Adrienne Vittadini Lace & Ruffle News

I'm about 5" and two sets of increases into the back. Progress has been slow, my knitting time has been cut in half since I spend most of my homewards commute chatting with coworkers who take the same train. I'm definitely doing the lace correctly now--I don't think it was so much an error in the lace pattern as my knitting into the wrong side of certain YOs.
I STILL don't fully have the lace pattern memorized, so it takes me more thought than I'd like to work in the increases into the pattern.
Also, the actual color of the yarn is somewhere between the above green and the hideous that it was showing up as in some previous posts.

Bead Night Thursday

My workspace tonight
I came home from work today to a clean apartment (tidied up, vacuumed, washed...) and a table full of flowers and a note waiting for me. Excuse me please for bragging (or don't--fine, be that way...) but I have the greatest SO ever. He's worked the day and night shifts for the past week and hasn't gotten any sleep and my birthday isn't even until Sunday. (That's FOUR dozen roses, FYI. Ahh...)
I was playing around with beads tonight:

From L to R:
-Dainty Earrings- I only had cream colored size 10 thread, I don't know if I like the results enough to make another one.
-Add-a-bead earring, sort of ugly, sort of cute.
-African Net Earring,- this came out way too big and floppy for an earring (it was meant to be made in delicas and I made it in size E) so maybe a pendant?
-freestyle experimenting- again, can't decide if this is cute or stupid.

Sunday night

Here is a screen capture of my weather forecast for the coming work week. However, what I'm trying to draw your attention to is not the craptacular nature of the weather in NY, but to the ad on the right. Is it just me, or is the prospect of a crocodile lurking in your timber oil a little bizarre for an ad campaign? That thing is freaky, yo. Erm, yes, maybe I should just go to bed and stop blogging.
Oh, in other news, I ripped out all my "progress" on the AV lace and ruffle cardigan and re-cast-on. But so far it looks correct!

CRT is completed!

CRT, aerial view, blocking with cat.


Front view


This came out with so much extra room in the front bottom that it could serve as a maternity top. In fact, I think it might fit one of my expecting coworkers who, BTW, just told us it's going to be a girl (eee! now I can make this!) and is definitely showing. I'll bring it along to work tomorrow. Edit: It fits her and looks great! Whoo!


Why can't I ever take a good picture of my back? A mystery indeed...

AV Lace & Ruffle Knitalong!

Because I found some free image editing software, I made a button. Because I made a button, I now proudly declare the AV Lace & Ruffle Cardigan Knitalong to be...erm, in existence. It's going to be a knitalone until any/some brave souls join me. E-mail me or leave me a comment if you'd like to be added, and feel free to take the button below. (To your own server, of course!)

Sheerly, Sort of -- Done!

from Knitty.

Yarn: Light pink laceweight mohair from China
Needles: #13 Denise
This was the easist knit ever. The bead cast-on and ribbon-neck made it fun, but I extra hated seaming with this yarn/gauge. (The longest part of the project was getting around to seaming it...) The finished product, as you can see, is SUPER sheer. While not practicable, it IS adorable. (IMHO.)

State of the AV L&RC

As you can see from the above picture, I got frustrated once I hit the increases and trying to work them into the lace pattern and just ripped the work off the needles. This relates to the other, more serious problems that I'm having with the lace pattern. For some reason this pattern is just not gelling into my mind--perhaps it's because it's written out rather than charted, but I'm not memorizing it, and it's coming out looking VERY WRONG. I think I'm purling into my YOs wrong. Thus you can see my re-swatching of the lace on the smaller circ above. Aaaa!
Look at a close-up of the lace, below:

The lace I'm doing is just wrong. I've never had this kind of problem with a pattern before, but then again, I really haven't had much experience with lace. Live and learn.

Cat, suitable for shipping.

He went in there himself, I swear.


But he didn't put the lid on.

If you look closely at the background, you can tell I made more marble magnets last night...

AV L&RC Progress

I'm home sick today, not feeling well enough to knit but well enough to blog. I'm drowning my system with tea and orange juice as we speak.
This progress was made in the last few days, barely 2.5 inches. I got smart and put in a lifeline this time, but I've also gotten a lot savvier about seeing my mistakes (a common one being an ssk where I neglected to lift the slipped stitch over) and seem to be doing better. It'll be interesting to see how I do when I have to start incorporating increases and decreases into the lace pattern.

Quick Pink Flower pin

Another flower pin, this time with a leaf.

Yarn: Cervinia "Softer" (pink mohair blend) and Lily Elite Cotton in green
Hook: I

What I think about other than knitting.

New York is so romanticized--in books, in movies, in the American psyche in general.
I've spent the past two years here believing that life here is just that--life. You go to work, you come home, you eat and go out. The only differences being the cost, the amount of space, the varieties of food...and everything connected by a silver monster, the frustrating lifelines of the city, the subways.
Today on the train I felt a little of the romance again. It's hard to stay cynical with so many daffodils finally out, the spring air and clear skies. Realizing that life in the city IS different--if only because so much of it is packed together, so many people living their normal, everyday lives, but so much intersecting, so much time spent in intimate spaces, the train cars, with strangers. The sleepers, the readers, the headphones. Me, the sometimes knitter. Pumas, stilettos, flip-flops. The homeless, the businesspersons, the tough-guy city kids. The out-of-towners (me, too). But you still always see smiles when a cute baby comes into the car. That makes me feel a little love for them all.
For me, there's two ways to react to the world when you're in love with a single, specific person. Either your love for them spills over, maybe just a little, into the whole of humanity, or the outside world becomes unworthy of your attention.

AV Lace & Ruffle Cardi WIP

from Adrienne Vittadini Spring 2005

Yarn: Lily Elite Cotton in Moss
Needles: Denise #7s
I've been a little smitten with these shades of bright grassy green lately (see this). I hope this little crush hasn't led me down the garden path as far as color choice for this project. I wanted a brighter color to offset the primness of the pattern a bit, but hot pink seemed a bit overkill and blue didn't appeal to me and...you get the picture. I haven't memorized the lace pattern yet. I had to rip out about an inch and a half and start over because I tried to watch Jeopardy at the same time. Oh well.

Oh! And does anyone want to join me in knitting this little girlie? It won't be like a real formal KAL but we can pretend :)

VK Crossed-Front Tank

from Vogue Knitting Spring Summer 2005

Yarn: Beige/gold ribbon yarn from China
Needles: Denise #9s and #11s
I had no information on the gauge/yardage/content of this ribbon yarn due to it's having been bought off a yarn stand in China. Thus, I hope that this cone has enough to make the top. *Crosses fingers* Worst comes to worst, I'll just make the left front out of the slightly-smaller purple cone of this ribbon I bought.

Yay Smiley's!

I got lots of yarn at Smiley's for under $40! 6 skeins of Lion-Brand Cotton-Ease on the left in bright pink, and 6 skeins of Lily Elite Cotton in grass green. For some reason these bright colors just jumped out at me. The cotton-ease feels quite nice, I'm excited about it. Yarn snobs may feel free at this point to kindly BITE ME.
I also bought a big skein of Bernat light green acrylic because it looked like it matched this mystery light green acrylic I had in my stash and I could maybe make a blanket out of them. Much to my dismay, it did not, so now I have TWO un-matching giant skeins of light green acrylic.
I loved Smiley's. It's not as much of a fiber-porn store (oh, I could spend forever just fondling yarns at my LYS) but it's so big and so cheap, and the staff are friendly. Even the train trek wasn't as bad as I thought it would be--a bit over an hour each way from Manhattan, the length of my daily commute from the BK to work.

Summer Plans

Today was one of those quintessential (and rare) perfect, glorious, gorgeous spring days in NY. Among other things, I picked up the Adrienne Vittadini book at Knit NY. Also pictured is a 3+ lb cone of nylon/linen thread that I got for $5 at School Products, and a 1lb cone of dk cotton in a lovely deep burgundy. It is my sincere and earnest (and futile) hope that it will knit to gauge for the ruffled lace cardi on the AV cover, despite being the wrong weight. I'll let you know what happens...

Score!!

The antique store/flea market shop down the street had bins of free books out last night. Fighting with hipsters to get at their contents, we came up with about 30 awesome free books--ancient engineering books for the SO and great classics of literature for me, including:
Saul Bellow's To Jerusalem and Back and Herzog (how timely...)
Leaves of Grass (also timely, 150 years! how time does fly...)
The Great Gatsby
Jane Eyre
Story of O
Candide
Countless Agatha Christies (if I hadn't read just about all her mysteries when I was about 10, I might have taken all of the numerous ones in the pile...they're addictive like candy!)
And I even left a few for other people....!


Mack readies himself for a trip to 1968 Paris avec un Michelin guide and Larousse de Poche.



More free books!

Mack the Mechanic

I'm obsessed.

I just got the Vogue Knitting Spring/Summer 2005 Issue. (The first time I've ever purchased a knitting magazine, but damn, $5.99 for all those patterns? Sign me up!)
In it is a little tiny ad for the Adrienne Vittadini Spring 2005 booklet which features this ruffled cardigan which I am now obsessed with making. There's no way I'll pay $85 for the yarn, though, so as soon as I pick up that AV booklet I'll need to find a yarn substitution. Stupid knitting, so freakin' obsession-causing.

States thing

Haha, this is fun (half of these were bolded on a U-Haul move from Chicago to Irvine oh-so-long-ago...):

bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C. /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

Bulky Mittens - Finished!

pattern: my hands (L&R)

Yarn: Fox Brand Germantown Bulkyspun, Black
Bernat Boa in Cardinal
Needles: #11 Denise
Hook: Size I
I had these two balls of this black bulky yarn that I wanted to make some cold-weather accessory out of. I whipped these up with the magic loop while watching Metropolis. I love the magic loop. The finished mittens seemed boring (and were also a little short in the cuff, oops.) so I dug up some of this boa which would never have seen the light of day otherwise and crocheted on some furry cuffs.

modeled by my hand

Not the most amazing project, but hey! New Mittens! (and I'll be darned if it's not still cold enough out at night to wear them!)