Pictures

Here are the promised pictures of my Tomato Sweater and my Celtic Vest.

I just finished this last night at 12 am, so it has not been blocked yet. It will be a little longer once it is.

They both turned out really nice if I do say so myself.

Monday Weigh In & Stuff

Jeez, I can't believe I haven't done any blogging since St. Patricks day! I thought for sure I had, because lots of things have been going on. I guess "thinking" about blogging a topic doesn't actually count. My knitting friends pointed this out last week. Yep, I said last week and I still didn't get a blog entry in until today.

Ok, first things first then I'll update you on what's been happening. Today is Monday weigh-in and the good news is that I lost 3 lbs this week. Woohoo! That brings my total to 5.6lbs. I'm totally amazed by this since I wasn't able to get to exercise class last week. I threw my back out somehow and was NOT feeling well at all. I couldn't move my neck and I had such a headache. It just made concentrating so hard. I went to the Chiropracter everyday last week and now I'm feeling better. Although last night when I got home from work, it was hurting again and the headache was back. But not as badly as before.

On the knitting front, several exciting things have occured.
1) I took a trip to Indianapolis over the weekend of March 20-22 to visit Teresa. Actually 4 of us went down to attend her baby shower. When I mentioned to a knitting friend that I was going to Indy for the weekend she exclaimed "Are you going for the big sale?" To which I promptly replied "What big sale?" Well Mass Ave Knits was having their annual classroom sale. All the yarn was $1 per skein (yes I said ONE DOLLAR) or you could fill a Mass Ave Backpack for $25. Well, since I WAS going to be in the area anyway, I did a mapquest search to see where they were in relationship to my friends house. Imagine my surpise when it said it was only a 17 minute drive. ROAD TRIP!! So we got up early Saturday morning, which was not too easy for me as I think I had food poisoning the day before. Yacked twice on the trip to Teresa's house. Of course it didn't start until I got to Carmel, IN so I couldn't really turn around and go home at that point. Besides, I had a passenger that was so looking forward to visiting Teresa. Leslie had never been to Teresa's new house and was excited about the weekend away. Sorry, back to the yarn. After standing in line outside the shop for awhile in the cold, we were usherred in to the classroom. At first I was a little disapointed, because all I saw was novelty yarn. You know stuff like fun fur, that bobbley yarn and ribbon yarn. But after circulating around a bit, I did find some cotton blend yarns. And you know, if you collapse the cardboard inserts on certain skeins, you can fit 41 skeins of yarn into your backpack; 20 Sonrisa by Katia all in one color (cotton/poly/nylon with a cardboard insert), 13 Cotton Twist by Berroco in various colors (cotton/rayon) and 8 Nostalgia by Berroco in 2 colors (cotton/acrylic). What a haul! I looked up the yarn on-line to see what they had been selling for and wow! The Katia had retailed for $7/skein and I got 20. That was worth the trip right there. I got $265 worth of yarn, for $25! Teresa's Mom and SIL got some yarn also. We were the only knitters/crocheters in the group.

2. I finished my Tomato Sweater!!! Mine is in Bubble Gum Pink. I was planning on wearing it this week, but with the temps dropping back down into the 30's and the snow flying around, I think not as it is short sleaved. Brrr!

3. I finished knitting the Celtic Vest. However, when I tried it on, it's a little tight around the middle, so I'm going to pick-out the cast-off edge on both sides and extend it a bit.

4. I finished another Temple Guardian applique' block. I now have 5 done, 4 to go. Yeah I've passed the half way point. The head of #6 is done. I'm planning on getting the last 4 blocks done this summer, so I can get it pieced by this fall. If I knuckled under, I could get all 4 done before summer, but that would mean no knitting, and I'm just not prepared to do that right now. I never realized how addictive knitting could be!

Yeah I know, where are the pictures?? I havent' gotten around to taking any yet. But I will soon.

Books

I went to the library last night before you guys left me books to check on and picked up 3.

Salvation in Death by J.D. Robb - Futuristic Cop murder mystery. I LOVE this series and have been waiting to get this one.

Velocity by Dean Koontz - A guy gets a note to do something or a young school teacher will be killed. The cops think it's a hoax, so he does nothing and the woman is brutally murdered. Sounds kind of interesting.

While My Sister Sleeps by Barbara Delinsky - One sister has a heart attack and is in a coma.... I've read a couple of Delinsky's books before and thought what the heck.

Thanks for the book suggestions. I will look into them during my next trip to the library. The medical thriller sounds good. I've heard that Robin Cook was good, but never tried any. Tess Gerritsen writes some good ones too. Harvest was excellent. And I've heard several knitting friends discussing "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", I just can never remember the title. Now I have it written down. :o)

On the knitting front, I started my Celtic Vest again; my third attempt. The first time I accidentally felted it. BooHoo! The second time, the colors just didn't come out right, they kept pooling when I didn't want them to. So this time I have a lovely lavendar/green/aqua yarn that I got at Lorna's in Chicago paired with a solid aqua. I only have 10 rows done, but it is looking great!

I've also been working on my Tomato Sweater; in Pink/White. It's knitted top down and I have it knitted down to the decreased just below the bust line. I tried it on before I started the decreases and it was a little loose, but I don't think it was too terrible. I tend to where my clothes loose anyway. I don't like clothes the cling to you. I have 5 skeins of the pink cotton ease and I'm hoping that is enough to make the sleeves 3/4 instead of caps. I'm really liking the feel of the Cotton Ease yarn.

Ah Hah!!!

If you'll remember, last week I was bummed, because I had 2 knitting projects going and was having a problem with both of them. The 'Ah Hah' is in regards to my Cul-de-Sac Vest. I was having a stitch count problem, where things were not adding up and it was throwing me into a tizzy. To recap just a bit:

"After joining the 2 bottom flaps and finishing charts C&D, it said I should have 142 stitches. Then beg. increasing 2 stitches every 6th row, 6 times for under the armpits. After doing that increase, according to the pattern I should have 138 stitches. Which is obviously doesn't add up, so I chose to ignore that part and just knit on."

I emailed a couple Ravelry members who have knitted the Cul-de-Sac Vest. The thought that kept popping into my head was: "why am I having such a hard time figuring this out when at least 60 other Ravlery members have made or are making this vest and they don't seem to be having the same problem." I could not figure out what I was missing.

"Spinsterrowe" (a.k.a. Lisa) emailed me back on Dec 4th, and although I read her email, there was obviously an electrical short somewhere between my brain and the lightbulb that hovers over everyone's head. (You know you have one too right?). She sent me another email today, checking up on my progress, and I replied back, that no I hadn't really figured it out but that I had just decided to frog back the armhole decreases and re-do them. I told her I had even tried to count the stitches in a row below the armhole decreases to determine exactly where my mistake was, but hadn't had any sucess with that either (because I counted 138 and new that must be wrong). I admitted that I had also switched the L/R cable charts and so had ended up with an "S" on either armhole in one spot instead of the cable. So for aesthetic reasons, I was just going to frog back and my stitch count would just have to be what it was. After sending this response back to her, I decided re-read her earlier email to see if I could maybe glean some more info from it, which I thought highly doubtful. To my immense surprise, I read the following sentence:

"when you join the back pieces, there are 16 extra stitches for the cables that have been decreased out of the picture before you get to the underarm. 142-16 (cable stitches) =126, 126+12 (increases) =138."

OMG!!! I can only imagine what this woman was thinking of my intelligence level when she read my "no, still haven't figured it out" email, and here she had answered my question in her email on the 4th. I admit I'm blond, but I don't usually act it!

Everytime I re-read the pattern I was interpreting it to say "After joining the 2 bottom flaps and finishing charts C&D you should have 148 stitches" when in actuality I was joining the 2 bottom flaps in the middle of the charts and then decreasing as I finished charts C&D.

Again, OMG how dumb am I. No wonder none of the other 60+ knitters were having problems with this pattern as there wasn't a problem in the first place.

I must now admit that I have actually messed up my armhole decreases, because I have 1 decrease row left to do and I should then have 88 stitches but will have 96. So I know I missed a couple of decreases along the way and still need to frog to fix that. But I at least know that what it is that I was missing.

I'm Bummed!

For several reasons.

First: Now that I have the Cascading Leaves Shawl done (pictures forthcoming), I decided to cast on for my Celtic Vest. I made one of these last year and accidentally felted it. I bought some really cool yarn on our Chicago Yarn Crawl at Lorna's Laces. It started out really nice, but then the yarn started pooling. The Celtic Vest Pattern is designed to be knit using 2 balls at one time tp avoid pooling. Like I said, it started out looking really nice, I even made sure to start my balls of yarn in different parts of the color repeats. Maybe they were still too close. Anyway, when I noticed the pooling, I thought maybe I had done something wrong because partway through I had decided to try a little continental knitting. Will get into that more later. So I ripped back to before the pooling and re-knitted the area. Started pooling again at the same spot. I have set it aside until I figure out if I want to use different yarn, or rip it and restart with the yarns repeats even further apart. Still thinking on that. Any ideas??

Secondly: I picked back up my Cul-de-Sac Vest last night by Elsebeth Lavold. I was having problems with the decreasing for the armholes, and set it aside until I had the heart to trying figuring it out. I got the pattern from a 2003 Knitter’s magazine and am now wondering if there is errata out there somewhere or if the pattern has been reprinted in another magazine/book at some other point. I found what I think is an error when working on the back. After joining the 2 bottom flaps and finishing charts C&D, it said I should have 142 stitches. Then beg. increasing 2 stitches every 6th row, 6 times for under the armpits. After doing that increase, according to the pattern I should have 138 stitches. Which is obviously doesn't add up, so I chose to ignore that part and just knit on. However, I am now on the arm hole decreases and my numbers don’t match the next set either, so now I’m not sure if i have done something wrong or if the pattern is again wrong. Not sure if I should rip back to the before the armholes or just plug ahead and again ignore the numbers. I did determine that the armhole decrease numbers are based on the 138 stitches. When I do the math based on the 142 stitches, I figured I should have 154 stitches after the increases and 104 after the armhole decreases. I have one more set of decreases to make and my stitch count now is 98. So something definitely wrong. I have contacted 2 people on Ravelry who have finished the vest to ask for their opinions/help and I tried contacting Elsebeth Lavold to find out about the errata. But I'm pretty sure regardless of what they say, I still have to rip back.

Third: On the way home last night from knit I stopped at Taco Bell for a snack, because I had skipped dinner. I went through the drive thru and was getting my money out to pay, because I was next in line to pay, when the pick-up in front of me backed up and hit the front of my car. Luckily the only damage done was to my bumper. Her Reece trailer hitch holder broke a hole in the center of the plastic bumper. Since we weren't in the street, the police won't do a report, so I had to contact her insurance company directly. I'm not mad that she did it, just mad that I just had that stupid thing fixed from when I rearended someone a month or 2 ago. GRRRRR.

Sock Progress

I got the cuff on Sock #1 of my Crosshatch Lace Socks done. Instead of starting the heel, I decided to set that aside on a pair of bamboo needles and start the cuff for Sock #2. Once I have the cuff done for that one, I will add #1 back onto the magic loop needles and see how successful I am at finishing them both at the same time.


Also, I got a copy of the Cul-de-Sac vest pattern from the fall 2003 Knitters Magazine that I have queued on my Ravelry page (moonlightserenad). I started working on the gage swatch at lunch, but I will have to frog it, because I didn't have the right size of needles with me. But I wanted to knit something, so I just when ahead an 'pretend' knitted. Just so those of my friends who aren't on Ravelry can see it, here is a picture of the one made by Michelle (alwayscastingon).