G. Knerd

I should really be working on the Wedding Blanket, but for the last couple days I’ve had a new obsession.
 

That, my friends, is a friendship bracelet maker that I found at Old Navy for a few bucks.  I figured that, since I tend to like fiber arts in general, I might enjoy this.  Plus, it would likely give me a way to add more decorative cords whenever I needed them.

It might be hard to tell from the picture, but the rope it’s making has these little mini flowers on it.  After only a few hours, I have almost four inches of super cute, delicate, flowered rope.

I think I’m in love.  And the Wedding Blanket?

Maybe I can finish it after the wedding?

The Knitting Black Hole is a well understood recognized phenomenon wherein a knitter knits and knits and never seems to make any progress.  Generally related to large swathes of stockinette, the Knitting Black Hole plagues many a knitter, often causing severe emotional distress and consternation.

More rare, however, is the Knitting Shrink Hole.  This phenomenon is categorized by a section of knitting that not only refuses to grow with more knitting, but goes so far as to shrink between measurements.  Often, this shrinking behavior is in strict opposition to any swatches that may have been performed on the pattern before casting on for the actual project.

The Wedding Blanket is a prime example of a Knitting Shrink Hole.  When I swatched the center pattern, I ended up with something that told me that if I did 9 repeats, I would end up with 6 feet exactly.  However, 9 repeats later, I’m not at 6 feet at all.  I’m not even close to six feet.  After 9 repeats (or 500+ rows, or several thousand stitches), where am I?

I’m at 5’2″.  That’s 10 whole freakin’ inches short!  That’s very nearly a foot short!  Where did those inches go?

It’s unclear.

And don’t even get me started on width.  When I started the center section, I was sure it was at least 18 inches.  I measured it constantly, and I was always very, very sure that it was a foot and a half wide.  Dead certain.  I would have staked money on it.

Now that I’ve knit the entire panel?  Not so much.  Now it looks like it’s clocking in at 12 inches maybe, and that’s if I stretch it out a bit.

I’ve never experienced a Knitting Shrink Hole so extreme.  Sure, an inch or two here or there, but 50% shrinkage?  Without getting wet or felted?  What’s going on?

Luckily, I can still console myself with the fact that I haven’t yet blocked it.  Blocking will fix everything, right?  Right?  Hello?  Why are you laughing?

I’m kind of upset that it looks so gorgeous, actually.  If it were hideous, I’d contemplate starting over, but as it is I get lulled into a false sense of security looking at it and I feel like it’ll all come out okay in the end.  I’m not sure how it’ll all come out okay when I’m losing literally feet of knitting, but somehow I’m convinced that it’ll work out.

After all, maybe I was really knitting them a place mat.

I’m super behind on a lot of things lately, not least of which is this blog.  As it turns out, when you decide to do three major home improvement projects in a week, it ends up being three weeks of working on said projects at every spare moment.  Actually, technically I’m still not done, but what’s left is mostly cosmetic and I’ve been putting it off.

Just as I was finishing up the home improvement, though, I had a concert run with my choir which took up all of my spare time for another week.  And since The Blanket Thief proposed in May and we’re planning on getting married in September there’s plenty of stuff to do and worry about in that area as well.  Not to mention, work continues to be extreme.

All of which is a long run up for my apology for not posting as often as I should.  I swear, I’ll try to post more often…in fact, to that end I’ve installed an app on my phone that claims I’ll be able to post from anywhere.  If you’re reading this, apparently it works.

Next post to contain an actual picture of the Wedding Blanket – I’m almost 15% done with the second panel!

So, just over a year ago, I decided to knit the Blanket Thief some slippers.  I’d read about them on the Yarn Harlot’s blog a while ago, and when he mentioned that he didn’t have any slippers I immediately thought, “That’s something knitting can fix!”

Now, mind you, I tend to have the “That’s something knitting can fix!” reaction a lot – it’s my version of “if all you have is a hammer…” – but usually I’m stretching at best.  This time, though, I was right – this was indeed a problem that knitting could fix, and without much ado I found yarn, I found that Fiber Trends pattern, and I went to work.  Easy peasy.

The Blanket Thief has been super happy with them for the past year, except for one tiny little thing.  I had planned to sew on some suede bottoms in order to make them a little less slippery/last a bit longer, and I went so far as to buy said bottoms…

…but I never actually attached said bottoms.  By and large, this was something that everyone was okay with, and things might have in fact stayed this way forever if I hadn’t noticed that the slippers were leaving little pills on the carpet next to the couch where the Blanket Thief liked to sit.  Apparently, I was totally okay with the idea that I might have to knit him another pair someday when they wore away, and I was kind of okay with the idea that he might slip a little on the few tiled surfaces in our house, but the idea of the really messy, to-be-replaced-someday carpet getting pills on it?  Apparently not okay.

I quickly whipped out my cotton thread, and within a couple episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, the slippers had soles.

I’m not convinced I did the best job ever (frankly, I’m sure I could do better if I were to rip them out and try again, now that I’ve had the practice), but the Blanket Thief thinks they’re snazzy and who am I to argue?

Besides, when you get right down to it, they do look pretty snazzy.

Maybe I need a pair…

Things have been a bit…er…hectic around here lately.  A few months ago, I got the brilliant idea that I would take a week off of my real job that people pay me to do and spend the time doing Home Improvement tasks.  (The capitalization is important, for that’s the scale of the improvements we’re talking.)  Not to be satisfied with simply painting the walls or cleaning the house (Cleaning?  Seriously?  Have we met?), I instead opted for painting the cabinets, refinishing the stairs, and retiling the shower.  It’s worth keeping in mind, for those who haven’t actually been to my house, that there is one shower/bath combo, one staircase, and the door opens to the middle of the stairs (so it’s not like you can just live out of the bottom floor for a few days, because it’s not possible to leave the house then).  And, as if it weren’t crazy enough that I wanted to do all three of these things, I decided that I would just get them all over with and do them at once.

Yeah, apparently you’re not supposed to do that.  Funny how no one told me that until after I’d destroyed my entire house.

The way the Blanket Thief tells his friends about it is to say that I’ve taken away his ability to feed himself, walk through his own house, or bathe himself.

Also, that week I took off work?  Ended Monday, and (surprise!) not one of the projects is done yet.  I have high hopes that, eventually, at least one of these projects will drop off the radar (either by being finished [preferable] or by being “good enough”).  In theory, I should be able to shower by Saturday, at least.

It might occur to you that none of this has anything to do with knitting.  You’re very astute.

Although I haven’t managed to do a proper post on the Wedding Blanket, progress is going well so far.  I have almost five feet (by 1.5 feet, so 7.5 square feet) of knitting done at this point, and it’s relatively gorgeous and soft and comfy and everything one could ask for in an heirloom blanket.

Except…I started thinking about the stitch pattern I was using as a band to separate the larger pattern sections.  And I thought…well, what if I did something else instead?  Like, say, clover stitch?

I even went so far as to swatch it out.

The thing is, while the clover border is slightly swoopier, and maybe I would pick it instead of the standard border I’m using if I were starting from scratch, the fact is that I have seven and a half square feet of knitting done.  That’s got to be at least a sweater, right?

But still, I considered my options.  The best contender was that I could do knitting surgery by unravelling just the borders (because they luckily had the same number of stitches in both patterns) and then knit them back in the new pattern.  Which would take forever, and probably look a little funky, but it would be the best pattern possible.

Luckily, at that point I consulted the Blanket Thief, who first gave me the “you’re crazy” look and then explained that to a non-Knitter (especially one who was never exposed to both patterns side by side) the difference between them was negligible.  And when I tried to argue with him that it did matter, and that I wanted this to be perfect, he asked how long it would take to make the change.

I thought quickly: Well, four columns, roughly 400 rows, so 1600 rows of fussy knitting surgery…that equals…lots of time.

And then I looked at the knitting again, next to the swatch.

You know, actually?  I think what I’ve got might be better anyway.

So there was a sale at my favorite yarn store last weekend (starting on Thursday).  If it had just been me, I likely would have been strong enough to stay away from the building altogether.

But I also have friends, and these friends are wonderfully effective enablers.

My goal was to go with them to the store, support their yarn choices, help them figure out how much yarn they would need and whether it would work for whatever pattern they were picturing.  Maybe, maybe, pick up some fiber to use with my spinning wheel (because I actually don’t have any fiber at home, having spun it all into yarn I haven’t used yet).  And then we were going to go out to a fabulous dinner.

That…didn’t exactly happen.  Well, the fabulous dinner happened, with great company of course, and I did give some assistance with yarn choices.  But the part where I abstained from the yarn…

Not so much.

That’s right, I managed to buy ten – ten! – balls of yarn.  When I was trying to buy zero.  I’m still unclear about how, exactly that happened.  I think I might have had the proverbial falling-down-and-magically-swiping-my-credit-card-on-the-way-down experience.  Just about the only thing I have figured out about all of this?

I really just can’t go to yarn stores anymore.  The wool fumes are too strong, I just can’t help myself.

Every now and then, I realize that Monkey Kitty is great training for the eventual day when I might have children.  Sure, as long as there’s enough food and water I can potentially leave him alone for a weekend, but at the same time, if I leave anything “dangerous” around?

Five minutes.

For example, I was working on the Wedding Blanket when I decided to ask the Blanket Thief a question.  I left a ball of yarn attached to a swatch on the coffee table while I went upstairs to consult with him.  I wasn’t out of the room for more than five minutes.  And when I came down?

To give you an idea of the damage he wreaked, here’s a close up:

That used to be a slightly blockish ball of tightly wound yarn with a neat ball band on it.  At this point, it’s roughly three times normal size.  Meanwhile, Monkey Kitty made it clear that he did not understand why I was yelling about being “gone for five minutes!” and that if I would just go away again, he’d like to finish what he started.

And that neat little ball band that had originally been around the ball of yarn?  The Blanket Thief found it hidden in the bottom of Monkey Kitty’s hide-away bag, without a single tear or mark on it.

It’s really quite amazing what that cat can do in five minutes.  Especially considering that he doesn’t have opposable thumbs.

I’ve apparently decided that I’m supposed to churn through all of my Works In Progress (yes, there are enough of them to have formed a committee with capital letters) before starting anything new.  I suspect this is not in small part related to the fact that I can’t buy new yarn anymore.

Speaking of not buying new yarn, for some reason I think it’s a good idea for me to go with some friends to a yarn store sale tomorrow.  I even think it’s possible that I won’t buy gobs of yarn while I do.

Yeah, I think I’m crazy too.  Not much I can do about it now except hope the damage will not be too great.

In the meantime, I’ve made some progress on the cARGHdigan!  The body is done (well, except for all the finishing…)!

You can sort of see what I was going for with the whole idea of sloping the back and having the sides come over the shoulder to meet it here…except, you know, how the sides both tilt to the right, when in reality they’re supposed to be perfectly flat.  Apparently, I can’t block to save my life.  I straightened them out after taking this picture, but I guess I forgot to take a picture of proof that I wasn’t a moron.

As soon as it was dry again, I seamed up the shoulders and demanded that the Blanket Thief try it on.  I figured I was already being a bit pushy, so I didn’t also demand that he either put on a different shirt or strip entirely – even I know there are limits, but that means it’s hard to tell where the sweater ends due to the black-on-black nature of the setup.

It seems just a bit small in the body, but that’s the way he wants it (and who am I to argue with less knitting?).  The armholes fit fine and rest exactly where they’re supposed to be, so that’s one potential crisis averted.

Now, it’s on to the sleeves!  At some point, I think I’ll even stop being excited about them for long enough to actually figure out how big they need to be and cast them on!

One of the top projects I’m working on right now is a blanket for my best friend’s wedding.  Being me, I decided I was going to design a brand new pattern for this, bought the yarn before I’d figured out what I was going to do, and then once I’d picked out the stitch patterns I liked and figured out what order I wanted them to be in, I cast on and started knitting.

I was about this far when I realized I’d made a mistake already:

My plan was to have a row of eyelets at the beginning of one of the patterns.  You’ll notice, there are no holes in this knitting.

There proceeded about a minute of internal monologue berating myself for not charting out the pattern, especially considering that I do intend to write this up as an official pattern someday.  The only excuse I have to explain it is that I wanted to get knitting right away. We’ll not examine the fact that I probably lost as much time fixing this mistake as I would have charting the pattern (note: I’ve apparently not learned my lesson, as the pattern remains uncharted at this time).

After the mental tongue-lashing, I went to work unraveling the few rows I had.  I decided that it would be good enough to unravel just the section that was messed up, and although the process would be fussier I would save more time not needing to re-cast on and re-knit everything else.

I always think knitting mid-surgery looks really fascinating.  I wonder if I could make a career around just doing knitting surgery.  Is there even such a thing as a knitting surgeon?  And couldn’t you imagine knitting surgeon specialties, like Cable Surgeon or Lace Surgeon?

Maybe I’ve been watching too much Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice…

But, anyway, after more time than I wanted to spend on it, I was back where I should have been all along.

Here’s hoping the rest of it stays on chart (assuming I ever write up the chart, of course).