Sorry I’m a bit late, but Happy Birthday to my brother!

The best part was his “cake”:

It is a calculator from the dollar store, molded into Jell-O, ala The Office.  I got Alex the DVDs of Seasons 1 and 2 for his birthday, so it was perfect!  (If you don’t watch that show — which you should — the main character Jim is constantly playing pranks on his coworker Dwight, including putting his stapler in Jell-O.  He also Jell-O’d his boss‘s mug and another coworker‘s calculator.)  We even hid it in a cake box so it was a pretty good surprise…

Whoa…

Really?  Is that really what I think it is?

Yep, it’s Jell-O!

Mm…tasty…

Don’t worry, there was real cake too:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX!

I’m making some good progress on some of my WIPs:

The baby blanket is about twice as long as it was last time you saw it.  I hope to add about that same amount of length before I finish it off and send it to baby.

Practice sock, before I make the real socks for Dad.  I tried a different type of heel flap.  I don’t like how it looks as much as plain St st, but it’s supposed to be sturdier, which is good.

My sweater!  Almost 9″ of the back!  Graduation is in a month.  It’s probably not going to be done by then, but oh well.  At least it’s coming along.

That’s all for now.  School is nuts right now, so I should get back to work.  Ciao!

…is finally finished!  Yay!

Pattern: Penny by Corinne Niessner, published in Knitty – A good enough pattern, though it needs modification/clarification.  The neck and increases from neck to body are confusingly (and, I believe) incorrectly written.  You always want to slip the first stitch pwise and knit the last stitch on every row to maintain the selvedge.  (This applies to the whole sweater, not just these parts.  Makes it easier to sew up and gives a nicer looking seam along the bottom.)  I think that Rows 1 and 2 should read:

Row 1: Sl 1, p1, *k2, p2* rep from * to last 4 sts, k2, p1, k1
Row 2: Sl 1, k1, *p2, k2* rep from * to end

Then, for the increases, keep the selvedge, keep one stitch of stockinette (k on RS, p on WS), and then to a m1 on each side of the RS rows.  Basically, the increase part should be of this form:

RS rows: Sl 1, k1, m1, garter stitch – continually increasing, ribs – staying the same width, garter stitch – continually increasing, m1, k2
WS rows: Sl 1, p1, knit the back of the m1 and est. garter, ribs, knit the est. garter and m1, p1, k1

Does that make sense?  If it doesn’t, and you’re going to make the sweater, leave a comment and I’ll try to explain better.  The way the pattern is written, the increases are lopsided…which I’m pretty sure was not intended.  I think, based on her notes and the pictures with the pattern, I’m pretty sure she meant to write something similar to what I just described. 

For this sweater, I also made the body part a lot longer than what’s written.  When I followed the length instructions on Spicey’s, it turned out to be more of a tube top than a sweater.  (Remember? scroll down)  So I made this one longer in hopes that it actually covers her belly.   I also made it halfway between the two sizes given – 54 total stitches in the center rib section.

Yarn: Berroco’s Touche` – Holy moley I love this yarn.  It meets pretty much every requirement I have for great yarn: natural fiber (cotton & Modal rayon – which is made from beech trees), machine washable, sooo soft, and gorgeous colors (including new ones that just came out…please notice the shades of blue…please also remember that I have a gift-giving-occasion coming up…).

Here’s a closeup:

I just hope it’s not too warm for her to wear it!

Yay!  Dan’s hat is done!  It’s amazing, amazing yarn, called Peace Fleece.  It’s a mix of yarns from all over the world, specifically from war-torn areas (they started with Russia, but now buy fiber from Israel and Iraq in addition to American fiber) and is an attempt to provide economic opportunities in places that need them desperately and to build peaceful relationships between enemy countries.  It’s also thick, warm, and delightfully colored.  Dan’s hat is made out of the color Father’s Gray, and is a standard hat pattern, with a bit of extra ribbing so it will hopefully stay on better.

I hope you enjoy the pictures.  They are styled after the supercool pictures people put on their MySpaces, taking pictures of themselves in the mirror.  They always make me laugh so I figured I’d try them myself:

You’ll notice the hat is folded up in those pictures.  Dan’s head is bigger than mine, hence a slightly bigger hat.  Here’s what it looks like unfolded:

Had to turn the flash on, so you could see the color properly.

(So maybe I was up too late last night…what of it? )

…on my brother’s door.  (He’s my rommate in CS too, if you didn’t know that…)

The fantasy baseball draft was tonight…I have the coolest brother ever…

Gauge is the bane of many knitters.  Projects that you think will be perfect end up all wrong, because you knit more loosely or tightly than the designer, or you substitute a yarn and it knits up completely different.  Many things have been written on gauge.  The funniest are in books, so go to your local library, check out Knitting Rules!, turn to page 78, and start reading.  (Or really, just buy it.  It’s worth it.  Buy all her other books too, while you’re at it.  You won’t regret it.)

Here’s today’s gauge lesson.  I knit two scarves using the same pattern, light blue for mom, teal for me (I know, you’re shocked at my color choice…).  The yarns are very similar in weight, though the light blue (Encore Colorspun) is a tad heavier than the teal (Cascade 220).  The biggest difference was the needle size: US9 for mom’s, US8 for mine.  Because of the difference, I ended up adding one more vertical ‘rib’ to mine.  I used almost the same length of yarn for each.  One rib + one size smaller needle = big difference!

Here they are, both folded in half.  Notice that they are essentially the same width, but waaaay different lengths.

Here’s a closeup, sorry the quality is not fab, I was in a hurry.

I actually like the short length of mine because it’s more for accessorizing than warmth, and perfectly cute in length.

Moral of the story: gauge matters.  Don’t ignore it.  Especially if you’re knitting something that needs to fit.

…that I haven’t posted in forever.  I promise real content soon…San Francisco, San Antonio, yarn, pictures!  I have two WIPs that are thisclose to being done, and so I’m making myself finish those before working on anything else.  Hopefully they’ll be done in a day or two and mailed off to their respective recipients soon!  In the meantime, you can check out one of my other blogs, to see what I’ve been up to today that was not knitting or homework:

http://philsummer07.blogspot.com/

So far, it’s mostly a collection of my research for this summer at Philmont.  It may become more this summer, or I may keep the neat content (stories, pictures, camper timmys) all on this page.  I’ll let you know.

For now, back to work.  Or sleep.  One of the two.

…so few people could be so loud.  Greetings from Baton Rouge, LA.  After a week in San Francisco with the family, I’m here in lovely BR visiting LSU’s Astronomy Grad Program. 
I will hopefully blog about both trips in detail later (though it’s
doubtful, so you’re probably better off just asking me), but for now, a
quickie.  The department has put us up in the LSU Faculty Club, which
is really quite a nice hotel.  Not plush by any means, but comfortable
and spacious.  In addition to hotel rooms there is a large banquet
room, which was rented out tonight to a local high school for their 9th
Grade 80′s St. Patrick’s Day Dance/Party.  The music was insanely loud,
basically preventing any work from getting done, and then, when it
finally ended, they all congregated outside my window while a man with
a megaphone announced the name of each student as his/her parents
pulled up to get him.  It went on forever.  Here’s a shot, midway
through the name-calling:

I know it doesn’t look like that many people, but boy do they have some lungs on them!

Besides the disruption, the visit is going well so far.  On the knitting front, I am nearly done with Fetching, part (a):

I really like the pattern and mostly like the yarn (Karaoke),
and hope to get them complete soon!  And now, the noise has stopped and
I will attempt to get some work done before I fall asleep!  Ciao a
tutti!

HH asked for a close-up of the scarf in the WIP picture and I intended to do a scarf feature over Spring Break, but then forgot to bring that one home…oops…so look forward to a scarf blog soon, including a lesson on gauge.  For now, here’s a preview of things to come:

The swatch and the first three balls of yarn for my sweater!  I’m so excited!  The stitch gauge is nearly perfect, the row gauge is a little short.  I think I’ll just add a few rows to the bottom of the fronts and back of the sweater, and the sleeves, and hopefully that should make up for it.  (Famous last words, right?)

Beads on yarn for Odessa #2, this time for me.  The yarn is a super soft charcoal alpaca from Kansas, and my fabulous mom strung all the beads, using a regular sewing needle and a lot of patience.  (I’m on the hunt for a beading needle.  Let me know if you know where I can get one.  Hobby Lobby?)

I was on the other side of Houston today, giving me the opportunity to swing by The Hen House and check out Buffalo Gold, which the website says they have.  I finally found it stuck on a shelf out of the way, pulled it down to look at, and nearly fainted.  It’s so incredibly soft, and I was already planning projects with it, until I looked at the price…$85!  Eighty.  Five.  Dollars.  Nevermind!  I love yarn, and spend too much money on it, but that’s too much even for me!

Tomorrow we leave on a family vacation to San Francisco – yay!  Don’t worry, I plan on doing lots of knitting and yarn shopping while I’m there.  Hopefully I’ll have good things to report!  Ciao a tutti!

I have some sad news – yarn diet is in full force as of today.  The stash is getting seriously out of hand.  I’m hoping to photograph and catalog all my yarn in the near future, though I’m kind of dreading it.  I may or may not share those pictures, because I may or may not want to publicly own up to how much I actually have.  I know it doesn’t compare to the Harlot‘s or probably most other famous knit-bloggers (shut up, they do exist, and their books sell zillions of copies!), but it’s probably more than “normal”.

So, in response, my Project ADD has ramped up and I have a lot of projects on needles right now (luckily, I have lots of needles too!), plans for more to be cast on shortly, and ambitious semester goals.  Some of them are listed in the Xanga sidebar, some of them are small or secret enough that they’re not listed.  In the meantime, here are some of the WIPs (Works in Progress) right now:

Here are some closeups:

 

Mystery blanket for a very special baby, and some of the yarns going into the blanket.

A blue version of the hat on the cover of this book.  I’m not going to do the Fair Isle top, instead using a great variegated yarn I got at the Yarn Barn in San Antonio last fall.  (Their store website appears to be broken currently, so that’s a neat article about the store.)

Chloe’s sweater, getting close to done!  Not going to be a crop-top, for sure.

Sock in progress.  This is not one of Dad’s socks, but is practice.  I’ve only done one other pair of socks before, and they weren’t fabulous, so I’m making one more pair to practice (it’s the picking up stitches after turning the heel that isn’t perfect yet.  (Hancock Fabrics closing = sale = YARN SALE = cheap sock yarn, and we all know sock yarn doesn’t count as part of the stash)

Also, major congratulations to the Texas A&M Women’s Basketball Team – Big XII Regular Season Champions!!!  Here are some pics from the game that clinched the title.  What more could you ask for: championship on senior night (where both seniors got to play) where we btho t.u.!

       

Me & Marlis, pre-game — Whoop!!! — Coach Gary Blair and AD Bill Byrne, Building Champions — Lenka and Jen, the seniors, with the trophy — Micheaux and Me, she’s my favorite player!

And the coolest thing, the VIP Pass I got from Coach Blair the day before.  VIP Lounge = free food and beer before the game = my kind of basketball game!

(Update 3/01/07, 5:45pm CST.  I forgot to put in links the first time around…doh!)