Kauni 8/28/13

I'm not in love with the 2 color cast on, but I might be OK with it. I worry that the bind off on the sleeves and button band won't match. It's tough to get a cast on and bind off to look similar. Hmmm. However I am happy with the progress so far.

The Kauni is on the needles

The plunge was taken and 266 stitches have been cast on for the Kauni cardigan!
I knit a small swatch and was able to get gauge, almost. (This sentence will probably come back to bite me.) When I say "almost", I mean that instead of getting EXACTLY 24 stitches to 4" in plain stockinette, I got 24 plus about a 1/4 of another stitch, so just a tiny bit off. BUT that was in plain knitting. When I knit with two colors my knitting draws up a little, and I'm hoping that will compensate for my lack of perfect gauge. However, according to nearly every blog I've read about this cardigan, I should plan to rip it out at least 2 times. If I'm going to rip, why strive for perfect gauge? This will be interesting.

Two color long tail cast on with two color 1x1 rib.

About waffles and needles

In a week my nest will be empty once again. The summer has flown by!

There isn't much back to school shopping that needs to be done. All the dorm stuff we bought last year will be used again this year, so Zack and his roommate are pretty much good to go. But he wants a waffle iron. (He makes killer waffles with protein shake mix and cocoa as a base.)

Waffle irons are pretty easy to come by, but I want one that has an auto-off feature. Zack has been known to lock his keys in the car...with the car running. Auto-off just makes sense. I headed to Amazon, clicked on an Oster model and scrolled down to read the reviews.

  

This "Frequently Bought Together" pairing is:
a. puzzling
b. disturbing
c. unnerving
d. all the above

Who buys waffle irons and crossbows? Together frequently? At the risk of sounding crazy, it's my opinion that the word "frequently" implies more than one occurrence, maybe even more than two.

Update on the Kauni Rainbow Cardigan!

Liana to the rescue!! She brought her Knitpicks interchangeable needles to lunch the other day so I could give them a test drive. I really liked the look of the acrylic needles, and that's the direction I was leaning...until I saw the needles with stitches on them. This may sound weird (and totally obvious) but you can see the backside of the stitches through the clear acrylic. That's just not right. I liked how they felt and the points were nice, but I couldn't get past that transparent thing. Creepy. Then I tried the laminated birch Sunstruck needles. Heaven on a cable! They are absolutely lovely. Good points, smooth wood, warm to the touch, light color that won't compete with the yarn.

I also checked out the Addi Bamboo circulars. Ick. I know to some knitters, Addi needles are the ultimate luxury. I have a couple sets of the turbos and they are nice. BUT they are darned expensive. Here's what I didn't like about the bamboo needles. Addi has embossed the needle size into the bamboo. The embossing is about a half-inch long. Sure, this is a good way to identify the needle size, however that embossed area breaks up the smoothness of the bamboo and make the stitches drag. I'm not paying $16 per set for something that will make me hate knitting. (Fingernails on a chalkboard!)

Yesterday I took the plunge and made the Knitpicks purchase. The Sunstruck needles, in varying sizes and cable lengths (along with a few extras so I could get free shipping), should be here early next week!

About dream knitting

Last night I dreamt about binding off a project. It was a dove gray shell and the yarn was a tweedy wool, silk blend. As it always is in dreams, the knitting was perfect, gauge was spot on and the garment was going to be a perfect fit. I'm talking about knitting dreams here. Dreams where the pattern has no errors and the yarn never tangles. There are such things as knitting nightmares, but those are more likely to happen during waking hours. Like when you leave your knitting within reach of a bored dog who freaks out at the sight of a nicely wound center-pull ball of yarn. I try to not think about those times.

So back to the dream. I was about halfway through binding off a long row of stitches. (I don't know about anyone else, but in my knitting dreams the project is nearly complete.) As I was binding off in the normal fashion as directed by the pattern, it occurred to me that I should be doing the three-needle bind off so I wouldn't have to sew the shoulder seams together. Ah ha! Deviate from the pattern and....and...that was the end. I woke up.

I know! Doesn't that just suck? So many unanswered questions. Did I rip back the bound off stitches and start over with the three-needle bind off? Did I block the sweater? Did it fit? Was it glorious? I don't know...I JUST DON'T KNOW! I tried, but I couldn't get back to sleep. It was like picking up dropped stitches in a complicated yarn over, knit two together pattern. The harder I worked at it, the further the stitches slipped from my needles. I willed my subconscious into picking back up where I left off but to no use. I will never know how it turned out.

Speaking of dropped stitches...I got an e-mail today from a knitting website advertising a new book of patterns. There were several photos of the patterns offered in the book. I don't normally make fun of review patterns, however this one is special. 

What the heck is that (besides super fugly)? Captions anyone?

• Did someone hear something rip?
• Does anyone else feel a breeze?
• I seemed to have snagged my sweater.
• Duck tape is NOT going to fix this.
• Did I hear someone say they need dental floss? Just use the back of my sweater.
• Does anyone know how to pick 45 dropped stitches?
• Shit, Grandma is going to kill me!

About The Mohair

I was able to wear this sweater yesterday that I knit in 1999. That made me very happy. So happy that I finally took a picture of it. May I present the sweater that I never should have knit but I love anyway.

The amount of time it took me to knit the sweater, and the amount of money it cost me to have the last batch of the same yarn shipped from the mill in the UK because I was a stupid-ass and didn't calculate the yarn requirements correctly, does not nearly correspond with the amount of time I get to wear and enjoy the sweater. Had I known then what I know now, I probably would have knit something other than a dark gray cabled mohair sweater. But I did knit it, and I do get to wear it once or twice a year. I get tremendous pleasure on those days.

 

Oddly enough, this is the first time I've ever taken a photo of the sweater. With all the consternation that went into its creation, you'd think I would have photographed it from conception to birth. But, back in the 20th century, digital cameras were rather new and film photography was much more selective. Still not a good reason, but that's my only explanation for lack of appropriate photo documentation.

 

So yesterday, when I was able to tell the world once again that it was cold enough in Nashville, Tennessee for me to don The Mohair, I knew that a commemorative photograph was in order. The only camera at hand was the one on my phone. (We have come so far since the last century!) I don't have a smart phone and the camera is marginal. My arms weren't long enough for me to get the entire sweater in the frame. As it was, I had to sit with my shoulders a hunched forward so the official photo (above) wouldn't scream BOOBS like the one below:

 

 

I have more mohair in my yarn stash but not nearly enough to knit an entire sweater, which is a good thing because I'm a sucker for mohair. Some people find it scratchy, but I think it's absolutely delicious. Maybe it's a good thing that I only get to wear this sweater once or twice a year. That way it's a special snugly treat on a day when everyone else is shivering and griping about the cold.