the good stitch

Instead of having a cook-out, going to the lake, seeing the fireworks, or watching the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest (ok, you caught me — I did watch the hot dog eating contest), I spent most of the 4th of July knitting. Not very patriotic, right?

At the end of the day, though, I looked down at my progress and realized that I’d basically spent the holiday knitting an American flag. That’s not its intended purpose — it’s actually supposed to be Christmas oriented. but there it was, a red and white striped swatch of fabric.

In the third grade I was in a history play at Greenlawn Elementary School in Rantoul, Illinois. I stepped out of a huge history book onto the stage, and took my place, kneeling, third from stage left in the front row. I don’t think I had any lines, but I honestly can’t remember. I was wearing a dress of some sort, and a ruffled ivory apron that mom had sewn for me. I was playing Betsy Ross.

I only lived in Rantoul for eight months, in between an 18-month stint at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany and a three-year residence in Tampa, Florida. Over the course of my childhood I also lived in Biloxi, Colorado Springs, Honolulu, and Austin. I was a military child.

I read a Wikipedia article recently that said that being raised in the military is a personality profile that cuts across whatever other cultural, social, or economic profiles that might apply. It also said that kids raised in the military grow up to be much more patriotic than others.

I can’t say that I’m terribly patriotic these days, mostly due to the horrifically disappointing administration that is in control of the White House. But I was comforted by my red and white stripes and hope that at some point in the near future I can be proud of them again.

• Sunday, July 15
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The Ice Storm 2007(tm) arrived last Monday and stayed until Wednesday, forcing me to work from home and stay in the house for four solid days. You’d think that alll that concentrated home-time would have inspired speedy completion of the snail shell, but no. I’ve become addicted to Viva Piñata. I can’t stop playing. I even have an xBox360 Live account now. I hardly recognize myself anymore.

I did manage to complete the shell, but a solid week after I’d hoped. Class and the local yarn store were shut down last week, so I’ll buy the yarn for the face tomorrow. It looks like the face will go pretty quickly, so I’m still hoping to get him all finished in the next few days.

(And I lied in my last post. That photo showed the shell at about 16 repeats, not 20.)

• Monday, January 22
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This snail is actually coming along pretty freakin’ fast. I did the first ten rows last night, and then started all of the shell repeats this morning, a la the first photo. I gave up after twenty of the thirty repeats, as shown in the second photo. The plan is to finish the shell by Monday, so that I can buy the lime green yarn for the face before class Tuesday night. I’m hoping to give it to its intended recipient by Friday.

This weekend is great knitting weather, but terrible knitting photography weather, which is why I’ve skipped showing you my last finished project and have settled for the in-progress photos, which can be a little less polished. Not that my finished project photos are ever terribly polished. I’ve had a really hard time with the photography. I can’t seem to find decent light inside, and with the early winter nightfall and rainy winter weather, outside photoshoots are difficult, too. Ah well. I certainly won’t complain if Monday’s impending Ice Storm 2007 forces me to work from home in my jammies.

• Saturday, January 13
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Look! Do you see what’s going on here? There are FOUR balls of yarn in play! Mercy!!!

The photo was actually taken a few weeks ago, when I was working on the front panel of the Jess Hutch robot. I managed my first intarsia piece much more easily than I expected. The only problem was that, instead of running two live strands of orange, I passed the orange behind the white. I didn’t leave enough slack, so the orange strand pulls the white section and makes it pucker out a little.

The other sections look really pretty, though, and I learned to twist the yarn neatly on the back, so that looks good, too.

I’ve finished all of the pieces and have them blocking now. Tuesday in class I’ll start sewing them together. Hooray!

• Sunday, October 8
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Remember the Pete Parts? All flat and lifeless? No little kitty heart, no little kitty soul? Well, not only are they now a plump plushy 3D kitty, they have a sister!

These are the first and second of Matt?s three cats – Pete and Hexe. Pete is the gray fella in the background, and Hexe is the black little girl with the white chest in front.

I?ve just finished the rectangle for the body of kitty number three. I knitted most of it at my parents? house in Arlington this weekend. At one point I put my needles down and walked out of the living room. When I came back, my knitting was no longer on the loveseat. I looked down at the yarn ball sitting on the ground, and the string running from it went straight to my dog, Cliff, who was lying on his tummy on the floor with a completely guilty look on his face!

The yarn ran straight under his tummy, so I pushed him over and found that he?d stolen the knitting from the couch and laid right down on it. He didn?t eat it or damage it at all – apparently he just wanted it for himself, so he stole it and tried to hide it. He must have known that it would grow up to be a kitty one day. His mischievous side has come out in the last few weeks, so I have to be more careful where I put my knitting down.

• Tuesday, June 20
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These little scraps of hardly-interesting knitting will one day be a 3D representation of the West Coast’s most beloved feline, the inimitable Pete.

It’s nice to have something to knit your friends other than hats and scarves. I?m making a trio of toy cats like the ones that Pamela made last year. Each one is a knitted facsimile of a cat of Matt’s, this gray Merino wool version being Pete. He’s very flat in this photo that I took last week, but yesterday I sewed up the seams and stuffed him. Tonight I?m going sew all of his little body parts together, and later this week he?ll get a face.

Pete is my first knitted toy. I?ve been watching Lee make toys for a while now (how fabulous is Hank??? Seriously!) and wanted to give it a try. His little siblings will be a black Baby Alpaca girl named Hexe and a tortoise-shell sister named Torby. Tortoise-shelled yarn is a little tricky to find, but I got a lovely ball of yarn last week that will make a nice artist?s rendition.

• Monday, June 5
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Mr. Bigglesworth was not easy to get started, but here he is, half finished. I first tried to crochet him in the round, so that I wouldn’t have to do much seaming.

It worked out sorta ok, but even though I swatched, he kept coming out too big. Waaaaay too big. And every time I unstitched him, little fluffy bits of yarn would come off. I didn’t want to keep stitching and unstitching, because the yarn would have just worn away to nothing. And because I was working in the round, I had to do twice the stitching before I realized he was too big.

So finally I gave up on that idea and just crocheted a square. After a few more tries, I got the right size. Once I was on the right track, stitching went pretty quickly.

So one side is finished. Fantastic! Now, how to tell if I have enough yarn to stitch the other side?

It seemed like enough, but I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t want to get all of that stitching done, just to find myself short on yarn. So I got very very clever.

I dragged one of the kitchen stools over to the counter and climbed up to get my roommate’s kitchen scale down off of the top of the cabinet. (And didn’t hurt myself in the process, thank you very much.) The finished half weighed 4 oz. The leftover yarn weighed 2 oz. Not even close! So, off to the yarn store for me. Lucky that I’m getting a discount while I’m in the BTB class.

• Sunday, May 14
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This is my first knitting project, a scarf to thank my friend Karen for coloring my hair. I haven’t knitted on it in a while, and had forgotten how gorgeous the yarn is. It’s hand-painted coral wool, and its color variations are just lovely.

It’s a little over two feet long now, and I’m still on the first of three skeins – she wants a loooooooong scarf. I wish I’d gotten another, though, so I could make a matching hat.

• Friday, January 20
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Here’s a peek at the hat I’m making for Guy. It’s only my second knitting project (the first is still on the needles, too) and I’m pretty pleased with it. It’s a 2×2 rib, which is much simpler now that I’ve realized that I can tell what kind of stitch to make just by looking at the row before, instead of having to count in my head. I didn’t realize that at first, because the yarn is black, and tiny tiny to boot.

Most of what I have so far will be the 3-inch cuff. It’s at 31 rows right now, with 59ish more to go. At 144 stitches per row, that’s a lot of stitches left!

• Thursday, January 12
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