Cattywampus

A product!

I think it's clear by now that I am not a process knitter.  

The way I started that you'd think I was going to launch into a discussion about process vs product knitting, but I'm not.  I'm simply stating a fact.  I am a product knitter.  I make articles of clothing to wear and I view them as such - a product of my time spent knitting.  

So, here is my latest product.  

In brooks farm fourplay (man this stuff is beautiful to work with!), the Climbing Vines Pullover.

 

Alterations to the pattern:  I made a size between XS and S to get a better fit.  I knit it in the round and knit the sleeves from the top down.  I only knit 7" from the underarm bind off to the top of the shoulders.  I didn't do any shoulder shaping on the top because I have rather square shoulders, instead I did a three-needle bind off straight across the top.  I altered the decreases for the neckline because it seemed uneven the way they were working out in the pattern, I honestly couldn't tell you what I did though.  I picked up less stitches than the pattern said around the neckline, I used the normal 2:3 ratio on the sides and the 1:1 ratio on the straight bits.  I did 2" of ribbing on the bottom instead of 1.5" and I did 2" of ribbing instead of 3.5" on the sleeves.  Oh, and I spaced out the waist decreases and bust increases more evenly to get a bit of extra length in the waist.  But really, other than that I followed the pattern.  :-)

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE IT.

Cuteness

I haven't been posting much lately.  I haven't been doing much of anything lately, I guess.  I had quite a few work events in the evenings last week, that saps out my energy quite nicely, and we had a full agenda this weekend as well.  Combine that with the events over the past few months and I can't seem to catch up.

In the meantime the house is threatening to rebel.  The vacuum is broken, there is dust everywhere, and the dogs were stinky.  And yet I was feeling so overwhelmed by it all that I didn't even know where to start.  Do you ever feel that way?  Like you are underwater, by which I mean that everything you know you should do or want to do seems like you have to push against the universe to make it happen, the same way that your limbs meet resistance when moving underwater.  

Ah well.  Such is life sometimes.  

So, I took an hour yesterday and went to Macy's while running some errands and spent a bit of time bargain shopping.  I got some new sunglasses, valentine's bears on sale for replacement dog toys, a new wallet, and a pair of shoes for $16 (just the shoes, not the whole thing).  They were small purchases, but somehow they helped me feel like I was gaining a bit of control over my life again (this must be why stress shopping feels so good, it gives the illusion of control).

I felt a bit better after that.

Today I have managed to wash all the bedding and throw everything in the dryer for 20 minutes or so to kill the dust mites, and I even bathed the dogs.

Here is Duke lounging on still warm bedding.

Cute, no?  Here's more cuteness.

I mean really, isn't that just too much?

Just a few more.  

And the last one - camouflage doggie.  

That one cracks me up.

In knitting news, I am moving right along on the twining vines top (or whatever the heck it's called).  I am supposed to be starting Vienne for a knitalong today, but I have too much momentum on this one, I want to finish it up, so Vienne will have to wait a few days.

So, the dust is still there, the vacuum belt has been ordered, you can tell by the state of the mirror here that my bathroom needs to be cleaned, but there will be a good meal on our table tonight, there is fresh bread for my hubby to snack on tomorrow, we will sleep on clean sheets tonight, the dogs smell as nice as dogs ever do, and this sweater is just short a sleeve.  

This are looking up.

A weekend list of 10 things

A list of random things.  (in no particular order)

1.  I love grapefruit juice.  Straight, unsweetened grapefruit juice.  Every once in a while I get a craving for it and it lasts until I can satisfy it.  Like this weekend, for instance.

2.  We are now officially Godparents of this adorable little boy!

3.  I slept for 11 hours saturday night.  I was exhausted (obviously).

4.  The person who photographed the ceremony for us was shaky.

5.  I worked on the Stora Dinum bottom up shawl on the plane.  In about 4 hours of knitting I think I did 6 or 7 rows.  Wow.  

6.  Jacob's maternal (maternal twice, I don't know how to say that) great grandmother is Scottish and admired my knitting, she also showed me beautiful 'Irish' (aran) sweater that she had knit.  It was just gorgeous.  It was really lovely fun to talk about knitting with her.  A woman who has been knitting for at least twice as long as I've been alive, who made a Christening shawl for the baby out of the same pattern her mother had made her Christening shawl from, a woman who doesn't know that there is a online knitting community, and it wouldn't make an ounce of difference in her life if she did know.  It was really something to have her admire my Swallowtail Shawl and socks in progress.

7.  I successfully found and joined a CSA that has a pick up in Center City.  It will start the beginning of June.  I'm excited!!  (It's Dancing Hen Farms in case any of you are interested.)

8.  Check out Restaurant.com - where you can buy 'gift certificates' to local restaurants on the cheap - $10 for a $25 gift certificate, it totally rocks.  And if you have Borders Rewards you can often get them even cheaper.  It's a great way to try a new place or just save some money going.  (Not an ad, no affiliation, it's just really cool.)

9.  My hubby loves the bread from 'Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day'.  (Not that I don't, he just eats more bread than I do.)  

10.  This week is the last week of class with my freshmen, so I'm going to make chocolate chip cookies to take in to them, I thought about it and it seemed like homemade chocolate chip cookies might just be the one thing they can't find in this fabulous city.

ETA:  I was trying to prevent spam comments & accidentally made it so only typepad account holders could comment.  I think I've fixed it now.

Compare and contrast

Do you remember doing those essays in high school - ooh boy am I glad I don't have to do that anymore.

Just for the heck of it...similarities:
Both Brooks Farm Yarn.  Both the same sweater pattern.  Both sized to fit me.  Both an inbetween size that is not in the pattern.  Annnnnd that's about it.

Differnces: 
One is visually appealing while one is not. 

Yep.

That's the only major difference.  ('cept for the color of course, but that's so obvious I don't really have to actually SAY it, do I?)

I'm VERY glad I frogged the above version and started over, thank you all for your encouragement with that.  I decided I didn't want to chance the striping still not working out, I wouldn't have the heart to start it a third time, so I swapped out the yarn.   I am a few inches from separating the front & back. 

And now for the cuteness factor.
 

The acquisitions

Stress shopping.  Have I ever mentioned I'm a stress shopper?

I give you exhibit A.  Casbah sock yarn in Twilight from the Loopy Ewe.

When I'm stressed at work I take 10 or 15 minutes and look at pictures of pretty yarn, which would be fine if ALL I did was look at the pretty yarn, but...yeah.

I give you exhibit B.  Also from the loopy ewe, Indie Dyer sock in Peacock.  Pretty, isn't it?

The above was stress from the first two weeks of classes. 

Then last week I went to Loop after work and did a bit more stress shopping, in response to my grandmother's passing.

Below witness incredibly gorgeous Colorful Yarn sock in Wine.  Dyed Locally.
This really is not a true representation of the color, it's a dark, deep red, very very pretty.

The day I returned to work after my grandmother's funeral resulted in this:

from Webs (on sale ridiculously cheap!), to make Vienne, which strangely enough is probably the only pattern that I would have made from French Girl Knits, none of the other patterns in the book appeal to me. 

and this cascade heather, it's a plum with reddish highlights, it's so hard to get reds right with a camera:

to make a v-neck sweater just like this one b/c I wear it all the time and think I should have an alternate color choice. 

The Red Riding Hood tshirt was from the same stress shopping venture.  The one trick about financial stress is that it is imperative NOT to shop.  So that will be difficult for me, but I can do it.  Along those lines, I am destashing.  I know.  It's preposterous.  But really!  I put a bunch of stuff for sale on my ravelry trade/sell page.  I am not destashing in a 'get rid of everything to buy groceries' kind of way, I'm destashing in a 'I want to go to MDSW with my friends and still be able to have fun' kind of way.  So I am selling some stuff and whatever money I make selling yarn I will get to spend at MDSW.  No harm, no foul. 

The only stash acquisitions you *should* see from me for the duration are a. gifts, b. upon return from MDSW, c. if I trade with someone on Ravelry, and d. from the 'embrace the lace' club that I joined, I already paid on it so I'm in it, like it or not, (and honestly I'm secretly pleased that I'm already committed, I love getting surprise yarn in the mail) that will start in march.

This is the point in time when I am quite glad I have a substantial stash.  I have quite enough yarn right here in my house to keep me knitting for a long, long time.

Soooooooooooo

So, you know that whole financial crisis we kept hearing about?  And all those layoffs on the news?  Well.  They're not just on the news anymore.

My dear hubby will be getting a chunk of unscheduled downtime.  Not that it's undeserved mind you, after flying back and forth between NC and Philly for 5 months last year and then hopping right into a new job, he certainly deserves a bit of downtime, it's just...unscheduled. 

No worries, we'll be fine, my husband is nothing if not a Planner (and I love him dearly for that).  It just means dinners at home, knitting from the stash, hopping on the staycation bandwagon and adjusting to a new-to-us household arrangement until he finds something.

So there it is. 

Updates on the knitting front:  none.

I have decided you are all right (of course, if I hadn't known it already I wouldn't have been asking the question, but sometimes you just need some reinforcement to egg you on) and I am going to frog the climbing vines sweater and use a different yarn for it, but I haven't had the energy to work on it this week.  Maybe I'll have something to show after the weekend.

I have a few stash acquisitions to share, purchased before said financial crisis impacted our lives, but I'll do that in a separate post as I am feeling too lethargic to be excited about them and they really are fun, so I'll wait.

I jumped on the bread bandwagon (I'm just a bandwagoneer today, eh?) and bought that 'Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day' book that everyone is raving about and I whipped up my first batch tonight.  Baking will commence tomorrow, so I'll let you know, but I'm excited.  My logic there was that the bread at my local shop is pricey for flour and water mixed together, so if I can make good bread on my own, then it's worth the investment.

There was snow.

Duke does not approve.

I love the meters, aren't they funny?

And finally a statue of some dude I walked by, looking all funky in the snow.

One more thing, this is a tshirt I just bought, also right before said financial crisis impact.  I LOVE IT.

It's hard to find tshirts with appropriate images or sayings that a grown woman can wear.  (apologies to anyone who doesn't think this IS appropriate for a grown woman to wear, to each her own and all that)  I have had good luck finding some nice ones at Threadless.  The prices are reasonable and every once in a while I see something I really like.  Obviously this will be my last impulse purchase for some time, so I hope the entertainment value lasts!

Now I am going to read about bread and why it will be fabulous!

A question

Well, things are returning to normal around here, the house is still not cleaning itself, the dogs still refuse to vacuum, and all the wishing in the world doesn't make dust disappear.

And today, I just don't care.  

I'm exhausted.  Totally worn out from the events the past few weeks and today we begin the journey back to normalcy and adjusting to the new reality.

My incredibly sweet friend Heather sent me this fantastic care package in the mail.

She included tea, soup mixes, hot chocolate, bath soaks, fruit sticks, and chocolate bundt cake, all wrapped up in two pretty kitchen towels.  Isn't that just one of the best care packages you've ever seen?  The notes put it over the top somehow, just knowing that she took the time to think about what would help me in the next week, it's just super sweet.  It was like a hug in a box, it was here when we got home from the funeral yesterday.  That totally rocked, and so does she.

We did have enough energy to procure moderately unhealthy food for the superbowl.  We are having homemade sourcream and white bean dips with transfat free chips and pitas - we try to keep things reasonably good for us.  Dh's friend (the one I made the hat for) is coming over and he is going to make his famous ribs - YUM!  

And now for the question.  I have been working on the climbing vines sweater and I'm not sure what to make of the color patterning.

I would like opinions please.

Is the color patterning going to ruin this sweater?  I know it's going to take away from the leaf pattern, I"m not so much worried about that - I'm more worried about it turning into a 'what was she thinking?' b/c the vine pattern and the color striping will compete for attention and make the whole thing a big ol' train wreck.  What do you think?