artisticky

somewhere between everything that has and has not been going on recently, there was summer, and yarn, and a shawl.

quill by jared flood

ravelry link

size gigantic

BT loft (220g / 3.5mm)

also there was a deep and profound sense of discomfort at being photographed - despite the many, many unspeakably dirty favors the photographing party was willing to offer in return of a single frame where eyes weren't crossed, tongues weren't out and/or breasts weren't flashed.

what can i say. there is something utterly disturbing about posing in front of a machine that has the full capacity to capture your soul and put it in a jar and sell it to the gypsies, all the while being bent into weird shapes and attempting to look as if you were too cool to care.

still - what a lovely, therapeutic knit, and what a lovely heathered colour, which, incidentally, was personally approved for this particular project by the lovely jared flood himself at vogue knitting in april.

sizewise it turned out to be more of a blanket than a shawl though, and as such has found its place less as an everyday accessory and more as a priceless sit-on-me-and-fucking-die type of chair cover.

but for one day it got to go out and be pretty, and artisticky, and pretty, and indeed it was, and things were good, and souls remained intact, and afterwards there was a bit of boobage, and that was lovely too.

spring, snooker & shallows

it's the time of year again when men put on their bow ties and shiny leather shoes and gather up to poke their polished balls into some deep velvety holes, bending over backwards to get the position just right, crafting every thrust with precision only attainable through years of practice. for characters like "the rocket" and "the captain" failing or running out of steam is not an option. they will pound through 35 rounds of sheer sweaty excitement to see who's boss and who's.. well, the bitch.

i'm just gonna end this retarded analogy now.

turns out watching snooker and knitting makes even the douchiest life infinitely more tolerable. that and getting some global-ass support from people who are under no obligation to even care. so i thank you all in the most non-clever and non-sarcastic way i know how.

and now back to some actual knitting.

i don't have much to say about this cowl though, except that it's utterly, utterly sweet and awesome. it drapes exactly as i wanted and i dare say the color suits me, sir. i wouldn't have said that a year ago, but as it happens i've recently matured and can now wear whatever the hell i want.

shallows by bonnie sennott

ravelry link

size 15 x 114 cm

madelinetosh tosh merino light (70g / 3.5mm)

and spring's here too, that belated bastard. i've always figured you can't really truly appreciate spring unless you've clawed your way through seven months of winter first. the first day you go out and the wind doesn't slaughter you like some cosmic chainsaw, when it actually caresses you instead of withering away your last remaining breath of hope, that's when you feel alive again.

and you skip along, humming as you go, squinting at the piercing rays of light and greeting every bird and bug and blob of color like you've just got out from the cave from the descent, and happily ignore the fact that approximately four months later some creepy bearded woodsman will yank you right back down again and throw you at the mercy of the drooling albino monsters your fellow men have become because of their chronic deprivation of sunlight, human compassion and dental hygiene.

pictured: me. yesterday morning.

but until then you're sort of, kind of, fine. and baby, it feels good.

cutesy

picture july.

a girl walks into a yarn store.

she finds three gorgeous skeins of hand-dyed sock-weight yarn. on sale. and on a very generous sale too, she mumbles ecstatically to herself whilst attempting not to foam from her mouth like a rabid dog. she's been looking for the perfect fingering-weight yarn for a certain cardigan for ages, and this is it. she buys all three skeins and trots happily along.

unable to postpone the merryment of starting a new project she casts on, thinking it will be finished in a couple of weeks.

well. it wasn't.

instead, it lay practically unaffected on my (as you, my cunning reader, may already have inferred) dining table for five months after the sizing/frogging disaster that left me so emotionally drained that i wouldn't have pissed on it if it's kidneys were on fire. or something. i've been reading too much stephen fry lately. point is i didn't want to have anything to do with it. i was only able to muster up a couple of rows at a time.

but one night after christmas, having finally become sick of looking at the messy ball of fabric on my table, mocking me and reminding me how much i suck at all things unpleasant, i somehow summoned up enough willpower and stamina to knit the remaining sleeve. i just sat there watching five hours worth of TV and squeezed the thing out of me like some morbid life-to-hairy-purple-things-giver.

so allow me to introduce...

smaragd by svetlana volkova

ravelry link

size makeshift xs

araucania ranco (300g / 2.5-3mm)

i know i sound like a broken record here, but after all the clusterfucks this top-down cardigan put me through i'm really really happy with the result. it's a defining characteristic of my knitting to be completely unenjoyable to make but in the end satisfy me on all levels but the sexual one. and sometimes that too. why is it that i always associate woolly things with sex?

see? boobs.

i love the lace part although i couldn't find a way to block it properly to really open up the stitches. but i'm sure it'll even out in use. and the color is pretty awesome, which can only be attributed to my impeccable eye and the uncharacteristically far-sighted idea to knit alternately from all three skeins. it was pure torture all the way but in the end it produced an amazing flow of the slightly different tones that works really well with the otherwise boring stockinette. shows too how variegated the colors can be in handdyed yarns.

starting the cardigan twice from scratch was a devastating decision that resulted in me smashing stuff and swearing something along the lines of "i'll never fuckin' touch those fuckin' needles again". both times. but eventually it rewarded me like it always does because now it fits like a dream with no excess fabric in the top part. originally i was making the smallest size but it was still too big for me so i deleted one vertical lace chart repeat (8 instead of 9) and cast on 122 stitches instead of 131. it's only 11 stitches less, but just enough to turn a purple burlap sack into something that makes me look all lovely and stuff.

even the model is doing the twirl,
and only partly because i forced her to

so once again i've succeeded in making something completely awesome. i rule. i totally rule. bow down to me i'm the queen of knittingdom YE-HEARGH.

many many thanks to miss A for modeling!

back on track

please excuse the pseudoartistic tree hugger crap of the previous post. i had to do something. not being able to knit for almost two weeks made me delusional. that and painkillers. sweet opioidic mind-numbing BFF painkillers.

but i finally got some essential supplies on saturday and immediately made a pair of socks. oh god how good it felt. like taking a shower after spending 12 days in a broken porta-potty. and with a critically placed 7 inch wound that's not supposed to get wet for the first 15 days, i'm only half joking.

kiertoradalla by tiina kuu

ravelry link

size 37

cascade heritage (70g / 2.5mm)

they were presented to and modeled here by my sister-in-law, who graciously waited for 4+ months for me to darn the previous pair i made her, which i ended up... uh, never doing... because, well... i just didn't feel like it. the patience some people have for my idio-moronic-syncracies astounds me.

i also messed up the stitch count somewhere around the heel area (although i refuse to claim full responsibility for it, the pattern was at times just way out there), making the lace pattern uneven between the two socks, but see how cunningly i took the pictures so you can't tell? and therefore still consider me a competent and admirable knitter?

i didn't have time to block them either. so i'm not super happy with the way they turned out. but at least i got to knit something. and more important, i'm back on her favorite people list, which will come in handy around christmastime.

p.s. armageddon made me cry. again.

project infinity

a friend of mine came up to me in march.

"can you make me a lace scarf for my sister's wedding?" she asked. "of course", i replied, with a magnificent halo of professional knittingdom above my head. "i can do anything."

so she bought a pattern and some super fancy silk yarn, and told me to do my thing.

i went home, sat down and said, "gee willikers". well, something to the effect. beginning with the letter F.

i'm not very smart, you see. any work that requires active usage of the brain scares me. combine that with a whole lot of chart repetition, which hardly appeals to my tragic attention span and TV knitter habits, and you've got yourself a nice little shit sandwich.

but i boldly took up the challenge anyway, and after mere six months of extreme procrastination and subsequent consuming guilt the scarf is finally done. and i'm ready for some serious compliments, people. lie if necessary.

tuomi by milja uimonen

ravelry link

size 28 x 200 cm

bc garn silkbloom extra fino (90g / 3.5mm)

i'm really happy with it too. really. i am. the yarn wasn't exactly an orgastic joyride to knit but works great in the finished piece. all shiny and excessive. i made 28 repeats of the chart and together with a rather violent blocking ended up with spot-on two meters of lacey drapeness.

but where the designer (and other normal balanced individuals) sees flowers, i see angry bees. for some completely non-freudian reasons, i'm sure.

i'm still not hugely and obsessively in love with lace for aforementioned reasons, but i do like the part where i get to say "finished" and get unconditional admiration from people who can't or won't knit themselves (and who thus don't know any better). and of course it's nice to be able to make something and then sell it for an outrageous price donate it benevolently to someone who appreciates it.

but the biggest mystery about this whole thing is how my friend knew what she's going to wear for the wedding 18 months in advance. because it won't be held until fall 2012. very, very not girly-like. in fact, i'm not sure she's a girl at all. i check myself regularly. maybe she should too.

mom's birthday

nothing says "i love you mom" like a hand-made present with a little blood, sweat and tears sprinkled on top. which is why exactly two weeks before mom's birthday i decided to make her a lace scarf. the idea was beautiful of course, and the outcome too. getting there, not so much.

kernel scarf by bonnie sennott

ravelry link

size 180 x 27 cm

wetterhoff sivilla (75 g/3.5mm)

i assure you, my mother is not being held
at gunpoint in this picture

the pattern was pretty clear and knitting it wasn't hard at all, just a lot of repetitive work. but when it comes to details and finishing my IQ drops by 40 points the second the basic chart is done. graft without reading the instructions? okay. thread the edges with sticky cotton yarn? sure. start blocking at 0:30AM? why not. and don't bother counting the charts either, a ballpark figure is accurate enough. frogging lace is easy anyway. sheesh.

here's me grafting. see?

i ended up redoing simple things over and over, because the lobotomic side of my brain couldn't keep up with the excitement, and because the smart part just couldn't let it go. also there was a south park marathon on TV during the first trainwreck of a blocking cycle, which may or may not have contributed to the lack of focus and abundance of epically retarded decisions. sticks and stones may break my bones but i'm jesus and you aren't.

still, 10 days for my second ever lace scarf is not bad. and mom seemed to like it. the yarn choice was perfect too, although the color was supposed to be a little more pink and less purple. so in the end the project turned out fine. but will i learn anything from all the shit i put myself through here?

hell no. same time next year.

more pics after the jump.

epic non-fail

so i didn't die. apparently i'm more resilient than i thought. but all the squinting at the pattern did make my brain go ouch. even though this was a rehearse project the end result is pretty sweet. the yarn works well in terms of color and material, so not too shabby a choice for something that was supposed to be a textbook case of "epic fail".

tiger eyes by toni m. maddox

ravelry link

size 175 x 15 cm

colinette jitterbug (just under 100g/4mm)

 

i spent the entire sunday finishing and blocking the scarf while drinking tea and listening to dan bejar and metallica (metallica? yes, metallica) which caused my idyll-o-meter to go red so today i've mostly scratched my proverbial balls and spit on people walking under my balcony. the universe is again balanced.

seriously, it really is nice to do things you consider nice. another pearl of my wisdom right there.

i probably need to re-block the scarf at some point soon, because it seems to have shrunk back a little. but i guess it's going to shrink horizontally anyway since i wear it kind of scrunched around my neck.

by the way, i dare you all to try and find rust-proof T-pins in a town that somehow still thinks regular pins are perfectly functional for all household chores from hanging posters to popping zits. i finally spotted them at a local model store but caused the guy at the counter to have an aneurysm when i kept asking him if they were stainless steel. "why's that important, how long were you planning to immerse them in water?" well thanks for not being a dick about it.

anyway, lace virginity lost. high five. where are mah smokes?

more pics after the jump.

look mom, no hands!

is this me making this perfectly awesome 31x16 stitch pattern? or some holographic projection of me? am i dead yet? why's that monkey wearing a tube top?

looks like lace is not entirely as cryptic and cringe-worthy as i led you to believe. i did take some precautions (sedatives, mainly) before color-coding the pattern and dividing it into blocks of 4 stitches. four stitches i can manage. try five and my face will explode.

to boldly go..

so what happens when someone with a negative attention span and zero ability to follow instructions tries to knit lace?

despite my 20 years of knitting experience i’ve intentionally kept myself away from projects which, without any exaggeration, can drive me to jump off a cliff while shoving a stake into my brain AND inflating my lifevest before the stewardess says it’s ok. let’s just call it pre-emptive self-defense.

then my friend asked me to make her a super fancy lace scarf for her sister’s wedding. and bought some super fancy (and super expensive) silk yarn that’s just too fancy to be destroyed in a frustrated moment’s rage, which will come at some point, believe me. so i need practice before the real thing. i don’t like practice. i don’t like asparagus either. but sometimes you just need to eat the effing asparagus because your stupid mother-in-law is sitting right there and saying no would cause your entire social universe to collapse.

so i hereby declare my intention to expand my affairs to uncharted lace territory. if i die before summer it’s because of lace.

and i want a viking funeral.

pictured: collateral damage