Carol's Correctional Corner for Knits

After unraveling and knitting, and unraveling and knitting, and unraveling and knitting the Knit One Below vest, I did finally finish it. And I have to admit that the problems I had with this project were entirely of my own making. (Dang, I hate to admit that in public!)

The design itself was published in Knitter's Winter 2008 issue. Instead of the chunky/worsted combination of wool suggested, I used a worsted/DK combination and was able to get gauge immediately using a 4.5mm needle. According to my knitting bag, I used two skeins of Twilley's Freedom Spirit and one of Cascade 220 Heather (colour no. 513 & 2434 respectively). Of course, I don't have the vest here right now, so I can't weigh it to see if that is correct. I know that the vest didn't require a lot of mileage, but I'm finding it a bit strange that I used so little wool. My guesstimate would be three balls of Twilley's and two of Cascade, but what do I know?

In any event, it was quite a nice knit once I learned to pay attention to where I put my needles. Apparently there is a knit-one-below book just published that has some to-die-for patterns. My intrepid friend Barb has the book and will share with me ... but not until next week. Grumble.

In other news, and this is momentuous news, there will be some changes happening here at Never Enough Wool in picturesque Port Perry. The shop will be moving! Just down the street, so there isn't a lot of distance involved. Actually, it's only something like 300 feet or thereabouts (three football fields). The bonus? My shop space will be doubled, I will have all my yarn storage on-site, I'll have plenty of room for knitters for my classes and knitting nights (and crochet nights!), and the parking lot gets thoroughly plowed regularly in the winter.

Moving day will be sometime during the last week of April. Fortunately there isn't a lot that needs to be done to the unit -- a bit of blue paint on the walls, the floor needs to be stripped and waxed ... that's about it. Of course, there will be at least one trip to Ikea for more shelving units, and then the fun of moving boxes and boxes of yarn along with the existing inventory. My Wednesday afternoon group have all volunteered to help with the move ... Somehow I don't think that too few hands is gonna be a problem.

Doncha just hate it when ...

good knits go bad?

March 7, 2009

It has been an interesting and busy week at our house. First, the daughter had two, count-em, TWO, auditions for university. The first was for Ryerson, which went well but she isn't crazy about attending there. The second was at York University, and it didn't go as well as she would have liked ... only to discover that perhaps, maybe, she might have liked to attend there. Ah well. Where she REALLY wants to attend, the University of Toronto, has already accepted her via early admissions to their Fine Arts program. She now is in the throes of the audition woes for the drama program.

In addition to the audition trauma, there was the Improv competition to contend with. This year, the team was in the Robo-Ghost Zone of the Canadian Improv Games (CIG) organization. They came in first place, which was a tremendous position for the team. The photo below is the tableau scene from the Zone competition ...
The Regional competition occurred just this past week. Unfortunately, the team was eliminated entirely from progressing further. They missed the wild card round by two whole points. Bummer, eh? At least they had fun, and we parents were treated to three nights of improv comedy.

In further news, I finished the Infernal Hat. This is the hat I was knitting for Doug in the double-knit technique. I believe the wool really wanted to be socks, or perhaps mtitens. Instead, I forced it to become a hat. It had its revenge -- I had to restart three times; then after seaming it up, I had to unstitch the seam and add length. Twice. I have now decreed that the thing is DONE. If it doesn't fit Doug, I'll FIND someone it'll fit.

I also finished the baby gift for my neighbour. Tada! This is the ribbed, hooded sweater from McCalls Super Baby Book (circa 1979). I started this sweater on the 7th of February. It has actually been finished for about a week, but I've just now gotten around to photographing and talking about it. A three week sweater -- not bad.

The yarn is Maypole from Coats & Clark, found in my stash. The needles were 5.5mm, so the stitches moved right along. I used 2 skeins and a bit ... hard to say exactly how much since I started with a partial skein and ended with another partial skein.

So how many projects does this leave on my needles? Um ... 9. I really need to start finishing things before starting new ones!