The Sweatshop of Love Blog

Love

Cute Sleeves!

Yes, we finished on a rough note, but yesterday afternoon I finished the twelve rows of my left sleeve. I don’t want to toot my own horn here, but seriously? Seriously. Could this sweater be any cuter? I love the two different stripe colors. I love the collar. I love the sleeves! I love how it makes me look really skinny. I’ll be working on translating my notes to actual pattern form very soon so it’s fresh in my memory, in case, horror of all horrors, I have no idea what my notes mean. There are a lot of arrows on that sheet of notebook paper and it might kill me to have to deconstruct to figure out exactly what I did.

Next up? Using this basic pattern to write a cardigan pattern. Same needles, same yarn, just long sleeved cardie.

(Glances up at pictures) I’m feeling pretty confident that I can do it!

Body Finished!

Between all the pie and traveling this weekend, I got a ton done on my sweater! I just kept it in my bag the whole time and pulled it out whenever I had a spare minute. Once I got past the shaping it was just knitting for many many inches, and that we can all do in our sleep.

I was feeling good about it, and knitting away, and in Sweater Club Sunday I picked up the sleeve stitches and was knitting away, and finished one sleeve! Then I picked up stitches on the second sleeve and was knitting away, knitting away, la la de da!

When I ran out of yarn.

Within 12 rounds of finishing the sleeve. I was so close I was looking at how much yarn was left hanging off the sweater at color changes. I was so close I knit myself right up to the end of the skein in disbelief. If I would have knit two fewer rounds of total sweater I would have had enough yarn to finish.

Can You Believe It?

It is ridiculously infuriating! I need like 4 yards! Gah! I looked all over my house for a leftover ball of it and of course found nothing. So, this afternoon I made my way over to Joann.

Stupid Skein

I know these Carron Simply Softs are only like $3, but it is the principle of the thing. I know I’ll use it, I use this yarn all the time.

Yeah, ok, I should stop complaining.

Velma is obviously not worried about it.

I’m still kind of irritated with it, though! I haven’t even finished the sweater yet. It will take me 10 minutes at most, I know it will. But I’ve got my sock in my lap (for picture uploading time). It can wait. It can wait until I’m not angry with it anymore.

Sock #1 Done

I finished sock one somewhere this weekend, too. I ended up cutting it off mid-calf, as you can see, and I’m happy with it. I want to start knitting socks with my new stripping yarn! I’m over this yarn.

Detox: Asparagus Pasta

After this weekend I’ve needed to chill in the eating department. I’ve been trying to stick to veggies, fruit, and wheat. Like this beautiful asparagus pasta with carrots and my tomato sauce.

Detox: Caramelized Onion Quesadillas

And these caramelized onion quesadillas with pepper jack cheese, tomatoes, and romaine.

Detox: Lots of Oats

And, of course, lots of oat bowls. This one has raspberries, apples, nutties, milk and cinnamon. With peanut butter toast. The tummy is slowly recovering.

A Little Bonus Shopping

So I’m almost finished with my sweater pattern, I’m on my second sock, and I’ve really had nothing else lined up! I recently had this tote pattern, the Elisa Nest Tote, sent to me, and since I have never knit a market bag, and since I’ve been complaining that I don’t have a summer shoulder bag good for biking, I thought, what the heck? I picked up this ball of Lion Brand cotton yarn with a 40% off coupon. The pattern says it should only take one ball, and in that case this is one economical project. And it’s cute, right?

I’ll keep you posted.

60 degrees and rainy? I’ve gotten a lot of knitting done these past couple days with absolutely no guilt about sitting inside watching baseball.

My Sweater Pattern!

I’m into the easy part of my sweater. I’ve figured out the sizing and the sleeve increases are correct. Now I’m just going. The stripes worked out perfectly at 20 rows per stripe? I have no idea how that happened. I ran out of the light blue at the perfect time to make my color change look normal! You can see a couple little brown rows started at the very bottom of the sweater. I knew I wanted to switch colors at some point, the amount of blue yarn I had just made it very easy. A couple brown stripes at the bottom? I’m digging it. I’m also digging how awesome my boobs look in this sweater. I think my boobs will be a great selling point for this sweater. I added some boob shaping (called ‘boob shaping’ in the sweater pattern, of course), and it helped. I was right about my boobs being 12 stitches big! What a fit.

Boob Increases, Waist Decreases

Here you can see, I increased two stitches each side every three rows three times, all in that top white stripe. Then I knit even for a while and decreased two stitches each side every inch and a half three times.

Sock Progress

Amazingly I even had a chance to work on my sock, though I can’t remember working on it at all. Somewhere within the last four days I’ve finished turning the heel, decreased back down to 64 stitches, knit even for a couple inches, and even started ribbing. The problem is that I have a ton of yarn left! It feels like well over half the skein. Usually I just keep ribbing until I finish the skein but if I do that I’m sure I’ll have thigh highs. I might just bind them off after a couple more rib inches and start sock two with the same skein, to see how far I get. This must be a different yarn than what I’m used to working with? Though I’m pretty sure this yarn is the exact same yarn that I knit my first pair of toe up socks with, when I established the one skein/one sock method.

In any case, I knit this sock without realizing it, and my sweater pattern is coming right along, too! You won’t hear me complaining about this weather.

Since I got that Summer Sweater out of the way, I’ve been able to work on my other projects that have been hanging out on the back burner.

My Sweater Pattern

I separated the sleeves of the sweater pattern I’m writing. Cute, right? Tara’s Sweater inspired me to make my sweater stripped, and I’m working on it right now and looking at the picture of Tara’s sweater and it looks a lot alike! Right now I’m working on boob increases. It is hard to translate boob size to stitches increased, but I’m trying.

Working on it right now, you ask? One of the many joys of having a very old computer is that you have a ton of free time to knit, balance your checkbook, dance, whatever! while things are loading. I am never without a project while working on my Old Lady. Especially when I have a lot of programs going. Right now? iTunes, gchat, my photo editor, and this blog writing page. Old Lady is working hard. She is just lucky there isn’t a baseball game on.

F-BLTA Sandwich

If it is possible to die from an avocado overdose I’ve got to be close by now. After Saturday’s avocado soup and avocado salad, you would think I would have had enough of the stuff. Not the case! Yesterday PT suggested BLTs for lunch. With avocado, of course, though the letter is not represented. And if we are being technical, that is fake bacon. PT calls it bacon crackers, but I’m fine with it. I can’t remember what real bacon tastes like, anyway. This sandwich was unbelievable! Homemade bread, a little Miracle Whip, lots of tomato, romaine, bacon crackers, and a quarter of an avocado.

Egg and Avocado Salad Sandwich

Then I turn around this afternoon and make egg salad with avocado for lunch. This is so incredibly simple: one hard boiled egg, 1/4 of an avocado, fresh cracked pepper. Mash with fork. Throw on toasted bread.

I’m sure I am alive right now only because my dinner last night didn’t involve avocado at all.

Fresh Michigan Blueberry Pancakes, and Potatoes

One of the best parts about being an adult is that you can eat pancakes whenever you want. Hungry at 3am? Pancakes! Dinner? Pancakes! Hungover and just woke up at 2pm? Pancakes!

Our excuse? The Logan Square Farmers Market treated us right again yesterday with a pint of fresh Michigan blueberries for $4. One pint of fresh Michigan blueberries? Pancakes! These were cinnamon blueberry pancakes and heavenly. The blueberries exploded when I cut into them, so the blueberry juices would spill onto the plate, mixing with the syrup I sopped up with my pancake! Stop. Just stop.

The potatoes were excellent, too.

I still had those pancakes on the brain when I was hitting my Goggle Reader this morning. A blog I just recently started following, Bakerella, had a blueberry pancake orgasm on her blog, too. And while you are over there, check out the reason I’m following this amazing woman in the first place.

By the way, my boobs are size 12 stitches. I’m ok with it.

I am going to change it up a bit over the next couple weeks. My goal is to start writing more, writing more in book form, in the afternoons, giving myself little mini writing goals involving chapters or pages, and the best place to do this is not in my house. And, if you’ve taken a look at the Sweatshop class schedule this week and next, I’m going to be spending a lot of time at New Wave as it is. Why not mix it up during the day?

Atlas Cafe

Today’s location? Atlas Cafe on Armitage and kinda Humbolt. It is small and very quaint and they have been playing The Softies all afternoon (and I know that band, and sound cool, because of PT) and I’m very ok with it. I got a little cookie with my small cup of coffee for $1.59. Free WiFi. Rachel walked over before going to work and we caught up – A LOT has happened since Sunday afternoon, naturally. Now I’m sitting here enjoying my high boy table next to the windows, watching the rain.

Last night PT and I met some friends at Cleo’s on Armitage for 10 cent wing night. We knew 10 cent wing night was coming, but not until like 9:30, so we kept dinner light.

Meal Salad

Last night’s salad was cucumber, broccoli, carrot, romaine, tomato, avocado, and mushroom and radish from the farmers market, with my dressing of choice, Kraft Free Thousand Island. So good! And when I ate the Cleo’s max of 12 wings 2 hours later, I didn’t feel so bad.

The salad I made for lunch today was the same, minus the broccoli and avocado. I love huge salads in the summer time. Veggies are so cheap and everywhere, and eating a big salad is so cool and refreshing! I can’t get enough.

It occurred to me that I haven’t been talking very much about knitting on this knitting blog the last few days. My sock is on pause until tonight’s class, sitting, ready to turn that heel. My Knit Pick’s yarn hasn’t come in yet so I haven’t had a chance to work on my Summer Sweater. Leaving:

Sweater Pattern Progress

I’ve been making little progress on my sweater pattern. This weekend was just go go go I didn’t take a lot of time to knit anything after getting done with the foot of my sock. That is one thing about the summer, not a lot of sitting watching movies time. And I didn’t want to watch the Tigers games this weekend. Stupid Pittsburgh.

I like how this is shaping up! I love yarn over increases, so they had to be involved. I love the chunkiness of the ribbing, and the contrast with the blue yarn in stockinette. I’m getting increasingly nervous about dividing for the sleeves, since I have no idea what the stripes are going to look like with the sleeves, how many increases to do, or really what I’m doing at all, but I just have to try it and see what happens.

I let Rachel distract me for a while, so now its after 4 and I’ve got to write at least a little bit, since that is my goal for getting out of the house! You know what its like, HAVING to write your BOOK at the COFFEE SHOP.

I hate myself