May 14, 2008

Have I mentioned my dogs are spoiled?

Bouncer with his head pillowed on my Snowflakes in Cedarwoods shawl. 
Spoiled

I'm about 1/3 of the way through chart J now, with only one more body chart to go.  There are approximately a gazillion sts on the needle.  And more to come.  Then the endless, endless edging.

/sigh/

April 20, 2008

Progress pictures, as promised

Out of the snowflakes (mostly) and into the trees.

0420SideView

Snowflakes in Cedarwoods.  Chart F completed, and 10 rows into chart G. Over 700 sts on the needles.  Yeah, it's a lot of sts, but there'll be lots more before it's done.  :)  It's an easy knit, though.  I did switch to my ludicrously long Addi Lace Turbo needle, and that helped immensely, mostly because it's pointier.  I'm not fighting those k2togs and ssks anymore.

And though I can't match ESC with her pictures of stuff on Sadie, we do occasionally put Stuff on Jasper. 

0420StuffonJaws

Bouncer is bemused.  Or maybe disgusted.  Or just thinking about something else.  :)

0420PensiveBounce

April 12, 2008

Second chart finished

Snowflakes on Cedarwoods, Chart B plus a couple of rows of chart C, finished Saturday night:

SnowFlakesCedarsChart2B

And a gratuitous Jasper headshot:

JasperHead

I was watching Tarzan on TCM this afternoon.  Jasper was watching all the motion on the screen and doing his cute head tilt at Tarzan's yell and Jane's screams and the apes' screeches.  He was as entertaining as the movie.

January 21, 2008

Lace knitting photos

Here's what clue 2 of the Spring Shawl Surprise is SUPPOSED to look like:
SSSClue2

And here's Clue 3:
SSSClue3

And Secret of the Stole ii, Clue 1 (sounds like a score, doesn't it???)
SotSiiClue 1

January 09, 2008

3 stages of lace knitting grief

or, What you do when you realize you've made a BIG HONKING ERROR in your knitting.

Stage 1:  Anger
At self:  "I did NOT use the wrong chart.  No way!  I'm better than that."  [looks closely at charts]  "Crap."
[stomp around house, screaming obscenities and tearing hair.  Dogs hide in fright, husband tiptoes away to play video games]

At the designer:  "Freakin' files were confusing!  It's not my fault!  Waaaaaaaah!"

Stage 2:  Denial
"I don't really HAVE to fix it, do it?  It's not THAT bad.  It's still nice and lacey."

Stage 3:  Acceptance
"Cripes, how many times have I seen other people make errors like this and thought 'Jeezopete, how could you miss THAT???'"  The Karma fairy has just tapped me with her wand.  Hubris is a bitch, my friends.  I just DIDN'T READ the name of the file correctly.  I am officially a moron."

"And dude, you know that if you didn't fix it, EVERY TIME you looked at this shawl, you'd see that error.  Because it's big, and it's honkin'.  You gotta fix it.  Just suck it up and do it."

So I did.

Frogged

Here are Janice's tips for frogging back to the big honkin' error.

I don't use lifelines.  So when I do something like this, I just pull the needle out and frog rapidly back to approximately where I need to restart. 

On this project, the section before the error had a purl back row.  If you have that option, frog to a purl row.  I wanted to pick up sts from one of the purl rows, because nothing makes you scream in frustration like trying to tink back through a bunch of sk2p or k3togs. 

At this point, you want to tink one st at a time.  If possible, put your needle INTO the st before you pull the working yarn OUT.  You're less likely to have a stitch go running down the work if you can do this.

Don't worry about yo's.  You can always just lift them up when you go back.

Check what you've done.  Twice.  I like to knit from charts, because you can easily see the st relation from one row to the next.  I start at the beginning of the row, and just slip the sts from the left needle to the right one, correcting stitch orientation as you go.  You do have to be able to read your knitting, to know whether that little thing on the row below is a k2tog or an ssk, or a sk2p.  Pick up any yo's you may have missed.  Then do the same thing again. 

Then knit your first CORRECTED pattern row, paying CLOSE attention to how that row fits with the row below.  If anything doesn't look right, STOP RIGHT NOW and find out what it is.

The first time I started to pick up my sts, I was about half way through the row before I realized I needed to go down about 4 more rows.  No problem.  Rip them out and pick up again.

Now I have the right chart.  I'm 2 rows into it.  So far.  :)

January 08, 2008

Spring Shawl Surprise, Clue 2

ETA:  That third motif that's different marks the spot where I started knitting with the wrong chart.

head/desk/repeatedly

Ok, I should have looked at the clues more carefully.  In slight defense of my mistake, there are 4 freakin' versions of this pattern.  Jeezopete.  That's what I get for trying to get it done.

I thought the bottom of the center section looked a little funky too.  If it wasn't for that, I might just leave it.

/walks off to print correct chart and frog back and start again./

Whew.  I had a marathon knitting session today, along with everything else going on.  But I finished the second clue of the Spring Shawl Surprise:

SSClue2

I really hate pinning out works in progress, so I just kinda sorta pin it out.  But you can see the general principles of it. 

I just had to run back and look at the pattern, because I just noticed that the 3rd edge motif from the bottom is different.  When I look at the pattern, I'm pretty sure I knitted it correctly.  Kinda stinks that I didn't notice it till now though.  But I've always been much better at seeing the trees than the forest.  Hell, I didn't even realize I was making little circles in the middle till I looked at the picture.  That's being a little TOO closely focussed on the stitches.

This section of the pattern was lots more interesting to knit than the first section.  Lots more going on, and some rows have lace patterning on both the right side and the wrong side, plus various combinations of knit and purl sts.  Good stuff.  So far, so fun.

June 13, 2007

Blocking is not for wimps (lotsa pictures)

Remember the Dragon Wing Shawl I was working on?  I finally got off my fat ass and finished it up!  It was only stalled because it has about 8 gazillion edging rows, and most days I'd rather chew aluminum foil than knit edging.  But I'm on a mission to actually, you know, FINISH something, so I did.  I finished it.

First off, look what I found yesterday!
Foundobjects_3  
Great big FAT pieces of styrofoam!  (Hand in picture to give you an idea of scale.)  And someone was THROWING IT AWAY!  There were even two BIGGER, humongous pieces that I looked longingly at, but couldn't figure out how to fit in my car.  And sorry, I just wasn't going to do that "stick it on the roof and hold it with your hand" thing.  I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid.

Anyway, the shawl.  Here's the obligatory, unblocked (aka boiled ass) shot.  It's got an extra helping of boiled ass because apparently I can't focus a camera on unblocked lace.
Fuzzyboiledass

About 40 minutes later, it looked like this.  If I had a real understanding of geometry, it probably wouldn't have taken me this long to get here.  This is after I pinned and unpinned at least three times before the penny dropped and I remembered that I'm essentially working with a CIRCLE, and that if you put your tape measure on the EDGE of the circle (as opposed to, oh I dunno, the CENTER), you just shouldn't wonder why you can't pull your all your edges out to the same measurement.

Yes, I'm a moron, but I'm ok with that, mostly.  I figure things out eventually.
40minslater

When I got to this point, I thought, "What does this remind me of??" 
Milleniumfalcon_2

Then I remembered:  Han Solo's Millenium Falcon.  :)
Gdykstrafalcon001_4
   

Done!
Whew

Ok, it's only MOSTLY  perfect.  I'm fairly anal, but I'm also reasonable about it.  And I'd already spent an hour pinning this thing out.  I took so long that it had dried out from washing, so I needed to dampen it back down.  I couldn't find a spray bottle, so I filled a squirt bottle and threw water on it.  It was the moral equivalent of shooting it with a squirt gun.  It was close enough.

Here's a detail shot:
Detail

And the finshed shawl, back view:
Backview

Front:
Front

The "my hair looks like crap, but my shawl looks GREAT" view.
Smirk

February 06, 2007

Spider Queen Shawl

Fleegle is working on Hazel Carter's Spider Queen shawl.  In black. 

Take a short pause and think about that.  It'll be fabulous, but the just the thought of lace in black makes my eyes hurt.

I started this shawl a couple of years ago, supposedly as a local KAL with a friend.  My friend wimped out on me, so I set the project aside.  Since Fleegle's having some issues, I pulled my incomplete center square out to take pictures.

Here's the section in question:
Spiderwebs2

The tricky bit is that Hazel has you knit every row of the chart from right to left.  Me, I'm not smart enough to do anything different than what the pattern says, so I just blindly followed.  It makes nice little spiderwebs. 

Here's a larger picture with the little webs centered:
Sqshawlseg
Keep in mind that unblocked lace looks like boiled ass. 

I gotta finish this thing!

November 21, 2006

I got nuthin'

Folks, I got nuthin' today.  I'm suffering from a pre-holiday malaise, my left eye is bothering me (though my shoulder is feeling lots better!), and I sorely need a break, which I won't get till after the holidays.  I just wanna sit down and drink copious amounts of eggnog and bourbon or some other alcoholic concoction and just not have to do anything for a while.  {sigh}  Oh well. 

There are a couple of bright spots.  The new NBC show Heroes is pretty fun to watch, if you like comic book-type shows.  (I do, a lot.)  And there's a Victorian Lace Today KAL starting up. 
Smallvlt_1
Like I need another excuse to knit lace. 
Looks like there's a new episode of House tonight.  Speaking of Hugh Laurie, have any of y'all seen him in the Jeeves and Wooster series of shows?  I hear they're the bee's knees.*

And I'm reduced to talking about tv shows for blog fodder.  Jeezopete.

*obligatory Wodehouse reference.

November 12, 2006

Lace dreams

I dreamed that a woman picked up my Oregon Shawl and walked off with it.  I saw her before she got too far away.  I chased her down, and grabbed her by the arm. I dragged her to her parents, haranguing her all the way about how she should NOT pick up other peoples' stuff.  I shamed her into giving it back to me.

Clearly, I have been working on lace too much lately.  I am now suffering from Lace Anxiety.

: )

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