Even in Kyoto

So in anticipation of finishing the cardigan and wanting to get started on the next knitting project while at the conference and traveling, I brought along a ball of sock yarn and sets of #2 and #3 double-pointed needles (DPN). I had a certain sock pattern in mind, but when I finally actually started reading the pattern, it called for 2 sets of #1 circular needles (or could be adapted for DPN). I had my interchangeable circular needles along with me, but the smallest size they have is #2. So I thought, "Well, maybe I already have #1 DPNs in New York, so I guess I'd better hold off on this project until I'm back in New York."

As the subject line suggests...yeah, nope.

Maybe I'll manage to actually stop by UpStitch on Saturday, and if I'm lucky someone will have donated some #1 DPN's. Maybe. Sigh.

Although probably what I should actually do is work on finishing the needle felting on what S now refers to as my Elf Slippers. I apparently need to continue to be really stabby. And the slippers would count as finishing a project, whereas socks is more like starting yet another new project

(Though I could quibble with myself there, because I generally like to have at least one knitting project going in the background, and aren't all these skeins of sock yarn in my yarn stash representative of unfinished projects?? Anyway.).

To no one's surprise, it was a busy weekend. I am most pleased that today, I was able to finish re-seaming the Angwin Cardigan.

Previous, inside-out seams:


New, corrected seams:




Interior of the cardigan:


I can finally try it on!





I still need to knit the (wide) collar and the pockets, but those are projects I can tackle on an airplane or while traveling. I really wanted to get the seams finished while I could sit at a table. Success!

And now, a week of final exams and grading, grading, grading.

I can at least report some incremental progress on three projects this weekend, accomplished by way of procrastinating from grading:

-Chair refinishing: I deployed some Dremel accessories to strip some old finish out of some spots on those old dining chairs. The Dremel was slightly too aggressive, but I'm feeling better about things because it worked for some areas that had stymied me. There are still a handful of other spots I want to tidy up before I re-stain these chairs, but this felt like progress, at least. The hard part is, with the cats around, I don't really feel like I can work on this project in the basement, because it produces too much dust and we don't have any tiny face masks for the cats. So I'm limited to working on it only on good-weather days, out on the back steps.

-Catbed quilt: I finally trimmed down the edges on the "quilt sandwich," so the catbed quilt is now finally ready for binding. I, however, am not quite yet ready to bind it, because there's some complex geometry involved in certain spots and I need to re-watch some stuff on binding quilts so I can go at it with a plan. So, forward progress, but not yet that sense of satisfaction that comes from FINALLY completing a lingering project.

-I finally started piecing together the Angwin cardigan I've been working on since 2019.





There's just one small hitch: I got the first sleeve sewed closed, then looked at it and went, "That's not right." Then I went back to watch more videos on the mattress stitch, where I discovered that I'd been doing it backwards. You're supposed to use the mattress stitch on the RIGHT side of the pieces you're working with, not the WRONG side. Argh.

I took the stitching back out of the sleeve. I now need to decide whether I should also go back and do this for the shoulders and the sleeve caps. On the one hand, that's more hours of stitching. On the other hand, it's far easier to fix this thing now rather than later, and I learned from my very first (and only other) sweater that if I'm too impatient, I'll regret my haste later. (in that case, it wasn't so much "haste makes waste" as "haste prevents waist," as in, the sweater's just a little too short-waisted).

The only challenge is that I'm hoping to have the cardigan at least pieced together by mid-December, so I can bring it with me to knit the collar while on long airplane rides. I really can't be working on piecing it together while traveling - that benefits from a big table. I just have to somehow find the time. Somehow.

The consolation prize for not going bicycling was moving projects forward in small steps.

I glued on safety pins for the Shrinky Dink captain's pins, so those are now finished:





If all else fails, they are personally amusing to me. Probably more importantly, they are DONE so I can cross them off my projects list.

I finished the last couple of rows for the sleeves for the sweater I started in 2019 on the journey to bury my dad (with AKW's mom next to me, holding the yarn, commenting on how soft it was). So I was able to block it. This feels like real progress! George for scale:



Next up, I'll put the pieces together and work on the collar. It's getting closer to completion and will soon actually look like a sweater!

As mentioned in my previous post, I made it over to Up-Stitch to look for some supplies for a couple other projects. They didn't have any roving for my poor slippers, but now threemeninaboat is my savior because she has some she'll send to me. Thankfully I don't really wear these slippers until it starts getting pretty cold out, so there's still plenty of time to work on the repair.



Eggplant and zucchini were on sale at the co-op on Friday night, so I cooked up the first batch of ratatouille for the summer, with oregano and rosemary from the back porch. The basil plants aren't quite big enough yet.

I also biked down to the boathouse (masked) to tend to a handful of loose ends. The boathouse gnomes have been up to their usual mischief, so there were lots of bits and bobs to tidy up and put away, including doing a proper job of folding up the World's Largest Tarp. Previously someone had attempted to fold it along the hotdog axis, then along the hamburger axis, which seemed cumbersome. So I instead folded it ~4 times along the hamburger axis, then rolled it up, figuring that if someone decided they wanted to use it in the future but maybe didn't need the entire thing unfolded, the next-best configuration would be to use it doubled up with a hamburger fold. (we are not trying to use it to cover our delicate, skinny rowing shells, which is just about the only time a hotdog fold would make any kind of sense).

Sometime soon I need to go through the collection of rowing club stuff here at home. Working with the rowing club stuff in general, one sees a large array of attitudes and methods towards stuff management. There's the "It's broken but it might be really expensive and we might be able to repair it someday" stockpile. There's the "Let's buy this thing quick to address this issue, disregarding how the thing will be stored/managed/maintained in the long run." This leads to a lot of awkward objects without homes. With our boats themselves, there's a general acknowledgement that we'd like to keep them relatively nice and clean and whatnot, although there's also often a limited understanding of how the rigging actually works, and what components are actually important to keep clean, so they experience their own wear-and-tear. The boathouse workbench is its own thing of beauty, with all of the actual high-quality bits and bobs carefully stockpiled away out of sight, but also with ready access to the basic tools that rowers often need to run and grab quickly. Seriously, one of the best boathouse workbenches I've ever seen, although not a Boatman's workbench per se. (a Boatman's workbench is carefully guarded by a resident Boatman; our Head Coach doubles as Boatman so he has a more lax system).

And there's so much more to it all, too. Today I picked up four walkie-talkies, to add them to the collection I have at home, because they only get used for the regatta and the conditions at the boathouse would destroy them prematurely if stored onsite. I also unboxed a second high-quality megaphone for coaches to use, and squirreled away a medium-quality megaphone before anyone has the chance to destroy it by dropping it in the water in the bottom of the safety launch or letting it get rained on. (Dead megaphone count for this year is already at 2, hence the push to switch over to the more expensive higher-quality ones that are actually designed for watery environments and might last more than one season).

A couple months back, someone purchased one of those over-the-door shoe organizers for me, so I could convert it into a better charging station for our boat lights. I got the organizer partly prepped, then brought it to the boathouse and left it there in a temporary spot when I figured out I'd need to do further work to finish the project. By now it is nowhere in sight, so I'll have to start over again with the second shoe organizer that was purchased at the same time, but which I kept at home as a backup. At least with organizer #2 I have a better idea of what I need to do to prep it at home. It needs a solid backing for attaching the USB charging stations. I won't bring it in until I can actually finish the project as soon as I get there.

It was kind of nice to just be in the boathouse by myself again, fighting entropy for a while. It has been a long while since I've had the space and time to hang out there on my own.

Oh friends.

On the plane trip from SFO to PHX, I continued working on the beautiful cable cardigan that's going to take me at least 4 years to finish because I generally only knit while traveling.

Counting stitches, something didn't add up right.

I am not sure why, but it appears I didn't cast on enough stitches when I began the back section. I'm around 20 stitches short. This is a non-trivial amount.

I have alrady knit most of the way up the back section.

This is going to be a lot of yarn to frog. I don't frog often, but there's no point in spending hours and hours to knit an ill-fitting cardigan.

For those who work with wool more than me: should I plan to frog, then get the wool wet to relax it, then start anew? I have an extra skein with me, so I could use the extra skein in the meantime to start over again. I just don't know what's best for this much frogging.

That overzealous data entry project, coupled with continued long days at the computer, is making my arms feel less than entirely happy. So I'm trying to be more conscientious about staying off the computer. It's challenging, but a side-effect is that I'm getting lots of other things done.

Currently in the pipeline:

1. A shawl made from yarns that my sister-in-law gave me. I think I might be about 1/3 of the way through? This one is going to take a while, and I'm not particularly motivated to work on it in the Arizona summer heat, heh.





2. A bike seat cover, to help reduce the wear-and-tear of leaving a bicycle outside in the Arizona summer sun:



Better finished sooner rather than later.

3. (not pictured): I am staining and finishing a board to fit over the hole in the sewing machine table. The wood stain is so smelly, but on the other hand it's drying much faster here than the sewing machine table did in California, where I had to work in cool, very damp conditions.

4. (also not pictured): Re-potting succulents in freshly fired ceramic plant pots and trying to make sure they're happy. Ceramics starts up again on Thursday. The glaze pick-up date from the previous ceramics session happened while I was out of town, so my officemate kindly picked up a few pieces for me. But I think there should have been around twice as many pieces as she found, so we shall see.

I am still peeved by my cell-o-phone's camera. It is terrible at taking close-range photos! Sigh. Oh well.



During the drive across Nebraska over the weekend, I worked on darning S's socks. Because I am mean, I used red darning thread on one conspicuous hole in each sock. I darned around 10-12 holes in the sock on the right, but only a couple of holes and weak spots in the sock on the left. If you look closely you can see a couple other darned spots on the inside-out sock on the right.

In case you ever find yourself darning socks, here are a few thoughts. First, the darned spots will not be stretchy, so overall while the socks will retain their structural integrity, they won't be quite as comfortable and elastic as they were at first. Second, the darning works surprisingly well. In a couple of places I first stitched a grid, and then stitched diagonally across the grid because the grid didn't seem quite substantial enough.

While thinking about what to do about an elbow hole in one of my favorite cheap sweaters (Old Navy but bought at a thrift store), I came across a website advocating for felted patches. This also would have worked as an alternative to darning the socks, but I'd already purchased the two-ply darning yarn and darning mushroom and didn't have un-spun wool of the right color sitting around, so I went ahead with the darning. I will probably try to felt an elbow patch for the sweater, however.

When darning, it's useful to use two-ply yarn that's thinner than the original material, so that it holds the material together but doesn't create a thick spot.

Keep your woolens in cedar and monitor them for moth problems, folks. Moths are tricky, annoying bastards.

Projects that are next in the queue:
-Aforementioned sweater darning and patching
-Quilted cat bed (practice for twin-size quilt)
-Twin-size quilt (FINALLY)
-Socks (so much sock yarn, so little time...)

Yesterday evening, I got to wondering whether there are any other knitters out there who wind up saying up past their bedtimes to finish a certain knitting project.

I didn't wind up finishing last night, but this afternoon instead of going on a long bike ride, I finally finished this vest.



It either took a year and five months, or just five months, depending on what counts. I started the project in January of 2014, but eventually realized something was off. It was probably my fault, for failing to knit up a gauge swatch, and for deciding to knit the thing in the round instead of as front and back panels. Regardless, I had to frog several inches and start over because attempt #1 was too big, and it took me until my Grandpa's funeral this past December to get started again.

One of the other hitches was the yarn. I came up with this project as a way to use a skein of blue camel's wool yarn that my parents had given me from the Snow Leopard Trust, and to also use up a nice handspun skein of yarn that a friend from Minneapolis had given to me.

Well, as I knitted up attempt #1, I soon realized that two skeins would be insufficient. I didn't have any way to match either of the preexisting colors, so I wound up considering a different skein of cream-colored yarn that was given to me, and buying two other skeins of yarn, a hand-dyed red and the tan you see pictured (although I think I'm going to call it "burlap-colored"). It also came from the Snow Leopard Trust. So now I have two other odd skeins of yarn instead, although they're slightly less odd than the ones I used up.

The striping, as well as variations in yarn quality, meant that I had to sew in a LOT of loose ends at the end, a tedious step that is one of my least favorites:



But it is done. I can only show you the vest, and not how it fits, because it's still damp from blocking. The fit looks like it will be fine overall, though, so I'd give this pattern a thumbs-up (a free pattern from Ravelry).

So, hurrah for finishing that project.

Then I looked in my yarn box. The next thing I want to deal with is a pair of moth-eaten socks that belong to scrottie:



It's hard to tell from the photo, but these are so moth-eaten that it would be difficult to repair them by sewing up the holes. I had been thinking about noting down the pattern, and then frogging and re-knitting them, so as a test for how that might go, I went ahead and frogged a misshapen hat that I crocheted for my sister years ago, that she gave back to me because she didn't have a use for it (and I can't blame her):



Now I'm not so sure I want to attempt frogging the socks, especially given how fragmented the strands will be, due to the moth holes. I wound up tearing a lot of the fibers in the hat, to take it apart, and I suspect that would be even worse for the socks, given how much heat and moisture they've experienced.

Looking in my yarn box was overwhelming. As a PSA - please, unless there are really special extenuating circumstances, DO NOT GIVE ME ANY MORE YARN (a recent gift from dichroic counts as a wonderful extenuating circumstance). I HAVE LOTS. I just don't have ideas for what to do with it, and I think I have about a 50% success rate at this point in terms of knitting nice, useable items. I don't know how to show you my "stash" on Ravelry, but I've listed almost all of my yarn there.

I still have some of the same grey yarn that I used for sytharin's erstwhile hat, the two balls pictured towards the upper left in this photo, because I got the yarn because it was pretty and soft, not because I knew what to do with it:



Thing is, it's super-soft stuff, and I don't know what works best for socks, because I really haven't knitted many socks, but I suspect it isn't the super-soft stuff. S really likes those moth-eaten socks because they are nice, thick wool that will keep his feet warm in the dead of winter. So I'm curious to know whether anyone else has any ideas or insights into how to proceed.

Before it started to rain today, my father and I rode bicycles over to Nervous Nellie's in Ballard. They almost scored 5 out of 5 points on my dad's scale, except there was no bike parking in sight. You can click on the pictures for slightly enlarged versions.

Dad notes how Nervous Nellie's scores in his notebook


Toast! And not just any toast...Swedish toast (at least, for my dad): toast with butter and cheese. I got boysenberry jam, which was delicious. They use Great Harvest Bread, and you get to pick out your own mug from a huge rack of mugs. I was tempted by the pirate mug, but it didn't look like it would hold enough coffee.


Resisting change: When he realized where we were in Ballard, my dad took me to see a small house with a big story. Apparently a developer had been scarfing up all of the land around this home, but one little old lady refused to sell out. So the developer ended up having to build the massive development around the old home. Partway through the building process, the builders befriended the lady and helped her out around the construction--she was pretty frail. She died some months ago, but the house is still there, for now.


My current knitting project: Now that all of the gifts are done for a while, I get to knit something for myself. It's my first cable-knitting attempt--arm-warmers. With size 2 needles, this project is going to take forever. Maybe they'll be done by next fall.

I thought that I would have a reasonable day today. Sometimes I can be so naive.

Last night, instead of going to the painting class that I signed up for, I sprawled out on the couch and finished knitting a scarf. Now I can get back to knitting leg-warmers. I'm racing kihle, who is trying to knit two hats that are over a year overdue. My goal is to finish the leg-warmers before she finishes the hats.

Our friend A just learned how to knit. All of a sudden, I'm totally into the idea of boys learning how to knit. I really *do* think it could be a way for them to pick up girls. The other night one of my friends said that all that a boy would need to do to pick up girls is sit in a coffee shop, look really sad, and work on some knitting and the girls would flock. Heh. Get to work, boys.

Anyhoo, T and I started placing bets on how many rows of knitting A would achieve. He bet 7. I bet 10. But A has already knit 18 rows, apparently.

I'm feeling better than yesterday. Man does it take a while to recover from a marathon. It's pretty fun to tell people about it, though. One of my undergraduate minions ran the half-marathon. I'm quite proud of her.

Well, it's about time to go and photograph a bunch of ants. I have such a crazy job.