Thursday, March 30, 2006

The good, the bad, and the ugly......


Since I'm not nearly as entertaining as so many other bloggers (Yarn Harlot and Franklin), I figured that I'd just steal movie titles. However, as I look at this photo, I can see the good, but can't put my finger on the bad and the ugly....

One good is I'm finallly on track knitting Via diagonale, after four, count'em four, starts. I frogged this damn thing three times. The first because I can't count, the second because I thought it was coming out too big, and made it one repeat smaller (no I didn't swatch, it's a purse), and the third because I wasn't happy with the color contrast. As you can see the blue is varigated in the photo and looks pretty good against the black. However, originally I had it against another shade of blue, and the "diagonale" pattern got pretty lost. I was away over the weekend so I toddled off to what passed as the LYS (A.C. Moore) and bought "Sugar and Cream" cotton in black. It costs about 1/3 the price of the blue and you can tell, it is not nice. But I was away from home, and I was desperate. The other interesting thing is that no where on the ball band did it tell me how much yarn was in there. So I had to buy enough extra, just in case. So I have a feeling that I'll be stuck with black "Sugar and Cream" when this whole thing is done. I'll also have more of the blue varigated stuff. So I may have to go back to my LYS and exchange it for two other colors and make one that I'll like better. I'm still running a little larger than the pattern, so I'll probably decrease it one more repeat if I do make a second. Knitting Rules! (which is quite good, if only I could read more than a page at a time before I fall dead asleep, no fault of the author) and my rapidly fading crocuses are both good as well, so I suppose the Sugar and Cream gets both the bad and ugly designation, even though you can't tell that from the photo.

On another front, I got my sister started on a Kitty Pi Bed. She hasn't knit in years (had vague childhood nightmares of learning), but after starting on Saturday afternoon, she was more than half way finished by the time I left her on Sunday afternoon. In addition, she neglected to do any of the chores my mother had asked her to do. I had to explain to my very affronted mother that it was "knitter's syndrome". She was counting. I'm not sure that she'll continue. I've already got her hooked on beading. But if she does continue, she'll definitely be a "product knitter". Today she called me at work so I could describe binding off to her. I'm now awaiting for the "felting" phone call.

And wouldn't you know, even though her own cats each have a bed, knitted by yours truly, the one wants to sit right in the center of the one she's knitting. I had better get a photo of the finished product!

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Who said socks needed to be identical.....

I guess there's a first time for everything. I am not a fast knitter. I'm actually happy not being a fast knitter. Since I do not have to knit for warmth or protection (that's what Kaufmann's is for), I can putz along as I please. But I am going home to visit my mother. When I saw her at Christmas, she asked me to knit her a pair of socks, in the Brown Sheep Symphony colorway. No problem. Well, it has taken me about two weeks to knit the socks. I just finished to take them to her this weekend. However, when I really looked at the pair this is what I saw.

Not only are they not identical twins, they are barely fraternal twins. In fact, it appears that I used two completely different dyelots. My LYS bands together two balls of the same dyelot in their sockyarn so a customer doesn't have to sort through an entire bin. I just grabbed the color I wanted late one evening, and didn't really look that closely. So I've now checked and nope. Both said 004 dyelot. I thought the second ball looked like it had less burgundy, but I thought that perhaps it was just on the "outside". Of course I was pulling from the inside. So now I have two what appear to be mis-matched socks for my mother. I'm hoping she'll wear them until I can get back to the yarn store and buy one ball that appears to have more burgundy to knit her yet ANOTHER sock.

Sorry for the blurry picture. I was experimenting with my camera phone. I thought it was clear enough to get the idea across. Life is never easy.

On another front, I am giving my sister Kitty Pi Bed lessons this weekend. Her kitties love their beds so much her boyfriend wants one for his mother's kitty. I said fine. I'll be happy to teach someone how......

Monday, March 06, 2006

Ever have one of those lives?

You think everything is going along pretty much normally, then karma, or something equally sneaky, comes in to bite you on the behind.

Husband and I were supposed to be going to the 'Burgh this weekend to see a ballet. I've been a season ticket holder for years, but this year, I've not been able to get to many of the performances. Here in Happy Valley, it is spring break--students are non-existant, so restaurants are quiet, traffic is low, it is quite nice. So what happens... my dearest gets a toothache. Now, unfortunately he is one of those poor folks who didn't get a good roll of the dental dice, but we have a good dentist, and all has been well for quite a while so this hit him out of the blue. He had an "emergency" root canal last evening, and this morning is in some dreadful pain. No ballet for him. So it is up to me to decide....do I turn the tickets back and stay home? Try to find someone in the extended family who isn't busy this weekend? Find two someones in the extended family to give the tickets to? Sigh. It's always something.

So yesterday, I'm busily working on socks to take to my mom in two weeks. I needed a sock break so having exchanged some of the cotton from my frogged Cozy, for a darker shade I begin to cast on for the Via diagonale . Casting on is not my favorite part of the knitting process, but last night I don't know what I was thinking. I cast on and began to knit. I noticed at the end of the first patterned round that I had an extra stitch. Oh well, it was just a miscount right? On the next round I purled two together, and that took care of the extra stitch. On the third round where the pattern really begins to emerge, I'm knitting along fine, when I realize I won't be able to finish a repeat of the pattern......What's going on here?!! Well, as you can all assume what went on is that I couldn't count, or add........So here we are again...... sigh.