One Down

Where to Red Wings keep their armies? In their sleevies! *groan*



Well, well, well, this went quickly. I'm not sure if it's the amount of hockey that's been on lately or that the stress of watching a Wings playoff game makes me knit faster, but the Wings have one round done and I have one sleeve done. And I must say, I'm pleased as punch with myself. My stitch, row, increase and decrease calculations all hit their marks, and the type of increase I used looks practically invisible (or at the very least like a machine knit sweater). I also remembered - just in the nick of time - to not knit the top-of-the-sleeve decreases in the round :-). All that remains is to bind off the top, only because I didn't want to do a rush job during the last 20 minutes of my lunch.

My only concern at this point is that the red yarn may bleed when I block it. Curses for not swatching both colors!

Sweater Progress

After last night's Wings game and two lunch sessions, here's where I stand. How's the red look?

And a little fun over on Ravelry...

One more way to win a prize for RavelRaiser '08. What's that you say? Only the greatest fund-raising effort to help Jess and Casey (and Bob!) made possible because knitters are so awesome. If you're on Ravelry (and seriously, who isn't these days?) you can enter to win tons of fabulous yarny prizes just by donating $10 to Ravelry. Each $10 donation gets you one entry in the raffle. Read all about RavelRaiser here, see more lolRavs here, and view the rest of my lolRav entries here. Now go donate!

Striped Myself Up

en·nui
–noun
a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom:

Yep. That's pretty much where I'm at right now. I think my biggest problem is lack of focus. There are so many projects that I want to be knitting right now, but there just aren't enough hours in the day. It's like my brain is floored in 1st gear/on caffeine with all the patterns and yarn and so on, and the rest of me is stuck in molasses. It doesn't help that my arms and shoulders are sore from knitting. That tends to slow one down.

I want to knit my Wings hockey sweater so badly - my mind's in overdrive with measuring and swatching and designing - but I can't go anywhere until my new yarn arrives. (I ended up keeping the wrong color yarn and ordering more of the right color. I hope. I tried to see it in person at two different yarn shops on Friday, but neither carried it. And one place was snarky about it. See if I go back there...) I do have one cuff done and ready for the first red stripe. Although, I'm already second guessing my design choice. I found this article on knitty.com and decided on a modified drop shoulder construction (the 'pattern' is just over halfway down under the heading Sketching your schematic) so I could keep things as simple as possible without knitting a straight-up drop shoulder sweater.

Anyways, I'm only 23 rows past the cuff and already it seems like the sleeve is getting way too big and it will be baggy at the elbows. This is where I do myself in. I have these types of thoughts and then I get overwhelmed. It's because I'm not that willing to just keep knitting and see what happens. The perfectionist in me rears it's ugly head and I want to figure it out ahead of time and make sure that it's right. So I end up doing nothing. It was like that when I had to lay out the stripes too. I put it off for days until I finally forced myself to do it and it wasn't that bad. It's actually kind of funny....I took a fleece sweatshirt that fits me about how I want the sweater to fit, stood in front of the bathroom mirror with a roll of masking tape and striped myself up. All at 2:30 in the morning. I'll see about posting a picture.

Actual Knitting

Alright, I admit it, I have gotten some knitting done in the past few weeks. I have an iPod case for my wife and a Koolhaas hat both done, but photoless. And we have this:



Which is now 'these' since I've finished the first one and started the second. I really don't like these socks. They're for my wife, but the yarn sucks. It's Knit Picks Parade that I got by mistake in a trade. She liked the yarn, I didn't know what else to do with it, I had been wanting to knit her socks (smaller feet means they go faster) and so started the pressure. Now I'm just trying to whip through them so I can stop getting guilt ridden stares whenever I pick up a different project.

Why I Love April

It's finally Spring around here. Although it was much, much cooler today than it was last week. That can't last, right? We were finally able to emerge from our house-cave and enjoy the patio last weekend. Believe me, sitting in the sun knitting for several hours on a Saturday does wonders to shed the winter blues.

The NHL Playoffs began last night. I watched two whole games (or I would've if I could wrest the remote away from my wonderful wife) between teams that are NOT my hometown Wings. I LOVE playoff hockey. The intensity is palpable and every game is entertaining. So many story lines will develop over the coming weeks and it started with Pittsburgh's decisive shutout of Ottawa and Calgary's upset win last night in San Jose. Even better, Game 2 in that series is already tonight and starts at 10 p.m., right about the time the Wings game will be over. By far the best part is the first two rounds when there are multiple games on every. single. night.

This is really more specific to April this year rather than every April, but I began knitting a swatch last night for my Wings sweater. It's going to be my NHL Playoffs KAL project. If you're interested, head on over to the Puck This! group on Ravelry and join up.

Good News, Bad News
Good news: My yarn order from WEBS came on Monday.

Bad news: It turns out red yarn I thought I was ordering is actually a very reddish orange. It's hard to tell and I only realized it because the invoice listed the color as 'Sunset Orange'. I cannot in good conscience knit a Red Wings sweater with orange yarn.

Good news: I get to go to an actual LYS tomorrow to find the right color to make an exchange with WEBS.

Bad news: I'll probably end up buying some yarn there. (Shhhh don't tell)

Good news: Cascade 220 Superwash is surprisingly soft.

Bad news: How can you find bad news about that?

Good news: Two skeins of Malabrigo were in my order on Monday.

Bad news: I don't know what to knit with the blue skein. (The orange skein will be a Koolhaas for me.)

Good news: I have several blog topics rattling around in my brain.

Bad news: I hardly have time (or motivation to be honest) to blog said topics.

Good news: It's spring!!!!

Bad news: The dogs will be constantly dirty for about two months while it rains every other day. Oh well, that I can handle.

Uh oh...

Thanks to this, I just ordered enough of this to knit this. Maybe I can knit it all during the playoffs. I also ordered my first ever skein of this and I am so totally stoked. Heaven help us all.

This has since been frogged, so big thanks to all for these. This will now be used to knit this instead, and this will be maybe turned into one of these.

This is getting old, so I'm out.