Jon's Knit Blog

Giftless at the Big Gay Wedding

So the Big Gay Wedding was last night. It was beautiful. Everyone looked nice, the room looked great, the food was delicious, the service was lovely, etc.

There was only one item of lovelitude not there. The BGWA. Oh well. It'll be finished one of these days and I will give it to them. And in the meantime, I will knit on it, and other things, too.

Friday night, since I knew there was no chance of finishing the BGWA anyhow, I decided to knit something else for a change of pace, so I picked up the Dia Materie that I bought at Knit NY the other week. I started a scarf in Brioche Rib stitch. It looked really great except I kept flubbing the pattern so there were a few big holes in it. I ripped it all out and will start over. Maybe on Tuesday evening so that I have something in my hands rather than chew my fingernails totally off over the election suspense. We'll see...

A Lack of Leaps or Bounds

So over the past two days, I was supposed to get lots and lots of the BGWA done. And did I?

Nope. Couple inches, maybe. If that.

I ended up having to go to a funeral in Coney Island on Wednesday (family friend's mother), which turned into an all day ordeal, what with going to Long Island for the burial, then back to Bensonhurst for the post-burial open house (complete with overheated apartment and lack of sufficient food or drink), followed by dinner in the City with aforementioned family friends. Which put me back at my place after 10:45pm or so, when you account for the fact that I hung out for a bit to watch the lunar eclipse.

And given how much wine had been consumed with dinner, I wasn't about to start knitting.

Today, then, I woke up and thought about knitting, but I sat down in front of the computer and couldn't muster the energy needed to move my lazy ass to the knitting end of the sofa. I did a little bit of housecleaning, registered for my 10 year college reunion, ran a couple errands, had dinner, and finally started to knit around 8:30pm this evening. I finished the garter band and 12 pattern rows, but that's nowhere near enough. I still have something like 88 rows left. Then finishing and fringing. Not gonna be done anywhere near on time. Well, they'll still like it when they get it.

Because Kristine Said To.

Kristine said she wanted photos of BGWA. So here ya go:

And a close-up of the stitch-y stuff:

So it's highly unlikely that this will be ready for gifting on Saturday, especially given that I have to go to a funeral in Coney Island tomorrow, but still, it's a nice gift-in-progress. And who ever has knitted things done on time? Unless it's a harlot who's headed for a yarn festival?

At What Point?

When do I actually bother to take a photo of the BGWA? I mean, you know what it looks like. It's off-white, it's scallopped, and it's growing too slowly... and if I had to take an actually satisfactory picture of it, that's time away from knitting it... right?

Anyhow, I doubt it'll be done in time, but I'll take a picture so you can see where it is tomorrow anyhow.

Otherwise:

News from the land of the knit blogs:

What's this? Wendy is blogging no longer? Egads. Comes as a sad shock; she will be missed by a lot of people. Although the SpongeBog thing was freakin' me out...

I was trying to find a blog I stumbled across the other day, and I cannot... it was a knit blogger whose brother had just died; I wanted to check and see if there was any news on how she was doing, and I could have sworn that I bookmarked her, but I can't find her site at all... Anyone know what it is?

I just want to say, thank you, all of you, for reading my blog. It's really always a thrill to come home from a long day and see that I've gotten a few hits or a few comments. I enjoy that!

We Knit Knit Knit Knit Knit the Whole Day Through

Or at least we wish we could. See, the Big Gay Wedding is this coming Saturday night. And I'm maybe 50% of the way done with the BGWA. So this week is going to be a big push to see how much of the BGWA we can get done.

Of course, it would have helped if I'd knit on the Afghan last night instead of working the last few rows of the Angora headband for Mom and then doing 6 rows on the 2nd sleeve for Blue Cable-y Goodness.

Well, whatever. I'll finish BGWA eventually. Does anyone actually think I can get it done by Saturday? If it weren't for the fact that I have to go to a funeral in Coney Island on Wednesday, I'd think I almost stand a chance...

Warning: Scary, Non-Knitting Content Ahead

Boo!

Shameless Self Promotion

I think I wrote a very clever entry over at my non-knitting blog today.

Check it out!

What Bunnies Do

I doubt if you can figure out what I'm doing from the photo. And I doubt that it's a good idea, but I'm having fun and learning a lot. And enjoying the stranding.

Yes, I'm stranding with Angora. I don't know if it's a good or a bad idea but I'm enjoying it so there. I provisionally cast on 126 stitches, joined, and knit in rounds for 15 rows. Then purled a row, for a turning row, then started a stranded design, in black on the red background. I'm doing the mirror image of the pattern at the other side, then another purl turning row, then the same number of knit rows, and I will graft it closed. It's supposed to be an angora headband to keep my mom's ears warm when she's out in the crisp autumn cool driving her convertible.

Since it's rabbit yarn, and it's to cover her ears, I'm calling this headband "Bunny Ears." For whatever it's worth, which probably isn't all that much. Good thing the yarn was on sale!

(PS: The yarn is really red in real life, not the orange you see here.)

It Sucks to Be Me.

I'm too depressed to photoblog today. Why?

Because you all got to go to Rhinebeck, but I had to work.

No fair!

Little Bunny Foo Foo

Knitting with angora is a whole new experience. It's like knitting with yarn spun out of butter. Granted, very furry butter that gets all over everything and makes me sneezy, but wow is it soft.

It's also very fragile yarn. I had to readjust my tension after a few stitches. I'm normally a very tight knitter, but I found that I was pulling so tight the yarn was coming apart. So I'm forcing myself to knit more loosely.

I've got to say, though, and you'll see photos of what I'm making soon enough, that I really love knitting stockinette in the round. So easy and mindless and repetitive and soothing... Mmm. Especially when you're knitting with bunnies.

All Better

So I was at Knit NY yesterday. The lovely and talented John suggested that indeed, I would do best to tink back across the broken stitches of the BGWA, which took a while since the Fandango is not the easiest yarn in which to see stitches, but I got there (with a little help).

I also seamed up the Poncho. Everyone there loved it, and in fact they asked me to write up the pattern for them, which I did. Turns out, though, that while they stock Giotto, they do not have Zanziba. It's ok, though, because I'm going to write up the pattern for you. Probably tomorrow. I let a nice woman named Jen try the poncho on. It looked really cool. I am going to make my sister take some photos once she receives the poncho in the mail. (What, you thought I was going to model it for you?) And while it's still lovely, taking a photo of it would really show you nothing more than this, which is the photo of the front half. I'm rather please with how quickly this project went. Although it seems a long-ish time since I was in DC and at Knit Happens, I've gotten a fair amount of other stuff done, as well.

Like the Erotic Enigma scarf. John liked it. And so did another woman who worked in the store (and is a design student at Pratt or FIT or some such...). So if two LYS people like it, I figure I'll be done with it. Easy enough.

And we got the BGWA dilemma all fixed up. Although for some reason there are not quite the right number of stitches in the affected area. Luckily, this is the easiest of the yarns in which to fudge it so that nobody will ever be able to notice. (Probably that means we'll all be able to see it.)

So now it's time to head to work.

What, you expected drama and photography? Sorry to burst your bubble...

Houston, We Have a Problem

I didn't make it to Knit NY today. For a few reasons. Mostly because I stayed up way too late playing on iTunes rather than finishing the second half of the Colinette Poncho. So I overslept, and basically just didn't have time to get the knitting done and get down there to do what I wanted to accomplish.

So when I got home this evening, I picked up the poncho and finished the knitting; now I just have to sew two seams and weave in a few ends.

But I wanted to still knit some more so I picked up the BGWA. Made it through two or three repeats of the pattern for the row, and was trying to purl two stitches together, when this happened:

So even though I didn't buy the yarn at KNY, I'm hoping that they will take sympathy on me and suggest a potential fix to the problem here.

Can you even see what happened? The *@&% yarn broke. Simply snapped. So I am not a happy camper.

The other reason I am not a happy camper is the third WIP I am taking to KNY tomorrow for advice and guidance. It's the Erotic Enigma scarf. I do like each half, but only separately. I don't like them together. I think I'm going to have to find three more balls of yarn, cut the scarf in half, catch all the live stitches, and knit from there. Hey, at least I'll end up with two wearable scarves instead of one curiosity that never leaves the closet...

How Fun Is This?

So someone found my blog by googling the key words Funny Knit Blogs. I am thrilled to say that I came in 6th overall, of the entire web.

The only blogger who I know who came in ahead of me is, big surprise, everyone's favorite Harlot. Still, I'm excited to rank so highly. I guess that it means that a few people out there really read my blog (which I already knew). I guess, though, that I'll always be humbled by people like Wendy who can get 1,000 people to send her emails in a day. Egads! Still, I'm averaging over 70 hits per day, which is nothing to sneeze at!

OK, it was a long day at work but I finally get to go knit as soon as I finish my dinner (burger with feta and tomato, thank you very much!)

Maybe I'll see some of you at Knit NY tomorrow???

Another Photoless Update

Since it looks just like the other side, and you've already seen the photos, and since I think taking more of them would really just be a waste of cyberspcae, there are no photos for today's update.

Sorry!

But I will tell you that I expect to finish the knitting of it Tuesday night, and I expect to go to Knit NY on Wednesday to take advantage of their nice big tabletops which, I think, will be quite useful when it comes to seaming. Not to mention that I need to get a second (or third or fourth) opinion on the Erotic Enigma scarf.

Then, it'll be back to the BGWA, because the Big Gay Wedding rapidly approaches. And, suprise, I don't have a date!

PS: I had no clue how much yarn I would need for the poncho when I made my purchases at Knit Happens. I am going to have two left-over skeins of Giotto... what do you think I should do with them?

More of the Same

Busy weekend at work, I have to say. I was still able to make some progress on the Colinette Poncho. I expect to finish it this week.

Anyone who wants to make one, here's what you have to get:

2 skeins of Colinette Giotto, in the same colorway.
3 skeins of Colinette Zanziba, in a coordinating colorway.
One US 11 needle (circular), or size needed to get gauge of 2 sts = 1", in garter stitch.
One stitch holder (as opposed to stitch marker)

I'll give you the actual pattern soon, but I have to get ready for work now.

The Problem Is...

...that the textures are too unbearably different. I love each separate half, for its own reasons. Although I think I like (gasp) the non-Colinette half more! It's somehow prettier. I really enjoy seeing what different yarns can do when you hold them together; I guess that's part of it.

So I am contemplating trying to cut it in half and knit each half up with more of the same yarn... you know, send someone on a long, drawn out quest for each of them. Because there's only about 20 yards of the Eros left, and that's it. After I ran out of Santa Fe, I started in on the second half of the Zanziba-Giotto poncho I'm making for my sister. I am going to go by Knit NY this weekend and see what they think (and see if I can find any more Eros and Santa Fe - when I was there, they didn't think they had any more of the Eros in this colorway...)

So I'll keep you posted. And in the meantime, I'll continue knitting this poncho. I will post the pattern when it's all done! It's an interesting poncho, and a very quick knit.

The Enigma Moves to Santa Fe...

Today was a fun day. I went to Knit NY. My main objective was to figure out what to do with the Enigma scarf. The deal is, they had a really lovely sample scarf at Weaving Works in Seattle where I bought the yarn. They said it was made from one skein. Well, my skein did not come anywhere close to being a full scarf. It's about 40 inches long, in fact. Not scarf length at all.

But lovely:

So at Knit NY today, they didn't have any Colinette Enigma, least of all any in Morocco. So I picked two other yarns which looked interesting and sort of matched the Enigma color-wise. Plymouth Eros in a largely off-white colorway and Diakeito Santa Fe, in a blue-grey-purple colorway (525 in the link).

Together, they knit up like this:

So what happened was, I decided to have a scarf that's half one yarn and half the other. And the really weird part, although you're not going to see it in this photo, is that I am getting the exact same gauge with the Santa Fe and the Eros together as I was with the Enigma. The scarf is the same width. Randomly lucky, I guess:

And since one of the new yarns is named Eros, the scarf is now called "The Erotic Enigma." Although I doubt that I'm going to tell that to the person who's going to receive it. God, I hope she likes this new idea of the half and half scarf. It's fun, right? Because you sort of have two scarfs, since you can wear either one or the other end sort of on the front of it, right? Right?

So, well, you know I wouldn't be me if I had survived the trip to the Knit Shop by also picking up just the skeins I "needed."

So how do you like this:

Another Diakeito yarn, Materie, in color 605. I'm really fond of it.

And I really just had a nice time sitting at Knit NY drinking coffee which had been brewed by a really cute guy and knitting. Yay!

Two other things: 1) Em: Congrats, you're Comment # 400 on the blog! (Maybe one day we should actually plan to intentionally be at KNY at the same time, btw).

2: Here's an idea for a scarf. Do you think it'll work? 4x4 rib, cabled. But the trick is, cable on the RS row and on the WS row so that it's double sided and doesn't really have a wrong or right side. I think I'm going to try it in the red Feeling I bought on eBay.

I'm Not Speaking to You Today

I have nothing to blog about today. I was at work three extra hours last night due to some extreme drama with a suitcase. I was tired, frustreated, and irritated when I got home last night at 1:40am. So I knit up the last of the untangled Enigma into the scarf, and although I have some yarn left, it is not untangling enough to appear to be practical. I am about to venture to Knit NY to see what we can figure out of how to resuscitate this project.

So I'm not blogging today.

Except for this.

Which counts as blogging, I guess.

Oops!

Damn. Damn. Damn.

I just wrote a really funny, amusing, enjoyable blog entry.

And my computer fritzed and the whole thing was lost.

Argh!

And now I don't have time to come up with anything lovely today for you to read...

I will, however, respond to Linda's comment from yesterday asking why not block the BGWA on the wall. The wall, madam? Well, I think that would cause a large amount of stretching from the side that would bear the weight of the afghan... I think it would do a lot better on a horizontal surface...

Anyhow, there's still a decent-ish amount of knitting to be done before we get close to that being an issue.

Bigger. Gayer. Wedding. Afghan.

A few rows into the second repeat and look what we have! It photographs better than I thought it might. It's going to need a Big Gay Blocking when it's done. I have no clue how to go about blocking something that large in a Small Gay Manhattan Apartment.

Anyhow, I am enjoying knitting it, loving the yarn, and seriously missing all the glorious colors one usually associates with Colinette. Well, it's going to be done soon-ish, I hope!

Well, I'm tired now, so I'm off to bed. Have fun surfing the knit blogs, all you fabulous folks out there!

Did You Notice?

I'm up to 33% done on the BGWA, after being stuck at 8% for the longest time. I finished the first repeat last night, and plan to make more progress tonight after work. I'll take a photo then...

Happy October!

So I went to the theatre tonight with a guy. We were walking down Sixth Avenue after dinner and we passed Macy's. I wish I had my camera with me because you're not going to believe me when I tell you that they already have a giant Christmas Tree. It's only been October for about 2 minutes when we're there, and already, a fucking Tree.

We were pretty appalled by that. I was not surprised, but not thrilled, either, when we got to his place and told me that he "wasn't interested in dating" at the current moment. Story of my life. I just wish I didn't have to get up early in the AM so that I could be knitting right now; I think it'd make me feel a bit more upbeat.

Funny how metal sticks and lucious fiber can take your mind off of things...