You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January, 2009.
I’ve been tidying the living room, and part of that always entails culling the yarn. My stash is nothing compared to a lot of people, but the yarn does generally come in faster than it goes out, and I have a habit of dragging it out a lot to toy with different ideas. I’m not going to show you a picture of what I had piled on the ottoman a few minutes ago because I think its evidence best not displayed to my husband. What I will tell you is that a club shipment arrived yesterday, plus I brought yarn back from Chicago, plus I just finished a swap project and spinning some BFL. Things were kind of a mess.
My particular drug of choice when it comes to yarn is hand painted sock yarn. I know I’m not a rare breed that way. For a long time, I was keeping it in one of those clear plastic containers that’s meant to hold a big skein of center pull yarn with the working end coming out of the top. I outgrew that awhile ago, and moved some stuff to the stash and some other things into my computer hutch.
Today, I pulled some older yarn from that plastic bin–it lives next to my chair in the living room–to move into the stash in the closet. I was trying to figure out what to replace it with, and was a little alarmed to realize that I actually felt guilty sending hand painted yarn to live in the stash in the closet. Someone (in many cases, someone who I have at least a vague, online relationship with through blogs and Ravelry) went through a lot of trouble to make that yarn pretty, and put a lot of thought into just how to work with the colors, and it makes me happy and I like to look at it….And I was about to show my gratitude by stuffing it into a dark closet (there are monsters in there!) in an even darker plastic storage bin. It made me feel sad for the yarn, and I started looking for something that could contain it while still showing it off.
My eyes fell on the glass cake tray in the kitchen, and for a few seconds, it seemed like a really, really good idea. The cake tray was pretty. The yarn was pretty. Wouldn’t beautifully dyed yarn look just as nice under the tray’s domed lid as a dozen perfectly iced cupcakes? I almost never use the cake tray, and it sits on the shelf over the fridge, taking up space for no real reason except that once it twice a year I might want it for a cake. It made such sense to just put the pretty yarn in it, possibly wound into cakes and stacked, or maybe just in a festive pile of hanks. Every time I walked into the kitchen, I could see the pretty yarn and it would make me happy. The yarn would be happy, too, out in the light but away from the dust (I admire people who can store their yarn out in the open, on pegs on the wall or in dishes or baskets on the shelves. I am not a good housekeeper, and my yarn would be full of dust and gross inside of a week), where it could be properly admired.
This whole thought process went on for approximately four seconds before I was stricken with the reality that I had reached the level of crazy where things like storing yarn in the cake tray were a good idea, and while I am the sort of eccentric that isn’t bothered by being a little unhinged (and rather think the folks who have started using broken dishwashers and the insides of pianos are brilliant and have their priorities in good order) I hadn’t reached the place where I was ready to explain to my husband just why the yarn was invading the kitchen–particularly when there was still plenty of room in the box in the closet.
There has been a conversation on one of the Ravelry forums I frequent about schedules for knitting, or, more accurately, the rules that people make for themselves or their knitting.
One person seems to have a strict rotation that, she explained, meant that she worked on one project one night, another the next night, and so on, with each project getting its turn. Every fourth night was a cast-on night for starting new things, and every fifth night she could knit whatever she wanted.
Someone else mentioned that they only have one project on the needles at a time, unless it was something that needed lots of attention, in which case there could be two, one of which was mindless.
I couldn’t do either of those things.
In general, unless I am doing some seriously deadline-oriented knitting (and even then, some crazy bargaining with myself goes on), I need to be able to knit what I want when I want. Sometimes I don’t want to think at all, and that calls for mindless stockinette. Travel knitting for places like the car or movies take that a step further–plain stockinette, plus it has to be small. Sometimes I want to zone out on the knitting, and I need something with constant charts or lace or counting that take up my whole brain. Sometimes my hands are tired or cold and don’t want to deal with small needles, sometimes I want to feel a certain texture under my fingers. It all adds up to me needing multiple projects at a time, and being able to knit according to my whims.
Even so, I realized after awhile that I do have some of my own rules (Well, not rules. More like guidelines.) for knitting.
First, one big project at a time. Trying to wrangle two sweaters at a time is right out.
Second, only two socks at a time, but I only have to knit half a pair at once. This means that I have one patterned sock and one plain vanilla sock going at a time. Once I finish one sock of a pair, I can cast on for a new pair of socks. But. Once I finish the first sock of that pair, I have to go back and finish the second sock of the pair before it. That’s accomplished more easily than it might be due to the fact that I only have two sets of circular sock needles, so I need to get things off the needles before I can start something new. I have a few sets of dpns, so if I really must start a third pair, it can happen (and has been known to).
Third, a project that I need to have can actively trump anything else I’m knitting and any other rules I’ve set for myself.
Fourth, I can ignore projects as hard as I want for as long as I want as long as there is room for them in the knitting baskets. If they start feel like they are wasting space there, though, and go into the stash boxes, the needles have to come out and they are written off as lost causes.
And the fifth and most important rule is that if I hate a project, I don’t have to finish it, no matter what. This one took awhile for me to really get on board with, but now I’m a big fan. If I’m going to spend this much of my free time doing something that I don’t have to do, there is really no excuse for including things I don’t enjoy.
I have to imagine that other people have their own set of knitting rules. Care to share?
The lack of blogging here in no way indicates a lack of knitting. All sorts of things have been happening around here.
Last week, I finished the body of my Opulant Raglan.
It still needs to be properly hemmed, and I’m debating ripping out the bind-off and making it a few inches longer, but I’m going to finish the rest and then see how I feel. Other then that, I’m reasonably pleased with the way it fits. I made it with a bit of negative ease in the bust, but I wish there was a little less through the hips. I think I can fix that when I block, though.
I finally, finally finished the scarf that I started knitting way back in July. I bound off the night before I left for Chicago to visit Christine, who the scarf was meant for. It is now living happily there with her.
I absolutely love the yarn (Tillie Thomas Milan on size 3s) and the way that it drapes. What I don’t like is the way that it curls in on itself along the chevron lines, folding into thirds. Ironing the hell out of it helped, but I think its always going to revert to curling.
And! Also for the Chicago trip, there were mittens. I’ve knit three pairs of fingerless mitts (Genmacha, Fetching and Dashing) and a pair of fingerless gloves (Knucks), but this was the first pair of proper handwear I’ve knit.
The pattern is Breathe Deep from Through the Loops and the yarn is Cascade’s Lana D’Oro, wool/alpaca blend. I do love my alpaca. They were super warm and cozy, but I think that the suggested Malabrigo or some other similar yarn would have been better for the pattern. Even so, I wore them all over Chicago, and they kept my hands warm in the midst of this:
Next up, yarn porn. I have some delicious laceweight alpaca from Loopy Yarns to make a Swallowtail Shawl, and some yummy roving and sock yarn that Christine gave me for Christmas that I need to tell you all about because seriously? It is the best. thing. ever.
In then end, I decided that I was not going to be beaten by a pattern that people managed to complete 2437 times (by Ravelry’s count this morning), and I finished the Koolhaas. (Then, I learned how to work the self-timer on my camera and took a bad picture of myself wearing it. I don’t love how I look, but I have to grant that its better than the MySpace style long-arm shot.)
Pattern: Koolhaas, by Jared Flood
Yarn: Three Irish Girls Galenas Merino, in Cinnamon Spice (December 2008 Stash Menagerie)
Needles: Sizes 4 (for ribbing) and 6
I love the finished product. It is warm and squishy and buttery soft, and I like the way the hand dyed yarn adds depth to the already highly textured fabric. Galenas is a lot like Malabrigo, and I know what I said before, but I think I’m starting to warm up to the reason everyone likes working with it so much. My only complaint was that I found at least 4 knots in my skein. Not tangles, but actual knots, where two ends had been tied together. Sharon tells me that isn’t normal at all, and I’ve never had that trouble with a 3IG yarn before, but I thought it was interesting. I’m of the firm belief that my love for the yarn was one of the only things that got me through the project. (The others were pinot noir and the fact that I refused to be beaten by a pattern that 2437 other people had managed just fine.)
Its good that I love the hat because I had massive, massive hate for this pattern. (When I started over for the fourth time, I used lifelines. I totally think that they are cheating, but I needed a security blanket.) I should point out that this is in no way a fault of the actual pattern. I still think that Jared’s designs are clever and well written and they really do make total sense. The fault is entirely my own. In general, I dislike having to consistently switch between knitting and purling every few stitches. It slows be down and makes my shoulder hurt. I also don’t like to live so dangerously as to cable without a cable needle, especially when the cable is so involved that one mistake will screw up the entire pattern, so the cable rounds were super-fiddly. These are things that I should have considered before I started, but I really liked the way the hat looked and I wanted one, and so I totally disregarded all common sense.
I only cast on 96 stitches, which was 8 less than the pattern called for (or one full pattern repeat). I still thought that sounded big for my head, but the cables pull the hat in enough that I could have worked as it was written and been fine. Something interesting happened during the decrease rounds, but I’m not mathematically inclined enough to bother figuring out whether it had to do with the lack of stitches or (and this is far more likely), shoddy knitting on my part. I started with eight fewer stitches than the pattern called for. I ended with one fewer stitches than the pattern said I should end with. Somewhere in the last 9 rounds, I found 7 magic stitches, and I have no idea where.
And, in unrelated news…because people (Pia, I’m looking at you) kept telling me how awesome it was, I went to Georgetown Cupcake the other day to get a treat to celebrate my husband’s new job. Aren’t the cupcakes darling?
They are (from top left), Red Velvet, Toasted Marshmallow, Carrot and Chocolate, and ohmygod they were seriously the best cakeythings I have ever eaten. They may become my undoing.
My first project of the year was meant to be a hat.
This hat, to be precise. I cast on the other day, and yesterday afternoon sat down to start tackling the cable chart. I worked for several hours, ripping back twice because my knit/purl two stitch cables kept begging buggered up, finally made some progress, stopped to go massage some clients, came back and worked a little more…and then I spotted my mistake.
It was really the best sort of mistake. You know the type. Two and a quarter chart repeats into the hat, you notice a mistake at the beginning of the first chart repeat. To add insult to injury, you are completely unable to figure out exactly what you did wrong. Was there a knit when there should have been a purl? Did something go wrong when the pattern instructed me to relocate my marker to begin the round one stitch off? I had no idea, but I decided that the mistake seemed only to effect two or three diamonds in the next round up, so I knit a little more. That was stupid, because upon finishing a few more rows, I realized that while it only effected a few diamonds, the entire pattern was dependent on the latticework lining up, and if one line was off, it screwed up the while bloody hat.
It was the third time I had ripped back the cursed thing, and the pattern was really, really fiddly, and the idea that one misplaced stitch could at any point spell doom for my hat wasn’t an idea that I was comfortable working with. The pattern felt like X-streme Championship Knitting, and I wasn’t really sure I was ready to tackle something quite that edgy.
At 10:00 last night, watching Supernatural (the season three Christmas special) with my husband, I gave up and cast on for the Amanda Hat instead. Its a very cute hat and a well written pattern, and within 40 minutes I had forgotten that garter stitch in the round actually does mean you have to purl, ripped back the brim to start over, finished the brim and promptly screwed up the simplest lace pattern ever in the world.
I don’t even know what to say about all of this. I worked a few rounds on a lace and cable sock without incident, so I’m pretty sure it doesn’t meant that I am an incompetent knitter. Maybe the yarn is cursed. That would be a shame because it is very, very nice yarn. Its sitting in a basket, half ripped off the needles, taunting me.
The thing is, I’ve realized that I am attached to the idea of having a Koolhaas. The pattern is captivating (when it works) and I like the way it looks in general. I am also taken with the way the single ply yarn shows off the stitches. But. I’m not sure I’m ready to tackle such a fiddly pattern, especially one so easily screwed up. I’m also not sure I’m ready to be defeated by a pattern that eleventy-million people on Ravelry were perfectly capable of knitting.
This may all take some thought.
I spent some time this morning looking back at my FOs from the past year, and thinking about what I want to do now that the calendar has revolved back around. Last February, Jason and I made a trip to Florida and New Orleans, and I began my first “real” pair of socks on the way down. I bough two skeins of sock yarn at The Quarter Stitch in NOLAs French Quarter, and now I’ve knit nine pairs without realizing it. Add to that the two half socks waiting on mates and the pair I knit and ripped out because I hated them, and that works out to 11 pairs, which is just crazy.
The fingerless mittens pictured here are, by the way, my favorite thing that I’ve knit, ever. That %$#&% dog sweater is my least favorite, and I’m still a little horrified that I gifted it anyway.
I’m determined that this time next year, I’ll be able to post a full grid of twenty projects.
1. Thumbless Dashing, 2. FO:Monkey, 3. FO: BFF Socks, 4. FO: Sunset Socks, 5. Christine’s Sox, 6. Simon, 7. Cathay Top–Preblocking, 8. FO: Bruce Wayne Socks, 9. FO: Vog On, 10. FO: Broadripple, 11. FO: Popsicle Socks, 12. FO: Birthday Bag, 13. One down., 14. 365/2 (Turn a Square), 15. Liz’s Earwarmer, 16. Basic Neckwarmer, 17. Jason’s Cozy Feet Socks, 18. Mom’s Garden Socks., 19. Milo’s Sweater
