a true friend

The spring + summer knitty of 2011 had not one, not two, but actually three patterns for cardigans that I actually want to knit! When I see great patterns I usually put them in my ravelry queue and then they stay there and wait, sometimes for years. But when I saw Amiga, Corinne and Daedalus, I just knew I had to have all three. Especially since I have lots of yarn for Amiga, given to me by a friend of my mother's.

I started my Amiga in basic black. I cast on the numbers for the mediums size and it knit up rather quickly. Soon I came to the row where the arms are split from the body. And that is when I realized that as wonderful as that cardigan is, the original garment was knit in a "small" size. Then the numbers were scaled up mathematically and suddenly my medium cardigan had huge armholes. Now in retrospect, it might have been my gauge. I hardly ever check gauge because I dislike knitting gauge swatches (yeah, yeah, I know) and I probably knit a little loosely with this yarn.

So I grew very, very annoyed. It's always easier to blame someone else - like oh say, the designer (well, I'm still annoyed with the giant sleeves, I gotta tell you that). I ripped back a few rows to get back to the numbers for a small size, put the arms on hold and increased a few stitches under the arms to make space for my boobs. At that moment I still hated the whole garment. Of course, since I didn't rip back to the beginning, the back was much broader than intended (yes, I could have probably omitted those increases under the arms) and anyway, it was somehow loose and frumpy and annoying!

But my mother thought it was great. And since my mother likes her jackets on the looser side and has a birthday in July, well ... hello birthday present (plus a mug - my mother doesn't read this blog so I can say this). So I knit on. And on and on and after a very short while - it really knits up quickly - the thing was long enough. I picked up the stitches for the collar and once that was done, I started liking the jacket more. And more ... and more! I mean, apart from the loose fit, it is a great jacket. I did not, however, use Jeny's surprisingly stretchy bind-off, because a) too much of a bother and b) a loose normal bind-off is better for this jacket, *I* think. (I always know better, check out the first panel in the third row.)

So I will be knitting this again - with the right numbers (small size) and a few adjustments. After all, I have the yarn for three more jackets. But since I don't need three Amiga jackets, I'm giving one of those yarn collections to a dear friend of mine who is just getting into knitting (she's an absolute crocheter), because Amiga is quick, simple and satisfying.

Right now I'm still on the arms. At first I knit them both at the same time might because that saves row-counting, but it's not as quick and convenient as knitting them one at a time. And my mother likes long sleeves, so I'm switching.

In other news: guess who got a haircut!

In the ongoing process of turning myself into the adult I always wanted to be which started last spring, this is a huge step forward. For the second time in my life I went to a professional hairdresser and now I have hair that is about 10 times more daring than I am. 

Lifelong learning. It's a bit scary, but fun!

Those two pictures were taken almost right after the cut, when I had about 20 5 different styling products in there. Today I washed my hair and only used a bit of curling spritz (tee-hee) and while it is still adorable, I can totally see why styling products are necessary now, since my soft curls will grow fuzzier and frizzier the longer the day is. So tomorrow - new wash, new experiment (styling foam).

what am i doing?

Recently I read another knitting blog that raised a lot of questions for me. What am I doing with my blog? What are my intentions with it? What am I showing and why am I showing it? How am I writing and why am I writing this way? What could I do differently? What does my blog say about me? When I started the blog, I intended to write "a knitting blog, although I guess I won't be able to keep out my opinions on movies, books, comics, music and other things out completely. A knitting blog that will hopefully not only cover the projects I'm working on, but also my thoughts on knitting, new patterns I've discovered, things that are going on in the knitting world and so on."

Ha! Considering the blog started to turn into THESIS BLOG in June 2010, it now seems a rather lofty goal. But up until then I had talked about my knitting, mostly, with a bit of music and anime thrown in for good change. And then I started with pictures of flowers. I worked so much in July 2010 that I had no time to knit and the computer broke and the thesis ... and I started illustrating my blog with pictures of Vienna and Scotland. Before going completely silent in September, I posted pictures from Switzerland, the Czech Republic and, once again, Vienna. Then I finally returned to blogging in February 2011, after I had finished the thesis and started posting pictures of the sky and the moon. And a few knitted items, too. Then, more pictures of flowers and of places I had been to - Hungary and Germany.

After reading the other knitblog, I'm now feeling uncomfortable with my pictures of flowers and earrings and the moon and the places I went to. I feel like I'm bragging. I feel like I'm being twee or posing as a hipster. I feel ... pretentious. The other knitblog had a lot of pictures of stuff - buttons, mugs, cloth, cutesy things. I thought of Bezzie and her views of another knitblog with beautiful (but extremely pretentious) pictures of knitting. I thought of all the other knitblogs I read - most of them feature either the knitter's life as it is or they feature lots of knitting. A very few - one or two - feature photography that I would call ... show-offy. A very few - one or maybe two - feature photographs of things other than knitting. I don't read the show-offy ones very often and I don't read the ones showing lots of cutesy stuff very often, either.

So why the heck did I post so many (pretentious, show-offy) pictures of flowers, the sky and the places I had been?  I mean, sheesh, for my travels, I actually have albums on facebook. Why here? I'm not even using the pictures to illustrate how certain colors of certain places INSPIRED me (caps because pretentious). My inspiration doesn't work that way. The rhododendrons in the last post made me think of underwear, not knitting. Maybe it's because I don't have a lot of confidence in my writing. The other blog was eloquent, if at times infuriating (because trite, wrong or pretentious, also some elements of the writing style got on my nerves very much). I feel like my posts aren't eloquent at all. I feel they're short and matter-of-fact and there's a lot of "-" and "...".

The knitblogs I like to read the most are eloquent and funny. And they make the daily life of their writers sound interesting. One of my favorite blogs doesn't even have pictures - or only very rarely. I don't trust my sense of humour to come across very well, it is weird, nerdy and obscure. My daily life isn't very interesting, either. I could rant away about the person playing saxophone in the other room (who is leaving in a few days, I'm glad to say) or about the lack of a shower curtain or the brothel or whatever it actually is (officially a swinger club/sauna ... yeah, right) in our house or the weird owner of the hotel in the house behind us who screams at people who put their trash in the trashcans because sometimes there are people who don't live in our house who deposit their trash in our trashcan, but while I love reading about such things on other blog, I, myself, don't feel like writing about them.

I could show you pictures of my room, of the flat I share with two other people, of the house and district I live in - but I'm shy about posting pictures of my own self and I wonder if my readers (I do have readers, the blog stats say so) actually would find it interesting to see where I live. I'm also afraid of looking pretentions in the way of "ooooo, look at me, I live in VIENNA in a house with JUGENDSTIL windows on the TOP FLOOR in one of the HIP DISTRICTS". But why did I post pictures of Vienna and other places I've visited, then? Nothing else to say or show, I guess. And the idea that a blog post without pictures is a bad blog post (I think I read that somewhere). Well, maybe I should take pictures of my chaotic room ...

Where is that line between pretentious and "oh look, I went here and saw this neat thing"? Where is the line between twee and "these are the buttons I'm going to use for this cardigan"? Showing you pictures of the two bowls that I got last week from a jumble sale - is that pretentious? After reading the other blog, I guess the answer is: yes. Showing you my grandmother's soup bowl that I use in place of a yarn bowl - that wouldn't be pretentious, I hope. It's not like it's a superduper expensive treasure or something. It's just a soup bowl.

But the other bowls aren't either. And they aren't even from the 19th century or anything. Googling has revealed that they must have been produced between 1939 and 1945 and inspection has revealed that I scratched the surface of one of the bowls during transport (bad porcelain, I must say). Showing you the earrings my mother gave me for my birthday - pretentious, I guess (really?). Is showing you the earrings that I recently bought from a place that sells cheap jewelry and repainted with nailpolish pretentious or a useful idea?

I do know that I feel jealous of bloggers who post pictures of the beautiful places they live in and the places they visit and the knick-knacks they own and the things they knit, always photographed against interesting backgrounds, in great clothes and neat shoes and headscarves and makeup. Actually, when I see the things they own, I want to own them, too. And I am jealous of their lives, too. Heck, I, too, would like somebody else to take pictures of me in my knitting in nice clothes and makeup in beautiful locations. I'd love to be married and have children, too. But I already have plenty of twee knick-knacks and buttons and live in a beautiful place and I have opportunities to go to beautiful places and knit beautiful things and I can take pictures of flowers and the moon and whatever else strikes my fancy. And marriage and children will come (hopefully). And why shouldn't I post these things on my blog? It's my blog, after all.

But I now feel just as pretentious as those bloggers. Displaying my privileged life and the stuff I own was not one of my intentions when I started this blog and now it's even less my intention. But it's so easy to hide behind beautiful pictures. It's easy to say "I went to Bonn and to the country and killed millions of dandelions" and not talk about the things that I should be doing (looking for a job, among other things). And damn, whining about the loss I feel after finishing my thesis is pretentious, too, which is why I haven't done it here.

I also find the pretentious blogs boring. There, I said it. Yes, buttons, yes, knitting, yes, whatever. I'm curious about your life, not your buttons. Well, I'm definitely a voyeur, heck, I see nothing wrong with what Jimmie Stewart did in Rear Window. But then, I am a historian, a professional voyeur of people's lives in the past. I'm immensely curious about the way people lived and continue to live (a convenient excuse), so I want to know how the knitbloggers live, too. Otherwise, show me your knitting and plenty of it.

But all this makes me wonder - what the heck should I write about on this blog then? Well, maybe I should write more about my knitting and take pictures of me in it, even if I'm not wearing makeup and the background is chaotic! I've also come to the conclusion that writing about knitting itself can be pretty pretentious, too, but still, I haven't done a post about "what knitting MEANS to me" yet. Maybe I should do that (don't worry, it won't be about CONNECTIONS or CONSUMERISM). Maybe I should just write what I want to write and show what I want to show and concentrate on my own life instead of looking at all the others and wondering why they seem to have it so much "other" than me. Of course other people lead different lives and write different blogs, duh.

Maybe it's time for a new job it totally is.

project 250

Before I flit off to Styria for a few days, let me tell you a little about my 250th project and let's ignore the trip to Bonn and the knitting I did there and the yarn I bought today until next week.


250 is supposed to be the first garment knit by and for myself that I can wear without thinking: "But I could have done this much better and this doesn't fit well and this isn't good and this and that is wrong". I picked a pattern that I have been wanting and waiting to knit since 2008. It's called Stormsvale (not a Ravelry link) and attracted me instantly with its pretty, understated herringbone stitch and attractive fairisle bands. Yes ... I can wait years until I start a pattern. Capricorns are patient like that.


However, I decided to go in a completely different direction with the construction. The yarn that I'm using is vintage yarn that was given to me by my father quite some time ago. It's probably between 35 and 40 years old or maybe older. I only have 10 balls of dark blue, a bit of grey, a bit of green and a bit of white - and the green is much moth-eaten. After some deliberation, I replaced the green and the white yarn with purple and a variegated turquoise-grey-brown yarn to make the fairisle band stand out more.

So making the most of my yarn gave me the idea of knitting this cardigan in a new way. Instead of starting at the bottom, I used a provisional cast-on and knit the color band that should sit just below the bust first - and I knit it with a steek, because that's easier.



Then I switched to smaller needles and used the instructions from the pattern for what would happen after the fairisle band, i.e., bust shaping, armhole shaping, back and shoulder shaping and so on. The shoulders were knit using shortrow shaping, so I could do a three-needle bind-off (so worth it!).

After that, I knit the two sleeves. They were also started from a provisional cast-off and with the color band. Instead of putting the band at the wrist I moved it up to the upper arm and decided that short sleeves were the way to go. My first try at an edging was a reverse stockinette edging that would curl inwards and give it a sort of i-cord bind-off look without the actual i-cord (I hate i-cord), but now I'm afraid that actual i-cord is called for to make it look good. Man, do I ever hate i-cord. And this jacket will need a lot of i-cord bind-off.


The next step in the plan was to pick up the stitches from the provisional cast-on of the main fairisle band and just knit down from there for the "skirt", increasing steadily to give the whole cardigan a sort of Jane Austen vibe. I started doing that and after a while, I felt the need to see how the whole jacket would look. So I used some small hair clasps to hold the pieces together and put in one sleeve.

And of course a problem immediately revealed itself. There is a lot of extra fabric under my arms that should not be there. It looks weird when I lift my arm and there are weird welts and bulk when my arm is down.

What was to blame? As per the instructions,
I increased stitches at both sides under the arms and that is where the extra fabric came from, since my gauge is a bit bigger than the pattern specified. The only solution to this is ripping out the whole top (curses and swearwords) and not increasing that many stitches. Or maybe still increasing the stitches, but making the armhole smaller.

Of course, if I do this, the question is whether the sleeves will still fit. Maybe I'll have to reknit the sleeves, too. I do have to reknit one, anyway, since I knit it far too loosely. Reknitting the whole top really doesn't thrill me at all very much, but since I am determined to make this jacket fit and look good, I'll do it.

It will be a good chance to fix the neckline, too. I went with the original neck instructions, intending to maybe do some ribbing instead of the fairisle stand-up collar, but that just looks too uptight. So, a far lower neckline is required and it will probably also be finished with the all-powerful i-cord bind-off (grumble). Then more i-cord for the skirt bind-off. Then sewing the steek! And then the endless button bands! Two of those! To say nothing of sewing the button loops and sewing on the buttons!

Why did I start knitting this again?

Well, look at that last picture. It will be a seriously nice jacket once it's done, so I'll put in the effort to make sure it will turn out that way. My new lace shawl will just have to wait ... and maybe I should block all the lace shawls I have knit up to now before I start a new one. Or not.

what happens when Capricorns knit

Capricorns supposedly love to make plans far ahead of the actual event. At least I do. I like to plan ahead. I like to have a plan. Once I have a plan, I can deviate from that plan (although sometimes someone has to make me see that possibility first), but without a plan I feel very uncomfortable.

Now one of my closer friends is expecting her first baby. I love this friend dearly and she is also the first of all my friends to have a baby. So naturally, I have already produced a number of baby items and there are more on my list.

The baby is due at the beginning of March, so as soon as she's ready to actually be outside, it will be April and soon it will be too warm for knitted hats and cardigans. What's a Capricorn to do? Easy. Knit for the next winter.

I've knit exactly one cardigan for her to wear during the first three months, the ever-popular February Baby Sweater (pictured above). I didn't plan for it to be newborn size. It is a newborn size because I used sock yarn and followed the directions, except I made the neck bigger.  For every other cardigan or sweater I have knit I used the 12-month if not the 18-month size, because babies grow at different speeds and come in different sizes, so (for Capricorns) it's best to be prepared.

And yes, I am knitting all the hats in at least the 12-month size. But I am only knitting three of those to minimize the risk that they won't fit.