Aw, Crap

Last week I bound off the Epic Adult Surprise Jacket, and Katie decided to "try it on" like I did a couple of weeks ago. However, I've been stuck since then. Because...



I messed up.

It doesn't look "messed up" here, but I managed to miss an important detail when I was reading the pattern.



To do the edging and button band on the Adult Surprise Jacket (and the Baby Surprise Jacket), you have to pick up stitches around most of the rectangle, including several nooks and crannies. This requires negotiating several corners and trying to fit a lot of stitches on one needle.

I thought the pattern said to purl the wrong side rows. While I was working on this blog entry, I checked the Adult Surprise Jacket pattern in The Opinionated Knitter again, and I realized it said to only purl the stitches at the corners on the wrong side. If I'd followed the directions correctly, I would have had a garter stitch button band that would lie flat. I ended up with a stockinette button band that wants to curl.



At first I liked the idea of a stockinette button band. I assumed if Elizabeth Zimmermann and Meg Swansen recommended it, it must work. But now that I've finished it, seen how it curls and learned that this is not what Elizabeth Zimmerman and Meg Swansen had in mind, I don't like it. And seeing all the neat, flat button bands on other people's sweaters on Ravelry makes me like it less.

So I decided to unravel the button band and do it again in garter stitch. Or maybe seed stitch.* I think it will be worth it.



I know I read the instructions for the bind off correctly. The pattern says to bind off in purl. I liked the look of the knit bind off on my Baby Surprise Jacket, so I tried that first.

Before I realized my mistake, I thought that the knit bind off may have been causing the curling. I undid part of the bind off and redid it in a purl bind off. They both curled anyway. You can see both bind offs in the picture above. It's hard to tell the difference.

I was glad I didn't break the yarn the first time I bound off. That left me with more options. Of course, I haven't let breaking yarn get in my way so far.



Before I finished the button band, I had to decide which buttonhole to use and how to place them. I went with the one row buttonhole.

It took some algebra to place the buttonholes. I had to account for the number of stitches I wanted at the top and bottom of the button band, the number of stitches between the buttons and the stitches used for the buttonhole itself.



I managed to avoid picking up stitches on the wrong side when I did the button band by breaking the yarn and starting to pick up stitches on the end of the row, rather than starting in the middle. It's hard to explain without pictures.

I found the trick here. It took some thinking to translate it to the Adult Surprise Jacket, since I don't have the same number of stitches

I'm going to try not to stall on the button band. It's a pain to redo the entire thing, but I've put a lot of work into this project. I don't want to see a curly button band every time I look at it. I also don't want to see it stuffed in a bag, still untouched, when it's finally cold enough to wear it.

That being said, I'm in pain. More pain. Different pain. With the bonus of more injections coming up and COBRA running out pretty soon.

And I still haven't dealt with the moths.

I need something to lift my spirits. So I'm giving myself permission to start a new project. I'll probably look for something to knit in that sweet spot of not too easy or too hard, not too long or too short and using some really nice yarn.


Parting Shot



A couple of weeks ago I had another weekend with Shiloh and her friends. I have pictures of everyone here, but I like this one of the family's new cat, Bunny, meeting Spiny. (Don't worry, the standoff ended peacefully.)


* - If you are new to this knitting thing, and want to know the difference between stockinette, garter and seed stitch, There's a good explanation here.

Frayed Knot

A piece of yarn walks into a bar and orders a beer, but the bartender snarls, "We don't serve your kind here!". The yarn is forced to leave.

While sitting on the curb feeling sorry for himself, the yarn is suddenly hit with a brilliant idea. Working quickly, he ties himself into a knot and unravels his ends. Taking a deep breath, the yarn marches back into the bar and orders a beer.

"Hey!" says the bartender. "Ain't you that piece of yarn I just threw outta here?"

"Nope," replies the yarn, "I'm a frayed knot."

I've heard this one before, but I found this version on the Socknitters Forum. (It was post by someone named "silfert.")

This past week I got a lot of work done on the Epic Adult Surprise Jacket, but I had a problem. The yarn started breaking.




It started with my second ball of Queensland Collection Rustic Wool. I started pulling the ball from the middle. When I started to run out of yarn the ball started falling apart. (See the picture above.) I assumed the first couple of breaks were a fluke, but after the first couple of frays I realized something was wrong. I wondered if the yarn had been in contact with something with something sharp in my yarn bag.




After much spit splicing* I finished off the Rustic Wool and continued with the last little bit of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted leftover from Katie's Le Slouch. This time I started using the yarn from the outside of the ball, and the same thing started happening right away. (You can see some examples above.) The breaks stopped when I got farther into the ball.

Both balls had breaks and frays on the outside part of the ball and not the inside.  And most of the breaks weren't clean breaks. Individual plies had been broken. This leads me to one conclusion...




I HAVE MOTHS!


Here are the facts:

1. Both of these yarns have been in storage since November.

2. They were in plastic tubs, but not in plastic bags within the tubs.

3. They were stored in two different tubs.

4. They're both wool yarns.

5. I've seen silverfish in the unit before.

6. We've been having lots of triple digit days recently, and the unit is not climate controlled.

7. Dad put moth balls all over the unit when we moved my stuff in. This was recommended by the management at the storage unit.

8. Both yarns have been in my stash for at least a couple of years.

I'm seeking input on this issue. We haven't been back to the unit since this discovery. I guess I've been putting it off. I'm also wondering if it could be a different pest, like the silverfish I saw before, or if the yarn is so old that it's disintegrating.

In "The Secret Life of a Knitter", the Yarn Harlot's talks about her battle with moths in her stash. It was an ordeal. She had a complicated system of freezing, thawing, freezing again and inspecting. (I seem to remember a microwave being involved at some point. I could be wrong.)

Like the Yarn Harlot, I have a large amount of yarn. Unlike the Yarn Harlot, I live in a hot and dry climate that rarely has snow (especially in June.) I don't have the option of putting my yarn outside to freeze, as she did. Our freezer is packed, so I can only fit in a skein or two at a time.

I'm planning to start by taking the two tubs that the frayed yarns were stored in out of the storage unit. They will probably get some sort of Yarn Harlot-esque treatment.

Then I'm going to ask Dad to put in more moth balls, even though I hate them. (He puts them outside the tubs, so hopefully they don't stink too much.)

Mom got fresh lavendar for her birthday. I'm considering drying sprigs and putting them in the the tubs themselves.

I know moth balls and lavender won't do much if there's already moths in the yarn. I'm wondering what else I should do. Should take out every tub and "treat" all the yarn? (We're talking about approximately 10 tubs.) And exactly what type of freezing/microwaving type of treatment should I do? Should I bag all the yarns within the tubs?

Can I use your freezer?




Meanwhile, the Epic Adult Surprise Jacket is coming along nicely. I'm at the phases where you only knit the stitches in the middle of the rectangle for a while.




I've done even more since these pictures were taken, including using that Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted with all the breaks.




The problem with the Adult Surprise Jacket is that you can't really put on your work in progress to see how it's going to fit. Mom helped me "try on" the jacket while I was lying on the floor. It was great photo op, of course.

I was trying on the jacket because I'm not sure what my desired length is. I'm supposed to go to the next phase when I'm about one inch from my desired length.

The pattern recommends using the length of your favorite sweater, but I don't have a favorite sweater. I may go by the length of my favorite t-shirt. That's why I haven't worked on it for a few days. I need to decide both the length and what color to use next. I'll keep you updated.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this:

A guy walks into a dentist’s office and flops right down on the couch.

“Doc”, he says, “Here’s the problem. I think I’m a moth”

“Well”, says the doctor, “That certainly is a problem, but why did you come into a dentist’s office?”

“The light was on.”

-From www.free-funny-jokes.com.



* - I know spit splicing isn't supposed to work with superwash wool yarns like Rustic Wool, but it worked well enough for me.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Bites

I'll get back to the title in a moment. I'm going to start with a different bird.




Mom finished crocheting this a couple of days ago. This is Kate Alvis's  Funky Little Owl Potholder, made with dishcloth cotton.






Then she got on a roll and started looking online for more crochet patterns. This time she found Doni Speigle's Flower Coaster pattern. I think she's planning to make more. They may be gifts.






I lent Mom some dishcloth cotton for for the flowers. She picked some out when I went to storage to get more yarn for the Epic Adult Surprise Jacket. The different yarns looked so pretty together that I had to take a picture.






The Epic Adult Surprise Jacket is coming along nicely. I'm glad I found these colors. There's a lot of blue and green, and a big red and orange section. I think these pinks and purples will balance those colors out.






This jacket is going to look a little crazy, but I think I can pull it off.






I'm ending with something sad. I don't think I've ever mentioned Dewi, the family parakeet, on this blog. Our family had her for 11 years. Last Saturday she quit eating. By Sunday morning, she was gone. The video above was filmed just four days earlier.

We knew she had been having some problems. We took her to a bird expert at Tomlinson's back in May after she started pulling out the feathers under her wings. He contributed the itchiness to old age, and he said she was thin. We knew her time was short, but we didn't think she'd be gone so soon.

I've debated whether the title I used for this entry is mean. Since we found the other bird, which Katie and Aaron have named Pico, I've wanted to write about Dewi. This was the title I had in my head.

We wanted a male bird, since we've always read that male parakeets are friendlier and more likely to talk. We've had several parakeets over the years, and all but Dewi have been male. Dewi surprised us.

Dewi was always angry and easily frightened. It was a long time before she showed any interest in interacting with us or even leaving her cage. And she was a biter.  These are traits I've always attributed to her sex.

After we had Pico in the house, I thought maybe we had been too hard on Dewi. Pico is sweet and didn't seem afraid of us, very different than Dewi. Maybe it wasn't fair of us to expect Dewi to conform to a role created by humans. The qualities that make a good pet bird aren't the qualities that make a good mama bird. Perhaps she was programmed to be more concerned with protecting her "nest" than sitting on our fingers.

I started to wonder what other birds would have thought of Dewi. What would have her role been if she lived with a flock of birds?

I had planned to expound on this further before we lost her. Now that's she gone, I can see that we accepted her, even if she wasn't what we were expecting, and in return she accepted us. Over time she began to come out of cage and sit on our shoulders while she picked at our shirts and our hair. She would get on our plates and try to eat our food, and we would let her. We were friends, and that's what mattered.

"Nothing Happened"

I kept diaries off and on when I was a kid. Sometimes I'd have trouble thinking of something to write about. Sometimes, the day was just boring. And sometimes I'd miss several days, and I would be stuck with blank pages with the dates printed at the top. On these days I would simply write "Nothing happened."

Over the last two weeks I broke my New Year's Resolution and didn't write a blog post. So if you're wondering about last week, don't worry. Nothing happened.

For the past two and a half weeks I've been house sitting for the third time since January. This time it was for Lyndsey's family. That's part of the reason I didn't blog. Since all my pain issues started, I've had trouble finding a comfortable place to use my laptop. With all the furniture in Lyndsey's house, I couldn't find a spot comfortable enough to use my computer for long periods of time. And blogging takes time.

I did take some pictures. Here are:



Mercy,




Kelly




and Lady.

I also took this picture one evening of the view from their deck. I wish it turned out a little better:





I included my latest knitting project, which I somehow managed not to blog despite all the progress I've made. Remember the sweater I was dreaming of that I eventually decided would be an Adult Surprise Jacket?





I present the Epic Adult Surprise Jacket. I'm already at the armpits.





You can see pictures of the evolution of the jacket here. Between the four stitches per inch gauge and the six inches of ease, I'm a little worried that it's going to be too bulky. I think it will be ok, since I am aiming for more of a coat than a jacket.

Later on I'll list more details, including the different yarns I'm using. I'm trying very hard to choose yarn that keeps the gauge consistent.

For now, I'll leave you with two things in honor of International Yarnbombing Day. First, a sighting from the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar on Saturday. I made asked Katie, Aaron and Aaron's brother Jacob to pose in front of the pipe with me.





The yarn is very soft. I wonder what they used. It didn't seem to be acrylic, but I didn't have a lot of time to examine it.

Finally, I have more coverage of A Knitted Wonderland. This time it's a short movie is by Sarah E. Gonzalez.

The Trees are Naked! (and a Baby Surprise Jacket update)

All good things much come to an end, and on Friday, March 25, A Knitted Wonderland* ended. That evening Mom and I took down our tree sweater and Dad came to help us carry everything and take pictures.



We had just gotten started when my friend Stephanie saw us while she was walking through the plaza. She works downtown and walks past the Blanton Museum almost everyday. She walks a lot. Recently she walked a marathon. I don't know where she gets the energy.



Anyway, Stephanie stopped to talk, help us take the seam out and take a picture or two. I had started at the bottom of the seam, Mom started at the top and Stephanie jumped in in the middle. It went pretty quickly.



While we were working, we saw one of UT's famous Albino Squirrels. Several people, including Dad, took pictures of it. In fact, Dad took more pictures of the squirrel than he did of the Capitol.



We were one of the last groups to take our tree sweater down. We had a couple of people stop to ask questions and take pictures of our tree. I know at least one group came specifically to see our trees, but they didn't know that that we would already be taking down the tree sweaters. I saw one guy stop and take a picture of Flat Stanley with our tree, which was awesome. I wish I asked him to send me a copy of the picture.



I had a hard time deciding what to do with our sweater. The group in charge collected sweaters from anyone who didn't want to keep them. Half were going back to Magda Sayeg to be unraveled and used for future projects and half were going Emancipet to be unraveled and used to knit dog sweaters. I had considered holding on to ours and using it for a wall hanging. Katie had expressed some interest in keeping it, and she wasn't there to weigh in. It would have been an easy decision if they weren't going to be unraveled.

Finally, with some gentle nudging from Mom and Stephanie, I put it in the Emancipet box. They use old towels and blankets for the animals to snuggle with. I hope if they have too much yarn they'll keep mine intact and give it to a pet. Or maybe I'll see a dog around town wearing my former tree sweater. Maybe they'll keep the flower intact and use it to embellish the sweater.

At any rate, that's one less piece of clutter in my life, and Katie didn't mind that we donated it. And there will always be lots of other chances to make wall hangings. Wall hangings that fit my wall better and don't curl.

All my pictures from "A Knitted Wonderland" are here.


Baby Surprise Jacket Update


My Baby Surprise Jacket grew pretty quickly. Since the last update, I knit the center stitches only for rows 80-99. In rows 100 and 101, I picked up the rest of the stitches, including stitches along the gap you can see in the picture above. The problem with picking up stitches along the gap is that a ridge is created. Because you pick up one side on an odd row and one side on an even row, the ridge is on the outside on one side and the inside on the other side. (Say that last sentence 10 times fast.)



I cast off on row 114. I'm not sure exactly when I did the button holes and how I spaced them out. I lost track of that somewhere along the way.


This is the finished knitting piece before the shoulder seams. I asked Dad to try to fold it in to a sweater to see if he could figure out how. (Elizabeth Zimmerman actually suggests this in her book.)  He did pretty well. He got half the sweater right, but couldn't quite get the other sleeve to do the same thing.


 It took me a while to figure out the best way to do the shoulder seams. I used this tutorial on Pamudom's blog. I think the Yarn Harlot uses the same technique, but I had trouble with her tutorial because it has pictures only. I guess I'm a verbal learner. The one ridge (two rows) to one stitch ratio worked well.



A couple of nights ago I worked on placing the buttons by placing bobby pins where the buttons would be. This gave me a chance to make adjustments. I plan to finish sewing on the buttons tonight.


All my Baby Surprise Jacket pictures are here.



* - Mom, Katie and I volunteered to knit a tree sweater for "A Knitted Wonderland." If you're tuning in late and want to find out more about it, I recommend reading all my tree sweater blog entries.

WIP: Baby Surprise Jacket

I've been so distracted with "A Knitted Wonderland"* that I've gotten behind on my blogging. I have two FOs, a cake and a new WIP to talk about. I'm starting with the WIP.

It's my very first Baby Surprise Jacket!


Back in January I said I was daydreaming of a sweater made from my stash. I wanted a cardigan that was seamless or almost seamless. Mom suggested that I look through her old Wool Gathering newsletters for patterns. When I saw the Baby Surprise Jacket pattern, I immediately knew that was what I wanted to make.

In The Opinionated Knitter there's a pattern for an "Adult Surprise Jacket," the Baby Surprise Jacket's grown up counterpart. It's perfect for my epic stash sweater.

But first, I'm taking the author's advice and making a Baby Surprise Jacket before I embark on a larger sweater. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the pattern.


The Baby Surprise Jacket is both very simple and very complicated. Basically, you knit a wonky rectangle, fold it, seam the shoulders and end up with a cardigan.

At the beginning of the jacket I had no idea what went where until I did a row of increases to create a cuff. At that phase it was hard to imagine that I was knitting sleeves. A little while later, I was binding off a few stitches for the collar. It started making sense in my mind.

There are diagonal increases and decreases that work well with variegated yarn and makefor some interesting stripes. I went with some variegated yarn from stash. I would have liked to add some stripes, but I don't have anything that works with the yarn I found.

I'm using Baby Bee Sweet Delight from Hobby Lobby. I bought it ages ago for because I liked the bright colorway. So far, I'm happy with it. It's a nice for a machine washable synthetic yarn.

There's a point where the increases and decreases meet in the picture above. That's the armpit. If you fold what I have so far, you get this:.


This pattern, like most Elizabeth Zimmerman patterns, is more like a recipe than a set of instructions. Specific row numbers aren't listed. So I want to leave some notes about row numbers, increases and decreases for myself and anyone else who's interested. If you follow her original instructions exactly, you'll probably have the same row numbers.

The original pattern suggests a gauge of five or six stitches per inch. I'm knitting five stitches per inch, mostly because that's what I got with this particular yarn and the first needle I could find. Five stitches per inch makes a size for a baby around one year old. Six stitches per inch will get you a newborn size jacket.

I think row ten was where I did the increases for the cuff. I spaced them out so that there was no M1 next to the marker.

At row 43 I found myself with 91 stitches, not 90 as the pattern says. I looked carefully at all my decreases. I think I decreased by two stitches instead of three in the first row. So on row 44, the first of the "work three rows even" I knit two together at the corner where I made the mistake. I think it'll be fine.

Row 47 started the increases, and I think row 60 was where I added the increases to add fullness in the back. I don't think I did a very good job of spacing them out. I miscalculated and one M1 was too far off to the side.

On rows 72 and 73 I did the neck shaping. As of right now I've finished row 79, and on row 80 I'll be doing some more mind bending shaping.

If you're new to the Baby Surprise Jacket you're probably still confused, I'll leave you with "Baby Surprise Jacket - The Movie." It's a short (14 second) video that I posted for the first time in 2008. I tmade it when we found an unfinished Baby Surprise Jacket that Mom had started years ago.


* - We recently found out that our display will be up another week. Now you have until March 25 to see the the installation.

"A Knitted Wonderland" Part 1 - The Installation

Last Friday was installation day for A Knitted Wonderland, and I think I've spent more time uploading pictures to Flickr than I did sewing up the sweater. I have so many pictures, I've decided to share them over two blog entries.


In case you're tuning in late, "A Knitted Wonderland" is the latest project by Magda Sayeg, who is known for her yarn bombing work. In January she invited knitters all over the city to help her cover the 99 trees in front of the Blanton Museum. I've written more about it in greater detail in previous entries.

Mom, Katie, Aaron and I arrived in the afternoon not long after the installation officially began. I packed the leftover yarn, some carefully selected knitting notions, safety pins, water, an old sheet to sit on, sunscreen (that we didn't need) and a ladder.

I couldn't wait to get started when I saw the very first people sewing up their tree sweaters. I went to the front desk to get our tree sweater and signed in at the table. All four of us had to sign waivers, one for using ladders and one allowing people to take our pictures. Apparently someone is filming the process for South by Southwest. They had drinks and cookies, although they went fast.


Mom was the one that suggested safety pins, and that was a good idea. I was thinking we'd baste the sweater, but pinning it was easier. We were told to leave some negative ease, so it was pretty tight. We were worried at first. I knew we'd figure something out. You can see the big gaps here.

But once we started sewing, it started coming together.


We started at the bottom and worked our way up. We could get away with being a little short on top, but not at the bottom. It ended up being about the right length. I found that sewing was easier if we moved the safety pins to close the gaps as we seamed. That way we didn't have to pull together so much fabric at once.


I used the Mattress Stitch on the knitting section, and the stitch was close to invisible. I showed Katie and Aaron how to do the mattress stitch, and they both caught on pretty quickly. (I think Mom already knew. I learned it from The Knitters Book of Finishing Techniques a while back.) I think Aaron did a big chunk of the seam in this picture. We took turns sewing, so I've lost track of who did what.

As you can see, we just whip stitched the crocheted sections. We didn't know any awesome techniques for seaming crochet.


Getting the seam straight was easier because we pinned the tree sweater first. You can see Mom straightening out the tree sweater here.

Despite all our measurements, the tree is kind of unpredictable with all it's knots and bumps. There's one area in particular where my cable looks pregnant. But that's part of the fun, and knitting is forgiving.

There was one team* that managed to get everything almost perfect. I wish the picture I took wasn't so blurry. They made a little "skirt" at the bottom and left a hole for an especially large knot. They may have been the only team to use all ribbing, which is smart. Ribbing will stretch as much or as little as you need it to. I was impressed. We weren't nearly that precise.

Off and on we all took breaks and went to run around and see the other trees. I ran into Alicia from the Austin Meetup Group sewing the tree sweater for her team. I also saw Sandra Singh and helped her find a tree 55. She took our picture and put it on her blog.


I have all my pictures here. I'm going to share some of my favorites, like the one above. This team added sleeves to their tree "sweater."


This tree has a different stitch pattern for every color. We debated doing something similar, but I don't think we could have gotten it this uniform.


I really like this one. This group managed to do a lot of colorwork while following the guidelines.

I also saw stripes within stripes, people with matching accessories and a snake. I wish I could have taken a picture of every single tree.


I was worried that we wouldn't finish in time, but we got to the top faster than I expected. For the record, I did do some work from the ladder. I couldn't reach up this high for very long because of the pain from the pinched nerve, but I wanted to say I did it. (Mom did most of the work from the ladder.) I was really worried that I wouldn't be able to do this because of the pain. Of course, frequent breaks, three people to help sew and carry everything and a Flector Patch helped.


At dusk, we were finished, and we had time to spare. Installation was blast. I talked to so many people. Two men visiting from New York asked us a bunch of questions about the whole project, and several knitters complimented my cables. We had a great tree ready for Saturday.

And Saturday is a story for another entry.


* - I'm assuming these were teams. I know a few people knit entire trees all by themselves, but most people worked in groups.