KnitMe

Technicolor

I didn't have much last week, and since everyone loves Melanie's posts so much I decided she should occupy the front page for a while longer. It gave me a chance to get some more stuff done and ready to photograph. We're all over the place this week with color to look at.

I photographed Flower Basket a week ago and really haven't done much on it since. I can only knit on it when I have a good supply of concentration, since the silk is so slippery. It's going to be a wonderful summer shawl. Maybe I'll have it done by then...

Last week I had the intention of turning this into fingerless gloves, for those times when I really want to sit and knit or spin in the porch and my hands just get cold.

This is Baby Silk from Elann - very soft and lightweight. I started out with a pattern off the internet. I got partway up the thumb gusset then realized that (a) the pattern was confusingly written, and (b) the glove was coming out too big. So I frogged the part glove and put it away. Of course the day after I frogged, it was 15 degrees when we got up in the morning and I wanted fingerless mitts...

Luckily I was distracted by a beautiful hat pattern in the new Twists and Turns. I had been thinking that my last hank of emerald bluefaced leicester (the hank that came out worsted weight and so couldn't be part of Cutaway) should be a hat, but not just ANY hat. Check this out.

So I started it.

The pattern starts with a provisional caston, immediately increases to double the stitch count, and at the end comes back and finishes with applied i cord at the brow. I decided I was going to finally master the technique of doing a crochet-chain provisional caston right over the needle, so I got out my Meg Swansen Knitting book and re-read the directions. And after some futzing I got it! I'll never do any other provisional caston again! There is one teeny crucial move I had to make, which isn't documented in any instructions I've ever seen, to make this work. After completing one chain stitch over the needle according to Meg's direction, the yarn is at the top/front of the needle, but in order to get the next chain stitch done, the yarn is supposed to be at the back. It dawned on me that I just needed to pass the yarn over the tip of the needle in my left hand and to the back, and I was all set to do the next chain stitch. It's hard to explain - but it worked like a champ.

I'd forgotten how wonderful this fiber is, I'm enjoying knitting with it some more. I think I will probably not buy any more fiber in my life except Lisa's fiber...

I finished my Koigu socks last weekend.

Having heard that Koigu socks stretch, and knowing that I had 175 yards for each sock (which is less than a standard ball of sock yarn), I made them somewhat narrow and a tad short in the foot. I thus ended up with a VERY long leg, which I am rolling down to make a little cuff. This must have worked out, as I've worn them and found them very comfortable, and the same size at 8pm as they were at 7am. I also threw them in the washer and dryer and they came out very soft and pillowy. So, this experiment was a success. After I finish the beret, I'll cast on for more socks. Maybe by then Vicki will have her Torino sock pattern available.

In other news I finally sat down to ply some of my teal silk/merino, since I finished a second bobbin of singles. I really intended to spin all the singles before plying but I couldn't wait.

This was a very aggravating center-pull plying experience. Here's the finished yarn and the little pile of waste from all the &#$!*&# barfglobs I couldn't untangle.

My problem with center pull balls is not the last little bit (I can usually maintain control of that). It tends for some reason to be the middle - when I'm just past halfway through the ball, my center starts putting out barfglobs. And I can't untangle them without letting go of everything else and having the twist undo itself so the single separates. Where's that third hand I requested long ago???

Anyhow, when I finished swearing at the wheel and snapping at Emily to WAIT A MINUTE (she only seems to urgently need to say something to me when I'm fighting a barfglob), to my surprise I had some really beautiful yarn.

It's about 450 yards and 3 ounces. And hard to photograph. The closeup is a more accurate reflection of the color. If I left the picture alone, it was too blue. If I tinkered at all, it went to too green. It's really a nice medium teal/dark turquoise. Anybody ever seen chrysocolla jewelry? It's that color.

I have 3 more ounces of singles to ply and then about 2 ounces of fiber left to spin.

I bought this at Maryland Sheep and Wool 2 years ago, from a vendor named 'Pleasant Home' something or other. They didn't have a website at the time. There is nothing to indicate on the bag whether they bought this from a wholesaler or had it blended themselves, but it's really nice fiber - spins easily, shines as if there was way more than 15% silk in it.

The big time work was done on Eris. I finished knitting down the body and started working the cabled-corner shirttail. Tina had given me a heads-up that the shirttail was not symmetrical, but only on the right side. I wasn't too delighted with this idea and figured before I set off to change it on my own I'd see if the designer had any advice. It turned out she'd already been asked that question and posted some suggestions for doing the change. I am finding as I go along that I am making changes and clarifications to the details of her suggestion, but that the recommended approach is working fine. Here is the first shirttail corner.

I'm into the 4th hank of handspun and this must have been the first one I spun because it's more irregular than the previous 3, so the cabling looks a little more lumpy.

This is going to be an incredibly cuddly sweater. I fear it won't be finished before it gets too warm to wear it, however. Getting out of the car Saturday I saw that my shasta daisies in my front flower bed have already started to put out leaves. Egads! This is what happened to me last year before I could cut down the dead stems from the year before, and so I had ugly leggy daisies. But I don't remember it being FEBRUARY when I noticed the leaves. I'm SURE it was more like late March... (Of course, February always gets away from me faster than I expect. This is the one month every year when I'm likely to pay a credit card bill late...) I ran straight for the trimmers and hacked them down low to see if we could get them to be nicer this year. But - WTF? - these daisies are July-August bloomers. My neighbor's dogwood is beginning to leaf out. Seems to me people who disbelieve global warming must never leave their houses or look at a living plant, because the evidence is all around us.

Hm didn't mean to wander off onto a gloomy note, at least I'll have a very cuddly sweater come next winter. And hopefully nicer shasta daisies too.

Little birds have been telling me that all regular attendees of the Pink Tea have now completed their 'Arches' sweaters. Perhaps we can have visual confirmation of that rumor around here soon...

Parrots and Autumn

What do parrots and autumn have in common? Not much, but that's what these colours remind me of.

A few weeks ago I attended a dye workshop with local artisan Louisa Chadwick. It was my first foray into the world of acid dyes. As you can see, we played with some intense colours. We painted and dribbled dye on skeins and roving, and did some dip dyeing and some immersion dyeing too. It was a fun day. I discovered a very nice book at the workshop. It's going to be very helpful to me as a rank beginner. It has information about all kinds of acid dyes.

In the mean time, may I present Lisa Souza's superfine merino in the colour Beach Stone? This fibre was a complete joy to spin. And look at those colours!

That bobbin has since become 840 yards of lace weight. I'm open to suggestions for what to knit with it. I would rather not make another Flower Basket shawl just yet.

Arches is nearly done. One cuff and one neck band to go. Other than Arches, I'm down to one pair of socks on the needles. The yarn is Trekking XXL, colour 76, knit in my tried and true 3x1 rib pattern. I can knit these in my sleep. Just to switch things up a bit, I put in a Dutch (square) heel instead of a round heel. I can't decide which of these two heels I like the best.

White out

Saturday night, in the middle of the big snowstorm, I tried to think spring.

This is the beginning of another Flower Basket shawl, this one as springlike as my last one was autumnal. The yarn is 100% silk from Blackberry Ridge, in a colorway I think is called 'Blossom'. It jumped up at me when I opened the rotating stash box, and said MEMEMEMEME. I'm not sure why, it's all pastel-y (buttercup yellow, pale green, pale violet), and I'm not a pastel person. Maybe it was the shine. Anyhow we're going to try to get a Flower Basket out of it. One thing I really like about it so far is that the color runs are very short - so rather than pooling or striping, it makes a nice overall shimmer.

Otherwise, I continued plugging away on my Koigu socks and on the yoke of Eris. This is becoming harder to photograph as it becomes 3-dimensional.

Opal the poodle tried to help but he or she doesn't really have shoulders.

I picked up for the yoke and knit the short-row section Sunday and Monday. Tuesday I decided I had made too many mistakes, ripped it out, and reknitted it Tuesday and Wednesday. Then I began the raglan increases that lead down to the armholes, and that's where I am at the moment. Once the body gets longer it should be easier to photograph. It's hard to tell, as I go along, what the finished sweater will be like, given I'm knitting with handspun and it's a little variable.

This is going to be one of those sweaters that will have a list of mistakes published along with its FO picture. When I got done the short row section of the yoke, I was 2 stitches short on one of the sleeve sections. I just fudged those stitches back in. Then, when I started the round knitting and continued the raglan increases, I didn't do the twists on the odd-numbered rows that did not have the raglan increases. I decided it just wasn't worth ripping back and doing those - the twists on every row made the raglan increases look a bit lumpy - yep that's my story and I'm sticking to it. We'll see how many more mistakes I end up absorbing before this is finished.

No finishing

Someone asked in last week's comments - what are you going to do NEXT week?

What, indeed? Well, I didn't finish OR start anything. I kept plugging away at what I was already doing.

I have almost one Koigu sock. It's turning out better than I expected, both in terms of fit and in how this yarn looks worked up. It wasn't that striking in the ball but it's looking great in the sock.

I'm using this pattern again, it's the perfect toe-up sock for me. I like the figure-8 caston despite the fiddliness at first, and it has a flap and gusset heel.

I decided to spin more silk/merino singles instead of plying the first batch, and I didn't spin all that much this weekend with one thing and another. I hope the little wee center pull balls don't turn into rocks (the way brown sugar does) before I come back to ply them.

And I've saved the best for last. I kept on with Eris. I finished the collar - it took me 8 nights, working on it 45 minutes to an hour each night, and it's beautiful.

Best of all (attention, Liz!) - there is NO GRAFTING to make this. You'd think by how you start it off that you would graft. But, no. You work each side down a certain distance, then put both sides onto a needle and start working across both sides as you execute a chart that narrows down to a point and leaves one stitch you just fasten off.

My favorite part is how the final little cables end with a downward curve.

Last night I picked up stitches around the collar and started the yoke/shoulder area. It's done with short rows, back and forth around the back neck and a little further down the collar each time. So I haven't yet started knitting from 2 balls of yarn - it's enough to be wrapping and turning without swapping balls of yarn as well. Once I get going fully in the round, below the point of the collar, I will start working from 2 balls to even out the character of the handspun.

This is holding my interest sufficiently that I haven't even been tempted to wind yarn and cast on something else. Once I get to the cruising part of Eris, though, I plan to start something else. I had thought it would be 'Moscow Nights' but now I'm feeling fickle and indecisive. We'll see.

Cloudy

Wendy posted in her Feb 1 entry a link to something called a 'word cloud' - I went and made one for Pink Tea and it was so cute I couldn't not post it here.