see mi knit

Hrumph

How NOT to start an internet business:

1) Spam potential customers under false pretenses, continuously lie about motives, and try to play for their sympathy using insincere stories. (long ravelry thread) (Subway Knitter's excellent summary)

2) Trick suppliers into thinking your service is providing exceptional publicity when in fact, well they're just not.  Craftster post with very amusing "gotcha" moment.

shophandmade.com welcome to the shitlist. David Kovanen, dood, you're a slimeball.

Honestly, in this day and age, businesses are just plain stupid to think the craft community is tech-unaware and/or isolated from each other.  There is no reason and no value in trying to deceive us.

Hatbrained schemes

Since I have taken this picture, Petersburg has finished drying and is ready to seam.

I'm a bit torn though because as much as I want to seam and finish this, I think I have hat duties calling. Yes, again!

Snowboarding knitting is fast approaching.  I plan to do what I did last year, which was to make a hat each for Craig, his sister, and her boyfriend.  We're going to France in mid-March by which time I hope to make:

Craig: Herringbone tweed hat (Rav link), which I started LAST YEAR
Cheryl:  Norwegien Star Earflap hat (Rav link) in red and white to match her snowboard jacket
Rob: 18 Seconds to Sunrise (Rav link)

The complication arises with that last one because Rob's birthday is this Saturday and I've got half a mind to try and make the hat in time for that.

It's right now Monday night, too late to cast on, which proves that yes, I have half a mind to come up with this scheme.  I am hoping bulky yarn and big needles are on my side.

Still complete

Just in time for the London outing tomorrow!

Still by Kim Hargreaves, from her book Thrown Together. Which, I think I've mentioned before, but I totally Love.That.Book.  Sometimes I buy pattern books even though I don't necessarily want to make most of the projects but because the pictures are pretty.  But Kim Hargreaves' books are beautiful and I want to make practically everything in there.

Ravelry link

I modified the sleeves according to Roko's directions.  They're a bit longer than her version, I think I could have skipped the last 15 rows.  But they're not too long and I'm totally in love with it.

It's very lightweight but warm.  The yarn, Queensland Collection Kathmandu DK, was very nice to work with except for seaming when it kept breaking.  It as an annoying lesson to learn but eventually I got the hang of it.

Temporarily thwarted

Arghhh I was hoping to be able share pictures of:

1) Finished and modeled Still
2) Finished back and start of front of Petersburg

But the knitting gods are bored and decided to toy with me.

First I zipped through finishing the back of Petersburg. Zip zip zipping along. I finished the neck shaping, cast off and held up the fine stockinette glory.

It looked kinda... big.  I held it against myself. Yup, ginormous.

Not only that, I ambled back to my stash, did some quick math and realized that at this rate I would be woefully short of yarn to finish the sweater.  So this is what happened:

When I bought the yarn, I did intend it for Petersburg and I bought enough skeins to make the small (with what I thought was a safe amount of yardage). When I started the pattern, I overestimated my size and decided to go up a size.  The ironic this is that I DID double check how much yarn it would take to make the next size up and it said 7 skeins, just like the small.  But wait, I'm not using the yarn in the pattern so going by the number of skeins is utterly useless.  This should have been obvious to me since I bought 12 skeins of the Jaeger so duh, Jaeger Merino yardage != Rowan Cocoon Yardage.

Such a noob mistake!  Anyway, I'm continuing with the front left in the small size and I'll rip the back when I can face myself in the mirror again.  At least it was just all stockinette! And fast at that.

Still isn't complete because by the time I figured all this out it was getting late and I had to stop seaming. I only have one sleeve seam left to sew up so I'm hoping it will be finished by this weekend to wear to a trip out to London to see this.

New Year WIPs

Still is finished and blocked, ready for seaming. Still loving the color and I can't wait to wear it as it's still frickin freezing.

One mitten down, one more to go:

I've purposely not done the thumb so that I can make sure to finish on the second one and not just have one mitten.  Mind you, I haven't cast on for the second one yet so I could very well be stuck with one mitten without a thumb.

I'm not entirely happy with it. I'm still getting the hang of fair isle on dpn's.  I think I've overcompensated from this last foray where the strands were too tight so you an see some sort of issue where I stranded too loosely across the needles (the lines on either side of the thumb placement).  I tried "trapping" the yarn whenever I start the next needle, but that didn't really work as you can see.  I'm not sure how to get it right other than practice. I know I can do fair isle nicely on circulars, but the dpn's are tripping me up. Anyone have tips?

I've also started a new sweater, Petersburg from Rowan 42.

The pattern calls for Rowan Cocoon but I'm using Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Chunky. Cocoon has some mohair content, which seems to give it a fuzzy halo and is probably luscious to wear.  The Jaeger however is pure merino, which is giving a wonderfully crisp stitch definition.  I can't wait to see how the front cables turn out.