so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night / I hate to go and leave this pretty sight.
I’ve become a grown-up-lady-knitter. I know, right? Me? Sure, I swatch now, I do knitting math(s), those are grown-up knitting things, big deal. But you remember how I mentioned that due to my 15-pound weight loss, my beloved dark & stormy hangs on me now? I’ve been thinking hard about Noreen’s great suggestion just to wear it as is, as a big old comfy sweater, which would also make my weight loss visible (“gosh, have you lost weight?”) Well, I think I’m going to frog the entire sweater.
sigh.
I’m trying to be all mindful about it: yes, I got all the pleasure out of knitting it. Yes, I enjoyed wearing it last year, very much. Yes, it was a beautiful birthday present to myself. Yes yes yes. Wah! Wah wah wah! Y’all.
Here’s the deal. My waist is my best physical attribute. It’s small relative to the rest, see?
me on the left, with my dear oldest friend in the middle and my son on the right.
So while I have it, while I’m young, I want to highlight it (and hide other bits!). My huge dark & stormy does the opposite — it hides me.
I’ve never frogged a giant sweater before, so I don’t know: do I need to soak the yarn (post-frogging) and let it dry, to get all the knitted-already-ness out of it? Or can I just go ahead and use it? It’s madelinetosh vintage, which is superwash.
I think I’ll give it a big kiss and a hug, pour a glass of wine, lay the sweater out and set up my ball-winder, and just frog it directly into cakes (unless the answer is that I need to soak it).
This is a good thing. This is a good thing. It’s reclaiming gorgeous yarn to refashion into something that will be flattering. This is a good thing. This is a good thing.
how far could you go, if you really really REALLY had to?
I was going to include “cutting off your arm” in the post title but thought better of it. Last night I watched the movie 127 Hours, with James Franco. He’s been nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. I always think I don’t like him, but every time I watch him I really really do like him; maybe one of these days my automatic opinion will match my learned opinion. Anyway, it’s the movie that’s about that real-life guy who was climbing all by himself and his arm got crushed by a giant rock, and he eventually had to cut off his own arm to save himself and get out of there. GRIM, right? I had little to no interest in seeing it — (a) I had my automatic opinion about James Franco, and (b) I thought who wants to watch a guy cutting his own arm off, not me sister.
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:
- 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.
- 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.
who IS the knitting god and how can I appease her? anyone?
I woke up all out of sorts this morning. You may not believe this, but it’s nearly impossible to find an image of “half a bubble out of plumb” in Google images. Of course it didn’t help that I first typed ‘half a bubble out of plump.’ Paging Dr. Freud. But that’s me this morning, half a bubble out of plump. One card short of a full deck. One egg short of a dozen. One skein short of a sweater, to turn this into a knitterly saying.
After frogging everything I’d done last night on the g^*#_&damn, motherf^*#*%&* Eve’s Rib shrug, I decided to knit a quick winner, as I posted earlier this morning. Maybe I should’ve just honored the whacked out state I’m in and decided to do something else, BUT NO.
So I cast on, and was on row 3 when I noticed further down after the pattern rows it says “if you want to avoid a seam, do a provisional caston.” OH WELL, I thought. So what, I’ll seam it. My hair’s long, it’ll be hidden anyway.
So on I knit. The cable crosses are 8 stitches, so it’s cumbersome and tight, and somewhere along the way I dropped a purl stitch. I saw it and hooked it back up there with my crochet hook, but I noticed on the return row that I’d somehow bungled it. OH WELL, I thought. It’s right next to a cable, that kind of thing won’t be noticeable.
So on I knit. I finished the cable crosses, did the return row and then two more stockinette rows and the pattern seemed to say it was time to do another cable cross. That didn’t seem right. The photo shows long sections between cable crosses. I looked at the pattern again — yep, repeat row 1, repeat row 2, cable cross. So on I knit. When I was working the return row I thought this canNOT be right. So I looked at the pattern and noticed that it said something like this:
Rows 7, 9, 11, 13 – same as row 1
Rows 8, 10, 12, 14 – same was row 2
See, I didn’t notice the whole several-rows-each thing. (cf my state today.) I’m sure this kind of thing never happens to you.
we love the harlot – she speaks for us, the middle-aged, working-class-breasted, short-legged, bad-haired knitters.
She’s not just a great knitter, book writer, sock conference organizer, and all-around swell gal, she’s also a humble knitter who experiences the same miseries that we all experience (see my dreadful post a few back, about how many times I had to restart my Eve’s Shrug) and she tells them in a hilarious way. To wit, Yarn Harlot’s post today included this:
This sweater can bite me hard on the hind-parts, because this is supposed to be what I do for fun. I’m a forty two year old woman with working class breasts, short legs and bad hair. I don’t need my self-esteem any lower and I’m certainly not lowering it myself. I have bathing suit shopping to do that for me, and I don’t need it from a hobby.
HAHA and HA! Amen, and I wish I’d said it that way. Except that as of one month from today I’ll be a 52 year old woman with all the same attributes mentioned in that great quote.
i have been my own worst enemy on this project, and we nearly came to blows. read what a little perseverence’ll do for ya.
ICK and YUCK. As lovely as Saturday’s weather was, today’s is that awful. It’s cold, gray, and drizzly, but not in a let’s-get-together-in-trench-coats-in-Casablanca kind of way. Just in that ick kind of way. The kind that makes the annual GYN trip just that much more pleasant. Yeah.
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).
it really sucks to frog, but there’s a delicious feeling of self-righteousness when you do. 
A quick photo just to mark the new beginning, and the next photo I’ll post won’t be until I finish the collar and start the widest portion, the sleeves and back. But here, it’s finally right:
look at those beautiful unbroken ribs
I’ve already begun the repeat for the 2nd time, so the fact that the ribs continue along is the important part. It’s really very very simple, the pattern, and if I had been writing the instructions I never would’ve said that “repeat rows 1-7 beginning on opposite side” line. Because without that (unnecessary) sentence, you’d just finish row 7 of the pattern and go back to row 1 and presto. Perfect. Easy. Not at all confusing.
So if you’re casting on (ahem, to a certain linguist), have fun! If you decided to frog (ahem, to a certain birthday girl in Taos), or if it’s in your queue (ahem to a lot of you), here’s how it goes when it’s done correctly.
For now, I’ve eaten a few too many M&Ms this morning and am feeling a bit hyper from the unaccustomed dose of sugar. Think I’ll sign off and do a bit of breathing and knitting. Isn’t that always the cure for anything that ails you?
really? REALLY ME??? i’m THIS goofy and weird because there’s a low pressure system hanging over the east coast? REALLY?????
[insert image of throbbing head here]
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!
Well, I did it. I unbound-off the too-long Peasy sleeve, frogged enough rows, and knitted/bound off once again. The sleeve is now the perfect length – it matches the other one, and it matches my arm length. I like that in a sweater.
What an accidentally perfect choice I made for my first sweater; the yarn – Rowan Felted Tweed – is very sticky so it hides errors and looks fantastic when it’s blocked, and since it’s so sticky, it’s easy to frog with abandon, without worrying that it’ll all come undone.
Continue Reading–16 words totally
Well, I did it. I unbound-off the too-long Peasy sleeve, frogged enough rows, and knitted/bound off once again. The sleeve is now the perfect length – it matches the other one, and it matches my arm length. I like that in a sweater.
surgery - knitting needles, stat!
What an accidentally perfect choice I made for my first sweater; the yarn – Rowan Felted Tweed – is very sticky so it hides errors and looks fantastic when it’s blocked, and since it’s so sticky, it’s easy to frog with abandon, without worrying that it’ll all come undone.
It’s always good to take the time to fix what’s wrong. Mister Rogers had a great song called “I Like to Take My Time” (remember, Katie? ), but for this post, I just imagined him singing that he’s proud of me. I’m proud of me too, Mister Rogers.
AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
What in the hell is wrong with me – you know how sometimes the simplest things are the hardest?! Well, after thinking about my endless sleeve dilemma (and whether to cast on a small purse project), I decided to go ahead. I had a long subway trip this afternoon, an hour there and another hour back, and it’s far too muggy to schlep my Peasy – and it’s too unwieldy for subway knitting, anyway.
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?
the perils of lace and the misery of frogging. again.
Knitters:
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? )
.
too bad I had to frog my wonderful socks.
Yesterday I got a lot of knitting done. I worked on my great-looking sock and got into the heel flap. I adore the pattern; it’s so thick and squishy, so 3-dimensional in a cool way, architectural, even. The socks must be warm, warm, warm.
And the yarn – I totally love the yarn. I love the shifts in color, and the particular colors themselves….that brilliant turquoise, a deep olive, dark reds, light purples, rich browns. And this variegated yarn works great with this pattern, because the color contrasts are so interesting.
BUT. Oh, how there is a but. As Pee-Wee Herman said to Simone, sitting in the dinosaur’s head, “everyone I know has a big but.”*** For some reason I wasn’t going to have nearly enough yarn! After only 3 pattern repeats, I was more than halfway finished with one ball of yarn. I kept going back to ravelry, looking at other people’s project pages for this pattern knit with this yarn, and they always listed 2 balls of yarn for a pair of socks. And the pattern makes these 3D squishy socks….but mine were stiff like heavy cardboard. I kept going back to ravelry, looking at other people’s project pages for this pattern knit with this yarn, and my needles were the same size as theirs. I must have been knitting very tightly. I know I was, actually, because I was fighting the needles.
Desperately I decided oh what the hell, I’ll just make the tops kind of short. Three pattern repeats, that’ll be ok, right? But what if I still run out of yarn, and end up needing to buy another ball or two? Then I’d have too-short socks for no good reason. I forged ahead, trusting – other people got one sock out of one ball of yarn, other people used these needles, it all worked out, other times and other projects I thought it’s not going to work but then it did so just keep going, trust the project.
Two-thirds of the way down the heel flap I finally threw in the towel. I pulled the sock off the needles and pulled it on my foot, just to see. Yeah, it was stiff and cardboardey. I had clung too tightly to the yarn and needles. Kind of like life, during hard times – clinging too tightly is not going to help. I love it when knitting reinforces a life lesson.
***here’s that clip from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, where he says that hilarious line to Simone:
It’s been one of those 2 steps forward, 3 steps back kind of days. I spent the morning redoing things on the blog – things like tracking down plug-ins, finding dumb API keys, rediscovering the widgets I’d used, rewriting my “about” page, stuff like that. I’d been happy with things the way were, so I wasn’t working in the spirit of doing it right/better this time, but rather trying to recreate what I’d had. Ah well. I’m mostly there, just minus all my posts.
Continue Reading–64 words totally
It’s been one of those 2 steps forward, 3 steps back kind of days. I spent the morning redoing things on the blog – things like tracking down plug-ins, finding dumb API keys, rediscovering the widgets I’d used, rewriting my “about” page, stuff like that. I’d been happy with things the way were, so I wasn’t working in the spirit of doing it right/better this time, but rather trying to recreate what I’d had. Ah well. I’m mostly there, just minus all my posts.
On the knitting front, I made it through the entire part of the shawl chart with the big set of nupps. And they were fun! I definitely learned how to do them better by the last row of them, but I was happy enough. Then, knitting the last set of lace rows to complete the chart, and *clunk*. Something was way wrong. After each row – partly due to overweening pride – I’d stopped, stretched out the lace, admired it, looked for problems, found none. After each pattern repeat, I rechecked the stitches. If each pattern repeat was correct, and each row was correct, I’d be in good shape, right? And yet I’d really screwed up something, somewhere. How hadn’t I seen it in all my looking?! Too much pride, too much “look, isn’t that cool what I did?” I guess. And so I had to pull that whole section out. Had I put in a lifeline? NO.
So I held my breath, got out a small tapestry needle and a roll of dental floss, and tried to put one in, below the nupps chart. A tiny little stitch at a time, through the cobweb-weight lace. plink. plink. plink. plink. plink. Across the row…..and then pull pull pull pull, unknitting. It worked, and so now I begin again. At least this time I’ll do the nupps pretty well from the very first row. So with the shawl too, I’m back where I started.
My sweetheart and I have been dieting – him on Atkins, me on low-cal – but here it is, Valentine’s Day (tomorrow). We’re going out for dinner at our favorite Ethiopian restaurant, Awash, and then we’ll come home for something sweet. He really loves blueberry coffee cake, so I just popped one in the oven. Photos of a slice tomorrow, but for now, The Making of the Coffee Cake, followed by its recipe.
rich batter chock-full of blueberries
sprinkled with a yummy streusel topping, ready to bake
Want to make it yourself? Here’s how:
CLICK to continue reading diary of a V-Day Eve... Continue reading »
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