Of f'd up mittens, ginormous sleeves, and ugly stitches
Sheesh, it's been a looooong time, huh? Longer than I'd planned, that's fo sho! (Listen to me with my whitey-white girl ghetto BS, huh?) I came down with a phantom fever last Monday night that came literally out of nowhere. One second, I was fine, the next minute, I was freezing cold and my skin hurt. 100.5. No warning, no other symptoms. By the next morning, it was up to 101.7. And then the tummy ickiness started. Nothing major, not like the bug that's been going around, but it was Pavlovian - every time I got hungry, I would get nauseous too. That is a GREAT plan for weight loss, let me tell ya! I lost 6.5 pounds last week, and this week it's still around - not the nausea, but the, um, bad butt as Mama Scrapalotta so eloquently put it! Sheesh. Let me tell you what a crimp that put in my knitting last week (but I was able to finish a new book, The Terror, in the span of 2.5 days - 766 pages! It's INCREDIBLE! If you like historically based fiction with a supernatural bent, it's a MUST READ!!! Like, I put it down and wanted to pick it back up. I told my husband to hurry the hell up and finish the book he was reading so he could read it...and now that he's reading it, I'm jealous! Ok, enough gushing - go read it!)
So there was tres little knitting, spinning, fibery exploits at all last week because of the fever and resulting absolute sucking lack of energy. But before I got sick, I learned a new skeel! I took my butt down to Hayes in Wilmington and took a 2-hour "Managing Your Machine" course to learn how to use my old and busted Singer sewing machine. So now I do! Well, I sorta do - can't exactly remember everything I was told, but I know enough now to do this:
Not too well, tho':
But I think the purdy batik cotton fabric distracts from the hideousness, huh? This project actually inspired me to take a course, since I hate digging through my diaper bag to find a pen or lip gloss. So Natasha mentioned this pattern, and away I went!
Anemoi hadn't progressed much further than the last pic, but then it went, well, away. I went to the yarn shop Saturday to knit for a few hours, and the lovely proprieter (proprietress?) Laura took one look at my so-called tubular cast-on, and was like, "Uh, that'snotatubularcaston". Uh-oh. So Anemoi was ripped back, I was schooled in the proper was to cast on tubularly, and Anemoi is on time-out while I finish the Faux Fair Isle sweater from Spin to Knit. Especially since I have committed to knitting a swing top for my little girl for her bday March 20 (to the tune of $40 of yarn!). So I have to get on the ball, and Anemoi and Erte (oh, man, don't even ASK about Erte!) have to wait!
I've been plugging away, however, on the Faux Fair Isle from Spin to Knit, and I finished the body of the sweater the other night. So I picked up and started a sleeve, and OMIGOD! I put it on the other night when I had a few inches, and it was big, but the whole sweater is a bit, which is exactly what I wanted - a big, comfy, knockaround sweater. I was plugging away at the sleeve, thinking that maybe decreasing every inch was going to make the sleeve too small too quickly, so I threw it on to see. Well, it's almost down to my wrist, and STILL TO BIG. Check this out:
See that? The sleeve is TWENTY INCHES AROUND! My arm at its, ahem, fattest, is THIRTEEN INCHES. I HAVE SEVEN INCHES OF EASE IN MY ARM!!!!!!! I mean, the WRIST is still too big for my upper arm! So, I know there is frogging in my future, but I'm wondering now what to do with the ginormity of this sleeve! I set aside and cast on the correct number of stitches for the arm opening when I finished the yoke, so I'm wondering now if it makes more sense to pick up fewer stitches, or decrease sharply on the first round. Or maybe decrease every half inch? I don't know what to do to not make the sleeves look like poo! And how many to decrease so I don't go too far the opposite way and have them be too small? Maybe a trip to the yarn shop (and the pro!) is in order!
Oh, and this is something cute I just had to share! My daughter gets CLICK! Magazine, and I always look through to see what's in it before I give it to her. Well, imagine my surprise when I saw this!
And here's more!
Didja see that? A closeup is in order!
A DRUMCARDER!
And at the end, the little girls have llama sweaters that match their llama neighbors!
So there was tres little knitting, spinning, fibery exploits at all last week because of the fever and resulting absolute sucking lack of energy. But before I got sick, I learned a new skeel! I took my butt down to Hayes in Wilmington and took a 2-hour "Managing Your Machine" course to learn how to use my old and busted Singer sewing machine. So now I do! Well, I sorta do - can't exactly remember everything I was told, but I know enough now to do this:
Not too well, tho':
But I think the purdy batik cotton fabric distracts from the hideousness, huh? This project actually inspired me to take a course, since I hate digging through my diaper bag to find a pen or lip gloss. So Natasha mentioned this pattern, and away I went!
Anemoi hadn't progressed much further than the last pic, but then it went, well, away. I went to the yarn shop Saturday to knit for a few hours, and the lovely proprieter (proprietress?) Laura took one look at my so-called tubular cast-on, and was like, "Uh, that'snotatubularcaston". Uh-oh. So Anemoi was ripped back, I was schooled in the proper was to cast on tubularly, and Anemoi is on time-out while I finish the Faux Fair Isle sweater from Spin to Knit. Especially since I have committed to knitting a swing top for my little girl for her bday March 20 (to the tune of $40 of yarn!). So I have to get on the ball, and Anemoi and Erte (oh, man, don't even ASK about Erte!) have to wait!
I've been plugging away, however, on the Faux Fair Isle from Spin to Knit, and I finished the body of the sweater the other night. So I picked up and started a sleeve, and OMIGOD! I put it on the other night when I had a few inches, and it was big, but the whole sweater is a bit, which is exactly what I wanted - a big, comfy, knockaround sweater. I was plugging away at the sleeve, thinking that maybe decreasing every inch was going to make the sleeve too small too quickly, so I threw it on to see. Well, it's almost down to my wrist, and STILL TO BIG. Check this out:
See that? The sleeve is TWENTY INCHES AROUND! My arm at its, ahem, fattest, is THIRTEEN INCHES. I HAVE SEVEN INCHES OF EASE IN MY ARM!!!!!!! I mean, the WRIST is still too big for my upper arm! So, I know there is frogging in my future, but I'm wondering now what to do with the ginormity of this sleeve! I set aside and cast on the correct number of stitches for the arm opening when I finished the yoke, so I'm wondering now if it makes more sense to pick up fewer stitches, or decrease sharply on the first round. Or maybe decrease every half inch? I don't know what to do to not make the sleeves look like poo! And how many to decrease so I don't go too far the opposite way and have them be too small? Maybe a trip to the yarn shop (and the pro!) is in order!
Oh, and this is something cute I just had to share! My daughter gets CLICK! Magazine, and I always look through to see what's in it before I give it to her. Well, imagine my surprise when I saw this!
And here's more!
Didja see that? A closeup is in order!
A DRUMCARDER!
And at the end, the little girls have llama sweaters that match their llama neighbors!
posted by Tala at 9:43 PM
1 comments
