LoopyKnits

My Nautilus Hat is finished! It’s a bit too long, because I kept fretting that it would be too little, but I mis-estimated how much it stretches when off the needles. It’s *almost* too large in length and in circumference, but I’m not going to frog this darned thing after my angst in finishing it!

And doesn’t my model here look adorable anyway?

All thugged out. Friend’s daughter; my knitting. Coolness.

The angelic smile emerges.

Technorati Tags: Nautilus cap, Nautilus Hat, knitted cap, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm

Okay, now that I’ve hit my stride on the Nautilus Hat (I call it a cap, but the designer said “hat”) and it’s about 99% finished (all but the edge), it looks like a little green cupcake from the top. Here are some photos from earlier yesterday when I was only halfway finished.

I have discovered that the real secret to lace knitting (even simple patterns like this one) is to NOT EVER STOP. If I don’t put the darned project down, then I don’t forget where I was and goof up the sequence of stitches.

Of course, some of you probably just sensibly mark your place in the pattern. Hmmph.

Technorati Tags: Nautilus hat, Nautilus cap, little green cupcake hat, lace knitting, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm

Well, I attended my first meeting of the Memphis Stitch n Bitch group today and had fun watching them cut stamps (a fascinating hobby I didn’t even *know* about until today), string beads, bend wires, sort through relatives’ hand-me-down costume jewelry and explore their crafts while I wrangled further with (what else?) that elusive Nautilus Hat that keeps defeating me. By the time I figure out what I keep messing up, the first few feet of the yarn will be worn down to monofilament. But I digress.

We also enjoyed Ziggy, a glossy silver schnauzer who overcame his anxiety at strangers invading his home and eventually really got into having a whole roomful of people tossing his toys around for him. (At 3, he’s a bundle of gleeful energy compared to our sedate 9-year-old Sheltie.) And we snacked mightily on cookies, chips and dip, bagels and cream cheese, and diet Cokes.

I got the biggest kick out of the conversation, although I did feel a bit self-conscious like a married 44-year-old fart compared to the cute 20-somethings and 30-somethings in the group. ;o) It was cool, though, just to relax and chat with some new women friends about work and family and love lives and movies. There were some widely divergent opinions on who made the best Bond (I’m in the Sean Connery camp, although the understated Roger Moore had his defenders present … and I’ll be the first to say that ol’ Sean doesn’t need to be playing any more leading roles against any women younger than 50 … c’mon, Hollywood).

I’m looking forward to meeting again! There’s a big beading event here in Memphis in mid-July that they’re planning on attending en masse, so I’ll probably have to take my older daughter, who is SO into beading, and maybe I’ll be able to get a good deal on the Japanese glass beads I need for my stole (which I still have to order the yarn for … having to wait for yet another payday, darn it). And now I’ll see some familiar faces there too, which is always heart-warming.

Cool, ladies of the Memphis SnB — it was grand to meet you! — Carolyn

(Update: Due to my overflowing schedule, I eventually had to stop attending the Memphis SnB. *sniffle* Sometimes I despair of ever having enough time. But I can recommend them as a fun, pleasant group of skilled craftsmen, er, craftswomen. Yeah!)

Technorati Tags: Memphis Stitch n Bitch, Memphis SnB, Nautilus Hat, Nautilus cap, knitting groups, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm

I can’t quite figure out why the 1 x 1 ribbing on my Beehive Hat looks so crummy on the wrong side. (I knit the bottom ribbed edge for 20 rows rather than 10 so it could easily be folded up, so I’m talking about the outside part that won’t show when the brim is folded up.) The left side of each stitch is extra-poufy in the ribbing. I took some photos in hopes of demonstrating this and proving that I’m not, actually, crazy. At least not as far as this is concerned. It really *is* lopsided.

The problem doesn’t reveal itself much in this photo, does it?

You can see the Evil Lopsided Knitstitch in this close-up.

And now from another angle. Suddenly, I’m hungry for corn …

With the edge folded up, you can’t see the evil that lurks within.

I read someone else’s blog saying that some uneven knitting might be due to some twists in the yarn and that re-winding the skein might help. But I was knitting directly from the center pull of the store’s skein, not an overstretched ball. And this is garden-variety acrylic anyway. This isn’t mission-critical since the brim gets folded anyway, but I’d like to know in case I’m doing something wrong with my stitch tension, or maybe it’s a difference in the tension between my knit and purl stitches since this is 1 x 1 ribbing. Or maybe it’s normal and will lessen as the hat gets worn and washed.

Any ideas?

In other learning experiences, I now see that the circular needles aren’t a good fit for a project this small. I’m probably going to switch over to DPNs soon (and definitely when I start to decrease at the crown). Don’t know why this didn’t occur to me earlier …

Technorati Tags: beehive hat, uneven knitting, knitting glitch, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm

A few signs that the day will be “interesting” if you’re not more careful:

• When you look down to see that your deodorant is sitting beside you on the bed and you are reaching toward your armpit with your undereye coverup stick.
• When you wonder briefly what deodorant would do for bags under the eyes. (Probably way more than the coverup stick would do for the ol’ pits.)
• When you can smell what the dog did downstairs before you actually *get* downstairs. (Why does he always develop digestive ailments when his owner, my oldest girl, has gone to her daddy’s house for the weekend?)
• Why does my mom (who lives with us) always walk through his digestive ailments before I find and remove the evidence of said ailments?

The culprit. (This is a guilty look, wouldn’t you say?)

Technorati Tags: guilty dog, interesting day, morning mishaps, Banjo, Ginny, mom, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm

The good news in my current small project on the needles is that I’ve discovered (woo-hoo!) that it is indeed possible to knit cables while using circulars. It’s *exactly* like doing it on straight needles, which makes perfect sense now that I think about it. The only things I’ve had to change on the Beehive Hat pattern are:

• Eliminate the two stitches at the beginning and end of each row that are not part of the cable pattern (they were for the seam, I guess)
• Instead of working even-numbered rows in purl, I work every row in knit since I’m on circulars.

Just so I don’t screw things up since I’m making changes to the original pattern, I made a list of each row and what to do on it in an Excel spreadsheet and am highlighting my progress. I had to do something, since the instructions told me what to do on rows 1 and 5, then all even rows up to 8, then special instructions for rows 3 and 7. Then repeat. (Oh, no, there was just no getting there from here without a map. If I’m driving and the directions to a new place involve more than two turns, I have to make a list.)

My obsessive-compulsive drive to get organized is thwarted on a daily basis (usually by my own blunders), but I made a valiant effort with this pattern.

I’ve also figured out a way to keep my row counter with me on my circulars without creating a too-wide space between stitches. I made a marker out of a piece of scrap yarn in a darker color (just a piece of yarn tied in a circle) and tied the row counter onto the end of the yarn. Darn, aren’t I smart. (Bet a 100 of you have thought of that before. But it was a fresh idea to me!)

*pause*

I have stopped blogging momentarily to listen to my younger daughter play a song on her pink Barbie-brand guitar from Wal-Mart.

It was “Jingle Bells,” here in June. She played the same note for each word in the song, although she did change her voice to conform to the actual song. (This is just like the “I’m Focusing On My Life” song she wrote earlier this year, which she always ends by showing her choreography, complete with handclaps and leg movements.) Sometimes it’s hard to be a mom without laughing so hard you pee on yourself a little.

In blogging news, I’ve brought another person into the fold, in my own Borg-like fashion. (Michelle, you will be assimilated.) I suggested to a pregnant friend that she start a baby blog for her soon-to-be-here bouncing baby boy. We started out with basic blogging tools but before we finished, she had signed up for a domain name, gotten website hosting, joined Blogger.com and also downloaded the Picasa2 and Hello software. And I’ve passed along the links to dotPhoto.com for her photo hosting and pointed her to the FTP freeware I use, FreshFTP. Welcome to blogging and website fun, gal-pal! (Note to readers: That “Michelle” website link may not be active for a few days as she plays with templates and such. Or longer, if bouncing-baby-boy arrives sooner than expected.)

Technorati Tags: Beehive Hat, cable knitting on circulars, children’s music, Caitlyn, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm