Jon's Knit Blog

For Your Consideration

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a photograph of the well known yet extremely reclusive Seed Stitch Scarf. This may be the first time said scarf (along with much beloved turned wood needles) has presented itself to the camera. While the scarf is longer than it was at the beginning of the evening, it's still not long enough.

Good News from the Sofa

I finished the main knitting on Blue Cable-y Goodness, and look who's left over to pose on the sofa. The only knitting left is the neck band. Of course, there's 88 ends to weave in, 8 seams to sew, and then the neck band to take care of. And then Blue Cable-y Goodness will not just be a pile of knitted pieces, it will be, lo and behold, a sweater.

Maura was so excited she let the ball of yarn pose in a very special photo:

It's a different kind of BCG: It's Blue Cadbury Goodness! Yum. Yum. Yum! (And would you believe that I haven't eaten any yet? But that's only because I also bought some Marshamallow Peeps.)

Behold!

Hark! Is this a crewneck that I see before me?

An astonishingly knitful day, and some powerful latte from Knit NY, resulted in lots of productivity! There's half of a neck, can you believe it? And some other fun photos, too.

Rachael, this one is for you:

(Yes, it was delicious!)

And just in case you think I wasn't productive enough, what do you think of this:

It's a swatch for a baby-blankie idea. I wouldn't call it perfect or anything, in fact, the tension on the intarsia needs a little bit of work, but it's partly Maura's fault. Being such a fantastic macro lens, she picks up everything; the swatch really looks better in person. And hey, it's a swatch. And it's hard to do little 5 stitch sections. Especially when there's a new color every 6th row. But it's a start, and I don't have to do this pattern, either, but it's cute. And it took a lot less time than I thought it would, which is a good sign, if I decide to use the squares as the blankie pattern. If I do, I still have to decide if they'll be random, Kaffe Fassett-y placement, or if they'll be in diagonal rows, like in this swatch. I'm just happy that BCG is far along enough that I can actually contemplate what I'm doing next. Although I should probably be contemplating another WIP. Of course, that just wouldn't be like me, would it?

I Think I Shall!

Although there's a ton of cleaning to do around the house, and other shit I should be doing, I have the feeling that I'm going to pick up BCG and get in a cab and have the nice driver (yeah right) take me to 2nd Avenue and 14th Street. So if you're at KNY, look for the guy knitting the royal blue cables. Maybe I'll see you there.

Scandal!

Well, I've decided that I have a crush on another gay knitblogger.

Too bad he lives in a different city than I do! And no, I'm not telling who it is, and you probably can't guess. But he's really cute. Really, really cute. At least, in the photo on his page...

Anyhow, I haven't touched BCG (or any other knitting) in the past couple of days. I have been looking at patterns, especially at "Family Album" by Kaffe and Zoe, to try and figure out some ideas for the new Baby Blankie. I hate that I keep being drawn to such difficult intarsia designs, but they look so cool! The leading contenders are a blanket of a ton of multi-colored little blocks (5 sts across, 6 rows each; or 10 sts across, 12 rows), or the crazy multicolored cable design in that same book. Both blankets would probably have to be lined, given how many ends there would be as a result of the intarsia. And I have not yet lined a knit project. But I assume it's possible.

And that's all for now. I have to meet my boss at a Jewelry Shop. (And no, I will not be buying anything for the above-mentioned crush.)

Just Barely

So I'm close enough to the end of the front to know how much more yarn I'm going to need. It's creepy, actually, there's a change-of-ball end hanging out in almost the exact same place on the front and the back... and from that ball change, on the back, I used about 2 1/2 more balls. Since I have three balls plus some oddments left, I am breathing a huge sigh of relief because, as I think you know, I was really not sure if I was going to have enough yarn.

But I am! Just barely. I'll probably be binding off the neck band with the last inches of it. We'll see. Soon, I hope! Looks like there are only 49 rows left.

Thank You!

Sometime in the next 24 hours, this blog will experience its 20,000th visitor. I think that's pretty darn exciting! So I wanted to thank all of you for your support and your help and, well, your visits!

BTW, if you are visitor # 20,000, I'd love it if you could take a screen shot of the counter! My little ole blog is growing up, I'm so sentimental...

Anyhow, I got 7 or 8 rows of Cable-y Goodness done last night. The rows are a bit quicker now that there's not quite so many stitches on the needle. I would have knit more but I wasn't feeling great - I have this sinus or allergy thing that is really wiping me out. Fun, huh?

So for the baby blanket, I'm thinking about doing something in the multi-colored cable design by Zoe Hunt in the book "Family Album" that she did with Kaffe Fassett. I am going to try a swatch soon to see how feasible it is. I'm thinking, though, that if I do something intarsia, that I'm going to simply knot the ends rather than weave them all in, and then line the blanket. But I'm still not sure.

I'm Ready For My Close-Up, Mr. DeMille

I got a new digital camera, can you tell? Oh, and I bound off the armholes of the front of Blue Cable-y Goodness. I have to say, though, when I went to look at the armholes on the back, gosh, I really had no clue what I was doing when I knit the back of the sweater. I mean, the cables look nice and all, but no thought was given to how the damn thing will be sewn up once all the pieces are done. One side is knit stitches, one side is purl stitches, and after the armholes, there's like one or two purl stitches before a cable. Oops!

So when I bound off for the front, I left one extra stitch on that I'm using to create, yes, wait for it, a selvage. How smart am I? Now...

Since I want to show off what my new camera (who I am thinking needs to be named Nancy the Nikon) with her friend Maura the Macro Lens*, can do:

*OK, Maura can actually zoom from 24 to 85 mm, she's quite the versatile lens. But Maura the Macro just sounds better than Zelda the Zoom, don't you think? Here is some more proof of Maura's Macro-osity. The shot could have used some more light, but it's 2:30am, give me a break...

An Idea that Reserves the Right to Evolve into a Contest

Remember this guy?

Well, he's about to get a brother or a sister, probably in July. Which means that I have to start planning a new baby blanket! The problem is, I have NO idea what to make. It has to look at least as "interesting" as the slip-stitch blanket in the photo above. I was thinking about something in a simple lace pattern, which would be fine if it turns out to be a girl but maybe not the best for a boy. And would it be as warm as something without holes in it? I was also thinking about an aran-y blankie. Or an intarsia blankie with squares of lots of different colors. Argh, I have no clue.

Anyhow, what do you suggest? My main rule is that the yarn should be soft, at least 75% natural fiber, and machine washable. And nothing bigger than a US6 needle, probably. (Although that's the most negotiable thing up here.)

There's a good likelihood of a prize if you have the idea which ends up becoming the actual baby blankie. But I have no idea what it is. Some sort of gift. We'll talk. Invent a blanket idea first...

1302 Stitches

KKPPKKPPKKKKKPPKKKKKKPP and so forth.

For a few hours.

And it means that tomorrow I should have a photograph of some bound off armholes to show you. Which means that I'm getting closer and closer to actually having to figure out how to do the front neck of Blue Cable-y goodness.

But it means that I avoided having to think about my lack of Valentine for at least a few minutes.

A Good Reason to Leave the House

For the benefit of all you non-NYer's out there. If you're in the City, you have NO excuse to miss this. It's incredible. What an experience! A couple more photos at The Jon Blog.

Progress is Relative

So I went to Washington, DC on Wednesday and came back this morning. I spent some time working on the infamous Seed Stitch Scarf. Now, as you know, I've been working on SSS for just about, well, forever. It's Colinette Prism, in Cardinal, on US10.5 needles (Brittany rosewood), in seed stitch. Seed stitch, as you may well recall, has a very, very tight row gauge, so this scarf grows at an extraordinarily slow rate. But I have good news: I started with three skeins of yarn, and on the train (Yes! I knit the entire trip from Penn Station to Washington!) Wednesday, I used up the last of one of the skeins! So now, I'm just knitting between two skeins.

And the scarf is getting long! I was very excited about its length, to tell you the truth. Then, just to make sure that I wasn't getting too happy too quickly, I laid it out on my hotel room bed to compare to the scarf I had worn to DC. Now, the scarf I had worn on the trip is a lovely woolen felt scarf that my mother bought me in Scotland. The only problem with this scarf is that, even with its fringe, I think it's about 18 inches too short. Guess what? It's about a foot longer than SSS.

So I guess it's back to the needles for this little project. Who knew that scarves were so freaking LONG?!?!

Our Nation's Capitol

Heading south for a couple days. I'm takin' the Seed Stitch Scarf with me. After all, it is the most travelled of my knitting projects so why not continue this trend? My intention is to actually knit this afternoon on Amtrak! We'll see if this actually happens or not. It has to do as much with if I get a seat to myself as if I decide to knit in public.

I didn't get anything done last night, but I did get a few rows of Blue Cable-y Goodness done over the weekend. It's actually starting to look like a part of a sweater, which is good. I think there's only 18 or 20 rows until I bind off for armholes!

Hope your knitting is growing more quickly than mine!

Metropolitan Knitting

Do you read the "Metropolitan Diary" column in the Times? Check out today's edition. You'll have to register for it, but the penultimate item is a great story - for knitters, and for anyone else.

Enjoy!

Hey Look, a Photo from Angkor Wat!

Another Knitful Guy Day

I went to Knit NY yesterday, and in the spirit of the AP Article, there were a lot of guys there, knitting. One in particular was really cute. He finished a hat, then started something in what looked like Lopi.

At one point, though, this 5th grader boy came in, and he was hysterical. He doesn't knit much himself, but he loves to teach people to knit. He also had that air about him that some of my friends refer to, and I mean this in the best possible way, as M.I.T., which doesn't have anything to do with any institutes in Massachusetts, but rather "Mary In Training," aka FHA - a Future Homosexual of America. Obviously, I don't meet a lot of children, but I'm always intrigued by them. So that put me in a good mood.

Then there was another guy there who was working on *more's Henry 8 sweater from Tudor Roses. It looks awesome! Everyone gave lip service to my cables, but his sweater is definitely more impressive.

Later in the evening, there was what appeared to be a knitting class. I think there were six people at the table, and two of them were guys.

Granted, most of the people who came in were women, but there were no less than five knitting guys at KNY yesterday, which I think is rather cool.

The other good news is that it looks like I may just barely eek by in the yarn department. I appear to have enough yarn to finish Blue Cable-y Goodness. It may come down to how big the neckband can be, but... it may work! (Oh, and I ****ed up a cable, too. We knew the front would have one too, we just didn't realize it'd be quite so soon...)

On an unrelated topic, I have decreed that I am going to only start one project this year, but otherwise the year is going to be devoted to finishing things I've already started. There's a slim chance that I might need to amend this rule by autumn, but I seriously doubt it. I do have one caveat - one not-started project in place that I will buy yarn for and I will start, but it's a baby gift and those, well, those never count. I know I had been all excited about the idea of the "Impossible-Along," but I think it's probably more important to get all the other disctractions out of the way before moving on to such a major project. I promise, we'll get there...

We Made the AP!

It's True! Guys join the Knitting Craze!.

The one thing I don't get about the article? The snowboarding guys who knit their own winter-wear as a way to save money. Can someone actually give me a concrete example of a hand knit item which costs less than a store bought one? Unless, it's a store that sells hand knits, but how many of those are there? And are any of them cheap?

Still, cool article. And the Men Who Knit web-ring was linked! So was MenKnit.net!

Obsessed

The past few days, it seems that all I can think about is Blue Cable-y Goodness. How much longer will it take? Will I have enough yarn? Why are there so many ****ing ends to sew in? Et cetera, et cetera.

I was at the opera this evening ("Pelleas et Melisande," which was lovely, by the way), and at one point I realized that I was knitting in my mind and not even paying attention to whatever was going on onstage. At a different point in the day, I started having the "What if it doesn't fit my friend" jitters. Another point, I started to wonder why exactly I'm spending so much ****ing time knitting a sweater for a friend, when I could be out finding myself a husband instead. OK, well, we doubt there's a reasonable chance of finding a husband, but that's the kind of thing that runs through my mind, alright?

Anyways, when I came home from the opera this evening, I had a bite to eat and at about 1:45am-ish, I picked up BCG. And I knit through two movies, both of which, ironically, involved amnesia and female lead characters named Lucy. OK, well, "While You Were Sleeping" isn't exactly about amnesia, but for a while they pretend that one of the characters has it. "Fifty First Dates" sure is, though. Good knitting movies, both. Although I have to admit that I teared up when Bill Pullman slipped the engagement ring through the subway token window to Sandra Bullock. I'm a sap, even when I knit. What can I say?

So my obsession with the sweater is the main reason I haven't putzed around with the laptop to get the Asia photos online. I will. I promise. But don't be surprised if there's some photos of blue cables, too.

Oh, by the way, two movies worth of knitting, at least tonight, came out to 9 rows, which is over 1,600 stitches. Two cable rows tonight. And can I just say that it's a whole lot easier to cable with a cable needle than with a cracked bamboo DPN? And yes, I understand the concept behind cabling without a cable needle. I knit too tightly for this to be a practical option, sad to say. So that's that. Now, sleepytime for Jon!

How Many Pictures of the Same Blue Sweater do you Want?

So I've finished the first 9 pattern rows of the front of Blue Cable-y Sweater. This is quite the slow project, and there are times it makes me want to jump up and scream. But I'm working on it, because mostly I just want to finish it. And now that I'm actually on the front, the end is sort of in sight.

Still, another trip to the yarn store will be required as I do not have enough yarn to finish the sweater. And since I bought the yarn, initially, well over a year ago, there's no chance in hell of finding the original dye lot, one assumes... Hopefully the yarn is mass produced enough that it won't make a difference.

The other reason I need to go to the yarn store (Yes, I have reasons, not just stash) is that I seem to have misplaced my cable needle. Now, if you could see the mess which is commonly known as my apartment (which you can't, bwahahahaha), then you'd know why I can't find it. But it'll be easier, and more fun than cleaning, to simply go to a yarn store and buy a new one. Hooray! And KNY has such yummy coffee, too!

Photos from Asia hopefully tomorrow. It's all about which cables plug in where and when Jon works and when he has enough time to shuffle all the **** cables around to post photos to the internet, ok?