Wednesday, May 04, 2005
I picked out little mother-of-pearl buttons for AJ yesterday at Windsor Buttons. The buttons' own bluey iridescense matches the teal of the yarn. Fantabulous! Only half a sleeve to go...and the slip crochet edging (slip-stitches not so easy, maybe I'll try single)...and the sewing of the buttons, which hey, just occurred to me, I don't think I know the proper way to sew buttons?
I also purchased two more Phildar magazines - the latest spring and the latest spring Famille. I don't know the reason why I haven't completed anything from Phildar when I love their stuff, AND their patterns are easy to follow. Everyone gets a chart! My second sweater was supposed to the Drapey Shoulder one, but it's so far been woefully neglected as I plough through one Rebecca project after another. It's funny how I've been totally on the Rebecca-only train. Kind of just happened.
Tulips in Copley Square
Still too brisk out to really feel like spring, but it sure looks like it. By the way, thanks for all the nice comments you guys left about AJ. I hope to take her on her first Grand Day Out this weekend. Fingers crossed...
Filed Under: Phildar | Rebecca 27 | Apricot Jacket
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Front half of AJ seemed
Instead of casting on immediately for the next sleeve after finishing one, I decided I'd start seaming one side so any adjustments that might have to be made can be done before everything's been knitted and sewn up. I learned my lesson after unwittingly knitting up The Sweater with Gorilla Arms that, after much cursing and way too much math, later became Savanna.
For AJ I went down two needle sizes to a size 6/4.25mm, and for awhile there it looked as if I'd have the complete opposite of the gorilla arms problem, but (angels singing) all is well. In fact I think this is the best fitting sleeve/shoulder I've knitted and seamed so far. No lumpy frumpy bumpiness, and the sleeves are hitting right below my wrist, instead of down to my knuckles as usual with Rebecca patterns.
Two minutes after the post on the Adrienne V. shaped top, I derailed on the lace pattern for the right side and could not reconcile it enough to get back on track. Ripped out a few rows and will return to it once I black out their chart with a big black marker and rechart it myself, following the textual instructions found in the first pattern, in the same book. So same lace pattern, but instructions for one piece uses text only, and instructions for other uses chart only. How odd is that? I did a cursory row-by-row match of the text and the chart to confirm that they actually don't match. So yeah, the chart is crap.
Spring in the Boston Public Garden
To celebrate my favorite month that is May, the month my favorite flowers that are lilacs will be in bloom, I present this lovely picture of spring that is currently awash all over Boston. Unfortunately this picture was taken last year, because this weekend it did nothing but rain. I am so looking forward to warmer weather (not this 55, 60 degree crap) and pleasant sunshine. Boston is so very nice when the weather is too.
Filed Under: Adrienne V | Rebecca 27 | Apricot Jacket
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
How we celebrated my birthday:
I was out of town, so nothing
Gifts received: none
How we celebrated his birthday:
Ate steak.
Gifts given: none
Gifts exchanged at Christmas:
Zero.
How we celebrated Valentine's Day:
Ignored it
How we will celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary today:
Fierce snuggling on the couch with the boys while watching netflix, like we do every other evening.
Life with Duck is so much fun, every single day, that on special occasions I want nothing more than for everything to be exactly as they are.
Filed Under: Life
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Front of Dianne, several rows into lace pattern and v-neck split.
Looks all innocent in the afternoon sunglow, but she's a total bitch.
Dianne started off normally enough. 15 inches of pure stockinette
stitches with a few waist decreases and increases thrown in to keep the
eyes open. Nevertheless stockinette sure gets boring quick, so I was
pleased to have finally reached the lace pattern so that the real fun
could begin.
The pattern says this is for experienced
knitters. That part at least is correct. But let me clarify a
bit. Experienced here does not mean experienced in knitting
techniques - there are nothing but simple yarn-overs, ssk and k2tog
here.
Experienced means "Keeping a smile on your face while you navigate
the very turbulent landscape of our pot-hole filled, erroneous,
lazy and all-around shitty pattern, and still come out the other side
with something that isn't completely F&*D and without having
kicked your cat for no reason (to him)." I am not an experienced
knitter. Sorry Bunny, hope your hips aren't too misaligned.
Lace Pattern. Or, A Very Bumpy Road Ahead
The chart is wrong in some places (unequal number of increases and
decreases, even though in the instructions it says to "make sure number
of inc and dec are the same for a given row."). It tells you how many
stitches to cast on but that's about it as far as helpful stitch
numbers go. You're left on your own as to how many should be left on
the shoulders when all is said and done, if you've managed to get
that far intact.
Also, there are no edge stitches. They've even got yarn-overs and
decreases at the edges. Knitting hooligans! How am I going to seam this
thing?
In conclusion. The
instructions could not be any worse than if you removed the chart
and replaced it with a picture of a giant dirty rat. The only way to pilot this thing is by the seat of
your pants, and to fill the holes as you go along. Counting stitches to
keep in pattern is useless, which is why for me I've got
a delta of 5 stitches between the left and right front. But it
doesn't matter. I'll get that under control eventually. I'm doing
whatever I gotta do to keep the lace in pattern, even if that
means conducting suspect accounting practices by putting an
extra credit here or another debit over there.
I will finish this though. I will.
Did I at some point say that the Apricot Jacket pattern was hard to follow? Did I say it more than once? Interesting.
PS. I didn't really kick the cat.
Filed Under: Adrienne V
Friday, April 22, 2005
It's unbelievable what changes while 10 days away from New England in the middle of April. Suddenly now there is what appears to be FOLIAGE. I'm seeing things that are green, yellow, and PINK. All my daffodils are in bloom. The hyacinths are at peak. The tulips are ready to party. And the peonies! Just before I left for Taipei I was searching in vain for their little pokey heads in the dirt, and now they've seemingly bypassed the Pokey Heads stage and headed straight into Twelve Whole Inches of Fluffy Leaves with Even a Few Buds Included stage!
All the perennials planted Spring '04 - ah yes that magical season of unsurpassed gardening frenzy because I wasn't working - are coming back as well. I know it's their job, but I'm still surprised.
 Back to knitting talk. I finished the left side of AJ. I will say again: the instructions for this piece are f'ed up. I continue only because I really love this cardigan, and because every knitter and their dog on this planet has managed to complete this piece well enough to wear it in public. And so will I damnit.
So first the good news: the mystery that is the front bands has been revealed - they're knitted at each shoulder of the front pieces. You bind off about half of the stitches for the shoulder, and then continue knitting the other half for some inches which will then constitute "front bands." Ahhhh.
Now the bad news: With the front pieces joined together by the front bands, the piece will resemble a halter top. So the front bands then are really back bands, wrapping behind your neck. In the back. Not the front. The back. Back bands. BACK bands you fools. That yes, are knitting from the front. If You Pattern Writers had just mentioned this very quickly somewhere in the footnote of the pattern I wouldn't be so upset.
More bad news: What REALLY bugs me is that for the front/back bands, the pattern says to cast on an extra stitch "anew" at the edge. Anew is too quaint a word for a task so clugey. Unless I misinterpret, anew requires dropping/snipping the old yarn and attaching a new ball for the sake of ONE cast-on. Why not just do a simple increase? Or, why not bind off a stitch less? Or, why not account for the extra stitch in pattern? Or better yet, why don't we just not do it?
I need to find me an AJ support group.
I'm hoping that like the front band mystery itself, when finished this extra stitch tumor will reveal itself to be useful if not totally mandatory. For now I'm a little put off by the whole thing and have taken a break from AJ, and started AV.
Adrienne V that is, Shaped Top #6 from Spring 2005. I'm going to give it a less clinical name and call it...Dianna. After the name of the yarn. This name will work if I knit in this yarn this one time in my life only.
Filed Under: Adrienne V | Life | Rebecca 27 | Apricot Jacket
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Every day is a packed blur that I can't even remember what I did this morning aside from having a very hard time pulling myself out of bed. This trip has been the first time that I/we haven't tagged along with my mother here and there like illiterate ducklings. We're still illiterate but can finally find our way around unsupervised, and at least have some sense of direction --I asked Mom once whether grandma's house or auntie's house is eastern Taipei, western, southern...? and she had utterly no idea. She can't find her way out of a paper bag, even the same paper bag she's lived in for 30 years.
The funeral was yesterday. My uncle, the new patriarch of the family, delivered a lovely speech after Mass that we were all in tears. After the burial the entire family had lunch together at a nearby restaurant. About 50 of us in somber black attire streamed in on a wedding banquet being held at the same time. I'm sure they loved that.
It turned out that knitting store I visited the other day with the hideous prices was Filatura di Crosa. Just so you know.
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Taipei
Thursday, April 14, 2005
While I continue to make minimal progress on the Apricot Jacket (henceforth AJ), I am making huge progress on the eating.
Last night my cousin Paul took us out for a Japanese bbq dinner. We cooked thin strips of sirloin, pork, fish, clams, vegetables on small grills perched atop a ceramic pot of coals. By far the most expensive meal we've had here, but who cares because we didn't pay, heh. Oh on the way there we walked by Chiang Kai Chek's great-grandson walking his dog. Ooo the closest I've ever gotten to a dictator sighting!
Advertisement: Getting around Taipei is a breeze with mass transit. This "easycard" transit pass is one of several issued with my uncle's name printed on the front. He's apparently famous around here. I saw him on the news the other day, after having just seen him in his pj's.
Today after buying our usual pastries from the shop next door, we headed to, um, Starbucks to eat them over coffee. I know, I know. This city is littered with all sorts of cafes fitted into every nook and cranny imaginable and we picked Starbucks. The problem was that the nook and cranny cafes we've visited were serving up exotic coffees doused with weird syrup or powdered milk (??) or ten feet of foam that there was no coffee flavor to be had. Apparently it's too little to ask for a simple cup of no-frills coffee, because everytime I do I'm barraged with 20 Questions - do you want froth, do you want bubbles, we can add chocolate syrup, do you want sprinkles, only $5 extra for blah blah blah and flah flah flah...Gah!
I also decided to refuse patronizing coffee shops with blatant Starbucks-rip-off logos. And man are there plenty of those. It drives me absolutely crazy. This city comes up with the most creative concoctions of eats like shaved ice drenched in cream and fruit, or topioca balls swimming in tea, or meat sausage nestled in another sausage of rice, and they can't for the LIFE of them come up with their own damn marketing campaign.
Today we went with my cousins to Danshui, a small harbor I guess with a boardwalk of various street food. We spent the whole afternoon eating this and that. Then we came back to the city and had shaved ice, and picked up a couple of scallion pancakes on the way home.
Duck with green-tea flavored gelatinous goo sprinkled with sesame, and (can't see it well here) cannibalistic Chinese sausage within a rice sausage.
Strawberry and mango shaved ice.
Thanks Blossom for the yarn shop tip - what color line is the MRT stop on? Hopefully I'll find the time between the eating and the family stuff to make the trip. I left the States in such a hurry that I didn't even bring appropriate funeral attire. Truthfully I just don't have anything appropriate. Why is everything sleeveless? And suddenly so frilly and so colorful? No doubt my Grandfather would frown in disapproval.
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Taipei
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Errrrgh! I want to throttle the instructions for the Apricot Jacket. I don't know what's up, but this is the fourth Rebecca pattern I've followed and having by far the most trouble with it. The textual instructions are pretty much useless. I should instead carry the back piece with me and use that as a visual guide - the front is really just the back in two parts - but it's too bulky carrying that all over the city. I've started and restarted the pattern for the front panel so many times that the yarn has started to become frayed.
Also the finishing instructions say to sew "front bands" together and to the neck edge. Uh, what bands...?
My mom and I visited a yarn store yesterday, giving ourselves plenty of time to browse/buy before a dinner engagement later in the evening. It turned out we browsed for all of 2 minutes. The prices ranged from $700 NT to $2000 NT ($20 to $60 USD) per ball. I think we must have asked the owner about one hundred times if the prices was per unit or per bag. FOURTY DOLLARS FOR A SINGLE BALL OF WOOL. They were mostly Anny Blatts and Bouton d'Or and other French imports. What's the big hooha? I don't get how anybody, no matter how irresponsible with money, could stand paying $400 to knit a plain ole wool sweater.
So yesterday Duck and I spent part of the day at Taipei 101. I wanted to go up on the observatory deck but it's been cloudy and foggy and unseasonably cold. We spent the morning eating pastries til we turned green, then walked around, then had lunch, then had dessert. For dinner we ate sushi again (an obscene amount that I think I'm actually scared of sushi now), then spent some time with my grandmother playing mah-jong.
We're staying with my cousin at what I like to call the Kennedy Compound: Uncle and Aunt #1 along with my cousin Paul and wife live on floor 2. Other cousin Francis and wife with 2 kids live on floor 3. Grandmother and Uncle #2 live on floor 6. We're staying with Francis. The kids (aged 1 and 3) stare at Duck like he's from outer space. Yaya, the eldest, won't call him when she sees him, but she apparently talks about Uncle Duck all the time when we're out. She's warming up though. Today she was willing to get close enough to take a picture with Uncle Duck!
I appreciate the kind comments left in the previous post! Til next time...
Filed Under: Life | Rebecca 27 | Apricot Jacket | Travel | Taipei
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