Specs Knits

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival 2008.

And the spoils:

The Yarn Place’s laceweight tencel/merino blend in a beautiful deep grey not-quite-variegated color. I am in love.

Colinette Jitterbug in “Salty Dog.” Last skein at the booth and it was mine, all mine.

Malabrigo (my first ever) worsted in Navy. Hello, my favorite hat of next winter.

It goes without saying that I had a fantastic time (but I’m saying it anyway), met some lovely, friendly knitters and found that the festival still has the same warm community feeling it had when I was a kid, despite the increase in size and popularity. Next year I’m going for both days and bringing twice the budget. And wearing more sunscreen.

This vest. It has been weighing me down. There has been a lot of drama with it “behind the scenes” that I haven’t mentioned on the blog because, well, nobody likes a whiner and I’ve been really embarrassed about the whole thing. I made a couple of erroneous assumptions when I started this project, so while the finished object is vest shaped and functional, the process has been less than wonderful. I assumed that:
1) knitting a vest will take much less time than knitting a sweater — no sleeves! That’s, like, 50% of the work!
2) designing a vest myself will be easy and fast (again — no sleeves)
3) seed stitch button bands will look awesome and be fun and easy to knit
4) ok, so I’ve never done anything like this before — how hard can it be? (No sleeves! I can’t overstate how important this was in my reasoning.)

You can see these things coming, can’t you?

But at this point, all the ripping and re-knitting is moot because it’s done and it looks good and this weekend it’s being solemnly given to my dad, who I hope will wear it until it just falls apart.

Upper Class Vest of the Year (Rav link)
Yarn: Mondial Prima (100% merino)
Needles: 5 circs, metal
Projected started: Dec 1, 2007
Project finished: April 21, 2008

I’m just going to skip all the details about the progress and dive into my thoughts on the finished object. The first thing that strikes me when I look at this is how uneven it seems. I couldn’t find a (free) pattern for a waistcoat, so I based my pattern on this one, from an out of print Vogue knitting book (More Knitting in Vogue):

Stylish, no? Refined, sleek, debonair, scholastic and sophisticated? I think the Upper Class Vest of the Year (hereafter VoY) will be much sleeker after another severe blocking to take care of any button band pushing and pulling. But I want to see it on my dad before I commit to another 48 hours of soaking and drying, so it’ll stay lumpy for now.

I also can’t help but be unhappy with the bands (button, sleeve, and pocket). What you see is the third, fourth, or fifth incarnation of some of those bands, so when I sewed them on and they didn’t seriously disrupt the vest-ness of the vest, I was done. But oh, have I learned some valuable lessons about button bands and miters. Most importantly the “two stitches for every three” lesson, but also the “miters have holes — they just do” and the “do not knit these in the car without a tape measure” lessons.

There are other little things I’m not happy with (pockets look weird, top button is too far from bottom of the V, etc), but I don’t want my nit-picking to give the impression I’m not pleased with this. Instead, I’ll end with the positive: I learned so much from knitting this vest. So much about designing, gauge, time commitments, techniques, buttonholes, button bands, grafting, and even blocking. It was a learning process disguised as a vest, and as such it was a monumentally successful project.

Merry Christmas Happy Birthday Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

And while I don’t want to steal the spotlight from the VoY, let me just add here that I’ll be at MDS&W on Saturday. I think I’m avoiding the Rav gathering (I know, insane, right? But I don’t do much socializing on Ravelry and the large number of people they’re expecting is frankly intimidating) but if you seem me or I see you, let’s say hi to each other, ok?

Spring is just creeping in around the edges here, and R and I are starting to talk about planting a vegetable and herb garden. The thing is, we’ve never done this before. But my parents had a pretty large vegetable garden when I was a kid though and I loved going to nurseries with my mom to pick out herbs for the spring, so I’m not entirely inexperienced in growing, you know, stuff. But R is and he’s trusting me to plan this out and pick the right herbs and veggies for our tiny, shady backyard. His faith in my ability to nurture is frightening.

Here’s our tentative list of stuff to plant:
Tomatoes (Definitely some cherry, so as to get them from the vine to my mouth the fastest, but we haven’t decided on another kind)
Cucumbers
Red and green peppers
Jalapeños
Yellow squash
Basil (loads of it)
Rosemary
Catnip
Thyme
Oregano
Cilantro

This afternoon I am going to pull out the graph paper and start plotting. Oh, planning. I love it so.

‘Cause a knitblog party* usually includes knitting, some of the nicest, funniest people you’ve ever met, drinks, dinner, and an opportunity to talk about a part of your life that your non-blog friends just don’t get (that moment when we all shook our heads in deep, dark despair over how anyone could like pooling was heartwarming). And although it does actually stop at some point in the evening, that’s ok because you get to go home happy with with loads of pictures to look through.

Unfortunately, all of my photos are blurry and/or dark. This is the best one I took of us as a group. I am not kidding (just imagine what the others looked like). Also: the best one of everyone else is the worst one of me, as is usually the way with group photography. I promise I’m not a evil-eyebrowed hunchback in real life. At least, not most days.

Anyway, I had a great time, guys! And cheers to Jennie and D for baking for us and letting us laze around their place and harass their cats.

*with Knitting Philistine, Minty, and Twinknit. No guarantees that your knitblog party will be this much fun if you hang out with different bloggers.

I’m visiting my dad in Maryland for a few days, and I brought with me this vest I was originally knitting him for Christmas. I completely and stupidly failed to consider that designing something yourself more than doubles your project length, and the vest was quickly recategorized as a birthday present. His birthday is Thursday and I couldn’t have timed the finishing better. I’m on course to finish the button band tonight, the seaming Wednesday night, and then present it to him on Thursday, wrapped nicely and adorned with shiny new buttons.

Or, I was. Before I left my last ball of yarn in New Jersey.

FO photos will be a little later than I originally planned.

Specsknits is back online and normal service should resume shortly.

Cheers to Katie for a great suggestion! (Monthly hosting, now why didn’t I think of that?)

Thanks for all of your comments on my last post! I’ve taken several of you up on your suggestions. I now have a wrist brace thingie, am taking time to stretch every hour, and I even made a halfhearted attempt at a nail polish habit to prevent myself from using my wrists for a good 10 minutes. It’s all helped tremendously — thank you!

Some of you left really, really helpful comments that somehow didn’t make it into my inbox, so I’m sorry I didn’t reply to each of you individually. I think it’s a problem with my host, but since my contract is up on the 25th I’m not going to make too many waves about it.

That said, my site goes down on the 25th, and it’s likely to be down for a little while afterwards. This month has been financially tight for many reasons (most of them ridiculous) and a year’s worth of blog hosting just isn’t in my budget for now. It will be, next month, but not before the 25th. So the blog will be down for a while, but I’m making back-ups and counting my pennies so it should be back soon. Please do keep me on your Bloglines/Google Reader, just don’t expect anything for a few weeks and don’t be surprised if you visit the site and get a wasteland of internet space.

And in the meantime, I’m on Ravelry! It took me ages to sign up because as much as I love the internet, I’m actually a massive luddite and I like to watch others try out the dangerous technology before I jump on board. That’s what I did with Ravelry, and at this point, I’m pretty sure that this thing is going to work out.

My knitting productivity has slowed due to over-activity. And while this is nothing unusual, the frequency is a bit surprising. It seems like every time I pick up the needles, I end up with tingling fingers, wrists, and/or elbows the following day. And then I have to take two days off to give my wrists a rest and let the tingling subside. Of course, this is probably because 95% of my day is spent being tough on my wrists: my jobs are all done via my laptop, to relax I play video games and knit, and then at night I’m usually on the laptop again, flickring, talking to friends, and emailing (not to mention the rare blogging incident).

So my question to you is: what do you do when this happens? Is there a magical wrist brace I could be wearing? Should I only knit on larger needles? And how long do you need to put the sticks down when this happens?

(The subtext of all of this is, of course: am I a medical freak? Are my hands going to fall off and my wrists turn to stone? What gives?)

I don’t usually jump on this kind of bandwagon (she lied to herself), but I liked the Harlot’s blog today so I’ll hop right on. I’ve also been having a fairly emotional few weeks, dealing with being sick (nasty chest cold), being lonely (working from home will do that), and finally thinking seriously about the consequences to dropping out of grad school (I could have been a semester away from being done with coursework by now). So here’s a shot of optimism to get me through the weekend and hopefully to perk up a couple of you are having a rough time of it lately — unless you guys just hate, hate, hate winter, in which case there’s nothing I can do for you.

Things I like about winter:
1. Snow.Yeah I know — gets slushy and brown, bad to drive in, etc. *waves hand dismissively* But I still get excited every time flakes start swirling. And I get downright giddy if it’s at night and I can watch the snow falling inside the streetlights.

2. Soup. Love soup. Always have some tomato in my cupboard. R hates soup (your guess is as good as mine), which is great because it just means I don’t have to worry about my soup stash disappearing.

3. Tea. See above. Except R likes tea, so I’ve got to keep an eye on my cupboard ‘o tea to make sure it doesn’t fall below acceptable levels. (Acceptable levels being “packed with tea” and “so full of tea boxes fall on your head when you open the door.”)

4. Being in a warm car at night.

5. Walking in from outside and my glasses fogging up. I love that. I have no idea why.

6. Knits! Mittens! Hats! Scarves! Sweaters! Socks! Yay!

7. Holly and other traditional red winter things. Cardinals fall into this category.

8. Winter sunsets. Crisp and bright and orange and pink. Beautiful.

9. Being warm in bed but your nose is cold, and then pulling the covers over your head to remedy that.

10. Hockey. Not strictly a winter thing, but it’s definitely been a big part of my winter experience this year. (And let’s just pretend that the Flyers are going to stay on top of the division, shall we?)

There’s got to be something that you like about winter. What is it?

I had what you could call a good weekend.

My dad and my brother came to visit me, and my house was full of people (4 is pretty much “full” at our place). We also stomped all over Philadelphia, ate cheesesteaks (vegetarian for me, R, and brother Joe, who isn’t vegetarian but is open to new things, and meat-filled for Dad), ate massive Thai dinners, took pictures, drank hot chocolate, drank local beer, baked cookies and played about sixteen hours of Guitar Hero. And while all this was happening, I got to recharge and re-center myself in a way that only happens when I’m around my family. Thanks for visiting, guys, I really needed that. (P.S. It’s a cold day for pontooning.)

It was a nice weekend. And it was improved by the fact that my dad wore the fair isle sweater that my mom knit for him ten years ago. This thing is beautiful. It’s garnered compliments from fair isle book authors at MDS&W. It won a blue ribbon in the Wicomico County craft festival 4-H something-or-other. And yet every time I see it, I’m re-surprised by just how gorgeous it is.

There isn’t really much I can say that would add to the photo, so I’ll just slap up another picture and fawn over it silently.

*fawn* *fawn* *fawn* *fawn*

The funny thing about this sweater is that he never gets compliments on it in public. There was the one errant compliment I mentioned above, from someone who wrote a book on fair isle knitting (whose name Dad has completely forgotten, unfortunately), but other than that, your average guy or gal on the street sees nothing extraordinary about this sweater. It boggles the mind.

Oh, and I also want to add that my mom has knit two and a half of these sweaters. One for my dad, one for herself — a cardigan version in purples and deep rose colors — and the beginnings of one for me.

This one will probably never be finished because the pattern has been lost somewhere in the massive piles of paper and books that swamped our living room for a few years, and because my mom doesn’t knit anymore. I have thought about using Dad’s sweater as a guide and finishing it myself, but the effort and concentration that would take is beyond my capabilities.

But with that inspiration, I’ve redoubled my efforts on my dad’s cardigan. He can’t go through life with only one nice handknit garment, can he? (I mean, he could, but with two knitter daughters he shouldn’t have to.) I’m slogging through the back, which I knit in stockinette to make it go “faster,” but all that really did was make me dread knitting it because it’s so damn boring. But it’s almost done and I’m looking forward to doing the front pieces, which will involve my first miters. Uh, yay?

And further adding to my complete enjoyment of this weekend (weekends continue into Monday for me — don’t hate me, I work very hard the rest of the week), I had a comment from Alice of slippedstitch telling me that I was a blogger who “makes her day” as part of that meme that’s doing the rounds. And to return the favor, here’s a short list of some blogs that I really do love to see pop up on Bloglines (in alphabetical order):

1. A Cold Bright Day in April. Stella knits great stuff and has a sense of knitting-style that’s really close to mine (I don’t think you’d ever catch her knitting a poncho). Plus she’s got chickens!

2. Dogged. You know Ashley, right? She’s smart and funny and knits and sews and makes these stunning quilts and pretty much does everything that a blogger should do without being pushy or showy about it. She’s also one of the first knit bloggers that I read and she continues to inspire me to both blog and knit pretty much every time she posts.

3. Flintknits. I know Pam’s on pretty much everyone’s list, but that’s because she’s awesome. She’s one of the few bloggers I’ve actually met, and I can tell you that she’s just as witty and funny and cute in person as she is on the blog.

4. I May Be Knitting a Ranch House. Sandra is one of the many bloggers on this list whose writing style is instantly familiar and inviting. She’s also got great taste in music and knits some pretty cool stuff. But I’d be totally remiss if I didn’t point out her etsy page: pookeh. I just ordered some earrings from her and I love them so much I’ve been wearing them around the house with my pajamas.

5. Knitting Philistine. Megan is another blogger I’ve had the pleasure to meet in person and she’s got a fantastic sense of humor, which comes through in her blog. Wry, sarcastic, and sardonic, with just a hint of goofiness. And she knits some pretty amazing stuff, too. (Also: Single Sock Swap? Brilliant!)

6. Lickety Knit. Rachel is a blogger who I would love to read even if she wrote about basket weaving or laying linoleum. She’s really funny, and of course, she knits some beautiful things (most recently a couple of sweaters as part of her very productive Year of Sweaters). And she’s a MST3K fan. All the best people are.

7. Pepperknit. Minty is the only person who has ever knit a skirt that actually made me think “oooh, I should knit that.” She’s also a great writer and takes beautiful pictures of her knits and anything else that wanders in front of the camera (people, shiny things, friends, food, etc).

8. Slippedstitch. Is it ok to tag someone who tagged me? It had better be, because I really do look forward to reading Alice’s blog. She’s got a practical take on knitting that is really very refreshing when a lot of blogs go for cute and/or baby-oriented knitting. Plus she writes some of the most interesting and enjoyable patterns out there, one of which was the first pattern from a blog that I ever knit (her clever DNA illusion scarf).

9. Yarnstorm. I know there’s been some controversy around this blog and the book, but I really, honestly love the photos. The lighting is great, the colors are beautiful, and even when the subjects are a little too domestic for me (I am never, ever, going to make a heart-shaped pink marshmallow), I still love looking at them.

10. Zeitgeist. Kate is a grad student (one of many on my blogroll) who somehow finds the time to knit these beautiful socks and sweaters. She’s also a local Philly girl, a contingent of smart and creative ladies who really can’t be over-represented on the internet. Go see her “Cold Hands Warm Heart” sweater — it’s both creative and pretty.

Have a great week, kids.