I could barely sleep last night

I'm not sure if it was because I drank coffee so late or because my head was brimming with ideas.

Yesterday when I was walking to work I had an idea for a knit stole pattern. It has completely captured me for the last 24 hours.

People that I have mentioned it to said it sounds like a good idea. It's still boggles my mind that I came up with an original idea.

Previously, my game plan was that my first design would small, maybe a set of mittens along the lines of the fiddlehead mittens. Meaning I wanted to do colorwork on a small scale and a small design.

This will certainly be a labor of love. I guess from this time forward it will be my super secret project (SSP) that only a few people know of. One thing I am immensely grateful for is that I know some designers so I can ask them for guidance.

Tea attacked my yarn today

At lunch today I poured some tea and heard a ping. I thought "What?" Lifted up my mug and the bottom dropped out and tea went everywhere, including the pair of socks I'm working on for my son's bday on Monday. Ugh! So I got the stuff in cold water right away and cleaned up the mess. I have my stuff sitting in some water with soak-type stuff right now. The socks have to be done by Monday for DS's birthday. Oh I'm not even sure where I can sit them to dry and he won't see them.

I had just picked up the stitches around the gusset. It kind of hurt to pull those needles out so I can soak the sock. :-( I'm also wondering if my bamboo DPNs are ruined.


I find it kind of funny now that when it happened my first thought was "Oh no! It's on my knitting." Never mind that tea is all over my desk, dripping onto my floor and everything, it soaked my knitting!

I'm pretty sure I know have a stain on my carpet. Good thing the carpet is brown. And I was wearing all black.

The importance of guage

I decided to participate in a KAL for the February Lady Sweater by flitknits.com. I have a bunch of acryllic yarn that I decided to use for it.

Not too long ago I was listening to the manicpurl.com podcast and Chrissy was talking about qauge. She had decided to do a gauge swatch for a sweater and take all her measurements, etc. and she was surprised at good the sweater turns out when you take the time to do a gauge swatch, prep it properly, and take down all your measurements. With this still fresh in my mind I started swatching Saturday.

I swatched on size US 8 (Got 14 stitches for 4 inches), then size US 6 (Got 14.5 stitches for 4 inches) and finally US4 (Got 16 inches for 4 inches). Some told me that I was a loose knitter.

I watched my guage swatch go from loose and drapey, to smaller, dense and kind of stiff.

I asked for input and came to the conclusion that this yarn was not for the "The Lady" I figured that there was just no way that I could be that loose of a knitter. The knitting sure didn't feel loose on Size US 4 and US 5.

On a "Oh for the heck of it" moment I dug a small ball of Cascade 220 that I have and started a small swatch. I got a couple inches into it on US 8 and measured. Guess what? I got 17 inches to 4 inches. So I'm only guessing that if I dropped to a US 7 I would get guage.



So I pondered this for a few moments and got up to go get the original yarn. I compared the yarns side by side. The yarn I origianally swatched with is MUCH thicker than the Cascade 220.

No wonder I wasn't getting gauge. Now I have to decide if I want to continue with the yarn and just try my hand at a smaller size or buy new yarn.

This weekend taught me that not all yarn weights are the same even when they both say that they are the same weight.

Dye project Jan. 2010

Last week I dyed some white superwash yarn I had. It's to make DS a pair of socks for his birthday. I didn't feel like kettle dyeing this time. I wanted some variation in the blues so I tried handpainting yarn again. I've done this only one other time.

This is what it looked like after the dye had set and the yarn was completely cooled off.

I've been asked very nicely to not do this in the house anymore when the windows can't be opened up. I put the yarn, covered, in the oven to heat and set the dye. The odor coming from the oven was not very pleasant. I was told I could do this again as soon spring rolled around. But preferably outside.

Here it it all skeined up and pretty, sitting on a window ledge. This was the first time I got to use my umbrella swift that I ordered from Knitpicks back in June of 2009. Took long enough, huh?

I am almost done with the leg of the first sock.

FO ~ 2x2 ribbed scarf

A simple 2 x 2 ribbed scarf that I made for DS for his birthday next month.

Lionbrand hometown yarn in the "green bay" color.

One skein

His favorite colors are green and blue. So I thought I would make him a green scarf and then blue socks.

Blowsey Ruffles scarf

From the now defunct InsideLoop.com knitting site.

I cast on yesterday and got the first ruffle done. Then I got to the main pattern. Wow, talk about slightly confusing. They are using a chart and it's charted for all rows of the repeat. So it's got symbols that means different things depending on which row you are on. Since I don't know what other people have done for this I am going to write out the pattern.