Bulky Cabled Cardigan

Pattern: Bulky Cabled Sweater by Glampyre
Yarn: HPY 6ply Merino in Velvet Grapes (5.5 hanks)
Needles: 8mm, 7mm, and 5.5mm Addi Turbos
Date Started: 1.05.05
Date Finished: 1.26.05

I've been wearing this all weekend and it feels great. It's comfy, warm, and soft; basically everything I wanted out of it. Hell, I even got a few compliments while out, which is always a boost to the old ego (especially when they didn't assume I made it). My new nifty sweater shaver was a must for this yarn and now I've gone a little crazy with it and started shaving every project or swatch I have laying around. Who knew it could be so addicting?

cables after a little shave

The bulky merino is one of those yarns that scares you after washing. The sweater looked like it grew by six inches while wet and I started to freak out until I remembered my swatch doing the same thing. As it dried, the merino sprung back to the right measurements. I still think I'll reblock it and get a little more length out of the sleeves and maybe the body. Actually, the one thing I want to redo is the buttonhole band. I picked up the same number of stitches and placed the buttonholes as the pattern states, but I'm not feeling that bottom buttonhole. I think I'm going to reknit to space them out differently or at least add another one so I can close up the hem. Well, maybe I'll just sew on another button and just use the stitches as the buttonhole.

The Chronicles of the Bulky Cabled Cardigan

When we last left off, I was begging all of you for advice, but really I was tricking you into making a decision for me. My plan worked and many of you offered up your advice, thanks! The majority voted for longer ribbing, some warned not to add ribbing to the body without thinking of the sleeves, someone said that I needed to add length to the body, someone mentioned cropped cardigans being in style and some people told me I already knew what I wanted to do. I agree with all the above, well except for that already knowing what I want part but I won't digress into semantics.

I deliberated and finally forced myself to make a decision. I thought of ripping back to the body, but when looking at the yarn again I doubted it could handle it. I haven't even worn this sweater, let alone finished it, and it's already pilling. I love the yarn (hpy bulky merino), but I doubt I will use it again for a sweater since it felts when I look at it funny. Basically all my beautiful knitting and cables, the cables!, look out of focus. Great. Want proof?

This basically decided it for me, but I really did think about adding the length to the body. I wasn't sure if the proportions were right for longer ribbing, but if you look at the top picture you'll see I found a similar sweater with the ribbing you all love. Ok so it works, it helps that this sweater doesn't have any waist shaping to worry about and that it's knit from the top so I can do this sort of thing. I guess I could have left the length alone, but I kept hearing 'fat man in a little coat' in my head. Just because it's short it doesn't mean it's right, it needs to hit at the right spot.

So why am I going on about this? I guess to say that I do think a lot about this stuff, maybe too much, and that I'm very particular about what I like and don't like hence the indecision. The three inches of ribbing was quick enough to add, so I went ahead and knit the button bands. Hell, some could say I'm done, but of course I'm not. I still need to decide what to do with the sleeves; to aggressively block or knit some length into them (and how)? Then we get to do some serious blocking, some possible shaving (target here I come), and then pick some buttons.

We are almost there my friends, almost there.

If you ignore...

As my indecision grew and more suggestions came in about my cardigan, I knew there was one obvious choice at hand: ignore the whole thing and work on another project. I call this the procrastinator's way and it fits me just fine, thank you.
With Jack Bauer's help (and half of a movie) I was able to get through the soul sucking stst that is the Hourglass' body. I'm finally at the yoke and can attach the one sleeve I have done. It's a little depressing to think that I still have one more sleeve to go, but we carry on! I should have worked on this sweater when I actually started it months ago, I guess I didn't expect my progress to be so fast or maybe I just needed a good show to watch. I'm pretty happy with the way it's knitting up, the malabrigo is incredibly soft and it doesn't look like it will pill as much, or as fast, as I'd imagined. Knitting it at a tighter gauge helps (5 spi on 4.5mm). The colors are captivating, I swear I would have more done if I didn't stop and stare at my stitches and pet the fabric.

It's a good thing that it's a quick knit since I really haven't had much time to work on my projects in the last two weeks. I've been the good girlfriend and entertaining guests from China (for the boy's work) all that time. I've been out to dinner so many times that I'm pretty sick of restaurants, I've done touristy things that I usually wouldn't care to do, and I've been stuck in uncomfortable situations where I swear people are talking about me in Chinese. Somehow I found myself in Atlantic City on Saturday explaining the rules of Blackjack and slot machines to a group of people that gave me blank looks; I'm sure much got lost in translation. Eventually we split up and and I stuck with the slot machines. I managed to lose most of my money and then win 400 quarters to end up in the black (doesn't 400 quarters sound like a ton?).This may sound idiotic, I think I'm going to take a break from ms. stst and go back and finish the bulky cabled cardigan. I want it to be my first FO for '06 and I only have a week to meet that deadline. Hopefully some progress and thoughts tomorrow.

Indecision

I've always been indecisive, I never know what I want to eat or even if I want to eat. Ask me what I want to do if we go out and all you'll get is a blank stare. Some may confuse this with apathy and sure, maybe it has a tinge of it, but really I'm just terrible when it comes to deciding things. It's so bad that I coulnd't even decide what to title this post, see the witty winner I chose. Anyway, when it comes to knitting, where every step of the way is full of decisions, I usually half ass my way through it and see what happens. My latest question: how many unflattering pics can I take of myself? That was easy, four. But that's not what I really want to know. I finished the sleeves and basically like where they are (I know they will grow when I wash it), but now that I can actually wear the cardigan I notice that the length is all wrong. It's not the fault of the pattern, nope I was just an idiot and measured while I pulled on it... when it was still on the needles. Yep, smart move. I know I need to add at least two inches on this sucker (that's how much extra I thought I had), but the question is where? Do I rip all the ribbing and continue with the body for two inches and then add the waist band? Or do I just tink back three rows to the end of the ribbing and make the waistband extra deep? I think I know what the answer is, but, uhh, I rather hear it from someone else.

I'm so close to finishing, I can taste it. After the length situation, all I have left are the button bands. I just needed to let this sit while I figured out (ie. beg you for advice) what to do next. Well actually there was another reason, a very annoying reason. I couldn't even tell how short it really was till I took these pics. Want to why? No mirrors*! There are no full-length mirrors in my house. I assure you this wasn't my design. In the meantime I picked up my hourglass again and finally casted on for the body.

I was craving some boring stst in the round, especially now that my man Jack is back. I can't afford to look away or not pay attention for a second, so this will be my '24' project. I still havent' finished watching this week's episodes (we decided to split the four hours and just watch one a night, so no spoilers!) so this sweater still has two more hours of growth ahead of it.

To save me some time and aggravation, I decided to cast on using two needles. I'm using the cable of the longer one as a foundation, when I finish the length of the hem I can just fold it and knit the stitches together. No sewing and no provisonal cast on. Genius.

*apparently the boy was traumatized with too many horror movies at a young age, so no mirrors for us except for the bathroom mirror. apparently he thinks one day he'll look and see another face staring back at him. I don't think he understands the whole 'growing old' concept if you ask me.

wisdom in a box

Dating the son of a dentist doesn't sound exciting or terribly interesting, but somehow I picked the one that keeps supplying me with blog and party stories to no end. Case in point? Before xmas I got a call from the dentist telling me how my tooth was apparently on a tour and everyone was so interested in it (way to make me feel like a freak!). This confused and annoyed me, what the hell was my tooth doing with other people? Hell, why is it even still around? Nevermind that, what really got me was what he said next: "I made you something for xmas!" My response? "It's not a necklace is it?!" I didn't know what to expect. I already hated this tooth for causing me four hours of pain and torture, now I have to wear it like my personal albatross? How do you even match your outfits to a tooth? Maybe it's cool for Angelina to wear a vial of blood around her neck, but I didn't want to go there. (Once you start wearing your teeth as accessories, you need to dress differently, get new friends, get a whole new lifestyle really. That's just too much work for me right now.)

Thankfully, it wasn't a necklace. Instead, I got my tooth back in a weird form of a memento mori (or would it be memento denti?). Maybe he failed to understand that I didn't want my tooth back, I mean if I wanted to keep it then I wouldn't have gone through surgery, right? Anyway, now I have a visual tool for my story of torture, I think it makes it very climatic when I whip this out at the part I say "and after hours of not budging..."

Actually looking at this tooth makes me wonder if it held some sort of magical power that I now lack. I haven't felt like myself since the extraction, my knitting is taking longer, my blogging has taken a nose-dive, and don't even mention housework. Sure, I could blame all of it on work, but no I think it's the tooth. Once it was ripped out of me I lost a little part of myself (har-dee-har-har). I bet this one contained knitting wisdom, which is now stuck in a little clear box. Look at how big that one root is! You can't tell me that wasn't a lot of knowledge in there. I have one more wisdom tooth left, I'm scared to find out what power that one contains.

In the meantime, my knitting continues at a slow pace. I've only had maybe an hour to knit at night, but my progress isn't too shabby. When we last saw the cardigan I had just split the sleeves, I think. It's grown a little since then.

I feel very theo huxtable in this pic, but I do what I have to do. I'm knitting the sleeves flat so that's why the one sleeve looks a little funky. I'm undecided about the length, I'm always undecided about length. I'm going to block it before I pick up the button bands to see if I should add some more or if blocking will add enough. I'm knitting this at a different gauge for my size, making it a few inches smaller than what the pattern calls for. I like my sweaters with little ease, but should bulky sweaters be like that? This is dangerous ground I tell ya. I'll need to think about this over the weekend. I sorely miss that wisdom tooth.

Binge

"an unrestrained and often excessive indulgence"

I'm a binger, I'll admit it. Especially when it comes to colors, all of a sudden everything must be the same color. This past summer it was red; everything I bought, be it shoes, makeup, vases, or yarn, had to be red. Lately it has all been about purple. How else would you explain my new shoes?

yoga shoes, though I don't practice yoga

and, umm, these?

these look like mini work shoes to me

My obsession carries over to my yarn stash as well.

merino in velvet grapes

I obviously have some sort of problem. To remedy the stash kind, really the only one I can fix, I started knitting the yarn up. After a two week hiatus I finally picked up the needles on Thursday. A sane person would have picked up one of their wip's and gone their merry way. I think we can agree that sane I'm not. Sure I could finish a sweater I already started, but somehow I decided I needed a quick project (shh, don't tell me how if I actually worked on things I started then they would be quick and finished. we don't take kindly to that sort of talk around here). A sweater maybe? How about a cardigan?

I usually wouldn't use a variegated yarn for a project with cables, but I love how this one is working out. This is Glampyre's Bulky Cabled Cardigan that I've been wanting to knit for months now. The yarn is hpy's 6ply bulky merino, which I originally was going to use for one of those UO/Craftster shrugs thing, but my hatred for ribbing kept me from casting on. I'm glad I didn't, this sweater knits up pretty fast (I already have the sleeves on scrap yarn) and is giving me my cable fix. Unfortunately, I won't be able to work on it tomorrow either (I'll explain why tomorrow night) so maybe it won't get done till next weekend or the weekend after that.

A belated post

After all the holidays, all the family, all the eating, and all the marriage pressure I needed a little decompressing time if you will. I'm finally back and well rested. I was hoping to show you all the fabulous projects I finished while away, but, truth be told, I didn't pick up my needles. I tried, but I just didn't feel like it. Perhaps it was all the commotion and stress that comes with hanging out with both my parents and the boyfriend's parents 24/7. I was tired or busy. Luckily for xmas I did receive some fiber goodness and a spindle; I love having something to ignore people with. My boyfriend's mom picked up a spindle and roving while in Nova Scotia this summer for me, who knew. I don't know anything about the spindle (uhh it's made out of wood) or roving (so it's wool and white) and apparently nothing about spinning.

When I unwrapped my gift I immediately had visions of all the fabulous yarn I would spin and knit up, but more importantly I imagined all the roving I would get to buy. After reading the one sheet this kit came with and some googling this is what I came up with:

I obviously have no clue what I'm doing. It's my first yarn though (can I even call it yarn?) so I love all it's "overspun and not spun at all' character. I'm sure somewhere I could get 20 bucks for it. Or maybe 10?