Frogging

I picked up Liv again after spending time finishing a UFO scarf and good grief, I've frogged the first inch or so 4 times. Four! I'm terrible at frogging back only a few rows. If it's one row I'll unknit (or unpurl) the stitches but in this case I'd only started so I just unraveled the whole darn thing. Four times. I learned in a Stitches class that when working a complicated pattern, include a strand of another color yarn a set number of rows apart. That way you can just unravel back to the colored yarn and slip your needles back on. Sure I'm working cables but I didn't think this was so complicated to warrant this approach. Now I'm not so sure. I seem to have a problem following the chart. I understand the chart, it's just that I think I know what it says without really looking at it and I keep messing up. And perfectionist me won't let that happen because I'm knitting the very visible, very eye-catching front cables. I want them to be correct, even if it means spending all evening to complete an inch four times over. Fortunately the yarn is holding up just fine and not splitting. Hooray for good yarn!

I'm all signed up for Stitches West. I registered for 12 hours of knitting classes on Saturday and Sunday and the banquet on Saturday night. I'm going by myself but hope to meet people, knit a lot, shop, and learn some more knitting skills.

I haven't been doing any sewing lately. I find it difficult to sew during the week because after we get home (late) from work and eat dinner, sometimes after stopping at the grocery store, we find ourselves on the couch with the TV on for the remaining few hours before we go to bed. We did manage to pry ourselves off the couch one night this week to get to the gym, but I overdid it and now I am very sore.

This weekend will probably be dedicated to packing up the living room (so we can start the room redo) and getting stuff together to donate. I'd like to do some sewing but if I don't , it's ok because the following weekend will be all sewing, all the time. My sewing guild is hosting Lyla Messinger for a trunk show on Friday and an all-day seminar on Saturday. Sunday is a get-together with my sewing friends I met on the internet. Busy weekend!

Lists

So many projects. So many projects.

These are just the home dec things I want to get done...someday.

1. Hem and join (via velcro so I can wash them later) blue velvet IKEA drapes for family room sliding door
2. Pillows using these fun low pile fabrics:



3. Valence for family room sliding door
4. Dining room drapes
5. Storage ottoman - Butterick 4677, the cube style one, covered in this ostrich skin pleather:



6. Finish faux fur throw - will definitely want this when we have the heat turned way down this winter to avoid monstrous natural gas bills.
7. Guest room drapes
8. Living room drapes - but first we have to redo the living room walls, floor and lighting.

Hmmm...one would think our house is quite drape-less due to my procrastination in getting these home dec projects done. Well, at least there are shades on the windows. So when are these going to get done with Christmas around the corner? Yes, I have a Christmas gift project list but for obvious reasons I can't post it here!

I'm still here

I'm here...just not blogging. I haven't been sewing but I have been knitting.

I finished the back of Liv and last night I finished the cabling at the bottom of the left side. I'm contemplating working the right side up to the same spot and then joining the two and knitting the rest of the front as one piece instead of knitting each separately and then stitching the two together down the center front. It just seems easier to me to knit it as one piece and I'm afraid of having different tensions by the time I stitch the right side. Of course I would have to interpret the pattern a little differently at the neck edge but then I'm already having to do a lot of interpreting due to being a lefty knitter. The back was easy since it was just reverse stockinette and when I got to the decreases I just had to swap the SSKs for the K2TOGs. The increases were a bit trickier. The author uses lifted increases, which I'd never done before. I thought the example in Viking Knits Collection didn't tell me everything so I looked in the other book I have by her, which helped but also was confusing. I sort of followed the instructions and sort of improvised and somehow got it to look just fine.

The cable pattern is knitted from a chart with one chart for the left side and one for the right. I knitted up a sample first and quickly realized that rather than read the chart backwards, as a lefty would normally have to do, I needed to knit the right side as the left and vice versa. And no swapping of SSKs and K2TOGs - just follow the chart. It worked. Though I'm sure glad this pattern doesn't continue for the whole sweater! I've knitted from charts before and after a while the pattern becomes a rhythm. This pattern requires a bit more concentration. The WS row was easy - it made sense when I needed to knit and when I needed to purl, but each RS row was different and it was very easy to confuse the cabling until I got the feel for where the cables were going. This was my very first time doing cables and I only frogged two entire rows twice, so I think that's pretty good. Of course I have three more visits with these charts.

Another thing I learned is that it's nice to knit with nice yarn and not so nice to knit with cheap stuff. If you're going to spend a long time handling the yarn, as you do when you knit a sweater, then I think the yarn should feel really good. Also, if it doesn't feel good to knit then it's probably not going to feel good to wear. I've decided that the acrylic/wool stuff I used for the sample will never be used for anything except samples. I couldn't wait to pick up the Cashcotton again. Very nice stuff.

Just because I've been knitting (while watching TV) doesn't mean I've forgotten about sewing. My Fall/Winter 2005 Marfy catalog arrived and I'm drooling over every page. Gorgeous clothes. I'm anxious to make the free patterns too: a short cape, a loose blouse, and a straight skirt for anyone curious about the free patterns. This is the first time I've ordered any Marfy but since Vogue is now selling some of the patterns, I thought I'd give them a try. I'd heard they were excellent patterns but not for the faint of heart. This is true as they don't provide instructions and the patterns have a lot of detail like darts, pleats, pockets, and ruffles...and the details are often used very creatively. But as I sew more and more, often using the very sparse instructions in the Burda magazines, I'm getting more confident and knowledgeable in my sewing. So why not? At the very least I have a cool catalog of Italian fashion to browse.

On my sewing table are the beginnings of my Month of Softies entry. The very beginnings. Not a stitch has been stitched and scissors have not yet been applied, but hopefully I'll get there.

Tonight I'm going to a sewing guild neighborhood meeting. One just started up in the evening for all of us sewers who have to work to support our fabric habits and can't attend during one of the many daytime meetings. Should be fun.

Got silk?

Yesterday I escaped work early to go to a sewing "show and tell" at Thai Silks and it sure beat working, although I did have to bring some work home to do later. Anyway, the "show and tell" was fun. It was the first time they put on this little party to invite people who've made items from their silk to show them off. All I can say is wow. There are some talented sewers, quilters, and crafters in this area. One older woman painted gorgeous flowers on silk. She blushed and denied it when they told her she was an artist. Another woman made period doll clothes that were exquisite. There were some costumers, including one who made a corset that was incredible. The lone guy in the crowd wasn't actually a sewer but he designed some cool looking silk shirts to wear when he performs with his harp.

After the "show and tell" they raffled off some prizes: yards of silk, samples of silk thread and ribbon, and some books. Unfortunately I didn't win but later on, when I was still browsing fabrics in their store, they came up to me and gave me one of the gift bags they gave to the people who showed off their items. In the bag was a silk tie, silk scarf, piece of wide black lace (also silk?), and a big bag of silk swatches. Cool.

They also had a one day only 25% off storewide sale, hence my prolonged browsing. Yes, I have an overflowing stash at home and no, I don't need anything, but...how could I resist? I bought some white silk jacquard and four yards of this silk crepe georgette



I know it looks really wild in that swatch but trust me, it looks much better in real life. Although the swatch is more accurate to the way the pattern looks in the charmeuse, which is why I bought the georgette. I haven't decided exactly what to make with it but I'm thinking some sort of blouse or jacket that would keep the fabric more flowing and also in folds so that the overall pattern is not so visible. While I like the William Morris-like print, it's quite busy so I'd rather let the color combination come through more than the pattern itself.

Grownup toys

The camera, a Nikon D50 digital SLR, is a birthday gift from my husband. I thought my Nikon Coolpix 5700 was a great camera...and it is, but digital SLR rocks! No more lag when I take the shot. You can fire off shot after shot in rapid succession. I wish I'd had this camera at Le Mans! There would have been more pictures of cars and less of empty track (since the car was long out of the frame when I snapped the picture, even when I tried to time it). The SLR has a manual focus as well as automatic so I no longer have to wait for ever for the Coolpix to figure out what to focus on. This will help tremendously with close up shots because I had many times where the Coolpix just refused to focus at all.

The only problem is that I'm back to toting a camera bag containing multiple lenses! I enjoy point and shoot cameras for their portability but when you want quality pictures and control over your shots, then I guess you have to live with extra gear. At least I don't have to tote around rolls and rolls of film. And pay for the processing. (camera photo from Macworld.com by the way)

The truck replaces a 16 year-old F-250 diesel. My husband said the truck was old enough to get a learner's permit and drive itself. And no, I did not take that picture of the truck with my new camera. I found the photo on internetautoguide.com.

I never liked driving the F-250 beast - not that I did drive it. I drove it once for a very short time when we were tugging a cargo trailer (empty at the time) on a cross country trip to retrieve stuff from my mom's basement. About 250 miles from my mom's house the transmission failed. Fortunately a friend lived nearby and came to rescue us. We left the truck and trailer at a gas station garage, rented a car, and continued to mom's house to work on cleaning out the basement while the truck was worked on. The mechanic thought he could "save" us money by replacing one part, despite our request and his agreement to rebuild it. Yeah, thanks buddy. The transmission still leaked but we made it to my mom's house where we then had to scramble to find a place to rebuild the transmission in short order as we were already running out of vacation time. The transmission held for the 3000 mile trip home but the spedometer and odometer didn't work and the passenger power window failed somewhere in Missouri. We had the transmission worked on two more times after we got home. In addition to the unreliable transmssion, the window seals leak, and the air conditioner doesn't work. Then someone broke in through the back sliding window and stole the radio (it was a fairly inexpensive one we installed, but still...).

So it was time for a new truck. We've been remodeling our house and do the work ourselves, so we do need a truck for all those Home Depot and dump runs. And I might actually enjoy driving it!

Knitting 101

Sometimes it's the basic things that catch me. Today's knitting question: Is every two rows the same as every other row?

And when the instructions say something like increase every 4 rows, is the 4^th row the one you increase on or is the next one? I figure it would be the next one. Take for example a stockinette stitch with instructions to increase every 4 rows. I would begin the increase on the first row and count this as row 1.

row 1: knit ---- increase
row 2: purl
row 3: knit
row 4: purl
row 5 (1): knit ---- increase
row 6 (2): purl
row 7 (3): knit
row 8 (4): purl
row 9 (1): knit ---- increase
...etc

Am I right or am I wrong?

So for every two rows:

row 1: knit --- increase
row 2: purl
row 3 (1): knit --- increase
row 4 (2): purl
row 5 (1): knit --- increase
...etc

Hmmmm...that looks like every other row. So why didn't they just say that? So I think I'm ok and won't have to rip back the last two rows I knit last night!

Busy week

I've been busy but not busy at the sewing machine, I'm afraid. My birthday was last week and so was our anniversary but they were sort of overshadowed by a big meeting at work. This meeting caused me to stay late on Monday, bring work home on Tuesday (my birthday!), spend Wednesday evening at dinner with the out of town work visitors (at least I got to drink wine), and by Thursday evening (our anniversary) I was completely spent.

I had intentions of getting lots of things done over the weekend but also high on my list was just relaxing. I did manage to do a bit of that. I spent some time just sitting and working on this:



I bought the yarn (Rowan Cashcotton in Apple):



and the book:



in Mendocino. Actually, my husband found the book, liked the sweaters and thought I might too so he encouraged me to buy both the book and the yarn for this project. He's sweet. And apparently not (too) annoyed by the yarn and pattern books I already own and have not used.

I thought the name of the designer and the "viking knits" theme was familiar and when I checked my bookshelf I found Viking Patterns for Knitting, by Elsebeth Lavold. How about that?
The sweater is coming along slowly, despite the fact that I pick it up every time I sit down to watch TV. I watch a lot of TV but still haven't gotten very far on the back. This is perhaps why I have not knit many sweaters. Maybe I will post of photo of my progress, but maybe I will wait until I get to the more interesting cables in the design motif on the front. How exactly I'm going to do those cables, having never knitted cables before and being lefthanded, I don't know. There is a chart and I can follow charts and supposedly if you're a lefthanded knitter you don't run into left vs. right problems, but we'll see. However, I will definitely be sure to make a sample of the charted motif.

I'm still intending to get pictures of our Mendocino trip up on flickr.com. I have them posted on Kodakgallery.com. I don't know if this link will work for anyone to view them on that site but it's worth a try.

Jalie polo shirt #2 is in pieces on my dress form. I finished the front placket and sewed up the collar pieces. Although I love this fabric - a rayon knit - I am not happy that I chose this particular fabric for this pattern. The fabric is quite thin and can't really support the lump created in the front of the shirt where the two placket sides are sewn together. I had no idea this would happen and will have to consider it a learning experience because there's nothing that can be done about it now. But I will not let this shirt become a wadder so I'll continue to work on it. I adjusted the shoulder seam to try to eliminate some of the excess fabric under my arm. I think that will do the trick. Now I just need to adjust the sleeves to compensate for the smaller opening.