Friday, June 03, 2005
Putting Dianne under 30 lbs of books was a bad idea. So was soaking her thoroughly in a waterbath. That was three days ago. A spin in the dryer seems to make Dianne even wetter. I was actually feeling good about the finished piece before the flattening trauma. Now not so much. All that manhandling has stretched her some more. She's too big, too flappy in the breeze and too limp and boohoo I am too sad. Maybe I will give her away.
I have a hangover.
By the way, I have been getting a lot of mileage out of AJ. In fact I wore AJ twice this week to the office, paired with even the same shirt underneath and the same pants. I was able to get away with such a fashion faux pas because since Tuesday I have seen and spoken to exactly no one (okay maybe I spoke to one person. Two at the most). How is this possible you ask? First, many people were away on conferences. I think. Second, I have this weird corner office in the way back of the floor that gets little traffic and even if there was traffic, the wall directly in front prevents anyone from seeing the office's occupant. If there is one. If a consultant sits in an office and no one knows she's there working, then has she gotten anything done?
And so I wore AJ over and over. AJ's been in the wash too, and although the color faded somewhat, she's holding up extremely well.
Filed Under: Adrienne V | Life
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
The good news is I finished Dianne the other night. The bad news is that in an attempt to uncurl the unruly bottom edges, I subjected Dianne to the force of Webster's Dictionary and two more text books, and any little bit of air has been entirely stamped out. Dianne and all her perky picot bobbles are flat, lifeless and crushed. I tried her on after retrieving her from underneath the pile of books, and hey I was wearing a box. Poor Dianne. Stupid me. I'm going to attempt to plump the stitches back up by soaking the piece and maybe give it a quick run-through in the dryer.
Filed Under: Adrienne V
Monday, May 30, 2005
I could have spent 5 hours in Vegas and seen all I needed to see. Vegas is not the place to go to if you don't care two flips about gambling. Sounds obvious. I was hoping the people watching and the hotel hoping would be enough. And my god was it HOT. I know I was looking forward to the heat, but an entire week of triple-digit highs was hard to keep up with. If you didn't sweat outdoors, you did as soon as you entered an air-conditioned casino - but at that point it was more like you were condensing rapidly. You know it's out of control when the meteorologist calls a high of 99F a "cool down."
"O" was amazing as expected. So was the brunch buffet at the new Wynn. They had congee, and Thai lychees.
 
Left: South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Right: Red sand at Zion.
The best part was the drive to the Grand Canyon and Zion. I didn't plan well for this trip at all, so we didn't have time for hikes, which would have been perfect because the temps there were a good 20 degrees cooler. We drove from Vegas to the South Rim, stopping at Hoover Dam along the way, quick detour along Route 66, and made it to the Canyon in time for sunset.
Zion in fact was a last minute "detour" - I hadn't realized how close it was. Instead of driving back to Vegas we drove East around the GC, through Navajo Country, through the Painted Desert, and into Utah. It was a beautiful drive. Had I planned this through we would have spent less time in Vegas and more time at the national parks.
Duck had a mild case of food poisoning from a suspect hamburger at a restaurant in the Canyon and puked on the side of the highway in Utah. First time that stretch of dry dry desert had seen any precipitation in weeks.
As far as knitting goes, I brought with me the other Adrienne V project, and did a few inches. Lots of cables and yo's to keep things interesting. Pics later. As far as Dianne goes, I will have her finished TODAY, fingers crossed.
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Las Vegas
Saturday, May 21, 2005
We're off to Vegas today for a week, where it's going to be hovering over 100 degrees the entire time. I. Can't. Wait. I say this now as we're mired in yet another crappy week of fall-like weather up here. 50 degrees at the end of May, I'm so sick of it! I can't wait to complain about the heat, sweat like a pig, eat ice cream all day, slather on sunblock, wear shorts. Anyway we have no day-to-day plans in Vegas aside from seeing O at the Bellagio aw yeeeahhh and a side trip to the Grand Canyon.
Haven't been knitting much. Some high school buddies were in town so I've been entertaining. The back of Dianne is nearly finished but I have yet to make it to the armhole. I just can't seem to get there, and I'm on the 5th and last skein.
So see you next week!
Filed Under: Life | Travel | Las Vegas
Monday, May 16, 2005
I might be slipping into a knitting funk. Nothing I've been working so far is distracting me enough to spend hours and hours on. In fact, I've been doing the laundry, mopping the floors, cleaning the house, pulling out weeds, and other various chores that I normally would happily neglect - and have been - in favor of knitting. Clearly something is amiss. Something like my Knitting Groove.
Three start 'n stop projects to talk about:
Dianne
Hey now, a real blocking board!
Can you see the boo-boo in the lace pattern? No? Great.
The front of Dianne has been done for some time now. Nothing but stockinette from here on out and it's so boring, I find it difficult to get myself motivated to finish. Only a few inches completed so far, and it's killing my hands for some reason.
Chevron Rib Tank
 To change things up I started the Chevron Rib Tank, free from interweaveknits.com.
Just a few rows into it and I discovered I didn't like this pattern. The chevron is extremely steep, it practically goes down to the crotch, and plus, it's only on the front, while the back is straight across. Goofy McGoofers. I'm going to rework this pattern to reduce the length of the chevron, or come up with something new entirely. But for now let's just put it aside.
Cotton Tank from Phildar
Once the tank project was nixed, I decided I'd start on something else rather than return to Dianne: a cotton tank from Phildar Tendance Famille, using Cotton Ease in yellow. I like this pattern. It's simple but interesting, which is half of how I would describe Cotton Ease. Simple yarn, uninteresting colors. The price you get for the yardage of Cotton Ease is fantastic, but the color choices are pretty much primary school. Is yellow my color? All feelings revolt, but I'm feeling frisky...We'll see how this goes.
The M1's that make the diamond pattern
in the center are also making small decorative holes.
Filed Under: Adrienne V | Phildar
Friday, May 13, 2005
Thanks to everyone who left such lovely, ego-inflating comments on AJ! I really appreciate it. I put AJ through an unscheduled stress test the other day when I ran a small marathon to catch my train after work, heavy laptop bag in tow. AJ was slipping off my shoulders. I think I stretched that sucker pretty good. But, the buttons stayed sewed on (was worried about that because I did a pretty ad hoc job sewing them on), and sleeves didn't get torn off. Not that that is usually a huge concern, but sometimes I wonder if mattress stitching sleeves isn't strong enough, if I should be using backstitch instead...and now I won't be wondering no mo.
So now I'm focusing back on AV Dianne. For awhile there I was tempted to abandon ship, then decided I couldn't, then sat down and drew my own chart.
My chart's better
I charted only the RS, and color-coded the yarn-overs to better see the diamond pattern. It is soooo much easier this way. Now I'm nearly done with the pattern, thank god. I still made an error, even though I redid the offending row(s) several times it came out the same (wrong). My chart looked ok, so I don't know what happened, and I don't care! You can't tell otherwise.
Filed Under: Adrienne V
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Finally there is sun!
Pattern: Apricot Jacket from Rebecca 27, duh
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece (80% cotton/20% merino wool) in teal, 3 1/4 skeins.
Gauge: itty bitty on 6/4.25mm needles
Everyone's seen it, everyone's made it. Judging from photos on various sites (it's amazing how different the same sweater can look on different people), and from the magazine itself, the sweater looked like it was running a little big, or had the potential to. I mean look at the photo in the mag: it's probably knit in the smallest size and the model is wearing a frilly, poufy blouse underneath the sweater and it still looks a bit roomy. Dare I even say...ill-fitting? There I said it. Also very very long in the arms. All Rebecca patterns end in very long arms, so this time I took care to revise that.
Notes on knitting AJ:
- Update: I didn't mention the pattern error because my English copy included a correction insert in the magazine. The correction is still on the rebecca site, despite reports that it no longer exists. You just have to search through their news archives. Find it here.
The error is on the back pattern. It should say "10 sts. pattern A, 34 sts. (instead of 40 sts.) as they appear..." That's it.
- Substituted yarn, again. Cotton Fleece was nice. Great yardage. A little splitty but I guess all cotton is like that to some extent.
- Went down two needle sizes for a better fit on my person. I'm practically collapsible so any bit of roominess and suddenly I'm wearing a deflated balloon.
- Stitch markers are powerful allies. Place a stitch marker before starting row 1 of chart, and if you follow the chart up to row 7, an extra stitch will appear after each row before or after the marker (depending on whether you're working left or right side). Once row 8 is completed, move the marker in front of the yarn-over made in row 7, and repeat chart from row 1.
a
- Wow was that above bullet confusing or what. Sorry. I wrote that because the textual instructions in the magazine had me spinning. It was trying to explain the chart but just made it more muddled instead. I would have fared better without having read the text. Just use stitch markers my friends, repeating 1-8, and keeping the yarn-overs in diagonal pattern, until pattern A and B are separated by 2 purls, and then continue repeating rows 9-10. At the point the yarn-overs will be stacked on top of each other.
- Used the back piece as my visual guide for knitting the fronts, as the front left is the same as the left half of the back, and vice-versa. Again the textual instructions confused me a lot.
- Reduced the length of the body ribbing by about 5 cm. Same for the sleeves.
- The front bands, that go in the back. Ah yes. Those things. It was a very ad hoc process. First of all, I disregarded their call to join another ball of yarn to cast on one single stitch. That seemed silly, so I just made an increase.
After knitting the prescribed amount of cm's I kept the stitches live on both sides in case. Just, in case. As I was getting ready to sew them to the back piece, I ended up knitting an extra several cm's more to the bands. They seemed too short that the back neck area would likely bunch up when seamed. So I would seam a little, working from outside in, then knit more length to the bands, a little on one side, then on the other, seamed a little here, and little there, until they met right in the center. Then I grafted the bands together.
- Seaming: the pattern has purl selvedges for the sleeves and body ribbing, which means come seam time you'll be mattress stitching reverse stockinette. In the sleeves it leaves a very visible seam, almost like a ditch running underneath your arm, which can either be interpreted as decorative or ugly. I thought it looked fine, but technically I found it more difficult to seam reverse stockinette. If I were to do this again, I'd knit, rather than purl, the selvedges.
- Did a slip-stitch crochet edging along the fronts and neck, making button holes on the front right. Pain in the butt. I find slip-stitching to be difficult because I always have trouble pulling that yarn through the loop, it naturally wants to tighten as I'm drawing the yarn through.
- Sewed 6 buttons on the front left, going from top to bottom instead of bottom to top. I actually crocheted enough loops for 8, but decided I'd never close the two bottom buttons and it looked funny to have them just dangling.
Very careful consideration (aka preening in front of the mirror) went into deciding where to put the first button, and how far apart. I wanted a deep V-neck, so I started the first button at the point where the ribs stopped, and sewed on about every 3 cm's. It took many many many hours to sew on these few measley buttons, just a clunky, yicky process that I did not like it at all. But now I've learned and the next time it won't be nearly half as bad.
I really like how AJ turned out. Fits well, color is nice, perfect for spring (IF IT EVER ARRIVES). I am suddenly in awe of just how labor-intensive knitting is, especially with a piece like this. Next time I'm going to start the clock everytime I pick up a project. Forget about materials, using labor alone something like AJ would cost about a gaBILLION dollars.
AJ mows too!
I love it when I don't have to figure out what to wear to work the next day.
Filed Under: Completed Projects | Rebecca 27 | Apricot Jacket
Monday, May 09, 2005
But pictures will have to come later. The lighting is bad (sun covered by cold, gray, decidedly un-May-like clouds) and I haven't showered.
To celebrate, I'm making a lemon bundt cake!
Filed Under: Apricot Jacket | Rebecca 27
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