You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December, 2008.
Things that go round and round seem to be the theme of the week.
Over the past two nights, I spent some quality time at the spinning wheel and turned half of this:
Into this:
I’m going for a worsted weight yarn, and even though I have no bloody clue what I’m doing, chances look good that I will get close to what I want. (Through no fault of my own, I’m sure.) The second half of the roving is a darker red, so I’ll spin it separately and then ply them together. After the roving that I’ve been learning with, the BFL is like spinning butter. I love it, even if it does pull apart on me every ten minutes.
Today, I cleaned the bedroom and as a reward when I was finished, I set up the ball winder and swift that Jason got me for Christmas. How have I lived this long without them?? When I got my nostepinne, I was all about how it was as high tech as I needed to be. Ha! Quaint and traditional is nice and I’m sure I’ll still use it for small bits of handspun, but I’m here to tell you: that winder and swift are at least as fun and cool as Jason’s Xbox and personally, I find them way more enchanting. In about fifteen minutes, I wound the yarn for the hat I want to make for myself (As an aside, I was a little late to the party and missed that the Koolhaus hat was named for an architect and inspired by his design in the Seattle Central Library and spent some time digging around and reading about him and have decided that he’s pretty cool. See? Knitting is educational–even if it doesn’t teach you to avoid run on sentences!), the yarn for the sweater I want to knit for the niece or nephew who I’ll get to meet in July, and and a skein of yarn for my sweater so that I’ll have one ready to go when the current ball runs out. In fifteen minutes, and that includes a small snafu with the first yarn, while I worked out the mechanics of getting everything to stay where it needed to be and not get all wound up around the gearish bits. It wasn’t pretty, but I got it figured out and am still thrilled to pieces.
Having exchanged all of my Christmas gifts, I can finally talk about the projects that kept me busy over the past few months.
There were Mom’s Garden Socks, in Noro Silk Garden Sock.
I loved the way the yarn striped, but I absolutely hated working with the base yarn. It had no give at all, and it killed my hands. The good news is that mom loved them, and that made it totally worth it.
There were Jason’s house socks. When I saw this yarn in Gryphon’s shop, I knew that it needed to be socks for him.
This picture really does not do them justice. They’re unblocked, which makes both the heel flap and ribbing look a little lumpy, and they are on my feet, which are about 7 sizes smaller than my husband’s.
The yarn (Traveller, in Wales) was wonderful to knit with, and the only trouble it gave me at all is that I finished the second sock with about two yards to spare, and there were a few terrifying hours when I thought I would have to rip back the first sock, use that yarn to finish the second sock, and somehow find plain black yarn to do the toes.
And, at the very last minute, there was a cowl, also for my husband.
I bought him a new winter coat about ten days before Christmas, and decided that it needed a scarf to go with it. I wasn’t able to find a scarf that I liked for a price that I thought was reasonable (for something I could make myself), so a cowl seemed like the obvious answer. My choices for yarn were (probably thankfully) limited by what the LYS by my spa had in stock, and I wound up with Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Worsted. I’m not sure how I made it this long without knitting with that yarn, but I have a feeling it’ll become a staple. I kind of wanted to keep the cowl for myself.
Now that all of my knitting obligations have been met, I’m left wanting to cast on for everything all at once. That can’t mean good things.
I finished the earwarmer. I was stitching it together 30 minutes before the party started, but it was finished.
And can I just tell you how much I love that it matches her scarf perfectly? The yarn is Malabrigo Worsted in the colorway Purple Magic. The pattern is Headband in Alaska from Drops Design. I followed it exactly as written, except for binding off before I stitched it together, and I love how it turned out. Once the holidays are over, I might need to make one for myself.
I’m supposed to be getting ready for my Yule party tonight. I still need to make a shopping list, go shopping, bake, clean the house and set up. Oh, and finish the Malabrigo ear warmer that I cleverly decided to cast on Thursday night and mean to give as a gift tonight. (Stop laughing. It will get done. Blocked? Not so much.) So naturally, I am making a blog post to let you know that I am still knitting along and that I still can’t show you most of what I am doing. What I can tell you is that I have been working on so much so quickly that my right arm (the “throwing” one) is so sore I could barely life the kettle to boil water for coffee this morning. I have got to start knitting continental.
So, in the spirit of wasting time as efficiently as possible, a list.
1. It is snowing on WordPress’ front page and I don’t know how I feel about that.
2. I’m pondering The Loopy Ewe’s sock club, and am really curious about the yarns that have been sent over the past year, but my Ravelry-fu is failing me and I can’t figure out how to search for stash that was part of the club. I suspect there really isn’t a way to get that detailed yet, since the query would have to dig into the stash notes and not just the tags and titles in a lot of cases. Was anyone a member? Can you enlighten me?
3. Since I can’t share pictures of any new knitting, I will give you some pictures that have been sitting in my Flickr for a week.
I am still just about this far on my sweater:
And this sock is totally finished. Its made to fit a size 8 foot, and I’m still debating whether its really going to the person I had decided it was meant for. Its a little too big for me, but the ^%&#* short row heel is a little wonky, and I’m not sure I can pass that along to someone who doesn’t understand how those things go.
4. I’m probably going to get tarred and feathered for this, but I’m not sure I get all the fuss over Malabrigo. It is really, really soft and squishy and cuddly, but honestly? I’m enjoying Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock better. I think maybe Malabrigo isn’t sproingy enough for me. Or something. Is it really just the softness that people go gaga over? Or maybe the fact that it is so soft and also not very expensive. Help me understand?
5. I’m done to nine hours. This is really not the list I should be working on.
Being sick for most of a week has netted me a finished Christmas project, roughly one third of a sweater, a little more than half a sock, and about an ounce and a half of handspun Corriedale singles. Not too shabby. It would all be more exciting to report if the battery in my camera wasn’t dead.
The sweater actually appears to fit and be wearable, though I suspect that my row gauge issues led me to make the waist decreases about two inches higher than they really needed to be. Its really hard to tell, with the way the edge curls up. Sometimes, when I try to hold it in place, it seems like they are just right. Other times, not so much. I’m crossing my fingers and knitting on.
The sock is made from Three Irish Girls Beckon Stretch Merino, and there is a very real possibility that I enjoy knitting with it even more than with Sanguine Gryphon’s Eidos, and that’s saying something. (That could just be because following up silk garden with anything that has even a little stretch would make me swoon, and this yarn is seriously, seriously stretchy.) I’m working with the Arctic Circle colorway, which I have loved since I got it, and was thrilled with the way the yarn made thin dainty little stripes up the foot. I’m doing contrasting heels and toes (black), and while I managed to execute a respectable short row heel (I still hate doing them), I didn’t manage to join the colored yarn quite as cleverly as I did after the toes, and now my dainty stripes have turned into thicker spirals and I don’t love them quite as much. I don’t have them enough to start over, though.
I’m feeling progressively more human (even though I got zero hours of sleep last night), which is a good thing, since I’m faced with two full days of work and a busy Sunday.
I always thought that opulent was spelled with an a and not an e. By the time I’m finished knitting this sweater, maybe I’ll have learned to spell it properly, and won’t have to correct myself every time I type it. I’m only this far along, so I have plenty of time to re-educate myself.
The magazine (Knitscene, Fall 2008) is open to the pattern, so you can see what the final outcome is supposed to be. I say supposed to be and not going to be because, well, sometimes the yarn just doesn’t do what I want. (Also please note the Knit Witch yarn bowl, a bday gift from my MIL.)
By the time I was finished knitting the Turn a Square hat, I had decided that I absolutely had to have a sweater made from Berocco Ultra Alpaca, and the gift certificate that my BIL and fiance gave me for my birthday was just enough to buy a sweater’s worth. I had every intention of making February Lady, but in the end, I decided I wanted a sweater that could stand alone, and that didn’t hang off my torso, so that I could wear it to work and not have to take it off and on all day while I massage. The fate of the bell sleeves is still in question. I love them, but they would put the sweater right out of the running for work clothes, so I have to decide how much I care.
I had to go down to a size 5 needle to get stitch gauge (How is it possible that I am knitting worsted weight yarn on 5s?) and that means that my row gauge is pretty significantly off. I’m pretty terrified by that, but I’m hoping that the fact that the pattern is top-down will allow me to adjust as I go. In the interest of fairness, I only just realized last night that I should be adjusting from the beginning and not just thinking I could add some inches to the bottom, and quite possibly I should have been adding rows before now.
Its going to be an adventure.
…is that it doesn’t leave you with much to blog about.
For the last little while, I have been knitting projects that I can’t talk about and can’t show you.
But!
There is hope yet. I’ve just had a birthday and it left me with enough yarn that even I feel satisfied (at least until Gryphon updates her shop later today). My husband’s family seems to understand that yarn and coffee are always the answer, and so I got gift certificates to two LYSs, along with two skeins of possum yarns. On Sunday, I magically turned one of the GCs into four skeins of brilliant pink Berocco Ultra Alpaca (color 6233), and I will now proceed to magically turn that yarn into a sweater. Clearly, I have worked out my earlier questions about alpaca and have decided that I love it.
Photos will follow, when I manage to get free time and some daylight. Shorter days do nothing for photographing yarn.
