More knitting, more doggie birthdays

I finished two more helmet liners. (No pictures, this time. If you've seen one helmet liner, you've seen 'em all--especially since the new ones are the same color as the previous one.) I think I'm finished with that pattern for a while. Three times in one month...


I made a hat with the Intriguing yarn.



I invented the pattern as I went along, and the resulting product fits me nicely. Of course, the pattern is nothing but ribbing, which is nice and stretchy and hard to screw up.

With US8/5.0mm needles, I cast on 80 stitches, knitted 1 inch in 2x2 rib, increased to 90 and a mixed 3x2 x 2x2 rib.

I had 20 knit ribs, 20 purl valleys. At 5 inches, I started decreasing: decreased 10 stitches (all the 3K ribs reduced to 2K); knitted even; decreased 5 stitches (every 4th rib); knitted even; decreased 10 stitches; knitted even; decreased 5 stitches (the last 2K ribs reduced to 1K); knitted even; decreased 10 stitches (knit 1K+1P together for each decrease--much easier than P2tog for the decrease, and it looks good); knitted even; decreased 5 stitches…, etc.

The hat took less than half the ball of yarn. I'm using the other half to make a neck-warmer. (I'm making up that pattern, too.) The neck-warmer is my lunchtime-at-work knitting. Pictures and details later.

The yarn knits up nicely. It's not particularly splitty (which some wrapped yarns are). It's a bit fuzzy (the mohair), but I think it probably would frog with less trouble than one normally encounters when frogging mohair--although that's an experiment I didn't have to make. :) There's some acrylic in the yarn (77% Wool, 15% Acrylic, 8% Mohair), but I blocked the hat anyway--wanted to see if the yarn changed much. There wasn't a noticeable change (the yarn didn't "bloom," if you know what I mean), but the yarn behaved well and didn't fade or tighten up, or do anything unexpected. (Having recently seen a Cascade 220 Superwash project--not a helmet liner, but another item--gain a ridiculous 20% in size when blocked, having the hat hold its dimensions was very nice.)


With the Granny Smith-colored yarn, I've started the Traveling Woman shawl. I'm still very much in the early stages:




Jacey turned seven Wednesday (the 19th). She and Sam got to have the last of the doggie birthday biscuit (with icing) that my sister bought for Sam's birthday the week before. (We parcel treats out sparingly around here to avoid stomach troubles.) And a friend's dog, Katie (MACH Never Had Braces UD),* turned a dignified twelve years old on Monday.

*MACH = Master Agility Champion, the highest AKC agility title (Katie was the first greyhound to win that title); UD = Utility Dog, a very high AKC obedience title.

Recent and Current Knitting

I recently knitted a helmet liner. A blogger was asking for knitted helmet liners for a Marine unit that will be shipping out to Afghanistan. I decided to knit a liner, and it knitted up quickly.



And then a coworker asked for one for her friend, a soldier already in Afghanistan. So I gave her the one I knitted (she'll repay me for the yarn), and I bought a new ball of yarn today and have started the second helmet liner. It's nice yarn (has to be wool--no acrylics, and there's a limited range of acceptable colors), and the pattern is easy. I'm already an inch into the second liner. But let's not tell the Marines they're wearing a color called Doeskin Heather; Bambi-colored yarn doesn't quite sound right for the Corps.

***

Sam has turned 10 years old. Both dogs have coats I made for them (Jacey inherited Oreo's coats), but only Jacey has a hand-knitted sweater. Every time I've started to make a sweater for Sam, Christmas knitting has intervened, and Sam's sweater has been pushed to the back burner.

But the boy turned 10 on the 10th of this month, and I wanted him to have a sweater for the fall, so I knitted one that I finished the day before his birthday.



The turtleneck can be unrolled to stretch up his neck and give his ears some coverage when necessary.

I have yarn to knit a matching sweater for Jacey in forest green. There are changes I want to make to the pattern (I made notes in Ravelry), and I'll probably make her sweater soon, while the changes (and my notes) still make sense to me.

***

At the recent Stitches South convention here in Atlanta, I won a prize: a kit to make a shawl. The pattern is for Cascade's lacy Grapevine Shawl, and the yarn is a bright fuchsia cotton (Cascade Sierra). I've started the shawl and made it through one pattern repeat. The one repeat measures about two inches; just 26 repeats to go. ;) I have a high school reunion coming up in October, and a bright shawl might be just the thing for a fall evening.

Nice, relaxing day off today. I've puttered on Ravelry. I wove the ends in on the shawl I was making for myself. (Pictures later.) I started two new projects. One is a dishcloth--something I can work on at lunchtime since it doesn't require a lot of counting and pattern-following. (The shawl I finished was my old lunchtime project.) The other is a sweater for Jacey.


The picture is the frogged coats...

I started making one last year--a sweater for her and one for Sam. After lots of hours on both (his was nearly finished), I called it quits. I really liked the stitch pattern (and the colors), but I didn't like anything else--like the fit, the way the sweater hung, the coverage on Sam, etc. But I found a new pattern--one that really is a sweater rather than a crocheted, blanket-style coat that just hangs over the dog's back. The pattern comes in sizes from small to extra-large. According to the published dimensions, the extra-large will just fit Jacey (if I add 2 inches to the back length); Sam's will have to be 5 inches bigger in the chest and 8 inches longer down the back. I figure I need to make her sweater first, and measure it against Sam before I seam it. That should help me see how much--and where--I need to change the pattern for Sam.

But I've just worked a swatch in the pattern stitch, and I'm way off in every direction. I'm re-swatching to see if it was a fluke...and to see if I can force something to give. (My stitches are too loose for the width: 15 stitches in a space that should be 20. My rows are too tight for the length: what should have been 5 inches was only about 4. Yeah, I can stretch the piece longer, which will correct both problems--but only if I keep stretching the piece, and Jacey isn't going to put up with mom yanking on her sweater all day.) If I have to, I can live with it, though. The extra stitches in the width will make it easier to make the adjustment for Sam, and I don't mind if hers is loose around the chest. And I can get the length I need for the body by stitching more rows (I have plenty of yarn); I just have to make sure I have enough length in the front section, so the "armholes" fall at the right spot. The pattern shows the "neck length" (from the neck/throat edge of the pattern to the point where the armholes begin), so I just have to match that length (for her--exceed it for him), no matter how many rows it takes.

This evening, after lots of promising thunder and lightning, we got a tiny bit of rain--a nice, gentle shower that lasted about 30 minutes or so. I took two dog beds out to the carport, and the dogs and I sat out there and watched the rain, and the people coming home late from work. I'm off Thursday and Friday, and hope to have nice weather and a relaxing time both days--although, on one day I have to haul recycling and do some grocery shopping. Oh, and I need to get my Mega Millions ticket. The last drawing paid off for me: $3. That's not quite enough to finance my early retirement.

(Maybe you noticed that none of this is the needlepoint stocking I'm supposed to be working on. I need to do something about that...)

My Shawl

I've frogged the shrug I hated so much, and I've started a shawl for me. This is a no-brainer: 30 sc across each row, repeat until you reach the desired length. It's a perfect project to take to the store to work on at my lunch break.

The shrug was awful (Can you say, "fuzzy strait-jacket"?), but the yarn was very nice: Lion Brand Homespun in Colonial:

This project is cursed...

In the past few days, I've finished up a baby afghan and a shawl (pictures later). I've gone back to working on the accursed greyhound table runner. I have 12 rows to go (plus the edging), and I haven't omitted any of the border checkerboard blocks. And, near as I can tell, I haven't misplaced any of the blocks, either. Fingers crossed, but it looks like third time might be the charm.

(Actually, it took three tries before I worked out a shawl I liked: this one isn't triangular, but is just a nice, long rectangle. But it seems to be taking multiple tries before I can get things to work out, lately.)


Oh, honestly! Talk about an accursed project: I took a break in typing this to take Sam and Jacey outside. When we came back in, Sam darted ahead to sniff around where I'd been working to see if I'd left anything for him to eat. (I hadn't.) When I came back into the living room, he jumped down from where he'd been on the sofa (he knows better than to sniff around at that end of the sofa) and ran back across the room so he could look all innocent...and he hooked the damned crochet thread with his collar and unraveled nearly half of the most recent, carefully counted row.

Originally posted: 24th-Jul-2007 12:12 am

Gorgeous doilies, a shawl

I'm envious as all-get-out. Go here and click on any one of those five sets. Just look at those gorgeous things! Yeah, they're pretty when you click on the individual photos, but the array in thumbnail view is stunning! I wish I had (a) her courage where color use is concerned, and (b) enough time to produce work like that. And talent, too. Some of these feature very difficult techniques.

I haven't yet ripped out the filet-crochet-gone-wrong. I'll probably give it another try, when I will rip out rows 5 and 6 and redo and hope for better results. Meanwhile, I'm working on a shawl, making up the pattern as I go. (It's more-or-less a triangle. As long as it has more-or-less three points, how wrong can I go?)

Originally posted: 19th-Jul-2007 09:06 pm