Break-Neck Adventures

Usually, I wait to block until all of the pieces are finished. But, I'm impatient when it comes to lace and I wanted to see the finished back of the cardigan. Or, as I've been claiming since the beginning of this project, the back of the tunic.

It is officially a tunic now. I've decided to be daring and to try and change a project, by changing it from a cardigan to a pullover. I've made this decision for three reasons:

1. I think it would look better.

2. My mum prefers it and she's the intended owner.

3. I somewhat loathe knitting two front pieces. I don't know why. I only wear cardigans, so you would think that I would like knitting the separate parts of them.

My fingers are crossed for success in this venture. Altering patterns has always gone fairly well for me, so hopefully this will be no different. I even have a plan for how I'm going to do it and I rarely have plans for anything.

Siren Calls and Works in Progress

I am a complete sucker for nice yarn. Of course, that's practically synonymous with saying, "I'm a knitter," but it's still completely true. Currently I've been looking for a yarn to go with my next project: Liz Abinante's Travelling Woman. My adventures with Aeolian have made me ache for more shawls, even as I continue with the River Falls Cardigan.

Look at it and its seductive powers. It's taunting me.

The yarn that I am yearning for, despite its price, is KnitPicks' 100% merino wool Preciosa Tonal in Captain. Referred to by multiple Ravelry denizens as "super soft and squishy." Also, $12 for a 243 yard skein.

I was planning on making Travelling Woman with fingering weight, as it's finer, but this yarn is calling to me. "Buy me," it says, "I'll wait for you to finish the shawl. Under the hemlock tree, where we first met."

Then I blink and wonder why it's talking about trees, until its enchanting powers lure me back under its spell. The fact that KnitPicks' stock is low is not helping at all -- I fear that if I don't buy it now, it will be gone and I will forever regret my terrible decisions and my financial stinginess.

This is all a bit premature, actually. I am still in the throes of my torrid affair with the River Falls Cardigan. After navigating the treachery that was mistakes in its Chart B, I have finished with the lace portion.

This is going much faster than I expected. I think I actually will be done before I leave for college, which was originally just an optimistic joke.

I think I can finish the back within the next two days and next week I'll have plenty of time to work on the two front halves. While trying to ignore the siren call of Preciosa, of course.

Operation: "Actual" Lace, completed

I don't have blocked pictures of the Aeolian yet, because I don't have the current ability to take pictures that will do it justice. There are scenic mountain views and a gorgeous dress in my future, so I'm saving myself for those.

That doesn't detract from the fact, however, that I was finally freed from my curse of binding off and got to blocking.

Blocking lace is harder than blocking everything else, apparently. No one informed me. It took me a full viewing of Donald Glover's Weirdo and halfway through Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonde, to finish pinning down this thing. If the entertainment had been less entertaining, we would have had a big problem. Well, a bigger problem than that I actually enjoyed Legally Blonde 2.

We'll discuss my taste in stand-up routines and movie sequels later. For now, let us (or at least me) rejoice in the fact that I finished my first "actual" lace project and I love it.

We can also rejoice in the beginnings of my new project, the River Falls Cardigan. The very beginnings of it. I've decided that I can't knit the thing with my mother around, so I've mainly confined this project to my workplace and bedroom. She hasn't even seen the color yet, which could be a good or bad thing. The color is a mite brighter than I was expecting. It's much greener than it looks in the picture. Much greener. Greener than Ireland and I've been there -- Ireland is pretty damn green.

I actually swatched something, for once in my life. I'm really bad about swatching -- I've learned over the years that I usually need to go about two needle sizes down to get the result I want, so I usually don't bother putting more thought into it. The swatch convinced me that to knit a medium size the way the pattern says to, I would need to knit it with size 2 needles. That's not happening, so instead I cast on for a small and hoped. As it turns out, a small knit with a slightly-too big gauge, comes to 19 3/4" across. Way too big for the 17 1/2" small, but just right for a medium. I think it was the green of it, sapping from the luck of the Irish.

We'll see if it holds.

Binding off Aeolian...

...and binding off, and binding off, and binding off...

I know I should have realized that with a project ending with 600 stitches on the needles, binding off would be a pretty mighty endeavor. But I didn't and now I'm in a monotonous cycle of "p1, move 2 to left needle, p2tog-repeat." A cycle that might never end. I will probably grow old and wizened, binding off these last stitches, doomed to repeat the tale of my folly to any errant wanderer unfortunate enough to encounter me.

I'm melodramatic when I'm bored.

I might be a bit naughty and cast on the starting row for my next project: Susan Adkins' River Falls Cardigan. A box of Knit Picks' CotLin arrived yesterday and is being tantalizing. 12 skeins of Sprout for the project, plus 3 skeins of Pomegranate for me.

The Sprout is for the cardigan, which seems more like a tunic to me, but who's judging? Green is not my color, but it is my mother's. Since I'm "abandoning her to pursue a quality education, like a traitor," I figured that I would make her a going-away present. With all this binding off, I most likely won't have it done by the time I actually abscond to university, but I do have three weeks.

The Pomegranate will go toward a second Best Friend Scarf at some point in the future. I made my first Best Friend Scarf for my own best friend and then decided I wanted to keep it. I didn't keep it, of course (although I could have, considering she didn't know it was for her), but my stupid love for my friend won out. Instead, I elected to plan for my own in the future, in the same yarn brand for best friend matchy-matchy purposes.

A Needle Appreciation Post

In knitting circles, there's a lot of yarn appreciation. Why shouldn't there be? Yarn is soft, warm, colorful, fun to squish. It is all of these things, regardless of whether one is a knitter or not, so it can start up a conversation with people who aren't part of the secret society of those who know what the meaning of k1p1,yo means.

Other knitting tools are less appreciated. Tools like needles, ball winders, swifts. It's not that you don't love them, it's just that it's a lot easier for others to understand why you absolutely adore that merino/silk blend you just bought. It's not that you don't love needles, but they are cold to the touch and they hurt you if you try and squish them. Of course you love them, but it's a quiet, more dependent love.

So, this is an appreciation post dedicated to my size 5 (3.75 mm) ChiaoGoo Red Lace stainless steel circulars. These needles are some of the best I've ever worked with. The steel is slick enough for quick knitting, the cable is very flexible and memoryless, and the cable's red color makes me feel like a knitting bad-ass. I bought the ChiaGoos to knit my Aeolian (above) and the second I cast on, they became my closest friend.

The first circulars I ever bought are probably the cheapest circulars I have ever bought. As you can probably see from the image below, they are not magic-loop friendly. They have the memory of a champion speller and the flexibility of a paraplegic. No matter how loosely you cast on, your  ends up too tight. I've used them maybe twice since I bought them.

The ChiaGoos are a complete pleasure. Continuing the metaphor of friendship, ChiaGoos are the friends that pick you up from unpleasant places at the drop of a hat. They always remember your birthday, they know all of your siblings' names, and they threaten to stab anyone who breaks your heart (they're needles - it's their only available recourse).

The needles above, whose brand I have long forgotten, are more like Facebook friends. You met them at some event, they friended you, and you confirmed their request because it might be useful to have them around. They constantly post random junk that conflicts entirely with your political stance and the contact they have with you directly comes entirely in the form of Candy Crush requests.

The Chiagoos are the ones that eventually convince you to unfriend them and get rid of their stressful influence. They were never good enough for you anyway. The ChiaGoos, though? Those are worth appreciating.

Stripey Socks and 80's Classics

Sometimes life takes you on interesting journeys. You move out of Chicago to a tiny town in the Midwestern United States. You start a new school, wondering what it will be like to completely change your entire pace of life. You make unlikely friends with a guy whose first instinct is to insult you. You realize that the town you are now living in has outlawed dancing and the residents are about two seconds away from burning every copy of Slaughterhouse Five that they can get their hands on. You meet the preacher's daughter who is a bit off the hook and definitely has a death wish, considering her attitude toward playing chicken with eighteen-wheeler trucks. Together, you embark on a quest for a senior prom and find romance along the way.

Or was that Footloose?

Kick off your Sunday shoes and show off your socks.

I started Simone Van Iderstine's Maritime Wool Socks because I was waiting for my Gloss Lace to arrive from Knit Picks. It was supposed to be a stashbuster, as I was never going to use the yarn if I had a choice (it was thrift store yarn from the days before I had a job and knew how merino/silk blends felt -- pretty sure it's Red Heart, but I wasn't certain).

I cast on 40 stitches instead of 48 because even with a gauge, I knew that since the socks were designed for an adult man's foot, they would be too big for my lady feet. Using this handy dandy guide to turning a heel, I determined the correct amount of turning stitches and went for it.

These socks remind me of Ally Sheedy more than Lori Singer

Note to self and others: write down your modifications to a pattern. At least write down how many stitches were on the needle once you finished turning the heel flap. Luckily, I figured it out. Or, rather, I decided to screw it and just keep going and it worked out fine.

I did remember to keep the k3p1 ribbing going to the end of the toe. It was a trick I learned when I knit Tiina Kuu's Merenkulkija socks and I loved the look of it. I continued to love the look on the Maritime's and I'm glad that this particular executive decision on my part was successful.

I finally finished the second sock while watching Footloose for the first time. This was a good decision on my part. That movie is a great movie (and hilarious from 2010's dancing standards) and the colors of the yarn had been reminding me of a decade I couldn't place. I decided on the 1980's.

WIP: Aeolian, Begun

I work in my local gym, which would be a more interesting job if people in my hometown ever wanted to work out. I spend most of my day checking in the few members that actually show up and taking phone payments for memberships that are never actually used.

While this is sometimes mind-numbing, I recently realized that I could use this time productively; by knitting. My supervisor doesn't care what I do as long as I answer phones and smile at the members when they come in. So, I've taken this opportunity to begin my first real lace project: Elizabeth Freeman's Aeolian.

Behold, the brilliant photographic lighting of my workplace.

Technically, I've knit lace before. I made Deb Mulder's Abstract Leaves Cowl for a Mother's Day present and my best friend just got Cindy Bajema's Best Friend Scarf for a Belated Birthday/Happy 4th of July present. But there are two things about this pattern that make Aeolian "legitimate" lace in my eyes.

One: It's made with Knit Pick's Gloss lace yarn, which is lace weight. All of the other lace I've knit has been fingering weight at the lightest and there's a definite difference in terms of pattern and texture. Also size: when I next knit something sport weight or above, my hands will feel tiny.

Two: It's a shawl. I always associate "real" lace with shawls. Shawls are big enough to be really complex and intricate. Even though I've knit lace before, it never felt like lace. Which might be because I've been addicted to blocking before/after photos on Ravelry.

Technically it's a shawlette, I suppose. The shawl size is huge and somewhat impractical for my fast paced life of sitting around waiting for the fall semester to begin and then the sitting around in class and sitting around writing papers. It will get ruined with all the action going on.

So far, I've worked four and a half repeats of the Yucca pattern. I'm going for six and then two Agave (including the final) and then the edging. A lifeline will probably be used at the edge, depending on how much yarn I have left at that point. I'm liking the pattern so far. I've only had to tink back to a mistake twice.