Name That Cardigan

There's a point in your schedule at which having a whole lot of fulfilling activities suddenly becomes overwhelming, and those fulfilling activities lose a little of the appeal that made you sign up in the first place. It's like hitting peak oil: you're drawing more energy out of yourself than you can produce.

A sign that I have hit peak oil would be that I have been waiting three days to finish the final two inches of a shoulder seam on a cardigan I'm designing. I have a Netflix movie that has been sitting on our table for 9 days. The bathroom sink doesn't want to get undressed if the lights are on.

It's those final two inches that are bothering me the most.

Here's my original sketch of the cardigan:

This is my first sweater that I've designed, and it's actually gone very well, when I've had time for it. I don't have a name for it yet; I'm calling it a "Honeysuckle Cardigan" on my Rav page, but seems like there ought to be something more alluring than that.

If you're thinking of designing a sweater, here are some lessons I've learned as a first-timer:

1. Draw a sketch, even if you think you're a bad artist.
1(a). You're probably not that bad of an artist.
1(b). When you're halfway in and you're trying to remember how wide a lace panel you wanted, look back at the sketch. Things will change from start to finish, but this is how you record your original inspiration.

2. Read up on sleeves before you get too far. I am shocked that these sleeves appear to have worked out. (There's still a chance they'll fail - remember those two inches.)

3. Reduce bulk. Make a half-inch seam allowance instead of a full inch; do a three-needle bind-off at the shoulders.

4. Seam in bits and pieces to see how things are going.

5. Keep it simple. Someone (maybe Michelle Rose Orne?) said that you should focus on one inventive design element, and everything else should support that. That doesn't mean everything else is boring, just that you're creating an essay of sorts, and you need to remember what your thesis statement is.

6. Make thorough notes on your swatch. I did it on an index card which I'll probably staple to the swatch after the sweater's done, so I can have proof that it lied to me.

7. When all else fails, study the Anthropologie catalog. Those sweaters are genius.

FO: Fishens

Before we get down to business, I'd like to bring up something. There ought to be a special word for the kind of person who plays his television at top volume early in the morning while he's in the shower and therefore can't see said television. How about... "douche-waster"?

Our downstairs neighbor has decided he'd like to be a douche-waster. So that's why I'm up this early.

I also have a list of FOs and WIPs that is beginning to make me feel guilty. That right there is not a good sign. I just started contributing to a for-profit blog (hard launch next week, I'll tell you about it then), one that requires five posts per week, and the last thing I want is for this project (slightly paid though it may be) to start gouging into this blog and my knitting time. I may not have a choice.

Quick projects are good in a stressful time, and a couple weeks ago, I finished up these baby mittens, which I'm calling Fishens for now:

I suppose the pattern is mine in that the concept is mine, but it's really a Frankenstein of two patterns, neither of which originated in my brain: Baby Mittens (which I've made before) and Wishy Washy Fishy Tawashi.

They took about two weekend days to complete, which doesn't count my false start after I decided I didn't like the colors I was using before and frogged the first attempt. In fact, if I had scrap sock yarn that was machine-washable, I would certainly have chosen brighter colors, but this is what I had, and given the state of the current embargo on yarn buying, I went with it.

I started these Fishens without a recipient in mind, but then the fella pointed out that he's subbing for someone who's on maternity leave from work, and it was a good opportunity to make nice. Turns out, she adores them and now wants pairs for all her friends.

I sure don't have time for whatever number "all of her friends" turns out to be, but it's nice the Fishens are appreciated.



pattern: Fishens, a combo of two other patterns (see above).
completed: October 25, 2009.
yarn: The Woolen Rabbit merino/nylon sock yarn (colorway: Rosemary and Thyme) and Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock Solid (colorway: chino)
made for: professional advancement
needles: size 2 dpns

Multiplication Tables

Last night I cast on for a pair of men's gloves requested by a friend. This friend has enormous hands. His wrists are 8" in diameter. His knuckles are 9.5" in diameter. (A woman's medium is usually about 6"/7.5".) There is no one in my household with hands like that, so I am making these gloves somewhat blindly, with only my hasty measurements to guide me.

Here's the math: at a gauge of 20 sts/4", an eight-inch wrist means 40 stitches, minus the standard 10 percent for ribbing.

(Did you know you subtract at least 10 percent on ribbing, to make it snug? You do.)

I decided to cast on 36 stitches. What's 36 divided between 3 needles? Why, 13 of course.

Sigh.

In other news, tomorrow I'll be returning to the third grade, where we learn things like multiplication and division.

Happy Point Count: 63. I have my next yarn order all picked out, but oddly enough, we have no money. I appear to have discovered a flaw in the Happy Point system, wherein previously I had assumed that I would have least that much money to spend on yarn once I'd earned the points. In fact, income has proved to be an independent variable, and long story short, we're damned poor right now, thankyouverymuch RECESSION. (Yeah, I'm talking at you.)

But good golly, Molly. If and when things turn around for us, can you imagine the colossal box of yarn that will arrive at our doorstep? Not just yarn: books, clothes, the entire stock of Anthropologie... A dresser from Pottery Barn... My sweetie wants a PS3...

Adventures Abound

We're trying new things around here.

First, I had a coupon for Greenling, an organic grocery home delivery service. They offer a lot of local foods, which are hard to find when you start looking.

Turns out, local foods really are better -- it's the freshness. On Saturday, we had my usual "throwpot pasta" (throw whatever you have into a pot and put it over pasta) with half a pound of ground beef from a cow who lived in nearby Bastrop and ate a lot of grass. OH MY GOODNESS. You could smell and taste the difference -- absolutely fresh meat, bright red when it was raw, that tasted superb. Also, meat from locally raised livestock may still involve the death of an animal, but the animal lived in better conditions and the negative environmental impact is drastically lessened by the reduced distance the meat has to travel.

We also got a half-dozen fresh eggs form a local farm in the same drop-off box. Four of them did their part in a key lime pie:

It didn't last long enough for a virgin photo.

I followed the recipe in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and the ingredients roughly include the following:

• 9 Graham crackers
• sugar
• LOADS of butter
• the yolks of four farm-fresh eggs
• a little bit of lime juice
• later,
• the four egg whites
• confectioner's sugar
• a pinch of cream of tartar and salt
• a call to my mother to ask if it really takes that long to beat meringue: "It's faster if you have a mixer." / "Yeah, I don't think we have one."
• a plea to my husband who generously turned his arm to the meringue when mine threatened to fall off, followed by, "You know we have a mixer, don't you?"

Lastly, I finally found the time to unpack my brand...
new...
sewing machine!

Thanks to Kara and Consumer Reports, I settled on a Brother Innovis-40 machine, and this weekend I tried it out on a simple repair job. It ain't pretty, but that's one sports bra that'll have another few years of use left. I've got a skirt pattern and some cotton-hemp fabric waiting for when my courage rises.

By the way, I put money down for all the products mentioned here. Just in case anybody's wondering if Brother decided to send me a free sewing machine. (Say, that's a pretty good idea, now that I mention it...)

Lace: How to Read a Chart

Tonight, I tried to pick up where I left off on my Traveling Roses Scarf:

I had the chart in front of me, and I stared and I stared for minutes and minutes. Dinner was on the verge of burning, but I couldn't tear myself away from that chart until I deduced properly where I'd left off. I began to mutter, to curse, to squint. How could I be so lost? How could it be this impossible to find my place? I'd only put it down less than two weeks ago! Confoundit, that stupid, mother-effing piece-of-crap pattern written by the biggest b--

Oh.

I was holding the paper upside-down.

Navajoland: Come for the Unemployment, Stay for the Dust

(Which is not to be disrespectful to the Navajo. I think most Navajo would in fact appreciate the dark humor. And to be fair, there was an awful lot of dust.)

As I mentioned, the other week I went on a volunteer trip to the Navajo Reservation. We worked on the roof of a house that was about ten minutes from town. Behind the house was a view like this:

Next door to the dorm was a trading company with a wall like this:

I accomplished many things.

Happy Point Count: 52. It was significantly higher, but see that picture? These folks are selling Brown Sheep Top of the Lamb for $4.25/skein, and Lamb's Pride for $4.50/skein. Plus I was lonely, and I'd like to point out that some people shoot heroin when they get lonely.

FO: Selbu Modern, DK'd

The list of items I am intending to showcase here is sort of appalling, in that it's very long and I have the attention span of a turnip this week. That's what happens when you endure five and a half days of dust storms in rural New Mexico, much of it from atop the roof of a house where your cell phone just looks back at you and blinks rather than attempt any meaningful contact with the outside world.

Just sayin'.

Where was I?

I finished this a few weeks ago in September:

Apologies for the bathroom-mirror shot. I try to avoid those, but the odd part of finally living in a nice apartment is that there is no direct light against a bare wall anywhere in here.

This yarn is unbelievably awesome. Soft, soft, soft, and the colors behave excellently together, precisely in the opposite way of a dust storm and my sinuses.

pattern: Selbu Modern, by Kate Gagnon Osborn.
completed: September 28, 2009.
yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca & Silk (1 skein each of 127 (blue) and 132 (yellow), 146 yards each).
made for: me.
needles: size 1 and 3 circs.

Permit me to show off like your Cousin Buster last Thanksgiving and tell you about my mathematical prowess. See those decreases at the top? There are seven repeats in there. Yup, seven. Pattern calls for eight. I used a DK yarn instead of light fingering, and all my calculations (many of which involved the quantity pi) turned out righty-right-right. I'm just sayin'.

This pattern is a super one if you're not sure about your colorwork skills; there are only two strands throughout. Plus, it's beautiful. I've got my eye on Jared Flood's Beaumont Tam next!