knitting in the dark

Okay, okay, I confess: I’ve been out of town avoiding my life, but I’m back in Brooklyn and feeling pretty good (helpfully, I have a really busy fall coming up). I visited my parents in Seattle for a week and my brother in DC for a long weekend. And I finished a sweater that was started pre-blog in 2005…! When I left for Seattle I needed to seam a sleeve and up one side and sew on the buttons. Coming from steamy NYC I didn’t realize I would want to wear that sweater while in Seattle (it was awfully cold there for the end of July and I didn’t take anything other long-sleeved clothing items), so I promptly finished up and wore it the rest of the week and conned my mother into taking some photos - so much easier than self-portraits!

pattern: Moonlight from Rowan 34 (ravelry link to my project page)
yarn: Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair, color: Raven
needles: US 8
started: July 2005 (!!!)
completed: 29 July 2008

modifications: None; I started this sweater before I felt comfortable enough with my abilities to alter much. I don’t think I did a gauge swatch, but it fits pretty well (I could lose a few pounds around the middle right now, though), so I’m not complaining about knitting blindly from the directions, except maybe about seaming the reverse stockinette - it would be easy to convert to a no-seam knit.

Ah… sunbathing in Seattle in July apparently requires a heavy wool sweater!

I purchased the buttons before I left New York at M&J because if anyone anywhere had a better selection it would make my head explode:

We had quite a steamy weekend here in Brooklyn… in fact, ConEdison called thousands of customers, including me, yesterday morning (at 7:30! *grumble grumble*) asking us to turn off and unplug all non-essential items, but specifically mentioned that we could keep our refrigerators plugged in. Gee - thanks! I complied and kept my air-conditioner and computer and things off almost all day. It gave me an excellent excuse to go browsing around the neighborhood shops (free AC!) and to buy a pint of my newest favorite dessert: yes, that does say “grapefruit campari” sorbet! Delicious!

When I plugged the AC back in last night and my apartment cooled down a bit (I usually set it at 78 degrees - just low enough to take the edge off), I finished seaming and weaving in the ends on my Tour de France Knitalong project: Thermal! She’s done! And I dare not go outside to take action shots of the sweater because it’s supposed to feel like 100 degrees out there today (for the fourth day in a row *grumble grumble*). Maybe - hopefully - soon it will cool down just a bit…?

pattern: Thermal (Ravelry pattern link) from Knitty Winter 2006, size B (with ribbing unstretched it’s about 32″ around, but after a wash it should relax some)
yarn: less than 4 skeins of Araucania Ranco Solid in Teal
needles: 24″ 2.5mm Addi Turbo and INOX 2.25mm dpns for sleeves
modifications: The front pieces after the neck split are one repeat narrower than designed to try to prevent the shoulder seams falling off my shoulders. What else…? Oh right, I’m skipping the buttons in favor of an open V - and if I hate it I can always sew it shut and put some non-functioning buttons on there.

notes: Alternated between 2 skeins changing each row - what a pain! And I don’t love the semi-solid look anyway, so I probably won’t be doing that again anytime soon! I do, however, love the lack of seaming created by knitting both body and sleeves in the round.

And then I started swatching for my next project!

Also, thank you to everyone who either commented or emailed me relationship condolences; it has really been very nice to hear from you. As I said in a reply email to Opal (who just opened an etsy shop with her handspun - go check it out), “relationships come and go, but knitting is forever.” And knitting (and blogging and Ravelry) has definitely been very helpful keeping my mind off the sad stuff; and so again - thanks.

Unfortunately for my brother, he got stuck overnight while flying through JFK on his way from Seattle to DC. Fortunately for my brother, I live in Brooklyn and he was able to take a taxi over and we pulled out the inflatable mattress and he was able to sleep in a bed with clean sheets rather than on an airport bench and take a shower in the morning before going to the rescheduled flight and then directly to work. And his unexpected visit prompted me to do some apartment cleaning (and believe you me, the place needed it desperately after breaking up with The Boy last week). I did the dishes and picked up my floor and did a load of laundry and cleaned the toilet and bathroom sink - hooray!

To catch up on other matters, the Tour de France is happening right now (and, therefore, the fantastic annual Tour de France knitalong), and I haven’t been able to watch ANY of the coverage due to my work schedule - but I have been getting some good knitting time in during my reverse-commute to Connecticut on Metro-North every day. And now that job is over so I may actually get to watch a little of the Tour if my internet connection continues to work smoothly (I don’t own a TV)…

I started Thermal (from Knitty Winter 2006) back towards the end of May and flew through the body and the first sleeve in just over a week, but hadn’t started the second sleeve yet. I’d heard some pretty sad stories of never-ending Thermal projects because the whole thing’s knit in the round in fingering weight in a sort of ribbed/waffle pattern and I didn’t want mine to become another long-lingering work-in-progress. So on July 5th, when le Tour started in France, I started the last major piece of the sweater. There is a bit of a tighter-tension issue from the knitting I did the day after the break-up, but it’s not too bad - not at all noticeable while on my arm - and a wash should help to further even it out.

And I’m already working on the cap! I should definitely be able to finish the sweater in the next week. (Isn’t that when the race is over? I’m so out of touch… oh nevermind, it looks like it ends the 27th - PLENTY of time!)

And to keep the good vibes going around here - a macro shot of the stitch pattern then I’m off to ride my bike around Prospect Park a few times!

The person who would have taken pictures of this sweater has been forcibly ejected from my life… he didn’t really want to be in a relationship anymore and I wasn’t feeling valued in that relationship (big surprise considering his feelings, right?); it was very mutual, but not so amicable. I’m angry and hurt, but slowly coming out of the immediate post-breakup funk.

Fortunately, I had a little free time in the park two days ago in Westport, CT, between rehearsal and preview for the show I’ve been working on all month to take some pictures using my camera’s lovely shutter-timer feature. It’s one of the best-fitting sweaters I’ve made myself and should see a lot of use, though it’s a little warm in Brooklyn for wool right now! It’s definitely coming with me to Seattle in two weeks when I visit my parents.

pattern: Penny from Debbie Bliss Summer Essentials (Ravelry links)
yarn: O-Wool Classic 2-Ply (delicious!)

started: 5 April 2008
completed: 26 May 2008 (the knitting was much faster than this, but it took me a long time to sew the ribbons on)

notes: shortened both the body and sleeves

I’m super excited to be knitting again - Penny has been blocked and I’m seaming her up and going to buy a ribbon for the wrap ties this afternoon. I’m also working on a pair of socks for my friend James that I promised him way back in the middle of December (!). But while my left hand was in a splint I had the time to catch up on some books I’ve been wanting to read. I’d been in a reading slump for months and it was nice to find that I can still enjoy a good book:

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Color by Victoria Finlay
The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs
Talking to the Dead by Helen Dunmore
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Lucky Girls by Nell Freudenberger
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

and I am now most of the way through A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

Lucky Girls and Talking to the Dead excepted, I really enjoyed and highly recommend each of these. The Other Boleyn Girl is complete fluff (perfect summer beach reading) but very good entertainment. Eat, Pray, Love is just as good as everyone says. And The Complete Persepolis was beautiful and absolutely changed my preception of graphic novels; I can’t wait ’til the movie comes to me via Netflix sometime in June.

Does anyone have one of those Amazon Kindle digital book-reader things? I think I want one (I’m envisioning a sort-of ipod for books in terms ease of use and portability), but I also think I might miss the physicality of turning pages and holding paper. I suppose if I started carrying that everywhere I wouldn’t get to do much subway or in-line knitting… audiobooks (especially on my ipod - which is many years old but still running like a champ) would allow me to do both, but audiobooks are so expensive compared to hard copies!

I can knit again! The orthopedist gave me permission to take the splint off while at home and said that exercising the hand would be good (she suggested typing, but I’m sure knitting is good too). So I have a new project: “Penny” from the Debbie Bliss Summer Essentials book. Over at Ravelry I am the only person who is knitting or has knit it - and, annoyingly, the pattern is now available for free (and apparently called “wrap cardigan with ribbon”) though I bought the book last summer shortly after it came out. I am flying right through the sweater, too - I swatched Saturday and started knitting Monday night after procuring the proper needles; this is the progress after watching Brokeback Mountain that evening:

Then I was able to knit quite a bit Tuesday as I didn’t have work:

And I finished both the back and the left front yesterday, but they don’t line up perfectly - I think I forgot a set of increases on the front, so I’m going to have to rip it back out to the start of the raglan shaping:

This color is proving difficult to photograph; I don’t even have this much trouble with reds! The second photo seems the most accurate on my screen. The yarn is new to me and fantastic - it’s Vermont Organic Fiber Company O-Wool Classic 2-Ply in color 2012 and it is delicious! Hopefully I will finish before it gets too warm here in the city - it was about 70 degrees here today and so spring-y.

This is my sad left hand and wrist:

There won’t be any knitting for me anytime soon… well, at least until I figure out how to wedge a needle more securely between the fingers of my left hand (I give myself about three or four more days)! I got hit by a car (a van, really - one of those big cargo/commercial types) Tuesday afternoon. I was (amazingly for a New Yorker) in the middle of a crosswalk, crossing with the light, and not talking on my cell phone! The driver and I saw each other right before impact, so he was able to hit the brakes and I was able to put my hands between the rest of my body and the hood of the van. Right as he hit me I jumped down the street in the direction he was traveling so I managed to stay on my feet and not go flying onto my ass or head - I find it astonishing how quickly the body will respond to this sort of situation in order to save itself without any prompting from one’s brain! The only thing I remember thinking before impact was: “he’s going too fast - he’s really going to hit me - asshole!” (and my mother says I’ve been in New York too long…) After the adrenaline wore off, my hand started hurting a lot… which makes sense considering they think I’ve fractured two metacarpals!

Except for that whole getting-hit thing, I feel really really lucky. It could have been just so much worse; I’m quite happy to have walked myself out of the street to sit down on the sidewalk to collect myself and wait for the paramedics. And the driver stopped and called 911 and didn’t run! And it’s my left hand and not the one I write with! The little things for which I’m thankful just keep coming… Now, there are plenty of things about this experience that are frustrating and upsetting - and I’ve cried at the strangest times - but I am trying to remain positive, which is pretty easy when I consider what could have happened!

So I’m going to visit an orthopedist/hand surgeon Monday morning. The PA, xray tech, and radiologist from the ER visit and the doctors in my primary care office don’t seem to think I’ll need surgery or anything more than to wear a splint for the next month or so, but they want a hand specialist to go over the films and confirm the fractures and supervise my recovery. They gave me some big-dose painkillers, but I mostly just need them to sleep and only take them otherwise if my hand is swelling up.

While I did finish these socks in January as promised - I am an entire month late posting about them! I’ve been out of town for the last five weeks for work; first in San Diego at the La Jolla Playhouse and then in Connecticut at the Westport Country Playhouse. So a big thank you to February for the extra day this year; and why isn’t February 29th a holiday? Anyone?

pattern: my own

yarn: Regia Kaffe Fassett Landscape Storm from The Loopy Ewe

needles: 4x my favorite 2mm dpns

started: 3rd week of November 2007

finished: 17 January 2008

They are, happily, fraternal instead of identical twins; and I used every last bit of yarn in the two skeins:

Skeins Her Way has a brilliant contest going on right now… it’s the January Finish a UFO Contest 2008!

I haven’t worked on a sock since Thanksgiving weekend… which, for me, is shocking since I tend to always have a sock going for subway knitting or whatever. Thanksgiving weekend I finished the first of (what will be) a pair of ribbed knee-highs out of Kaffe Fassett Regia.

I had originally thought I wanted to make a pair of Rainbow Socks from the yarn, but I didn’t like the way the long stripes of color were (or weren’t, as the case may be) working with the pattern:

So I ripped it all out and decided to knit it up in vanilla-style 3×1 ribbing:

With a little bit of TV time in the hotel room I completed the first of the pair, but since then I have been completely engrossed in holiday knitting and gifts and time with my parents and brother and one other project (FO post to follow soon). According to the rules of the contest, I have until February 7 to complete its mate. I think I should be able to accomplish that without too much heartache, so…

I’m giving myself an extra-credit assignment - for the Yankee Swap that my friends do here in Brooklyn I promised to make a pair of hand-knit socks or fingerless mitts out of this lovely Lisa Souza:

Our friend James walked away with that gift (he seemed pleased but was a little confused as to why they weren’t already made… silly!) and I still haven’t even taken measurements so I can start! He’s decided on socks instead of mitts - so if I measure this week I should be able to whip out another pair of socks in the next four weeks.

You know what makes writer’s block worse? When you accidentally delete the post you’re working on after you’ve been writing for a while. Oh well! This is me remaining calm…

After being unbelievably busy with work since July and then with the holidays (and, therefore, not posting as frequently as one might like), there’s A LOT to show and tell. In order to not feel entirely overwhelmed and thus never begin, I am going to start 2008 with a simple finished object post and not do a recap of my last 5 months because that would be crazy and potentially (definitely) long and boring.

So without further ado, may I present the fingerless mitts I made for my best friend for Christmas; please excuse the cell phone photos as I forgot to bring my camera when we took her to the train station for her return trip to Portland.

pattern: none

yarn: Koigu in… um… greens? (top photo is accurate colors)

needles: Prym 6” 2mm dpns (which I previously thought were INOX)

started: December 5^th (maybe)

finished: December 24^th (just in the nick of time to be unwrapped the next morning)

notes: They’re pretty much a tube with a few increases before the thumb. What else? Single-round stripes and twisted ribbing…

Happy New Year everyone!