Friends Don't Let Friends Knit Drunk

Alcohol + pointy objects = not a good idea, especially when yarn is involved. For those that know me, you know that I'm not much of a drinker, and the one time I attempted knitting a dishcloth after one bottle of Mike's hard lemonaid was not a happy evening. Lots of dropped stitches, screwy tension, and swearing. Not a pretty picture. But no one ever says anything about crocheting and drinking...

This weekend I had an adventure on the high seas! Ok, so it was a short sailing trip from the Everett to Hat Island, but it was definitely not an everyday event for me. On Saturday morning several of my coworkers piled into 3 boats and headed towards Hat. At one point I even got to steer the boat. Go me! Good thing I had my pirate shirt on ;-)

Eventually we made our way up to the house, unloaded all the overnight gear and food, then got to relax. We sat around chatting and drinking and life was good. Especially when they made a big bowl of the best slushie ever. Fresh peaches and raspberries in a large mixing bowl with some tonic and a whole bottle of Skyy vodka. My kind of fruity awesomeness. This is definitely in my top 5 favorite drinks! Anyway, once the yummyness was gone, and we continued to sit around chatting, I decided it was time to break out the yarn. Based on past experience one might this this wasn't a particularly bright idea, but that wasn't about to stop me - I was going through yarn withdrawal. I was good and even kept track of my time. Can you believe that I managed to keep to my rate of 5 minutes per shell???

By the time I'd finished 2 rows (19 shells), dinner was ready and I put the yarn away for the rest of the weekend. I had a killer headache anyway and was getting pretty tired. We ate dinner, chatted some more, watched part of the Seahawks game, then it was time for bed. This morning I was pretty much a zombie, but didn't need much brain power to pack up the sleeping bag, eat breakfast, and head home. I was soooooo happy to get home. The weekend was fun, but that's a lot of time to spend with coworkers and I'm not particularly looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Oh well. When I got home I just crashed. Now that my brain is starting to work a bit better, I did the math on the crocheting (no way was I up to that last night) and got out the shawl to inspect it. I'm very proud of myself - the tension is even, I'm not missing any stitches, and I don't have anything crazy going on like 15 posts in one shell. Yay, I don't have to take anything out!!!

Now it's time to go work on the pointy eared bastard or reskein yarn. It's so good to be home and back to my yarn :-)

Day 3, Triangle 1: 19 shells = 1 hour 35 minutes
Average: 5 minutes per shell
Total: 55 shells = 4 hours 35 minutes

Time For a New Shawl

The doll I've been designing lately has been giving me problems for the past few days (friggin little pointy eared bastard), so I decided it was time for a change of pace. Last night my Knit Picks order arrived full of all kinds of scrumptious yarn such as my Springtime Shadow Tonal lace yarn. I instantly popped it on the new swift (so in love with the new swift!), wound it into a cake, and went off to knitting group.

I spent most of group working and reworking the pointy eared bastard's arms, gave up, and started work on the Dragonfly Shawl. All I had time for was the gauge swatch (which I recently learned is VERY IMPORTANT), and it measured up perfectly! Since I was so stressed last night, it didn't really come out to my liking so I decided to start over today at lunch. With my pattern book sitting out on the table, a coworker came up to check it out then asked a million questions about it - the most interesting one being "how long does it take you to make something like this?" I honestly didn't have a clue. It's been forever since I timed anything I've crafted, so I decided to pay attention this time around. In the following half hour I was able to eat my sandwich and complete 6 shells, so 5 minutes per shell.

When I got back to my desk I decided to quickly do the math. 153 shells per triangle, 2 triangles = 306 shells. 182 shells at 5 minutes each equals 25.5 hours!!! That doesn't even count the panel of dragonflies in the middle. I'm hoping that once I get into a rhythm with the pattern that it isn't going to take me 5 minutes per shell, but I felt like I was moving pretty quickly. So... here's the goal: I'm going to keep track of time worked on this shawl and see if I can do it under 25 hours. Ready? Set.... Go!!!

Day 1, Triangle 1: 28 shells = 2 hours 20 minutes
Average: 5 minutes per shell
Total: 2 hours 20 minutes

Scarlett - The Evil Shawl From Hell

Just over a month ago I decided I was going to knit a shawl for my swap partner in the Night at the Movies swap through Swappers Anonymous. It sounded like a great idea going in. I needed something to represent Gone With the Wind - one of my partner's favorite movies. What better than a red ruffly shawl inspired by one of my favorite dresses worn by Scarlett O'Hara? The pattern was Multnomah and the yarn was Cascade Heritage Paints in the 9926 colorway. Beautiful and soft and squishy - I was in love. If only I knew about this colorway's evil past... but more on that later.

This is certainly the largest knitted project I've ever tackled and I've only completed something crocheted in this size once. I really didn't think about how long this was going to take, but I was excited to get started. The first rows just flew by! I started knitting it on July 13th, and by the following week I was this far (including lack of knitting time on vacation):

When I started, I thought all that garter stitch was soothing. It's much better than miles of single crochet, but after a while it got to be quite tedious. Right around the time I was getting really bored with it, I got to change to the rippled edge. It was a great change in pace and I got to learn a new knitting technique. Go me! Bella liked it too :-)

Then disaster struck. In one evening I had to rip out the same row 3 times because I was totally distracted by an episode of Burn Notice then I ran out of yarn on the last row. I knew my shawl would hold up the shipping date of my swap box (it was due to ship July 31st and by now it was Aug 10th) so I had stayed up late to finish it so I could block it then ship it out that Friday. Can we say complete meltdown? Word of advice, staying up late to knit after a frustrating day is a BAD IDEA. By this point I was freaking out, posted a panicked plea for help in a couple of my groups on ravelry then attempted to sleep. I was so stressed about the shawl that I only got about 2 hours. Oy. I spent the next day in a horrible mood and spent all of lunch ripping out the last 4 rows. At this point I should have listened to the majority of advice and just cast off then, but I was determined to get the last repeats in. I joined some blue yarn in hopes of bringing out the blue splotches, but it clashed horribly and made it look cheap. Did I follow my instincts and rip it out right away? No - I kept knitting. On the last row I was still in a horrible mood, the blue made the shawl look worse, and I ripped those rows out again. Then I rejoined the red and cast off like I should have before. That evening I went to knitting group where I finished knitting it, and one of the women told me about how this colorway is cursed. It's beautiful yarn, but this is the 3rd project she's known of someone who has had problems using this colorway. One project involved a ton of mistakes and the other became a tedious never-ending scarf. Fair warning to anyone out there wanting to use this colorway.

Now time to block the shawl! This was the first time I've ever blocked knitting so it was a learning experience as well. Bella was "helpful" in keeping the shawl flat too. Since my lace blocking wires hadn't arrived yet (darn that ground shipping) I used dental floss to keep the lines straight. Not the best plan ever, but it mostly worked out ok.

I completely finished it on Saturday, brought it to work Monday to show it off, then shipped it out today. So much work for a complete stranger, but I'm sure she'll like it. I've never been happier to give away one of my creations though. I never want to see the damn thing again.

So what did I learn from this adventure? Gauge swatches are crucial! I don't know if I was knitting too loosely so I ran out of yarn, or if there just wasn't enough there. I also learned that if I'm going to do something insane like knit a shawl for a swap, I need to give myself LOTS of time. Also, I should just stay away from all things Gone With the Wind - I hate the movie with a firey passion, so why would I think knitting something inspired by it would be a good thing?!?!

Time to get back to some crocheting...