Monday, June 8, 2009

I Got a Fever:

Ohhh Lawdy, I've been bitten hard.

Sweaters. I must make more. Better ones. Cuter ones. Cardigans and pullovers both.

My first foray into the land of AdultSweaterWorld was a very poorly adapted attempt. I'm not even gonna sugar coat it: I made a baby sweater and then thought "pshaw, lemme just cast on more stitches, using a COMPLETELY different yarn and needle size, and eye ball the thing. I'm smart, so this should go swimmingly!"

You'd think I would have learned by now my whole "eyeballing" inability.

It's so hideous that it will never touch the light of my ravelry projects page! Badbadbadbadembarrasinglybad. But, I learned some techniques and absolutely learned from the experience . . .

Until the next time I cast on for a sweater :blush:

This one was via an actual Adult Sized Sweater Pattern, even. My Radiate (from knitty.com) Did I follow it? Since this is my blog, and ME we're talking about, you can safely answer "oh hell no." No swatch and liberal application of casting on stitches with zero regard to pattern sizing. Hi! I'm ajdury and I apparently don't learn from my mistakes!

Again, I learned some things (outside of how much of a dummy I am) but the nail in this sweater's coffin was that my 4 skeins are comprised of two different dye-lots. Before this sweater even started, I missed two opportunities to notice that little fact :blushingredder: Hi! I'm ajdury and I can't even be bothered to read ball bands!

I may be a damn dummy, and I may be doing things the hard way, but! I'm 98% done with my third, and final, "First Adult Sweater" and can't stop thinking about the next one to get on the needles.

This last one is (again with my inability to strictly follow a very well-written, well-executed and so good it doesn't need MY interpretation added to it) the fabulous Tomato sweater (originally on knitty.com).

My husband (who has witnessed every good/bad/inbetween thing I've ever knitted) and my two friends Alex and Sheila have all said very nice things about it. Hell, even I like it!

For now it's the best sweater I've knit to-date, but it won't be the best sweater I've ever knitted.

The sweater bug has bit me hard and all I can think about is making a better one next time, and an even better one after that.

I'm so smitten with sweaters that I'm going to do the following: 1) Swatch (don't faint), 2) follow directions (get off the floor!) 3) seriously consider a "pieced" sweater pattern (don't MAKE me get the defibrillator out!)

Whadda ya think about THAT? :bigproudcheesygrin:

Sunday, June 7, 2009

About Those Kids I'm NOT Having:

Was that a long enough "hang time" since the last post? :giggle:

Y'all have commented in multiple ways (personally and online) and my blog comments sum them all up nicely.

No, I haven't bumped my head, come up with a baby-bump or bumped on over to "Pregnant Women Are Smug-ville* (I'll leave that to others I'm oddly related to).

When I wrote of "All the cuteness there is out there", it was THE KNITTING stuff, Chickens!

Mike's niece, Ms. Ella-Gator is turning 4 in July, thus I've been knitting up several beach-themed stuffed animal/toy/things in anticipation.

You've all seen the parade of knitted fish, starfish, sun, mer-woman, the errant penguin (wrong ocean :blush:) and that octopus march across my ravelry project page. What you haven't seen, I'm guessing, is the gi-freak'n-normous amount of super a-dang-dorable knitted animal/toy items that are out there, floating through the intronets ether.

The web is just chock-full of knitted cuteness, lemmetellya.

Remember though, when I said I "wanted kids", I had a set limit. I wrote "Maybe around 3. I think I could handle three."

Again - that represents knitting. Three to knit for, LOL.

I already have the aforementioned Ms. Ella-Gator and the second slot has been taken by Suzanne's granddaughter, Ms. Ireland.

Who shall be the third? My hope is that the last one is a boy, to give me knitting variety! :grin:

You all do the difficult and thankless work of having and raising them. Me - I'll be over here in quiet and calm child-freedom, knitting cute things for you to wash puke out of.

* that video/song makes me belly-laugh every time I open it.