Wool For Brains

It’s a rare occasion that you see me in a dress, it is even rarer than seeing me in a skirt. That makes it rather out of character for me to buy this, it’s not in colours that I usually wear and it’s not as if I have an upcoming event that needs proper clothing. A floaty dress and matching overshirt is a bit over the top for grocery shopping and dog walking, or at least it is in the area where I live. I suspect that I have been brainwashed by walking past this fibre so often. It’s been living in the corner of the bedroom so it’s the first thing I see in the morning and I see it at night and all the times in between. I can look at it and pet it even if I can’t actually spin it (new dog+wheel=bad idea). It would appear that I have bought an outfit just because it matched the roving which is fine except that it isn’t an outfit that is going to wear well with either the socks or the woolly hat that I had planned to use this fibre for. It’s just such a good thing then that I hadn’t already spun it.

I dyed 100g of blue faced leicester, it’s what I dye when I’m just playing with colours and haven’t a clue what I will use the fibre for. I know that’s enough for a hat or socks but there’s the danger that it might not be enough for the new accessory (whatever that will be) so more would be better. It just happened that two of the bloggers I read launched their Etsy shop on the same day that I got the dress and that one of their fibres was exactly right to ply with the fibre I already had. It was clearly meant to be mine.

I think I’m getting close to bringing the wheel back out. The puppy is now 12 weeks old and is turning from a silly snappy menace into a more reasonable dog. He has a nice long nap under the settee in the morning and another one in the afternoon. I can see that I could sit and spin and he’d be happy to doze and watch me, the time I’m worried about is when he’s not half asleep and the wheel is sitting there ready to be chewed. Maybe in another week or two I’ll be able to leave the wheel up without finding a dog attached to it whenever I turn around. In the meantime I can wander all over the internet deciding on the perfect lacy object to knit from the yarn I haven’t made yet. I think it will be simple tv lace and possibly rectangular but I reserve the right to change my mind daily until I cast on.

(I did try a spindle, it was the sensible solution as it can come out just when I’m using it and live out of sight the rest of the time but it wasn’t filling the need. The yarn was pretty enough but all the time I was aware that I wasn’t spindling by choice but because the wheel was out of action. I’d rather wait now and spin this the way I want to)

It was hot and sticky all day and probably not the best day for sitting under a heap of wool but the pup was asleep under the back of the settee and the boys had gone swimming so it was the ideal time for me to join the front of Ophelia to the back. When I first read the pattern this was the part that made me put it aside “for later”. The back stitches are left live as are those from the front but instead of a three needle bind off there’s a ten stitch gusset that joins the two. I couldn’t see what the pattern did, there was a lot of “SSS” and “switch” and “SSP” and every line looked to be different. In the end I cast on the ten stitches and did what I was told. It wasn’t hard, the lines are written out clearly enough and it took less time to knit it than I’d spent trying to work out what it did. The blue contrast rows at the top of the back and the front swooped in and out and everything did what it was supposed to do. The problem that I’d had with trying to visualise the pattern was that I thought the blue lines crossed and I couldn’t see how that was done. The reason that I couldn’t work out how it was done was because that isn’t what happens (assuming that I’ve done this right of course). I never did work out what diagram 3 was showing me or found anywhere that referred to it but the front is joined to the back, nothing was twisted except the stitches that were supposed to be and I then had something that was starting to look like a sweater.

Ladyhawke movie To top it all, it was so hot that we really had to stay inside during the peak of the heat and so I managed to then pick up the stitches for the neck and knit the eight rows it needed to finish that. Yet again I’ve come close to achieving an effect so subtle that it wasn’t worth bothering with. My contrast is solid blue, it seemed at the time to be a good idea to use one of the colours in the body yarn as the contrast but of course it has a tendency to vanish. If I’d used a true contrast such as a grey then those rows would have really popped out. Am I bothered? Not really but it’s something worth remembering in future.

The body is currently blocking, the next step is to pick up for the sleeve and that will be easier if the edge is not rolling. This is the also the time where I need to find out whether the fronts and back are 19″, 22″ or some other measurement. Of course I already know what they because I’ve measured the pile of wet wool but I’m not telling….

Demolition Man movies

“Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crisis” – Elizabeth Zimmermann

So it came to pass that to finish the back of the sweater I had to be certain what my row gauge was. The pattern would have had me knit for 126 rows rather than X” so it was a good idea to work out whether I was getting 8, 8.5 or 9 rows to the inch. Rather than continue to do the wiggle it and guess method I went to do it right, pinned the piece out until the stitch gauge was right and then measured the row gauge. What do you know, 9 rows per inch, right on target just the same as the stitch gauge. Smugness reigned, although not for long.

Dead Poets Society hd

When I got near the cast off for the armhole on the front I thought it was a good idea to check that the back was really long enough. If not then I was intending to make the front longer and then come back and add some length to the back to match which seemed a much better idea than making the front just as much too short as the back. To measure the length of the back I needed to first pin the piece out to the right width and that is where it all went pear shaped. According to the schematic the back should measure 22″ and mine is 20″. I have checked my stitch gauge more times than I want to think about with multiple tape measures and it is right, 3 repeats to 4.9″ (12.5cm). There are 12 repeats in the back so by my reckoning the back should be 19.6″ and not the 22″ in the diagram. I spent a lot of time yesterday circling around this trying to work out where I had gone astray. I’m making the right size, my tension is right (although I suspect it might be a little tight right at the moment), there are no edge stitches that I’ve missed off. I refuse to consider that it’s the pattern as I firmly believe that Lucy Neatby is totally infallible. My latest thought is that it’s the schematic that is slightly off (or possibly my reading of it) and that the measurement of 22″ includes the 9 stitches at the top of the side gusset. I think this is right because I’ve crunched the numbers on all three sizes and compared the hip and bust measurements. The finished size has to include the top of the gussets and so would be bigger than the total width of the front and back. If the back and front were 22″ then the finished size would be bigger than 44″ and as the finished size is 44″ then the back and front can’t be 22″. That seems watertight enough but I’m still not convinced.

I am eight rows off the start of the armhole on the front, the back is complete. To be honest it may well be complete and too short because once I realised I was missing 2″ in the other direction I forgot all about measuring the length. My options at the moment seem to be to wail and gnash my teeth, rip the whole lot and start over with the next size, rip the whole lot and reclaim the yarn for socks or to carry on and hope for the best. Now that I’ve had time to really think this through I’m nearly almost certain that there’s nothing wrong and I’m thinking of going with the last option. I was initially going to go for the first one as well but my temper has improved now that I’ve had longer to think about it. I am confident that Lucy Neatby knows what she’s doing and even if I’ve screwed this up in some way that I can’t figure out at the moment I can hopefully recover it with the gusset. The pattern details how to adjust the gusset for fit and what corresponding adjustments need to be made to the sleeves so its not as if I’m on my own.

Knit on, knit on.

This is my settee but this is not my knitting (or my comic either). The luminous green item is going to turn into a hat in about 4″. Daniel has asked to be taught to knit more than once but this time it clicked and he knows what he is doing. He can now pick up stitches that he has dropped, I’m told that it’s easy, you just poke the needles back in them. As of this week I have been allowed to add a couple of rows after he’s gone to bed but it’s mostly his own work. He has stuck at it and is now measuring it every other row to see if it’s long enough. I know just how he feels with that. Last night he found out that his father knows how to purl so he’s desperate to do that next.

Ghost Town: The Movie move The not green item is David’s scarf. It is actually much longer than this, it’s in two parts as we (I) removed a section that was a poor (but expensive) yarn choice. At some point I’ll show off and join the two bits back together because there are still some things that only I can do. Both of them are reaching the end of their projects and I’ll be interested to see what they line up next. Daniel wants to make socks but I think that this might be a bit ambitious for a second project unless he sets out to make the puppy a Christmas stocking. The advantages are that you only need one of them, you can make it with big wool on a circular needle and you can add an afterthought heel without fussing about the fit. David may be intending to retire from knitting as he’s now proved that he can do it (including casting on and purling).

Demolition Man rip Where is my knitting?  - well the armhole is closer than it was but I spent my knitting time dyeing fibre even though I can’t spin at the moment. It’s not fully dry yet so it will lighten a little but this is 200g of wool, mohair and alpaca which should make for a good hard wearing sock yarn at some future time when I can put the wheel up.

It’s all very well sticking to a single project, I’m very pleased with me for not giving into the lure of other knitting and keeping going with the sweater but it doesn’t make for very interesting blog fodder. This is the front of Ophelia which looks exactly like the back and will continue to do so until 88 rows after the armhole decreases. After that there is some neckline action followed by the very exciting joining of the front and back with a saddle shoulder. Anyone who doesn’t think that is terribly exciting hasn’t been knitting the same two rows over and over for weeks. I’m still finding the colour changes entertaining, especially watching for the appearance of the very rare brown stretch which is only in one of the three balls I’m knitting with. (Note to self, when pouring spare dye over light patches in the skein, make sure that the dye you use is one of the ones you dyed the skein with) The armhole is still some way away, I knit a few rows each day but what has always been my prime time knitting time now coincides with the dog’s stupid period when he’s too tired to care what he does and I have him on a short lead to stop him getting into mischief. He’s cutting his front teeth and has periods of mad chewing activity, usually just before he falls asleep.

It would be nice to bring out a bit of newly spun yarn to break up the Ophelia monotony except that I had to put the spinning wheel away (it folds – who knew?) because of its attractiveness as a chew toy. This is particularly upsetting as I have some drop dead gorgeous bfl all ready to spin, I look at it longingly every time that I walk past it. I should put it away because it makes me realise how much I’m missing spinning but I like looking at the colours and imagining the finished yarn. I’m dithering between it being for socks or a hat and it would be sensible to have made my mind up before I sit down at the wheel. No doubt I will have plenty of time to make the decision because it seems that school breaks up on Wednesday. I have no idea how it has managed to be mid July already, there’s clearly been some sort of a mistake with a few months cut from the calendar this year.

Hat or socks? Hat or socks? (Repeat until decision reached)

I’ve had a busy week and I was shocked when I managed yesterday to sit down for long enough to work out that it had only just started. It feels like Thursday at the very least. Monday was the killer. It was the day of the year three school trip, except that it was also the day of the music exam so Dan missed his trip out. As he has an understanding teacher we had an alternative educational visit to Weston Park Museum during the puppy’s morning nap time. His report says that we saw a dead polar bear stuck up on display, which is one way of putting it I suppose and that “mummy waffled on about sheep being important”. Well yes, if you were an anglo-saxon then sheep would have been important to you because you wouldn’t have been standing there in a cotton polo shirt and polyester trousers. The afternoon was taken up by the music exam, the exam itself is about fifteen minutes long but it took an hour to get home (multimap says 29 minutes which it might be at midnight)

I had hoped to have finished the back of Ophelia by now and although I’m not there yet at least the end is in sight. It needs to be 14.7″ after the cast off for the armholes which I find to be a strange measurement. The tension measurements are in odd decimal inches as well but I worked out that they were sensible metric measurements that had been converted to inches (why?). I was expecting 14.7″ to be a nice integer metric measurement but it isn’t. The measurement is important for me because although the pattern has you knit 126 rows my row gauge is slightly off. I’m not certain exactly how off because I get a different number each time I count it but I’m either getting 8 or 8.5 rows per inch when I should be getting 9.

Pebble is doing “hurry up” and “do it here” in the garden, which means that I’m out there a lot of the time too. Needless to say he doesn’t hurry up and do it but takes his time sniffing about to find the precise spot that needs his attention. Iris and Ophelia can’t really go out there (especially now he’s found that the paper sack that the sweater is living in makes a fantastic noise when you jump on it) and I still haven’t sat down to work out what I need to do to make the tsock fit. Larger needles are not the answer, I’m getting the 8 stitches per inch that the pattern calls for and I don’t really want to knit socks any looser than that. The solution has to be extra stitches but the questions that remain are how many and where. What my life is calling for is a small portable project but as I’m still not feeling the call to socks this might turn out to be a hat.

• Love’s Brother movie download

Knitting progress is slow, unless Pebble is asleep I’m keeping an eye on him for intent to water the carpet or chew. He’s settling down now and it’s easier to predict when he’s going to leak or be desperate to chew and every day is easier than the one before it. There has also been the added excitement of a different sort of a leak from the bathroom (my wonder husband caught that one before it fetched the ceiling down), school sports day (make your own Olympic torch from household objects) and the class play. On top of everything else we have a music exam next week and I have scales to oversee. There’s no wonder I have no time to knit.

Anastasia psp

I have found time to read though. The postman was kind enough to bring me a parcel and I’ve had a chance to sit down during puppy nap times with a cup of tea and a good book. This is the conversion of my birthday book tokens and I suppose that it’s no surprise that I spent them on knitting books. The side effect though is that I am seized by a desire to wash all of the coloured Shetland fleece that I brought back from Woolfest, blend it with the black alpaca that’s living in the wardrobe and set to knitting my way through “A Fine Fleece”. The only things holding me back are the helpfulness of puppies and the continuing downpour (thankfully now just outside rather than inside)

Excuse me while I go and be helpful to plumbers by turning taps on and off. May you all have a weekend that does not smell of wet dog and wet plaster.

I have been in deep discussion with my inner knitter over whether I really am in the right place for the armhole cast off. I seem to have reached it very quickly and as a result there has been much measuring of sweaters and of me. I was planning on taking 4″ off the length, this is after all a tunic pattern and I wanted something more like a sweater. The length on the schematic is 28″ and I’ve measured where that would fall and that is indeed much longer than I want it. I’ve measured my blue cardigan and I am certain that I can lose 4″ from the length and it still be an inch longer than that one. I can do the maths as many times as I like but I can’t convince myself that it looks long enough at this point. I know why this is, it’s because the sleeves are of the dropped shoulder sort, with a huge armhole that starts around your waist. The schematic clearly shows that there is more sweater above the cast off than below it. Despite all the evidence I still can’t convince myself that I’m not making a huge mistake. I have reached an agreement with my inner knitter that if it turns out to be naval skimming then we’ll be ok to snip a thread, unpick the bottom off and add the missing length before grafting it back together. I was going to knit the back and fronts at the same time but now I’ll just knit the other piece to just before the cast off and then stop. I have nothing against grafting but I’d rather work on 171 stitches than 342.

I have cast off 52 stitches (hurray) but now I have to work straight for 126 rows before anything interesting happens. It’s a good job that I’m still entertained by watching the colours change. I like the one row stripes best, there are places where the same colour stacks up deeper than that but it’s not yet crossed the line into “blotchy”. I’m hoping that it won’t start doing something widely unappealing now it’s worked on fewer stitches. It will give me something to look out for while working my way through those 126 rows.

Things I didn’t like about this, working from the cuff down.

1. The ribbing is too small, there is a reason that I don’t usually use twisted rib and I should remember that in future.

2. The half size gulls are ok but they would be better with more than four plain rows between them, as it is they look to be squashed up.

3. The cuff is rather more snug than I like, the stitches are straining in between those gulls.

4. The gull didn’t end up in the middle of the heel.

Flight of Fury rip

5. The pick up along the heel flap is holey.

I’ve been through the stage of looking at it, poking at it and looking at it again and I can’t convince myself that it’s all going to be fine. All in all I think I’d be better starting over, either increasing the number of stitches or (more sensibly) sticking to the pattern and finding a foot that the sock would fit. I’ve ripped it and put it in the naughty corner so it’s back to Ophelia again.

I have worked out why it is that puppies are so cute, it’s a survival trait. If they were not so adorable then you wouldn’t put up with the chewing, peeing, crying and the early morning starts. They have a lot in common with baby humans except human babies score higher with me by wearing nappies. It is hard to be annoyed with anything that is this soft and fluffy and wants to be your friend. I have some concerns that I’ve been sold an Ewok rather than a dog but we’ll see what he grows into. Don’t be taken in by the small size, that’s only visual. If you could smell him you’d think that he was a very large dog indeed. I’m steeling myself up for being nasty enough to give him his first bath. It feels cruel to do it but it would be in self defence.

I have some new knitting because the second sock in the Tsock Flock club came this week. Details are after the break so that anyone who doesn’t have their package and wants to be surprised by it can be. I will eventually catch up with your comments, the only time I can safely potter about on the computer is when the mothhound is doing something where he doesn’t need to be closely supervised.

Live Free or Die Hard release

(Read on …)