OK and Phew and All Other Such Words

I finally did it!  I finished the State Fair Cardigan, and not a day too soon for Christmas! The thing is, it wasn't even meant for Christmas. It was meant for the fall of 2014, so it's a little late. I used Knit Companion for it, and I love KC!  No magnet boards, no pencil and paper.

 The only thing is that I think Knit Companion lies.

IT says that this sweater took me 75 hours and 19 minutes to make. I started this in August, so what KC says cannot be true. I think it took thousands and millions of hours, but that's just me. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe I forgot to turn KC on all the hundreds of times I had to frog parts of the sweater, and I think frogging time should count. 

Anyway, it's FINISHED!

(And I hope it fits. Please, please, please, sweet Mother of Purl, let it fit!)

Cables

I LOVE knitting cables. I'm a bit slow to get going on a cabled project because all the twists and turns intimidate me a bit, but once I get going........I'm still slow. I am now knitting the right front of H's sweater and then I'll just have the left front, blocking, sewing the pieces together, picking up stitches for the neck and button bands, knitting them, and voilà, I'll have a sweater.  Or rather, H will.

Maybe even before Christmas!!!

Progress and Bad Boy Baxter

I've been knitting and knitting away, and finally, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am almost at the point where the decreases for the sleeves begin and I have knit the sleeves to that point also. Yesterday I got a bit cocky confident and knit so absent-mindedly that I made a mistake and had to take back one of the cables, AGAIN. I really need to pay better attention. 

I apparently do love knitting cables and watching them form; I keep choosing cabled sweater patterns to make and this is my third in the past two years. I have knit some lace and keep buying lace weight yarn and lace patterns, but never seem to get around to making them. I'm beginning to suspect that I don't enjoy lace-knitting. 


Now for Bad Boy Baxter.

Early last summer my husband built a tall gate so that Baxter could spend time on the deck and not escape. A couple of weeks ago, twice we thought he was on the deck, but we couldn't see him and assumed he was in the house. Hours passed and we would walk past the windows that overlook the deck and there he was! How on earth could we have missed him?

Turns out, we hadn't, because we finally saw this:

He climbs the gate! And then climbs down the other side and goes off on an adventure. Bad, bad Baxter! There are coyotes and foxes around here, as well as one orange cat that likes to fight and that had pretty thoroughly beaten Baxter up when he escaped a year or so ago. 

My husband has put a section of lattice, about four inches deep, along the top of the gate, at a 90-degree angle to the gate, and Baxter is so far defeated in his efforts to escape. He meows, rams himself against the gate, puts his head through the holes, but can't get out. 

We win! 

For now.

Oh, Sweet Mother of Purl

I have gone from this:

To this:

 To this:

It only took three size 1 double pointed needles, a crochet hook, two cable needles, a couple of pins, an OTT light, more time than I wish to think about, and nerves of steel. No wine allowed.    

The stitches are kind of stretched out, but I believe, Ah Believes, in the miracle of blocking.  

Finished!

I started working on this sweater last August, and I have now finished it.  

I am thrilled.  Maybe even more thrilled than my daughter will be to get it---Finally!

(And no, she won't keep it on a hanger.)

Here is the back:

After it is properly introduced at knit night this Thursday, it will go in the mail, insured for a million zillion dollars.  

Because I'm not making another one.  

Our Long National Nightmare is Over!

So I exaggerate.  A little.

MY LONG local nightmare is over.  

I have finished the back of the Currant sweater, the one I started August 15, 2013.  And I know this exact date because, unlike SOME people I could name, but won't (you're welcome Sallyknit and Lucille), I enter my projects on Ravelry.  

I like to share.  

Here 'tis:

I cannot understand how this project has kicked my b*tt, but it sure has.  I'm hoping that I have learned all the new things I needed to learn in order to do this and that I remember them because I still need to knit the two sleeves and the two fronts.

Maybe it could be sleeveless....hmmmm.....


And yes, I am back from my week in Mexico.  A very l.o.n.g week.  And because as a child I was taught that if I can't say anything nice, I shouldn't say anything, I will list only the three things that were good during the week.  

1.  Gorgeous weather the entire time.  Upper sixties through the mid-seventies, cloudless blue skies.

2.  I saw whales the second morning there.  They were where they were supposed to be, out in the ocean, eating and making their way north.  There were three for sure and possibly a fourth. They wouldn't hold still enough to be accurately counted.  

3.  The place we rented (and I still can't explain how we came to be in a residence with no walls in the living areas) was 100 feet from the ocean.  So---perfect views and a lovely ocean breeze all of the time.  

And now I'm home.

Knitting indoors.  

I sweartagah

I keep knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting and knitting some more

and this sweater NEVER gets any longer than 11 1/4 inches long.  I've been knitting for days and weeks and......well, since AUGUST 15th!!!!!

and this is as far as it goes.  

I had thought that it was my fault, lack of initiative, lack of inspiration, lack of stick-to-it-ive-ness, but I have decided that it is not me.

It is the sweater.  

It is evil.  

Just like the Bunny Blanket Buddy I knit a few years ago.

So, younger daughter, it will be a sweater when IT decides to become one.  In the meantime, I will keep knitting and knitting and knitting, but it is ultimately up to the yarn and the needles.  

Really.

¿Qué pasó?

See?  I'm learning Spanish!

What's happening with Knittergran?, you may ask.

Well, she can't knit and watch Breaking Bad at the same time.  She discovered this after making a few too many mistakes in her knitting.  So now that she is caught up on BB, she has been knitting.

And she should stop referring to herself in the third person.  It's just weird.  She is not royalty.

So I have been catching up on knitting!

I have finished these socks, the first ever knit on size one needles.  (Signature needles, plain vanilla pattern, and Sweet Georgia Tough Love Sock Yarn, color grouse)

AND I have been working on the tricky Miss Winkle scarf:

I don't want to think about how many loops I have attached the wrong way and have had to frog.

AND I have finally, finally, with the help of several Ravelers, gotten started on the Currant Cardigan.  It has been the most difficult project I have attempted because of the new cast on and new stitches I have had to learn.  And I was reading the charts wrong because the right side rows are usually odd-numbered (I think) and the wrong side rows even-numbered (I think) and this was backwards to me, but I didn't realize it until I had done parts of a couple of rows um...backwards?  I'm not actually sure.  I was so confused.... A very experienced knitter on Ravelry helped me sort it all out. And then I frogged.

But now I am on my way, I hope.

AND I may have discovered that I am no gardener.  So far, this is the total of my crop of peppers:

Teeny, tiny.  CUTE!!!

We have had something like 16" extra inches of rain this summer, so maybe that's the problem.  I have no idea. 

It tasted great.  So there's that.

Anyway, Breaking Bad is on tonight, but I will record it and watch it later without the ads.  

Sorry, advertisers, but you break up the mood, the color, the ambiance, the sounds, the carnage, the blood, the swearing......... maybe the ads are a good thing.  

What is Wrong With This Picture?

Just about everything.

I finally decided to start work on S's sweater. Yay me!!! (I bought the yarn in March.)

I scanned the paper pattern into an electronic PDF file, imported the file into Dropbox and from there into KnitCompanion on my iPad mini. Then I set up a new project in KC, cropping and pasting as directed. I opened a video on my laptop so that I could follow along with instructions on doing the Old Norwegian Cast On. I pulled out the yarn and the gauge swatch. 

Had I indicated on the swatch which size needles I used for the swatch (and I hardly EVAH make gauge swatches)?  No. Did I leave the needles I used in the bag with the yarn?  No, I did not.

But wait!  My memory says that I had decided that I needed one size larger than the pattern called for.

Woo Hoo!!! So let's get out those size 9 needles and get cracking!!!

Can I find those needles?  

No, I cannot. ANYWHERE.

All these electronic helpers, which kind of took a long time to set up and I'm wondering if they really are all that helpful, and I am defeated by my own lack of organization. 

Off to search for the needles. Again.