Week 4: Fresh Start

I'd hoped to go for a hike this morning and bring you guys back pictures of the mountain turning green, chubby little quail puttering among shoots of grass and wildflowers that have sprouted from all our rains. The only thing is that it was supposed to rain today. Not a problem as far as keeping me inside--since our big storm, we've reverted to our pattern of little, short rains. But the deal was that if it did, I got the car. If it didn't, las hermanitas got the car.

Talk about stacked odds.

There's no way I could walk to the mountain, so I took a hike around the neighborhood and down the canal, thinking I could find some good sidewalk graffiti left by construction workers, or a particularly gnarled tree, or something to photograph. Turns out, I could've given you guys a sweeping vista of the mountain from the entrance to the canal path (oh, the irony), but I forgot my camera in my haste to leave before the dog realized I was taking a walk without her.

So you'll have to be happy with a 2-week-old picture of a cactus, taken on the mountain, and pictures of little green things and quail will have to wait until next week.

I am not totally crushed here: This morning I finished the Hermanita Warm-up. That was the last of my Christmas knitting, and now--finally--I am free to start fresh and focus on new knits. Woohoo!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas (or winter holiday of choice) everyone! I did, in fact, survive the madness of finals. Las hermanitas y yo even had time to help with Christmas baking, too. The gingerbread chalet is the most photogenic of our efforts: Monita decorated the front, and I decorated the sides. Hermanita forbade both of us from icing the roof, which is not as unfair as one might suppose--Monita and I both have histories of sticky Kitchenaids and similar lapses in fine motor skills whilst in the kitchen.

So I made it through finals, but what about the gifts? Anyone here who has been following the progress of the Tempest Cardigan will not be shocked to discover that it was a humongo (albeit tasteful and nicely-colored) black hole of time. I had to devote all of last weekend to finishing the beast. To circumvent a long rant, we'll just say that I now remember why I became so enamored with one-piece projects in the first place.



That's gift the first, off the needles but in the box sans buttons.

Note: I am fully aware my pincushion is politically incorrect *and* balding. Its inclusion in the picture is a desperate cry for a new pincushion.



Um, ya. That's what I've been knitting Hermanita. Formwise, the warm-up will look like a cross between this and this (the striped one), with sporty lacy side stripes, when it is completed. Which will not be until after New Year's. Mayhaps the Warm-up will want to take it up with the Thundercloud Cardigan.



This is the gift that gave me the idea for the labels. Last Christmas, when las hermanitas y yo were looking at my new knit.1 magazine, Monita said she wanted the Duotone Cardigan. Only problemecito: The smallest size is a 36. Monita wears a 32 at most. I really and truly tried, working a gauge swatch, crunching the numbers, working two dud starts that were like additional gauge swatches, and crunching the numbers again, but I only started on Tuesday (Monita might like to take this up with the Thundercloud as well), and I plain and simple ran out of time.

I think I know who's going to be busy knitting over winter break.

May you all have a very merry holiday, with lots of gifts sans assembly required under your trees!

Friends in High Places

I came out into the living room with the intention of continuing my punishment--I mean, finals--but Stella came and got into my lap before I had a chance to get my binder or my knitting, so another post it is.

(Yes, I could just move the dog and get my stuff. But she's just so cute and contented up here. And my brain isn't working quite right for homework purposes.)

Final the first has been sent in, final the second is *done* and just needs one more looking over before it can be sent in (that's the article article article paper I was talking about the other day), which means I am down to one last final paper. I'd be thrilled to dickens if the thought of writing another paper didn't give me such a humongo headache.

In knitty news: Hermanita's Patternless Christmas Gift has been frogged and is back on track. I brought my knitting to work with me to do my dirty deed. As it turned out, one of my coworkers was in the break room, too. I've found that non-knitters fall into two camps when you tell them you are about to undo a portion of your knitting: the Oh No! camp and the Can I Help camp. Luckily for me, my coworker fell into the latter camp, and not only that, but she skeined the yarn up between her hands as she ripped (I was holding the work in my lap to make sure we didn't frog too far). Cool, but here's why it's really cool: she's six feet tall. Ergo she has a six foot wingspan. We got that 4" frogged in no time, and rather than the chubby little tangle I would have made, she left me with a long, skinny skein that I just twisted up and popped in my knitting bag. Onward!

Week 16: Such Great Heights

I liked that song when it was a radio song, but I came to absolutely love it when my Pandora started playing it and I learned the lyrics. The freckles in our eyes are mirror images... *sigh*

That song has nothing to do with Week 16 of this or any semester, except for the title. Once madness starts, it begins to escalate, and reaches such great heights more quickly than any sane person could contemplate in Weeks 1-4.

On one hand, I am trawling through research papers about people looking up health info online and scribbling down hypotheses, samples, and variables like I've got good sense. The madness here is not that I have no interest in medicine and would be an abysmal health librarian. I chose the topic because UA also has a med school, so they have just about every volume of every medical journal available online and I could spend the next 10 years doing this without ever hitting that "article not available" dead end.

The madness is inherent in the repetitive nature of the assignment--hypothesis, sample, variables, outcomes, write it all down and move on to the next article. I'm not trying to diss my professor here--he's here to teach students how to assess the quality of research, and by jiggy, I'm learning how to assess the quality of research. But I'm on article 5 of 10. Hypothesis, sample, variables, outcomes... *giggle*

Other hand: Hermanita's Christmas gift has hit a snag. Did I mention I have no pattern for this gift? I don't. I'm cobbling it together as I go along. When I said madness, I meant madness.

She and I are almost the same size, so I was banking on the accuracy of my schematics and being able to try it on as I work to make sure the pattern is working. Only I didn't have enough to try on until last night, when I discovered that my pattern is not, in fact, working, and I have to rip back 4" of work. Alack, alay, oh woe, oy vey. On the bright side, my schematics are bang on!

Week 15: There's Madness and then There's Madness, or Why I Knit Christmas Gifts

Luckily, I have not had so abominable a Monday (or any day) since last posting. That's not to say all's roses and kittens in baskets, but definitely less abominable.

As finals and the Christmas season barrel down on me simultaneously, I have had an epiphany about Christmas knitting. There are lots of divergent opinions out there: Laura of Cosmicpluto is doing some gifts this year, Ravelry's advice columnist has editorialized against gift knitting, and then you have me who knits gifts for everyone almost every year.

I've pondered the why my gift-knitting for a while, because it certainly isn't the cheap way to go, nor is it the stress-free option (although there have been several holiday experiences where I walk into the mall and within minutes want to run out screaming or murder someone, depending on which is more feasible, and that doesn't count as stress free either). And for the past...6 Christmases (that many?--ye gods!), I have been in college, which means Christmas knitting and the fall semester have a total or near-total overlap. I plunge into my semesters to the point of burnout. I plunge into my knitting to the point of almost burning out. Does doing both at the same time make any sense at all?

Actually, yes. The only thing out there that can truly distract me from my classes is my knitting, and when class deadlines get closer, so do project deadlines. The two work in perfect tandem.

This year promises to be particularly gripping. On one hand, I have three mongo final papers. On the other hand, I have three large Christmas gifts and 23 days to finish them all.

At top you see the gift closest to being done: Mum's Thundercloud Cardigan. No, that doesn't look like three months' work to me, either, but I'm really happy I didn't run out of yarn. Once I reknit the top of the left front (counting error, augh), seam all the pieces, knit the front bands and hem and sew some buttons on, that one's done.

Hermanita's gift is far enough along to warrant a Ravelry page.

Monita's gift is yarn in a bag.

Let the madness begin.

Week One: Pulling the Plug

First week of grad school proper over, and I'm still here with what sanity I had to begin with. Such as it is.

Whoo hoo!

I like it, although this whole online classroom thing really weirds me out. Yes, I know, it's sort of like blogging. But still.

One thing I've learned is that there comes a time where I have to pull the plug. When I had in person classes, they stuffed the students into the classroom when it was time for class to start, and then shoved them out when class was over with a paper saying do this before it's time to stuff you back in the classroom again. Do your homework and you can do what you'd like until the next class. After 5 years, that's what I was used to. Now, the classroom is there 24/7, and so is the work. Do a little of this, a little of that, and then I realize I've played through two and a half albums in my iTunes and my eyes are starting to cross. It took me a few days, but I think I've gotten to where I can catch myself and pull the plug before hitting that point.

So when I step back, I pull out my newest project: the Tundercloud Cardigan. The pattern is Tempest, from Knitty, and so called because of the color of the yarn--blue with gray but a little purply too, like the color the sky would turn before a storm in Illinois. As an aside, the sky don't turn that many colors here. There were blues, grays, and purples, and I distinctly remember several instances where the sky went green in Illinois, but I have never seem a green sky here. Maybe it has something to do with there being moisture in the air... Like with many great colors of yarn, I wasn't able to get the color to show up properly in the photo above, but I'll keep trying.

This sweater is for Mum, and you know what that means: Christmas knitting has begun! Having a gift on the needles is perhaps the only thing that will reliably get me to step back from school when I need to. Will I get it all done in time? That's the sport.

Betwixt and Between

Happy Holidays to all--Christmas blew past me, but we've still got New Year's to help us get down off the holiday buzz. Thanks to everyone in blogland for sharing their celebrations!

Here's a quick Christmas recap:
I made
~Monkey (a pair of Monkeys?) for Hermanita
~Hedera for Mum
~Gretel for Monita (as chronicled last post)

Plus a lace sachet for Mum of my own design, filled with a mixture of rosebuds and rosemary.

All items were received with enthusiasm, and better yet, everything fit the intended recipients!

Now, I'm trying to balance the urgency of catching up on all the things I should have been doing during the semester (suffice to say the list's a mile long) with the relaxation that ought to go along with a holiday. So far, so good: Sunday was a graduation dinner with a friend, yesterday was a woollens-washing marathon (much to Stella's delight).

I have so much planned for the new year--finishing up my UFOs, starting new projects, and taking stock of my stashbusting. Stay tuned!

Reason Prevails--Eventually

This year, Monita's gift was the troublesome one. First, I had a heck of a time figuring out what to give her. Finally, I settled on a hat, and because I developed an obsession with Ysolda Teague's designs over the course of this semester, I settled on her Gretel hat. So, no biggy, I stopped at my LYS after one hectic school day, perused the shelves for something in the appropriate weight and color (yes, this was a non-stash project), and I was off.

All the classic symptoms developed early. I read the project gague, and instead of noting how softly draping the modeled versions were and taking the time to discover that the yarns Ysolda used generally knit at tighter gagues, I just grabbed the yarn that matched the pattern gague (i.e., thicker than the prototypes). Then, my beleaguered brain thought "slouchy is in" and began to knit the slouchy. Even as I felt like the cabling might go on forever, even after trying it on and seeing what looked like the beginnings of a Rasta-style hat (not the look Monita is going for, last I checked), I kept going.

It wasn't until Friday, after graduation, that I tried the hat on and saw it as the bright red blimp it had shaped into. Note this is after I had used up the first skein of yarn and had taken out half an hour to wind a second skein and begin knitting with that. It dawned on me then that there was only one way: the frog pond.

This is what it looked like halfway ripped (note that the skein trailing off is all frogged yarn)


This is what it looked like ripped back to where you begin the crown decreases for the fitted version, the place I was at after two or three days of knitting.


Saturday was a knitting marathon, and after dinner, I was finished with a multi-week project that should've taken me about three days. Aaaaalll good.


Specs:
Pattern--Gretel. Clever, clever design.
Yarn--Malabrigo Worsted in Vermillion, under one skein
Needles--Size 7 Addi Turbos and miscellaneous size 7 dpns
Modifications--None. If you haven't already learned to do cables without a needle, do as Ysolda suggests and use Grumerina's tutorial. It is very clear, and once you've done a couple twists, it becomes intuitive. I am not an innovative knitter or one who prides herself on knowing tricks, but this is one trick I am all over.

Week 10: Socktoberfest Spoils

No, it's not a whole sock. Yes, it is 1 of 2.



But it's rawther trellisy, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Mayas or Hohokam, which I appreciate.

Week 8: Like Frogged Bamboo

A glorious cold snap and the arrival of Socktoberfest inspired me to finally act upon my simmering sock obsession. These two skeins topped my list:


Rio de la Plata Sock Solid in Seaweed



and Panda Wool in Strawberry Pink.

The Panda Wool got precedence because it's destined for giftiness, and I began a pair of Hedera.

Then midterms came along, and my gauge tightened like a hungry boa constrictor. Behold the result:



That's kind of how my brain feels now, after three midterms in two days. I am not overly hopeful about the results, but I don't know that I care. Major case of senior bad attitude, I know, but the sock is back on track now, and that's enough to make me happy.

Christmastime Is Here

All right--I have gotten over my Calmer tizzy (that statement is loaded with irony) and I am quite pleased. Seeing the Fiery Bolero finished, tiny as it is, somehow made all the stress, the entire days and late nights spent finishing it, the feeling that my triceps was going to peel itself off the bone in protest of its abuse worthwhile. Debbie Bliss is an amazing designer, and thanks to Theresa Vinson Sternson , I got the ribbed bands picked up so tidily, they look like they grew there. (Her Knitty tutorials are truly incredible.)

No pictures yet, though: it my Christmas fervor, I wrapped it up with the rest of my gifts. Maybe we can do a Christmas morning photo shoot.

Over the years, I have lived out many a gift-knitting saga. At one part, one begins to doubt one's sanity. But I am not alone: Stephanie Pearl McPhee's army of gift socks makes my paltry three gifts look like nothing, and Blue Garter has captured--with photos!--the pride of a gift well-finished. Seeing what they, and many others, go through for the thrill of giving a homemade gift has reassured me. Knitters are givers. What better time to give, to push our skills (or at least our patience), and even to show off, than Christmas?

The tree is up, all my gift knitting is done. I am chock full of holiday cheer. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Brain Break

I can't take it anymore. I have been home sick all day (thank you, Hermanita), and in an effort to feel useful, I have been working on the Fiery Bolero. As of right now, I could die, be reincarnated, and live out that life without ever seeing a single milligram of Rowan Calmer, and that wouldn't be long enough.

Exegesis: I have substituted the Debbie Bliss Cathay (Big surprise~Debbie Bliss designed the pattern) with Rowan Calmer in Coral.

It's horrible. Torture. High-quality, yes, but ugh--sticky, and stretchy, not at all like worsted *ought* to be. This summer, mi familia y yo happened to be going past Chix with Stix, which is an awesome little store, so of course I had to stop. (Incidentally, I was sick then, too.) I only bought the stuff because I knew I needed a cotton blend that knitted at 22 sts over 4 inches and the ultra-cool, ultra-helpful woman behind the counter suggested it, and I was being rushed.

I did not do any of my homework on this one. I did not check to see what size needle was recommended on the label. That would've set bells ringing. Cathay gets 22 sts over 4 inches on U.S. size 5 needles. Calmer? 21 sts over 4 inches on U.S. size 8 needles. Their site hints at its bizarre texture--in an oblique, all-our-yarn-is-wonderful sort of way--but once I had the yarn in hand, I didn't think to check what the manufacturer had to say about their product. Finally, I didn't even wind the yarn into handmade balls. For big projects, I usually don't. Unless the yarn comes in a skein and must be wound to avoid distressing snarls, I figure that it's not worth the effort. Usually, it's not. In this instance, that first acquaintance with the yarn might have saved me some undue distress and frogging.

Thank goodness I did a gauge swatch. That, at least, told me I had to go up to a size 7 and use metal, not wood. I invested in an Addi Turbo. I'm not really into metal needles--that incessant clicking annoys me and all the rest of mi familia, and this particular circular was ridiculously expensive. But I must say--it is oh so shiny, and the vile Calmer doesn't drag along it like it did on my bamboo needles.

Even still, trying to get gauge is murder. I detest gauge--it has lied to me on many a project. Whenever I can, I say to heck with swatches, jump into the project, and figure it out from there. Because I rarely knit things that have to be just so, this approach works quite well. But this is a sweater, a gift sweater, and a gift sweater that must fit snugly.

All day, I have been closeted in my room, sinuses pulsing (again, thank you Hermanita), knitting. I knitted through 100-odd pages of a new book. I knitted through Fables, Definitely Maybe, a Concretes single, and one of my own mixes.

And I've gained about 4 inches in length.

Oh, the agony!

POW!

Isn't this the most amazing thing ever?

Not my knitting--obliterated by blocking are nearly a dozen fudges. I mean the fact that this shawl is off the needles and blocked.

I am thrilled to death. Right now, I expected to be glancing balefully at my corner piled high with UFOS and shuffling along on the Fiery Bolero. But the yarn gods are benevolent. The Malabrigo came in early, and in my elation, I whipped out the last few rows, the edgy bit, and bound off in three days. Staying up until midnight watching Arcade Fire on Austin City Limits helped. Arcade Fire is one of those bands that you can't really appreciate fully until you have seen them perform, and they really kicked it out that night. I was hugely impressed.

But anyways. As part of the FO ritual, here are the specs:
Pattern: Icarus Shawl from the Interweave Knits Summer 2006 issue
Yarn: THREE skeins Malabrigo Laceweight in Bergamota. I do not recommend using anything dark. This yarn is a little slippery, and most of my fudges were the result of losing a yarnover and not discovering the fact until 2 rows after it happened.
Needles: There's always lots of discussion on what sort of needles to use, metal vs. bamboo, ultra-pointy tips or not. I did ok with plain bamboo Addis. The tips were not inordinately pointy, but they worked for me. I do not recommend using metal needles with this particular yarn, as per my above note on fudges, but a longer wire would be good. After the first few repeats of Chart 1, the whole thing started bunching up on the needle and it was impossible to see how my gauge was holding up.
Blocking: threading string through the eyelets while wet, tugging the ends tight, and setting it aside to dry works just fine.

My favorite part of this pattern is that it impresses the heck out of people. My Linguistics classmates had been monitoring my in-class progress, and asked me to bring "the red thing" in when I was done with it. I did (shamelessly), and they oohed and aahed in amazement. I take no credit in such success. The pattern is elegant and elegantly written. If you 1. can read a chart, 2. buy good yarn, and 3. have boatloads of patience/are a glutton for punishment, you can make this.
Of course, there's no need to tell everyone else that.

After I got it off the needles, I agonized over the pronounced bimp at the base:


But blocking evened that out.

Here's a detail before blocking:


And one from after:


And a closeup:

(This last picture best approximates the actual color of the yarn.)

Yes, I am totally enamored. But I was so totally in a rut, and after that bit of instant gratification from the Acorn hat, this was just the boost I needed to get me going on the Fiery Bolero.

AND I just got off on Thanksgiving break. The best way to see the effect this had on my mood would be to look at what I was playing on iTunes: yesterday I had Yellow, Despair in the Departure Lounge, and Sailed On in the lineup. Today? The Colour the Colour the Colour with All for You, Sofia and Seven Nation Army thrown in for good measure. This is the teaser--that little taste of freedom (and pie) to keep us going.

The end of the semester IS incredibly close. Beginning Tuesday, we hit the short, steep slide to finals. After that: winter break. Not quite the Holy Grail that is summer break, but at 65 degrees, I'll take it. Repeat: 20 days, I can make it another 20 days. Just 3 more weeks, and I get my brain back.

Happy knitting with cranberry sauce.

Strategizing

After the spectacular stall of the Firebird, I have not been sitting quietly in the corner, weeping (although that would be a perfectly reasonable reaction).

I have been STRATEGIZING.

At 46 days until Christmas, I am still without finished gifts, and two out of my three main recipients always seem to be about when I want to work on their gifts. (Honestly--you'd think they lived in the same house) So here's the plan:

While Mum is not about, I'm working on squares for her patchwork blanket.


Mona Pequeña has requested a Firey Bolero, from the Summer 2005 Interweave Knits. The idea is that while Mona is out, I'll work on this.

Note the yarn is not yet on the needles. As a result of the Firebird fiasco, I am feeling a little pattern-shy. But if nothing else, I will be working with slightly chunkier yarn, on slightly larger needles, than I was with the Firebird. In theory, this translates to the project working up faster.

For those instances where both Mum and Mona Pequeña are about, I have pulled out the Acorn Hat. This will not become a gift, so I can knit away without any worries about who is watching.


That's the plan. Think it will work? Stay tuned...

Houston, We Have a Problem

True to my word, I worked away on the Icarus/Firebird like my life depended on it (my sanity certainly did). I got all the way to the middle of the last chart--things had gotten easy--it was looking great (don't you agree?)--



Then disaster struck. I swear: I read the pattern, I figured out the yardage. Yes, I did substitute yarn, but the pattern notes practically promised me that I would only need one and a half of my two skeins!

See that sad little string trailing off the end of this picture?



That is the end of skein one. Skein two is hiding off the edge of the frame, out of shame for its similarly minute size.

This has happened many times in the past, but never with a lace pattern and never with a Christmas gift of such importance. (Did I mention the Firebird is a gift? It is: hence my panic.) Drawing on my previous experiences, I ranted briefly and then rushed to my LYS. Fumbling through the delicious skeins of Malabrigo lace weight, I found blues and greens and a rawther distasteful pink/red/hmm colorway, but no Bergamota, that arresting, unmatcheable orangey red I NEEDED.

The owner of my LYS, similarly experienced in yarn shortages, ordered a skein for me straightaway (If it takes more than 1 skein to finish 4 rows and a border, I am throwing this thing out the window). I was relieved. I was reassured. I was endlessley grateful. And then she warned that their last order had taken eight weeks to come in.

Do you ever feel like Losing My Religion should be the soundtrack for your life?