Author: Susan

As I’m sure all of the knitters in the known world are aware, the Yarn Harlot recently decided to host a Knitting Olympics. While speed knitting is not generally my forte, this quest sounded wildly appealing (not only will I start and maybe finish a project, but it will be community-oriented and provide blog fodder! awesome!). I signed up with the following comment:

I have a red beaded scarf (yarn, beads and pattern) that has been sitting and waiting for me to finish my first pair of socks… So, a dual challenge: first the time trial to get on the team (I’m just through the heel turn on sock #2, there’s hope), then the olympic knitting effort itself. I’m even color-appropriate: blue socks and red scarf (go USA!), and the red can do dual service as a tribute to our host country, Canada. 🙂

So that it’s clear what I’m working with, here’s the sock status as of about 11 pm last night:

I am actually making excellent progress, and am finally on the straight-away after the heel turn so I can knit while I read without stopping to count.

The project that has been calling to me is a variation on the Cascading Diamonds Scarf from Knitting with Beads. (This picture from the very neat google books is the only one I could find — the purple project in the upper left corner shows the bead detail.) I’m going to use my red Cotton Classic that I bought with the gift certificate my brother and sister gave me for Christmas last year, plus three colors of beads. I can’t wait to start.

This picture was taken at night, and as usual with red, isn’t completely true to the colors — it real life the yarn is a little bit darker and a bit less fluorescent. I love the way they look together.

Does stringing the beads count as starting?

Our orange zoos took a tumble yesterday, and when I went to replace them I realized that two little faces had spread onto the bottom rock and with the fall were now separated. I don’t know whether it’s stress or (hopefully!) a permanent change, but the two new guys have much darker centers than their older counterparts. The original zoos’ centers are concentric rings of lavendar and tan, and the new are very dark brown and a deeper lavendar. The outside fringe is also more brown than bright orange.

You can see the difference here:

The picture on the right is looking down on them from above, so it’s far less clear due to surface water movement, but you can really see the difference from a distance. The new zoos are down and to the left of the big zoo rock. (If you look closely, you can also see an earlier group of orange zoos to the top left of the main rock, and a small group of yellow and pink sunflower zoos to the lower right.)

At knitting on Wednesday night, a certain someone described her feelings on clicking through to my blog as “Please not a fish post…. damn!” So, since this is in essence a fish post, I will first placate the knitters with a picture of kevin’s second sock, now at 5 5/8″. 🙂 Ooooh:

You would practically think my needles had wings.

And now onto the mysterious and wonderful world of the fishtank…

We’ve known for a while now that we have a rogue crab living in our rocks, which was hairy, seemed to eat algae, and definitely was not intentionally introduced to the tank. Usually you can see a hairy leg or two in one of the center rock’s crevices, and at night once the lights are out, you can even see his claws. (As a former ocean swimmer who used to keep her feet up lest a crab run over them, crabs still aren’t really my thing…) Since coming home from the PA Christmas trip, though, I hadn’t caught a glimpse of him and feared the worst. Yesterday, I came home from work to find this guy upside down in the sand next to the sunflower zoos:

I’ve been sad since — I liked our mystery crab, in a not-wanting-to-touch-him sort of way. But last night, what did I glimpse while feeding the crew but a hairy leg in a familiar hole in the rock… So we had two?! Kevin’s afraid that they mated and one killed the other, and now we’ll have dozens — is that just a spider thing, or do crazy hairy crabs do it too? And does anyone have the slightest clue what kind of crab this is and whether it’s actually reefsafe?

While my old computer has not yet entirely given up the ghost, it’s been close enough for the last few years (ahem…) that I’ve been looking for a new one. I’ve been taking it apart and giving it new pieces, OS’s, etc. since senior year of college to try to mollify it, but since it has trouble staying non-crashed for long enough to load photos and write a blog post, it was increasingly apparent that it was more or less time to move on.

I’m now the proud owner of an eMachines T6524.

I’ve been moving files and programs and settings over for the last night or two (wouldn’t take so long if I didn’t keep stopping to look through old photos and college essays), so I still have my old, not-so-reliable machine plugged in on the left, along with a plethora of wires. I am exceptionally happy with it so far. I’ve known that this was my next machine since late-summer, after a lot of comparison-shopping and buoyed by the knowledge from an inside source (who lives in my apartment) that it has outdone machines that cost twice as much in his company’s performance tests. I’ll probably be putting in 1-2 more GB of memory at some point soon, and I’ll upgrade the video card before I install Vista next year, but otherwise it’s perfect. My favourite part is how wonderfully quiet it is — I can hear the fishtank gurgling downstairs over the computer sitting next to me. Bliss.

Finally done with the vexing hat! I don’t know why I can’t just follow directions when it comes to hats, but I always end up second- and third-guessing, then ripping. After two false starts, it was clear that my third try would be too long, so I condensed the decreases and finished up, then cut off the bottom inch and a half. Three inches into the ripping, and well past the point of ridiculousness (it’s a HAT! how long should it take?!), it occured to me that I’d made a Sorting Hat:

See the mouth? 🙂

Once the stitches were ripped, I picked up the bottoms of the next row and turned around to cast off. It was going the wrong direction but with the dark yarn you couldn’t tell — good enough. I cast off super-loosely, so it has a nice stretch and is actually a prettier and smoother edge than the original. Awesome.

I should have taken a picture of it on the boy, but enough minutes have gone into this project, and so I’m on to his second sock… 🙂 I’m sure I’ll have an action shot of the hat some time down the road.

Hayden Hat for Kevin:
Yarn: Plymouth Encore Worsted
Colors: #668 (Lt Sage), #1234 (Dk Forest), #240 (Lt Beige)

Needles: 16″ #8 circulars until decreases became too tight, then switched to magic loop with 24″ #8s.

It’s so nice to be back home. The trip was so fun, and it’s wonderful to see people, but there’s something about coming back that’s just happy. The fish (and pumps!) survived, the mantles didn’t burn down (we didn’t have a tree to worry about), and the plants grew like woah: Remember the garlic? We’re thinking we need a plant stand, since now it’s over a foot tall and we can’t close the blinds anymore.

And, a happy surprise:

The two green arrows are pointing to green buds in the strawberry plant! Neat! It’s still alive! I don’t know how much it can grow or thrive without any leaves to make energy, but I’m so encouraged to see that it’s still sending out buds. Does anyone have suggestions (fertilizer? etc?) to keep it alive and happy while it’s regrowing?

Since this is alledgedly at least in part a knitting blog, and since this was one of the best moments of Christmas and knitting-related to boot, I ought to show a present:

Kevin’s mom has a stocking that her aunt knit for her when she was very little. It’s utterly lovely, with her name, the year she was born, and a Christmas tree decorated with sequins. 🙂

Then, when she was married, a dear friend of her family’s knit Kevin’s dad a stocking with a portrait of him on it (note handlebar mustache!):

She also knit Kevin and his sister Kristina a stocking each when they were born.

When Kevin’s mom found out we were both coming for Christmas there, she asked the family friend to knit one more for me. Clearly, the woman is a very generous soul and a speedy knitter because when we came down the stairs on Christmas morning, there was a stocking for me. 🙂 Wow.

I was so floored. This was my first Christmas not at home with my family, and it was such a wonderful gift. Added to the fact that The Polar Express (which my aunt gave to my sister when we were little — a staunch favourite) was one of the packages underneath the tree, the magic of Christmas is still there. 🙂

(posted, as are the next few, on Dec 31…)

Continuing the trading of holidays, I flew back to the east coast with Kevin to visit his family for Christmas. 🙂 When we booked for Thanksgiving in early November, we’d been hoping that the prices for flights had been raised artificially — that the airlines would figure that people would panic and snatch up their $700 tickets for December. So, we gambled and waited a few weeks for them to go down. I still think it was a good idea, but prices, if anything, went up. We ended up flying United (squishy, but non-stop and way cheaper than most) to DC, then renting a car and driving up to PA. This ended up working out so that we could see my sister, who graduated in June and has a job and awesome first apartment right in the city. After a wonderful nap, look through photo albums, and brunch out at the crepe place in her neighbourhood, Kevin and I started on the road. I started a new Hayden:

For those who may make the drive, never take New York Ave to Rte 50. We sat in traffic for ages. Eventually we got off and wended our way over to 95, which was semi smooth sailing to Baltimore, when we started seeing signs like this:

By the end of the drive, the hat looked like this:

Progress! At the expense of travel time, but nonetheless progress. The first time I knit this hat, I ran into endless problems adjusting it for a larger male head. There’s something about hats that my brain just doesn’t get. This time, I had all of my notes from the time before, and yet still managed to out-think myself. After knitting on the drive, I measured and “realized” that the seven and a quarter inches of decreases couldn’t possibly work with the size of kevin’s head, so I ripped out all but an inch. Apparently I neglected to reread this post before reknitting the whole hat, because I made the exact same mistake of ripping then reknitting three inches less as a year ago. Once I realized what an idiot I was, I decided to just keep going and finish the decreases, so now I have a baby-sized sunbonnet-ish hat. After restarting, I’m this far:

(Kevin’s family is convinced I’m math-disabled… at this point I’m in no position to have proved them wrong, frequent measuring not-withstanding. I tell you, doing a gauge-swatch is no insurance against stupidity.)

A mere ten months later, I have finally finished the white sweater!
Pattern: Bomber Jacket from Rowan’s Denim People
Yarn: I substituted Cascade Sierra in off white (#03) for the Rowan Denim

After knitting this, I don’t think I’d knit another Kim Hargreaves pattern — the text and finishing instructions left a lot to be desired, it wasn’t very carefully constructed (details like keeping a knit rib on the sides to facilitate sewing up, specifying where increases should go, etc.) and things like the shoulder decreases and sleeve cap were wildly off.

That said, I’m proud of it. I spent a lot of time working with the yarn substitution and pattern gaps to come out with something I really liked. I’m impressed at how well the various changes worked. The greatest triumph was my first machine-sewed zipper:

Apparently everyone was right and the trick really is just to baste it down firmly before you start. I think it’s the height of cool. I also love the collar.

Once the body was blocked, the sleeves stayed a bit big (which I can live with) and the ribbed pieces went from teeny to quite big. Does anyone have any experience blocking ribbing? Can you get it the ridges to lie closer together if you re-dunk it? This sweater is quite boxy — I wouldn’t mind if it was a bit more form fitting.

I finished it a week and a half ago and keep forgetting to take a daylight photo of it on. So here’s a front and back in the mirror before work:

For the first time in half a year, there will be more daylight minutes today than yesterday! We’re on the upswing!

In the meantime, I’m keeping those candles lit…