robknits

Thanksgiving yarn

 I now live a long way from family.  Visiting over Thanksgiving also gives me a chance to visit with Kim, who comes in to New Jersey from central PA for a family Thanksgiving of her own.  We now meet up on the Saturday of the Thanksgiving weekend in beautiful Princeton.  We had gorgeous sunny weather, a charming town to walk though, lunch... and yarn shopping.  We went to Pins and Needles there in the center of Princeton and both fell in love with a stole knit in a gazillion shades of Koigu in a drop stitch pattern, with a ruffle on one side.  The stole in the store in 90 inches long.  Kim and I average 61" tall.  Hmmm.  So we decided we would make a 60" long stole, using 8 skeins of Koigu.  While I love color selection, and am usually pretty confident, I was overwhelmed by the Koigu and watched in amazement as Kim put together skein after skein.  You can see her choices on her blog: here are the ones she helped me put together.  We are going to do a little knit-along to make our shawls.

In the meantime, I took the Best Friends sock with me, determined to get a version that fits.  I decided to try the Fleegle heel after a discussion on Ravelry.  I had given up on short row heels, and had stuck to reverse flap-and-gusset heels. 

I was wrong.  I can't believe how easy this technique is and what a nice heel it produces.  My only confusion is why I would need fewer increases for the gusset with this heel.  This is what the sock looked like when I did the number of increases recommended by the pattern.  To make the sock fit with the total number of increases recommended in the pattern, I would need to make the foot of the sock no longer than 4 inches!  The heel increases would start more or less at the ball of my foot.  So I ripped it back (the heel on this sock has been ripped back 4 times -- this yarn wears like iron), and decided to try it with 16 increases, instead of the recommended 23.  Now, normally I have no problem with the idea that I would need a different number of increases or decreases recommended by a pattern, but knitting socks is what taught me that I have a high instep, so usually I have to add increases.  Anyway, I ripped back to 16 increases, did the heel -- so easy and smooth -- and the sock fit beautifully.  But now I have to figure out why I had so many extra stitches after finishing the heel.  I decreased at the ankle, knitting like crazy at the airport on my way home, and even taking off a shoe and sock at the airport, and on the plane, to try it on.  I didn't get home til 1 am, so I didn't try it on after all the decreases I made on the plane.  We'll see tonight if I can get the sock on over the heel.

Playing in NY was fun as usual.  We went to see Carrie Fisher's one-woman show Wishful Drinking, which was very good.  We had Sunday brunch at a restaurant on 10th Ave and 17th st, called Park.  It is an old parking garage turned into a gorgeous atrium-like garden space.  Even better, it is across the street from the High Line.  In a stroke of amazing foresight, New York City turned an old elevated subway into a park.  It is kind of like a boardwalk, with raised beds filled with ornamental grasses and small trees, lined with benches whose designs are artwork themselves.  Take a look at the High Line blog.  There are also other artworks to be seen, based on the river visible between the buildings, and there is one point where you can see straight downtown to the Statue of Liberty.  It was full of folks promenading and enjoying the sunlight, it looks like a couple of cafes might open, and there was a stand selling cocoa.  A new wonder in New York.

An urge to create

Maybe it was the Kid 'n Ewe festival, but I am in full fiber-creation mode.  I decided that the den/tv room is the logical place for the spinning wheels.  I decided that my pretty much empty front room needs a floor loom.  I am thinking hard about improving my spindling, dusting off the wheels, putting a warp on the rigid heddle loom, and casting on for more socks.

I am going to move the wheels and some of the fiber into the tv room tonight. Office Depot has plastic boxes with lock-on lids that are truly clear and that come in lots of sizes.  I bought a teeny one for stitch markers, and then realized the larger ones would be great for yarn and fiber.  I am also tickled that they are called Really Useful boxes.  They are.  I am going to get some for the spinning stuff.

Since I have been at work, and unable to put this fiber-creation mode into play, that urge was channeled into book buying.  I am waiting for the following to arrive:

• Productive Spindling by Amelia Garripoli
• Woven Treasures: One of a Kind Bags with Folk Weaving Techniques by Sara Lamb
• Respect the Spindle: Spin Infinite Yarns with One Amazing Tool by Abby Franquemont
• Custom Knits: Unleash Your Inner Designer with Top Down and Improvisational Techniques by Wendy Barnard.

Good subtitles, by the way.  A classmate of mine in grad school wanted someone to write a dissertation titled After the Colon: .....   (Get it? After the Colon [colon]. Leetle grad school joke. )  Anyway, some of this loot was purchased with points from a credit card company I dislike intensely, and I figured that at least I would get myself some fiber goodies before telling them to ... well, anyway, I got an Amazon gift card with some of those points.

I did manage to not buy a floor loom.  No points for those.

Anyway, so here I am, a few days before traveling for Thanksgiving, fantasizing about reorganization and project beginnings.  I got to try on the Featherweight cardi, which is moving quickly and which I think will travel to New York with me for the holidays.  And with cooler weather here, I got to wear and enjoy wearing the Sockotta socks I finished recently.  Gotta admit, even if cotton/wool/nylon blend sock yarn is not my favorite to knit, I love wearing those socks.

Lots of searching through stitch dictionaries resulted in a possible choice for the front band for the Featherweight cardi. I found a stitch in an old Harmony Guide (Vol 2, for those who care) called the Dewdrop Pattern.  Sounds too sweet, doesn't it?  Doesn't look that way in the Harmony Guide.  So I checked under that name in Barbara Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns, and there it is, where it definitely looks a bit too sweet a lace pattern for me. Once I remembered the name, I googled it and don't like it on any of the projects I found.  Hmm.  I have to sit down and compare the instructions line by line, to see if they are the same, and of course, swatch it in the lace yarn I am using for Featherweight.  But now at least I have an idea of what kind of pattern I would like, and I may have to just make up my own version of it.  Which would be very cool.

a fiber festival

Well, I have one vote for the shawl/vest, from Kim, and one vote for the sweater.  I think I will dither for a while.

Yesterday I drove up to Boerne (pronounced Bernie) Texas to the Kendall County Fairgrounds for the Kid 'n Ewe and Llama Too fiber festival.  Like many of these festivals, it was created by folks who raised fiber animals -- sheep, goats, and later alpacas and llamas.  Compared to shows like Rhinebeck and Maryland Sheep and Wool, Kid 'n Ewe is very small, which was quite a pleasure.  I drove up, found the fairground, discovered you parked wherever, and walked into the buildings.  No long line to park, no huge crowds jostling for access to commercial yarn, no entrance fee...  Just three buildings of vendors.  The center building was the most populated with vendors, there was an amazing amount of alpaca and mohair around, lots of spinning wheels, some classes.  I found the Brooks Farm Yarn booth.  I first encountered their yarn at Maryland Sheep and Wool, where they were crowded into one small outdoor tent the year I found them.  They told me that this year they were allowed to put up three tents. They told me selling at Maryland Sheep and Wool is an enormous effort for them.

As usual, I found them by spotting their yarn, not a sign.  I can immediately recognize Brooks Farm Yarn!  I fell in love with some gorgeous DK weight wool and mohair, and carried it around petting it until I acknowledged that I wouldn't have much use for a sweater made of DK weight wool and mohair here.  Yesterday at the festival, on Nov. 14, it was 77 degrees.  While that is a bit warmer than usual for around here, it wasn't by much.  This week, with termperatures in the 60s and low 70s, will be more typical.  But still, not exactly the wool-wearing weather folks experienced this year at Rhinebeck!  So instead I fell for, and bought, enough of Brooks Farm Yarn's Acero.  They describe this yarn this way:

After dyeing, the yarn has a heathered look with subtle variations throughout the skein. This easy to knit fingering weight yarn is 60% super wash wool, 20% silk and 20% viscose. Its versatility lends itself to needle sizes from US1 to US8.

Determined not to buy blue/teal/bluish greens, I fell in love with this. 
 And for once, I bought enough.  Instead of buying the least possible amount, I bought a generous amount of this fingering weight yarn so that I will be able to use it for whatever pattern or project attracts me. 

The color is a deep rich purple with some variation throughout the yarn.  This means I might be happier alternating skeins when I knit with it.  And I feel pretty good about buying it even as I work at destashing lots of what I have in the yarn closet.  I just found buyers on Ravelry for several batches of yarn and roving that I am not going to use.  So I moved out three residents of the yarn closet, and found yarns that are more appropriate, I think, for use here in San Antonio. 

Speaking of which, the Featherweight cardigan is progressing quickly.  I am below the armholes, knitting the body of the sweater, which is a bit dull right now since it is just stockinette, without any interesting construction (like top down shoulders) to interest me.  But it is going very quickly, I am loving working with a springy wool again, and I am enjoying the ability to simply try it on whenever I want.  I did want, yesterday, and am pleased with it so far.  When you knit a raglan sweater from the top, you increase the number of stitches for the back, each sleeve and the fronts.  I followed the pattern, which meant I increased back, sleeves and fronts at the same rate.  This is the kind of calculation I am going to want to think about for future top down patterns, since increasing the sleeves every time I increase to make sure the sweater fits my front can lead to very wide sleeves :>  I am at the point where the sleeve stitches have been put on holders and I am now knitting around the body of the sweater.  This creates the armhole and means I go back to the sleeves later on.   I like the current size of the top of the sleeve but may in fact want to increase the sleeves at a slower rate for other sweaters.

      There were lots of other goodies at Kid 'n Ewe, though I didn't find another drop spindle that attracted me.  That was a major purchase goal for me at Maryland Sheep and Wool every year.  I did find some inexpensive fun stitch markers.  I lose the darn things, even sitting on my own couch, so I don't indulge in fancy or expensive ones.  These are cute, and visible, and losing them won't create anguish. 

     I was heading home from the festival by noon, happy with my purchases.  Next year I might sign up for a class. 

Which one?

I have had 4 skeins of Dream in Color Classy yarn sitting in the stash since last year's Texas Yarn Crawl.  It is worsted weight in their gorgeous Deep Seaflower colorway.  4 skeins = 1000 yds, which was all of that color Hill Country Weavers had in stock.  Since then I have been struggling to decide what to use it for, and even listed it for sale on Ravelry.

Now... 

(yes, it's teal)

Now, I have 3 possible projects for it.  The first is an unusual sort of vest thingy, or a circular shawl with armholes.  It is a free pattern on  elann. com called the Short Circular Vest.  I think it would be fun to make and very usable here in San Antonio.  that's it on the left.

But then again, I had decided to use the Classy for Ella.   A shawl, and I have to say I am not always comfortable wearing a shawl, but the shape of this one makes it a possibility.  You can click on the thumbnail for a bigger picture if you want.

But then, spending way too much time on Ravelry, I found a cardigan called the Waterlily Rib Waist cardigan.  A low v-neck, ribbing at the waist, 3/4 sleeves.   It is from a Classic Elite brochure called Curvy Knits, and the second (second to the smallest, I hasten to add) size says it only calls for 1000 yds of yarn.  I looked again, and it turns out that is for yarn that is knit at 4 stitches to the inch.  The Classy's suggest gauge is 4.5 stitches to the inch.  But I could at least experiment with knitting it to a loose gauge.

 Today anyway I am taken with the thingy on the left.  A circular shawl with armholes.  It is lacy, and should be quick.  It may turn into yet another project I don't wear, but I could always frog and recycle the yarn.

Two types of progress

My knitting focus has snapped back in, and I am making rapid progress on the Featherweight.  I am noticing some uneveness in my stitches, and unfortunately spotted a couple of spots where I caught one strand of yarn instead of two for a stitch.  We'll see, though, how it works out once the cardigan is blocked.  I am thinking of developing blocking skills beyond just washing the project and patting it into place.

Frannie appears to be making progress as well.  Saturday's attempts to get her into the crate ended with her hiding behind the armchair in the den and hissing at me whenever I appeared.  I finally left the house and ran errands designed to make me feel in control -- got the car inspected on the very last day my sticker was good, dropped a suitcase off at the Goodwill -- and went to dinner with friends.  To my surprise, on Sunday morning, Frannie appeared on the bed, talked to me as usual, and spent the day cuddling up while I read about 14 lbs worth of Sunday newspapers.  This is normal behavior, which she has not been exhibiting.  Then she ate the food I put out.  Not as voraciously as usual (DNA tests would prove she is a pig in tabby clothing) but she ate.  And slept with me last night.  I am also no longer seeing the scariest symptom, which was blood in the litter box.  I am still going to take her to the vet (really, Kim) but she is obviously feeling better.  

And I can't stop thinking about knitting.  I miss knitting mittens and hats.

Progress and a sick cat

Exasperated with my spinning in circles without doing anything, I cast on -- finally -- for the Featherweight cardigan.  Two strands of cobweb-weight lace yarn (Filatura di Crosa Centolavaggi) on a size 4 KA wooden circular needle.  For what might be the first time, I cast on and was off and knitting, without having to redo the cast on.  I am not sure why I almost always have to redo the cast on.  This time, rapid progress is being made, even with the tiny yarn.  I am so much happier knitting with wool than with cotton.   This picture also has a pretty fair representation of the color of the yarn.

My new stash of size 4 needles arrived.  I was really disappointed in the new acrylic Knitpick needle points.  They are clear, pointy and just sticky enough to be useful on a project like this, but they bent when I used then, and just felt really icky to me.  So I am continuing to use the KA needles, though I miss the very sharp points on the Knitpick needles.  Since this cardigan is a raglan knit from the top down, I am increasing on every knit row, and soon enough I am not going to be completely happy knitting the entire body of the sweater on the 24" KA cable.  At that point I may switch to the Harmony wood needles, but for the first time I was finding it hard to see my (dark) yarn against the flashy colors on the Harmony needles.  I might be able to move the cardigan onto a long Knitpicks cable just when I need to try the sweater on for sizing, and continue to knit it on the 24" KA.  Not a perfect situation.

Nevertheless, as you can see, it is going quickly.  I thought a stockinette project would be boring, but I knit quickly with wool, apparently, and am zipping along.  Once the body of the sweater is finished, I will have to pick up and knit a wide front band.  The original pattern calls for stockinette on the band which, of course, curls wildly.  Some folks have substituted a rib, and a few folks have used a non-curling lace pattern.  I am browsing through stitch dictionaries to find something interesting to do on that band and on the bottom hem of the 3/4 sleeves.

Today, Saturday, I have not been knitting though.  I have a sick cat.  My (very) big girl, Frannie, has what appears to be a urinary tract infection.  I had a vet's appointment, but Frannie has never let me pick her up.  I would not find it difficult to make a dog go where I wanted, but man, a reluctant cat is a whole other situation.  I managed to grab her a few times, but could not pick her up.  Now she is hiding behind an arm chair, terrified, growling and hissing at me, and we did not get to the vet's.  I tried grabbing that loose skin at the back of her neck, but it doesn't appear to be loose on Frannie.  I am very worried -- I HAVE to get her to the vet. She is not eating much, and I don't think she has used the litter box in a while. The vet's office gave me the number of the emergency clinic, so that if at some point I do manage to get her into the carrier I can take her there.  They also suggested the mobile vet.  I am feeling pretty helpless.  My lack of cat skills is putting Frannie at risk.  I am off to try one more time to get her into the carrier.

Kick off

OK, now there are 4 projects in the queue.  I just have to pick one to start.  

Possibility #1: The Featherweight cardigan. 

   Successfully swatched on a size 4 needle, but that size 4 needle was an Addi.  Once beloved, now unbearable.  I am NOT struggling with that cable for an entire sweater.  But I could not find a single #4 Harmony needle.  Now I know I have size 4 needles, and I know that the knitting corollary of Murphy's Law dictates not finding it until I have bought new ones.  So I went to the Knit Picks site and ordered 3 sets of size 4 needle tips: one set in the Harmony wood (although I found that too distracting under the dark lace yarn when I tested a larger size), one set in metal (which is like the Addis I used to swatch, though I found it a bit too slippery with the lace), and one set in their new acrylic tips.  THEN I went to Yarnivore to pick up the book I won during the 3rd Annual Best Little Yarncrawl in Texas and bought a KA brand size 4 circular needle.  Whaddya MEAN I don't have a size 4 needle??????

Overreaction?  What means this overreaction of which you speak?

Anyway, I was just wearing myself out jumping from one possible project to the next (the most efficient of all forms of procrastinating) so I think I am going to jump in with Featherweight.  I also found the pattern for Sausalito, so I will go back to working on that as well.  So I am not going to list #2, #3 or #4.

The swatch above, which is much lighter in color than the actual yarn, by the way, also shows the need for me to slip the first stitch of each row, as the sweater calls for.  Some of the folks who made this cardigan commented that it made it harder for them to pick up the stithces for the front band.  I may do some research on that, but I found it hard to get neat edges with this yarn.  At the very least, I will need to pay attention to the edges.  I am also going to make the front panels a little wider, to make sure this does not end up a shrug-like framing of the boobs.

The book I won was A Knitter's Template by Laura Militzer Bryant and Barry Klein.  It is subtitled "Easy Steps to Great-Fitting Garments" and provides instructions on how to get accurate measurements, make swatches, and calculate sweaters that fit.  I am not sure how useful it will be, but might be a good reference.  It includes patterns, though none appeals to me and I don't think they fit the models all that well!  But the charts will probably come in handy.  

Brimming with ideas

After hoping for quite some time for some renewed direction in my knitting, I am now flooded with ideas about what I want to start next.  And yes, I still have projects to finish, but I have decided to let myself start new projects.  My current requirement: that the cardigans be knit top-down, even if it requires conversion on my part.  So my first step this evening will be to reload Sweater Wizard, the knitting software I have used for years to recalibrate and recalculate patterns.  But... Sweater Wizard's top-down patterns are for raglan-style sleeves only.  And the main recalibration I want to do is to redesign Amelia, not only to knit from the top down but for set in sleeves.  Raglan shoulder lines are not my friends.  So I don't really need to load Sweater Wizard to start recalculating Amelia.  Well, actually, what I can do is redesign Amelia on Sweater Wizard to have set in sleeves, and use the numbers from the Sweater Wizard pattern to rewrite it from the top down.

So, Amelia is one possibility.  Last night I swatched the cobweb-weight (!) Centolavaggi yarn.  As I said last time, this is the laceweight member of the Zara yarn family.  I also know enough Italian to understand that Centolavaggi can be translated as 100 washes -- this laceweight is superwash yarn (to you nonknitters, that means it can be machine washed).  Anyway, the yarn is soooo fine I went back to Yarnivore and bought another skein, and swatched it doubled -- holding two strands together.  I also had the store owner wind both skeins for me, to avoid tangle disasters.  When swatching, I remembered to NOT pull the yarn from the center (when I tried and immediately got a yarn tangle) and instead am working from the outer strand on both yarn "cakes."  As usual I had to go down two needle sizes, and got gauge (6 stitches to the inch) with two strands with size 4 needles.  I had to use my metal needles, though, since the dark blue yarn was hard to see on the wildly colored wood Harmony needles.

That swatch is for the Featherweight Cardigan, a simple, top down, buttonless cardigan.  The pattern is for a cropped sweater -- mine will NOT be cropped.  The wide front band is written in stockinette, which will roll like crazy, so I have been looking on Ravelry at the variations folks have used for the band.  A potential spot for creativity, there. 

And, after a year and a half of avoiding it, I figured out how to put the drive band back on the Columbine spinning wheel.  And wiped off a year and a half of dust.  I want to go back to using it.  I have to admit to not liking the yarns I have tried spinning from fleece I have washed, dyed and either combed or carded -- it is all very hairy.  I do like the yarn I was spinning from a lot of the Confetti roving I bought from The Copper Moose when I first got the Columbine.  So for the moment I am going to stick with commercially prepared top and roving.

By the way, you can see the Confetti spun into yarn by better spinners than I here. Mine does not yet look like that.

Yarn Crawl in the Hill Country

With a friend visiting from Pennsylvania, the last 4 or 5 days were spent enjoying San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country during the local Yarn Crawl as well as exploring San Antonio.  The Yarn Crawl was a lot of fun, since we used it to explore the Hill Country towns of Boerne, Comfort, Fredericksburg and Wimberley.  We did sort of a triangle through the Hill Country, as Linda noted how the geography changed and enjoyed the 19th century Main Streets in each town.  All except Wimberley, actually, since the Old Oaks Ranch is literally that, on a country road outside of the town itself.  The Old Oaks Ranch was our favorite yarn store on the crawl, though it was raining -- pouring actually -- and so we didn't get to visit the Sculpture Garden or the alpacas, who were smart enough to get out of the rain into their shelters.  But they had interesting yarn.  I was amazed at the amount of heavy wool they had (still can't imagine it in Texas) but I did succumb to this -- the beautiful handpainted rayon on the left in the photo.  I am verging on buyer's remorse, since I am not sure really there is enough of it to make what I want, but we'll see.  Part of the problem is that the shop and Ravelry have different ideas about how much yarn is on the skein.  I might write to its creator, at The Drop Spindle, to see if she can clarify it for me.

At the Yarnivore in San Antonio, I bought a laceweight yarn I had been mooning over.  That's it on the right in the photo.  It is incredibly soft, and is part of the "Zara family," according to the label.  Once again, I have my doubts about the data about the yarn, since Ravelry says it is a one-ply cobweb, and looking at it shows that it is undoubtedly a two-ply yarn. 

We also had a good time at, ummm... sorry, they are running together a bit. No wait, I remember.  I found the perfect button for the Sausalito jacket at The Tinsmith's Wife (isn't that a cool name for a yarn store?).  This is a Gita Marie button, and it was very pricey for a button, but perfect with this yarn.  Linda bought a scarf pattern and a skein of Mini Mochi at the same store.  We both finished the crawl with lots of ideas floating around for knitting projects, and the button will, I hope, provide some motivation for me to finish Sausalito.

I also did my evil deed for the year -- I introduced Linda to Ravelry.  Bwa-ha-ha-ha!  Doing my part to spread the contagion.

Linda and I also explored San Antonio.  I introduced her to my new campus, and from there we discovered that I am about a two block walk from Market Square, and just over a half mile to the River Walk.  I took her over to the Southwest School of Art and Craft, and we walked about 3 miles on the River Walk from there along the new Museum Reach section -- very different from the tourist-y central part of the River Walk, which is fun in its own way.  The new section is quiet, beautifully planted on the banks, and includes a new lock system to raise the river taxis near the San Antonio Museum of Art.  Several public art projects are included in the Museum Reach section of the River Walk, including one I encountered for the first time walking with Linda -- it is an aural project, with different sounds forming a soundscape as you walk under an overpass.  There are good pictures on the River Walk pages linked above.  We then had dinner at Cool Cafe, overlooking the River Walk.

We also did a 5K walk on a ranch in the Hill Country on Saturday, saw a great concert by Ellis Paul, walked around the King William neighborhood of San Antonio, explored the Guenther House, and then headed off to visit a couple of the Missions that founded the city.  We walked around Mission San Jose and Mission Concepcion.  Mission San Jose has some beautiful land around it, as well as the San Antonio River.  I had been there once before for a bike ride along the Mission Trail.  The stonework is gorgeous.  I took a lot of pictures.

Mission Concepcion is a bit different in that the city is literally built up right to the mission, with apartment buildings overlooking the church.  Both are still active churches, though at the moment the church at Mission Concepcion is closed for restoration.

I will be going back to the Old Oaks Ranch.  They had two interesting woven hangings in the window, and I spoke to the weaver who made them and who teaches weaving there.  So I think, since my tapestry class was cancelled at the Southwest School, that I may go back up for a private class, using my rigid heddle loom.  That loom, a Glimakra Emilia, is still in a virgin state, not having been warped even once.  So again, the crawl created a lot of motivation, for weaving as well as knitting.

So when are the rest of you coming to San Antonio?

First FO of the year???

My nonfinishing has reached horrific levels.

  I just finished the Sockotta socks.  See?  Done toe-up, reverse flap-and-gusset heel, my default leg stitch (a garter rib over 4 inches) and a sewn binding at the top. Started summer 2008, soon after I moved to San Antonio -- in fact, this is probably the first yarn I bought after moving here.  The second one then languished, a victim of Second Sock Syndrome, but here it is, finally.

So I decided to add it to the Finished in 2009 album on this blog, only to realize there is none.  Can this really be the first thing I finished this year???

I went back through the blog to check. 

• I have one finished sock from the Applelaine Best Friends sock yarn.  Sock #2 has not yet been started.
• I finished knitting the copper Bias Toward Lace scarf but have not blocked it.
• I have half of the Sausalito jacket knitted.

Conceivably, then, I could see another pair of socks, the scarf and the jacket finished by the end of the year.  And, I should remind myself, one finished tapestry.  Other things I worked on this year: several frogged projects, and the Swirl stole, of which I still only have a few hexagons knit. 

Still and all, pretty low production.  It is nice to have these socks done.