More seams

This is one of the sleeve seams. There's no way the increases are going to match, since I didn't even do them at the same intervals. The pattern is supposed to match, but it's knit at an angle. Since I didn't leave any purl stitches next to the edges it is hardly noticeable.







Three years ago I was here, dressed in white, making some serious promises to the love of my life.







Among the promises we made, there's one that stated we would not make any unneccesary expenses. Three years later, with no furniture except a mattress and a desk made of cardboard boxes, I can tell we're good at keeping our promises.



With or without furniture, we're still happy next to each other, and I am infinitely grateful for that.

Mea Culpa

I should not have whined so much about that pattern because I did not read it correctly. I skipped the part that said you needed to put some stitches on a holder. I only noticed my mistake when I took a look at the picture and the collar looked quite different.






I have now finished the ribbing on the left front and guess what... I ran into trouble again. When knitting the right front, I always had a red strand of yarn on the right hand side when doing the little checkers. I used that red strand for the button band intarsia style, turned my work, knit the button band and then kept going with the checkers. But now I need to make a buttonhole band on the left hand side, where no red strand of yarn awaits for me. There's three ways (maybe more) to go around this:

Rip. Start knitting on the wrong side from the beginning. This means I'll do the checkered stitch from the wrong side, and the garter band with purl stitches. I like this solution. I could even forgo the purls and use knit stitches. Who's going to notice that the bands don't match?

Don't rip. Get another red yarn bobbin and knit the button band using intarsia.

Rip down to the ribbing. Cut the yarn. transfer the row to another needle and start the pattern from the wrong side.

There's always the possibility of knitting the buttonband separately, but that would be cheating... plus I hate seams and want to avoid them whenever possible.


Talking about seams, I started putting the pink raglan together. I'm trying to get all rows properly aligned, which is something that usually doesn't bother me.






The picture on the right is the raglan. See how the pattern rows are aligned? The increases match too, but you have to take a really close look to see that. The picture on the left shows a seam in which the increases do not match. But the people I frequent don't usually bring their faces that close to my armpit anyway, so I usually don't care about such things.

The end is near

Or so I hope. I did have to unravel that third sleeve. And the fourth. And the fifth. So of course I'm thrilled that this time I finally got things right.









Part of the problem is that this stitch really makes a stretchy fabric, so what seems the right size while lying flat can be oversized when worn (YES, I got as far as seaming a sleeve, putting it on and finding out that it was too big). Live and learn. Luckily, the trial and error phase is behind me and all I have to do is knit a duplicate.

I have also completed the front of the baby cardigan, another trial and error process. The pattern doesn't really tell you when to start decreasing, it just tells you how many decreases you need to make (plus it would really help if it explained how the decreases should be worked to keep the squares consistent). Also, the checkered stitch has a shorter row gauge that stockinette stitch. I didn't realize that until it was too late. I had to rip down, add rows, and start the decreases again. Seaming will be a nightmare, since the back has 2/3 of the total amount of rows I used on the front.

Chugging along

This is my third attempt in making a sleeve, and it looks too big so there might be a fourth one:

I was luckier with the back of the baby cardigan:

But that's because following a pattern is easier than making things up as you go (I haven't dug out my green notebook). The pattern says I should bind off the shoulders. Experience tells me I should make a three needle bindoff and avoid ugly shoulder seams.

Louise was wondering about the nature of last post's painting. It's painted on silk.

First, the good news

The replacements for my broken dishes are here, and none of them broke. Also, I'm happy to report that in spite of the dire prognosis, my begonya survived and is now starting to bud again. She must like it here. (Note to self: trim back all those dead stems, they look ugly).




Unfortunately, there's also bad news. I had partially unwrapped a framed painting right after the move, and the glass seemed intact. Well, it was, except for a little corner.







Oh well, one more thing that will need to be fixed. I do remember thinking that the painting would look much better without the glass, do you think it's a good idea to get rid of it altogether? Another bad news is that I had to rip the first raglan sleeve. And the one after that. I sat down, measured and realized that I need to space my decreases even more than I expected. They will not match the decreases on the front and the back, but I don't want to fret about that because I want to finish that sweater soon. I added a few rows to the baby cardigan in between ripping and knitting the raglan.





My elbow is not getting any better, but not any worse either. So that's a so-so news, I guess. I acknowledged it was time to go to the doctor. We signed up a week ago to our new insurance, but we had not received the cards yet, so I called their offices. The girl at the phone was unable to locate our records, which basically meant that we had no coverage with them, but when I checked the mail our cards were here. She had me really scared but I'm not mad because I guess it's hard to deal with hyphenated foreign names.

I see the light...

I'm almost done with one sleeve. I did not work on both at the same time because I'm unsure about the size (the original instructions are still missing). If it turns out to be too big or too small I will only have to rip once.








I started working on the baby cardigan. The back is very boring, I'm glad I'm working on the raglan sleeve at the same time.

May I start a new project now?

Thanks for the get well wishes. My elbow is coming along. I don't use it much and the tenderness is slowly going away (or so I believe). I don't know about my spinning wheel because I haven't tried it, but I'm confident it will still work. The front of the raglan is finished, and all I need now are sleeves:






I made a little swatch for a baby cardigan. It looks a little weird because in addition to gauge I was testing for color. Also, I don't want to pick up stitches for the buttonbands, I will instead do some garter edging as I knit the sides.







I will attempt to follow this pattern. I found it thanks to Stacie, who has a lot of free pattern links on her page.

This makes me sick

This bit of news makes me sick and angry. I'd read that story on some blog or another and I was hoping it would come out not to be true. Now I wish for that Louisiana police chief to end up working in a McDonalds right next to Michael Brown.


I've started the decreases on the front of the raglan:






Soon I'll be working on the sleeves. I'm already thinking about the next project (like I need another one). I did not buy yarn for it (I'm still on a yarn diet, remember?), this is yarn from my stash. The skeins got a little messy with the move, so I had to wind them again. I have a great yarn winder, which unfortunately must be attached to a table, and we don't have one. I tried the kitchen counter, but that didn't help. In the end, I ended up using a kitchen drawer, which I propped open with a plastic bottle.





We need some furniture badly but we're waiting for my arm to heal (hauling all these boxes sprained my elbow). Luckily, I can still knit, as long as I don't overdo it.

A week already?

Unbelievable. You'd think that with me being unemployed I'd have more time to knit and blog about it. Instead, I've been unpacking, searching for furniture and applying to jobs. I'm happy to report that we do have a desk and a chair now:



And that the movers *ONLY* managed to break a few dishes (replacements are on their way) and a picture frame (which was too ugly anyway and I was planning to replace). The're also a crack on a glass lamp that's part of a set. It's cracked, but not broken. Let's count our blessings here.





The belt tension seems not to open up the crack on my spinning wheel. The rovings are still packed somewhere so I cannot really tell if spinning will make a difference, but I suspect it won't. I still haven't found the instructions for the rest of my raglan. I wrote them down on a green notebook which I believe should be in any one of the boxes now functioning as either desk or chair. If it is, it won't get unpacked until we get a bookcase (hopefully by then we'll have a better desk).



In the meantime, I've decided to pick up the raglan and copy the back as best as I can, since that green notebook could be in limbo for a long while.

My babies are here

And so is the rest of my stuff. Most of it is still boxed but I unpacked my babies as soon as they got here. Here's the spinning wheel that had been "professionally packed":





They said they would pack it themselves because it was a fragile item. Well, where in this box does it say that there's a fragile spinning wheel inside? The box is too big and my baby was allowed to wobble inside with nothing to secure it in place but packing peanuts. I found a small crack on the mother-of-all. I have to test and see if the tension opens it up and if it's still functional, but I haven't had the time to put it together, because I was rescuing my other babies:




The violet lost all its flowers, or course. The begonya looks really bad, I'm not sure it's going to make it. I hope she does, she's been with me since 1998. Whatever happens I will be the only one to blame, since I packed them myself and was too cheap to pay for overnight delivery, so they spent a whole week without sunshine nor water.


I'm very grateful for all the nice wishes. I'll get back to reading other knitting blogs now that I have internet at home (although a chair and a desk would be nice, too). I do intend to keep working on my raglan, but instead of buying yarn, I'll make a donation to the Red Cross. It's not the right time to be selfish.