Back to the Math

I should apologize to my faithful readers.  Both of them.  I have been a very neglectful blogger.  Busy, work, kids, blah, blah, blah.

But my needles and knitting juices have not been idle.  Quite the contrary.  I found myself all alone at Knittervention.  I had arranged a sitter, and was determined to enjoy myself.  I ended up finished and binding off my Mother's scarf.  A Christmas present finally finished in June.  Now there is something to be proud of, right?

 My Annis Shawlette is blocked, and I have learned to charmingly drape it around my neck.  Just in time for the 80 degree weather.  May was more like July in Indiana, certainly not shawl weather, not even a small one.  I stubbornly wore it a couple times, then carefully folded it away until autumn.  Or a freak cold snap in July right after I finish a cotton/linen tank top.  Such is my luck.

    I have been knitting quite a bit on the place-mat.  The pattern is nice.  Easy, but just enough to keep me interested.  I am looking forward to having these place-mats in my kitchen.  Then I realize that I currently have eight place-mats.  There are only four diners in my family, but two of them are still dodgy about their fork abilities, so the place-mats are constantly in the laundry rotation.

That is a lot of place-mats to knit.  What have I gotten myself into?




Lastly, since realizing that the Jane Eyre Shawl won't work with my pretty sage mohair, I have returned to my original concept: a wrap with Celtic-inspired design.  Of course, I searched Ravelry endlessly, and couldn't find EXACTLY what I was thinking anywhere.  Making up my own pattern seemed incredibly ambitious.  I mean, I am not an inexperienced knitter, but following a lace pattern with minimal screw ups is a far cry from creating one.  

This weekend, I started cutting and pasting, almost literally.  I took the central motif from one pattern, the border from another, then started cutting out the portions, leaving something close to what I had in mind.

Then started the math.  How many stitches wide?  How many rows tall?  I had to balance the border repeat  with the central motif and desired overall size.  Each time I thought I had the math cornered, I reviewed it one last time, and found one more thing I had missed.  Over and over, until I started coming up with the same numbers, repeatedly.  The planning was infuriating, but every time I caught another omission, I reminded myself that it was far better to catch it now, rather than with my tears staining the mohair.

I just hope that I haven't forgotten anything.

Today, it is all about planning the math.  

Size Does Matter

I finished casting off my Annis Shawlette.  I have quite a bit of yarn left, relatively speaking.  A ball of yarn about the size of my fist.

On a not-completely-unrelated issue, the shawlette seems smaller than I was picturing.  I am pretty sure it is the size that the pattern specified, so any inaccurate picturing on my part is entirely my fault.

 I haven't blocked it yet, so it may grow a little yet.  I am reserving judgment.

In the meantime, what does one do with a fist of lace weight alpaca?  Too much to throw away; too little to make anything useful.  Maybe a bookmark, but that sounds like a lot of work for something that will be mostly squished between pages, and probably lost in the bottom of my work bag.  I will have to keep thinking.

I could always save it in a box, waiting ten years for someone on the other side of the globe begging for me to give it to them so they can finish the edge of a massive shawl.  I don't know from where that idea came.

Today, it is all about the fistful of useless yarn.

  

I always overpack

 Planning vacation knitting is always a balance between restraint and panic.  I always start with two strategic projects.  Carefully selected for their level of difficulty (one simple, one complex) and small size.  I know this will be more than enough for the trip, and vow not to overpack my knitting, like I always do.

Then I start start to re-evaluate.  I have hours and hours of plane, train, bus and car rides ahead of me.

Then I start to panic.  What if there is a problem with one of the projects?  What if I lose the yarn?  What if I lose the needles?  What if I get bored and can't bear to look at it?  What if I get stranded in an elevator for twelve hours without children and finish both?  What if my body decides it no longer needs sleep?

Then I overpack, as always.  These are the four projects I brought with me for our vacation to Poland.

This is the ONLY one that I actually worked on during those two weeks.

Ironically, it is the one that I had wanted to finish before the trip.  The one I was hoping to wear on the trip.

All those hours of public transportation, and I never strayed.  Maybe a small part of me hoped that I would finish it before the end, and still be able to wear it.  (Though that small part of me had not figured out how to block lace on the road.)

On the plane ride home, I did start casting off, too late to even hope that I could sashay the streets of Torun with a shawlette casually draped around my shoulders in defense of the spring chill.  The streets of Lafayette will have to suffice.

Perhaps it is for the best.  My brother already spend quite a bit of time teasing me about my shawl fetish.  He says that like it is a bad thing.  Besides, I only brought one shawl with me, Aurora.  And we will forget that I chose by dresses to match the shawl, not the other way around.

Our travel adventures were enjoyable, but it is nice to be home again.  Back to my own bed, my own kitchen, and a giant mountain of laundry.

Today, it is all about feeling homey.

Courage, in all forms

There are some knitting actions that require extra courage.  These are best saved for knitting among like-minded friends, who can provide commiseration and encouragement.  Alcohol is suggested, but not required.

Monday was Knittervention, and I came armed with just such an assignment.  Ages ago, I started the Swirl Skirt.  I loved many things about the skirt.  I loved the overall design.  I loved the color progression.  I loved the yarn.

As so often happens, there was a hidden bug that revealed itself too late.  Not a failing of the pattern or yarn, I regret to say.  This was completely user error.  The skirt was way too long.

It is knit on the bias (read:diagonal, for those unfamiliar with fiber nomenclature), so the length of the skirt is difficult to judge pre-assembly.  At some point, however, it became obvious to even the most dense of knitters (that would be me) that this skirt was going to be a foot longer than I wanted.

I am not sure if the extra foot was a failure of my gauge swatch (swatches lie worse than lawyers, politicians, and used car salesmen combined, after all), a reflection of me losing 40 pounds since I cast on, or a change in my expectations, but the facts were plainly before me.

And so was the solution, no matter how much I wanted to deny it:  I had to rip out the whole bloody thing and start over.

I finished the ripping, but have put aside the starting over for a few weeks.  I have other things to focus on, and I want to make sure that my anger at the yarn for not knitting the proper size has time to fade before I try again.

Today, it is all that the re-start delayed.

From the Mouths of Husbands

My sweetie may have blundered into the perfect vacation knitting project.

We were cleaning the kitchen, and he said that I needed to make more dishrags.  No problem.  I pulled out six finished ones, that only needed their ends woven.  Then I moved onto cleaning off the kitchen table, and switching the dirty placemats for clean ones, when he observed that the placemats were probably at the end of their lifespan.  The lining pretty much disintegrated after the first watch, and are the same now that they were a few years ago, but then he said words that perked my interest.  "You could knit new ones."

It took about three minutes on Ravelry to locate a pretty pattern, and I was tempted to rush out right away to buy yarn.  Then some sense of logic prevailed, and I decided that it could wait a few days.  This would be a good project to take knitting.  Basic, easily memorized pattern.  Small enough for instant gratification.  New enough for excitement that will maintain through the whole trip.

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner!  

My husband, the knitting planner.  Who knew?

Today, it is all about the spouses  of women who knit.

Planning

For the past week or so, I have been starting vacation planning.  I have evaluated suitcases, balanced wardrobe and weather considerations, and mentally set aside electronic devices.  Then I realized that I had forgotten the most importantpart: the knitting.

Something small and compact.  Something with minimal yarn requirements.  Something interesting enough to hold my attention, but not so complicated as to invite an insurmountable issues.  Something that wil noto be finished in the first few days, leaving me knitless and cranky.  Preferably more than one somethings, in varying degrees of difficulty.  

Right now, I have nothing to knit.  Well, I have two socks in progress that would be appropriate.  And I have my mother's scarf, but that is almost finished.  I have the purple lace shawlette, but that is almost finished too, and I kind of want to have it to wear.  I have the mittens, but they have five different colored skeins of yarn.    

That's it, I have nothing to knit.  I need to go shopping!

Oh, I suppose that you are going to remind me of the half dozen half-finished things in theknitting bag.  Well, who asked you?  

Today, it is all about the shopping justification.   

The Downward Slope, That Points Upward

I always love the acceleration factor of the last portion of a knitting project.  As I breeze my way through the last part, my progress seems to accelerate.

This portion is short rows, to shape the crescent.  The first row was 25 stitches, and increases by three stitches each row.  Hmmm, when you put it that way, it is actually more of a reverse acceleration.  The rows will be getting longer each time, and will take longer.

This doesn't sound like a good thing.

Today, it is all about the premature celebration.