When we last saw our hero, she was well blocked, but still awfully floppy and with a collar that just wasn’t cutting it.

When I first knit this sweater, my first ever adult human sized sweater, I didn’t actually follow the pattern. First, I knitted it in the round because I didn’t want to learn to do two-color stranded knitting in the flat. It’s a raglan sweater, which means no shoulder seams, and I steeked it. Very floppy.
I tried to compensate, I knitted the last few rows of the body on smaller needles to get a tighter gauge, thinking this might give some stability. Not really. Another mistake I made was to knit the collar right onto the body without binding off.
The buttons were all wrong. They are really pretty, but not right for this sweater. See how they flop? The button band was at too loose a gauge to support buttons with stems. I needed a flat button instead. And more buttons.
And here she is.

The collar is long enough, and shaped nicely, and has a nice new stable band. It breaks nicely, instead of just splaying. The new buttons lie flat and straight.

I bound off the collar stitches, then picked them up on both sides and knitted three rows of 1×1 ribbing. Then, using the three-needle bind off, but not actually binding off, I merged the two sides of stitches into one. Then I began the 2×2 rib that would become the collar, increasing at the edges and at the back to cause the collar to roll outwards. I made it longer than before, so that it had somewhere to go. The bound off stitches and the 1×1 rib stand gives stability to the collar.
I increased from seven to eight buttons. Which meant I needed to re-knit the button band as well. Then, taking off the old buttons left some holes in the other button band, so I re-knit that also.
All in all, I think she came out so much nicer that she’s been for the past 2 years. A new lease on life – nicely blocked and clean and ready to be added back to my wardrobe and worn with pride.

All this ripping and re-knitting started on Tuesday night. I got a good bit of the collar finished on Wednesday night at Stitch n’ Bitch and then finished up Thursday morning while my husband drove us in the carpool lane. (I get the passenger seat in the morning, when there is light, then drive home in the afternoon when I would have trouble seeing what I’m doing anyway.) When I got home Thursday night, I pulled out the buttonhole band and re-knit the buttonholes in their new positions. Then I made a mess while removing the buttons, so re-knit that side also. Thank the great maker that I had saved those balls of yarn leftover from the original project.
I finished up on Thursday night, just in time for the earth to tip the other way, starting a new season, and giving a new life to my old sweater.

I have a few sweaters now that I have made for myself, but have been avoiding wearing because I haven’t washed them and they are in need of a wash.
I have been wanting to make a wooly board for a while, but kept putting it off. After the great success of the blocking board and my shawl, I decided it was time to do it.
I didn’t have a pattern, so I used Google Images and searched on both “Wooly Board” and “Wooly Horse”, and then used those images, along with a pattern found here to make my own.

Here are the parts, all laid out.

On one end of the sleeve poles, I put straight ends, for sweaters with square sleeves, like my kimono sweater.

For the rest, angled ends, so the sleeves are more arm shaped.
If I were to make another, I would create a jig to make all the holes line up properly. Some of them are a little wonky, but it seems to work ok. I’ve only run into one problem so far, the smaller dowels I used for the pegs is a little soft, and I’ve already broken a few of them. Luckily, I could see that coming and made a few extras. It’s a pain drilling out the holes from the pole ends. When I can find some harder wood, I’ll replace them all. I didn’t use any wood glue to hold those pegs in, so I will be able to pull out the non-broken ones.
So today, I want to block my first sweater.

This was the first one I ever made for myself, and I never blocked it or washed it. I’ve been wearing it since May or June of 2004 when I finished it. It’s made with Cascade 220, and it’s also a little pilly, so blocking it out will give me a chance to clear off the pills.

Here it is stretched out on the wooly board. I soaked it in soapy water, rinsed carefully, and sent it for a spin in the washer to mostly dry it out, then placed it on the board and adjusted to the dimensions I need. I had marked the inches on the board so I would know where to put the upright pegs to stretch it to the right width.

And here with the button band sewn up to keep the buttons from pulling.
While it was stretched out, I discovered that there is a hole in the back!! Ack.

But lucky for me, I still have some yarn left from when I made the sweater. The original pattern called for a Fun Fur collar. Anyone who knows me knows that I could never stand to have that stuff near my face, so I just made a small ribbed collar, but I have always hated it.
So much so, that I took a class last year at Stitches West called Collar Obedience Training. I had always planned to re-knit the collar and button bands, and this was an excellent class to teach me all I need to know to make the collar look right.

I keep the handout in my knitting notebook, along with other class handouts, articles printed fro Interweave Knits (Beyond the Basics and other technique articles) and patterns that I want to try one day.
I’ll post after I replace the collar, which I plan to do before starting the still undecided lace project.

I finished the fingerless gloves for the huz, and am just adding the cuffs to the Ernie sweater and I will post that after Christmas, once it’s been sent off to the recipient.
What a week I’ve had. I had to go for a medical procedure on Wednesday, but then they moved the appointment to Friday so I had a whole two extra days to worry about it. Then I went yesterday, they did their thing, and now I have to wait for the results. Ugh!
Once the above-mentioned cuffs are done, I am itching to start something new. I’ve got the lace bug, and bought some Trendsetter Kid Seta in a nice red to make the stole from the cover of Victorian Lace. I think, unless I do something completely different, like take the pattern from Myrna Stahman that is inShawls and Scarves: The Best of Knitter’s Magazine (Best of Knitter’s Magazine series, The) and swap out the lace pattern she used with one of my own.
Then I snooped around on the web and found a lovely example here of the shawl knitted up as written. Maybe I just didn’t like the white and grey examples in the book? Maybe I’ll just buy her book:Stahman’s Shawls and Scarves: Lace Faroese-Shaped Shaws from the Neck Down & Seamen’s Scarves.
I’ve got some linen that I was going to use for the shawl in Big Girl Knits, but now I am thinking Faroese style. I love the shawl I’ve already made, and want more more more!

It’s been cold for the past week, like 37F, and 42F in the morning. Cold enough to close the windows, which we haven’t done much since it was too hot and we put the air on.
Thursday night I slept with two shirts on and my shawl wrapped around my head and shoulders.
Last week, when it was still 90F, I had called for an estimate to get our heater replaced. It’s quite old and we knew we would need to turn it on soon, but didn’t realize how soon we would need it. We have had two very different estimates, but the much more expensive one seems a lot more thorough, so we may decide to go with it. The same night the second estimator came was Thursday, and before he arrived, we tried to turn on the heat and no go. It was frakking cold in the house.
I almost think that the windows we just replaced are so efficient that they are keeping out the heat that the old windows used to let in! That, coupled with the complete lack of insulation in this house are just killing me.
At the same time, my husband, thank the Great Maker , has a new hobby that is finally up to a point where he can play with all his toys, but since his office/ham shack is at the back of our garage (which is a separate building from the house) he is freezing out there in this cold. The only other items he has ever asked me to knit for him are as skull cap and some of those Fiber Trends clogs which he loves, so much that he’s on his third pair.
So I started a pair of finger-tip-less gloves for him, in black Knit Picks wool, which is just what he wants. I started out with size 4mm DPN and 60 stitches, in a 3k2p rib, and increased for the thumb and as I was getting to the point where I wanted to close off the thumb, I consulted the book that I find I use the most of all of my books – Mary Thomas’s Knitting Book.
Mary Thomas’s Knitting Book is such a great book, and at under 10 USD, how can you go wrong? In the book, she has several mitten/glove patterns. She mentions using smaller needles on the fingers, which made so much sense after I read it, because that’s what I always had a problem with when making half-finger gloves. I always felt like the fingers were too fat in worsted weight. So I used 2.5mm glove needles to make the thumb and fingers, and had him try on the first glove at each milestone to check the length of the fingers. He wants to be able to use the dials and buttons on his radios, so if the fingers are too long, that would make him cranky ;/.
I hope to finish the second one this weekend.
Today though, we got up to go to an appointment and it was again freezing in the house. We sluggishly dressed and headed out the door, only to find that it was beautiful and warm out in the sun, it was at least in the 70sF at 9 AM. We came back from our appointment and went back inside to change into play-clothes, and headed down to the beach to take advantage of what might be the last warm weekend for a while.
We got down to the beach and it was beautiful. The water was so blue, reflecting the clear sky (well, except for the brown smudge) and the wind was slight but very comfortable in a t-shirt. We walked for about 30 min., and I caught up on some half-listened podcasts. Thank you so much majordojo for mentioning the Galactica Watercooler podcast, I’m loving it after listening to all the whining and nitpicking on CIC.
While we were walking, the wind started to pick up. Since it’s been so dry the past week, the sand isn’t moist enough to stay on the ground and starts dancing on the pathway, and starts to form a fine dust cloud about 4-5 ft high. The sand started singing too.
We decided to turn around, which made it worse because now we were walking into the wind. We ended up on the sidewalk instead of the path, otherwise we would have probably ended up blind from the fine dust. I wish I had my camera while the sand was dancing, it was quite mesmerizing.
It must have been in the high 80sF today, as I ended up beaking a sweat on our walk, and had a little sunburn (or maybe it was a wind burn?).
And another random thought, have you seen Green Wing? It shows up on BBCAmerica once in a while, and is completely over-the-top hilarious. I just received the season 2 box set and it is even more over-the-top than last season. We have a region-free DVD player so my husband can watch stuff from France that you can’t get over here, so I bought the Green Wing DVDs from the UK. They are broadcast as 30 min episodes here, but they are actually 50 min long! They are so severely censored that sometimes they don’t make sense. Anyway, if you get a chance to see them in full, take it. It’s like Scrubs without the patients, but way more funny.

So I worked on the bolero while I was away last week. I wanted to travel light, so I copied my chart into my smaller notebook, but in words instead of images.
Last night I thought I was ready to piece the whole thing together, or at least block it so I can start on the final trim pieces, and decide if I’ll do lace or just garter stitch.
Do you see what I see? Are you thinking what I’m thinking? How can the back be so much shorter than the fronts??


And this sleeve? It’s way too small for the arm hole! What did I do wrong?


The gauge is fine here, looks spot on.


That’s not right.


Sleeve fits the armhole on the back. What happened?
I dug out the charts that I made from the original pattern and discovered several problems. In addition to my gauge being too loose on the fronts, the chart is a little off. There are too many rows before the armhole decreases, and too many rows after also. I must have been distracted while I was working on the chart. In fact, I am sure I was, because it was the night before my vacation and that’s what was on my mind, not my chart.
Then when I transcribed the chart into words before my business trip, I again messed up. I miscounted some of the decrease rows, adding even more rows. What the heck?
Anyway, I’ve ripped back to the beginning of the fronts and have them both on the needle again, ready to follow my corrected directions. You would think that after knitting this four times, I would have figured it out, but luckilly the pieces are small and portable.
Which brings up another topic… When you attend a proffesional conference, is it acceptable to knit while attending lectures? What about the keynote speeches, lunches, breaks, etc? Personally, I think anything to get me through the keynote speech is a plus, they usually go just about 30 min too long and the whole audience is squirming to get off the uncomfortable chairs by the last 20 minutes. In the dark, I knit during the keynote. At least I wasn’t as rude as some people who walked out on one guy. They kept bailing, man after woman while the guy was talking. Hey, I was bored too, but that’s just rude. During lectures, I didn’t knit, but I did while waiting for the guys to set up projectors and the like. What else is there to do? Anyone have a different opinion?