Acquisitions and progress

Last week I ordered yarn. I read about it on the Ravelry Longies/Soaker group, and I admit I was encouraged by a glowing review by the Yarn Harlot. So I ordered a skein of green merino from Marr Haven.

The yarn arrived early this week. It was every bit as wonderful as I'd hoped. So soft and so plush!

I caked up the yarn as soon as I'd photographed it, and immediately started swatching. I've been working all week on a little pair of newborn sized longies. For a friend. No babies expected around here.

I do love being able to knit the legs together, just like 2 socks at a time.

Houston, we have longies

After knitting through many troubles, I finally completed the longies from Yarn Pirate yarn. They've gone to their new baby owner and I hope they keep baby dry and warm next winter.

I originally knit the legs in the multi-colour yarn, and then switched to brown when that ran out. But then I had longies with cuffs that came above the knees, and that looked just plain dweeby. So I knit the legs by alternating colourful with brown yarn, with made the legs look much better, and I still had enough brown left for a 3-row cuff. The longies came out about an inch and a half shorter than I'd hoped.

Third time's a charm?

These longies will be utterly fabulous once they're done. They have to be. They've been nothing but trouble through the whole process. The first time they were too big and I was running out of yarn. I ripped them out and restarted them on a busy day full of commencement ceremonies. At some point in the process, I did a short row WRONG, and continued to repeat that error all through the longies. Only when I divided for the gusset did I notice that I was SEVEN STITCHES SHORT. That's when I realised I'd been doing the short rows as a k2tog, not as an encroachment. DUH. There's no recovering from that error, and I ripped them out and I'm working on them again. There were a few other downers, too, like leaving my knitting bag hanging in a bathroom stall at the commencement, and discovering the bag missing when I got home. By reviewing my pictures of the day, I could see at what point I was missing my bag, and returned back to the place to get the bag. I won't even get into the story of the bum on a bicycle who wouldn't leave me alone when all I wanted to do was work on the longies. I'll be actually seeing the baby shortly, hopefully they'll be done by then.

Greenies, finished

The shorts I started Saturday morning were finished promptly Sunday evening. I'm very pleased with how they turned out. I wish I had access to the baby herself so I could see how things fit. Oh well!

I used the itchy fingers longies pattern, doing the math using the numbers provided for a "small".

Short on the shorties

On Saturday morning, I awoke thinking of knitting. I think this happens on the weekends because I have the luxury of waking up slowly. Instead of being yanked from a deep sleep directly into the morning's preparatory activities, I can lie there for a bit. And naturally, my thoughts turn to yarn.

On the day I dyed the volcano pants, I also dyed the leftover blank yarn in the sink. The results didn't look like I expected, and I was disappointed. I balled up the yarn and forgot about it. Now, almost 3 months later, I can look at the yarn and see it for what it is, rather than for what it is not. There were exactly 40 grams of it, so I decided to combine it with some green Cascade and make some shorties. I did a descending pattern of 6 rows colour A, 6 rows colour B, 5 rows colour A, 5 rows colour B, etc. I had the pattern pretty well calculated, but I forgot to take into account the extra yarn the short rows use up.

The following picture shows exactly where I ran out of yarn. I was on the final row of the pattern, the part where there was one row of each colour. I ran out of yarn 26 stitches shy of finishing the last row. Sigh.

more on baby skirt

Well, the progress on the baby skirt has me totally engaged, so may as well blog the progress. I discovered that knitting does not just unravel from the cast on edge. Wherever the knits met purls, there were knots. After further contemplation, the skirt became a cake.

Progress on the baby skirt.

On Friday evening, I had the house entirely to myself. I put on a classical CD and sat down to cast on the baby skirt. I cast on 216 stitches. While I believe I mastered the counting skill many many years ago, I seem to have a difficult time casting on an accurate number, and the higher the number, the greater the margin for error. So I made sure I had no interruptions, and counted aloud while I cast on. It took forever! Then I carefully counted the stitches, again outloud, to confirm that I did indeed have 216 stitches.

Next up, I had to knit in a (k3p3) pattern. This is equally a challenge, so I worked quite slowly and deliberately. When I came to the end of the row, my stitches didn't come out even, so I knew I had goofed. I went over the row very carefully, and on the second try, I found both errors. I picked back about 130 stitches and redid. This time, I got a perfect k3p3, but I still came out one stitch short. I went back over the row again, twice, and the best I could conclude was that I was dealing with only 215 stitches. Sigh. So I increased one stitch in the middle of the purls. Does that make me a bad person?



I knit several rows of pleats, and then decreased slowly in the purls, making a skirt with a row of pleats along the hem. The skirt is a few more stitches around than the panties that will go underneath, with a row of decreases at the back just as it approaches the waistband, to make the stitches line up.



While I thought the line of pleats would be cute, they don't flair enough for my tastes. While I had thought the skirt would be a little boxy, I think it's a little too boxy. I studied it carefully for a while, and finally concluded that the pleats have to go.

I think I've read that it doesn't work to rip out the cast on, rip back, and reknit backwards. But I want to explore that for myself. It's worth the time invested to see what happens. So right now, I'm in the middle of picking out the cast-on edge. This means that every single of the 215 stitches that I carefully cast on are now being individually untangled. I'm half way through the skirt. Back to work...

And the cuffs became...

My purple cuffs became legs. I'm working on new baby woolies, this time cuff upwards. If all proceeds as planned, these will be the panties of a little diaper-cover skirty.

New cuffs

Well. There hasn't been much knitting going on lately. However, tonight I started a new project. Doesn't it look like I'm starting some socks? I'm not.

New definition of HOT PANTS

I soaked the pants overnight in water with a dash of vinegar.

Into the crockpot: 5 cups water. 4 packages lemonade koolaid. 40 drops of yellow food colouring. Mix well, add wet pants. Cook on low until dye is exhausted, which took 2 hours.



Allow to cool in the crockpock. This took several hours. The results were a little splotchy, but that's okay.



Now, on the stove, in the top of a double broiler: 2 cups water. 2 packages strawberry koolaid. Using the gradated dying tutorial, slowly dye the pants bottom to top.




Cool. Rinse. Dry flat. Voila! Volcano pants!