KnitMe

Last distraction

As if I didn't learn my lesson by piddling away a week knitting teeny socks, I did the same thing this week with more Cat Bordhi. I ran across her first Treasury of Magical Knitting at the library and decided I wanted to see how she makes a moebius.

The technique was really interesting and I'm glad I learned how to do it. I think the drawback of it is, you have no idea what you've made till you bind off. The stitches are coiled up around the circular cable, so you don't know how long the darn thing is going to be. Now, I know, you are supposed to know exactly your gauge and exactly how many stitches you cast on, so you should know how long it's going to be. Ha ha. Very funny. Nothing I knew in advance about worsted weight yarn and size 7 needles and me would have led me to expect this thing would be 48 inches around.

Also, I have not one, not two, but three twists in this thing. I suppose it would have been possible to detect this after I did my cast-on.

The cast-on itself is clever and fun, it's a little like Judy's magic cast-on. The resulting item is an ugly mess and I think I will just throw it away.

I did finish one Marilinda sock.

I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I added one extra pattern repeat on the leg to get a little extra length.

I love how the pattern comes down the heel flap.

I didn't have too much time to spin this weekend but I'm working on another skein from my cormo fleece from last year. After struggling with flicked locks for awhile and not being happy with the resulting yarn, I decided to try combing. One pass through the two-row combs is just enough to organize this and clean out the neps.

I can't get over the feeling that I'm generating waste where there should be none, but I have a ton of fleece, and this combed top makes a much nicer yarn. Don't you just want to take a nap in that??

Lily and Toby say: "Nap? sounds great!"

Distractions

I should have made more progress on my projects this week, but I got distracted.

These are three little learning socks from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways For Sock Knitters. I have to admit I hae been avoiding this book since it first came out. I mean, I have more sock patterns now than I could ever knit - who needs half a dozen NEW WAYS to knit them? But I poked my nose into it at my LYS last month and decided I really ought to give it a shot.

Once I opened it up and started to play, I didn't want to stop.

The learning socks are:

Learning Riverbed

Learning Coriolis

Learning Sky

I wanted to make more baby socks in unusual ways but I decided enough was enough and I had to get back to my regularly scheduled knitting. But my next pair of socks will be something from that book. I wish I was someone who can make up her own stuff because the possibilities of some of the shapes are really inspiring. I like the Sky architecture with the increases opening from the ankle down the instep in an expanding wedge, and I like Riverbed with all the increases on the sole so that your instep pattern can be uninterrupted all down the foot. I like the one whose name I can't remember, with the increases in two wedges on the sides of the instep, which to me seems best suited to an actual foot. Neat stuff.

Once I laid that book aside I made a lot of progress on Cookie A's new Marilinda pattern.

It's hard to see the pattern in this photo but when the leg is stretched while worn, it pops right out. The yarn is Classic Elite Alpaca Sox and so far I think I like it although I can't tell how it will wear. I'm knitting it at a tighter gauge than most people who have used this yarn on Ravelry - I can't imagine knitting this looser than size 1 needles to get any wear out of it at all. We shall see.

I also finally got off the ground with my variation on the Gathered Pullover. It's slow going, though, because I'm so enraptured with socks.

I think this yarn shows nicely in both the garter and stockinette sections. We'll see how it likes the cabling at the neckline.

Four heels...

That's how many heels I knitted for these Evening Stockings.

It's a good thing they were a pleasant fairly quick knit!

Last time we spoke (before the gorgeous cat and the lovely spinning were posted), there was one Evening Stocking.

However, I had realized that I had enough yarn to knit to the full pattern length, so last week there was a second sock, longer, with a heel, plus a first sock that no longer had a foot.

When I went to pick up the stitches for the gussets and resume knitting around, I realized I had knitted the heel flap one stitch off center. So the heel flap got ripped out and redone. When the sock was finally finished, I then finished the leg of the other sock and knitted the heel and foot of that one again. So I knit the heel flap and heel turn four times altogether for this pair of socks.

I still like them, though, they are awesome socks. Elastic and tall and very very bright in Lisa's hardtwist petite in Blueflame. She told me that the colorway was inspired by a piece of Murano glass.

So, phew. Now that that is over I started a new pair of socks - Cookie A's new Marilinda pattern, using some Classic Elite Alpaca Sox because the skein was in such pretty easter-egg shades of pink and blue. So far I do like the yarn, it's a little hairy as alpaca often is, but it's making a nice soft fabric.

(Can I just say, I can't keep up with that Cookie. Since I went over and bought Marilinda, there are 2 or 3 new patterns I want. Sigh.)

The Brushed Lace cardigan was finally ready for showing last week.

The yarn (Valley Yarns Florence) knitted up very nicely (no splitting or snagging), survived blocking nicely, and is very soft to the touch. I got some pretty 3/4 inch shell buttons to put on it, they are as light as the knitted fabric so they pair well.

I can see in the photo that I either messed up the buttonband or the blocking - it looks like the top button should not exist. But I did put that buttonhole right next to the first decrease for the neckline, or at least I thought I did, so perhaps when I blocked it I didn't notice that top buttonhole and pull the V together properly...

It was a quick knit on size 8 needles - I started on February 24th and finished on March 24th so 4 weeks, and I used almost 8 balls of Florence. It looks a little frumpy in the photos, but it looks better in person (although not as nice as it does on that skinny model in the magazine...). Florence happens to be on sale during the WEBS anniversary sale if you are looking for a less expensive substitute for a worsted weight brushed alpaca.

So after finishing this, I wanted to start another sweater. (I am approaching a cedar-chest crisis, but I think that can be put off a few more months...) I had been contemplating how nicely this batch of handspun would work up as the Cabaret Raglan by Norah Gaughan that was in the Summer 2004 issue of Interweave Knits, so first I swatched for that. It quickly became clear that there was no way this yarn could be worked at that loose a gauge - and even if I went up a couple of sizes, it just seemed too far off to attempt. Wanting something else fairly simple to let the yarn show itself off, I swatched for the Gathered Pullover and decided that if I knit one size larger I could make it work. So I happily knit along for about 6 inches, enjoying the yarn a great deal (I still can't believe I made it). Then I decided that the bottom edge was going to roll so much that it would end up under my arms - it seemed to have unlimited capacity to roll on the needles, the 6 inches of fabric pretty much was like a large circular cannoli. You can see here how much difficulty I had even photographing it.

So I frogged all that and set out again, to make a 1 inch garter stitch bottom edge to keep the fabric down where it belonged. I knit a lovely 1 inch garter border before I realized it was a moebius. Sigh. So I frogged that, and I will try again today.

This rolling business is just another thing about that pattern that I find weird. Not only does she knit sport weight yarn at an aran gauge (which to me means the sweater will sag, pill, and lose its shape in no time), but she doesn't knit a bottom border - a little rolled edge can be attractive but this light yarn will go up like a window shade. They must have starched the sweater in the magazine photos to make it stay down. It's odd to have a pattern in a magazine like IK be so counterintuitive in every way and still be so pretty on top of it. I noticed on Ravelry that everyone was knitting it in worsted weight yarn, so I'm not the only one who didn't buy into the whole sport weight thing. If I can ever get off the ground with this, I think it will look lovely in this yarn. I wonder if I can raise the neckline without spoiling the effect of the cable.

Cat math: With Melanie's new family member last week, plus the second one she's going back to get when he gets over his cold, that makes 10 cats in the KnitMe family. I don't know if Jan has any cats, but Sam has 4, I have 4, and there are these two new guys. Cats rule!