Buttons

While home for Thanksgiving I spied my grandmother's button box and asked if I could go through it and pick out some for myself. She said I could and I stayed up until 1AM sorting buttons by color and materials (plastic, shell, metal).

My mom was proud to share her button stash as well and pulled out a rusty tin full of buttons the next day and sorted them with me.

So now I'm sinking further into knitting nerd-dom with a button stash. I photographed some of the more interesting ones last night.



These two were my favorite buttons. They are metal with a shell insert. Unfortunately the metal is pretty rusty, but I think I can get the majority of it off and then seal it and it should be fine.



More Buttons



These were my second favorite...so unique










A landscape of buttons is a beautiful thing













I'm ready for future cardigans and shrugs now.

Thou art mine enemy.

Knit Picks, generous as thou may be, thou has diverted my knitting plans. How couldst thou split mine order and send half now instead of delaying the shipment, in its whole, for sake of those back ordered items? Why dost thou taunt me so? How canst I receive bulky weight alpaca/silk blends and NOT begin knitting them? Speakest thou...HOW?

It was an accident

I didn't mean to go to WalMart and buy more yarn while thinking of all the babies being born...And that shopping list is shabby evidence, I mean, I certainly didn't get the bulb for my headlight that was at the top of the list, so who's to say the list had any resemblence of my premeditations at all?

So this little guy who started springing to life from my crochet hook and knitting needles will have to just live with the fact that he was an accident and know that I love him just as much as if I had planned him.
(Please ignore the oddness of his eyes, they are mearly templates of what I want to make for him. He'll be getting cute, brightly colored arms and ears soon too!)




Oh and those sketches...I'm sure those came later too.

Knit Picks...friend or foe

They offer amazing prices, allowing me to buy almost twice as much as I might otherwise...and I'm not sure that's a good thing. I think that cost is one of the things that keeps me from knitting 24-7 and delving too deep into obsession.

Thankfully I ordered some things that were out of stock, so I can have a couple of weeks to anticipate them coming in and keep my pace a bit more restrained.
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My co-worker mentioned today that my productivity had increased, and she couldn't believe how much I was getting done...procrastination= mother of all motivators for doing things that were much further down the list than the object of procrastination.--> Term paper= very clean bathroom, and clean dishes, Cleaning out the garage= finally organizing your books by subject and author, Novel to write= 2 completed knitting projects, 3 more started, cleaned out files, windexed windows and vacuumed floors at work.
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Oh, so new projects that I'm looking at include:
Cropped Bolero Vest--although I'm still not sure how this could require 468 yards of BULKY weight wool...maybe they're hiding more in the back--maybe the back is entirely ribbed or something. Weird.


Next thought? Something fuzzy. I'm thinking of a bolero like the one sweaterbabe has up and that Linda just made (see her's in her blog-on my list), or the Grecian Plait sweater from Knitty, or the Spiderweb Capelet from SnB, or maybe just lacy, fuzzy scarves. Good times.

Back to novel writing.

My novel suffers, my knitting soars

Procrastinating and knitting go very well together.

I finished my altered Tivoli/Picovoli Tee. More projects have been begun.



Okay, so my notes on the project...

*first off I should note that the gauge on this yarn was different than on the first so duplication with other yarns may differ.

Yarn: Lion Brand Microspun in Lavender
Pattern: Altered Tivoli Tee from MagKnits (Link on left)
Needles: US4 until the last 3inches of waist increases and then US5


I made a few changes based on how the first Tivoli/Pico attempt fit me...I cast on the same number of stitches but allotted more to the shoulder and fewer to the front and back. I didn't join and knit back and forth until the keyhole was the depth I wanted and did a garter rib for 4 rows along the edge (if I were to do it again I would have included increases in this, as it is slightly bigger than the stockinette that follows.)

The thinking on the alteration of the number of stitches for the neckline was that the last one felt too wide across the front and back and draped a bit, and I figured I would end up with the right number of stiches but a narrower width after the increases if I swapped the strap length for the panel width. I ended up doing a few more rounds of increases (until I had almost as many stitches to the front panel as in the original pattern) and it worked out alright, but I did end up with slightly wider arm hole openings (I tacked the sleeves down a bit when binding off though so it didn't change much).

When I got to the straight stitch portion after the waist decreases I did two repeats of a fir cone pattern (basically a round of YO,K1,YO,K3,SL1,K2Tog,PSSO,K3 then a round of K and then the same combo with the pattern shifted over 1/2 way ) and then quit switching between the two stich patterns to create vertical columns (which hide the increases I did better than the fir cones would have). I increased the needle size by one towards the end as well. I did garter rib for 4 rows around the bottom to match the top.

With the extra increase rounds at the top the cap sleeves were wider than on the original and came further over my shoulder. To make them fit better as a cap sleeve I left them live until I finished and then I knit across, picking up 3 stitches of the bottom of the armhole on each side and then reversed and bound off about 12 stitches of the base and then did * K2tog, K1* bind offs until I was about 12 stiches from the other end binding those off regularly.

I'm very happy with how it turned out, and only wish I had made it in a better yarn (this was just supposed to be a test run and I had the Microspun in my "this didn't work like I wanted it to" stash)

Experiments

I'm loving the Reader's Digest Knitting and Crocheting Patterns Book I got and have been trying out samples of a few of the patterns. I've added a band of Fir Cones to the straight middle section of my second Tivoli/Picovoli Tee and am trying to decide what I'm going to do when I get to the point that I need to do increases. It wouldn't be an easy pattern to add into, so I'm thinking of adding gussets, or of just continuing the pattern in sections (like across the front & back and adding in at the sides)...We'll see.

Today I'm going to try to keep my knitting in the car so that I can actually get some work done on my novel. Wish me luck.

Knitting, Writing, and Reading

So last night, while procrastinating from my novel writing I picked up my size 13s and some novelty yarns and started a knittin'. I finished off the novelty yarn I was using about 1/2 way through a scarf, so I'll have to go shopping if I want to finish it.

I haven't been working on my second Tivoli/Picovoli Tee for a while, but I have update pictures I can post later, as it's more than 1/2 way done now and looking to be a good learning experience for me. (Making up how to make cap sleeves should be interesting.)



And today...arriving at work I found the book I ordered on Amazon a week or so ago and spent several hours pouring over the patterns. It's the "The Ultimate Sourcebook of Knitting and Chrochet Stitches" by the Publishers of Reader's Digest. Lots of great patterns and techniques. I'm thinking of using the Fir Cone pattern or the Flickering Flame to make a Shawl/Scarf/Wrap thing for my mom out of a nice laceweight alpaca yarn I got from Knit Picks! I'm just going to compare the patterns to the Birch/Kiri pattern everyone has been working on to figure out the gauge I want to do it at.

But knitting really IS supposed to be put on the back burner while I novel this month! (I have a feeling it will be my best source of procrastination from novelling though)

Oh, so if you want to check out my novel go to The Life and Imminent Death of Simon Frank