AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

So, as usual (damn, I need to break this habit) I have not finished the sweater I was trying to get finished on time. I'm good with test knitting deadlines, but not gift/at home deadlines. This however, is only part of the problem.

All I had to do was get the zipper in. When putting in zippers, I tend to hand sew them in to make them go in perfectly. Well, as this one was DK as opposed to the worsted weight sweaters I've done in the past, I wanted to get the thing done, so tried machine sewing it. I could not for the life of me get the zipper and sweater to stay straight. Maybe if I didn't put the foot of the machine down, it would not have pressed the sweater out so much, causing it to overshoot the zipper, but that doesn't matter now.

What does matter is that I screwed up putting the zipper in, so pulled out the trusty seam ripper. Figuring it would take a minute or two, as I have gotten very good with it during my couch slipcover project, I went at it. And promptly cut a hole in the sweater, making a sound that caused my husband to ask me if I sliced off a finger or punctured an artery, in his words. I told him it was worse. He didn't believe me until I showed him the hole. He agrees that it is worse, and would only have been worse if I had punctured an artery/cut off a finger in the process of creating the hole, thus rendering the sweater stained and/or me unable to complete it.


This is NOT GOOD. Now, I have an overdue sweater that needs to be fixed and have the zipper put back in, correctly this time. I will not give a sweater that has a zipper put in so badly that it's obviously homemade. I can do this. I know I can do this. The cut stitches are two purl stitches (from two separate rows) that divide the I-cord and the body of the sweater, so isn't in a highly noticeable spot, but will be somewhat difficult to fix due to the I-cord border and the fact that it is only a 4-stitch I-cord from the end. I have five options.
1: Rip out all of the ribbing up to the hole, knit back down those couple of inches. No thanks.
2: Pull out the four ends a bit, weave those in, double knit over the opening like darning a sock and weave those ends in. Probably not.
3: Only pull out a stitch or two, felt the cut ends together and darn over the smaller hole. Probably.
4: Pull out the strand of yarn that makes up the end of one cut row and the beginning of the other, felt the other two ends and re-knit one row, seam up the next. Also probably not.
5: Cry. Knit a small patch, needle felt it in, hope no one notices. Nope, as I'd have to buy more needle felting stuff because I left mine in the States. Not a bad option though if I were to make sure to solidly felt the cut ends.

I'm planning to go with Option 3, but that really depends on how many stitches I have to pull out to get the ends long enough to fix them. I wish I had a felting needle, as it would be so much easier to needle the small ends of the yarn together instead of trying to pull out enough to weave in or wet felt. I'll be trying to wet felt only the ends, not any of the rest of the sweater, and keep it small enough that it's not pulling weirdly and can be easily hidden. I'll probably pull the ends, making the neighboring stitches tighter to felt them, and use a crochet hook or other implement to loosen the stitches back up, pulling the felted ends tighter in, and double knit over a stitch or two to make it look better when fixing.

The sweater is currently waiting for me to be awake and level headed enough to go back and fix it. This will be tonight, and it WILL be out in the mail tomorrow, come hell or high water!

Socks!

Apparently, I just can't finish a pair of socks. I've had the Hourglass Socks on the needles since November 4. I did technically finish them once, after making a stupid error with the heel flap. Then, I did a test knit sock (Nebula by Cookie A., the brown one) which I LOVE, but I didn't have to make both, so I'm leaving the second one as a gift to myself, once I finish the Hourglass pair. Now, I have a sample knit pair of socks to make, so the Hourglass socks have gone back onto the stitch holder they just came off of, and will be waiting for this pair to finish.


I'll be knitting an as-yet undetermined pair of socks to showcase the yarn, Super Sock by Abstract Fiber. I'll update the colorway when I show off pictures of the in progress socks. I also have a pair of socks I just can't seem to get right, the Snowflake socks I'm trying to make. I keep on knitting them, then realizing they just aren't working the way I thought they would, and ripping back. I will, as soon as I start the sample socks, have four pairs of socks on the needles. That is three too many. There should always be a pair of socks on the needles in the purse for waiting in lines and such things, but this is just too many. I blame the complexity of the patterns. The Snowflake ones just don't turn out well. The Hourglass ones have an easy to memorize pattern, but have cabling nearly every other row every four-ish stitches, so take awhile. The Nebula socks also have cabling every other row, but not nearly as much and those look so awesome I just want to finish them and wear them everywhere NOW!

As for the sample knits, I have it narrowed down to three possible patterns that show off variegated yarns well, one of which has cables. I think it might show the yarn off the best, which is why it's on the list, but I don't want to knit more socks with cables! The other two are nice, easy to memorize lace patterns, so I'm leaning towards those, but am giving the final say to the designer as she'll be keeping the samples when they're done being samples. I may as well make socks she'd like to wear later, especially if she ever discontinues the colorway!

ACK!

I'm trying to get the MIL sweater to my mother in law for Mother's Day. That was a realistic goal. However, I've been having issues.

I don't typically knit things that require you to switch needle sizes. Therefore, I am not paying as much attention as I should be to switch the needles. First, I forgot to switch to the smaller needles for the back of the sweater. No big deal, I was only 1.5 inches in, rip and re-do. However, I have just finished the left front, and I remembered to change for the small needles to start. I just did not remember to switch them after the ribbing.

You'd think that I'd learn to stop when I think "that's strange" or "hmmm, it wasn't like this before..."

Apparently not.

Sleeve Island

Typically, this means you have only the sleeves left on a sweater, and it's taking forever because, well, sleeves are just long and painful. They have about as many stitches as 1/2 the body or more sometimes, and you have to make two of them. Two! You're usually already done emotionally with the sweater, and just want to put the stupid thing on already, so why are you still knitting?

For me, right now, this means that I have the sleeves from two sweaters done. But nothing else. I've knit both sleeves for the Telemark ski sweater, and they match perfectly, so I'm quite pleased about that. I've also knit both sleeves for my Mother In Law's cardigan, and blocked them both, as I really don't have enough blocking surfaces to block all of the pieces at the same time. Raglan pieces are huge.

I did the sleeves first because they are more like swatches, and if I was dead wrong for some reason or other, I wouldn't have knit quite as far before realizing and ripping it all out wouldn't be as painful. For the Telemark cardigan, I figured I should finish the second sleeve ASAP so it matched the first as closely as possible. I didn't want my gauge changing between sleeves, so doing them one right after the other seemed the best route. I should be continuing on with the body for consistent gauge throughout, but I've jumped projects a few times in between.


For the MIL cardigan, I'm making this up as I go based on desired dimensions and a picture of a sweater that is pretty nice. I'm really hoping that it turns out well. I took the dimensions before moving to Japan, and won't be able to re-measure/see her try it on until the summer of 2010. I'm worried the sleeves are long, but I knit them to the desired length. I'm just worried that the join between the underarm and body will be lower than anticipated, and therefore make the arm length even longer, resulting in gorilla arms. I'm doing the calculations and it just worries me that it won't turn out, mostly because I've never knit something this fitted completely from scratch before.


The sleeves were the easiest to calculate, so I started with them first. That and I wanted to be sure my gauge swatch wasn't lying to me. I was going to knit one sleeve first, then the body pieces, then the other sleeve, so that the sleeves didn't bore me, but then realized it would be better to just get the second one done in case I didn't write down some crucial bit of instructions and therefore had two completely different arms. As you can see, my blocking surface is a bit small, so I pinned one to the front of the board, sliding the pins in sideways so they lie flat along the foam instead of pushing straight through, and one on the back, for double the blocking area. I allowed it to dry leaning up against the wall, and then put it into the closet, knit a sock and worked on some other things.


As of this writing, am blocking the back and about to start the front pieces. I think I may do these two at a time, so that I mirror them correctly. It would be very much like me to make two rights, or two lefts, especially as my list of instructions says to mirror pieces instead of spelling out what to mirror. However, I'm not bothering to wind the hanks into balls, so maybe two hanks going at a time won't be the easiest thing to do. Or, the back took just over one, so maybe I could just use both ends of one...? No, that's definitely a tangle waiting to happen!

More Ikebana!

I have made a couple more Ikebana arrangements, and I will now show them to you! I know you are as excited as I am!


This was my second arrangement. It has Calla Lilies and Kangaroo Ears Paws (thanks MildlyCrafty!). There's also some cute pink flowers and a branch with some leaves on it, but I don't remember the names of those. The teacher showed me what to do for the main branches, but I placed the Calla Lilies and leafy branch myself, and she said it was good. Yay!


Because the Freesias and one Carnation weren't done yet, and the branches were growing leaves, I rearranged those pieces of the first arrangement into a new arrangement. I only had the one kenzan, so couldn't have two at once. This is my unofficial but still very much pleasing to me arrangement.


For this arrangement, the flowers were not quite in sync with the blooming, so it was not as pretty as it could have been at any one point in time. The roses were best the day or two after I got the flowers, and the lilies didn't bloom until 3 and 4 days after, when the roses were wilting. I liked this arrangement a lot, and just wish I had a more appropriate bowl. We make these at school using their supplies, then bring the flowers home and rearrange them in our own. I got three interesting bowls from the secondhand store for my arrangements. The only problem with them is that they're about 2/3 the size of the school's bowls, and in arranging Ikebana you tend to base the lengths of your flowers off the size of the container. I didn't want to re-cut everything after it looks so perfect the way it was, especially as the leaf would just be too big if everything else were smaller, so I left it even though it definitely overpowers the bowl.

I'm so glad I'm doing Ikebana. It's really cool to learn a beautiful flower arranging technique that I'll be able to use for the rest of my life, and it's nice to have the fresh flowers in the apartment on a weekly basis. Even Lee likes the flowers, and says they brighten the place up. Plus, I get a certificate for each year I complete, and the textbook is in English so I actually am learning the technical aspects and not just trying to piece together what I can from pictures and the other students.

Ca Ri Ga Pi

Yay! My first pie crust, for real! I made a Vietnamese curry chicken (Ca Ri Ga) pot pie for dinner, and boy was it delicious! This was my first pot pie, my second ever pie, and my first pie crust. It came out surprisingly well. I used the filling recipe from Wandering Chopsticks, after having tried the non-pie version of the curry and enjoying it greatly, and the crust recipe from the same. Lee was aghast - I was making pie crust and not using his family recipe? Sacrilege!

He agreed that the crust I used was perfect for this particular use though. It is very rich and pastry-like, so excellent if you're looking for a thicker tart-like crust, but I think I'd still go with his family's recipe for most fruit pies. I used this recipe for a chocolate pie as well (no pictures, it went too quickly!) and wow, was it amazing. My family typically gets boxed pumpkin and chocolate pies for Thanksgiving - never again on my watch! This pie was so amazing, and actually really easy to make. I hadn't ever made my own pudding before, and it worked out so well. I shall have to make it again sometime and blog about it then.


We made some rice to go with it, because as filling as the pie was, we wanted to have leftovers for the next night! Ca Ri Ga pie a la mode.

Ikebana!

I have just joined the Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) club! Every Wednesday, I will be getting new flowers to arrange, so we will have fresh flowers in the house weekly. It's a very good deal, and is a really cool skill to have, so I'm very excited about it. As I am a first year student, I get the first year student flowers, and have to arrange them in a very, very systematic way, which is good for me. Technically oriented flower arranging based on set angles, where each piece is some fraction of the next, based off of the size of the vase you're using? I can do that. This week, we had a couple of pink carnations, some yellow fresias, two branches, and a fern, very festive in a spring and Easter way. It's looking a little beat up at this point, from carrying it home and resetting it here after arranging it at school, but the flowers are more open:


I'm inordinately proud of myself for this. I keep telling Lee to go look at the flowers, another one has bloomed, or another leaf has popped out on the branches, but he's not as awestruck by them. Arranging flowers is just one of those things that I tend to put in the "I can't do it" category because it's just too artistic and not structured enough - but I did it! I tend to put painting, drawing, calligraphy, sculpting, and quilting in this category. I will be trying calligraphy, I start that on Monday! I'm trying to continuously challenge myself, learning how to do things I never thought I could do on my own. What better places to learn the arts of calligraphy and flower arranging than in Japan? And it ain't half bad, if I do say so myself.