Yipes, seven days!

It has been too long since I posted. I am sorry. I would prefer all my favorite knitbloggers posted about three times a day, so posting once a week is not exactly keeping up my end of that implied bargain.

The weather is a lovely spring gray and may stay like this for a while, so it's not really worth photographing any of my partially-complete WsIP anyway. If you're dying to see them, imagine that the bamboo sockscarf and the basketweave Plymouth Encore scarf below look exactly the same only longer. Ditto for Ufserud. I've also finished knitting sock #1 in some Claudia's handpaint (plain stockinette), and cast on for a stretchy cotton hat in black Cascade Fixation for Other.

I have been getting together with a friend (yes, sorry, should have warned you - I do have a friend) to knit and drink beverages. There has also been ice cream afterwards, which really cannot hurt the goodness of any day that includes knitting in public.

FO: Roza's Socks

Yarn: Brooklyn Handspun in "Minty"
Pattern: Roza's Socks by Gumperina
Needles: size 1 Crystal Palace bamboo dpns
Modifications: substituted stockinette between rib and pattern rounds (because the garter makes it look a bit unfinished or inside-out, which is fine, but my wardrobe tends dangerously in that direction on its own)
Why the Weird FO Shot: I'm taking a page from the book of Ashley, with the "requisite pattern shot" thing she did with her chevron scarf. And this is similar enough to the pattern photos to be recognized as an homage (anyone?), and I already had the lacy white skirt, and so why not?

I bought the Minty from Brooklyn Handspun before I had a pattern in mind, and then Grumperina's post about the socks she had designed inspired my first purchase of Interweave Knits. Which I'm probably going to have to subscribe to here soon.

I'm very happy with how they turned out. I'd been looking for a green like the green in my first socks, and hadn't found anything close to it until Minty. The color is complex, with bluer parts and yellower parts, lending some nice interest to what are basically solid-colored socks.

You might be able to see this a tiny bit here:



So I'm 4 for 7 of having a week's worth of handknit socks. Onward!

Ufserud In Progress

I will updated later with some pics of a finished pair of Roza's socks. For now, though, here is a shot of Ufserud. You can actually see that there's a pattern! And yeah, I'm aware that that's the point of stranded knitting, but I didn't have much faith in my ability to actually make it do that. And the knitting isn't the most regular I've ever produced, it's okay and might be getting better.

May you never find your own handknit lying in the road.

This entry is back-dated because I couldn't get the picture uploaded when I originally wrote it, and didn't post it until a few days later.

I have a problem with bags. I carry around a 32-oz water bottle, small sterilite container (with knitting project, usually a sock), digital camera in its (small) case, my journal, and occasionally a course notebook. My hemp messenger bag is the right size, but it's falling apart, not easy to get stuff in and out of quickly, and not good at holding anything but the aforementioned items.

Which is, I believe, how one of my Hurry Up Spring armwarmers ended up spending several days in the road/parking space that I found it in. I was aware that righty was not with lefty, but, because I'd gotten worried several times recently only to find an armwarmer jammed under my camera case, water bottle, or knitting container, I decided not to worry about it. If not for the telltale bright bits of color, I wouldn't have recognized the soggy lump at all.

At first glance Mr. Armwarmer looked pretty bad. But even though I find the Noro Kureyon to be pretty scratchy and think that in anything but direct sunlight the darker colors are indistinguishable from one another -- and also kind of think that the nice branch/leaf pattern, rendered in this yarn, makes me look like my arms have Hulk veins running up and down them -- I wanted to at least try to revive him. This was my first project on double-pointed needles, and also, I believe, my first project using cables. They have served me well in the chilly office many times.

So I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed both of them ("gentle squeezing" - I've felted with Kureyon many times, and know how fast that can go) and then, once the mitt was no longer giving up road dirt, dust, and bits of leaves, gave them a nice Eucalan bath.

And as far as I can see, feel, and smell, they came through just fine.

Yarn!

From left to right: Cascade 220, Claudia's Handpainted (in Bearded Iris), Naturwolle (in 116 Gloria), variegated Karabella (color 11), Rowan All Seasons Cotton (in a discontinued color that I would love to find more of), and Jo Sharp in light and dark brown.

I wish I could knit all of them right now. But instead I'm about to start the heel flap on Roza's Sock #2, and still plugging away at the scarves.

Sock & Sun

*

I should finish the toe of this bad boy tonight, and have been doing an average of one row of Ufserud a night. Both scarves-in-progress are coming along, and looking like more of the same, so I have no dramatic progress shots.

*Also, if this looks lumpy and weird, it's because the reskeined component of the yarn containment system is jammed inside in an inaccurate approximation of my foot.

Taking pictures of yarn and not dead things since 2005

I'm knitting away on Roza's Socks. I've decided that if knitting keeps me from wanting to go to bed at night, it might also be able to get me up in the morning. And that's kind of working. If I could somehow remember that I want to get out of bed to knit a bit before work a little earlier, then I could partake and still be on time, rather than 10 minutes late, which is anyway better than the 40 minutes late I usually am. So, yeah. Kind of working.

The archives of licketyknit have been keeping me entertained these days. The ongoing drama with the penguin, it kills me.

Anyway, Lickety (heh) mentioned at some point how much she likes seeing beautiful pictures of knitting on blogs, and I really do too. And of late, my pictures have been sucky, despite the fact that I have no fewer than four lights pointing at whatever I'm taking the picture of. Really, though, if I waited until I had good light to take pictures, you could expect them about once a week, and then at the peril of weather and motivation. So, apologies.

Today I made an effort to get outside before the sun had set too much, and so the picture seems to show the color pretty accurately. And it shows my positively idiotic system for dealing with 415 yards of yarn, which is to wind most of it into a ball, reskein the rest, and only work on it at home until there's enough used up that I can wind all of it. Because I would rather do this than cut the yarn and weave in more ends than is absolutely necessary (which for a single sock is two).

We all make our choices.

Anyway, I got good light but have no nice kinds of background to speak of. You got concrete instead of swampy backyard, dead garden, cheapy beat to hell lawn furniture, or dead bird.

Frog Pond City

I've cast on for Grumperina's Roza's Socks, in this issue of Interweave Knits, which I ran out and bought on the day it hit newsstands.

I like how it's working up in this "Minty" superwash sock yarn from Brooklyn Handspun. Unfortunately, the yarn is on the thin side, and while I've never used Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, which is what the pattern calls for, I suspect that it's different enough to be the reason why this is coming out a teensy bit too snug. So in the way too long amount of time it took that picture to load, I have frogged and re-cast on in one size bigger needles, of which I have slightly the wrong number of needles and which also kind of sucks because I bought the smaller ones specifically for this project. D'oh. Oh, and also I have to remember not to put these needles in my mouth, because they have been dropped on some terribly disgusting floors, and this, people, is sadly harder to remember than you might think.

Other was kind enough to send in my eight hats to the Muppethead contest, and they are on schedule for an under-the-wire arrival of today. I'm proud to have done my part to have Boston (or Boston's postal service workers, at least) groaning under the weight of several more skeins's worth of fun fur hats.




This:


is the beginnings of the sock-weight stockinette stitch scarf that I achieved this past weekend. Its sole purpose is to be mindless but pretty, and it's doing a great job.

I used to wonder at the Yarn Harlot's need to knit a few rows to "take the edge off," as she says, but today I was positively jonesing. That's why I've used uploading pictures to my knitblog as a puny excuse to put off driving for awhile so I can sit somewhere that isn't my house and read a textbook that I really honestly do not have any desire to read, and sit and knit some instead.

Okay. Everything's up. Sigh.

FO: Belize Socks

Yarn: Regia Bamboo
Pattern: my own
Needles: Crystal Palace size 1 dpns



These socks were started in July, when I flew to Belize. They're simple stockinette with ribs of different lengths at the top, picked up here and there for months. I liked the unexpected sheen of the bamboo yarn.

FO: Casey's Coat

Yarn: Cascade 220 Superwash
Colors: olive-y green and dark turquoise
Pattern: Casey's Coat (from Stitch 'N Bitch Nation)
Needles: size 8 boye straights, size 8 clover circ, and I think there was a size 7 in there too
Modifications: none on purpose, although I didn't end up with the right number of stitches after the series of decreases (had significantly more than I should have) and couldn't figure out where I'd gone wrong (and also checked the errata, which didn't mention any such problems), so I just threw in a few more decrease rows.

I've avoided seaming dilligently up until this point, so the seam on this puppy is both crappy and the result of my third or fourth attempt.



Mr. Bunny so lacks the right proportions to pull this off, but I had to put it on something and the intended recipient is 2 hours away.



And, finally, I cast on for the basketweave scarf:



which grew by a couple repeats as I waited for all of these pictures to load.

FO: My so-called scarf

Yarn: Malabrigo Kettle-Dyed
Color: Verde adriana, 117
Pattern: My So-Called Scarf
Needles: Brittany Hardwood dpns, size 11, with a rubber band on one end
Modifications: CO a bit fewer stitches, BO

I bound off as normal, and it looked really bad. So I bound off in purl, still looked really bad. Then I slipped the first stitch, *k1, bo1, k2tog, bo second stitch, k1, bo the k2tog. Worked very nicely.

Calorimetry

Yarn: Artyarns Supermerino
Color: 136
Pattern: Calorimetry
Needles: Size 8 Crystal Palace bamboo circs (not the type called for, but whatever, it worked
Modifications: no purposeful ones



Because of my own staggering inability to estimate or count, getting this going took forever. First I got toward the end of casting on and ran out of tail to cast on with. Then I cast on for two fewer stitches than were called for, and realized it at the end of the first row. Then I couldn't execute a double rib to save myself. Once I got past the first two rows, it was fine, but that took way too long. The pattern itself is clever and easy to follow.

The pattern calls for a yarn that will happily bounce back into shape. And while I read every day about the behavior of specific yarns, I really had no idea what kind of yarn to choose for such a goal. So I went with the Artyarns Supermerino, in a colorway I'd had my eye on for a long time, and it turned out to be a really great substitution. This is like no yarn I'd ever worked with before - it really has a mind of its own, by which I mean it was rather stiff (while still being soft). When I was trying to count my cast-on stitches, some fell off the end and sproinged right out of the loops. (This might be why I ended up two short.) There was no pooling, flashing, or any other variegated-yarn-problems.

I wore it all day today (I work in what might as well be an iceberg), and though I felt a bit silly sporting any kind of fashionable anything, it did keep my noggin nice and toasty. It's not as warm outside as a hat would be, though.

If I ever knit this pattern again, I will probably cast on fewer stitches and adjust the number of pattern repeats accordingly.

Mom's Disaster Scarf

This is Mom's Disaster Scarf, v.2:


Specs:
Pattern: My own (co 168 st, double rib, change colors after 3 rows)
Yarn: Lion Brand Homespun, held doubled
Needles: Clover 13" bamboo circs

This scarf started out as "Mom's Scarf." She pointed out to me a scarf she had seen on one of the soap operas that she watches (this one mostly for the knitwear, as she's not finding the storylines too compelling) and asked if I could make it. It was very long, and looked like it was made sideways in a double rib pattern. So, over winter break, I got down to work.

My conception of a side-to-side scarf is that the basic limit is on the length of the scarf, and this one needed to be long. So, I should cast on as many stitches as I possibly could. Cleverly, though, I was able to just about double this number by taping two 29" circular needles together. Mom helped. We held the tips of the ends of each needle together, overlapping up to where the point stopped, then wrapped them up together in saran wrap. Then we taped over it, keeping saran wrap between the tape and the actual needle. It was not elegant, but it worked.

I cast on about 250 stitches. I didn't count or anything - why should I for a scarf? The idea of a swatch didn't even cross my mind. Again: scarf.

So I knit and knit and knit and knit. Simple pattern. It went pretty fast. When I sat down to cast off, it took forever. Oh man. I would look down and think, okay, about a fourth done. Then I would look down and think, hmm, that looks good about right there. And then cast off some more. And think, hmm, it would be good if the scarf stopped right there. Wow, there sure are lots of stitches left to bind off. And then: GOOD FREAKING GRAPES HOW MUCH MORE DO I HAVE TO CAST OFF? That was after about an hour.

And, surprise: the scarf was twelve feet long. I am not kidding about how long the scarf was. I could hold it at the mid point with my arm stretched as far into the air as it would go, and the ends would brush the floor. While this would work for someone who is 6'3", neither of us is 6'3". When Mom wrapped it around her neck twice, the ends dragged. D'oh.

Hence v.2. Using the original twelve-foot scarf as a gauge swatch (oh, that hurts), we determined that the ideal number of stitches to cast on for the length Mom wanted was 168. It probably only took a couple hours of knitting.

I know I could've steeked the original and chopped the extra length off, but really the idea of knitting an entirely new scarf was much more appealing than the idea of trying to use a sewing machine to make a hacked-off end look presentable. And of course, because it was knit side-to-side, there was no way to tink back to any sort of acceptable length.

Moral: don't underestimate super-bulky yarn in double rib for a side-to-side scarf.

malabrigo!

My So-Called Scarf: The First 5":



This is a very nice pattern, although you can't quite zone out and you definitely can't do it without looking. Which is to say, I can't. You might be able to, you knitting dog, you.

I'm enjoying the yarn, too. It's a bit uneven in terms of thickness and color saturation, and the shades remind me of clover. I like clover.

Mmm, kelp.

So how did I not know that Eden knits?

Recently I cannot get enough of the knitting content. I am devouring archives like a baby brontosaurus devours... kelp. Nyam nyam nyam. Good archives.

Sigh. Yeah. Anyway. I'm on to fun fur hat #4, which is not fun fur at all, but polarspun or something similar. Squishy, fuzzy, lashy, not kicking my ass. That fancy fur had my ass in a sling. It was a bad scene. I used almost two skeins of it, which sucks, because I bought three, and I am not buying any more (give me an oh hell no?) and am going to have to figure out how to squeeze a hat appropriate for a 10-16 y.o. out of one and one eightieth of a skein. Size 17 needles, anyone?

I have frogged the beginnings of wavy, and was all worried about finding a basketweave pattern, but came to my senses and realized that I can invent a basketweave pattern. I don't want to use the same one as in the SNB Nation 2 book, with the knit row between pattern rows that makes a front and a back side. So I just won't. There.

Also, I'm itching to cast on for My So-Called Scarf, but then I look at the stitch pattern and think eeehhhhh. Oh, and now I am also thinking, do I have size 11 needles? Maybe in dpns.

The x-treme! consumption of knitblog archives is also giving me a serious itch to actually knit (you know, instead of just buying yarn), so I'm getting lots of stuff done, such as a cuff and part of a leg for the Belize sock.

Oooh, and also my Ufsered kit shipped today. Just for fun, I tried feeding some Polarspun from my left hand and that did not go so well. This is going to be interesting.

Four FOs in One Week.

Look! There are two fetchings! On my monitor, which is older than the hills, you cannot really see the cables on the cuffs, which is too bad, because they are very pleasing.



And, two socks in Regia Surf, in the colorway Rosso. Summery, yes?


Three re-starts and four rows into my Wavy scarf, I'm thinking that this is not what I want to do. The pattern is very nice, and works with the yarn well, but I got it with a flatter stitch in mind, and this will end up being a bulky scarf. I'm thinking about just doing the same type of basketweave-y thing that worked so well for my brother's scarf.

watch me juggle bowling pins

Still knitting FFH #2, hope to finish it tonight. I'm into my third skein of the stuff, and bought one more skein of plain FF and three more skeins of Fancy Fur that I actually kind of like, don't tell anyone. It's in the colorway "sunrise."

I finished the other Fetching for me, and have worn them a couple of days now. There is a problem with the ends refusing to lay flat, which I'm considering dealing with using elastic. Dunno. Also, we took pictures but the detail didn't come out well so I'll try again tomorrow.

Apparently I'm on a green-and-white kick. The scarf yarn below is destined to become a white wavy scarf, and a green my so-called scarf.

And, apropos of nothing at all today, I sent away for (ordered on the internets) an Ufsered kit in green and white. Didn't know I wanted to do colorwork. Maybe I just want that hat. Maybe I've been reading too much Eunny and Wendy. Maybe I'm very lucky I didn't stumble across the link to Wendy's Bohus pattern source first. Maybe I'm not linking it here because I don't trust myself not to drop however much money on a kit and teeny needles and a sure knitting-time-vortex. Someday.

For the time being, I'm just very excited to be working on my knitting. I'm giving a lesson tomorrow and intend to cast on for Wavy then.

Fun Fur Hat #1

New yarn for scarves:




And my first finished Fun Fur hat:



It took a little over 2 days to knit. I got a total of 10 skeins, many of them this rainbow color and then singles of other colors. This took a bit more than one skein, so I'm going to go up a needle size in hopes of squeezing a whole hat out of a single skein, both so I won't have to buy more of it, and so I have as little left over as possible.

The Fun Fur itself isn't too bad, though it would be hellish to learn with and good luck to you if you drop a stitch. It's lovely going back to regular yarn after this stuff.

Holy cannoli, an FO

Finished: Fetchings con fingers

Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran
Pattern: Fetching (from Knitty)
Needles: Susan Bates aluminum dpns, size 6
Color: Dark Grey from stash
Modification: extra cable repeat at cuff, co 50 st instead of 45 for an additional rib, added fingers, omitted picot bindoff

The best that - the best that I can

Yo ho*! Hey, note to self: if you ever decide to place an open call to knitters to knit things or give money or knit things in a certain time frame or whatever -- be prepared to be inundated, I mean take-a-couple-days-off-from-work-to-sort-the-e-mail swamped with the collective goodwill of the knitting community.

What I am talking about in this case is this: Mini Soup's Contest Wherein You Knit Hats for Children's Hospital (Made out of Fun Fur) and Can Also Win Stuff.

I bought fun fur! 10 skeins! And... I kind of hate fun fur a little on principle, but that's probably good because I will have strong motivation to knit it and get it out of the house! Woo!

While I've observed knitalongs involving socks, olympics, christmas gifts, &c., it is time I jumped into the fray. So I did.

*this is intended to be pirate-y, and not to imply that you are a whore.