Sunday, February 26, 2006

Extra, extra! Actual knitting progress made!



Yikes! I've got to clean that mirror!

Here's where I am with Tubey. It's getting to be very cumbersome as bus knitting, so it is hereby retired to home knitting. Unfortunately, that means that my progress will be slower since I get less time to knit at home than I do on the bus and during my lunch hour. Anyway, I am fairly pleased with the way it's fitting so far, so maybe that will get my ass in gear to finish it.

It's been a busy weekend here at the old homestead. In addition to nursing another cold, we did some work on our TV room, including cleaning down the walls and baseboards, painting, shampooing the carpets and installing a new ceiling fan. Now I just need to get it together and find some furniture to go in that room. It's not quite large enough for a full-size sofa, and loveseats are too small, so I don't really know what we will be doing with it yet. I have two comfy chairs that need to be reupholstered also - anyone know a reasonably-priced upholsterer in the eastern suburbs (Lawrenceville, Etna, Blawnox, etc.)?

But all work and no play make Jen a dull girl, so we decided to treat ourselves to breakfast on Saturday morning and then do a little grocery shopping at our favorite highly-priced food store. While we were in the general area, we stopped at another favorite store for a treat:

Noro again, I can't help myself

Man, I love that store. Now, I know that I've publicly sworn off all needles that are not Addis before, especially when it comes to bamboo double points, but I can explain (they didn't have any metal dpns). I've been thinking about my post-Tubey knitting, and I came to the conclusion that I would really, really like to start and complete a pair of socks. The same day that I was thinking this, I came across this link on Becky's blog. Maybe this is just what a really, really remedial sock knitter needs? Tune in to find out!

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Via the Post-Gazette:

If there are any Lily Chin fans out there, she will be at the Pgh Knitting Festival this weekend.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Shrug ahoy!

The completed shrug part of Tubey:

excuse my ends

I've had the shrug part done for about a week now, but have been too lazy to blog about it. I picked up the stitches at last week's stitch and bitch and have about an inch or two of body done now. I was looking forward to knitting this weekend, but instead we disassembled and cleaned our 90 gallon fish tank and delivered it to its new owner. Boy, am I glad to see that thing go. We inherited it with the house (though Mark already had a smaller tank) and I have always disliked it. We're back down to the smaller tank, and I will soon be renovating our television room, where the fish tank used to be. It also includes a hideous rainbow-colored fan. We also had some friends over for a 15 degree BBQ on Saturday night. It. Was. So. Cold. Much fun was had anyway. So, One Weekend - BBQ - fish tank cleaning - time to visit with the in-laws = no knitting at all. I'm on it, though, these temperatures in the teens definitely call for a Tubey!

Last weekend's SnB was lots of fun. Hi to Rita, May and SJ, who is making gorgeous and speedy progress on Blanche-Neige, her olympic knitting.

More Tubey progress coming up!

Monday, February 13, 2006

Stitchin' reminder...

If any of you Pittsburgh knitters can drag yourselves away from the Olympics on Wednesday night (02/15/06), the monthly knitting session at the Barnes and Noble in the Waterworks will be happening. This used to be hosted through meetup.com, though they now require an organizer to pay a fee to list events there, so the group is defunct through that site. It will live on, though we can't dare refer to it as a "stitch and bitch". See here for why not. Ridiculous, no? So anyway, Bitch & Stitch, Wednesday night, B&N Cafe, Waterworks Mall, 7-ish. Be there or be square.

This weekend was another home improvement one, so no knitting on Tubey over the weekend. I'd say I have about four inches of sleeve to finish before I start on the body (woohoo!).

Go olympic knitters, go!

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Danger!

Oh, why can't I leave well enough alone? Yesterday, after checking out this post on the Tubey knitalong site, I thought, "what a great solution to my sleeve curling issue!" So, I proceeded to unbind my bound-off stitches when I got home from work. Now, it's been a stressful time at work lately and by the time I get home, I am really tired, my eyes hurt, and I'm not really able to concentrate well. I don't know what I was thinking. As I was unravelling, a little voice inside my head was screaming "danger- stop now!" Sure enough, before I knew what had happened, I had all live stitches, some of them starting to ladder, and visions of my sleeve laid to waste. It took me two hours, but I finally sorted out all of the stitches and re-knit them in seed stitch:

welcome to my nervous breakdown!

It looks pretty wonky, but I am hoping that will all sort out after I block it. I'll tell you that I almost cried when I finished, I was so relieved that I didn't have to re-knit the entire sleeve. I'm not sure it will look great with the ribbing, since the seed stitch will only be on the arms, but I'll deal. Hey, at least it's not curling.

Thanks for all of your comments to the last post. Jenn and SJ- thank you! I am so relieved to hear that I am not crazy. Well, as it pertains to the crochet cast-on, anyway. Jane, thank you for your comment- I need all of the encouragement that I can get to finish this thing! Jessie- I am a very slow knitter, so I am just hoping to have this finished to wear for at least one cold day this winter. Hopefully I'll have it done by March, but it's not looking too good :) As far as the sizing goes, I am a little curious to see how it will come out myself. What's nice is that you can try on as you go, so I know the back and arms fit (true to the cross-back measurement in the pattern for the size medium). I'll be trying the size small body instead of the medium though, as my upper arms are large-ish, and my back is wide, but my chest measurement fits the small. The pattern is very easy to tweak as you go. Good luck with it!

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Hey tubey!

I finally got to work on Tubey again last night while Lori and I knitted. I bound off on the first sleeve after trying it on, then unraveled the crochet cast on, which was a pain in the ass. The wool fibers really stuck together, so it didn't come out as smoothly as I'd hoped it would. Also, somewhere I lost a stitch. Neither I or Lori could find a dropped stitch, though we looked it over several times, so I can only assume that I lost it due to the slipped stitch at the beginning of each row. I made a stitch, but it bothers me that I had to do it, and it probably always will. However, in the interest of progress, I guess I can live with it. I'm about an inch or two in to the second sleeve now, and here's what it looks like:

bell sleeves

yar.

The edges of the sleeve and back are really curling, despite a row of purl on the sleeves before the bind-off. I am hoping that a good blocking will correct that and I think that the back rollage will be taken care of when I pick up the stitches for the body.

Thanks for your comments on my car photo. That was fun, though I wheezed and hacked for about three minutes after I did that. So sad. Hope that everyone's "training" for the olympics is going well!

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Oh what a feeling!

we really love our new car

Anyone out there remember those Toyota commercials from the 80s? Just thought I'd share :)