Moths!

This past week, the weather finally started turning, and I went to wear one of my hand knit sweaters (made out of merino/angora), and promptly found a moth hole. And I had absolutely no time to fix it.
So, I took out another sweater (this one handspun AND handknit), and found yet another hole. GAH!

All I could think of was...MOTHRA attacked my sweaters! I'm not used to dealing with moths, as I've never had issues like this...ever.

I quickly dumped all the other sweaters from that drawer out (and found no other moth hole), wore another hand-knit sweater to work, then later that night set about fixing the holes.

For the merino/angora sweater, I found FIVE HOLES (two of which weren't quite holes yet, but you could see the thinning fabric). This one is not heavily worn sweaters by ANY means, so it HAD to be something eating my sweater.

I took leftover yarn and darned the actual holes, then duplicate stitched the not-quite-yet-holes. Luckily, none of them were in obvious locations (like the front cabling). Then I wrapped the whole thing in plastic and chucked it into the freezer.

My handspun/handknit sweater only had one hole, which was small and fixable. But I did have a hard time with it, as this is a garter stitch sweater. Plus, I had to really dig into my stash to find the itty bitty left over yarn from the project (which I'm glad I kept!)

It's in a non-obvious spot and you'd have to be VERY close to notice that two stitches look more stockinette than garter.

All of the other sweaters were absolutely fine. I took a look at my handknit socks (in another drawer in the same bureau) and they were fine. I looked at the other sweaters (located in other areas) and those are all fine too. It was just that one drawer.

So the whole thing got put out into the garage, and I'm filling up sacks of cedar & lavendar and lining everything containing wooly product

Wheel Sneak Preview

Okay, here's a small taste of things to come. I'm still pretty much staining, sanding, and re-finishing the wheel, but I did a test run with the kate & bobbin to ensure that I have the right color combination. I really wanted a green coppery color -- something that would have the sheen of metal, but still be a beautiful green. Originally, I was thinking "verdigris", but not as teal.

Here's the unfinished portion of the kate plus a singular bobbin.

 

Here are the color chips that I was considering. It was a toss-up between "botanical" and "verdigris".

I went with "botanical". And I also picked up a metallic "glaze" in gold.

Here's the finished bobbin. (I think I went a bit heavy with the gold glaze.)

And here's the finished kate

So far, so good. The rest of the wheel is still in progress.

Early Saturday morning, I went to check out a used spinning wheel. One was for sale for cheap, but appeared to be in good-working-order, as she was a spinner. However, when I got there, only to discover that while it DID work, it was like trying to pedal a bike up a super steep hill.

I had no idea what was wrong with it, and neither she or I could get it to work smoothly so I passed on it, despite it being a good price. I could tell that she kinda sorta took care of it and that she felt this was the normal for this wheel, but...it really wasn't. There were other things about it that bothered me a little bit (the wood was kinda dry and she had done a crappy varnish job on it), but it was really the treadling that broke the deal for me.

It was good that I had tried another wheel of the same style previously, and knew what a well-maintained wheel felt like, and this just wasn't it. I was REALLY ready to get it, but it just wasn't in the cards.

I spoke with Sandy at Purlescence about the wheel and what problems I had with it. She diagnosed a few things that might be wrong with it and how it could be fixed (fairly easily I might add, but still a pain to get fixed). I'm very glad I didn't get it, because now, I have something that is going to be just absolutely faboo.

What is it? You might ask? Well, I'll post about it later, because I have photos to upload, and no post is really completely without photos.

As they say, Pictures or it didn't happen.

She Will be Called Geoge

As a note, my lovely Ashford Joy found a new home the other day. Another spinner's wheel was tragically destroyed during her cross-country move, and she was looking for another wheel and had fallen in love with the Joy.

I was looking for a new home for her, so this was synchronicity. My Joy found a loving home, and a spinner got the wheel she could love, hug, pet, and call "George". :-)

Although, I did think she renamed it "Georgina" :-)

Spin U: Thicker Yarn - Week 6

I'm jumping around from week to week as I get photos taken and uploaded of the various in-class & homework assignments.

In the first trimester of SpinU, we worked on perfecting techniques for worsted spun yarn in smaller WPI (lace, fingering, sport), because for most of the spinners in the class, this is their default spinning. In the second trimester, we worked on creating chunkier yarn (aran, worseted, bulky) by spinning thicker singles.

For the 6th week of class, we did a 2-ply worseted weight yarn. The singles were 16 WPI, and the resulting yarn was an 7-8 WPI 2-ply (heavy worsted/bulky).

I used the same fiber as I did with the 3ply

 

Spin U: Art Yarn Week 7

In SpinU this past week, we learned how to do "thick/thin" singles -- essentially art yarn. Most beginners can do this type of yarn because they haven't learned how to consistently draft yet. But, as a beginner's skillset increases and their drafting becomes more consistent, it becomes harder to do something like "thick / thin" yarn.

So, this past Saturday, we learned just how to do this technique. And I have to say....I dislike it thus far although there were some in my class that absolutely LOVED it.

The basic gist of doing this technique is to set up your wheel for the "thick" part, so using a slow ratio whorl. Then draft your "normal" way, but every now and then, "jerk" a chunk of fiber out of your passive hand (and slowly add twist & structure to it), then go back to whatever your normal drafting. The best type of fiber to use is something that is slightly felty that you would have trouble normally spinning with because of the felted chunks (perhaps due to dye'ing). Luckily, I had some from a dye'ing attempt gone awry.

Take the fiber and split LENGTHWISE down the roving and start spinning. Eventually, you get something that looks like this on the bobbin:

It was definitely a challenge to work on this project, and I had to stop frequently because my wrists were getting tired and "jerking" chunks of fiber out somewhat taxed my wrists a bit until I started pinning the roving down against my leg with my passive hand. Eventually, I finished this bobbin (slated to be a "single" of thick/thin yarn), and wound it off onto the niddy noddy.

Sandy, our instructor, had advised us for our "single", that we wash it under tension, so my PVC niddy noddy was perfect as I could just wash the whole thing. The challenge was to find something "big" enough where I could soak the whole of the niddy noddy in the wash.
Afterwards, it came out looking like:

Overall, thick/thin yarn is not my thing. I can see where this technique is useful and what you can do with roving that came out slightly (or a lot) felty that wouldn't be appropriate for regularly spinning. It's good knowledge to have, and something to help change things up a bit in your spinning.
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While I am not overly pleased with the result -- I'm not a fan of art yarn anyways) --- I think that the resulting thick/thin yarns would be good for yarn hair falls. But it's not something that I would use regularly -- I almost never use art yarn in my normal everyday knitting.

On our next class, we learn how to take some of the thick/thin singles we created and ply them into a two-ply yarn.

SpinU: 2nd Trimester Homework - 3ply Worsted

Just some photos from one of the homework assignments to the finished skein.

From this:

8oz of Crown Mountain Superwash Merino dyed to "She's Like a Rainbow"

to 3ozs of singles across 3 quills.

to the finished skein

Worsted Weight 3-ply.

I "think" its about 120 yards?  I need to spin up and ply the rest of the fiber, but I'm very happy with the result.

Spin U: Trimester 1

I've been attending SpinUniversity over at Purlescence Yarns for the past several weeks, and so far, so good. We're concentrated on spinning worseted spun yarn, and I'm learning quite a bit about how to improve my spinning in a lot of technical ways.

• getting more consistent yarn in the singles
• how to ply better.
• plying doesn't always fix certain problems and how good-in will always make make a good-out.
• ergonomics on spinning
• how best to hold yourself when spinning singles
• how plying isn't ergonomic at all, but the things you can do to help mitigate it.
• how to correctly hold your yarn during plying so that you can control the amount of twist effectively
• how sometimes, even the best of intentions in plying will neccessitate the need to call someone to help you untangle your singles.
• why "balanced yarns" isn't always better
• what types of yarns are best for some types of fabrics  --- why energized yarns are better for socks or outwear
• you don't always have to wash, full, and set your yarn. And if you spin it correctly, you don't even need to wash your yarn (unless it's dirty, of course)

Homework, in general, consists of reading and spinning a lot of singles. In class, we ply those singles so that we can get our form corrected and immediate feedback on how we're doing. Sandy's been an awesome teacher providing feedback to each individual student on what they need to improve upon. It's really a matter of practice.

We're in the 2nd trimester of SpinU right now, and I'll be posting photos and updates as we go. But for now, here's my notes regarding this past trimester.

Week 1

In Week 1, we basically went over the Greensheet for the class, the physics of spinning, then Sandy demonstrated how to actually do worsted spinning. There was a lot of practice in class, but I think most of us knew how to do it. It was just a matter of doing it ergonomically correct.

For homework, we were supposed to spin up 2 ounces of singles to ply in class. This was singles at 36-40 wpi @ 20 degree twist angle.

Week 2:

We plied it our homework in class, and I got some lovely 2-ply lace yarn.

Week 2's homework was 3 bobbins of singles but at a higher twist angle (30deg) but slightly lower WPI (32-36 wpi). This was a lot more difficult than it sounded. I had a slightly hard time with this homework, mostly due to the high twist angle, and my singles were extremely lively and had a lot of corkscrews. When I got to class, I wasn't the only one who had problems and a lot of corkscrews in our singles.

Week 3:

Sandy knew exactly what we had done "wrong" in spinning our singles and pointed it out to us-- mostly how to "not" pull when feeding the yarn versus letting it just slide through. I tried to apply this advice to the homework afterwards and it really helped.

In class, we worked on 3plying from the homework. In class, we plied our homework into a 3ply yarn -- and I ended up with yarn that was very "lively" and curled in on itself and felt like rope. I hated it. However, Sandy assures me that it's fine. I felt a little better after that, but I still hated the color. The wonderful roving that I had gotten (greens and reds) and turned into a mottled brown).

For this yarn, Sandy did recommend that I wash it after it "relaxed" after a few days, but not to full it. The washing process helps "tame" or "set" the yarn so you can knit with it. She told us about how sock yarn is super lively and if you don't wash and set the sock yarn, it becomes impossible to knit with because it'll tangle onto itself.

The particular skein would be "perfect" for sock yarn (except that it's a bit too thick), but the liveliness of the twist is perfect for sock yarns of outwear garments. But these samples aren't really "enough" to knit with as we're learning, and to which we can refer to later. So, this gives me a baseline of what I need to do for spinning for socks, which I haven't done yet because I find it intimidating.

For homework, we spun 2 bobbins of singles @ more than 30% twist, 40WPI+ (which for me was easy)

Week 4:

I missed Week 4 of class (which was mostly on how-to clean the wheel and take care of it.) So I did a make-up with Sandy. She primarily wanted to go over my plying techniques. This week's plying was much easier than the others.

At this point, we went on a 2-week break due to some scheduling with another class. Our homework was a lot more due to that fact, which I'll recount in the next post for the 2nd Trimester.

Cigar Case

 

My entire house is one large crafting room that just happens to have a kitchen & bedrooms attached to it. A good of mine keeps telling me it's like an atelier's workshop -- at any given moment you can start any given project and have most of the materials at your disposal.

 

She's got a very romantic way of putting things.

 

Me? I see a house that needs seriously cleaning up.

 

The reality is probaby somewhere in between. The house IS a mess and I can start nearly any project I want (within my realm of interest) almost immediately.

 

Take for instance, this particular project. I have a wonderful humidor (that's for cigars) that very good friends gave to me for my birthday one year. It holds about 3-4 cigars and is just Fricking COOL. It's more portable than my travel humidors, but I needed a carrying case for it for places like the Renaissance Faire. (Yes, I smoke cigars on occasion. It's a guilty pleasure.)

 

So, one night, I had about 1.5 hours to spare, so I grabbed some scrap pieces of leather that were from my Chinese armor project, my leather awl, and got to work. I used the scrap leather and figured out how much to wrap around to make a tube.

 

Then, it was a matter of making a cover to go over the tube, and making a belt hook. I made some leather cord from more scraps so I can use it as a closure for the belt hook.

It's a bit rustic looking, and I can probably make something better, but it's not bad for 1.5 hours worth of work. The longest part was handsewing through the leather with a leather awl.

The finished product kinda looks like a cigar itself, doesn't it?

Casting On!

I appear to be on a sweater kick. Okay, who am I kidding? I've been on a sweater kick for some time now. Some say, maybe addicted to sweaters. Because ten minutes after attaching the last button to the previous cardigan, I was starting to swatch for the next sweater. (How sad is that I haven't even finished weaving in the ends of the previous sweater?)

DH even took immediate note of it, asking "Is that a different color yarn? Are you knitting a new sweater?!?"

What can I say? I'm addicted to having sweaters. They are warm, fuzzy, and even in the warmer weather, it's good to have in our office (where they turn up the A/C to icy cold!)

And I'm really liking vest-type sweaters as they work nicely as layers. So, now I am working on the Adam's Ribs Hoodie by Carol Sunday. I saw this on Ravelry and fell in love with it. I love the tunic length and the wavy lines. Plus, I'm fond of hoods even if I never use them.

The recommended yarn was out of Carol's own line, but I wanted to start it immediately (as I knew I would be soon finished with the Raspberry Cardigan). So, I took a look at a bunch of different yarns on Ravelry trying to find something that would match in both yarn weight and about the same yarn grist. (Using my SpinU lessons for this!)

Eventually, it came down to a few yarns, and luckily, my LYS was having a sale on one of them (Dreams in Color Classy) but they didn't have enough for a sweater and I was unsure about how the varigation in the color would work in the ribbing. After consulting with the owners and a few knitters that was there, it was determined that the Cascade Eco Cloud would be one of two alternatives that would work best (the other being Frog Tree Meriboo). Consequently, I went with the Cascade Eco Cloud (in a beige-ish/coffee with milk color) because I loved working with it and I was familiar with its characteristics.

I swatched using US 6 needles, which after washing and blocking, came out at gauge -- 24 stitches/4 inches (in the ribbing).

So far, so good. The ribbing pattern is actually pretty easily memorized; it took me about half the swatch to get it ingrained in my head. I also tried a few different types of increases, because I didn't like the hole the suggested increase left in the fabric.

Currently, I am about 2" into the body of the sweater. The ribbing pattern is engaging enough to make me pay attention, but mindless enough to not have to pay "too" close attention to it.

The Never Ending Sweater

I have been knitting on my cabled sweater since...well...July, and I've FINALLY finished it last night. I've renamed it the NEVER ENDING SWEATER, because it's taken forever to finsih.

Around the beginning of September, I finally finished the sleeves. About 3/4ths of the way through BOTH sleeves, I knew that I was creating the sleeves MUCH too big, but I continued to press on in the hopes that it'd get better. It didn't. When I tried on the finished sleeve..well, it was about 3 inches too wide.

The finished sleeve was supposed to be 13.5" wide...this was nearly 17. I finally decided to check gauge, and discovered that I was WAAAY off, despite using the same exactly needle that I used to knit the body (which fits perfectly, BTW). Luckily, all of the increases were at the edges of the sleeve, which the Costumer in me said, "We'll just cut off the excess fabric, while the Knitter in me is screaming "OH HELL NO..."

So, after DH helped me check for fit, he pinned the seam line, and I ran it through the sewing machine with a good bit allowance. Then I pinned the sleeve together loosely on the new seam line (using locking stitch markers) and pinned it to the armscye. It fit perfectly so I added unpinned it and ran it again through sewing machine with a zig-zag stitch, used Fabric Tack to ensure there was no additional unraveling, and then cut the excess fabric off.

Yes, you heard that right. I CUT my knitting. Here's the Before & Aftershot.

I figured it this way: if this didn't work, I would have to completely REKNIT both sleeves, which was going to take a Very Long Time. Plus, I still had a ton of yarn left over, so I wasn't too worried about not having enough. I would try with one sleeve and see if it worked. If it didn't, I'd frog the 2nd one and reknit.

Consequently, I attached the armscye and sewed up along the new seam allowance, and it worked perfectly. So, I started on the second sleeve. This saves me a TON of work having to reknit the whole thing.

Now, I was concerned about the shawl collar, which other knitters promised is going to take as long as the whole sweater combined. So, I picked up 400 stitches, knit the shawl collar while adding the button holes. It took about a week to fully finish the shawl collar, because it had short rows along the neckline, but it worked about beautifully.

I even had the appropriate buttons that worked well with it.

The sleeves are a teeny bit long, but can be easily pushed up. And it's got about 2 inches of ease, so I could probably wear this as an outer sweater in the winter. But it's DONE and it's WARM, and I need to take better pictures of me wearing it...when it's not 80 deg F outside.

Oh, and yeah, I started a gauge swatch for a new sweater about 10 minutes after attaching the last button.....

Throw me a Lifeline

(or ...Too many AT THE SAME TIMES...)

Last night, I was working on my Blackberry Cabled Cardigan, which not only features cabling and double moss stitch (for my version), it also has a LOT of the dreaded phrase, "at the same time" .

There's neckline shaping/decreases AND AT THE SAME TIME with bust increases, then neckline decreases AND AT THE SAME TIME armhole shaping, then the knitter moves onto THREE "at the same times" of neckline decreases and AT THE SAME TIME armhole shaping and AT THE SAME TIME shoulder shaping.

It's enough to make a knitter want to grit her teeth and swear... a lot. However, this is where lifelines help, because everytime I hit a milestone where it's long enough to start the AT THE SAME TIME....I throw down a lifeline.

Of course, I almost didn't at one point, when I finished working on the left armhole shaping and was about to start the shoulder shaping, because, I had thought, "NAW, I'm on a roll! I got this!" (But the nagging part of my hindbrain kept arguing until I got out the brown sock weight yarn I normally use for lifelines and threaded it through the stitches on my needle, which took less than a minute.)

Oh, boy am I glad that I did, because about part way through I realized that I had forgotten to continue working on the neckline decreases AT THE SAME TIME as the armhole shaping AND the shoulder shaping WHILE maintaining (quoting the pattern) the "cable ....pat as best as possible throughout neckline shaping".   (You know things are going to get iffy when the pattern designer has to say "as best as possible....")

(Of course, the nagging part of me turned into the smug-I-told-you-so-me....)

Oofda. So I had to rip back, luckily to the lifeline (a mere rows back) and do all of the AT THE SAME times. Here's my lifeline, which you can't see all of because of the purl stitches on the cabling, but it did save me a ton of frustration and annoyance.

But lesson re-learned. A few moments adding a lifeline can save you TONS of heartache later.

Slugs on the Brain

If you're a fan of the show, Futurama, I'm sure you're familiar with the brain slugs. As DH is a big fan of the show, he said he wanted one of these to wear for conventions or the ilk, when he didn't quite feel like wearing a costume.

So, obviously, I had to make it for him. And what better way to do it than crochet amigurumi. First, however, it was getting the necessary colored yarn. I had thought to use just Lion Brand acrylic, because, it's a) cheap and b) I usually like making my toys out of acrylic yarn. 

However, they didn't have the right color, so I just went with Cascade 220 in Apple Green (which was approved by DH).

 

I took a look through Ravelry at some of the patterns, but many of them seemed way too large or I didn't quite like how they looked, so it was time to improvise. I'm particularly fond of amigurumi and no stranger to creating such toys. This one was rather simple. But, first I made a small prototype to see if it'd work;

 

The initial prototype was a bit too small, and DH didn't like the ruffles, as he felt they were too doily-ish. This one fit my head a little bit better than DH's head (which is a big head in the literal sense). So I increased the size by about 20%, made the ruffling a little bit uneven, then sewed together a felt eye (using the tutorial I posted), which was then attached to the body with needle & thread.

To provide a little "depth" to the eye. I crocheted a chain long enough to go around the eye, and sewed it down. Then, DH placed the iris, himself, and it was just a simple matter of glueing it down in the appropriate spot. It was then stuffed with some scrap yarn that I had recently cut off my loom.

It took an evening to create the prototype and then the final brain slug.

Leather and then Some

Sometimes, I want to do something a little different from the norm. In my opinion, it's good to have a wide range of skillsets ...especially when the zombie apocalypse should occur. And it's even useful to create things that you need on a daily basis.

In my case, I wanted a new belt to match my blood red shoes. Luckily, I had some leather and belt findings lying around.

Belt Blank

After some quick use of my hand-dandy leather tools (all conveniently placed in a single toolbox) and using a favorite belt as a generally template, I had a brand new belt to use for tomorrow.

Finished Leather Belt

In addition, I still had some left over leather from another project, so I created a belt hanger for me to use at various Renaissance Faires. Simply put, a belt hanger hangs from your belt and can hold a variety of things, from small bags to tankards. At Ren Faires, I primarily hang my tankard. These things cost anywhere from $10 - $20.00 a pop. The left over leather cost me nothing, but the lovely Kells Dragon conch only cost me $3.00.

Belt Hanger

Reverting to Paper Patterns

Despite all my work on the various UFOs that had been languishing in my knitting basket, I was jonesing for casting on a sweater. I don't know when I turned into a sweater knitter, as the year before, I was all about knitting socks.

But now, if you look at my finished Ravelry projects, I've finished four sweaters this year, which isn't too bad, all things considering.

And I just started a new sweater, involving cables and double moss stitch. I was dutiful and made a cabled gauge swatch. Normally, I knit loosely and have to go down 2 needle sizes from the recommended needle, but as this involved cables, I tried the recommended US 7. However, I didn't like the resulting fabric too much as I felt it was too dense, so I went up to a US 8 and got gauge.

   

The swatches were washed & blocked, and I started knitting on the sweater. But I had to frog the beginnings of it once over, because I couldn't get the cabling correctly, because the front starts with a partial cable and as you increase stitches, you work the cable pattern. And my poor brain couldn't wrap itself around the concept, nor could I visually see how this was going to work.

I had re-written the pattern to work the sweater as a single piece (instead of having to seam panels), and my Excel spreadsheet was ACCURATE. However, it didn't take into account the visual aspects of the chart (although my iPad displays the chart easily enough.)

I had redid the cabling on both sides...frogged just the cabling...redid the cabling...then eventually frogged back to before the cabling started. sigh.

Then I hit on a simple solution: PAPER

My pattern is digital on my iPad, and my PDF reader has a nifty feature that allows me to highlight notes and some charts, but sometimes you need to have something in front of you that is visceral.

I printed out the cable chart and went through the pattern line-by-line with highlighter and pencil in hand, and marked out where increases happened and where it was the cable pattern for the Left Side. Then I repeated this exercise for the Right Side. Now I can clearly see how the cabling is going to look on the sweater.

Hopefully, this trick will help me get this patterning right.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Using my iPad for reading patterns is awesome. I love it. And I will continue using my iPad. But sometimes, it helps to mark up a paper pattern just for notes. (I'll still be using my excel spreadsheet to refer to as I knit, however.)

ComiCon - a Love/Hate Thing....

Ah, Comic Con has come & gone. I have not yet gone to San Diego Comic Con, which some claim is the mecca of all geeky-ness. Although, I have attended similar, but smaller events, like San Francisco's Wonder Con.

I have many friends who go, but it is something I have yet to attend. In fact, I have a love / hate relationship with ComicCon.

Love:

• a lot of geekyness can be had there.
• Some of my favorite stars, authors, and show producers/directors attend
• There are show previews and lots of swag
• Stuff that you only see at ComiCon. (Not that I need stuff, but it'd be interesting to SEE)

Hates:

• It's HUGE...50,000+ of your closest friends
• Lines. You stand in line to get in line, for the line of the panel you want to attend.
• You might only get to 1-2 panels the WHOLE weekend
• It's turned very commercial

I WANT to go AND, simultaneously, I have no desire to go :-(

It's a conundrum, I tell you.

But, perhaps one day, we'll make the trek to go to Comic Con, then to just say we had.

FO: Blue Steel & Granite

Shortly after July 4th, I finished my UFO shawl-ette that I apparently had started in September 2010 (according to my Ravelry page)! I hadn't realized it had been that long.

I had put it down with only 3 inches left to finish. I have no idea why I put it down, but it feels good to finish it. And I really love how it looks striped. The yarn coloration worked out well.

Finished UFOs...

I've been on a UFO kick -- as in finishing up some unfinished objects. I had been feeling ennui on starting anything new, and I was cleaning up some of my knitting and came across some UFOs that I thought, "What the heck? Let me finish these up."

1) I started knitting on a UF shawl object (Age of Brass & Steel) that I started a while ago out of my handspun, Targhee.

I have no idea why I put it down. I was about three inches from finishing. I'm currently working on finishing this project now.

2) I also managed to salvage a cardigan that I thought had to be frogged, but I procrastinated because it is knitted from pure alpaca and that is a royal pain to frog.

This particular sweater (started in '09) was the first cardigan I had attempted to knit, and had put down several times. I was nearly finished -- I had blocked the body pieces, seamed them together, and had added a hood. But the sleeves didn't work with the body, although I had followed the pattern exactly. I finally went back to Ravelry and read the comments --- a lot of people had issues with this pattern, esp. with things 'lining' up (heck, the body pieces didn't line up correctly and I had to do a lot of easing to make things work).

I had given up on the sweater and thrown it into the basket for a 'time out' because I was thoroughly frustrated with it. However, now that I had knitted several sweaters under my belt, I looked at the project with new eyes. I tried on the body and it did fit; it wasn't too badly off. The armscye was a little large, but a sleeve cap would help with that issue.

The sleeves were unusable w/o re-knitting them both. I could have picked up stitches around the armscye and knit 'after-thought' sleeves, but that would have been too much work and something I couldn't face doing considering how long this sweater had languished. So, I thought to myself:

"Self, why not turn this into a vest? You've done several already, and this would save your time".

And myself agreed. :-)

I picked up 87 stitches around each sleeve and knit several rounds of 8 roundseed stitch to form a sleeve cap (decreasing by 4 stitches total). Then I added a button & an i-cord button loop. About 1.5 hours later, I had a finished sweater vest, which pleased me mightily, as I really thought this project was a lost cause.

I still have a few UFOs still lazing about. We'll see if I get any more done after I finish the shawl. Although I have to say, it feels REALLY GOOD to get finish a languishing project.

Ravelry v. USOC

I'm sure a lot of you by now have heard the kerfuffle regarding the US Olympic Comittee and their very insulting cease & desist letter to Ravelry.

In case you haven't, here are the pertinent links:

• the cease & desist letter from the USOC legal council, which included terms like "disrespectful" and "denigrating" about our fiber arts
• this letter led to an outcry from the Ravelry community regarding the tone of their letter on the USOC FB, twitter, and webpage. Places like Gawker picked up on the news.
• The outcry led to a non-apology apology by the USOC Public Relations director, saying that it was a boilerplate letter and not meant to be insulting. There was another outcry from the Ravelry community about this non-apolgy apology. NPR picks up on the news.
• FINALLY, an actual apology is finally given. (And apparently, their use of "denigrating" and very insulting tone IS boilerplate for the USOC.)

As an athlete (and former Olympic hopeful), I was deeply saddened & angered by the actions of the USOC. I wrote them a letter from the POV of an athlete and a knitter decrying their behaviour.

However, I have to say, that as a fiber artist, I was very proud of the Ravelry community for sticking together to defend its honor. It's really truly worth while to know that this "grass-roots" community embodies much of the Olympic spirit -- to work together and triumph together for the good of the whole.

This amusing Comic by Worsted for Wear pretty much sums up the initial letter:

I can haz gloves?

My neice & nephew love asking me for knitted gifts. This year, during our annual trip with our in-laws, my Youngest Nephew saw that I was wearing a pair of fingerless gloves.

Because of our busy schedule, DH & I forgot to stop by the store to pick up a birthday present for him (the beginning of july) and bring it with us. I figured that I could just mail him a gift card (which he loves getting) instead.

But, just like last year, my nephew surprised me by asking for a pair of fingerless gloves for his birthday (which he again reminded me was coming up). And then he specified the colors he wanted. LOL. I had him try on my gloves, and while a little bit big on him, would at least last 1-2 years before he outgrew them.

Not wanting to be outdone, his older brother & sister immediately also asked for gloves too, but I told them that their brother would be getting HIS first and they'd get theirs for the holidays.

Now, I just to go pick up the appropriate color yarn from my LYS!