Mittens and Malabrigo, Apes and Blue Demon! Oh My!

I did finish my mittens this Wednesday, and just realized that I haven't woven in all of the ends on one of them. But here they are, in all of their acrylic glory!

They are not warm enough for most January-in-Boston days, but it was unseasonably warm this week (meaning above 35 degrees), therefore I was able to wear my cute matching set. People in work were duly impressed. I still have lots of the light pink and grenadine-pink Red Heart yarn left over; I may combine it with some pine green Red Heart Supersaver I have into some cute preppy-colors accessories.

I also made a swatch of the Malabrigo that Mike gave me for Christmas. The color is "Holly Hock", and the below swatch is 20 stitches x 20 rows on US 9 needles:

I started a sweater last night with this, since I made the gauge requirements with the #9s. It's a sweater from a Spinnerin magazine from 1962. The sweater starts with a k1 p1 ribbed bottom done on #4 needles, which seemed to take forever (2 inches worth of knitting). Now that I am on the #9s it is going a little bit faster. I ended up making one size bigger than I would have on a modern pattern, simply because a 36 bust in the early 60s usually had a 24- to 26-inch waist to go with it, not to mention the teeny tiny shoulders woman seemed to have. So I had to up to a 38 bust to be certain it would fit, and I'm still a little worried. I may try to add a couple more stitches to accommodate my shoulders, plus my rib cage seems to be too wide for dresses that are fitted in the waist area (both vintage and modern, the difference being that in modern dresses the shoulders are often too big). I'm going to take the plunge and go with it, and hope it turns out for the best. If not, I can always frog it and redo it.

Oh, yeah -- so in order to go to the bigger size, I needed to buy another skein of the yarn. Lucky for me, Windsor Button had just gotten in their order of Malabrigo, and Susan was able to find the Hollyhock in about 20 seconds. The dye lot is not the same, obviously, but I bought it anyway. There is a big difference in the new dye lot and the 4 skeins I already had from the old dye lot. So, the new skein is for the waist ribbing, sleeve cuffs, and collar, and, at Susan's suggestion, I am going to switch between my other 4 skeins about every 20 rows in case there is difference in the color on those. So I have to be off soon, and wind 3 more skeins of yarn -- joy. I don't have a swift, but my dress form makes a good makeshift swift; I just put the hank of yarn over the shoulders and can get going at a good clip. It's still not my favorite thing to do.

This morning's breakfast (and knitting) viewing was the first episode of "The Planet of the Apes" TV show from 1974. I don't have vivid memories of it on television (I was 5 years old when it aired), but Mike used to watch it back-to-back on Friday nights with "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" (something else we've been enjoying on DVD). If the first episode is any indication, I'll be eating the PotA show up like candy. It may help that Roddy McDowell was in it, and I just LOVE him. Even if his cuteness is hidden by the ape costume (you can still see his big brown eyes, though, and he is good at manipulating the make up and getting some facial expressions through). After we went to the Mall to get pictures and have some lunch, we came back and watched a Luche Libra movie. It was "Blue Demon vs. the Satanic Power". It was completely in Spanish, although Mike has a decent synopsis of it from Santo Street and we were able to follow it. I didn't pay 100% attention to it (I was knitting!), but it was pretty good and was from 1964 (I think), so there was lots of big bouffant hairdos and some cool musical interludes. A magician comes back 50 years after his "death", seduces a bunch of young women, then incinerates them. Blue Demon wrestles Lobo Negro, El Nazi (or did Santo wrestle El Nazi? I forget). The magician tries to hypnotize Blue Demon to get him to jump off a building, but his powers wear out and Blue Demon snaps out of it. There is a chase, and the magician ends up aging, dying and drying up in to a mummified corpse. I never said the movie made sense. I'm sure we missed a lot by not understanding most of the dialogue, but I think that by seducing the women the magician was staying young. What this all had to do with Blue Demon, I don't know. We decided the magician was going to seduce Blue Demon next.