Greetings from the Dark Side of knitting!

First order of business: I am finally back to the blog, at the gentle urging of my friends.  When my daughter gets home from school, I will have her help me get pictures up.  This might be a bit stressful for both of us since she has no patience for the technologically impaired(which I am). 

Just to warn you, this entry encompasses very scary details involving frogging, that which happens when you !*#% (picture the naughtiest expletive ever in caps) up the guage, what to do when your yarn color nauseates you in a particular project you get very far into, and perhaps more horrors too awful to mention that my delicate mind has moved them into my subconsious…that is, if they don’t resurface and scar me for life! 

Also, be warned!  If this chronicle becomes too tedious, my feelings will not be hurt if you run screaming from here!  I feel a ramble comming on…

Anyway, on to the dark side of our much loved art!  As shameful as it is to admit, I have only completed three garments this year.  I have been knitting daily in large quantities, yet ripping continually.   Do you get so attached to your yarn that you just can’t bear to make anything less than the perfect garment to complement it? 

This is why I have enough angora to make a scarf reaching from Savannah to Timbuktu, yet no scarf.  Well, I wouldn’t make it into a scarf anyway.  I have hoarded too much in each of a variety of stunning colors, and many poor little tiny orphans, to waste it on mundane projects.  Speaking of the poor little orphan angoras, can you believe that Pingouin used to put up 33yd balls?   What the “you-know-what”!

On to the first abomination that screamed to be liberated from it’s stitches, the Simply Marilyn by Debbie Bliss.  Off on a tangent first: several years ago, I bought one skein of Malabrigo in the Dusty colorway.  After making fingerless gauntlet thingies from Alterknits for my daughter and using all 200+ yards(of course), I tried for months to find that particular Malabrigo, searching every online yarn shop from here to eternity(and everywhere else).

I had one of those fabulous “Eureka!” moments when finally I found it and bought eight balls!  Then I held onto it for about a year with it burning a hole in my proverbial pocket!  Since my friend Kayla had so successfully made the Simply Marilyn, and I looked hot in it, I decided, after trying hers on(check it out on her blog, the Yarn Bearer), to whip one out for myself.  However, after the sweater was 3/4 of the way done, I had to rip it out since it made me sick to my stomach.  The colorway, which is coral with subtle brown shading, just nauseated me when knitted into a sweater, so I frogged and recast on for Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton’s Sursa Wrap from Noro Book 2. 

(Insert picture, bring text up bordering the rh side)

Here is the result, sans ruffle and I adore it. This is truly a weekend project and an impressive-for-nonknitter-friends/family, yet easy, gift.  Knit on sz 11 circs, it goes so quickly, and my faves to knit it in are Rowan Big Wool(single strand, 5 balls) and Malabrigo Merino Worsted(double stranded, 5 or 6ish balls).  I would recommend this project in any incarnation you could possibly come up with.  Everyone I know knits a slightly different version, in different yarns with varying sizes of needles, and each comes out fabulous. 

In between almost finishing a Simply Marilyn and reworking it into a Sursa, I cast on 7 more projects, all of which needed frogging.  What has now become a lovely capelet began life as a Klaralund.  Of course, when I knew I had to frog, I ran into major problems…the original yarn was Pingouin Angora 80. 

The dark plum shade was so beautiful that I couldn’t waste it, and the Klaralund suffered from an enormous, really…enormous, problem(same as the Marilyn…oops, forgot to mention that fiasco).  It was belling into a shape that resembled a yurt.  A BIG yurt that could have lodged an entire tribe of Mongolian camel-herdsmen and clan – maybe even the livestock as well.  You can understand my plight.  Either wear a maternity-looking, yeti like garment(frightfully unflattering),  rip, or attempt to salvage.  Same as the Marilyn, it suffered from adventures-in-guage-gone-wrongitis.  Yikes!

Anyway, if you have ever had angora on the needles, you know that it semi-felts as soon as you knit it.  This mess was easier to rip than the Kelly Cardigan in Erika Night’s Classic Knits(another fiasco) since I was knitting it in the round, but I can tell you this with certainty…it was still a mess!  A hot-tranny-mess to be sure!  Frightening mess that it was, it evolved into an attractive capelet.  I added simple fair-isle at the top of the yoke and then knit the top in Patons SWS with mirroring shoulder decreases until it seemed to be just the right size.

(insert pic here/mirroring the lh side)

 

This is one of my favorite pieces ever.  It is toasty and so deliciously, sensuously soft.  It begs to be worn while walking hand in hand with your lover at dusk, in a light snowfall, with a tiny sliver of moon illuminating the snow, enveloping you in a weightless cloud of warmth(the thing weighs nothing…literally).  This makes me think of romantic, rural mainland Japan in the winter.  Big sigh…

The next project was An Affair to Remember.  It’s a  pin-up-girl looking skirt from Annie Modesitt’s Romantic Hand-Knits.  After I was fairly far into the lace pattern, I realized that I had buggered it all up and was one row off thus throwing off all the stitch counts and causing a problem that would make the poor skirt quasimodo-ishly lopsided(this brings to mind the classic 1939 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame). 

Since this dire mistake needed some frogging, which I couldn’t bring myself to do, and I needed the circs that I was knitting it on, I substituted them for a length of yarn and liberated my needles.  Alas, I was not able to wear it to my pal Rachel’s wedding.  Fortunately, I didn’t frog, and I have had time to reconsider it’s possibilities.  My Affair to Remember will become a sexy, fitted sweater soon, and I’ll share the method…when I have it. 

(pic of aftrem w text bordering)

 

Somewhere in all that, I had to redeem myself (to myself), so I made the Ballet-T from Teva Durham’s Loop-de-Loop Knits.  This is instant gratification at it’s finest.  It took two half-days to complete, during the course of one weekend and looks totally hot, hugging in all the right places, very pin-up girly.  And even better than all that, it is virtually indestructable in Brown Sheep cotton fleece. 

I wash it in cold, on gentle cycle, and dry it in the dryer on medium.  After finishing, however, you must wet block it to get it to lay right.  After that, it’s smooth sailing!  Also, although it stretches when worn, it’s still incredibly flattering!  Long live T. Durham, the Loop-de-Loop Queen!  I made sz small, and it didn’t even use the entirety of the two skeins.  It requires two skeins because it is double stranded.  Make it I say, make it!

 

(pic/text bordered)

 

I am currently working on a design of my own to post.  The body is knitted in the round, from the bottom up, going down a needle size after the border to eliminate the need for shaping, and then working a stretchy stitch at the bust for shaping in the boobal region. 

I am experimenting with the orientation of two panels to complete the upper portion.  Should be done later this week and will post pics and the pattern in PDF format(Oh Kaaaay,  I need a tutorial from the My Savannah Cottage computer guru).  This sexy little confection is worked in Ironstone Flake Cotton, double stranded.  Double stranded, this yarn produces a substantial fabric.  The extra strand adds weight, which gives it nice drape, and it still has enough stretch to be comfortable, yet can be knit into form fitting, flattering garments that hold their shapes.

 

(pic/bordering text)

 

Other yarns were cast on and frogged, thus more travails than I could bear to remember.  I’m just glad that phase is over, and I’m finishing things again.  If you persevered, making it to the end of this epic story, you must be one of my best friends, tell me what you thought, and I love you!

See you soon!  Knit on, rock on, and add to your stash whenever you can!  Here’s lookin’ at your yarn, kid!              

Love and Addi-Turbos, Jules

Also, please overlook any typos, I cannot bring myself to proof and revise one more time.  Oh yeah, and I am aware that the sentences are far too long and cumbersome…it’s that pesky stream of consiousness thing again!  Sayonarra sweethearts!