G. Knerd

When I last left all of you, it was Friday night and I was waiting for the left sleeve to dry so I could pick out the grafted seam, knit another repeat of the pattern, and then try blocking it again – this time with the requisite twelve points (as opposed to the eleven I’d actually done).

Saturday morning, I woke up excited to fix the mistake I’d made, sure that I still had a chance to get this thing handled.

The sleeve wasn’t dry.

I’m going to point out again that there are a lot of things I’d do differently if I did this pattern again (like, say, learn to count past 10?), and blocking before the fabric is doubled is only one of them.  If for nothing else, it would allow me to recover from my mistakes faster.

In desperation, I recalled a post from the Yarn Harlot, where she put her knitting in the oven in order to dry it more quickly.  I was in so much of a hurry that I didn’t even look up the post to figure out the details (I looked it up just for this post), I just turned the oven on as low as it would go and shoved the knitting in.

It took about twenty minutes before the combination of wanting to make progress and fear of scorching the yarn combined to make me take it out.  Frankly, it was still a little damp at that point, but…yeah, I needed to move on.  The next hour or so was spent correcting my (stupid) mistake, after which the sleeve went back into the water and was ruthlessly pinned out for blocking, with a fan blowing across it and the rest of the pieces (which, surprise, surprise, also weren’t dry yet due to their doubled nature).

Sunday morning, I woke up as early as I could stand it, pulled the blocking needles out, and got ready to do some serious seaming.

I only had to go back and redo part of a seam once due to lack of counting (note to self: if the ratio is 4:5, grafting 1:1 will not work.  at all.).  It was down to the wire, but with about 15 minutes to spare before the Closing Ceremonies started, I snipped the thread for the last end after weaving it in.

I was done.

I did it.  Somehow.  I was surprised at how relieved I was, how important I’d let the Knitting Olympics become.  It seems like all I’ve been finishing lately have been things for the feet, and it’s nice to know that, when push comes to shove, I really can actually finish something that goes on my torso.

Also, it doesn’t look too bad.  Not like I was picturing in my head, and I’ll certainly need to find a shirt that will work underneath it, but…not bad at all.

Anjou from French Girl Knits

As you might have noticed, I’m not quite thrilled with the way the pattern is written, and if I were to do it again, I’d make even more modifications than I did already.  The results are lovely, but I feel like they could have been lovelier if I’d done a few other things to rework the pattern.

Also, you know, if I’d been able to tell the difference between a size 9 (5.5 mm) and size 10 (6.0 mm) knitting needle – I was supposed to go from 9s to 10s after the yoke, but ended up going from 9s to 9s.  That was kind of pointless, but luckily it doesn’t seem to have hurt the finished project too much.

But really, the most important lesson?  Learn to count past ten before you take on a major project.  Seriously.  And eleven really doesn’t equal twelve, no matter how much you want it to.

I may have bragged last night that I had picked a project for the Knitting Olympics which was, if not easy, at least possibly not hard enough to qualify for Olympic status.  Nothing in the pattern was particularly hard (except, maybe, understanding it…), the large gauge meant that there weren’t too many stitches, and it centered around a simple lace pattern that I could easily memorize.  I haven’t even been knitting on the bus or at work at all, and yet I knit the last stitch last night.

I should have known better.

This is what everything looked like when I was all ready to start blocking:

And since I like to get things really wet when I block them, everything went straight into the sink for a soak.  I was feeling so cocky about getting finished on time that I even cleaned the sink first instead of just getting a mixing bowl.

Blocking has always been one of my most favorite parts of knitting, at least whenever there’s lace involved.  You’re basically taking something wrinkled and blotchy and in no way resembling something amazing, and with a little water and a few pins you’re turning into a magical weightless sheet of fabric – I don’t care how many times you do it, it’s always going to be awesome.  I started with blocking out the top – having the lace attached to the body and double layered made the process somewhat ridiculous – if I were to do it again, I think I’d make the lace around the neck separately and graft it on after blocking.

Once I had that straight (or as good as it was going to get), I moved on to the right sleeve with its twelve beautiful points.  This is another place where, if I were to do the pattern again, I’d probably do the grafting post blocking instead of before so I didn’t have to double the fabric at all and I could make it straighter overall.

I wanted to be sure to have the same size for the left sleeve, so I tried to fold the right side in half to get six pairs of points like I had with the right sleeve.

That didn’t work out so well.  It’s hard to tell with this picture, but the farthest point to the left doesn’t actually have a pair.  Somehow, I managed to knit a sleeve with eleven points.  It took counting both sets of sleeve points about seven times each before I accepted it – the left sleeve did not in any way match the right.

Normally, this discovery wouldn’t be too bad – I’d just unpick the grafted row, unravel the bind-off edge, knit another repeat of the pattern, and do it all over again.  Given that it’s only ten rows, that shouldn’t take me more than the evening to fix.  The problem?

It’s wet.

So now, instead of waiting for my pieces to dry so I can seam them together, I’m waiting for my sleeve to dry so I can unravel it, knit more onto it, graft it together again (even though I’d do it differently if I were doing the whole pattern again, I think I should do both sleeves for this time the same – even if it’s wrong), weave in the ends again, string up the sides for blocking again, get it wet again, and then finally get to the blocking it and waiting for it to dry part.  I’ve put an extra day into the process, at least.

If there were anything I could do about it, I wouldn’t be writing this post.  If I owned a hairdryer, I’d be sitting next to an outlet gently forcing the yarn dry.

Luckily for you, my hairdryer died a couple months ago after more than a decade of being mostly ignored in the cupboard.  At the time, I remember thinking, “You know, the only reason I can think of to get a new one would be if I had a knitting project I wanted to dry faster…and even then, I can always just wait for the yarn to dry naturally.”

I hate it when the Knitting Fates take perfectly reasonable and sound arguments and use them against you.

At least everything except the sleeve is properly blocked and gorgeous.  My favorite is how the hip band just seems to go on forever.

After all, it’s almost seven feet long.  In knitting, that’s like miles!

I’ve been frantically trying to get my Knitting Olympics project finished, so I haven’t had time for a real post (and unfortunately, I only seemed to plan for one week’s worth of Knitting Olympics ahead of time…).  For now, hopefully this will tide you over:

That’s the current state of the cARGHdigan for the Blanket Thief – right at the point where I have to figure out what I’m going to do about the sleeves.  I’ve always done raglan or drop sleeves when making my own sweater patterns (mostly because they require so little calculations or precision), but for this one the Blanket Thief was adamant that the sleeve cap be set in.  He’s being pretty understanding about me randomly picking up and putting down his [at this point long overdue] Christmas present, I figure the least I can do is make it the way he wants it.

Of course, I’m not even thinking about it until after the Knitting Olympics are over.  Speaking of which…

I’ve been trucking along on my Knitting Olympics project, but it seems that the kitties really don’t want me to finish.  First, Monkey Kitty took apart a ball of yarn, then he chewed on the cable for my circular needle (luckily, not enough to break it), and now Bear Kitty is joining the fray – last night while I was brushing his teeth (I, er, may, in fact, be a crazy cat lady) Bear Kitty bit down on my thumb hard enough to break the nail and draw blood from multiple locations.  I’m fine (and I’m not going to horrify you with pictures), but one of the wounds is exactly where I rest my thumb against the needle tip, which…well, it doesn’t feel great.

I’m continuing to soldier on, but I don’t think my progress will be as great as it was before the injury.  I’m going to call this part of the “Fortius” part of the Olympic motto.

Four years ago, the Yarn Harlot declared the start of the Knitting Olympics – and I didn’t do it.  I could use any excuse I want about how I was in college, it was a weird time for me, I didn’t have the yarn for a good project, yadda, yadda, yadda.  The real reason I didn’t go for it was…er…well, if we’re going to be quite honest here (and when are we not?), I was just too lazy to put the effort into picking a pattern, and finding the yarn, and waiting to start until the right time, and so forth.  When I have the urge to start a project, very little can get in my way – even the Knitting Olympics.

This year, though, I’m in.  I’m doing it.  I’m signing up for the Knitting Olympics (in fact, just did, right here).  I’ve got the pattern (Anjou from French Girl Knits), the yarn (Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine in the 1275 colorway), and the needles.  The yarn is wound up.  I’ve swatched (although I’m living dangerously, because I’ve decided to skip blocking the swatch and fudge the numbers a bit between my inability to get gauge and the lack of a size that really fits me well).  I’m ready to go.

Or, I was ready.  Then Monkey Kitty got involved.

Now I like untangling knots more than most people (I’ve actually begged some of my friends to let me untangle skeins they got into a mess), but this was not what I wanted to wake up to this morning.  Luckily, only one of the three balls was really unwound (but boy was it ever!), and Monkey Kitty didn’t break the yarn in too many places.  Still, I’ll be spending a bit of time tonight turning this:

Back into this:

Because tomorrow, I get to cast on and go to town.  This will be interesting – the pattern doesn’t look too challenging technically, but it does have lace which has to be blocked (actually, the whole thing needs to be blocked), and I’ll need to plan accordingly for that one.  Also, there’s miles of stockinette down the body – that’s the endurance section.  And then there’s the seaming, which based on the description seems fiddly at best.

Really, I can’t wait.  Except I have to.

Damn rules.