I had an excellent weekend, although about 12 hours of it was spent on the road, hence the lack of blogging. I met up with my brother-in-law, Keith, in Milwaukee, where we were joined by sister, Michelle, from Omaha, before proceeding to Madison for the 2006 Drum Corps International Finals. (Other sister, Sarah, had class over the weekend, so she had to stay home.)

We had a fabulous time, and we’re psyched that starting in 2008, the finals will be moving to Indianapolis for the following decade or so: much easier to get to, park at, etc.

But did I take any drum corps pictures? No, of course not. I took a knitting picture, instead.

Before I started working on it, I found all kinds of issues online with the Hooded Kaftan from Special Knits by Debbie Bliss. The pattern is not at all clear, so for the good of the cause, I thought I’d try to elucidate here, even though I’m not finished with it yet. I’ll update with in-progress shots once I get further along.

Yes, you do end up binding off the back neck before separately casting on stitches for the hood. This seems silly, but it’s necessary — the hood is nearly twice as wide as the neck; if it weren’t, you wouldn’t be able to pull it up over a big baby head. In the picture above, I’ve already joined the front and back at the shoulder seams. I knit across the held stitches on the right side of the front, cast on the required number of stitches for the hood, and continued onto the left held stitches.

Continuing to follow the hood directions as written, you do end up with a big trapezoid. Points A and B are at the ends of the bound-off hood edge; point C is approximately at the middle of the hood edge. D represents the cast-on bottom of the hood and E is the back neck edge. There are, like, ten words in the finishing instructions that tell you how this is all supposed to become a hood. Here are about 75 words that should do the same thing.

Fold the hood in half along the center back at point C, bringing together points A and B. Join the two halves of the hood edge together.

Join D, the lower edge of the hood, with E, the back neck edge. Because D is longer than E, you’ll have to ease or gather edge D a bit to make it fit. If you’re doing an invisible seam, this means you’ll probably go through two hood stitches for every one neck stitch. To be certain, mark both D and E at the 1/2, 1/4 and 3/4 points, and match them up before you start.

Like I said, I’ll post more pictures as I get further along (and I’ll try not to take them in the half light of 7:00 AM).

Oh, and if I ever say, “I’ll just put in a zipper,” about any knitted garment in the future, remind me how crazy I am. The red sweater came out great, but the process was a big old pain in the ass.

Or at least I will have a stash once all my various and sundry shipments of yarn get to me. I have been trying very hard (with the small exception of sock yarn, which one always needs to have more of for when one finishes the pair of socks one is presently working on) not to buy yarn without any specific projects in mind for it. I’ve been doing really well, too. I have a small collection of leftovers I’ve been trying to use up, and everything else was purchased with a specific project in mind.

However, when my sisters and I took the aforementioned trip to my local LYS, I checked out their sale area and picked up 8 balls of RYC Luxury Cotton DK in Slipper, a rosy pink shade. I love pink, the price was right, and I think I can squeeze a Picovoli out of it; we’ll have to see.

Then WEBS was having a sale, so I added a random ball of green Debbie Bliss Merino Aran for my as-yet undesigned holiday wreath, along with some Jo Sharp Soho Summer in Oyster for another summer sweater, and some Knit One, Crochet Two Angora Soft in Dove at a ridiculous $1.50 per ball. I have no idea how it will behave, with its angora and viscose content, but at $18 for a sweater’s worth, I figured it was worth finding out.

And then, after talking with the Borders knitting group last night, I was somehow convinced that I absolutely should take advantage of the Rowan Yorkshire Tweed closeout at one of my favorite eBay stores, Jannette’s Rare Yarns. Oh dear. Had I bought everything I wanted to, I would have spent well over $200. As it was, I still spent more money than I should on yarn, but I got some serious bargains: enough 4-Ply for a sweater each for me and Mike, and four more random greens in various weights for my wreath. I think between what I’ve bought and what I have in my stash, I have 10 different green yarns.

I’ll take pictures once it all comes in, both of the yarn and of my attempts to cram it into my already full yarn storage.

My sisters were in town last weekend, and each of them bought yarn for me to make sweaters to give to friends who are expecting. Here’s the sweater for baby #1, due just about any minute now.

This is a sweater totally of my own devising, and if you ask me, it came out just great. It’s Tahki Cotton Classic — a serviceable yarn — on the good ol’ Denise circulars. All it needs now is a zipper.

Check this out from the Infinite Cat Project — a
video of a cat watching a cat on a computer screen, watching a cat on a computer screen, watching a cat on a computer screen…