You were perfectly fine . . .

beloved faces

OK, I have to confess right now that I just got back from seeing "The Notebook" and I'm feelin' a little sappy. I'll try really hard to keep it to myself.

This is the completed left front of the JS hoodie (with the added bonus of my daughter's beloved face). I did a gauge swatch before starting, and was dead on with both stitch and row gauges. However, my stitch gauge is now off. I'm getting 4 stitches per inch instead of 4.5. I'm sensing a disturbing trend here. This happened with my last project too. Grrrrr. When I first started knitting, I had to go down a needle size or more on every project because I was knitting too loosely. I thought I was done with that, but apparently not. Bummer. Does this mean I'm not a real knitter?

Nah. I spend far too much on yarn; I buy far more yarn than I could possibly knit up in a lifetime; I can't sit still for 5 minutes without thinking "I could be knitting!"; and I think about reverse shaping in the shower. Yeah, I'm a real knitter.

Just for fun, here's the other most beloved face in my life. This weekend we went to Monterey to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. My husband forgot to bring an extra T-shirt to sleep in, so he asked me if I'd brought an extra sleep shirt (hey, it's been 5 years!). I did. Guess which one it was?

See? Knitting IS sexy. :)

Thanks to Rachael for the great shirt!

what do jo sharp and chubby checker have in common?

The twist!

I've just finished the left front section of the Hooded Jacket from Jo Sharp's most recent book (Family, a.k.a. book 7). I'm knitting it in Jo Sharp Desert Garden Aran yarn, a cotton/microfiber blend with a WICKED twist to it. I suspect that the tight twist is used to combat splittiness, and it does so very well. The fabric is smooth and drapes nicely.

However (you knew that was coming, didn't you?), once you're working on it, the yarn between the work and the ball easily becomes over-twisted, catches on itself, and becomes a twisty mass of, well, a twisty mass.

I have found that when I'm knitting at home, or somewhere I have plenty of personal space, I can hold the ball in my lap and sort of work the twist outward from my knitting with sweeping arm movements, letting the ball rotate freely and counteract the super-twist tendency. But knitting on the commute train is really frustrating, as I have no room to pull out a length of yarn and redistribute the twist so I can keep going. People get kind of crabby when you smack them in the nose on the way to work, and don't seem at all mollified when I explain the necessity to them. Also, I can't have people bleeding on my lovely yarn. You know.

I'll post pictures tonight, so you can see what this hoodie looks like. I really like the pattern so far--it's straightforward and the shaping is interesting and well-designed. Have a great Tuesday!

new toys are lovely

This:

is a photo of the finished Haiti (though not yet blocked), taken with my new Canon S50 digital Power Shot. I love love love it! Instant gratification is a good thing, no matter what they say. Before I go back to playing with it some more, here's the scoop on Haiti (from my point of view, anyway . . . )

The Svale is splitty, no doubt. I think the reason my gauge got looser (and the tank got 2.5 inches wider) was that I was compensating for the splittiness. It worked too. I used a US4 (3.5mm) needle, as called for in the pattern (though not for the gauge swatch--that called for a US3 . . . which should probably have been a clue for me too). I'm going to knit a couple of other items in Svale, including another Haiti in jade (the color shown in the Dale book and in my entry last week about Haiti), and I'll use a US3 next time (3.0 or 3.25mm).

I was able to use the row of single crochet that forms the basis for the scalloped edging to rein in the bottoms of the armholes by putting an sc in every other stitch across the bottom third of each armhole (instead of an sc in each stitch). It's still a little swingy around the bottom, but I don't think she'll mind. :)

Bottom line, though, on the Svale is that I love the fabric it makes, and the splitting thing won't be enough to keep me from using it again. One more thing--knot your ends carefully, because I found the ends I wove came unwoven pretty quickly just in the time it took to do the edgings on neck and arms. So a good square knot will be necessary at each juncture to keep this thing together.

Last night I went for drinks with a work friend at Luna Park in the San Francisco Mission district--why is it that margaritas made in the City by City bartenders taste SO much better than suburban ones? I lived in the City for years, but eventually surrendered to suburban life mostly because I was tired of having nowhere to park (and of paying many parking tickets . . . ). But every once in a while, like last night, I get to visit that City feeling again--of walking to a fun place, getting together with friends, going out, being a little bit young, and having a few less responsibilities for just a little while.

It was lovely and just right. Thanks, Kim.

Confession

I abandoned the OndeAlong. I could tell that the tunic I'd started was only going to end in frustration and pain. So I'm saving that yarn for something lovely. Ideas are welcome. :)

I'm working through the edging of Haiti and hoping to finish tomorrow. I somehow got a bit off in my gauge, and the tank is about 2.5 inches wider than it should be. I'm hoping my sister won't mind.

progress report

I'm nearly finished with Haiti--and loving it! I have one more front strap to finish and then the crocheted edging. This tank is knit in the round to the armholes, so the only really awkward part is knitting the four strappy parts (2 front, 2 back) with the weight of the whole tank on my needle. Not a problem, just feels kind of awkward. I just finished the three-needle bind off on the right side, and will hunt up the appropriate size crochet hook before bed.

This tank is for my sister Erika who had a baby about 6 months ago, and already looks terrific! She's amazing. I hope she'll like it.

My mom liked her bee stitch scarf from the red Mtn Goat--it turned out very nicely. And K scored a baby doll blanket out of some weird but colorful Lion Brand "Landscapes" yarn in "pastel garden". This yarn is a very odd 50/50 blend of wool and acrylic, and claims to felt when machine washed and dried. It's very bulky and knit on #13 needles (9mm), so it went really fast. I'm not a big fan of felting, so I won't felt this, but thought that was interesting for a blend. K's baby doll seems to like it as is.

Guess what I bought at the bookstore over the weekend? Hint: I'm apparently running out of knitting books to buy. Another hint: I've clearly lost my mind.

Ready? Knits for Barbie Doll, by Nicky Epstein. I know, I'm a glutton for punishment. On the other hand, having sewed barbie clothes not that long ago, and having it take FOREVER, I can't imagine that knitting for barbie could be any worse.

Boy do I hope I'm right.

drink me

Have I been watching too much Alice in Wonderland lately? Well, yes.

It's time to go out for cocktails, I think. Here's mine--and if you'd like one of your own, type your name or nickname in the box below and give it a whirl.

How to make a Chandra Wallace

Ingredients: 5 parts friendliness 5 parts humour 3 parts leadership

Method: Stir together in a glass tumbler with a salted rim. Top it off with a sprinkle of lovability and enjoy!

Username:

Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com

Thanks to ann for passing this on!

This is what I'm working on now, in black Svale. Strangely, despite my fits over the splittiness of Giotto, I am loving knitting with Svale. I do have to watch for splitting, but I don't knit very quickly, so I think that is why it's less of a problem for me. And the fabric it makes is smooth and gorgeous.

I have my new Canon digital camera coming in about a week, so I'll post pictures then. It was getting really really tiresome to take pictures with the regular camera, get them developed, pick them up, and scan them in to post. Life is too short for that.

I love books. I always have. I love reading them, but I also love buying them and talking about them and organizing them and recommending them . . . even just holding one in my hands. Books are lovely.

Last night on my way home from work, I stopped in to Stacey's--a fantastic independent bookstore in San Francisco where I spend lots of time and even more money--and got a couple of knitting items for me (knitter's stash and the latest interweave knits) and some "big girl" books (the kind with chapters) for K (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mary Poppins, Judy Moody and Ella Enchanted).

I'm hoping that K will love reading too, and so we're getting started on the non-picture-laden books in hopes of encouraging the love. :)

I was catching up on Kerstin's wit this morning and came across a list of books posted by jstrizzy. How many have you read? Mine are in bold type. Do you see anything I haven't read that you'd recommend?

Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

One more thing--Haiti

This is what I'm working on now, in black Svale. Strangely, despite my fits over the splittiness of Giotto, I am loving knitting with Svale. I do have to watch for splitting, but I don't knit very quickly, so I think that is why it's less of a problem for me. And the fabric it makes is smooth and gorgeous.

I have my new Canon digital camera coming in about a week, so I'll post pictures then. It was getting really really tiresome to take pictures with the regular camera, get them developed, pick them up, and scan them in to post. Life is too short for that.

Mmmmmm books

I love books. I always have. I love reading them, but I also love buying them and talking about them and organizing them and recommending them . . . even just holding one in my hands. Books are lovely.

Last night on my way home from work, I stopped in to Stacey's--a fantastic independent bookstore in San Francisco where I spend lots of time and even more money--and got a couple of knitting items for me (knitter's stash and the latest interweave knits) and some "big girl" books (the kind with chapters) for K (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mary Poppins, Judy Moody and Ella Enchanted).

I'm hoping that K will love reading too, and so we're getting started on the non-picture-laden books in hopes of encouraging the love. :)

I was catching up on Kerstin's wit this morning and came across a list of books posted by jstrizzy. How many have you read? Mine are in bold type. Do you see anything I haven't read that you'd recommend?

Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son