The wedding shrug, however, is coming along. I am in the process of turning this (Handmaiden Double Sea Silk in the Topaz colourway)

into this, and so far it is looking something like this

and I think it’s coming along rather well, knock on wood.

The recently-finished shrug is the Two-Tone Ribbed Shrug by Stefanie Japel, in Cascade 220, colours Silver Grey and Cotton Candy.

The actual knitting went fairly quickly, but I agonized over seaming the sleeves for a while. See, I am a slow knitter, and also a lazy one, which means I knit a lot of accessories as they are (supposedly) quicker than knitting garments. Which means I don’t do a whole lot of seaming. But I am also an obsessive perfectionist, which means that I want the seams to be done right. Hence the agonizing.

I’m pleased with how it turned out, though, and now I can focus my attention on the next shrug. In fact, I don’t think I’m even going to be wearing this shrug anytime soon, because I intended to use it as warm-up clothing at ballet class (hence the black leotard in the photos), but now that it’s summer I’ll probably be too hot if I wear something made of wool in the dance studio. So I guess I’ll keep wearing a T-shirt over my leotard until fall or winter. Or I might just decide the shrug is too pretty to sweat on and it’ll become regular everyday wear instead.

The shrug I am currently working on is my wedding shrug. I hope, I hope. It depends how it turns out. Which is why I am knitting an extremely easy lace pattern. It may be the easiest lace pattern I have ever seen. Yet I still manage to make mistakes, of course. In addition to being easy, it is also very small, so in theory, it shouldn’t take long. This does not keep me from being anxious about it, though. Excuse me, I think I have to go knit a bit on the shrug now in order to keep from panicking.

There will be more Georges to come in the future. Stay tuned.

The Big Bang Theory-inspired his-and-hers sweater vests! Lieutenant Uhura’s red minidress! Firefly-inspired scarf, socks, hat, and jacket to go with the Jayne Cobb hat that of course you already have somewhere! In the interest of full disclosure, I have not made a Jayne hat yet, but I’ve had a Jayne hat kit in my closet for ages and ages (I think it’s this one), so you know I’ll get around to it. Eventually.

If you don’t understand how much I need a geeky knitting book…well, this is my shower curtain.

Clearly, I need geeky everything.

How can I possibly wait until next year for this book? That’s so far away! So of course I bought a copy of World of Geekcraft: Step-by-Step Instructions for 25 Super-Cool Craft Projects, edited by Susan Beal of Geek Crafts, to tide me over until then.

It truly contains projects to appeal to every geek. My friend Jeannie, a beader and D&D player, would be all over the d20 Deluxe necklace and earrings set made from sparkly many-sided dice. I can totally picture my Buffy-loving, cross stitching friend Yolande translating the Buffy Fuse Bead Portrait pattern from a Perler bead project to a stitching one. I love retro games, Magritte, and John Lohman’s site Sprite Stitch, so I think my favourite project is his Mario Magritte cross stitch pattern (I also own this shirt). Truly, though, I love everything. Star Wars terrariums! Crocheted tribbles! A knitted coffee sleeve with Trivial Pursuit-inspired embroidery!

Okay, that’s enough geeking out for now. Recently I knit baby legwarmers for a friend’s baby, with Bernat Baby Jacquards in Petunia. Although the pink and green parts in the repeats may look like flowers when you knit something wider, like a sweater or a blanket, in tiny skinny little legwarmers, they’re more like modern art-y pink and green diagonal lines. And not in a good way. But the striping is pretty, and although they’re a bit too big for Miranda right now, the size is for 3 to 6 months, and as she’s not three months old yet, she’ll grow into them.

I am now working on a pair in the 12-month size for Izzy. In the larger size, the “flowers” are upgraded from “pink and green diagonal lines” to “large pink and green blobs that might look sort of like flowers if your eyesight is not very good.” I’ve finished the first one, and although it’s only about an inch longer than the 3-6-month size (which is obvious from reading the pattern), it’s a lot bigger around (which should have been obvious to me from reading the pattern, since the biggest part is twelve stitches wider in DK weight yarn). The legwarmers may only fit Izzy if she wears them over her pants, which I think is perfectly fine, because I’m a child of the ’80s and I used to do that myself, as if it were normal and not insane. I am slightly worried, however, that they might only fit her if worn over ski pants, and that is just not okay, no matter what decade it is.

I’m not sure how my better half is going to amuse himself during this time, but his willingness to go on a mini-honeymoon entirely full of yarn (real honeymoon to happen sometime in 2012) indicates that he will be the best husband in the entire world.

Speaking of classes, last month I took a Fair Isle class at Cricket Cove from Andrea Arbour. Project: the Paris Mittens that she designed.

Don’t let that progress picture scare you. In general, the mittens look better when they are knit by someone who is not me, and that particular mitten would look better when photographed by someone who is not me. I also expect that a photo of the mitten when it is entirely finished and, most importantly, blocked, will look much better even if I am the one who takes it.

I’ve been nearly finished the left one for a while now, but have been having some arguments with the mitten regarding closing the top of it. The garter stitch saddle in two colours makes my head go a little splodey. Once I have shown it who is boss, I plan to get back to work on baby items for various friends and relatives before embarking on the second mitten. I swear this is a result of my spirit of generosity, not second-mitten syndrome. Uh-huh. For reals. I’m willing to pinky swear on it.

I’ve been feeling a bit better lately, and the prevailing theory is something like, Hey, you have bipolar disorder with a seasonal pattern to it — did you really think you could go the entire rest of your life without that affecting you in any way? (Which is not at all the way my doctor phrased it, but I think that’s sort of what she meant.) So I suppose I should feel lucky that this fall/winter my drastic change in energy level was not accompanied by a drastic change in mood. (I do not feel lucky, by the way. If I were a lucky person, it would not have taken me fifteen cups of Tim Hortons coffee to finally win a free coffee, even though the odds for winning a prize in Roll Up the Rim are supposed to be 1 in 6. Also, I made my fiancé buy that last coffee for me in order to trick the cup into thinking that it wasn’t for me. You may scoff, but it worked.)

Anyway! Tomorrow I will go for the regular blood tests I am supposed to get because of my medication, and they will also make sure there is nothing else wrong with me, which there probably isn’t, and then it will be spring and the sun will shine and the birds will sing! And here, to catch you up a little bit, are some photos from 2010. Roughly one from each month, but not exactly. Because some months, either nothing happens, or you don’t take pictures of what does happen, or you do take pictures, but they’re crap.

2010 started like this, in a Cuban restaurant in Manhattan. That’s Mare on the left and me on the right, Yolande is taking the picture, and Yolande’s friend Carla is somewhere out of camera range.

The fiancé, who does not like his photo posted online, and I spent Valentine’s Day at the Homeport Historic B&B/Inn. (This year we went to a Goo Goo Dolls concert on Valentine’s Day.)

The sock acknowledges famous goalie and knitter Jacques Plante at the Bell Centre in Montréal.

Back in New York on April 1, I attended an event sponsored by Scholastic and Women in Children’s Media to celebrate the release of the Baby-sitters Club prequel and the rerelease of the series. Let’s just say that this was my childhood dream. Awesomeness quotient: Meeting Ann M. Martin? Check. Being in a room full of women my age who aren’t afraid to admit that they can still remember the names of all eight Pike siblings way more easily than they can remember useful things like where they put their keys? Check. Meeting people I know online from BSC fandom? Check. Meeting the amazing and funny David Levithan, who is a great YA author himself and has edited so many other novels I love? Swoon. I want to have his babies. It doesn’t matter that he’s gay and I’m engaged. I don’t see what could possibly go wrong with this plan. Um, I mean… Check!

Yes, this is the same sock that was held by Judy Blume and, well, everybody at the 2009 ALA conference. So many famous authors have touched it that I know I am never going to actually wear this pair of socks except to take pictures of how they look on my feet. Which is why I still haven’t finished them — I’m not in any all-fired hurry to finish knitting socks that have become strictly ornamental rather than functional. I’ll get back to them someday, and I’ve knit plenty of other socks in the meantime.

I told you the fiancé didn’t like his photo online.

A dishcloth I knit poses with Our First Dishwasher. Oddly enough, by now the boy and I are already on Our Third Dishwasher, as last fall we moved from the apartment with Our First Dishwasher to the apartment with Our Second Dishwasher, and when Our Second Dishwasher broke in an expensive manner, our landlords decided it would make more sense to replace it with Our Third Dishwasher (okay, so technically none of these are really ours) than to fix it.

I got this in July.

I named my engagement ring Sparkly. BECAUSE HE IS SPARKLY.

The wedding, by the way, will now be a semi-elopement, since we have invited our parents. Which means we say we are having a small wedding, and people say, “Oh, with about fifty guests?” and we say, “NO. SIX.”

I got some more sock photos with Canadian rock stars when I went to a Crash Karma show. Here’s the sock with Mike Turner, formerly of Our Lady Peace.

And here it is with Edwin. Who is really quite good-looking.

That night I did also get a sock photo with Jeff Burrows (formerly of The Tea Party) and The Other Guy in the Band (okay, he has a name; it’s Amir Epstein), and they were also very nice and they look fine in the picture… but I’m in it, too, and I look terrible. So nobody gets to see that one.

David Usher seemed more confused by my sock photo request than the guys from Crash Karma were (and more confused than his keyboard player Kevin Young was that one time), but he posed with it anyway. This is maybe a month after the Crash Karma show, and it’s the beginning of the mate of the previous sock.

Sock is a pirate! We’re on the HMS Bounty. This replica of the original was built for the 1962 movie Mutiny of the Bounty, and it’s been in other movies like Treasure Island and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Sock enjoys hanging out with movie stars.

I made my ballet debut at the age of 30 as a party guest in The Nutcracker. I did not fall down.

And no picture-filled post would be complete without a kitty pic! Here’s me and my girl at Christmastime.

We’ll see if I update more often this year. And I am knitting things that aren’t socks, too, although right now I’m mostly focused on the birth record I’m cross stitching for my new niece. I started it in July, the kid was born in January, and it’d be nice if I finished it before she starts school.

]]> http://knitkitten.net/2010/05/31/knitter-to-tie-the-knot/feed/ 5 http://knitkitten.net/2010/02/12/flame-on/ http://knitkitten.net/2010/02/12/flame-on/#comments Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:49:30 +0000 Kitten http://knitkitten.net/2010/02/12/flame-on/ The 2010 Knitting Olympics kick off in just over an hour, and I’m competing this year. I intended to take part in the first Knitting Olympics in 2006, but I wound up in the hospital when the Olympics began and was not allowed to bring sharpthings with me.

Oops.

In 17 days, these two balls of yarn (Briggs & Little Regal in Red and Bleached White) should be a pair of socks. Your basic red socks, with a white maple leaf and maybe a couple of white stripes. I don’t know; I’m deciding that as I go along. I’m not sure what maple leaf chart I’m using, either. Maybe the one from Audrey Ritchie’s Maple Leaf Beanie, maybe not. I’d use the chart from Maple if I were knitting this with sock yarn, but since I’m using worsted weight and it’s only going to be 40 stitches around, a chart that’s 22 stitches wide would be gigantic.

Obsessing over stuff like this is what’s going to turn knitting a really simple pair of socks into a production that will actually take me 17 days. IF 10:00 P.M. ATLANTIC TIME EVER COMES, THAT IS. This is the longest evening ever. It’s like waiting for Christmas morning.

Most of the items that were destroyed were craft supplies in my mom’s sewing room. It’s a good thing that her yarn stash isn’t as formidable as mine.

So my parents spent two months living in a hotel room with three cats, a dog, and a goldfish. (Well, at first there were two goldfish. RIP Glenn.) My mom had just had foot surgery and was supposed to mostly stay off her feet for a couple of months. Plus, my dad got pneumonia over Christmas.

When my brother and I came to visit, we stayed in another hotel room, which was actually larger than the one that my parents and the menagerie were living in. No, it doesn’t make sense.

Our Christmas tree was kind of small this year.

Small enough that two cats working together can manage to knock it over and run through the room with it.

My mom liked eating Christmas dinner in a restaurant, though, and decided that it is to be our new Christmas dinner tradition. I’m down with that. Way fewer dishes to do.

Mare and I didn’t actually do any yarn shopping in New York, but don’t worry — we did plenty of other shopping to make up for it. Most of my photos from the trip are still on her computer, so I’ll post them another day. You know, once I actually have them.

The sock I brought along was just a basic sock with Knit Picks Felici in the colourway Aquarium. I love the yarn, the colourway is discontinued, and I hope they introduce a new colourway that’s similar to it. Since I am essentially finished that pair of socks now (“am essentially finished” = “have not yet grafted the toe of the second sock because I am lazy”), I also cast on for a new project, Fetching in the recommended yarn, Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. The colourway is 601, and in real life it looks nothing like it does on the screen on that product page. In real life it’s definitely not blue, and much more of a dusty purple.

I have completed one-and-one-third fingerless mitts, but the second one is taking longer than the first because for some reason I have suddenly forgotten how to consistently count to any number higher than one, and that slows me down somewhat.

I was technically taking part in a NaNo online chat while I was at knitting night, but declined to take part in the hour-long “word war,” since there was no way I could type that much and still hope to get any knitting done. When the other people in chat were tallying up their word counts for the hour, I said that mine was “about five rows of a shawl.”

I did not do very much knitting in November. I did, however, show the Margaret sock a good time. I took her to an Emm Gryner show on November 2, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. There were maybe about ten people in the audience, because the venue had done basically nothing to promote the show. We were ten very appreciative people, though. And who wouldn’t appreciate an evening that included Emm Gryner and Darren Eedens playing the theme song from The Littlest Hobo?

Emm was very gracious about holding the sock, and, as you may be able to tell from her tour diary entry, she also thought it was cool that she was holding a sock that Judy Blume had held. I love people who don’t think that Can I take a picture of you holding a half-knit sock? is a weird question at all.

The title of this blog entry has been brought to you by Emm Gryner’s song “89 Days of Alcatraz” and Gennifer Choldenko’s novel Al Capone Shine My Shoes.