Ah Cindy is done.

I have been trolling around blogland and enjoying myself immensely. I am thinking of totally redoing my bloglines links because I find myself reading people on a daily basis that I never read before and not reading people that I used to hit several times a day waiting for a new post already. YO Lisa start blogging again puh-lease. Anyway Friday night I came accross two resolution thingies: UFO 12 by 12 and a place with a yarn diet button. Now I feel like I am on the perpetual yarn diet so I *could* add that button but I wonder on the 12 by 12 thing. Do people have 12 UFO’s sitting around? I have 7 at the moment~ Collinette shrug called Ffion, Colinette top called Cindy, Shetland Tea, Maple Garland and Field of Flowers shawls, BW topdown and spinning if you want to be picky. Is this a finish 12 objects this year group? I could live with that. So here I am musing on yarn diets and knitting for myself and I decided to totally change my goals for the year. Quelle Surprise. Actually there is more to the story. Mainly I have spent my past week online perusing blogs and starting stuff and swatching yarns and doing the demi and scoping out the Wonderful World of Wool aka WWW. And Friday my husband threw some extra money into the acct for me to purchase yarn. First I thought wipieeeeeee stuff that has caught my attention lately or stuff I have been coveting for a while. While stuff won and I went searching for some CE Maya. What!?! It’s Discontinued and nowhere to be found. OK how about some CE London Tweed? What!?! It’s been discontinued and nowhere to be found. Hmmmm OK Reynolds Turnberry Tweed. What!?! Discontined and nowhere to be found.  With the background firmly established I vow to purchase yarn willy nilly all year long and every single chance I get. So there. By the way I did buy yarn and needles.

Knit related news I decided to rip my maple garland shawl because….. I got to the end of flower and realized the entire ground of shawl is a textured stitch instead of a lacey stitch. I think Miss Kinzel was right about going up to an absurd needle size so that the whole thing will be more filmy. I doubt I will go up to size 5’s and I ordered a brand spanking new set of Aero’s in size 2.75, 3, & 3.25mm so will swatch with those. Yah I have needles in those sizes but new needles woo hoo! Make it 6 WIPs//UFOs. I also didn’t work on the green shawl and have decided to go ahead and follow the pattern [instead of adding border or making it square] because I don’t feel like asking for more yarn to be dyed up for me. I have, however, been knitting on the plum heather shawl aka Shetland Tea just so that when I am done with a few other things I will be at the lace portion. Those long rounds of plain st st are mighty tedious. I got my extra Colinette yarns so am working on those as well.

Hey I finished Ffion!{I’ve been adding to this post which began on Friday evening every day} Let’s begin with the fact that this is one strange ‘garment’ I read through the instructions and immediately called UK to ask where the neckline instructions were. Yep you CO on one hem edge, knit so far, CO for sleeves, knit so far, BO sleeves, knit so far, BO opposite hem. No neckline. Ends up there isn’t supposed to be one. Your just supposed to stick your arms into the sleeves and either have a shawl collared bolero/shrug whatevahhh or a cowl necked backlass thingie. They seemed quite pleased with the concept of you can wear it upside down, backwards, and if your neat with your seams inside out as well. Its huge. Looksie:

I had to crop the picture so that I could stand way up high to get width of garment almost all in which resulted in a lotta floor over and above. See those sleeves? They look so piddly in relation to the width and they are 8″ long. Can you see the loose gauge at hem level or at least a slight flare? The hems are knit very very loosely so that you can have the bottom wrap around your body and still drape over shoulders. It is indeed an odd garment. It’s completion brings us down to 5 UFO’s/WIPS

Ah Monday morning so toodles!

So yesterday when I said I was almost done I really really was. In fact all I had to do was sew up one shoulder, do the one row for neckline, sew up sides and set in sleeves. I didn’t want to. Personally I think its idiotic to knit a st st sweater in bulky novelty yarn in pieces so resent sewing them up. Its been 2 days of avoiding before I started but I’m not done yet. Oh no gentle readers. First there is the lovely armhole to sleeve cap sewing in problem:

How freaking huge is the armhole compared to the sleeve cap? Huge thats how huge. HUGE. So huge that the armhole extends beyond cap, beyond bound off sts that begins sleeve cap, beyond the freaking Cast on edge of sleeve. HUGE HUGE HUGE. Am I sure? Yes its huge:

 That edge along right of picture is the CAST ON of sleeve and that little C to its left is the Bind Off to begin armhole shaping plus first few rows of armhole. I am not imagining hugeness here. It’s huge. Should I say it again? HUGE.

Ah but thats not what is bringing me to tears. No not my inherent resistence to sewing up the sweater in first place followed by some whacky armhole/sleeve ratio but …. *sigh* I am stubborn. I figured I would just, you know, gather a bit here or there and make it fit. Ha Ha Ha. And here is where the novelty yarn factor did me in. Begin aside. BTW I enjoy novelty yarn for fun factor but have only spent my cold hard earned cashiola on the stuff twice in 30 years. I enjoy it but ummmm hate it. End aside. So I am sewing in my sleeve cap and go to tighten the mattress stitch. I like mattress stitch. I like just pulling my strand of yarn and having everything just zip into place. Did I say pull my strand? Yes I did. Wanna know what happens when you pull on this yarn? It breaks into two. Suspecting this would happen I carefully used my needle tip to tighten each and every little freaking mattress stitch into shape. Which was great until I hit the portion where my mattress stitching must have pierced an edge stitch or carried yarn along back cause we are alternating hanks as per instructions. What I had going on was a big ol loop that wouldn’t zip, scootch nothing into place. Such a big ol loop it makes the armhole look miniscule. Undo the freaking mattress stitch. The already into place stuff had to be pulled to rip the thread cause you know for a fact there was no way I could possibly figure out which part of floof was the sewing up floof. You have all figured out what happened by now haven’t you? Yes dearies I tore my stitches along side edge. Not any side edge mind you but the side edge that also included the hank changes aka extra strand carried along side. Is it bad? Judge for yourselves:

I cannot figure out how to squidge the loop into knitting. I cannot figure out if the loop is part carried and caught in back strand or part of which row. What I can do is cry. Cyas.

2:38AM Monday morning and I am done. Pretty pretty pretty yes? The yarn is Colinette Giotto in colorway Fruit Coulis. Sorry for the radio silence Friday btw. I stayed up all night Tursday and then went furniture shopping. When I got home at 3:30 I was dead to the world and crashed. I had a great weekend anyways. I received my shawl kit and pattern Friday and Saturday morning I got my invite to join FiberR.O.A.K The group was closed due to a cap of 100 members and that was upped to 150. Apparently there were 30 people on a waiting list[counting moi] so rush on down and sign up if you read the we are closed and didn’t sign up. 20 spaces left woo hoo!

Have a great yarny day you alls. I am gonna clean and generally putz around.