I present Woodland Sage Hitofude!

I had to wait until Thanksgiving morning to get photos of the finished cardigan. Sorry I made you wait for the final unveil. I needed to stack the posts for the end of the month and as mentioned, earlier in the week, when this posts, I'll be at the beach. ;-)

My stitch count may have more. There was that whole figuring out that the pattern didn't match up so tinking and re-doing. Plus there were extra stitches to do the bind off, but I just counted the row stitches because I was tired and didn't want to try to figure out how many there were. I definitely met the goal of 50, 000 stitches! NaKniSweMo target accomplished! There are about 69206 stitches.

My lovely Woodland Sage Hitofude:

My dear husband needs to look behind me and move me. Also full sun in the face isn't good. But was in a hurry to get them done.Maybe better ones at the beach!

I'm going to get a lot of use out of this cardigan! This is going to take me through the end of Fall, through Winter and all the way through Spring. It has also made me want to knit another cardigan, but one out of a heavy weight yarn. I think I might have enough yarn to do the Central Park Hoodie - Michele happens to have a purple one here. I have that purple yarn that is multi-toned:

I think I'm going to over dye it and a bit of purple Cascade 220 so that I have enough yardage. Since the hoodie portion of it is done last, I may opt to forego that part. The temptation is to jump in and strike while the iron is hot, but reality says, I need to get some projects done for the munchkins towards Christmas gifts.

If you hadn't figured it out yet, I was also quietly trying to do NaBloPoMo. I found out about it a couple days too late to get in on the possible prizes but figured why not do it anyway? ;-) Hence why the great unveil was the last post of the month. I have no idea how many of the family look at my blog. It's not hidden from them, but over the month of December I'll try to do better than one post a week or one for the month and continue regular blog posts. There's a Yule event too to share.

(The Hitofude is entered in the NaKniSweMo group's prize category for meeting the goal, if you're a member of Ravelry you can see it here.)
Thank you for visiting!

Ack! Dropped Stitches!!

I finished the Hitofude Cardigan late Wednesday afternoon. Gave it a nice hot soak in some Eucalan with Lavender. Took it out squeezed out the water by hands as much as possible, then put it in a towel, rolled it up and squished it out some more. Then laid it out on my bed to block and dry:

Poor lighting to show the details. I had to stand on the bed and look down to get this shot. You'll have to wait to see it all dry.

 Imagine my horror when I looked down and saw this:

ACK! Somehow a slip, slip knit came undone. I've had this happen a few times and don't full understand how it happens. The stitch gets purled on the next row, but this was clearly undone and two stitches to grab a hold of and fix. This was the upper body above the ribbing band. I can tell where the fix is, but you'd have to be looking for it to see it thankfully. 

Almost done pics

This is where I started out this morning. I knit until about 1:30am Tuesday night. This is three-quarters of the way done with the last chart, Chart E:

I had to dip into the seventh ball of Knit Picks Gloss yarn. (Looks like the Woodland Sage must be discontinued, closest is Jade.) My swift gets noisy towards the end, doing it at midnight was a bit noisy, but thankfully didn't wake anyone up.

As you can see from the last shot above, there's definitely spread in the lace patterning. I'll have to see how that shows up with the finished cardigan. 

Going for the gusto

I'd love to have this cardigan done on Wednesday and be able to wear it to Thanksgiving. Its going to be nice to have, but I'm getting bored. it needs to get done or it won't be done. Know what I mean? ;-)

Night pics of how far I've gotten since last night:

See how the pattern is 'growing'?

Wondering if its going to have enough length. 

The wonderful thing about lace type projects is that they allow for growth through blocking. Of course, its deceptively short right now and making me think that I may want to try to add a 'chart f''. I'm not though.

So as of right now, I'm done with Chart D. Yeah, stayed up late last night and got six rows of Chart C done. Finished the last two rows of it this morning and then started Chart D and worked half of it. Gave myself an hour of LOTRO, then dinner making. Another little bit after dinner and then while catching up on shows we missed last week slogged out the last eight rows of the chart. That's 4008 stitches for the day. 2976 last night. I'm about 81% done according to my math, but it may be off, because I just realized I missed a setup row for the ribbing.

Just twenty-three more rows to go! I'm increasing another thirty-six stitches so each row is 444 stitches, if you want to have some math fun. ;-)

50,678 stitches

This is what it looks like with that many stitches:

Middle of Chart C and I have D and E with an inch or so of ribbing to do. It's still kind of bolero-ish right now, so definitely need those rows!

Spent Sunday afternoon in the kinship. Jenna and Heidi came over as planned. Heidi brought Kathy along too. Brent met us online near the beginning of where we all started together. It was fun spending the afternoon all together in the same room gaming. We're going to try for a few more in person sessions before Heidi makes her final move back east to Pennsylvania.

Jenna's planning to come over after work on Tuesday. She needs to come to the JoAnn's Superstore by us to fabric shop for the weekend.

We're doing another household beach trip over Thanksgiving weekend. William has work and homework that he'll have to do so he'll be home keeping the home fires burning. 

Dinner out

We spent the afternoon and evening with a bunch of friends. In the SCA they are members of the Iron Ring and Havoc households. So just the three of us from the Golden Bee were there. The original plan was to go to a lunch at Nona Emilia's and then go back to the Bear's house for a white elephant gift exchange.

It was discovered that on Saturday Nona's doesn't open until 4pm. So we met beforehand and socialized then headed over. This is apparently their thing for the holidays to get together as a group and go in garb somewhere for a meal and then the exchange.

If was fun seeing the reactions of people and we had a large enough group that they put us in our own separate room.

Before ordering food. It was a nice couple of hours with dinner and then doing the white elephant. I got a big book of the Complete Edgar Allen Poe works. Brandon had just gotten that particular book as a birthday present from Dawn-Marie, so since no one else stole it from me, I gave it to Sara. She's a teenager and the perfect age to be reading the stories. She did recognize the Tell Tale Heart from reading in a class, so I think she'll like reading the rest of the book. I like encouraging readers. ;-)

On the Hitofude front, I'm working on Chart C. I added a buttonhole, in case I do want to close it in the future. Another perfect button to be found! I knit before we went to dinner, while they were getting the table ready for us and after the gift exchange. Still have a bit of knitting to do before C is done. Maybe tomorrow morning.

Sigh...few steps back to go forward

I was working on the cardigan and thought I was about done with Chart B. Was going with the flow and and scratched my head last night but brushed if off and went forward. Yeah. I had followed how the pattern was setup with Chart A, but Chart B increases by two stitches, so some modification has to occur. What does that mean?

I had to tink back 8 rows this afternoon. Sigh.

So with two extra rows shown, here is where I am right now:

I'm snuggled up under my Cascade Lizard Ridge Blanket. Link takes you to when it was finished. It is the right size for one person and couch blanket or I've taken with us camping. I've been alternating using the wool setting and the gentle on the washing machine and purposefully gently felting it. Less snagging issues with dog nails that want to lay on the blanket with me.

Think in January I need to make another blanket for the times I have to wait while this one is in the wash and the dryer. ;-)

Surprise Game Night

Thursday's are LOTRO game night with Heidi, Jenna, Brandon and I. Wednesday they put up the new game and made a lot of changes. To the point that last night we decided that we should just start with all new characters.

So we switched over to Elves and had the introductory quests to do and a little bit online together where we could. Heidi though was having problems with her laptop, so wasn't able to get as far as the rest of us.

She talked with Brandon during the day and it was decided it would just be easier for her to come to our house so he could look at it and since she was here, just game. I thought it wasn't fair not to have Jenna, so we called her and had her come over.

There ladies on the sectional couch and Brandon at his desktop. Lots of laughing and interesting comments abounded. ;-) Heidi's character got a companion bear, so lots of comments about following a fluffy butt by me. They got to hear all the new player comments I was making and Brandon's pithy replies. I have to push Z to talk and sometimes that's hard to do while also pushing all the buttons during combat.

We had so much fun that it was decided that they would all come over again on Sunday for the next game day. Brandon just has to double check that his D&D game isn't on earlier in the day. Heidi lives waaaaaay across town and it was late when she left, so doesn't want to have to worry about that with a Monday morning work day.

I was only able to get 8 rows of the Chart B done today with all my other chores. I'll have a picture of it in the morning. Here's what it looked like this morning:

Little bit left on that fourth ball. I'm on five now.

Close-up of the setup length of the four chart As.

Increasing finally!

There it is with three of the four setup charts done. Finally at the part where the increases in the front sides start to happen. I'll still be doing that basic pattern in the back center, but from now on, there's increasing going on. Yay!

Dawn-Marie was here and we got two naalbinding needles done for her. She managed to take off a bit of skin on her right finger. Belt sanders, they're blood hungry beasts! Nice blog post on 'qualities of a good needle.'

Some laundry progress. Hair re-colored. It's fall so Garnier Nutrisse's Black Cherry. It gives my hair a few days of a purple tint before it settles down to something very close to my own reddish-brown. Okay, there is less of a hard line of color grow out. ;-) I've tried other brands but they are very drying on my hair. Since the two white streaks showed up in the back of my hair at 19, I've chosen to color. You get tired of people asking if you painted over the weekend and haven't washed the paint out of your hair really quickly.

Tried a coffee bread this morning. It uses leftover coffee as the liquid and some spices. Since I only had half a cup, I went with the small loaf. It also used the left out, expired bread yeast, so may not have risen as high. It wasn't dense, but it is short. Then I also have to remember that we have the rectangular loaf pan that is wide not, tall. The outside crisped up, so the crust is crunchy. I'm also learning that it helps to scrape the sides of the pan while its mixing so that all the flour gets wet. I did a bit with this loaf, but it needed a bit more. 

I like the bread. It's a dark, flavorful bread, good with butter and my cup of coffee. Looking forward to having some with tomorrow's coffee. Might lightly toast it to warm it up, but not too much!

If you're interested in the recipe, let me know.

Someone shared this on Facebook and thought I would share a link here. Star Wars snowflake templates. One of the guys at Brandon's work got one done today. Took a sharp exacto knife and patience. I think he was working on the AT-AT but it was going to take a different knife to cut it out. 

Looking more like a cardigan

This is where it was at yesterday morning. I was bad and forgot to take pics this morning of the progress, so you'll have to wait for tomorrow for the big leap that it will show.

I need two more repeats before starting the growth parts of the front panels. I had planned to get them done today, but that time limit on the Gold Cap discount was putting pressure on me. I took my Human Capitan, Baltwiga through level 13 and got my 30 turbine points I needed to be able to spend 316.

Oh my! It took a lot longer than I thought it would! Had to do some quests as well as some deeds to get the points. Did a quest in Bree and then realized that it did nothing for what I was trying to get done. Refreshed my memory of where things are in town and was able to breeze through some areas because I knew right where to go.

So tonight with the group, I was out in an area that I had inadvertently worked alone this weekend. So I was able to relax and just kill the things we needed to while they hunted for the different items. Getting better about using all the different 'extra' or 'bonus' skills and traits that only become active while using some of the others. Still got turned around, fell over a wall and had to be helped back to the main group a couple of times. Reading the map in fighting moments gets jumbled in my brain and then my mouse skills get me screwed up.

Dawn-Marie wants to come and make some naalbinding needles tomorrow so she can learn how to do that. She has yarns that she wants to make things. Laundry, hair color and woodwork along with knitting. Hope to also get to knit night at Whole Foods. I've missed going!

A few of them are getting closer to blooming!

Good news!

I wasn't messed up with the instructions for the lower body. The front left and right panels don't line up with the previous work. Just the back panel lines up. Sigh. Wish she could have said this explicitly.

Did the setup Lower Body work while hanging out with Jaime, Dawn-Marie and Brandon at Jaime's house. We had a movie day watching Much Ado About Nothing. We like the Kenneth Branagh version, I think that Emma Thompson does an awesome Beatrice. The Joss Whedon version was fun to watch.

We don't recommend that you try to match them on the amount of drinking they do though! We realized that you would quickly be drunk! Of course if you wanted to have a drinking game, the highest repeated word is - Love, loved, or loving.

After the movie we got out grocery shopping done. If you have a Winco, our local one had a deal where if you spend $150 you got a free Jenny-O or Winco turkey, any size. We brought home a 22 pounder, couldn't find one of the 24 pounders. ;-)

Thanksgiving is down in Corvallis with the family there, yes, the family are all Beaver fans.

After unloading all the groceries, we would have played with Jenna and Heidi online with the Lord of the Rings Online game. We're playing the free and they've both paid. Hope to start paying after the first of the year. They have a new module coming online, Helms Deep, on the 18th, so the servers are all down. Knitting time!

No picture of the progress until there's daylight. So I'll leave you with my Christmas Cactus pic I took a couple weeks ago:

A couple of the buds are a bit bigger and there's more of them on the plant. Don't think it will be blooming still at Christmas, but who knows?  I thought mine might be abnormal, but a few other people have posted on Facebook that theirs are blooming or getting ready to bloom too.

Ow

A few weeks ago while doing yard work I dislocated my left shoulder for a few seconds. My brain sent me the picture of where my arm was located and without even thinking made a move that caused it to relocate. Those few seconds seems to have been long enough to cause injury to the deltoid.

I used castor oil on the shoulder that night and for a week afterward and thought things were doing well. I still have problems with weird rotations of the shoulder though. For example, trying to twist my arm up behind my back to unhook a bra. Or what caused it pain yesterday and into today. Sitting in the passenger seat, and trying to toss my sweater onto the back seat. I think it was a combination of the angle and the weight of the sweater. Ow.

Today I tried going forward and get the setup row done and do the lower body work on the Hitofude. Not that many stitches in and I find that all the kfb increases has made it so that I would need to be working a future chart in the pattern. I'm six stitches too many to do the pattern as written. Grrrr

I've tried putting in a help request with the pattern author, who it does turn out, did have it tested for the XL that I'm knitting. I also posted to the pattern page. Japan is 17 hours ahead of us and I still haven't heard anything back, but on her Ravelry page she does have this

 "I’m not good at English. So I can’t reply to complicated questions."

I tinked back but have lost my beginning of the round point because of removing that marker 10 rounds earlier and my brain is discombobulated trying to find the starting point. So no forward progress for today possibly. My shoulder is also hurting and holding the knitting seems to be aggravating the shoulder pain.

Sorry no pics today.

Oh my!

Started out my morning attempting to get the setup done for the lower body of the Hitofude. I re-did the bind off for the neckline three full times. That includes un-doing it twice, but it seems like I did that three times, so it gets confusing. It was definitely too many! The first time was because I just by rote fell into doing a standard bind off when I had read, but not fully read (should have had a cup of coffee before starting!) that the suggested bind off was an Elastic one where she was having you keep in pattern so purl one, knit one, then knit through the back loops those two stitches.

So what amounted to two finished rows took 974 estimated stitches. Doing 71 stitches six times really does add up! Didn't get any further than that because it took me a couple of hours just to get that done. Oh my!

Was asked to be feast steward again for Yule this year. It's a combined one with the Barony of Three Mountains. Cooking meat and helping to organize the potluck foods as they come in. The Baroness of Three Mountains said that its one event that they don't want something special for the high table, so that makes it easy on me.

Came up with the idea of getting the roasted chickens done by Safeway in St. Helens, where the event is going to be held. I talked to the deli manager and she said to come in today to pay for it because they were going to be $5 instead of the regular $6.99. Save $24 by driving there and back? Sure! I can spend it on other things. I have bone-in pork butts and roast beef ordered through Ponderosa Purveyors. There will be pulled porked, chickens, beef and still debating on the turkeys. They are currently in the plan to get a couple, but I may see if I can get a deal on goose or ducks. The plan is to cook the roast on site, it smelled really yummy cooking last year. I did a fresh rosemary, marjoram, garlic, salt and pepper with olive oil thing. Rave reviews by people who usually don't like the meat at events.

Dawn-Marie tagged along with me, so after we were done there we stopped at JoAnn's with my finished Spatterdash mitt. I hoped to find some pretty green, rose and white buttons to finish them. I did find possible ones in white and rose, but might be the wrong season for the spring green. To get the needed 28 buttons, would have cost $9. Thought that was a little spendy, and seems like a reason to take a trip into Portland and visit The Button Emporium.

There was a 50% off coupon burning up in my email, so found a nice lighter weight white linen that I can try making a St Birgitta Cap. Which can then be used under the basis for the more interesting German head coverings. We had also spotted that there were some picture frames that were 60% off and I had recently found the pictures we had done last year that still needed frames. They'll finally find their way into the frames and I can hang them up with all the other family photos. We picked up Brandon from work then took him back to confirm that the approved of the frame style.

Dropped off stuff back at the house and then decided that we would do a sit down dinner since we were early enough instead of picking up fast food. Opted for Izzy's since its a buffet and we'd all find something that we liked. It has been YEARS since we've gone to an Izzy's to eat. Very noisy. The grilled salmon that I had was tasty and so was the salad. The pizzas and desserts were disappointing.

Stopped at the Burgerville for a pumpkin milkshake before they are out of season. I had a Jamba Juice Pumpkin Smash a couple weeks ago. I must say that I preferred the Pumpkin Smash over the Burgerville shake.

Revels was festive with preparations of Yule decorations, new people, Eulalia in garb sharing some smoked pork with a mustard sauce and some rose tea. Conrad dropped by with a couple paper bags of fabric donations. I brought some home and Dawn-Marie did as well. Made sure that Susan took some home for herself and towards dressing bears at Yule, a munchkin event she's helping with. I also got a Dragon's Mist patch to put on my haversack that the Baroness had made me as my 'favor' I posted about.

It's just resting on top of the bag. I still need to stitch it down very carefully! That will be fun to learn how to do. 

Looks like a sweater!

Spent time today on the Hitofude cardigan. There was a crochet chain provisional cast-on. Must have done something wrong because undoing the chain and slipping the stitches on to the needle is the way its supposed to go, that's not how it went. I had to undo each chain by pulling out the strand. For the left sleeve that was 60 stitches and then doing the three needle bind-off before moving the stitches off of the other provisional cast on (192 stitches.)

I was curious why a three needle bind off, but since the pattern author is trying to limit having to attach yarn and doing it as one swack, I guess it makes sense to use this one. It makes it so the seams are nice and neat and have less stress. If you haven't done one before, Jimmy Beans has some nice instructions on how to do it.

From there it was getting all the stitches on one needle and knitting in the round for eight rows to work the neckline and the fitting in the back. I got all those done and now working the skirt of the cardigan. Whew!

My handy spreadsheet says that I have 31,227 stitches towards the 50,000 goal and am 62% complete towards that goal. I don't think I have to worry about meeting the goal and hopefully will exceed it. I know happy to exceed. ;-)

Sleeves!

Showing the ribbing that goes around the neckline and around the back

Three needle bind off, seaming up the sleeves

There's more binding off in the next step, then back to knitting flat. The math will get a little more interesting shortly, but I think I have a couple more days of knitting before it gets to that point. 

NaKniSweMo Progress Update 1

I've been knitting for nine days and have made steady progress - Yay!

I manage to get one pattern repeat done a day, because I'm now also working on another project and because I have it memorized and it gets a little tedious. I've done two in one day or a little more than one.

Day 2

Day 2

Day 4

Day 5

As you can see above, I've used about a skein of yarn to get to that point. Now like a lot of knitters weaving in ends isn't a lot of fun. I'd recently seen a post by Knitted Wit about how to join yarns without ends to weave in. It's supposed to be fairly easy to let it blend in. Here's the YouTube video on how to do it.

Here's my knot:

Here it is all knitted in. It ended up at the point of the pattern. I can feel it. If I hunt for it, I can find it, but its not glaringly obvious. I'll see with the next one if I continue to use this.

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

So making progress. I want to get the sleeve/upper body done, so it looks like a cardigan rather than a shawl in progress. My row count will change with that though, so maybe I shouldn't be so eager? ;-)

NaKniSweMo 2013

Some of you may be familiar with November being a NaNoWriMo where people sit down and try to write a 50,000 word novel during the month. Well a knitter wanted a sweater and decided to use the same concept to knitting.

I had heard of this phenomena, but November is usually smack dab in the middle of Christmas knitting. I've been handmaking Christmas gifts for years. This year, there may be fewer hand knit and maybe some sewn things as well as jams and preserves.

We have two nieces and six nephews, so they'll get the focus of the handknit stuff. Well except for Logan. We had gotten him a book (other kids got books too) and I found out that he's definitely the reader in the family. He has gone on to get the books in hardback and will go back and re-read from the beginning of the series to prepare for reading the latest book. So I'm going to pick him up a book or two for his gifts this year. I'll handmake him a bookmarker so he has something made by me.

I have a start on the Christmas gifts as you saw with Bailey's hat yesterday. I have a pair of fingerless mitts also planned for her. The rest of the boys I've run into stumbling blocks with. I think they are due for hats, but what ones?

Selfish knitting is usually planned for January for most knitters. I can't wait until then this year. I need to satisfy a need to have something that I'm making stay with me. So NaKniSweMo seemed like a perfect way to accomplish this goal. I have yarn stashed for several sweaters and cardigans but gift knitting always seemed to get in the way, or it was the wrong time of the year to be thinking about wearing a sweater. It's actually the perfect time to do it, so its ready when the weather is, but we won't go there right now. lol

I posted it to Facebook as kind of a way to put myself on the hook. I had at first planned to do Tempting. I have the yarn that I thought would work for it, more than enough I think too:

It's some Arucunia Wool that I had bought at The Knitting Bee several years ago during a Super Bowl sale with the thought of using it to make a Clapotis. In the knitting world it seems like everyone has made one, but me.  Oh I know there are a few hold outs still. ;-) I didn't jump right in and start making it, so the yarn has been at the bottom of the stash bin, pulled out a few times and put back.

I even did a gauge swatch for the pattern! I was a little tight with the yarn and then relaxed and got gauge. Yes, I know the swatch should have been bigger, but I wanted to get started!

So through chatting about the sweater on Facebook I also mentioned that I had been thinking about doing a new pattern I bought. The pattern is called Hitofude and was just a few US dollars. I had been looking at clothing through different online stores and noticed that this style of cardigan is very popular right now, so seemed like a perfect time to knit one. I'm also all about the layering. I have a tendency to run warm, weight not withstanding, so wearing the Tempting might be a little warmer than I would like.

Now, if we ran to colder winters, I'd be totally into making one. Our more temperate weather here in the Portland area means I need to worry more about getting wet than bundling up.

So I'll still make the Tempting, with the cable modification at the neckline, but after I do the Hitofude cardigan first.

I cast on and got start on November 1st and have been knitting on it every day. I have pics for the first four days:

I had some Knit Picks Gloss in Woodland Sage planned to make a Thermal. It's nice but I don't think I'd ever wear it.

Day one. You do provisional cast on in crochet chains. Then do the setup rows. I got the first two done before going to bed. Why was I doing it so late? I'd started playing Lord of the Rings Online with Brandon and we played until after 10pm, so I had to do all that so I wouldn't be behind.

Day two I have one chart repeat and two rows into the second done.

Day three there are three chart repeats done and I'm one chart repeat ahead of daily stitch count needed.

How do I know I'm ahead?  Well I sat down and tried to come up with a spreadsheet to track numbers of stitches each day done and whether or not I was ahead or behind and if I was on track for the goal. I then enlisted Brandon's help with getting all the bells and whistles done through Excell. He helped me with it and I was using it and on day two he tells me that I had a mistake and so he was re-doing the spreadsheet for me.

Yes, it helps to know how many days are in the month you are working with. I had given November 31 days, it only has 30 days. So he was able to take all of what I wanted and create the new spreadsheet with some better programming and formatting.

Because Ravelry keeps track of progress by percentage I had to request that addition to the spreadsheet. It unfortunately does it in increments of 5s, so I've been at 15% for a couple days. (You should see that by the project pic in the upper right hand corner of the blog.)

I'll try not to bore you with daily updates, unless you really want to see them?  Let me know. ;-) I have 15 chart repeats to do of the current setup. This makes the arms and the upper back of the cardigan. I don't want to get close to the end of the month and be racing to be done.

Its not too late to get started on a sweater/cardigan for the month. Want to join in on the fun? The Rav group is here. As mentioned there are prizes, its going to be done on a random number generator basis on finished projects. One lady has donated $75 gift certificate to WEBS and that's going to be a grand prize, yet to be determined how to win.

So am I totally selfish in wanting to knit something for myself? Or recharging my creative box by knitting for myself?