Meet: SuperKnitter

Last week I threw a teen National Comic Book Day party at the library. One of the activities was to design your own super hero. Here is what I came up with.

Name: SuperKnitter

Powers: Advanced Knitting, Speed, Nimbleness, Accuracy with Knitting Notions (Yarn, Needles, Etc.), Extreme Intelligence

Origin of Powers: Knitting outside with metal needles, when a thunderstorm suddenly arose. The needles were struck by lightning.

Hometown: Downtown Seattle

Lair: Hidden Basement of a Local Yarn Shop

Transport: Souped-up High-Powered Orange Vespa

Gadgets: Yarn Rope, Crossbow that Shoots Double-Pointed Needles, Circular Needle Garrote

Enemies: Mothman, Crook Crochet, The Tangler

Catchphrases: You Made Me Drop A Stitch! By All the Fleeces in Scotland! Existential Yarn Boogers!

Knitted Jewelry

Blondie's birthday present included (in addition to breakfast and a sisters only slumber party) one handknit of her choice.

Since I was already making her a satchel for graduation/going away, and since she is going to college in Florida where it isn't super cold, she decided to go with knitted earrings.

I used the Bijouterie pattern from Knitty. They were surprisingly simple to make. (Although, at first, the wire kept breaking, and it came off the spool in a horrible twisty slinky-like mess.)

I gave them to her at her going away party on Sunday. Here they are in her ears!



(By the way...she made that face on purpose)

Ribbit Ribbit

I was working on Les Tuileries Monday night, when I noticed that I had messed the stitch pattern up in the second or third row...which was 8 inches or so ago.

It would have bugged me forever.

So, I frogged. All night. And then rewound the yarn on the skeins.

The biggest headache came from the fact that since I am using a hand dyed cotton, I had been alternating skeins every few rows. Talk about existential yarn boogers as I unraveled it. NIGHTMARE.

At least I got several movies finished while I worked. (I seem to be on a literary/BBC/Jane Austen kick.) And since Tuesday was my late day at work, I was able to sleep in.

So, here I go. Starting fresh.

The Scarf that didn't WANT to be Knit

I went to Target a WHILE ago with Broseph and Matador. (And by a while ago I mean a couple weeks before Halloween!) I needed to get some key components for my NCIS Abby costume, namely goth boots. Before we left, the three of us wandered over to the men's accessories section...where all of the hats were. While trying them on joking around, Broseph picked up a very suave brown fedora with a tan and orange band. It looked amazing on him. Matador and I, with some help from a Target employee who wandered by, convinced him that he had to buy it. He could wear it when he does concerts. My wheedling took the form of a promise to knit him a scarf to match the hat.

When I got home I promptly designed the "Fretwork" scarf, which had a slipstitch detail loosely based on a guitar neck. I even found two balls of Debbie Bliss yarn in chocolate brown in the stash. I cast on immediately.

I knit that scarf in my down time for several weeks, even getting so far as to join the second ball to the first. When I was 3/4 done I realized that I had cast on WAY too wide and that I was going to be stuck with a weenie little short scarf. (As she puts it in her candleflame scarf pattern...I was going to have a highwater scarf.) This was unacceptable.

The problems were:

• I should have realized the scarf was too wide when I went to join the second ball...duh, that was the halfway point!
• I had used stash yarn and lost the ball bands so there was no way to get additional yarn.
• I was using smallish needles for a scarf, so it was not a fast project to knit.
• The yarn was a solid color, so there were no little color surprises to keep me intrigued.
• The pattern, while pretty, could not be brainlessly knit during movies or tv shows when the lack of color variation wouldn't have mattered, because I had to actually look at every row I knit.

But, since I love Broseph, I unravelled the ENTIRE scarf and recast it on. Now I just had to go through the whole painful process again. So, I reacted in the same way I always react. I procrastinated. I knit A LOT of other things before picking this one up again. In fact, it was only guilt that finally drove me to force myself to knit it again.

To add insult to injury, the last 1/3 of the yarn was knotted into a riotous bundle of nastiness. I spent almost 2 hours untangling it and rolling what was left into a neat little ball...which then, of course, rolled all over the floor as I finished the scarf. (I seriously need to learn how to hand wind center pull balls.)

The end result, I must admit, did make the whole painful process worthwhile. I finished the scarf right before class started at Preacher and Psych's house last night. I wove the ends in and tossed it across the living room to Broseph. The wonderful guy wore the scarf for the duration of class and the rest of the evening. I think he really did appreciate it. He wanted to change before I took a picture... but I just wanted the thing photographed, blogged about, and DONE WITH!!!

Now...I just have to convince him to buy a camel corduroy blazer to wear in concert with Fretwork and the Fedora!