Castonitis

I have a serious case of “cast-on-itis”. I ferret out all these cool little projects that I simply must cast on right this very second or I will die, my heart pounds, my fingers tremble, I swoon. Then I take a few breaths, chant and the terror passes. Let me explain what I have going on (“no there is too much, let me sum up” bonus points if you, Dear Reader, can NameThatQuote!)

OTN (On the Needles)

The Punk Shrug: Status – Hibernating.
This was started for baby sister and is on hold until I find her measurements so I can see if it will actually fit. I’m hovering in this looooong section of stockentte and well frankly it gets a tad boring after awhile.

Jawbreaker Cardigan: Status – Unknown.
I am filled with deep dark premonitions that this project will soon find its way to the Frog Pond. I adore the pattern. I adore the yarn I bought for it… however…. After skimming “More Big Girl Knits” in the bookstore a while back – I am coming to the conclusion that Chunky Knits + Chunky Girl = Not So Good. I absolutely refeuse to knit a garment saying to myself “well, I’ll lost 40lbs and look perfect in it!”. I’m going to hold off on final judgment after serious conversation with the Mamajama… and after buying and devouring “More Big Girl Knits”.

Midnight Surf Scarf: Status – WOW.
I can’t stop knitting on this. It is so very awesome. The pattern is sooo much fun to work with and of course I love my Inferno Monster Yarn. I actually have to start holding back and savoring the experience!

Recent FO (Finished Objects)

Branching Out AKA Spring Mix Leaves Scarf
I’ve actually made some great progress in the finishing category, because you see, it is finished completely. AND I BLOCKED IT! Yes, I actually blocked it. That is a big deal to me. Usually I burn out of big projects by the time it comes to the finishing details like sewing on buttons (see “I’m a little teapot Cosy”) and sewing in ends. I have a horrible terrible confession to make. I don’t sew in the ending yarn in the toes of my socks. I know. I’m a terrible knitter. I should shun myself from knitting society and live a solitary life of penance…. But I digress… So this is why I’m so proud of the Branching out scarf… I SPUN it from roving. I PLIED the singles into a 3-ply yarn. I KNIT it into a lovely LACE pattern. And I sewed all the ends in AND BLOCKED it. Proud. Proud indeed.

Stretchy Sport Socks
I am not a fan of these socks…. Fade to black with telltale flashback music. The Mamajama and I were on a yarn-crawl thru the smaller yarn shops of The Isle of Long. There are times, I have to admit, that I get this pang of guilt in my gut when I just browse in smaller local shops. I know very well how hard it is for LYS to stay afloat so when I pop in, I feel obligated to buy something… so anyway… in this LYS the were some balls of this candy colored cotton stuff with elastic. And the shop gal assured me you could get two socks out of the tiny ball. I think it was under $10 so I could satisfy my guilt and have a pair of socks to boot! I figured the color would grow on me. Well, I might have been a touch “glass-half-full” on this one as the color didn’t grow, actually it kind of shrank and shrivled… now add that to some serious pattern frustration, makes for not a happy project experience. I did manage to finish them up during WWKIP Day. So they are done. Done! They will probably never see the light of day, but they are done.

What I WANT on the needles

Oh, I’m in such dilemmas. The Mamajama has roped me into not one, but two, count ‘em TWO sock knitting KALs – The Sock Knitter’s Pentathlon and The Pair-a-Month Challenge. SKP2008 I’ve talked about before (to sum up- a speed knitting challenge of 5 socks over the course of the year, quickest overall knitter wins). A sock is released every two months. The Pair-a-Month challenge is well, pretty self explanatory and if you need me to explain, let’s talk. Now, the Mamajama and I have agreed that we can double count the SKP socks for the Challenge. Now here’s my dilemmas… THERE ARE TOO MANY COOL SOCKS TO CAST ON! The Summer Knitty just came out and the nanosecond I saw Ziggy, I was balling up my skein of Noro. I cast on and knit a good portion of the annterloc sock in the Brooklyn Handspun Sprinz but HATE how it’s coming out. It’s far far too poofy (Yes, that is a technical term). So, to the frog pond it went and I found the Rainy Day Pattern to cast on that should match up nice with the yarn weight. Picot edge, people! It has a Picot edge!!! And then there is the Bellatrix sock. MUST MAKE HARRY POTTER SOCKS! And I LOVED the, but I just have to find a suitable yarn. But I know myself, if I cast on all these projects right now, I will run out of steam before the pair a month challenge is up. And there is NO way I’m losing to the Mamajama. Not happening. Nope. Never! So I’m booked up on socks for-like-EVA. July will be the SKP Sock3. August will be Ziggy. September will be SKP Sock4. October could be The Romantic Lace. November is SKP Sock5. And December is Belletrix. January is Anntreloc????? How crazy is that?

A slow few days

Things have been quiet on the crafty front. Well, that’s not exactly true.

Remember my Inferno Monster plans.

Well, I got Phase 1 and Phase 3 done. I like phase 1 a lot. Not so happy with Phase 3. It didn’t turn out the way I expected. I wanted solid colors with a hint of accent color. It’s certainly a lesson learned! I can’t wait to see how it knits up.

Phase 2 of the Inferno Monster is by far the easiest. It’s just solid sections of color with blended sections in between. My problem is to figure out how big each section will be. Since I’m Navajo plying, the color sections will shrink to a third of the length of the single. I’m thinking I might do fairly small sections, break it up the way I did for Phase 2 so that I’ll get short color changes and less of a stripy effect. I hope. So far, little has turned out the way I wanted it to. It’s supercool, nonetheless, albeit not how I predicted (Oh how I love words that are actually more than one word mushed together ie., none-the-less) I think am going to have to try and get good pictures of how to Navajo Ply. It’s a very cool technique and I’m sure if I don’t do it for an extended period of time, I’ll forget. Handy thing about blogs, they are like your own personal reference guide!

I’m off to visit the Mamajama for the weekend! I’m bringing the Inferno Monster but I probably won’t work on it. Spinning is kind of a solitary obsessive process for me. I have to figure out something to do with the Spring Mix. I’m just not happy with the scarf. It will probably meet the frog pond for the second time. I’ll show mommy and then decide.

You spin me right round Inferno Monster!

Between Defensive Driving and a Bachelorette party, I got in a ridiculous amount of spinning.

Before I talk about Inferno Monster, I need to dish about the driving course and the party.

$50 an hour.
My eyes teared up and my stomach dropped when I bought my first 6 months of car insurance. I was so excited to learn it was JUST $500 but I didn’t fully understand, that was for a 6 months policy. I had a swift learning curve. It does seem a tad goofy that at 35, this is the first time I’ve bought car insurance, but until 2 years ago, I lived in great cities with great public transportation rendering a car, not only not smart, but completely foolish. I’ve never been a big car person, never really felt that apparently All-America desire to drive whopping gas guzzling vehicles. Then I moved here, the Ex bought me a car (which will shortly be nicknamed POC short for “piece-o-crap”) and I had to buy insurance. Once I figured out how it all works, the buying of the insurance wasn’t a problem. Watching $500+ leave my account was painful however, especially when you consider that in a blink of 6 months, I’ll have to pay that all over again. And basically the only way to lower your insurance is to take a defensive driving class. Now I have heard people lament about the horrors of sitting in a room for 6 hours listening to some guy wax pathetic on the rules of the road, but honestly, 6 hours of my life is totally worth expending in the strenuous activity of sitting in a chair knowing that I’ll get to keep about 100 smackers in my wallet. Nice ROI there don’t ya think?

Bachelorette Parties
I’ve never been to one before. This was an event for a co-worker. I wouldn’t consider us “friends” but we are certainly “friendly” and I was glad to go. There is an odd tradition in these parts that Bachelor/Stag/Bachelorette parties are paid events, meaning that you, as the guest, buy a ticket and pay for the privilege of drinking with the future Bride or Groom and stand witness as their ‘singleton’ days fade into the sunset. This is how most couples raise money for the wedding I’m told. How odd is that? So in essence, it’s like paying to go to the wedding. Very strange. I had a good time regardless and rediscovered my love for Stoli. No, there were wild tales to tell for the nights proceedings, although I did find myself in the peculiar position of molding penises from purple playdo with my co-workers (silly games are apparently required at such events). That was fairly uncomfortable (more for them, less for me).

Back to the spinning!

I’ve mentioned my 3-part-plan to spin Inferno. I started off like gang busters and got the first part done. I divided up the roving into three separate colors and spun each color separately. It was much harder than I anticipated to separate the fiber. And no, I am not quite that anal enough to sit there with tweezers and pull out each fiber individually. I wound up with bunches of little wisps of roving that had two colors in it. So I decided to spin these bits at the beginning and the ending of each of the solid color batch. This fiber was a tad more difficult to work with than other stuff I’ve been using. It’s VERY soft, VERY poofy, VERY silky, and will start to felt just from the pressure of my fingers and the moisture off my palms. This is not a “gnash-teeth-rend-garments” type of problem, but does lead to slubs and mild irritation (that’s mental irritation, not physical). I’ve adjusted the way I hold the fiber a bit to help with this problem. The end yarn doesn’t suffer that much because of it. OH, also, this stuff breaks like mad. I’ll be spinning happily, la la la, twirl draft twirl draft twirl CLUNK - the single will breaks and the spindle will crash to the ground. Clunk. I think I’m going to need a new spindle soon, as this one has bellyflopped quite a bit. This stuff is so poofy that I’ve had to add a lot of twist to it of it just breaks for the weight of the spindle. But I did get to ply it all.
And I’m happy to report that the yarn is delightfully soft and fuzzy. I’ll have to let Claire give it the nuzzle test. But it seems quite nice. I can’t wait to knit with it, but wait I must! I need to find a pattern that I can show off the three different patterned yarns. Well, I HOPE I’ll have three different patterned yarns.

I’m not too sure how this will all work out yet.

Frogged!

Alas, we are gathered here today to wish farewell to a sock. I’m deeply saddened to inform you that the Spring Mix Handspun Rainy Day Sock has retired to the Frog Pond.

I became increasing un-fond of the color changes on the sock. I love the sock pattern, and I love the yarn. But they were just not working together. I’m totally digging lacey stuff right now after successfully completing the Berlin Sock. I’m going to stick this pattern back into my queue and do it another (rainy) day. Here’s the other problem that contributed to the frogging… It didn’t use enough yarn. I have a yarn meter (thanks to the mamajama!) and all the stuff I spun up for the Spring mix totaled about 355 yards. The sock require close to 400 I think. I had finished the sock and didn’t even get a third of the way thru the ball. I hate having leftover yarn! Yes yes, I know, too much is better than not enough. But what the heck was I going to do with 100 yards of handspun. This is HANDSPUN! Meaning I spun it BY HAND! That’s too precious to just sit in a ball somewhere so I can look back and fondly remember spinning.

So to the frog pond it goes!

I balled it back up and divided it (hopefully mostly evenly) into two sections using that handy-dandy meter again. And I found the Sisters pattern for a lacey scarf. The pattern is a little strange in that you knit the scarf in two pieces and then graft them together (oh how I despise the Kitchner’s Stitch! I will get over it however). So I’m knitting the two parts at the same time. Much confusion is already ensuing. But I figure if I knit the two halves at the same time, I can just stop if I run out of yarn. This will give me better yardage usage and hopefully I’ll get more out of the yarn.

More on this later!

and speaking of frogging...

This sort of ties back to my “Lazy Perfectionist” post… well not really…

See, I started this Head Band Thingie I found on Ravelry. I’m not a hat person, my hair is too big for hats (not 80’s big but not conducive to proper hat coverage) and since I live in the Great White North, having something on your head is important, lest your ears freeze off! Enter the Head Band Thingie. It’s a fairly simple pattern… a rib pattern where the rib increases from a k2/p2 rib to a k2/p5 and back down again.

Simple right?

Well right off the bat I started having issues. You are supposed to slip the first stitch on each row to create a stockinet edge. Well, I must be twisting it or something because I’m getting this intermittent bumpy edge.

Second, I forgot to count rows which means, I’m going to have to count it all up somehow on the decreases, not a bad problem just a pain.

Third, the pattern said to make all the increases on the right side rows. Well, I didn’t read that part and did it on the wrong side, then corrected it and did the next row of increases correctly BUT I like it better with the increases on the wrong side. So when I went to do one of the rounds of increases, I was having such a hard time increasing, purling into the front and back of one stick, that I decided to just pick up a stitch and just purl it... which resulted in a series of big holes in the fabric… AND I didn’t really love the yarn I was using anyway…

so 1/3 of the way into this little project, I ripped it all out. I’ll probably start it again. I’m not sure.

Why I should have listened to the voices in my head....

So I finally bit the bullet and I sat down last night with the new pattern and how much yarn it's going to take for the two throws I wanted to do (see earlier post).... Did the math...

CRAP
(sorry mom)

Not going to be enough. Not even close. It would be more of a pillow cover (granted a large pillow, but still) than a throw. The voices in my head at the yarn sale that told me to buy extra, but alas, I chose not to listen to them. This is one situation where I can think that it WAS a good idea to listen to those voices... despite what the doctors say.

So I'm either going to completely frog what I have and start over - mind you, this would be the 6th time - and try to find an ok pattern this time around... or give up for now and try to find coordinating yarn at another time to make it big enough. I'm thinking option 2, a) because I have a list of things that I really do need before Christmas b) because I think I might snap if I have to work on it right now.

But maybe now I'll finally finish the hats I drunkenly promised my friends a while ago :)