Swatching... swatching... swatching...

Finished the first swatch for the Dragon Scale Gauntlets, 24 st/32 rows of p2k2 ribbing.

Gauge stated by the pattern: 6 sts and 8 rows per inch.

Gauge I got: 8 sts and 6 rows per inch.

Head, meet desk.

Hopefully I can finagle it -- just add some more stitches in the ribbing for the gauntlets. I need to take my arm measurements and see. I may also skip a repeat of the chart; we'll see.

I am doing two chart repeats, bordered by 4 sts garter stitch, for my second swatch. I've completed one repeat. It was a little tricky at first to do the decreases/increases, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. SSK, in particular, is a breeze most of the time now. My only real concern is whether I'm doing the m1s so that they slant the right way... I don't think that I am. I can't really tell, though, because I've got 34 sts squooshed together on a short needle so I can't get a good look at the fabric I'm producing. I'll see how it looks when it comes off of the needles.

Well, that's basically it... I'll try to have swatch pictures next week (hopefully I'll have finished swatch #2 by then), but that's a little iffy since I will be packing up to go home for two weeks. We'll see.

DONE!

I finished my scarf!

(no, I don't know what I'm doing with my hand in that picture...)


Here's a closeup of the stitch pattern, and of the interesting stuff that happened at the color changes:

Pattern: Seven rows of garter stitch on either end; four sts garter on either side (slipping the first stitch of each row purlwise), with three repeats of this stitch pattern in the middle.

Yarn: Caron Simply Soft in Autumn Red and... umm... blue. (Can't find the ballband...) The better part of 2 skeins.

Time: Slightly over a month. Probably about 20-25 hours (hey, I'm a beginner, so I'm slow. ;) )

Notes: This came out to be about 3 1/2' long and about 8 1/2" wide. It's a little on the short side, but not terribly so.

After the first couple of repeats, I noticed that the previous color was creeping up along the edge into the new color on one side of the scarf:





I didn't appreciate that, so instead of slipping the first stitch of the first WS row after the color change, I knitted it. That fixed the problem.

All of my pictures relating to this project can be found here.

This was a good first pattern for me. It was simple enough (only 4 repeating rows) that I had it pretty much memorized by the end, but complex enough that I didn't get remotely bored until I was just eager to finish because I'd bought the yarn for my next project.


Speaking of that next project...

I am swatching. (Oh, the p2k2 ribbing, will it never end?!) Gauge seems wonky... I might be making gauge in terms of sts/in (hard to tell until I get it off the needles), but I definitely am way off in terms of rows/in -- it's supposed to be 32 rows = 4", and I think I've just hit 4" with 8 rows left to go! *sigh* Oh well... Actually, since it's really horizontal, not vertical gauge that matters here -- I can always take out a pattern repeat, or just have long armwarmers -- as long as my horizontal gauge is basically okay, I'll be happy.



(crossposted, sans babbling about swatches, to the knitting LJ community)

Soooooo clooooooose...

Five rows of garter stitch and weaving in of ends, and I'm done with the scarf. Well, maybe I'll have to do a quick wash before I count it really finished... it kind of smells.

So close to the end of this project, I am of course looking forward to the next (Dragon Scale Gauntlets). Swatching will be fun... 24 sts/32 rows p2k2 ribbing = 4" for this, supposedly, so I guess I get to do a 34x40 swatch. In p2k2 ribbing. With tiny (to me, at least, though I know that I could go much tinier) needles and yarn. (I'm not even sure I can fit 34 sts on one of my DPNs...) And I also need to swatch a chart repeat, but that should be fun for real. Hopefully I'll be done with the swatching pronto, and then somehow I'll find time to knit the actual gauntlets (next week is the last week of class, so my 1 hour per day of knitting time will be disappearing). I'm sure that it will be an adventure. Maybe I'll do a couple of chart repeats in my chart swatch, just to get the hang of it before I'm working on the actual garments.

I made my very first post on the knitting LJ community! It was to ask for help with some parts of the gauntlet pattern that were unclear to me, and I quickly got an extremely clear, useful answer. It was great. :)

I've got nothing else.

Almost done!

Missed my weekly post last Sunday because I was in Maine for a wedding. Not much knitting done on the plane there or back, but I did get some done in the car (I flew in and out of Boston and drove up to and back from Maine) and while chatting with people when hanging out the morning before the wedding. And, of course, there's been two whole weeks of stats class since I wrote last.

To make up for missing last week, I bring you PICTURE:

This is the scarf as it looks now. It is currently 2'6" long, and I'm thinking it'll end up being about 3' -- I'm starting to run out of yarn, and hoping I can eke another six inches from what I have left. Once that's done, I'll be moving on to a pair of Dragon Scale Gauntlets.

...which brings me to my next bit of news.

While in Belfast, I visited the yarn shop there (the name escapes me, but there's only one -- it's right in the center of town) to pick up some yarn for a future project. (I chose the gauntlets mostly because I happened to find and like some yarn in the weight for which that pattern calls.) I also got size 6 DPNs, which (oh joy) means that I get to learn to knit on DPNs. (Also, I picked up some point protectors, but that's unexciting.) I guess that I need to learn to swatch on DPNs before I can knit on them, though... I have my theories about how to do it (based on how one swatches when using circular needles to knit in the round), but I'd like to have said theories confirmed. I'll poke around and see what I can find out.

Anywho, as further compensation for missing a post last week, I bring you yarn porn:

It's the yarn that I plan to use for the gauntlets, of course. The color is rather a darker blue than in the photo. I bought it for that lovely blue-black variegation -- it should look lovely in the gauntlets' scaly pattern. I should only need two skeins, but I bought three because it was fairly cheap and I wanted to be absolutely sure that I have enough. (Anyway, you can never have enough yarn, right? ;) ) I didn't check the dye lots before I bought -- lucky for me that they all match!

In further knitting news, my roomate has a HUGE cone of wool/acrylic blend that she is planning to just give me, only barely used, when she finishes making a felted purse out of it. (She says she'll be sick of it by the time she finishes.) It's a wonderful cream color, with some brownish bits, and it knits up beautifully. I can't wait to get my hands on it. Can you say scarves?

Coming along...

I've now got two blue stripes, and 2 1/5 (ish) red stripes. And the scarf is ONE FOOT AND 1 3/4" long! Yaaaay! :) That's almost six inches longer than last week.

I started weaving in some ends; I'll probably do that periodically in non-class downtime so that I don't have to do them all at the very end (which would be really tedious, and I couldn't do it during class -- it takes too much concentration). I've been knotting the yarn, which I know I shouldn't do, but I'm paranoid about it unweaving itself, and since this is just a scarf it's not as though the knots are going to get terribly irritating.

Hoping to get a lot done on the plane next weekend (flying to the other coast for a wedding -- 12 hours of flying, more or less, in the space of 3 days! *dies*), but we'll see. I'm crossing my fingers that my needles don't get confiscated!

Baby's First Mistake

...okay, not my first. But my first on a real project when I wasn't just messing around.

What happened was simple: I finished row 2 in the pattern, forgot to mark that I'd finished row 2, put my knitting down. Picked it up again later, looked at my notes to see where I'd stopped, and started knitting row 2. Again. Twice through the pattern rep I had to set it down, and when I picked it up again I immediately saw that I'd been doing an awful lot of purling for being on the right side of the fabric.

Oopsie.

Well, I learned to un-knit. I probably have twisted some stitches, but oh well -- not sure how to tell if they're twisted before knitting them, and I certainly won't want to rip back to un-twist them once I've gotten far enough forward to see that they're twisted (not to mention I'd probably just twist others trying to un-knit that row again).

I modified my plan and only did 20 rows of red, then 12 rows of blue. I'm back in red now. It's about 8" long (wow, did I really knit six inches in a week?!). Sorry no pictures this week; I spent my alloted weekend knitting-related time frogging the misknit row instead -- I definitely think that that's something I can't do in class while still paying enough attention.

Single Chevron swatch and scarf begun...

I did a swatch for my first project ever, which will be a scarf in the Single Chevron pattern.

Here's the swatch:

For the swatch I cast on 24 sts and did 20 pattern rows. It came out to 6.25" x 3.75". The pattern itself is fairly straightforward and relatively easy for me; it didn't take me long to get the hang of it.

A close up of the pattern:

After I finished the swatch, I started right in on my scarf. I cast on 32 stitches, and did 7 rows of garter stitch before starting the pattern repeats.

Here's a picture of it in progress yesterday evening (which is about as far as it is right now, too):

It's about 2" at the moment. As you can perhaps (hopefully?) see, I'm doing 4 stitches of garter stitch on either side of the pattern. 3 stitches sometimes, actually, because I'm also slipping the first stitch of each row purlwise in the hopes of getting a nicer edge. So that's sl1 purlwise, k3, 3 repeats of whatever row of the pattern I'm on, k4. I'm going to do 32 rows of red, then switch to the blue yarn that most of my swatch is in for 20 rows, and then back to red again for another 32, and so on and so forth.

Yaaaaay for finally starting projects! Hopefully between stats class and plane rides I'll have this done or mostly done by the end of the summer.

WOOHOO!

I HAVE FINISHED MY SWATCH!!!!

Here's a picture of the whole, huge, long, ugly thing:

The middle looks icky because I was doing so many increases and decreases in so short a space.

Here are a couple of pictures of the stripes:













...and one picture of the stripes from the purl side (I think that this one looks kinda cool)...

And here's a picture of the ribbing.

So. Where and how did I actually find the time to finish this, you ask?

Statistics class.

The professor lectures right off of the slides that he has printed out and handed to us. I barely have to take any notes, and if I didn't have something to keep my mind a little busy I'd go crazy from boredom. So I knit. And I am going to be fantastically productive in class for the next 8 weeks. *g*

I went to my LYS and bought myself a pair of size 10 Crystal Palace bamboo straights to replace the crappy plastic size 8s I've been working with so far, and I've been working up a swatch for my next (or should I say very first? *squee*) project. It'll be pretty simple; I'm just going to do a striped scarf in this stitch. I cast on 24 sts for the swatch and will probably do 5 reps of the pattern. I'm on row six right now (one rep and a half) and was amazed the first time I really looked at the work and saw the pattern! It was way cool. I think I made a couple of goofs, but they don't really show because it's a dark yarn (the red in the swatch pictures above). Hopefully the swatch will be completed by the end of the week (I have an hour each morning, yes, but I'm kind of slow and I do have to pause to take notes or actually pay full attention on occasion).

Wheeeeee! This is so exciting!