I think I have finally gotten the hang of this thing.  After 3 cast-on attempts, a few choice words said, knitting row 4 even after I figured out that some how I had lost 3 stitches in row 3 and determined that I was NOT going to frog again, I finally have it figured out.  It is rather simple, really.  I don’t know why I had such a hard time with the start, but hopefully things will be smooth from here on out.

I even applied a trick that I learned in my mittens class a month ago.  Row 11 calls for an increase of 18 stitches, 9 on each side, to "fill out" the sleeves.  Back in row 4 when I had to increase 3 stitches to make up for the three that I lost, I used the pick-up method, the one where you dip down to the row below and bring up the yarn to make a new stitch.  Well, when you knit on the row coming back you actually create a small, rather noticeable hold. 

See the hole?  It’s small, I know, but it is still there and I’m a little self-conscious about it, thank you very much.

So when it came time for me to add the 18 stitches I was a little more than concerned about the holes in the thing.  I didn’t think they were becoming.  But then something happened.  I suddenly remembered a technique from my mittens class that just might apply here.  And lo-and-behold it worked!  No holes!  See?

The increase row was the second blue row.  Betcha can’t find any holes in there that aren’t supposed to be there!  Ha! to the holes!

Here’s what I did.  When I came to the stitch that I was supposed to increase, I did a simple yarn-over, which will also produce a small hole.  But then on the next row, instead of knitting it just as it is, I knit into the back loop instead of knitting into the front loop.  This will in effect flip the stitch around closing up the hole.  And unless you make the yarn over too loose (which I did on a few of them) you cannot tell that you increased at all.  Rather a brilliant move on someone’s part to invent that I’ll tell you!

So this is the progress I’ve made in the last few days..all while attending a conference in Nashville.  Toodles!

There are decisions that we make when we are not completely awake.  Unfortunately most of these decisions are bad ones.  Take for example the time I decided to exercise early in the morning and the piece of equipment flew off my feet and whacked me in the mouth.  7 stitches but no broken/chipped/cracked teeth, just one big, fat lip.

Today it was not exercise that became the bad decision but my choice of words.  I woke up this morning at 3:45 AM to take a cab to the train station to go downtown so that I could then walk 5 blocks to catch the El to the airport, walk about 200 miles, wait for 90 minutes, sit on the runway for 30 minutes all so that I could arrive in Nashville for a conference.  I must also mention that between 3:45 AM and 5:45 PM I ate exactly one bagel (toasted) with one small pack of cream cheese and one coke.  So, I’m at the conference, its the end of the day and there is this Regional User’s Group meeting…kind of free form…with these tables set up with food things on them.  Richard (a co-worker) decided to go for the cheese and cracker table so that we could then spend time in the bread-marinated vegetable-meat line.

Enter: my big mouth.  I love cheese.  Basically any kind of cheese will do.  The cheese table was really good.  While in line I made the comment that I could live on cheese, peanut butter and mint chocolate chip ice cream.  Those are three of my favorite things.  Apparently Richard takes objection to my choice of three things.

Question:  what three foods could you not live without?

Okay, so I had pictures of my mittens and the new baby sweater that I’m knitting for Gabrielle Joy (my new niece due in July) and as things would go, I had to frog the baby sweater. Somehow I just lost count of which row I was on…and I couldn’t figure out where I was. Luckily I had only gone 8, or 9 or 10 rows, so it’s not much of a loss. I have a new spreadsheet on its way that will explain the whole business for me. There is a guy who put the whole thing together and is willing to share the spreadsheet upon proof of ownership of pattern. You can find him here. Toodles for now.

Well, since I have the Baby Hearts blanket finished, I’ve been working on the mittens.  I would be working on the socks since they are more practical, but I’m ready to “turn the heel” and I don’t know how to do that, so I’m waiting on those until Kate can teach me how.  Meanwhile, lest I forget the Magic Needle trick, I’ve been working on the mittens.  Oh, lookie what I have here, a picture.  I’m not sure why this came out so whitewashed (overexposed), but you can get a small glimpse of the colorway.  The thing I like about these is that you can’t match them up, or at least I couldn’t (which isn’t saying much).  But you can see how well the 10-stitch cast on fits the hand better, whereas before, with 5 stitches, I could only get 3 fingers in – my pinkie decided it needed warmth too!

Here’s another picture.  I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet when I get to the thumbs – I hope I remember that hands are mirrored and not exactly the same, otherwise I’ll end up with 2 righties or 2 lefties, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t all that bad – having one hand warm is at least 50% there.  Wish me luck on the thumb thing.

I also cast on last night for the Baby Surprise Jacket (Elizabeth Zimmerman) in a fantastic cotton yarn.  It is from Knit One Crochet Too and the colorway is Ty-Dy in a purple/blue/green (color #672/lot 4519).  I have 2 skeins of the purple/blue/green (196 yards each) and one in a green variegated that I will add to contrast the purple.  Here are the first photos ever taken (shhh, please don’t disturb the nature taking place here):

These were taken from the back of the library where my office is (Lake Forest College).  The building in the background is Hotchkiss Hall and is one of the oldest buildings on campus.  It used to be a women’s gym, complete with swimming pool, and now it houses the Psychology, Sociology and, I believe, the Anthropology departments.

After one false start and one frustrating start I finally have my mittens in the current queue.  I am making square top mittens using the Magic Needle method I learned back in April – knitting 2 mittens at the same time on one circular needle.  In the class we made "mini mittens" and since I was using the yarn that I had purchased to make the real ones, I frogged them and started over.  The first false start came when I realized that if I cast on the same number of stitches as for the mini mittens then I would, in fact, end up with…mini mittens.  My hands are small but not that small, so I frogged again and this time cast on for 10 stitches.  (For those of you out there who are extremely adept and experienced knitters, I need to make a clarification.  When I say that I cast on 10, what I actually mean is that there are 10 stitches on one needle and 10 stitches on the other needle.  I seem to have a mental block when it comes to circular knitting and how many stitches in total that I’m working with.)

After knitting 2 rounds I decided that I had no clue what I was doing and so decided to frog again and try for the third time.  Charm.  I am now half way down my hands and they are fitting like a glove..er, I mean mittens.

I confessed a few weeks ago to having a yarn obsession, but what I didn’t explain was that my obsession is really not that bad.  Now I know what you are thinking, that most people with an addiction and/or obsession always say that they "are not that bad" and to their credit there will probably always be someone worse off than they.  I think this holds true for me – there are absolutely TONS of people with worse yarn/knitting addictions than me.  I know, I’ve read their blogs.  My confession today comes not as a justification of how not bad my addiction really is, but an exploration of how I think about knitting and yarn.

I started with crochet about 4 years ago learning from a friend who knits and crochets constantly and has been doing so since she was about 5 years old.  She is "mom taught" and has not taken many, if any, knitting/crochet classes.  I really respect her for what she does.  She has a big heart and makes lots of things for other people and rarely anything for herself.  I have had a great time learning both crafts from her.

I decided to learn these two crafts after several frustrating years of doing cross-stitch (which I still do enjoy just not as much).  My frustration stemmed from how not really portable that craft is.  Just as soon as I get settled in a chair, pull out the chart, select the floss and thread the needle, probably 20 minutes have passed and no progress on the actual piece has been made.  The constant chart reading was enough to drive me crazy.  Enter a more portable craft: crochet.

I’ve decided that I’m more of a dreaming knitter than a productive one.  Looking at my list of Finished Objects in the last 3 years one could probably guess that about me fairly easily.  I don’t knit fast, nor do I knit frequently, but I enjoy the process of knitting more than anything.  Being able to see a pattern develop, learn new patterns and actually do something while watching TV is very soothing and relaxing.  Something much needed in my hectic life.  Being a full-time programmer and part time graduate student, all the while leading a bible study and being a part of my church’s 8th grade confirmation class, doesn’t leave much time for knitting.  Hence the low number of FO’s.  But, because my schedule is so full, when I finally do sit down to knit, boy-oh-boy is that a relaxing hour or two.

Enter the dreaming part.  I’ve been purchasing quite a few knitting magazines lately and I’ve decided that I almost enjoy reading about knitting than actually knitting.  This may seem strange to you, but in my mind the possibilities of what to knit next are fantastic.  There are hoards and hoards of things out there that I can dream about and not have to worry about messing them up because I’m never really going to knit them.  That’s a pretty cool thing.  A lot less stress and some creative dreaming to boot.  Can’t beat that.

Until next time in the confessions diary – toodles.

The women in my Wednesday night bible study surprised me last night with a beautiful card and some gift cards as a “thank you” for leading the study this year. I was, to say the least, overwhelmed by their extreme generosity. There was, however, one stipulation: no buying yarn. Mina even checked Target to make sure that they didn’t sell any. Did I mention that I love the women in my bible study? They take my yarn obsession seriously. Thank you!

There was a young woman,

Who lived in a shoe;

She had too much yarn,

She didn’t know what to do.

She knit all day,

And crocheted all night;

But her projects were never done,

Try as she might.

I was really bummed at first to do a whole blanket in yellow, but I must say that this turned out okay.  I edged it with a pink yarn that was the perfect pink for the yellow, not too dark and not too pale.  The pink yarn also had little "ribbons" of color – blue, pink, yellow and green – that seemed to finish it off just right.

I’ve already had one comment that this doll is "freaky".  My grandmother made her, so please don’t freak out.  The doll really is much better in person.

This is a little blurry, but here you can see the edging a little better.  I did one row around of a slip crochet (really a 1/2 crochet), one round of a pure single crochet and one round of a picot edging.  It worked well…no folding or too much puckering.

FO: Saturday, May 10, 2008.  1 skein of 3/4 lb of love and 1 skein of something else (the pink yarn).  Started in October.  Pattern: made up.  It is basically 10 "columns" of hearts by 8 "rows".

Sometimes my mom really surprises me.  She emailed me a few pictures yesterday (that’s not what surprised me) along with this narrative (this is what surprised me):

I am sending you pictures. I was going to go to UPS and get your package off, but when I went downstairs I found the battery in my car was DEAD. Your Dad tried to take it out, but found he cannot find his metric tools (because I think he never puts things back where they belong–but that’s just me). He asked if I had a key to Kris & Jude’s house and I said yes. He tried calling Jude at work–I told him that he may have to leave a voice mail and he would call back–but he didn’t call back. He tried calling his cell Jude didn’t answer. Sooooo, he decided to jump in the truck and go to Auto Zone and buy a battery AND the metric tools that he would need. Here I sit with only laundry to get started on and waiting for a car. This is all for your benefit because I would not have downloaded the pictures until later this afternoon or sent them. Have a good time with the pictures! Mom

I thought this was a well written narrative.  I’m putting this out here in cyber space so that you can all see that 1) I am related to my Dad (my answer to not finding things is to just buy another…and I lose things quite frequently) and 2) that I am related to my Mom (cynical outlook while waiting for other people to do what they are supposed to).

Then she wrote this:

He came back with a new battery and ONE new wrench. The new battery had a carrying handle that we had to remove before it was placed in the car. The guy had told him how to remove it. Your Dad had trouble doing that. There is a tab that has to be bent out or it will catch on the battery and keep the handle from coming out. He worked and worked and couldn’t figure it out. I picked up a flat head screwdriver and held the tab out from underneath, but I couldn’t see what I was doing because I was not in the right position. He took the screwdriver and tried it and obviously he could see and it worked! He said ‘hmmm’ and went to work on the other handle. I said ‘you’re welcome’ and he looked at me and nodded his head. I guess that was his thank you. Anyway, we got the new battery in and screwed down and he reconnected the positive terminal, but when he touched the negative thing to the negative terminal, he horn went off and the lights blinked and we both jumped. Every time  he tried, the horn went off. That’s when he said “I guess I need to call [the Honda place] about this.”  All we had to do was when the horn sounded was to put the key into the lock on the door and turn it—that resets the alarm system. We did and it did not go off again. When he finished tightening everything up, it actually started up!

Oh, the things I get to look forward to when I retire.  Dead batteries and having all day to fix them…with no where pressing to go.. Ho Hum. 

Here are the pictures she sent.  The first one is my Dad with Olivia and the second is Jude (my brother-in-law) with Olivia.

Enjoy.

I have more for today’s post, but I have some work I need to get out of the way first.