How many graduate students does it take to work a copier?

Three. Nothing to do with knitting, just something I learned yesterday.

Exciting times in RhiannonLand! I started my wedding veil last night. You will all recall that I am modifying Knitpick's Rona Lace Shawl to be a half-circle and knitting this out of Zephyr Laceweight yarn. That being said, this is the first time I've ever attempted any lace asides from Branching Out, which was knit with fingering weight yarn. Laceweight is so thin! I knitting with thread! Which means, of course, that I can't knit without paying extremely close attention to the project. This is going to be a project that all I do is knit. I don't surf blogs, I don't watch any movies that I actually care about, I just knit. Which can be good, you know, Zen.

The only bad thing about this has to do with the yarn. Like most laceweights, it was twisted into a hank. My ball-winder was a casualty of the move in August. So far, I've just knit with the hank hanging from the corner of my chair, but it seems to be getting a little tangled. If the yarn was thicker, I would just keep going, but I think I'm going to need to spend some quality time with the yarn and my hand-made balling technique.

In other news, this mess o' knitted yarn is destined to become Norberta. Eventually. When I feel like doing all of the finishing. Possibly never. We'll see.

This weekend was, generally speaking, not good for knitting. Those projects I blogged about on Friday? Once again had created a sense of ennui. I cast on something new (big surprise).

The good news is that I finished the Natalya mitts. The bad news is they are currently at my boyfriend's place of employment and I didn't get a picture of them. Pity, the mitten flap was really nice.

The arr-gyle socks are no more. I didn't want to finish knitting the one sock, I knew that I would never make the second, and even if I did get them done, I couldn't wear them for fear of them just falling apart on my foot. So the navy has been reclaimed and the rest of the sock is sitting on the floor, waiting to be thrown away.

On Saturday, I did start Norberta. That's a really quick knit! I only have to make the spine, and then I can sew it up. I kept holding it up at my boyfriend and making growling noises. Sometimes I made him guess what part of the dragon that piece was supposed to be.
He actually got the wings right.

No pictures today. All that exists are piles of indistinguishable yarn.

I'm going to have to leave for school soon, which was irritating, until they started renovating the office right below me. Now, I'm happy about leaving.

The Best Laid Plans...

My knitting has been re-prioritized. I have four things on the needles, and I want them off before I start anything new. Three of the four, I've talked about before, and the fourth, well, that's so close to being done I'll probably just wait for a FO post.

1. Natalya mitts for Wayward Boyfriend's co-worker. I finished up the first one, and sent it to work with WB. Apparently, Lisa really likes it, and is suitably impressed with the cabling, so I'm trying to finish these up first.

These also made me realize just how little WB notices how fast I knit. His comment: "You can get those done in, like, a week or so, right?" Me: Love, I can get those done tomorrow." And I can. So hopefully, tomorrow there'll be a FO post, and everyone can see my clever, clever, mitten flaps added on.

2. World's Most Boring Scarf. Since I'm using the same yarn for this as for the gloves, I don't wnat to knit on this until the gloves are done. My theory is the scarf can be shorter than planned for. I can't run out of yarn for the gloves. So, once the Natalya mitts are finished, this will be started.

3. Arrr-gyle socks. These may never be a matching pair. Remember how blase I was about all the ends to weave in? Too many of them. I ended up doing a really shoddy job, where I weave in a couple of stitches, then just tie it together with the nearest other end. Unforetunatley, this is all super-wash wool, so the knots don't hold as well as I would like. I'm scared to wash these socks, and even more scared to make another one. So this one sock will probably get finished, then I'll put everything I need for the second in a Ziploc bag, and forget about it.

Then, I get to start new stuff.

1. Fools Rush socks. I think I'm going to modify these to be toe-up, so I can get really long socks out of them. It helps that the Keyboard Biologist is doing a tutorial on knee-high socks right now, so I won't have to figure too much out for myself.

2. My wedding veil. I have the yarn, I have the charted out pattern, I'm just waiting for the needles to arrive.

3. Norberta. For my dad, I think. I have enough yarn to make two of them, so the plan is for one to go to my dad, who loves all things dragon, and one to go to a friend's child.

Just so this isn't a pictureless post:

My Red Scarves are all ready to go. Worst case scenario, I'll mail these out on Monday. (We don't have a car. It's harder to get to the post office.)

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right

Similarly, two good things don't outweigh one bad thing.

Good thing #1:

My final Red Scarf is finished. It's drying right now, but then it will be wrapped up in one of the handy-dandy labels, placed in a box with care, and mailed off. Probably Monday. With priority mail, it should get there in plenty of time. By the way, I know that's a bad picture, and there's no real proof that the scarf's actually done, but trust me, it is. Finished around 11 o'clock last night.

Good thing #2:

In order to finish this scarf, I had to figure out how to graft 2x2 ribbing. And I did! It's not perfect by any means, but it's better than if I had just tried the stockinette grafting. You can see the seam line in the picture, but it's really not as noticeable in person. It's not invisible, by any means, but it's not as obvious.

Bad thing (sans picture): I broke a needle. What makes this really bad is that it's all my fault. Well, mostly my fault. My wayward boyfriend helped in its ultimate demise.

I tend to be rather careless with my knitting. whenever I stop, I just drop the WIP on the floor. Makes it easier to pick it back up when I want to. Aside from a few unfortunate DPN incidents (I have a nice, round, 3.75 mm scar on my right thigh), this hasn't caused any problems. Monday, I had to go to school, so I dropped the Red Scarf on the floor next to the computer. I came home, and the boyfriend had moved the chair. ON TOP OF MY NEEDLE. It wasn't completely broken, so I put some Scotch tape around the break, and kept knitting. Wednesday, I went to class. The scenario repeats, with more dire consequences. I come home to find my lovely 4.0 mm bamboo needle, a gift from my father, in two pieces on the floor. There's not enough Scotch tape in the world to fix that. I used what I had and finished the scarf with one and half needles. I'm not entirely sure where to go from here. Throw the broken needle away, I suppose.

Arrrr-gyle!

So what was that pile o' yarn destined to become?


Arrr-gyle socks. These socks amuse me to no end. They were borne out of my desire to avoid having half skeins laying around the house. After making my Jaywalkers, I had over half a skein of the yarn used for them. I know from experience that that's not enough to make even a pair of anklets, but I really have no other use for sock yarn aside from, well, socks.

Reading Julia's archives, I was reminded of the Arrr-gyle socks, and remembered that I desperately wanted a pair. Simply stripes has fairly long repeats, and it seemed totally reasonable to use that yarn for the diamonds of color, and the navy sock yarn as the background. A little bit of math later (how much yarn do I have left, how much yarn do I need for each diamond, how many diamonds can I get out of how much yarn I have left, etc) and I was ready to cast on.


The downside to using the striping yarn for the diamonds is that there are a lot of ends to weave in. A lot of ends to weave in. How many?

That's not even all of them. some have already been woven in.
But that's a good thing, since this is my first piece of intarsia (I know. My first piece of intarsia with fingering weight yarn on size 1 needles. Real bright.), so all of the ends allow me to correct my little mistakes.

Just a little bit longer and I'll be finished with the colorwork.

I have something to say

I had written a post earlier today, but it got eaten by Blogger. Since I wasn't saying much of anything, I decided against a re-write.

But now, I have something to say.

Normally, I only block things that need blocking: lace, sweater pieces, that sort of thing. But I decided that it would probably be a good thing if I went ahead and washed the scarves I'm sending to the Red Scarf Project. The Irish Hiking Scarf has been floating around my apartment for a fair number of months now, who knows what it's picked up in the process. I filled up my bathroom sink with some lukewarm water, added some Eucalan wash, and dropped the scarf in. I knew it would bleed. I wasn't expecting the water to turn FUCHSIA. Fuchsia people. Okay, it needs a couple more washes. Two washes later, the water is still fuchsia.

I remembered that Grumperina had this same problem with Hollyberry yarn, although hers was the Merino style, and mine's Wool of the Andes. I went to her blog and searched. She "rinsed and rinsed, and by the time my arms got really tired, and my back started to hurt from hovering over the bathtub and it was about 2 a.m., the water was a light peach color." I am not that patient. I do not want to spend my entire day washing a damn scarf.

But wait! Didn't she do some experiment about setting the dye? Why, yes she did. Vinegar. Vinegar saved my life. I refilled my sink, added some apple cider vinegar (the only kind we have), and dropped the scarf in. The water is barely pink. I can live with that.

In other news:
Come back Monday to see what this pile of yarn is destined to be!
That's two skeins of Knitpicks Navy Essential, one hank of Knitpicks Bare sock yarn, and a partial skein of Knitpicks Simple Stripes in Tropic (left over from my Jaywalkers). Oh, and two size 1 DPNs.

Man, that's a quick knit

I started these around 9:00 last night. They are almost done. Crazy. These are Natalya by Jody Pirrello. I shortened them considerably and am using a smaller needle (size 6), but I love them. I'm making them for one of my boyfriend's coworkers, but now I'm kind of hoping she won't want them, and I'll have them all to myself. I'm a selfish person, what can I say. I still need to knit about four more rounds, then add the half-fingers, and a mitten shell (not included in the pattern, but I've winged it before on gloves, so I'm not worried), then they're done! I think I'm in love with Jody. These are perfect. Even if Lisa does want these, I'm thinking I'll need to make a pair for myself.

If anyone's curious about why I'm making these for someone, and wondering if they'll want them (since I know most knitters would say "if you're not sure the knitwear will be appreciated, don't knit for the person), I offered to make a pair of fingerless gloves for the person, but, due to time constraints and crazy schedules, I haven't been able to ask exactly what she wants. So I'm guessing. I like them, though.