Monday, October 24, 2005
I love the internet. But feel sheepish now for that silly previous post of mine. Thanks for leaving your opinions though! I listened to the masses and went with the sash. I also didn't listen and wore Butterfly too, ha. Tucked in. I know, the horror! The whole point of being for Butterfly is that hem. The thing with that sequined tank top though is that it's basically a gussied up wifebeater, and once I brought it home I decided no way could I go to a wedding wearing underwear. Knowing me I'd probably spill red wine all over the front during the reception, fall on my face, and look like the perfect toothless drunk. So I wore that to the previous night's rehearsal dinner instead which was definitely more of a sequined, wifebeaterly type of hoedown.
Are you still reading?
I'm scared of the internet. Check this out. Someone took the pictures of me in my bolero, blew them up bigger, posted it on their site and then typed stuff in what I think is Turkish. There is something being said in Turkish about the bolero on the internet. And maybe how horrible it is.
Waaah why? What's she saying?
Filed Under: Bolero | Life
Friday, October 14, 2005
Pattern: Bolero from Simply Soft by Debbie Bliss
Yarn: Cashmerino Aran, 7 skeins + another couple yards
Gauge: 18 sts/4in on US8/5mm
Well, it's done, and it's...aight. I think I obsessed over this pattern for too long before buying it, like it was The Knit of the Century, and of course it's just a little bolero. I like it, I do. Just not head over heels for it, like I thought I'd be.
The Cashmerino, such a soft, beautiful yarn, seems sort of a waste on something like this. I know it's a bolero so it's not supposed to cover you completely, but when I was wearing this I kept pulling the front together to get more cozy cashmerino goodness around me, and I thought, why didn't I just make something with more cashmerino coverage? Something like a cabled cardigan or turtleneck, something snug and squishy, something like the toddler seed stitch and cable jacket, but longer?
Blah blah blah. Blah. Blah. I'm just down on Debbie Bliss patterns. As you are aware by now I'm sure. It's No More Bliss After Thiss!
I think it looks better "buttoned" at the front. See? Too bad it will never be buttoned. I do have a single eye and hook fastener I might try. Or I just might try to be happy with it as is and leave it alone.
Only thing of note on this project: I used Aran instead of Chunky weight yarn. I did no adjusting of the pattern to account for this, except to add a couple extra rows in the armhole shaping. This sizing still came out fine. And I used JUST over 7 skeins. The original pattern called for 11 of chunky. Look at me, I'm so economically sized.
The color is nice though, no? I call it aubergine. That's fancy talk for "eggplant" by the way. In fact the paint color of our dining room wall is aubergine profonde. That's fancy talk for "super PROFOUND eggplant."
Thank you Duck for all those super profound angle shots.
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Debbie Bliss | Bolero
Monday, October 10, 2005
Rubadubdub, check me out in the tub.
WHAT is Aimee doing in the tub? Because the tub is clean. Here at Chez Knitty McKitty, we finally have the power of Pine-Sol!!! Feel free to come over and let your baby crawl on my kitchen floor. After I finish the post, I will wetblock Aimee in the toilet, just to prove to you how clean our house is now. Sniff sniff sniff, ahhh. So that's what clean smells like.
I don't know how you guys run your household, but we don't. There are no cutesy "Laundry Wednesdays" or "Vacuum Fridays." We've tried though. We are just not routine people. Clothes get washed when they can stand up on their own, things are put away when the cats have puked on them at least twice. Unlike some crazy people I know, I find therapy in not cleaning. Duck is the same way, so between the two of us, we are very very dirty (although I very much remember while we were dating that his room was always SPOTLESS. Hmm. Interesting).
So we have housecleaners now. I KNOW. If you tell my inlaws about this they will kill us, my dad would pinch his nose because the idea stinks. My mom would be cool though. She understands that time is money. The DIY method has had us using up an entire weekend to clean this dumb house from top to bottom. Gross! How many sleeves, scarves, socks could be knit up, how many miles on the biketrail could we cover in that time? Probably bajillions, if not gazillions.
I like how the housecleaners move the furniture so they can get at the corners, where large amounts of Dust Kittens are most likely found, metastasizing quietly in the dark. They really are relentless.
The bolero is coming along slowly. I knitted it up some more in the car, on our way to and back from Grammy's funeral.
(She had the perfect Irish sendoff - it had been sunny and dry all week, then on the morning of her funeral the sky and the bottle of Jameson opened up, and everything turned to slosh, just in time and just for her.)
I finally finished the ribbing around the front and neck. It's very squishy and yummy. But the slopes in the ribbing don't seem to be as smooth or gradual as they look in the picture. Mine are kind of abrupt...I'm going to blame the instructions again and not my technique. I seamed in one sleeve and really had to stretch the cap to get it to fit in the seemingly larger armhole. Luckily it looks alright when I tried it on, but this is for sure the last Debbie Bliss thing I make. I hate her instructions.
Filed Under: Debbie Bliss | Bolero | Life | Rowan | Aimee
Monday, October 03, 2005
Help...me...*twitch twitch*
This weekend I finished and blocked one half of what will become the world's ugliest pair of sleeves. Thanks to the wretched instructions for the Debbie Bliss bolero. Or, is it my fault? I don't know dude. I've never knit an adult sweater from DB, and this is the first time I looked at a sleeve cap and wanted to throw up. I even did the sloped bind off technique. Imagine if I hadn't. Wow. That is the ugliest sleeve cap I have ever seen.
Hopefully it will seam up alright.
Not much else on the knitting front. This week has been busy busy. Friday was my last day at the job so I've been busy with wrapping up and knowledge transferring and all that good stuff. It's been a good gig, one that originally was slated for 6 weeks but turned into 14 months.
It's amazing how much time goes by when you're not paying attention. Suddenly I was all, "I've been here over a year, and still don't have my own desk or know your name. Or yours. Or...yours." Such is the life of a contractor. I kept getting booted around for new, legitimate hires. I kept thinking, I'm only here temporarily, no use in introducing yourself, then meanwhile a year goes by and you still have no idea who anyone is or what they do.
Outside of my core group I did make one fabulous friend. And she has a fabulous name. Kitty! Kitty and Cat! Kitty Cat! We understand each other. We go drinking in bars and gossip/make fun/complain about people in the office and forget the time and spill wine all over ourselves and have our husbands come pick us up and say, "You smell like a homeless man." Oh wait that was just me. She's hilarious, and we've promised to keep the weekly, bi-weekly Cats' Night Out thing going.
But anyway, I decided to take another contracting gig that came along with another former co-worker, and I start some time this week, or possibly next. Whenever all the legal contract mumbo jumbo goes through.
So what am I going to do with the couple of free days that I have? DUH. I'm going to KNIT. NON-STOP.
And ride! We went biking again this weekend. I didn't have time to find a new seat (thanks for all your advice!) but I wore a pair of Duck's biking shorts, under cropped pants, to tie me over. A couple of times I sneaked a peak at my reflection as we rode by a storefront window, and gee! Who's that cat with the bubblicious JLo ass? Meerow! We stopped per usual in Lexington center, I ducked into Wild 'n Wooly (hooray! I can bike to the yarn store!), we had some ice cream, etc etc, then rode a little farther out before coming home. La la la!
Filed Under: Debbie Bliss | Bolero | Life
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Bolero Jacket from DB Simply Soft
So far I've only worked this in the car. Don't know what happened, but I'm not so ga-ga for it anymore. Figures. But I'll finish it, to get my money's worth if nothing else. I have only the sleeves to do, and then, the Endless Ribbing. Since I'm a renegade/lazy knitter, I did not alter the pattern to account for using Aran rather than Chunky. It's going to turn out smaller than the smallest size. It'll be fine, because I too am smaller than the smallest size.
Aimee from Rowan Vintage Style
 
I am officially President of the KSH Fan Club. Just had do to a couple of rows of this to get my KSH fix. For awhile there I was debating using some of the Liquer to make another Butterfly, and some of it for a shawl. This color is so delicious that I am overwhelmed with the urge to eat it. So, please, pass me the goat hair.
Our favorite gal, Kooch from Rowan 38
 
More Rowan! I just love this coat. By the time I finally decided that yes, I will pay for Rowan 38, they were out of stock everywhere. Everywhere being the one local yarn store that I can get to without driving. (The LYS in Boston which I deemed sometime back as MY LYS doesn't even stock Rowan, so it doesn't count as a reliable source.) A couple of weekends ago, on our way back home from Stowe, VT, we stopped by the ultra-bucolic little town of Woodstock, and as we strolled down the main street I said aloud, "A place like this ought to have a yarn shop, for sure." I had not even finished my sentence when we passed the last store on the street, et voila! Yarn! Fate! Ha Duck was thinking he was in the clear. Little does he know, I'm like the pig sniffing out his truffles. If there is yarn, I will find it.
The pattern for Kooch asks that you purchase 11 skeins of Yorkshire Tweed DK and 11 skeins of Tweed 4ply, and hold them together for a chunky gauge. That's 22 skeins of yarn. Ha HAA you cannot sucker me into paying $170 for two types of yarn, when I can instead pay $65 (shipping included! All the way from the UK!) for 10 skeins of Rowanspun Chunky in Fern on eBay and use the rest of the money I saved to buy shoes.
Filed Under: Debbie Bliss | Bolero | Rowan | Aimee | Kooch
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
I had all these things I wanted to talk about, and now I got nothing. Can I be boringly brief instead? OK: Vermont was lovely, good riddance to Michael Brown, and Butterfly is on the road to a glorious debut.
But first, some not-so-glorious grafting of the hems. This was so gross, people. I didn't get why we had to knit 4 rows of St. st. in waste yarn at either ends for the hem, but figured it would all make sense come grafting time. Well it didn't. All those rows of waste yarn was a pain in the ass to maneuver around, didn't help me in the grafting process, so I ended up removing them and threading one string of contrasting yarn through the loops. That made it much easier, and in the end the pattern motif aligned. F+ for technique, but A- for outcome.
Lo! That's project number 2 that I've been knitting up during weekend after weekend of mini roadtrips this past month. Why yes, it's that blasted Bolero from Debbie Bliss Simply Soft that I kept mooning about forever. I must have leafed through it in five different yarn stores before I finally sucked it up and bought it. It's still a bloody rip-off! Anyway, I'm doing this in Cashmerino Aran, rather than Chunky, and have the back and one front panel finished. The front panel ridiculously itty bitty, but half of its width is comprised of 2x2 ribbing that goes all around the circumference of the entire piece. That'll be fun when I get to it.
Filed Under: Debbie Bliss | Bolero | Butterfly
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