Clapotis Fin!

I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Mine was great. I love going over to friend's house and being responsible for just one or two things, rather than a whole meal.

I finally got some new batteries for my camera, but I think I might have to tell Santa that I need a new camera for Christmas. This one is seriously wonky all of a sudden.

Because the Clap deserved its own post, you're getting a FO finally. My, my, this thing was really a beast. I really went through fits and starts to finish this one. Running out of yarn, which thankfully,Mim came to my rescue, with extra yarn. Mine is the Clapotis that ate everyone else's! It is so large and not what I wanted, but I can use it. I decided to go ahead and keep it. It is a nice wrap to throw on when one is cold, which I am frequently. I blocked it last weekend and have been using it since, so I guess it is a keeper.



Sorry for the crappy pics, but now my digital camera is not working so well. M tried and tried to take a decent picture, but this is what I ended up with. It is a bit blurry, but you can see how I wear it, which is how I'm wearing it at work right now!


This pic above shows the width of this Monster Clapotis.

Project Specs:
Project: Clapotis from Knitty
Yarn used: Brooks Farm Limited Edition sock yarn-not listed on website, it is 60% wool, 20% silk, 20% viscose. It has a nice light weight warm to it.
Date Completed: started October '06 and finished November 16th, '06.
Modifications: not really any, except for that big glaring mistake of not following the instructions in Section 2 for the increase rows. Instead of doing 6 repeats in that section, I got confused with Section 3 and did 12 repeats, which is why I ran out of yarn.

I'm overall pleased with the project, even though it wasn't what I initially envisioned. One day, I may try again with the Clapotis to get it to the right size, but right now, I'm a bit burnt out on this pattern.

What's Happening Pussycat?

I'd planned to blog way before today, but time just got in my way. And now, I have a post with no pictures. But I felt compelled to blog, so here ya go. I took out my camera to take some pics last night and my batteries died AGAIN. I really have to search for a charger for this camera, b/c what I have with the batteries is getting really old. The camera took the pictures, but then it shut down and now my pics are trapped on my dead camera, so there.

Lots of knitting progress has been happening. I finally finished the second garter stitch scarf out of Patons SWS (Soy & Wool) and I added fringe. The scarf is really a bit too long, but after finishing it, I was ready to wear it and I wrapped it around my neck the next day. Then I realized I didn't know what I was thinking when I thought I would keep this scarf, b/c the stuff sheds like crazy. It did already when I knitted it and then it just got worse while attempting to wear it. The issue isn't so much that it sheds, but I can't wear it around my neck, because it would shed on my hair and leave lots of lint to be collected by the ends of my locked hair. So it's outta here. M kept commenting as I fringed it, how that would be a nice gift for someone other than myself and I was so cocky, that this scarf was to be mine. Yeah, well, apparently not. I told him that he is a jinx on my knitting.

Secondly, I finished my monster Clapotis. I received some additional yarn from Mim. She was such a lifesaver. I saw that she'd been knitting socks out of the same yarn, as she was at Estes this summer. She ripped hers out as she didn't like the pooling on it. I inquired about a possible swap and it was arranged. That saved my hide as this Clapotis is eating yarn. So I finished it Thursday morning after staying up to 3 a.m., because I thought I was running out of yarn AGAIN and I could not deal with that. I didn't run out, but I used a goodly portion of yarn and only have a small amt. leftover. This thing is huge.

While beautiful, it's not what I wanted. I'm a bit disappointed with that. It's more like a stole than a scarf at this point. It's really, really huge. I don't love it, but I love the yarn. I'm not sure what I will do with it. One of my friends commented that most of my shawl-type things I've made, I've given away, which is true, except for Seraphim. My mom really liked the alpaca shawl, but it wasn't very large. This thing is massive, but she might like it. Who knows? Right now, I think I could do 3 things with it, 1) rip it out and remake it to the right proportions, but then I'd have lots of leftover yarn. Of course I have no desire to restart it anytime soon. 2) make another Clapotis out of different yarn, but once again, no real desire to reknit this right away or 3)gift this Clapotis and start another one, much, much later. I'm leaning towards option 3.

I'm still making progress on the socks, although since I received the additional yarn for Clapotis, I was knitting almost exclusively on it. I picked up the socks last night, turned the heel and picked up stitches while watching Gray's and Shark. It was nice to not knit something fast and furiously, but just to knit and enjoy it leisurely. While one part of my brain says, geez, these socks have been around forever (although not really), the other part says, there's no hurry for the socks. It's not like I don't have any socks and these Koigu socks really match nothing, but I will love wearing them regardless.

I did finish the second sleeve on Hourglass and have joined both sleeves to the body and now I'm knitting hundreds of stitches while decreasing. I worked a few rounds earlier this week, but then decided that I must finish the Clapotis. I am looking forward to working on Hourglass. While this is my sweater to be completed this month, I decided I'm no longer rushing, but enjoying the knitting of it.

I guess that's it from the salt mines. A new post will be coming over the weekend, but with pictures.

About NaKniSweMo

Yeah, so it's the first week of November and I've found yet another KAL to join. This one has the purpose of imitating NaNoWriMo to knit 50,000 stitches in one month. There are no real hard and fast rules which suits my purposes just fine. I've decided to focus on finishing my Hourglass sweater. I'd put it down for a week or two while I tried to determine if my sleeves would be too big or not.




Well finally after casting on for the first sleeve this weekend, it appears the sleeve is just fine. I finsihed the first sleeve and attached it to the body and then cast on for the secnod sleeve today. Then I went to vote. While Im' glad to have the right to vote and that I did get the opportunity to vote last night, I was one of those caught up in the long voting lines. I stood in line to vote for almost 3 hours. That was quite the feat for me. Next time, it will be absentee ballot all the way for me. Nonetheless, I was able to knit while standing in line and I kept trucking along on my sleeve.

I even got to meet the Mayor of Denver, which was pretty cool. He went around to various polling sites thanking the voters for staying and voting and the volunteers passed out water, crackers, cookies and chips, which was great since I didn't get home until after 9:30 p.m.!
I even took a picture with the mayor while holding up my knitting. I'm such a nerd, what can I say?

And sorry for the cellphone-quality pic, but that was the closest to digital I could get at the time.

The Passing of Socktoberfest

Whew, so it's been a little bit. I could apologize, but I won't. I just didn't feel like blogging, so I didn't. I've definitely been doing a lot of knitting. Albeit, somehwhat crazily. Of course, I joined Socktober this year and didn't finish my socks, although I did finish a pair for M2. They just haven't managed to make their way onto the blog. M2 is too busy wearing them, which is a good thing. They were Ped socks.

Although my Socktober socks are not finished, I haven't stopped working on them. I cast on for the second sock and am a few rows away from starting the heel flap. Everytime I work on these socks, I love them more and more.


What I have been working on incessantly, like a crazed woman is my Clapotis. I love the yarn and the color. I was really wanting to finish it so that I could wear it and use it. One of my knitting girls kept saying how large it was considering I hadn't even starting dropping stitches yet at that point. She was really concerned that I might run out of yarn. I was convinced I was fine, but yet, a shadow of doubt crept in and then I started knitting like crazy to see how much further my yarn took me.



As I knit, I started thinking of the first Clap I knit for my cousin that this one was so much wider and I thought that perhaps I might check my stitch count. Where I should have 107 sts on my needles, I had 171 sts. How could this be?, I thought. But of course, since a lot of my knitting is done at work, I realized that in Section 2, it has you do repeats of rows 1-12 6 times and I must have looked down at section 3 and done the repeats 12 times instead. I even kept a sticky where I marked my 12 repeats, so that's how I screwed it up. But by this time, I was into the second ball of the Brooks Farm Limited Edition "sock" yarn and as Brooks Farm only sells this at shows, you can't get it. And since it's Limited Edition, there's no dyelots. I didn't want to rip, that just wasn't in me. I was already dropping stitches, I just couldn't do it. There is a swap in the works,so hopefully I'll have some more yarn soon to complete it.

I also bought some fun yarn (what yarn isn't fun) that I saw Nachaele knitting with. It's by Patons and it's the Patons SWS, a soy and wool yarn that is feltable. It's really nice stuff to work with and Michaels had it on sale for $5, which was only a dollar off, so no real savings, but I went crazy and bought like 8 skeins, planning to make a hat and scarf set. Well, later reason got the best of me and I realized that I would realistically only make 2 scarves before I would get bored with it. I finished the first scarf, from the colorway Natural Navy and M decided he liked it and kept bugging me for it, till I just let him have it. Sorry for the sideways picture, but I uploaded them in a hurry this morning, so this is what you got. Nothing special, just garter stitch.



Ever since the sweater is almost finished, M is getting a little demanding about the handknits, if you can imagine. First he was happy with whatever I gave him. Then I agreed to knit him a sweater and I had a year to finish it. More on the sweater later. Then as I finished knitting it and just have the finishing to do on it, he remarked that I was going to knit him a scarf, too, right? But when I offered to make him a scarf last year, he wasn't interested in it. Now all of sudden, he sees the yarn I'm working with, which was an acceptable length for him, about 48 inches, he decides he wants it and won't it look so good with his jacket? Next thing you know, I just cave and let him have it, because hey, I won't have to knit him another scarf, right? I'm done. So I'm making myself one now out of the Natural Plum color. Actually it's finished, just need to weave in some ends and I plan to add fringe, because I used some of the 3rd ball, but not much. Might as well add some fringe to make it longer and do something different with it.

Since it's NaKniSweMo, I'll have some more news to add about it this weekend.