almost there . . .

Ok. I have been doing some serious thinking about the Epic Poetry Scarf, and I've gotten some very good suggestions from some very clever people.

However, I think I'm probably going to end up going with one of my dark horses. From Richard III:


Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our House
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

At first I was like, no, that's kind of cheesy, but the more I think about it, the more it makes me giggle, somehow, to have that on a nice winter scarf. Ha! There's a double meaning in that.

So now I have to chart it out, and then decide which words I want to do in purple.

Yay! I feel good about this.

slow going.

Ok, wow, it's much harder than I thought it would be to choose text for the Epic Poetry Scarf. I may have to can the idea of it being poetry and just go for a basic nice quotation, but . . . poetry somehow goes really well with the concept of a scarf knit out of really soft yarn on size 2 needles, you know? There's something . . . I don't know, lofty and unattainable and really beautiful in the concept of both.

Argh, but since no one seems to be able to find out what my brother's favorite poems are, I'm SO STUCK. I want to start knitting this thing no later than October, too. Scarves are LONG, y'all. Anyway, right now I'm looking at some Shakespeare. I could do this, from Hamlet:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Which is a nice sentiment, beautiful language, the right length--and also somehow overdone and obvious. There's a longer quote from Hamlet that I really like, this one:

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and gracious is that time.

But that's too long, for the size of letter I want to use, etc. I could put it on both sides of the scarf, but I was looking forward to having some semi-plainness on the back side as a rest for my knitting self. I could just do the last four lines, say, but I like the part about the bird of dawning.

I guess my other option would be to find some grey yarn that contrasts better with the olive green, and then I could use smaller letters. Hmm. However, that scares me because I'd rather not do this kind of colorwork with different yarns. Oh, Ultra Alpaca Fine, why must you be so alluringly soft and yet come in so few colors?

Anyway, that's where the scarf stands. If anyone has a brilliant suggestion, feel free to let me know.

Damn, I wish my brother understood German. Part of Schiller's An die Freude would be perfect.

(Oh, and the Seat of the Pants Opera Stole turned out just right. I would have frozen solid without it. I don't think I'm going to take it apart: I think it will be awesome to have a sort of everyday awesome wrap that I can wear and not feel too fancy.)

I think we're gonna need a bigger boat.

If I keep on with this lace knitting concept (which it looks like I probably will,) I'm starting to think I need a couple of things:

1. Blocking wires. Dear Lord, so many pins. Such crinkly edges. Given my general lack of precision, I think blocking wires are probably a good idea.

2. A bigger bed. I'm not kidding. I have your basic twin, and I just did the Fastest Pinning-Out Ever of the Seat-Of-The-Pants Opera Shawl, and I totally ran out of room. I need about six more inches of length. I'm going to have to let this part dry, and then block out the last crumpled-up edge on its own later. Thank God laceweight dries quickly.

I feel that maybe if I had blocking wires, it wouldn't be such a pain in the rear to shift the whole thing, but as it is now, no WAY do I have time to unpin everything and re-pin it. Especially since I have an audition at two.

Ok. I need to put some makeup on my face. Pictures to come (of the shawl, not my face) later, as always.

Embroideries!

Not the greatest photos ever (macro and I are still in the process of becoming friends) but you get the idea.





I just really, really like string.

random update on random things.

Ok! Opera tomorrow, y'all!

My wrap is nearly finished. I should be knitting on it right now, but clearly I am not. I am lacking in Quality TV to watch whilst I knit it. Dear Hulu, why must we wait until the 29th for the new episode of House?

In other news, I cleaned yesterday. There was much throwing out and digging through boxes, and uh-oh. I discovered some nearly-finished embroidery projects, y'all. And they're really nice. Like, I was seriously impressed with my bad self. So now I know I'm going to have to finish those and frame them or something. (I'll take pictures for you at some point! No fear!)

On the Epic Poetry Scarf front, I've looked through some Shakespeare and have a few candidates. My mom managed to winkle out of my brother the info that Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream are two of his favorites. I'm thinking that most of Hamlet would be a bit depressing to wear all winter (can you imagine February with "To be or not to be" wrapped around your neck? Dismal.) but I may be able to find something in Midsummer.

Oh hey, the sun's out! I think I'll take some pictures.

Oh, me.

In typical me fashion, I've decided that I need a black shawl when I go to the opera this coming Saturday. It's not like going to the opera is all that big a deal normally, I do go a lot, but this is the season opener, and the folks with money will be going to a ball afterwords, and so my mom and I have decided to Glam Up, just for the hell of it.

And I figure I'll get a little cold in my awesome racerback zebra-print dress, so therefore I need a wrap. I don't know what the hell good a wrap done in laceweight on size 7 needles will really do against the cold, but I'm sure it'll look nice.

The best part of this is that I'm really just throwing the poor thing together, and will probably unravel it after the opera and make it into something nicer. I am also making an actual planned, nice, going to be awesome black shawl, but it's on much smaller needles and will not be dramatic and large by Saturday.

This other one I've just started, I figure if I knit approximately 8 inches of it a day, I'll have a good size, and I can block it on Saturday morning, because lace dries so quickly. Don't worry, 8 inches a day goes really, really fast on 7's, even in laceweight.

sigh.

You'd think that if you bought two balls of the same stripey sock yarn at the same time, from a store that doesn't carry tons of stock, and so probably only ordered a few balls of the stuff to begin with, you'd think they'd be the same, right? Wrong.

Now, this would not normally be a problem, because it's not really like I care if things match, but I'm making a pair of Della Mitts , and I was all "Oh, I can use this orangey-brown-y stripey mix that I bought approximately three years ago to make socks out of, and then I made gloves instead, so I have a whole bunch left over." Only I made the first mitt out of the remainder of the first ball, and now that I've started the second mitt from the second ball . . . not so much. The second ball is lacking a whole solid dark orange repeat, and the whole effect is much more brown.

Sigh. This would also not normally be a problem, except that I already have a pair of gloves out of this yarn, so I was going to use these as a gift. I imagine that most people I know care about matching more than I do.

So really, what this means is that I'm going to have to knit a THIRD mitt as a mate to the second one, and I don't know, unravel the first one, or find some brown yarn and make a fourth one and wear the first and fourth ones myself, and say screw you, people who like to match.

Anyway, photo of the beginning of the first mitt:



They're very cute, and very quick to make, and they fit really well once I went down a needle size. (They fit ME, that is. I have miniature wrists, so normal-sized people will want to knit them according to the pattern.)

Fugitive Sweater!

It's finished! All seamed up and whatnot. I'm quite pleased with it. Ok, I could have made it a size smaller, but it's really comfy, and I think it will respond well to maching washing and drying. Here it is yesterday:



And a detail of the left sleeve:



I am currently a little freaked out because I don't have anything big that I'm actually knitting on. I guess I could knit the other half of the Wreck of the Old 97, huh? Or decide on a damn poem. I'm still kind of leaning towards the Crispin's Day speech. Anyone got another idea of a speech or poem or something a man might like to have on a scarf?

ooof.

You know, I haven't made a sweater in pieces in a good year, and oof, this sewing-up, it is exhausting. Set-in sleeves are kind of a pain in the rear.

And I still have three seams to go.

Sigh. What a buzzkill. :)

Oooh! Oooh!

The Glam Fugitive Sweater is half sewn together (it's taking forever, ow, my back) but I think, I really do think, that it might have come out exactly right. Ok, maybe the arm-hole is a little big, but I might be able to futz with that. The effect looks right, though.

Could I possibly be two for two with recent sweaters?

We'll find out tomorrow morning when I sew the rest of it together.

I'm kind of excited about this one!

manly colors?

Remember that trip to the yarn shop of a couple of days ago? Well. The store is lovely, with a big selection and good light and generally just all kinds of good stuff. If I had just been browsing, I don't know what might have happened. I might have had to sell a kidney or something.

Anyway, I looked at teal yarn, and was very very close to buying some Brown Sheep Naturespun, but then the Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine caught my eye, and dude, I just love the way that stuff feels. So I bought some.



I'm still not entirely certain if the grey (which is going to be the letters of the Epic Poetry Scarf) will provide enough contrast with the green, but then again, subtle is ok, right? The purple-ish color (and they're pretty accurate) is for Important Words.





The next things I have to do are A) pick a poem, and B) decide how the heck to knit this. I've got that last mostly figured out. There's been some swatching. It's going to be a tube. But mostly I don't think dpns are the way to go here. I may have to do two circulars, which will mean purchasing two circulars. So now I have to decide what lengths I should get, etc.

However, all that is moot until I A) figure out what my brother's favorite poem is, or B) just pick one that I think anyone would like. Maybe I'll just do Shakespeare's Crispin's Day speech. That would be kind of awesome to wear.

fugitive sweater update!

Not really an update, per se. Just me realizing--fortunately only an inch or so into the first sleeve--that I really should knit both sleeves at once, and therefore make sure they're the same length.

I'm sure it would be very awesome and fugitive-y to have one sleeve longer than the other, but that would make me positively nuts. I do kind of want to put some kind of detail into one of the sleeves, but I'm not sure what. A random dropped stitch? A random cable of some sort? Just something small, you know.

If I knit the sleeves separately, I'll have time to think on this . . . but same-length is probably more important, right?

Right?

a good deed!

Last week or so I was twiddling about the interwebz, reading some knitting blogs, etc, and I came upon one that sounded interesting, the Knitting On Top Of The World Knit-A-Thon. I love it when people embark on mad, 'impossible' sorts of quests. Stuff even bigger than my Epic Poetry Scarf!

Anyway, when I read this post, I knew it had to be fate that took me there. Did you scroll down and look at that horse? That horse knit from a pattern that's in the book I learned to knit from? Yeah, I know that horse. Mine's blue. So I identified the book in the comments, and today (saving my truly crappy day, by the way) I had a thank-you package in the mail from Mary, containing some lovely grey Knit Picks Gloss Lace. Omg, so awesome.

Now I just have to figure out what to knit from it. (But I have to go to rehearsal first.) Thanks, Mary!

quick update:

Right. I've got the front and the back of the recycled fugitive sweater done! It's amazing how fast stockinette goes on size 11 needles. Especially when you've got a lot of train-riding and memorizing to do. (Only I really do need to check and make sure that the armholes are the same size. I counted, but we all know my counting skills are shaky.)

Here, this will give you the general idea. Not of my counting ability, of the fugitive sweater:



And today I might be heading to a 'new' yarn store (new to me) in search of yarn for the Epic Poetry Scarf. Have I mentioned that yet? I'm sure I have. Anyway, off to look for Manly Teal Yarn. Anyone know a good manly contrast color for teal?