tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-130528762009-12-26T01:12:39.329+01:00rope. tree. fan. spear. snake. wall.alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.comBlogger536125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-72443966866785412492009-09-30T20:41:00.004+02:002009-09-30T20:49:28.464+02:00

So between that last post and this one, I've gone and moved to a whole 'nother country! Sort of. I mean, moving from Germany to the Netherlands is probably a bit like moving from Seattle to Vancouver, but you know, it's... kinda different. Anyway, I packed up all my yarn, started some things, re-started some other things, tabled some other-other things, and kind of, um, misplaced a project or two

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-11526250098173172062009-08-15T16:18:00.004+02:002009-08-15T16:30:54.511+02:00

I used to think tucking in the ends was the most tedious part of a knitting project. Well, a successful one - frogging and fixing whatever you did wrong on an unsuccessful project would be the übertedious part, but in general, end-tucking used to seem like the most annoying use of my knitting time. I did that last night. Today I photographed, measured, washed, blocked, edited the photographs,

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-24900214513320950992009-08-06T19:50:00.009+02:002009-08-06T20:50:21.241+02:00

Well, now I know that one skein of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted Multi is enough for a baby sweater, size newborn (probably). You never know, with babies. Lo, another 5-hour baby sweater, knitted in, um, a little over a week because I kept frogging and refining. And I had an annoying amount of yarn left over, too small to do anything useful with, too big to throw away.But it's done, and sent off

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-2133943073662544342009-07-30T09:08:00.009+02:002009-07-30T09:24:22.661+02:00

This was a test-knit for the inimitable Laris (seriously, HOW does she do it?), sorry I couldn't get better color in the photos. But these are fancy princess-gloves, knit in Wollmeise Twin, colorway Merlot, two at a time on magic loop. They were very fun to make, even the bobbles, until I was done and had 20 (twenty! two-zero!) little ends to tuck in. And now I am giving them to my mother-in-law

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-28631243788654716192009-07-21T11:00:00.003+02:002009-07-21T11:38:51.253+02:00

I bought a double CD case at Aldi for €2.99 (they were only available in gray, can you believe it?) and stuck all my circular needles in it. They're all sorted, first by size and then by cable length, with little labels so I don't have to keep measuring things to be sure I've got the right one.I've been looking for a good way to store circs since - well, pretty much since I started knitting. The

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-69829623686537323542009-06-21T22:07:00.005+02:002009-06-26T22:35:17.561+02:00

Saturday I went to Pfaffenhofen! My friend Yasmin drove, she lives in a nearby town so we're practically neighbors. And we (she) found a parking place right in front of the shop and we saw lots and lots of people and hugged lots and lots of yarn and sat on couches and knitted and it was fun. And now some pictures. My photos here, Elemm's photos here, Goldbek's photos here, and here is Maria's

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-91956366425031524372009-06-21T00:16:00.010+02:002009-06-21T00:45:53.577+02:00

Today I went to Pfaffenhofen, but that post will have to wait till tomorrow, because before that, on Thursday, a box came in the mail. It looked like this:When I opened it, there was newspaper.Under the newspaper, there was this!I almost stopped right there, because oo! Shiny! But eventually I remembered I was sort of a grown-up, and peered under the shiny. There was happy!It's a swap, I'm

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-63573841994112585062009-06-14T23:23:00.003+02:002009-06-15T20:40:52.946+02:00

So I picked up this habit, when I knit socks, of jotting notes on the back of the ball band about gauge, cast-on, things to remember about the heel turn, etc. I suppose it would also work for hats and gloves.You know what it doesn't work for? A sweater for a largish man. I'm making a sweater for DrBob, designing it myself because I have a problem with authority am wholly incapable of following

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-64939547874006732522009-05-21T15:41:00.004+02:002009-05-21T22:28:15.853+02:00

Not that I took any pictures of Sindelfingen itself, though I should have because it was all half-timbered medieval fabulousness of the sort that makes American tourists squee. But I didn't think to take my camera because the battery's only good for five minutes or so, and anyway it takes sucky photos. Have I mentioned lately that I hate my camera?But it was sunny today, and really, what is the

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-28974364557445793872009-05-16T19:37:00.002+02:002009-05-18T09:23:12.272+02:00

All right, just a quick photo - I'll try to go into more detail later, but you can't imagine how tired I am right now, and I still have the whole Eurovision Song Contest to get through.

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-5170055179320009182009-05-12T23:10:00.002+02:002009-05-12T23:17:44.206+02:00

Turns out, that mitten-cuff from the previous entry was actually a swatch, though not a very good one: when I was first getting the hang of double knitting, I kind of knit too loose and the cuff was huge. I got up about 26 rows and decided that, while I loved the two colorways together, they weren't working with the zigzag pattern. So I frogged it and started over with the same red (Campari

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-29289923727079260092009-05-03T22:52:00.005+02:002009-05-03T23:00:30.656+02:00

Yesterday I had a train ride and then two hours to kill while Ignatz had his first Dutch lesson. A knitter never minds having time to kill (as long as she has her knitting handy) and I did make some lovely progress, though it's double knitting, which naturally goes rather slowly. But then I found an error, had to frog waaaaaay back, and by the time I had all my stitches back on the needles it was

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-85798569514800813532009-04-19T22:50:00.004+02:002009-04-19T23:13:20.449+02:00

So Aliénor was not graded for different sizes because it was written to be flexible: do this until it's long enough, pick up enough stitches, stop when it fits there and then do this, that sort of thing. And I did it that way on purpose, because I really don't much care for standardized size charts. I, for one, am one size when buying pants and skirts, and another size when buying shirts. (I

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-64234990246229691082009-03-30T23:10:00.006+02:002009-03-30T23:48:01.139+02:00

Well, eleven people bought my pattern, which makes me feel like all this time spent knitting ain't been in vain fer nothin', which in turn justifies spending all my time knitting now! Yay! Yes, I am working on another sweater, called Juana La Loca, and it's taking awhile because I'm pausing to document every stitch I knit (twice - once in knitterese, once on a chart). But I'm about halfway done

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-12025408793178396272009-03-19T23:03:00.002+01:002009-03-19T23:13:35.576+01:00

TEN pattern sales, and one of them? Was to the incomparable Yarnissima, my favorite knitstuff designer, the only designer whose patterns I knit without modifying them somehow. Well, except for Spina di Pesce, which I modified to fit a bigger foot than the pattern was written for, and then sent her my notes so she could offer the pattern in a larger size too. I've met her, she is made of awesome,

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-76408312822059882172009-03-15T21:21:00.002+01:002009-03-15T21:21:58.459+01:00

Two people bought my pattern! Two whole people thought it was worth actual money! I am completely floored.

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-30003090851475190572009-03-14T23:06:00.004+01:002009-03-14T23:16:24.179+01:00

I'm trying to get the Aliénor pattern into a presentable form, and I've been at it all day. The in-laws came over for coffee and I sat on the couch and twitched while DrBob and they talked about cats. I fidgeted through dinner with the family. But other than that I've been here, typing, tweaking, fixing, re-thinking. This is so fiddly! I'm learning to hate .pdfs.Anyway, that's why y'all haven't

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-54617168725337278752009-03-08T21:07:00.003+01:002009-03-08T21:17:10.305+01:00

Nonward. Nupward! Nowhere! Brace yourselves, people, because what I am about to say will truly shock many of you:From Tuesday to Saturday of last week, I was too sick to knit.YES! All the more amazing because I am posting today, when everybody knows that the next step after "too sick to knit" is "quite thoroughly dead." And yet, here I am. And it wasn't cancer or polio or arthritis or anything

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-5462374160850543772009-03-02T19:53:00.004+01:002009-03-02T20:09:44.810+01:00

ZERO progress on Zur Lederhos'n today. I've got the dark variation of the ZL colorway, and I can only knit during daylight hours, so even though the day's not over, I can safely say that I won't knit on those today.My daylight hours - the ones where no children were home, anyway - were full of Dunegrass! I wrote a from-scratch web page of the Dunegrass sock pattern, hoping I could convert that

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-46414277105929660742009-02-28T23:02:00.002+01:002009-02-28T23:09:13.063+01:00

Because egad, has it really been three weeks since I posted? Yike.Okay, so I've been test knitting a scarf for a friend, and I can't post photos yet. I bound that one off today, just in time to frog Zur Lederhos'n and re-start it; it was on hiatus while the designer worked out some kinks, and she ended up redesigning it from stitch one, so we're all starting over. I liked the old pattern fine,

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-26125804380149382952009-02-08T17:59:00.004+01:002009-02-14T13:18:04.411+01:00

You know, clothes used to fit much better. Before factories were built to churn out sewn-together rectangles that more or less fit most people, pretty much, there were seamstresses and tailors who made clothing to fit the body that would actually be wearing it, not some clearly defined yet potentially non-existent "average."Now, part of the reason we knit is to make things to fit our own selves,

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-70168850521729353342009-02-06T20:45:00.003+01:002009-02-14T13:13:39.955+01:00

Wow. People like my sweater. I'm... surprised and gratified. Yes I will definitely write up a pattern, at some point. I'm going over the page proofs for my husband's next book, and we're on a deadline that is made shorter by the fact that the proofs have to be mailed to and from the U.S. So that's taking most of my time right now.And... well, you've seen my other patterns, they're a bit haphazard

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-15284087530054243382009-01-31T18:44:00.006+01:002009-01-31T23:52:00.186+01:00

The sun came out today, so I got Mr. Husband to take a few pictures. I still think this could be shown to better effect, but at least you can sort of see the whole thing. This is Aliénor, and it is very warm and comfy. I should have made it a bit longer, but it's been really cold and I wanted a warm sweater to wear NOW.It's Valley Yarns Stockbridge, in Deep Teal, and I am thinking a nice alpaca

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-4843862633750685512009-01-28T14:40:00.002+01:002009-01-28T14:42:48.376+01:00

I love winter because you get to wear all those fabulous sweaters that you spend the year knitting!I hate winter because the light is so bad you can't photograph said fabulous sweaters. Aliénor is a FO! Washed and blocked and on me right now, and fairly fabulous, actually, though it would look better on someone a tad more swanlike and princessy. Whatever. It's done! And you can't see it because I

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13052876.post-91708950790408240762009-01-14T13:51:00.003+01:002009-01-14T14:20:15.982+01:00

So I had this idea for a sweater, and I swatched extensively and knit it halfway in purple and then decided it should be green. Then I started it in green, and divided for the sleeves in the wrong place and frogged back, did it right, made the plain bit too long, frogged back, finally finished it, decided the sleeves were too tight, and frogged again. In terms of stitch count, I have probably

alalahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08504045003702100248noreply@blogger.com3