[knitting] Herringbone Mittens

I did get knitting-olympic gold for these mittens:



Pattern: Herringbone Mittens (sans poms)

Needles: US 5 (3.75mm) for cuff, US 7 (4.5 mm) for hand and thumb.

Yarn: Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair: 1 skein natural, 1 skein evergreen

Gold for completing the mittens, that they are colorwork and for using stash yarn...





I know, the original pattern I wanted to do was Wintergreen. I got nearly halfway up one mitten and had hated every minute of knitting it. Every. Minute. I knew if I finished it, I wasn't going to want to make another one. So I frogged. I'd still like to try the pattern, but with a bouncy sport-weight yarn and, like, US 7 needles.

I still wanted to make stranded mittens with the Mountain Mohair, so I grabbed the Herringbone pattern. These mittens were so much easier and faster to work on. I acutally enjoyed working on them- imagine that! My only complaint is that I think the thumbs came out too short. If I were to make them again (and I think I probably will), I'd make the thumbs three for four rows longer. I was able to block them out to be longer but unblocked, the would only have fit of you snipped off my thumbs at the first knuckle. Really.

No gold for the cabled bag. The body is done but I'm still making the i-cord and I have a zipper and fabric I'd like to sew in as a lining. But since I have no idea how to do that, the project is in cryogenic stasis. And I didn't even get to Murderface's new sweater. He's devastated- I know it.

[misc] Procrastination - If a job's worth doing, it'll still be worth doing tomorrow.

I finished the main body of Quinn. The bottom is seamed (three needle bind-off, rather than kitchener) and I washed it and blocked it. I still have to make the strap: strands of i-cord braided together. In the interest of saving time, I tried to use my Embellish-Knit machine (a turn crank niddy noddy), which works well with up to DK weight yarn, but it totally bombed with the worsted weight, mostly cotton Sierra I'm using. It got all kinds of jammed up and I ended up having to cut out a tangled mess of immovable knots.

Which, I suppose, is fair? I was planning on literally cranking out at least 12 feet of i-cord with this thing because I didn't want to do something so tedious by hand. But this is the Knitting Olympics. Would it be like running a 22 mile marathon and then jumping onto a motorcycle at mile 17 to finish out the last 5 miles? I kinda think so. It felt like cheating to me.

(But if the machine had worked, I totally would have used it.)

###

I got some new games from Game Surplus. Dollar and I are going to try out Batt'l Kha'os tonight. I tested it out a bit by myself last night (blatantly avoiding all the i-cord I have to make) and it's very cute. A tile-laying game for two. One side is Knights, one side is Orcs. You line up opposing forces and whoever has more forces at the corners of the tiles wins that corner. I know, it doesn't make sense when I write it out here, but it seems light and fun.

We've been playing a lot of Smallworld recently. This is the ONLY game I can't win against Dollar (besides chess) (and Magic) (okay, maybe there's a SHORT list of games I can't win against him). I have NO IDEA how he ends up with a higher score than me. I would accuse him of stealing victory tokens but I'm usually the one passing him his chips. Even when I know I've won the game, KNOW it because of all the victory points I was accumulating like crazy, when we add them all up he still wins. By a lot.

I played Dominion up at my sister's last Friday. Now that Lost* has started, we all watch it together on Friday nights, with supper, then play a boardgame. We started by playing a game of 4-player regular Catan. I placed my starting settlements in unapologetically mean locations and the rest of the game was smooth sailing to an easy win for me. I wanted to play Dominion after but Dollar wasn't feeling like another game (crushing defeat tends to have that effect on him) and he walked back down to the house to play a video game. I stayed to teach my sister and her bf Dominion. We played a game. Then we played again. I offered to leave but they kinda taunted me into staying for another game. I didn't get back home until midnight.

###


*If Kate doesn't meet some kind of grisly demise this season, I'm calling BS on the entire series. I didn't invest 6 years into this show to not see Kate get what she deserves. I demand satisfaction!

[knitting] Quinn's Surgery

I'm making good progress on my Quinn cabled bag. I was able to knit all of the band on Saturday, graft it together and pick up stitches around for the main body. Here's the front...



As I was knitting along, I flipped the bag over to knit the back and saw that I had messed up. MESSED UP. Look at the top of the back:



On the previous cable round, I had sent the stockinette lines back toward each other (rather than away). I said to Dollar, "Oh [bleep]. I [bleeped] up. I [bleeped] up really bad. It's time for surgery. I'll see you in an hour."

I went into my craft room, dramatically cleared my desk off pushing everything off one end, and put the patient down on the table.

Scalpel, I mean, crochet hook. Check. Cable needles. Check.



The fix was easy enough, just tedious. Pick up 4 stitches 2 rows below onto a cable needle. Drop those 4 stitches down to the cable needle. Reverse the orientation of the 2 purls and 2 knits. Pick them back up. Do this 10 times.

 

 

Here's the surgery 50% complete (with the fixed cables shown on the right):



It was a success and the patient is no worse for wear. Dollar and I celebrated with a bottle of champagne. Which we had on hand for Valentine's Day, but I think it's an appropriate reward for this kind of thing.

And I explained to him why I didn't just rip it all back to the mistake and knit it all over again. "It's like building a 2nd story to a house, finding out you put the windows in wrong and tearing the entire 2nd story down to put the windows in right. You don't have to; just fix the windows."

[knitting] Eye of the Tiger

The Winter Olympics start tomorrow and I've been busy training for the Knitting Olympics. I was going to take an action shot of me in a striped terry cloth headband and wrist-warmers, in a track suit, tirelessly winding yarn from skeins into balls... But really, it was just a couple hours of me casually turning the knob on my ball winder while sipping wine and watching Flight of the Conchords. Yeah, that's my kind of training.

I have three things I want to do: a cabled bag, a stranded pair of mittens, a sweater for Murderface. I also want to frog a pink sweater. Ideally, I'd also like to be able to spin 8 oz of wool, knit a hat, a pair of slippers, a baby sweater, finish my handspun shawl... Yeah. I think that's it. That's all I want to do. In two weeks. BUT we're not meant to set ourselves up for disappointment, so my "official" goal is just the first three things.

I've been cooking and freezing dinners so that I can just reheat them on week nights during the Olympics. I'm skipping boardgaming on Wednesday nights. I do have a few upcoming obligations (a dinner with Dollar's family, a show at the HOP, a hair appointment... oh yeah, and work) that's going to cut into my knitting time but what am I going to do. The occasional shower and event outside of the house will probably do me good. At least I'm starting with a three-day weekend to make up for the wasted time, I mean, lovely time doing Valentine's Day dinner and stuff.

And the Chinese New Year starts on Valentine's Day- it's the year of the tiger. Eye of the Tiger!

[knitting] Ravelympics 2010

I joined the Ravelympics group on Ravelry. I'm not on a team but I'm going to try to participate in as many events as I can possibly complete in 22 days...

- Aerial Unwind (Frog those poor unloved projects to reclaim that yarn.)

I have an unfinished pink sweater from years ago that's ugly, weird, mis-shapen. I want the yarn back.

- Bag Jump (Bags, totes, pouches)
- Cable Cross-Country (All things cables)
- Stash Compulsory Dance (Use of long-neglected stash purchased at least 1 year ago)

The Quinn Cabled bag, in my queue since I joined Ravelry, will count for all of these events. I plan on using gray Cascade Sierra that I've had in the stash for ages. I'm a little worried that this mostly-cotton yarn might not be right for a heavily cabled bag, but I would probably (hopefully) sew a fabric lining in. And then it would also count for the SnowCross event.

- Bobsled (All things pets)

A better sweater for Murderface.

- Flying Camel Spin (Just spinning... lots and lots of spinning)

Spin something from my fiber stash. Not sure what yet. First I'll need to finish some fiber I'm in the middle of and get it off my bobbins.

- Mittens Moguls (Mittens, gloves, anything that covers hands/wrists/arms)
- Nordic Colorwork Combined (Colorwork, intarsia, fair isle)
- Stash Compulsory Dance (Use of long-neglected stash purchased at least 1 year ago)

Wintergreen Mittens will count for all of these events. I have some grayish-white and evergreen Mountain Mohair from the Green Mountain Spinnery.

And if there's time...

- Hat Halfpipe (All things hats and heads)
- Single Skein Speed Skate (Projects of just one skein/hank)
- Scarf Super-G (Scarves, cowls, neckwarmers, smokerings, scarflettes…all things neck)
- WIPs-Dancing (WIPs/UFOs and only these; Projects not touched since Jan 12th)
- SnowCross (Projects that combine knitting, crochet, needle-felting, embroidery, sewing...; minimum of 2 crafts combined together)
- Junior Olympics (Kids, baby garments)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So... yeah. That looks like a lot but the number one rule of Ravelympics is you don't talk about Rav- Wait- that's for my other club. The one rule of Ravelympics is: "Challenge yourself." I may have taken it to the point of "Challenge yourself into a state of overwhelmed panic and just watch LOST instead." We'll see...