Black Sheep

Seriously depressed

You know how, in my last post, I was kind of worried about stretching out the fabric? Well, I had good reason. The sweater got waaay too stretched out. The arms are longer than my hands, for christs sake. Dude. What the fuck am I going to do with this? I am seriously bummed out. Big time. To the point where I feel like giving up on knitting altogether. Or just giving up on knitting sweaters and relegating myself to a life of knitting scarves.

So I ask all of you knitting goddesses out there: How can I fix this? Do I reblock? Do I reknit? I am not totally againsts reknitting…In fact, I halfway have myself talked into going that route. But if there is an easier way to solve this problem, I want to know about it. One thing that I did mess up on when sewing this up was aligning the shoulders on the arms with the shoulder shaping of the body. The arm shoulder shaping ended up just getting seamed up in the side seam, and it did look kind of weird when I tried it on. You can kind of tell in my mirror in the bathroom shot (see the lump on the inside part of my upper arm?). So I know, at the very least, I should re-sew the arms to the body so that they are more properly aligned. But then what do I do about the body? It’s stretched out way too long. Please, if you have any advice, I would so appreciate it!

One thing I did learn from this is that I should never block a hand knitted silk sweater by soaking it first. From now on I am going to dry clean silk (I guess…I don’t even know how to clean it!). I guess the best way to block this would have been to iron it.

I loved this sweater the other day when I finished it. And I still do. It’s a nice sweater, probably the nicest I have ever knitted, and I want this to work. I don’t want this to be ruined. But, the way it is right now, it is totally unwearable! This is not good.

9 comments June 10th, 2005

blockage

The Chai pullover is seamed and finished! yay! on the right you will see a mirror in the bathroom pic of me wearing it pre-blocked (with my new haircut. Love the flippy coif my hairstylist did! I wish I could do that ). I also still needed to weave in some loose ends.

Now it’s blocking. Sorry for the horrible, dark picture. I took this last night. My God, the arms look awfully long. Are my arms really that long? Yikes! I hope getting it wet didn’t stretch it out. I’m always afraid of that.

I started on the Phyz scarf for my mom. I’m going to be in Spokane next week and would like to give this to her when I am there. I’m also going to make her a scarf made from the rest of the Chai. This is totally her color, more so than mine, really. I am going to do the pretty Branching Out scarf from Knitty Summer 05. These will be my vacation projects. Hopefully I will get them both done while I’m there.

I’m going to Spokane, to visit my family, but primarily for another reason that I can’t really reveal publically yet. It’s a really good reason, though. Let’s just say that I will need your good vibes, prayers, or whatever Tuesday June 14th at around 9:00 AM (pacific time) .

I will check back in before I leave with final shots of Chai and the specs. I will also try to post while I’m there, too. Not sure what my mom’s internet connection is like these days but we’ll try it.

10 comments June 8th, 2005

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Son of a Mother F*cking Bitch! I ran out of F*cking yarn! NOOO! I am soooooo close to finishing the second sleeve, too. And then all I needed was enough to knit 10 rows of k1p1 ribbing for the collar and sewing together. That was it. damn.

Well, I am planning to go to SF next weekend when my parents come to visit, and my mom and I were planning on going to Artfibers, so I guess it will be a UFO for a week until I get another friggen ball of chai. I just hope they still have this colorway. Oh please God. Please let them still have this colorway.

I guess this is why you always buy and extra ball or skein of yarn for a project, huh? sigh.

7 comments May 20th, 2005

Chai Sleeves and some Clap thoughts

I’m making progress on my Chai Pullover! I’m about halfway done with the second sleeve. Next I will be picking up stitches for the collar and I will be done with this baby! Yay! I can’t wait to wear it. It’s so soft and very lightweight. Nice for spring. And since we can’t seem to get nice weather here in the Bay area, longs sleeves are still okay. I can’t believe it’s raining AGAIN. Hence, the crappy, dark, photo.

I’ve been doing some thinking the past few days about my Clapotis.
I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that I don’t like it. Don’t get me wrong, there are things about it that I do love. I love the color, for one. But I just don’t like the bulkiness of it. It’s too heavy and bulky to be worn as a scarf, and it feels and looks awkward when worn as a shawl. It doesn’t hang rignt. It doesn’t have that nice, springy texture that I see most of them have. So I’m thinking about making a new one, in the far future. I’m trying to think of yarns to use and I’m kind of thinking either Koigu or a Knitpicks equivalent. I mean, look at this Clapotis knit with Koigu. It’s not bulky at all. I like that.

So then I got to thinking about what I would use with all of that silk garden from Clapotis. Hmmm. I’m thinking about either York, or Karlsro (which is what I wanted to use this yarn for in the first place). But I’m leaning more toward York:

I’m just kind of thinking out loud at this point. God only knows when I would ever get to any of this, if ever. I’ve got too many other projects waiting in the wings.

5 comments May 19th, 2005

That was fast

I made it back from Loex and Kentucky in one piece. I’m exhausted, but I’m in one piece. I got some knitting done, as you can see here. I finished the front of my Chai Pullover. AND I’m about halfway done with a sleeve. I think, since I’m on a roll with this, I will push through and just work on this until it’s done. Then pick up Lucky Clover and finish that. I feel like i have too may WIPS going on right now and I feel like I just need to focus.

I found it interesting that I did not run into any knitters anywhere on my trip. Usually I will spot another knitter working on something in the airport, or somebody will come up to me and ask me what I’m working on. Not on this trip, with the exception of a lovely older lady sitting next to me on the plane back. She told me that she wanted to bring her knitting but didn’t think she could, so we had a conversation about that. Then she asked me if I’ve ever knitted argyle socks, to which I said, “no”. And she told me about how she liked to knit them. She was just a really lovely lady . It was nice to sit and talk about knitting on that long flight back.

I thought about whipping out my knitting during the actual break-out sessionsat Loex but felt that I would be rude if I knit during somebody’s presentation. I guess I’m still a little bit shy about knitting in public.

Would you believe that I managed to fit a few souvenirs in that tiny bag that I brought with me? I did. I saw this little bottle of mint julep in the hotel gift shop and got it as a little pressie for my hubby. Now we just need some Kentucky Bourbon. Being that we have limited exposure to the South, we have never had mint Juleps before, so we are looking forward to that. I like to collect charms from places I visit to put on my charm bracelet (I know it’s corny), so I got this little horse charm that is supposed to be a replica of a horse from Gallopalooza, Louisville’s sidewalk derby (which I didn’t get to see. More on that in a minute). I also got these little earrings, too. Accross the street from my hotel was a Borders so during one of our rare quickie breaks, I rushed over there to buy the book, Ahab’s Wife, because the author, Sena Jeter Naslund, was the dinner speaker at the conference. I thought that I might have her sign the book or something. But when I bought the book the copies that they had were autographed. I thought that was kind of cool! She’s a Louisville local, so it makes sense I guess. I’m about 50 pages in and it’s a lovely book, by the way. She was a great speaker, too.

Loex was great, for all of you librarians out there. It was much better than SLA, imho. All of the sessions I attended were really interesting and inspiring, and very practical. The only issue I had was that I was so exhausted by the time I left the conference to catch my plane. It was non-stop from morning till night. The only time I left the hotel was that half hour when I walked across the street. I started to feel a little bit claustrophobic. I really wish I had allowed one more day to just get out and see the Louisville, and I wish my husband was with me. I don’t know if I will ever get a chance to go back there and I really regret not being able to do more touristy things. I think you need a little bit of playtime on business trips, otherwise it gets a little bit crazy.

8 comments May 16th, 2005