That's How We Do

I've been so busy with school lately that all of my knitting time comes in 20 minute spurts. After that, I'm overcome with guilt and must get back to my death grip on the semester. Couple that with the miles of brown ribbing I'm churning out and my knitting life seems to be rather lack luster. However, now that the semester is almost over, I allowed myself to sit and knit a project from start to finish.



I needed a gift for an exchange at work, so I decided to knit a hat. Unlike my usual M.O., this hat has color, stripes and the illest reindeer you've ever seen.



How 'bout we see that one more time.


That's right. Can you say dope?

I love this hat so much, I didn't even mind weaving in the mounds of ends.



I asked Andrew to model it for me:






The hat fits perfectly, which kind of sucks because it grew substantially after blocking. We'll see what it looks like when it dries. If it's still huge, I'm bringing the world's most bad ass tea cozy to the company holiday party.

Whew!

I spent about 30 hours silkscreening this weekend in order to get ready for my semester critique. A responsible blogger would have photographed the process so they could share it with the fiber-obsessed of the world. This blogger on the other hand, has failed you. I apologize. I was spending so much time trying to line up my screens, mixing colors that would transfer well and cleaning up gallons of spilled ink that my camera did not make it into the equation.

I do have more pictures of this, though:



It's snow. 'Bout six inches of the stuff. I'm still amused by it, but slightly intimidated by what six inches of snow before the start of winter could mean.



This is the corner of my house. I don't think I've ever seen an icicle that big before. It's practically a weapon!

Thankfully, my winter reading has started to arrive in the mail:



I think you all recognize Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac which is filled with awesome patterns and prose for the snowed in, and what's the holiday season without
Critical Art Ensemble's Flesh Machine:Cyborgs, Designer Babies and New Eugenic Consciousness? It's practically the new The Night Before Christmas.

As far as knitting goes, there's not much exciting progress here. I was able to knit on the second sleeve of the Zipped Raglan for a few hours last night and was pleased with how much knitting gets done when you actually, well, knit. I've been looking at other patterns and I'm afraid I may have to detatch the first sleeve from the body in order to knit a few more inches on the fronts and back of the sweater. I knit it to the length of the XL size, but it still seems like it may be about 3-4 inches too short.

I told you about the scarves my mom knit me:



They're knit in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino and I think they are the most wonderful things I own. Funny how that works sometimes.

I knit a swatch for the army earflap hat using a double strand of malabrigo:



The origional pattern calls for chunky weight yarn whereas malabrigo is definately a standard worsted weight. The versions of this hat I've seen using a single strand makes a hat that looks almost unwearable, it's so small. Trouble is, a double strand works up to 3.75 sts/inch. it would be easy to adjust the pattern to make up for this if it told you at any point how many stitches around it is. i think i may just knit the hat as is and revel in the wooly gigantic-ness of it. if nothing else, it'll be amusing disastor which is always good blog fodder.

Anyway, keep warm and fed wherever you are and have a swell day.

First Signs of Encroaching Winter

I hope you all had a fantastic holiday, I certainly did. My family came up and we sat around for almost a week straight, knitting, eating and playing cards. I traded my mom the pastel ball of mountain goat for a few additions to my sportweight alpaca stockpile and I received not one, but TWO handknit scarves for my birthday (which is in march, but she made up for it by doubling the bounty).

I made progress on my zipped raglan. Even though it's nowhere near finished, I'm okay with it. Unfortunately I spent all morning writing a paper, so the light outside kind of sucks for taking pictures, so we'll just have to look at a picture from Thanksgiving morning:



That, my friends, is real live snow. Now, many of you who live in colder climates could give a damn about a few flakes of snow, but I, a transplanted southerner, was enamoured with the powdery stuff. Yes, it snows in the south sometimes, but it's much more like lumpy rain than bonafide snow. I'm sure that in my eighth month of winter I'll be less impressed with snow, but for now it sure is pretty. Well, it would be if it hadn't melted the next day.

And look! Jill likes it:



Likes/ Hates; Terror/ Tomato.

I bought the new Son of a Stitch n Bitch this weekend and I am absolutely enthused! Who would have guessed that non-ugly/tacky/dorky men's knitwear patterns existed? I really did find like twelve things I want to make.

Oh by the way, Thumbs down to interweave knits for leaving out even the perfunctory men's pattern in the winter issue. Yes we get it. Women knit. Men can check back in 6 months to see if there's something available then.

Oh well. At least Debbie Stoller's got my back.

I've been on a crash course, heading straight into the end of the semester for the past few weeks. Crit week is 13 days away and I've been in the studio cranking out as much work as possible. I still have a long way to go, but I'll get there.



The sleeve for the zipped raglan is just about done. I want to knit it a few inches longer so it will cover my long monkey arms, but that won't take any time at all. I was really hoping to get this sweater finished by Thanksgiving, but that may not be entirely possible. My entire family is coming from Hotlanta to visit us next week, so hopefully I'll be able to get all of the knitting on the sweater done before school starts the next Monday.

I bought some yarn for my winter hat today to replace the Mountain Goat of easter egg brilliance.



It's malabrigo and the shade is called Autumn forest (224). While yes, it's varigated, the colors are so muddy one would be hardpressed to call it unmanly. I need to find a good pattern for it. I'm thinking the Army Girl Earflap Hat from Interweave knits. (I really tried to get the link to work and it was ugly. Trust me.) Mine, however will just be the Army Earflap Hat, 'cause that's how I roll. I need to knit a swatch to see if I should double my yarn or not. I really don't want to have to buy new needles, but I may just have to bite the bullet.

What will happen with the Mountain Goat, you ask? I think it'll end up being a pair of socks for my mom. We'll see if I can knit a pair in the 8 days between the end of the semester and Christmas. Oh the joys of holiday knitting.

Speaking of the holidays, I bought some ornaments for our first Christmas in Chicago.



They're made out of what I assume to be tiny gourds. The owl belongs to Andrew and this one is mine:



That is a wild-eyed panda if I ever saw one.

Crunch Time

Hey y'all! So, for the past three weeks I've been busting it in the studio, trying to get ready for a show on Sunday and finish some entries for a few film festivals. While I like to consider myself a relatively laidback kind of guy, when I have deadlines, I'm more of a wild-eyed, don't know if I'm gonna knife ya or cry kinda guy.

I will post some pictures after the show so we can all look, discuss, and determine if I'd be more suited to a career in the sitting at home and watching The People's Court industry.
Until then, I have this:



These are some t-shirts I've been dyeing for a project in May. There are 30lbs of 'em in 7 colors. While most every 12 year old can successfully dye a t-shirt, it took me three tries to get it right. Three freaking times. You would think that with all of my experience dyeing wool and reading about fiber that I would have been smart enough to realize that the dye I was using was acid dye and not cellulose-reactive dye. Hmmm. Strike one.

At least while I waited for each load of [7(colors)x3(dye failures)=loser] to wash and dry, I knit the sleeve of my Zipped Raglan. I would be able to show you said sleeve if I hadn't left it in my studio. Strike two.
However, I can show you guys the beautiful yarn I bought months ago to make my winter hat:



See that? My colorblind ass thought that was grey. If I knit a hat out of that, I'll look like a freaking easter egg. That's right, strike three. Damn.

So let's recap. Colorblind artist can't figure out why he can't dye cotton with wool dye on the first two tries. Thank god I love Judge Joe Matthus.

What Homework?

Like I said, I've been fitting knitting time in whenever possible, which is completely unlike me. I'm normally a very lazy knitter who prefers to read blogs, buy yarn and plan sweaters 3 years in advance. This is everything I've been knitting for the past few weeks:

I was caught downtown a few days ago in a t-shirt in fifty degree weather, necessatating a store bought sweater. I bought one on my break that looks like something i would knit myself, except it was missing elbow patches, so I knit some:



The patches are knit out of knitpicks telemark on size 2 needles. I haven't had time to block them and sew the suckers on, but all in good time.

I'm knitting a scarf on the train:



This scarf is really killing my fragile knitter ego. First of all, the yarn is beautiful, soft and spongey. Run it through my grubby man-hands and it becomes snagged, pilled and hairy. I'm trying to compensate by handling it more gently, but that results in really ugly stitches. It kind of looks like I was knitting baby cables. The best I can hope for at this point is a bohemian look. Le sigh.

I started knitting Major from Rowan. Well, kind of. I had to use a completely different pattern due to Rowan's really awful sizing issues and worse schematics. I'll add the details from the origional pattern to a sweater sized for a human being and all will be well.



*Note: Please ignore the awful lighting. I knit this in my studio, where natural light is only spoken about in rumor. That also explains why I've only knit 5 inches of the back of a sweater knit on size 17 needles. Don't judge me. I do plan on passing this semester.

I'm still knitting the zipped raglan. I finished the body and have started a sleeve. I'm knitting the smallest size, but I knit it to the length of the large. This may be finished one day. I'm aiming for Thanksgiving. Please do not hold back ridicule if the end of November comes and I have a body and half of a sleeve knit. Be cruel, otherwise how am I ever going to learn?



And a sleeve:

Knitting like a Mofo

Now that I've decided that I'm knitting for the shear pleasure of it, I'm knitting everywhere and everything that will sit still long enough for me to wrap it around a needle. I have a project to knit on the train, one for when I'm waiting at the dentist, or what have you, one to work on while I dub videos, one for my studio when I want to feel productive and one for when I watch tv at home.
Wow, that may be a little excessive, as I'm sure that several of those could be consolidated. No matter. I will show pictures when I have a second and some decent lighting. Until then, be good and fruitfull and all of that.