slowly but surely

I will have a blanket very shortly. (well, shorter than I originally thought!)

This has no particular pattern, but instructions for the motif can be found on Lucy’s blog here. The whole thing is made of entirely sock yarn mill ends, a few full skeins from my stash, and a few purchased pals that were going to be used for the Shelly Kang blanket (ravelry link). My plan was to a) use up most of the sock yarn stash that I had that wasn’t quite enough for a pair of socks, but in colors that didn’t necessarily work together without some help from other colors, and b) have a blanket so I wouldn’t freeze while my family plays chicken with the gas company so to speak (PGW is a racket, I swear). The only rule to picking the colors was that there would be no reds, oranges, yellows, blues or black. The end result reminds me of an English garden and when DC mentioned it one day, I knew that was the color scheme to stick to. It’s easier sometimes to recognize and go with what you don’t want as opposed to trying to force colors together.

It was a nicely-paced project, crocheting hexagon by hexagon, joining as I went. The best stage was when it got big enough to cover my legs & feet while adding more hexagons. Tightly-plied fingering-weight merino is quite warm, let me just say. All I need is another outer ring of only green hexagons and then an outer ring of only brown ones. If you’re wondering about the amount of ends I will have to weave in, don’t worry; I worked the ends underneath the layers of each hexagon as I changed colors. After I wash it and block it, I’ll just turn it over and cut all of the ends.

I didn’t have any plans at the beginning of the year to cut down my stash as much as I have so I’m ecstatic that most of my stash of Koigu mill ends & full skeins/Louet Gems Fingering/Claudia Hand Painted Fingering is almost gone. (That drawer of sportweight tweed/heather yarns is another issue.) Maybe I’ll make a pair of striped socks or legwarmers out of the remaining pinks & purples until they run out. The process was enjoyable mostly because there was no deadline. The projects that I worked on that were more urgent got finished and then I’d pick this back up and crochet a few more splotches of color onto it.

I’ve got another planned in Cascade 220 and maybepossiblyhopefullydeliciously another one after the new year in Manos Rittenhouse 5-Ply Merino. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

sometimes you just have to ask…

Today Vicki and I went to Starbucks and I taught her how to knit.

It wasn’t so much me teaching her as it was me reminding her hands of what they were taught already. She learned when she was little, like most of the people I know, but had put it down. It was really cool to watch her because she’s left-handed but she’s a thrower. Not only is she a thrower, but she inserts the needle through the back loop and wraps the yarn clockwise around the needle, not counter-clockwise. I think it’s Eastern crossed-style. I think I had more fun watching her form the stitches that way than she did actually re-learning to knit. I love how we can all do the same craft in so many different ways that fit us and produce the same wonderful garments.

Speaking of wonderful garments, I sweater-spied again. I thought of the last sweater and how I let it get away before managing to snag one blurry picture. This time, I saw this walking around the cafe….

Vicki thought I was nuts for doing this, but I have no problem documenting decent knits I see out in public. They serve as a push for me to finish some of the lingering things I just can’t seem to finish before starting new things. I see a sweater like that and it goads me to keep chugging away at that Penny Straker Shalor pullover, and reassures me that I’m not bonkers for wanting to make it. A few minutes after knit-spying, a woman walked past us to go to the bathroom and mentioned her sister’s knitting for charity and her own knitting. As it turned out, the gentleman is her husband and she knit that sweater.

35 years ago.

Not joking, seriously, that is a handknit sweater from 35 years ago. Vicki asked if we could take more pictures and she obliged. Who knew it would be that easy? While the husband was the cutest model, the wife told us of how she made everyone in her family, including the dog, an Aran sweater. She said that she “just took a simple cardigan pattern and fiddled with the numbers and put in patterns where she wanted them to be and filled in the rest with seed stitch”.

This woman is my Heroine of the Day. She even let us get close-up pictures.

The buttons? They’re made from oven-fired peat from Ireland. I gotta find that lady and be her buddy!

my first love…

now that i’ve finished this….

i’m trying to decide what to do with 2125 yards of this…

2125 yars of cobweb weight 1-ply Shetland yarn.

i’m thinking big.

the comeback kid

guess who’s making their rounds in my project queue again?

i never really let her go, but a few others were at the forefront for a minute that needed more attention due to deadlines. it was a nice return to some simple crocheting and piecing together, picking colors a bit haphazardly, watching a patch grown slowly into a blanket. it’s big enough to cover my legs while i work on it, so i might finish it in time for the frigid weather after all. i’ll let you know how far i make it before i surrender to PGW in my own furnace war.

there’s also another project making its way into being completed (hopefully) in time for Rhinebeck. I’ve never been to what Sara calls the “superior sheep and wool festival”, but there was no way i was missing it after going to Maryland’s festival earlier this year. i bought fiber, of course, and it’s pretty much going to be the order of the day to get some in NY. i want to buy fiber while wearing this….

Mine will be worked in Rowan Felted Tweed in Duck Egg. I fell in love with the color as soon as i laid eyes on it. If the color choice is nothing else, it is proof that my taste in color has changed and that i will no longer be so quick to knit a hot pink sweater for anyone over the age of 9. I still dream, but it’s just not practical thinking.

if that weren’t enough, i totally have dreams of making Shalor out of Manos Rittenhouse 5-Ply Merino.

mmmmm…soon enough, my lovely cabled friend, soon enough.

jenna is contagious

i know it’s been a while since I blogged last, but I felt like saying something worth blogging about today.

i’ve knit a lot of stuff in the past few months. I’m in no way complaining about this. Some of the projects were awesome and more are in the queue. One than I’m particularly excited about AND can blog about is a new blanket. I still have the hexagon blanket in my mind, but right now it’s sitting in a bag until i can devote more time to it. Picking the colors for each hexagon takes some time & planning. But the new blanket in town is something that Jenna made & posted pics of on her ravelry page. I’ve stared at it for some time but never thought of knitting until now.

This one is mine…..

…and this one is hers.

As you can see from the size of it, it’s definitely not a sudden, needs-to-be-finished-next-week project. it will probably be a few months before it’s finished. however, it’s just nice to have something to knit on the bus mindlessly. here’s to the bright randomness to which i find myself perpetually drawn!

hot weather = sock knitting

I totally forgot to post this when it debuted.

A while ago, The Fibre Company debuted Canopy Fingering (then known as Canopy Sport) and I thought that it would make some AWESOME socks. Instead of knitting an existing pattern, I decided to fiddle with some cable patterns and make up one of my own. It was a bit scary, but it all worked out and I’m pretty gosh darn proud of ‘em. 

The Twisted Diamond socks are available as a free download. Enjoy!

let’s play a game…

check out the new socks (rav link).

they were fun, the pattern was memorizable. let’s have some more fun.

one of these things is not like the other, one of these things is….

…eh. it’s going into my shoe anyway.

i don’t remember this…..

I washed my Cap Shawl from a while back for the first time since ….a while back.

Actually, I don’t think I’ve washed it since the initial blocking. I can’t say that I remember the water being this crazy Kool-Aid color, though. Ah well, it needed a bath. Imagine it smelling like Soak Flora. ahhhhh. I’m not even gonna re-pin it out. I hung it over the banister and it still had the pointed edges it had from the first time around. Now for the sweaters and socks (the socks I can find matches to at least).

is it that big of a deal?

I never swatched as a beginner knitter. I always felt as if it took too much time. I was so eager to get started and enjoy whatever pattern I’d picked up that I rarely took the time to swatch. The ladies at the yarn store would warn me and say that I should swatch and I would flippantly agree, but never really do it once I got home. So it was no surprise that many projects I started would end up being too small (tight knitter) and I’d spent all of that time knitting something that was doomed from the start. Nowadays, I rarely start a hat or scarf without swatching to get some idea of what my finished product will look like. Those 15 minutes or so save me the frustration and migraine from recalculating a misshapen item.

Swatching gives you an idea of what your knitted/crocheted garment will look like with the size needles used. I say garment because whole sweaters and such seem to need swatching to be done a bit more than a simple scarf, but it can never hurt really.

What is a gauge?

1. A measure; a standard of measure; an instrument to determine dimensions, distance, or capacity; a standard; an act of measuring.
2. Any instrument for ascertaining or regulating the level, state, dimensions or forms of things
3. an instrument for or a means of measuring or testing
4. the fineness of a knitted fabric expressed by the number of loops per unit width

Is it that big of a deal to swatch? Does it take THAT much of your time to check your tension? There ’s a good amount of people who feel that swatching is just too much of a bother, that “swatches always lie”, and that they’d enjoy knitting more if they didn’t have to knit such an insignificant little thing. I mean, it’s so small in comparison to the actual project, why bother?

BECAUSE YOU WILL WIND UP WITH A MISTAKE!!!!

Don’t look at me like that.

 I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve done posts on swatching being a pain in the butt before. Once I grew up in my knitting so to speak, I realized how such a little step can be just as important as well-executed finishing/shaping/knitting. And you know what else? If you get gauge, no matter what needle size (but close to the size given in the pattern), you will need the same amount of yardage. It doesn’t matter if you knit loosely; you won’t need to buy less yarn. The same goes for tight knitters who think they’ll need that extra .34 of a skein when they’re calculating yardage. Let’s hope you’re calculating yardage to begin with!

Basically, if you want to skip swatching, go right ahead. But stop looking for elephants and rhinos to give your too-big socks to. They don’t want them.

i’ve dyed and gone to heaven

two weeks ago, I went with Rosie’s to Maryland Sheep & Wool for the first time. I had some idea of what I wanted to purchase. I’d heard so many stories of people spending all of their money at one or two booths only to find something else in another barn and little money to buy anything else. I had a plan: roving that I thought I’d never see again, a skein or two of Brooks Farm something or other, and some laceweight to knit Lyra by Herbert Niebling. I did succeed! I found some 70% merino/30% silk from The Drafting Zone in Lilac, 2125 yards of 1-ply Shetland Supreme Gossamer yarn, and a skein of Brooks Farm Solo.

I also bought some Jacquard Acid Dye in Emerald. I’d been wanting to dye yarn/fiber before, and talking with Christi when her & her mom visited Philly only pushed me more in that direction. So the other night, I gave it a shot and what a shot it was. The results were a bigger & better surprise than I’d imagined, especially with the Koigu. I might cast on for some socks out of it this weekend, that’s how much I like it now. So here are some shots of how the whole thing went down:

Up first is the Araucania Ranco Multy is color #305 Fern…

Next up is some Koigu that can be described as “the old jen”….

And last but not least is some Shetland that I spun but had no idea what to do with until now…

I haven’t even knit these up and already I’m wondering which color I’ll buy for the next round of dyeing. I’ll probably be able to knit down my stash a bit. I figure that if it’s a color that I’m not fond of anymore, I can just wind it up on my niddy noddy and overdye that sucker. Who knows? Maybe some fiber dyeing/spinning in the future?

Heh heh.