Yarnification

Hey folks.

I have this $25 Knitpicks gift certificate that I won months ago in Lori’s blog contest, and it is seriously burning a hole in my pocket.

But.

I can’t decide what yarn to buy. I’ve been trying to settle on a project and then pick out yarn for it, but this is more complex than previously anticipated.

I want to make a cute little crochet dress, like maybe this or this (pdf files, both of them, just so’s you’re warned), in celebration of the fact that I have lost something like 40 pounds and possibly might could actually look cute in something like that now.

But.

How do I figure out what size to make? I have to wonder if my bust measurement, which is how both of those patterns are sized, is going to tell me to make it a size too big. I’m a 10 in jeans, a medium-to-large in tops depending on how much give they have, 36DD bra size (because I have so far been blessed with losing weight without my boobs disappearing—go me!—but just try finding that size at Walmart). So I dunno. Do I go with what looks like the equivalent of a size large on the grounds that if crochet clothing patterns are anything like sewing patterns, it’s probably designed for a B cup? Or do I make the medium size and try to adjust if it looks like it’ll be too small around the bust? Do I even trust myself to be have enough of a clue to adjust the pattern properly?

Gah.

In other news, the other day I ran across three leftover balls of Woolease worsted in blue mist and they just called out to me. We want to be made into a scarf for Vicki! So that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m using one of the sedge stitch patterns (the first one, I think) from the Harmony 300 Crochet Stitches book and it’s working up pretty quickly. Photo soon, maybe tomorrow even.

Oh, and I overcame my fear of setting the corset on fire and singed the boning (hee!) and have attached one of the two edging channels. One more to go, then sew the boning in place, make the eyelet rows for the lacing, and it’s done. I am not looking forward to the sewing in place of the boning because it involves a needle and thread and a thimble and it sounds tedious and also a bit painful, but I’m sure it’ll be worth it in the end.

And, finally, a project pic, because didn’t I promise to post the photo of What I Did With That Motorhead T-shirt I Stole From My Buddy Jim In 1989? (Note: I have cropped the photo to just the t-shirt because, dude. I look really pudgy in that photo because I forgot to stand up straight, and also I am squinting because the sun was in my eyes in a major way. But if you want to see the whole Deranged Pixie Outfit, it is here.)

Anyway, here ya go:

That afghan was actually not the only thing I was working on. I was putting a few rows here and there on a plain hdc scarf for sanity purposes, and after I finished the afghan, I finished up the scarf. It’s made of, um, RH Casual Cotton I think. Some chunky cotton thing, anyway. I remember that the color name was mushroom but am a little hazy as to what brand it was.

I’ve been intending to make a scarf out of that very yarn for upwards of two years now, and now I have. Well, I’d started a scarf with it more than once but was never happy and kept frogging it. What I found and frogged most recently was some stitch pattern I couldn’t even remember that seemed to invove a lot of crossed dcs. Interesting, maybe, but I decided plain ol’ hdc would look nicer and be warmer.

I have an unaccountable fondness for absurdly long scarves, so I was happy that two skeins made this long enough to go all the way around my neck and still reach hip-length.

Clickable (eek! I have no neck!):

All hdc with aforementioned chunky cotton yarn (two full skeins) and a size M hook.

It is done, and that is a huge relief.

Honestly, though, I don’t know how all you folks manage to take photos of afghans that don’t suck. I know it can be done, because I’ve seen it done by other people, but I can never find a place to lay it out flat where I can get a decent photo. So it’s all folded up here. The border I did instead of the one in the pattern? It looks weird in the photo, but okay in reality. I’ve never been entirely happy with any afghan border but I like this one a lot better than what was in the pattern.

Anyhow I don’t have time to get a good photo; it needs wrapped up now. So just take my word for it that it does not look as odd in person as it does in the photo, okay? (clickable)

Ack!

The story thus far: I have gotten through all but the last round of the border. I stopped to eat, which was evidently a mistake becase my shiny happy red J hook is now missing. This is my only Boye J hook, folks. I do not want to switch to the Bates J hook because I know for a fact my gauge will change. Aaargh!

(runs around shrieking for a bit before resuming the search)

Edit: After a brief freak-out break and recruiting some help in looking, the gnomes have returned my shiny thing and all is now right in my world.

Again with the editing: This border blows. I’m on the last round where you do all these freaky clusters and goofy picots in the ch3 and ch5 loops from the previous round, and you know what? I am not doing it. I hate it. It is pointy. You could put an eye out on that thing, it’s that pointy. It’s the sort of thing that would be lovely in a doily but is absurd in worsted weight yarn. I’m doing shells in the ch loops instead, and that is final. It will be way cuter, and also faster because I don’t need to read the pattern and make tr clusters and dc picots and pointy things.

That’s how many rows it took to get the throw as long as I wanted it, 100. Now I’m looking at the instructions for the border, and my first impression is, “Huh?” I thought it was a multiple of three in each round, but now it looks like one round is a multiple of five, and I need to sketch out a diagram of it so I can figure out whether this border is doable or not. I may try to come up with a different border. The pattern (warning, PDF) is this one: Sunshine lace afghan.

Argh.

In other news, I have tried on the outfit I planned to wear to the wedding and am happy to report that the skirt (which had not fit me since 1998) fits just fine. I was pretty sure it would but hadn’t ruled out the possibility of a last-minute wardrobe crisis. Losing weight is hell on the wardrobe. I know, I know, I have no business complaining, but still. I had only just gotten rid of all my smaller clothes a few months before I lost that last ten pounds and would’ve been able to fit into most of them again.

Most of them were outdated anyway, though. Luckily the skirt doesn’t look dated, just a basic fall-weight wraparound thing in charcoals and blacks and dark reds. Speaking of which, I so wish I’d gotten around to finishing that choker before the aghan time crunch because it would have gone perfectly with this outfit. Ah, well.

In other news, Jewels suggested I try the Irish hiking wristwarmer pattern to learn cables, and I may just do that. It does look less scary than Fetching and would get the keeping-hands-warm thing accomplished. Thanks, Jewels!

Then I will tackle the dpns again another day. I also did download a bunch of videos from knittinghelp.com to try to figure out where I’m having problems with the whole knitting process. I need to look closer at the videos to be sure—mostly I was downloading them but not watching them first—but I’m starting to suspect that I may have been knitting combined, not English as I had previously thought, and maybe I need to make adjustments so as not to have things come out wonky.

Today is day zero—gotta get that border figured out and finished so I can get this thing done…

The good news: I have finished row 91 (out of 91 rows specified in the pattern).

The bad news: As per usual, my stitch gauge is dead on but my row gauge is a little short. It really needs to be longer by at least six rows before I put on the border.

I have until Friday night to get it completely, thoroughly, one hundred percent finished. Six more rows and four rounds of border. I am not entirely certain it’ll come together, but I have hopes. I have to go kill part of tomorrow at the doctor’s office, so maybe I’ll get it finished there.

I am now on row 80 of 91, except that I’m increasingly sure it’s going to need more like 103 rows instead of 91. Fortunately the border looks like it’s a multiple of three, and so is the pattern for the main afghan (the pattern is in multiples of three rows, that is) so as long as I add extra rows in threes I should be okay.

I kinda expected this. My stitches tend to be a little short; I can pretty much always match the stitch gauge in a pattern but hardly ever the row gauge.

I need to find a comfier chair to crochet in at work. Yes, I am mostly crocheting at work right now; that’s one of the benefits to being your own boss, that nobody can fire your ass for spending half your workday crocheting frantically. Anyway, my desk chair is apparently not so much the thing for crocheting, and my upper back and neck kinda seized up on me last night. Basically my entire trapezius muscle on the right side was in spasm. That suuuucked. I am trying to sit up straight today and not aggravate it.

And now for something completely different: (ooh, can you tell I’m procrastinating?)

My Personality

That afghan/throw/whatever that I’m making? Needs to be finished by Friday. I am on row 73 of 91 (plus four rounds of border, and you know a round of border on an afghan takes as long as six rows). That’s if I don’t get to row 91 and decide that my row gauge was off and that it needs another dozen rows, which might happen.

I have hopes that it’ll be done. I did 13 rows yesterday and, knock wood, my wrists are not bothering me, so if I can keep up this pace it’ll get finished in plenty of time.

That’ll teach me to start on an afghan at the end of summer when deadlines are involved. Really, who in their right mind decides to start an afghan at the end of August? Once I had more than a row or two done I couldn’t stand to work on it because it was so hot. Fortunately the weather’s cooled off enough that it’s nice to have a lapful of blanket.

Everything else is still on hold until I get this done.

This summer I was supposed to learn to knit on dpns so I can make myself some fingerless (or mostly-fingerless) gloves before the weather gets cold because this arthritis thing is The Suck and it’s chilly in the office here at work. Something like Fetching from Knitty, except those cables are intimidating. The whole thing is intimidating, really. I have not yet succeeded in making anything other than a mess with the dpns, and I’m starting to have doubts as to whether I possess the sort of physical coordination required to knit well.

Hmm. I now have sporadic access to a high-speed internet connection, so maybe I’ll take my USB drive with me and download a bunch of stuff from that one knitting help site with all the videos. I’ve been there before but it takes a long time to download over my dialup connection.

Thank you for all the comments about the doily!

I’m catching up reading at Bloglines today, which reminded me that I meant to post this link ages ago. Bear with me through the explanation, I finally do post the link after a few paragraphs.

Okay, see, I was at Liberty Books in Columbus a few weeks ago and I found this do-it-yourself tech-geek magazine called Make and was having myself a geekgasm right there in the store. Alas, it is $15 per issue—though it’s only $35 for a year (or $26 for the digital version, except that I would probably spend the $9 difference on printer ink to print things out) so maybe I will subscribe when I have some money. Anyway, I restrained myself from buying it even though I so very badly wanted to make the two-cylinder Stirling engine from pop cans. I mean, how cute does that sound? Not to mention extracting my own DNA and making a head-mounted water cannon and everything else in there.

But that is not actually the link I wanted to post. Later on I went to their web site, and apart from all the cool things I found there (projects! and more projects! Hairspray powered potato cannon! Woohoo!)

Er. Sorry. As it turns out my soul is composed of approximately equal parts geek and redneck, and I’m still most excited about the potato cannon. (Also in those project links somewhere: A really cute FM radio that uses a little Play-Doh can as its case. Just in case you have a little person that wants to have an Ipod like yours.)

Anyway, and this is what I was working up to here, on that magazine’s web site, I also found a link to this new magazine that is launching, I think, this fall: Craft. That looks fuuuun. They also have a blog with lots of links to nifty projects: craftzine blog.

You all may have already seen this—I wouldn’t know because I am so far behind on reading everyone else’s blogs—but I had to post it before I forgot.

Yay!

And I promise that soon I will come back and post photos of the cool thing I did with that Motorhead T-shirt I stole from my buddy Jim in 1989 after I lost my own shirt under mysterious circumstances at a party at his parents’ house (this was during my misspent youth, hence the party-at-friend’s-parents’-house thing). It was great fun (reconstructing the t-shirt that is; I can’t really speak for the party because it was seventeen years ago and I was almost certainly drunk at the time). I got the idea from a book called something like Generation T: 108 Ways To Deface a Perfectly Good T-shirt (okay, that isn’t the real title, but I will come up with the actual title when I post the photos).

Currently in progress:
Asphyxiation (that choker I’m making), two and a half motifs down, one and a half motifs, a flower, and some sewing to go.

An afghan (well, the pattern says “afghan” but it’s more throw-sized IMO) that I’m making as a wedding gift: Probably about 40%. I have a deadline, and I am on row 41 of 91 (plus four rounds of edging). Wish me luck—I’m gonna need it.

It is purely embarrassing how long this has been finished but not blocked. I finally got off my ass and blocked it so I could send it to my ma (who I sincerely hope does not know about this blog, because then it wouldn’t be much of a surprise, would it?) It’s Priscilla Hewitt’s Petite Pineapple doily.

I think I’m getting a little better at blocking, though maybe not so much this whole photography thing. Clickable: