Revenge of the sleeves

Wednesday night, I finished knitting the sleeves on my Ribby Cardi. I immediately sat down, attached them, and knit the front bands. Due to the weeding I did, I didn’t have time to finish the collar.

Good thing.

I was wearing my semi-finished Ribby around the house (yes, with the ends hanging out), and I looked in the mirror. The front of one sleeve seam and the back of one sleeve seam looked HORRIBLE. Like I hadn’t sewn it in properly. It was all askew.

Part of me really wants to pretend it’s not there. Just knit the collar, finish the sweater, and wear it proudly. The realist in me knows that’s not going to happen; I won’t wear a sweater that I’m not proud of- and that includes being proud of the finishing.

The next step is to mark where the sleeves went askew, undo the seams, and redo them. That’s half an evening’s worth of work. So, I’ll suck it up and do it, because the sweater is beautiful and I want to be proud of wearing it.

On the plus side of all of this, I’ve found that you don’t actually have to watch the television to enjoy “Bones”. This has potential.

“…and rain will make the flowers grow.”

Flowers and weeds, it turns out. I have a tragically brown thumb, so I stick to what I’m good at- demo work. I may be terrible at keeping plants alive, but I am stellar at weeding. No joke.

Our Awesome Neighbors moved to Hawaii last week and their house went up on the market on Monday. I saw that the sign listed open houses this weekend, so I thought (since it has stopped raining, at least briefly) it would be a good time to deal with the weeds in the front yard. This was a 15-minute task in my poor, delusional mind.

The soil out front is nice and soft (and still a little damp). I was pulling out good-sized weeds with ease. For every weed I pulled, I saw four more that needed pulling. No problem; for the AN’s open house, I wanted the front of our house to look as nice as possible. When the space between our houses was weeded, I walked to the “rose” section of our yard.

Four. Foot. Dandelions. No joke.

Did you ever see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze? It was EXACTLY like those dandelions. They must have weighed close to twenty pounds, and needed the leverage of my full body weight to get the roots moving.

We filled our green waste bin in 45 minutes. That would be 45 minutes of triumphant “Boo-yah”-ing and “Ha!”-ing as Andrew and I relieved our garden of the unnaturally large weeds.

Maybe I should spend more time out there; who knows, maybe whatever made the Uber-Dandelions will make me a superhero.

SuperJasmin has quite the ring to it, don’t you think?

Almost a Cardi-carrying member

I’m torn.

The whole “knitting carrot” is failing in the face of more interesting knitting, but I’m trudging towards the Ribby Cardi finish line. Another hour of knitting, and both sleeves will be finished. If we watch a movie tonight, I think the collar and bands will also find themselves complete.

Despite what my Ravelry queue says, the next two projects on my list are “Muir” and “Large Rectangle with Center Diamond Pattern” (from Victorian Lace Today). I picked up some lace yarn at the show, and want to (a) write reviews of the yarns, and (b) knit these shawls.

It’s not the Cardi part of the Ribby Cardi; it’s the sleeves.

I thought I was being super-smart, and I was. In theory.

First, I got out my handy-dandy graph paper and charted out the sleeve cap so that my sleeve was certain to come out in pattern. (Yes, I know it’s ribbing. Yes, I know I have OCD about this stuff.) This is a necessity for me, since my sleeve caps don't need shortening, but the sleeves always do, and I don't like the guesswork of "shorten or lengthen here" before a shaped sleeve cap. Cap first, then work out the rest, I say.

Next, I cast on both sleeves at the same time. I knit the sleeve caps flat (from the top down) to where they hit the underarm. Then, I put them in the round. So now, we have two sleeves on two circs, top-down. This all adds up to a tangly mess if you’re not paying attention. Doubly so if (say) one of your balls decides to throw up everywhere. This project stays home, safely in a place where it won’t get jostled around.

So far, the sleeves have taken me a couple of evenings of knitting, and it looks like I’ll be able to finish the knitting tonight. This is real growth for me, since 90% of my sweaters get held up at the sleeves. It seems I have an aversion to knitting sleeves, but a need to wear them. I am a complicated woman.

Andrew is totally jazzed about Jasmin 2008- especially the finishing things list. As I was trying on my sleeves, he pointed out that I could blast through the Sweater Formerly Known As Zak’s (SFKAZ) in a week and have it completed, too. That would be two sweaters done in a month, he pointed out emphatically.

While that’s true, and Jasmin 2008 likes to finish things, she also wants to knit what she wants to knit. Especially after Stitches. Jasmin 2008 laid out all of her purchases on the dining room table, to inspire her. While I didn’t overbuy, and I certainly limited my purchases to only things that I LOVED, there is a lot of inspiration laying out there. Being beautiful. Tempting me to stray from finishing back to starting.

I think what is most tempting is that I’m not enjoying the sleeve process, which is as tedious as it is smart. I’ll admit that this will leave me the least amount of finishing, which I may dislike even more than knitting sleeves. So, again, smart. But tedious.

The SFKAZ isn’t half as tedious, because when I cast the sleeves on simultaneously (over eight years ago), I didn’t bother to do so in the round. Though I’m not looking forward to attaching sleeves to shoulders and doing the two long, cuff-to-armpit-to-sweater-bottom seams, this sweater has the potential of being an awesome kicking-around sweater. Lucky for me, the formerly intended recipient of this sweater wasn’t much bigger than I am now, and sleeves that aren’t finished are easily shortened.

Hopefully tomorrow you'll be reading about my latest lace shawl.

Review Template and Intent

Jerry asked:

“Thank you for being honest about what you write. Will you also give negative reviews in a positive light. Like, "I would like this better if it had more twist and less splitty??" I just omit the review and let the blog reader draw their own conclusions. I may disclose my purchases but only review what I like.”

That’s a really good question, Jerry. While I try to be a tactful person (generally), and my diplomatic skills were praised by an ex-boss recently, if something doesn’t live up to my standards, I’ll say so. I think it's important to be polite, but I find positively-skewed reviews to be, frankly, skewed. The existence of the skew messes with the "balance" of my fair-and-balanced reviews.

Now, I won’t say anything unnecessarily unpleasant or rude. I’m working out my format for the reviews. So far, the template looks like this:

Product: [NAME]

Product Description: [DESC. OF MATERIALS]

Bought from: [STORE/WEBSITE]

Price/Gift: [$X]

Comments: [BLA BLA]

I’m also going to be sending links of my reviews to the people who I’ve bought the product from and/or the company.

Anything else I should add?

Trust and blogging

I love to read knitting blogs, but in the last year I’ve had some trust issues. I feel like some of the more popular bloggers may not be giving “fair and balanced” reviews and promotion of products.

Sometimes it’s not disclosed whether they have paid for what they’re using or reviewing, and in some cases, the reviews of products that they’re given are biased towards the positive BECAUSE they were not paid for.

I have been given some things, and I have paid for some things. From here forward, I will be doing fair and balanced reviews and disclosing what was paid for and what was a gift. I’ve done reviews before, which are all fair and balanced, but the disclosures will be made crystal clear.

Jasmin 2008 meets Stitches West

I shopped with some relatively incredible resolve this year. I bought some handpainted roving and yarn, some gorgeous glass needles, and a little yarn from Webs.

What?! No pictures?

That’s right.

This year, I’m not posting pictures of the haul until after I’ve formed an opinion on the quality of my purchases. I don’t want to promote anything that may not be top-quality. I’ll be giving fair and balanced reviews of my purchases, good or bad. Those will be tagged with "Stitches 2008 loot"

But.

I’m qvelling over my purchases. They’re on my dining room table, busy being beautiful.

It's a Ribby Process

For a month or so, I’ve been in a knitting lull. I haven’t been knitting as much as I normally do, and I’ve been a little unenthusiastic about it as well. Everything I really wanted to work on was on hold because of something small.

Jasmin 2008 reappeared yesterday. She must have been on vacation this last week, but she’s back. I figured out how to knit the sleeves on my Ribby Cardi top-down, and I am nearly finished with BOTH sleeve caps.

This is simple, but the task makes me feel incredibly smart, and my sleeves always end up the right length. Having short arms means less knitting, but more thinking. It’s a trade-off.

I like to knit my sleeves at the same time, partly because in the event of Project Abandonment, both sleeves will (optimistically speaking) get finished the same way. I also like to knit my sleeves in the round to minimize the finishing.

The zipper has been bought, and once the sleeves are done and attached, Mom will be able to attach it and BAM! The sweater is done. I think that’s enough motivation to actually finish it.

I’m pretty excited about finishing a sweater- I don’t think I’ve finished a sweater in the last year. Half a dozen lace shawls, yes. Sweaters? No. I’ve also given away all but one of the sweaters that I’ve knit for myself.

Its funny how we evolve as knitters; ten years ago I was knitting six pairs of socks a month. Five years ago, I was knitting two pairs of socks a week and finishing a dozen large projects a year. Now, I’m spending more time spinning than knitting.

Sweaters don’t really take that much time; most of the sweaters I knit are out of worsted weight yarn. Even a sock can seem interminable- or maybe that’s just in my case, when I’m knitting Andrew’s giant socks.

Speaking of which, I finished off Pair #4 of the Black Sock Project on Friday night:

Once I finish Pair #5 of the Black Sock Project:

Andrew has requested that I begin the “Tan Sock Project”. My love for this man may be without limit.

Orange you glad?

We have oranges. Lots of firm, round, oranges. You know you want some.

Instead of doing something organized and structured, let’s do this:

Call (or e-mail me) and I’ll give you our address. I’ll scoop the dog poop, you’ll pick oranges and take them home to your loving families. This is a Bring Your Own Bags arrangement (we’re running low, sorry).

You can find me at cuteknitterAThotmailDOTcom.

Bring on the fun.

Maria Bamford and my sock!

Last night we went to the Punch Line in San Francisco to see Maria Bamford. The three opening folks were surprisingly good, and Maria was absolutely hysterical.

She was also a good sport and posed with me and my SOCK! (Three times, due to technical difficulties. Triple "good sport points".)

Evidently, she too is a knitter. She admitted that she has been working on a scarf for four years, to which I replied, "It's a process."

If you get a chance to see her live, do. If not, she's been on the Comedians of Comedy tour, has a couple of Comedy Central specials, and has a couple of CDs out.

Welcome, stalkers!

If you’re the stalking type (or just enjoy stand-up comedy), Maria Bamford is performing at the Punch Line (in San Francisco) tonight, Wednesday, February 13^th. You can get tickets here.

I’ll be there (with my camera and sock), and hopefully I’ll get a picture with her.