View from my Desk

What does it say about me that I like to write with knitting to look at?



(That's the oh-so-seasonal wool sweater in front... actually, it would be seasonal if it was done now, but probably the fact that it's not is the reason the whether has been so abysmal... sorry! And some handspun I'm thinking about making into Harmonia's Rings Cowl, because that's also seasonally appropriate. They are different colors, I promise.)

I'm still plotting my large shawl project with the alpaca I bought in Peru (but not actually knitting, see: writing, above). I'm currently leaning towards the Firmaments Shawl. I'm also partial to the Spring Leaves Shawl, or possibly the Anthemion Wrap--but yardage-wise, either of the latter two would be a better match for my gray Trenna (a gray wool-silk blend from Schaefer), than the alpaca.

And hey, guess what? I finished my 25 days of erging in March, and there's still one more day of March left. Hurray for me!

Laziest Blogger

I actually have been knitting and spinning, believe it or not, but I have more consulting work right now than usual (which is good for me, but not so good for the blog), and I just want to knit in the evenings, not write about it.

Just in time for spring, I'm knitting up the dark brown wool and mohair I spun last fall into a cozy, long-sleeved sweater (it's going to have extra long sleeves with thumb holes and a shawl collar... so springy!). The sweater itself will be simple enough, but it turns out that I'm going to steek the neck opening. (This is slightly interesting because it will be the first time I've steeked anything.)

While I understand steeking in theory, I haven't ever done it because I don't tend to knit or wear colorwork, I don't mind purling, and I occasionally change my mind entirely about a sweater, rip it out, and knit a different sweater from the same yarn--and you'd REALLY need to love your yarn to do that after you'd cut it in pieces by steeking. However, in this case I'd knit myself into a problem, and steeking seemed like the best way out.

I'm knitting the sweater in the round, with a simple, all-over 2-row pattern--row 1: knit all stitches; row 2: knit 2, purl 1. When I was ready to divide for the neck opening and start knitting flat, I realized that the beginning of the round (in terms of the pattern) would fall in the middle of the row if I started knitting flat (with the result that within each row some of my stitches would be on row 1 while the rest were on row 2)--and I thought keeping track of that would be a pain.

Instead, I bound off the neck stitches, cast on 6 new stitches over the opening (the ones I'll cut when it's time to steek), and kept knitting in the round. Easy, at least for now.

Now I just need to not change my mind!

Historical Miscellany

1. Hurray, we got to row on actual water tomorrow!

2. In an eight! (Clearly, the best boat ever, no matter what insane nonsense people may talk about how quads are so much fun and how they like fours. They. Are. Wrong.)

3. I have already set my phone alarm, in case I somehow forget to set my alarm clock at bedtime tonight.

4. For 4:45.

6. AM.

5. I am so excited I can't number correctly.

7. Wanna bet I wake up several times in the night, sure that I've overslept?

8. This does put a possible crimp in my plan to erg a half marathon tomorrow (part of the erg marathon training plan), because I'm running a half on Sunday and wouldn't it be fun to erg and run half marathons in the same week? The danger here is that I won't want to erg tomorrow, and that this will be the final straw that convinces me of my other "wouldn't it be fun?" idea... that it would be even more fun to do both on the same day (and by fun, I mean, fun in retrospect).

Yes, it's Done

See?



(Please ignore the odd wrinkle across my lap--I'd just been at the gym, which meant my poor sweater had just been folded up in my locker.)

Let's review: Summer Solstice sweater, knit on size 7 needles (size 6 for the collar), with Sheep Shop Yarn Co. Sheep 3 yarn. I used a bit more than 4 skeins, then I made a hat with part of the remaining skein and I was going to make matching mitts with the rest... but now that I look at the picture, maybe I should make a belt instead. Or possibly some kind of invisible button system. I actually like it open as well, but this dress is voluminous on its own, and without the belt my waist was entirely lost--like wearing a blanket over a tent.

Speaking of the gym, it's March, which means it's time for the Concept2 March Madness Challenge--erg 5 or 10K for 25 days in March. And we all know I love a nice C2 challenge, with things to check off and downloadable certificates!

I've erged both days so far and am off to a good start--but I'm about to miss a bunch of days with a work trip (no need to get excited--just to New York City). The 5K version is meant to be easier, but my problem isn't erging 10K, it's that hotel fitness centers are very often erg-less. And there's no way to make it up--extra 10Ks one day do not count for previously missed 10ks.

And speaking of challenges, I'm trying to decide what to knit with the alpaca laceweight I bought in Peru. I think I have about 1800 yards, or possibly meters, and I'd like to use as much of it as possible--but not run out since there's no way to get more. Also, I worry that I wouldn't wear something gigantic very often.

(Maybe I should just make something I know I'll wear, then use the rest for another project?)

What's your favorite gigantic shawl? Would/do you actually wear it?

Maybe Done

The Solstice Sweater is possibly finished, and blocking as we speak. Or as I type, at least.

Possibly because I may want to add a little bit of edging to the the front edges (clear as mud, right?), and the length may not be quite right--all that talk of knitting the neckband before I bound off to be sure I had the length right, but really the issue was the the edge curled, and stuck away from my body (because I kept trying it on while it was still on the needles--what did I expect?). I'm hoping the blocking will fix both those problems.

Here's the thing--I'm not sure what to knit next. I have a sock in progress (Monkey socks, int he yarn that only wanted to be Monkeys), but I still want a big project, since I sprinted through the Solstice Sweater.

On the other hand, I'm distracted by the rest of the last skein from Solstice. I have about 300 yards left, and I'd kind of like to use it up (maybe a hat?), but I shouldn't use it till I'm sure about the edges and length of the sweater.

Maybe it's time for some spinning?

Progress

Here's where the sweater was this morning, but since Thursday is one of the days I'm not at work-work, I've made all kind of progress since then.





Depressingly, it hasn't gotten much longer because I worked nearly all day on the collar. (I did go to the gym, and because it's been raining so much I also stopped by one of my consulting projects, to make sure there wasn't any flooding--the fact that there were gigantic puddles on all the storm drains nearby seemed like a bad sign, but it turned out to be ok. Free Archives Preservation Tip: do not put your records in your weird, semi-finished basement--especially if said basement is located at the bottom of an outside staircase, protected only by an insufficient, clogged-looking drain--because it makes me nervous. Very, very, very nervous.)

Anyway... I worked on the collar because I'm still trying to decide how long to make the body, and I suspected the collar would make the whole sweater sit higher on my shoulders. It does, so I'm glad I knit the collar before finishing off the lower edge--it would be irksome to have knit the sweater exactly the length I want (whatever that turns out to be), then have it shorten up in the finishing.

So imagine a collar on there, ok? Stockinette stitch, with a slightly rolled edge.

3 days, 2 sleeves, 1 long run

I made all kinds of progress on my I'm-too-good-for-the-Olympics Olympic sweater over the weekend--I'd swatched Thursday night (I think I mentioned that last time?), so after dinner on Friday I cast on and knit as fast as I could all weekend. By Monday morning, I'd finished the upper back/yoke and both sleeves (Summer Solstice is worked from the center back out to the sleeves to make a kind of shrug, then from the shrug down to whatever length you want).



Things have slowed down since then--I have that pesky job for one thing, and besides, now that I've picked up the body stitches, there are about a million stitches per row. That's how it looked this morning. I've knit about 6 inches of the body, although it's still mostly made of sleeve.

We're not training for the Boston marathon (you need to qualify, and my fastest marathon time isn't be fast enough to qualify unless I can run that time again when I'm 55), but Kevin and I been doing a series of races intended as a buildup for Boston. I've been doing pretty well for me, for my general runner-ish-ness and the amount of training I've been doing (especially the amount of speedwork: none), but since I'm not actually training for a marathon, each of the longer races is the furthest I've run since 2008.

The races get 5K (3.1 miles) longer each time, and in non-race weeks I've been making Kevin run an intermediate distance with me so I feel more ready. Since this coming weekend is 25K (15.5 miles), last weekend Kevin and I set out to run 14 miles. I'm hoping it was the bad run of the season (there's always one--and hopefully only one), because it went kind of terribly. We didn't really decide where to go ahead of time, so we ended up running over East Rock, down to meet up with the canal trail, then along the trail till we got to 7 miles.

Kevin was planning to go home the same way, till I announced that there was absolutely no way I had enough hoppity to run back up the hills we'd just run down (although I may have phrased it more crankily than that--not enough hoppity makes one think of bunnies, doesn't it? I sounded like a bunny whose treats were threatened). So we tried to run back along the trail to campus, then home, but parts of the trial were covered with icy snow (and there's construction on the campus end anyway), so we detoured onto the roads. Kevin thought that had made the run too long, but it turned out to be exactly right--fortunately, because only under the best of circumstances do I have enough hoppity to run further than I'd planned.