No fiber today

It's another Friday, one week closer to our departure (exactly three weeks from today - someone please shoot me now). I know I'm getting stressed out because I'm tired all the time (sleeping only 6 hrs a night because of the fucking inventory we are doing of Everything.In.Our.House might have something to do with that too), and not really hungry ever - I'm subsisting on large amounts of The Nectar of the Gods/The Evil Bean Water* and whatever seems palatable at the moment, which is not much. I've decided that I am going to put a moratorium on knitting projects for the moment - my plan now is to take with me on the plane the projects that have been lingering for a while (aka the Sock Yarn blanket and a certain shawl that has been sitting on the shelf being ignored for the last five months or so) and commit to finishing those up. I'll send the yarn by shipping container with massive amounts of lavender, and hope that it all makes it there safely.

The wheel, however, will be going air freight. I have (some of) my priorities straight after all.

Another sign that I'm getting stressed out is that my brain is popping out design concepts galore. As of right now, in addition to the Tour de France projects I'm still hacking away on, I've got ideas for four sweaters, another pair of socks, and some mitts. The mitts have been knit in one incarnation, and I'm planning on a proposal to work up for a spin/knit combo pattern for an online magazine. The socks are pretty straightforward, but need to be written up and (gasp!) actually knitted. I've got yarn for three of the sweaters, but have no idea when I'll actually get around to them. I think it's my brain's way of aiding me in my denial of what I really need to be doing, i.e. writing a paper and getting my crap organized.

The good news is that I have three of the four TdF patterns charted and written, and one test knitter has her materials (and 82 row chart!) in hand. I'm working on the first of the two that I'm test knitting, and am rapidly proceeding up the foot. I've got two cuff treatments in mind, and I don't know if I'm going to just pick one or do both. And if I do both, I don't know which order to do them in. So it's likely that the top of this sock will have lots of ripping involved.

Can anyone identify the jersey (color has been adjusted because that's too easy)? And the specific inspiration for the instep pattern? I'll give you a prize if you can...

* My feelings and Ironman's feelings about coffee respectively.

Sad Day

So last night, I finally finished dropping down and picking up all the stitches on the back of Aleita, knit the last inch and a half, and sewed up the shoulders so I could try it on.

Umm...well...no. Just...no.

Where do I begin? I guess the good news is that the length overall is ok (I was worried I would need to add length below the waist decreases). But the bad news is that neckline. Dude. That sucker needs to come up at least three inches. At least.

And while I'm at it? A couple inches longer before the waist decreases is probably a good call. Survey says frog pond.

So I guess that week I spent slaving with a crochet hook was worth it, hunh? Grrrr....

FF: A blend

About a year ago, one Thursday evening, I ventured out of my home-bound knitting realm and joined a group of people I didn't know in public to knit. It was the first of many, many Thursday nights spent out of my house ingesting wool fumes with other like-minded fiberholics, and is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I am typically prone to inertia (not to mention being somewhat introverted), and leaving my house after dark doesn't happen often unless IM and I are headed out on a hot date. But all that changed last spring, and now I chomp at the bit every Thursday until I can get out the door.

In the last month or so I've been exerting my powers to convert some of these lovely folks over to the spinning side of things. I've been thinking about handspun giftees for everyone for a while, but felt it my duty to see if I could entice anyone else over to the dark side. There was one spinner already, and I managed to get another convert, but some others have been vehemently against any spinning-type things at all. Hopefully they'll come around soon...

This week I've been working on the last of my handspun giftees for The Ladies (most of whom are grouped over there under a ridiculous jumble of letters). In almost two years of spinning, I've done lots of pure fibers - Romney, merino, BFL, Corriedale - but not so many blends, and certainly never one with three different fibers in it.

Fiber: alpaca/merino/silk (65%/20%/15%) from Little Barn.
Spun/plied: 9.25:1 (I finally checked the actual ratios on my wheel).

I found this vendor by searching for CVM roving (California Variegated Mutant), and ended up leaving their site with 24 oz of fiber; the CVM, a tweedy wool blend, and this gorgeous green stuff. It was described on the website as a turquoise color, but it is really really green. Kelly green, leprachaun green, bright green. Not exactly a green that I do a lot of, but still gorgeous stuff.

I spun up the singles really quickly - I managed 2 oz in one night even! - and then plied together with a fair amount of twist. This is intended for someone who likes more of the blue colors, and since I'm in such a frenzy to use up some of my dyes, I tried overdying this with some blue to get more of a teal color.

It's lovely soft stuff, and I hope there's enough here for a lacy scarf or something like that. I'll update with final specs once it's dry.

And just to whet your appetites ladies, here's a mosaic (with original fiber and final yarn): any predictions on who's getting what?

Progress? What progress?

Somehow I managed to forget my report for February, so I've combined it with the report for March, just to keep things up to date.

February:
Knitting - Boo's socks and the Booby Hat
Spinning - Preppy Longwool and Night Sky

March:
Knitting - Manon, La Nadadora (finished long ago, but only just published and blogged, so I'll count that project as finally finished), DNA socks and unblogged mitts (yarn flashed here), pattern to be submitted somewhere.
Spinning - twas a Blue Faced month! Yarn School Blue BFL (finished skein not blogged) and the swoony-worthy Briar Rose BFL for Ply by Night March/April.

That screeching sound you hear is the brakes

Being put on the Aleita Shell.

I had been cranking along in good style on this piece. Did both fronts, noticing and fixing my annoying edge mistake on the left front before it became visible, successfully negotiating neckline and armhole shaping without too much recounting and/or swearing. So I moved on to the back, feeling quite swell about how things were going.

I had noticed when I started the ribbing for the bodice that my stitch counts did not match the ones in the pattern. I don't know if I cast on a some extra stitches or if there's a mistake in the pattern, but in any event, I had an extra stitch on each front and two extra on the back.

This was not a big deal when working the fronts in pattern; I just kept that extra stitch as a purl on the right front and mirrored it on the left. But for the back, my mind apparently went on vacation stopped working had a serious brain fart, because I started the ribbing as directed in the pattern. It took me longer then I care to admit to realize that this meant that the ribbing on the back was shifted to one side by a stitch.

Being categorically averse to tinking unless there is no other option, I elected to soldier on, figuring that a one stitch shift wasn't going to be noticeable.

Can you see the storm clouds gathering? Yup, me too. Might be hail up there as well - best take cover.

This was the case until I got through the armhole decreases on the back. And I realized that on one side of the back, it looked like this: (I = knit stitch, O = purl stitch, offending stitches are blue):

IOOOOIOIOI

And on the other side it looked like this:

IOIOOOIOOOOI

It may be hard to visualize from those representations, but on one edge it looked like k1 p1 ribbing next to a large purl block, and on the other it was k1, p1, k1, p3, k1, purl block. Not a big difference, but for some reason, every time I did another right side row, it bothered me more and more.

Now the smart person would have stopped there (a couple inches into the armholes) and, either ripped back to the start of the bodice (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh hell no!), or dropped back the offending, miscentered k1 columns on the right side, replacing them with a purl column and shifting over the knit column to the right location. Guess what I did.

That's 12 inches of back ribbing. 12. One.Whole.Foot.

This is going to take a long time. 13 sets of columns to be fixed. I'm on number 5.

My armholes are 7 inches. I am not smart.