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Mary Beth asked for the pattern for the scarf I made for my old boss. I made it up, and at the time wrote something down, but whatever that was it wasn’t the scarf I knit. The most obvious problem was that I cast on 45, but each row as written had 49 stitches. I should take better notes.

Using Knit Visualizer from www.knitfoundry.com I charted out the pattern several times and several ways, referring back to the photos I had taken of the unfinished scarf. Turns out I had only cast on 45 and most of problem came from mis-counting the M1’s.

And here we have the resultant pattern, with chart and text: Undulant #2 (pdf)

The software is pretty good. It charts with the mouse or by translating text. As you can see, it prints out both the symbols and instructions for both right and wrong side rows. The selection of symbols is fairly broad, but it could use one for make one-purlwise. I had to use a color symbol. Since in print preview you can edit the instructions, but not the symbol name, a small improvement would be to have a few symbols for special instructions. You can also edit the text pattern as well, which I found necessary since the text is a direct translation of the chart.

In other knitting news, because one just can’t have too many lace projects going at once, I’ve started a lace scarf in rayon for a friend with a wool sensitivity. Pictures later. Birch is in my desk drawer at work, making slow progress during conference calls. F&F, unfortunately, needs to be frogged back 4 rounds. I managed to miss two yarn-overs, one after the other on the last increase row. After I finish the laundry, I’ll lay it out on the bed and frog.

Weather-wise, it’s like fall today: cool and damp—too wet to bike.

As you can see, I have finally completed the Angled Scarf. The Crystal Palace Bamboo needles helped it go a bit faster, though I would still have preferred aluminum.

An interesting note about the Elsebeth Lavold Angora: the knitted yarn got fluffier as it was handled, though the yarn coming off the needles wasn’t particularly so.

Detail of scarf »

After wet blocking this and while waiting for it to dry, I amused myself yesterday by teaching myself how to populate an HTML form from a MySQL database using PHP. That pretty much sums up the day, except for the hour or so I spent at the gym—my first time in the gym in about a year. These love handles have got to go.

This came Friday, thirteen hanks of wool from Beaverslide Dry Goods, two sampler packs of wool/mohair, which is the rainbow effect, and the one in the foreground, wool, which just looked like a something I’d like, which I do. While J might argue that I don’t need more yarn, since I don’t have any place to put it, I like having enough—in quantity and variety—to choose from when I want to start something new.
It would make a lovely rainbow sweater don’t you think? *barf*

There is, unfortunately, a slight floral scent to the yarn, probably from the wool wash used. It’s not overpowering and most people would find it pleasant, but J and I are both scent-adverse. Break out the Zip-Locs.

I was amazed at this:

I have never seen so many stamps and so many denominations on one package. Looks cool.

Different subject altogether

On the advice of my newly acquired cardiologist—isn’t aging wonderful?—I ordered fish, cod to be specific, at dinner last night instead of the hanger steak or pasta in cream sauce. People eat this? Slimy and nauseating.

Tuna and salmon are fine. Swordfish would be okay if it weren’t endangered. Cod is going to take a bit more effort.

And I don’t remember what’s in it. But does that stop me from buying more? Of course not. Would it stop you?

I took a sick day today for a mid-day doctor’s appointment that had every possibility of being a very long one, but only it only swallowed two hours of my life—including a twelve-block walk for bloodwork—so I went shopping. I visited The Point on Bedford in the Village for the first time. There are some very nice yarns in there. I bought a few.

The green is Fleece Artist Kid / Silk 3 Ply in Moss. It’s so pretty, it will be a shame to untwist and wind it. The blue and the yellow are Manos Cotton Stria in two of my favorite hues. They’re labeled Navy and Saffron, but the blue as a hint of green to it.

I also picked up a set of Crystal Palace Bamboo #9’s (Am). These are smoother with a slightly sharper point than the hated Clovers.

This is my progress on the pattern from the last post. When viewed from the side the pattern is distinct, but from the front, it’s pretty much a blue rectangle.

Today’s Mystery: Just how many tissues did J forget to remove from the last load of laundry he did?

At work—for conference calls where I have to pay attention and can’t actually work through them, yet don’t have anything to contribute—I have a bit of knitting I started, a scarf, and have been futzing around with a pattern. It’s in Baby Ull on #3 Am (3.00 mm) Swallow straights, so it’s in a fairly small gauge, but it’s just knits and purls, so I wouldn’t call it particularly difficult to knit. What’s been difficult was working my pattern out in my head. I tried working it out on paper, but my notebook isn’t big enough, so I turned to MS Excel, which can provide a decent grid.
Is a 102 row repeat excessive?
Four or five of them should yield a nice scarf.
I’ve put the pattern chart in a PDF here. I tried a table in HTML, but it wouldn’t print.

Men Knit, Issue 2 is out and I have a design in it, the Chevron Scarf, but I have no idea whose head is shown next to my “bio”.

Any clues? I haven’t had that much hair in twenty-five years.

I can’t count. The
Ribbed Scarf should be 38 stiches wide, not 40.

I’ve corrected the pattern.

Sorry.

Impossible Princess comments that he should count down to his 22nd birthday. I think he should count down to fifty like the rest of us. If his birthday were today he’d still have 10,227 days to go. Now that would be rubbing it in.

Angela: The Chevron Scarf should be in the next issue of MenKnit, due out soon.

The Spring Scarf was something like this:

This is knit from the center out. I changed colors when I thought it would look good, never put the two contrasting colors next to each other, and tried to make the two halves look similar but not exactly alike.Cast on 42 with a provisional CO (I used a crocheted provisional CO)
1. K1, k2tog, k18, p18, p1 then k1 into same st, sl 1 wyif
2. K1, p20, k20, sl 1 wyif
3-22. Repeat 1 & 2
23. K1, p2tog, p18, k18, k1 then p1 into same st, sl 1 wyif
24. K1, k20, p20, sl 1 wyif
25-44. repeat 23 & 24
I repeated these two sections until the scarf was half the length I wanted, then finished with
1. K1, k2tog, *p2, k2*, p1, p1 then k1 into same st, sl 1 wyif
2. K1, p1, *K2, p2*, p1, sl 1 wyif
3-10. repeat 1 & 2
Bind off
Remove provisional CO and replace scarf on needle so that you will be knitting in the same direction as before, then repeat first half.

As I would have reported yesterday, except Blogger was on the fritz, I can’t say enough about our new programmable thermostat. It’s actually warm when I (remember to) wake up in the morning and not at 3am as it was with the old thermostat.