Recently in Knitting Category

The book and the broom...

I just spent 4 days in Portland at the TKGA/CGOA show working for Stitch Diva and I did, in fact, put down my knitting. I spent all weekend working like crazy running the booth while Jen taught classes. I learned a lot about the inner workings of a successful knit/crochet company and I learned how to Tunisian crochet. Yes folks, I can now wield a hook with a basic level of success.

Jen was carrying Tilli Tomas, so needless to say much yummy yarn was brought home with me. There's a new yarn they make called Elsie, which is quite lovely, but totally reminds me of Cabaret, so I was humming the song all weekend long.

When I wasn't working I was off touring the town with my cohorts, Spinnity and Bogie. A very good time was had by all. We've decided that Portland has awesome public transport and it's on our short list of places to live. As if I need to move again. But it felt great to be out and about doing again, and pushing my little business along too.

Oh yes, dear Grant got Stick Chick Knits up and running, huzzah! It's very basic for now, but at least it is lovely to look at. It's forward progress and I'll take. As I learned this weekend...

When I go I'm going like Elsie!

I was talking to a friend online yesterday and realized that though I'd agreed to make a pair of socks for her mom, I'd never finished them. So I went digging through my stash yesterday and found this.

It's a pattern I was making up as I went along. Of course, I took no notes. So now I have to decide whether to plow on to the end (just have the toe left) and try to decipher my own knitting as I make sock number 2 or if I should just frog the thing and start over.

Here's my take, I like the pattern, mostly. Hate what I did with the cuff and am worried it will be too big through the leg. It fits my leg, but it's meant for a woman that is very thin and wears a size 5 shoe.

So do I cut off the cuff and work another cuff with smaller needles going up? Will a smaller cuff be enough to make this fit a small woman? Ugh, so much for a quick finish on a lingering UFO.

Though I have a blog, the vast majority of my tech support is done by my husband. That said, my poor husband is overworked when it comes to matters of the interwebs. Despite this, and because he is such a wonderful guy, Grant agreed to help me launch Stick Chick Knits.

I'm creating Stick Chick Knits as a way to break off the working nature of this blog (the patterns I'm chugging away on and planning on publishing) from the personal nature (pics of Zig and my travels and other ramblings). I was happy to let scknits (yes, it's a nod to both my Knittyboard name and my alma mater, yay) languish in the background for quite a while as I tinkered with my patterns. But now things are picking up speed and I really wanted to get something out there. So today I made interwebs! I borrowed some code Grant wrote, adapted it to my needs, created an image (bonus points to anyone that can name the yarn, including colorway, used), figured out how to use ftp through the run command line in Windows and put the dang thing up.

So now there is a tantalizing little image telling you Stick Chick Knits is on its way to becoming a real live website! It's not much, I know. But I kind of feel like this is the interwebs equivalent of that first scarf that actually turned out right. It might not be the perfect yarn and the stitch pattern might be basic, but it doesn't unravel and it can be recognized as a scarf. So go see my interwebs scarf!

Our good friend Chris excitedly emailed me the other day that his sister was due to have her baby girl very soon and he couldn't wait to be an uncle. So, of course, I asked him what her favorite color is and busted out the needles and the yarn as every baby deserves to have a hand knit hat to keep them warm.

I was thrilled to hear back from him today that his sis loved the hat and her little girl was happily wearing it at just three days old! He was even so sweet as to email me a picture of her wearing it. Isn't she darling? Almost makes me want to have another baby.

I've got to say, it absolutely warms my heart to see the things I make for little ones being used. It also reminds me that I should send thank you pictures along with the notes for all the folks that made Zig gifts. I think that may be what I love the most about knitting - the FOs are like little hugs. A sweet reminder that someone took some time to make you something.

I enjoyed making that little green hat so much that I decided to whip up a second one in blue so I could write up the pattern. I think I shall call it the Teeny Cabled Beanie. Here's a shot of it I took at lunch. Despite being outside, it's not the best representation of the color.

Once the hat was bound off I did some frogging on the Fair Isle scarf, I missed the last row of the snowflake pattern on one side of the scarf. So I took the opportunity to weave in the starting ends before continuing on with the scarf. Here's a shot of the inside of the scarf, kind of cool in its own way.

Lastly I'll leave you with a sneak peak of a big project I'm finishing up. I've got ends to weave in then it's time for the big photo shoot this weekend. After that the object goes to The Bobbin's Nest Studio and the photos go to the publisher (hopefully to be published online). If not, watch this space as I'll just publish the dang thing myself.

The blog has been quiet of late because things have been a zoo. Work is crazy busy all of a sudden and so is home life. We had a trip to LA to see Viv and her folks, then a weekend off, then it was off to Annapolis for Susie's wedding and now back to LA to see Grandma G and Great-Grandma B. We had so much fun at Susie's wedding that it's making me seriously homesick for all my friends. There were four of us that were in the same 3rd grade classroom and for the first time all four of us were together with our husbands in tow. We've all been to each other's weddings, but we've never had the boys all in one place. Along with the four of us from grade school we had a couple more friends from junior high there too. We were up way too late both nights and it was just fantastic. I love these guys so much. If only we didn't live scattered across the country!

As we were crazy busy getting things ready for the wedding, and then enjoying the wedding, I got very little knitting done. So I've decided to make up for it with a frenzy of knitting on this road trip. Hence the over packing. Right now I've got the ability to work on 7 different projects on my road trip. Yep, 7; because I cannot commit to just oh say 2 or 3. No, must feed the easily distracted ooh look shiny knitter in me.

The HSD will be finished on Sunday's drive home. 5 hours with lots of daylight is good HSD time. I made major progress on it driving home last month, so I am sure I can finish it this drive. It is actually finished, but I don't like the looks of the shoulders or my short rows, so I'm ripping back and trying again.

Along with the HSD I've got yarn to make some gauntlets for my sis for her birthday, a hank of Malabrigo that I think will be a hat for Ziggy and the first half of a second modified Manitou scarf for me (I've got the second hank in this color at home), my never ending MS 3, yarn for the Secret of the Stole (though I don't think I'll start this, as I'm not really into the design so far) and my new BSA eyelet cardigan. I figure it's ok to start working on a sweater for me as I'm going to have HSD done before I finish this cardigan.

I've got a very full knitting bag for this trip. Good thing I only had to pack a couple tshirts and some jeans to wear. Hooray for a relaxing road trip weekend with family!

I've had a knitting monkey on my back for about two years now, the never ending HSD. It's been frogged and tinked and reknit more times than I can remember at this point. I really did finally stop keeping track. In order to motivate myself to finish it I made Grant a promise. I swore I would not knit myself a sweater until the HSD is done. This has been such torture for me, as I have all sorts of beautiful yarns stashed away to make sweaters for me. So I have instead cheated and made all sorts of other goodies (hats, scarves, blankets, baby sweaters) in order to avoid working on the HSD.

But all this changed last weekend. We took a road trip to LA to meet the beautiful Miss Viv. It was a great trip. We ate and drank and cheered on the Men of Troy. We have video of our kids meeting each other for the first time. We're all still a bit agog at the thought that we now have kids in tow. Sunday we went to Portos, the best Cuban bakery ever; I grew up going there with my Grandma when they were a tiny store front in Glendale, now they've got two massive locations and lines out the door. After a quick trip to the yarn store next door (tell me again why I don't live in LA) we hit the road.

On the long drive home, filled with lots of sunshine and nothing to do, I hauled out the HSD and decided to tackle the decreases. Decreasing in linen stitch is not the most straightforward thing to do. I tried the good old K2tog and SSK a while back and it looked like crap. Which is why the HSD was stalled this most recent time, I needed to frog those rows and try again. But this second time around I got it. The decreases are exactly right. Things are progressing again!

So armed with my trusty Elizabeth Zimmerman for guidance the design of the upper sweater continues. I've got to say, EZ is brilliant, but she is not for beginners. At least, not the section on sweater design. She assumes you know a lot and just gives you the basic framework. I personally love this, but it does mean you need to have a clear focus when trying to use Knitting Workshop.

Grant tried on the sweater two nights ago and it still fits. Boosted by that and the decrease success I'm now a woman on a mission. I will tame this sweater monkey on my back and I will finish the HSD. I'm on the last ball of yarn (that fateful little green ball that started this whole thing). He will be warm and snuggly by winter and I will have my first pattern to sell. Keep your ears open for the call for test knitters.

Though I haven't blogged much about it, I am still chugging along on my mystery stole. At this point the game is over and the clues are all out. Turns out the theme was Swan Lake. Having seen some of the finished stoles out there, I've got to say that though the wing is beautiful, I don't think it matches the rest of the design at all. So I'm going to do the modified symmetrical version.

Here is the first half of my stole complete.

I stopped quite a few rows early, as I was tired of the cats paws section and feel that my stole will be plenty long enough with blocking. I did decided to add beads to the last row evenly spaced to create continuity from the top and bottom of the stole. You can't really see them in my terrible action shot above, but they're there. I'm almost done with clue 1 on my second half, I'll post pictures when it is actually done.