Tag: Mishaps

Lots of Tiny, Tiny Beads

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February 23, 2011

11:56 pm

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Last week, I was at a meeting with someone wearing a beautiful shawl. She mentioned that it was made from Wollmeise. And I remembered that I had a barely-begun Wollmeise shawl project sitting in my closet: my Entomology shawl. I pulled it out of the closet and read through the instructions again. I had not quite finished stringing all the beads.

The Beading Continues

The instructions for the shawl give a handy little tip. Instead of counting out each of the 1205 beads, string a bunch on and measure how many beads fit in an inch. Do a little multiplication, and you can simply measure the string of beads for an estimated total. I did the math. And I realized that, at 14 beads per inch, 1205 beads would measure just over 7 feet.

Beading

That’s a lot of beads. I strung them all, plus an extra inch or so for insurance, and cast on this evening. During a couple hours of tv watching, I worked my way through the 20 rows of chart A. And then realized I completely forgot to place the beads that were between stitches – I only did the ones in the yarnovers.

My little shawl is back to being a ball of yarn with a whole lot of little tiny beads. And that cross-stitch stocking is looking at me reproachfully.

Ouch

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October 10, 2010

9:24 pm

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Everything Else

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It’s T-14 days to the Half-Marathon, but I don’t have much of a taper in my plan. Next week’s run is the longest, at 10 miles, and today’s was supposed to be 9 miles.

“Supposed to be”? Oh, yes. I got to 7.5, and then I did this:

Ouchie

I tripped over nothing at all. One moment, I was running along, doing mile splits between 11:50 and 12:40, and the next, I was flying through the air, watching the asphalt move toward me with alarming speed. I landed hard on my hands and rolled to right, banging the heck out of my right leg. My hat flew off. My glasses flew off. I saw blood dripping on the ground and took a few seconds to realize it was coming from my forehead. I scooped up my things and moved to the grass along the bike path.

“Oh, my god, your eye!” exclaimed a guy walking past.

“No, no,” I said. “It’s my forehead. I’m fine.”

He offered to call someone for me, but I waved him off. I walked the 3/4 (or so) of a mile home. It wasn’t until I got home and sat down that I started to feel really lousy. There was blood all over my favorite running shirt. I had scrapes and bruises all over. My glasses were out of alignment. And I hadn’t managed to finish my run.

On the other hand, unlike the ill-fated 11-miler in 2002, this run didn’t end with a sprained ankle. Tomorrow, I rest. Later in the week, some treadmill running. Next Sunday, 10 miles. And I’ll be carrying my cell phone.

K has suggested that I take up cycling instead. At least I’d be wearing a helmet.

Winter Games

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February 18, 2010

6:00 pm

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Before the Ravelympics, before Ravelry, for that matter (imagine that!), there was the Knitting Olympics. A simple concept: between the opening and closing of the Olympic Games, cast on and complete a project that challenges the knitter.

Two years later, Ravelry was in full (beta) swing, and teams and events were born.

Two years after that, another Winter Olympics season rolled around, and the Knitting Olympics returned.

I have actually signed up for the Ravelympics, entering as part of Team WeHo, for the West Hollywood knitting group that I haven’t actually attended in quite some time. I’m there in spirit.

But my spirit really finds its home with the purity of the Knitting Olympics. No teams, no events, no judges but ourselves. My challenge: to turn a bagful of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran into a Mr. Greenjeans.

Stash: DB Cashmerino Aran

I chose this sweater because (a) these skeins of Cashmerino have been sitting around for a few years and haven’t yet magically turned into a Cardigan for Arwen, the pattern I originally had in mind, and (b) I want a new cardi to wear to Stitches West, which falls on the last days of the Winter Olympics.

I was off to a fantastic start, casting on around 7:00 pm PST (despite NBC’s insistence on delaying the Opening Ceremony until after 8 p.m. for the West coast of the U.S.) and trucking on through to the point where the pattern changes from stockinette to ribbing. And then… equipment failure.

Mr Greenjeans

It seems that I do not have a US7 circular needle. Learn from my example, future Knitting Olympians. Check and double-check your equipment, or you, too, may find yourself halfway through the course without the right needle to continue, with your favorite LYS – after you’ve waited three days for your non-working hours and their posted store hours to coincide – inexplicably closed. Or maybe that’s just me.

Sad Sock

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October 22, 2009

7:06 am

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One day, I will learn to look carefully at a sock before weaving in the ends. Yesterday, it seems, was not that day.

Zig Zag Diamonds

I had just finished watching Glee while doing the toe decreases and grafting the final seam. I neatly wove in the ends, turned the sock right side out, and put on my snazzy pair of socks.

Zig Zag Diamonds

Something didn’t look right. It took a minute to figure out what it was (and move past the Denial stage). The patterning didn’t match.

Oops

Somehow, on the second sock, I zigged when I should have zagged after the heel turn.

Wollmeise comes in a extra-large skein: 150g instead of the usual 100. My finished sock weighs 42g, and I have over 70g left. I would rather knit a whole third sock than rip out that woven in end, frog, and reknit the entire foot with the kinked-up yarn. I’m just not quite ready to cast on yet.

‘Fess Up Now

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July 1, 2009

8:30 pm

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Who is it?  I want to know.

Who is hoarding all the 32″ US8 circular needles in the San Fernando Valley?

I am working on a project knit in the round with a whole mess of decreases. After I got gauge on my trusty size 8 Crystal Palace circs, I didn’t want to mess around with any other needles. So I went ahead and cast on with my 16″ circs.

You know how the instructions always tell you to be careful not to twist? When you cram way too many stitches on a 16″ circ, it becomes clear why pattern writers think knitters need a reminder about that.

After at least two false starts, I got a good way into the pattern before completely losing it somewhere and ripping out the whole darn thing. That was when I decided to get a longer circular.

It was Sunday afternoon, and I had a load of laundry going. It had another 20 minutes to go, and my favorite LYS is open for exactly 3 hours on Sundays. I slipped on my sandals and headed out the door.

They didn’t have the needles I needed.

They don’t carry Crystal Palace circs at all, which is fair enough, although they do carry the Crystal Palace DPNs. I scoured the rack of Addi circs for quite a while before I realized that among the many, many plastic-swathed needles there were no 32″ circs in a size US8. US7? Sure. How about 9? You betcha.

With a sigh, I got back in my car and drove to my local big box craft store. I made a beeline for the knitting section and located the array of Crystal Palace circs. Size 8 in 16″? Check. Size 9 in 29″? Check. Size 8 anywhere between 24″ and 36″? Not so much. In fact, that was the one completely empty hook on the wall. I cornered an employee and asked when they might be restocked.

“The truck comes on Fridays,” he said.

Great.

Home I went, where I once again cast on with my 16″ circ. With a dedication to counting stitches that borders on the Obsessive-Compulsive, I have successfully reached the end of the first set of decreases, and by this point I was supposed to have switched to a 16″ circ anyway. Just in case, I stopped at a big box craft store near work last night and picked up a 29″ circ. It can’t hurt to be prepared.

It Might Be Cursed

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June 17, 2009

12:00 pm

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I’m starting to wonder if this particular yarn is cursed.

Cascade 220

Looks perfectly innocent, doesn’t it?  Nice orange Cascade 220 all skeined up, waiting to be knit into a cute toy for Little Miss.  My plan was a carrot from Amigurumi Knits for my daughter’s play kitchen.  I popped the yarn onto my swift, wound it up into a ball, cast on, and happily knit away for several rows before realizing that I had miscounted somewhere along the line.

Off to the Frog Pond with the carrot.  Maybe I should try something else.  So, I cast on The Deadliest Crab and knit merrily away for several rounds, all the way through the first set of bobbles, and then I noticed that something was wrong.

Miscount.  Again.  A really big one this time, and I could not for life of me figure out what happened where.

Ripping out stitches can be so satisfying.

Is This Yarn Cursed?

I’m hoping the third time is a charm in this case.  If this one goes all wonky, I’m afraid this skein will be in need of a time-out, and I’ll just have to comfort myself with stringing another couple hundred beads for Entomology.

The Beading Continues

Ready, Set, Wait

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June 15, 2009

10:07 am

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I’m all set to get started on Miss Honeychurch (which I keep calling Miss Honeydew – perhaps I need more fruit in my diet), except for one thing.

Just Add Yarn

My yarn is somewhere between Ohio and California. My copy of A Room with a View is also somewhere between a shipping center and my house, but I expect it to arrive today. (A year of Amazon Prime is one of the best holiday gifts I’ve gotten. It is, indeed, the gift that keeps on giving.)

But I have my pattern and a short circular needle for swatching. My plan is to read the book and knit the sweater over the course of July and August.  The sweater should will be done by Labor Day, which is still quite warm in this part of the country.

It’s not like I don’t have anything to knit in the meantime.  The Chicago Illusion Blankie is coming along slowly:

Chicago Illusion Blankie

Each charted row is actually four rows of knitting (two in each color). It’s going a little quicker now that I’ve marked every 10 columns on the chart for easier counting. And it only took ripping out two rows to get me to do it!

And my beloved blue skein of Wollmeise informed me that it didn’t really want to be socks (after I started a cabled sock not once but twice!). It wants to be the Entomology shawl. How could I argue?

The Beginnings of Entomology

250 beads down, 955 to go.

One Pomatomus, Two Skeins

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September 11, 2008

10:22 pm

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I finished the first Pomatomus sock while watching Rachel Maddow last night, but a picture will have to wait for the weekend. I manage to finish kitchenering the toe right at the spot I’d marked as the halfway point of the ball. But when I weighed my sock, then weighed the remaining yarn (all on my trusty Weight Watchers scale; at least it’s getting some use), I seem to have used 1 more gram on the sock than I have left.

Here’s the frustrating thing: I think I’d actually prefer a shorter leg. But the idea of ripping out the first sock and doing it all over again fills me with dread. I’d rather knit up the second sock with what’s left and take the chance of having to do the last couple of rounds with a different yarn.

Speaking of yarn (and aren’t we always, really?), Stacy of Tempted Hand Painted Yarns, well, tempted me over Plurk with new colorways of Glam Grrl. I was helpless to resist, I tell you. And then these lovely things showed up on my doorstep a few days later:

Tempted Glam
Red Diamond

Tempted Glam
Destiny

One of these days, I’ll get my hands on some Branded in Glam Grrl. But that day is not today.

Ceci n’est pas une sock

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August 27, 2008

8:45 am

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Ceci n'est pas une sock

(Yes, I know that “sock” is not the French word for sock.)

That sad loop of yarn was once almost half of a beautiful skein of Tempted Hand Painted Bad Grrl in the Clover colorway. After that, it was a gorgeous Embossed Leaves sock that was, sadly, too big for my foot, and a little too loose-knit in the gussets.

So, I ripped. And ripped. And ripped. It takes surprisingly little time to rip out an entire adult-size lace sock. I wrapped the yarn around the lid of Little Miss’s block box, and then wrapped it again around the back of a chair, tied it in a couple of places, dunked it in the sink, and hung it to dry.

It was when I tried to rewind it into a ball that things went really sour.

I don’t know what happened. I put the hank on my swift and started winding, and I ended up with one ginormous tangle. I spent 4 hours detangling until the yarn snapped. Twice.

At the moment, I have one lovely (properly-sized) Embossed Leaves sock, one sock about 2/3 of the way through the leg and already on the second remnant of yarn, and three more small balls made out of the frogged sock. I am going to have a lot of ends to weave in. K has already renamed this project The Sock of a Thousand Tears.

But I love this pattern, and I love this yarn, and I am going to finish this pair of socks.

I mean, look at this:

Embossed Leaf Sock v1.5

How could I not give it a mate?

Stashdown 2008

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December 14, 2007

11:11 am

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Last night, as I was outlining a candy cane in Santa’s pocket, I discovered a mistake.  Three little red stitches, painstakingly placed… one stitch to the left of where they should have been.

I adjusted the outline and moved on.  I am so not ripping out three stitches less than two weeks before Christmas Eve.  I did, however, rip out two French knots that have been bugging me ever since I did them.  They looked sloppy and wrong, and they will be redone.

While my crafting energies are focused on the stocking, I’ve also been fiddling with my Queue over on Ravelry.  I’ve been matching up projects in my Queue to yarns in my Stash, and I discovered that I already have the yarn on hand for 30+ projects, including two sweaters for Little Miss that may not go up to an appropriate size now.

Given this situation, it’s time for a Stashdown.  In the New Year, I’m going to focus on the projects I’ve lined up and the yarns I’ve got tucked away.  I’ll let y’all know how it goes.