Knit to Flatter Worksheet

After five years of radio silence… I’m still not coming back to blogging about knitting. Or maybe I am! Who knows! The world is a mysterious place!

The point being, I’ve got something to share, and this is probably the easiest way to do that.

I got Amy Herzog’s fantastic book Knit to Flatter two Christmases ago, and then I did… nothing with it. I don’t even know. I looked at the patterns and loved them, but although I measured myself at the time and filled in the worksheet, I guess it just wasn’t a very sweater-y period in my life. Which is just as well, because I lost a bunch of weight, as I discovered when I unearthed the book recently. Plus, I couldn’t be bothered to do the math every. Single. Time.

So I made the math for always. And let me tell you, suddenly the sweaters I made started fitting perfectly. The world is a mysterious place.

So without further ado, here is the Excel version of the Knit to Flatter chapter 1 worksheet, except that this version calculates your stitch and row count for you, and has a couple of Elizabeth Zimmermann percentages that I use all the time. Just take a measuring tape to yourself and your gauge swatch, plug the numbers into the yellow fields, and knit away!

[Right-click, save link as!]

(For y’all Americans out there, just toggle to the second sheet for a version that uses inches.)

I guess this is a good time to mention that I am in no way, shape or form affiliated with Amy Herzog, that I make no profit off this, and that you should definitely buy her book for the excellent advice and beautiful patterns. I just don’t see why other people should have to do the math when I’ve already done it.

 

Hey Ashurbanipal, I’m a Mesopotamian!

Entirely expectedly, I got a lot of knitting done in the crunch phase of my finals, with the whole refusing more than an absolute minimum for Spanish (I passed the oral! Abysmally, but I passed! Yesss.) and general procrastination.

(The day before my oral, Saskia and I went down to the canal and sat in the sun for an hour. What a perfect day.)

Incredibly, I’m down to one project. Well, three. Well, technically four, but the Dalek vest has been hibernating for so long and it looks like that’s not gonna change anytime soon, so. (well, four things and a lizard.)

Anyway: the Thermal sweater is finished! Done! All sewn up pretty and with buttons and a little ‘handmade’ tag in the back of the neck. I’ve already worn it to choir, literally fifteen minutes after cutting the last thread, and I’m pretty enchanted by the whole thing.

(Thermal by Laura Chau, 3mm needles, just shy of 600 g of Zitron Trekking XXL)

I’m proud to report that the sleeves are NOT too long, for once. It seems I’ve finally learned my lesson? Or maybe it was just a fluke. Who knows.

Re: the sleeves though, I don’t know if it was the fact that I had to fudge the sleeve cap a little (I increased to 106 instead of 112), or that my sweater is generally a tad less fitted than the one on the model, but the tops of the sleeve caps were VERY boxy. Very angular. To the point where they stuck out and just looked stupid. I fixed that by sewing the seam in a diagonal line over the last 16 rows or so. The downside of that is that now there’s four little triangles inside the sweater, but they’re not noticeable from the outside, and they haven’t been a problem yet.

More photos (and close-ups of the uber-cute little buttons) when I come back from Berlin next weekend or so, in the hope that I’ll catch some good natural light at some point. It’s been overcast, and that always screws with red colors.

Also, guess what became of the handspun?

A Hitchhiker! It knit up really quickly on 4 mm needles, and I’m still very charmed by the construction. Alas, I did not get 42 spikes, but the fact that they’re much more pronounced and dramatic than in the sock-weight version more than makes up for it.

The best thing is that it worked out perfectly. I finished on the last row of a spike without a single yard left over; there were two 2-inch pieces that I cut after weaving in the ends, but that was it. A very, very gratifying knit. Calmed me down immensely in the last couple of minutes before my Spanish oral.

Also, I’ve figured out what’s wrong with my Spanish Armada – I’m missing three stitches on each side. Very, very strange. Rather worrying, actually, but I think I’ll just fudge it with another row and a sneaky increase somewhere in the middle. I’m so confused though why 3 and not 2 or 4. Those I could have explained, but three is indeed very bemusing.

Book rec for this week: Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”! I’d never read it before, but I’d resolved to include as many classics I’ve always wanted to read but never got around to buying in my 52 in 52 project as I could. And in the case of Jekyll and Hyde, it was definitely worth the, oh, €2.50 I splurged on the Dover Thrift Edition. And, uh, it’s much better than that just sounded. It reminded me a lot of Dorian Gray, actually, which isn’t all that surprising, considering they’re both Victorian novels dealing with the strange rift in their society, between virtue and vice, between public and private. It was terribly captivating, a gripping read that had some places where I literally recoiled in horror – perfect, really, for a nice rainy afternoon. It’s under 50 pages too, but it’s packed with mystery and thrill. I loved it.

It’s also narrated from an outside perspective, which surprised me: I’d always assumed it was going to be following Jekyll rather closely, but it didn’t at all until the very last chapter, which of course elevates the mystery a good deal more. You literally don’t know what the hell is going on until the last couple of pages. It must have been so endlessly shocking to Victorians reading it as a fresh story, a fresh idea, without any kind of foreknowledge. All in all, a book definitely worth reading. I might tackle Treasure Island too this year, I really liked Stevenson’s style.

❧

Next week I’ll spend four days in Berlin with Saskia. We’ll be visiting at least two yarn shops, one button shop and four museums, and I hope we’ll not be too tired to see a silent movie on Wednesday evening. I’ve already cast on a sock to drag everywhere and photograph; also I’ve been saving the new Thursday Next novel for the train ride. I can’t wait!

If I go crazy then would you still call me Superman?

As always, I can count on my desk to be a pretty accurate snapshot of my life. Mostly because I just pile stuff on there, pull things that I need from the bottom to the top, until everything’s arranged in a kind of organized chaos.

My life seems to be a pretty even split between knitting and Spanish right now. Which… is kind of what it’s been for the last year, to be honest. Except now it’s more fun and less fun at the same time – more fun because I read books in Spanish now, even if my dictionary is never particularly far – less fun because my Spanish course kind of sucks, for several reasons I won’t go into.

But those rather vague lumps in the picture, that’s top to bottom: Henry scarf (for Adam), Vespergyle Mitts (for me), Watson sweater (tan-colored lump, for me), Girl Friday (grey, for my sister). Featured in the background: Thermal sweater, for me, which I haven’t touched in a while due to, well, the big pile in the middle.

I’ve tried rotating working on them by day, which was a veritable shipwreck due to my project ADD, so I mostly work on each of them every day. Which sounds like I’m getting a lot more done than is actually the case.

Which is weird, because I’m actually more lazy recently than in a while. I love knitting, but with Christmas at the door it’s mostly a low-level stress factor, along with something that kind of feels like a chore. Plus I have Smallville and Psych to supplement my usual shows, so more knitting time there. Plus I ordered a webcam the other day and it should get here this week, which means I can knit while webcamming with Adam.

And gosh, doesn’t that sound naughty.

Take a look ahead

It’s not like I’m not stressed, with Christmas only 53 days away – especially since I kind of randomly decided to knit a Henry for Adam. On the plus side, I’m almost done with the backside of the Girl Friday for my sister, despite my incredible slackerdom when it comes to that thing.

I’d much rather work on Watson (also only about 15cm to go on that back), or the Thermal (started a sleeve, back done, half the front also), or my Vespergyle mittens (halfway up the thumb on the second mitt), or Saskia’s Super Secret Christmas Present (finished, booyeah! but I’m considering making matching mittens). I’m also done with the Brambles beret and scarf, even if I haven’t gotten around to wearing them. I have a feeling I’ll have to run some kind of elastic through the brim of the beret, since it’s pretty loose, but I’ll wait till after I’ve actually worn it.

In conclusion: I feel like I’m getting somewhere. Making progress. Which is important for my sanity, since uni doesn’t exactly evoke the same feeling at the moment.

Also, it’s kind of hard to get really stressed out if the foot of my bed looks like this most evenings.

Yes, I also got my other roomie to join us on the dark side. She’s making a hat. Which she was half done with, then discovered a mistake two rows down from where she was, and subsequently… frogged the whole thing. And started over. I’m still kind of flabbergasted.

Speaking of flabbergasted. I’m making good on my resolution to go to the knitting café more, and lo and behold. I was just hanging out there on Saturday, very content indeed about just having bought truly luscious yarn for Henry,

(Bremont Camino Alpaca, fingering weight, 60% merino, 20% alpaca, 20% nylon)

… and then Christine plunked an armful of yarn on the table in front of me. Not just any yarn. Wollmeise.

I tried, for about three hours, to discourage myself from buying one. I failed. Mostly because I didn’t really have any good arguments except for how it was kind of expensive (€17.50 for 150g, which… isn’t that bad, but not that cheap either), but then I had that exact amount in my wallet and that must’ve been a sign.

It was kind of hard to decide, because all the colors were gorgeous. No kidding. Even the ones I usually can’t stand. ALL. GORGEOUS. But I settled on this beautiful green, Grashüpfer, and my photo doesn’t do it justice.

Also, it’s so tightly twisted that the 150g look like 100g, and you could probably bludgeon someone to death with the skein. Death by Wollmeise. There’s worse ways to go.

And when I touch you I feel happy, inside

There’s kind of been a lot going on, yet at the same time, things have somehow stayed the same. But then, that shouldn’t come as such a surprise to me, since the French have been saying that for ages. (Does that mean I’ll listen to the French more? Possibly not. Except when it comes to cooking. I made Boeuf Bourguignon the other day and it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted.)

Anyway. So, I’ve spending some money on yarn. Ahem. In which case ‘some money’ amounts to leaving €170 at various yarny institutions in the past two weeks or so, which is a ridiculous amount even for me. But wait! Eighty of those bucks weren’t even spent for me. €36 went into a Girl Friday cardi for my sister (who randomly professed to wanting one for Christmas), then Saskia ordered Zitron yarn via me for about €30, and then there were those three balls of sock yarn for a Christmas Stocking my mom wants. And with some odds and ends, you know how it is when I’m at Zitron and fall into a yarn coma, I spent 120 bucks there, of which I got 45 back, which isn’t all that bad, considering I had to move yarn from my stash to my wardrobe because it wouldn’t fit.

And I vowed not to buy any more yarn until all that I had bought was knit up. And I did start a scarf with the stitch pattern from Knitty’s Brambles Beret to go with that hat, even though I haven’t cast on the hat yet, but hey.

And I totally forgot that I was scheduled to go to the modell-hobby-spiel trade fair for all things hobby-ish and creative on the 3rd, and oh dear.

I bought several sets of buttons for the placket of my Thermal, most of them green, in various opacities and sizes just to be sure – at 40 cents a pop, I just couldn’t resist.

And I was going to be good, I’d fortified myself against the presence of the Strickcafé which I knew would be there, carrying the most fabulous yarns… and indeed I resisted.

And then I rounded a corner and found myself in a maze of shelves full of Lopi. And I don’t know if you knew this, but it’s funny, they don’t have a single colorway that’s not entirely gorgeous.

I must have stumbled and hit my head, because somehow I bought a sweater’s worth of Létt-Lopi in  a gorgeous oatmeal color – Saskia bought it in a shade lighter, and I’m already refiguring the Watson charts to fit the 14sts/4in – and two balls of colored Létt-Lopi, and because all was lost anyway, I bought this gorgeous, truly gorgeous baby alpaca/silk/merino blend lace yarn that has 400m/50g and is the softest thing I’ve ever touched, over at the WollLust stall, and then I fainted.

They had really good prices though!

And then we went home, heated and spiced some wine in a copper kettle, drenched a sugar cone in rum and set that shit on fire.

‘When shall we three meet again’-quoting entirely optional.

Reeds drifting by you know how I feel

So, the self-imposed three-day knitting pause. Let me tell you how it’s going.

Ah. Until last night, it didn’t go too badly. And by ‘not too badly’ I mean that the only yarn not in a ball in this house is 100g of laceweight even I am not crazy enough to try and wind on my own. (I’ve tried it before. It wasn’t pretty.) And also by ‘not too badly’ I mean that I was bored out of my skull, scouring the internet for interesting things and being close to having to physically restrain myself from going over to my desk and picking up some knitting.

And then I found something amazing. I found a present-day version of Sherlock Holmes, a three-part series written and produced by Mark Gatiss and, wait for it, Steven Moffat, and it was SO GOOD. With how much I wasn’t thrilled by the last DW series I kind of forgot how truly amazing Steven Moffat is. How he’s the guy who created Cpt. Jack Harkness. The guy who has this wonderful gift for suspense and dialogue and horror.

It also helps that the Holmes/Watson subtext is up through the roof. Especially in the first half hour, which I watched twice because that’s when Saskia came home. And it was all good, because the program was just so intriguing and exciting that I didn’t even miss my knitting.

And then It happened. Apparently the universe thinks it’s not bad enough that I can’t knit. No, to add insult to injury, they had Steven Moffat put Watson in this gorgeous, truly gorgeous Aran sweater.

And I want it. I was up till 2.30 last night researching Arans and figuring out the pattern on paper, my fingers itching to cast on a swatch so I charted more options and went to bed half-crazy and dreamed about gorgeous sweaters that I couldn’t knit all night.

So after messing with contrast and brightness and general photoshoppy shenanigans until my eyes bled, I forced Saskia at swordpoint to knit up a swatch, and then I adjusted, and she cast on a new swatch and did about two rows, and then she just left my room and left the knitting lying on the foot of my bed, about an arm’s length from me.

She might as well have left an opium pipe next to Sherlock Holmes, or 50-year-old whiskey next to a recovering alcoholic. Seriously.

Which is my only excuse that I may or may not have knit three or four rows. With a nifty system, including knitting back tbl left-hand English style, that allowed me to mostly hold my right wrist stable. Which was kind of tiring but also went much better and much less painful than I’d anticipated.

But, better than that… I have charts.

I have construction notes.

I have calculations that with my chart, and the construction notes, and some worsted-weight yarn on 3.5mm needles, this sweater should fit me like there’s no tomorrow. I also have a roommate who’d be thrilled to have a Watson Sweater KAL if we can find a way to adjust the pattern to her considerably skinnier frame (either thinner yarn or thinner cables. we’ll see.) I have seldom been so excited about a prospective project.

Now all I need is said worsted-weight yarn, and a new fucking wrist.

Somebody shoot me now.

Ain’t nothing gonna break my stride

So, it looks like my right wrist is kind of busted.

Well, not busted busted but there is definitely something wrong with it, some kind of repetitive-strain thing. It started last Friday after five solid hours of knitting, but I thought it was just soreness (since I usually don’t do non-stop knitting) and that it would go away after a couple of days of very light knitting.

Well, it didn’t. In fact, it’s creeping up to my elbow, which makes me think it’s something with my tendons, which is Bad with a capital B. And I’m mostly mad at myself, because beating eggs for crème brûlée with a whisk instead of a mixer, even if it was mostly with my left hand, certainly didn’t do any good, and constantly sneaking in ten minutes of knitting here and there didn’t either.

So I’ve decided to take a three-day break from knitting to see if that would help any, and I’m trying to keep general wrist movement to a minimum… and needless to say, it’s severely cramping my style.

Today is day 1 of the self-imposed knitting break and I’m already going bonkers. On the plus side, I’m getting all my hanks of yarn wound into balls, since that’s basically the only activity that I can do to keep my hands busy while not moving my right wrist.

It’s not that I haven’t gone some time without knitting. There’s been times when I was just too damn pissed off with knitting or too busy that I didn’t get my hands on some needles for a day or two. But I’m just not busy, plus all the stuff I’d planned is totally falling through: I wanted to go to the knitting café today, and I was looking forward to listening to Stravinsky’s Firebird while knitting on my red sweater. Plus I was thinking of making beignets this weekend, but I need both my wrists to knead that yeast dough properly.

The only good thing that’s come of this is that I ripped back about half of what I had of the Miralda Shawl I started in May 2009. I made some major mistakes, and I wasn’t the kind of person who’d rip back a couple of rows of 300+ stitches just for the hell of it and tried to fudge it instead, which obviously didn’t work. And required some serious self-medication. Ah, it was so frustrating. So I eventually balled it up and stuck it in a bag and stuffed that into the deep dark recesses of my wardrobe, and only got it out to pull out the needle because I needed it for the Dalek vest.

But today, after untangling a tangled skein of yarn for a solid hour and a half, I decided to get it out, rip back to (hopefully) before the mistakes, and continue with it… once I can. It was kind of a weird experience though, because it made me realize how much I’ve changed in just a year and a half: I’ve become much more anal-retentive about mistakes, I’m more willing to rip back, and I don’t think 300-stitch rows are all that terrible.

If there’s one thing the Big Green Monster, the Swallowtail Stole, the Garter Stitch Bitch and the current sock-yarn sweater have taught me, it’s patience with long rows. And if there’s anything Girl Friday and Balmoral have taught me is that it’s usually worth ripping back to fix even minor mistakes.

Miralda was only the fifth shawl I cast on, and the other four were two Swallowtail Shawls, a stockinette sock yarn shawl, and an Aerang – none of which were particularly difficult or had a lot of charts. Maybe Miralda, with its bazillion charts, was a bit of an overly ambitious project at that point. But in the 17 months since, I’ve done a lot of chart-work, and a lot of patience-work, and I’ve learned to pay more attention. And, even more than that, I’ve learned not to be afraid of ripping back.

And now my sister has asked for a Girl Friday for Christmas, and I wanna work on Miralda, and get to the short rows on Thermal, and when I know how that works continue with the Dalek vest, and… I just wanna knit. And I know that if I don’t rest up now, it’s only gonna take longer till I can go again, but… help, I’m going insane.

I hope Saskia comes back soon, so we can do some more fencing with our new swords or toss a softball. Maybe I’ll clean up the kitchen. Or photograph… something.

***

Speaking of photography. I’m so proud of this photo. Maybe because it’s just a snapshot of one of these moments, the one where you usually can’t whip out your camera in time.

The more we find, the more we see

Today, I wanted to start on my paper.

Today, I also I duplicate stitched a P on my Weasley sweater, cooked, cleaned the kitchen, started my first pair of Christmas socks, taught myself two-handed stranded knitting, watched the first episode of Castle and decided I loved it, and… contemplated the meaning of life. Or something.

Damn rain. I’m blaming it all on the rain, and the need for a sweater, and then I pulled out the initial-less Weasley sweater, and it went all downhill from there.

But hey, at least now my Weasley sweater is a proper Weasley sweater. Despite the terrible yarn.

I swear, if I had the long needle, I would’ve finished the damn Girl Friday cardi today from sheer boredom and procrastinationg. I’m also sick of having it hang around on my chair and mocking me. I wanna wear it, damn it!

These are the first Christmas socks of the year, and I’m pretty much keeping my trap shut about those on the blog, since I don’t want to risk spoiling the surprise. I’m keeping my knitting restricted to times when I’m alone, etc. All very hush-hush, but I’m having a great time on them. There’s slightly more info on Rav though, so, yeah.

What else… yesterday I turned this

into this

with a heavy heart. I put so much work and love into it last winter, but then I had to face the fact that the contrast between the colors wasn’t prominent enough. It looks fine in the photo, but trust me, you had to know there was a pattern to see it. Which is the reason I abandoned it, and that yarn really deserves better. So I ripped it, but I’ll restart the Ruba’iyat mittens with the brown yarn and… I haven’t decided, actually, either white or light blue.

I’m still vaguely stumped by how much I’m looking forward to winter this year. Well, to be perfectly honest, I’m more looking forward to fall, but right now I’m romanticizing winter so much I’m ignoring the fact that especially towards the end of January, it’s my least favorite season.

In other news…

I have a shawl drawer now. For the laceweight shawls. The sockweight ones still hang from hooks, the scarves hang in my wardrobe, the hats and gloves have their compartment in the sideboard, the socks are in a big box, and in none of these places was space for laceweight shawls. Somebody fucking stop me.

Mach das Radio an und dreh richtig laut auf

Holy crap, I haven’t blogged in a while! I guess it’s mostly because I felt like I didn’t knit that much, but now that I look around on Ravrav and in my apartment, a couple of things have accumulated. Plus, recipe recommendations!

I still haven’t duplicate stitched a huge letter on my Weasley sweater. I still haven’t finished Haruni. I haven’t knit a pair of socks in a long time. And I haven’t been out and about so much in quite some time.

I have, however, learned to double knit, and it’s a TON of fun. So much fun, in fact, that I kind of never want to do anything else. (I’m sure that effect will wear of sooner than later, but I’ll bask in the glow as long as I can.) I love the HOLY CRAP! effect you get when you first show people the one side…

and then you say SURPRISE! and turn it around.

So, yeah. What I got there is really a glorified swatch that is kind of like a really oversized potholder but in reality is too big and unwieldy to be a proper potholder. It still hangs in the kitchen, on the potholder hook, cause I’m that proud.

Knit with Rico Creative Cotton (1 ball yellow, the other four colors left over from washcloths) on 3.5mm.  It’s a colored version of a washcloth design, cut by 10 stitches because in my head, 20+17 is apparently 47, not 37. It turned out to be a blessing that I cast on too few stitches, because the yarn was just barely enough. As in, there was barely enough yellow left to weave the end in after crocheting around the edge. The next DK project I’ve planned: Winchester Potholders. Oh yeah.

Speaking of Rico Creative Cotton, I finished my kitchen towel the day after my birthday, and it’s okay. We mostly use it for drying off hands and pans, cause it kinda lints. Which is weird, for cotton. But it does, and because it’s bright red, the lint looks really unappealing on white plates and glassware. Good thing that’s not an issue for the two washcloths I churned out, one red Knit Apple Cloth for the kitchen and one blue Stargate Earth for Saskia. Man, those two aren’t even on Rav yet.

On a less successful note, I cast on for the Swallowtail Stole a couple of days ago, and… holy crap, it’s kicking my ass. A puny little 6-stitch repeat is kicking my ass so hard I can feel it in my throat. Meaning: I still haven’t gotten beyond the set-up row. In fact, I haven’t gotten beyond half of the set-up row. Granted, it’s like 350 sts or something, but man. Six-stitch repeat. Of a pattern I’ve knit two shawls in. And I keep tinking back and fixing things and realizing forty stitches later that I shouldn’t have fixed that. It’s terrible. I don’t know what it is, either. I know it’ll get better once I’m past the set-up round, cause then I can read the pattern in the knitting, but shit, I am so close to giving up on this. Or I was, until my stubbornness kicked in and I realized I refuse to be beaten by, you know. A six-stitch repeat.

Which is just plain pathetic.

Speaking of plain, I’m thinking about ripping back the Ghostproof sweater to the salt line, add a couple rows of plain brown, and then… possibly just go on with the ribbing, and just do salt lines around the arms. Maybe the neck. Maybe just duplicate stitch fornicating moose on one shoulder. I thought the salt line placement wouldn’t bother me, cause, you know, it’s so damn smart and I was so damn proud, but honestly, I don’t think I could’ve found a less flattering place for it. So yeah, there’s that. And it was such a perfect fit, too.

***

Now, one of the reasons I haven’t been knitting a whole lot is that I’ve been baking and cooking like crazy. It’s kind of ridiculous, really, the amount of flour and butter we go through here. Especially flour. Which is in everything, from homemade pasta to brownies. And baking is just so satisfying, especially when you’re like me and getting your ass kicked by a six-stitch repeat and *trails off, grumbling*

So, here my go-to baked goodies:

Biscuits. Good, old-fashioned biscuits. Or the ones with parmesan and thyme. I loved them when I was in the US, and when I wanted to do biscuits and gravy here in Germany, I dug up this recipe site, and let me tell you: you won’t need any gravy with this amount of delicious.

Focaccia. Italian flatbread with herbs and garlic. It takes its time, being a yeast dough and everything, but pounding the dough is just about the most satisfying thing ever, plus your hands are butter-soft and smell like herbs and olive oil afterward. Alternatively, leave out the herbs & garlic and replace with ‘a goodly amount’ of sugar and cinnamon, and make 12 delicious cinnamon balls with it.

Caramel Apple Sticky Buns. Speaking of cinnamon. Oh, my.

Quintuple Chocolate Brownies. I know I’ve linked the recipe before, but man, these would probably be on my short list for a last meal. Along with the Sticky Buns and a steak with green beans.

Like she’s born in black and white

I just realized I haven’t blogged in a while… but honestly, I was sure there hasn’t been a whole lot to blog about. I bake more than I knit, I spend a surprising amount of time outside enjoying the crisp, dramatic weather, and I read more gossip than anything else. But somehow, stuff has accumulated, I guess. So, here goes.

I finished the body of my sweater last weekend – I still haven’t picked up stitches for the first arm, mostly because I’m suffering from an acute case of Startitis and Spring Fever. But, on the positive side, I finally figured out what kind of color pattern I wanted to put on the sweater – I’d debated whether to put the Fornicating Deer on the shoulder, but in the end, I decided on something far more awesome, and subtly geeky.

A ‘salt line’ just over the ribbing. To keep out the ghosts, Winchester-style. Thirteen repeats of the word SALT around my torso, and I’ll put some around the arms, too. (It turned out to be 13 by accident. Sometimes it’s great to be a fatty. Another lucky accident was that I started charting at random, got a 16-st repeat, and apart from one single stitch, it worked out perfectly.)

The placement isn’t the most flattering, cause it’s right where my jeans pinch in, but I’m too excited by the concept to care. Plus it’s kind of negative space, so you don’t immediately see the geekery, but it’s still there.

My I’ll-just-fudge-it Shetland Triangle (shamelessly ripping off Evelyn A. Clark’s version, proof that my ingenuity and wit is worth at least $9) is also done, and already blocked while I visited two museums with Saskia the other day. Good times.

I had to rip back one repeat at some point, because I realized I was running out of yarn, fast. Even with one repeat less, the amount I have left over is scary small.

Apart from that, I knit myself a new washcloth today out of boredom, and when it was finished after watching ‘She’s the man’ (one of my favorite feel-good movies, even if it’s kinda girly), conveniently took a bath. I should stop knitting new washclothes whenever I need to change them. It’s not like I don’t have a bazillion in my closet and hamper already. But it’s cute. And apple-y.

I also started a hat in some lovely fingering weight grass-green alpaca, but it turned out I cast on about 30 stitches too much. So it got ripped back before I could even think to get a picture. The plan is to make a slouchy beret with the fir cone stitch pattern, and maybe some clever in-pattern crown decreases if I can figure them out.

So, anyway. The new Grey’s Anatomy ep just finished downloading, and after I’m done watching that, I think I’ll go outside and take a walk.