A Knit's Tale

Putting the yellow obsession on hold for a moment...

2008-08-15T19:43:00.000-07:00

for a new focus on some easy stash busting.

Only one sleeve left to go. Hurrah!

Who says that obsessions can’t be pretty?

2008-08-02T21:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve recently become quite enamored with the color yellow.
Quite, quite enamored.
It all started with one pretty handbag that caught my eye and suddenly, I've found myself in a yellow period. A quick succession of yellow possessions have found their way to me -- a sunny pair of sandals, a summary top, a breezy skirt (with pockets!)...

...my new favorite robot…(okay, so he probably would have made it even if he wasn’t yellow -- you try and resist those eyes…).

With my newfound love for yellow, even an avowed yarn diet (yes, again) couldn't stand in the way when I spotted three plump skeins of squishy merino in the most perfect shade of ambery yellow buried in the sale bin at the lys.
But what to do with 300 yards of an impulse buy? Having just returned to the fold of the blogging and Raveling legions, I of course consulted the internets. A few clicks later and I, like the 525 others before me, decided that my wardrobe was in sore need of a Gretel.

The round, multiply yarn (Classic Elite Waterlily) was an absolute joy to knit with. Unlike all the other types of yarn I done cables in without using a cable needle, the stitches in Waterlily held firm while I maneuvered them around for the various C4F's and C4B's. Not having to do the ungainly stitch grab everytime a stitch sat needle-free during the cabling process made for much faster knitting. Some backtracking aside due to my belated realizations that A) yes, the hundreds of Ravelers were indeed correct that the regular size gives just the right amount of slouch, and B) I didn't have enough yarn to make the slouchy version anyway, the hat virtually flew off the needles...at least by my slow, easily distracted knitting standards.
Voila the cabled pancake view...

And the woolly-hat-modeled-at-the-height-of-summer view.

Details

Pattern: Gretel, by Ysolda (Ravel it)
Yarn: 3 skeins of Classic Elite Waterlily, color 1943 (Goldenrod)
Needles: US8/5mm
Size: Regular

Great pattern, great yarn, and highly obsession-fulfilling. What more could a knitter ask for?

A flying leap for the bandwagon

2008-07-21T19:14:00.000-07:00

One thousand five hundred fifty three Ravelers can't be wrong...

The sound of silence…

2008-03-06T18:05:00.000-08:00

…is really make up of the noises of frantic multi-tasking. Around here anyway. With less than three weeks left to finish my thesis, extricating myself from lab experiments, and ready myself for a move across the country, there’s not much time for things of the fibery persuasion. (Excepting the odd spurt for those moments when everything just gets to be a bit too overwhelming, of course.) So, it will be rather (frantically) silent around here for the next few weeks while real life takes over. Keep your fingers crossed for me that all that needs to get done will get done (it’s never a good thing when really, it’s never been a question of “will I get it all done on time” but a matter of “it doesn't matter, I simply have to get it all done on time.”). I’ll leave you with another picture of a recent spinning acquisition. Fiber Denn Finn Shetland batt, just squishing it does wonders for the soul. And the stress level.

A Square for Pterry

2008-02-27T00:28:00.000-08:00

We knitters are lucky. When tragedy strikes, be it us directly or those we know, we can do a wee bit more to assuage that desperate need to “do something to help” than your average person. We can knit.
So, when there is bad news, we can pull out our yarn

And knit...

And knit...

And tidy up...

And embroider*...

And make something that we hope will at least bring a smile to the face of the person afflicted.

This is my contribution to the afghan (Pratchgan) we of the Ankh-Morpork Knitter’s Guild over at Ravelry are putting together for Terry Pratchett, that wonderful creator of Discworld and author of numerous delightful books (and a knitter and spinner to boot). He was recently diagnosed with a rare early-onset form of Alzheimer’s. Because we, being mere fans and not family, can’t do much besides think good thoughts and send well wishes, we knit our appreciation for his work that has made so many of us laugh and hope that he remains well as long as possible.

*Afghan square explanation for those uninitiated to Discworld: Eta Beta Pi (sound it out…), the unofficial motto of the Unseen University, domain of the wizards and constituting one of the best satirical send-up of old-school Ivory Tower academia stuffed with quirky, pompous, often gluttonous, and frequently lazy academics of the elderly male sort. Really, just go read some of his books. You won’t be sorry.

Behold the Pinecone

2008-02-20T00:26:00.000-08:00

There’s not much I can say about the Koolhaas that has not been said already. Twice. Like almost everyone else, I found the hat to be extremely enjoyable knitting. It’s satisfyingly fiddly to precisely the right degree – just enough to engage the brain but not so much as to require complete concentration. Perfect for me since the majority of my brain cells are currently mired in pondering thesis writing (six years of doctoral work and it all boils down to what I churn out on my laptop in the next month. Fun.). The Pinecone was just right for bouts of stress-induced knitting. Working with merino wool so soft that it would give cashmere a run for its money helped too.
The Pinecone will need a bath with some vinegar before real wearing since the yarn dyed my needles a rosy pink but otherwise, it is everything one would want a hat to be. Soft, wooly, and warm. With a nifty texture to boot!

Project Details:

Pattern:
Koolhaas Hat, by Jared Flood; Interweave Knits Gifts, Winter 2007

Yarn:
Handpaintedyarns.com natural dyed two-ply worsted weight merino in Cognac (I think this was in their odd and ends section)

Needles:
4.5mm/US 7 DPNs

Ever fickle

2008-02-13T00:14:00.000-08:00

Because I now have a particular urge to resemble a pine cone (or an architectural feature). In a good way, of course.

Why it’s probably better to sleep on that brilliant idea you have in the wee hours

2008-02-09T11:53:00.000-08:00

When it comes to knitting, I’m nothing if not governed by sudden whims and fancies. Just like my tendencies towards sudden obsessions, I’m equally prone to sudden covetousness regarding finished objects. A few pretty FO pictures et voilà, I must absolutely replicate that same exact thing on my needles right then and there. Of course, patterns and yarn purchases frequently ensue. Anyway, so there I was innocently browsing through Ravelry during a bout of insomnia the other night when I was seized with an absolute need to knit Foliage.
Out of my own hand-spun.
I don’t even remember what particular combination of FO pictures and forum conversations lead to the genesis of this need but there it was, firing at maximal speed through all my late-night twingy neurons to occupy my entire being. Never mind that I possessed neither bulky handspun nor solid roving that could be turned into bulky handspun. No, my mind raved, don’t let that little hurtle stop you! The hat would still look wonderful in a green and teal blend! (Why yes, my mind in the wee hours speaks in exclamatory statement. Doesn’t yours?) A green and teal blend that I must make right then and there! Right. Somehow my 3am brain thought that it would be a brilliant to use part of the December offering from the Spunky Eclectic fiber club, a roving space-dyed in bright lime-green and teal (and red that I had already separated and spun up). I would draft from both the green and teal portions at the same time as I spun and it will be beautiful!
So, with this vision of beautiful bluish-green blended yarn burning in my mind, I snatch up my spindle, made a lousy attempt at blending the two colors of roving together, and proceeded to make some of the ugliest yarn I have ever seen.

Yeah.
The wrongness of the yarn…the uneven thick and thinness, the strange marled looked, the odd transitions from “shade” to “shade,” oh just the fugliness of it all was enough to convince even my pigheaded manic 3am visionary brain that it was not working and was never, ever going to work. I mean who in their right mind would wear something knit out of this on their head? Deflated, I shoved the sad little spindle-full into a bag and called it a night.
But I still really wanted a Foliage. So, I went stash-diving and came up with this.

One buttery soft skein of natural-dyed merino in a color called Cognac procured in the early days of my knitting obsession from Handpainted Yarn, those folks related to Malabrigo.
I’m very much smitten with the subtle variations in the colors. They shift from a pale rosy brown to faint olive green.

Thousands times better than using teal-green marled handspun.

Now that I have the yarn all wound up though, the winds of whimsy have shifted yet again. I don’t think I need a Foliage after all. No, what I really, really could do with is a little Karma.
(And I really have no idea what to do with my fugly handspun...)

A Feast of St. Brigid Tradition

2008-02-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

The third annual (Silent) Blogger's Poetry Reading. Consider yourself invited.
Something rather silly this year for me. This is one of my favorite Donne poems that never fails to make me laugh – a "love" poem that offers a hilarious view of the efforts of a persistent suitor with more wit than favor, with terrific insights into 17th century hygiene to boot.

The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
When we almost, nay more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, we are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder be added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thy self or me the weaker now;
'Tis true, then learn how false fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

John Donne 1633

Warm Head = Good. Warm Head + Warm Ears = Rather Essential

2008-01-26T02:12:00.001-08:00

I knit another hat for I. (see the tale of his 1st hat, the What Hat, here). Why? Well, his first hat was only long enough to touch the tips of his ears. Not a crucial detail, I thought, when I made the hat, being a mild-climate and non-hat-wearing person. After a recent trip to Boston during a snowstorm though, I stand corrected. A mere 10 minute walk outside while wearing I.’s non-ear covering hat was enough to convince me that indeed, the ear-covering part is a very important detail. Especially when wind is shrieking by and giant flakes of snow are buffeting your head. I was so convinced, in fact, that I bought yarn in the city right then and there to start knitting. So here’s the new and improved What Hat, knit wider and longer than the previous. I did a similar cable pattern (the science dork in me is still tickled by the fact that they look like chromosomes) with some adjustments due to the increased stitch count.

Project Specs:

Yarn
Less than 1 skein of Araucania Nature Wool, color 56 (dark blue-tinted charcoal)

Needles
US7/4.5mm DPN

Pattern
My own, using the same pattern I outlined here with the exception of casting on 108 stitches instead of 96.

Thoughts
I really enjoyed knitting with the Nature Wool. It’s a sturdy, substantial 3-ply aran-weight with wonderful yardage (240 yards per skein!) that feels like it would be an excellent workhorse yarn (good thing since I have some in the stash earmarked for a sweater). Compared to Cascade 220, my usual favorite workhorse yarn, it’s slightly thicker, more rounded, and feels less liable to pill. However, this is definitely a yarn that I would only buy in person since the evenness of color (it’s kettle dyed for a tonal variegation) varies vastly from skein to skein. In fact, there are no dye lots for the skeins since they vary so much. On the whole, I’m very happy with the hat. I love the color and the look of the shifting shades of bluish charcoal. And, it makes the ears happy!

(Please forgive this peculiar self-portrait of hat on head...proper camera angling to capture an image of my own head is a skill I have not yet mastered.)

Mad Spinning

2008-01-12T19:20:00.000-08:00

Been a little spinning obsessed lately...

It doesn't help that I'm so head-over-heels in love with this blend of lush amber and deep blue (Wensleydale from Hello Yarn in Mmm...Rich and rich the colors certainly are...) that I can hardly wait to make something wearable out of it.

So, step one in the fiber to scarf transition: spinning it into yarn.

Spinning Wensleydale was quite an interesting experience. The long-stapled fiber is very lustrous but quite tough and sticky and really doesn't like to hold twist. The resulting yarn has a bit of a halo, similar to mohair, and is probably akin to Lopi or Noro Kureyon on the scratchiness level (which doesn't much bother me but may be a concern for others thinking of spinning up Wensleydale).
Because of the long fiber length and sticky texture of the fiber, I didn't split the roving. Instead, I spun directly from it, drafting as I went. I opted to Navajo-ply the singles so that I can preserve distinct colors in the roving (even though doing so with a non-squishy single means that the little knots from the chain-plying will show a bit...you can see one such knot in the closeup). For the non-spinner, this way of plying makes for a 3-ply yarn. As you can probably tell from the number of photos peppering this post, I'm quite enamored with the resulting yarn. The only downside of doing a 3-ply when I only have 4oz of the fiber is, of course, the not so great yardage. Now that all four ounces are spun up, I have four little skeins that total up to around 140 yards of worsted weight (9-11 WPI) of the yarn. So, something on large needles with a lot of dropped stitches, perhaps?

Wooling in the New Year

2008-01-04T00:22:00.000-08:00

Funky Carolina hand-spun and Sundara sock yarn…
What better way to start off the New Year than with a great big whack of wooly goodness?

These were all the beautifully color coordinated goodies that arrived in a jam-packed box of raffle prizes from the wonderful fundraiser that is Spin Out (a pretty magnet and SOAK samples and Yarnitini sock yarn and Grafton Fiber needles to boot). Oh what a glorious start to the year (and knock on wood that I didn’t just use up a year’s worth of luck)! Thanks, Cara and prize donators!

I’m so far behind on trying to catch up on blogging that I’m going to leap frog it all and start in medias res. So, look for some chatter about a new FO and some pretty, newly spun yarn here soon. And, if I manage to stick with my New Year resolution, there may even be some reviving of long forgotten WIPs (Bunny Lace, I’m looking at you…).
Hope the year is off to a happy start for you too!

Spinning Autumn

2007-11-29T00:49:00.000-08:00

Christmas trees might be glittering in many a window and the strains of “deck the halls” perpetually jangling in the background but here – here it’s still very much Autumn. A very wooly, Blue-Face Leicester sort of Autumn.

My very first batt, newly acquired from Miss Bab’s, now one of my favorite hand-dyed fiber purveyors. Go look and do some coveting. She dyes yarn too.

Knitting for the overtaxed, writer’s-blocked brain

2007-11-18T18:14:00.000-08:00

Oooo, just look'd the purty changing colors…

Color-shifting yarn + mistake rib = endlessly entertainment for a stalled, twitching brain.
Now, if only words would start behaving like stitches flying off the needles...

Same old, same old

2007-11-15T00:13:00.000-08:00

Still cooling my heels in work-induced knitting limbo so here are some pretty yarn pictures instead.

Both scrumptious skeins (Petals and Autumn) are from the Knittery*, home of cheerfully hand-painted yarn that I have spent entirely too many hours ogling and coveting. For now, these are marinating in the stash until I have enough brain space to contemplate them further. Maybe they’ll be lovely, lofty scarves one day…

*Psst, did you know that they’re having a sale on their merino 4-ply right now? Go buy it all up so I won’t be tempted.

Playing Catch-up, again

2007-11-03T21:07:00.000-07:00

Remember all that criss-crossing, chest-thwacking knitting I did a whinge about months ago? Well, it’s finally done! Done and gifted!

Here’s I. kindly modeling the scarf for me before I hurried into my suitcase and we set off for our whirlwind two-week trip to visit relatives (including the intended recipient) overseas. Happily, my uncle the scarf-recipient was quite delighted with my gift. Yarn, color, stitch pattern – it all went over extremely well. Really, nothing beats the warm fuzzies of having a knitted gift well appreciated!

Specs:
Yarn:
Brooks Farm Riata (48% wool, 36% mohair, 16% silk)

Needles:
US 10.5/ 6.5mm

Pattern:
Tubular cast on x number of stitches, knit in Barbara Walker’s basket weave stitch (book 2) to desired length, do a tight bind-off to avoid flaring, attach fringe.

Comments:
I love, love this yarn. I really can’t enthuse enough about it. Once knit up, the end product is soft as anything and amazingly warm. The yarn is composed of three separate strands with each one a different fiber content. The strand containing silk provides a subtle gloss and texture to the knitted fabric surface. Furthermore, since the skeins are hand-dyed and each fiber takes on dye differently, there are subtle shade gradations across the skein that adds to the depth of the knitted fabric. That said, I think the yarn probably works best in stitch patterns where there is a common overall texture rather than one in which you have a single motif you want to have “pop-out” of a plain background as the color shifts may camouflage the motif. The mohair content in the yarn does mean that there is a bit of shedding but otherwise, I can’t find a single fault. (And even less so when a skein of 375 yards sells for a mere $34 dollars) You can find the variegated-dyed skeins of Riata at the Brooks Farm website but the solid color ones like this teal seem only available at fiber festivals. I bought this skein at Rhinebeck last year and have been kicking myself ever since for not buying two, especially when this particular teal I choose seems to have been irreproducible, not to mention impossible to photograph accurately (the top photo is closer to the real shade but still not quite right). Since I missed out on Rhinebeck this year…well, there’s always Maryland Wool in May!

An inadvertent tumble off the face of the Earth

2007-09-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

Well, perhaps a bit of a dramatic overstatement but still, work and life asserted themselves and in a blink, the one area of my life that has not fallen into the orbit of being perpetually behind succumbed. So, as in all other aspects of my life, it looks like I will be playing constant catching-up in blog writing and reading as well, especially since life is continuing to be crazy. Already, it’s been over a month since I’ve had a chance to even think about posting or visiting anyone in blogland. Sigh. Well, enough self-pity and on with the first installment of catching up.

I have terribly considerate friends who keep having babies to satisfy all my urges of knitting tiny clothing items. When I last check in with Blogland, these wee shoes were cropping up on everywhere. I’m a sucker for cute things and you can’t get much cuter than tiny shoes with giant (relatively speaking) buttons.
A closeup…

And the obligatory shoes in hands shot.

Specs:
Yarn: Artyarns Ultramerino 4, fraction of a skein
Needle: Brittany US2/2.75mm DPNs
Pattern: Saartje’s Booties, new born size
Thoughts: Amongst the various baby bootie patterns I have tried from Debbie Bliss and Zoë Mellor, I like Saartje’s the best. Compared to the others, these shoes were the fastest and the most straightforward to knit (and keep track of while knitting). The yarn, on the other hand, was a bit disappointing. The Ultramerino is composed of four single strands plied together and even during something as simple as casting on, the strands untwisted easily. Oddly, the twist would shift down the strand so that one section would kink and wind around itself while another section loosened to the point that all four strands were separately distinguishable. That was annoying during casting on and made the knitting rather irksome at times. The yarn also didn’t seem quite color-fast since in the few hours it took to make the shoes, my wooden needles turned a pale purplish-pink. Those yarn issues aside, these shoes were a delight to make. Excellent if you have some spare yarn and an urge to whip up something adorable.

A labour of moles

2007-07-20T19:59:00.000-07:00

How could you not love a book that not only informs you of how to properly term a group of moles but also instructs you in discerning the approximate century from which a building hails by the shape of its moulding, includes a tidbit of advice on achieving stealthiness ("Goloshes are capital thing. They keep the feet warm, and prevent your footsteps from being heard"), and contains this following delightfully silly poem, written by an anonymous 20th century author and simply titled The Rabbit:
The rabbit has a charming face:
Its private life is a disgrace.
I really dare not name to you
The awful things that rabbits do;
Things that your paper never prints –
You only mention them in hints.
They have such lost, degraded souls
No wonder they inhabit holes;
When such depravity is found
It only can live underground.
All this plus a jumbled treasure trove of instructions and information about everything from song birds (complete with music notation of their songs) to star gazing (intricate constellation maps included) to long forgotten parlor games (Nine Men's Morris, anyone?), no wonder this little tome sold out of its first edition in 1924 within days. I first admired the Week-end Book here ages ago and serendipitously found it on sale this week here for a ridiculously small sum of money.
By the way, did you know that to take away the stinging of nettles, you should apply a bruised dock leaf and chant this Cantrap?
Out Nettle, In Dock:
Dock shall have a new smock.
Oh yes. Have a good week-end!

Criss-crossing my life away

2007-07-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

Okay, it’s not that bad, but still. Hours of making the same basket weave stitch row after row with no appreciable change in the size of the unworked ball of yarn make me start feeling like I’ll be working on this scarf forever, not to mention make me begin to question the wisdom of having put off working on it until a mere few months before it needs to be gifted. After almost exclusively knitting the gift scarf for the past few days with a pair of size 10.5 needles, I can’t for the life of me understand why beginning knitters are often handed needles the size of small tree trunks to learn on. I suppose the rationale is that the knitting will grow faster with larger gauge needles but talk about awkwardness in handling the giant sticks! I can’t imagine how someone attempting to master the already slightly complex coordination of motions in making a stitch ever succeeds in doing so while simultaneously trying to balance the large needles (and yet they do somehow since so many knitter started with big needles and thick yarn). Perhaps it’s the way I hold my needles but even after many rows on this scarf, I find myself struggling ever few stitches to keep the needles from a) thwacking me mid-stitch, b) toppling over and falling out of my hand, or c) thwacking me and then falling out of my hand. So instead of flying through the simple stitch pattern, I’m moving along at the poky speed of 3 to 4 minutes per row (it felt so slow that I was compelled to time it), longer if I manage to lose my hold on a needle. Now figuring four rows to an inch and a desired scarf length of at least 80 inches – sigh…

Lace on the brain

2007-07-13T00:24:00.000-07:00

Thank you for all for your wonderful compliments on Swallowtail! With that happy success, it’s been difficult for me to get lace out of my mind. Never mind that I have deadline gift knitting prodding my conscience and clamoring for attention, my neurons persist in chanting “lace, lace, lace.” Being in possession of both a feather-light mini Bosworth (glowing red cedar, 0.6 ounces – can you say love?) that lace-weight singles practically flow off of and merino-silk roving begging to become lace certainly doesn't help matters either. I said I was hooked before. Oh, how I understated matters.

With my much larger Kundert to help ply, half of the roving has already been turned into near laceweight 2-ply. Now, fingers crossed that at the end of four ounces, I’ll have enough yardage to knit myself one of these. Go on, take a look. Just be sure to remember to keep breathing, or have a swooning couch handy!

Swallowtail, the gateway drug

2007-07-08T19:51:00.000-07:00

Much virtual ink has been spilled on the little matter of those triangular or rectangular knitted items containing deliberately placed holes. Multitudes of blog posts devote themselves to expounding on the agony and ecstasy of knitting lace shawls. The excitement of embarking on a joyfully frivolous project, the tedium of finding oneself in the middle of knitting a single repeat in increasing iterations twenty times, the awe at the beauty of the finished product, the pain in discovering an error two rows of hundreds of stitches back, the delight of the magical transformation that comes from the careful application of some water and pins…lace knitting seems unmatched in the depth and range of emotions it can elicit from both the knitter and the spectators. I used to be puzzled by the obsession over lace shawls, the way those holey pieces of knitting held sway over a large percentage of the knitting population who made one after another. Sure, they were pretty, but how could these elaborate and impractical labor of love’s be so addictive? Now that I’ve finished my first shawl, I think I finally get it.

There’s no concrete reason, nothing you can point to and say “this is why.” All I know is an attendant joy as I K2tog, YO, and ssk’ed my way across the rows, feeling happiness at knitting with the only goal of creating something beautiful. And all I know is that little thrill when I unpinned the shawl from blocking and admired its newly gained drape in the sunlight.

Yes, I think I understand what the fuss is all about now. And I think I’m addicted.

To sleep, perchance to dream…of knitting more lace.

The technical details:
Pattern: Swallowtail Shawl, Evelyn A. Clark Interweave Knits Fall 2006
Yarn: 1 skein Handmaiden Seasilk, Sangria
Needles: US4/3.5mm
Blocked dimensions: 55 x 24 inches

Done, done, done!

2007-07-06T21:27:00.001-07:00

Just waiting for a good soak and some pinning now. Yippee!

Reason #52 to love summer

2007-06-28T22:44:00.000-07:00

Lychee season!
Even if summer here does mean dense chilling fogs and scarf-snatching winds that match the worst winter has to offer, there is at least a surfeit of these fragrant summer fruits to make up for the decidedly unsummer-like weather.

Not only are they absolutely delicious, I think they make for some of the prettiest and most charming fruits around, what with their daintily scaled shell that delicately shade from khaki to green to red as the berries ripen.

And as an added bonus once the crystalline fruits are gobbled up (and hence not, um, presenting an opportunity for photography…heh), even the inside of the shell is pretty.

What makes you happy about summer?

(Now, fingers crossed that this post shows up in Bloglines, unlike the previous one…grr.)

Out of the tangle

2007-06-26T23:35:00.000-07:00

Many hours and one pained scissor snip later, lace at last!

I don't know whether it was the pent up frustration from the untangling process, or this particular mix of the lace stitches, or the many month I have waited to knit this pattern, or the brazenly colorful sea silk, or some magical synergy of the four, this swallowtail started flying off the needles from the very first stitch.

It's only been three days since I cast-on and I've already found myself almost at the edging chart. Even more amazingly, no boredom with the charts, no sudden yearnings to knit a plain square of stockinette – just a happy contentment with yarn-overs and ssk's and k2tog's. And nupps, have I mentioned the nupps?
Hark, nupps!

Squee!

Sometimes all you need is a little sun

2007-06-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

Nothing like a gloriously sunny day to cheer things up. And some sun-basking hand-spun in happy colors, of course.

Yup, same fiber as I mentioned here. I just couldn't resist taking a few more photos now that all of it is spun up and plied. It's not a terribly even spinning job with the final yarn ranging from a puffy worsted (earlier on) to a more even DK (by the last few spindle-fulls) but a great lesson nevertheless in spinning a more consistent single and plying a balanced yarn. All told, I got about 150 some yards from four ounces, pending a final wash. Perhaps a destiny as some simple lace is in order to show off the colors (which I attempted to spin for gradual shifts from one shade to another) and make the variability in grist less obvious?

Arggghhhh!!!

2007-06-22T21:49:00.000-07:00

Absolutely impervious to two hours of gentle tugs and shifting strands. Worse yet, there's still this pass the tangle.

And all I wanted to do was knit some lace...

You know you're completely hooked when…

2007-06-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

...a loud noise startles you awake at 7am and your first thought is “oh goody, I can spend some time spinning before I head off to work!” And then you actually get out of bed. To spin.

But then again, this is some Ashland Bay merino and silk blend that shifts in color like opals and makes the soft wool I was spinning last week feel like a Brillo pad in comparison.

(Anemoi) Mitten the First

2007-06-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

Finished!
While I expected to find color-work interesting to knit and the end results obviously pretty to look at, I never expected to find the wrong side of the fabric so utterly delightful. It’s a happy surprise that gives a thrill like finding that last chocolate hidden amid all the wrappers when you thought you had finished off the whole box (there, finally thought of the proper analogy. Hee.).

Now, fingers crossed that that I escape second-mitten syndrome to make it a pair. I'll just keep looking at Mitten One for motivation.

Spinning a sunrise

2007-06-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

What better way to get out of a mid-week slump?

(Spunky Eclectic Fibers, Tahiti colorway, wool blend, 100% bouncy yumminess)

Post of gratuitous cuteness, now with hat and mittens!

2007-06-11T23:22:00.000-07:00

(Or, spicing up ordinary FO’s)

Look what just sprouted!

Hello.

More hamming for the camera

Uh oh, he’s a wee bit attached.

Yes indeed, I’m easily amused, but he’s just the perfect size and shape to model a toddler’s hat. How could I resist? Just to show that I don’t spend all my time making posed shots with stuffed animals, here are the mittens, sans owl.

Hat and mittens for I’s one-year-old niece, in plenty of time for next winter!

FO details:

Pattern
Hat – generic ribbed hat to leaves, Ann Norling kid’s fruit cap for leaves and stem
Mittens – improvised with help from The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns, by Ann Budd; freehand embroidery with green yarn

Yarn
Knit Picks Swish Superwash, MC wisteria, CC dublin, approximately 1.5 skein MC for hat and mittens, teeny amount of CC

Needles
Brittany DPNs US 6/4.0mm

Thoughts
Teeny tiny thumbs – not so much fun to knit on long DPNs, but otherwise, both hat and mittens made for satisfying small projects. I’m rather impressed at how well the KP Swish stood up to ripping and reknitting despite how soft the yarn feels. No pills or loose fibers after much wrangling of the yarn. It is a tad splitty so I had some trouble with catching the odd strand out of place but if you pay attention, it’s not so bad at all, especially given the low cost of the yarn.

Post of gratuitous cuteness

2007-06-10T13:20:00.000-07:00

Not at all fiber-related but how could one pass these by in the shop?

Hmmm???

Hi, I’m Marie and I’m a stuffed-animal-holic.

Abracadabra

2007-06-07T22:18:00.000-07:00

Now you see it…

Now you don’t.

Knitting magic! Albeit not the sort generally enthused about on knit blogs, but there is something to be said about the particular allure of ripping back. Yes, allure! Once the agonizing final decision is made that nothing else can be done to rescue the knitting, there’s something incredibly satisfying and freeing in the soft rrrrr’s of stitches popping apart to gentle tugs. A fresh start. A brand new chance to make it all perfect. What’s more magical than that?
Of course, the decision to rip is the not quite so magical part. It’s amazing how much my brain will twists itself into knots rationalizing errors to avoid any consideration of the dreaded act of ripping back. In this case, it took more repeat trying-ons of the Anemoi-in-progress and more continued knitting-in-denial than I’d like to admit for me to succumb to the attractive notion of ripping it all back to the cuff. Never mind that the mitten was obviously too large, or that the stitches were definitely too loose, or that for several rows, the palm bore more resemblance to abstract art than the precise diamond lattice design charted on the pattern, my brain kept insisting that it’ll all be fine. It took until a handful of rows past the completion of the thumb gusset for the realization that since this was to be a pair of matching mittens, it would be rather stupid to invest all that time to knit not just one but two mistake ridden, ill-fitting hand-coverings rather than negating a tiny bit of work by ripping back to knit a better version.
So, hello new path to perfection!*

*Actually more like the road that meanders near Perfection. Teeny stitch color error, you see. Sort of inevitable...

Can’t talk, knitting.

2007-05-26T03:04:00.000-07:00

Frantically knitting.
(And sewing and weaving in ends. Oh why does it take so long to weave in ends?)

After the chaos of the last few weeks, the new deadline for finishing the vest that was intended for my mother’s birthday last year, an effort I had been putting off, thinking I had plenty of time, has once again passed me by without any manifestation of a finished object. Being mired in a morass of work deadlines and meetings and wedding planning this week also hasn’t helped matters one iota. So, given that Mom’s visiting tomorrow, there’s some frenzied needle action ensuing here in the wee hours.
Procrastination? My middle name.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

2007-05-19T22:12:00.000-07:00

It's the start of cherry season, she chortled in her joy.

O callooh, callay!

Hope a little thing made your weekend too.

Oh how far we've...

2007-05-15T23:28:00.000-07:00

Erm…not come. Even as knitting and other fiber arts have enjoyed a resurgence in popularity during the past decade, along with an increased interest in creating things by hand rather than buying mass-produced items, disparaging snubs against the crafts, or even just against making things in general, are still disappointingly easy to find. This latest slight hails from a recent article in the NYT about spiritual tourism –– not a topic that has much to do with fiber arts until we get to the description of one of the tour guides. In that part-patronizing, part pop-ethnography style of “let’s peer into the thoughts and habits of these kooky folks!” that the NYT does so well, the writer of the article subtly presents facts about the tour guide to demonstrate just how far from normal she is. The very first fact the author lays before the reader? No, it’s not something related to her unique spiritual outlook that brings her to lead these tours where participants enter Egyptian tombs to connect with spiritual energy. Nope. It is the fact that –– are you ready for this? –– she knits her own clothing! Gasp! But wait, not only does she knit her own clothing, she knit her own clothing from fiber that she harvest from her alpaca (named Hopi, nice humanizing detail included as per Journalism 101) and spun herself. Double gasp! Wow, she must be nuts! I wonder what the author of the article would have made of any of our legions of knit-bloggers. Not only do they knit their own clothing, they spend time to write about it! How crazy is that?

I don’t know why this particular snub about those who do fiber arts bothered me so much. Usually these little snippets that reflect how society tends to view anyone who takes the time to create something by hand don’t elicit much more than an eye-roll from me. “Silly people, they don’t know what they’re missing out on,” I would say and move on. But this, this little insidious paragraph remained lodged in my brain for days. Perhaps it was just the last straw after the plethora (that has now thankfully died down) of articles about the knitting craze all written with a slightly disbelieving note of shock that “gasp, these knitters? They all seem to be stable, normal people!” Or the profusion of knitting books bending over backwards to reassure their readers that this is not the same craft as practiced by dull grannies and unfashionable women incapable of having fun, that this is hip, cool, and hey, something celebrities do! To all this, I just want to ask, just what exactly is so odd, so wrong with taking the time to create something from scratch? Is it better to spend the time vegetating before a flickering television? Does that somehow make a person a more “normal?” Maybe this continued snubbing is just a matter of the persisting stereotypes of those who “hand-make” things…the hippie, the granny, the socially-awkward wall-flower, and so on and so on. Maybe it’s all a matter of waiting for these seemingly indelible images to wear down and wear out as more and more people take up “hand-making” things. In the mean time, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to turn on the crazy and knit myself a sweater.

Happy Mother's Day!

2007-05-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

Hope you and your mom had a good celebration, or if you are a mom, you were well celebrated (hopefully with lots of yummy pasteries)!
(Thanks so much to everyone for their happy thoughts! Things are much better now so more regular postings to follow soon!)

Tumultuous Days

2007-04-22T23:25:00.000-07:00

Real life has been doing a pretty good job of kicking my ass for the past week or so by simultaneously presenting me with a professional crisis and a family emergency, along with a side helping of other pitfalls (one literally…always be wary of freshly mopped floors); all of course, two weeks before a planned cross-country trip. All this leaves precious little time for anything besides doing all that I can and must to do to counter the unhappy events (and trying to think positively, not something pessimistic me is very good at). So, I will be a bit scarce in blogland for the next few weeks, until -- hopefully, with all my fingers and toes crossed and many a fervent wish—everything resolves for the better. If you can, spare a happy thought or two for me. It can’t be clouds and rain always, right?

Just another excitement filled evening...

2007-04-10T23:40:00.000-07:00

here at Casa Knit's Tale

Oh the fun.

Some comfort, throw-together baking (and subsequent eating) helps a great deal though, especially when crunching numbers that are directly related to the size of the imminent drop in one's bank balance.

Apple cranberry bread pudding. Yum!
In case you want to make your own:

Ingredients:
Approx. 12oz French bread, or whatever bread you have lying around the house, cut into 1-2 inch cubes
1 ½ cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
¼ cup sweet white wine (optional, can replace with milk or cream), plus a few tablespoons for soaking cranberries
2/3 cup sugar (plus some for sprinkling)
3 eggs
1/3 cup dried cranberries
2-3 small crisp apples (e.g. Fuji), diced
½ teaspoon nutmeg (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter 9x9 Pyrex baking dish. Soak dried cranberries in 6 tablespoons of wine. Whisk eggs, the 2/3 cup sugar, the ¼ cup of wine, milk, and heavy cream together until well blended. Pour over bread. Add cranberries and apples. Gently mix (go ahead, use your hands!) to ensure that all the bread pieces come into contact with the liquid to optimize uptake and that the fruit is more or less evenly distributed throughout. Pour mixture into buttered baking dish. Lightly sprinkle the top with some sugar and nutmeg. Pop into the oven for approximately 50 to 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (You can cover the pan with tin foil if you want to keep the top from getting too crisp and brown)
Cut into squares or just spoon out while still piping hot and enjoy!

Illustrate Friday: Green

2007-04-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

What a perfect topic for this month's Project Spectrum!

I wonder if Mark Rothko ever contemplated other mediums...

Have a great weekend!

Vintage Obsessions

2007-04-04T23:08:00.000-07:00

I’m prone to sudden obsessions. Like summer storms, these come over me with little warning and disappear with a similar lack of notice, usually leaving only credit card charges and an increased number of books or materials in their wake. These bursts of finding out “all there is to know” about a given topic are often triggered during my perusals through the blogosphere. A pretty sweater, an interesting stitch pattern, or even just an intriguing bit of yarn will catch my eye and the next thing you know, I’m off, googling like a fiend. A few passing obsessions ago, I traversed, with a few side path meanderings, from the topic of vintage sock patterns to the work of Jane Waller. For anyone with an interest in vintage patterns, she is a find indeed, though perhaps a few decades too late. During the late seventies and early eighties, Ms. Waller published multiple books containing collections of sweater patterns for men, women and children from the early half of the 1900’s, all now sadly out of print*. I could find no excerpts of the books online but I was intrigued nonetheless. A few searches brought me to a used copy, very reasonable priced, of her comprehensively named “The Man’s Knitting Book: Classic Patterns from the 20’s to the 50’s,” which claimed to contain over a hundred knitting patterns for men, all reproduced as they were first published. Of course, I pounced immediately. A few weeks later, it was in my mailbox and oh what a treasure trove!
Patterns from the four decades, 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s, are reproduced in the book exactly in all their original glory. Sometimes, rather dated glory.

Yes indeed, it was once deemed unseemly for men to expose their unclothed torsos in public. Hence the requirement for a bathing suit. The fitted one-piece in bold color stripes or fair-isle was apparently all the rage in the 20’s, though this specimen is sadly monochromatic.
Each decade of patterns is prefaced with a wittily written piece by Ms. Waller on the fashion trends for men of the decade in relation to the historical context with many a quote from society and fashion authorities of the day. These little gems of historical snapshots alone, in my opinion, would make this book worthwhile for purchase but (as it is said) wait, there’s more! In addition to the immense number of patterns for sweaters, vests, and an oddment of accessories like gloves, scarves, and hats, a detailed index is provided in the back of the book for translating these patterns to modern day terms. Not only is there general information for the equivalents of the British needles sizes, needle sizes, gauge, and modern-day (modern for when the book was published in the mid-80’s) yarn suggestions are given for each and every of the 167 patterns. Several of the sweaters and accessories were also knitted up for the book and shown in full-page color photos throughout. Like this set here:

50's two-colored chic

80's retro preppieness

Or this sweater:

40's sportsman with bicycle

80's pouty punk with umbrella

There are a few women’s patterns as well, like this cozy jacket, due to the interest in his and hers matching sweaters during the 50’s (the pattern booklets would include both a his and a hers version).

While some of the sweater do not appeal to me at all (like a sweater vest pattern for the quintessential pipe-smoking, head-of-family-type, for example), there are quite a few that I would love to adapt for myself, knit for I., or co-opt the stitch pattern for something else. Of course, given that I have only two sweaters’ worth of garment constructing experience under my belt, the very succinct directions of knitting in these patterns may be beyond my comfortable reach for now. So, I’m doing a spot of vintage knitting training.

Salina, Rowanspun DK, soothing stockinette happiness.

*Jane Waller has just published a new book compiling knitting patterns from the 1940's. You can find a wonderful and thorough review of it here.

Shading away from blue

2007-04-01T02:24:00.000-07:00

and grey and white...

Hello pink and yellow!

and green!

Illustration Friday: Snap

2007-03-30T19:21:00.000-07:00

It's a horrid little noise...

(pen/colored pencil)

Draw along! Join in here.

ETA: No actual trauma, physical or emotional, was inflicted on either needle or knitter during the making of this drawing. (Though heaven knows I've broken my share of DPNs in many a creative fashion in the past year...)

Ahhhhh....

2007-03-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

Much better.

Not a red-letter day

2007-03-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

Unless you are going for the annals of dumb, dumb, dumb moments.
This is exactly why I should never start projects on a whim late at night and low on sleep and then continue knitting blithely on without ever looking back at the pattern.
The directions? K1MC, P1MC, K1MC, P1CC, repeat round and round, essentially 3x1 corrugated ribbing. Simple enough, no?

Apparently not.

Yeah. And even more pathetically, my forehead-smacking moment of realization did not come until row 14.
And so we are now back to this.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.
(Though perhaps this is for the best -- my first attempts at two color-knitting is the very epitome of ugly unevenness...)

It must really be Spring

2007-03-25T03:02:00.000-07:00

Mild rain showers, balmy temperatures, blooming hyacinths...yup, Spring.

I've adjusted my plans accordingly.

Sort of.
(Them's Springy colors, no?)

Illustration Friday: I Spy*...

2007-03-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

with my little eye...

YOU!
Have you spied me?

*If you feel like doodling to the theme, join in on the fun here!

A series of halves

2007-03-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

Thank you all for the helpful and nice comments about my new banner! I agree, it is a bit too wide vertically but I’m at a bit of a loss for how to make it narrower without simultaneously shortening the image length-wise. So, after trimmed and tweaked off a bit more width, I’m going to call it good until I can think of a solution.
In the mean time, here are my two weeks of halves.
It all started off well enough. While Occam the Laptop was off for repairs, I finished half of Veste Everest, intended as a gift for my mother on the event of ~~her 60th birthday~~ ~~Mother’s Day 2006~~ ~~Christmas 2006~~ ~~her 61st birthday~~ Mother’s Day 2007, though I may have jinxed myself again right there.

I also finished half of a toddler mitten pair, sans embroidery as of yet, well on track to be in time for the one-year birthday of I’s niece

That was week one. Week one was good. And then the Knitting and Electronics gods decided that life should always be filled with a little…you know. Builds characters, and all that.
So, in week 2, the rather more important half of my pair of arms went haywire when my long ago pinched ulnar nerve decided to announce itself by rendering me unable to keep my right elbow bent for any length of time without numb fingers and general unhappiness of the forearm.

Enter lots of Ibuprofen and exit knitting.
Exit too the hope of a working laptop when Occam came home only half repaired. The trivial but expensive half of the repairs was done (new CD/DVD drive) while the crucial but not as expensive repair (new hard-drive) was deemed unnecessary (though of course I was amply charged for the process of deeming said repair unnecessary -- wiping the drive and reintalling the OS). As I soon discovered, the crucial repair was necessary after all (and perhaps not even sufficient to fix all the problems) as poor Occam went from normal to hobbling to this in a few days.

I’m happy to say that this week is going a little better (knock on wood…could the good/bad weeks be following some sort of sinusoidal wave?). I’m starting to get more use out of my arm, enough to do short bursts of knitting, as I did in those silly effects pictures last post. I may also be able to get most of my repair dollars refunded. And, there’s this (thank goodness for fellowship funding).
Meet Sirius*.

I'm quite besotted.

*Not after Sirius Black, fond as I am of the character, but after Sirius the Dog Star from Dogsbody, a favorite book I wax poetic about whenever given the chance, written by the incomparable Diana Wynne Jones and if you haven’t read it, then by by God why are you not off right this instant hunting down a copy to start?

k...n...i...t...

2007-03-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

k.n.i.t...

knit...

knit, knit, knit, knit

Almost free of hinderances (computers and my right arm all hate me) but for want of a USB cable...more to follow soon...

P.S. What do you all think of the new banner on the header? Too big? Too distracting? Takes too long to load? And while I'm asking, does anyone know how to keep it linked to the main blog page (i.e. when you are only looking at one post, you can click on the header to return to the main page)?

Temporarily hindered

2007-03-07T22:29:00.000-08:00

After three year of steady service through multiple little knocks and bangs and two falls, my little laptop is finally giving up the ghost. Poor Occum the laptop seemed to recover itself over the weekend after some rather frightening glitches last week (have you backed up your computer files lately?) but today, after I regained enough faith in it to try posting, the problems have come back. So, this post is being written on the little machine's last gasp. Tomorrow, Occum will be going to the shop for some new innards. Of course, this sadly means no laptop and no posting for the next few days (though, thank goodness for work computers, there will still be blog reading). In the mean time, I hope my new stash enhancement provides you with some yummy eye candy.
Really, there's no better salve for the wearied soul (or for the soul just feeling meh) than the heady scent of wool, oh so faintly laced with tangy notes of vinegar. Just a passing whiff of this smell brings the words "beautiful" and "hand-painted" and "wool" into the forefront of my mind. It's even better when that whiff is accompanied by the sight of this:

I splurged a little two weeks ago at Briar Rose Fibers. I've been in love with their hand-dyed yarns ever since I encountered it at Rhinebeck (when a skein of Sea Pearl just had to come home with me). The wonderful color palette of the yarns, where deep plums shade into blues and olives and rich reds transition into a brilliant orange, has caused me to spend more time than I would like to admit browsing again and again through the online shop. But, let's not dwell on my obsessive yarn-stalking behaviors... Here are the delicious smelling skeins (and for the second photo, please imagine a vibrant red in place of the insipid, washed out vermillion that my computer insisted on showing in direct conflit to what appears on the camera).

Respectively from the top, Collette (wool/mohair), Grandma's Blessings (superwash wool), and Earthsong (wool/alpaca), the latter skein being in two pictures because the colors are just so pretty. It's all I can do keeping myself from throw all the current projects in the corner and casting on these skeins...

Bunny Lace

2007-02-28T23:28:00.000-08:00

Now, if only this knitting-in-progress could look like that all the time...
Thank you all for the compliments on the Sea Monkeys! The universe must have felt that an unexpected success with variegated yarn in lace must be balanced by a failure in some other aspect of my knitting. How else can I explain my momentary amnesia regarding angora when I impulsively embarked on some bunny lace? Bunny yarn, as we all know, can attribute its rational-thought-defying qualities of being oh-so-heavenly soft and fluffy and addictive to pet to its inherent fuzziness. You know, the halo comme ça around the yarn.

Lovely, no? Well, that delightful halo also makes the scarf look like this when sans back-lighting...

I think this is beyond even the magical powers of blocking to save. After much grumping and thoughts of frogging (not actually a possibility given the enmeshing abilities of the aforementioned fluff), I think I've finally made my peace with the scarf-to-be*. After all, even if no one else will ever be able to discern even the barest hint of deliberately placed holes, I will at least know that deep down, sandwiched between a double layer of bunny hair, there is lace.

*It helps that the fluff makes the yarn feel so luxurious that it makes me wish for a tubful to roll around nekkid in. Yeah, it's that soft.

Sea Monkeys

2007-02-26T22:41:00.000-08:00

Undulating waves of Sea Dreams lace

make for a most delightful pair of woolly Monkeys…

And a solo sock-modeling photo-shoot

makes for an excellent isometric stomach muscle workout!

Project Specs:

Pattern: Monkey Socks by the brilliant Cookie
Yarn: Claudia Hand Painted fingerling weight, Sea Dreams 009
Needles: US 1.5/2.5mm for four leg repeats, US 1/1.25mm for fifth repeat and remainder of sock.
Mods: One fewer pattern repeat for legs; change in needle size as above

A year and a day

2007-02-24T23:27:00.000-08:00

Three hundred and sixty six days of me blathering into the ether. Hard to believe. What started off as just a sounding board for me to wax poetic on my new-found love of knitting (without driving non-knitting friends and family mad with fiber talk) has turned into something of a refuge. Here is a mental space apart from the daily complexities and banalities of trudging the Ph.D. road, a place where I can muse and reflect to my heart’s content on the act of making things – sewing, knitting, spinning... – with no limitations and no one to pooh-pooh my efforts as “a waste of time.” Here is also a medium through which I can connect and exchange ideas with others who too love to create things by hand. After a day of moving bits of clear liquid from plastic tube to plastic tube in the laboratory, often with negative results at the end, it’s wonderful to come home and do something with my hands that actually can result in the tangible creation of something. Better yet, to be able to share and discuss in this space about those creations or the frustrations of bringing forth those creations – that just makes all the stresses of the day seem a million miles away. Plenty have been said extolling this wonderful, generous community built up around the simple act of looping a strand of yarn into a fabric and yet no amount of praise can be enough for this network of “kindred spirits.” I am still amazed each post by all of you who take the time to read and respond back. So, thank you, thank you everyone for being so kind to listen to me ramble and helping me create this sanctum. Here’s to another year!

Presenting....

2007-02-21T22:30:00.000-08:00

Oh, wait…focusing…

still focusing…oh, $%#$@&* auto-timer…

wait, ready…er…okay!

Presenting
Cyd!

My very second knitted top!

(Obligatory posed side view)

What a difference a year of knitting experience makes! When I finished my first sweater, binding off loosely and proper seaming were not concepts that I was well acquainted with. So, I ended up with edgings of limited stretchiness and gaping joins between the front and back, all of which relegated the sweater (excited though I was about it) to languish in refinishing limbo after only one wearing. This time it was all different! Knitting a pair of argyle socks put those necessary skills of intarsia and mattress stitch into my tool kit. Add that to a year’s worth of accumulated knitting knowledge from reading patterns and knitting books and blogs et voilà –– the confidence to modify a pattern and the ability to make it turn out almost as I had imagined it. Cyd is still far from being entirely free of errors and regrets, mind you, but it’s much better than the messy “home-made” look of the last sweater. And have I mentioned how warm and comfortable and wonderful this slip-over is? I ❤ fuzzy green and orange diamonds.

Specs and Notes:
Pattern: Cyd, from Jaeger Booklet JB31
Yarn: Jaeger Luxury Tweed 65% merino lambswool, 35% alpaca (sadly discontinued) MC 836, CC 823, 822
Thoughts on Luxury Tweed: Oddly, there is quite a difference in the feel of the yarn between the different colorways. The main color was much rougher with less of a soft halo than either of the contrast colors. The yarn, at least the main color, is also rather fragile. A quick tug, as during mattress stitching (ask me how I know this) easily snaps it in two.
Needles: US4/3.5mm needles for body. US2/3mm needles used for ribs at neck and armholes
Modifications:
A misreading of the pattern lead me to knit a gauge swatch with US 4 needles instead of the 4mm needles called for but my swatch was surprisingly on gauge. Given how loose the fabric was already on the US4/3.5mm needles (and I’m hardly a loose knitter), I shudder to think how it might have looked knitted with the larger needles. Because I used a smaller needle for the body, I also went down to a 2mm needle to knit the edging on the neck and armholes instead of the 3.25 mm needles called for. For the slip-over body, I deepened the V of the neck such that it came exactly to the top of the second green diamond rather than cut into a third diamond as in the pattern. I also reduced the total number of stitches around the body and added waist-shaping to keep the slip-over from being too sack-like since the smallest size was still a bit too big for me.
Now for those of you who’ve been kind enough to slog through all my rambling above, here’s a peek of the intarsia reverse side.

Oh ❤...

Sometimes you just need to look up

2007-02-19T23:15:00.000-08:00

Of all the random daily things that to bring a smile to my face, pretty blue skies never fail to inject a little happiness into my day, even for a brief moment. Rather mundane, yes, but there just something about seeing that exact, perfect shade of blue curving over to the horizon – suddenly all the little neurons connected to the happiness center in my brain fire and scream, joy joy joy.
It really doesn't get much better than yesterday, when the most gorgeous cloud-flecked blue sky put in an appearance to stretch over the pink magnolias blossoms in my mother's garden. Instant therapy.
What simple things make you happy?

Family and food

2007-02-17T23:48:00.000-08:00

Oh so much good food…

Happy Lunar New Year!

Tempestuous Bunny Love

2007-02-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

❤…

❤❤…

✖✖✖✖!!!

…❤?

❤❤❤!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Bottling away the blues

2007-02-11T12:40:00.000-08:00

Blue is all well and good, but in the context of one’s extremities, especially when one is in possession of a circulatory system that tends to bypass said extremities, blue becomes less of a good thing. I had apparently mused over the interesting blue tint that my feet take on during evenings at home one too many times to I., since this arrived in the post yesterday.

I.’s Irish co-worker kindly gave him her extra hot water bottle to send to me. And it's purple! I’m also greatly tickled by the very carefully worded, detailed instructions of use and caution statement stamped on the bottle's one side. (Though it does make one wonder about all sorts of things --- like what is the difference between a toy and a plaything? And do rubber bottles dissolve in oil and grease?)

Now that I am a knitter in possession of a hot water bottle, I’m sure you can guess what must follow.

Pins and steam and heat

2007-02-08T02:10:00.000-08:00

Somehow in my one-year and some months of knitting, I have managed to escape the necessity of blocking lace. While I love lace in principle, I inevitably contact Startitis and become distracted with other things whenever I spend too lengthy of a period on large lace projects like shawls…cough Icarus cough. Furthermore, I’ve always had a rather irrational fear of blocking…anything. No previous bad experiences, just a completely irrational dread. So, with these two handicaps, the only items with intentionally placed holes I have ever finished -- a Branching Out scarf in DK weight wool and a pair of Pomatomus socks -- were small and did not require blocking. Well, all of this is my rather roundabout way of leading up to say, wow, I knew blocking does wonders to lace but…wow.

Even on this scarf where the rumples were not extreme (but enough to absolutely require flattening of some sort), pinning out and steam ironing wrought an absolutely amazing transformation. Instead of the fuzzy, crinkled purple bundle that had been sitting in my knitting bag, I had myself 5 feet of light, lofty, flowing lace. It’s funny, I’ve seen much more spectacular examples of this transformation time and time again on many blogs but there’s just something about doing it myself (even a lesser version) that makes the experience seem extra magical. Now, fingers crossed that my future MIL will like it just as much as I do!

Project Specs:
Pattern: Crystal Palace Madeira Cascade Lace Scarf
Yarn: 3.5 skeins of Misti Alpaca DK 4ply 80% Suri baby alpaca/20% silk, color 2030
Needles: US5/3.5mm
Finished dimensions: 9 inches wide, 5 feet long (10 pattern repeats)

A belated kick-off

2007-02-06T21:07:00.000-08:00

…for Project Spectrum 2.0.

Paper white and gloomy grey without…

Cozy blues and creamy whites within…

Colors for Febrary and March? Blue, grey, and white, of course!

Bloggers' (Silent) Poetry Reading 2007

2007-02-02T22:20:00.000-08:00

It's that time of the year again for groundhogs and poetry. Since my favorite poem in its entirety would make for an exceedingly long post, here are my two favorite stanzas instead.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

--"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", by T. S. Eliot

Speed Knitting

2007-01-28T22:39:00.000-08:00

There’s nothing like the ghastly specter of running out of yarn to push me into knitting overdrive. As I progressed along on my impulse-buy-and-cast-on Monkey socks, the rather rapid implosion of the center-pull ball soon became an object of concern and then, of out-right panic. By the time I got to the heel turning, I was convinced that the sad little deflated ball of yarn could not possible contain enough yardage for me to finish the sock. So, what else could I do but knit like a house on fire? (As it is a universally acknowledged fact that if you only believe, the speed of knitting is directly proportional to the amount of yarn remaining.)
So in record time, I now possess one completed and perfectly fitting (Sea) Monkey sock

And, erm, plenty of left-over yarn (shown here relative to the skein destined for the other sock).

Which all just goes to show how true the relationship between knitting speed and yarn yardage is and says nothing whatsoever about my propensity to worry.
Ahem. Right.

Ah well...

2007-01-26T00:39:00.000-08:00

One little fall (four skeins' worth) makes it awfully easy to take another tumble.

Merino and tussah silk roving in the very aptly named Desert Rose colorway and an oh-so-handy hemlock nøstepinne that makes the most adorable center pull balls. Both are from Hello Yarn, my favorite source of spinning fiber and home of Adrian, she of the amazing eye for color. Did I mention she also dyes beautiful sock yarns?
Hmm, methinks the wagon's driven off without me.

Falling

2007-01-24T00:05:00.000-08:00

During a few days of frantic cleaning at the end of last year, I finally took full stock of the amount of fiber tucked away in every available nook and cranny of my apartment. It was enough to shock me into imposing a little buying freeze. For a few weeks, I felt absolutely no covetousness towards any yarn or roving. I passed my days thinking about the many projects waiting in the stash with fond anticipation. I was content. Happy even. And certainly firm in my no-buying resolve. Not even the glittering array of end-of-the-year project montages all over blogland could move me in the slightest to lust after new yarns. No, this was the new rational, prudent, stash-busting me.
And then, with no warning at all (there never is, is there?), I fell off the wagon.
The culprit for my lapse? The Loopy Ewe, or more specifically, their amazing selection of sock yarns.
How could one’s cursor not drift towards the purchase button when confronted with loveliness like this?

Or this?

Since both these yarns (Claudia Hand Painted and Sweet Georgia, respectively) in those specific colorways (Sea Dreams and the delightfully named Willow, à la Buffy, n.b. SG also dyes Slayer and Angel colorways…very charming, even though Angel is lame and his hair goes straight up and …ahem, where was I?) were unavailable ones I spotted a few months earlier and briefly obsessed over, I really had no chance in resisting. A few hazy minutes of clicking later, my buying freeze was no more.
But yarn doesn’t really count as stash if you cast on with it right away. Right?

Priceless

2007-01-20T22:10:00.000-08:00

Numbers of mistakes made in intarsia along the way: 11
Number of times multiple rows were tinked back to correct mistakes in intarsia: 11
Number of pink stockinette stitches consecutively knitted on size 0 needles: 9,000
Number of ends woven in: 20

Getting to dance around the apartment in hand-knit bubblegum pink argyle socks?
You know the answer.

Specs:
Yarn: Dalegarn Baby Ull (MC 4516, CC 8523, 2908)
Needles: US 0/2mm
Gauge: Flat -- 8.5sts x 12 rows per inch; in the round --10sts x 14 rows per inch (in case you should ever need proof that knitting in the same yarn on the same size needles can still give you vastly different gauges depending on whether you knit flat or in the round)
Pattern: Moth Heaven and the Cybersock Argyle Tutorial

Happy, happy, joy, joy

2007-01-20T02:40:00.000-08:00

Done, done, done! Can you guess what?

Shhh...

2007-01-15T23:10:00.000-08:00

Dottie the Procrastination Elephant loves to sneak up on people going about minding their own business, getting work done…

And pouncing!

’Cause this is what Dottie think about being sticking to deadlines and finishing up long lingering WIPs.

Dottie can be very eloquent, if not always polite.

Twenty repeats at last!

2007-01-15T01:06:00.000-08:00

A belated happy New Year to you all! I’m forgoing my usual blather about my absence (suffice it to say, holiday joy and family togetherness and lots of happy times) since constantly blogging about not blogging is getting a bit silly. Not only are my rather feeble expositions on my lack of posts starting to seem like a bad attempt at trying to attain meta-ness, I’m sure they are dull to no end to read. So, none of that this time. Instead, there’s knitting! Usually, I come back from breaks in blogging having spent the time being occupied with everything but knitting. This time, it was different. Not only was there waving about of sticks and yarn in the last few weeks, there was a lot of frantic waving about of said sticks and yarn. All in pursuit of a single goal, to convert this silk and alpaca yumminess (I don’t think I have ever touched anything that felt so heavenly)

into twenty of following repeat

so as to form a lovely and warm scarf comme ça

for my future mother-in-law in time for her birthday and visit here in the first week of January. Well, that week has come and gone, along with future MIL without her scarf. Alas, even my best intentions and a few days of panic-stricken knitting during every spare minute were no match for my ability to procrastinate. Have I ever mentioned that I live in perpetual denial of deadlines? I only made it to repeat 17 on the last day she was in town. It actually took me until that day to finally accept that I was not going to be able to knit the remaining three twenty-row repeats, block each half of the scarf (it’s knit in two halves for aesthetics), and graft the two halves together, all in less than four hours. Oh if one only had a switch to pause time. Or a magic wand to transform a pattern complex enough to require an eye on the chart but utterly boring after the third rendition into something absolutely simple but riveting. And while I'm wishing, I'd like a pony and world peace too.
Fortunately, the extremely mild winter so far this year on the East Coast where future MIL resides has bought me a bit more time in getting the scarf done before she would need it. (That is, if the current disturbing climate trend of warmth enough for cherry blossoms in January is not some permanent sigh of global warming, in which case she may never need a scarf again.) In any event, some devoted knitting time this weekend has finally brought me to the tail end of the knitting. I’m so happy to be finally done with these seemingly never ending repeats. Now there's naught but blocking and grafting ahead. Hurrah!

T minus zero

2006-12-25T01:03:00.000-08:00

The gifts are wrapped, the decorations are hung, the food is prepared, and naught but this blogger is stirring through the house. It must be time.

Merry, merry Christmas!

(To experience a spot of knitting related seasonal joy, click here)

Yes, Virginia,

2006-12-21T23:18:00.000-08:00

You can make an adult-size cabled hat on US7 needles from one skein of Cascade 220, with plenty left over.
Just putting it out there in case, you know, there are more knitters like me who remain ignorant of the general ballpark amount of yarn needed to make a hat, spend ages trawling the web to no avail, and finally find the answer by saying “to hell with planning” and just knitting one. Like this, the What Hat.

Yarn: Cascade 220, less than one skein (approximately 5-6 yds of contrast color yarn for edge)
Pattern: My own (see towards end of rambling)
Needles/gauge: US7/3.75mm 5sts/inch x 7 rows/inch
Circumference: stretches comfortably to fit head 22-23 inch in circumference. (16 inches lying flat and unstretched)
Length: 8 inches

This is the long requested and long given-up on present for I. the fiancé --- a hat that so resisted being knit that inquiring after its imaginary progress had become a long-standing joke between us for the past year. Typical beginning of an exchange:
I. : How’s my hat going?
Me (in my best glib voice): What hat?
Cursed with a killer combination of pain-in-the-ass pattern (two color brioche-stitch in the round from Weekend Knitting) and DK-weight yarn instead of the worsted called for, the poor hat in its first incarnation never had a chance. Even with the yarn shop hours invested in choosing the exact shades of color that I. would permit on his head (who knew a man normally so oblivious to color would be so particular about what shades he would wear?). After struggling for days with the annoying cast-on and always ending up with a muddle instead of distinct ribs in alternating colors, I banished the project to a dark corner of the closet. It wasn’t until this winter when I, stressed into distraction by the holiday knitting deadlines looming overhead, became obsessed with wrestling that brioche stitch pattern into submission. To make life easier this time, I started with worsted weight yarn: Cascade 220 in a nice, masculine combination of blue and heathery grey, bought without consulting the fiancé’s color opinion. This time, on try number two with no rhyme or reason I can discern, the hat finally settled into looking how it should. But of course there was one problem: my hard-won distinct ribs of alternating color made a fabric so open and loose on needles that should give gauge that I could see the outline of my hand through it. Not the best thing for blocking out the cold. Since I was in the grips of procrastination, I couldn’t just give the hat up again. Thus began the web-trawling to determine whether one skein of Cascade 220 is sufficient for a cabled hat. My rational?
Blue edged grey cabled hat = knitting that wouldn’t bore me to tears but still masculine and understated enough that I. would deign to put it on his head (fingers crossed for the latter)
In any case, I cast on the magical 96 stitches and just went with it, making it up along the way. The hat practically flew off my needles once I figured out how to travel a rib on the fabric. It was more fun than watching argyle diamonds form to see the cables twining into the pattern I had in my head. I’m so delighted with how this seat-of-my-pants effort turned out that I’m half tempted to keep the hat for myself! Now, here’s hoping I. likes his surprise improv hat!
In case you too want to get creative with simple cables on headgear, here is a general recipe for you to play around with:

With a worsted weight yarn of similar gauge, cast on 96 stitches, join in the round (if you leave a tail of yarn from your cast-on, you won’t need to use a marker to mark the beginning of the round since that is where the tail will be).
Knit in 2x2 rib (I did twisted rib: *knit through the back loop 2, P2*) for 2 inches (do more if you want a longer hat, e.g. be able to fold up the brim of the hat)
Decide how you want the ribs to travel. I first did a pattern in which two straight ribs flanked a pair of crossing ribs as in the picture below.(When I started traveling and crossing ribs, I only knit the straight ribs through the back loop)

After crossing the ribs and traveling them back to being parallel with the straight ribs, I continued in 2x2 rib for six rows. Then, for every other set of four ribs (crossed pair flanked by 2 straight), I crossed the straight flanking rib with the crossed rib next to it. My next and last cross involves the first set of ribs I crossed.

Whatever you would like to do with your ribs, all you need to know is the following for moving and crossing them:
1. To travel a rib through background purl stitches, you move the rib 1 stitch to the left or right per row. To cant a rib left, hold 2 rib stitches in front, purl next stitch, knit the 2 held rib stitches. To cant a rib to the right, hold the purl stitch before the rib in back, knit the two rib stitches, purl held stitch.
2. To cross two ribs when you have traveled them right next to each other, you hold the two stitches of one rib in front of the other. To cross a right rib in front of the left, hold the right rib stitches in front, knit the left rib stitches, then the held right rib stitches. To cross the left rib in front of the right, hold the right rib stitches in back, knit the left rib stitches, then knit the right rib stitches.

I knit without decreasing until the hat was about 1.5 inches less than the length I wanted it to be. Then I did rows of decreasing. I winged which stitches I decreased along the way but followed this general hierarchy of stitch elimination: first went one of the purl stitches between each pair of ribs (P2tog get K2, P1), second the ribs lost a stitch each (K2tog to give K1, P1), third I began to merge the ribs, and last I knit across all the stitches.

Row 1: Dec evenly to 72 sts
Row 2 – 4, 6, 8: Knit the knits, purl the purls
Row 5: Dec evenly to 40 sts
Row 7: Dec evenly to 32 sts
Row 9: Dec evenly to 16 sts
Row 10: Knit
Row 11: Dec evenly to 8 sts

Cut yarn, leaving at least 6 inch tail. Pull tail through eight stitches with tapestry needle to close the hole, weave in ends, and you have yourself a simple cabled hat!

You can’t blog in a vacuum

2006-12-19T03:08:00.000-08:00

Which, is exactly what I found myself stuck in for the last two weeks. How did I end up there? Well, it all started off innocently enough. One night, I put off writing a post in favor of getting some chores done. The next day, I skipped over my daily blog-reading time so as to get more done at work. Then of course more chores appeared during the next evening to keep me from posting and so it went. Me spiraling further and further into the vacuum. Without the daily dose of knitting and crafting ingenuity and chatter, I had nothing to compel me to react and share. Knitting and spinning still happened in the evenings but all of it seemed so banal that I felt like I had nothing remotely interesting to say. By the time I realized how much I had fallen out of the blogging habit, along came a cold virus to make sure that I stayed put in the vacuum. With the virus sticking as close to me as a Victorian chaperone, the only thing that mattered anymore was the proximity of the nearest box of tissues, preferably the soft, lotion-laden kind. And so it went for another week. When my immune system finally kicked the cold this week and I mustered up enough courage to tackle my long-neglected Bloglines subscriptions, it was like a shot in the arm. You know the talk that swirls about the knitting blogosphere about the wonders of the community and the support and the inspiration? All of it is true to the nth degree and if I have ever cast a slightly cynical eye towards it all, I will never do so again! Oh all the amazing things you people have been doing all this while and oh how I feel inspired!

Intolerable

2006-12-03T00:20:00.000-08:00

Distractions, distractions.
How can I possibly focus on gift knitting when I have bags overflowing with this

and new magazines* chock full of these lying about?!

Knitting, what's that?

*Stitch Idée and Cotton & Print from here, just in case, you know, you want some distraction too.

Meta Meme

2006-11-29T22:20:00.000-08:00

How very so to make and spread a meme so as to obtain data and insights into how a meme spreads. This is exactly what one UC Irvine English grad student is trying to do for his presentation at a panel of this year’s MLA conference (ah, if only my data gathering were as easy as pleading for public sympathies!). So, in the spirit of supporting (fellow) graduate students everywhere sloughing towards graduation and giving a little exposure to the world of our knitting blogger community, do join in on spreading this little meme. Here’s all you have to do:

1. Mention and post a link to his meme on your blog.
2. Ask other to do the same. (Remember, struggling grad students in desperate situations…sob, sob…)
3. Ping Technocrati

Of manly sophistication

2006-11-29T00:48:00.000-08:00

Now that turkey day has come and gone, it’s that time of the year again -- the time when those gift-giving days on the far horizon suddenly loom disturbingly close. For the non-knitting portion of the population, this means the manifestation of a voice in the back of the head screaming “Shop! Shop! Why are you still standing there? Shop!” For those of us inclined to play around with sticks and threads for most of the year, that voice brings along a sly little friend, who incessantly reminds us just how wonderful, how much better in demonstrating our love, how the very spirit of holiday giving, handmade gifts would be. This year, I've succumbed to that guilt-inducing little voice. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy gift knitting, but that the many unknowns in devoting the time to make a present (will they like the yarn, the color, the stitch pattern…will they wear it at all?) is quite crazy-making. To wit, my Thanksgiving vacation time was almost entirely devoted to pondering this.

How to turn 375 yards of Brooks Farms Riata into a manly yet sophisticated scarf, of comfortable width and sufficient length, that my uncle (who is thankfully very excited over the prospect of my knitting him a scarf) will like and wear. All without running out of yarn, of course. I started off quite optimistic, even though I have no idea what a man of sixty-plus years would consider to be manly sophistication (choosing the yarn color was enough to tax all my knowledge there). Riata is, after all, a beautiful, lustrous yarn. Surely it will look perfect in any stitch pattern. Surely. And besides, if anyone would know, surely my mother would have a good idea of what her brother would like. Surely. So, together with Mom, a few Barbara walker stitchionaries, some Vogue books, and a vintage text from Mom’s knitting days, we started to search for the perfect stitch pattern. All the lace patterns (really, anything with holes) were sadly dismissed out of hand for not being sufficiently “manly.” Ribs were good. Knit-purl texture patterns even better. Oh, and what about the cables? There seemed to be plenty of contenders but the more I swatched, the more frustrating it became. Initial swatching ruled out cables because of the limitations in yardage. More swatching nixed knit purl texture patterns because of the way the three ply yarn, with one ply containing silk and thus shinier than the others, reflected the light and made the texture disappear. Even more swatching settled the contention by Mom that an alternating rib pattern would work out beautifully --- the yarn is simply too loosely plied to show the difference and the end result looked boring and messy. Most irritatingly, nothing I tried showed off the subtle color and texture variation within the yarn. If anything, the yarn was screaming to be a loose, lacy pattern. This observation then touched off an extended debate with Mom on what exactly constituted a “manly” scarf. Between this and the failed swatching, I was ready by Sunday to knit two bobbles and an I-cord to a rectangle and call it manly and done. Fortunately, one last perusal of my pile of stitch patterns saved the day. I wanted something simple, interesting, and not too loose looking on larger needles…why didn’t I think of the plaited basket stitch sooner?

So, is this manly sophistication?

Family and food and other festivities...

2006-11-22T16:31:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

(And, given the poor weather all over the country, hope you all stay safe and dry.)

Diamonds, diamonds, everywhere...

2006-11-18T22:20:00.000-08:00

And

not

a one

close to completion.

Sigh.

S•P•I•N

2006-11-14T22:56:00.000-08:00

Spin (n) -- the angular momentum intrinsic to a body, as associated with the motion of that body around its own center of mass*.

Merely add some fiber to that intrinsic motion and suddenly, you can create absolute joy. Witness here:

My first skein of handspun! Yes, it's unevenly plied and alternately overspun and underspun but I love, love, love it -- all 41 purplish-pink heathered yards of it.
It's amazing how much finally figuring out how to properly draft will do for spinning speed and quality. While it used to take ages for me to spin a few handfuls of fibers into ugly, thick-and-thin yarn, being able to draft better allowed me to go through the rest of my two ounces of Coopworth in virtually no time at all with much better results. To make the final yarn in the skein, I plied my first spindle-full of singles with my second spindle-full (of which there are still a number of yards left). Since the singles from the first spindle-full were much more uneven and thick overall than that of the second, the resulting two-ply ranges from a light DK weight to a fingerling weight in terms of thickness.

In case you care for more details...

Fiber: Indigo-Cochineal natural dyed Coopworth by Stefania
Weight: <2 ounces
Yardage: approx. 41 yds

And so begins yet another happy obsession.

*Oh what would we do without Wikipedia?

A random musing for the day

2006-11-12T23:48:00.000-08:00

Are three heads...

better than one?

Happy purple fingers

2006-11-09T21:46:00.000-08:00

makes for happy purple yarn.

Or is it the other way around?
My singles are still uneven more often than not but I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. How to keep the fluff of the unspun roving from getting tangled in the developing thread, how to simultaneously "pull" (or draft, as my spinning teacher at Rhinebeck sternly corrected) the fiber while keeping the spin, how to coax the fibers free of the mass of roving without tugging so hard that the interrupted spin sends the spindle flying sideways...it's all slowly settling into my brain and body. As it was when I learned how to knit, my hands are finally adapting to this awkward business of simultaneously managing a tuft of fluff and a rapidly twirling wooden object. It's hard to beat that wonderful feeling when everything falls into place, when one's hands finally fit into positions that work and feel comfortable. It's like coming home. Even though the end product of my spinning leaves much to be desired, I'm loving the spinning process. There's something so very soothing and almost mesmerizing in the series of motions involved -- flicking the spindle into a whirl, drafting out a thin stream of fibers from the puff of roving, letting the twist climb into the fiber, reflicking the spindle into a whirl, and so on. I feel like I could almost do it for forever.
Happy purple fingers indeed.

Psst...

2006-11-07T10:25:00.000-08:00

Don't forget to

today!
Polls are open til 8pm.

Fickle is the urge to craft

2006-11-05T23:13:00.000-08:00

Now that I have on-going knitting projects aplenty, including a few with deadlines, what did I feel compelled to do today but drop by the local bead shop. Makes perfect sense, no? Without fail, crafting not only brings out the worse of my packrat hoarding tendencies, but that hidden attention-deficit streak as well. A few weeks immersed in wool and suddenly the glitter of the jewelry dangling in the bead shop window is like a siren call. Not even the new issue of Interweave Knits could pull me back from taking a little side path off knitting (though Eunny Jang’s amazing Fair Isle Venezia pullover came close, until I thought about steeks and my already lengthy project list, that is). Good thing jewelry making, the amateur kind that I do anyway, is almost always just a night’s work of instant gratification.

With the very non-instant gratification of gift lace scarf knitting ahead of me, a new bauble to wear certainly goes a long way towards tempering and focusing my urge to make, make, make.

Yes, even with winter rapidly approaching, I appear to be still obsessed with autumnal colors.

Rhinebeck! Much belated…

2006-11-01T22:10:00.000-08:00

Nothing pulls one out of the blogosphere like a flurry of long-distance driving, future-relatives-visiting, and other vacation-related activities. I meant to blog along on my trip but almost before I knew it, I was on the plane heading back to the West Coast. Here, very, very much in the way of old news, is my Rhinebeck experience.
It was the quintessential autumnal day. Sunny and crisp.

The drive up to Rhinebeck was like something out of a car commercial – all windy roads flanked by red and gold trees with the occasional flurry of leaves blowing across. I would have enjoyed the drive more had I not been fretting about not getting there early enough to catch a glimpse of the Socks that Rock yarn at The Fold stall (my main goal for the festival) before they sell out. I., being ever rational and having never encountered the rabid obsession inspired by STR among the knitterly masses, scoffed at my fears. After all, we were arriving only one hour after the festival opening. Hardly late. It was not possible, he stated as one confident that the sun shall always rise in the East and that the demand for yarn shall always be limited, for the yarn to sell out that fast.
Well, he quickly stopped poking fun at my concern when we walked into the exhibition building. I was worried that it would take me a while to find The Fold stall in the huge hall but I needn’t have. There was a line traversing the length of the building composed entirely of women (and the occasional man) clutching skeins of brightly colored Socks that Rock like stolen treasure. The stall itself too swarmed with bodies, even though the racks were all empty but for a few sad skeins. Of those skeins, I spotted one in a colorway that I had been coveting. At this point, I’m ashamed to report, I took a complete leave of my senses. Even though I knew that I could order any color and weight of STR just by contacting Blue Moon Fibers, even though the line to pay was at least fifty persons long, and even though I had yet to explore any of the other hundreds of vendors at the festival, I wanted to have that skein. Not even this sight, once I queued up to pay, could deter me.

See that white tent the green arrow is pointing to? That’s The Fold tent, site of the yarn, the cash register, and the beginning of the line, as seen from my place at the tail end of the line (with even more people starting to queue up behind me). There’s nothing like scarcity to make everyone all a little crazy. Well over an hour later, I was in possession of one skein of medium weight STR and a rather grumpy fiancé. So, to make peace, we headed off for food and wooly animals. Fortunately, the animal tents were quite a bit less crazy than the wool-selling halls. And really, how can one feel ill-humored when looking at sweet faces like these…

Or marveling at all the varieties of sheep?
These little guys (don’t they resemble miniature bison?) are Southdowns, one of the oldest breeds of sheep.

Here is a Cotswold. This one placidly permitted some nose-scratching and close examination of his/her corkscrew wool.

This poor dear made the most melancholy calls that rang through the entire hall. Apparently, his stall friends were just swapped out so he was lonely.

By the afternoon (and after another long wait in line at the Brooks Farm stall that caused me to miss the blogger meet-up), I was starting to wish I could make like these woolies and take a nap.

All in all though, I think I made out rather well in the yarn department:

One hefty skein of Brooks Farm Riata (a wool, mohair, silk blend) to make a scarf for my uncle, one skein medium-weight STR in Rhode Island Red, and one skein of the glorious Briar Rose Sea Pearl (merino wool and tencel lace weight).
Yarn-wise, I was rather restrained, but all that wool and roving still managed to go to my head as I was unable to leave the festival without stopping by a spinning booth. After an hour of patient drop spindle instruction from the purveyors of the booth, I was the proud owner of some beautiful natural-dyed Coopworth roving and a Bird’s Eye maple Kundurt Wheels spindle.

Now that I’m in possession of a spindle and roving, there must of course be the obligatory picture of my first yarn. So, here, to finish this rambling post, is my first yarn in all of its two-plied, uneven, seven-inch glory.

No nupps yet…

2006-10-20T00:50:00.000-07:00

Just more packing procrastination.
Think this will be enough to keep me occupied on the plane?

Whether it’s because of the imminent trip (Wool! Fiancé! Wool!) or the fact that I’m finally feeling better after days of being “off,” I’m positively giddy today. Not even the thought of the many sleepless airport/plane hours ahead has been able to make me feel anything besides bright and bubbly. I blame that same giddiness for going a little crazy at the bookstore today. Somber literary novel, intriguing mystery, mindless romantic fluff, and a knitting magazine*, all in one trip! All this and trying to figure out how one would wind yarn with one’s knees (Alison and Janet, please enlighten me!)…should be sufficient to keep my brain busy for twelve hours!

*For those of you thwarted in your attempts to purchase the Holiday Vogue Knitting at your LYS like I was (all copies sold out within a day of being available!), try Borders. Quite a bit less competition. Oh, and the issue? Definitely worth owning, if only to admire and think covetous thoughts about the blue-lilac cables and white lace.

I may not have a swift but I do have doorknobs

2006-10-18T02:04:00.000-07:00

Yes, doorknobs.

Necessity is really the mother of invention. Well, inventions new to me at least.

In a pinch, these doorknobs worked as well for me as a pair of extra arms (when you take into account the advantage of the doorknobs being inanimate objects and thus possessing infinite patience) or the back of a chair. Fifteen minutes and some minor untangling later, I had myself one perfect ball of yarn.

I don’t have too many more days before I leave to tackle the things on my household to-do list. And yet, as soon as I run through my mental list to note that it’s all not checked off, my brain tacks up a “Gone Knitting” sign and I find myself playing with fiber. Call it stress-induced procrastination. Rather than putting clothes in the wash or making packing lists, I’ve been pondering what knitting projects to bring with me for the long, long plane ride (6am to 5pm…oh the joys of a non-direct cross-country flight). After all, choosing knitting projects is a complex endeavor. Most importantly, there should be at least two projects to minimize stitch pattern fatigue. Said projects must also be interesting enough to block out the frantically restless rat-in-a-cage feeling elicited by the tiny space allotted to one on the airplane. And yet, these projects can’t be so complex as require many manipulations that would be difficult in such a small space. So, given that Cyd comes with an entourage of no less than eight ball of mohair-containing yarn, all the strands of which love to tangle with one another, it won’t be making it into the carry-on. The bubble gum argyle sock 2, on the other hand, does manage to make the cut. But what other project bring along?
Well, you can probably guess from the skein-winding going on that I’m starting something new for the trip. With these. (What about the other WIPs? What WIPs?)

I wish I could capture reds accurately with my camera. Imagine the most perfect autumnal shade of rusty red occasionally lightening to a gold like fall leaves. I spotted this particular mostly solid shade of Koigu and could not leave the store without a few skeins. I even went back and bought more once I decided I wanted to show off the knitted item rather than hide it in my shoes as socks. Of course, in a perfect world, I would have sweaters, scarves, and socks all of this yarn, but in a perfect world, money also grows on trees and I float about all day in my Victorian mansion doing nothing more taxing than eating chocolate, sipping champagne, and knitting (the former two having no physical consequences, of course, being in a perfect world and all). Since I have yet to find that perfect world, I have to devote my four precious skeins to one perfect project. After much dithering, I finally settled on doing a smaller version of Madli’s Shawl , designed by the sock goddess herself. A fall scarf in fall colors. Watch this space for nupps.

Tumbling off the blog-wagon

2006-10-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

It hardly seems possible that more than an entire week has elapsed since I last posted. Nothing specific precipitated this lapse. No malaise, no emergencies -- just a dash more than usual of mundane happenstances that litter the day to keep me completely occupied and away from the blogosphere. Admittedly, I have been trying to get a bit more done in lab since I will be going on a mini-vacation at the end of next week. At this time seven days hence, I will be joining the legions of knitters, spinners, weavers, and other fiber-addicts in making the pilgrimage to Rhinebeck. I would be beside myself with excitement had I not managed to come down with some odd strain of cold/stomach virus a few days ago. Now I’m preoccupied with fretting over all the things I would like to get done before I leave. Besides list of work-related things, there is also that knitting-related item known as the Rhinebeck sweater. To wit, Cyd.

A sick day wouldn’t be a sick day if one wasn’t actually ill but it’s still so indescribably frustrating to have hours and hours of potential knitting time on my hands just when I have no ability to do much else besides sleep. So, the front of Cyd has been growing very slowly. With just a week to go, perhaps Cyd will just have to be at the festival in spirit… However, is anyone else going to be there in person?

En pointe

2006-10-03T21:08:00.000-07:00

Happy

Dancing

Foot!

Operation knitting retrieval was a success so here is the completed argyle sock number one. And just in time to join in on the

fun (hosted by the wonderful Lolly) too! As I have a tendency to be overly ambitious in my knitting plans, I'm going to try to be restrained this time and limit my sock celebrations to admiring sock yarns, finishing the argyles, starting only one other pair of socks, and of course, poring over these hallow tombs of sock knitting.

How are you celebrating this month of socks?

Une petite souris

2006-10-01T23:58:00.000-07:00

Look who showed up on my doorstep yesterday!

She has flown all the way from Belgium (where she lived with her talented creator and a large delightful family filled with colorful characters) to come stay with me! The trip left the little dear a bit shaken up, though. The security officials must have been convinced that her travel conveyance, instead of holding a wee little mouse, harbored instead those mysteriously missing W*M*Ds. So, they weren’t terribly nice. They ripped open the package and tore into the box and roughed her up a bit before shoving everything back.

Fortunately, the damage was minimal. After a bit of a rest on a tuffet...

and some TLC with a little glue to put her tail back on, she is feel much better. In fact, she’s already helping to water my neglected plants and making friends with her new neighbors!

Merci beaucoup, chère Geraldine, pour m’as donné une souris beaucoup mignon! Bizous!

Knitting? What knitting?

2006-09-29T01:42:00.000-07:00

The BBS strikes again!
And that’s not even half of the haul…

Ceci n'est pas une chaussette

2006-09-28T00:22:00.001-07:00

Imagine a sock.
Imagine a pink sock.
Imagine a pink argyle sock.
Imagine a finished pink argyle sock.
Had I not manage to forget my knitting at my parent’s house after my visit there yesterday, I wouldn’t have to ask you, dear reader, to do all the work today. Not only did I leave my argyle sock there at the kitchen table but because of my inability to ever decide on a single project to bring with me whenever I go somewhere, I also managed to leave all of the other projects I was working on there. At the kitchen table. All in one neatly packed zip-lock bag.
Le sigh.
Perhaps this is a sign for me to get on with the gift knitting?

More reason for girlish squealing

2006-09-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

The birthday bouquet from I.

In almost exact argyle colors!

Squeal!

An excess of sugar and spice and everything nice

2006-09-24T21:38:00.000-07:00

I. the fiancé sent the best birthday care package ever.

Icelandic lace patterns and chocolates and a card that makes one go “squee!”

The sugar, the lace, the adorable, fluffy, and resolutely un-ironic anthropomorphosized animals –– it all makes me feel fluttery and girly as anything.
Sometimes, it’s nice to leave the irony behind to revel in a bit of good-old-fashioned sugar and prettiness. Take for example this shawl (my sole reason for coveting Three Cornered and Long Shawls).

Ever since I saw hyrna herborgar knitted up here, I’ve wanted one. Yes, it’s lacy and girly and impractical for actual wear in the t-shirt and jeans world of a graduate student but something about the absolute frivolity of it appeals to me. It’s just so unabashedly pretty! Not only that but the distinct looking lace motifs promise for some interesting knitting too. And really, when have I ever been rational about my knitting (to wit…making wool socks and gloves in an extremely temperate climate where it rarely drops below 50°F)?
So, excuse me while I go indulge in some more girlish squealing over the b-day goodies (certainly makes getting a whole 'nother year older much more pleasant!). I’ll leave you with one more dear little drawing from the card.

So sweetly adorable that it’s positively cavity-inducing.

Voilà, back!

2006-09-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

Not of much visual interest but highly satisfying for this knitter: the back of Cyd is done!

Now, on to the diamonds!
(The yarn is actually a much more pleasant color than the liverish shade of red in the picture above...more like this...)

Stockinetting away

2006-09-18T22:11:00.000-07:00

Many thanks for all the kind words about my argyle socks! Thank you too for the advice on the sock heel. To tell you the truth, I may have been dithering over the heel more because of my dread of facing the one part of the argyle sock construction that remained stubbornly opaque to me despite much brain-wracking: the knitting of the gusset and the transition to the foot. At some point last week, I finally took the reinforcement thread-less plunge and made my K1, Sl1 heel. With that out of the way, I couldn't put off the gusset any longer. Happily, everything clicked as soon as I started working at it. A few hours of knitting decreases and some mattress stitch later, I had myself an ordinary sock-in-knitting on the DPNs.

It's all St St from here on out. Should be quick except that rows on US 0's accrue length oh-so-slowly and there's been some competition for my attention in knit 1 row, purl 1 row. You see, my sudden infatuation with argyle patterns didn't just compel me to do these socks, it also induced me to start working on this vest...slip-over...diamond-covered thing.

This is Cyd from the Jaeger booklet JB31. Though I have never in my life felt any interest in wearing a vest, this one caught my eye. After seeing it, I was rather surprised to find that I suddenly did want to wear a vest, or rather, wanted to wear exactly that vest, in exactly those colors. But, I had promised myself that there would be no yarn purchasing this month. So, I was the very picture of restraint. I told myself the project could wait for a few months while I knit up some of the stash. I told myself that the project wasn't going anywhere and would still be there in a few months. I told myself many calm rationalizations and I held firm and all was well until a quick Google search informed me that the Jaeger Luxury Tweed the vest was knit in had been discontinued. Once the word "discontinued" worked its way into my brain, a sense of franticness compulsiveness seized me. Before I knew it, I had hunted down the yarn and obtained a copy of the pattern. And here I am, knitting away on the vest back.
When I was working on the intarsia of the second argyle socks, I kept feeling a longing to do some simple, mindless knitting. No changing of colors, no fancy stitch work, just straight knit, turn, purl, turn ad infinitum. Well, I suppose my wish has been granted, in plenitude. Perhaps by the end of the week, I'll be itching to start these. (Not that I wasn't already tempted...)

Why I love used bookstores: Reason #547

2006-09-17T20:54:00.000-07:00

Look what I found at the neighborhood one!

I couldn’t believe my luck in coming across a Japanese craft-book, looking absolutely brand-new, no less, tucked between two heavy volumes of art prints. And here I was mourning the fact that I didn’t having the time this weekend to stop by Kinokuniya for a craft-book fix! Of course I snatched up the book immediately. Once I thumbed through it, I was really quite beside myself with delight at the find. The book (ISBN4-14-927553-X) is a squeal-inducing hodge-podge of craft projects of every kind.
There's everything from a cozy baby doll made from towels

to beautiful Japanese costumed dolls

to traditional bean bags

to a few sweet baby items (there are some children's clothing patterns too)

to a gorgeous hand-quilted blanket

to adorably silly felt animals of the zodiac. Here are my two favorites of the dozen.

I think the sheep on the right is thinking about her holiday knitting…

And then there were two

2006-09-12T23:55:00.000-07:00

On to the heels!
But first, a request for some advice. Since I was absolutely unsuccessful in my search for matching pink reinforcement thread (unless I want to resort to using elastic), the heels and toes will be composed solely of Dale Baby Ull as the rest of the sock. So, asks the worry-prone sock-knitting and hand-kitted sock wearing novice, can any sock knitters out there comment on the durability of non-reinforced socks? These are knit on US 0's so the fabric is relatively dense but I'm concerned about the nylon-less fiber content. Also, does anyone have any recommendations for a well-wearing stitch pattern for the heel flap (e.g. ribbed vs. K1, Sl1)?
Many thanks in advance for any and all purls of wisdom. (Wince...sorry, just couldn't resist the pun).

Argyling along

2006-09-11T23:50:00.000-07:00

It was a pink, orange, and green sort of weekend. I’m almost done with this second go-round of the chart.

Intarsia is so much faster and neater once one finally figures out that “twist strands together” doesn’t actually mean twist them together.

A most pleasant surprise

2006-09-09T22:15:00.000-07:00

Today started off as a hectic mess. A knitting night with a friend on Friday ran quite late. When I finally came home, I was so hopped up on caffeine and sugar and laughter that there was no way I could get to sleep. So, I knitted. And knitted and knitted – until faint bird chirps began filtering their way into my apartment. Needless to say, I slept quite late into the day. That, of course, has the unfortunate consequence of squashing everything I needed to get done today into a much, much smaller window of time. Just as I was running out the door, much frazzled and stressed, I found this from Phillipa in my mailbox and suddenly, my day seemed much better.

I didn’t have a chance to open it right then but remembering that I had a special package waiting for me made all the errands I was running seem much less of a chore.
When I finally opened the package, I was greeted by a soothing perfume. It smelled like lavender and clothes dried in the sun and general coziness. Here is what I found inside the envelope:

An enormous cut of whimsical Liberty fabric printed with yarn and knitting (I have been desperately coveting Liberty fabric ever since I knew of its existence. Now I finally have some!). A bar of delicious smelling candy intriguingly called Kendal Mint Cake that was a great favorite of Sir Edmund Hillary’s famed Mt. Everest expedition. A lovely post card of some spires (a spire) of Oxford. And the wonderful goat milk soap that suffused everything with its perfume.
I’m quite over the moon with everything. I can’t stop fingering the delightful fabric (soft as well as adorable) and sniffing at the soap. It’s all so generous a thank you for a little felt hamster.
Thank you, Phillipa, for such a wonderful and unexpected gift!

I ♥ mattress stitch

2006-09-08T23:49:00.000-07:00

Behold the wonder that is the result of the mattress stitch. See the seam? Or rather, the absence of a seam?
(Except the wonky spots where I somehow managed to offset the rows and then get confused at the ribbing, all entirely having to do with my own stupidity and not the technique.)
I've always had a vague fear of the mattress stitch. Not that I actually knew what mattress stitch was but all the dark (and occasionally resigned) mutterings about it on knitting boards and blogs had me convinced that it was at best, a difficult technique, and at worst, a pain in the ass and absolute waste of time. So, when the sock directions emphasized the necessity of using mattress stitch to seam up the back, I was filled with trepidation. So, I dithered. I took my time weaving in ends, spent ages trawling the web collecting directions for doing it, and generally dragged my feet. Then I actually sat down and read the directions for seaming together stockinette and a little light bulb went off. The technique is really quite brilliant and make a sort of intuitive sense...rather like weaving two pieces of fabric together. It's exactly the sort of mindless fiddly work that I find oddly enjoyable. The clearest directions I found were those from Lana Grossa. The diagrams are excellent and make the accompanying words almost superfluous. After all that initial dread, the seaming process was quick and uneventful, though I was surprised by how hard I had to tug on the seaming yarn to tighten the stitches and make the two sides fuse well together.
So now, with seaming done, I present to you...the argyle ankle warmer!

Just kidding.
The argyle tube is getting a heel and a foot and becoming a sock. Before I start all that though, I'm planning on knitting the argyle portion for the second socks to head off the potential onset of Second Sock Syndrome. After that, it will be all heels flaps and gussets and the rest of the sockly goodness.

Argyles on the brain

2006-09-07T22:53:00.000-07:00

The unforeseen consequences of four days of devoted, monogamous knitting, besides completing the argyle portion of the sock: I see argyles everywhere.

The weaving in of ends is done too.

Next up, mattress stitching up the back…

The madness continues

2006-09-04T21:55:00.000-07:00

The obsession with knitting argyles (alas, just plain argyles and not arrrgyles) has yet to show any abatement. Indeed, it only seems to increase with every row. Nevermind the chemical inbalance, I place the blame squarely on Moth Heaven's luscious Happy Socks (which I am unabashedly copying), the sight of which instantly filled me with covetousness. Add to that her endlessly helpful charts and instructions for argyle construction and there was no way I could resist the impulse.
Perhaps a little madness is a good thing…

Going a little crazy

2006-09-04T01:17:00.000-07:00

I'm not a pink person. Nor am I a bright color person. And really, I'm also definitely not a patterned-print-wearing sort of person.
So why is it that nothing right now can make me happy except the knitting of argyle socks?
Bright pink argyle socks. With bright orange and green diamonds.

Temporary chemical imbalance?