Deep Down, I Knew It All Along.

Brooklyn Tweed posted yesterday about frogging recalcitrant UFO’s. He talks about the liberating feeling of – oh, he says it better than I ever could. Go read it, I’ll wait.

You’re back. Good, huh? My point is, he made me realise something.

The Raglan from Tartarus must go.

For those of you who came in late, here’s the back story (scroll down, the culprit is at the bottom of the post – see that puckering along the seam? That’s what you get when you stubbornly try to fit raglans that are plainly mismatched, as in 6.5 cm difference in length. Can you say denial, boys and girls?).

For a good long while now I’ve been stubbornly ignoring the truth, announcing that I really was going to fix the problem. In June, I ripped back the raglans intending to knit in the round from the armscye up, and then sew up the side/underarm seams. Well, obviously that didn’t happen, or I wouldn’t be writing this post. I kept putting it off because I didn’t have a circular long enough for the job – I was waiting until I got the KnitPicks Options set (which I still don’t have, but there’s a certain birthday coming up in a few weeks, and certain persons have been made aware how happy they would make me, etc, etc). Then there were socks to knit. Many, many socks. And here it is September and the weather is beginning to warm up, and it is now four years since I bought this yarn, and I still don’t have a jumper out of it, despite hundreds of hours of knitting.

Add to that the increasing frequency of the Jiminy Cricket voice when I look at certain patterns (mostly this one), saying things like “Hey, that would look really nice in brown. Don’t you have a whole bunch of brown Jo Sharp in your stash? Oh, no, my mistake. That’s a work in progress, isn’t it? And when exactly was the last time you knit a stitch on it?” (Jiminy is a sarcastic little bug).

I guess the moral to the story is: listen to your yarn. It usually knows what it wants to be. It definitely knows what it doesn’t want to be.

Challenge

In the lead-up to the Southern Summer of Socks, Rose Red has suggested we set ourselves a list of goals we would like to achieve over the course of the Knitalong. I think it’s a brilliant idea, so here’s my list:

1. I am shooting for a dozen pairs of socks this summer. The KAL lasts six months, so this is a reasonable target, at roughly a sock a week. If the Harlot could manage a sock a day, I think I can do this.

2. I have Christmas socks to knit, but I would also like to set myself up with a full week’s worth of hand knit socks. At present I have three pairs, two I knit for myself, and the pair of Bayerisch that my fabulous Sockpal Becky made me for Sockapalooza. The rest of the time I’m wearing store-bought socks! It’s just not right!

3. I want to try knitting two socks at once, either Magic Loop or two circs.

4. I want to learn how to knit Continental, to facilitate Goal #5.

5. I want to try Fair Isle, specifically these.

6. I have joined the Sock Knitters Anonymous group on Ravelry, and I’m going to be working my way through the Sockdown: Ravelry! schedule while I do this. It’s twelve months of challenges designed to broaden one’s sock-knitting horizons, including (every odd-numbered month) the Magical Mystery Sock Tour.

Also at Rose Red’s suggestion (and assuming I square away a respectable amount of the above), I will be rewarding myself for success. I think an on-going reward is the way to go, so I will either be subscribing to Interweave Knits, or joining a sock club. I’ll make up my mind at the end of the summer.

A Glutton for Punishment

So I just signed up for this knitalong. That sound you hear but can’t quite place? That’s Becky laughing her arse off, because I have been complaining to her about the desperately boring socks I am knitting, and how I am totally over the whole sock thing for a good long while.

Anyhoo, you should totally head over there and sign up, even if you’ve never knit a sock before in your life (there is a prize for best first socks), or are currently stuck on your first sock (cough-Mandie-cough), or live in the Northern Hemisphere (it’s an equal opportunity knitalong). I believe there’s going to be a Ravelry group, too.

And if you’re at all technically inclined, there is a competition on for banners and buttons for the knitalong blog.

Come on, you know you want to.

Mmmm…

You Are a Chocolate Cake

Fun, comforting, and friendly.You are a true classic, and while you’re not super cutting edge, you’re high quality.People love your company – and have even been known to get addicted to you.

What Kind of Cake Are You?

I Do Love a Surprise

My brother and his wife recently made me a brand new nephew (wasn’t that nice of them?). I didn’t actually knit anything before the birth, because I was hoping against hope that the ultrasound technician would prove to be mistaken and this baby would turn out to be a girl (there is a dire shortage of girls in my family, and so many adorable baby girl patterns to knit!). Obviously, he didn’t turn out to be anything but his dear little self, and I am making him a Baby Surprise Jacket, in a nice manly colour scheme of green, navy and red.

The yarn in question is Heirloom Easy Care 12 ply (worsted weight), a 100% Australian merino superwash yarn that is beautifully soft and squooshy, and it’s knitting up like lightning on a 5mm Addi Turbo circular. I am loving the BSJ pattern, too. The garter stitch is a no-brainer, perfect for TV-knitting (or that space of time in the morning when I have just enough mental function to drink coffee and snarl at passers-by), but the shaping is making it interesting enough that I’m not bored. Of course, I’m just about to start the increases, so stand by for it all to go to hell and me to lose my mind.

How cool is Ravelry? I am having the best time playing about in there, looking at other people’s projects, getting ideas for future projects of my own, looking in on forum discussions, it’s all very exciting. If you’re not already there, you should definitely sign up.

Come on, all the cool kids are doing it.

…and she was never seen again.

Got my Ravelry invitation this morning. I checked my progress up the Ravelry list 14 times yesterday (at least – it may have been more). What would you call that? OCD? No life at all? Feel free to comment on my slow descent into madness.

Gotta go, I have a new toy to play with, stash photos to upload, groups to join….

Hee hee!

P.S. My user name is KissMyFrog. Drop by and say hello.

Spring Has Sprung

I love spring. It’s absolutely my favourite time of year. The weather is starting to warm up and the bulbs are out, the plum and cherry trees are blossoming their little hearts out, the willows are wearing pale green lace. It’s just such a pretty time, I thought I’d share it with you all out there in Blogland.

I had a wander through the Orange Botanical Gardens yesterday, just for you.

Weeping Cherries

Crabapples: red above, and white below

Not sure what these are, but they are pretty.

Updated to add: Taphophile tells me these are Hellebore, and the lady knows her flowers (check out her blog – she grows beanies in her garden!)

I love tulips. I used to loathe them and all they stood for (I grew up in Bowral, so tulips meant being inundated with camera toting tourists for two weeks every year), but since we moved away I’ve forgiven them for past crimes, and we are good friends now.

For the yarn-obsessed (you know who you are):

These are Grape Hyacinths growing wild in my backyard, overlooking a bowl of Heirloom 12ply superwash merino in shades 760 (red), 787 (navy) and 799 (pea green), destined for Baby Surprise Greatness. The colours aren’t very accurate – it seems the morning sun is a bit much for the yarn (although the grass and hyacinths are right on the money). The bowl is a hand-thrown lovely from Carcoar Pottery.

This ball of Tofutsies followed me home. It wants to be Christmas socks for someone.

And last, but by no means least, it is 10.14am on Saturday and I am 257 people away from my Ravelry invite! I will be there any minute, baby!

Made Me Giggle

Just wanted to share this. I linked there from Mason Dixon Knitting. Go look, it’s a hoot.

There’s now only 819 people between me and my Ravelry invite! Woohoo! Time to start limbering up the elbows!

Fleece: The Next Generation

This is a picture-heavy post – apologies to those on dial-up.

Sasquatch and I visited a friend’s farm today, to see the new lambs. Just look at all the little woolly-jumpers-to-be!

Check out this little guy: half his face and one ear are black. How cute is he?

Quite a few of the ewes have dropped twins this year.

We had a fun time, but Sasquatch’s favourite part? Bouncing around in the back of the little 4WD bush-basher. He’s such a boy.

For more pics (or a closer look) check out the Flickr set.

Ravelry update: 1379 people in front of me. If the queue is anything to go by, this will be the best ride in history. It had bloody well better be.

Several Kinds of Progress

Yes, I have progress to report!

Firstly, I have broken the 2000 barrier on Ravelry! Woohoo! There are 1868 people in front of me as of 8 o’clock this morning.

Second, I have started the second of my Mother-in-law’s socks. I haven’t quite finished Sock The First, because when I got to the point where I start decreasing for the toe, I discovered I’m going to run out of yarn. Now, I’ll be damned if I’m gonna rip and reknit the wretched thing! When I split the skein of Jigsaw, I ended up with one ball slightly bigger than the other, as you do (or at least, you do when you’re working with my scale, which only weighs in 5g increments. I need a new, more sensitive scale, but that would be money out of the yarn budget). Sock The First was knit from the smaller ball, so I’ll knit the second sock, and if I run out of yarn I will buy a coordinating solid for the toes.

The point is, I’m about 15cm along the cuff of Sock The Second, and that is a Good Thing (another Good Thing: my Father-in-law received his Father’s Day Socks, and they fit, and he loves them).

Third, I have started the first of my Dad’s socks. They are Charades, in cafe latte with a chocolate toe and heel (I prefer to think of them in these coffee-related terms, because otherwise I would have to face up to the reality that they are actually beige and brown, and I think at this point that that would suck the will to live right out of me).

Finally, my poor hubby got this for Father’s Day:

He got other presents, too, but I feel badly that he got yarn (for us, yarn would be a fabulous gift, but he is a muggle, when all is said and done. You can’t really expect him to get it). The yarn isn’t really this orange, more of a brick red – the same colours as FIL’s socks, just reversed. These will have cables up the side, not unlike the Harlot’s recent Earl Grey Socks, but with a contrast heel and toe.