Overheard.

So, I’m at the MVA waiting for Jason to take care of licensing stuff and knitting. On the bench behind me are three kids being generally loud and crude and wound up and bored.

One of them is standing up and pacing around, and I hear him say, “Man, that’s how you KNOW they be makin’ us wait to long.”

His friend looks around. “How?”

“They got people SEWIN’ up in this piece!”

His friend sees me and, without missing a beat, comes back with, “Naw, man. That’s called KNITTIN’.”

Frogged.

I ripped out an entire sock the other day. It had been finished, right down to grafting the toes, for a number of weeks and had been sitting there in a basket, just getting uglier and uglier. It was meant to be Christmas knitting, so I started my Barrow socks, deciding that once I finished one of those, I would go back and knit Ugly Sock, Park Deux. It was a good idea in theory, but every time I thought of casting on for that second sock, I would come up with a million other projects that I wanted to start when the Barrow was finished.

Knitter’s denial is a great thing. In hindsight, I have no idea why I even finished the Ugly Sock, but while I was knitting I somehow managed to continually convince myself that as fantastically ugly as it was, its intended recipient would think it was marvelous. They may well have, but I don’t think I could, in good conscience, give that sock to someone and expect them to go round with it on their foot.

And so I took the sock outside (because it was a gorgeous day and somehow the sun would make the frogging better) with a tapestry needle, sat down on my balcony, and started picking out the graft. That part was a little tedious, but the actual ripping? Great fun. I could actually feel the weight of the ugly sock lifting with every stitch that plinked out. It was glorious.

I’m still deciding whether ripping back projects gets easier the longer I knit (possibly because the knitting itself goes faster?) or if the sock was just so awful that frogging it somehow set things right with the world, but knitting life is better now. The yarn is being reknit as a pair of plain vanilla socks, for which it is much more well suited. (But I’m still thinking of way too many projects that I’d rather be knitting.)

How Not to Felt

I felted my first project last night.

By hand.

…

…

Okay.  Thought that some of you (who have tried that before) might need a second to laugh and then collect yourselves.

I was going to take pictures of the process, but it was entirely too undignified to want real documentation of.  Suffice it to say, it involved my bathtub, a bucket, a dish basin, woolite, two tennis balls, a toilet plunger and my Teva-clad feet.  It was really not one of my finer moments.

It started because I was worried about felting in the front loaders in my building.  Firstly, I don’t really understand how they work and I was worried about not being able to get the cycle to stop in time, the water not being hot enough, and generally screwing up an otherwise perfectly good (secret) project.  (Also, I didn’t knit a swatch and so I had no idea how it would felt.)  I started poking around online and found several articles about how hand felting was a perfectly good substitute.  That it wasn’t that bad, even.  The article in Knitty that compared felting by hand to Laura Ingalls Wilder at her butter churn sold me.  I’m a sucker for the Little House books, and for doing things “the way they’ve always been done.”

The entire process took probably 40 minutes.  I followed the instructions from Knitty–starting with some no-rinse wool wash, and for awhile, was pretty disappointed.  The project got bigger.  (I had read that was supposed to happen.)  Then, the fabric started getting a little bit matted, but it still wasn’t really felting.  I kept at it, taking on the mindset that was I was trying to do was really just piss the fibers off.  I mashed.  I swirled.  I discovered that the plunger suctioned to the bottom of the bucket and almost flipped it over, and that I needed to add more hot water frequently.  After awhile, I could see the felting process start to happen.  After an even longer while, I had trouble telling the inside from the outside.  And then…nothing.

I rinsed the project with cold water and refilled the bucket, using Woolite this time.  I have no idea why I thought that the suds would help the felting, but the wool wash wasn’t sudsed really at all, and it seemed like I should try something else for the sake of science.  I don’t know whether the soap actually made any difference, but watching the soap bubbles fly all over the place was pretty satisfying.  So was splashing water all over the bathroom.

Progress was definitely being made, but slowly, and my hands were starting to feel blistered from the plunger.  I remembered a comment I had read on Ravelry, and went and put on my Teva’s.  They’re waterproof, and have nice, thick treads.  I transferred the project and fresh hot water into the basin, and went at it with my feet.

I thought that part was pretty awesome.  As a generally mild-mannered person, I find things that are safely, appropriately destructive and violent.  I like throwing bags of trash out of a truck at the dump as hard as I can, or tearing paper for a collage, and find things like that to be sort of cathartic.  Stomping on a piece of knit fabric in a tub of water, splashing all of the bathroom, scuffing your feet around and stamping them like a three year old having a tantrum tops the list.  (I called my husband in to help at that point, but I don’t think he enjoyed it as much as I did.)

After a few more shock cold-fresh hot water-plunge until the burn factor goes away-stomp with feet cycles, the project was a little more than half its size, and had lost probably 95% of its stitch definition.  I called it done.  It might have felted slightly more in the washer, but you can only see the vertical lines between stitches in a few places if you know to look for them, its a good size, and its plenty sturdy.

This morning, I have a nice tender red spot, accompanied by a blister, in the center of my right palm from the plunger handle, and my shoulders are a little sore, but I don’t think I regret doing it.  The project greeted me on the kitchen counter, still damp, stuffed with bags to hold its shape while it dries, and I’m still happy with it.

Three months.

Christmas is three months away, and that isn’t enough time.

Every time I open Ravelry, I think of one more thing that I want to make for someone, nevermind that some of those people probably wouldn’t appreciate a hand knit gift. Before I can start on them, I have some other secret deadline knitting to get through, and the second Ravelympics sock (which is, consequently, Christmas knitting), and I really just need to take a breath, stop drooling over the container of sock yarn that is taunting me, and realize that planning for more than a few knitted gifts is just not going to happen. And, that if even a few are going to happen, I need to actually focus and, yanno, knit on them.

I’m making strides towards that goal by knitting on my Barrow sock. A sock that is for me, and not a gift.

And also, spinning some sort of mystery fiber that Christine passed along to me. I can’t believe how much easier it is to spin fiber that isn’t merino–I can finally spin without having to drop and park.

Drive By Posting

Knitted organs.  These are awesome.

Carry on.

That’s What I Get.

Last week, when I wasn’t supposed to be knitting because my arms needed to rest?  Yeah.  I was knitting.

It was just a tiny little bit of knitting.  I thought that maybe if I could make one small thing I would feel better and stop wanting to, yanno, knit.  So I cast on for a blankie square.  Thirty-one stitches, a 2″ x2″ square, its hardly knitting at all.

Four rows in, this happened:

That is one of my ebony Lantern Moon Sock Sticks.  Snapped right in half.  I wasn’t holding it tightly or doing anything weird.  I was just knitting along and….snap.  I’m suddenly really glad that when I lost one needle and had to have it replaced, they sent two.