Late But Not Forgotten

This post was supposed to be all about the trials I went through to complete that "easy" knit-in-the-round hoodie. Well, by altering the pattern to knit it in the round, I lulled myself into thinking it was going to be a breeze. By the time I stopped knitting endless rounds of stockinette, I realized I was two inches past where I should have broken for armholes. I ripped out two inches and continued to complete the back, the front, the three-needle bind off at the shoulders, and was halfway finished with the hood when I realized I hadn't been 2 inches off after all. I was five and a half inches off!

I panicked for a minute, then considered my options. I could rip out all of my tedious work, which involved a fiddly neckline, shoulder seams, and different balls of yarn attached in different places, or...I could steek.

I have never steeked before. This was a very scary thing to consider.

I emailed my brother. He was freaked out too.

But one of my goals this year was to learn how to steek, so it might as well be now, right?

With some help from Eunny Jang, I made a practice swatch, reinforced the steek line with crocheted stitches, and cut it:

Since I was making the sweater with fake side seams (a column of purl stitches on each side), I knit my swatch the way too, and added a yarnover at the top of the column. I cut the steek, and it was kind of fun! The crochet stitches held the cut ends very tightly. In fact, The Brain took my swatch and tried to stretch it and rip the stitches out, but they held on.

So, I learned a useful new skill, and more importantly, I learned that it's not scary! I plan on using steeking a lot more in the future. :)

Is It Really Summer Already?

Sorry I left that last, whiny post up there for so long. I meant to have progress pics the next day or something, but then the real world called and I had to take care of a few things. Mainly, I had to polish off my thesis and graduate. Which I did! I am now officially a former grad student and have progressed on to being a regular unemployed, overeducated person. What joy.

Before I get to my knitting stuff, however, I want to share a tip for any thesis advisors out there: If your student turns in a draft of their thesis and has only three weeks to gather responses from three different people and make any changes before the final draft is due, PLEASE don't wait two and a half weeks and then email them on a Monday morning, three days before their final thesis review meeting, with a list of topics that you would like to see addressed, and chapters you want them to add to the paper, especially if they only remotely pertain to the topic at hand. This will make the student really hate you for a while.

And while you're at it, PLEASE don't begin your email by saying, "Dear Student, It is obvious that you are just dialing it in..." This will make the student hate you forever and swear to ignore any pleas for money the school starts sending out immediately after graduation, and which somehow manage to find you, no matter what remote corners of the country you move to.

Just a little nugget of advice from me to you.

Now. On to the knitting:

I finished up my Something Red, but I will save info on that until I sew the button on and get pics.

I also finished up my Hanami Stole. It was a very easy knit and the changing pattern kept things fresh. I added beads throughout. They're a little hard to see in the photos, but I put them next to yarnovers in the petal part of the shawl, and added four rows of them just before the gathered edge on the bottom. I like how they look, and I hope that they look just as delicate after I block the stole and they stand out a bit more.

Pattern: Hanami Stole, by Melanie Gibbons
Yarn: Malabrigo Lace in Cactus Flower
Needles: Knit Picks circ, 3.25 mm























I started my next two projects:

Under the Hoodie, by Kristin Spurkland from the first Stitch 'n' Bitch book. I'm making this in Ultra Alpaca (so soft! But so warm!), and I'm liking it so far. It's for my little sister, and per her very specific requests I am making it all in a pea green color, with no stripes or cables. I also modified the pattern to knit it in the round to save my self the pain of having to seam all those pieces together. Since it's just simple stockinette, I see no problem with it.

I cast on for my Auburn Camp Shirt, by Chrissy Gardiner from the Spring '08 IK, last night. I like the pattern so far, but it's the first time I have done a hem, so that part was a bit tedious. But it really does add to the finished look of the sweater, so I'm happy.

Finally, to follow up on my last post, I did eventually receive an email from the woman who sold me the yarn. She SWEARS she put all the yarn in the box, and that it must have been "compromised" while it was in Pittsburgh. She sent an email to the USPS and another one to Berroco to see how long it would take to get replacement yarn. This was over a week ago, and I have not heard from her since. Now, maybe it's just me and the fact that I like to GET THINGS DONE (you know, "I don't freak out. I just get it done. That's just the way I roll" and all that), but when I'm at work and there's a problem, I CALL SOMEONE right away to get the problem taken care of. We all know that sending emails out into the ether is the lazy way of foisting the responsibility onto someone else. I'm giving her another week and then I'm demanding my money back. This is beyond ridiculous. Just to put it into perspective: I wrote an entire thesis and finished my masters degree while waiting for my yarn!

OK, I wasn't going to complain and then I did. Oh well. Don't come between a knitter and her yarn, people! It's not pretty!

Knitting Funk

Sorry, I have no pictures today. I haven't made any picture-worthy progress on anything since my last post, even though I feel like I've been knitting my fingers raw.

I ran out of yarn on my Dollar and a Half cardi midway through sleeve #2 last night, so I have to order a couple more balls of that before I can continue. That's OK. It will give me time to finish up my Something Red, (remember when I thought I would have that finished by the end of last weekend? HA!) so I'm working on that.

But I have a little story for you that has caused me to be in a knitting funk today: (warning, it's a little long)

I'm super bummed because waaaaay back in early March, a woman who runs a tiny little online yarn store out of her home advertised some Berroco Ultra Alpaca for really cheap, so I took advantage of her clearance sale and bought 25 skeins. Even though I am on a very tight grad student budget, I knew I would use this yarn and wanted to take advantage of such a great deal. Plus, the woman was more than accommodating and sent me lists of the colors she had available so I could have first pick.

Well, I placed my order with her and paid for all 25 skeins through PayPal. Then...disaster struck. For some reason, PayPal had never taken off my old Pittsburgh address, even though I have lived in Minnesota and now California since I ever lived in Pittsburgh. I didn't realize this until the shipment went out and I was eagerly following the tracking number...all the way to the Pittsburgh post office. WAH!!!

The seller was very pleasant and went to the post office to fill out a form to recall the package, but it still took a month for the post office to send it back to her in Texas. I was annoyed with PayPal, but it wasn't this poor woman's fault at all, and our correspondence was extremely pleasant.

Once the package was back in Texas, she re-posted it to me out in California. I made sure to have her send me another PayPal invoice for the new shipping charges (nearly $12!!!), and the package FINALLY arrived here today. YAY!

Except for one problem: there were only 13 skeins of yarn in the box. I paid for 25! Not only that, but she doesn't even list Ultra Alpaca on her little shop's website any more, which probably means that she doesn't have any left so I can't get more from her if I wanted to. There aren't enough skeins of any one color to make a sweater, so any additional yarn I would get would be in a different dye lot and that is beyond annoying too. I am more than annoyed. I am VERY ANGRY.

I paid cash that I don't really have right now (which is my problem entirely, but I was considering it a graduation gift to myself), I waited nearly 2 months, I paid shipping twice, and SHE ONLY SENT ME HALF OF WHAT I ORDERED!

Not to sound like Eeyore or anything, but this kind of stuff always happens to me. My life is a continuous comedy of errors. But I have been looking forward to this yarn for TWO MONTHS, people! I wrote my thesis while dreaming of all the sweaters I could knit as soon as I got my work done!

I sent the woman a very polite email, asking where the rest of my yarn could be, but I haven't received a response yet. I will keep you posted, believe me.

In happier news, Little Knits has a couple issues of Phildar magazine on clearance so I snagged those yesterday. I had never heard of their patterns (they're from France) until I started seeing some really cute sweaters on Ravelry. Does anyone know if you can get subscriptions? Or which yarn stores sell them? Too cute!

OMG I Think I'm DONE!!!

With my thesis, I mean. I just emailed out my final(?) draft, and barring any glaring errors or omissions, I'm considering that one finished.

In other finishing news, I went back to my Buck Fifty earlier this week in a fit of finish-it-upitis. I really really like the pattern, and I really really wanted this sweater to work out, but last November I stitched the front and side pieces together and discovered that it was too small. So it sat in the bottom of my UFO basket for months, nagging at the back of my mind. I'm not one of those people who can just abandon a project that isn't working out for me. I spent money on that yarn! Plus, I still really like it, I just couldn't seem to get it to work.

So I ripped out the side seams and added 2" panels of reverse stockinette running up each side. Now I have to knit the sleeves at the very largest size just to fit them into those arm holes. That wouldn't be so bad, except that I only have 4 balls of the yarn left and I have a feeling that the sleeves will take up all of them. The problem there is that I knit the button band according to the pattern directions, even though my row gauge was way off so I have waaaay more rows than were indicated in the pattern. But I went ahead with the pattern count anyway. (This was before I ever heard the 2/3 button band ratio.) The result is an ugly, too-short button band that pulls the fronts up. They need to be re-done, but I have a feeling I will end up ordering another ball of yarn for that and it will be in a different dye lot. Oh well, some things can't be helped. I'm finishing the damn thing, and that's all that matters.

In other exciting news, the Knitty surprises went up today and I am totally in love with the Tempest sweater! I have been reading Ann Weaver's blog for a while and really like her funky take on things. The funny thing is that I knit up some swatches for my next 2 projects last weekend, and they have been lying around on the arm of my couch all week. I keep thinking, "Ooh...I really like those colors together. It would be really neat to have a sweater in those colors." And then one pops up online and it's super cute! I'm a little puzzled by the yarn though. She says it's lace weight, but other places say it's fingering weight. Hmmm...must investigate some more.

Job Interview

I am usually one of those people who doesn't talk unless I have something to say, but whenever I'm nervous or around particularly quiet people I have a tendency to talk nonstop, without any control or knowledge of what exactly what I'm babbling on about.

I had a job interview on Thursday. I have been kicking myself ever since because I have the distinct feeling that I actually said, "If there's a way to solve a problem, I just do it and I don't freak out. That's just the way I roll."

That's just the way I roll?!?

Yeah, that's right. I may have two bachelors degrees and a masters, but I can still kick it with the high school kids. Hire me! I'll bring some well-deserved playground flavor to your organization!

Good grief. To make myself feel better, I headed to the LYS, Knitting in La Jolla, and picked up some of this:

Curious Creek Fibers superwash Wasonga sock yarn, in the Emerald City colorway. I don't knit socks, but I am addicted to Berroco's free Jacoby fingerless gloves pattern, so that's my plan for this luscious stuff. Whew! It made me feel better immediately.

I also picked up Norah Gaughan, Volume 2 because I am also addicted to her patterns. Not that I have time for anything new quite yet.

I'm plugging away on the Hanami stole and the Something Red sweater, but I'm about to go flop on my couch and knit up some swatches for the Auburn Camp Shirt and a hoodie for my little sister. Gauge swatching. Good times!

Coming Up For Air

I'm still alive, still knitting, and still working on that f*@#&%!@#(%&^ing thesis. I turned in the first draft last week but then I went out of town for a few days to visit the fam, who I haven't seen in nine months since I moved out here. It was a nice, relaxing weekend. I got to go to my brothers' play (they carved out the two male leads for themselves, thank you very much), I got to be around for my youngest sister's 8th birthday (and the even more fun family barbecue that accompanied it), and I got to see my older sister's seriously cute 9-month-old baby, and my younger sister's seriously weird-looking 2-month-old baby. (He's getting cuter, but newborns often look kinda strange.)

I have been doing some small knitting, in between working on my research and throwing myself on the office floor in some kind of rebellious, flailing "movement piece" (if I pretend it's art, it can't be called a tantrum, right?). Thank you to everyone who filled out my lengthy survey. You have my gratitude.

But you don't care about that stuff. You want to see some knitting, right?

I started the Hanami Stole a couple weeks ago, and last night finished up the last repeat of the first chart:

I am using Malabrigo lace in the Cactus Flower colorway. I'm not normally a huge fan of pink, but since it's supposed to represent the cherry blossoms and all, I thought I would play along. I really wish I would have gone with my gut instincts and picked up two skeins that matched each other more closely in color (they are from the same dye lot though). But the women in the yarn shop insisted that the colors would blend better than they really are, and I'm not too excited about the stripey look. Plus I wish I had used a gray color (Polar Morn, maybe?) instead of pink because I feel like I'm knitting spun Pepto Bismol and that's just no fun for anyone.

I'm adding beads to the pattern too, but you can't see them because my camera is pretty much dead and I have been taking all my photos with my iPhone. The phone is lovely, but it has no zoom or flash so what you see is what you get.

While I was out of town, I also started working on my Something Red.

It's a super easy knit, and I wanted to get the Cascade 220 out of my stash. Last night I got down to the ribbing of the lower half, and I should be able to finish this off over the weekend. Nothing like a quick and dirty sweater to make you feel like you're accomplishing something!













I also went shopping while I was out of town and came back with these:

Malabrigo lace in Stone Chat, Pearl Ten, and Paris Night. I have no idea what these will be for, but this stuff is the softest, squooshiest lace I have ever worked with and I just needed some.



OK, enough indulging in my blog. Back to the thesis. *sigh*

Please help!

As you may have gathered by now, I am in the throes of agony (more commonly known as "writing my Masters thesis") and I need some help.

If you would be so kind as to take a quick survey, that would be stupendous! I am trying to collect as many responses as possible.

And if you want to send other people in the direction of my survey, that would be doubly stupendous and I will be eternally devoted to you. (A lot better than winning "the satisfaction of coming in first" or whatever other crap they tried to sell you in preschool, right?)

You can access my survey by clicking here.

Thanks! I promise to return to my regularly scheduled knitting content next time!