Is It Lunchtime Yet?

My stomach is still on Daylight Savings time. I’m hungry at all the wrong times! I seem to be sleeping ok but waking up earlier than I did before the clocks changed. This is a good thing. Did this adult really need 10 hours sleep every night? OK, maybe not quite 10. T-Man’s been snoring quite a lot lately (allergies? remains of his cold/flu thingy?) and if I’m not deeply asleep even my deaf ears don’t help. But I usually need more sleep than the average: 9 hours is about right. Otherwise I’m a cranky bear! I kind of envy folks who can get away with less sleep – they have more time to get things done. However I guess I should be grateful that I don’t suffer from insomnia like several people I know. Wanting sleep and not being able to have it must be horrible.

In crafty news I managed to finish up Princess Pink’s new sweater before we went to their house for a very yummy dinner yesterday. All steam blocked, machine washed and dried and everything. It’s pretty large on her but still wearable I think. At least she’ll be able to grow into it over the next few years. She quite liked the silver and black buttons I found in my stash.

The Not-Pink Cardi

For: my granddaughter, Princess Pink

Begun:  October 30, 2010
Completed:  November 8, 2010

Pattern:  Fresh-Picked Color 3/4-sleeve Cardigan by Sarah Hoadley, Ravelry link, free pattern link.

Yarn:  Lion Brand Cotton-Ease, colour 191 violet, dyelot 35851A, 50% cotton/50% acrylic, 100g = 207 yds, 3.2 balls.

Needles:  Denise circulars size 8 (5mm) and 7 (4.5mm), Clover bamboo dpns, 5mm.

Buttons:  3 silver and black metallised plastic from the stash.

Comments:  Completed in just over a week!

Princess Pink loved her 4-year-old version of this sweater. She’s completely grown out of it so I’ve made her another considerably larger one using the middle size (my gauge was a bit off so it came out as wide as the small size) and lengthening the sleeves and body to 14” because I didn’t want a tight cropped sweater. I also put 3 buttons (from the stash) on it instead of one. I am using the actual specified yarn though. Very unusual for me! I was seduced by its washability since her mom is not up for careful laundering or blocking of any sort.

Other mods: used a k1/p1 long-tail cast-on (now that I know how to do it thanks to the Knitting Daily video tutorial). Did the sleeves in the round and joined to body with a 3-needle bind-off. Didn’t read carefully and found that you were supposed to bind off 8 stitches on the sleeve to attach to 6 stitches on the body so had to decrease the extra 4 stitches on the next row, one at each side of the sleeve joins. Had to write out the instructions for the yoke row by row because they were way too confusing as written. Lastly changed to 4.5 mm tips for the neck’s seed stitch - didn’t want to have it too baggy. Worked great!

Unusually for me I sewed the buttons on with the yarn instead of thread. I didn’t want them to be floppy. The shanks were very large and even 3 loops of relatively thick yarn didn’t fill them. I secured the yarn by tying a tight square knot and using a bit of Fray-Check. Hopefully they won’t come undone.

Now I have most of the last ball left. Her mom suggested a cowl that PP can pop over her head. She tends to not wear hats and loses her scarves. Maybe I’ll use the eyelet yoke pattern from the sweater.

Meanwhile I’ve got the leg parts of the Happy Legs tights up to somewhere near mid-thigh. This is the equivalent of a couple of pairs of socks! Still lots more knitting to go. I don’t think I realised when I started this project that it would take so long to finish. Plugging along faster now because I want to wear these as the weather gets colder.

BTW have you seen the new free electronic version of the double-sized 100th issue of Knitter’s magazine? (Info is here.) I already own all the other 99 issues and keep wanting to stop buying them but somehow I can’t. The early ones were really innovative and informative but lately the styles are kind of dumpy. Interesting stitches or techniques sometimes but the shapes are not fitted enough. Or they’re just plain not wearable by Real People (Lydia, XRX’s ubiquitous model aside). Is it just me that thinks this? Anyhow I’m a little suspicious of e-mags in that I doubt they will be readable in a couple of years, unlike my 30-year-old paper magazines. This one uses a service/software called Zinio that you have to register with to use. You can read it online or download a program that will let you save it to your computer. I get that it’s nice to save paper and ink and trees and all, but I do like to keep my craft magazines and will definitely look at them again years down the road. How long will this file and more importantly the software to read it with survive? And can I resist buying this issue in paper version? We’ll find out. It’s a really huge magazine issue anyway and I thought the history of the publishers was a fun walk down memory lane.

Speaking of buying, I was going to go downtown to Dressew today but changed my mind because the weather is kind of sucky. (You know it’s bad when it rains sideways.) Lazy me. I’ll wait until it’s supposed to clear up tomorrow. I want to get some little notions, check out the cheap yarn (like I need any more?) and generally see what’s available. Haven’t been there in awhile and I’ve been feeling the need to browse – not necessarily to buy much. I already did a good peruse of the new local Michael’s and good old Maiwa Supply last week and controlled myself pretty well. It does serve to remind me how much stuff I already have but helps keep my creative juices flowing. I need to survive the next two months where I pretty much boycott the shops entirely except for groceries. I’ll be working from the stash until the holidays are over.