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[oyceter]

I am currently gorging myself on all the figure skating Tivo has recorded for me. This is one of the reasons I love Tivo -- I always want to watch things like figure skating, but I never know when they're on or what channel they're on. With Tivo, I can just plug in keywords and it finds them all for me. Unfortunately, each competition is about 3 hours worth of viewing time. And they record even more for the big ones, so I have about 10 hours of the World Championships recorded! But... pretty people doing pretty things on ice. I am susceptible.

The plus is that I have mostly mastered knitting while watching TV, so I can at least be somewhat productive. Today's figure skating watching has produced four inches worth of the front right panel of my hooded sweater jacket. I think I'm even starting to work out a system. I've got sticky notes all over the pattern so I can keep track of my rows, as well as the stitch and row ratios. The pattern is supposed to be knit using Lion Brand Color Waves, but all the colors they had when I checked out Jo-Ann were really ugly. So I'm using Homespun. It knits up nice and nubbly, especially with garter stitch, but the problem is it's not really a twisted yarn. Instead, it's a whole bunch of fibers wrapped around with a thin thread, which makes the bumpy texture. But that means it twists up very easily. Grr. And I had to translate the gauge and everything, because it's not quite the same gauge as Color Waves. So far it seems to be going ok. I've found I knit mostly to gauge, although mine is just a wee bit larger than normal gauge. Sigh. It's frustrating because it measured out fine in the beginning but ended up changing! Also, despite tightening my end stitches, they're still a little uneven. Actually, all of my knitting right now is a bit uneven, but luckily I seem to have gotten out of the habit of dropping stitches. Amazingly, all those dropped and added stitches back in childhood seem to have helped.

Forthcoming projects include a mini afghan, a short-sleeved top in lavender alpaca, another cute top knit in the round (haven't tried that yet) in black cotton, hopefully with a pink ribbon, because if nothing else, I am incredibly girly, and this in green and gold yarn. elann.com is evil and tempts me with cheap yarn. I'm also tempted to pick up the yarn for this, but I think I should probably finish something that's not a scarf (and the dozen other projects I have planned) before getting even more yarn!

Luckily, I have a knitting group once every two weeks and another one every week at work. And lots and lots and lots of figure skating to watch....

Comments

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I'm ready to start back to knitting! Any good pattern links? A knitting group sounds wonderful, but I love doing it while watching TV, etc.

[oyceter]

Ooo, yes! I really like Knitty. Other than that, I've been checking out a few free patterns on Elann.com, which is horrid because they have some very discounted yarn! I am also working through some stuff in a random knitting magazine I bought, as well as stuff from the two Stitch and Bitch books. Lion Brand also has some free patterns posted on their website.

Oh man, I am obsessed.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! I'm considering this one: http://secure.elann.com/productdisp.asp?NAME=Peruvian+Collection+Pure+Alpaca&Cat=&ProductType=5&Count=1

[oyceter]

Ooooo, yes, those are gorgeous colors!

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Oooh! Those are good pattern links. Thanks.

[skylee.livejournal.com]

I love watching figure skating too. I can't even skate (at all) myself, but like you said, pretty people doing pretty things on ice, it's cool. :)

[oyceter]

I can sort of get around on the ice without falling, except I never learned a good way to stop, outside of crashing into a wall.

But ahhh, figure skating ^_^. Me and my sister used to watch and critique everyone's outfits.

[ann1962]

Knitting in the round is fun, especially with that pattern. No great detail except at the collar. Add your knitting stories to the posts that I like to read. Those are very cool patterns.

[oyceter]

Yes! I was glad... it looks like a really cute, really easy to knit top!

[chi-zu.livejournal.com]

Again with the same brain thing. I went to see Ice Princess yesterday, then found the exhibition skate on last night. There's something about watching it that always makes me hold my breath. I wish I had known about the competition all week, I would've watched it.

I'm so proud of you wrangling a pattern like that! I'd love to see a picture when you're done. I need to get better about taking pictures of my stuff. I'm so busy trying to get pictures of things I do for work that I forget about things I do for fun.

Homespun is tricky to use because of exactly what you described. I find that knitting it loosely makes my life much easier, but then of course your gauge changes. I'm currently trying to loosen up my knitting in general. I've developed into a relatively tight knitter which yields a very even fabric, but also kills my wrists.

I used to make everything out of Homespun because it was the nicest yarn I had available to me. I still wear those pieces all the time. I like how snuggly it is. It's not really my yarn of choice anymore, but I still have a soft spot for it. I'm actually making a shawl out of it for work right now. It's going to be a net-like adaptation of a Faroese shawl crossed with a ruana.

Knitting in the round is my preferred method of choice. I go to great lengths to knit in the round as much as possible as well as to knit seamlessly. Less purling (my knit stitch is faster), easier to keep track of shaping and cable charts, and less sewing at the end. Ironic that my job is to sew and I love it, but I will go to great lengths to avoid it in my knitting.

[oyceter]

The competition is quite nifty so far! Although more people are messing up, and it makes me so nervous! And Evgeny Plushenko, who is awesome, had to withdraw, so I was sad because I couldn't watch him skate and he just skates so wonderfully.

Homespun is now annoying me less, but it is still rather frustrating having to untwist it every few rows. I find that my problem is when I'm feeding the yarn through my fingers... they keep pushing the twists further and further down, if that makes any sense. But the jacket is really nice and nubbly, and I love the texture, esp. with garter stitch. It's so cool how you get to knit for work!

I'm hoping that wrangling the pattern is actually working... and if not, hopefully all the mistakes will be in the same proportion. Right now, I'm just doing the back and the front two panels, so that's not quite as difficult, but I am eyeing the sleeves with quite a bit of trepidation. Thank goodness for SnB Nation and that section on translating gauges!!