Thursday 30 April 2015

Charts

I typed up the lace chart I'll be using for my top.  It's fairly simple and intuitive, but I wanted to have the chart typed before I actually knit it so I could correct it on the go.  I find it's a lot harder to be motivated to chart it out after the fact and I usually catch some errors this way, it's also benefitting from my current need to have everything done before the baby arrives.

This need is somewhat illogical, I wonder what it means that the front hall closet and my knitting pattern have been organized but the baby's room still needs work.  In any event, I'm not quite ready for him or her to come.  I am pretty excited though.

Monday 27 April 2015

Back at it

I'm well into the raglan increases and am confident that the top is going to actually work for me (before it may have worked for me if I was wearing football gear, the shoulders were absurd).  It's at a stage where it's nice and simple, and where I really should draw up the lace chart so that when I come to that part it will be ready.  I'm quite taken with my plan and what I imagine it will be like in my head.

I'm really hoping things turn out according to plan, and my estimate of how big I might be after this baby is near reality so that the top will fix.  Risky, right?  But sweaters and tops are my favourite to knit and I just couldn't resist.  Besides, there will be enough give in it that it's not like the sizing has to be dead on, it would work with some positive ease as well as some negative, so I think it will be okay.

Thursday 23 April 2015

The importance of brackets

I was making good progress on the purple top I'm making but something didn't quite feel right about it.  At first I couldn't put my finger on it, I looked at my plans and they seemed reasonable, but still, something was off.  Then it began to be obvious that the sleeves had started with too many stitches (it's a top-down raglan), and I thought and thought about my math and the top, and I rechecked my gauge and math and still, I couldn't figure out what the issue was.

Tuesday night I was knitting and hanging out with friends and suddenly it hit me.  The order of operations, I had accidentally done the math in the wrong order and this was why everything was wonky.  Yesterday I re-did the math, confirming exactly what the issue was and ripped out to the start. It wasn't as demoralizing as I thought it would be.  

I was at row 26 when I ripped back and am back to row 18, and things are looking much better.  They're also going much faster since there are considerably fewer stitches for each sleeve.



Monday 20 April 2015

An unorthodox nap

Caleb fell asleep in the car again, which was a problem because that means once I wake him up he won't go back to sleep until bedtime and will likely be an absolute wing-nut it the rest of the day.

Then I had the epiphany that since it's nice out I could just let him have his nap in the car.  (I am also in the car, which is in shade and is a comfortable temperature--no one worry).  Although this means I can't knit (my knitting is inside and no where near the front door) I can still get some things like phone calls out of the way and the few things that have to actually happen inside the house can happen while I give Caleb quiet time in his room. He's quite happy to play in his room for a good hour which means my day isn't shot even though his nap time is totally not happening normally today.

It will be nice that I don't have so many appointments after the baby is born, they're totally what's messing up nap time.

I'm at that stage in my pregnancy where it feels really important that everything be "ready."  Why I feel that it's imperative that our hats, mitts, and scarves be neatly organized is beyond me but as I was organizing the front hall closet the other day I began making a list of the things that need to be knit for next year.

A neck warmer, hat, and set of mitts for Caleb.

A sweater for Caleb; a pullover with a good hood that stays up like the one from this year that I love so much, but with different cables.

A sweater for the baby's first winter; a cardigan with colourwork. I know what I want it to look like but the motif and colours will probably be gender specific.

The baby's Christmas stocking, I have it all planned except the colours. I want to meet the baby first.

Some people say it feels like they're getting to the end of pregnancy when the room is ready, or some other thing happens. For me it's when I start planning the knitting, not the knitting that's for a newborn, but the items that they'll grow into or keep.

I can hardly wait.

Thursday 16 April 2015

I *think* it's going to work

I've ripped out the shawl that's just not to be and after much deliberation have decided to try my own design.  I figure I'll just make TinCan Knit's Bonny later so I don't have the same sweater as my friend in a near-identitical colour.

I've done math and double checked it and I think it will work, but it's quite fine yarn which means there's a lot of knitting until it's long enough for me to try it on and get a really good idea about whether my math works.  I'm pretty good at math, it's a top-down raglan, and I have no reason to assume it won't work but I'm still a bit.... I don't know what, actually.  Not nervous, maybe mildly apprehensive.  I really like it so far though.

It's about an inch long so far and is looking quite nice.  It would have been longer but I ripped out the first start because it was using the yarn I'd ripped out of the shawl and the fact that the yarn wasn't smooth was making the knitting look wonky, so I started again with the yarn that hadn't been used, keeping the rest in a little ball.  There's more yardage than I think I'll need in the ball so I'm hoping I can just use the fresh stuff but if I need to use the shawl-yarn I can figure out how to straighten it out when I come to it.  In any event that will now be near the bottom which is easier to over-look than the neckline, and would be blocked anyways.  The swatch came out fine, but I'll be trying it on before it's blocked and I like it better this way.

Monday 13 April 2015

Delighted

I've taken the blanket off its blocking wires and I am thrilled with the results.  It's beautiful and simple and I love it.  I'm really happy with my decision to reverse the colours on half of the squares and assemble it in a checkerboard pattern.  I really love the original one TinCan Knits made, that had all the background being one colour and the dots different colours but couldn't find a yarn with a long variegation that I was happy with and I think with the yarn I choose it would have looked like all the squares were the same and been a bit boring.


That's the blanket folded in quarters, it's five squares per side.  It might sound silly but it's a big thing off the to-do-before-baby-comes list.

Thursday 9 April 2015

Almost Done

The blanket has been finished, I blocked it yesterday and it's still drying but I'm very pleased at how it's turned out.  I thought I might be dry today but it seems it will need at least one more day.

I've been thinking about the yarn that I want to make into a shirt of some kind and am pondering making up my own pattern, I have a vision for what I'd want the back to look like but am not quite sure about the front.  However I really like the idea, so that might happen and be my next interesting project.

In the meantime I'm working on my lovely but never-ending blanket made out of sock yarn, I still like it.  I haven't measured it but think I might be at 3.75' by 4', which isn't too shabby.  I'll need a lot more yarn though, but that's okay, I don't need to buy it all at once.

Tuesday 7 April 2015

Way easier than I thought

I almost ruled out making TinCan Knit's Pop Blanket because the squares were all crocheted together.  I decided to go ahead anyways, because I love the finished product and I just figured I'll learn how to crochet later.

Yesterday at knitting group a friend was supposed to teach me how to attach these things but she wasn't there, so I asked another friend who crochets.  Now, despite the fact that this other friend crochets and makes absolutely beautiful, complicated things she said she had no idea how to do that and always sewed hers together when making a piece like this.  I thought about it, but the idea of that much sewing (and how many ends that would create) was enough to drive me nuts so today I sat down with the computer.

Five minutes later I figured it out, and about half an hour later almost all of the blocked pieces have been attacked (I still need to finish blocking about a third of them).  This is ridiculously awesome.

Friday 3 April 2015

Frusterated

Pregnancy insomnia is maddening.  It's been such a busy week and today I finally have a day at home to play with Caleb and get some things I haven't had time to do done during his nap.  I was really looking forward to it, but I've been up for hours and nothing I do is helping.  I just want to have energy to play with my little guy and not feel like a zombie.

I can't even work on my to-do list in the middle of the night because doing laundry and a number of the other things involve noise and light and would totally wake up my husband which would be unfair.

I've narrowed down the fate of my purple yarn to three patterns but am still undecided.  I'm hoping I'll be able to spend some time on YouTube today to figure out how to crochet the blanket squares together and to block the other half of them.