Thursday, August 30, 2012

Making some progress

Well, since I last posted, I made substantial progress on my sweater for Cate, having knit the better part of both sleeves.  Unfortunately, I had to rip them out due to stitch insufficiency.  That is to say, I was supposed to knit the sleeves, increasing every 5 rows, until I had 47 stitches and then knit even until the sleeves were 8 inches long and then decrease.  Well, I got to 8 inches and I still hadn't made it to 47 stitches.  I drove myself crazy trying to figure out how it happened.  The easiest explanation would have been that my row gauge was off, and it may well have been a little bit off.  However, I did the calculations and found that you actually can't increase that many stitches in 8 inches at the row gauge stated in the pattern if you follow the pattern and increase every 5 rows.  However, there are no errata for this pattern and nobody on Ravelry who has knit this pattern has mentioned this issue.  There are lots of complaints about how the designer didn't tell you to handle knitting in pattern when you get to the sleeve cap decreases, but nothing about problems increasing to the right number of stitches.  I checked and rechecked the math, though, and I stand by what I say.

So, I ripped back to the ribbing (*sob*) and started knitting the sleeves again, now increasing every 3 rows.  So far, I have made little progress (I've knit exactly one row) but hopefully that will change once I get over being annoyed at the pattern.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Over-inspired

Lately, I've been thinking about why I don't blog much anymore.  I used to maintain 3 blogs and post to all at least twice a week.  Now, I can barely even manage posting once every couple of weeks to one blog.

One issue, I think, is that for a long time I lived alone or with a relatively absentee roommate and/or a husband who lived in a different city during the week.  So, when I got home from lab, I would need to express my thoughts, I did so on a blog.  Now, I live with my husband and baby girl and Lorenzo the cat, so I end up expressing my thoughts to them.  Or a Skype with my mom.  Or, I walk a couple of blocks to a friend's house and talk to her while our kids play.  So, I don't need a blog just to have someone to talk to.

For this blog in particular, the other major problem is that I just don't craft as much as I used to.  This puzzles me, because I still love to knit/crochet/embroider/sew/cut/paste/etc.  In the past (when I mostly lived alone) I would spend some time every night knitting and I sewed on the weekends when I had a chance.  Actually, I knit just about everywhere--on the bus going to lab, during lab meetings, during seminars, while hanging out with friends, while watching TV.  Now, I don't take a bus anywhere, nor do I participate in any lab meetings or seminars and I watch very little TV.  So, I guess I've mostly eliminated the times and places I used to knit.

Still, you would think that, what with being a SAHM, I might find some time to craft.  I mean, Cate's in bed by 8pm.  That would seem to indicate I could squeeze in some knitting or sewing time before bed.  So, what do I do instead?

I read blogs.

For real.  One of the biggest reasons I don't blog or craft anymore is that I spend too much time reading other people's blogs.  My reasoning for reading so many blogs is that I find them inspiring.  They fill me with all sorts of ideas.  However, I am never actually acting on these ideas, I'm just, you know, having them.  And having so many of them, I don't know which one to act on first.  The result is that I am rather over-inspired and under-ambitious at this point. 

So, I think I need to re-evaluate which blogs I read and why and then seriously curtail my blog reading.  I'm reading craft blogs, sewing blogs, knitting blogs, science blogs, mommy blogs, and genealogy blogs.  That is just too, too many. 

Just cutting back my blog reading isn't going to do much, however, unless I actually work on setting aside time specifically to craft.  In the evenings, I'm pretty much fried so, perhaps I should [shudder] get up early?