LoopyKnits

Three babies in my office this fall. *Three!* Cutie-pies who I’ll want to cuddle and carry around whenever their mommies bring them for visits. We’ve had fun with the baby showers, oohed over the new arrival photos, and sent casseroles to welcome the new parents home. But I wanted to do something special for each of them, just from me, so I set my heart on making baby booties for each new arrival. I’m a little late since the third one has now arrived, but nevertheless, booties don’t take long to knit, right?

Right?

I guess not, if you only knit each of them once. I was using this pattern, which looked like a good basic bootie. You’ve gotta love a pattern titled, “Grandmother Owl’s Really Good Booties.” I knit a test swatch or two since I always have to adjust the needle size I use (loose knitter), then hit the trail. The first couple of times I made the bootie, I was struggling with seaming the sole. Once I tried a three-needle bind off, however, that problem was licked. Then I had to tinker with the gapping stitch where the instep met the side of the foot. Next, I wrestled with seaming from the sole to the ankle, with mixed results. (A little sloppy, but not too bad in this boucle yarn.) Finally, I finished.

And hated the result. It was too long. I mean comically long. Clown foot long. Not long as in “you made the bootie too big, Carolyn,” but long as in “What is wrong with your baby’s feet?”

So I tried again. The instep was supposed to be 26 rows, so I made it 20. Nope; rip-rip-rip again. Then 16. No noticeable difference. From the polite “Um …” I got each time I showed the bootie to each person in my house, I guessed it was another lengthy error.

Here’s a shot of one of the booties (the 20-row version):

Still pretty freakin’ clownish, no? I’m imagining what I’ll say to my co-worker. “Just as a token of my affection for you, here’s a gift for your daughter … Flipper.” Or, “Your family still goes water skiing, right?”

It probably is a good pattern, but certainly not for my knitting or for the acrylic yarn I used; perhaps wool would make the long-paw design look normal if properly blocked.

Perhaps.

[Update: This became another abandoned project -- darn these UFOs!]

Technorati Tags: baby booties, baby knitting, knitting UFOs, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm

Oh yeah! It’s postman-hugging time!

I do love getting me a package. I couldn’t wait to tear into this one because I just *knew* what it would contain, and I was right. This was my reward for making one of the two winning logos for Cast On, Cast Off: Jennifer’s Knitting Dojo.

Thanks, Jenifer! As you can see, I got your two skeins of Noro Kochoran (my first-ever) in yesterday’s mail. Scrumptious! I love the smudges of teal, purple and cocoa throughout the light and dark gray yarn, and the little wisps of angora among the silk and wool make the yarn super-cuddly. If I sound like I’m squealing, that is an accurate guess!

I’m following Jenifer’s advice on a simple knitting pattern she provided to show off the yarn. I took a ball of the Noro to Caitlyn’s soccer practice and her game today and knitted inbetween cheers for the Fusions to win (a loss, but they played well). And here are the results so far. I’ve not made such an airy scarf before, but I like how it feels. I had to use size 11 needles instead of the 13s Jenifer recommended because I knit loosely, and I kind of liked dragging out this pair of my grandmother’s needles to make this too. I can already tell this one is going to whip out quickly. I’d forgotten how satisfying it is to make something on uber-large needles.

Cheers, everyone!

Technorati Tags: Noro Kochoran, lace knitting, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm

I ran by my LYS today to pick up the baby alpaca yarn I’d ordered for my very first shawl. It came in a light greenish-gray instead of the charcoal we had anticipated (shipper error) so I opted for another color she had in shop. Two skeins of Misti Alpaca laceweight yarn in a plummy wine color, and I’m good to go. OH it is so soft! I may never knit with anything else again.

I also picked up two skeins of hot pink Regia sock yarn in a wool/polyamide blend for my 6 Sox-Along project (finally), since I can’t find my two skeins of red (lurking somewhere in this house).

And also got another ball of Idena’s Mega ladder yarn; since I modified the width of the simple stole I was knitting, it came out a bit shorter than I wanted. I’m going to try to finish *that* one to wear out tomorrow for a dinner date with hubby.

Photos and decadent yarn fondling later — the dinner bell just rang at my house. ;o)

- Carolyn B.

Technorati Tags: Idena Mega, Misti Alpaca,  Regia sock yarn, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm

Knitting? What knitting? All I’ve done since returning from my business trip to San Antonio is:

• Ignore my laundry pile. It’s growing faster than even my 7-year-old, too.
• Turn a blind eye toward housework (my house proves the chaos theory).
• Get the kids’ last-minute school supplies.
• Work. And work. And work. Lots of catching up since we were out of the office for most of a week.
• Sleep. Lots of early bedtimes for me recently. I can’t figure this out. Maybe it’s part of the periomenopause that has me testing the outer limits of my antiperspirant’s capabilities. (Works for the ol’ pits. But it’s my HEAD and NECK that are sweating the most — and you can’t exactly glide Secret over your hairdo, can you?)
• Repeat the previous steps.
• Oh, and frog my shawl. Twice.

The shawl was just too darned narrow or too long. Or both. It ended up looking like a scarf, even when I stretched it out (it’s very netty and stretchy). So I frogged it and tried again, this time casting on 80 instead of 40. Big mistake. Emphasis on BIG. It would have probably hit the back of my knees if I had finished it like that. (The extra weight of the yarn made it stretch even more when I examined several rows of progress.) So … back to the frog pond. Now I’m knitting around 57 stitches (intended 60, but what the hey). This — like the baby bear’s porridge — seems to be just right. So I’m thinking of calling this my Baby Bear Shawl, to the mystification of all.

I’m *dying* to get started on my 6-Sox-Knitalong project, too. But I’m discouraged because I will have to upsize the pattern to fit my fat, er, I mean, CURVY calves. I’m planning on doing the fancy calculating while I’m on vacation next week. (A week of housework, weeding, and knitting. Ah, knitting. Some bright spots in my fall cleaning project, at least!) And while I’m at it, I will try to find the darned two skeins of red sock yarn I bought last year and promptly misplaced. Hmmph. I think my house needs a good spraying for gremlins.

Technorati Tags: shawl knitting, sock knitting, procrastination, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm

First, a little non-knitting contents in honor of our mini-vacation this past weekend:

There’s no place like HOME! It was fun to visit San Antonio, but it was so good to get back to my kids, my pooch, and my peeps in general. (The hubby came up for the weekend or he’d have made the peeps list too.) It’s nice to be around people without having to tip them every few seconds. (Teenagers excepted.) Our tour included the Alamo, the Natural Bridge Caverns, the local mercado (market), Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and a visit to a highly rated local Tex-Mex restaurant (wherein I tasted my first dish of baby goat — yum).

And finally we get to the knitting contents of this posting: We of course made a stop at the Yarn Barn. Wow! What a selection! I was in awe just of their knitting needle selection alone, not to mention an entire aisle just of SOCK yarns. I went in and out of this largish shop in a blur due to our other plans for the day (”blur” meaning about 45 minutes when I wanted to stay there for 2-3 hours), but I fully intend to go back for an entire afternoon the next time I’m traveling nearby. The staff was nice and knowledgeable, with one staffer immediately noticing my dropped jaw and asking me if I needed help (I’m sure she was offering retail assistance, not mental health help … pretty sure, anyway). She then walked me toward the back of the shop to see the lovely selection of wool and cotton sock yarns.

You could probably get better prices online, but they seemed comparable to my local shops and it was nice for me, as a relatively novice knitter, to be able to squeeze and stroke the various yarns. I kept putting some skeins up to my face and sighing while my husband just sighed and found a comfortable place to stand with my purse. There were a good 10-12 patrons in there, happily doing needlepoint, crochet, and knitting as other shoppers puttered around. I think I and another gal had the only husbands in tow, though. And only mine was actually in the store. ;o)

As much as I love visiting the local yarn stores back home (I recently dropped the bucks for three projects at two of ‘em), I do so love being “unfaithful” to ‘em on those rare occasions when I’m out of town, too. It’s just nice to see what other knitters have available to them.

You see two future pairs of socks before you, of course. This is Cherry Tree Hill’s fingering-weight merino in Supersock Solids Purple and Supersock Champlain Sunset (such pretty colors they almost sparkle).

I didn’t make it to the nearby alpaca farm as I had hoped, but I managed to wear Texas-size blisters on my little toes by the end of the day, just the same. Those pinky toes were curled up little balls of screaming meat — and I was still happy, just the same. Caverns! Yarn! Historical site! Exciting new foods! Weird stuff at Ripley’s! Coolness! I’m struggling with my two-color stranding for my newest sock project, however. It kept me occupied during my downtime between events at my work division’s annual meeting. Busy knitting and then frogging, that is. I have no trouble at all holding one color yarn in the left hand and one in the right and knitting away. It feels very nifty and I think I’d like to knit an entire sweater like this. It’s definitely addictive. The problem is figuring out what to do about the color jogs. Either I’m not following the directions well or I need to find better references online. The only free advice I could find online about color jogs was in the Swirt pattern online at MagKnits; it’s Tip #1 on that page. But when I follow their brief directions, the main color intrudes on the row of secondary colors. I feel certain I’m missing something …

There’s also a “dealing with jogs” tip on this KeyWay.net page but it doesn’t seem helpful either, for my socks. (If anyone has some good online tutorials — especially with vidclips — I’d appreciate a comment with the info. Thanks! I’ve spent a bit much on my stash lately and am trying to avoid purchasing a book especially about Fair Isle knitting — at least for now.)

In the meantime, I’m anxiously awaiting tomorrow’s revelation about the new sock pattern for the August project of the Six Sox Knitalong that I recently joined. All we know so far is that it’s supposed to look best in a solid color, not even anything tweedy, and we need 100 grams of sockweight yarn. I’m reserving the new purple merino for this project and will begin looking for another cute sock pattern to try the spiffy colors of the Champlain on. (I saw a sock pattern that looked almost modular recently with little “scales” of different color streaks … I’m probably not describing this well … and have been desperately looking for that link ever since, darn it.)

Okay, that’s probably enough about my weekend! — Carolyn B.

[tags]San Antonio, Texas knitting, sock knitting, Yarn Barn, Cherry Tree Hill yarn, travel knitting, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm/tags]

I think I was a bit more of a fuddy duddy this year than in previous years because I stuck to the hotel room for peace and quiet when we weren’t in meetings during this year’s annual conference for my corporation’s division (about 480 people) in San Antonio. I don’t find drinking to be that entertaining. Not being a prude about it; I’ve certainly sucked down a few brews, fine tequila, cheap wine, and expensive Remy Martin in my day. But it’s not as entertaining as it used to be, and drinking makes me feel bloaty and draggy the next day, so I usually limit it to just one glassful. This time I just wanted to sleep, knit, watch TV and get online after being pinned down in all-day meetings.

Which isn’t to say the meetings were bad — we had a former Olympic skiier and a workplace diversity/bias reduction speaker who had some useful insights and who were each vibrant and funny in their own way. And the head honchos did drag us out a bit to have dinner at Rio Rio Cantina (the mild salsa was flaming hot but good, and the frozen margaritas were EXCELLENT). And of course there was the night when we all got to play cowboys and cowgirls.

My friend and co-worker, Deb (on left) and I
hold down the benches and hold up a couple
of the souvenir cowboy hats.

We went to the Knibbe Ranch for an evening of line dancing, pool playing, grub-eating fun. I have two left feet when it comes to following dance instructions, so I just watched and took photos of more nimble-footed friends. Some folks had their picture taken astride what must be the world’s most placid longhorn bull, a mild creature named Oreo. (With a name like that, he’s got to be an easygoing critter.) I didn’t want my thighs to smell like, uh, bull the rest of the night — not that any thigh-sniffing was planned (darn it), but still. So I passed on that too. But I couldn’t resist a shot of Oreo’s reaction to all the dancing and commotion.

Meet Oreo. That’s one calm bull.

I also took my knitting to the ranch in anticipation of having little to do besides vie for position at the pool tables (too crowded) or stomp on everyone’s toes, including my own, out on the dance floor. And once there, I found a fabulous use for the cowboy hats we each received as souvenirs.

Valiantly trying to knit amidst the clamor …

We were only there a few hours, some of which was eaten up by VP speeches, so I didn’t get a lot of knitting done, just a few inches on my socks. I’m making the Relax and Breathe socks from the Betsy Lee McCarthy book, “Knit Socks!” — which I picked because I wanted an excuse to learn Fair Isle knitting. I’m doing them in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino. Mmm, soft goodness. The colors are peach (main color), a mossy pale green, beige, and butter yellow.

I took the third bus back to the hotel for a quiet night in the room. (Sometimes it’s just too hard to resist taking advantage of those rare times alone — at least they’re rare for me!) I realized I was making a tangled mess of the Fair Isle portion of my socks anyway and stopped until I could get back to my room and check out the KnittingHelp.com site, which showed me a simple technique for holding a yarn color in each hand. It was easy and looked so cool doing that!

Now I’ve got to look up something on preventing “color jog” and I’ll be all set. I did go ahead and rip out the work done because I wasn’t happy with the look of the top cuff. It looked a bit large and floppy.

(It looks better in the photo than in real life, actually.) I’m going to try a second time with the alternate version of the pattern, which uses a garter-stitch rolltop. So I frogged, studied my yarn a bit more, and decided that I was happy being a fuddy duddy for the night. After all, my room really did have a great view — at least from my vantage point.

A room with a view

P.S. I’ll have more postings next week; my husband’s flying over for the weekend and we’re going to an aviation museum, some underground caverns, at least one yarn shop and (maybe) an alpaca farm. But no more blogging until Sunday or Monday night! ;o)

Technorati Tags: San Antonio, Rio Rio Cantina, Knibbe Ranch, travel knitting, sock knitting, Fair Isle knitting, color jog, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm