus I give you...

Melissa's Dictionary of Knitting Terms
Knit: to make things out of magical sticks much like Harry Potter (except without as many near death experiences...I hope), also a type of stitch which is basically loops that go through each other
Purl: a reverse knit stitch, instead of loops going through the bottom they go through the top, just think of it as another loop
Stockinette stitch: looks like this (little v shapes)
Garter stitch: looks like this (little sideways c shapes)
Anything other than Stockinette or garter stitch: very complicated loopy patterns
Needles: the magic sticks used to turn this into this
DPNs: double pointed needles, two sharp pointed ends for maximum pokeage, a miniature double edged sword if you will
Casting on: putting yarn onto the magic needles
Binding off: taking yarn off the magic needles
Ripping back: removing the magic needles and pulling the yarn out of what you just knit so that it unravels some (or almost all) of the way. This is so you can try and put the yarn back on the needle and fix a stupid mistake you made like knitting when you should have purled (Why should it matter really? It's all just loops!)
Frogging: Remember the Weezer song that had the line "If you want to destroy my sweater/just pull the string as I walk away"? That's what you do to your project. On purpose. Because you are an idiot and did everything so wrong it will never be fixed unless you just start over. But you still want the yarn.

J.M. that was for you. Hope that helps. If you need any other definitions you can just ask.

And, as an explanation as to why sometimes things seem to happen slowly around here, I give you this picture:
This is how my cat sits on me. Notice she props herself on my arm. What you can't see is that she actually shifts all her weight so it is on that arm and I can barely move it. Sometimes my hand falls asleep. She is so co-dependent.

Block Party Weekend

Today, while out furniture shopping (read about it here) I picked up some t-pins. That means that today was the beginning of a blocking extravaganza. Here's a baby blanket that I had finished a few weeks ago (pre-blocking):

I made it from leftover yarn. The red is deep red Red Heart that I used for the Simple Scarf. The blue is a Red Heart sport weight in Skipper Blue (loved the color!). The multicolored yarn is Red Heart super saver in Mexicana. I originally got the pattern from www.nancyhearne.com. But the pattern is no longer available. I've included it at the bottom of the page if you want to use it.


This is baby blanket during blocking. It's a "preemie" sized blanket at about 15 inches long.

And...I finished all the rectangles for the preemie sweater! I knit the last panel up while waiting for the high school band to perform at a concert on Thursday night.

And here it is pre blocking and before I sewed in the ends but it's set up in the way that it will be pieced together. I like how the purple in the yarn made these interesting tiger stripes in the sleeves. I think I'm going to make a hat and booties to match.

My friend Jenn is already begging for one when she has a baby. I was going to block this tonight too but I decided to wait since I wasn't sure if I had enough t-pins. The sweater should be done by the end of the week me thinks. I can't wait to be done with this cutie!

Raised Garter Stripes blanket:

Materials:
1 oz. each of 3 colors of yarn
US size 5 needles (the original pattern calls for size 6 needles)

Rows 1 and 2: With color *, K across
Rows 3-6: Work stockinette stitch (K on right side, P on wrong side)
Rows 7 and 8: K across; change to color *
Rows 9 and 10: K across; change to color *
Rows 11-14: Work stockinette stitch
Rows 15 and 16: K across; change to color *
Rows 17 and 18: K across; change to color *
Repeat rows 1-18 continuing to change colors for pattern.
*= colored yarn, you want to continually cycle through the colors. First A then B and then C. This makes the color changes different each time through the pattern.