To be announced

THIS SWEATER. RIGHT HERE.

But not in orange. That's not a colour I would wear. I can afford yarn from Knit picks - they have a yarn that is specifically for fair isle and stranded colourwork in a pleasing variety of colours.

It's vey inexpensive, and it is apparently scratchy and woolly and other such complaints for people who prefer very very smooth merino and the like. Well I can't fault them that, I like a nice soft wool myself, but this is stranded colourwork and steeking and hairy woolly yarn is good for this sort of thing.

defiler_wyrm says a pale green - edamame would be a good choice. and that definitely is a me colour - a green with warm undertones. but i have been desirous of sky blue yarn for over a year now, and they have a lovely example. arcadiax can probably attest to me gazing longingly at the colour in various yarn stores.

But look at that PRICE, folks. I can buy the yarn for that sweater design for about 20 dollars. I could buy the yarn for a second sweater in sky blue yarn. though I'm a warm toned person and sky blue is not a warm-toned colour. I am committing complexion folly if I give in to this blue sky desire.

But perhaps there is a solution. I could find a stranded colourwork sweater that needs a lot of colours, and I could include that pretty sky blue, and arrange things so more flattering colours are near my face and hands. Then I could stop sighing at sky blue every time I see it.

I just don't know what I would knit, and I want to order the yarn for my sweater NOW NOW NOW so I either need to find a second sweater design for stranded work that I like or do another order later.

Some knitters have one project that they work on and they don't start another until it's finished. others have multiple projects on the needles, some for years. heh.

This is basically a list of current works in progress that i have going - a bit like the opening sentence of every unfinished story exercise writers do. So here we go:

Purse project - toe up socks in a hand painted shades of green yarn on tiny size o needles. not a high priority project, no projected finish date. socks are an excellent purse project because they fit into my bag and aren't awkward to haul around the way a sweater would be. these socks are just being knitted because I'm working on not very luggable projects at home, so i don't know when they will get finished.

Swanky Market bag - I'm knitting a string bag for shopping. I have one already in variegated green kitchen cotton, but this one is super fancy, as i'm knitting it in brown Italian wet-spun linen. I wanted a string bag that was a little more suited to what i'm wearing when I stop in at the market after collective, so I'm knitting a reusable shopping bag out of some fairly expensive yarn. I really like my cotton market bag, even if i think the colour is a bit hilarious. i'm probably going to get this done relatively soon - it's mindless knitting and I'm motivated to have it done.

A swell swing cardigan- this one is in pink superwash wool. there isn't a pattern, i'm freestyling it. my design idea is to make a one button cardigan in a fairly retro silhouette - it's going to be short, with an a-line swing, and have 3/4 length sleeves. I've set it aside, for the moment - i've just gotten to the point where i'm probably going tohave to divide for sleeves and such, and I'm going to have to check and re-check my math before i do that. the market bag is more my speed, because it's just automatic knitting.

I haven't done any yarn recycling for the sylvi reboot yet, but i have been writing down some notes about alterations i want to make. so i really only have three projects in progress at the moment.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/Swinging+on+the+Cusp/Ge3y4

also today while i was tidying up i had an idea for a thing. I have a lot of yarn in my stash, yarn i purchased for projects that wound up being too much for me or because i didn't really know what the yarn wanted to be, or whatever, and i usually talk about knitting only when a project is going well.

But i knit every day.

so maybe I should talk about the days where things aren't going superfantastic as well as the days where i figured out this technical thing and aren't I a smartypants? because i don't knit so much as i blunder and frog, and only presenting when i'm doing well maybe makes an illusion that i'm captain awesomepants knitter and that in order to be a knitter, you have to be great at it.

hahaha. I read this definition not too long ago: A cyclist is someone who cycles, even when they don't have to.

So maybe a knitter is someone who knits, even when they wind up frogging it anyway.

and that's ME, Herc! That's ME!

( So i took a couple quick pictures: )

This might be a very short post considering the amount of time it took me to actually get the technical competence to *do* this part. It might not. let's see how it unpacks.

The gusset, because I prefer heel-flap heels to short-row heels is simple - you stop decreasing on the sole, but continue to increase over the arch:

1. k to marker, k1tbl, m1, k to end
2. k to 1 sts before marker, ktbl, k to end
3. knit plain on both needles

the question that I answered (by frogging back over and over) was when do you start doing this? The answer I came up with for this sock was "about three inches shy of my total foot length." I did the increase row ten times, adding another 20 stitches to my circumference. this was because my row gauge was ten rows to the inch - if it had been nine, I would have done the increas row nine times.

once done, I shifted my needles to arch/sole - 30 stitches on the arch, 50 stitches to the sole.

now, I do math. I want my heel to fit, so I would choose fewer stitches than this for my base - I have duck feet. this math is for people who don't have to adjust for narrow heels.

i used Wendy johnson's slip stitch gusset heel for toe up socks. you can too!

my sole at the heel is 20 stitches wide. I'm creating a bit of a curve across this center 20 stitches, because my heel curves. so:

1. knit 34 sts, KFB, k1, wrap and turn on next stitch. this leave 14 stitches untouched, so we'll go with 14 on the other side:
2. p 20 sts, PFB, p1, wrap and turn
3. k 18, make an extra stitch, k1, wrap and turn

decreasing the number of stitches knit and purled before m1, work a stitch, wrap the next stitch and turn by two every row until you are at:

8. p 8, make an extra stitch, p1, wrap and turn

now you're on the right side, so knit all the way around, picking up the wraps on the sole side, continuing to the arch. when you're ready to start on the sole side again:

Setup: K 43 (picking up wrapped stitches where you encounter them.) s1, k1, Psso, turn.

1. s1, p28, P2tog, turn
2. s1, k28, s1, k1, psso, turn

if you have a special heel stitch, this is where you use it.

repeat until all the stitches flanking have been taken up, and you have returned to the number of stitches you had on each needle before gusset shaping.

now you're just working the leg. keep in mind that you're going to have a loose spot at the point of your gusset triangle - you can twist your stithces to tighten that up, or make one in the gap and decrease it next round, or just leave the gap knowingly (instead of unknowingly, like I did. heh.)

i keep telling myself that i should be learning how to spin, but i am intimidated by it, so i've taken a bit of a break to moonlight on a freestyle sweater project with the Noro Yarn of Drama.

the project i take my inspiration from is called Klaralund (that's a ravelry project page, and i suspect you need to be a member to see it)

basically it's an incredibly simple sweater pattern. You knit up four rectanagles. two of them form the sleeves and the shoulder saddle/yoke and the v-neckline, and then the other two rectangles are the body. the self striping yarn makes for colour interest, and this is a project thati think is as suited to noro as things made from squares.

but I didn't dig where the yoke fell on most of the women. it worked best on ladies without a prominent bust - and while I cannot claim any sort of abundance in the bosoms department, i felt i could do better for my figure if i just... messed with it a bit.

and now it's not simple. :)

I came to knitting construction from sewing construction. so i address the challenge of wrapping a three dimensional figure with a 2-d surface in knitting in the ways that I would do with flat fabric. so I wind up creating things with very obvious visual shaping - but because I prefer to work in the round, on the fly and seamless, i find some crazed ways to create this shaping. ihave a lot of fun doing this, i and i think it lends a distinctive air to things that i make. ( here's an example of what I mean: )


now i'm going to talk about knitting in my own personal kniting jargon. i'm sorry, non-knitters. :) i'm sorry, knitters who aren't me. :) this is me recording an overview of my project notes, and i just decided to share it for no real reason other than whim.

i hate seams, so i decided to avoid back and forth knitting and seaming wherever i could. So i cast on 60 stitches on my wee 16" 6mm circ, knit a few rounds garter, and then 60 rows of stockinette - and decided that i much preferred the reverse stockinette side and the way it treated the colour changes of noro kureyon.

this sleeve length is just a wee bit past my elbows. i decided that with that amount of sleeve fullness i'd find the sleeves much less cumbersome if they were draping elegantly off my elbows rather than dragging in my meal at my wrists.

When i got to the shoulder saddle/yoke, i decided that I wanted it to be the bodice as well. so i crocheted a chain of waste yarn, picked up 15 stitches to make a provisional cast on, and started gartering back and forth. I wound up with a bit of a stockinette ditch at my cast-on points, decided that i didn't mind it, and then discovered that it was vital to my shaping.

i proceeded from that ditch for 13 ridges of garter, trying the sleeve on as i went, and then short rowed the front for bodice shaping - vertical bust darts. i wrapped the first 2 rows as every stitch, and then wrapped back every other stitch for four more. I don't need a lot of front on my front, and then symmetrically wrapped back to create the dart. (if you've done horizontal front row shaping on a sweater at the bust, or perhaps for a sock heel, that's what i've done here, except vertically, and only on one end..)

i gartered plain a bit - only three ridges, and realized that my center back was in the right spot, but I still needed some coverage in the front - so I short rowed the front in order to slant the neckline and get more yarn in the front where i needed it. when I'd gotten the coverage i wanted i just knitted along the whole row, past my wraps, because the short rowing was to create a \ shape and not a 3d shaping as for the bust, and bound off.

my right hand sleeve is the same, except mirrored at the bust shaping to be the right hand sleeve. once it's don, i will seam up a couple stiches at the center back and do a fitting to decide if i've got it right for the bust, right for the shoulder drape, how far to seam up the center back and the center front. when i'm happy with the bodice fit, i will pick up stiches along the bottom edge for the bodice, garter in the round for five ridges, and then mindless stockinette (to show reverse as the right side) while fitting to adjust for waist shaping... and then hem the bottom in the round in garter at a length suitable for wear with low rise jeans.

i prefer making sweaters top down in this way because I *can* fit them to me as I go. Which means that I'm a good craftsman, but i'm not who you want writing knitting patterns!

this isn't a pattern so much as it is a method that each knitter would have to adjust for themselves. when i say that I knit for 13 rides of garter, that is an incredibly personal measurement, meant to fit me. if you were to try the same sweater, even if you used the same yarn and got the same gauge, 13 ridges might not be enough. or too much. doing a provisional cast on at the underarm for 15 stitches to make the bodice might be too short, or too long. i'm going to shape the body as an hourglass to fit my figure, and because I can do a bit of fit and flare with this yarn - but i can see how a drapier yarn could be much better suited to an a-line drop from the underbust band. I can see a way to do this so the body stripes run vertically, and wouldn't that be fun? but i think if i tired to explain how to do that i would fail miserably.

Anyway, I'll post pictures of this sweater when i'm done, and show you what happens when I decide to modify an existing pattern.

and then take another crack at explaining it again. :)

I have GUI! and all it took was a re-install. I haven't checked to see if I have connectivity yet - I was about to, and then Wolf fired up the vacuum so we had to shut down all extraneous electricity because of load. the lights flickered. I'm not kidding.

(later)

okay, so GUI=yes. internets? no.

okay, keep trying.

xubuntu has a word processor built in. once I get internets going, basically what I want it to do is write, web, music, chat, and the capability of using skype/webcam - not that I expect the laptop to be able to do the latter, but it has to be able to do it on my desktop.

oh and image editing. mustn't forget image editing.

I don't think that's beyond xubuntu's capability.

---

not a single stitch on Durrow. Yet. But it's early yet. I may not get a full pattern repeat in, but I'll get some done now that I'm done messing with linux for today.

---

After raving about Minstrel in the Gallery, I was then enabled with another track from that album, The Baker Street Muse. Well, Peter recced it, and Bear sent it. She also managed to send the beginnings of a more recent album, J-tull.com.

So even more music to enjoy. Hurray!

...I have picked up my Durrow sweater once again.

now I don't really know if I talked all that much about the Durrow sweater before, and some of you might know this but toobad.

so as a new knitter I realize that you can't really play with the big kids unless you have the mad sweater skillz. So to that end I kept my eye open for a sweater that would do some things for me:

1. It had to be technically challenging.
2. It had to fill the huge gaping hole in my wardrobe where "100% wool heavy sweater for winter" should rightfully reside.
3. It had to be black.

So this is where Durrow comes in. take a look at this picture:

the sweater that is breaking my heart.

Like RAWR. those cables! WAAAANTS! and so I went and bought yarn for it. Inexpensive yarn, as this was my first sweater and I didn't want to make a total ass of myself on $150 worth of wool. and besides, scratchy was part of the concept.

I followed the directions and ended up with... body too small, uneven sleeves WAY too long, and a neckline that was way too wide. oh I was upset. I sulked about it for days.

Then i pulled a thread on one of the pieces and started building a funnel roll necked, top down, in the round, raglan increase sweater. and started the cable pattern on the shoulders, so the cable will run upside-down from that picture - but seriously, who is going to notice?

it has its drawbacks. It's a bulky project. It's hard to drag around with me. I have to pay attention to the chart, or else I make mistakes and so I must single-task to do it. Well, okay. I read long works of fiction on the internet or listen to audiobooks.

so it doesn't get the love and attention that my fast projects do. I'm spoiled. I do these quick stockinette in the round things that only take a couple of balls of yarn so if the project isn't done in two days I get antsy. so I've knitted up all my "easy" projects and only have "requires more attention than my confidence in fine manual dexterity usually lets me get away with." I've got an awesome pair of socks, though. and another awesome pair of socks that I should mail to their intended recipient. and they better fit or I will cry. and mittens. and a chullo.

but now it's time to work on Durrow. the weather's cold; it would come in really handy if it were finished. so I will work another repeat of the cable pattern, with the body of my sweater tucked under my right arm like bagpipes, and follow the chart.

And yeah, I'm not making you a sweater, so forget it.

I have to admit to you people that I have a problem.

I can't stop thinking about yarn. I'm crazy. I have this knit along I'm going to do in conjunction with Black Phoenix Alchemy lab, and I'm going to make the girliest little capelet ever and name it Peony moon

because I bought pale pink lace weight mohair. WTF? pink? me?

I have a problem. but I'm going to knit a cute and girly capelet that will not go with anything else in my wardrobe because my aquisition brainstem activated at the sight of it.

so! YARN DIET!

I may need to find one more ball of mohair for the capelet, I don't know, but NO MORE BUYING YARN until I finish Durrow! IMEANIT!!!! I will allow myself to buy size 0 addi turbos for my stupid stupid fiddly little sock but that's just more Yarn diet because no more buying yarn until those stupid socks are done! IMEANIT!!!!!

I mean, I have stash. Stash, folks. it's not enormous stash, but I have enough yarn to keep myself amused, at least.

oh and

there's something that I would very much like to do, so I'm going to say it here.

I would like to take an evening class at Bow Valley College. Specifically, Biology 20. I think they might force me to take science 10 because I took Chemistry 10a and Physics 10a but I didn't take biology (I didn't have enough room in my grade ten schedule to take all three sciences, and I didn't know that I would grow up to be more interested in the life sciences than how to build a trebuchet out of popsicle sticks. shutup.) but I think I can jump it at Bio 20. I dont know. I'll ask.

it's just that the courses are self paced but in a classroom environment and the course costs $140 which isn't really a lot of money. I'd go twice a work and work until I was done and then go on to Bio 30 and - well okay, I'll take pure math 20 because I flunked it BAD and then get my 30 level pure math and then go beat English 30 into the FLOOR because it cannot withstand my rhetorical might...

and then?

Why, then I would have true prerequisites for university application, instead of "yo I'm 37 let me in!"

But that's going really far ahead, kids. For now, I'm just eyeing that Biology 20 course. Because it would be interesting. and I spend that much on yarn anyhow, so why not? *sneaks up a little closer*

my paper journal is going well. I see all the scans on embodiment and people have these wonderful jornals with their own handmade touches, and I have a 6x9 Hilroy 350 page spiral notebook.

Teh fuglee. but I wrote in it yesterday and I wrote in it today and I'm trucking along - I mean I filled up pages and pages. I went off on a screed.

and there is already a to-do list.

next I need to angst about how I dont know what's supposed to happen next in a story, and then jot down a phone number, and the darn thing will be complete.

Dear Madam,

On behalf of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), we wish (to) thank you for your email of November 16, 2006, regarding the transportation of knitting needles in carry-on baggage.

When traveling from a Canadian airport, permitted and non permitted items are regulated by Transport Canada and are enforced by screening officers. According to Transport Canada regulations, all knitting needles (wood, plastic and metal) are permitted in your carry-on and checked baggage without restrictions.

Once again, thank you for your inquiry.

CATSA Client Relations

( The yarn report )

okay now, I'm having very little luck with this and I'm hoping you guys can help me.

my unnatainable desire for fall clothes this year is a Pair of Boots. I've been sorta looking but I haven't found what I want.

my checklist:

Heel: flat, or low heeled/sturdy. teeny stilleto heels or tack heels=no good.
height: calf length is the shortest. I'm hoping for knee, if I can get it
toe: pointy. and I mean 80's fluevogs pointy, if I can get them. not the demure little short point, but long and wicked. they could be squared off, but I'm looking for a long pointy squared off, if you see what I mean.
detailing: they could lace up like granny boots, but they should have an inside zip. they could have an english riding boot style, but western is a last resort.
price: I'll go up to 300 if I gotta. but really I'd like to just throw down 150 and get the hell out. if possible.

any ideas? notice anything anywhere?