robknits

New things

My cousins and I explored the Hill Country last weekend, checking out several yarn shops and tasting wine at several wineries in the area.  It was a lovely day.  The Tinsmith's Wife in Comfort, TX is a gorgeous store that easily tempted one of us off her yarn diet.  I picked up a little kit to make a knitted bracelet.  I think it was at Stonehill Spinning in that I fell for two skeins of Alpaca with a Twist's Baby Twist -- huge hanks of more than 500 yards.  I was going to make a shawl, but I think I will make Chic Knit's Cerisara, the vest version.  Knit from the top down, so I can decide on the length as I go, or as the yarn goes, anyway.  I think an alpaca vest qualifies as a winter coat here in San Antonio, or as a good hedge against the frigid air conditioning in some of our meeting rooms.

My car -- or rather, my mother's car, a 10-year-old Subaru Legacy L sedan that she had started driving onto shoulders, fields, and various other things that left dings on the bumpers -- had been developing signs of age.  Like dragging pieces of itself on the interstate.  When I was told a repair would cost a few thousand dollars, I decided enough was enough.  So now this is on my driveway:

 
I had really missed the kind of cargo space a hatchback or wagon provides, and discovered that the Hyundai Elantra Touring is basically a 4-door hatchback.  SUVs still seem huge to me, even the so-called small ones, and this car just fit.  I was comfortable in it immediately.  I did drive a Kia Soul, attracted by its funny design, but I am afraid Consumer Reports was right in complaining about visibility -- I had HUGE blindspots.  The Hyundai comes with a three-month satellite radio subscription, and I am already hooked.  My mother's car had the bottom-of-the-range radio with a cassette player and terrible speakers, so I was vulnerable to the idea of a good stereo with satellite radio.  Kim immediately sent me the data for the all-Springsteen station.

So what this means is that I will be bringing my coffee and lunch to work for the next few years, and knitting from stash.  That won't be hard to do -- after selling lots of things I was not going to use, I now have visible lovely stash yarns.  I have to decide what to go back to -- Que Sera would be smart, and I could go back to the Moongarden Wrap, though the yarn for that one turns my hands and needles black.  Or I could cast on for something else, couldn't I?  Stay tuned.

String theory and cell phones

String theory.jpg

Here is a picture of the String Theory Nexus yarn in color Labradorite. This was taken with my cell phone, which gets better color than my camera!  Also my first attempt at mobile blogging from my fancy new phone.

A warm toasty FO

I raced right through the second Best Friend sock, and they are both done.  An apparently simple pair of stockinette socks, I ripped the first one back uncountable times, used a new-to-me heel (the Fleegle heel), and Jenny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off.  I found the instructions for the latter confusing but found a YouTube video on how to do it that was made by sock architect Cat Bordhi.  These socks are incredibly cozy to wear, at least around the house as I celebrated finishing them.  I have yet to try them in shoes.  The Apple Laine yarn is gorgeous (and survived all that frogging) but rumor has it yarn stores have had trouble getting regular shipments.  I don't see many places carrying it.

I resisted my usual inclination to jump into another pair of socks and immediately went back and starting work again on the Featherweight cardi.  Knit from top down in one piece, I am now about four inches below the underarm.  If I am going to do any waist shaping, I have to decide now.  I am hoping to finish this cardigan by the end of the year.  Then my end-of-year total for knitting in 2009 won't be too pathetic -- two pairs of socks and a cardigan.

And, obsessed with sock yarn (as if I didn't have enough, and now so visibly displayed), I made the mistake of reading the appropriately named Enabler Alert:Sock Yarn thread on the Sock Knitters Anonymous forum on Ravelry.  I came away with two gorgeous new additions to the stash.  The first is from an indie dyer known as Marilla on Ravelry, who has an Etsy shop called Moonlight and Laughter.  This is a skein of superwash merino and nylon sock yarn in the Twilight Time colorway of periwinkle and violet.  It arrived, I swear, within 24 hours of my order, along with a little bag of stitch markers and some lavender sachet. 

Then, unable to stop myself, I found some Nexus sock yarn on sale at String Theory.  On sale.  And it's teal.  I had to buy it.  It is very similar in color to the Araucania Itata I bought in Princeton, but that is going to be a scarf, and these are going to be socks.

Obsessed with socks (amended)

OK, I think I understand now how things work in San Antonio.  We had six months of intense heat, and I began to think knitting was just not a reasonable obsession (oxymoron?) for someone who doesn't like knitting with cotton or linen.  But... it went down into the 20s last night.  I have been wearing wool socks all week.  It has been colder here than in New York.  In fact, I want more wool socks.

The new sock with the Fleegle heel is great.  It is almost finished, fits very well and goes on very easily.  Last night I started the second sock.  In my obsession for wool socks, though, in addition to spending way too many hours on Ravelry studying other people's socks, I ended up buying some more sock yarn.  I couldn't resist, a pusher an indie dyer named Marilla posted about her newest yarns on the Enabler Alert: Sock Yarn thread on the Sock Knitters Anonymous forum.  Now, both the title of the thread and the title of the forum makes the problem obvious, but I fell for it anyway.  I went to her Etsy store Moonlightandlaughter and bought some lovely multicolor sock yarn called Periwinkle.  I will post a picture when it arrives.

Two organizational storage systems now live in the Rob yarniverse.  The first is related to sock yarn, and makes shopping in my stash more fun and more likely.  This is an over-the-door shoe bag from the Container Store.  It took a little bit of shopping to find a transparent shoe bag, since a lot of made of canvas.  But being able to see the yarn was a requirement.  I do need to confess that these 24 pockets were not enough.  Most of the cotton-blend yarns I have bought recently are not here, and there are a few stray skeins on the shelves in the yarn closet.  The newest skein is a gift from Kim.  I am very interested in seeing what this blend is like.

The other new storage system has been a while in development, but the answer appeared during a trip to Office Depot.  This is a mesh-bottomed file holder that has been transformed into a spindle display.  The spindles hang by their hooks.  I can add more using Christmas tree ornament hooks, which let additional spindles hang a bit lower.  That last bit was an act of true creativity, given that I did not know Christmas tree ornament hooks existed until relatively recently.  I am pleased with the spindle display.  The inside of the rack can hold silk roving (:>) or wound-off copps waiting for additional yarn to be spun before being plied.

P.S. A forgotten pair of socks

I was handwashing some handknit socks yesterday after writing this post.  I am terrible when it comes to handwashng, except when it comes to handknit socks.  For some reason I enjoy that, and it certainly doesn't qualify as work.  Anyway, as I hung these up to dry, it suddenly occurred to me that they are not present in any of my photo galleries.  I just updated my Ravelry projects page to include a lot of older finished projects (thus making me feel much better about my Ravelry projects page) and I know this pair was not there.  So I went back through the blog, and discovered that I blogged about starting these socks, but never about finishing them.  Or if I did blog about finishing them, I didn't post a picture (or put a "sock" categorization on that blog entry).  So here, more than 2 years after starting them, are some more socks.  I love wearing these socks, they are very soft, and the colors blend better than is seen in the photo.  These are made from some Froehlick Blauband sock yarn, with a reverse flap-and-gusset heel.  Here they are displayed on my handmade wire-hanger sock blockers.  (I am still, years later, thinking about some nice sock blockers.)  Anyway, I love wearing these, and they are wearing very well.  I am glad I have more of the Blauband in the stash. 

Tennis and rain

 I've been watching great tennis on tv, which does wonders for my knitting.  See?  First I ended up with a nice snug heel and a deep instep, and then -- just a day or so later -- most of a sock.  All while Kim Clijsters and Rafael Nadal played amazing tennis. 

It has also been raining in San Antonio, after two years of almost no rain.  At first it started very gently, so we began to get some much needed rain but no flooding.  But since the beginning of September we have gotten more than 2.5 inches whoops now it's 3.4 inches of rain, and so the blocked-off streets and low-level flooding has begun.  The good news is that the worst of the heat has broken, and that I now find temperatures in the high 80s to be early fall weather (which is really very funny).  Today when I was out it was in the 70s -- bliss.  The yards have already greened up, at least those parts that are not actually really dead.  And with the cool weather and rain today, I actually wore sneakers... and socks.  Some of my favorite handknits socks -- these.  They fit perfectly and the cotton and wool mix yarn is very comfortable to wear.  They actually encourage me to finish the Sockotta sock-in-progress, though I doubt they will be as soft as this Meilenweit yarn -- the yarn just doesn't feel very soft.

Unfortunately I can barely make myself knit a row or two on Sausalito.  No problems with it, I am just bored.  But talking to Kim, who is the friend who gave me the lovely blue yarn I am using on the current sock project, was wonderful, because she thought it made perfect sense for me to start a lace-weight cardigan.  I want to try the Featherweight Cardigan, as I have mentioned before, and have been fretting that perhaps I do not have enough of any one lace yarn stashed. I think I will need at least 1400 yards.  But I am beginning to think that the stash might contain a possibility, even if I want to make the cardigan longer.  Because while I only have 1320 yards of the two Knitpicks Shimmer yarns in the stash -- Lost Lake (a lovely heathered green) and a heathered blue) -- and only 1250 yards of Helen's Lace, I do have  1460 yards of Prism Lace wool in the color Periwinkles,  which I bought in Seattle. That's it on the right.  And 1400 yards of Mystical Creations Yarn Spun Silk, image on the left.  But I would love to have more -- I hate to start a project worrying about running short, and I am not happy with the cropped jackets and sweaters I have.  But even the much larger size of the Featherweight calls for 1400 yards, so I should be OK.   But stashing means I should use now a color that appealed to me then, whereas if I didn't have stashed yarn, I would go ahead and buy plenty of lace yarn in a color that appeals to me today.   More fuel for rethinking having a sizable stash.

Except, of course, now that I have posted their pictures, I do like them both.  My concern about using the Mystical Creations silk is handling such a slippery yarn.  I am worried about winding it.  Should I wind it into a cake using the swift?  Pull from the center or from the outside?  If I pull from the outside I can't use a yarn bra to keep the yarn under control.  Maybe I should leave it on the swift, and knit from there.  Or wind it into a big ol' ball by hand.  Let me know what you all think.

When stash and creativity meet

I always feel that I have to struggle to avoid standardized answers to problems.  That is, I worry that I have to remind myself, for example, that the answer to a household design issue is not necessarily found in the standard stores.  My living room windows have sheer curtains in a sort of burnt orange or dark copper color.  I like them a lot, but they are sheer, and after my house was broken into again a couple of weeks ago, I decided I needed something that created more privacy.  Not that anything that could be seen from those windows was stolen, but still...

I want to keep those curtains on those windows, but add something on the lower half of the windows, leaving trees and sky visible through the top half of the windows.  Interior shutters would prevent cats from sitting on those window sills.  Can't have that.  In addition to pushing the cats off the sills, wood carvings or metal work or shoji screens would make it difficult to open those windows, which I like to do when the temperature drops all the way down to the 80s and like to think I could do if that were my only exit from the house in an emergency.  I thought of bamboo curtains but could only find bamboo shades, difficult to hang halfway down the window. 

Then I thought of weaving something, but figured I wanted a solution that would take fewer than 3 or 4 years to develop.  I played around with an idea from the book Time to Weave, modifying the runner on the cover (the project on the upper left on the cover).  There is a variation on that inside the book that uses stalks of plants instead of sticks that got me thinking. 

   Then I found the Loop Door Curtain crochet pattern here.  Hmmm.  Wandered into the yarn closet.  And I came out with the generic recycled silk yarn that has been hanging around the house for years.  Knitting with the stuff is a nightmare.  I did weave with it as weft, and that was OK, though I never took the piece I wove and made it into the bag I had planned.  So I began playing.  I tried the crochet instructions.  Ok.  Then I began to play with other  ways of producing the strands.  Long rows of just knit-on cast on stitches.     Long rows of knit-on cast on with the next row done as a bind off row.  I began thinking perhaps I could also intersperse just strands of the recycled silk, not knit or crochets. It has actually been kind of entertaining.  But then I decided it actually looked kind of scraggly.  What to do, what to do....

It required another trip to the yarn closet, staring at its residents.  Then I found this stuff (pic on the right).   I bought it at Knitters Connections, which I attended with Terry a few years ago.  I was going to make the Evening in Eden shawl with it, but that never happened.   And I half to admit that while I like what shawls look like, I think that when I wear one I look like an old photograph of an Eastern European immigrant from the turn of the 20th century, sitting on my suitcase at Ellis Island.  I have been thinking of seeing if I have enough for a cropped lacy jacket (it's rayon, good for this climate) but now I think it might dress the windows, not me.  A very satisfying idea, feels very creative, and is produced with materials already in the house. 

Meanwhile, I have finally gotten back to the weaving studio, and have reached the design part of my little wall hanging. I will take a picture tonight.  I am loving weaving with Lamb's Pride.  It doesn't allow for the sort of weft color blending that other yarns allow for in tapestry.  That's when you blend multiple strands of a yarn and use it as a single weft, to create lovely gradations of color.  On the other hand, the fact that I cannot blend colors is leading me toward other types of design.

More weaving, and lots of Magpie

 First, the picture of the Magpie.  This is Rowan Magpie that I appear to have accumulated in pieces over the years.  Some of it was acquired when in a moment of insanity I decided I was going to knit a Rowan jacket whose name I have forgotten -- it looks like a Kilim, and required combined stranded and intarsia knitting with something like 14 different yarns.  I now acknowledge I am not going to knit this jacket, as much as I would love to own it.  Other skeins of Magpie I acquired at my LYS.  Anyway, I am destashing all but the Oatmeal colored Magpie (I still plan on using some of it for a vest, with some Noro Shinano, swatched ages ago).  It is on my Sell or Trade stash page on Ravelry, or you can email me if you are interested.   The Antique Gold colored skeins are not Magpie, by the way -- they are Rowan's Designer DDK.  Also for sale.

The online community of fiber artists came to the rescue via the Yahoo!Group Tapestry2005, where a member suggested turning my tapestry-in-progress upside down (the benefits of working on a small loom) and beating the bottom edge straight.  I did that, retied the string of knots supposed to hold it level to the sides of the frame, and wove in a metal ruler below the knots, to help form a base.  I am continuing to weave the image.  You know how in knitting you have to modify an image to make up for the shape of the stitch?  Otherwise the image comes out oddly elongated.  I am running into a bit of that in my tapestry weaving and need to pay more attention to the shapes that result, so that I can weave greater width into my images.  That first tapestry, the Northern City Lights, suffers from that, with the image elongated and not wide enough.  I am now thinking about a more satisfying image (to me) to represent that Northern City Lights idea.

I also succumbed to my latest weaving obsession and bought, as I suggested in the last entry, a rigid heddle loom.  I chose the Glimakra Emilia after my usual obsessive search for information.  I deliberately chose a rather narrow loom (15" weaving width, I think) and one that was reviewed as having a good (i.e., relatively large) shed and a good tension device.  My goal is to "weave close to the thread" as Betty Linn Davenport said on Syne Mitchell's podcast about rigid heddle weaving.  An early birthday present for myself.  Now I want to create a record of my weaving stash, since I have accumulated some weaving yarn/thread, so I am looking forward to the start of Weavolution, which is going to be a Ravelry-like online resource for weavers.  Just as I do on Ravelry for knitting, I will be able to inventory stash, projects, get ideas, communicate with weavers, etc.  I am looking forward to it!  The Beta testing is going to happen in June.

Knitting is continuing on the Sausalito jacket.  I am kinda ready to be done, but I still have both sleeves and the left front to knit, so I can't run out of steam now.  I am knitting the first sleeve -- it is pretty mindless knitting at this point if I pay attention to which row I am on, so I am getting it done in front of the tv.

We are enduring a historically extreme drought here in San Antonio but it has been drizzling on and off and really looks like rain.  Who knew rain could be so exciting!

Stash growth and weaving

This past week the Contemporary Handweavers of Texas had their biennial conference here in San Antonio.  I didn't take any of the classes but did visit the vendor rooms with a friend from my tapestry weaving classes.  There was, of course, stash enhancement.  On the right (with very accurate color) are five skeins of Anny Blatt Silk'Anny, a worsted weight 100% silk single.  Someone was selling old stash.  There are only 65 yards per skein, for a total of 325 yards, so my intent is a very cool scarf-like thing.  I haven't decided what yet.  In the middle is a glimpse of a long cotton scarf I bought from a vendor of fair trade Guatemalan crafts.  It has lots of teal in it, but also some lovely green that did not show up in the photos.  And on the left are 3 skeins of Elsbeth Lavold's Silky Wool  (half price!)in an intense turquoise color not well represented in this photo.  I am adding it to the stash I started to create a multicolored jacket or vest.  I got some great ideas for it when I took some classes on color in slip stitches at the Knitters Connection (a few years ago, but I will get it to it.  Really.)

     The conference also had lovely fleece (especially some gorgeous, extremely pet-able mohair curls) and top from Texas breeders which I managed not to buy.  Great weaving and spinning tools and accessories.  Lots of books and magazines, of course. 

     It was inspiring to be surrounded by spinners and weavers, of course, and I came home and got to work on the next tapestry.  I had started it at the very last class in the tapestry workshop, but had not done more on it here at home.  Instead I was working on the finishing of the first tapestry, Northern City Lights.  So the new tapestry still looked like it does on the right.  (And yes, actually, this time the color in the photo is accurate -- that actually IS the color of the chair in the studio!)  So when I got home from the weaving conference, I got to work on some basic preparatory work on this tapestry. 

     I needed to get the "cartoon" in place.  They call any design used for guiding a tapestry a "cartoon," even those created by Degas and Picasso.  Anyway, first question: how to mount the cartoon behind the working warp threads?

     I ended up using bulldog clips to attach the print to some long stick shuttles I acquired somewhere (I think when I bought the floor loom a couple of years ago).  I did this on both sides, top and bottom.  The picture itself is on its side -- once again, I will be weaving this image sideways.  That's done to make it easier to create certain types of lines in the image. 

    Then I had to figure out how to get the mounted cartoon between the front and back warp threads on the portable loom, and how to tie this thing onto the loom itself.

 

     That created some frustration, of course.  I was kneeling on the floor, my joints suggesting that perhaps that was no longer a comfortable thing for me to do at my age, catching the slits in the stick shuttles and the edges of the bulldog clips on warp threads, and trying to figure out a secure way of tying it to the frame.  I have an unfortunate mental block when it comes to knots.  Yeah, a weaver and knitter who has trouble with knots.  Finally though, I achieved this:

   The cartoon is in place between the warp threads.  I ended up threading string through the bulldog clips and tying that string to each side of the frame.  I think that'll work.  Now I need to wind some butterflies of yarn, tighten the warp a bit, and I can actually weave.  I am hoping to get into the habit of doing a little bit of weaving on this on a regular basis.  A tapestry weaver named Tommye Scanlon has a project like that -- immersed in a move and teaching but not wanted to stop her weaving, she has an improvisational piece that requires a bit of weaving every day.  You can see it in the left column on her blog.  To my delight, it has become a citiscape. 

     I am also still knitting Sausalito, and looking for interesting ideas to show off the Anny Blatt silk in a creative, decorative scarf.  Most of the ideas I have come up with so far include lots of i-cord, and I am not sure I want to subject myself to that.  But I do want something creative, arty, maybe even necklace-like.  Ideas and suggestions welcome!

Getting back to my needles

     The knitting meet-ups here have helped get me back into knitting mode and out of my stuck-without-a-project rut.  I did need something relatively simple, something to knit on autopilot but as I have said I got stuck when I thought of socks, immersed as I was in my new sandal-friendly environment.  But there was a sudden breakthrough.

     First, I fell in love with the Chevrolace sock pattern from Knitty's Winter 07 issue.  Not sure how I missed it the first time around.  Knew immediately that I want to use the Dream in Color Smooshy yarn that I have in the Wisterious colorway.  (The second from the left in this line-up of last summer's sock yarn splurge.) I couldn't start right away though since the Smooshy is not wound.  So winding that is on the do-next list.  (The other yarns in the picture, from left to right, are Cherry Tree Hill Sockittome in Moody Blues, Lisa Souza Sock! in Mother of Pearl, and Schaefer Anne in Mint Caramel Frappe.  All awaiting the perfect project.  I don't like the self-designed pattern I started with the Anne.)

     Sock-yarn blankets were also on my mind, as a way of providing a continuing mindless project.  The problem was I couldn't help trying to plan the colorwork on a mitered project, which was kind of beside the point.  Finally, I picked up one of the afghan or Tunisian crochet hooks I have, one too small to make a nice fabric out of heavier yarn, and started experimenting with bit of leftover sock yarn.

      I can't stop. 

     I love the woven look you get with afghan/Tunisian crochet.  And I love the motion involved.  But the relationship among needle size, yarn size, and fabric is quite different in Tunisian crochet than in knitting.  I am using a size G Susan Bates hook.  That's a 4 or 4.5 mm size hook, the equivalent of a size 6 or 7 needle, that I am using with fingering weight yarn.  In knitting that would get me a lacy fabric.  In Tunisian crochet, that gets me an OK blanket-weight fabric, but I really could have used an even larger hook to get a drapier fabric!  That's why I ordered such huge hooks to experiment with fabrics for jacket patterns.  As you can see, I am working in broad color groups with a few contrasting colors thrown in.  The result? I need to knit more socks to get more leftovers!  That helped reignite my interest in knitting socks too.  Isn't that funny?

I don't think I like the brown/copper bit I used in the blue-ish strip.  And I think putting together lots of strips will look as uninspiring (to me, but then, it's my blog) a grannie-square afghan.  So, I think I am going to make strips of varying lengths and then somehow put them together with navy blue sections, in a quilt-like kinda way.  Til then, though, I am just going to make strips of left-over sock yarn.

     So in addition to knitting Chevrolace out of the Smooshy Wisterious, I am also going to start a pair of all-stockinette socks with the  Apple Laine Apple Pie sock yarn in the Best Friends color Kim gave me as a going-away present.  I was also able to look back through the blog to discover what stitch pattern I had used on the Moving socks, done in Paton Kroy Eclipse.  So I can work on sock #2 there.  So with a sock yarn leftover project in motion, and 3 sock projects about to take off, I appear to be back in my basic knitting status.  But I still have to find the following:

• More sock yarn is hiding somewhere.  Missing is my stash of red sock yarns, including the gorgeous Mysterious yarn I bought from the Knitting Zone.  There is an APB out for red sock yarn on Inspiration Drive.
• The Campanula WIP.  I know I saw it somewhere.
• My knitting notions in a clear cosmetic bag.  Now THAT is critical.

Sock!

      In the singular.  My moving-therapy sock #1 was completed just a few minutes ago.  Using Patons Kroy in Winter Eclipse, purchased for very little during, I think, a Herrschnerrs sale. Notice the other all important items sharing the top of the cart:

• Painter's tape.  Good for labeling items going into the freezer and anything else that needs a label.
• Two cat brushes, because of course Maggie will only allow herself to be brushed by the pink one and Frannie only tolerates the blue one. 
• A catnip mousie
• Pencils for marking pattern repeats.
• A knitting magazine.

Anyway, this sock is also a bit long.  That's the second pair in a row that ended up too long.  I am going to cast on right away for Winter Eclipse #2, and will try making that one shorter.  I am also casting on for sock #2 immediately to counteraffect the news that apparently the electricity in the house I want to buy in San Antonio was installed by monkeys.  I tried some alcohol but I think it's gonna take some sock knitting before I calm down.

      We interrupt this knitting blog for some cat cuteness.  First, as all folks who share their home with cats know, if you make a pile of something it requires a cat.  Moving, of course, produces lots of piles.  As I was trying to wash every piece of clothing I own, this resulted.   Maggie appears to understand that her role in the house is to produce moments of outrageously sweet cuteness I disavow in all other parts of my life.  Oh, and then she did this:

Yup.  Discovered ice cubes.  And nope, she sure wasn't supposed to be on the counter.

   Frannie is sharpening her skills of invisibility, except at feeding time and when she has to be brushed.

     Ok, back to fiber fun.  I figured out how to pack a spinning wheel today.  It included a big box, lots of towels, and whatever yarn was still lying around in that room.  And I may have gotten a bit carried away when I prepared for a couple of months of knitting while packing, moving, and unpacking:

Ya think? The yarn for 9 or 10 pairs of socks, a shawl, and 3 sweaters in progress.  I think that's about 2 years worth of knitting for me.  I think I should make it til I am unpack.  Face it, Rob, this is a security blanket in its raw state.  That would have been a cute moving project -- random skeins of things knit into a security blanket.