Sesame Sweater (Post 2)

It's nearing the end!

This past week (week and a half), my tendonitis has come back with a vengeance. To give you an example of it's severity, it hasn't been this bad since last April when I was spending almost all of my time on the computer researching and typing up 20-30 page papers. I don't even know what's caused it this time around. Knitting? Piano? Light typing? Something at work? All the above?Friday though, I finally cracked. I was going to start knitting this sweater again, even if it did make my hands utterly useless. And it paid off! I'm almost done with the second sleeve now and I was able to seam both sides of the sweater to the back!
Now all that's left to do is finish up that second sleeve, block it, seam it. Then work on the buttonhole band and the collar. Then it will be finished! FINISHED!
I'm still a little paranoid about the sleeves being enormous and I do still think that I probably should have gone with the pattern for the large size instead of x-large, but hey. At least the body fits comfortably and the stripes (more or less) match up. It's all coming together. And thankfully it's coming together better than I originally thought it would.

After I'm finally done with this I think I'm moving onto socks. I have some gorgeous sock yarn that I'm going to use. And I haven't made socks in a really long time.

I'm Not A Hat Person

I have an abnormally large head. No, really, I do. And generally speaking, I really don't wear that many hats -- never have. For some reason though, I have been in a hat mood this winter. Maybe it's the impending move to Chicago and the knowledge that I will have day upon day of being stuck in frigid cold wind tunnels. Maybe it's just because I'm suddenly realizing that hats can be pretty darn stylish. In any case, I have been searching Ravelry for the cutest hat patterns that I can dig up.

This was when I found Le Slouch.
I wasn't really "taken" by the pattern until I saw some of the FOs that were featured on Ravelry. That's when I fell in love with it. I loved the seed stitch, I loved the way that it slouched down in that adorable way. I said to myself, "Self, this is the hat for you!" And so I went to City Knitting, picked up a couple skeins of Nashua Julia (in Geranium) and put myself to work!

First, I read the pattern wrong and I could not, for the life of me, figure out why it was decreasing in such a bizarre way. That was, until I realized that I had skipped over an entire paragraph of critical decreases. I was baffled as to why it wasn't "slouching" right. Well, of course it's not going to slouch right if you're forgetting to knit at least an inch of hat!
I actually did this twice -- the whole, missing that crucial paragraph. Which meant that I had to frog twice. *ribbit* Amazingly, I did not drop any stitches while doing this and once I finally realized what I was doing wrong, the thing actually looked similar to all of those other FOs that I had seen and admired so much on Ravelry! Hooray for Auna!

Ultimately, the hat took me about 4 days to knit. It would have only taken 2 had I not been stupid. I was thrilled that the hat actually fit my enormous cranium (without any alterations to the pattern!), and if anything, it was too big. Wait. It kind of was too big.
I wanted an "extra slouchy" hat, so I added a little bit of length onto it beyond the 6 (7+?)" that the pattern suggested. I kind of wish that I had stuck to what the pattern said in that regard because I can honestly stuff all of my hair into the thing and still have room for my cat (okay, maybe not, but there's still room for more cramming in there).
It's kind of heavy (it is two skeins worth of yarn), and as enormous as my head may be, the 2x2 rib really has a lot of give to it, and with one blow of those Chicago winds, Mr. Slouchers (yes, that's the hat's name) is going to go sailing off of my head.

Initially, I claimed that I would wear Mr. Slouchers all the time. It would never leave me. I would love it and care for it forever and ever. So far? It hasn't really gotten a whole lot of wear. My Clapotis teases it mercilessly (okay, not really).
Nevertheless, I really do like it. It looks pretty darn cute on me and it is nice and warm. That said, I'm already planning my next hat -- which hopefully, will get some better wear. I just bought some yarn (Lamb's Pride) for a felted cloche that I will be making in the not-too-distant-future (i.e. after my sweater sleeve is finished). Hopefully that one will fit. And hopefully, I won't have to worry about that flying off my head at the first big gust of wind that blows by.

Sesame Sweater (Post 1)

A while ago, I promised myself that I would finally knit a sweater. I started knitting a tank top last spring. Unfortunately, that kind of failed miserably. I finished the back piece and it was at least 3" too short (and that was after adding a couple extra inches anyway). After waiting it out a couple of months, I decided that I would start knitting a sweater. After all, there are a lot more sweater patterns out there to knit than there are things for summer wear, right?

After much browsing, I became very interested in MagKnits' Sesame Sweater. After getting a nice gift certificate to City Knitting for my birthday, I bought all the yarn that I would need to knit up the largest size of the sweater.

It's been a long work in progress. The pieces themselves are actually not too difficult to knit up. It didn't take me long at all to knit the back. It didn't take me long to knit up the sides. It's taken me about a day to knit up one of the sleeves. For whatever reason, it's just a bit difficult to actually work up the motivation to knit up each individual piece.
I just finished knitting one of the sleeves. I am very much afraid that this thing is going to be huge. Damn my large chest circumference. :P

Further updates to come. Hopefully I will be finishing all of it up in the next week or two.

Crazy Squares!

Finally! A knitting update!

I'm trying to catch up on blog posts for FOs that I've posted to Ravelry. I guess I'm kind of working backwards with this one. Instead of posting about something I made, oh, 6 months ago, I'm posting about my most recent completion.
CRAZY SQUARES!
(Plus Toby)
I started this what feels like eons ago now. Back at the beginning of July. After feeling a little less despairing, I decided to knit a mitered square blanket. At least that way, if I felt really lazy and didn't want to knit again for a long while, at least it would be something that I could easily pick up again down the line.
It started out as a 3x3 square (of 4x4 little squares) blanket. It was going to be a little kitten blanket for Toby. Which, in retrospect, it's probably good that it didn't turn out to be that because Toby just sort of lays wherever he pleases and doesn't care what is specifically for "him". However, by the time that I set down my needles, took a step back and counted my squares, I had more than the 36(?) squares that I needed to make this little blanket.
Then I started to feel artistic with it all. I decided that it would become a 3x4 square blanket (which was quickly updated to 4x4). I knit a "center" square that would be composed of two solid variegated yarns and two of the standard striped squares and decided that I would knit one solid square for each of the 4 corners. Alas, with this plan in motion, I would have to make the blanket 5x5. I did the calculations and I had a whopping 64 more squares left to knit! (Shoot me now, right?!?)

So I knit, and I knit, and I knit some more. I decided at a couple of different times to lay down the knitting needles and pick up a couple of different projects (like my sweater to be posted at some point here...). I was also at a loss of anything except for towels to block the pieces on so the individual squares remained unblocked and unseamed for a long time as well.
I finally bought some "blocking boards" (toy foam puzzle pieces from Toys 'R Us!) and got to work with blocking all the pieces. Then I got into seaming and was having a great time seaming them all up. Once I had seamed up all the squares I had knit, I stopped again. The basket of squares went back in the closet and they remained untouched until probably November when I finally decided that I was going to finish the blanket once and for all!

Counted all of the squares, laid all of the squares out on the floor. I can't even count how many times I did just that. And the worst part about laying this thing out on the floor was that Toby went nuts for it and would roll around in the squares and drag them off in all sorts of different directions. Crazy feline.

Once I counted it out for the last time, I had something like 24 or 25 squares left to knit and I think that I breezed through those pretty fast, really. Then I blocked some more, then I seamed some more. Then I laid the squares out on the floor again and tried to figure out how I was going to pattern it. Really, I could have planned the patterning a lot better but...whatever. At that point, I just wanted it to be finished with and I really didn't care anymore. As long as there were no two same colors matching up together, I was happy.
(Unfortunately, there are maybe 2 or so spots that do match up with the same color...kind of a bummer, but oh well)

Seaming together the 4x4 squares went so fast, I was really surprised. It also kept me really warm as it stretched across my lap while I was sitting in my freezing cold bedroom! It probably only took me a couple of nights to get all 25 pieces together and believe me, when I was finished with all of those seams I just about threw myself a party.

...Nevermind that I still needed to weave in the ends and trim away some of the excess yarn that spilled out of the center of each mitered square.

So finally, this past weekend for the holidays, I took the blanket up to my grandparents' house with me so I could weave in all of those ends. I ended up tying a lot of knots (because good lord that was a lot of little loose ends!), but it looks good now. Though the front looks much better than the back. ;)


I'm still contemplating whether or not to add a back onto the blanket. I'd really like to add flannel or something back there. I realize that it would make it super warm (and even heavier than it already is!) but at least it would hide those icky knots and little bits of loose yarn.
I'll keep it as it is for now though. It's a great afghan. I absolutely adore it and I'm already in the process of planning what I'm going to make next...another blanket. Though the next one will be made from a machine washable cotton. Or maybe a superwash wool if I can find some for a relatively inexpensive price.
Now the boring stuff (or interesting if you're a knitter!)
Pattern: Mitered Square Blanket from the book Mason Dixon Knitting
(I found a free copy of the pattern at this website. I used the pattern for the smaller squares.)
Yarn: So many I lost count (not that I was keeping count to begin with). Most of it is Cascade 220 and Cascade Heathers. There is a teeny bit of Patons and Knit Picks dye your own. There's also a ball or so of a hand dyed wool yarn that my mom gave to me for Christmas one year that she colored herself. That is what the two center squares are knit of.
Needles: My trusty ol' Crystal Palace US Size 8s

*waves*

Hello Blogger land!

I haven't updated in forever. I realize that.

Since my last update, I have gotten promoted at the library -- I no longer shelve books, I work the desk at a little place away from Main.

I moved away from downtown, and brought my kitty in tow (he's so big now!). I'm currently hoping/planning on moving to Chicago in the next month or two. Good luck to me! I think the main obstacle will be finding a one bedroom apartment for under $800 a month in the neighborhoods that I like/want to live in.

And I've been knitting a lot! Most of my things are posted to Ravelry now that I have an account there, but I'm going to try and keep this updated more often once again with the things that I've created over the past few months!

So until then...I'll probably post my blanket since that's pretty successfully finished at this point.

Where Have I Been?!?

No list of loves update, just an update to introduce my kitten to my little blogging world.

This is Toby
He is my handsome, bluepoint Siamese kitten. :)
He's almost 4 months old and he is a randy little fellow.
I already have enough pictures of him to fill a photo album. I certainly won't post all of my pictures here in this post (actually the one above is the only one I'm going to post).
If anyone is interested in seeing more, there are plenty more to be found in my Flickr Album.


In non-kitty news: I finally found a job!
Meet Auna, Library Page! Woohoo!

In other non-kitty news: Season 4 of The Office starts in a little over a month! I am going crazy in anticipation!!!

#19: Siamese Cats

So we've come to #19!
Except I'm not doing these in any particular order, so #19 means nothing!
In any case, #19 on Auna's List of Loves is Siamese cats.
Why am I doing Siamese cats today?
...You'll see.
This is a picture of my Willow kitty. Willow is no longer with us. She passed away a couple of months ago, just a week short of her 18th birthday. :(
I've had Willow since I was 4 years old. She was a Christmas present to my brother and I from my parents. I think at that age I wanted a tabby, I'm not positive. But Willow didn't look like all of the kitties that you see on TV. Little did I know, my Dad sucked me into the trap of never, ever wanting another breed of cat for as long as I live.

Siamese cats are a curious breed. I like to say that they are smarter than the average feline. They're extremely intelligent. They're independent like a cat, but loyal like a dog. They talk to you when you talk to them. All around, they are an awesome cat.

Willow was the greatest pet, ever. She slept with me at night when I was living at home (she'd usually hog the bed which is pretty impressive for a ~10 pound cat) and when you were sad or upset, she was there to cheer you up or cuddle with you when you were sick. And that's what I like about Siamese cats.

When Willow recently died, I was grief-stricken. I handled it a lot better than I ever thought that I would, but even now, if I think about her a lot, I cry. I really, really miss her.
But in any case, her death meant the opportunity for me to get a new cat. I was never able to actually bring myself to get a new cat while Willow was still alive because it felt a little like betrayal.
So what did I wish for my birthday?
A Siamese kitten.
What did I get for my birthday?
A Siamese kitten.
XD
And I just found him today. :D

I went out to Holland today to go see a Siamese breeder (who apparently has been breeding for 35 years) and has some of the most beautiful Siamese cats I've ever seen: Van Scholten Siamese
She had one blue point Siamese left that is ready for adoption, and I put down my deposit, and I will be picking him up this weekend.
So with any hope, I will have another Siamese companion until I'm 40. (Hey, Willow lived 'til I was 22! I have high hopes for my little boy!)

And I will be sure to post pictures of the little guy when he comes home. :)


UP NEXT! On Auna's List of Loves:
#4: Knitting