A finished striped top

My striped top is all done! More or less my own design, somewhat inspired by a pattern in Fitted Knits by Stephanie Japel. More details on how I made it later... for now, just the pictures because I am watching Amélie and can't read subtitles and type a pattern at the same time.

That's a lot of stitches

So I was happily cleaning our guest room closet and freecycling the stuff we never use. Next door in our office, the basketweave blanket that I washed this morning was blocking. It’s almost a perfect square - 41 x 43 inches. And I used almost every last bit of the 13 balls of Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk yarn. Go me!!

Well. In the depths of the closet behind our stockpile of gift bags, guess what I found? That’s right, a 14th ball of Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk. Grump, grump, grump. Who ever though I would be sad to find yarn?? Now came the dilemma of whether to frog the edge of the baby blanket and add the extra ball (giving me about 3.3 more inches of blanket length) or use the extra ball for something else. Thanks to my lovely friends on Ravelry, I will not be frogging. Instead the extra ball will become a cowl. This makes me happy.

Just for fun, I decide to count how many boxes of basketweave I have in the blanket. As a result, I was able to determine exactly how many stitches in my blanket.

• 24 5-stitch boxes wide plus a 10 stitch garter border = 130 stitches wide.
• 37 5-stitch boxes tall plus a 12 row garter border plus cast on and bind off rows = 199 stitches tall.
• 130 x 199 = 25,870 in the baby blanket.

The blanket was about 32 x 32 unblocked and is 42 x 43 blocked. I think it will grow a little more with use. Thank goodness I talked myself out of a sweater with this yarn. It's gorgeous, but very stretchy and would certainly not hold its shape well in a garment.

Oh, and just for fun, I did the math to see how many stitches were in my legwarmers:

• Lower ribbing: 13 rows x 90 stitches per row + 90 cast on stitches = 1260 stitches
• 1st repeat (only one done correctly!): 14 rows x 90 stitches per row = 1260 stitches
• Lower leg: 12 rows x 90 stitches per row x 9 repeats = 9720 stitches
• Upper leg: 12 rows x 96 stitches per row x 8 repeats = 9216 stitches
• Upper ribbing: 13 rows x 96 stitches per row +96 bind off stitches = 1344 stitches
• 1260 + 1260 + 9720 + 9216 + 1344 = 22,800 stitches in my legwarmers

Design Hazards

In December, I decided to design my own top-down V neck sweater (or tee, depending on the yardage I have left for the sleeves) using yarn leftover from other projects: Valley Yarn Northampton in grey (242 yards leftover) from my boatneck bluebell sweater and Cascade 220 in a grey/white twisty tweed (385 yards leftover) from my satchel project. I did a lot of math to get the top part of the sweater to fit just right. And it does! Once I split the sleeves from the body, I decided to wing it. And that has now cost me 2 froggings of the body. Hmpf. The first go round, I did some bust darts on the front and decreases in the center back. The back looked really bad. Lots of puckering. And the stripes looked horrible in the back with the decreases. I knit almost down to my belly button before I frogged that back. Then I tried to do the decreases on the sides, 2 stitches from the place where the sleeves were split, so there were 4 stitches between the decreases. Two things: 1) The decreases started too late and there was bunch of fabric bagging under my arms, 2) the deceases were too close together (both row wise and stitch wise) creating a weird angular shape... basically the shaping was too dramatic. I finished ripping just a few minutes ago. The picture below is half-way frogged back. Yes, that's right, I made it all the way to the waist shaping before I finally admitted to myself that the bust shaping was NOT going to block out. Anyway, away I go again. This time I am starting the bust shaping right away (2nd row after splitting the sleeves from the body), I am doing the decreases 6 stitches away from the center of the under arms (12 stitches between) and I am decreasing every 3rd row instead of every other row. I'm crossing my fingers that the "third time's a charm."

(Also pictured: my breakfast of cream of wheat with cocoa and sucanat and a mug of earl grey in my Washington DC mug. The inauguration is only 2 days away!)

I received a hand-me-down food dehydrator over the holidays, so I'm giving it a go with 4 naval oranges. The kitchen smells divine right now! The only trouble is that the dehydrator didn't come with any instructions, so I'm not sure when to stop it. I guess I'll just keep checking. I'm planning to use these oranges with some rosemary from my herb garden and maybe a few pine cones for a potpourri in the living room.

In other news, Rocky seems to have cabin fever. He's been moping around the house for a few days. I think I know why. We haven't been for a run in a week because of the very cold weather and a bad head cold that I had. Here's the depressed pooch. (I'm not sure why he sits on the stairs like this... it must be comfortable.) Don't worry, buddy, we're going for a run today. I promise!!

I went into the basement this morning to start blocking the basketweave baby blanket, and found Chloe and Cheshire sleeping their heated cat bed. Chesh woke up for the photo op, but Chloe was having none of it. Must have been a long night of pouncing on each other and wrestling.

Xmas gifts delivered and legwarmers

I delivered my Christmas knits last week! Yay!!

Seafoam scarf for grandma:


Turn a square hat for pappy:


FLS for mom:


I spent most of the trip to SC working on a pair of legwarmers. Lucky for me, I read about some of the projects on Ravelry AND got some advice from a friend who made these legwarmers. Here are my specs/mods/details:

• Pattern: Alpaca Sox Legwarmers
• Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine in grey
• Yardage: 1.68 skeins = 727.4 yards (I know this is accurate, thanks to my new electronic scale for weighing yarn!!! Thanks, Santa!) This is WAY more yarn than the pattern calls for, but 1) I used a smalled needle size and 2) added more length than the pattern called for.
• Needles: Size 1 (I wanted them knit up tighter than the pattern called for, based on input from others that had knit up this project.)
• After the first repeat, I thought I had memorized the chart. Well, well. Turns out I skipped rows 7 and 8 of the chart. I didn't realize it until 6 repeats in to the first legwarmer. So, consider the lack of rows 7 and 8 a "design feature."
• From looking at the pictures of other projects, 11 pattern repeats should be sufficient to make the legwarmers the recommended 20.25 inches. But, since I went down 2 needle sizes AND skipped rows 7 and 8 of the chart AND wanted longer legwarmers (23 inches), it took 18 pattern repeats and 26 rows of ribbing (13 on top and 13 on the bottom) to complete the sox.
• When I wear them, it's hard to keep them up over my knees. I might add elastic to the wrong side or just wear them below the knee. We'll see.

I'll conclude with a few picture of the legwarmers. Here they are with ballet flats. Don't all ballerinas wear legwarmers? Too bad I'm way to clumsy to be a ballerina!


A close up of the stitch pattern... (sans rows 7 and 8!)

Totally 80s shot!! Legwarmers and heels. I'm totally sporting a side pony tail with this. Promise.