Completed Set

I finished another set of preemie hats and booties. Yay! Now I have two completed set. You can actually see the first set in the background.

I've done more work on the Jaywalker, still nothing exciting though. I'm getting closer to turning the heel. I'll show you pictures when that comes along.

Finished Frogging.

I've finally finished frogging and have begun re-knitting... YAY!

It looks so short.... so sad. :-(

STOP EVERYTHING!

They finally emailed me back. Remember way back when I had so many problems with my Heartthrob purse. They finally emaild me back! The one mistake I found with the whole 80 minus 8 equals 74 has now been corrected, but they didn't say anything about the other three mistakes. Then again those were things I could have just read wrong. The directions weren't horribly clear so I'll blame that.

I'm still ripping on the Jaywalker. I don't mind it so much. It could be worse, it could be lace. Lace would not be fun to rip.

This is why I should count.

I'm the type of person who doesn't count. Once I get into patterns I know where things go, so I just get lazy and don't bother. Well last night while working away on my Jaywalker I said to myself, I really should count, that way, if I do mess up, I'll catch it two rows later when I do the pattern repeat rather than much further along. So I started counting. The first row I counted, was off by a stitch. But how could that be? I screwed up. Yup. I forgot to increase at the very end of a row way back when (which probably explains why the sock just looked a bit odd at that point).

So how will I solve this dilemma of mine? Just one word for you: Rip. I know I could have just increased twice in that row, but it would have thrown off the pattern and annoyed me for the remainder of the socks. That and I would be haunted by the error everytime I wore the socks, so I'll be taking it apart and re-knitting. I've already ripped a few rows, how much farther do I need to go? I placed my spare needle right across the row where the mistake is. I thought about running a piece of string through, pulling out the needles, and just ripping away till I got to my row, but I'm worried I won't be able to tell quite where the row is. The small stitches (not to mention all the slants) just make me a bit uneasy so I'll be un-knitting them. I was so proud of how far I'd gotten. I really must remember to count. That's what did me in on the pink purse to. I didn't notice that I was two stitches off until several rows later. There was a mistake in the pattern, but I would have caught it earlier had I been paying attention.


In other news!

I changed my layout. I was getting a bit sick of the green. I also added some of the blogs that I read into the side bar. Of course I read far more than what is listed there. I have over 60 in my bloglines account and I read all of them. Now that I think of it there are several I really enjoy that I forgot to put up there so I'm going to go fix that.

Blonde Joke

So my mom got one of those forwards with a bunch of blonde jokes and decided to send it to me. She thought I should put the knitting blonde joke in my blog, so I have done just that. It's kind of funny, but I couldn't see it really happening in real life so I guess it just doesn't do much for me.

Anyways... here goes.

A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway. Glancing
at the car, he was astounded to see that the blonde behind the wheel was
knitting! Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and
siren, the trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and
yelled, "PULL OVER!" "NO!" the blonde yelled back, "IT'S A SCARF!"

Leg Warmers

I've finished the legwarmers. Actually they were finished on Monday but I wasn't online Monday night and only got on for a brief period Tuesday so there you go. What did I used to make these said Legwarmers. Red Heart. No big shocker there, we all know I love acrylic.

Oh, and because the question was raised, I used Regia for my Jaywalkers, color Chili. That was my lovely $3.47 yarn I bought of Herrschners a few weeks ago. Speaking of the Jaywalkers, I've found I really enjoy constantly knitting around and around and around. It's that row between the knitted ones that isn't my favorite. Usually I'm all for the complicated stuff, so this comes as a big shock to me. But hey, I guess this is a good thing, it means I won't be bored if I just do basic socks, and mindless projects are always a plus.

Oh, I went to stitch and bitch last night, if that's what you want to call it. No one showed up so I left after 45 minutes. I did drag two of my friends along with me, so technically it could have been a group, but it just isn't the same.

Weekend with Knitting

Didn't finish much of anything this weekend which is somewhat sad to say. I did make some (but not much) progress on my jaywalker. I finished up my hat and started sewing up more booties for charity. I also finished the knitting portion of the legwarmers I was working on. All that's left is to sew them up.

This leads me to my question... Should I put a pom pom on the top of the baby hat. I usually do, but I'll have to use a different yarn because I don't think it's possible to make a nice looking pompom out of the stuff I used for the rest of the hat. It's somewhat of a "fancy" baby yarn and as soon as you cut it with scissors the whole thing unravels.

I had three pictures but blogger isn't loading them.

I'll try to add them in later, if you're debating about the pom pom check back a few entries where I showed the green hat I made. All comments are appreciated.

OH WAIT! I've found if I sit long enough blogger will eventually load the pictures!




My lovely RED Jaywalker.


Lovely PINK hat and bootie. Bootie not yet completed. The big debate, pom pom or no pom pom, and what color to make it. I'm thinking white.




Legwarmers! I think I might just sew them up tonight and get rid of them tomorrow. Hurrah for finished projects.

My Jaywalker

So I've started my socks, like I said before, didn't gauge swatch or nothing, and I'm a bit scared. Swatching just seemed like too much of a hassle. Now I just fear my wide feet won't fit into them. If it doesn't work, I'll have to find some way to adjust it because I love the pattern too much not to make it.

I just keep reminding myself, so many people have made this sock, so it should work. My ribbing went well although you can't see it much in this picture. I know the ribbing will fit around my leg so I'm only hoping my stockinette will too. I think I'm just going to hurry this project along so that I can see if it works or not.

Socks, socks, socks...

I'm afraid they're going to be too small. Yup. Looked at the pattern, bought the correct needle size and all. (Should have done a test swatch but didn't have the patience to. I'll frog if I have to.) Then I measured my foot. the pattern says 9 inches around the foot. Then I thought, "I wonder what size my foot is?" So I dug out my tape measure and at the widest point it's 9 1/2 inches. Hmmm... I've always had fat feet and I mean fat feet...fat.fat.fat. Haha, my whole body is a bit on the fat side come to think of it.

Cross my fingers, if they don't fit I'll frog it and find a different pattern.

If someone with experience with these socks could let me know how they usually fit. If I'm screwed, just tell me now.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

So after school today I swung by the LYS with the bad vibe. I'm just not crazy about the store. One thing I don't like about LYS in general, they have so much "fancy" yarn. I just don't like all the weird yarns out there... maybe it's just me. Anyways, I was on a mission for size 1 dpns, for my Jaywalker socks I want to make. I looked through all of them, didn't find any. The lady working asked me what I was looking for, I told her, and she said, "oh I know we have those, I'll help you find them in a minute." Okay, if she can find them I'll be thankful, really. She couldn't find them either. I guess it's good to know I'm not going completely blind.

The only needles they had that were size 1 and contained 5 needles like I wanted were imported, hence, expensive. I didn't care much though. Just wanted to make my socks. So I came home, ran to get my yarn, and jumped online to get the pattern off the magknits.com website. Website is down. I've tried 20 different time to access the site, no luck. I have to get off now, I'll go crazy if I sit here any longer. I'll probably stay signed on just so that I can check to see if the site's up yet.

Ta DA!

My lovely pink purse on my lovely red chair. It's done, so it can no longer taunt me while I'm in my room. I have tons of yarn left too and a strong desire to make mittens. Might be making some of those later to donate or something. We'll see.

Now I have no more "difficult" projects laying around. Lots of small nice ones. So my goal, get everything off the needles, I'm getting sick of looking at scarves that I started last year.

So I now have 3 projects on the needles not including my never ending charity projects. I need to bust my stash of yarn, it's everywhere. I think I'm going to buy needles tomorrow to make socks. Might buy a couple pairs that way I have all the sizes I need. Knowing my luck if I ran out and bought size 2s, I'll need 1s or 3s.

Hurray for finished projects.

School.

Spring break has ended. So sad. Now it's back to school stuff and unfortunately I can no longer sit around and knit for 10 hours straight.

I've made great progress on the legwarmers, they're still blue though so there's nothing really exciting to see.

The purse hasn't been touched. I'm hoping if I ignore it it'll just go away, or I'll have a dream where the magical answers to fixing it come to me.

Promised Pictures

I said I'd show a picture of the purse problem. If you look you see that there's a slit in the front (obviously) and my problem is my gauge changed so my slit is being a little covered up. I'm hoping if I sew it up it won't be noticeable.

So I ordered some sock yarn last Saturday after getting a letter informing me that because the yarn I wanted was on backorder, then discontinued I would get free shipping on my
next purchase. So I found some Regia that was on sale for half off. So I saw this and liked it. Ecru. So pretty in the picture, but I didn't look quite the same when it showed up today. The Chili looked better. Oh well, yarn is yarn. It's hard to order it online for this reason, color. That and you don't know what it feels like until you get it. It looks soft in the pictures but who knows what it's really like.

Red's perfect for project spectrum, and I'd love to start a pair of socks on it. I'm afraid to make it my first pair of socks though. Should something go horribly wrong, I'd rather have wasted some of the cheap yarn I have in my room. Oh, and I did get two of each color, just didn't feel like taking a picture of it. Then again maybe I should just jump right in. Screw those unfinished projects! But what sock to make? I have no idea! I want to make Jaywalkers but I'd have to go find needles too. Which means... A TRIP TO MY FAVORITE STORE! I wonder if the LYS by my school has the needles I need. If not I'm pretty sure the nice cheapo yarn store out in the middle of nowhere has the needles. They have everything.

Gotta go. Chinese food, which means lots of sushi. I love sushi.

The Purse

OKay! So I fixed it. It's all knitted, now I just have to do the finishing, my least favorite part. (Remind me in the future to knit everything in the round) I think this is why I'm going to like sock knitting so much. ROUND!

Okay, so I've attached the handle, woven all the ends in and noticed a problem. Not a pattern problem because I've fixed all those, but my gague. It was correct when I started but after my hands took a beating I must have loosened up a littly. Unfortunatley the area affected is where my zipper goes. The problem is that it overlaps. What to do. My boyfriend's recommendation was to just take scissors to it. Of course the pure thought of the purse unraveling makes me sick. I thought about starting over. It really didn't take that long to do. I just don't want to. I don't know. I need advice. Maybe I should just sew it up and pretend this was the way it's supposed to be. I'll take a picture and post it later, maybe tomorrow. I don't have time right now because I should be leaving for work.

So tell me

I'm just not sure when it comes to socks. I bought enough yarn to make 7 pairs of socks, yet I've never actually made socks. I just got back from JoAnns with my purse handle and zipper. While there I detoured through the yarn section to look at dpns and to be upset at the fact that they never have the sizes needed to make socks. Of course I wouldn't really expect them to seeing as how it's a craft store and most craft stores don't have anything smaller than 5s. But wait! Oh my, they had 1s, 2s, and 3s! Who would have thought! They also had circulars in size 2! But they were in packs of four. Most of the time when I'm reading the blogs I read people recommend using five dpns when making socks because apparently it "works" better. Either that or I've imagined this whole scenario which is entirely possible.

So my question for you. How much of a difference does it make whether you use five dpns or four? I imagine no difference, but I really haven't made socks either.

Another New Project

Started the bribe gift legwarmers yesterday. The girl who I'm bribing is thrilled. They are really nice. Lovely cheap acrylic (of course), double stranded, on size 10s. VICTORY! Size 10 needles, not the 7s that I have another project on which I have come to hate with passion. I like the pattern. Nice and easy. Now all I have to do is repeat over and over and over and over.

Now I just have to figure out the purse pattern. I should do it but I just don't want to. I have that gut feeling I should just rip back to the problem and bind off 6 instead of 8. The thing is I just don't want to rip it. Oh well. I must do it sometime. That and I have to go buy the zipper and handle for the purse. Maybe I'll go do that after I get done reading all those blogs I read.

Finished!

Finished! Finished! Finished! Finished! YAY!

The baby blanket is complete! I'm very much excited. My mom took it with her to work today to show everybody. She gets so excited over things like that.

Then after finishing that I decided that my goal over Spring Break would be to finish all those UFOs that I started ages ago. To kick things off I worked on my lovely pink dishcloth. This was actually started March 1st which isn't exactly ages ago, but it was the closest to being done. So now the only UFOs lurking in my bag are the green scarf and the orange scarf. Of course there's also the lovely pink purse, but I'll be holding back on that until they tell me how to fix the mess they made.

Oh, there's also a pair of blue legwarmers that I'll be starting too. Like the pink purse it's another bribe gift. Hopefully this one won't be as difficult to make literally. I can't remember which magazine I found it in, but I think it was Vogue Knitting.

Well I'm off to my friends house. :-D Oh, and she wants to learn to knit so I might drag out an old pair of needles that I don't mind her never giving back.

Annnnnnnnnnnd...I might finally be able to make it to our local stitch 'n bitch tonight. I've been busy every single time for the past how many.

Put the Needles down and back away slowly...

Another Mistake! ANOTHER MISTAKE! This is the 3rd one. And I mean seriously, this one is so obvious it should have been caught earlier. Don't they pay someone to catch these mistakes? I'll give you a short overview of what it said. Cast on 31 stitches... blah blah blah... Then the two pieces got "attached" no problem now we're up to 80 stitches on the needle. Knit another few rows in stockinette. Now, knit to the last 8 stitches, then bind off the last 8 stitches. There are now 74 stitches left on the needle.

Anyone else see the error. Apparenlty not. 80-8=74. Wonder what math class that was in. I could have sworn it was 72, but what do I know. Of course I rarely bother to count all my stitches to make sure that they're correct. But I think it as at this spot where I did count and said to myself, "I have 72, oops the pattern says 74." Oh... must have just been a typo, no problem. But later on in the pattern (11 rows later) it becomes a bigger typo, because this part of the pattern is working of the 74 stitches that I don't have. This is when I got really, really ticked. So I sat, counted stitch after stitch after stitch. Then I realized, once again there was one little pattern error that threw the whole thing off. So I've about had it with this magazine. Ever pattern I've ever tried to make from it has had errors. (That's only about 4, but still). All of the patterns except for my lovely dishcloth that is. I've yet to have a problem with that one, so it's now my favorite.

I emailed the magazine. Asked them to help me because this was the third error I've found. So now I will wait. (and yes I did check their corrections page first, the purse wasn't on there) Until I get a response I'm going to neglect my purse which is very very sad, because I thought I was finally going to get rid of it. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, unfortunatley for me it turned out to be a train.

Happy Saturday everyone!

Sock yarn!

I love mail, especially when there's yarn in the mail. How the mailman managed to shove my yarn and the mail into our mailbox amazes me. Meet my sock yarn. Not the first sock yarn I've purchased, but the first sock yarn I've purchased that has wool in it. Yes, you heard right wool. I've never knit anything with wool in it. Oh wait! I have, I knit a square out of yarn I've spun, but I'm not counting that since it wasn't a real project.

So they charged me for the orange yarn, the yellow yarn and the shipping. And after the yellow was on backorder they didn't charge me for that. But I still had to pay the extra shipping fromt the extra yarn. It wasn't a whole lot, just an extra $2. So I was a bit annoyed. Then I realized, this must be why they sent me a "free shipping" letter in the mail. So I went to the website and bought what? MORE SOCK YARN! I've seen people online use Regia, so I thought oh, maybe I'll take a look at that. Oh my god, it's $6.95 a skein. Well maybe I'll buy two skeins, enough for a pair of socks. Then I see it.... Some colors were on sale for $3.47! That's half price. So exciting. And the best part, they had nice bright colors on sale. So I bought four skeins. Two in Ecru and two in Chili. They had a ton on sale too which made it difficult. So if you're interested, head over to Herrschners. So now I have about 10 skeins of sock yarn in my possession, another 4 have been ordered, and I haven't started making a sock yet. It can't be that hard right? I don't think I've ever found a "hard" knitting pattern. I've found ones I just don't like, but I don't consider them hard. My goal now is to get all that knitting done on those things I don't want to do so I can start more projects.

YAY! for FRIDAY!

For those who were wondering, the dishcloth pattern is out of the March 2006 issue of Creative Knitting. I've had a hard time actually finding this magazine in the store which is why I subscribe to it. $20 a year, for 6 issues, you can't beat it. I pay $20 for my other knitting magazine and only get 4 issues.

Oh, and what made me mad today actually starts last Thursday. I got the Herrschners catalogue thing in the mail last Thursday, found sock yarn on sale for $2 a skein and ordered 12 skeins. When going to pay for my order I was informed that one of the colors (the green) was on backorder and decided to just stick with my orange and yellow. Okay. Fun colors, can't beat the price. Then after we give them our credit card numbers they email us and tell us, "hey! all of a sudden we're out of Yellow" But wait? You weren't out when I ordered it! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!?!?! Okay... so I calmed down. Yellow was on backorder, orange has been shipped, I'll get the yellow, it just might be awhile. So then today, after a particularly long/difficult day at school I'm sorting through the mail and find a letter from herrschners. Oh dear. It was a letter informing me that they had run out of yellow yarn. Apparently it isn't being made anymore or some other just bad story. So because I paid with a credit card they're just not going to charge me for it. Now I have four skeins of bright orange sock yarn on it's way and I don't really want solid orange socks. I wanted to stripe it with the yellow, but now Herrschners has shattered my dreams. Oh well, guess for under $2 a skein I can't really be picky.

Hurray for March

I know, I know, March started yesterday. However, I usually update my blog in the afternoon after I get home from school, then my younger sister takes over the computer as soon as she gets home from school and I usually don't see it again until the next day. Because of this I hadn't started my Project Spectrum stuff yet.

So, let Project Spectrum begin!!! Okay. I decided for the whole knit-a-long that I was going to try to do some serious stash busting. I have lots of pinks laying around so I figured my first project would diminish some Pink Sugar and Cream that I had sitting around for the past year or so. Flipping through my Creative Knitting magazine, (the same one that has the evil purse pattern) I noticed the dishcloths. I like them. I don't know why but I like them. They're circular, which is entertaining enough. And hey, for once I had the yarn that the project in the magazine called for! Usually I just substitute yarn so this is a BIG deal for me.

Will I run out of pink yarn? I highly doubt it. I have so much left over from baby blankets I can always whip out a bunch of preemie hats and booties. I wonder if I'm allowed to use this stash busting idea for project spectrum. I don't see why not but you never know.

I also worked on the evil pink purse which has now become a big pain because it's almost too long for the needles. Well now I think I'm just making up excuses. haha .... oh well.

And it just gets worse.

So I really have no desire to knit that purse, which I believe I've said before. While speaking to my boyfriend on Monday night I was told to just get it done and move on with my life. So I was plugging away on Tuesday, that is when disaster struck. Well I guess it's not really disaster, but you get the picture. So I have pieces number 1, 2, and 3. Number 1 (which is the triangle shape that is actually laying flat) and Number 2 (which is the baby triangle shape on the far right) were already joined together except they in another order with Number 2 being on the left of Number 1. Why? Because I was doing what the directions told me too, or at least what I thought the directions were telling me to do. So then I made triangle shape Number 3 (which is the last shape on the far left). Now it came to the time where I connect Number 3 to Number 1+2. First problem. I was supposed to connect them by purling across all the stitches. However, Number 1+2 fished with a purled row meaning to purl another row would mess up the stockinette. Not so bad, I figured I'd just take out a row. Then I noticed the other problem. If I combined Number 3 to Number 1+2, then it would be on the wrong side. Two mistakes. I think of course. In all honesty I have messed up patterns before because I don't read them correctly. I've gone to the website, and no corrections have been posted, but I'm pretty positive that there are errors. So I studied the diagram of the layout of the purse, ripped some out, and jumped back in. No clue if I'm doing it right, no clue what it will look like, and if it will work out, but I don't know what else to do. I don't improvise when it comes to patterns, so the fact that I'm doing this is crazy enough. Oh, and I still hate it, but with passion now.