Girly Goodness
I finished this last night. I’m not a fan of acrylics, but I may have to change my mind as far as this Sirdar Snuggly DK is concerned. It knit up fabulously without any squeaks and it’s really soft and resists pilling. When I finished the sweater I washed it in the sink with some Eucalan and then tossed it into a warm dryer. My knitting was pretty even to begin with but after fluffing in the dryer the stitches settled and it looks really great. I’m pleased.
I wasn’t too pleased with the pattern, though. For the front panels of the cardigan they tell you, at the shaped edge, to work two stitches together on the RS and bind off one stitch on the WS. It sounded really sloppy to me, but I tried it anyway because sometimes patterns do tell you to do things for a reason. It was hideous. I couldn’t imagine picking up stitches along such a rough edge and having it look nice enough for a gift.
I ended up up knitting, ripping, knitting, ripping until I came up with something nice. I left one stitch as selvedge and worked two stitches together on each row loosely. It had to be done very loosely or the edge wanted to pucker and bunch, as increases on every row tend to do.
It was trial and error to come up with decreases that would look nice on the edge and exactly the same when worked on both purl and RS rows. At the neck edge of the left piece (with the garment facing you) the decreases were easy:
RS: k1, k2tog, k to end
WS: p to last 3 sts, p2tog, p1
The neck edge of the right piece was a bit trickier. The smoothest edging I could achieve was as follows:
WS: p1, sl 1 st purlwise, sl 1 st knitwise, return both sts to left needle, p2tog tbl, p to end
RS: k to last 3 stitches, sl 1 st knitwise, return st to left needle, k2tog tbl, k1
It was worth the extra fiddling to get the edging just right. It drives me absolutely crazy when patterns are written to facilitate the process for the writer rather than detailed properly so the knitter can follow directions and achieve a professional-looking product. Being a somewhat experienced and intuitive knitter, I didn’t have much trouble making adjustments and deciding for myself how I wanted to handle the edgings. If I had tried to knit this cardi as a new knitter I would have been in tears at the ugly end result, thinking it turned out poorly because I sucked ass.
It goes in the mail tomorrow if I can scare up the cash to send it off. We screwed up our budget the last couple of weeks and right now we’re existing on rolls of change. Would you believe I have $44 in dimes alone?
A-Hunting We Will Go
Jeremy and I have decided to buy a house. We’re moving about an hour north of where we are and today is our first house-hunting trip. The agent is showing us three properties and I’m so excited right now I don’t know what to do with myself. I should be finishing up the baby cardi…the pieces are complete and I’ve just started joining and picking up stitches around the collar for the picot edging. If I sit down right now I should have it completely finished by this afternoon.
As most of you know, Jeremy and I quit smoking back in January. We went 10 full weeks without incident, but as soon as we took off the patch life started happening and basically we fell off the wagon. We’re smoking right now. Please don’t leave comments like, “Aw, but you were doing so well!” because to be honest, I still feel like we’re doing well. This is a setback but we’re not going to quit quitting. We just need to get our headspace back. I have a doctor’s appointment coming up and I’m going to discuss getting any help available to me so that I can really quit.
It took my aunt years to quit and I hope I can do it in less time, but since quitting is the ultimate goal, not impressing others with my willpower and stamina, I’m not discouraged and I’m going to keep trying until I am a real non-smoker. We’ve decided to smoke until I talk to the doctor and see what sort of help she can offer.
Today is gorgeous and spring-like which is so great after the blizzard we had the other day. I know winter is definitely at an end because I saw my first disgusting, million-legged bug bumbling across our ceiling late last night. I declared it good luck and made a wish as Jeremy sent it straight to hell in a wad of economy-brand kleenex. Take that, sucka!
Stuff
I couldn’t have asked for a better or longer 30th birthday. I basically spent all week quoting my cake and making people get me coffee and stuff like that. Last week we ate this cake with friends, and last night we ate more cake with family. My mom gave me some $$ which I spent on clothes. I go clothes shopping so infrequently because at my size it’s just depressing but this time I found some great stuff. I mentioned before that we bought the Nikon so I wasn’t really expecting anything from Jeremy, but he surprised me anyway. This is a photo-heavy post so I tossed the rest of the pictures in the extended entry section. Take a look…I even have a couple of knitting photos in there.
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