The Fish Knits

*ed. I just noticed that this entry has been sitting in my drafts folder since the 4th of January, just waiting for images. I think maybe I should put a big fat post-it note in the middle of my monitor to remind me of these things! Better late than never, I suppose, so here it is…

Happy New Year all, and welcome to 2006. Should be a good year. I can feel it.

I can feel that it will be a good year because I have done this:

That, my friends, is a triumph. At least, it is because once I had worked on it for about half an hour I was convinced that it was going to look like, well, something I wouldn’t want to wear in public. I started out confident in my grafting skills, such as they were, and dove straight into the seam, expecting to be very pleased with myself as the lines and cables all just miraculously lined up.

But they didn’t. At first I thought ok, I must have muffed it up at the first stitch. Un-graft it and start over. Second go ’round, I went thru the first 3 sts and found that again, the stitches weren’t lining up, and that there was a little “jump” where the edge rib connected in the graft. Crap. Ok, undo it, and try again.

3rd time’s a charm, right? Well… no. Same thing. Go get a glass of wine.

At this point I have a good hard look at the thing. (I know, you all see it coming. Stop right there). I am grafting the top of a hood together. This is a piece of knitting which comes together having been knitted, essentially, from two different directions. All works out fine if you are, say, shortening or lengthening a piece of knitting- all the stitches nest very nicely one v inside the next. If, however, you’re coming from a “v” and meeting a “^” things won’t really play along so nicely. Essentially, you end up with the seam offsetting the pieces by half a stitch. Crap. This is where I start wondering how on earth other people made this work…

Answer? It just does. I guess since there is enough in the way of cable crosses and ribs across the grafted section it sort of hides the fact that the stitch pattern doean’t line up perfectly. The only thing that is a little wonky about it is my tension across the seam, but hey. I’m still new at this! I’m hoping a light blocking will do the trick.

Now if I can just figure out how to seam the stitches held on the stich holder behind the grafting (which is all done now, btw) I’ll be all set…

How does the song go again? Right. “Oh the weather outside is frightful,”… Indeed, today’s weather is pretty awful. This winter has so far been on again, off again, and now I would say it’s off. The temperature is somewhere around 3°c and it’s peeing down with rain. So much for the Canal! Earlier this morning we did have some nice fog, but that wasn’t quite enough to make me brave the streets to get Evan to gymnastics. We have had reports that one of the main north-south arteries which carries commuters from a big development just south of town was shut down during rush-hour in order for the salt trucks to do their thing. And we live in a city that should be used to this sort of thing! So since we were stuck inside this morning I had to come up with something to keep us occupied.

Kool-Aid dyeing!

I checked out the Knitty article all about it since I was pretty sure I had some Kool-Aid lying around here somewhere. In a box? In the basement? Probably… Yup, there it is. I only had one packet of Grape so I thought I could at least test the theory on a piece of the yarn I will be using for Blackberry. But a purple Blackberry? Probably not, but at least it would let me test the dyeability of the yarn. And it would keep Evan interested and occupied. Right? Not so much.

It would seem that the magic of colour transformation just isn’t as riveting to a two-year-old as it is to his mum. Oh well… at least I was kept occupied!

One of the really cool parts of the process was how the colour was all sucked up by the yarn. The water went from looking like grape juice to looking like this:

Then, as if that weren’t enough (which in a way it was- I was giddy at this point! As for Evan? See above…) once I took it out of the water and rinsed it (no dye came off- how cool!) it turned into this:

How Kool!! Sorry about the image quality, it was very much “quick and dirty” and I was trying to preserve the colour rendition so I didn’t use a flash. Perhaps this morning’s coffee was a little strong?

Anyway, I was completely into this whole Kool-Aid dyeing thing. I don’t think I want to do Grape for the Blackberry. Given the colours in the Knitty article I’m thinking perhaps Black Cherry. It looks most like the colour I am usually drawn to, and I don’t think you can ever have enough deep, rich red in your wardrobe. Then again, I am intrigued by the Switchin’ Secret colour. Sort of a khaki/olive-y green.

Any suggestions?

Knitter.

Steph is at it again, enabler extraordinaire, giving me reason to pull my hair out. At least it should be fun, and it will definitely be over before too too long. At least, the official part of it will be…

I will be taking part in the knitting Olympics, hosted Chez Harlot. I have decided to knit Blackberry from Knitty’s Fall ‘05 issue, out of yarn salvaged from a sweater that was Not To Be. Good thing about the Sweater that was Not To Be is that I didn’t actually knit it in the first place. I bought it on huge sale for my beau, but realized shortly *why* it was being sold off so cheap. It was just. not. flattering. To anyone, as far as I can tell! But, it was “handmade” (probably on a knitting frame, but still) and I ended up with reams of chunky wool out of the deal. The light grey colour is less than wonderful, but I am figuring I can dye it. Maybe Kool-Aid? Hmmm… I see some artificially coloured/flavoured drink mix powder shopping in my future! Wheeeee! That doesn’t count as stash enhancement, does it? I have sworn off that for a while. Or at least, I have for now. Ask me again tomorrow…

In other random things… While packing to move to our new house I came across all manner of things I had forgotten about. I am a bit of a packrat anyway (what? you mean to tell me that you don’t still have excercise books filled with notes you wrote to your friend in class in grade 9? liar…) but I was still surprised by some of the junk (let’s call it what it is…) I had been hanging on to. One thing stood out though, as particularly odd. Take a moment to look back at photos of me that are posted to the site. Here’s a new one, for example…

So, if you have a pretty good idea of what I look like, take a look at what I came across. This is a portrait done of me about 12 years ago. Bear in mind that I would have been 18 or 19 at the time…

Now really. Do I look like I’m 18 years old in that picture? I think I saved it to see if I will end up looking like that 10 or 15 years from now! The story behind it is that I was doing a CEGEP diploma in Creative Arts at John Abbott College (go Islanders!!) when I broke my wrist. Since it was my right wrist, and I’m right handed, I couldn’t draw so I got to be the model for the class. This was drawn by our prof, who was supposedly an award-winning portraitist! (At least he got the hair style right. You’ll notice that I still wear it the same way!) Oh well, you win some you lose some. At least I was well liked by the prof (no, not like that! Get your mind out of the gutter…) so I passed the semester, with marks that were probably higher than I deserved. Can’t really complain about that one, can I?

Oh, and one last housekeeping note. Joshua mentioned tonight that I have “tons of comments” that I haven’t replied to. Tons, to him, is 4. Hee! Anyway, usually when I get a comment I answer people by email. That means, Love, that everyone who left a comment has heard back from me. Since you’d like that to change (admit it, you would!) I will start doing it through the blog, and we’ll see how that goes. Happy? Good. Please feel free to give it a test run!

That’s right ladies and gents, it’s National De-Lurking Week. Or at least it is in the States. Maybe it should be International? Ok, let’s go with that…

I just read about this today on Mason-Dixon Knitting, and of course, had to share. Is there anyone out there who reads my blog? It seems kind of funny to me in a way to just plunk stuff out there into cyberspace and not know if there’s a point to it, you know?

So anyway, if you’re out there why not say hi?

More project pics to come soon, as I have just finished a long time WIP (in fact, I started it in the spring and after about 3 weeks of getting in the odd row here and there it just sat on the needles being thoroughly neglected) and am in the throes of a new love affair! More on that later, but for now behold! The FO, the Branching Out scarf from Knitty, in all its blocking glory.

Once the sun comes out again and we emerge from the balmy 5°C weather that we’re having I’ll get a proper picture of it in action.

You may remember the Sherbet Sweater I was trying frantically to get done for a friend’s daughter last year, which I abandoned in a huff? Well, it has been given new life as a sweater for another friend’s daughter, and I have to admit, it’s really cute! The Sherbet Sweater is now officially Suki Sweater II, and looks quite fetching on an adorable one-year-old. Happy birthday Suki!

So is there a theme to my knitting these days? In fact there is. A loose one, anyway. It seems a number of bloggers out there are looking to clean up their act, sweep the cobwebs off the projects languishing on the needles and clear the slate for 2006. Here’s me, jumping on the bandwagon… fun times! If I hear from my peeps, maybe I will let y’all know how it’s going…!

Warning… gratuitous cute boy photos ahead… we spent the morning at the Aviation Museum and we had a blast!