Knithropology

The sooner we bring back victory gardens the better, I think. We’re doing our part, I reckon - over the past fortnight we’ve put in this year’s garden. We’re doing four varieties of tomatoes, a Mariachi pepper plant, lemon cucumbers, peas, two types of radish and a huge variety of herbs (including catnip for Denora). No, we don’t have a huge yard - we have one raised bed (about three by five feet) and a panoply of pots. Pictures as things develop, and perhaps some squirrel meat recipes for the omnivores in the audience, as our local greys are already pillaging this new food source. Those are my tomatoes, you little buggers! (sigh)

They certainly won’t get to one of my tomatoes - it’s in the Even Better than the Topsy Turvy that I crocheted three or four years ago:

Nice, hey? And I didn’t think I’d ever have use for a soda bottle again. Ha!

Now to the knitting front. The Dawn Chorus Danica is finished! Complicating its finishing were two competing projects: the Springy Garden and the Lad Topper Mark I. The Dawn Chorus Danica is (obviously) a Danica, the Springy Garden is the Misty Garden from Scarf Style and the Lad Topper is another Pi Topper cap. Here are pictures of all three, with The Lad as my ever-patient model:

On the needles: the Masala Moonlight is coming along slowly; I made a couple of errors that really put me off it for a bit, but I’m over it and it doubled in length last night.

I’ve fought my way through a Quinn Bag for my mum in Cascade 220 Heathers, and I had no idea how much I had missed cables. This is a welcome return to reordering stitches…and reordering I did, as after finishing the body of the bag, I realised that I’d done an entire row of C4Fs as C4B. ARGH. Dumb mistake, knitter. To make things worse, it was halfway down the body. (sigh) After failed attempts at using the Yarn Harlot’s cable fixing techniques, I took a deep breath, had a swig of coffee and frogged. It is all reknit and lovely now, and the frogging experience was, as ever, incredibly humbling. Here’s a picture of the body of the bag; I’m working my way through the i-cord handle now, and I’m going to line it with denim to confirm its rustic look:

At the same time I was put off the Masala Moonlight, I was making those cable errors in the Quinn and had a bit of a freakout. So what did I do? I got desperate. I pulled my Razoresque Cami out of hibernation, frogged it back to the ribbing and began it nearly anew. I’m a much better knitter now than I was when I originally started it, and I’m happier with the result (Though in my next project, I need to loosen up my YOs a bit more. I’m managing alright in the Masala Moonlight, but I’m tight on this cami).

Finally, I did something fabulous. I designed and knit up a French press cosy. One day of work resulted in a fantastic new finished object. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Sunday Afternoon Coffee Cosy, hard at work Monday morning:

Isn’t it lovely? I’m so happy with it. Instead of using one of our crocheted cotton kitchen towels to wrap up my press, now I have this beautiful dedicated cosy. Simply looking at it makes me smile. And the observant among you will see also that it matches my mini-placemat and coaster. Yay! I’ll need smiles and coffee over the next two months, as I began summer classes today. Where did the month of May go? I needed a longer break! Ah well, I’ll get all the break I can handle after August.

Aware that my lazy summer was about to end, I embarked on a project that would alleviate some of my knitting disorganisation: a pattern binder. I thought I’d print out the ten or so pattern pdfs I had sitting on my laptop’s hard drive, but soon realised that I had loads more pdfs on my desktop’s drive, and while I was at it, I could print out some of the patterns I have queued on Ravelry, and…well, you see where this is going. I printed enough patterns to fill a 1″ binder and still have more to do. Eek. (cue Jaws music) “We’re gonna need a bigger binder.”

Current knitting plans: yet another Quinn (no miscrossed cable madness with this one), a Sideways Spencer Redux (finally, a cardigan for women with alpine curves), a square or two on a Lizard Ridge (yes, I’m giving in to that one), a Womb for a good friend and some baby and charity items.

In the meantime, lectures and work are calling. Farewell, lazy summer!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 11:10 am and is filed under Finished Objects, On the Needles.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.