purlsandmurmers

Posh

Posh is finally finished:

Pattern: Vogue Knitting Summer 2005 #26
Yarn: Stacy Charles Posh trimmed with Stacy Charles Muse.

The pattern originally called for a tie on the front which I have decided not to use as it annoyed me.  At the moment I am leaving it with no closure as it seems to hug the body a bit and stay in place.  If this proves inadequate I will probably put in a couple of decorative hooks and eyes just along the front:

Return from the dead zone

I'm back from the dead.  Well, dead as in dead telephone line anyway. Our phone line has been out since Thursday morning and I have not been able to connect to the Internet or what-have-you, and therefore have not been able to post.  I have survived very well.   Verizon thought they fixed it Friday, they thought they fixed it Monday, but today the telephone actually works again.  Hooray! Hooray!

The good news is that they have discovered greater troubles on my line and have to trace it back through the town.  I have service in the meantime.  Perhaps this will solve the fuzziness, static, buzzing and occasional dropped lines we get here!

I still want to upgrade to some kind of higher speed line someday, but we have to rewire the basement for new cable wiring before that can happen.  It will happen, but when????? when I think of it at a practical time to call the electrician or am not crazy with other activities.

Knitting Progress during the Missing Days:

To begin, nothing has been completed, not that I haven't tried.

POSH
Posh has been completed and assembled, at least as far as knitting with the yarn called posh is concerned.  In a desperate attempt to finish in September I worked frantically only to discover that I did not have the right size crochet hook to finish the edges!!  In fact I don't have a hook anywhere near the right size.   Yet another unfinished project.

Did I run right out and look for a crochet hook?  No.  There is no store that close.  Did I call up and order one?  No.  I hoped to go by the new LYS today, but canceled all my plans to sit here and watch the TelCo repair man come and go.   I did get both freezers defrosted while I waited though.

TESLA
I am knitting on Tesla again.  I tried it on and decided that I needed to add more shaping through the waist and torso and so have added a few more decreases.  The fabric does not have a  lot of give and it kind of bags on the string I used for trying on.  Having side seams would have added a bit of structure but the yarn probably would have sagged between them.  Hopefully the sleeves and the neckline shaping will work as well.  It is really a guessing game as I go, but that is what makes knitting fun, if slow.

SOCK
I have overcome SSS and started the second sock.  I have almost 1 inch of ribbing knit, not great progress I know, but I haven't really devoted that much time to it.  At 84 stitches around on tiny size 0 needles it is not a fast project.

MISCELLANEOUS OTHER PROJECTS
I knit a swatch with a sample of Austerman Labella which I got from Elann.  I like the fabric I knit and it would make a great lightweight cardigan.  That was my car project coming home from Pittsfield/Hillsdale on Sunday.  We went to dinner at Aubergine after our last Pittsfield concert and I needed something to knit in the dark.  Neither Tesla nor sock would have been appropriate, Labella really wasn't appropriate either as it was hard to feel the stitches.  Still, a passable swatch was created.  I have been thinking about it.  I know that yarn went on sale this morning but as I had no phone service at that time I haven't checked the status of the yarn at Elann.  It is not like I am going to run out of knitting projects anytime in the near future.

Mad Rush at the End of the Month

I have been working on Posh since Sunday, well, mostly Sunday and Tuesday, when I made great progress on the last sleeve:

Posh was great car knitting as we were meeting friends for dinner after our weekly concert in Pittsfield and I knew we would be driving home in the dark.  Neither Tesla or the sock are suitable for nighttime car trips as I can't feel the stitches adequately without looking. 

I have suddenly gotten in a mad rush as I realize that I have finished no knitting projects this month and it is so close to the end.  I will finish the sleeve today and get the sweater assembled.  I hope to get started on the front edges, if not finished.  I. Must. Finish. Something. 

It's not just knitting.  I have done half the sewing I planned for this month and have been slow at gardening progress as well.  Everything seems to take longer than I planned, especially the yard work and construction, but then I suppose that is always the case.  I am basically lazy.  If I didn't set lots of goals for myself I would probably get nothing done.

It's that old "protestant ethic" work-driven upbringing coming back to bite me.

Progress on Posh

Well, she finally got put together.  The fit is wonderful.  Now I only have to start the last sleeve.

Fuzzies 1, Knitter 0

I have given in and ordered two more skeins of Posh.  Because I could not get the same dye-lot, I am holding on off on starting the last sleeve.  I don't know if it matters in this yarn as but it will probably be better to alternate the skeins as knitting.

I DID make more progress with unknotting but the problem with this kind of yarn is that it does not take to tugging and pulling well and begins to shred.  This will happen in the sweater as well unless one firmly knots the joins between yarns.  Otherwise the synthetic threads start to unravel, leaving little fuzzies throughout your sweater.  The yarn I have unknotted looks rather worn and frazzled in places.  Although I often find myself in a worn and frazzled state, I would prefer that my sweaters not start out that way.

Because I felt guilty about buying the extra skeins when I might be able to reclaim enough yarn,  While I was out I stopped at the store and got together some items to send a care package down to Louisiana to one of the organizations accepting donations to help the stranded and homeless.   Somehow, if I can make frivolous yarn purchases while some people are struggling to get buy having lost everything, it seems that the least I could do is send something to those who have less.    I know that my little matching gift program, where I try to match my fiber purchases in charitable contributions, is probably frivolous, and I am grateful that I am able to indulge in my yarn and fabric habits, yet I still feel better sending an equal amount of money off to others, my own little way of giving thanks. 

In a Tangle

Terribly busy day, ending with a sore back, my own fault really, I was determined to do heavy work in the yard and finish digging out the soil in the new iris bed and sifting out all the rocks.  I did manage to finish and so feel like I have accomplished something.  I picked up the first load of topsoil and organic amendments and can add them in tomorrow.  I will hopefully be finished and have some of the plants in by the end of the weekend.

I sat myself down in my chair after dinner and felt like knitting, but not the sock, just too tiny for my tired hands.  I thought about going ahead with the next sleeve for Posh, even though I have not put the sweater together and checked the first sleeve.  However, George found a missing bit of yarn and it may be just enough to finish the sleeves.  I knew I had this bit and had wondered where it had got off too, I left it in his car in a fit of frustration.  The only problem is that these two skeins fell apart the instant I pulled the end out of the center and they have been a mess ever since.  I finally gave up, most of the way through each, and left an impossible tangle.  I did intend to save it, despite abandoning it to the car,  reasoning that I just might need the yarn.  After an hours struggle this evening however, I had only managed to extricate a little over a yard of free yarn.

There is some stubborn part of me that does not want to order two $11 balls of yarn if I might already  have enough.  There is another part of me that feels that the struggle with the tangled balls is just not worth the effort.  If I have to depend on that yarn the sweater will languish forever.  George has volunteered that it is not worth the effort and he opts for buying more yarn. Usually this would have been my first thought, after all even at this fairly large gauge, a sweater takes a lot of time,  but perhaps I am just feeling stubborn and frustrated and don't want to give in without a little bit of a fight.  Since George is usually the frugal one however, perhaps he has a point, he is not caught up in the struggle.

Perhaps I will see if I can get the sweater basted together tomorrow before making a decision.

Rants and Raves

Raves First.  I got my hair cut today.  Hip Hip Hooray!  The previous cut was attractive, I had agreed to try something different, and I got TONS of compliments, but every time I looked in the mirror or saw a photo of myself I did not recognize the person looking back at me.  It was very discomforting.  As Alfie performed his magic with the scissors, I began to see a familiar face looking back from the mirror.  Self Restored!! 

Rants: 
I finished the first sleeve of Posh.  I am not sure  I have enough yarn for the second sleeve, although it admittedly will be very close:

That is all the remaining yarn, 2 whole balls and 2 partials.  I started this sleeve with a partial ball (see the ends) then ran out of the next two full balls (sweater is knitted with yarn held double) just before the sleeve cap shaping.  I think the ball that is left is bigger than the partial ball I started with, but I am not sure that I have enough to finish a whole sleeve.  I will have to seam the shoulders and baste the existing sleeve into the sweater to be sure it fits.  Perhaps it is too big, which does sometimes happen as my arms are short, and it is always hard to tell how the sleeve will sit in the shoulder and how the yarn will hang before I knit.  This is why I never do sleeves first. 

I almost hope the sleeve IS too big, then I will probably have enough yarn to manage.  Holding it up against my arm however, unattached, I am not convinced. 

The RANT is because I am not convinced this is completely my fault.  Oh I do mess up -- look what happened with Tesla, which I still haven't started by the way -- I got too wrapped up in Posh.  But in this case I ordered the yarn from one of my (once??) favorite yarn stores, which will remain NAMELESS and they have this summer shorted yarn on a bunch of sweaters.  When this yarn arrived, I had not yet had the yarn shorting problem and I admittedly did not count the skeins.  I noted that Posh was not the yarn listed in the Vogue Pattern Magazine and I hadn't yet checked the corrections and realized that this was the proper yarn.  I assumed the number of skeins was correct for the sweater I ordered.  I ordered the large, not because I need the large in width, but because I needed to lengthen the sweater and that always takes a surprising amount of extra yarn.  After checking the Vogue Knitting  corrections list, I realize that I did not receive the yarn for the large sweater, which actually would have been more than enough.  I would have had extra, but that was my choice to make and not the decision of the person selling me the yarn.

If I had checked this earlier, I might have caught the problem.  So, no matter what I must accept some of the blame.

Nonetheless, I am predisposed to being pissed at NAMELESS yarn shop right now because, although I have ordered from them for many many years, I have, since POSH arrived, received packages of yarns  for 5 other sweaters each of which was missing 1 to 3 skeins of yarn.  They weren't consistent, it was not like the  shipped the kit for the wrong size.  Yarns were just missing.  I was charged for the complete kit, but I did not receive it.  I would open that cute little box with the polka-dot ribbon (hint hint) all excited, only to be quickly disappointed.  Boo Hoo.  Of course, I called promptly.  The last order (4 fall Anny Blatt Sweaters) came almost two weeks ago (13 days) and I haven't received the missing yarns yet.  This reminds me that I will have to call again.

Should I just order another skein or wait and see?  Stacy Charles yarns don't tend to stay in production long.  Depending on how popular this was, it may be hard to find two more skeins. 

I hate having a sweater I can't finish.  I hate having a stack of projects that can't be started because they are waiting for yarn to arrive. 

In a burst of knitting fever I finished the front of POSH on Friday night in front of the tele, watching Forest Gump.  It is rare that we spend the evening watching TV, the DH is usually doing "more intelligent" things like reading or studying, and if my brain is not up for concentration anymore I am doing various stuff that needs doing.  So, I got to sit next to my sugglewumpus and knit, how cool is that?

I actually made a grievous error about halfway through the right front and did not notice it (OMG!!) until I finished and laid it on the floor next to the left front to admire.  Then I had to rip and redo.  Well, I still finished!

Saturday was a terrible photography day, because it was dark in the house all day. The blocking board is on the guest bed right now and that room gets wonderful morning light, at least most of the time.  It is dark and dreary now.  If your are not a morning person and want to visit us, I guess early fall is the time to come.

It was beautiful outside, mixed clouds and sun, breezy, wonderful for working in the yard.  Sometimes having all the windows on the west side of the house is a real pain.  That's not exactly true, there are other windows, but they are for the most part high and small.  Morning sun rarely gets inside. On the other hand we get more than our share of the late afternoon sun.    But it is the morning light I really miss.  I have my  light starved days when I just have to get outside. 

Actually, I have lived in this house how many years? and I just noticed something.  Looking out this morning I see that it is really just that the sun is just low enough in the sky now that it is below the line of trees on the south and east and therefore the light does not get through all that verdant green leafiness.  Another sign of impending Autumn.  We saw our first red maples on the drive north to the Berkshires yesterday, and the last few days particularly I have noticed the change in the light.  Strange that I never made the connection to the path of the sun and the changing seasons before.  It is Labor Day and fall is really almost here, even if the official date is a couple of weeks off yet.

Winter will be brighter, it usually is, now I know why.  Who would have dreamed that I would be looking forward to when the leaves fall off the trees?  Truthfully I never thought about it quite this way before.  The leaves are starting to drop early because of the drought in late July and August,  I honestly can't say that I mind.  I want light!! Come on in Winter!!

I haven't started any other knitting projects or worked on my UFOs.  I intentionally put off the second sock for the moment, but it is sitting next to my knitting chair waiting for the perfect opportunity.  I took Posh for the car yesterday and knitted on the drive to Pittsfield and back.  The first sleeve is done up to the elbows, or about half-done.

I haven't been doing a lot of knitting, hardly any in fact.  It is not that I haven't thought of knitting, as I have, but somehow, my mind has been elsewhere.

When the weather turned cooler my mind started thinking of fall.  This made me think I should go through my projects, both knitting and sewing, and see which summer projects might still be worthy of staying on the list, and which would be consigned to the higher reaches of the closet to await the spring thaw.  This started a whole "fall cleaning" of the sewing room, bedroom, closets, etc. which is still ongoing.  Now that I can see what I have, and have gotten rid of a lot of things I don't want, I can think about what I want to do in the future.

This means more knitting.

I did finish the first sock:

I am not sure what I think of the way the striping of the yarn works in the sock, but the sock itself is nice and fits well.  I will make the other one.

I finished this while glued to the television watching the devastation on the Gulf Coast.  I couldn't sit there without something in my hands, it was just too awful to comprehend and come to terms with.  Looking down at the sock was a relief; still, I kept dropping stitches near the end, but it comparatively speaking, a minor tragedy. 

Strange, on a totally mundane plane, that on Sunday we were driving down to NYC with Susan and Louis and talking about going to New Orleans together in February.  The men would go to the Academy Meeting and Susan and I were talking about shopping.  That seems so distant now.  I wonder what will happen to New Orleans.  Will it ever be the same?  I know it is a shallow thought, but that is all I can grasp right now.  I can't imagine what it would be like to have to contemplate the possibility of having lost everything.

Susan and I talked and talked on Sunday in the car.  I did not knit.  Unusual for me, but George and I usually take the train into the city now, it saves arguments over who drives, or more exactly who doesn't drive.  On the train I knit.  I could have gotten a lot done.  Talking with an old friend was much more fun though.  We had a great evening.  Talking in the car, dinner in the city, watching Deema's professional acting debut, even in a small out-of-the-way off-Broadway theater with 50 seats.  She was Anne Frank in the "Diary of Anne Frank".  Another story of devastation and loss.  Different tragedy but the devastation is the same, and the incomprehensibility of it all.

Nonetheless I am progressing on posh:

Posh

I am waiting for the extra skeins of Tesla to arrive.  They should arrive Tuesday or Wednesday.  In the meantime I needed a knitting project. 

The criteria were simple:
    1.    easy fairly mindless knitting as I would need to do it in the car in the dark.   
    2.    skeins that did not need to be wound first.

I chose this project:

The pattern is sweater number 26 from the Spring/Summer 2005 Vogue Knitting.  I am using Stacy Charles's Posh for the body of the sweater but I am using the recommended yarn, "Cosmos" for the border.  This is knitting up very quickly in seed stitch on size 10.25 needles.

Here is my weekend progress:

Sorry, the light is not perfect in this shot and it looks a little greener than it appears in real life.   I really like the color and the way this is turning out.  I see that this will go with many things in my fall werdrobe and I am already looking forward to getting it finished.  Of course, even though this is a spring yarn, the weather has to cool off a bit before I can wear this.

I don't expect to make as fast of progress on the front as it is going to be a busy week.  Besides Tesla will be arriving soon to tempt me away from this project and I am making painfully slow progress on my socks.  So far I guess I am more of a sweater knitter than a sock knitter.