Grr. Argh. October 20, 2009

The gods are toying with me.

 

I spent a goodly chunk of time churning out gauge swatches for my Central Park Hoodie.  Four large swatches later and it looked like size 10 needles were the way to go.  My yarn and needles came yesterday and in a strange fit of rationality, I decided to swatch again, just to be sure.  I even washed and blocked the swatch.  Guess what?

 

I’m now one stitch too short.  I have 16 sts for 4 inches instead of 17.  ARGH!  Forget it.  I’m just going to use my circulars and forget the idea of knitting this lever-style.  I can’t knit another swatch.  Well, really it’s more likely that I can’t wait to get more needles. I have all the circs that I need…

 

To take the bad taste of swatch out of my mouth, I’m going to show you the yarn that I got at Knit Purl last week.

 

My mom came out and visited last week.  We drove down to Portland for a day and spent some time in the Japanese Garden, which was beautiful and very peaceful.  That’s my mom on the bridge.

 

Then we went back into the city and went to Josephine’s Dry Goods and Knit Purl.  Knit Purl is a great store.  Lots of yarn and variety and even some roving!  They had a whole wall of Koigu sock yarn (which I don’t like as much, but I know lots of people love!)  My mom was really nice and bought me a Japanese stitch pattern book, and these yarns:

 

Some sock yarn from Happiest Girl! Dyeworks, 75% superwash/25% nylon.  The yarn isn’t very soft (washing will probably take care of that), but I am completely in love with the saturated teal next to the deep black.  It looks fabulous in natural lighting.

 

Sheep Shop Yarn (Sheep #3), a sport-weighty merino/silk blend.  Deliciously soft and it has that dangerous sparkle to it that makes it hard to put down.

 

Last but not least, a yarn that my mom picked out that is to die for.  ShibuiKnits Baby Alpaca DK, in a very royal blue.  So very, very soft!

 

 

Favorite color? I don’t have a favorite color.  Clearly I love all colors equally and nothing you can say will convince me that I love blue more than yellow.  It’s obviously not true.

Once upon a time October 8, 2009

Once upon a time there was a knitter.  She lived in a pleasant land with a slight nip in the air.  This got the knitter to thinking.  She really needed a light jacket to keep out the chill but not be too warm.  Her husband had just gotten a very nice leather jacket to fit that niche for himself.  The knitter wanted something nice too.  She searched high and low for a suitable jacket but none of the shops had what she wanted.  The knitter was very sad, thinking that her old ratty fleece jacket that she didn’t like was going to have to last one more year.

 

Then a good fairy appeared and bonked the knitter on the head with a very sharp wand (the part of the fairy in tonight’s performance will be played by a cabinet door.)  The fairy reminded the knitter that she had yarn, needles, and more than a little intelligence to make her own jacket.

 

The knitter thought that the fairy was very smart.  The knitter carefully ignored the unworn vest in her closet.  She didn’t like vests and never had.  No amount of “science” could convince her that vests can keep your arms warm by keeping your core warm.  Nope, she vehemently denied ever having thought that she would wear such a thing.  She had no idea why she would have knit that in the first place.

 

Having conveniently forgotten about the vest, she had also forgotten about the things she learned while knitting it.  Like the fact that she dislikes knitting things flat.  That she hates seaming.  And that the witchcraft of attaching sleeves was vaguely terrifying.  She also worked very hard not to remember the seamless cardigan that she had started earlier in the year.  She was pretty sure that the cardigan had been lost at sea, even though it had never been to sea.  It was tragic, really, she’d never quite gotten over the loss.

 

Maybe it was the bonk on the head, but the knitter thought that she could probably finish the knitted jacket before the weather turned too cold to wear it.  It wouldn’t take her that long to knit a worsted-weight jacket, especially if she shoved aside all the other things she was working on, including her spinning, and ignored the fact that Christmas (and a December 1st deadline for publications) was in two and a half months.

 

The knitter happily repressed any and all logical objections from her aforementioned intelligence and went and bought the pattern for the Central Park Hoodie.  Then she bought some Wool of the Andes, because she thinks that it’s generally nicer against the skin than Cascade 220.  She decided against superwash since a jacket needs less washing than a sweater or socks.  She is even thinking about knitting this using lever knitting, hoping that this will make things faster, even though her lever knitting still isn’t faster than her regular knitting.  This, of course, will require new needles.

 

And they all lived happily ever after.

Learning New Things September 24, 2009

I love learning new techniques.  One of the things I like so much about knitting is the number of techniques to learn.  Like entrelac, Norwegian purling, Portuguese knitting, colorwork… every time I worry that I’ve learned it all, something new pops up!  The story of how I stumbled on this new technique is long and boring, but I will tell it to you anyway.  I’m just that kind of person.

 

I was poking around on Abby Franquemont’s YouTube channel for some spinning videos about a week ago.  One of the videos there was this one of the Yarn Harlot knitting and explaining a bit about her technique, particularly how it’s better for preventing repetitive stress injury.

I watched the video and marveled at her speed.  “Isn’t that cool?” I thought.  Then I didn’t think much about it for a while.

 

A week went by, and I saw on the Harlot’s blog that she had finished another pair of socks.  Now, this woman is always traveling, teaching, writing, and has teenagers at home.  How is it that she can churn out multiple projects in the time it takes me to finish one (not one project, one sock)?  It dawned on me.  She is using that other knitting technique.  I watched the video again and paid attention to the name.  Irish cottage knitting or production knitting.  Also known as lever or armpit knitting.

 

Well, that set off a full-blown Google search for anything and everything that I could learn about Irish cottage knitting.  This is the technique that the Harlot teaches in her class about knitting efficiency.  I missed out on that class at the Sock Summit (it sold out fast!!) so I’ve tried to piece it together online.  There isn’t actually a ton of info about it out there.  It’s a bit of heritage knitting; not taught much anymore unless you are taught by someone who knits that way.  I mean, I have seven thousand books on knitting and I’ve never seen it really mentioned before!  There’s a brief description in the Art of Fair Isle Knitting and the History of Handknitting, but no pictures or instructions.

 

So, I believe that I have indeed recreated this technique.  I’ve been practicing so much that I’m almost as fast cottage knitting as my regular knitting!  Hopefully after some more practice, I will reach actual speed-knitting speed.  This is the technique that the world’s fastest knitters use!  It would be very nice to be able to churn out more projects… I have so many ideas for designs but I’m limited by the speed of my knitting.

 

So, we’ve got the above video.  Then there’s this one, which has a slow motion section and an analysis of the way Stephanie holds her needles.  Then there’s some good info on the Ravelry group about cottage knitting.  Once I’m sure that what I’ve come up with is indeed cottage knitting and really is faster, I’ll post up a tutorial about the technique!

 

And because I came across some other fun stuff in my YouTube searching, here are two other videos that I enjoyed (the first is very similar to the speech she gave at Third Place Books last October):

 

 

And this one is just plain funny whether you’re a knitter or not.  And especially if you’ve visited Denver.

ARrrgh May 21, 2009

   I’ve been knitting for three years now (well, knitting seriously) and I’d never broken a needle or even chipped one in that time.  And now I’ve broken two in short succession!  This time it’s not so crushing, since I broke a Size 1 needle and I have tons of those. But seriously, knitting gods?!  I had to break another needle?

 

  

 

This time I’m not even sure I know how it happened.  I had taken my knitting on some errands with Lowell.  When we got home, I had my hands full of goodies and my knitting bag slung over my shoulder. I took off my shoes and came through the door.  I slammed my foot into something sharp, which led to some jumping around, yelping, and dumping of goodies onto the floor.  I figured that I had stepped on a small stick or something on the welcome mat.  I put away the goodies and went back to look at the mat so that Lowell wouldn’t step on it too. 

 

I found some shard of something that looked suspiciously like a Harmony needle.  But that couldn’t be- my knitting was carefully stowed in my knitting bag!  I check my knitting, and there was a shattered needle hanging out of the bag.

 

 

I still don’t know how it happened.  How did my knitting jump out of my bag?  How did it get to the floor without my noticing and postition itself just right to get stepped on?  It must have wanted to be broken!  Do I have suicidal needles?  I thought needles like to be used.  Why would my favorite pair of needles jump to certain doom?  I don’t understand.  Clearly this wasn’t my fault.  I had everything put away nicely.  This needle wanted to be broken.  I feel terrible for its twin on the other end of the cable.  What must it be thinking?  Abandoned by its sibling and now useless to me.  That’s a terrible burden for a tiny needle.

 

Maybe I need a needle whisperer.  Or could this be a case of the rare needle flu?  I should go quarantine the other circulars; hopefully they’re not already infected!

[expletive deleted] May 1, 2009

 

I know when I’m licked.

 

This is the hazard of placing your project down anywhere near your feet.  Normally, this would be cause for some cursing, a brief memorial service, and then a transfer of the project to DPNs while I wait for a new Harmony circ.  Like most of my life recently, this is has not happened under normal circumstances.  There was a lot of cursing.  I have at least 3 pairs of size 1 circulars.  And at least 4 sets of size 1 DPNs.  I have slightly fewer combinations of size 0s and just enough size 2s to cover this sort of occurrence. But turn me ’round and call me Nancy if this sad horrific accident didn’t happen to my only pair of size 1.5 circulars!

 

See, I tried to start some socks using Shibui Knits on size 1s.  They were very dense and had very little give.  Then I tried them on size 2s, which ended up too loose and sloppy for my tastes.  So I went and grabbed Baby Bear’s needles and darn if size 1.5s (2.5mm instead of 2.25; often they’re just referred to as size 1s) weren’t just right.  Everything was going smoothly, including a very fast stockinette section that was very enjoyable.

 

Then I had to frog.  About 30 rounds.  And then I had a tangled mass of yarn to lug around as I dragged the project around to various engagements.  And now this.

 

 

I’m beginning to think that this sock doesn’t want to have cables on it.  It’s very picky, as this is the second attempt I’ve made at using this yarn.

 

I haven’t posted in a while, because really there hasn’t been a lot of knitting this week.  I fell off my bike (I got clipless pedals and everyone has to fall once with them.  I was smart and managed to fall on the grass.) and tweaked an old injury that hurts when I knit.  And there’s been a lot of spring cleaning.  And every time I sat down to post, I got writer’s block.  I’ve been dealing with some depression and anxiety lately.  I don’t want to go into too much since this is a crafting blog and not a inner-psychosis blog.  But it’s been keeping me from really enjoying writing like I usually do, so I feel like I should mention it.  I’ve been trying very hard to lose weight for a while.  No one’s sure right now why, since I’m following every instruction I’ve been given, I’m not making any progress.  The current theory is some sort of rare syndrome.  It’s very frustrating to have made all these changes in my life and to be popping supplements and pills left and right and to not know what’s wrong with me.  It will all be resolved; as Lowell says I can’t outrun the laws of science forever.  But right now it’s hard and stressful.  There’s a lot to keep track of.  On the plus side, I have found a lot of new foods that are incredibly delicious.  And the clipless pedals are not as scary as I thought they would be.

 

Guess I’ll go put the Shibui Knits in the corner and see if it ever comes around and tells me what it’s supposed to be.  Luckily, I have other socks to work on.  I took pictures for a tutorial today, so hopefully the next post will actually be something useful!