of hemming.

I've been trying to hem my recycled cardigan for a couple of days now. The sleeves look ok now. I had a couple of do-overs because of overly tight bind-offs, but they're ok. The hem hem, the bottom, is a real pain in my rear. I don't want it to be squiggly, but measuring doesn't seem to work, and I'm not particularly good at keeping my stitches in the same line of purl bumps . . . this afternoon I tried basting in a guideline thread, but I'm pretty sure that it hasn't stayed between the proper rows of purl bumps.

Ugh. If the guideline doesn't work, I'm just going to block it, in hopes that it'll even out the purl lines, and sew it up from there. Hopefully.

I really want to wear this sweater! It's very plain but very flattering. (And no, I still have no idea if I should put buttons or what on it. I'm so indecisive.)

where do they GO?

Y'all, my knitting needles are totally disappearing. My double-points, I mean. I don't know where they've all gone! Even the Great Knitting Needle Spill Of '09 can't account for all of it. I thought I'd be picking them out of the carpet forever, but then I got rid of the carpet, and yes, I checked for needles before I threw it out.

This needle problem can lead to comedy, like when, in dim lighting, I grabbed up five silver needles to do the sleeves on my recycled blue sweater. I know the silver ones are size 5's. No problem, right? WRONG! I'd finished the first sleeve before I realized that two of 'em were smaller. Probably size 3's. WTF? My 3's are aqua! I have no idea where the other two 5's have gone. Oh, and did I undo that sleeve and find several needles of the same size to re-do it? Nope, I just knit the other sleeve with the same mish-mash of needles. Ha ha! It looks fine, only I'm doing turned-up hems, and my cast-off is too tight for the hem to lie right, and I haven't been able to convince myself that a do-over won't really be that annoying. I do want to wear the sweater, so I guess I'll get around to it soon. (The sweater's pretty cute, I might add. Only I don't know what kind of fasteners I want to put on it. I have some silver buttons that might look nice, or I could do a belt, or I could just leave it open . . . argh, I can't decide.)

So. That is my current Knitting Problem. I am almost done with my potholders, which are quite nice, and I will take pictures if the sun ever comes out again.

what the playoffs are all about!

Q: Where does the general keep his armies?

A: in his sleevies!

That's my second-favorite Dad Joke. :) I bring it up today because I am finished with the body of my current Seat-Of-The-Pants Sweater, and have to start on the sleeves. I never like doing sleeves, because I'm not good at counting and am always afraid they'll come out crooked. (It's a top-down raglan, so no, I'm not going to be doing them both at once. I totally would, otherwise.)

Here's a picture, though it's really just a scraggly dark blob right now. And much more blue than it looks here:



It actually seems to fit very nicely. Covers my bosoms and everything. I'm kind of stoked. I mean, I won't know for sure until I block it, but I don't think it'll need an extra anything for any purpose other than decoration. Yay!

I really should get on those sleeves, though. If I knit like the wind, I can wear it to a concert on Friday. My mom is busy, so my dad gets to take me instead. It's apparently circus-themed. Maybe I should knit up some kind of Scary Clown Purse real quick?

quality knitting miniseries.

No, not a miniseries with knitting! A miniseries to knit to. I really dig knitting to tv and movies and whatnot. I've tried books on tape, but I don't concentrate on them very well. I do much better with something that's been filmed. And most of the time I don't need to look to knit, so as long as I pick something with a fair amount of dialogue that'll get me through the parts where I do have to look, all is well.

This week I've been 'watching' that most recent version of Bleak House that the BBC did. You know, the one with Gillian Anderson. It's actually pretty good--and it's really long, which is awesome for Knitting Purposes. I think I have one segment left to watch. Oh boy, I'm excited to see how things turn out! I do think, though, that the goofy Dickensian names might work better on a page than they do spoken. (Unless English people really do have cutesy-poo weird last names? There can't possibly be as many as Dickens throws in there.)

Anyway, off to watch the end! I'm about halfway through a potholder with a pretty sweet orange on it, in case anyone was wondering. I did the back for a lemon, but have decided that it needs a color I don't have for the background of the lemon side, and have not yet got to a store. I think cotton was on sale at Michaels' last week, too. Serves me right for being slow. :(

But honey, I thought you wanted a new vacuum!

When I was trying to think of something awesome yet cheapish that I could make my mother for Mothers' Day, I stumbled across a wee bin of leftover cotton yarn in the back of my closet. Since my mother's potholders have been looking a little singed lately, I am ruthlessly ignoring the little voice that says "but that's like buying someone a toaster for your anniversary!" and potholder-ing away. I figure if I make them really, really pretty, I might be able to avoid toaster or vacuum comparisons.

This will be the first one, front and back:



The tulip is from Debbie Abrahams' book 100 More Afghan Squares To Knit. Now, I'll admit it, I'm a snob, and usually I don't find anything I like in that sort of book, but dude, this one has all kinds of cute charts for fruit (there's a kiwi!) and a tulip and a wee cute fluffy chick . . . there are also some creepy clown-heads, but I flip past that part of the book pretty quickly. Oh, who am I kidding, I'm totally contemplating making some Creepy Clown Potholders just for the hell of it. Christmas Handmade Grab Bag Gift, anyone? Nightmare in a box? There's this one frowny clown which, if made into a potholder, is guaranteed to make anyone who's seen Poltergeist set it on fire on purpose. :)

I'm intending to make four potholders, but they're kind of like popcorn, and I may just end up knitting the damn things until I run out of cotton yarn. And then it's possible that I'll start on the wool or acrylic.

Now my only worry is that my mom will think they're too nice to use, because she won't want them to get all singed. And I will have to tell her that that's ok, if they get ruined, then I get to make more!

Spring? YAY!

I may be taking the concept of putting-away-the-winter-clothes a bit far this spring. Instead of folding all my sweaters up and putting them in drawers and bins, I'm unraveling some of them--the ones I didn't wear much this winter--and putting them in bins. And then I can make new sweaters out of them during the year! I think there might be a grey sweater with blue and green patterns on the yoke in my near future. Good times.

My seat-of-the-pants blue sweater is . . . well, I like the fabric very much. And the back and sleeves seem to fit well. However, there is not nearly enough fabric to make the two fronts close over my ginormous bosoms. (They're not really THAT ginormous. They're just, as I've mentioned, proportionally ginormous.) At first I was going to undo the whole thing, but then I was like, hmm, maybe I could put some kind of big wide collar/button band concept that would add three or four inches to the front? So I think I'm going to try that. There is a chance it will be a contrasting color, only then I will need to find more of a contrasting color than I was originally planning to. (I bet cream would be nice. Navy and cream are nice together.)

Oh, and I started a pair of Endpaper Mitts when I was on my road trip this week. I didn't knit much of them, because I was too lazy to print out the pattern, and fancy that, it was a huge pain in the rear to knit from my laptop when I was away. They're in Knit Picks Palette in grey and dark red (sorry, I never remember color names) and they look quite nice so far.