The Sky Is Grey

So blocking bowls...

really are the place where my knits go to die.

I took this picture at 10 o'clock this morning.

If you're keeping track I put the knits in water on Tuesday.

Three days ago.

And here they are still in the same bowls of water.

The shame was too much to bear.

Humiliated...I laid them out to block.

I had also pulled an item from The Abyss and soaked it for blocking.  I proudly laid it out to block, full of satisfaction that I was completing something long forgotten.  I was accomplishing something.  I was being productive and the world was full of joy!  Plus it had only been in the water overnight, so there was that.

Obviously my joy did not last long.

Do you see what I see?

That right there my friends is a HOLE!  A flipping freaking hole.  And not an on purpose-decorative-artistically place hole.  But a flipping bug ate my yarn hole!

Cue the ugly cry and descending black depression.

That hole is the thief of joy.  It is the death of all good things.  It is the worst thing to happen to anyone anywhere in the history of ever!

I wish I could tell you that I came up with a brilliant fix for that hole.

I could have, theoretically, taken some left over yarn from this project and duplicate knit fixed the hole.  Only the yarn I used was an amazing gradient yarn.

This poses two problems.   1) the yarn end wouldn't match the middle of the skein hole.  2)  I knit until I ran out of yarn, so there is no left over yarn in.  Practically speaking, this fix won't work.

I wish I could tell you that I personally sheared the softest sheep I could find.  And then I carded and hand spun the roving into the perfect thickness of yarn to match the original yarn used in the shawl.  Then I hand dyed the hand spun yarn from a dye I created from crushed beetle shells to find the perfect shade of almost grey, again, to match the original yarn from the shawl.  Then I took my perfectly dyed to match yarn, and I duplicate stitch fixed the hole.

But I didn't do that either.

In the end there were two lines of knitting that were broken.  I used a teeny tiny crochet hook to help me take the two ends, and I tied them into a knot.  They were too short to take across the hole and tie to close the hole, so I tied a knot on either side of the hole.

I tied knots and I prayed that my teeny tiny knots will hold.

Because the only other fix I could think of was to unravel the shawl back to the hole and to then splice the yarn together so I could reknit the rest of the shawl resulting in an identical shawl, minus one hole.

And I'm just not in the mood to do that.

I like it holes and all!

Pattern:  Pebble Beach Shawl

Yarn:  Some fabulous hand dyed gradient yarn my Dad and StepMommy bought me last summer.

Needles:  Maybe size 6 like the pattern suggest?

Modifications:  Not really a pattern modification, but I knit until I ran out of yarn.  And then I used some black KnitPicks sock yarn to finish the shawl.  I think it blended well with the grey gradient.

Review:  Again...

I loves it.  Hole and all.

Triangle

Failed attempt at a triangle.

I bought the pattern in August of last year, and I'm betting I knit it in August of last year.  I think it was a super quick knit and I enjoyed knitting it.  But beyond a fuzzy feeling of love I'm not remembering anything more specific.

Bad blogger.

I'm anticipating a lot of that as I finish things from The Abyss.  A general feeling of love (because I love knitting) but a complete lack of specific details.

I'll have to work on my abysmal photography skills to keep things interesting around here.

If I'm keeping score is this Abyss - 1 Me - 0?

Because of the deep dark depression inducing hole?

I'm going to say no.

This is Me - 1 Attempted sabotage by The Abyss - 0

And in red sweater news

I have two sleeves.  Achievement Unlocked!

My cat is unaccustomed to my strange knitting/blogging/photography ways.

She is judging me.

She will learn.

Potential

So toddler sweaters knit up ridiculously quick.  Almost as quick as baby sweaters.  I think I want to become a professional tiny sweater knitter.  Do you think there is a market for that?  And by market what I mean specifically is this:  Is there a profitable billion dollar position for a professional tiny sweater knitter that I personally can earn from my couch while eating chocolate and watching reruns of The Good Wife.

Yeah.

I didn't think so.

But it was nice to dream.

The tiny green toddle sweater knit up so quickly that the ends are woven in and it is already soaking in a bowl of water in anticipation of being blocked.

Yes.

I know.

This is where my hand knits go to die.

But since I didn't want it to die alone I am also soaking a pair of socks that need blocked.

I know.

It is always tragic when something so young and pretty dies an early death.  Hopefully I will rescue it from the watery depths of my mixing bowl in the nick of time and revive it back to life with some careful wringing and shaping.

Even with how ridiculously quickly the sweater knit up I did feel a teeny tiny bit stranded on sleeve island.  Those stupid short sleeves took HOURS to knit.  I wanted to abandon this knit and cast on something more fun.  But I'm trying to be a freaking grown up, so I bucked down and knit on.  And since I was knitting sleeves I grabbed the sweater that I was knitting before I abandoned it to cast on for the Queen's sweater, and I started knitting the sleeves on that sweater.

Like A Boss!  3/4 of a sleeve down.  1/4 and 1 sleeve to go.

That wasn't as inspirationally catchy as I hoped it would sound.  And yes, those are a billion safety pins marking various points of interest on my sweater.

Because I hate myself.  That's why.

In other news, when I decorated for fall earlier this month I had to bravely enter The Abyss to find all my fall decorations.  Since I was in there anyways I took some time to organize all my crafting things that have been in disarray since January when The Greatest moved them to put the Christmas decorations away and then "helpfully" reorganized my things.  I put all my needle sets back together, found my missing ball winder, and realized I have quite a collection of knit that I have finished knitting and thrown into The Abyss instead of weaving in the ends and blocking.

An embarrassingly large collection.

I have decided not to view this collection of abandoned knits as a sign of my moral failing and inability to finish anything I start, but rather as a bag full of beautiful potential and possibilities.  The good news is if I start doing the finishing work I can pretty much blog a finished object every day from now until somewhere around mid-February.

Silver linings People!  Silver linings.

Oh The Possiblities

I'd forgotten precisely how quickly a teeny tiny toddler sweater knits up. 

I'm roughly twenty four hours in and I'm already ready to divide the sweater at the base of the arm hole for the front and back.

I was holding the sweater up to the Queen to check the fit when Pork Chop exclaimed how cute the sweater was and that she needed one as well.

The wheels in my mind are turning.

Every year my children get a sweater at Christmas that I lovingly refer to as their Weasley Sweater.  Could this be the year that the children receive actual Weasley Sweaters for Christmas?

It's Fall Y'All

Guess What????!!!!!

Of course I've had my home decorated for Fall for weeks now.

Because I'm me, and it's what I do. (side note:  My favorite part of this picture is the football watching Husband on the couch in the back.  Makes me smile)

After I finished knitting my stripey pants I realized my hat box of sock yarn was dangerously low and lacking in variety.  It was most blue and brown.  And there were only a dozen or so colorways left.

So I thought to my self "Self, how can we get more left over sock yarn."

After much pondering of my dillema I came to one conclusion.

Short of begging, buying, borrowing, or stealing from other knitters, the only surefire way to acquire more left over sock yarn is to knit more socks!

And that my friends is where my love of fall and my love of knitting socks intersect

Just look at that fantastic fall colorway.

so full of burn red and forest green and oatmeal stripes.

The color way is called Jingle, which suggests more of a Christmas feeling to me.  It does have the red and green.  But in my mind Christmas colors feel brighter.  This feels more like the beautiful fade of fall.

I didn't use a pattern.  I just sat and knit a sock.

I know!

No pattern!

I knit the sock right from my brain!

Sometimes I impress myself!

I did try a new technique designed to eliminate that tiny hole you (or maybe I, maybe it's just me) get when you (I) pick up stitches for the gusset.

Yeah, it didn't work.

I also tried a new ssk technique, that involved slipping stitches strategically and the turning the work to purl and I'm calling that one a great big FAIL as well.  So not only did it NOT give me prettier ssk decreases, but it also created a "ladder" between the knit stitch and the ssk stitch.

So the hunt for the beautiful ssk continues.

Ladders and holes aside, I love my fall socks.

It turns out The Queen is quite the camera hog.  I wasn't sure she knew what an actual camera was.  I was pretty sure she thought only my phone took photos.  But when she saw me taking pictures of my socks she insisted on getting in on the action.

When I turned the camera to her and asked her to smile this is the face I got.

I love that face!

In honor of the First Day of Fall I cast on a project using a very faded fall feeling olivey green

Hello Pumpkin Stitch Marker!

As The Queen has outgrown almost all of her sweaters I need to get a jump on making her new ones before the cold(ish) weather descends.

More Madness

So when I said I was obsessed with knitting leggings I wasn't being overly dramatic, or exaggerating my feelings.  It wasn't hyperbole.

In July I was legitimately OBSESSED with knitting leggings.  They were the ONLY thing I wanted to knit.  And ALL I wanted to do was knit them.

You are all familiar with Exhibit A

It was well documented here.

Allow me to introduce you to Exhibit B.

Pardon the weird angle of my feet.  I saw an article titled "How to look good in every picture" and they suggested making triangles with your body.  I'm young and impressionable.  I decided it couldn't hurt to try.  So I made a triangle with my feet.  I'm pretty sure it looks as awkward as it felt, but scientifically my feet are now 42% more attractive because they form a triangle so I guess that's something.

I wish I weren't such a slacker and had been blogging in real time.  I knit them back in July.  I cast on for them about five minutes after I cast off the other pants.  You wouldn't believe how quickly I knit these pants.

I think it was five days from start to finish.

I am not kidding when I say I was OBSESSED.

Then I kept waiting for a good hair to take a pictures of my pants.  Because you can't photograph pants without good hair...right...I mean...right...I guess that's a thing... isn't?  Well, it's obviously a thing for me.  So I kept waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.  And I did have an amazing hair day on September 10th, but I was away and couldn't take pictures of leggings.  We'll (hopefully) return to the subject of September 10th and my fantastic hair at a future time and blogpost.  Until then allow me to present photographic evidence of my epically good hair day

Yes that is a fuzzy pink tiara.  I'm telling you, there's a blog post there, we'll get back to it.

Anyways...about my pants...

I gave up on waiting for a good hair day, and in the interest of keeping it real, this isn't even a clean hair day.  It is an it's out of my way and I really need to take pictures of my pants so I guess we can make this work hair day.  Somedays that's the best you can hope for.  Also triangle with my bottom leg.  I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be an isosceles or equilateral triangle not a scalene but I get beauty points for trying right?  Like 18% better?

Bird and I decided we would set up a cool artsy photoshoot of my pants to keep things interesting.

It didn't really go as planned.  Dear Lord is my arse really that wide?

Turns out we are neither cool nor artsy.  Although I did form an isosceles triangle with my wide butt leading up to my knees.  SCORE  My butt looks 42% prettier.

We don't care that we are neither cool nor artsy.  Nor do we really care how wide my butt looks in what turned out to be a VERY unflattering angle.

We only care about my cool stripey legging goodness.

Relevant Details:  These were knit on size 2 needles using various bits of left over sock yarn.  I knit two rows of black and then six rows of a random sock yarn.  I knit the same stripe sequence on each leg.  Eventually I ran out of black sock yarn and for a while I used some lace weight black yarn held trippled for the black stripe, but eventually I ran out of that and I had to break down and buy a single skein of black yarn to finish my pants.  (which is why it took five days not three to finish my pants).  Also notice I did not make a triangle with my feet, and while they look more comfortable they are 43% uglier.  #science

So these pants are warm and comfy and I wish I didn't live on the surface of the bloody sun so I could wear them.  Also Triangle!

And now here's what you're really here for.  Not for my awkward pictures or witty sarcasm or even my most expert knitting.  You're here for the toddler.  I know.  It's ok.  I feel the same way about her.

Oh yeah, we got a cat.