• Cast on, knit knit knit. Figure out the transition to the pattern, ok, knit knit knit.
• Along the way, a few stitches tinked. OK, for some reason, a lot of stitches tinked.
• A couple times, an error noticed two rows below, stitch dropped down and repaired. Look at me!
• Oops! Was supposed to begin shaping at 3″ from the turning ridge. Noticed it at 3-1/2″, figured it would be ok anyway. Knit knit knit.
• Several rows in, suddenly noticed that the ribbing just above the turning edge is wonky; along the center design panel, on the right, it didn’t end with k2 so what came above just kind of hung there. HMMM. Ugly. Double-checked the pattern, yep, it’s a mistake in the pattern. HMMM. Ugly.
• Knit a row. Ponder. Maybe no one will notice.
• Purl a row. Ponder. Yeah, no. It’s ugly. Am I a sloppy knitter, or a careful one?
• Frog down to the turning row, slip stitches back on the needle (semi-wonkily, but fixed as I knitted the first row, turning the stitches appropriately).
• Finish that row, realize I didn’t resume the ribbing after the center panel. Tink back to the marker and knit the ribbing….get to the last 3 stitches, oops, must’ve made a mistake in my 2×2 ribbing. Yep, back at the very beginning. Tink tink tink. Re-rib.

argh.

Now I’m watching The Third Man and “knitting.” Since it’s going so badly — so ‘wonkily’ — I’m trying to decide: should I put this down and do the sleeve? Maybe that’ll be the remedy for wonkiness. Should I get out the swift and ball up my siltwash and do those swatches? Maybe that’ll be the remedy for wonkiness. I already tried a brisk walk in the lovely park, a coffee at Starbucks, and I stopped at the store for a beautiful bottle of wine, for later. None of that seems to be ridding me of my wonkiness. Just one of those days, I guess.

Do you have a remedy for times like this? I’m all ears.

It was amazing. It was just amazing. I couldn’t speak when it was over, for quite a while. It’s a visually stunning movie, with wonderful editing and sound editing, but the thing is that it is really about what it’s really about. I mean, it’s not about a guy cutting his arm off (though he does). It’s really about facing yourself, facing life, facing it all, in a very real and rare existential moment. I get extremely irritated by people’s whining about “but what does it mean, it has no meaning, blah blah blah” the luxury problems of spoiled wealthy people. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t true existential moments, moments of facing the abyss of what it really all means, and what it means to be here, and that in some fundamental way it’s just you and that moment, alone. And that’s what the movie is brilliantly about, and it’s brilliant. James Franco is brilliant. The soundtrack is brilliant. Everything, I completely loved it. It’ll take a while before I can watch it again, and I hope it stands up to a second viewing. You’ll want to have your knitting with you so you can look away and concentrate on something else during some of the more difficult scenes, but you shouldn’t let them make you miss seeing the movie.

So what’s the sweater part of the post title? Two unpleasant things:

1. I’m frogging my Eve’s Rib Shrug. It’s just been such a pain in my ass the whole time, and it’s not going to look the way I thought it would in the wholly misrepresentative photos (i.e., it won’t be as long as it seemed and the actual shape isn’t flattering to my (*cough cough stomach*) figure. I love the yarn too much to let it languish. So yay to making a decision but damn to all that time wasted. I’ve learned that Carol Sunday’s way of writing patterns simply doesn’t work for me, and it’s not worth it. It’s a shame, because her designs are often truly gorgeous.
2. I’ve also decided with regret that I’m just not young enough to pull off the Laar sweater. There’s the ample bosom situation, but more importantly there’s the fact that I’m just too “mature” for the style. And I’m tired (see above) of putting in so much time and ending up with something I don’t like. So now I’m considering my sweater queue and yarn I already have in my stash, and as I promised myself, I’m taking my time with the decision. No more leaping without looking. My regret isn’t that I’m too old for that particular style, it’s just that it really is a beautiful little sweater and I have such lovely yarn for it. But one thing ravelry teaches us is that there’s always another sweater.

My precious oldest daughter Katie arrives in NYC this evening, and she’ll be staying with me until Wednesday. She’s on a family mission of import and urgency and probable sorrow, but it’ll be so good to have her here. I don’t get to see her….or any of my precious kids….nearly often enough. Intermingled with the moments of difficulty that bring her here will be lots of love and laughter, plenty of knitting and stash-pawing, some movie watching and card playing, probably, and lots of good food.

OH! Also, just to feed any schadenfreude out there about the high life in NYC: this morning I woke up and went to the bathroom only to find brown water dripping [again] from the ceiling, running down the pipes, dripping down the wall, splashing in the windowsill, bulging the ceiling. The guy who lives upstairs has bad plumbing and we always have to pay the very icky price. So happy waking up, Lori! Just in time for company, too. NYC, you’re such a charmer.

But then you start to realize that interesting should have quotes around it. She’s “interesting.” She’s beautiful, yeah, and she certainly does add a lot to your life, but the “interesting” and fascinating bits now make you suspect you won’t be friends for a long long time. Consultants call this the PITA factor (pain in the ass), and sometimes add a hidden PITA fee when offering a price quote to a known PITA client. Still, you can’t say this friend is boring. No, you could never say that, that’s for sure. You might say a lot of other things, but boring she’s not. Now and then you throw your hands up and say “that’s it, we’re done. I’ve had it this time.” But you go back…..at least for a while.

That has been the story of my relationship with my Eve Shrugged. At first? Smitten. Totally, totally smitten. Over the moon, endlessly fascinated. And then I hit the wall, not once, not twice, not even thrice (ha, thrice) but many more times than that. Knit frog knit frog knit frog knit frog. Repeat. But finally I got it, thanks to the help of many of you. I made it to the point of adding the sleeve stitches, where you then transition from Eve’s Ribs to Adam’s Ribs, and something went wrong. Knit frog knit frog knit frog knit frog. Repeat. This is why I haven’t been mentioning this project – it’s been in the Bad, Bad Knit Time-Out chair in the corner.

Last night I pulled out my ratty old cursed ball of this yarn and just worked the Adam’s Ribs repeats a few times, and it went fine. No problems at all. I knew the problem must be my haste, so I frogged it all one more time and started anew. Put stitch markers everywhere. Stopped and counted each tiny segment. As the French would say: et voila!

here's the transition point, from Eve's Ribs (on the bottom) to Adam's Ribs

good to go now. for a while.

famous last words.

Anyway. I’m feeling a little more hopeful about the old gal right now, and expect not to have any problems until I hit the next change, which will be (I think) adding the sleeve bells, after the sleeves and body are finished. I think Carol Sunday is a wonderful designer; her patterns are distinctively hers, typically feminine, and quite beautiful. But the way she writes patterns does not connect (like, at all) with the way I think, so they’re very frustrating to me. She’s not a bad designer or pattern writer, and I’m not a bad knitter or pattern reader, we just don’t think the same way so it’s 2 steps forward and 3 steps back for me. Other knitters sail right through.

I haven’t decided whether to take this project or the green tweed ribbon scarf project with me to Rhinebeck (Rhinebeck!!). If you’re going to Rhinebeck, I’ll be wearing my Peasy.

Here’s the transitional thing that straddles the awful-to-wonderful divide: my shrug. OK, so you would not believe the hell I’ve been through with this thing. First there was the whole oops I did it wrong debacle, resulting in frogging a whole skein’s worth of knitting. OK. Figured it out, cast on, got to the 2nd repeat (where we last left our cheerless heroine) and I made some kind of mistake. Shoulda just looked closely to figure out where I goofed, but I was getting a global sense of despair with this one so I just frogged.

Decided I’d better just try to figure out the stitch pattern before casting on again, so I cast on for 3 pattern repeats plus the edge stitches, and knit through three repeats. GENIUS!! IT WORKED!!! I must have just made an easy mistake the last time, I’m on it. Cast on again – 324 stitches, by the way, screwed up the first row. Frogged. Cast on agai…oh no, too short a tail, by ~5 stitches. Cast on again, got to the end of the row and still had ~30 stitches on the needle. Frogged. Cast on aga….too short a tail, by ~12 stitches (and p.s., how did THAT happen, because I kept the starting point the same as it had been the previous time, when I’d cast on way too many!!!).

Tried again, maybe 2 or 3 more times. It almost became funny. Almost. Maybe later it’ll be like, hysterical. I started thinking it was a sign; my friend Preeti used to see signs in everything, maybe I was just being dense about it. Maybe the universe was screaming at me “RUN AWAY LORI” and I was just sitting there like a dolt, trying again and again. After a couple more times, I finally gave up for the night.

I decided to try one. more. time. And if it didn’t work this time, I was going to cry uncle and decide that me and Carol Sunday, we’re one of those sad couples, the ones who love each other but it’s never going to work, and it’s no one’s fault. I cast on, put a stitch marker down every 10 stitches. Counted again. Counted by the 10s. Counted individually. Counted three more times, just to be sure.

Row 1, WHEW. Row 2, stopped after each 16-stitch repeat and checked obsessively. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16, ok. Next. I knew if I could just get past the first couple of rows, I’d be in like Flinn. AND I AM!

that baby hugs the curve just beautifully!

and look at that dimensionality!

it's right! it's right! it's right!

I know I said I wouldn’t blast you with more photos and stories about this project until I finished the collar and was working on the body, but you can appreciate the sense of triumph I have at persevering to this point. MAN. The good news is that it’s pretty fast knitting, and I know the pattern by heart (and it’s really very simple, despite me).

If only there were an uncliched image, I’d have inserted it, but they’re all exactly the same. GOOD HEAVENS. It woke me up in the middle of the night, as the terrible weather rolled into town. Are you as strongly affected by low pressure rainy systems as I am?! If so, I am very sorry. I woke up very very early this morning with a terrible sinus-type headache. I drank a little coffee, ate a bowl of cereal so I could take aspirin and sudafed. Stood in a hot shower for a long time, letting it hit me in the middle of the forehead.

Finally, the meds worked and I’m left with just the headache hangover (which, if you don’t know, is something like having an impression that you have a headache but you don’t, exactly). I’m dizzy and dull and weird and off. I feel the way it looks out my window: heavy and extremely still and just hanging there, pregnant and pulsing. Go ahead and rain, just do it, please. Please.

*****

So I frogged my shrug but I know how to do it now so I’m looking forward to seeing it work, this time. I also got plenty of yarn, thanks to a couple of ravelers. In fact, I’ll have more than enough to finish the shrug, so I can make something else with the luscious yarn after I finish this project. I think I’ll make the sleeves a little longer than I’d planned, since I don’t have to worry about yarn now. I would go ahead and cast on, but (a) I’ve already cast on for this project a couple of times, and frogged dozens of rows, and since (b) I have this head goofiness, I fear that (c) I’d screw something up and I’m not sure I’d have the courage to rip it out again and start anew.

If you’re on the east coast, I hope the rain isn’t hitting you too hard. If you’re in other places, I hope you’re having a better day than I am!

I have to rip out 3 rows, I think. We’ll see if that makes it right, I certainly hope so. It’s not nearly as horse-race exciting unknitting as it is knitting. Boo.

i couldn't find an image with fabric, too bad. when i first saw this scene i thought she was sitting in Texas bluebonnets.

But as long as I have your attention, I’ll direct you to some true handwork pr0n. MAN oh man. Staceyvee on rav mentioned the movie in a blog post recently, and we had a little email back-and-forthing about it. I’d had the movie on my list, but her post moved it to the top, especially after our emailing. Bright Star, a Jane Campion movie about Keats and Fanny Brawne. And no, Keats doesn’t sew. Good grief, you’re in quite a mood today. But Fanny Brawne does, and Campion’s camera gets right in there. The opening scenes are worth the price of admission all by themselves. Highly recommended!

I think I’ll do a bit of yarn fondling instead of frogging. Sounds like a much nicer time to me.

And as I’m walking down the sidewalk, I’m being very bothered by the fact that the right sleeve is considerably too long. Much longer than the left, but beyond that, it’s just too too long. It hits the middle of my palm (how did THAT happen?!). And I’m thinking ‘eh, I’ll just live with it.’

Then I thought I don’t have to live with it! I AM A KNITTER! And the maker of this sweater! After all the time and pleasure of making it, I want a lot of time and pleasure in wearing it. Mission #1 tonight: frog all those extraneous rows, reknit and bind off. Oh so easy. Peasy, even.

EDIT!!!!! ADDENDUM!!!!!! I just got the shipping notice from madelinetosh, telling me that my tosh merino DK (byzantine y’all!!) shipped. That means I’ll get it next week and can finally start the gorgeous Eve’s Ribs Shrug pattern (here’s the link to my post that shows the yarn and the pattern). This weekend I’m clearing the decks. Finishing my Mondo Cable Cardigan. Getting things done so I can cast on the moment that luscious yarn arrives. OH how hard it is to wait….

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This work is of the type that causes (and requires) complete immersion. If I were just doing proofreading, I could pick it up and put it down. But I have to hold the whole novel in my mind, see redundancies, sections that would better fit elsewhere in the novel, gaps, inconsistencies, etc. Plus, I get in a kind of flow with it; I’ll open the file and start editing, and the next thing I know it’s 8 hours later and I haven’t stopped to pee or eat or anything. Poof! Eight hours have passed.

I’m also teaching stats, and let’s be honest. None of the students love stats the way I do. They’re required to take it, some are very smart but some are incredibly stupid. That’s right, I said it. Some are mushy-minded people who seem to have been failed by the educational system. But anyway – also teaching stats. And also needing to do 6 research projects for the publishing house I worked for.

So when’s a girl to knit? I also worry about all the hours doing very finely-focused computer work (on a laptop with a cramped keyboard) and getting carpal tunnel. That would be just horrible. At the end of these very long days, I still need to eat dinner and straighten up, and the day is done. Last week I didn’t sleep one minute Tuesday night (thank you stupid waitress who clearly gave me full-caf instead of decaf, even though I emphasized and asked again twice before drinking it), and Thursday night I slept 2 hours.

So here is the current state of my WIPs:

there it is.

First up, the one that’s been sitting in my bag the longest: Mondo Cable Cardigan, with madelinetosh merino, in Graphite.

near the end of sleeve 1, body finished.

look at the beauty of the yarn

I realized some of my skeins were a drastically different color – blue black instead of charcoal gray – and it put a hitch in my gitalong. Thanks to ravelers, I was able to score a couple of skeins that matched better, but I’ve never recovered my mojo on this one. But it really is beautiful, and softer than a baby angel fairy’s bottom.

coming along - but not too quickly. FUN pattern to knit!

This is blanket-sized: It’s the Totally Autumn pattern by Anne Hanson, and it’s such fun to knit! The pattern is cool, and it remains so engaging as I work on it. The Cascade 220 is hard, though, and my index fingers starts to feel raw after a while, as the yarn runs over it. It’s never as hard as I remember it, so whenever I do pick it up to work on it, I’m always surprised. Still, I’ve got a long way to go on that one.

Peasy - after I finish the current ball, I'll be ready to do the collar and button band!! WOO-HOO!!

Peasy, of course, though I couldn’t photograph the color accurately today, for some reason. You’ve seen it so many times on my blog, so you know the color is a rich avocado. I’m getting there, and cannot wait to wear it at Rhinebeck. One good thing that’s come about as a result of this sweater: I don’t hate the purl row as much as I used to. The collar and button band are simple, and not very wide, so I really am getting near the end with this one. Just one more ball of Rowan Felted Tweed.

this one is suffering from no commute time

The Sockhead Hat, in a Regia yarn that I’m not all that crazy about but it was a gift so I love it for that reason. This one stays in my project bag in my purse, and whenever I’m in the subway I feverishly work as much as I can, but I’m only in the subway once a week now.

I don't know; I'm not feeling it. The yarn is just so special - may just frog this.

This snowflake hat pattern is fun to work, and of course the yarn nearly makes me cry, it’s so soft and lofty and such gorgeous colors too. I suspect I really want something different for the yarn, something I might wear against my skin – a little shawl or something, to wrap near my neck. I do suspect I’ll frog this.

close to the toe on sock #1

And my socks, out of Tosh Sport (colorway tweed – this photograph does capture the color pretty well, which I think should be called bronze. But they didn’t ask me.)

the beginnings of bag #1

And a new project I cast on yesterday – the Monteagle bag, using the Louet Euroflax yarn string yarn I recently got from Paradise Fibers. I’ll be making two of these, if I can tolerate it. The linen is kind of hard to work with, especially with these tricky stitches (the next one of which I cannot begin to figure out: “*Knit into the back of the second stitch with a double wrap, but do not transfer to the right needle; knit the first and second stitches together through the back loops with a double wrap and transfer both stitches to the right needle; repeat from * around on each following pair of stitches.”) WHA??? And the linen wants to be straight and hard and pop off the needle mid-stitch.

For now, though, many other less-pleasant tasks are calling my name. Shut up you less-pleasant tasks! I’d rather be knitting.

So I cast on a very simple hat – the Sockhead hat, by Kelly McClure. COULDN’T be easier. Cast on 144, do 4″ of 2×2 rib, then 9″ of stockinette. I have some very lovely Addi turbos, and a fun yarn, wham bam. I cast on, carefully counting and recounting to be sure, before I headed to the subway. Knit the first round of ribbi….wait a minute. Why do I have an extra 2 stitches? It should be knit 2 purl 2 then knit 2, to start the next round! Plow ahead, just have one little section of knit 4, who’ll notice. The long ribbing section is folded over for double warmth, I’ll just be sure to keep it at the back when I wear the hat.

But I got to my appointment a few minutes early, and sat down to recount the stitches. 154!! Ten too many! What the hell. Rip out the 4 rows I’d done, will cast on during the subway ride back.

So I cast on, and started knitting – like 20 stitches, or so. Realized I was knitting with the long tail. Tink those stitches, start again with the actual yarn that goes to the ball, LORI. Then I realized I was just knitting knitting knitting. Dang it! Ribbing! Ribbing! 2 x 2 ribbing! Tink those stitches.

And stop for a while. I know this kind of thing happens to you too. Don’t you hate it when it does?

Casting on for the 4th time. GRRRR. The wedding shawl is knit from both ends, and then grafted together. I’ve finished the bulk of it – probably 90% – and now I just have to cast on and knit the smallish border on the other end (it’s a 95 st cast-on, and the pattern repeat is only 33 rows). So I sat down last night at the beginning of a movie, cast on (which is a little bit of a pain because you have to double the yarn for the cast on and then drop one strand when you start knitting). So I was casting on, long tail, and hadn’t left enough yarn. I made it to 86 sts. No biggie.

at least this section I'm knitting (frogging) doesn't have nupps!

Start over, get the whole thing cast on, great. Knit knit knit, made it 8 rows in when I realized I was knitting the wrong part of the pattern. Frog frog frog. Cast on. Knit knit knit, something had gone so terribly wrong somewhere and there was nothing to do but cast on again. By the time the movie was over, I’d cast on again and I was 9 rows into the pattern. Go to sleep and start fresh in the morning.

This morning I was knitting the 10th row…hallelujah, finally getting somewhere!…when I realized the row was only 91 sts. I’d gotten to the end of the row, every pattern repeat absolutely perfect, but I didn’t have those 4 sts I should’ve had before the garter border in the last 5 sts. Somehow, I had missed that when I’d knit the previous rows.

So I just frogged it again. I think I’m going to put it aside and make some blueberry bars, and then pick it up again. I’m using KnitPicks harmony circulars from the interchangeable set, and the metal end of the tips, where it joins the cable, is starting to change and make things difficult. It’s not shiny like it was, it’s kind of dull and the stitches don’t slide, which makes the knitting hard.

Knitting is fun! I love knitting! Knitting is my passion! I love knitting! Knitting is fun! (does that sound like I’m trying to convince myself? )

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