Knitting with Sleeping Kids and Knitting in the Sunlight

Last week was a week full of disaster.  Pretty much everything I did had to be undone before any progress could be made.  It was a disaster.  I'd done all this work just to have to start all over again!  I thought it was going to be one of those things where I just didn't want to pick it up again and keep going, but I did, and sure enough, I'm back on track.

As I'm sure you can see by the picture, my Nutkins are redone and looking pretty.  I'm back up past the heel, and they actually fit!  They're looking pretty good and I'm happy with the way they've turned out.  I'm not making fantastic progress because I've been working on another project that comes with a lot more of a feeling of instant gratification.  Socks take so much longer to get done and there are two of them.  That means twice the knitting fun, but also twice as long to get the project off the needles.  It's great, unless you want something to bolster your ego after a miserable failure, like the ones I had the week before.  These have kind of been thrown on the back burner for a while and only get a few rows thrown in here and there.

Instead of finishing my socks, I decided it was time to work on my Leaving Cowl.  This has been quite the project.  After tearing it out three times, I finally decided the needles it was on were intolerable to work with, so I had to start over, this time on smaller needles.  It went up much quicker this time, and because the pattern was so easy and familiar, I didn't even need the pattern as a reference.  I just worked the whole thing up from memory.  I suppose that's a good thing, because now Little Bear wants one too!

The thing I loved most about this project was working on it with the sunlight spilling over my shoulder.  It's not the traditional fall leaf color, being more brown and gold than reds and oranges, but I think it's a beautiful yarn.  It's not really the feeling of fall that most people think, but it does remind me of Thanksgiving, which at this rate is going to be the earliest I can bust this thing out!  It hasn't been as cold as I feared it would be, so I haven't had much want for a cowl to this point, save for a few days, but I suppose that's soon enough to change.

The hardest part about knitting this week is knitting with Little Bear.  It's been a while since Little Bear has wanted Mommy Lap Naps, but we've been back to that.  The benefit to this is that it means I have to sit down and do nothing else until the Bear wakes.  Unfortunately, knitting isn't always easy this way, and my feet fall asleep so easily!

It's not as simple as it once was.  It's easy enough to let a baby sleep on your chest while your arms wrap around and knit, or sleep draped across your arms leaving your hands free.  Toddlers tuck well enough in laps, allowing someone to knit over them, or twist around to get a good angle without too much effort.  Again, sleeping on one arm is an option.  Once you hit preschool age, even with a preschooler as bitty as mine, it's really tough to make sure there's enough room to knit.  Enough twisting and turning can add to the degree of challenge.  It's almost like a knitting obstacle course.  Eve with the challenges, it's worth it.  It's something I've missed lately, in spite of how difficult it can be to work that way.

The best part about having Little Bear with me is always having a model to show off my projects.  This one couldn't even wait until it was finished.  Little Bear was very insistent that it had to be tried on right then.  Now I have to make another one.  The order came down, "Just like yours, but, blue, blue, blue!"  Can you guess what Little Bear's favorite color is?

Yeah, it's a proud mama moment, look how cute Little Bear is in that cowl!  I think I may need to pattern hunt for the perfect cowl for Bear.  Maybe I'll do something with an ice blue and white, or maybe I can find one with snowflakes.  Frozen is still a favorite in this house.  I also might do something pink and/or purple, because that's what Princess Rapunzel would wear.  Tangled is also a frequent watch around here.  Little Bear even insisted on getting a "short hair Rapunzel" hair cut, which could stand to be updated again soon.  It's just as much fun to knit for my kids, especially Little Bear, as it is to knit for myself.  Little Bear's the only one of the kids that really appreciates the hand-knits like I do.

So the cowl is finally finished, and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out!  I went all crazy and decided to do a fancy bind off that I'd never heard of before, but decided would be easy.  I got the idea from the Nutkin socks.  They have this way of knitting in the cast on edge to create a folded over cuff.  I did that for the picot hem on the bottom, so I figured I would make it match by doing something similar on top.  That may not have been the best of ideas.

Here's what I did for this insanity.  I took the concept of the Elizabeth Zimmerman sewn bind off, but instead of just binding off the edge, I picked up and stitched in the coordinating stitches from the folded over fabric.  I know it sounds complicated.  Maybe some day I'll do a video of what I did, but it was a hassle and time consuming.  I swore I would never do it again, especially after taking the whole binding out twice because it wasn't working out right and everything looked twisted, but grim determination (and people liking the photo of what I was doing on Instagram) kept me going.

Once I figured out where I'd been going wrong, it wasn't all that bad.  It looks nice and neat, and fell into a pretty decent rhythm, so in the end it didn't take all that long to work up.  It was just the first few tries that looked a little wonky.  I honestly don't even think you can tell what I did on that bind off just by looking at it.  It looks pretty sharp.

I'm pretty proud of myself for this one.  I don't take many bold steps with knitting, at least not without the confidence that everything will turn out just fine.  I tend to leave things be and follow the instructions, or to do an alternative that I'm confident will work.  It's not common to see me just whack away at something like this with reckless abandon, just diving in and doing something that I don't know will work, and no one's given me any instructions on how to complete.  It's terrifying, but at the same time, it was a lot of fun.  It gave me confidence as a knitter, and that's something that's always fun.  It's a new technique that I think I want to practice and perfect.  I've really learned something with this, and I didn't expect to.  It was a lot of fun.

The best part of the whole project, of course, is the finished product.  There's something so uplifting about being able to put on the finished piece and show it off.  I mean, look at this, it's beautiful!  The picot edge (which no one else seems to have done, even though it's listed as "option 1") gives it a unique style compared to the other projects just like it.  The dark, warm color goes well with just about everything, not to mention my hair.  (Speaking of my hair, it looks so incredibly good in this picture!  Why doesn't it always look this way?)  The fit is just perfect.  This is exactly what I needed.

For being a project that I wasn't at all in love with, and was just doing so I could have a little KAL with Sable, this has turned into a favorite.  I won't lie, I wasn't inspired to knit this at all after the Seasons Fall/Winter Shawl and the Tuscan Sunflower Shawl kits I got from KnitPicks, both with the same leaf shaped pattern.  I couldn't help but feel like this was just another leaf, but it looks really nice and will serve me well this fall and winter.  It had enough unexpected and challenge to make it something I'm proud to show off.

Nutkins and Knitting Disasters

There has been no update for a while.  Why?  Because every knitting project seemed destined to be an ill-fated disaster.  I made absolutely zero progress.  My Nutkin sock was too small, which really sucked, so I had to rethink that.  Then my Leaving Cowl just turned out to be a series of issues all it's own, which had me scrapping them both and starting over.

So, let's start with the Leaving Cowl.  I started this project because Sable suggested we do a KAL, though she started and finished hers long before I even cast on.  I think it's more like a matching project kind of thing.  She offered to get me the needles and insisted I'd need the 29" cable.  Well, it was too long, and by a lot.  I probably would have knit it on a 16", to be honest, and that's what I'm going to make it on when I finally get the right needles.  That was one big frustration, though I kind of fudged it with doing kind of a modified, one-sided magic loop.  It was super frustrating and I eventually got to the point where I just gave up.  Besides, I wasn't sure I liked the way it looked.  It was almost too snug.  It's too bad because it was starting to look pretty good too!

I was thinking the whole thing would have a lot more drape to it, given the way it turned out on Sable's project, but as you can see, it really doesn't drape much at all.  It would be a pretty snug little collar.  I wasn't sure I liked it and considered going with one more chart repeat, but after having seen it on other people's project pages, I think I might go back to the five I used across.  It looks pretty good and fits close enough to the same as everyone else's.  It makes it more like a turtle neck that way.  Of course, I'm not sure.  I'm never sure on these kinds of things.  I might just go with the six and see how it goes.  Of course, I do keep being reminded that a lot of people barely have the yarn to complete the project, and using a much more yarn consuming edge on the whole thing, I might want to take that into consideration as well.  If I don't have the yarn to finish, it would be a shame to have to rip it all out and start all over again, even if I could whip it up real easy in a few hours.  It didn't take me long to get where I got, but those needles were intolerable to work with.  It was much too fiddly.  I'm just going to get a new set of needles and work from there.

Then there were my Nutkin socks.  Let me tell you, that was a disappointment!  When I couldn't fit them on I decided I would just bump everything up to the next needle size.  At first I hated it.  The yarn wasn't knit as tightly as I wanted it   The color pooling got a little weird too (not that you can tell from the side shown in the picture).  I didn't think I was going to like it and I fought the urge to rip the whole thing out and start over, yet again, this time with the smaller needle and a larger stitch count.  I really didn't want to do it.  It didn't require much changing to add a higher stitch count, but it's more work, and then there's figuring the numbers on the short row heel.  It's a lot of work that I really wasn't interested in doing.  For once I just wanted a project to go smoothly.  With all of the things going on in my life right now, something easy that I can knit while watching television sounded ideal.  Of course, the pattern is simple enough that I could just fall right into the routine, but the heel wouldn't be something I could do rather simply while I sat in front of the television.  That was going to require more attention as I tried to remember to use my math, not the math in the pattern.  I decided to keep going and see how it turned out.

It's not the tight gauge I prefer with knit goods, but I'm pretty happy with the results.  So far the fit looks amazing, and since I'm working on circulars instead of DPNs, I'm able to keep fitting it as I go.  I guess I have a high instep because I keep having problems with the heel and the top of my foot.  It happens with shoes all the time too.  However, this is working out just the way I wanted it to!

At this angle you can see a little more of what I mean about the color pooling though.  One side across is really bright stripes, the other is a slow spiral up of darker colors.  I wasn't sure I was going to like it, but it started to grow on me.  I wasn't thrilled with the way the fabric was knit, not tight enough, until I tried it on and saw it stretched over my leg.  Now I'm pretty happy with it, so we're going to see how it goes up through the foot.  Keep your fingers crossed.  I may have a finished sock to go on display before too long.  It usually takes me a couple days to make a single sock, so hopefully by next week's update I'll have more to report!

It's Done!

The clapotis is finished!  It's taken a good while longer than I thought it would.  It's turned out to be quite the lengthy project!  Down to those last decrease rows I was beginning to wonder if it would ever end.  Of course, I was also in anticipation of finally being finished.  I couldn't wait to have it all done so I could wear it out somewhere.  I wanted to know just what it would look like, as if I didn't already have a pretty good idea.  I wanted to see it done!  I wanted that finished product in my hand.

Well, I finished it.  It looks stunning, in my opinion.  I've already worn it out once.  I plan to wear it as often as I can manage.  I absolutely adore it!

In thinking about the whole project, I've decided not to block it.  I was thinking I might, just so that it could have that finished and complete look, but I'm not going to do it yet, at least.  I know I probably should block it, but with this project, it at least looks fine the way it is.  I quite like it unblocked.

Of course, a part of this is my fear of blocking.  I've never had to block anything before, so I'm not entirely sure on the technique to do so.  I know you lay it flat, stretch it into shape, and pin it, but that's about it.  I know you can spray it down to dampen it.  Some people block their garments wet.  Others use steam.  I'm not entirely sure what process works best for what kind of yarn or garment, but I'm curious to try.

All of this work with the clapotis has got me thinking, if I can work on this kind of long-term project, maybe I'm ready for one with a bigger challenge to it all.  Maybe I'm ready for...dare I say it...?  A sweater!

And She's into the Home Stretch

Yup, it's clapotis talk again.  It's quickly coming to a close.  I've done all the prescribed rows and repeats, and then doubled the length.  I was only going to go half again on the length, but that just didn't seem like enough.  I was smart.  I tried it out before I made a decision.  I estimated about how long it would fall, how I would wear it, whether it would be long enough to wear the way I would wear it.  I came to the realization that I wouldn't be able to.  Instead of having half the length added, I decided to just double the whole thing, and I'm quite happy with the results.  Now watch it end up too long!

I have to say, this is pretty much the first time I've taken a pattern and customized it in any way, aside from doing the math suggested for custom fitting, something that's always been part of the pattern.  I've never ventured into doing anything flashy or unique.  I've just never modified a pattern like that.

In this case, the modification was thankfully easy.  All I had to do was add repeats and I know without a doubt I'll have enough yarn.  I had so much left over I was beginning to contemplate what I could do with it all!  I'd had some ideas, but I'll have to see how much is left before making up my mind now.  I'm not going to have as much as I thought I would.  We'll see what happens.  However, this is the first instance I've broken from the mold and done something different, something that wasn't listed as a pre-packaged option.

Who knows.  This could be a massive change in my life as a knitter.  It starts with the simple act of making a shawl longer, then who knows where it ends!  Next thing you know I'll be diving in to all kinds of projects I don't normally do!  Maybe it will be a sweater.  Who knows, maybe it will lead me to making my own patterns entirely.  Wouldn't that be a scary thought?  It's just so liberating to say, "I don't care what the pattern designer had in mind, I'm doing something different!"

And then there was one...

I know it may sound strange, the idea of knitting only one project at a time, but that's where I've been.  In part, circumstance has kept me there.  In part it's a matter of choice.  I know I could start another project.  I could bring the skeins of yarn I have to the LYS with me the next time I go down there, ball them up, and start on my new shawl.  I could easily start up the waist ribbing for the next set of longies.  I could buy some yarn and start up a whole new project to cast on.  Right now, I'm content to stick with one.  Isn't that strange?

Right now I'm kind of stuck with one project.  I finished as much on the gray and teal longies as I could and am at a bit of an enforced stopping point.  I can't continue until I have more of the teal yarn, or I get creative on the whole thing.  Sure, I have two socks cast on and started, but they're not even at the house right now.  I'm stuck with one lonely little project and nothing else to work on.  Do you know what the strangest part is?  Aside from the occasional, yet very rare pang of wishing I had something to break up the endless rows of repeating pattern, I'm happy with one project.

The clapotis isn't really the kind of project I ever thought would turn into dedicated knitting.  I figured it would be something that would turn into my TV project, or my Craftlit project once I had the pattern fairly figured out.  It would be simple, repetitive, and rather dull in a way.  It's not that I wouldn't enjoy it.  I would never deliberately choose a project I wouldn't enjoy, and if I did on chance, I'd probably just give it up, frog it, and start all over.  However, I did think it would be something that I could make rather mindless, something I could use to keep my hands busy while doing other things.

It started out a travel project, until it got too big.  Then when I was no longer able to cart it around with me, I put it down beside the couch to work on while watching television.  That's when we lost cable, so I started listening to Craftlit and other podcasts in my room in stead.  The bag was moved to beside the bed, where I sat and knit most of my projects.  It's still there, tucked beside my bed most nights, the last thing I see before I go to bed at night.  Actually, there's truth to that.  Most nights I've been picking it up from the spot I left it on the bed when I last went off to spend time with my room mates, or got side-tracked with the kids.

This project has become my only project.  I work on it while sitting with friends.  I work on it when watching movies.  It takes up my lap when I listen to podcasts.  I pull it out when I've got a few moments and just want to knit a few rows.  I've even started to notice I pull it out to knit endlessly, even when I've got nothing else going to distract my mind.  It's not like me to spend so much time on one project, or to focus on only one, but I am, and I'm loving it.

I suppose it's a good thing I love it too!  The television in my room doesn't have my VHS/DVD player hooked up yet, so I can't sit and watch television.  I do try to listen to my podcasts, but finding quiet time to listen and knit has been challenging enough with my kids alone.  Now that I've got teenagers blaring their music in the afternoon and a house full of rowdy kids, it makes finding peace and quiet to listen and knit quite challenging.  I could easily see myself falling into the trap of never finishing this project, especially as I want to add a few more pattern repeats so it's long enough for my own personal desires.  I'd end up packing it up and putting it away forever, but here I am, plowing through with it, almost to the point where I need to add extra pattern repeats and I don't even mind in the least!  If only ever knitting project should go as smoothly.

The Clapotis, because 15,000 Knitters Can't Be Wrong!

The Clapotis is a scarf pattern that looks more like a shawl to me.  It's trendy, popular, and something that just about every knitter has made, every knitter but me.  It's a cute little project, simple, yet dramatic.  I didn't like it at first, but it seems to have grown on me.  Who would have known I would fall in love with such a popular project?  I always go for the less popular stuff.  I like to be unique and individual.

What is it about this pattern that's got everyone wanting one?  It's a pretty simple, yet dramatic design.  The idea of dropping stitches and the increase pattern isn't something that's completely unheard of.  It looks classy enough, though simple.  There is just so much freedom through fiber choice to make this shawl or scarf take on a variety of looks, from simple and pretty to kind of wacky.  It's really something that speaks to many knitters.  It's truly diverse.  The stitch pattern isn't terribly complex.  Even a newer knitter can quickly master it.  The dropped stitches (though the idea gives me minor heart failure) makes the lace portion very simple to do.  It's a quick and easy knit without the look of simplicity.  It's wonderfully dynamic!

Perhaps that's why patterns such as this become popular.  They're easy and accessible to everyone.  Being offered free on the web probably doesn't hurt either.  Anything that's simple, yet classy can be an easy beginner's project that doesn't have the same, simplistic look of most easier projects.  Unfortunately, most "simple knits" and beginner's projects look like beginner's projects.  However, something anyone can do, yet still looks stylish, are incredibly popular!

My Clapotis is made of Ultra Pima (a cotton), which makes it wonderfully soft, silky, and brilliant.  The beautiful sage color gives it a very simplistic look, yet it's still versatile enough of a color that I can wear it with just about everything.  The pattern is engaging, even for someone who cannot work up a pattern more than once because it's boring once it becomes familiar.  I'm absolutely in love with the project coming off my needles!  Who knew such a popular and trendy project would be so inspiring?  I love it!

The Knitting Group

As much as I've met up with the local knitters, I've never really attended a kitting group.  I mean, I did join up with them at one point at the coffee house.  I suppose that was technically meeting up with the knitting group, but it was different, in a way.  I wasn't a regular member and I never did go back.  I wasn't really a part of anything.  It was more of a one shot deal.

Things have changed.  There is now a local yarn store.  They opened up a while back, but I haven't been able to make it.  I've been trying to get in for their knitting groups, but mornings really aren't my thing.  The idea of dragging a baby and possibly two older children while trying to knit on top of it all wasn't terribly appealing, no matter how kid friendly the space was.  I just didn't feel up to it.

Well, I went yesterday.  I did have kids with me, so I didn't  really get to knit, but I had a good time.  It was nice to get out and interact with other knitters.  I have to admit, I don't seem to have much in common with any of them at this point in time, but that doesn't matter.  Many of them are older, so I feel a little out of place.  It's hard to feel like you fit in when most of the other people there have grandchildren and I've got a newborn baby of my own.  It feels a little awkward at first!  I can't imagine we will have much in common beyond knitting, but that's okay.  Maybe I'll find myself more into knitting than I thought.  After all, that's how I was with bellydance.  I didn't have anything in common with my dance friends but dance, and with many, we didn't even share the same style.  However, we had something in common, so that was enough.

Not only have I started in with the knitting group, but I'm going to be joining their knit-along.  It's for a pattern that I wasn't really in love with when I looked at.  The Clapotis is nice and all, but it's kind of a trendy thing to make.  Almost everyone I know has made one at this point, at least, if they're a serious knitter.  I didn't want to do something that trendy no matter how much I might love the pattern.  This time, though, it's different.  I want to be a part of something.  It's a group effort, even though everyone will have their own finished project.  It just makes me feel more like a part of the greater knitting community.

I think I'm definitely going to make the knitting group a part of my week, twice a week if I can.  I really enjoyed it, and I hope the more I get to know people, the more I'll feel at home there.  They don't judge me because I'm different.  They don't nose into the personal details of my life.  They don't feed me opinions on how I raise my kids or what I've chosen to do with my life.  They don't even really ask me about my life at all!  It's all about the knitting and talking about happy things.  I've never met a group with so little drama!  I can't wait to go back!