Natalie Knits

MMmmmm... Pi day!

I never thought I could be so excited about sleeves! But tonight I finished the right front of the sweater, and moved onto the sleeves. I think this project has been the first to sustain my excitement and energy for such a long time-- anything else that I have been working on for this long has been regarded with at least a smidgen of dread by this point in the project ("oh, this again" or "still this same old thing??" syndrome). But here I cast on the left sleeve, and I am so excited! It also may be because the sweater is starting to have a shape. And I am still really liking the yarn I chose, the color will go with so many things, and while I find the dropped stitch pattern really simple now that I have practiced it so much, it looks rather impressive.

In other knitting news, yesterday Molly (my best-knitting-friend) and I ran around town looking for the materials to make blocking boards. So we found the blocking pins and the 1 inch checked gingham fabric to cover the boards as a guide for laying out whatever is being blocked. As for the boards themselves, I wanted to get the right kind of material-- something sturdy and solid that blocking pins will easily stick in. I read on knitty.com about how one might choose homasote boards. So we stopped at the home depot, but no luck. Then ace hardware, and still no luck. In fact, everyone we asked hadn't even heard of homasote. We were thinking, are we crazy? Did we maybe accidentally make this up? I know I feel that way about school stuff from time to time, but not usually about knitting! Then finally, a nice guy at ace was like "yeah, homasote! You have to go to the lumberyard to get that!"

So... on the one hand, we weren't crazy! Homasote did exist! On the other, I was thinking, "lumberyard?" I mean, I didn't have much time left for running around town, but the lumberyard is actually less than a mile from where I live, and from the ace hardware where we were at the time. Have I mentioned how much I love where I live?? So we moseyed over to the lumberyard, and about 10 minutes later we had driven through the warehouse (talk about service! I didn't know that drive-through warehouses existed!), watched our large piece of homasote be cut like butter through the saw and stuck it in the backseat of the car! Homasote is very cool-- it is quite substantial (hefty, and good thickness), and it's made from compressed recycled paper. I love recycling! So this seems like it was worth running around town for. So that's as far as it has gotten--the homasote is now occupying a nice space in the living room, waiting to be covered... perhaps this weekend, I am getting antsy to see what this blocking magic is all about! I seriously sat through my seminar this afternoon, fantasizing about wetting down and laying out the sweater pieces (yes, class was that boring today... it can't always be inspiring).

I also am already thinking about my next sweater. This is a very good sign!!

So I was going to post some pictures I just took, but they will have to wait until tomorrow, as my camera is being troublesome. If I am being honest about it, it's me and not the camera. You might think that because I've had the camera for like 2 years I would have figured out how to easily download my pictures. But instead I just got a really big memory card, and kind of ignored how full it has been. Silly, I should just figure it out-- it just looks like it is going to take a bit of a while to download my pictures tonight, and it's way past my bedtime (Jon Stewart is almost over! And I have stats at 9 am... yuck).
So, I promise better pictures tomorrow than I could have provided tonight, anyways.

As for this being my first sweater, I am still quite excited about it, and it hasn't been as hard as I thought it might be (then again, it's not done yet, who knows how painful this will become??)

Oh, and good job today Buckeyes!! You kept us on the edge of our seats at the end of the game, but it was worth it! I am particularly happy about the win, as a loss this early in the tournament would have busted my bracket.
I have to say, I definitely have a case of March Madness!

Just yesterday we were enjoying the beautiful weather...

And then today-- the same window!!

Although at least someone knows spring is coming, Miss Slider, my turtle, has stopped her hibernation phase and is now happily sunning herself on her rock. She's a bit shy, and usually doesn't like to pose for pictures, but this morning she didn't seem to mind. Maybe she's warming up to me a bit! The joke is that I've had her for years now (maybe 3, or even 4?) and she has always been a bit reluctant to make friends with me (even when I lovingly clean her shell!), but she just loves my boyfriend, Justin. He feeds her strawberries and shrimp treats, and she will sit on her rock all day long for him.

Perhaps this is a good sign, that she's liking me more, too!

In my last post I was optimistic about making sleeve progress. Now, not so much. Because of COURSE what I want to do it rip out rows and rows, including where I join the placket and the sleeve, and re-knit both plackets because either A) I read the pattern wrong, or B) the pattern is wrong. I haven't looked to see which one it is-- I'm going to stick with the latter. I'll post pics tomorrow-- but I'm afraid it won't be pretty.

Well, I knew it would be challenging to teach myself how to use movable type-- I am not used to doing things in code!! It has taken a lot of trial and error, but I am experimenting with the look of the blog, and I am so pleased when I make even the smallest bit of progress. I am figuring out how to put little pictures around, which I wanted to establish the feeling of the blog. I know my dad uses a lot of code in his work with computers, and I always found it so frustrating! Not that I didn't appreciate how difficult his work was, but now I feel like I have some idea of how cool it can be, and how rewarding to understand how things work (sort of).

I am hoping to get back to blogging about my sweater soon! It has been a crazy couple of weeks, but I have made small progress. I finished one sleeve yesterday, and I had made it wayyyy too long (at one point I held it up to my arm, and I was like, oh! my arm isn't actually 3 feet long! Ok, so maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I did have to do some ripping. I have never done so much ripping in my life as I have with this project, but usually I don't feel too dejected, because not only am I happy to keep working on the project, but I really want it to be just right! (or as "just right" as it can be for my first "real" project).

Also as of late I have been feeling that itch to spin some of the roving I have been stockpiling... I don't have a particular project in mind (ok, well maybe that's not entirely true...) but I am so happy to just look at all of the colors it is hard to use it up! I guess that's why I occasionally have a compulsion to buy so much more...

I should be off to bed, but more soon! And hopefully I'll be bringing in the stuff from my old blog soon. There is probably an easy way to do it, but I think I will be working on it piece by piece. Happy knitting!

I have probably been spending more time than I can on getting the new blog just right, but every little piece of progress feels like such a victory!  So bear with me, but slowly, slowly it is getting there.  One time I was talking to a friend of my mom's who is an amazing knitter, and I was telling her about Mason Dixon knitting, and how inspirational it is, and she said, "I don't want to spend my time reading about knitting, I want to spend it knitting!"

Now, I think she has a point-- I have been spending my free time working on the blog, not the sweater.  But at the same time, I need all that inspiration to keep me going!  I taught myself how to knit at a young age (I can't remember exactly how young-- 10?  12?) but it wasn't until many years later when I became aware of how beautiful and artistic knitting can be that I felt my desire to knit had been rekindled.  Now I find so much inspiration in other blogs I think I could knit double time for the rest of my life and not run out of ideas. 

 So, I am sharing a picture of a work in progress that will probably be so for quite a while-- it is made with yarn I spun by hand, on a drop spindle, and plays with combining colors both in the knitting and in the plying.  Recently I was at the local yarn store, and I saw a wrap that basically looked like what my piece of knitting could become (don't ask what it was originally intended to be), and it had these big square wooden buttons-- 3 of them, in a row, and a large button hole at the other end of the wrap, to hold it together at different lengths.  Pretty simple construction, so the beauty will have to come from the yarn and the colors.  It will also be a good summer project that will be good for fall :)