Prognosticating

I can see the future.

 

I foresee a Kitty Pi Bed in mine.

Something for Me

NB - Change date to 12/28/2015 if I ever publish this.

A few notes to the failure stories from last post. Then on to new adventures.

The gray scarf is almost done. I may not be able to hold onto it until next Christmas. It seemed like a reasonable plan in the midst of our El Nino December, but it's turned really unpleasant out there. The sleety, windy, icy, windy, snowy, windy variety of nasty. And did I mention windy?

Today's not-fun project is to frog the Raglan Sweater and reclaim the yarn. The debate is whether to frog the whole thing or try changing the yoke. This may be an intense debate. It could be that frogging will wait.

The tree skirt was at least a functional tree skirt, just not an embellished one. The giftee has instructions to return it when the season is over, but for the moment, I'm off the hook.

All of which means I'm going back to knitting for me. I got some fabulous yarn from My Sister. It's Verdant Gryphon Zaftig, a worsted weight blend of merino, cashmere and nylon. I have two skeins of it in Jade Eyed Bengal. I Googled Jade Eyed Bengal. It's a strange mix, but mostly tigers and Bengal kittens. None of which seem to have anything to do with the colors on the skeins I've got.

No matter. I have a pattern. I've had Leethal Knits' Betiko Shawl in my knitting patterns folder for over three years. Back then I was too intimidated by the casual instructions; it's more of a recipe for infinite variations than a cut-and-dried kind of pattern. Trolling through Ravelry's pattern search felt unusually uninspiring until Betiko came up. Not a lot of people have made it, but the ones who have write good things about it. It's enough for me.

I'm giving the "Wavy" version a try. The shawl starts with a sort of garter tab. One might say, an eXtreme garter tab. It's three inches wide, patterned, goes on for 24 to 32 inches and, by way of the clever use of a KFB increase followed by a short row gives you all the stitches you need for the main body of the shawl without having to pick any of them up.

I'm intrigued. It was tedious at the start, but as the pattern emerges (and as I internalize the repeats), it's getting fun. Well, fun-ish? Less tedious? Interesting, but in a good way? Most of all, it's for me. At last, some no-pressure knitting.

 Strangely, I can't seem to make myself take any pictures of these projects. It is a hard and fast rule that any blog without picture's is simple a rant.

So here are a couple more pictures of what I got at Stitches Midwest this year.  The red is Miss Babs something that is not Vlad.  I don't remember what and I'm not stash diving to find out.

The cream is a fabulous wool silk blend, from who I can't recall and of unknown colorway (see stash-diving comment above).  I can tell you that the pattern is Knitspot's Les Abeilles.

Edited to add.
P.S. You can see pictures of the scarf, sweater and tree-skirt in the previous post. 

P.P.S. If I read my own blog, I would be able to tell you about the Stitches yarn (Miss Babs Shiruku in Scarlet Letter (so, still not Vlad) and Seda Sock from Grinning Gargoyle in Petals).

Almost

I can't believe I did it.  Fell into the over-ambitious knitting for Christmas trap.   

It started out almost reasonably.  Having succeeded in NAtional KNIt a SWEater MOnth - not only participating but actually finishing a sweater (more about that later, to make up for not posting at all in November) - I decided I could make a sizable dent in the stash by knitting the sweater for the brother who asked for one back when I knit the Seamless Yoke Sweater for the Lord Protector. That would be the sweater that started in 2007 and finished in 2008.  

I was so flattered I went looking for yarn right away (the stash was much smaller seven years ago).  Seven years is a long time to hold onto a yarn.  So long that Rowan had discontinued it.  I bought lots of it, though, thinking about what a tall man he is. Scottish Tweed Aran  is (was?) a really heavy worsted, maybe even a heavy aran. Either way, I figured 1) heavy yarn means big needles equals fast knitting; 2) it's commercial yarn, not indie-spun or indie-dyed so no pooling or mis-matched skeins; 3) I knit a big honking sweater in less than a month, and would have done it in two weeks if I hadn't done the indie-dyer thing; 4) I had a month to Christmas, so I wasn't planning unrealistically; 5) the Lord Protecor had strict instructions to bring his sweater home from college, so I would have a template, as long as the new sweater matched the old sweater in size, I was golden.

It all went so wrong.  I may never trust Elizabeth Zimmermann again.  Admitedly, I went for the raglan rather than the shirt-yoke variation, but I still maintain the yoke should have come out the same size.  It didn't.

While I was living in happy delusion, I got an email that Their Father's goddaughter had found a tree-skirt. It's crochet, but I know how to do that. 

"Well," I thought, "crochet is fast and I still have weeks before Christmas." I figured I could finish both projects. It might be tight, but not irrational.  Besides the pattern is free.  Yes, it calls for acrylic yarn, but all the local big-box craft stores carry the product.  Except two of the colors had been discontinued and it turns out you have to get up pretty early - like October - if you want Christmas color yarn around here.  Okay, fine. I didn't really want to knit it in acrylic anyway. No problem. I have Rowan Pure Wool Worsted in almost every color I need and I can get the rest semi-locally.  The pattern calls for 316 yarn skeins.  The Pure Wool Worsted comes in 209 yard skeins. If I got 2 of the Rowan per each skein of acrylic, I'd have a generous plenty.

How then, when I should have had 100 yards left over, did I run out of the dark red three repeats from the end of the third to last row?

I should add.  When one is crocheting a circle, each round gets progressively longer. Ergo, therefore and Q.E.D. each round will take more time.  Factor in having to rip out the third to the last round (which, by the way used the most-yarn- and time- guzzling stitches I have ever some across), because of that yarn shortfall and perhaps you'll understand why the embroidery didn't happen.

You would think that between a sweater and a tree skirt I would have said enough.  Not so.  I decided I had to knit a scarf.  While powering away (as I thought) on the sweater, I realized I had never knit anything for one of my brothers. Admittedly, looking back, I think I got the idea for the scarf before I got the request for the tree skirt, but maybe not.  I do sometimes get chronologically challenged that way.  Anyway, once I had the idea the result was inevitable.  Not just that I would commence knitting a scarf but that I would fail to finish it.  I just didn't know about the inevitable failure bit until two days before Christmas and I still refused to admit it right up to the  point where I had to wrap the unfinished scarf still on the needles with it's ball of yarn still attached because I had no back-up gift.

Well. I certainly have a good start on next year's Christmas crisis presents.