Everyones Back!

I'm glad to have everyone back! Jamie - Utah looks beautiful, even if there wasn't a lot of snow. It sounds like you had fun despite the chaos! ... And those socks are beautiful! I love the colors - its kind of funny because I read your post yesterday right after I got home from Barnes and Noble where I bought Favorite Socks. In blogland it seems everyone is raving about this book, and when I saw it I decided I needed to start making more interesting socks. Its weird, because before I made any socks I thought, whats the big deal? They're socks, no one even sees them on your feet! But then I made a pair, and then another, and then another. Its addicting. And there is just something comforting about wearing socks you made. Its almost like having a secret or something. So I will make more! I do find it kind of ridiculous, though because sock yarn is SOOOO expenisive. I can go to the store and buy a pair of socks for $3, or I can spend $20 on yarn and two weeks making them.

So on to more exciting things... Here is the progress of my skirt. Slowly but surely, it is coming along. I think I finally have the pattern set & I think it will work. Molly, (and Jamie, too), if you want, I can figure out the pattern for you, it is actually pretty easy now that I have it figured out. When you are done with the lace & the eyelet part, stop knitting and give me this information:
1. The number of stitches on your needle when you are finished with the eyelet (I didn't have the number that it said I should have, but I didn't try to go back)
2. The length of what you have done (the lace and eyelet)
3. The total lenght you would like the skirt to be
4. The waist & hip you want
5. Your stitch gauge & your row gauge

I am also working on my first design project. Figuring out the skirt pattern made me decide that I could design something simple if I wanted. I saw this and had to have it, so I designed a pattern inspired by it. I am knitting on size 10s, so it is going fast. I am finished with one front side and just casted on for the other.

Well it has been a while since there's been any news on here from me, so here I am again... I haven't disappeared completely! I am in the hospital again, but I'm in a good mood (as long as I've got some vicadin in me for my leg.... it hurts a lot otherwise!) and since I slept all day long, it's 1022 and I'm wide awake. And since I've just got one IV which is rather painless, unlike before, I think I'm going to finally get back to knitting on this skirt. This skirt, which thanks to your horror stories, I'm a little worried about, but I'm still on the first lace squares still so I'll just plug on through until I find some problems of my own....

So, since I have no gorgeous pictures of Utah mountains or springtime in the South to share, and I'm pretty sure you don't want to see any pictures I might take of where I've been lately, that's about all I have to share. Hopefully I'll have more good news soon... from a more comfortable bed!

We're home from Park City....

The view from Snowbird, in Little Cottonwood Canyon, looking down into Salt Lake City.

Hi girls,
We had a wonderful week. It was relaxing/yet a little crazy. It's always difficult to coordinate 10 people. We thought that since everyone was an adult, that would cut down on how complicated the trip would be.....we were wrong.


A picture of the group....missing one, Joey (the picture-taker). I'm the lone snowboarder.

We couldn't decide what area to ski everyday, what day to take off, who was going to use what rental car, who was going out drinking (not us), people taking forever to get up and go due to hangovers,....etc. But, all in all we had a nice time. It was nice to be back in the mountains. Utah is a beautiful state with tons of natural history to enjoy (Molly, I wish you were with us to show me some geology). We spent all of our time in the Wasatch Mountains, which from what I understand are mainly a sandstone-based range. They are prone to erosion, and aren't very good for climbing. We got 5 days of skiing in, which was plenty for me....my legs are still sore. We were very concerned about the lack of snow (see the valley below in the group picture above....NO snow) in Park City, but when we got in the Cottonwood Canyons the snow was much better. This is the first year where the area has only gotten ~200 inches of snow. They usually get 500+ inches. Can you say global warming? On our 3rd day we got about a foot of powder, which was nice...I've never snowboarded in powder before and fell about a hundred times.



Here is a picture of that darn hat that drove me crazy. It fits it's new owner perfectly and he loves it. These folks (Jenna and Aaron) are some of our favorites, we tend to only see them on vacation. The picture is in a sports bar/"private" club (Utah has some DIFFERENT drinking laws) that we visited a few times to watch WVU basketball games. WVU won both games, which is awesome and they are this year's NIT champions. The state pride was really going strong out there in Utah.


Jill, I'm sorry that you have to be the person who discovers all the issues with the pattern, but I'm going to check my row gauge now. I don't know if Bill told you or not, but I forgot my pattern for the skirt at home. I had my yarn and all other implements, but no pattern!

So, because of this I mainly worked on a new pair of socks. It was my first patterned sock. I used a pattern called the "Cable twist ribbing". This is all I got done. I knitted on the plane ride out (a 5 hour ride), in the car en route to ski areas (30 min/day) and on the plane ride home (4 hours). But so far, it has been an enjoyable experience. I love the yarn, the varigated is Mountain Colors 4/8 wool hand dyes in Lost trail and the blue heel (and toe) is Cascade 220 in blue 8480. I think I'm going to put the stitches on a holder and then do the other sock, because in the past I've had SSS (second sock syndrome) pretty bad.

I'm going to finish up with a good picture of the snow on our first day of new snow. Molly, I hope you are doing better....



Love,
Jamie

Learning about patience...

I was telling Molly the other day that knitting has really taught me to be more patient. Well... little did I know that I had more to learn. Last night I went from this:


to this:


I checked my stitch gauge, but I never checked my row gauge. I have never checked row gauge before, but when making a skirt, apparently it is important. The row gauge the pattern called for was 29 rows = 4', I think. Mine was 35 rows. No wonder my skirt was seeming rather short...
So I decided to just start over from the lace. I checked my stitch gauge again before ripping, and it was off, so I just decided to rework the entire pattern. I measured a skirt that I already have and that fits nicely & decided I wanted 7 inches between the waist and the widest part of my hips. I needed the skirt to be 20" across at the hip and 17" across at the waist. And I wanted the skirt to be a total of 28" long. So I got out my calculator and got to work figuring out how many stitches equaled 20", how many stitches equaled 17", how many rows equaled 7" and so on, and figured out how to space the decreases to make it all work. It was at first annoying, and confusing, but then once I got the hang of it, it was quite satisfying. I basically rewrote the pattern (except the lace part), and it really wasn't that hard. So if either of you think you may need to do this, let me know and I can give you more specifics on how I figured mine out. Until then, good luck. This better be a pretty grand skirt, thats all I've got to say!

Rethinking...

Okay, I was thinking about this some more and realized that I want the extra rows at the bottom, before the decreases rather than after the decreases. So If you are going to stay with the length as it is, the pattern changes would be as follows:

Work 17 rows even (6 rows + the 11 rows)
k1, ssk, k to last 3 sts, k2tog, k1
work 11 rows even
Repeat last 12 rows 5 times (101 sts remain)

It think that should work better & that way the waist won't be really long!
Hope it makes sense! Good luck with your hat, Jamie & have fun on vacation... You really should be going some place warm, though. Its wonderful here, 80 degrees, sun's shining, light breeze... I sound like a jimmy buffet song or something!

Pattern Adjustments

Hi girls! I have started working on the stockinette part of my skirt. Last night I tried to figure out how to adjust the decreases so that the skirt will fit me. So, here is what I am going to do:
I followed the pattern up until the heading "All sizes:" on the second column of the second page. I didn't change the first paragraph (Rows 62-67) at all. But in place of the second paragraph, I am going to do this:
Work 11 rows even
Decrease row (k1, ssk, k to last 3 sts, k2tog, k1)
Repeat these 12 rows 5 times
Work 6 rows even (101 sts remain).

I added the 6 even rows to keep the lenght correct, but if either of you wanted to shorten the skirt at all, you could omit those 6 rows. If my gauge is correct, 101 sts should equate to about 19". From this point I am just going to wing it to make it fit my waist. I am most worried about it fitting my hips. I hope this helps!

Here is a picture of my finished honeymoon cami and a baby hat I made for Afghans for Afghans. I am trying to use up some of my leftovers, so I am making some stuff for charity. They need infant hats and other childrens warm stuff right now (hats, mittens, socks, etc.).

We're Back!

Molly drove all the way back on Saturday, so I had lots of knitting time in the car... I've got the lace and eyelet finished my first panel. I mis-read the pattern - I didn't realize that the lace was suppposed to be done in a larger size needle than the stockinette part, so it is all going to be done in the same size needle. I hope that it still looks okay.



We had a nice time on our little road trip. Gulf Shores turned out to be not what we were expecting. There wasn't anything to do except sit on the beach,and it was cold and dogs weren't allowed on any of the beaches, so we decided not to stay. So we went to New Orleans instead. Neither of us had been there either, and we had fun just walking around and exploring. It is a very pretty city. Yesterday we went back to Nashville and I dropped Molly off at the airport early this morning. And now its back to work...