Suzanne Earley

Knitting a scarf

I tried to think of a more exciting title, but nothing came to me.

As you probably guessed from the title, I am, indeed, knitting a scarf.  I’m using Cascade Baby Alpaca Chunky in Black, with some Brown Sheep Company Lamb’s Pride (a wool/mohair blend) in Strawberry Smoothie.

I’m using size 7 needles, and it is turning out to be a very fast knit (for me, anyway…).  I’ve got 26 inches down, I’m think I’m going for about 72 total.

It’s a pretty simple 1×1 rib, with a slip stitch edge.  I basically used the instructions for the Noro Silk Garden scarf that was (is?) a big craze, except I’m obviously not using Noro Silk Garden, nor am I striping the whole thing.  I was worried the 1×1 rib would drive me crazy (ribbing on hand-knit socks makes me a little bonkers), but…I’m not crazy yet.  OK, crazier…

I did teach myself how to do a Tubular Cast-on, which is pretty cool, and when I finish I’ll have to figure out how to do the matching Tubular Cast-off.  My cast-on is not beautiful, but it was my first time, I assume I’ll improve with practice…

The scarf coordinates with the mittens my Mom made, though it occurs to me that i don’t have a picture of those right now. I’d go get them, and take a picture, but that seems like too much work at the moment.

Footwork

I think feet are kind of unpleasant to look at, so don’t worry, I’m not going to show you my feet, but socks are another story…

These have actually been done for awhile, but for some unknown reason, I hadn’t gotten a yarn needle and finished off the bind-off edge of the 2nd sock.

The sock yarn is Heritage, the pattern is a plain vanilla toe-up sock from WendyKnits using garter rib for the top of the foot and the leg.

I need to get back to figuring out the sock machine so I can make socks faster for my great big feet.

But…if you are hand-knitting socks, I have to say that toe-up is a very beautiful thing.

Had to finish them today to complete my outfit for tomorrow:  we’re going Red for the Redhawks — showing our School Spirit!  Too bad I don’t like red.

Now we are friends

We’ve still got a long way to go before we are wearing socks made on this machine, but simply getting it cast on and knitting was a wonderful hurdle to have made it over today.

We’ve all had a turn this evening and have cranked out many feet worth of knitted tube.  I even just switched to a different yarn!  Woohoo!

One of the boys said “You’ve got to admit.  This thing is pretty cool.”

Rebooting a project

Way back in October, I started making a sock using this scrump-dilly-icious sock yarn.  Over the course of many months, I even got as far as turning the heel and starting the foot.  I even posted pictures of the sock in progress.  Said sock was also the source of Dramatic Exit post

After I got the heel turned I decided to try it on.  Slipped te stitches onto some waste yarn and pulled it over my big honkin size 11 feet.

Many bad words were said and the sock was set aside.

See, I hadn’t made it BIG enough.  It was sort of big enough, but not really.  I could get it on, but it was just too snug.

I rilly rilly rilly want to WEAR a pair of socks made from this yarn, and I was afraid that if I continued on the path of not-big-enough, I’d never actually wear the damn things, and I was NOT going to give these socks away to anyone else.

So I let it sit.

And sit.

And finally, I did what I had to do.  I ripped it out.  Hours and hours of knitting, gone in minutes.  Unraveling knitting is actually quite satisfying in a weird way.  Complete opposite of say, frogging machine quilting.  Hunh.  Hours of knitting gone in minutes, Minutes of quilting, gone only after hours and hours of frogging.

Ironically, I’m finding that this sock is going faster than the previous non-sock ever went.  I think there are several reasons, one, I’m a better knitter and two, I fixed a technical issue I had with the WAY I knit, and now my tension is looser, which makes it easier to slide the stitches.

Also, the fact that I sat at the computer and watched not one but TWO episodes of Grey’s Anatomy last night whilst knitting away might have something to do with the progress being made as well.

More girls knitting

Three of the Girl Scouts came back this afternoon, after school, to work on their projects some more.  It was much more subdued than yesterday’s chaos.  They got started and seemed like they were OK, so I went back out front to continue the endless bookkeeping that I’m so far behind on, it’s not even funny.

But then someone needed me, so I went back in to the classroom and decided, to heck with the bookkeeping, I’m going to sit and knit.  These three were actually getting it, and made some good progress.  They were even starting to be able to figure out what was wrong if they were having trouble.

It was funny, though, they were concentrating pretty hard, so it was quiet, but I didn’t want them to think I was totally lame and I tried to ask them some stuff.

I’m pretty sure they thought I was lame.

Afterwards, though, I realized that when I was 12, I had trouble relating to other 12 year old girls, so perhaps it’s no wonder that I still have trouble relating to 12 year old girls.

The Girls

Yesterday afternoon, Knots & Bolts was invaded by some 6th grade Girl Scouts.  (These girls are all…about 12 years old, I guess.)

They are working on a fashion badge, and part of what they’ll be doing to earn the badge is learning to knit.

Not surprisingly, some of them took to it more quickly than others.  The young lady 2nd from the left in the above picture?  She was the one that was MOST resistant to this whole learning-to-knit-thing.

She ended up being the one that caught on the quickest, and enjoyed it the most.  Lesson there, I think.

They’ll be back again in 2 weeks as as group.  I hope some of them will come back sooner for some one-on-one.

The girls and I learned a few things:

11 girls at once is a lot.

If you think you’ve got it, and get relax too soon and start chattering, you’ll probably get in trouble and end up with a tangled mess.

It’ll be a miracle if any of the dishcloths are square.  Or flat.  Or finished.

Suzanne is glad she is raising boys.

Yummy

I thought this yarn would be here tomorrow, but whoopee!  The UPS man came today!

This isn’t even all of it, bunches of it is already priced and put away.  I’m sitting down to cast on a new project** for a few minutes before I get back to it.  This is not waht I’d planned for today, but sometimes we have to just roll with it.

TTFN-

Suzanne

**I HAVE TO.  It’s a store sample.  <——-my story, I’m sticking to it.

Computers, part deux

Shortly after I wrote my earlier post, I decided to actually attempt to do a little troubleshooting, and fired up my laptop.  Network worked just fine on it, so now I don’t know what to think.  I’ll have to try moving the laptop to the front counter to see if it is locational, and if it’s not…well, then, I guess we’ll know it’s the computer (which happens to be the new Mac, and…I guess I’m going to learn a lot more about how my Mac works!)

Photos from yesterday and today:

I cheated a tiny bit. I took a number of photos last night, I wasn’t looking through the eye-piece, just holding the camera at about my stomach, snapping pictures. The picture I took that captured the word Lost on the TV — the knitting was blurry. So, I cut the TV screen out of that one, pasted on top of the TV in this picture and VOILA!  (I worked on my sweater some last night.  Long way to go yet.)

Yes, I’m weird. And geeky. And just the slightest bit addicted to several TV shows right now. I got to choir last night at 7 and informed the choir director that I HAD to be home before 8. I didn’t tell him why, but my Mom knew. Thankfully, she didn’t give me away.

I took about 25 pictures of Katie. She basically ignored me. The lighting in here tonight is terrible, which means the camera takes longer to expose the pictures. Holding it by hand gave me very blurry pictures. I set some books down on the floor, the camera on top and got some great pictures. So there’s your photography tip for today. Actually, two tips. Get down on the same level as your subject and use something to balance your camera (it was sitting off the floor as far as Don Quixote and a Moleskine journal would lift it). Books, tables, chairs, counters all work as stand-ins for tripods.

And on that note, it’s time to stop letting the sleeping dog lie and send her out for her last trip of the day to the great outdoors.

Come on Katie, time to wake up so we can go to bed!

Sock on a Keyboard

I’ve mentioned before that one of the things I want to do is learn more about Photoshop and specifically, photo editing.  I’d also like to learn more about how to use my camera, a Sony Alpha-100.   The other day I was just playing and figured out how to use the Custom White Balance setting, and tonight managed to take 2 pictures that very vividly demonstrate what that can do for you.

Backstory, or…why I took pictures of a sock on a keyboard:

My Mom’s Old Computer is going to become my Aunt’s New Computer, and I needed to clean some stuff off of it and see if I could make it not be so stinking slow.  Interestingly enough, simply uninstalling Trend Micro anti-virus seems to have done the trick as far as speeding things up…

As I was sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting for it to do things I suddenly thought HEY!  While I sit here I could be knitting! And I am now wishing that all those years ago when I actually worked with computers for a living and spent HOURS of my life waiting for them to do things, I could have been KNITTING.  Just think how much knitting I could have gotten done!!!

And now the pictures:

First picture taken using the Night mode on my camera.   The color is WAY off.  (No flash, just the overhead light).

The only thing I changed for this picture was setting the Custom White Balance, using the white countertop as the white reference point and voila:

Like night and day, isn’t it?

I didn’t do any further editing of the pictures, just resized them for the Internet.

If you are wondering what on Earth I mean by White Balance, here is a tutorial I just found that explains it much more clearly than I could:

Understanding White Balance (even if you just click over and read the first paragraph, you’ll get the idea)

What I know about photography could fit in a thimble, and I hope to at least expand that up to a mug by the end of the year.  I’ll try not to bore you too much in the process, but I’m such a geek that stuff like this really tickles me.

(And look!  I’m on the heel flap of my sock!  Isn’t it purty??)

Suzanne

Saturday

Beginning to knit is like patting your head, rubbing your tummy, chewing gum and walking all at the same time.  At least, I suspect that’s what our newest knitters thought this afternoon.  I think they were starting to get it, though, and I hope they had fun at any rate.

Yesterday afternoon we had freezing rain, and by the evening time it had turned to snow.  I didn’t even know it was going to snow, and was more than a little surprised to wake up and find that we’d gotten…6 inches?  Or more?  It was really fluffy stuff, and thankfully it wasn’t windy.

I’m headed for my bed and will maybe make a few stitches of my own before turning in.  I about 2 weeks ago that if I want to wear my sweater any time soon, I actually have to WORK on my sweater.  I’ve only (only!) got 24 more rows of the sweater “skirt” to do (out of 80 rows).  The trouble is that after every 8 rows, I’ve added 12 stitches per row, so…each row takes longer and longer.  I did start working on the sleeves 2 weeks ago, I decided I’d better get them in process, because when I get finished with the body of the sweater, I might be ready to throw in the towel.

TTFN-

Suzanne