Sorry for no post last week. I was at Notre Dame, fencing. Since it's fencing season, posting may be a little sporadic. I'll tell you now that I probably won't post next week, since I'll be returning from another fencing trip then.
Tasha continues. I'm petrified that my gauge is changing and I'm not noticing, especially since I hadn't knit for like a week and a half before I picked it up again for a few rows last night (no time/energy due to fencing trip, and I was worried about my hand/wrist -- but I'll talk more about that in a moment). The sides are currently about 5 3/4" (OMG I'M PAST THE HALFWAY POINT THANK GOD) -- so in the past two weeks I've actually knit about 3 1/4"... not bad... but I wonder when I got it all done? *sigh* only... lessee... 3 3/4" left. Woooo.
Have I mentioned that stockinette is boring?
In other news, I'm vaguely worried that I'm giving myself a repetitive stress injury, what with fencing plus knitting plus computer plus writing. My wrist/base of thumb/forearm have been kinda sore and stiff or tense for the past two weeks... I got some tension/slight occasional pain in my forearm during knitting starting last fall but it wasn't terrible. This isn't terrible either, but it's more noticeable and much more persistent. Lucky me, I had an appointment with the athletic trainer for tomorrow anyway (bum knee, which funnily enough has been basically fine for the last few months)... I'll ask him about it then (and pray to God that I just pulled something).
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
New year, new project
Sorry for no update last week. I flew back to school on the 7th and things were kind of too crazy to update.
I finished the scarf! Only thing I have to do is block it... problem is, I don't have pins and I'm not wholly sure I have space here to do it. (Come to think of it, I'm certainly lacking something to help make sure that I block the edges straight.) It may languish till spring break.
With the scarf finished, I've started work on Tasha. I actually had quite an adventure when I was preparing to knit my swatch. Scroll down a bit and take a look at the picture I uploaded of the 5 skeins of yarn for this project. I thought that they really were skeins, all ready to knit from, but I planned to roll them into balls anyway.
Turns out they're hanks. Not only are they hanks, they're folded in quarters, and the manufacturer didn't leave any scrap yarn tied around them at any point to ensure they stayed untangle.
Need I say that my first attempt to deal with one of these was a disaster?
To make things worse, I started doing it in the car on the way to visit my great-aunt and great-uncle, who live about 2 hours away. Maybe 5 minutes in, I tore the paper wrapping away. One "oops," and then another, quickly followed... and I spent the entire ride trying to untangle the mess, mostly working on a single knot and not getting more than a tenth of the way through. I was literally crying by the time we got to our destination. It was miserable. Of course, that meant that my mom and dad confiscated the yarn and proceeded to work on it themselves to spare me further trouble. Which was probably actually a good thing, for a while. We finally got it all untangled, balled up, and set to go about halfway through the visit, at which point I started in on the swatch I'd planned on being nearly done with by the end of the day.
The next time I had to wind a ball, I was much, much more careful. And wonderfully enough, it went just fine. Even though I did it on an airplane, with a wall on one side and a guy on the other. And I didn't even bang him with my elbow that much!
The swatch is done, but not washed (this yarn may shrink with washing, so I have to do that), and I've started in on the bag itself. I chose to begin with the sides because a) washed gauge/shrinkage doesn't matter too much with these (all other pieces can be knit to fit whatever size they come out); b) other than the strap, they're probably going to use up the most yarn, so I want to start with full balls for them; and c) I was apparently feeling masochistic (two 9.5" squares of plain stockinette, anyone?). I am knitting both sides at once on a single circular needle because I don't trust my gauge to stay consistent. That means dealing with two balls of yarn at once -- a bit of a pain, but I quickly learned to rubber-band them so that they don't go unravelling and rolling around, and I manage all right.
Here's a picture of how the sides look so far:
They are about 2 1/2" long. No clue how many rows I've done; I haven't been keeping track, since these are to be knit to length.
I don't know how quickly the bag is going to progress, since I don't think I'll have much knitting time this quarter. I don't have lecture classes, and I'm not sure if knitting group will meet (no one's written me back yet) so it might just be an hour or so per week at my Dickens reading group, plus a little down time (ha ha ha) here and there. We'll see.
In other news, my grandma sent me yarn! With the promise of more to come, if I've started knitting with wool and like it (what she sent me was mostly acrylic or acrylic/wool blends). She's so funny. When she saw me knitting once, she got a huge kick out of it. The scarf I finished is going to her when it's blocked.
...anything else? Naw, I think that's it. Expect short posts for the next few months, barring some huge disaster... I have seven more inches of stockinette, and I don't think it's going to fly by.
I finished the scarf! Only thing I have to do is block it... problem is, I don't have pins and I'm not wholly sure I have space here to do it. (Come to think of it, I'm certainly lacking something to help make sure that I block the edges straight.) It may languish till spring break.
With the scarf finished, I've started work on Tasha. I actually had quite an adventure when I was preparing to knit my swatch. Scroll down a bit and take a look at the picture I uploaded of the 5 skeins of yarn for this project. I thought that they really were skeins, all ready to knit from, but I planned to roll them into balls anyway.
Turns out they're hanks. Not only are they hanks, they're folded in quarters, and the manufacturer didn't leave any scrap yarn tied around them at any point to ensure they stayed untangle.
Need I say that my first attempt to deal with one of these was a disaster?
To make things worse, I started doing it in the car on the way to visit my great-aunt and great-uncle, who live about 2 hours away. Maybe 5 minutes in, I tore the paper wrapping away. One "oops," and then another, quickly followed... and I spent the entire ride trying to untangle the mess, mostly working on a single knot and not getting more than a tenth of the way through. I was literally crying by the time we got to our destination. It was miserable. Of course, that meant that my mom and dad confiscated the yarn and proceeded to work on it themselves to spare me further trouble. Which was probably actually a good thing, for a while. We finally got it all untangled, balled up, and set to go about halfway through the visit, at which point I started in on the swatch I'd planned on being nearly done with by the end of the day.
The next time I had to wind a ball, I was much, much more careful. And wonderfully enough, it went just fine. Even though I did it on an airplane, with a wall on one side and a guy on the other. And I didn't even bang him with my elbow that much!
The swatch is done, but not washed (this yarn may shrink with washing, so I have to do that), and I've started in on the bag itself. I chose to begin with the sides because a) washed gauge/shrinkage doesn't matter too much with these (all other pieces can be knit to fit whatever size they come out); b) other than the strap, they're probably going to use up the most yarn, so I want to start with full balls for them; and c) I was apparently feeling masochistic (two 9.5" squares of plain stockinette, anyone?). I am knitting both sides at once on a single circular needle because I don't trust my gauge to stay consistent. That means dealing with two balls of yarn at once -- a bit of a pain, but I quickly learned to rubber-band them so that they don't go unravelling and rolling around, and I manage all right.
Here's a picture of how the sides look so far:
They are about 2 1/2" long. No clue how many rows I've done; I haven't been keeping track, since these are to be knit to length.
I don't know how quickly the bag is going to progress, since I don't think I'll have much knitting time this quarter. I don't have lecture classes, and I'm not sure if knitting group will meet (no one's written me back yet) so it might just be an hour or so per week at my Dickens reading group, plus a little down time (ha ha ha) here and there. We'll see.
In other news, my grandma sent me yarn! With the promise of more to come, if I've started knitting with wool and like it (what she sent me was mostly acrylic or acrylic/wool blends). She's so funny. When she saw me knitting once, she got a huge kick out of it. The scarf I finished is going to her when it's blocked.
...anything else? Naw, I think that's it. Expect short posts for the next few months, barring some huge disaster... I have seven more inches of stockinette, and I don't think it's going to fly by.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
