Crafting crankiness

I think I've discovered how to prolong the, um, joy of knitting a single top-down baby sweater that has no cables, colourwork, fancy stitches or laciness whatsoever:

1. Swatch. Aim for a gauge of 4 stitches/inch.


2. Squint at the swatch, compare with tape measure and think, "Well, that looks about right."


3. Cast on for sweater.


4. Knit rows and rows of garter stitch. Every few rows, increase number of stitches. Mutter sotto voce when one forgets where one is supposed to increase.


5. Look closely at pattern instructions. Notice that one has skipped a few crucial rows, and that the first one was...oh...about 30 rows back.


6. Sigh loudly.


7. Frog.


8. Re-knit the section, this time including all of the rows in the pattern.


9. Stop occasionally to verify that the gauge is fine. Panic a bit when the gauge appears to be 4.5 stitches per inch instead of 4. Convince oneself that the gauge is being compressed magically by all of the increases in the pattern and will return to normal once the increases end.


10. Knit for a couple more hours and enter a huge patch of stockinette stitch.


11. Proudly hold up sweater-in-progress.


12. Think, "Hm, it looks a bit small."


13. Measure sweater. Confirm that circumference is 2 inches less than planned. Swear loudly.


14. Re-measure gauge. Finally admit it really is, and will steadfastly remain, 4.5 stitches per inch.


15. Frog. The. Entire. Bloody. Thing.


16. Blame the cats.


17. Decide to re-knit sweater two sizes up. But first, do something else for a few hours. Or days. Whatever.


18. Repeat until finished.

Fiber bling

Yay! I got my Ravelry t-shirt and buttons!



Something tells me Chester wouldn't be impressed.

Foulness of cat

Our cats can be really gross. Granted, they haven't done this yet (though Chester's litterbox adventures come close), but still.

Take, for example, Claude's dining habits. Despite having a perfectly decent food dish heaped with kibble, he insists on dropping food on the floor before eating.

He then leaves portions behind.

Chester, being the sort of cat who never lets (a chance to eat Claude's) food go to waste, sails in as soon as Claude walks away, hoovers up the remnants...

...and leaves a glaze of cat spit on the floor. I'd better go get the soap again.

In tidier news, I spun up some more Blue-Faced Leicester. It's squooshy! There should be enough for a hat once it's combined with the white BLF from earlier.


I also started a narrow Hydrangea Lace Scarf using yarn I spun from a merino-silk blend.

That stripe really is there. I hope there are more light patches in the yarn or else that one band is going to look pretty silly.

I spun up the other superwash merino roving I had bought from etsy. I made a 3-ply yarn using the fractal method described in Spin-Off Summer 2007, but in hindsight I think I should have Navajo plied, because that really lovely teal in the singles was overpowered by all of the pink.



Cindy sent some info on yardage for the Baby Surprise Jacket (thanks!). The 200-ish yards I have of chocolate and cherries yarn is nowhere near enough, but luckily I already have some white sportweight sock yarn at home. Hooray!