Oh, that's gonna bug me

It's done! But even in this crappy picture you can see that the back piece and the right sleeve have the same colour tones and the left sleeve is different. You can totally see where I joined on to finish the collar.

It makes me want to rip out the sleeve and the back piece and swap them. Except I'd very much like to wear it to the Knitter's Day Out event. Which means I just have to suck up and deal with how the colours wanted to be. *sigh*

I think I'm almost done

The shrug design has finally resolved itself and I'm just about to cast off on the last section. Then comes washing and blocking and drying and sewing it together.

Then comes the megasuperawesomefuntime of trying to decipher my pattern notes. And trying to resize it. I have figured out a way to measure the sides of the octagon without actually drawing it out, which helps a bit. Although not as much as I could hope for. I will still need to graph out those oh-so-complicated sleeves, so that I will be able to properly calculate what number of stitches should be in the the short rows. I hate graphing things.

The sleeves. Oh my, the sleeves. I am not entirely sure that many other people will be able to comprehend my instructions for the sleeves. It's not that I don't think people are incapable of doing them, if I can do them, anyone can. It's that I don't think I'm capable of giving proper, clear, concise, non-confusing instructions.

And do I try to submit it to a magazine or online thing or just fling it up on Rav? I really don't know.

Anyway. One last row to cast off.

links I like

Yay! I found it!

I like this way of picking up sock gusset stitches. It is extremely fiddly, but it does create a nice edge. Whenever I pick up edge stitches I always get holes or long stitches and it bugs me.

I tried to explain this method to a fellow sock knitter at the yarn shop and couldn't quite remember how to do it. I also couldn't remember much about the video, except that it was a guy knitting the sock, he was Australian and I think he made the video to help his sister knit socks. I knew I found it on a thread on Ravelry, but it was months ago, possibly over winter, and I had very little hope of remembering which thread it was. So, I searched Ravelry discussions, but didn't find it and ended up searching youtube for 'how to pick up heel gusset stitches' and there it was!

Now I just have to get back into the habit of knitting socks!

links I like

Last night I tried to explain to someone at the yarn shop how to pick up the purl bumps on a heel gusset and I totally failed. I know it was a video and I know I found it on a thread on Ravelry and I know the guy who did it was Australian, but I haven't a clue how to google for it.

And I generally use facebook or google+ to jot down notes as I'm designing things. But those posts can get lost on the shuffle and although many of my friends find my enthusiasm for knitting interesting and fun to read, I sometimes feel like I'm spamming them with crap they don't want to read.

So, I'm going to utlise this blog to store my knitting ideas and inspirations and whenever I find a web or video tutorial that I think it's helpful I'm going to link to it here.

Like this one: German short rows

I thought I had settled on using Japanese short rows (from nonaKnits) and I did like the way they looked but the pins are fiddly. The German short rows don't use pins and it looks pretty good.

Now I have to figure out how to write out what I'm doing. I can't just put that in the pattern, Now use German short rows to work the sleeves, go look at this video. I suppose I can mention where I found it - I did that for the hat pattern and my directions were merely 'for best results use a provisional cast on, I liked this one' But provisional cast ons are pretty basic, in my opinion. And people can trawl Ravelry or the internet to find out how to do them. And the hat didn't absolutely need a provisional cast on, it just gave slightly better results, in my opinion. But this sleeve *needs* short rows to accomplish this wonky angle.

I may need to take pictures for the pattern. I definitely need to write out some sort of instructions. Which won't be easy to do without practically plagiarising other websites - I mean, I'm getting this information off the internet! But I'm planning on selling this pattern, so how can I justify using someone else's information? Well, partially because I'm not getting info from just one source, I google a lot. And partially because my pattern will be the design as a whole.

And frankly I'm not so sure that selling patterns is the way to go for me. It's not going to make me enough money to justify having that stupid tax license, so, should I even bother keeping my patterns for sale?

Anyway. The point of this post was Links I Like, so I'll leave it at that :)

some things right, other things wrong

OK, so, Japanese short rows are the answer to my wonky angle problem BUT I did the math wrong, so, I have to rip out both sleeves to the cast off bit and start them over. Paying attention to how I do the short rows. I should get clips or at least try it with some bobby pins or something.

I almost had to knit it out first to catch on to my mistakes, so I'm not terribly upset at having to rip it out. Because I'm determined to make this a proper, size-able pattern and not just something that I I fling on and say I winged it.

And I had to pencil it out on the graph - I hate graphing it out! It won't need a graphed pattern for the final version, but I need to graph it out so I can check the math. *sigh*

Anyway. Even though I do have to rip it out I'm not going to to do that just yet, I want to take it to the yarn shop.

I am not going to take this project on vacation with me. I want more portable things like hats and probably that giant skein of cotton/rayon. I can put .pdf files on my Nook, so I can pop the patterns on there for the trip.

details, details. details

I really should have revisited the nonaknits site where I found out about Japanese short rows, because I really did the purl version wrong and ended up with strands on the purl side and loose, uneven stitches.

I am actually debating ripping it out to the cast off/back sleeve section, just so I can do the pinned short rows properly. And hopefully if I understand what I'm doing well enough then I can explain it well enough.

Too many design ideas!

Still working on the starflower jacket. I didn't go with the short rows angle idea because I though front flappy pieces would be nice too. And I thought I could do it sideways by just adding stitches to the bottom bit. It might look fine on a very thin girl, but alas, I am not that girl.

I think front flappy bits would work, but need to be worked from the bottom up or the top down and then pieced together. And I will likely work on that design some other time, but for now I really prefer the design as a shrug.

The Japanese short row technique worked really well for this. Although I didn't actually use the pins, I just used my left needle to pick up the purl bump and thus tighten up the stitch.

Making this pattern in different sizes is going to be a non-trivial problem. I may need to hire a tech knitter for help with actually writing this pattern because I don't know if I can convey my directions very well. People had problems with the hat pattern and I thought I was being clear and concise and that it was a simple pattern.

So, if I can't even do something that basic, I doubt my abilities to make this pattern understandable to anyone but me.