I know it must get easier....

...because otherwise my mom would charge more to put in zippers for people.


This zipper, the zipper in Darren's coat, is the second one I've ever replaced. (The first was in my coat, a couple weeks back.) Yup, I know it doesn't match, but it was what I had, and given the ice storm we got this weekend, I figured a functional zipper was more important than a matching zipper.



Honestly, it wasn't the sewing in that was a pain, it was figuring out how to take the darn thing out. Each side had 3 seams that needed to be undone. On the left side (in the picture), there's a placket behind the zipper. That had to first be sewn to the zipper before the zipper could be sewn in the coat. On the other side, there's the velcro placket. While that didn't necessarily need to be taken off, it made it a whole lot easier to get the zipper in. So on that size, I had to first sew in the zipper, then sew the velcro placket back on. It was a bit of a pain, but still much cheaper than buying a new coat.



Also this weekend I finished Sock #1 for a sock swap I'm participating in on Ravelry:


(It's from the book Knitting Vintage Socks. But don't ask me which pattern right now.)

It's not really that color at all, though it does show up as a pretty color. It's more greenish than that. (Not that it matters a whole lot.) I am a little concerned, though, about the sizing. My secret pal said that her foot, a size 11, is 10.25" long. Thus, when the pattern said to knit until it was 2.25" shorter than the desired length, I knit it 8", then started the toe. Unfortunately, I ended up with a sock that fits my size 8/9 foot. Sigh. So I emailed her (from my secret email address) and asked her to measure one of her socks from heel to toe and let me know how long it is. I fear I'm going to end up having to frog the toe.

Lunch today (for those of you who care), was Egg Noodles with Alfredo Sauce (from Tammy, so ya know it's good! oh, and it freezes well) and roasted squash. It was yummy (of course).

I'm thinking I'm going to participate in the Biblical Womanhood Making Your Home a Haven Challenge (two separate links, by the way). I do still live with my parents (that's to change, soon, hopefully!), but I still think I can benefit from the challenge. I'll be a bit behind, since it was supposed to start this morning (and it's now nearly 3:30), but I should be able to get caught up on most of it tonight. One of today's challenges is to create a morning routine of five items and post it. I'll try to get that done in a bit.

Oh, and we got our first snowfall here this weekend! (Sadly, it came with a great deal of ice, as well, but I'll take it where I can get it!)

Eleanora Socks

(Not a great picture; best I could get.)

Project Details:

Pattern: Eleanora Socks by Miriam L. Felton

Yarn: Brown Sheep Wildfoote Luxury Sock

Needles: Size 00 (for facing) and O

Notes: I've said it before and I'll say it again--this designer has some work to do in the customer service department. Despite her promise to offer help at any time, emails from both myself and a friend resulted in very snotty replies.

The original pattern calls for size 0 and 1 needles. I knew that this was going to result in a sock way too large for me. I took and chance and went down in needle sizes. Fortunately, this resulted in a perfectly fitting sock.

The pattern is difficult to get the hang of initially. Once you get the pattern established, however, it's easy to follow along with. By the second sock, I was hardly referring to the chart at all.

I'm so pleased with the overall fit and feel of these socks, that I think I may make all future socks on size 0s.

More pictures and details can be found here (on ravelry).

Blue Romper

Project Details:

Pattern: Baby Romper from Woolies for Babies (old, out of print book)
Yarn: Bernat Baby Soft
Needles: Size 1 and 3
Size: 2

Notes: I was really nervous that the collar on this was going to make my boy look like a girl. Much to my relief, it does not. (Well, I don't think it does, anyway!) The stitches were a bit uneven from where I stopped and started again, but washing took care of this.

The latice pattern did take some getting used to; it was a unique stitch. I did have some problems doing the left front, but that was mainly my problem, and not the pattern's. I did make up an Excel spreadsheet to spell out exactly what I needed to do on that side (the pattern simply said, "reverse directions").

Nothing too special to note about this pattern; I pretty much followed the directions. That's one of the things I love about the older patterns--they seem to be much more accurate. I tend to have to do less tinkering with them.

If you're on ravelry, you can see more pictures and detail here.

Funny Feet

So what did I do after I finished Accordian? (Which, by the way, was kinda anti-climatic. I guess I expected trumpets and fanfare. And confetti.) I finally got around to fixing some socks. I'd been putting off fixing them for ages (oh, nearly a year), so you can imagine my surprise when it took less than an afternoon to fix them.

Yeah, they were supposed to look like that ;) The socks were a pair I got in Sockapaloooza 3 last year. They were knit of a lovely cashmere yarn. So you can imagine my sorrow when I snagged one the socks and ripped a large hole in it. The other sock was wearing thin at the ball of the foot, as well. I couldn't bear to throw such a lovely pair of socks, so I improvised. I frogged the top half of the socks and reknit them. No, they don't match, but they are wearable. Really, how many people see my toes, anyway? Plus, they now make me smile when I put them on. You really can't beat that.

I was going to fix another pair, as well, but when I got to looking at them, I decided they weren't worth it. The yarn I had used wasn't an especially high-quality sock yarn, so they had pilled and felted quite a bit. Though I was sad, those socks I tossed.

Accordian--Finito!

Project Specs:

Pattern: Accordian, from Knitty
Yarn: Brunswick Germantown, worsted weight
Needles: Size 6 and 4 (KnitPicks Options, should you care that much)
Size: Ending size was size 2 (see notes for explanation)

Notes: I did a fair amount of tinkering with this pattern. I was able to get guage, but I wasn't happy with it. I like my knitting to be tighter than the average Joe and felt that, especially for a jacket that is (presumably) to keep out cold winds, the guage was way too loose. Let the tinkering begin.... I made the size 4 pattern to end up with a size 2 sweater. Any direction that called for stitches (CO, BO, decreases, etc...) I used the size 4 directions. However, when the directions referred to length (as in the sleeves), I used the size 2 directions.

Clear as mud, huh?

So with that said, I feel there's a mistake in the pattern. On the fronts, after the chest stripe, the pattern tells you to knit for an additional 5 inches before doing the armhole shaping. After the shaping, you're to knit until it's 14" long (then do the shoulder shaping). When I did this, it resulted in front that was 2" longer than the back. I found that if I knit for 2.75" after the stripe I ended up with the right length.

You can see a slideshow of pictures (including a close-up of the zipper) here.

Zippers

It's not going quickly, but it's a start. I've gotten the zipper sewn in as far as the needle, so about 4 inches or so. Only 10 to go! (Yeah, that was supposed to be laden with sarcasm.) It's not fun, but it's not difficult. Just tedius.

Hopefully I'll have a completely finished product the next time I post!

What do we have here....

...but a (nearly) finished Acordian! I need to purchase and sew in the zipper (I can't wait *heavy sarcasm*).

I haven't actually tried it on Darren, yet. I'll admit: I'm still a bit nervous about the apparent narrowness of this. I know ribbing pulls in, so I'm trying to assure myself that it will fit fine.

I am extremely proud of my side seams (the toothpicks mark exactly where the seams are):

This is the best seaming I have ever done. It's the first time I am confident that I did it right. Though pride is a sin, I don't feel too bad about being extremely proud of those seams.

I am not, however, completely thrilled with the under-arm seams (shown with my hand shoved in the sleeve, to stretch it out a bit, so you could actually see something):

(I know it's too bright, but it's the best of several pictures I took. Bear with me.) I am confident that I did the best I could seaming this part. But it was difficult. My main issue was that, unlike the side seams, I was unable to follow one row up each side for the seam. Also, I found the purls to be more difficult to seam than the knits. Had this been the only issue, I probably could have made it more presentable, but coupled with the increases (and, thus, the inability to follow one row for the entire seam), it made for less than perfection. (I suppose that's what I get for being so darn proud of my side seams.)

Live action shots to follow, as soon as the zipper is installed.

NaBloPoMo

National Blog Posting Month. The goal? Post every day for the month of November. Can I do it? Honestly, probably not. But as a new blogger (well, a new blog anyway), it's a good thing for which to aspire. Shmooshy (who I found on Ravelry...seriously, what a great place), suggested that she may do "Food Friday" to keep her on track. I rather like that idea and I'm totally going to steal it from her. (I credited her, though. That counts for something, right?)

As I suspected, I made a mistake in my re-typing of the Romper pattern. I'm not sure how, but I completely f'ed up row 2. Ask me how I found that out.... By doing rows 8, 1, and 2 about five times, and checking rows 8 and 1 several times, only then did I think to check row 2. Yup. Completely off. Not even remotely close. Sigh. So I wrote it in correctly and commenced. I got another repeat done (only 8 rows), and then suddenly realized it looked like crap. I considered leaving it, but ulitmately decided that even if I was the only one who noticed, it would drive me nuts forever. So...out it came (fortunately, that was only about 16 rows). At this rate, I'm going to be on kid #4 before I finish it.

Also, in retrospect, I'm less than thrilled with the cupcakes I made the other day. They're pretty dry. I suspect it may be in part because I used 2% instead of whole milk, but I have hard time believing that that's all of it. One of the men commented that they were pretty dry and "not up to my usual standards." (I adore this man for his honesty. All the rest lie to be nice. Him, I can trust.) Now I feel obligated to bake Cupcake another batch of cupcakes. I just need to find a good recipe.

I've made pretty good progress on Accordian, especially considering that I'm mainly only working on it at the bar. (Sorry I didn't think to rotate the picture.) As you can see, I'm done with the back and fronts and have the shoulders seamed. The other night, I just cast on for one of the sleeves.

It looks really narrow, but with my mom's help I tried it on Darren this afternoon and finger pinned it in place. I was unsure, but Mom said that, "it fit, with plenty of room to stretch left." Mom's brutally honest (the way I like it), so her assurance does help assuage my apprehension.

I'm not sure how thrilled I am with my shoulder seams:

I'm pretty confident in seaming side seams, but when it comes to sewing together two bound off edges....not so much. I do have the "Knitters Guide to Finishing Techniques," but I didn't have it with me at the time, nor have I had a chance to refer to it for advice, yet. I did as well as I could, but I'm just unsure. Are they okay? Do they scream "HOMEMADE!"? Do I need to take them out?

Some days....

....I wonder why I knit.

Okay, so not really, but today was almost frustrating enough to make me throw all my yarn out the window. I finally resurrected the Blue Romper from WIP Hibernation:

I started it last January or so, before I had Darren. I made the size 2, thinking, "Oh, this will be done long before he can wear it." You'd think I'd know myself better by now. He's nine months old tomorrow, and the thing still isn't done.

Honestly, after digging it out again, I'm not sure why I set it aside; I had the boring back done (all stockinette and ribbing) and was past the boring part on the front. I had the left front finished in no time:

But the right front has been the bane of my existance. The directions aren't bad, exactly, just pretty vague (I guess back in the 30s they expected a certain amount of "knitting common sense). First, I just plain did the pattern wrong. Then, I had the garter band on the outer edge, instead of in the center, where it could act as a button band. Out came 5 rows. Then, I something wrong with the number of stitches on either side of the pattern. Out came 6 rows. Then, I suddenly realized that I had made my garter band 7 sts too wide; it should have been 6 sts in stockinette, 7 in garter. Out came 8 rows.

The directions are so exceedingly vague, though! "Turn and work to correspond with left front." After frogging the same 8 rows about five times, I finally rewrote the directions for the right front in Excel. (Yes, I triple checked it for accuracy. I'm sure I still managed to make some stupid mistake.)

Amusing blogs I found just now:
Apostrophe Abuse
The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks

And last but not least, Darren in his Halloween regalia (edited to remove my greasy face):

(PS-->He's a horse.)

When I started this blog, I foolishly thought I'd have all the time in the world to post--ha! Here's what happend LAST week...

I made Chinese Orange Chicken. Even with a few modifications, it came out delicious. (Even my dad, and Ryan, enjoyed it!) I'll confess, when I first started making the sauce, I had my doubts. This is what I saw in my saucepan:

You've gotta admit: it looks a bit, well, strange at the very least. (The lumps floating in there are cubes of frozen lemon juice.) Fortunately, the appearance improved greatly as everything combined. Here's what I did differently:

1. I don't have rice vinegar; I just used regular old white vinegar.
2. I had no ginger; I just skipped it.
3. I had no green onions, and was too lazy to chop up some ordinary onions, so I just tossed in some dehydrated onions.
4. I had no red pepper flakes. I considered sprinkling in some paprika, but forgot to, so this ingredient was ultimately omitted all together.
5. Also, when it came time to thicken the sauce, I used a lot more cornstartch/water than what it called for. I didn't keep track, but it was at least 3 times more.

I'll admit, I was a little nervous making so many changes the first time I made a recipe. (The vinegar had me especially concerned, since there was so much of it.) I'm pleased to report, though, that it was delicious anyway. (Though I did buy some ginger to use next time around.)

I started the made the sauce and had the chicken marinating early in the morning, so while Darren was taking what turned out to be a 2 hour nap (!), I traced and made another pair of jeans for him. As you can see, I'm much more pleased with these:

(Let me just also mention how hard it is to get a picture of your very active 9 month old.) The main thing that makes these so much better is the denim I used. MUCH softer than the last pair. Of course, there's still room for improvement:

Mistake #1: The first pair I made was XL, and were WAY too big. The L didn't look much smaller, so I went down to a M. Not a good idea. These fit, but not for long. It's a struggle to get 'em over his tush.
Mistake #2: The pattern says to add 2". The first pair I added 4" (I allow for future growth), and it was just too much. I had a really hard time getting the hem to lay flat, with no puckers. So this pair I followed the pattern and added only 2". I really should have added 3".

So....third time's a charm, right?

And in randomness, can I just say how excited I am to have finally been invited to Ravelry? It's essentially an online database for your knitting: patterns, yarn, WIPs, items in queue, etc... but it's also so much more than that (as I'm just finding out). There are groups, forums, and more. My goal is to first get all my WIPs entered, then my needles. A lofty goal would to someday have all my yarn entered, but I have doubts that that will ever happen. If you're knitter, I strongly encourage you to sign up. There is a waiting list, but it's so worth it. My wait really wasn't that long. There were several thousand ahead of me in line, so I really expected it would be months before I got my invite. It was 6 weeks, tops. And well worth it.

ETA: I want to appologize for the lack of paragraphs. I deplore when people fail to use proper paragraphs, but no matter what I do, blogger will not let me!

Okay, so the tree is not an exciting picture, but I feel obligated to post SOME picture with every post. This is from our trip to the park on Saturday. It was unseasonably warm here (80-ish, I believe) and it seemed wrong to not take advantage of the weather. (And, of course, father-son antics took place as well. My first born child is being tossed in the air here. I generally avoid watching this sort of thing. I know that Ryan won't really drop him, but if I don't watch, I don't have to worry.)

I'm using the nice weather as my excuse for not doing much. I do need to start sewing again, though--it turns out that the pants I sewed for Darren are more than a little too big. They're too big in every way. They may fit him in a year. (Oh, and might I also mention that my mom made a pair, too. So I now have two pairs of pants way too big for him.) B/c the pattern is Kwik-Sew, though, this means I have to trace out another one. Tracing is far from my favorite thing today. I will be home all day tomorrow, though, so that's on my list of things to do.

I must also take a picture of the onsie-outfit-thing that I'm knitting for Darren. I started it, oh, last December or so when I was still pregnant. I even did the back first, because it was boring--straight stockinette, broken up only by ribbing--and I wanted to get it done while I still had the excitement of a new project going for me. For unknown reasons, it was relagated to the Pile of Forgotten Projects, doomed to be forgotten. Until, that is, Knitting Daily came out with it's UFO (unfinished objects) poll. In tallying my UFOs, I suddenly remembered this romper. Inspired mainly by a lack of any real knitting projects, I decided to dig it out. And honestly, I have NO idea why I put it down. The back (read: the boring part) was done, and I was nearly finished with the boring part of the front: the lower, stockinette part was done, and I only needed to do about 8 rows of ribbing, and then it was on to the fun, patterned part of the front. Now that I've gotten going on it, though, I'm a bit concerned that, even though it's in blue, it's going to look too girly. (I've found that collars tend to do that.) However, I've also decided that I don't care. My kid is going to wear this, whether it make him look like a girl or not!

I can just imagine: 30 years from now, my son's on a therapist's couch saying, "It all started when she made me wear this girly romper...."

We Have a Sock!

But, notice the key word in the title: "A." Yes, I have a sock. But, what a sock! It's the Eleanora sock, available at Mim's Knitting Frenzy. Though I can normally knit a pair of socks pretty quickly (a basic ribbed pair in a month or so), these were unique for a couple reasons:1.) You have to admit, it's a pretty detailed pattern.2.) I started them a month before I was due to have Darren. Not the most brilliant move.So between a detailed pattern and a new baby, these socks didn't see much action between February and September.

A notable detail about the sock: I did alter the pattern. The pattern calls for size 0 and size 1 needles, and CO 78 sts. I know from experience, that on size 1 needles, I need about 60 sts, not 78. That was going to be WAY too big. A friend, who was also interested in the pattern, but had misgivings about the sizing. We both emailed the pattern writer, asking if there was anything we could do to size them down, and were both given similarly rude responses. The gist? WE must have weird feet, because they fit her just fine. So after much talking between ourselves, we decided the only thing to do was to go down in needle sizes, to 00 and 0.

I'll admit, I was nervous. I mean, really. 00? Forunately, the 00s are only used for 10 rounds in the facing. After that it's free sailing (well, relatively). I was also a bit apprehensive about the end result. Did I really want to knit a highly detailed pair of socks, on size 0 needles, only to find out that they didn't fit? Fortunately, my misgivings were unfounded. The sock fits beautifully, and I'm thrilled with the end result.

Now, I just need to get cracking on that second sock :)