robknits

Ready, set... [edited -- off the needles!]

     Not an imaginative title for this entry.  But I am ready for the start of the Secret of the Stole.  The first clue will be out on Friday, I think.  I tried to upload a picture of my three swatches to the Yahoo!Group page, but couldn't get to it.  So here is my comparative swatch. As usual, it is not really visible unless you click on the thumbnail to see the full-size photo.  I am struggling to find ways to improve the photos of my knitting.  This was an attempt in natural light (gorgeous day here) using a piece of muslin as a background.  The larger swatch was the first one, with the copper beads at the top and the bronze beads at the bottom.  The small swatch was the third one with the amber beads, which is what I have decided to use.  I am glad we are about to start the stole, since I began looking at the other lace yarn in the stash and wonder about other possibilities.  But this is it: Knitpicks Shadow lace merino, in colorway Lost Lake, with glass size 6/0 amber-colored beads from Joanns.   Kim is doing the stole as well, so we will have a little local team as well.

      We have a knitting group that meets every few weeks at work, and one of the members came running up to me in the halls between meetings to show off the beginnings of her first toe-up socks.  I loved the yarn.  So I went over to a LYS I don't visit often enough, and discovered it was Claudia Handpaint, which Kim has shown me before.  I had hesitated, since it has no nylon in it and I am hard on my socks.  But then I saw this colorway, and I fell.  And this, at least on my monitor, is a very good representation of hte colors.  To my concern, the color name on the yarn label is ... wait for it ... Oops.  Yup, this color is named Oops.  I went to the Claudia website, could not find this colorway anywhere.  So I don't know what she was aiming for, but I think she ought to find a less disturbing name for it and do it again!  To counteract my concern about merino socks with no nylon or mohair, I am going to knit this yarn using two circular needles, using a size 0 for the toe, sole and heel, and a 1 for the instep and leg.  The only other yarn I fell for that does not have nylon is Smooshy.  I will do the same with that yarn.  As it is, I have two pairs of socks on needles right now -- yes, four socks, each on their own needles.  I started the plain teal ones while figuring out what pattern I wanted to use for the Anne yarn, and am now working exclusively on the teal, trying to finish those before going back to the Anne. 

     I am also racing to finish Ostrich Plumes.  When I hold it in one hand and stretch it with the other (i.e., kinda like blocking) it is almost fingertip to fingertip.  I think it will be more of a scarf than a stole, since I used laceweight instead of the fingering the pattern calls for.  That's ok.  You can see (in this rather vertigo-inducing photo) I have just a little yarn left in this ball, so I am declaring this finished when the yarn runs out and when I start the Secret of the Stole.  I have only used one skein (500 yds) of the 3 I bought of this Tess Yarns merino lace weight at MDSW.  So that leaves me with 1000 yards to use sometime later for another project.  Stash lives! 

Breaking news: Ostrich Plumes is off the needles!  Anyone know how to block the curved sides feather and fan type stitches create?

Socks! [with addendum -- MORE socks!]

       Finally.  That miserable second sock is DONE.  I have....  TA DA! -- a pair of socks.  This is my toe-up version of the Lacy Mock Cable socks, done in a Opal handpaint yarn.  I love this pattern and it might be the only one, so far, that I have used more than once.  You can of course click on the pic for more detail.  I didn't really love the yarn.  The texture is OK and I assume will soften once the socks are washed.  I am not very enthusiastic about the way the colors knit up in the stockinette sections.  So I don't think I will be using Opal in the future.  Lots of other sock yarns are biding their time in the yarn closet. 

     There is no reason this second sock should have caused me trouble.  I admit it -- the knitter, not the sock, was miserable.  I declare the completion of these socks, and the superdeluxe wire-hanger sock blockers  showing them off, to be the official end of the no-mojo summer.  To prove it, I did a couple of repetitions of the Ostrich Plume stole.  See?   If not knitting mojo, at least some basic knitting competence.

    With the completion of the Opal socks, the temptation was to immediately grab the waiting Anne yarn and cast on some sock toes.  One of the pleasures of toe-up socks are those cute sock toes at the beginning.  But I decided to take a breather.  Probably only til tonight, but I am working on a huge purge of all the crap piling up in my house.  A friend/neighbor called last week to say she was having a yard sale and would I like to participate.  So I dragged stuff over there on Friday and on Saturday morning,  and was successful at moving quite a bit of the "really should get rid of it" stuff.  So today I am going to put on some music or a recorded book and shred a lot of the paper that was sitting on the desk I sold, while running some dirty clothes through the washer.  Oh yeah, and putting the study door back on the hinges!  I must have assembled that desk in the study, since I couldn't get it out through the door.  Fortunately, it missed by only a bit -- less than an inch. 

     In a retreat from my mojo-less knitting, and my general distraction this summer, I fell back into old reading habits.  Which means lots and lots and lots of light reading.  I reread almost all the mysteries I had in the house, one after another, reading until my eyes refused to focus.  It is pretty aimless reading, and while of course it is enjoyable, it is, I know, a retreat. Part of my aimless, unfocused summer.  So today I am promising myself that I will do a couple of things I want to get done.  Plow through the piles of paper that had been on the desk.  Get my clothes ready for the work week.  Do some cooking.  And cast on some sock toes.

ADDENDUM:  Well, I was going to do those things, but then got into some really professional-level procrastination techniques.  But... I found some unfinished socks.  Sock number two -- yes, again, I tried to do the socks sequentially rather than simultaneously -- had a longer leg than sock number one, and I apparently threw them into the stereo/WIP cabinet in disgust.  So I frogged a few rows, did a short K1P1 cuff, and have... ANOTHER pair of socks!  These are, more or less, Kim Salazar's Pine Tree toe up socks.  I say more or less because I substituted my own favorite toes and heels.  These were started just after Maryland Sheep and Wool in May, using Regia's Line Step sock yarn.  And just because I took the picture and uploaded it to the laptop, here's a detail shot on the left.  They look very nice but I am being seduced by how soft the waiting fancy sock yarns feel compared to the Regia and the Opal.

Growing my own

     Returning the heddles that didn't fit to the LYSO, I showed her the draft for my now orphaned MAFA draft.  She mentioned freeware online that let you put in the threading you have on the loom, and a treadling pattern and it then shows you a graphic representation of the fabric that would result.  Wow.  Double wow.  Talk about studying the relationship between the threading of a particular warp and what you then choose to do with it.  So I ran home and last night began searching the Web.  There are several software programs for sale that do this, and a review of them available online from Interweave's Handwoven site.   Don't want to buy anything yet though.  Laritza recently posted a very useful list of freeware for crafters, including a link to the Handwoven reviews.  Her recommendation a while ago for a knitter's font led me to a great resource that I use all the time now to chart stitches, and I am about to start using Google's bookmark file resource so that I have my bookmarks no matter where I am online. 
So I am going to start experimenting with the demos for all the weaving software, to decide which I want to save up for.  At the moment though, I am using the free online WinWeave. It has already given me great ideas for how to weave this warp.
     It is a pretty minimal program, of course, and I can't find any help files at all.  So I am still trying to figure out, for example, how to change the colors of the weft thread, and how to edit the colors (which the home page says you can do) so that I can get colors more closely related to the ones on my loom.  But wow.  By a click of a menu option you can fill the treadling chart "tromp as writ," one of those apparently very obscure weird weaving phrases that actually means something very straightforward.  It means you take the threading chart (the draft, that tells you that thread #1 goes on shaft #4, thread 2 goes on shaft #3, etc.) and use it as your treadling guide.  Well, it is easier to show than explain.  Anyway I did that and decided... ehhh, maybe not.  So then I tried just the treadling for block B, and loved it, followed it by some plain weave, loved it .... and am going to keep going.  I have to figure out how many inches of each treadle pattern I would want.  That is, in the 3 yards of fabric I want to produce, how many inches will have the Block B treadle pattern, how many inches of plain weave...  I am going to take into account the design guidelines I learned from Ruth Lantz and Judy Ditmore at Knitters Connection: odd numbers, Fibonacci sequences, etc.   I am also going to work my way through the demos for the commercial products, and decide which I want.  Laritza is leaning toward Fiberworks Silver
      I also finally answered the call of the lace weight stash.  It had been calling my name beseechingly while I have been knitting the sport weight Campanula and the aran weight Bedazzled lace.  Finally I lined up the lace stash -- not looking at patterns -- and picked up the one that was waving its little hands frantically saying "Pick me! Pick ME!."  That was the Tess Yarns merino lace weight that I bought at MDSW.  It is amazing how comfortable it now feels to knit with lace weight yarn.  And I really wanted to -- one of those tactile knitting demands my hands make from time to time.  Then of course I had to choose a pattern.  I ended up using the Knitspot pattern Ostrich Plumes.  (That link opens her catalog, by the way.  And looking at it I see her new pattern Bee Fields is available.  I also see I want to buy her Starlight Wrap pattern.)
      So here is the beginning of Ostrich Plumes.  As usual, unblocked lace looks more like a scrunchy than anything else.  This is the first feather and fan-type pattern I have knit (weird, huh) and I am enjoying the rhythm -- one pattern row and 3 stockinette rows.   I am hoping, also, that once this is blocked I will see that the lilac/gray yarn is not striping.
     I did also notice that this stitch -- Ostrich Plumes -- is just a slight variation on the one in Barbara Walker's Treasury, with a 2-stitch garter border on each side.  And the other pattern I have from Knitspot, the Japanese Feather stole, basically does that too -- a stitch from the Barbara Walker Treasuries with a simple border.  I think they make for gorgeous stoles, and I am delighted with the Knitspot patterns, but it does make me realize that I can also pick up a hank of lace weight yarn calling my name and go through Treasuries to find a pattern that pleases me.  I do want to figure out how to put different lace patterns together in a rectangular stole.  Six feet of the same lace pattern and I begin to get bored (who, me?).   We have been talking about this on the lace forum on Knitters Review.  Can it really be as simple as finding the common stitch count denominator for several lace patterns?  I still haven't figured out the "pattern stitch +x" issue.  That is, if one lace pattern is worked over something like a 6 stitch repeat +3, and another is an 8 stitch repeat + 5.  Oh wait.  If something needs an 6 stitch repeat +3, and I do, let's say, 10 repeats of the pattern, I would need 63 stitches (let's leave out borders for the moment).  I would then need another stitch pattern that would need a total of 63 stitches -- for example, a  7 repeats of a 9-stitch pattern.  But that seems really hard to do. It is beginning to make me think I would rather do the gardening.  Perhaps that's where tweaking the Barbara Walker patterns comes in -- making a pattern variation over 9 stitches instead of 7.  I am going to take a look at how the Knitspot designer modified the stitches.  And I am going to go back to the Heartstrings Scotch Thistle pattern to figure out how she moves back and forth from one pattern to the next.

     Finally, I created two annual albums -- items finished in 2006 and, so far, in 2007.  I liked doing that -- I had thought I would hate it, thought it would be a way of nagging at myself over what I hadn't finished.  The results though are instructive -- 2005 was definitely a mitten year, 2006 was hats, and this year (no surprise) is turning into lace.