Thursday, August 14, 2003

 

The secret project is still in the growing stages. I did up a good sized swatched and decided the fair-isle in the round scarf in worsted weight alpaca will kill the intended recipient because it will be too hot. So on the excellent advice of Wendy I've decided to go with a sport weight like Dale of Norway Falk. I'm thinking Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, but the budget might not allow it. I won't have time to track down the yarn this week (I don't live very close to a lys) so this project gets put aside for a bit. Also, I need to regraph it based on some wonderful suggestions Wendy made.

My cottage knitting this weekend will be:

I started one today and they're cute. I'll do up a few this weekend in the car just cuz.

2:38 PM

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

 

Finished the kiddiekami! And she loves it!

and here she is holding the bean she grew (she asked me to put that in)

Finally, by request of ab-fab designer Bonne Marie here's Emma and me in our Chickamis:

I have enough to make her another one (more stripey) which I will need to do for next summer as this one is a smidge tight. I'm lucky she's a skinny minnie.

Last night I worked a bit on my mystery-birthday-present project swatch and discovered a few problems. The scarf (I'll give that much away) needs to be wider (i.e. more stitches) so I can knit it on a 16 inch circular instead of double points. I'm also remembering how slow I am when I do fair isle. I'm VERY left handed and find carrying the second colour in my right hand almost impossible (it's hilarious looking with the double points). It's something I want to master so this is good practice. Any suggestions on fair isle technique?

11:51 AM

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

 

I didn't finish Emma's kiddiekami last night--I just have the straps to do--because I got sidetracked making the chart for my friend's birthday present. So there I am using my measly paintbox program to chart the pattern, when my amazing husband asks for my chair, fires up Autocad and starts making me knitting graph paper. If you don't know, Autocad is a computerized drafting program (my husband's an Control Systems Engineering Technologist) used to design buildings, wiring diagrams, machines whatever--it's a huge program and I have no idea how it works. What was so cool about it was he took my motif (can't tell you what it is) and could move it anywhere on the graph paper (mirror images, upside down, cut in half etc.) I wanted. In the end we came up with an amazing chart for the project with very little effort. I'm sure there are other programs that do this (maybe photoshop) but this was cool for me to see and since Craig knew how to use it, there was no learning curve. I would have tinkered and coloured in little squares forever to get this. After I finish Emma's top I'm going to start swatching so I can get a yarn estimate and get going. I'm not a pro at fair isle so I need to get going (my friend's birthday isn't until November, so I should have lots of time). This design-your-own-stuff is fun!

9:19 AM

Monday, August 11, 2003

 

I'm whipping along with Emma's kiddiekami. I separated the back and front last night and am 10ish rows away from finishing the back. Emma went with me to the yarn shop Saturday and (with my guidance) she chose the colours and decided their placement. That four-year-old has serious style!

She decided on 4 big blocks of colour and I, unfortunately, took the straps into account when deciding how big each stripe should be (14.5" total length/4). So, the pink stripe might look a bit short. I'm not ripping and starting again though because Emma doesn't have any problems with it. I'll just have to work on my "striping strategies" for future projects. You'd think it would be easy.

What was easy was sizing down the amazing chickami. I took one of her t-shirt tanks and used those measurements and my gauge swatch to make the calculations. It was tricky getting all the armhole decreases in quickly which meant a few sssk and k3tog.

In thesis news, today I'm turning a new leaf/planting a new forest and getting my ass to work. I'll report on how that goes soon!

9:14 AM

Sunday, August 10, 2003

 

Cleo's all done and I like it. I made the full back version, so I only put on one elastic instead of two which save some of the dreaded sewing. Here's me in the finished product; I made a splash wearing it at a BBQ yesterday.

There's another closer-up image in my gallery and sorry for the picture quality, it's a hazy day today.

That being done, I decided to make another Chickami. With Bonne Marie's permission I sized down the pattern to make a KiddieKami for my 4 year old. I'll post pictures of it's rapid progress tomorrow. I'm also cooking up a birthday present for a friend's 40th (the first in our gang) but I need to keep it secret in case he peeks at the blog. He'll know it's for him immediately if he ever saw it. Hope the weekend's going good and my teeny hangover stops soon. Cheers!

3:28 PM