Hmmmm...

I might be making an ugly sweater.  

I bought the yarn in 2014, started another pattern twice, and am this far on my first attempt on the second pattern.  

It's supposed to look like this when it's finished:

It's The Weekender by Andrea Mowry, and I'm making it from Brooklyn Tweed's Shelter, which, I tell you, I will never knit with again.  It is beautiful, I love the rustic feel and look of it, and it's woolen spun so it's light as air, but it BREAKS.  Tug a little to pull the yarn through a stitch, and it BREAKS.  Pain in the you know where.

Anyway...mine looks like a big square with small holes for the sleeves.  I'm to pick up and knit 60 stitches around each armhole, but it's going to be a tight squeeze.

AND, do you see the line running up the middle of the front?  There is one in the middle of the back too.  A design element.  

This is mine:

It's all wobbly and the stitches to the left of the line are stretched out.

I always believe in the magic of blocking.

Sweet Mother of Purl, let it be so.

One Day Short of A Month!

I did it!  I finished my Umaro and I love it. It took a day less than a month, and according to my Knit Companion app, it also took 48 hours and 18 seconds of knitting. I am not so OCD or whatever that I would normally even know this, but the app tracks the time that the app is open, which it always was while I was working on this because the pattern was charted.

Before soaking.

Based on a conversation another knitter had with the owner of Apple Yarns, who recommended wet-blocking the blanket, I soaked this:

Heavy, sodden blanket

Heavy, sodden towels

What happens when a knitted wool blanket gets soaked?  It GROWS! It is now 46" x 77".

I didn't think to measure it before soaking, but it wasn't nearly this large. It grew about a foot in width and more than that in length.

I have the ceiling fan going overhead and I hope that will help it dry before the Rapture. I'd like to have a chance to gift it or use it.

Finished in Time for Cooler Weather

I just finished blocking this Joker and the Thief scarf after finishing the knitting yesterday and I am quite happy with it! It was fun to knit using a gradient kit from Miss Babs and a skein of turquoise Gypsy Wools Gaia Fingering yarn, which was a gift from older daughter.

THIS is a genius invention and I am told that it existed when I was a youth, but I don't remember seeing one before. It's a dish that holds my blocking pins and it is magnetic!

It even holds the pins when the dish is upside down! I first saw one when another knitter pulled one out of her purse. In her purse!!! Don't the pins end up all over the place? Nope.

Genius! I say. I suspect that everyone else who is involved in any kind of textile arts already knows about this, but it was new to me. 

I am not an early adopter, apparently.

I Am So Disillusioned...

I have always had complete faith in blocking. Blocking fixes EVERYTHING!!!

No. No it doesn't. My faith is shattered.

These are the sleeves for the State Fair cardigan I am making for my daughter. When I was knitting them, the total length measured around 16" more or less. Now that they are blocked, they measure 24". That is seven inches longer than they should be! 

Blocking stretched them to their actual length, I guess.  

I also guess I will be frogging the sleeve cap and seven inches of the sleeve. 

I just finished the right front and have started the left front. I thought that I was nearly finished, but my daughter is a human, not an orangutan.

#$%^&*()_!

Update:  Dumb, dumb, dumb. Put your glasses on, knittergran. The problem just didn't seem logical to me, so I checked again. I had read the measurement chart wrong and had not added the cap measurement to the sleeve-up-to-the-cap measurement. The sleeve is the correct length.  

Whew...

BLOCKING HELP

That I didn't want or need.

Hmmm....What's this???

(Daughter's sweater soaking)
Testing the water:

All four feet in:
And now out:
And yes, there I was again, taking pictures instead of reinforcing what NO means. But I was so surprised that he would get in the bathtub and the two inches of water in it that I ran for the camera. He was in and out several times, but when he started walking on the sweater, and then, even worse, chewing on one of the long strands of yarn I will use to sew a side seam, I took him out and banished him from the room.

I have never soaked and blocked pieces before sewing an item together before, but in a recent post by the Yarn Harlot she mentioned that she was doing that, and if it works for her, maybe it's a good idea. The sleeves were so curled on the edges that sewing them up would have been difficult. I'll see how this works, once all that heavy wool dries.

It's Lace!

I am so pleased, and sort of surprised, too. The six-hundred yards of alpaca turned into lace! It wasn't even terribly difficult. The pattern was over ten stitches, with repeats every eight rows. The wrong-side rows were just pearl stitches, which gave me a place to go back to when I made mistakes, which really was pretty rare with this. I think I found it easier than the last lace project (which drove me nuts) because I HAD to pay attention; this pattern is more intricate than the one for the simple scarf I made.

Now I'm blocking it and it's my first time blocking lace. Lace fights back! Thank goodness it's not as fragile as it looks to me because I really had to tug on it to get it to size. I'm starting on a second wrap from the same pattern but with a different color of the Peruvian Tweed Yarn, and I think I am investing in blocking wires before I block the second one.

Yay!!!