In No Particular Order:

1.  I finished some socks a week or so ago, and was able to cross something off of my holiday goals list, except that the socks turned out smaller than I had intended and will really only fit me.  I’m pretty much okay with that because I really, really love them.

The pattern is Through the Loops Mystery Sock 2009, and the yarn is some old club yarn from Three Irish Girls–Baltic Sea on the “vintage” Adorn base.  I knit them on square dpns, which I have decided I am awfully fond of, and I need to get more.

2. I have been working my way, however slowly, through the Couch to 5k running program.  Today began my 6th week but I am still stuck on the third week’s workout because I can’t seem to run for a full three minutes more than once in a half hour, and I think its a bad idea to move on to trying to run 5 until I can make it through three without needing to walk.  That part is frustrating, but it is pretty great to be outside and seeing things like this:

(Mid-afternoon on Sligo Creek trail, near Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring)

And this:

(Early morning on the back roads near my parent’s house on Maryland’s eastern shore.)

3. I cannot possibly knit fast enough to keep up with everything I want to make and everything I hope to finish for the holidays.  I have a handspun hat and a pair of socks on the needles that are meant to be gifts, and I am test-knitting a pattern for Kirstin at Through the Loops.  I’m  super honored to be allowed to do that, and the pattern is fascinating to watch work up, but holy wow is it requiring some attention on my part.  There are no pictures of any of that just yet.  You’ll just have to take my word that it is happening.

4. I spent several days in the Chicago area visiting Christine (who I haven’t seen since January and that is way too long) and her boyfriend Jason, who is just as great as she is.

5. We spent a little time in the city, mostly at the art museum, and then explored Naper Settlement, which is a replica of a 19th century village.  Since we were there off-season, it was pretty much closed, but it was still a lot of fun to poke around.

The mansion and its carriage house were the only buildings original to the property:

But several other buildings were historic buildings that had been relocated or reconstructed on site.

We also visited the zoo with Jason’s son, who I’m pretty sure was twice as big as the last time I saw him, but just as delicious.  The weather could not have been more perfect, which has kind of been The Thing for the past several days.  Their zoo has not one, but two kinds of bats and the gorillas actually look happy (They snuggled! And one had a blankie!) which, in my opinion, makes it far superior to the Nation Zoo here in DC.  I took lots of pictures at the zoo but may camera’s battery was dying a slow death, so they pretty much all turned out blurry.

6. Now I am home, making myself late by sitting here and typing when I should be getting ready to leave.

Lookit What I Can Do!

So, the epic holiday knitting goals list?  Yeah, it went totally off the rails this weekend.  See, all of a sudden, it got really cold and really rains and it drove me to search for something warm and wooly to knit in a nice, thick worsted weight yarn.  When I realized that the yarn I had on hand wasn’t sufficient to make any of the projects I wanted to knit, it somehow started looking at colorwork mittens.  (I know.  I’m back to the mittens thing.)  

Several months ago, I ordered some O-Wool 2-ply from The Backwards Loop to learn colorwork, but when it showed up, the red and the orange weren’t colors I wanted to put next to one another, so they have been sitting in the stash.  I don’t really know what came over me, other than that my hands were cold and I had a whole Saturday with nothing that needed to be done, and before I knew what was happening, I was printing charts and winding yarn and by late Saturday night, I had this:

The picture is terrible.  I took it with the camera on my Blackberry because I was so tickled with myself that I couldn’t wait to dig out my camera, take a proper picture, transfer and upload it…I needed to show off right away.

There are so many things wrong this mitten.  I’m still figuring out the business of tension, and how to strand the running colors so that stitches aren’t pulled at strange angles.  Its hard to resist not pulling the yarn tight at the beginning of each needle to avoid ladders, so the tension where the needles meet is a little wonky.  I’m trying to move the stitches around every so often to prevent that, and it seems to be helping.  

I’m shocked by how thick and dense the fabric I’m making is.  Its possible that I should have gone up half a needle size, but I didn’t have anything between the 2.25mm I’m using and a 3mm (that I just realized is labeled in the package as a US2, but I’m pretty sure a 3mm is awfully big to be a size 2.)  When I read that the pattern had me casting on 60 stitches for the cuff, I was just sure these were going to be way too big for me, and possibly have to be worn my a man with largeish hands.  I mean…60 is only a few stitches less than I cast on for a sock to fit my husband, and he does not have petite calves.  Now that I’m about an inch above the top of the thumb gusset, that thinking makes me laugh and laugh.  These suckers barely fit me, and my palm is only about 3.5″ across.  (Those of you who have knit colorwork before, or haven’t but are perhaps just a little more clever than me are thinking, “Duh.  Stranded knitting can’t stretch the way normal old stockinette does.  Of course the same number of stitches is going to work up smaller.)  Lesson learned.  

I’ve been through about ten bajillion diferent needle options for these suckers.  I started off wanting to use two circs, but only had one the right size, so I was using one circ and two dpns and that just got annoying.  I switched to a set of 8″ dpns.  I have no earthly idea why I thought I ever wanted to knit socks on 8″ dpns.  (Actually, I do.  Its because the nice lady at The Quarter Stitch in New Orleans told me its what she liked, and at the time, I didn’t know any better.)  I mean, its nice that my stitches aren’t ever likely to fall off the ends, but the needles get all hung up on each other, and stick out way to far, and…well.  They didn’t last long before I switched to shorter needles, except bamboo was just too grippy.  I’ve finally settled on using my grandmother’s old 7″  aluminum dpns.  (That one inch makes all the difference.)  The package says the brand is Hero from Middleboro, Mass and that they cost 55 cents.  (Its actually two sets put together because for some reason, my aluminum dpns are always scattered all over the house, which is why the needles are pink and blue and don’t match.)

By the end of yesterday night, the mittens looked like this, which, as near as I can tell, is pretty darn close to the way they are supposed to look:

Overambitious

The Three Irish Girls group on Ravelry is having a KAL contest in preparation for the holidays, so most of my former blogging time has been spent trying to work my way down a list of knitting goals before November 15th.  The list?  Way, way overambitious on my part.  Four pair of socks, part of a shawl and a baby garment in about two months.  Not. Going. To. Happen.  (Especially since I spent two nights knitting on a hat that isn’t even on the list.)  Nor am I any sort of a contender in the Most Socks Knitted category.  But.  It is making me focus more on finishing things instead of starting half a dozen and letting them sit, and that’s a good thing.

The first thing off the list is the shawl.  It went to live with Christine for her birthday.  I bought the yarn to make her socks a long time ago, but after trying three different patterns I decided that it didn’t want to be socks, after all.  It became this, instead:

The pattern is Multnomah, the yarn is Woolarina’s Silky Wool, and it worked up into a shawlette that’s just big enough to serve as caulking around the collar of a coat.  I loved knitting it, but blocking the scallops was not so much fun.

The second thing off the list are Charade socks.  They’re knit with Three Irish Girls Kinsale in Petit Fours and Icing, the same yarn I used for my nephews baby blanket.  The yarn was just as nice the second time around.

These are just little ankle socks, meant to use up leftover yarn, and they were knit toe-up so that I could add in the contrasting heels.  I used a no-wrap short row heel, which I hate moderately less than the normal wrap & turn short row heels, but I don’t think toe up socks will ever be my things.

The other interesting thing about these socks is that I knit them on Kollage’s square needles.  I can’t honestly say I noticed them being easier on my hands (and I still prefer two circs), but the square shape really did seem to make the stitches more even and uniform.

Next up: Through the Loops’ Socktoberfest Mystery Sock, and finishing the renegade hat.

Bad Blogger

Its really hard to blog when you can’t take pictures of your knitting, and that’s the only sort of knitting I seem to be doing lately.

Most of my time has been spent working pretty monogamously on a secret project for Sharon at Three Irish Girls. I have no idea what she is up to, but she asked a number of knitters from her Ravelry group to make some projects for her in a number of categories. Everyone chose a pattern and was sent yarn in secret, and there has been a flurry of activity on the group as everyone tries to finish their projects under a deadline. I hadn’t realized what a resource that group was to me until I couldn’t go to them to ask specific questions about my project when I got stuck. My project went in to the mail yesterday and the deadline is the 23rd, so hoperfully the project (and Sharon’s master plan) will be revealed soon.

My traveling project has been a shawlette (though I did cast on for a pair of simple socks when I reached the shawl’s lace edging and the thing became unwieldy) knit in some squishy merino/silk yarn form Woolarina. Its nearly finished, but the longest size 3 needle I had was only 32″, and at this point, the stitches are so crammed onto the cable that it only looks like a big blob of fabric. Given that, there’s no real point in trying to photograph it.

Instead, I have pretty pictures of other things. Jason and I went to Maine last weekend to celebrate his cousin Katie’s wedding. We stayed in Boothbay, a little fishing village that was just darling. Jason made all the plans, so I was floored when I got to the hotel and found a balcony that looked out onto this:

The wedding itself was on Burnt Island, which sits in Boothbay Harbor and has an old lighthouse and keeper’s house (that I wanted to live in).

Both the location and the ceremony were beautiful, Katie and Jesse couldn’t have been a cuter couple, and every detail of the wedding was so obviously them.

Its pretty important that we go back to Maine in February when there are six feet of snow on the ground and it is -43274684758 degrees because before the ceremony even started, I was texting Liz asking if she and her sweetie would move to Maine is Jason and I did, so that she and I could have an alpaca farm. I was pretty serious about the idea, but I suspect that seeing a Maine winter would change my mind quick, fast and in a hurry. I’m still not on board with winter in D.C.

Spun: Maiden

Possibly the only thing more lovely than handpainted yarn is handpainted roving and that is only because I get to turn it into yarn myself. Spinning is still a real challenge for me and always involves a lot of unladylike language, but I’m able to at least turn out a useable product….if by useable you understand that the weight is not at all consistent.

I managed to drag the process out for, oh, four months, but that amount of quality time with Liz’s spinning wheel turned this Marianne roving from Yarn Love:

Into this:

That’s about four ounces of 2-ply merino yarn that I’m calling heavy worsted weight, even though there are a few parts that stray boldly into the bulky weight catagory. Its pretty well balanced, has a really nice drape, and is as crazy soft as you would expect merino to be.

Christmas Knitting the First

This is either a very good sign, in that I am way, way ahead of the curve or a very bad sign in that I am going to get cocky about being ahead of the curve, feel like I have more leeway than I do, and wind up putting things off in the last minute.  Either way, I have finished the first object for the Christmas knitting pile.

Yarn: Three Irish Girls McClellan Fingering in Aiden

Needles :US1, two circs

These need blocking or at least a good soak and are a few sizes too big for me.  They took about two and a half months to knit, but that’s because they were my travel knitting and so were only worked on in spare moments while I was out and about.  Most of the first sock was actually knit at the hospital while my nephew was being born.  There were a lot of stitches knit in the wee small hours of the morning while my mother and I sat around waiting for something to happen and everyone else slept.

I was grafting the toe when my brother came out of the operating room carrying his new son.

The second sock was knit mostly on downtime during seated massage gigs and RPGs.  The bulk of the time was spent getting that one finished, since it didn’t have the dedicated seven or so hours of Hurry Up and Wait that the first one did.  If I had it to do over again, I might have added a few stitched to shift the patterning, but overall, I’m happy with them and really relieved that I didn’t have to go to any real trouble to keep them from wildly pooling.

Who Taught You to Knit?

Its a common question for knitters, and one that Michele just asked over on her blog.

For me, it was kind of a process.

First and foremost, there was my grandmother. I really have to give her most of the credit, because I don’t think I would have been so interested in the craft if she wasn’t constantly doing it.  I can’t picture her sitting in her chair, watching her shows, without yarn working between her hands.  I have her knitting needles now, and it took a lot of thought before I was able to transfer the needles I use (along with the newer needles I have bought on my own) into a new case.  I think of her a lot while I’m knitting.

When I was young, I spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s house. My parents would drop me off and I would spend the night (or a few nights).  She was my favorite person in the world, so of course I wanted her to teach me. She tried crochet first. I think that was because she was working on granny squares when I asked.

She sat me down with an aluminum crochet hook and some yarn scraps (Red Heart Super Saver, all the way) and started showing me how to make a chain, join it into a loop, and make the double crochets that formed a granny square. I couldn’t get it. It didn’t matter how much she broke it down or moved more slowly, I couldn’t get it.  (We won’t talk about how long it took me to learn to tie my shoes.)  Her solution was to move on to knitting, and to this day I think its easier to teach knitting than crochet. She cast on twenty or so stitches for me, showed me how to knit, and off I went. Over the course of a summer, I eventually also learned to cast off (interesting, since I have no recollection of actually finishing anything), but that’s all I could do–knit and cast off. I never really got the hang of starting things, and I guess I was never ambitious enough to figure it out.

Fast forward about twelve years, and my best friend Christine crocheted something. I mentioned that I’d wanted to learn as a kid, but never got the hang of it. She told me to get a hook and some yarn and she would teach me. What I got was a hook and enough yarn to make an afghan. (Again with the Red Heart Super Saver.  No one ever taught me any better.) I decided that I was going to give it to my father for Christmas. This was at the beginning of October. I actually did finish the blanket in time, thanks largely to a number of weekend-long LAN parties and Dungeons & Dragons sessions during which I would crochet.

(It bears mentioning that this was the project that taught me about gauge. I used the same hook I think and the same yarn for all of the squares, and followed the same pattern. Still, when I went to stitch the squares together…they were not the same size. They were so very much not the same size that some of the rows have 5 squares and some have 6, and the thing didn’t lay flat and smooth at all. I didn’t know about blocking back then, either, but all the blocking in the world could not have saved that blanket.)

Once that was over, I tried to knit a few scarves, but I always had a hard time keeping the edges straight. When I complained to Christine about it, she said, “Who told you it was a good idea to crochet a scarf? You knit scarves.” And when I told her that I didn’t really remember how to knit, and that I never learned to cast on, she told me that if I got some yarn and some needles, she would show me. (Evidently, dealing with my bringing every crochet problem to her for two months didn’t scare her off. She’s awesome like that.) I bought a set of aluminum needles, like I remembered my grandmother using. Instead of Red Heart, I found some ribbon yarn to make a drop stitch scarf, brought them to Christine’s that night, and I was off.

I still enjoyed crochet more than knitting, but it did keep the edges of scarves straight, and it used a whole lot less yarn. Also, the swooping motion of hooking the yarn and pulling it through the loops had started to irritate my right wrist, so it wasn’t something I could do for any extended period of time.  Over the next few years, there was a knit hat and a few scarves, and there was an unfortunate extended fling with novelty yarns, but that was really as far as it went until I moved to DC and met Joye.

Joye was a Knitter, probably the first I had met since my grandmother. If she was sitting still and not behind the wheel of her car, she was knitting. She knit sweaters and socks and used the most lovely yarns, and she–and this floors me even now–just made things up. She has a small library of pattern books, but mostly, she just decides how she wants something to look, and figures it out. Joye has never really showed me how to do anything (though she would if I asked), but when I worked for her, she was constantly telling me, “Well, you could make that,” when I wore a sweater to the office, or insisting that I could easily make socks. There was nothing to them. I figured out how to purl, and made another hat and a scarf.  They were as simple as could be, but she acted like they were exciting.  She would bring pattern books that she decided she wasn’t going to use and leave me piles of magazines when she was finished looking through them. And did I mention that she was always knitting? I am of the belief that you cannot spend that much time in the presence of a Knitter and hold the vaguest interest in knitting without picking up the needles and giving it a good, honest go.

So one day, after she brought me her favorite basic sock pattern, I decided to try it. Those socks weren’t wearable, but they did teach me that I could knit socks.  I love fun socks, so this was a Big Deal for me, as was the accomplishment of knitting anything that wasn’t just straight lines.

I’m still learning to knit, as is evidenced by the three projects in my living room that need to be frogged because of silly mistakes or my not knowing what I was doing, but I’m much better now than I was even a year ago.  Colorwork still intimidates me (I would say that I’m afraid of it, but Christine tells me that I’m not allowed to be scared of knitting and she’s usually right), and the math involved in calculating size in pattern recipes can go right over my head, but I can turn out a perfectly serviceable pair of socks with lace and cables, even, and a sweater that I’m not embarrassed to wear out of the house.  Without those three women, I never would have gotten there.

Moments From Italy (Episode 1: Dinner)

One of my favorite moments from vacation was the dinner we had our third night in Rome. We had eaten at our hotel, and in a few small restaurants and pizzerias on side streets, and in cafes where we found espresso and pastries and gelato, and Jason was ready to find someplace where the locals ate. We spent an afternoon on a tour of catacombs and crypts (another favorite yet-to-be-blogged moment) with a guide who spoke fluent English and Italian. What I gathered was that his mother was British and his father was Italian (though he sounded a bit Australian to me, so I could be very confused), and at the end of the tour, he offered himself for advice about what else to do and where to eat.

We were near Piazza Barberini, and the first thing he said was, “Don’t go anywhere around here.” Those places, as was the case with so many in the old sections of Rome, were for tourists. After chatting with Jason for a while about what we really wanted, he recommended two places. One was “nice,” but expensive, someplace locals went for a special occasion. “You’ll pay mid to high prices, but the experience will be worth it.” The other place wasn’t fancy, and he admitted that he hadn’t been in about a year, but it was clear that he remembered it fondly.

FO: Transatlantic Socks

Started on the flight to Ireland, knit around Dublin and across the surrounding countryside, and continued in Rome.  Grafted the toe of the first sock in JFK airport in New York on the way home, and finished the second sock a few weeks later as I recovered from the vacation and dreamed up ways to live in Rome.  (I’m still on that one, if I’m being honest.)  They’re not blocked in this picture–the crease down the side and the lumpy heel are totally a product of that, any not any flaw in the pattern.

The pattern is Cotty, from Irish Girlie Knits.  I’m excited about the pattern, and how it plays nicely with handpainted yarns.  I also really like that numbers for both sport and fingering weight were given, so that I can use whatever sock-worthy yarn I have laying around without having to so extra thinking.  I learned to do a picot edge on these, which is so much easier than it looks, even if mine if a tiny bit crooked.

The yarn is Kells Sport from Three Irish Girls.  (Are you sensing a theme here?)  The colorway is Waterlilies, one of the June club offerings.  If I understand correctly, it is part kettle dyed and part handpainted, which I think is really clever.

I love them.  I had thought they might be a Christmas gift, since they really aren’t colors I wear much, but the feet ended up being knit only as long as my own and I don’t know anyone with feet quite as small as mine (Okay, so I know one or two, but they don’t do pastels, either) so I guess that means these were meant for me.

In Which I Am Not In Portland

Despite this being a perfectly lovely weekend, I have spent the better part of it wishing that I was at Sock Summit.  I knew the moment I heard about it, many months ago, that I needed to be there.  I had every intention of being there.  My husband even agreed that probably it wasn’t a bad idea for me to be there.

But then we booked a vacation to Europe.  One that we would return from only a few weeks before the Summit.  And I realized that I hadn’t seen my best friend in half a year and had scarcely spoken to her since the beginning of the summer, and that before we got too deep into autumn, I was due for a trip to Chicago.  Even within my narrow world view, best friends and ancient ruins and the Irish countryside trump knitting conventions–even very large, sock oriented, epic knitting conventions that all my best Ravelry friends are going to be at.  And so I decided not to go. It was the smart, responsible decision, but that has not stopped me from being absolutely green with envy or stalking the Twitter-feed for the Summit.

In an attempt to distract myself from the fact that I was not in Portland, I tried to fill the time with as many interesting things as possible.  Somehow, a great deal of that has involved food.  Saturday morning, we went to the farmer’s market and brought home a ton of produce that we added to what Jason had already picked up at the farmer’s market in Penn Quarter on Thursday.  (I have no idea what I’m going to do when they close for the winter.)  I also brought home three herb plants–rosemary, parsley and dill.  I’m taking bets on how long it takes me to kill them.

Then, we headed into the city to play tourist at museums that wouldn’t let me take pictures.  We hit the National Building Museum first, and I absolutely loved it.  I have no idea why I didn’t make a point to go sooner–its a museum about everything I love.  My favorite was the exhibit focusing on the history of DC, even if it needs updating and I think its remiss in not mentioning Ben’s Chili Bowl in the section about U Street.  We also made it to the International Spy Museum.  It was fun, but we thought it was open an hour longer than it really was, so we only had about 90 minutes to get through, and wound up really rushing.  I’d like to go back again when we can really take our time.

We wound up at Central for dinner, which was probably the only time I wasn’t wishing I was in Portland.  It was absolutely amazing.  I saw a Yelp reviewer mention that they would eat there every night if they were rich, and I think I agree with them.  I can’t say a single bad thing about it, except that possibly I drank too much wine, since I came home and promptly crashed.

Today was all about cooking.  We took the produce from the farmer’s markets:

And turned it in to ratatouille, a tomato cheese tart, and a salad of heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers.  I’m particularly excited about the ratatouille, which is delicious.  I would have liked to play outside a little, but it was sweltering hot.  We did head down to the pool for a little while late in the day.  I always forget that its there, somehow, and this was the first time I’ve been down since it opened for the season.

Ironically, what I did not do this weekend was knit a single stitch on a sock.  It seems like there’s something wrong with all my projects (even if its just that I can’t be arsed to wind another hank of yarn), so I’ve been keeping busy knitting tiny squares for my sock yarn scrap blanket.  I’m a square and a half from having the third row completed.  Assuming it really is as wide as I want it, which I’m still debating.