It’s been a long time since any of the Knitsters have written here. Well, we do have a life outside of knitting, ‘ya know. All of us have kept in contact with each other through email, Twitter, LiveJournal and Facebook. Helen even came to visit Dani for a day over the summer to pick up baby stuff. (Yes, Helen’s little one is here, but I’ll let her fill you in on that!)

As for me, life has been a little crazy. I had a busy summer of trying to work full-time (or close to it), and at the end of September, I was laid off. Good times. I have continued with my knitting when I’ve had time, but I haven’t had time lately! I don’t remember if I took photos of everything. I started a sleeveless shell sweater from Big Girl Knits, but ended up frogging it. I’ve restarted it, but I’m not sure, since it’s been a few weeks, whether I’ll have to frog it again. Knitting up plus size items take a while, after all! However, upon the request of one of my little niece/cousins (she’s the daughter of one of JC’s cousins, but like a niece to me), I ended up making 3 hats for her and her sisters (they are triplets). My hands were sore after that!

Nowadays, I am still unemployed, but just embarked on a new adventure. I’ve just started graduate school. Now, keep in mind, I haven’t been in a university setting for 20 years. It’s been a long time since I had to collaborate with other people on a paper, or write an academic paper of any kind! I’ve taken classes in the meantime, but they were tech classes where I would have a test or a website as my final. And even those haven’t been in more than a decade (in my pre-mommy days).

I do have projects that I want to do this year, and projects that I want to complete. I just don’t know when I’m going to get to them! I will try to finish the shell sweater and I have yarn to make fingerless gloves that Drew wants (Bakugan gauntlet gloves, as he calls them), and I bought a whole lot of yarn for my birthday to attempt making the Mystic Shawl again, but in a watery color blend.

That’s all for now…hope to get photos up eventually!

Happy 2010!
PS, it’s almost the 5 year anniversay of Knitster.org already. Can you believe it? And remember, it’s all Helen’s fault!

But I didn’t return to knitting. I was, honestly, scared to; a lot of the ergonomic issues I had addressed to keep working didn’t seem to translate into knitting (raising my monitor being numero uno–i couldn’t raise up my knitting!)

But upon finding out I was pregnant at the end of the winter, I decided I needed to be able to knit for the baby–and for all the babies friends of mine are having. So the first thing I did was haul out a feather and fan scarf I’d started in May of 2007, the last project I started among several that have languished unfinished during my hiatus. I finished it last week, and the variegated green from a hand-dyed wool, the name of which brand I have forgotten in the intervening years, makes for a lovely, almost lizard-skin pattern with the feather-and-fan lacework in it. It’s lovely; I’ll get pictures up soon.

Now, having a baby to knit for is a great way to get back into practice with knitting — booties, little hats, even little sweaters! But NO, I have to go bite off the most insane project I’ve ever undertaken, even though it’s just plain stockinette for the most part: This plaid baby afghan from Yana Knits, which has me juggling 18 bobbins while knitting!

I’m making it in worsted instead of sport-weight, partly because winter will be ahead of us when the baby comes, partly because it will make a good-sized floor mat, and partly because my mom made me a knitted afghan in worsted (with bunnies) when I was a baby that lasted me until I was 6 or so.

But what really amazes me is how consistent my stitches are now. I had only knitted for three years when I had to give it up–not even that, really–but even though I completely blanked on how to cast on (and forgot my knitster password, to boot), it all comes back so quickly. Riding a bike, my mom would say.

Anyhow, I’m only on row five of the blanket body so far after knitting the border and winding all the bobbins, and doing this with light blue as the main color and tan and brown as the plaid colors. In the meantime, I’ll also start working on some smaller pieces to give to my fellow 2009 moms as gifts.

Granted, it’s been a while since any of us have written here. What can I say? 2009 is proving to be a very busy year for all of us. We’re all keeping up with each other via LJ, Twitter and Facebook, but it’s good to stop here every once in a while…when we have a moment!

I saw an article I wanted to post here, because it was, well, just a good article. And yes, it’s about knitting.
A novel prescription for knitted brows

It’s essentially how knitting is helping to pull a town together during the current economic situation.

In the meantime, just because we aren’t here doesn’t mean we aren’t knitting! I have one sock (not the one in the last post) done that I started, but didn’t finish the other one. I’ve also been working on some basic shawls based on a pattern in a Debbie Bliss magazine made with Debbie Bliss Stella yarn, which is mostly made of silk. I’m making them as thank you gifts for my son’s teachers, because since February, they have been sending home daily reports to help us track my son’s behavior since he started taking medications for ADHD and serotonin deficiency. I have one done, and am frantically working on the other so that I have them both done in time for the last day of school (which is in three weeks!). I will post photos of all of these when I have a moment. It’s harder for me to post as my part-time job has gone full-time, and I don’t have a heckuva lot of free time like I did before. But, even now, I try to get some knitting in during my lunch break, and any free moment I have (this is why my purse is a Jordana Paige, so my knitting goes everywhere with me!).

We’ll all soon show more results for things…when I’m not so busy!

Three Christmas Scarves

The recipients of them seemed happy. Well, at least two of them said thank you, since I didn’t see them open them. But one in particular said a big thank you, so that felt good. The black one was done in basketweave, the light grey one is in seed stitch, and the dark grey one is a simple 2X2 rib stitch. Interestingly enough, all were using about the same amount of stitches across. Funny how that works.

I also took the time to reassess some of what I was working on with other projects. I was feeling so frustrated that I actually frogged two projects, because I felt I had gotten to a point where I couldn’t figure out where to pick up again, and it would be just easier to frog and start over, despite having done so much already. One was the Mystic Waters lace shawl. It was just too F$#*ed up (and you don’t hear me say that word too much, so that shows you how frustrated I was and how messed up it was. You saw that in the previous posts.

The other thing that I frogged was my attempt at a different sock. It was the Columbine Socks from Cat Bordhi’s book about knitting socks on two circs. I’ve always made the basic standard sock from that one, but decided to attempt something else in there. Well, here’s my attempt before I frogged it:

Start and End of Columbine Socks

It was starting to look good, but I lost my place along the way, and goofed something up, and it was bad enough that I couldn’t find my way back. I figured that it was just better to start over at some point when I could concentrate on it better. Maybe in the spring.

I took a break for a couple weeks, but you can’t keep a knitter from her knitting for long! So I’ve started a pair of “Speed Racer” socks for Drew. He wanted me to use this red, white and black self-striping yarn I got from Michael’s, so I started it this week. His first part of knitted socks, alas, are two small now, and he asked for a new pair. He’s a good kid, in that he appreciates his mother knitting him things, which is good. I’d hate it if I knit something for him, and he never liked it or wore it. His red sweater that I made a while ago is his favorite that he’d wear to school every day until the weather got too cool, and he’ll wear it again once it’s spring.

In the meantime, I’ve been wearing my first sweater that I ever made, which I made almost 4 years ago. It was a basic hoodie pattern that I didn’t do right, didn’t make button holes, made the sleeves too long, etc. But, it’s a functional sweater and I brought it to work to keep me warm, since my desk is right under the blower and I’m usually pretty cold. Well, next thing you know, my boss wants to steal my sweater, and she loves the yarn, etc. I gave her a copy of the pattern (I know copyright infringement, oh well), which she in turn gives to a friend who is in the process of finding the discontinued yarn (because my boss insists on having that exact yarn) and she’s making it for her. How funny is that? And I can make sweaters better than this ratty old one that I have at work, but it does keep me warm like a blanket, so I guess that counts for something.

So, my knitting resolution for 2009? Keep knitting, of course! I also want to make more things for myself, and make the time to get to knitting. I do like the process and knowing that the finished products I’ve made are nice as well as enjoyed (either by myself or others). I also plan to continue to challenge myself. Perhaps 2008 was not the year of learning how to knit lace, but maybe once I get through these “Speed Racer” socks, I will get back to restarting some of those old projects, like the Mystic Waters and the Columbine socks. I would like to get back to the MSWF this year, and if not that, then Rhinebeck. Another project I want to do is make myself a nice tank top with the orange yarn I bought for my birthday. Since we got a Wii and a Wii Fit this holiday season, I’m thinking of making a Wii Fit Balance Board cosy — a knit and felt project. That would –and should–be easy and fun to do. So I think I’ll still be knitting for sure unless something major happens. But I’m going to do it for others when I feel moved, and I will do it mostly for me and for my pleasure. Heck, maybe I will conquer colorwork beyond basic stripes this year too. Who knows? The year is still young and full of promise.

We’re all still here, just very busy with life and knitting, of course. I have put down the lace and the socks in favor of getting some holiday knitting done. Since I know none of the recipients are reading, I am in the process of making 3 scarves and a bunch of handwarmers/knucks. I have one scarf done, working on the second (about halfway through?) and have yarn for the third. The first one was a simple seed-stitch scarf, and the one I’m working on now is a basketweave stitch one. It looks cool, but doesn’t knit up as fast, even though it’s an easy pattern. Just have been doing both off the top of my head. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the third one yet– guess I’ll have to either do something easy like a rib stitch of some sort, or pull out the Vogue Stitchonary to get some ideas for something quick but good looking (and masculine, as these are for guys). Once they are done, I’ll post some photos.

In the meantime, I received an email from one of those interior design stores that I love but can’t afford yet get inspiration from, and the photo of the item they were selling confused me until I looked at it more specifically.

Behold:

Yes, you are looking at that correctly. That is one humongously knitted carpet. Kinda cool, huh? Well, I think the first thing is that you would need some pretty giant knitting needles, and I know they are available (remember I posted about them one time?), and I guess the other part would be finding yarn that large and lots of it to make a carpet that’s 7′6″ X 5′7″. I don’t know that I’d put all that cabling and such in it, as that would make it rather bumpy to me, but hey, what do I know? But the idea has certainly intrigued me, and if I can get the supplies, you KNOW I’d do something like that. I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of area rug to buy for my family room for two years, and still haven’t found anything I’ve liked. (Same with my dining room chandelier, but give me time!) Anyway, knowing how much my husband and I tend to be big DIY’ers for most projects around the house, I could see myself doing something like this if I had the resources. Now THERE’S an idea.

Sorry for the blurry photo. That’s the best I could do with my cheap camera. But you can see it doesn’t quite look right, and this is after I tried to figure out how to rescue it. Becky has now taught me about a “lifeline”. Wish I had known or thought of that before! (palm smack to forehead)

I may continue this, but I think I have to look at it more carefully when I know that I won’t be distracted, and either see how to backtrack, or fix it enough that it will be noticeable, but passable, and continued onwards from this point forward. I haven’t decided yet. I think I need to put this aside for a little bit. But one things for sure– if I am able to rescue this on any level, I will at least have a lifeline from now on!

I wasn’t even cheering or anything. This whole Mystic Waters pattern is not difficult to do exactly. It’s just hard to keep track of where you are in the pattern and where you are in your stitches. Somehow in the process of things, I slipped some stitches off and something got unraveled. Yikes! And now I’m trying to figure out how to recover it and have no clue what I’m looking at. There’s a big gaping hole there. Well, not so much, but I don’t think the “patch” job I did is correct. And I can’t tink back ALL those stitches– we’re talking about several rows’ worth, and I still wouldn’t know where to pick up to recover. This pattern is THAT hard for me. Bleh.

I’m kind of upset about this. Wanting to cry but can’t. It hasn’t been an easy project so far. It’s taken me weeks to get where I am, and here’s the prospect that I might have to start from scratch again. My smile is definitely upside down at the moment. Here’s the second project in the last month or so that I’ve goofed up royally enough that I can’t figure out how to fix it or tink back. I’m not really sure what to do.

I’m not sure if there were other factors not working for it. One is my brain, as I’ve said, that was trying so hard to keep up with this pattern. My eyes would constantly play tricks on me, so I’d lose count or where I was in the chart. I eliminated the problem of not having sharp enough needles to work with the fine yarn. This is the thinnest yarn I’ve ever used, and quite frankly, I’m not loving it, despite the fact it’s supposed to be a merino/silk combination. It’s rather fuzzy. And after seeing Becky’s work on this (and she’s much farther ahead on this), my doesn’t lay flat like hers or anything like that. Everything looks all scrunched up, even when you stretch it to get “the view”.

I may have to let Becky continue without me, and just nix this project. Or start over. I’m not sure yet. This isn’t an easy project, and it’s taken me so long to get to where I am. Perhaps I need to stick to easy stuff and do that well. You know? I will still challenge myself, but perhaps this was too much of a challenge for me, much like my failed Flames sweater. Maybe for now, I need to stick to easy stuff like hats and mittens and scarves and such.

I don’t know. I have to think about this. I’ll try to photograph my progress thusfar, but I have a feeling that I won’t be able to recover this without a miracle worker. It makes me sad, and knitting is supposed to make you feel happy.

I had brought my Mystic Waters project with me. I’m not as far as Becky is at this point, but I do now have lace knitting needles, which will help, even if it’s with a circ cord that’s way too long for me (at least at this point). While using these new needles that I got yesterday helped, on the way to the event, I tried doing a row of the pattern, and promptly goofed it up. I figured that at some sort of down time at the event, I would go about fixing it.

When I finally got a moment, I started to pull out ye ol’ Jordana Paige purse, pull out my project, and untangling some things. One of my little “nieces” (she’s not really my niece, but my husband’s cousin’s daughter, but close enough to be a niece), K, who is 5, and started asking questions and looking at what I was doing. I showed he what I had done before, and showed her that just like she was learning how to read letters for reading books, this pattern was in special symbols to tell me how to do different stitches. She started digging through my purse, which she was amazed was so huge, and we found that I had that ball of the fushia yarn made from corn that I had gotten in SC, and a circ needle in there. I quickly did some thinking (I know, shocking!), and I offered to make her a bracelet. She got very excited and we cast on 5 stitches because she was 5 years old. I started knitting, and she saw at first it was a little slow going, but then she saw how after a little bit of time, the few stitches were starting to grow! It was like knitting a mini scarf for me. I started out just doing garter stitches, because it’s fast and easy, but then she asked why there were “stripes” in the texture, so I switched over to stockinette for a little bit, and then switched back and forth between garter and stocikinette just to make it look a little interesting. While I was in the process of doing it, her triplet sister, J, came by and she remembered me knitting my hat last year at Christmas at their house, and asked if I still had the blue yarn. I told her I didn’t have it with me, but it was at my house. The two of them were entranced by it all, and their mother came by and was amused at how I was entertaining them. I told her that had I known that this would be so amusing to them, I would’ve brought more yarn, and started making bracelets for all of them. But I only had time, from the time I had started late in our visit to make the one. I had told J that I had finished the hat I was making with the blue yarn, and when it’s cold and I visit next time (most likely Thanksgiving or Christmas-time), I’ll make sure I wear it so she can see it. She then asked if I could make a hat for her! Well, I figure I can make a small child’s hat pretty quickly between now and Thanksgiving. I asked her what color, and she said she liked red, so I promised her a red hat. I won’t make anything complicated, and maybe that will be my “brainless” knitting in my purse when I need my hands occupied but don’t need to pay much attention.

In the meantime, I finished the “bracelet”, and J brought it outside to her sister who was playing. She came in and she was very thrilled with it, showing her mother and everything. She came up to me later and gave me the biggest hug and kiss and said, “Thank you for my bracelet, (Windsornot)! I love it!” It made me feel good that a little bit of string knitted about 5 inches long or so would bring this little girl joy. It felt really good.

On the way home, my MIL told me that J and K’s father, E, had seen all my knitting stuff out, and he told her to pass along the hint that he wouldn’t mind a nice gray scarf and hat that I would knit for Christmas. Gee, it’s not even Halloween yet, and I’m getting the Christmas orders already! I supposed time to figure out my sock mistake is out the window right now, and I’ll just work on Mystic Waters when I can. I’ll be needing to get some decent gray yarn and get cracking if I’m going to be making a nice scarf and hat, even if they aren’t complicated, fancy things.

Even so, it’s nice to know that my knitting skills are appreciated in the family.

It’s been a while since any of us have posted. This is not to say that we are abandoning Knitster.org. Au contraire! It’s called, “We-have-a-busy-life-outside-of-knitting-but-we-squeeze-in-knitting-when-we-can-but-don’t-always-post-about-it.” Or at least, that’s what I call it.

I have been venturing more into challenging myself to do something different. Expand my horizons. Push the envelope. You get the drift. Granted, I’m still nervous about doing some things, and by no means am I any kind of knitting expert, but you don’t learn to do new things unless, well, you do them!

Case in point– I’m trying to do more with lace-type of patterns. I started out with my new sock pattern. The new sock pattern is Columbine Socks by Cat Bordhi in her “Soaks Soar on Two Circular Needles”. I’ve always just done her basic sock, and decided to challenge myself with something that wasn’t the basic sock, so I chose this from her book. Well, it involved me learning how to figure out how to read a lace chart, but I got the hang of it. The problem that I’ve run into is not even the lace part, but rather when I got to the heel flap. I didn’t like how it was going, so I started to frog it, but something went terrible wrong in the process, and I can’t figure it out. Bleeh! My head was spinning the other day trying to figure out where I was in the process, so I decided that I need to put it down for a while.

But before I put this aside for a while, here’s a photo of it so far:

Columbine Sock #1 - The beginning

So, in the meantime, I had talked to my fellow black belt and knitter, Becky of Fine Martial Fiber a while ago, and we talked about doing a Knit-Along together, but didn’t decide to start it until now. You may recall that I said that I bought the Mystic Waters pattern (see mention of it before here), and Becky liked the pattern too, so we decided that we’d do it together. I believe she’s still doing it in some lovely shade of blue. I, on the other hand, am doing it in a natural light vanilla color instead. Why like that? Well, not that she reads here, I intend to make it for my future sister-in-law. When I mentioned it to my mother, she felt that my future SIL wouldn’t like it, as she’s not very girly. Well, I think my mother forgets that I’m not the most girly-girl either, and part of the reason I chose this was because it wasn’t some frilly, flowery lace, but still very beautiful and geometric. I think my FSIL will like it.

Here’s a preview, as this is what I started just tonight:

We’ll see how it goes. The pattern really is beautiful, but it looks like a lot of work, as it has chart after chart after chart. After my days of reviewing mind-numbing grant application content, and doing graphics work, you’d think I wouldn’t want to be doing this. Ask me if this is true a little while from now after I’m about two charts into the project.

Lastly, although we didn’t think to get a photo together, there was a mini-Knitster.org reunion. Helen and I were together, albeit briefly, at Helen’s “Not Exactly a Wedding Reception-Reception” at her friend Jen’s house last weekend. I haven’t seen Helen since MDSW, even though we remain in constant touch via the intarweb and the various media options. Next time, we bring the knitting, chickie! It’s always great when we get together, because we have known each other for almost 20 years now (half our life, pretty much!), and she’s the one who got me started on knitting. And blogging. Yeah, it’s all her fault.

And that is our update for today.

Fortunately, this was not the case. We’re back! And fully upgraded!