Kiss My Knits!

So late last week, I ran completely out of yellow Jayne yarn. Yikes! I ordered some skeins on Friday through my favorite quickie supplier, and it arrived today, so I’m back in business until my gigantic cone order comes from Brown Sheep. Currently, I’m working on orders from December 5th-6th. Those people got an estimate of 8-9 weeks, so this is still in line with what they were told. I was hoping to really pull ahead, but whatcha gonna do, eh?

On the up side, I got a good head of steam up on my dad’s Charlie Brown sweater. When judging the color on that picture, please remember that my camera is currently equipped with a Powerpuff filter. It photographs everything hot pink, which I correct for as best I can.

This sweater is not a very portable project, since I’m ready to start the stripe and that’s going to involve about a million separate balls of yellow and black yarn, all being held double-stranded. It’s definitely a house project.

I was going to start on some slippers for myself as a portable project, but now that I can knit more Jayne hats, that’s what’ll be in my purse instead. Just call me Sisyphus, pushing a giant ball of Jayne yarn up the mountain.

Okay! I’ve got the chart reworked and ready to go. I’ve actually modified this slightly since I made the graphic. It’s a couple of rows shorter now. I printed this out, several iterations wide, and held it up to my Dad’s midsection to be sure it’s the right height. He’s a good sport.

The chart is 22 stitches wide and I estimate a 110 stitch caston with an extra stitch on each side for selvedge will be correct. I hope. If I’m off by a tiny amount per inch, that gets multiplied fast over 110 stitches. Keep your fingers crossed!

Next hat up for: Paris. Ooh la la!

Sweater pic, finished Regia bamboo socks, and all-too-typical story that happened to me last night.

Emily’s flower sweater
Pattern: Modified Drop Shoulder from Ann Budd’s Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns
Yarn: Encore worsted – 2 sk (plus about ten extra yards) blue, 1 sk green. Odds and ends of pinks and purples for flowers
Needles: Size 7. Size 6 for neck and waist ribbing.
Details under cut.

I’m postponing my morning walk a bit. When we woke up this morning at 6:15, weather.com said it was 57 degrees. An hour later, it was 55 degrees. I turned on the attic fan to bring in some of that cool air, but I kept it on too long and now it’s downright nippy in here. Fall is definitely in the air!

Since the weather’s turned, I’m glad Emily’s sweater is making progress. Yesterday I blocked the individual pieces. Last night, I seamed one shoulder and added the crewneck collar. You can’t tell, but it’s not the prettiest seam ever. I need to figure out what the best bind-off to use is when you’re going to be joining two pieces at the bind-off edge. It’s fine for this sweater, but this is a learning experience, so I’m taking notes on what to do better next time.

I added ribbing for the collar, but I’m a little concerned it might be too much ribbing. It’s an inch high, and the pattern called for 3/4″. It’s not a huge difference, but I’m trying to decide if I should go back a couple of rows or keep it as-is. I’m open to suggestion.

In other non-Jayne projects, the second Regia bamboo sock is about three quarters done. She and I had great fun at Starbucks yesterday, sitting outside in the cooler weather. I put the unfinished sock on my hand and pretended it was drinking her water and eating her food. Then I pulled out the finished sock I carry with me to check length and she put it on her own hand. We had sock fights, and after several epic battles, her sock puppet was victorious. Good times.

Emily’s continuing to enjoy Dan Gutman’s “Weird School” series. (I like the author’s rejection letters page. Persistence paid off for this guy.) We read these in bed, and she says she’ll be done reading at night when we’re doing with these books. There are, however, about 20 of these books. I want to check and be sure she’s not feeling like she has to get through them all, just for completeness’ sake. She does seem to be enjoying them, though, so I think it’s okay.

The other books she’s enjoying right now are the “Rainbow Fairy” books. There are seven, one for each color of the rainbow, so I think the series appealed to the collector in her. She’s warmed to the idea that yes, she can be reading more than one book at once. This is good, because otherwise I think she felt like she’d have to wait until we’d read all 20 of the Weird School books. We read the first chapter of Ruby, the Red Fairy yesterday, and I’m sure we’ll read another today. She’s really warmed to reading chapter books. It’s been very good for her.

In DR, I ran a merchant not long ago, and there are still a few vouchers floating around, so I need to track those down. I don’t like to leave those things hanging too long. Also, there are a couple of QCs that need my attention.

All right, I have to stop now. I’m making a crazy number of typos because my hands are cold. Must be time for cocoa! Yay!

But on Friday! Er… good things come to those who wait?

Anyway, here’s this week’s almost all-Emily awesomeness report.

(I tried to re-load Photoshop onto my machine today, but the disk was too scratched. I’m still waiting on a new copy of Photoshop and a newer version of Mac OSX, so no new original pics for at least another four days. Le sigh.)
Old FO plus good Emily stuff

I posted a while back about knitting this sweater, which is the cotton roll pattern from Minnowknits. I wanted to give an update.

I gave the sweater to my daughter’s kindergarten teacher yesterday, although she wasn’t able to open the package until later. She was thrilled! I had no idea, but apparently her little boy has hydroencephaly, and really can’t wear sweaters because the neckholes are always too small. But the cotton roll has two buttons along the shoulder, which opens up the entire left side of the top so his head was able to fit through with no problem. She said that he saw her coming with this sweater, and you could just see his face fall, like, “Mom, don’t try to put that on me.” But he was very happy that it fit. She said he’s wearing it today.

The Lego buttons that my daughter picked out were a big hit with the dad, who liked them to the point that my daughter’s teacher joked that she was going to get more and sew them on all her husband’s clothes.

I am thrilled that this gift was well-received, and very gratified that it has extra importance to them. She’s done so much for my ‘special’ kid that I’m glad I was able to do something for hers.

I finished the toddler sweater!

I’m doing Jil Eaton’s “Cotton Roll Sweater” and it’s going fairly well… up until this point. I have five rows to go on the second sleeve, and I RUN OUT OF YARN! So. Very. Frustrated.

Let’s hope my local yarn store has more in stock. Grrr. Stupid Manos cotton.