Monday, September 10, 2007

No more lollygagging around.


It stands to reason, I would think, that if you want to knit a sweater in a month, you need to be half done with it at the middle of the month. (That doesn't include finishing, but I'm willing to call it a success if I finish the knitting in September and spend a week of October doing finishing.) For refrence, what you see is the start of a sweater knit from wrist to wrist. The first sleeve is done; it's 15 in/33 cm long. Then comes the body, which is 21 in/46 cm long (with a half-gusset short-row thing in the middle for fit, but I'm not thinking about that right now), then another sleeve. Right now I've got about 4 in/9 cm of the body done, and I need to have about 11 in/24 cm done by the 15th if I want to keep up with this whole deadline idea. (Ideally, I'd be halfway through the short row gusset-thingie on the fifteenth, but I'm not thinking about it.)

Also due by the 15th, a Knitty article, and a skein of Purple Trainwreck.

Brace for prolonged swearing. I can see it on the horizon.

-... -

My father-in-law is known as Gadget Man (in fact, I may start calling him that regularly on the blog), and had in the past expressed interest in how I produced those nice, neat 'cakes' of yarn. I had explained the concept of a swift and ball-winder to him, but he wasn't quite getting it. (He's more about office gadgetry, and there's nothing quite the same in office equipment to compare it to.) While they were visiting, my mother-in-law was working on a sweater (she has the good sense to knit for herself - it's very nice, a dark pink cotton) and she pulled out a new skein of yarn to wind into a ball. The husbeast saw her and said "Julie's got something for that." and called me. When I figured out that a ball of yarn needed wound, I went and got my father-in-law with swift and ball-winder in hand, saying, "You're going to want to see this."

So I ended up doing a demonstration on my dining room table. My mother-in-law had seen a similar setup at her local yarn store, but was intrigued by my swift. (I have a Becka swift, and she's used to an umbrella swift.) My father-in-law, having watched the entire thing without a word, slapped his hands against his cheeks and said "AAAH!"

I have a feeling I'm going to get an e-mail one of these days, asking where to buy the swift. And I suspect that my father-in-law will want to wind all the yarn.

-... -

Some random weekend photos:




And now, back to the knitting. Woohoo!

5 comments:

Sonja said...

I love the little red crocs! My daughter has a pair too, she calls them her "puddle shoes".

Unknown said...

I always like to do the "swift" type thing with my darlin' hubby. The issues then becomes controlling him . . . the first time I pulled out Pampered Chef's pealer/corer/slicer thing to peal and slice potatoes, he was on the phone. He soon was off the phone and "took over." It was a beautiful thing, sort of Tom Sawyerish. Of course, he ended up doing almost 7 pounds of potatoes by the time he was done!

LOL! You could always suggest it as a Christmas present . . . the question is who do you give it to the MIL or FIL.

Anonymous said...

goober on the run!

i love the story of the swift... amazing how anything with screws and gears can get a guy's attention!

Amy Lane said...

That's so funny...Ladybug's friend at daycare has a pair of those--she came up to me today waving them around and yelling "shoes...shoes...mine mine mine..." Little clotheshorse.

And that's funny about the swift... it's like letting kids wind your yarn because...because...because they get to play with fun stuff!!!

roxie said...

There is a distinct fascination with umbrella swifts too. And have you shown him spinning wheels? When I used to do spinning demos at the state faair, 95% of the males (from age 0 on up)watched the wheel, and 95% of the females watched my hands. There is a certain ammount of hard-wiring going on in our species.