It stands to reason that if knitting is slower than sewing, then blogging about knitting is going to be slower than blogging about sewing. Granted, I’m making zippy progress with my Giant Yarn for Dummies and Tree Trunk Needles, but it’s still teeny steps compared with the zooooooooom! of the feed dogs on my increasingly dusty Husqvarna. I’m getting back into the rhythm of knitting now and starting to enjoy it, but it doesn’t change the fact that showing knitting progress seems a lot less interesting than showing sewing progress. Case in point- a fair bit of progress was made yesterday during packing downtime on the Carlos Miele knockoff sweater.
Before:
And after:
As you can see, significant progress has been made, and yet it’s really no more interesting than it was yesterday.
To answer a couple of questions that came up before my mind starts to wander again, yes, the gauge is huge. I put my seam ripper on the work so you can get an idea of the scale. Here’s a close up with a quarter to show you just how big those stitches are:
To answer a few more questions, I’m knitting on straight needles because the circular size 17 needle cost about $22. I love a good quality bamboo circular needle as much as the next Selfish Knitter, but the likelihood of me making future projects this tremendously chunky is very low, so I opted to make a smaller investment in the needles. The purple needles in the picture are the size 17. The gold needle is a size 10 or 11 that I’m just using as a stitch holder. The interesting thing with working at this size is that you can grab just about anything in your vicinity to use as necessary. I actually used a teaspoon as a cable needle yesterday because it just happened to be lying on the table before me. It was nice – the bowl of the spoon kept the stitches from slipping off while I worked my cable.
So. Yup. I guess that’s about it. Is this what knitting blogging is like? Is there anything more I should be telling you?
20 comments
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September 2, 2010 at 9:41 am
katrina
Great progress! I knew that the stitches were over-sized, but wow, that’s huge.
Whenever I knit, about mid-way through the project, I always look at it and think, this looks so bizarre, am I ever going to use this, why did I think this was a good idea? When it’s complete I love it, but at that midway point, I just don’t know.
Conversely, with sewing, I usually never experience that WTF?! moment.
September 2, 2010 at 9:46 am
Reethi
Photos of Sasa playing with the ball of wool, perhaps? Or is she a good cat who knows to stay away?
September 2, 2010 at 9:57 am
selfishseamstress
Hehe– Sasa could care less about wool, or playing for that matter. She does like when I knit though because she knows it means I’ll be in one place long enough for her to fall asleep on my legs.
September 2, 2010 at 9:55 am
Helen
how did you get the pattern translated from the german?
September 2, 2010 at 9:57 am
selfishseamstress
I didn’t- I’m a bilingual knitter/seamstress :)
September 2, 2010 at 10:07 am
kathleen
Knitting is very peaceful, and thus lacks the high drama of sewing
September 2, 2010 at 10:09 am
sisters4saymoreismore
its WAY bigger than i thought!!! i love it even more!!!!
~selina
September 2, 2010 at 10:09 am
ASH
It seems like you are adding more stiches to each row .. is this because you don’t have a circular needle that long? I was wondering how you accomplish that, if you can point me to a tutorial that’d be great! Thanks!
September 2, 2010 at 10:32 am
Meredith P
If you’re bored, you might consider translating the directions into English for us less linguistically talented. Actually, over the weekend, I’m going to figure out how to get the pdf into some sort of text, then use Google translate…for entertainment. I find Google Translate v. funny.
Perhaps I should clean out my sewing room instead…or even actually sew something.
September 2, 2010 at 11:43 pm
ellinoora
pfdtoword.com is very handy for that kind of travails :)
September 2, 2010 at 10:45 am
Nikole
I have a friend who knits (not sure of she does anymore) but I’m going to guess it’s like hand sewing…sort of relaxing
September 2, 2010 at 11:30 am
sewingwithaskein
Hehehehe! You are so funny! You make me smile with every blog (even about knitting!)
You are so consistent with your blogs how do you do it?
September 2, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Angela
I love knitting chunky items so it’s “quick” but not as flattering to wear. Looks like good progress!
September 2, 2010 at 1:50 pm
raquel
It looks heavy….Maybe because I’m here in Florida, still frying and watching the hurricanes pass by. I only knit when there is no power (because of a hurricane hehehehe).
Raquel from Florida
September 2, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Ryan
Meredith P – Google translate will translate a pdf for you. Copy the URL of the PDF into the text box and click Translate. It will leave out any pictures and be as accurate as an auto-translator can be. With sewing instructions I usually Translate all the instructions then go sentence by sentence to see if it makes sense and plug in words and phrases individually when it doesn’t. It also helps to kind of understand the basic construction of the garment too.
I’m afraid that given all the abbreviations in knitting I’d be lost trying to translate from another language though.
September 2, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Jessica
A teaspoon? That’s classic. Today I was using a tapestry needle while working cables in laceweight yarn, apparently to much more ladylike swearing than your improvised method.
I like the color you’ve chosen. I also feel you on the ‘should invest some money in yarn if I’m going to spend HOURS on this’ yet ‘not something I’ll wear often, not worth $200.’
September 2, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Veronica
I subscribe to all of one knitting blog, and she only updates once or twice a month. So, I guess that’s how you do it. Infrequently.
September 3, 2010 at 12:41 am
jimena
well, I was thinking if you can contemplate the possibility of borrowing a sewing machine from some of your friends (who are not so selfish of course ;-) !!! then you don’t have to wait for your work to advance.
Cordially
Jimena
September 3, 2010 at 7:11 am
Trudy Callan
I think you’re doing awesome.
Trudy
http://www.sewingwithtrudy.blogspot.com
September 3, 2010 at 9:44 am
mandy
It is knitting up really nicely. I look forward to seeing the finished sweater.