Adventures in blocking

Confession: I'm terrible at blocking my knitted work. Explanation for my non-knitted readers - blocking is a 'finishing' process for a knitted item. When you knit something by hand, the stresses in the fabric may not be entirely equal; this can result in curling, twisting, and any other number of unfortunate side effects that can make your lovely item look like a wrinkled old piece of garbage. Blocking usually involves wetting the item with water, pinning it in the desired finished dimensions, and letting it dry. Doesn't this seem like a stupid part of the knitting process to be bad at? Does anyone else consistently have trouble with blocking, or is it just me??

I came to a sudden realization last Wednesday: the wedding that I was knitting Mystery Wedding Project for was only three days away. Now I'd long given up on getting MWP done in time, but I did want to finish my shawl so I could show off the hand-knits a little bit. All I needed to do was block.

I collected some advice from some of the ladies in the shawl-KAL, and based on their suggestions a (half-baked) plan began to brew - instead of using a million pins, I would make a wire frame. First, I picked up some low-gauge stainless steel wire from the local hardware store:


I washed the heck out of it, since it probably had residual oil and grime from the production process. I couldn't resist playing with it a little bit:


Fun for a girl and a boy! And a dog, apparently.
The first setback was the fact that the wire did not want to keep any shape but a coil. I applied my materials engineering knowledge to something useful (for once): the wire needed to be 'work hardened' before it would be useful. Basically, work hardening is the concept that a metal becomes stronger when you do 'work' on it.

In this case, I used my hands to bend the wire back and forth, and when those got tired:


Wrenches! I used the wrenches to pull small sections of the wire straight. With the wire primed, I bent it into a rectangle measuring 60" x 20". I fed the shawl onto the frame in a 'running stitch' style - basically passing the wire over/under the selvage stitches:


Voila!


I did break down and use a few pins to hold the frame steady.


I moistened the fabric using a spray bottle filled with water. It dried within the course of a few hours.

Did it work? It did!


I couldn't really believe I had produced something so delicate (me = bull in a china shop).

Would I do it again? I would, but with the caveat that I'm really glad that I don't have to do the work hardening of the wire again--it took a while, and if I was to do it again, I would work with the wire long before I was ready to actually block the shawl, just to break up the tedium a little bit.

Major shawl-age

I don't think that an item has to be blocked to be considered a finished object, do you? I present to you, MAJOR SHAWL-AGE:





Phhhhhheewwwww. I'm relieved do be done with it, but yet a little verklempt because it was such a great pattern once you got into a rhythm.

I'm terrible at blocking, but I'll try not to procrastinate on this one.

After all my bitching about this heat, I'm sure this will come as no surprise - I am so pumped for the autumn season! We finally had a break in the heat wave, and it already got me craving cuddly scarves, hot tea and apple picking. I'm definitely utilizing my shawl for protection against the elements (mild may they be, since it's in Cali) for an outdoor wedding I'm attending in Sept.

Half-done shawl or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the picot bind-off

Half of my first shawl is officially finished! Actually about 55%, but who is counting? (Well, me). This shawl is a little weird in it's construction. It's worked from a provisional cast-on from the middle outwards to each side.

The upshot is, I had to bind-off when I was half-way done. Of course, I auto-piloted into the chained bind-off. It's usually my bread and butter, but ugh it just looked terrible here. Redo. I went though my good ol' bind-off repertoire and realized that one that I had deemed stretchy and lovely but never actually put into use was the picot bind-off. I had previously deemed it too 'twee'. Hell, if it's not appropriate to be twee on a lacy shawl, I'm not sure it ever will be. I used my own tutorial and to my surprise it was actually kind of useful (!!).



I like it! It gave me a lovely ruffly edge. I can't wait for the other half to be finished!

But first, I would have to take out the provisional cast-on. I used the method recommended and provided in the pattern I was working from, which was referred to as 'a provisional cast-on using the continental method' (?). Whatever you say, Martha. Once I got the hang of it, it went quickly and I really liked it. Taking it out--another story. Guys and gals, I spent three hours getting this thing correctly on the needles. I've been accused of being a perfectionist in the past, but the correct term is 'crazy person'. I'm not sure if I'm going to be using her method again...I should try it on something easier and see if I can figure it out for myself. Directions on how to take it out might have been useful....

So why, might you ask, is all of this provisional casting-on and such necessary? The lace pattern used for the shawl is called "Wings of the Swan", and working from the middle has the effect of "centering the wings when the stole is worn". Uh-huh. I've never been more embarrassed than when my wings weren't centered. Very glad I put in the extra effort.


Can you tell where the center of the wings is? I can't. Maybe all will be revealed as it gets bigger (I hope).

Remember this little angel?

How is that even comfortable?

After my morning shower yesterday, I come down to find this beast chewing happily on some white yarn. After a minor heart attack, I found that he had politely broken the yarn from the shawl and left the shawl itself completely alone.



He's got good taste in yarn, I suppose. He had to have gotten onto a table and pushed a book off of it to retrieve it. My mom bought me a shirt recently:


Almost right, except the ball of yarn should be in his mouth instead of the needles.

Milk was a bad choice!

Wow! First things first. I'm pleased to accept the "A Blog with Substance" award from Michelle of You Just Gotta Keep Knittin'.


If anything, I strive for substance--even if that substance is something more like Jell-o than an actual solid.

Rules of acceptance:

Thank the blogger who bestowed you with the award - That's easy. Thanks so much Michelle! She has a wonderful blog that you should check out. I kind of feel like her stalker because I wouldn't mind stealing her lifestyle - cooking, knitting, little ones + animals running around, living in the Pacific northwest, insert more awesome and cool things here. Ooh, that sounds a little creepy; I swear I'm not going to try to "Single White Female" you.

Sum up your blogging experience, philosophy and motivation in five (5) words - education, amusement/entertainment, inspiration, accountability (on all counts for you readers and for me, I hope).

Nominate 10 deserving bloggers - Also pretty easy, and it no particular order.

1. Designs by Dianna - fun designs by a gal who is amazingly a relatively new knitter.
2. My Fibre Obsessed Life - love her sassy attitude!
3. Wife, 'Mom', Knitter - when you read her blog, she seems like that buddy you can always call up and complain about your day, and she'll make it all better.
4. Fiolinn and the Handy Gnomes - I wrote this at first as Fiolinn and the Angry Gnomes, which is different and totally terrifying. This gal makes wonderful knits.
5. The Student Knitter - a multi-talented crafter!
6. useless beauty. - another multi-crafter with an awesome sense of humor.
7. fridica - great knits and fun photos from her day-to-day.
8. Stephcuddles - another blogger who you feel like you could ring up to bitch about your day together.
9. Dyeing to Knit - beautiful yarns and patterns!
10. And a bone for my non-knitting readers - parkerfath.com, a friend of mine who blogs about whatever is entertaining or interesting to him at the moment, currently health care in various countries and how they compare/contrast.

I would throw the Bike Snob in there, but he would just piss on my award and call me out for being too hipster. But that's also why I love him.

As I glanced through these blogs, there was a similar thread running through most of them (the knit-centric ones at least) of "Sorry I haven't posted recently, guys, I haven't done much knitting or blogging recently." Ditto. I'd like to place the blame squarely on the beast:


Don't let that sweet face fool you. Moments later he tackled the photographer and inserted his nose firmly into the photographer's crotch.

And that's part of it. Not only because of the walking/housetraining/playing/infinite other dog stuff, but because yarn is apparently perfectly shaped, colored, and textured for his entertainment. I snapped this photo of my shawl to show you a little progress:


And not a second later, the ball of yarn was snatched from the table. I have to wait until the beast passes out to get any productive crafting done:


FINALLY.

But I think a lion's share of the malaise can be blamed on the weather. It's getting to the point here where I feel like I'm pushing the limits of good taste in my apparel; there's only so many clothes you can take off. After a while, the thought of anything wool touching your body makes you throw up in your mouth a little bit. As has (oddly) been the case recently, my situation can be summed up by Ron Burgundy:


It's so damn hot! Milk was a bad choice.

Maybe I should start working on a bikini...

Shawl-along, little doggy

I started the shawl knit-along last Thursday. The goal--average 7 rows per day. Not necessarily knit exactly 7 rows per day, as we know that sometimes time and motivation are in short supply, just an average. Things seemed to be going swimmingly. I knit on the beach, in the car, through various episodes of Top Gear. I was well ahead of the goal, averaging about 12 rows a day. Drunk off of my own shawl prowess, I laughed in the face of lifelines. Then, last night, I realized my stitch count was off. Curious. Here's what I had so far:

Ohhh yeah. But something seemed awry in general, minus the extra stitch. I found it difficult throughout to check for errors; making a bunch of holes in the material seems like mistakes to begin with. But it looks good, right? Let's go in for an aerial view:

Mmmm hmm. That's hot shawl action. Wait a tick. What's this?

I think the technical term for this is 'zigging when you should have zagged' It's also the cause of the oversized hole to the left of the zig). So I hyperventilated for a while, and then decided that I could probably just drop the stitches down and fix it. I still had a nagging sense of unease, though. I thought I'd been following the recipe pretty well, but this error was uniformly repeated. Looking for mistakes on this thing is like looking at one of those Magic Eye pictures, and all of a sudden it came into focus:

Crap. The whole pattern shifts to the left at the green line. So I invented some new words, or at least some new arrangements of words, and made a few suggestions to the shawl that are probably anatomically impossible. I threatened to punch Martha Waterman in the face:


I will snap your stupid glasses in half. Lord, we all had those glasses back in the '90s, eh? Can I get a high-five? No? I mean, I didn't have them either.
Yarn post-mortem:


It got much worse than this, but I got too depressed to snap a photo.

I'm a bit off my goal now...my shawl is half the yarn it used to be. Blurg!

You stay classy, San Diego

I lamented to my copilot a few days ago that I had done no proper knitting or proper knitting blogging for a couple of weeks. He assured me that life had just been busy and equilibrium would soon be restored. I'm still dubious, since life has me on the road yet again.

"Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which of course in German means a whale's vagina." - Ron Burgundy

As far as conferences for work go, it's hard to complain about visiting the ol' Whale's V. It also meant a good 4 and a half hours of uninterrupted plane knitting time (not to be confused with 'plain knitting time', which I assume would involve garter stitch). I decided to finish up the fingerless test mitts, which I had neglected since only one mitt was required for testing purposes. On the first flight leg, I completed the palm section and was confident that I could finish up the thumb with plenty of time to spare. I was planning to prep the yarn I'm going to use for WifeMomKnitter's shawl knit-a-long (a very free-form affair--choose your own pattern and timeline, and receive encouragement from fellow knitters). After boarding the second flight, I tried the mitt on--wait a minute...why is the thumb-hole sticking out of the palm of the mitt??? I willed the thumb-hole to shift to the correct spot. When that failed, I started willing my thumb to regrow out of the center of my palm. When that didn't work either, I sadly started pulling out the previous couple of hours' work. I don't think the woman next to me was a knitter, but she seemed to sense that a minor tragedy had occurred.

I've always been tempted to knit during conferences. I'm one of those people that tend to be able to focus better when I keep my hands busy, but I'm always afraid that the speaker will find it insulting (though personally I think it's a lot better than people whipping out their laptops during presentations, which happens all the time and seems to be perfectly acceptable). Mystery Wedding Project is a perfect candidate for this kind of thing; it's a 'turn your brain off' type of knitting. Unfortunately, it's starting to get a bit cumbersome in size to keep toting around, and damn it, I wanted to finish those mitts! This is one of the most laid-back conferences I've attended in a while, so I decided to test the waters. I whipped out my dpns and started to business, while trying to make it clear that I was still engaged. And...no one cared. Other that one of the conference organizers happily squealing "Look! She's knitting!" to her seatmate, not a soul even seemed to notice. So I learned some cool new tech stuff, and accomplished a little crafting as well:


I'm modeling it here so you're convinced that I actually made the left one, and am not just trying to pass off the right-hand one again.
Another interesting discovery is that what San Dieg-ans refer to as a 'tall boy' beer is substantially larger than what we midwesterners are used to. I was a bit embarrassed when this arrived for me:

Then on the way back to the hotel I even had an encounter with some wildlife:


Eep! American opposum! Not the cute NZ possum, unfortunately.
The only thing lacking? Actually starting on the shawl-a-long. Does picking out a yarn and pattern count?