Lauren v. Intarsia: Round 1 - Seed St

I want to make a pair of arm warmers for a friend. She'd like cables on a contrasting background, i.e., via intarsia.

I've never done any sort of stranded knitting before, merely horizontal stripes. The latter nearly drove me crazy by the end of a 7" x 9" illusion-knit block so I couldn't imagine that dealing with multiple colors (and tangling strands) would be much easier. Of course, I was the one who suggested one-colored cables on a different-colored background, knowing full-well I'd need intarsia (moreover, at that time I'd planned on doing them up in the round; I've since given up on that idea and am most grateful that the pattern is already written for back-and-forth knitting).

I like pushing my limits, but I'm not one to begin on the hardest difficulty setting without first testing out the skills required--especially when someone else is the intended recipient so I'm striving for perfection more than normal. After the initial sighting, I've seen a few "monthly necessities" bags and decided to make one of those with a simple heart pattern on the front in a CC.

Shortly after beginning it entirely in stockinette, I frogged it and made 3 rows if seed st as the base to keep it from curling as much. From there, I thought, "it'd also seem prudent to knit the closing flap in seed st to stabalize that as well," which took me down a slippery slope to, "so long as I have that much seed st on the back, why not include some in the front, too? I'll do the heart in seed st!"

So now I'm faced with making my first-ever intarsia st as a purl on a knit background. My usual resources fails me ...well, they don't fail me completely (new mantra: "old over new") but they don't hold my hand through non-stockinette intarsia. As much as I hate to admit it, that's kind of what I need right now.

The best I've found from Google so far is this post on garter intarsia. It doesn't have anything about purls, of course, but it was encouraging to see the process someone else used to get creative with this method. She (He?) had to deal with strands being on opposite sides, which is kind of close to my predicament.

I've already tried a few times and either get the MC mixed with the CC or no purl bump, but I'm still determined to do this. Once I get that purl bump cleanly on the RS (and get it to stay there unlike that time it mysteriously disappeared after switching back to MC) I'm not going to be too picky about whether the strands were properly linked. It's one st and immediately going back to MC after that so any hole really wouldn't be that noticeable. In fact, it may even be remedied while weaving in the ends.

For now, I've frogged and ranted enough for one night. Tomorrow's another day.

Elbac is officially frogged

I took a photo before ripping it out last night:

It just wasn't fun for me. I was cabling too tightly making it difficult to knit, and I kept losing my place.

Don't get me wrong--I think reversible cables are awesome and I want to use them whenever the wrong side might show, but after learning the magic behind the trick this scarf wasn't as interesting.

I'll come back to reversible cables another day with a new project and nicer yarn.

Digital + Film

Wouldn't it be really neat (if really expensive) to combine film and digital into one camera? You'd have the best of both worlds immediately available at your fingertips. My favorite application for this: practicing in digital, then flipping a switch capture the moment with the already-confirmed-the-looks-good settings on film. I love film and I love developing it myself, but it's frustrating to spend so much on it + developing and then discovering that it's just a bit off from what you were going for.

Happy Halloween!

It's been years since I carved a pumpkin but this year I was so excited for this that I carved two.

Both patterns are from www.pumpkinglow.com. I highly recommend this site--excellent patterns (and they're free!). The only downside is that they're specifically not themed for Halloween.

Now on with the goods!

My panther pumpkin:

A dragon pumpkin I bought and carved on a whim for Eric:
Technically this pumpkin is supposed to be a lot brighter, but once he saw it like this he wouldn't let me punch out the rest of the pieces. I'll admit the whole outline this is pretty cool (and it saved me the trouble of poking out the more complicated pieces around the face).

And photos of them not lit:

Both carvings include scraping the skin (my choice, the patterns weren't actually designed that way). It was my first year scraping and I scraped too much. Everything on Eric's pumpkin that isn't an outline is actually scraped, it's just so thin that it looks about as bright as if I'd just cut through. Doesn't make much of a difference for his anyway since the parts that were supposed to be brighter stayed in the pumpkin for an outline effect anyway.

My panther pumpkin shows off the shading a bit better, but this pumpkin was older and drier after sitting out on the porch for a couple weeks. It was much harder to scrape than the other pumpkin so I ended up poking holes in it while trying to scrape.

Live 'n' learn.

I still love my pumpkins anyway.

...so much so, I was even allowed my picture to be taken while carving one:

Have a safe & happy Halloween!

Fire photos

...are available on dA:

• Blues and Curls
• Blue flames
• Vivid Colors

Someday I'll put more thought into the titles.

Status Check

Another post without photos... =/

Cherie Amour: still on the waist, but I'm pretty sure this is the last frog I'm going to do. The 2x2 rib with cables on every other rib looked very wide/bulky, the 1x1 rib looked very dense compared to the lace work, so I'm trying a 1x1 rib with eyelets every 4th row. I swatched a couple such eyelets, but none came out straight. k2tog was almost straight, but still with a bit of a wave; ssk made it look like more of a twist almost. I'm going with the latter because I can call it a design element instead of something that almost worked. It will create horizontal bands, but I think it'll be ok.

So I ripped out the waist and spent the week dekinking the yarn. The last batch is almost dry and it's now that I realize I should have wound them in smaller hanks so they dry faster. Another live & learn moment I guess.

Since I keep frogging and dekinking, I also decided that I'll soak the rest of the yarn before use. I don't notice a difference between fresh-from-the-hank and post-soak, but for all I know there's a big one. Just to be on the safe side, I also wet-blocked what I made so far and it does look nicer and more even already.

Old art: While the soaking and drying was going on, I went on a cleaning spree and found a lot of old art stuff. Most I don't mind getting rid of, but I'm really proud of one of the drawings I found (and in charcoal at that!), and two of the finds are needlepoint--including what I think is my very first one! More details on those after I photograph and post them.

Dom's arm warmers: Dom wants arm warmers--and I'm making them for her! Much more about this later, but for now it will suffice to say that this makes me ridiculously... excited, happy, manic, bouncy, and just overall hyper.

Misc. ideas:

• Elbac: I think I'm just going to rip out what I did and not look back. It's fine, it looks like the photos, but I'm not enjoying it. I still love the idea of reversible cables, but now that I (mostly) understand the technique, I'm not as excited about this project as I once was. Maybe with nicer yarn and a recipient in mind it'll be more enticing.
• A "monthly necessities" bag: the idea for one never crossed my mind until I saw "My Dear Aunt Flo's Felted Pouch" on Ravelry by Christy Tchaparian (non-Ravelrers can find her blog here and her pattern available on Etsy here) and then I promptly decided I must make one. I usually use a purse's inner pocket for such items but the one in my current purse is too small so I end up digging through them to get my wallet, chapstick, flash drive, etc. Plus my coworkers are mostly male and don't need to be exposed to such foreign items, lol. I'm thinking it'll be knit, black stockinette st background with a red seed st heart (first intarsia project?) inspired by another idea I had for...
• A larger bag--black background, red foreground illusion heart bag ...because I'm still fascinated by illusion knitting. Will be lined.
• To use up stash, a black 1x1 rib scarf with 3 pink stripes on either side
• Tetris scarf (or something Tetris)
• Something SMB3. I wanted to do a set of hats with a different character on each (including Mario in Kuribo's shoe!) but I'm having second thoughts about that.
• Chokers
• Plus more WUA sections and such

Oh! I forgot I took some fire photos recently (my bf's fam has a fire pit in their backyard). Maybe I'll go through those and see if there's any I particulary like to post here...

In the meantime, back to productiveness!

Cascade photo on Ravelry

A fellow Ravelrer asked to feature my photo of my Cascade 109 LE yarn on the yarn's page! It's not on the 'front page' of that yarn anymore, though, so you have to click on 'more photos' to see it. Regardless, it's still exciting. And it reminds me that I should get back into photography...

On hold

Between a stomach bug and bad sunburn crafting has come to a temporary halt as I lie in bed and frequently 'water' myself to prevent my very red skin from drying out. My stomach should be better within the next day or so, so I'm not too worried about that. The sunburn however...

On a good day, my skin is pale enough to rival a fresh box of printer paper. Then yesterday I unexpectedly found myself outside for 4 or 5 hours (read: completely unprepared and sunscreen-free). While I'm (thankfully) not blistering, I'm still pretty red, and while it doesn't hurt as much as it could (I'm either used to it or fried all my nerve endings long ago) my skin's still pretty sensitive. I can play with yarn a little bit, but can't, for instance, try on sleeves or anything like that. Moreover, the inside of my elbows are burned too and that actually hurts, limiting mobility for other crafts.

I'm debating calling in sick tomorrow, but I'm not the kind of sick where I could stay in bed all day. If I can't sleep but can't do anything else either, I'd be bored out of my mind. Let's see what tomorrow brings...

Chocolate Peanut Butter Love

A few weeks ago I discovered a bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Chips at my boyfriend's house. They look just like chocolate chips except they're made with peanut butter. It was love at first bite; they're amazing! As much as I love regular peanut butter from a jar, you can only have so much before your mouth is glued shut. These babies have all the flavor of peanut butter without that inconvenience.

I was eating them by the handful when I saw a picture and recipe on the bag for chocolate peanut butter chip cookies. That's right: chocolate and peanut butter together in a portable cookie. I finally convinced my BF to make them with me this weekend and we were pretty satisfied with the results:


The only downside is that they're a bit too sweet to indulge more than a couple at a time (or maybe that's a good thing?).

It would be more than worth making them again, though, just for the batter:


Ok so it doesn't look like much in the photo, but trust me it tastes fabulous.

If you want to make the batter yourself (or, you know, the finished product too), the recipe is online: REESE'S Chewy Chocolate Cookies

Sprite Love

No, not the drink...

http://www.spritestitch.com/ - a site for video game inspired crafts! *love*
It has everything from crocheted afghans, to needlepoint controller cases, to even pixel cookies!


Makes me want to get started on a couple ideas I've been tossing around, like a tetris scarf or SMB3-themed hats (though now I have to make pixel cookies, too... those are just too awesome to pass up)...

Cherie Amour: First major frogging

True to my intentions, I did work up a lot of Cherie Amour while at the beach (even finished the first ball of yarn!), but I'm caught up in the Harry Potter's again I'm having some doubts so once I got back, I left it in the bag, and didn't break it out again until finishing the 4th, 5th, and 6th books until a week later for an assessment and photos.

Current progress:


[Those purple squiggles are lifelines]
I'm not sure why the photo's so pixelated (it doesn't look that way elsewhere on my computer... maybe because of Blogger's automatic resizing?). A close up of the waist section:


After giving it a week's rest, I'm still not satisfied. I want the lace part longer so the ribbing doesn't end up the same length. As for the ribbing itself... well... as much as I love the cables, each rib is really wide and bulky and unflattering (and that's on size 8 needles). I'm going to try a 1x1 rib instead.

Next up: frog, de-kink the yarn, add a couple more pattern repeats to the lace, then 1x1 rib for the waist section. Then I still need to look into the rest of the sweater, too. I know I don't like the shape of the sleeves as written--I want at least straight sleeves, if not belled--and I'm concerned that 6" of positive ease around the bust is going to be huge. We shall see, we shall see.

Meet ...swatch?

Ok, so that one doesn't really work. But you can still meet my Cherie Amour swatch:


Ain't it purty?

Photo was taken before blocking. After blocking, it was still about the same size AND I was able to get rid of most of the wavyness at the bottom (it might be a cool design feature for some, but combined with the lace it would be a bit too girly for my tastes).

In the interest of full disclosure, this was knit back and forth, not in the round. I was going to make another, bigger swatch knitting in the round and this was going to be my lets-see-just-how-much-damage-I-can-inflict-without-felting swatch. Then I was so excited that I met gauge and figured it really can't be that much different and am I really going to get more needles? No. No I'm not. Let's be honest--I want to knit the sweater, not tons of swatches until I find the right needles and everything. If anything, my knit gauge is tighter than purl, so it'll come out a bit smaller. I don't see that as a bad thing--I just barely fit the XS as it is.

So I cast on.

So far it looks awesome, fits fine (yes, I tried it on when it was 2" long), and is going by so fast I balled another skein already because I'm almost done with the first one.

Coming up: 3 days of work, followed by a few days at the beach. I might get some knitting done in the mornings before work, but those beach days... I'm not a sand & surf kinda gal: the only thing I like less than seaweed and jellyfish wrapping around my legs is sticky, wet sand covering every part of my body. So while half of my boyfriend's family is on the sand and playing in the ocean for a week, I'll stay near the house with the other landlubbers. There will be much knitting those days while I sit my pale butt down in the shade of an umbrella and over-sized tee in a backyard that overlooks the ocean. Minimal ickyness exposure; maximum needle time.


EDIT 7.27.08 11.24pm
Completely forgot: I told you that I blocked the swatch already, what I didn't tell you was that it was a wet block and it stunk! I had no idea wet sheep smelled so bad. I was worried there was something in the water (no special wool stuff for now, I just wet it in plain ol' water so it would block). Now that it's thoroughly dry it's fine, but I really wasn't expecting it to be that potent. (Actually, I don't know what I was expecting, nor what inspired me to stick my nose in it in the first place...)

Meet Hank

And Hank, and Hank, and...

(I'm sorry. I'm hopelessly attracted to bad puns.)

This past weekend, I bought 7 hanks of Cascade LE for Cherie Amour. I couldn't stop touching it (Hank is pretty irresistible like that), so I balled one hank shortly after walking out of the store:




A swatch of it is already knit up and drying.

Goals: Fail

As good of an idea as it sounded, I'm giving up on the "goals" concept. It's just not practical for me I guess to keep up with deciding on what this month's goals should be and sticking to them instead of getting distracted by another project.

In other news, I had a wonderfully productive morning--and there's still an hour to go before I have to leave for work! Besides a bunch of cleaning (which never seems finished), I knit a bit of a scarf and photographed my newly acquired yarn. This whole late-shift thing is looking even better than I anticipated!