update: i think i'm going to continue blogging at www.hikatie.com/knit from now on. we'll see how it goes! still very work in progress.

i have a migraine so this is going to be very brief.

the socks for my grandpa are complete as of last night! (woo!) sock #1 was ripped back to the ankle and lengthened as per his sock preferences, and the second one was knit to match. the color changes lined up differently in each - not that it really matters, but i find it curious. here's a picture:

last weekend i finally did the last bits and pieces of the lunch bag kit by habu textiles that i picked up at arcadia knitting. arcadia used to be just two blocks from my apartment in chicago, and the women there were fantastic - chatty & helpful in just the right quantities, with a great sock knitting pep talk for me as i was about to embark on my first pair. my mom spotted a demo of this bag hanging from a shelf the day before i moved back to KC, and went nuts for it, had to have it... i told her i'd buy it & knit it up for her as a "you're letting me live rent-free for awhile & helping me move" gift. i knit up 90% of the bag in the van during the drive from chicago to kansas city, finally stopping when it was much too dark to keep it up. it got put down during the chaos of getting settled in here, and wasn't picked back up until last week. at that point all it required was weaving in the two ends and felting the roving for the handle (picture w/ roving here).

well, guess what. felting roving is on the stovetop is really annoying and doesn't create anything useful. it does smell like wet sheep, though! here are pictures of that process:
1) the roving twisted (the pattern says "like making a sushi roll") around a piece of string;
2) the works boiling away on the stovetop in a little soapy water;
3) the felted chunk of roving, which has definitely been felted but still has loose chunks and doesn't feel very sturdy and just generally seems useless as a strap/handle.

so, no more roving as handle. on a trip out to a joann's craft store in overland park (surprising fun & very cheap fabric) i picked up a length of black cording (for upholstery or something similiar). ran it through the holes for the handle, and tied a big fat knot. i think i like it even better than the demo with the felted strap! here are some pictures of the finished product:
1) close-up of the body of the bag & the knot that keeps it all together;
2) the whole deal - bag & strap;
3) model shot! my mom is really thrilled with this bag, and has been using it every day since it's been done;
4) very much close-up so you can see how incredible this yarn is!! it's lots of colors of silk bound up with black silk.

caitlin instilled in me some intense blogger guilt/sense of inadequacy for not posting enough pictures of things. unfortunately my digital camera takes terrible pictures indoors/at night, so the results are correspondingly low-quality. sorry, folks. first, here are some preliminary pictures of the wristlets i knit up for my grandma e. she complains of arthritis & cold so i thought these might be a welcome gift:

still planning to go to urban arts & crafts, probably, to see if i can find some little beads to sew at the top of the little openwork sprig things - i think it'll make it look a little more finished, and like it required more effort than it actually did. these went very fast, aside from the time i spent rethinking/modifying the pattern to fit much larger wrists and to have a thumb hole. and in truth, that didn't take too long.

and, the long awaited kyoto picture:

there's still work to be done on it - it could use a good blocking/tugging (even though that's not enormously effective w/ cotton) after the sash & collar seaming, and i want to sew a few stitches in where the collar crosses & meets the sash because it doesn't lay right. and i think the collar would look better if it had been wider ... but i had running-out-of-yarn fear & i think i'm happier with a deeper v-neck, at any rate. the sweater, in general, is growing on me slowly though it's far from perfect. the color isn't quite right in that picture, either, what with the terrible lighting - it's definitely not pink, i honestly didn't rip off the colors in from the pattern. the sash is an orangey-peach. once upon a time, back in february, i was desperate to start this pattern that same day and was stuck with whatever colors of 100% cotton i could find at arcadia knitting, up the street from my apartment in chicago. the most appealling colors in stock that day happened to be that green and the peachy-orange. that it corresponded so closely to the pattern was weird coincidence. p.s. i still really love the idea of the kyoto sweater, even more than is merited by the way this one turned out ... i'm wondering if i want to try knitting one in wool sometime soon. well, not soon. "eventually."

ok - kyoto is FINISHED. with maybe the exception of one more end woven cleverly in in order to take in some excess on a slightly-too-long collar. i think it's pretty much ok and will likely grow on me. my backstitching to attach the collar was much sloppier than i would have liked, and frankly i think the whole design could have been much better conceived/written. i'm definitely going to post pictures of it but i've been stricken with some bizarro stomach virus and have not been in the mood to do anything but lay on the couch whimpering, certainly not model sweaters.

IN OTHER NEWS! i ripped out my reveal sweater! in a fit of frustration about how unflattering it is. i saw a pattern in (i think) the fall '04 interweave knits that was done in reverse stockinette (as was reveal), and you know - that looked lumpy and chubby even on the skinny, narrow-shouldered, flat-chested model. even though i like the design so much, and love the finished product as long as it's not on my body, it's not worth wasting the however-many skeins of rowan cork to just sit in my closet. i'm thinking about using the cork for the . . .

. . . ballet pullover
from the summer '04 IK. maybe modifying it to have a v-neck. maybe not. maybe adding some short-row shaping on the sides. maybe not. the cork, on 10.5s, knit up to the same gauge (in reveal) as mentioned in the ballet pullover pattern, though that used an acrylic/nylon yarn, double-stranded.

after ditching my kyoto sweater-in-progress back in early march, i picked it up in a fit of organization tonight and got back to work on it. what annoyed me into stopping back then was seaming the sash on upside down - i just couldn't get up the energy to pick out all the stitches and then redo it. technically it wasn't upside down, but it fit terribly and that could mostly be fixed by flipping the sash over - i'd seamed it on with the bound-off edge on the bottom, and that edge was much tighter than the cast-on edge. as a result it fit tightly at my hips, which is where i need plenty of extra space and stretch. at any rate, tonight, i picked it all out and reseamed it and it does hang much better. last steps - knitting up the collar, attaching it, and weaving in the last of the ends. i'm still sick of the colors (dark-ish green and an orangey-peach) but not quite as furious about them as i was six months ago. pictures later.

what else? i decided that the new color of schafer's anne that i bought for madli #2 isn't right for that project - the colors are way too dark/heavy for the lace pattern, so i unraveled the couple of inches of that i'd gotten knit up. maybe i'll make socks out of it. or gloves. or something. i'm on the hunt for new yarn for more madlis but that's all tba for now.

and what else? i finished knitting up the wristwarmers for my grandma e., and i'm pretty happy with them. pictures of them later, too. i ended up making them two inches bigger around than the pattern described, and improvised thumb holes in them - they sit more comfortably and securely now than did the tubes of fabric the pattern dictated. i do think adding the little beads to the tops of the lace patterns will do a lot for them, so i'm probably off to urban arts & crafts in the next few days to see if they have something that suits them.

my madli scarf is basically done! and has been for about a week but i'm pokey about things recently - lots going on. madli's done in that i'm done knitting on her, but she still needs to be blocked so the lace looks like anything other than patterned lumps, and the ends still need to be woven in. here's a picture to give you a sense of what she's all about so far:

i'm about to start madli scarf #2 and have photocopied the charts from interweave & blown them up so i don't destroy my eyes and make myself dizzy squinting down at them as i knit along.

sidenote: there are the two pronunciations of missouri - missouree and missourah. there is some political ad that's been running a lot recently ... i keep missing who/what it's for, other than it being for something/someone conservative, because i only tune in to it when i hear the voiceover guy say MISSOURAH in such a way that suggests to me that it's not how he would naturally pronounce the name of the state. clearly missouRAH is the conservative pronunciation and i suspect the guy had to redo the voiceover recording until he properly captured the smalltown-conservative-midwestern-values pronunciation.

i don't think i mentioned that i finished my meathead for larissa's massive meathead knitup! this happened maybe two weeks ago now, my meathead knitting. it took just about an hour, the afternoon that the kit she sent out arrived in the mail, and it went directly back into the mail the next day. i knit so fast & furiously & with such devotion to the meathead concept that i neglected to take a picture to prove that i actually did it. maybe i'll take pictures of the tiny scraps of yarn i had left. at any rate, my meathead looks just like everyone else's, some of which can be found here.

i'm still not out the door to run my errands, but i am showered now, which is a step in the right direction.

this weekend, after a long & weepy day friday before my brother boarded the plane to head for his year in edinburgh, was spent around kansas city. we saw two movies - criminal with john c. reilly (ooh) and maggie gyllenhaal at tivoli on saturday evening, and this so-called disaster, about the rehearsal process (& biographical information) about sam shepard's play the late henry moss, with sean penn, nick nolte, woody harrelson, t-bone burnett, cheech marin, et al. criminal was quite a bit of fun but nothing groundbreaking; this so-called disaster was sort of fascinating to watch (but then, i'm nuts for sam shepard). plus, it was showing at screenland, my new all-time favorite theater, what with its smooshy red leather recliners available if you time your arrival properly.

i also went to yarn shop & more in overland park to pick up supplies for some upcoming (christmas) projects in the queue. i'm also throwing in some pictures/info about other projects that are currently in progress, because why not: wristlets for my grandma e., from helloknitty.com's classic wristlets pattern. in plymouth encore because she doesn't seem to mind acrylic content at all. these are going really quickly and i think they'll definitely need the little beads atop the lacework as in the pattern to look like anything at all. this project/yarn is new as of yesterday. also new, from yarn shop & more - schaefer yarn's anne in some sort of fascinating, desert-y colorway. this is the same stuff that i made my madli scarf out of, and my grandma s. and my mom have both demanded their own versions. this is for the second go-round, and i'm not sure who is getting what yet. working plan is that this one is for grandma s. nearly-finished lunchbag from habu textiles. i am drunk off the fabrics and yarns on that website, and the yarn that came with this kit is incredible (click for detail, as good as i could get it). this is for my mom, and i bought it at arcadia knitting in chicago, which was just a few blocks up from my old apartment. all that's left to do is weave in the ends of the bag, and then felt (by hand) that chocolate colored roving around a piece of twine until it becomes a sturdy strap, which is then looped through holes at the top of the bag. i'm praying that the hand-felting goes well - otherwise i'll have to make a handle out of something else. sock #1 for my grandpa g., along with the rest of the ball of merino sock yarn from interlacements. i'm using kathryn t's universal sock pattern for guidance, and i had my grandpa try this sock on after i finished it to make sure it fit. it does, but he wishes the sock went a little higher on his leg ... so i guess i'm ripping back to before the heel turn to make it longer. i'll probably just start the second sock and work it to fit, then rip back the first one and modify it to match. sigh. i got 4 balls of this rowan kidsoft from an ebay seller a few months ago, really cheap, and i'm not quite sure yet what to do with it. maybe birch from rowan #34. maybe not.

it's almost one now - i better be off or i'll lose my chance to get the passport business taken care of today.

what i really need to be doing right now is heading out to drop off my passport application and dropping a package into the mail. instead i'm not yet showered and am starting a blog entry.

the past two weekends have been spent running errands and paying visits all over the kc metro area and central missouri. on saturday sep. 4 we headed to columbia to visit my brother and his girlfriend and see her house ahead of andy's move to scotland (which happened this past friday). before meeting up with them, though, we drove a half hour east and spent a few hours in fulton, where i spent my freshman year as a student at westminster college. we got sandwiches and salads at court st. cafe (one place i do miss about that town) and intended to make a relatively quick pass through the antique store down the street.

now, this antique store. i've had some luck there - they have a huge basement filled almost entirely with dishes and cooking/baking implements, and since i've not mentioned this here yet - i'm nuts for old glass/pyrex bakeware and other kitchen goods. they still had a huge store of the light blue fireking teacups and saucers that i have a few of, and i also spotted hey have a huge basement filled almost entirely with dishes and cooking/baking implements, and since i've not mentioned this here yet - i'm nuts for old glass/pyrex bakeware and other kitchen goods. they still had a huge store of the light blue fireking teacups and saucers that i have a few of, and i also spotted a dark pink pie pan and baking dish ... but since i am temporarily without my own kitchen, i'm trying hard to not make more purchases that will just have to be put in storage. i did allow myself to leave with roughly a yard of this feedsack fabric (what to do with this great stuff??) and a huge pile of incredible buttons. many of them are being sent to my aunt wendy who makes incredible bracelets out of buttons. some of them, i am keeping, including these green ones - all i want to do right now is sew them onto a yellow sweater!