Category Archives: knitting

Internet woes.

March 7, 2011 peneloping

Having crappy internet is quite possibly one of the most annoying things ever.

If you’re out in the woods somewhere escaping civilization, then it’s pretty much assured that you have chosen to distance yourself from your addiction to the interwebs and that there is no hope of connecting anyway. But if you’re at your new apartment trying to post a picture of the gorgey cable/eyelet lace hat you’ve been working on and the ratio of time you’ve spent waiting for pages to load to time you’ve spent actually perusing page content is 4:1, chances are after several hours of contorting yourself into strange sitting positions in all odd corners of your room hoping to get your laptop within range, you’ll end up wanting to claw your eyes out in a rather violent way.

In related news, I should probably call my landlady tomorrow and figure out what’s up with the internet.

Button shopping at 11:36pm presents a problem.

March 3, 2011 peneloping

I really want to go button shopping right now. Why don’t 24 hour craft stores exist??

In other news, my Hermione Fair Isle cardigan is done!

Well, except for the buttons.

I also started my other re-do project while I was working on this one just to have something to switch to when the eighty million rows of reverse stockinette became too tedious. This photo was actually taken about twenty rows ago, but it’s Hermione’s cable/eyelet lace hat from the Half-blood Prince.

In yet more news, I’m moving into my new place this weekend! I’m moving to my very own ginormous studio with a kitchen and my own bathroom but I think what I’m most excited about is the huge squishy armchair that I’m going to curl up on to knit for hours when I have spare time. Squee!

I have a desire to learn to spin my own yarn that is bordering on obsessive. I bought a drop spindle a few years ago but either I didn’t give it enough time to learn the proper technique or I just bought a crappy spindle because nothing really came of it and I have a bunch of roving sitting in a box looking fluffily sad. I might have to bust that out when I finally unpack all of my boxes. What would make me die of squee’s is an actual spinning wheel, but I don’t exactly have $400 burning a hole in my pocket. I am considering building my own though.

Hmm.

Musings whilst fair-isling

February 25, 2011 peneloping

If you stick a sheep in hot water, will it felt?

I love you, Mr Fedex Man.

February 23, 2011 peneloping

After I obsessively refreshed the Fedex shipment tracking site all morning, my yarns arrived this afternoon!

I know I’ve already knitted Hermione’s Fair Isle sweater once, but I didn’t really know what I was doing in terms of Fair Isle knitting, the gauging was completely wrong, and I’m just generally not thrilled with the way it turned out. So we’re going for round two. So far I’m much happier with the color choices I found online and the yarn (Knit Picks wool of the Andes) is simply scrumptious.

Somehow I mustered up the strength and discipline to finish the scarf I was nearly done with before starting the new sweater because I knew that if I didn’t do it then I would most likely be carting around a mostly finished scarf for the next five years.

It’s pinned to the carpet while it dries but the lace turned out pretty cool!

Andd I’m also 24 rows into the sweater. Pictures of that to come when it becomes more interesting because right now it’s literally just a knitted ribbon with some awkward sideways cabling on the ends. I will say though, the gray yarn I bought for the sweater is absolutely perfect. It looks gray when you look at it but it’s heathered with bits of blue so that in certain lights it looks light blue, which is exactly the shade I was going for because for ages I couldn’t figure out if the original sweater was blue or gray.

-dances-

And now, bedtime.

1 Comment costumes - knitting hermione - knitpicks - knitting - scarf - springtime bandit - yarn

No, really. I need more hands.

February 21, 2011 peneloping

I don’t seem to be capable of sticking to only one project at a time anymore.

First there’s the pink dress. I got this far all well and good but then when I sewed the pieces together, it just kind of refused to behave, so we’re officially on a break. Then there’s the Gryffindor scarf. I’m on the ninth repeat of the big scarlet stripe and when it’s finished I’ll have to decide if it’s long enough. I think it should be, but it’s a really wide scarf and it might look funny if it’s not extra long as well.

I would have finished this already by now if I hadn’t gotten bored with the endless knit/purl repetition and started Hermione’s Fair Isle scarf, which I have been drooling over since I found a lovely pattern for it. The yarn I’m using is too thick, but the colors are exactly what I was looking for. I guess we’ll see how it turns out.

But then even Fair Isle got boring, so I pored through my folder of saved pattern PDFs and decided to make a pair of mittens. These are so adorable they make me want to weep a little. I’m not crazy about the color, since I’m using the leftover marigold yarn from Gryffindor scarf, but I think the owl makes up for it, especially if I can find some really cute buttons to use for the eyes. Plus it’s knitting up so fast that I can easily go out and get a nicer shade to remake them without feeling like I’ve wasted much time. Or maybe I’ll send them to my sister, as orange is totally her color 😉

I wrote all of this three days ago and then had to save it as a draft because I could not for the life of me get my photos to upload to Flickr. I ended up having to put them on my phone and upload it from there. No idea why. And in the meantime, I started a new project with the leftover gray yarn from my gray stripey Hermione sweater. Meet my first attempt at something resembling lace.

So basically the moral of the story is that I can’t wait for my yarns to get here tomorrow. -_-