You asked, and you receive! Photo of the (first) finished Honeymoon Tank! Yee-haw! And Julia? I can’t possibly thank you enough for this pattern! Mwah!
More pictures added to the gallery pages, by the by. The tank, a sweater, whatnot. Go see.
Yeah, yeah, I promise I’ll find a bra for the next picture…
Apparently I am not an old dog yet, ‘cos I’m still capable of learning new tricks. Lordy, yes indeed.
The new trick du jour? Knitting ‘backwards’. Or, for all you lefties, knittin’ all normal-like.
I had read about people who didn’t purl, but instead just knit left-handed back across, and I decided yesterday that I absolutely HAD to learn how to do that. Easier said than done, though, I must say.
Think about it. What, exactly, do each of your hands do when you knit? Think you know? Ok, swap it. HA! Toldja. Easier said than done.
I did figure it out, took me about an hour of going back and forth between my hands with the ball of yarn, and my left hand does it a little differently than my right hand does, but it works beautifully. I still love to purl, sometimes, but it’s nice to have options. Options are good.
Holee schmolee! So I finished the finishing on the Honeymoon tank on the ferry on the way to work on Monday. Hooray! When I got to work my friend Barb wanted to see it. Then she wanted to try it on. Then she wanted to leave the office immediately and go to the yarn store to get the yarn to have me make her one just like it. Hooray again! So after returning a few calls and dealing with the last of the computer hell (you can check out crankychild.com for more on *that*), off we went to the yarn store. She picked out the same yarn I did mine in, only in a totally yummy tangerine color, bought that, plus enough yarn for me to make a cardigan for myself, plus a stack of back issues of Interweave Knits. HOORAY!
I finally got a ball winder yesteday, and put that to good use this morning, so I can actually start casting on her tank tonight.
Knitting On The Edge (highly recommended, unlike Hot Knits, which will be going back…) showed up last night, and had some wonderful lace edgings, so I’ll be using one of those for the bottom of Barb’s tank. Can I go home and knit now? It’s not like I’m actually getting much done here at the office today…
I had so much I needed/wanted/was supposed to get done today, and did any of it happen? Nope. Well, some of it did (dishes and laundry and some serious sleeping in action), but mostly I sat and knit. I just finished knitting the Honeymoon Tank - still have to weave the last couple of ends in, but my goal of wearing it to work this week will definitely happen. I love it. Can’t wait to design and make a shrug to go with it…
Woo-Hoo! I just finished the right side of my Honeymoon tank and tried it on. I was soooo sure I was going to have to adjust the short-row bust shaping, but I don’t! I do have to add another half inch or so to the strap and graft it together, and do the left side, but if I continue to sit on my butt and do nothing but knit today, I could, conceivably, wear it to work tomorrow! It’s perfectly wonderful, and I’ve learned a whole bunch of new things on this project, which, of course, makes it all that much cooler. I’ll post pics of it later. Woot!
That’s right, baby, it’s time for the 
! I’ve been crankin’ along on my Honeymoon Tank from knitty.com. I’m making it out of Linet from Berroco (hopefully I’ll actually have enough of it, since it has been discontinued… ). I haven’t a clue which of the colors it is, since it bears no resemblance to any of those, but it’s kind of a greyish-purply-bluish kind of color. A shocking departure for me, I know.
So there you have it. Tank with me, kids! You know you want to!
Kick ASS! Thanks to the amazing Rebecca Love, I now have the coolest new trick in my bag!
Day before yesterday, our receptionist here at work, Penny, had brought in the baby blanket she’s working on to show me. She had dropped a stitch in one of the purl sections between the cables, and was talking about frogging the blanket back a couple of rows to the one with the dropped stitch in it. We then discovered another dropped stitch several rows prior to the first dropped stitch, but in the same section. I told her that there HAD to be a way to put all the live stitches except the ones in that section on holders and just undo that section and redo it. I didn’t know how, but there had to be a way to do it. Penny looked at me like I was totally cracked.
Fast forward to that night. I’m reading through the knitlist emails and find one from Rebecca. I always check out people’s blogs and pages when they post the urls, ‘cos it’s always interesting to see what others are working on, and I might learn something new, and some of these people are FUNNY. There are a couple of knitting bloggers that I read regularly now just because they write so well and make me laugh. I love that. So anyway. I went to check out Rebecca’s page, and lo and behold find this picture. I KNEW it was possible! Now I had proof!
I sent Rebecca an email asking if she could tell me how it was done, or point me in the direction of a book or web page or article or whatever that could tell me. I got mail back from her yesterday morning explaining in detail how it’s done. SWEET! She’s SO incredibly nice, and her instructions were totally clear.
I got to work and found that Penny had only torn out one row, but was just about to rip out the rest of them. I asked her if I could try the new thing, and she handed the blanket over. In between putting new computers together I managed to get the live stitches onto two holders and get the section with the dropped stitches unravelled. Over the course of the afternoon I got them all reknit AND IT WORKED! Penny was so excited, as was I . This has got to be the coolest knitting trick of all time.
As far as progress goes… Not much. It’s been a very busy few days. I’m almost done with the wide burgundy stripe on the hoodie, and have started the bust shaping on the tank, but haven’t touched the shawl or the sleeves in a couple of days. Tonight, though I will make progress on both of those. Have to. One or the other of those projects is slated to be worn to the opera on Saturday night. So I better get crackin’, no?
The best collective term I’ve heard in ages appeared at the top of someone’s post to the knitlist this morning: KNITTERATI. Love it.
Thanks to the helpful suggestions from several people on the Knitlist, there is finally being serious progress made on those pesky sleeves. It rather suddenly clicked last night, and I managed to get about 4 inches done on each one. It would have been more, mind you, but I got distracted on my way home by a yarn store that I hadn’t yet visited. We all know how dangerous those can be.
The new store (Seattle Yarn Gallery) didn’t have any of the things I was looking specifically for, other than the Denise needles, but those were $8 more than at , so I’ll wait and get them later. I did, however, finally find some yarn that I totally dig (so far at any rate…) for the Honeymoon Tank, and got that started last night, with a slightly different bottom edge. The twisted rib just wasn’t turning my crank, but I loved the vine lace pattern tank in the summer issue of Interweave Knits, but wouldn’t want an entire tank made out of it, so I used that as my bottom edge instead of the twisted rib.
On top of those two, I also managed to add another 8 inches or so of the Koigu lace edging around the Perfect Pie Shawl.
Sigh. Knitting bliss. It’s all good.
Whew! This one has been on the needles for WAY too long (3 weeks?), and I’ve been SO done with it for most of that time. *SSK, M1, P2, repeat from * until you want to cram one of the needles up your nose just to end the misery. And the best part? IT’S NOT DONE YET! Seriously. It’s blocking now, and once it’s dry I get to go all the way around the outside edge with little tiny needles and some Koigu Premium Merino and add some really lacy lace to it. At this point I’m actually really excited about starting the lacy part. We’ll see how long that lasts.
I still don’t have a clue what I’m going to do with it once it is totally finished - it’s absolutely beautiful and soft and wonderful, but when was the last time any of y’all saw me in a shawl? Never? Right.
And now back to those damn shrug sleeves that have been plaguing me since Manzanita. I haven’t really made any progress on them, but I haven’t torn them out again yet, either, so I guess that’s something. Maybe now that the shawl is in the home stretch the sleeves won’t be quite so uncooperative. We shall see.
I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with it yet, but I’ve just received not one, but TWO big skeins of that wonderful shredded sari yarn! I found a bunch of it on eBay a couple of weeks ago, and got an absolutely screamin’ deal on it.
It seems to be slightly more irregular than the stuff I saw at Lint a while back, and I’m not sure how strong it’s going to turn out to be, or how well it’s agoing to hold together, but it’s SOOOO beautiful! So, what should I do with it??? Ideas, anyone? Anyone? Beuller?
