Done, except for the lady (me!) singing.

I finished Icarus last night.



Well over an hour to cast off - about six hundred (600) stitches, but I sooo did not count.


I'm rather sad that it's over. But even pre-blocking, it looks great, if I do say so myself. I'm going to my mom and dad's this weekend - they have lots of room (and no inside kitties to 'help'), so I will block there.

Artsy pictures to follow (if my mom co-operates, and she will). My shoulders will be so happy - the office is freezing right now!

Score!

Look what I got:

I went on a drive yesterday, visiting garage sales north of the city. That is something I never, ever do. Needless to say, it wasn't my idea, but I am oh-so-very-glad I went. I didn't even spy these - my friend did. What can I say? A fellow that knows what I like may be worthy of a little more of my time. I was impressed - he even paid for them. A whole $1.75.

What made me sad were all the others I left behind. Some of them were so ratty that the pages were stuffed into plastic bags. The whole pile was sitting on the DRIVEWAY, underneath the $0.25 table. I could have, very easily, bought them all, but I tried to pick the ones that were the least damaged and appealed to me, at least a little.

I want to quote from the inside front-cover of Columbia (the colour one):

Times have changed... Yesterday we spent long hours and many
dollars creating hand knit fashions.... Today time is money and
nine times out of ten, each is frankly in short supply.

New ideas now strike our fancy...
Quick-Knits - often made on larger needles with heavier yarn in lacey
patterns (really, a stitch of this kind saves nine)... Bolero - start today
and finish tomorrow...Two-Piece dresses in Half-the-time - you make the blouse and the the skirt can be knitted for you.

Fashion plays into our hands, so look for... Stoles, shorter
jackets, abbreviated sleeves, interpreting the time saving sheath silhouette,
slender from top to toe... knitted in those heavenly yarns by Lees.

Several times over the past few months, I've read knit-blog entries blasting designers for using novelty yarns and enormous needles to make trendy items and then marketing the product as "not your grandmother's knitting." Well, this particular pattern book was published in 1951, and the patterns are very trendy, for the time (and stunning, in my opinion).

Maybe some of us are knitting more like our grandmothers than we think.

This gardening thing might not work out.

These are my tomatoes:



These are tomatoes a colleague gave to me (thank you, R!):



Tiny bit of a difference, eh?



Weather has been miserable, so all my little seeds are not in the ground. Most of them have died. I don't know what I've done wrong. Too much water? Too little? Too much sun? Not enough? I am completely ignorant in the ways of growing things, my houseplant success notwithstanding. That's pure luck.


So, buying bedding plants it will be. At least a few. Friday is supposed to be nice, it's my keep-the-crazy-away night off, and the stuff that is still alive is going in the ground. No arguments.


Knitting: I've continued working on Icarus, a row here, a row there, and the toe-up socks continue too. I'm spending much time thinking of my next project (naturally, working on something I have all ready started does not even register on my radar screen).


Question, because this is my blog, and only five people read it:

When someone you dated briefly, three years ago, and have remained friends with ever since tells you that he loves you, what does it mean? (N, I'll tell you all when you are feeling better).

A Single Girl's Saturday Night

I could have gone out tonight. A very nice man did call, and under the pretense of selling me a set of encyclopedias ask me if I could give him some time and attention for a demonstration. I thought that was quite clever of him. He knows how much I like books.

However, it's my second-last day at home before going back to work, and so I chose to spend it by myself. I am almost ready to paint that damn feature wall in the dining room (why do I feel the burning need to clean before I make a mess? That's a rhetorical question).

So, Icarus and I spent some time together, and I am mid-way through chart 3. Again. No yarn-shortage worries this time, and having those decreases pointed in the right direction does make a difference. Perhaps because I know it's right now, and that's all that it needed. I still maintain that after blocking, it would make no difference, but I feel better about the quality of my work.

I hope you don't mind, J, but I'm going to share what you wrote to me personally:

"Ohmygod. I just looked at the Purloined Letter site. That's what Icarus is going to look like when you're done? What a beautiful thing! You are going to be so pleased that you went back and fixed things. Did I mention how beautiful it is? It's the kind of thing that makes people want to learn to knit, and knitters learn to be better, and non-knitters bow down before you in awe. Wow. And you say you can't pay attention to detail?"

Yup, those are the kind of photos that make a knitter want to be better. I know I am capable of great knitting. I just choose to gloss over mistakes in the blind faith (wildly optimistic hope?) that only I will notice. But, since this choice was made for me, I must take the opportunity to learn and do better. And, no, it's not that I can't pay attention to detail. I pay great attention to detail in my life. That's what makes me good at what I do (however unsatisfactory my employment situation is, I do have a gift for that kind of work), and I do find a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure in looking at things, whether it be art, spreadsheets, or knitting in great detail. It's just that sometimes, I choose to not let the errors in the details bother me. It's a balance thing. If I stressed about every little thing that only I noticed, well, I'd be in an institution right now. It's a choice. And, since I chose to finish Icarus instead of stuffing it in a basket and ignoring it, I'm going to do it right.

Here ends the lecture.

However, I did take some time to wind some of my precious Sea Silk and start swatching it. I have been searching for an appropriate stole pattern, and the most suitable one is the pattern included with the yarn, and I'm not really that fond of it (I couldn't work three rows of a swatch. Not a good sign). Then, I received the new Interweave Knits yesterday, and I'm quite attracted to this scarf pattern. I would just adjust the width to make it more of a stole than a scarf. The bottom part of the swatch is on 5.5 mm needles, the pattern suggested size. I hate it. Tiny, slippery yarn on such big needles was not at all pleasant. So, I switched to my beloved 4 mm (my favourite size, whenever I have to re-jig gauge, I always fudge it so I can use 4 mm needles). To make a long story short, I could make this, and have it done in a week or so, and then be able to enjoy it this summer, not next. So, I'm leaning that way, but will still give that other pattern another stab.

And, I've been hunting for a stole/shawl pattern for my darling, wonderful knitting teacher. I've found some beautiful designs, but nothing speaks to me more than Print of the Wave. And, finances being what they are, I went shopping in my stash and found this: It's burgundy, beige, purple and blue, which sounds like vomit, but it's not. I'm going to try a swatch and see how it works up. I have loads of it, so running out will not be a problem, thank goodness. Not wild about working with fuzzy mohair in the summer, though. This might be postponed until September, and then it would get my undivided attention for a while. The woman is 77. I can't stall too long. And speaking of not stalling, I have to get off my duff and send some photos. This week, for sure. In the interest of doing this promptly, I think I will be doing colour photocopies instead of searching for negatives from fifteen years ago. I have no desire to drive myself insane after such a lovely, peaceful week (crappy weather notwithstanding).

Oh, and toe-up socks? Pretty cool. I've turned the heel on one, and while I'm not wild about having a much tighter gusset, the short-row heel and toe? Very clever. I'm hooked!

Frog Pond

It became clear, yesterday, that I was going to run out of yarn long before I reached the point where I could shorten chart 4. Plus, I saw these photos, and which are stinking gorgeous, and I want my Icarus to look like that.

Off the needles, before frogging.

So, I frogged nine days of work. It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought. I didn't cry, and didn't even touch my glass of courage until I was picking up the stitches. Strangely, I'm not as po'd about this as I thought I would be. Before I found my knitting community or started this blog, Icarus would have been stuffed into a basket and hidden away, never to be spoken of again. Now, I see it as an opportunity to get the decreases pointed in the right direction, and the shawl will be better as a result, if somewhat smaller. I actually am looking forward to re-doing charts 2 through 4. I love watching the pattern emerge. Never get tired of that.

Just about ready to start again.

Of course, tinking back an additional six rows because I stopped frogging too soon has not been fun, but it was pleasantly done at the watering hole last night while chatting with a very nice gentleman and listening to some karaoke (No, I did not get up and sing. I wasn't in the mood).

Now, if the weather would smarten up a little so I could sit outside and knit, that would be lovely. Oh yeah, and get my plants into the ground.

Priceless

Barbecue and bistro set: $225 Steak and asparagus: $14
Dining al fresco in my own back yard: Priceless.
Bonus - using my own power tools and muscles to build something all-by-myself: Beyond priceless.

I'm on vacation!

I took this week off to work on the yard, here at Chez Peepee. Not that I have grand plans, but I need more time than the weekend affords me (if I would quit knitting three hours a day, it would help. Not gonna happen, though).

Naturally enough, the weather is horrible. Cool and overcast, when it's not pissing down rain. You can blame me for the nasty weather. It's my fault because I HAD OUTDOOR PLANS.

So, I'm spending my time working on Icarus, while intently staring out the window, waiting for a break in the gloom. When I see it, I rush outdoors, do a project and hope that I get it done before the break is over.

Much as this bothers me, there is a bright (Ha! Bright!) side to the crappy weather. Some things that need doing indoors are also being done. Things that I should have done before I moved in. Things that will make me feel much better about the space and therefore improve my state of mind. Perhaps even inspire me to do more unpacking. I do miss my books.

However, here's Icarus:



I finished the last row of chart 3 waiting for the bus tonight. At nearly 500 (edited - 435 stitches sez the pattern) stitches, it takes close to two hours to knit two rows (the wrong-side rows go much faster - no yo, k2tog or ssk's). It measures roughly 67 cm (26") from centre back to the needle. I have 17 g of yarn left, including my swatch, with 28 rows and the cast-off remaining. I may just have enough. Since I began weighing the remaining yarn obsessively, I'm using about a gram every two rows (chart 3). If I don't have enough yarn, I will eliminate a couple of the last rows of chart 4 (the last eight rows are identical).

Other miscellaneous notes:

• I have not counted the stitches since the last row of chart one. At that point, I was four under, three over and then one short. Decided that was good enough. The first row of chart 2 fit, so I suppose my counting was off (I was watching teevee at the time).

• Now, I know how the pattern repeat is supposed to look, and if I don't have enough stitches to do what I need to do, or it doesn't seem like I'm supposed to purl and I want to, I look at the row beneath and see what I missed, drop the stitches and fix it. I've had to drop back more than one row twice. Once three rows down, and once four rows. Thank goodness for teeny crochet hooks and spare sock needles to hold the live stitches. Lace is very forgiving - there's lots of give with all the yarn-overs, and most of the stitches eventually adjust themselves. Blocking will fix the rest.

• I have reversed a whole bunch of the k2tog and ssk's. I just had a picture in my head of where the dominant pattern should be, and went with it. I am trained, from months of knitting socks, to k2tog first and then ssk. Charts 2 and 3 charts change the order mid-way through the chart, and I didn't catch it. I am not ripping to fix this. I bet no one will notice. Blocking hides lots of sins. Makes others apparent, but I will worry about that when I come to it. Or not.

I'm OCD about lots of things, but not whether my decreases are right- or left-leaning in a shawl. In a sweater, I would.