Tag Archives: gauge

It’s still Tuesday

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6 pm on a Tuesday is still Tuesday, so time for a post while I’m remembering to do it.

I hit Full Thread Ahead on Saturday to see what was left of their store closing sale.  I got a skein of Farmhouse Yarns Bo Peep’s Sock Yarn in Lilac and a skein of Trekking Pro Natura in a pale blue, which I was considering using for the Rivendells.

Then I head to Purlescence Yarns because they were having a 25% off sale on Dream in Color, which they never put on sale so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.  I walked to the back of the store where the Smooshy is and saw one skein… count ’em… 1… of Dream in Color Starry in Grey Tabby.  I nice silvery grey semi-solid with sparkly silver bits.  I pulled it down and walked up to Kathy and asked what she thought.  She thought it was perfect and told me that she had actually just found that skein and hung it up not too long before; the skein had been hiding, laying in wait just for me.  I’m hoping that the silver thread will give it a nice little bit of shiny.  I’m knitting the Starry on two size 2.5 circs and have already finished chart 1 for the first sock.

The only thing so far that’s a little odd is that pattern calls for a gauge of 7.5 sts/in, which just seems a bit loose for me (although the pattern also says that’s gauge on size 1 needles, which for me would be really loose knitting).  I’m used to knitting my socks at at least 8 sts/in but several pairs have been 9 sts/in.  But the looser gauge does mean they’re a fast knit.

Now for a real post

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I did indeed cast on for Birch last night. I even swatched first… and I’m not entirely sure I was getting gauge because Birch is one of those patterns that gives you gauge in pattern instead of stockinette stitch. It looked like it was right, and this is a shawl, so I don’t need to be bang on. Of course, now I’m worrying that my gauge might be a little on the big side. Of course, I’ve only knit 4 rows so far, and the cast on edge is really loopy, so it’s hard to tell if things are a bit loose or not. It could just be that I haven’t knit enough yet. When I was swatching for Ribby Cardi, I got a gauge of 8 sts/inch after knitting about an inch… my gauge changed to 9.5 sts/inch after I knit another inch. I think I’m just going to have to cross my fingers and hope that the stitches work things out amongst themselves… ripping this out would be beyond a pain in the ass. I tried to rip back my gauge swatch and ended up breaking the yarn. *sigh*

Thankfully, I have all these knitting problems to worry about cause otherwise I’d be worrying about the fact that my manager is on a 2 week vacation to Europe. This is worrisome because there are certain things that have to be done on a daily and weekly basis… and it’s end of quarter, so I have to take care of that report, too. Of course, one of the automated scripts we have broke on Friday night, which meant I had to run a whole bunch of things manually when I came in on Monday. Boy, did I have an argument with that computer… I had to reboot 3 times. *gah* And now people are coming to my cube and asking me questions about projects I have no clue about because I’m not working on them.

Other manager: Can you tell me when we’re planning for this search tool project to go live?
Me: No, but I can tell you that it’s being tested* at the moment.
OM: Can you tell me which server it’s set up on?
Me: Nope.

Hopefully, this won’t drive me crazy… I just have to make it to the 12th.

*And that’s only cause I’m included in the alias my manager sent an email out to.

A few days of freedom

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There’s nothing quite like sleeping in… especially when you haven’t done it in awhile. I had class all weekend… Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We had our midterm and the last of our lectures on Friday, and Saturday and Sunday were filled with processing papers, boxing them up correctly, and creating a finding aid (sort of an archive index). My group worked on personal letters* written to an enlisted guy in the Army who was stationed at Camp Roberts, CA during WWII. He was from Alameda, so there’s a local connection. We only sorted through the letters from his girlfriend/then wife, and his brother-in-law… 299 letters, cards, and telegrams altogether. It was a lot of work, but it was really interesting.

Stephanie** has left me advice on throwing the idea of relaxing my tension out the window, and by thus convincing me (wasn’t hard I think I already knew it to be a not-so-wise idea), has probably saved me many hours of frustration. Of course, I do think that part of the tension problem is from me knitting it at work. Definitely a very not-so-wise idea… at least the last few weeks… bah, who am I kidding it was a stupid idea. I had thought it would help me relax, and instead I strangled my needles with the yarn.

Now that the laundry’s done, I think I will sit myself in front of my wheel and spin up some more of the light grey romney, which I will then dye some color to be determined as a Christmas gift for my sister-in-law. I know she knits, but I have no idea what kind of stuff she likes doing, or what books she might find interesting. I figure I’ll use it as another opportunity to practice doing some dyeing, and hopefully, she’ll like it.

*One of the girls in my group had found them in an antique shop and thought they were interesting.

**Who I think is one of the greatest knitters ever (she doesn’t seem afraid to just jump right in) because she seems to have a lot of fun knitting or at least she knows how to laugh at the hard parts, although I think that comes after copious amounts of wine, which I heartily agree with as a salve for knitting frustrations.

Where am I going?

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It dawned on me last night that I could measure the current knitted state of the lace shawl and compare it to my blocked swatch and just get a reliable preblocked/blocked ratio. Thus, I now know that one leaf pattern knitted to one leaf pattern blocked is 1.5:2 inches. This is good to know because it means I will have to knit 13.5 inches to attain 18 inches of blocked shawl. I’ve got 7.5 inches knitted so far. Makes me feel a little better…. cause part of me feels it’s going to go on forever and I won’t get it done in time.