Step Off

Some questions have come up on one of my forums about how to get rid of that ugly little step you get when you bind off after knitting in the round.

There's a really simple solution that takes just a few seconds. It's hard to explain in words but in pictures it's pretty easy.

Here you are at the end of binding off, with 1 stitch left on the needle. Since knitting in the round is really making a spiral, you're left with 1 side a row higher than the other.

Instead of breaking the yarn and then pulling the tail of the yarn through the loop of the last stitch (an extra step that adds more yarn for no reason), simply lift the needle and pull the tail of the yarn out, so it's really only half a stitch.
Now you're left with this ugly step.

Thread the tail of your yarn onto a needle, and then pass the needle under the v that is formed from the *first* stitch in the bind off.

Close up picture after the yarn is pulled through.
Now put your needle back down into the center of the *last* stitch of the bind off. This is the same stitch you pulled the yarn out of above. Now you've made that into a whole stitch again, but it also goes under the first stitch.
So now it makes a pretty, continuous chain. You can't even tell where the round ends.
And, no more step. Voila!

Photo Finish!

It was closer than a Michael Phelp's race

But I did manage to finish.

This afghan was started Wednesday night and finished Saturday morning at Panera with some other members of Team Indiana.

It's 4 strands of acrylic yarn, knit on size 35 needles. I hated it all Wednesday night, and most of Thursday, but then I got the swing of it late in the day and didn't mind quite as much the ginormous needles.

Also finished Saturday was this dragon. The soaker has been done for ages but that dragon was causing me problems.

By far my biggest Olympic challenge was doing all the pattern sizing for the Skirt Pattern up to girl's sizing.

There are some interesting problems with going from baby/toddler shaping to going to little girl shaping (mostly, that babies waists aren't that much smaller than their hips. It's a whole different ballgame when you're talking about size 12 girls.

I thought I was home free on Saturday when I just had the legs of the pants to do and a wee bit of math. But then I tripped and knit the cuff of the shorts in the main color and had to rip that out. And I tripped on the math a bit too, and had to go back and re-adjust.

I was having my husband type numbers on the laptop for me while I knit the last leg cuff, but we finished both right around 11:35 am on Sunday (the deadline being 11:59 am my time). Which was good because I had to get dressed and leave the house by noon. But anyway, I did it! 14 finished objects, and 1 pattern graded. I couldn't be happier.

While we were frantically trying to get out of the house I realized I have nothing left to knit. I have really only 2 WIPs, and neither are suitable for taking places. I cant' recall ever having so few projects.

Sean has been asking me to make him socks with the leftover Blackwatch yarn ever since I finished mine, so I started those. Apparently my children have concluded that the knitting of socks is an act of great love, so I think there's a bit of competition in there to make sure no one else has more socks. When these get done everyone will be even and then maybe I better just stop making socks for anyone.

Meanwhile... I'll leave you with this little hint of what else I've been working on the past few weeks...

Olympic Knits

So I'd originally thought I'd follow the Yarn Harlot's suggestion for the summer Olympics and do a crochet project. I'm not nearly as much of a crocheter, but I thought it would be a challenge. And when I saw the Midsummer's Dream Camisole in Interweave Crochet a while back I thought I'd found my project.


But I also knew I had more half finished things than I was comfortable with. So I figured I could crochet and do some Works in Progress too. So I tagged my projects for Crochet and WIP Wrestling events on Ravelry. It wasn't until I realized I had 14 projects that I also signed myself up for Team Hopelessly Overcommitted.

Here's what I've done so far (in no particular order).


This one barely even counts. It needed sewing up and the ribbons sewn on, and it has been in that state for about a year. I have no excuse.


(Yarn is some kind of cotton, not dishcloth cotton, but the ballband is long gone.)






Here's another one that was really close to being done: a blanket for Project Linus that needed 2 rounds of border and a millions end woven in. But at least I did have to work on it for a few hours to call it done.


(Double stranded acrylic, double crocheted on an N-hook.)


I did the second Lorna's Laces sock, start to finish.
Molly's socks. These were part way through the first sock, so that was mostly a real project. She likes )


(Yarn is Katia Irina - very cool and sparkly, very splitty.)






Finished these 2 custom order Sheepy Pants shorts

Mosaic Moons BFL in rainbow. LOVE this yarn.
And this pair with hand-dyed yarn from Noes to Toes Knits on Hyena Cart, colorway "Aggie".

And this pair of longies that were down to the bottom of the top braid. Yarn is Noro Kureyon and Lamb's Pride.

These came out great, I'm so pleased with the color matching on the legs. A little extra work, but worth it.




This American Girl doll dress is a WIP from 2006. Really.


I ran out of yarn, couldn't really figure out what I thought of the skirt, which was weird, and finally decided to rip it out and start over. Basically the only thing I didn't do over was a few inches of bodice.
Speaking of running out of yarn....


I'd run out of yarn on these half way through the soaker part a while ago. Got some more but never got around to finishing this one. This was a pretty easy finisher, just 4-5 inches of soaker.


This skirt finally got a soaker too.







And on the subject of skirts...



Caitie's skirt design is done. I'm still working on the Designer Discus event, writing up the rest of the pattern. I'm taking the laptop to a coffee shop tomorrow morning and hope to get most of it done there.

All this means I have 11 projects done, and 3 left. It also means I am completely current on the blog now (yay!)


One project left is already knit and needs the (rather elaborate) embellishment finished. One is a huge afghan on huge needles which I started on Wednesday and is 3/4 done. And one is a custom order pair of Large shorts, which I started a few days ago and have barely gotten past the ribbing. Plus grading the rest of the skirt pattern.

I have less than 48 hours left. I am worried.

Q&A

I know you all probably think I never read the comments since I am so bad at replying to them, but really, I do!

Critterknit (my number one commenter) asked (a long time ago):

How exactly do you harvest angora? Any chance you'll have angora yarn projects at some point?
You can either pull it out (which is easier than you'd think), or you can shave it off (which is faster). And yes! (Why do you think I let her have a rabbit?)

And also:
So how did the bunny like being shaved?
Hmm, well, not very much. But more than I expected her to, and she seemed to really like *being* shaved once it was done. It must be SO hot to wear an angora coat all the time. Speaking of which, it's almost time to do it again...

She also wanted to know where we were on the lake when I was working on the skirt pattern. That was Lake Wawasee, Indiana, a few hours north of us. Very nice place to visit :)

A couple people have asked about the American Girl doll sweater or Molly's sweater. That pattern will be written up and for sale eventually. It's not super high on my list, since it's a sleeveless shirt and it's fall. Definitely should be done by spring.

Other people have asked about the skirt pattern. The sized up version should be available in a week, or 2 at the most (I hope!).

Laurie commented that Caitie looked taller in her back to school pictures. Caitie is actually wearing her first pair of high heel shoes in that picture. Molly is still considerably taller despite being 2 years younger.

And yes, it was as cool going to Lettuce Knit as it sounds like it was :)

Mollys

Here's one last entry that you should skip if you're not fond of pictures of kids on vacation...

Molly has been in love with Molly McIntire for about a year, since she discovered the books at the library. We finally found time to go to American Girl Place in Chicago and get her one last month.

The entire store experience is enchanting.




We found Molly!
Did you get the picture yet?


She didn't really get excited until Molly came out of her box.
I wish I could bottle that.

Then Molly had to go around and talk with all the other dolls.


After we got Molly (and a whole lot of other stuff), we went to have dinner at the cafe.
Molly didn't like it when they sang happy birthday, but *loved* the gluten and casein free cupcake.

Later we all took a carriage ride around Chicago.
On which Molly was not tired.
Next morning Molly and Molly got ready for breakfast. Finally time to break out the sweaters.

(By the way, the sweaters were finished in the nick of time. The doll version was still damp from blocking when we left and had to be laid out in the van to dry).

She really, really, REALLY did NOT want to go back to the American Girl Store for breakfast. We couldn't figure it out. She'd liked dinner.

Finally we realized she thought she would have to give Molly back.

Once she realized she got to keep her, it was good.

I think she had more fun at breakfast than dinner. Both were great, though.

After breakfast we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Molly told me several times that morning that she didn't want to go to the zoo, but I was sure she'd like it when we got there, so we went anyway.

She was right, she didn't want to go.

She had a little fun watching the otters, but mostly she didn't love the zoo.

Proof that Caitie is a monkey.
Molly wasn't *really* happy until we got to the beach.


But THAT?

That is sheer joy.

Randomness

The week in between trips mostly centered around me finishing this in time for it to be worn in in Chicago.

And a little bit of working on this blue thing, which is so so so soft and yummy. (More about that later).

And also finishing up this custom order.
There was so much excess dye in these pants that it turned my hands blue every time I went to knit. You can see the exact way I hold my yarn.
So I had to rinse them out before I could do the embellishments, to make sure the blue didn't end up all over the other stuff.
This is how much dye came out the first time I dunked them. It was so blue that I saved the water.

Meanwhile I had to experiment with getting the right shade of green for a custom order dip dye.

Which I finally got.
I had so much dye left over from rinsing the pants and dipping the sack that I made this while I was waiting for the pants to dry.

Here's what I ended up with.

The seahorse is doing a nice job of filling in the weird spot where the yarn pooled on that leg.

And the back.

I'm rather proud of how these came out.

Next up... Chicago.

Finale

The end of the vacation blog posting is near. And there's a little bit of knitting in it since this is a knitting blog after all.

(on and by the way, Laurie commented on yesterday's post that Caitie (10) is catching up to Molly (8). That would be because Caitie finally talked me into buying her shoes with heels. Take a look, you can see them. She's still quite a bit shorter :)

There was lots of camp stuff.
Rob and Caitie decided they had to make a bridge/dam across this stream. It was a big production.

Look how small it is here.

And now much wider it is here.
Ontario Place was a hit.
This is the blue slide, the top of which is supposed to provide a view of the nude beach on the Island. Caitie and I couldn't really see anything.

Caitie got to be in charge of her first campfire. It was a good one.
One of my favorite things about where we were was Teepee Steve.

He's a native who lives for the summer at this site right next to where we were at Glen Rouge, and does outreach education for kids. Several groups of kids came and went while we were there and when we were around they let our kids join in.

Steve took down one of his teepees and let our kids put it back up.
There were also groups of natives camping nearby who entertained us at night with really cool drumming and singing.

The fat ballsy racoons came back several times, but they didn't get anything else after the bacon.

In addition to the skirt I worked on around the campfire, I also knit the second of this pair of socks (Plymouth Sockotta, cotton blend, LOVE these)

and the first one of these (Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, Blackwatch).

I also did a bit of work on a silk/bamboo blend tank that I am in love with but pretty much did not take out of the car because I did not want to hurt the pretty yarn.
So on the last day we drove from Toronto to Niagara Falls. And dude, Niagara Falls is cool.

I've been there before, but not in many years. It does not get old.

Ignore the hair. It's impossible to be near that much mist and not have huge insane hair. There are several pictures of me and this is the only one where my hair isn't sticking straight out to the sides like Pippi Longstocking.

This picture is from the Cave of the Winds, a tunnel where you can stand underneath the falls, which is a little... disturbing. And cool, at the same time.
There's also a tunnel that comes out next to the falls. It's a lot cooler than this. I was insanely paranoid about getting my camera wet. You just can't believe how much mist there is.

Here's the American falls from the Canadian side. Caitie thought that it would be a lot more dangerous to go over that side because of all the rocks.

Yeah. That would be why.

Do you see all the little yellow dots off to the right by the little skinny branch (called Bridal Veil) of the falls ? That is the Cave of the Winds, which I thought was the coolest thing there when I was there 25 years ago (oh man was it really 25?).
I still think it's the coolest thing.

We crossed over back to the states in the evening because we wanted to see the falls at night.

(Incidentally, it's really *really* hard to take pictures of moving water with lights on it in the dark. Being worried about your very expensive camera getting wet does not help.)

If you go up to the top level ("Hurricane Deck") you get ridiculously wet and blown around. I do not have any pictures of anyone doing that because, it's ridiculously wet.
This is the rocks Caitie was talking about, where I dropped my camera lens while trying desperately not to get the camera wet by keeping it in a plastic bag.
Totally worth it though.

We left Niagara falls for home around 10, planning on driving an hour or 2 to a hotel outside of tourist central and saving ourselves a little cash.

Unfortunately the only hotel we saw for several hours was $100, which we were sure we could beat, so we went on. When we got to Pennsylvania (just a little corner of it), we stopped again, but there were no rooms. We stopped at a second and third place, still no rooms. Someone told us there was something called the Roar on the Shore in Erie.

So ok, we drove on to Ohio. STILL no rooms. What the heck? We never did find out what was going on, but there were NO rooms anywhere. We had a AAA book and called dozens of hotels, all of them were full. We finally gave up at about 3 am and decided to drive straight through. Cause the kids were asleep the whole time and they were going to be up at 7am whether we stopped or not.

We stopped and slept for an hour or something or other at a truck stop before moving on. Who the heck knows when you're that tired. It sucked so bad. And I didn't get *any* knitting done in the car on the way home. Not one stitch.

We got home around 9 am as tired as I think I have ever been. It was worth it cause the trip rocked, but if I could have skipped the overnight driving, it woulda been better.

Interlude

We interrupt this vacation retrospective to give you...



The First Day Of School.

(angels sing)



(It is not even 9 am and my house is already more organized than it has been in months).


We now return you to vacation blogging.

Yes, again.

Did I mention that I took over 1000 pictures on this trip? That's what happens when you go on vacation with a new camera that takes really fast pictures. But there's actual knitting related stuff in this entry, at least.

We made a quick stop at the Purple Purl, which is a lovely little shop. I almost fell down and spent $60 on some pretty silk/linen, but I resisted, and got out spending a little less on some pretty lilac yarn that Caitie and I want to share.


Then we took the ferry to Center Island, which the kids loved.
Terrorist Fist Jab

The ferry, in addition to being really fun if you're a 5 year old boy, gives you a great view of Toronto.
We visited Franklin's Garden, which was concluded to be "lame".

I was sworn to never show this picture to any of Caitie's friends. Since I'm pretty sure none of her friends read my blog, I think I'm safe.
There was more beach (still cold).

It was a beautiful day.

Looking back through the pictures now I can see what happened.

Rob was taking this flattering picture of my back side, when Molly wandered off. She got really very lost, and what followed was a ridiculous chase with me and a guy who worked there who had a walkie talking running around from place to place and getting bits if information. Is she wearing pink shoes? Saw her running by the petting zoo. Someone saw a girl in a pink skirt running over the bridge. Apparently several people tried to ask her if she was lost, but she just looked at them blankly and ran away. Everywhere we ran to where they just saw her, but she wasn't there anymore. And I am not a good runner. Running = difficulty breathing. Not good.

I could totally envision her getting on the ferry by herself and was fairly well freaking out by the time someone else who worked there finally caught her and held on to her until we got there.

Dinner and a beer later, I was almost back to normal. The guy who chased her down with me ended up being our waiter, and he ended up dumping a tray of drinks all over himself, which was hilarious and totally made my day. He got a very big tip.

After dinner I went back to Lettuce Knit for knit night (Rob took the kids back to High Park).

It turned out to be Megan's baby shower, so there were a TON of people there. It was a little weird to crash her shower. Apparently it's a pretty regular occurence for someone from out of town to come on knit night. Stephanie sprayed me with some kind of miracle air conditioner stuff that she said was the best thing American's ever invented. I don't know if I would go *THAT* far. I mean there was that whole lightbulb thing. But it was pretty cool.

I sat in the back off to the left and boggled that a baby would be so loved as to recieve so many gorgeous hand knits. I thought about Kinnearing Stephanie, but decided it's not possible to pull off with my big new camera, a down side I had not foreseen. I had some nice conversations with several Toronto knitters whose names I completely couldn't remember when I got back and wanted to look them up in ravelry. If anyone knows who the maker of the Elizabeth Zimmermann longies and sweater were, let me know.

Rob came back around dusk with everyone and Caitie jumped out exclaiming "I want to meet the Yarn Harlot!" Stephanie was a very good sport about it (you get the feeling that probably happens to her a lot), and we had a nice chat about fun things to do in or around Toronto. Caitie was a little star struck. (So was I, really.) We mentioned we were going to Ontario Place the next day and Stephanie gave Caitie the tip that you can see the nude beach on the Island from the top of the blue slide.

Rob blinded us all with the strobe light on my camera before we had to take off. (See very pregnant Megan behind me?)

Caitie declared after we drove away "The Yarn Harlot is weird - but in a good way." That's really high praise from a 10 year old.

And this was about 3 minutes after we got on the road back to our camp site.

Toronto Again

So, if pictures of kids on vacation bore or offend you, move along. Nothing to see here.

If not:

After Caitie and I left Lettuce Knit, we met up with everyone else at High Park. If you have kids, and you visit Toronto, you should totally visit High Park because it was very fun, and free. There is an adventure playground, designed and built by kids, that was really very cool and I don't know how I ended up with no pictures of it. When I asked Sean what his favorite part of the trip was, he said High Park.

There is also a small zoo, where we saw this peacock being cocky.



And this capybara, which was very exciting when we saw the sign. Last year Caitie did a school project on the rainforest and she learned a lot about capybaras, which are the largest rodents in the world.

All I could think of was that it was a real R.O.U.S.
There was also this animal. You might think it's a mountain goat, but it's actually a Barbary sheep. Basically it's a sheep without wool. What's the point of that?

High Park also has a big hill which is apparently really fun to run down.




And really hard not to wipe out when you do.
There were several races down and back up.
Molly learned the hard way and decided to take the long way down.

And here's the best thing about running up and down a huge hill all day.
There was even knitting.

Next day we went to the beach of Lake Ontario.

(which is cold, by the way)

But the sand was fun.

Toronto

Let's pass over the fact that it's been so long since I've posted on the blog, and just be happy that I'm finally doing it. Vacations are great but they mess me up.

So we went to Toronto in July. It was a great trip.

The kids loved taking the train

















But not the noise.
We took the train in to downtown and walked around the city checking things out.
We happened to walk in to this nice outdoor art/craft show in a park. I still don't think I know what the name of it was.

What I do know is it was the location of the Great Pants Incident of 2008.

Molly accidentally stepped into that water (which was clearly marked no wading but had tons of people walking around in it anyway).

Well Molly can not have wet clothes on. Can. Not. I honestly think it might be painful for her. There was much screaming, while I tried to come up with a plan. I rolled up the wet part. Didn't matter. I took her to a place with fewer people (which was hard, the place was *crowded*). We had no extra pants, and we were a good 30 minute walk and another 30 minute train ride away from dry pants. I couldn't find any pants that I could buy. I thought about having her switch pants with Caitie, but they wouldn't fit. I thought about putting Sean's extra shorts on her, but that didn't work.

Finally it occurred to me. Cut the stupid things off.

I don't know why it took so long to think of that.



After that we had a lovely day walking around Toronto.

We saw the CN tower, which we decided not to go up in once we realized how much it was going to cost. Apparently it's spectacular, and has a glass floor. But we didn't see it so I'll have to take other people's word for it. There aren't many views that are worth $140.

There was a mad dash to our train, up some stairs, came up on the wrong side, back down, around, up just as the train doors closed. Grrr.

So we waited an hour for the next train, and finally made it back to our camp site.


We stayed at Glen Rouge, which is in Toronto (but only barely). Our site was nice, except for the crazy French Canadians who parked their popup about a foot away from our shared water and the proceeded to set up their kitchen around and in front of the water so we basically couldn't get to it, and who's kids were swinging around 25 foot long poles.

It's not that I have anything against French Canadians in general. They seem to be perfectly pleasant people in general. I only mentioned it in this case because they didn't understand me at all when I said "Could we please get to our water?" or "Could you please stop your son from trying to decapitate mine?" There was a lot of smiling and waving.

Fortunately they only stayed for 2 nights.

Caitie found great trees to climb. She is a monkey at heart.
And there were some ballsy, fat racoons that actually came up and stole a pound of bacon out of our cooler that was sitting about 3 feet away from where I was sitting.

I know racoons can open coolers and will steal your food while you're asleep, but I've never seen one so completely unafraid of us. I chased them and they HISSED at me. OK, OK... you can have the bacon.

*grumble*

On Monday we drove back in to town and Rob dropped Caitie and me off so we could go to Lettuce Knit, which was seriously one of the things about the trip I was most excited about. Lettuce Knit is a knitting landmark.

I'd tried really hard to make it there on Sunday but it was too far to walk at our speed, and we just never managed to be in the right place to catch a street car (which is totally a trolley, but if you call it a trolley in Toronto they will look at you like they have no idea what language you are speaking).

So we made it finally and I learned how hard it is to take a sock picture.

I finally enlisted Caitie to hold the sock for me.

I was so overwhelmed by yarn fumes that I forgot to take a picture inside, but dude, it's tiny.

You see the door that you can see inside? That's as far back as the store goes. It's a really big closet. But there is so much yummy yarn in there. And Megan is really very nice, even when she's hugely pregnant (which I can NOT say about myself...).
There were even words of wisdom in the bathroom from Stephanie herself.

Too cool.
After that Caitie and I took the subway to catch up with the rest of the family. If you ask her she'll tell you the subway was one of her favorite things of the whole vacation. We probably could have saved ourselves a ton of money.

More later.