Frost Flowers and Leaves Finally Finished

Eleven balls of KnitPicks Palette in Purple, five repeats of chart 2, and twenty four feet of edging later, yes, the shawl is Done. Or at least almost done... I have some ends to weave in, but that doesn't count as knitting. If it were knitting, I'd've done it by now.

To the right, you see my long-suffering husband displaying the shawl to advantage. It's large, so I needed to find a model bigger than my 10 year old.







On the left, you see the shawl while it's drying. The little ruler in the picture is a yardstick. Underneath is a close-up of the pattern. Pretty, ain't it?

To block it, I ran a piece of crochet cotton through the edging. I think it would work wonderfully if I had used stronger thread (ie, small rope) and if I had something more than quilting pins in carpeting to hold it. I thought about using tent pegs and staking the shawl outside, but decided that would be best done with two people.

I've one more angora headband to do - for a total of 9 - and then that project will be finished. The books did finally reach the end of their editing process ... only to sprout some blatant typographical errors, omissions, and type-setting faux pas (pax? passes? What is the plural of pas? And does faux change to agree with it? Help, O students of French!). They are all taken care of, and I'm ready for my next editing project to arrive. While I wait, I shall knit.

Weedwacker cord and Basting Pins?

I'm not quite ready to try Rosemary's Circular Needles yet, but having a cable to transfer stitches on to sounds a whole lot better than putting them on a piece of yarn. And so, with 40 ft of cord, leftover plumber's tape, and some packing tape, I embarked on an adventure. If it ends with 1,232 dropped stitches, I will be mildly miffed with myself.

Having finished the main body of Frost Flowers and Leaves, I determined to connect the cord to one of the cables. Wonderfully enough, the cord I chose just fits inside one of my cable connectors, so I secured it with some tape, wrapped it, and nudged, cajoled, tugged, and otherwise manipulated one quarter of my shawl onto the cord. It looked nice.

Nice is pleasant, but when there's brand new edging to knit, the edging calls louder. After a few rows, Ι discovered that the seemingly regular edging isn't. Because of where the repeat was placed, the 'every 6 rows' stitch doesn't happen every six rows. Sometimes it happens after six rows, and the other half of sometimes it happens every 10. Yuck. I do hope it's an error. It sounded like a good question to have answered before I move forwards, so I decided to tempt fate (and 1232 dropped stitches) and moved the other 3/4 of my shawl onto the weedwacker cord.


With a few basting pins, I secured the corners (or something close to the corner, in the case of my 3" of edging) to various coverings on furniture, including our dog's blanket, and snapped a picture. This is *not* blocked dimensions (despite the 5 1/2' diagonal) It's the 'laid out somewhat flat' size. Blocking is going to be fun. Especially if I thread the weedwacker cord through appropriate holes and just pin that out. Flexibile blocking wire!!!

Posting when nothing happens

Not much is happening. The weather outside is getting springy, my children are getting antsy, and I, of course, am still knitty.

If you'd like an updated picture of my shawl, just imagine a purple blob. That's really what it looks like. In some lights it's a red-violet, in other lights, blue-violet. But regardless of the lighting, it's a blob. I'd use some plumber's tape and weed whacker string to de-blob it, but it's just not worth a 30 minute trip into town to get the cord.

I did pretty miserably on my goals this week. No letter written, no books at the end of their editing process, and I have a large chunk of Bible study preparation to do this evening. On the positive side, I did finish off my 7th ball of shawl yarn, and made progress on the headbands. I had to set a gray one aside because there wasn't enough yarn in that shade. There was an *impostor* ball of gray in the bag, but once I started knitting from it, its impostrosity became apparent. I removed the impostor, and placed the headband on waste yarn so it could be finished later when the proper bunny yielded up the proper amount of fur.

My daughter has been knitting. Here's a picture of her first pair of socks. They're not quite identical ... she picked a different heel for the second sock than I had her work for the first and sock #2 has a better foot length. She's not about to frog back sock #1 and add an extra stripe before the toe decrease, though. She's just about finished with her Barbie veil, and has started a scarf out of some stash (working from MY stash?!? Eeeek!) using worsted yarn and size 19 Lincoln logs ... um, needles. Her next official project is a poncho for her cousin. We need to pick a pattern and get some yarn ordered. I'm going to order some Dancing sock yarn, since it's being discontinued and I happen to like it. Machine washable, great feel ... if only it didn't have so much orange and yellow!

Now, *this* week I hope to finish editing a book set. All the finer points have been hashed out, as of late yesterday evening, so it's just me and some files between finishing. I also hope to finish chart three of the shawl - there are 13.5 very long rows to go - and get started on the edging. Will four balls of yarn be enough to do 13 rows and some edging? Time will give the definite answer, but...

I now peer into the future with my Calculator of Yarn Estimation. Careful examination reveals that one ball yields about 11,000 stitches, and I estimate the edging to contain ... 22176 stitches (about 1232 stitches in a row, bound off by knitting edging 12 stitches wide, and four stitches get bound off every 6 rows of edging ... so 1232 divided by 4 yields 308 bind-off groupings, times 6 rows times 12 stitches ) Wow. How's that for close? I only have 16000 or so stitches left in the main body of the shawl, so I think I'll have enough yarn with 4 balls.

I de-blobbed my shawl by draping the center of it on the arm of our couch. You can only see part of chart 1 -- none of the 5 repititions of chart 2 - but it's something!

George Mason did what?

My knitting basket is rather disorganized these days. I was working on an argyle sock, but need another skein to finish it, so it got bumped down the priority list. That accounts for the wine, navy, and tan yarns in the basket. Then there's the Moebius cowl, which was begun as a take-along project. It got bumped this past week by some angora headbands. Those - except for grafting - are the quintessential take-along project. Knit fourteen. Turn. Repeat for 18 inches. The chart in the background is for The Shawl.


Which, I am pleased to notel is growing nicely. I just started the 5th ball tonight, and am barely into the 4th repeat of chart 2. That adds up to being 35% done with the main body of the shawl. After that comes 24 feet of edging. I'm not going to think about that part, however. My fingers and palms have a distinct purple cast to them. Fortunately, I like purple, and don't mind having hands that look like they're severely bruised.

My daughter has been knitting a good bit lately. She's knit a shirt for a Ken* Barbie, and discovered how important it is to allow for ease in the shoulder area. The neckline goes up and down with Ken's arms. She's also finished Jackie's wedding gown, discovered that a slip is very necessary with some knit garments (especially when Mattel doesn't choose a neutral color for the painted-on outfit), and is now working on a veil. With Jaggerspun 2/8 wool. On my 000 needles. Addi needles. When I was her age, I had no idea that Addi existed. or that there was anything to knit with beyond Red Heart. (* not his real name)

My daughter has also broken 4 of my Brittany sock needles. I took Rosemary's advice and got a package of bamboo skewers, and borrowed some sandpaper from my mom. The skewers at Wal-Mart looked to be a size 5 or 6, but the ones at the grocery store I use looked sock-ish, and fit just perfectly into the 2.75 mm spot on my needle gauge. I gave my daughter the skewers, so she now has 80 sock needles to break, and I kept the *7* needles Brittany sent me as replacements. Let's see ... I started off with 10, lost one all by myself with no help, then four got broken, and I was given 7 to replace them. That makes for 12 sockie needlies, which means I could have a travelling sock pattern and a tricky sock pattern!

This week is not looking fortuitous for knitting. I shall, however, forge ahead, and report back in next week. Goals? Be finished with the current pair of books I am editing, write one letter, keep up with Bible Study,and finish 2 balls of purple yarn and 3 angora headbands.

(Today's title is in honor of my son, who is looking forward towards being old enough to have his own blog, in which he will wax eloquent about the state of sports in this nation.)

More yarn!

Blogger is not cooperating for pictures today, so no pictures.

That's not entirely bad. You can use your imagination to come up with how far one ball of purple yarn will go on a rectangular shawl. (Answer: Row 64) My unphotographed Brioche Stitch scarf will remain incognito. You'll have to knit one of your own to find out what an argyle sock designed to fit an 18" calf looks like. No, not for the kind of calf that says Moo. It's the kind attatched to a man's foot. And you'll have to use your imagination to picture the Moebius I was practically forced to cast on as a take-along project because I was running out of yarn for argyle sock 2 (and argyles are not take-along projects in any case) and I had no other viable project on needles. I'm using KnitPicks Shadow in Campfire, and it looks quite nice.

The socks which grew in the handwashing behaved appropriately when machine laundered, and reverted to their scheduled size.

My stash is actually shrinking at a steady pace, despite the fact that I haven't started my tea cozy which is lurking in it somewhere. The Campfire came from my stash, as did the Brioche Scarf. I also sent off 13 partial balls of sock yarn today to Major Knitter , who will be using them to make Knit Notes, the initial proceeds from which will go to charity.

To be honest, though, my stash also grew. I have 10 more balls of Purple Palette (so I'm going to work on your shawl tonight, Rebecca!) and an additional 10 balls of Shine in Orchid. That will become the Fluted Ribs capelet from WrapStyle, sometime, somewhen.

My daylight hours are filled with homeschool, household management, and editing. I cleaned up my desk yesterday (inspired by the YarnHarlot's new desk with a cubby for yarn!), cleared off the foot-high stack of Classical Writing books so that I could find the two books I am currently editing (and will hopefully finish before the next two books are ready for editing), and am generally not bored.

So unbored, in fact, that I think I'll go knit.
I still haven't started a tea cozy.

Purple Frost!

Sitting in a chair next to a sickbed is an excellent way to get lots of knitting done. That's exactly where I spent Saturday, which enabled me to finish up the Faux Russian Stole on Sunday - also spent at home with Sick Child, who was sick enough to stay home, but not too sick to pass a pleasant day as the Ruling Couch Potato, complete with books, knitting, stuffed animals, and live dog.

The shawl got washed in preparation for blocking...

then photographed...

and will shortly be shipped to an undisclosed location in Pella, Iowa.

Once I finished the shawl, I set to work on some socks with a vengeance. I am truly a 'one project at a time' knitter (not counting travelling vs. home projects. One simply MUST have knitting appropriate to the occasion at all times). The socks got finished, and even prewashed. They ended up being HUGE after handwashing. I'm going to toss them in the washer and dryer, see if that helps, and amputate the toes if not.

Finishing the socks left me with an as-yet unphotographed Brioche Stitch Scarf. My thoughts turned to dainty lace bread cloths for communion, and I was actually in the very middle of charting out a row-by-row pattern from the DMC Encyclopaedia of Needlework when my e-mail beeped at me. It was from the future recipient of my Frost Flowers and Leaves shawl. We've been talking yarns for over a week, and although we started out with a definite Iris Alpaca Cloud, that drifted over into a royal purple, settled on a laceweight Cashmere until I realized that this particular laceweight wasn't 3600 yds/lb, but 7000 yds/lb, drifted back to something thicker than a spiderweb, and landed - with that e-mail - on Purple Palette. Which I just happen to have in my stash.

Next came the needle decision. The pattern called for size 6, but that's with laceweight yarn. And I knit tight. But I don't like lace that is so holey in stockinette that one can't see the intended holes. I considered using size 7s, and might have, but for the fact that I have a) a set of four, and b) metal dpns. One thing I know about lace is that one does NOT want to begin by working a square shawl with a cast on of 8 with slippery, heavy needles in a triangle formation. I do have size 8s, 5 of them, in plastic (ick.) So size 8 it was -- and I still had my Boye Needlemaster size 8s handy from finishing off the Russian Stole.

Without further ado, I used my handy dandy copier to make a working copy of the pattern, popped it into a page protector, slapped on the magnetic strip to keep my place, flipped to the back of the book which showed 'Circular Cast-ons' and began.

Bliss. Sheer bliss.

According to the spreadsheet from the Knitalong, I'm closing in on 2% of the shawl done. Hooray!

Another week, another project

Note to self: If one wants to complete 200 rows in a week, it is helpful to record how many rows have been previously done.

The Faux Russian Stole is growing apace. I am on the 5th repition (our of 5 1/2). That makes roughly 400 rows since February 28th, so I think I met my goal of doing 200 rows this past week. I'm not sure though. There were days when I felt like I went backwards more than forwards, but as the net result has been forward progress, I must be feeling wrong.



My daughter postponed Friday until tomorrow (you can do that when your temperature has three digits before the decimal point), allowing her to spend today lazying on the couch. She's not being entirely lazy, though Look what came off her needles today!

My latest pair of socks is growing nicely, but they didn't start growing soon enough to prevent my casting on a new project, a Brioche Stitch Scarf in a yarn that is acquiring a reputation for flexibility. So far, it's been a sample cable hat for my MK coursework, and a trial piece for unventing increases and decreases in Brioche knit. The scarf is about 18" long at this point, and the toe-up sock is 2-3" above the ankle.

For those of you waiting to hear how my MK submission was received, stop waiting; it's going to be a while. I did call the Guild today to make sure my submission got there, since I've not gotten a postcard informing me of that fact. I am pleased to report (and relieved to learn) that my box arrived on the 23rd of February, and shipped out on the 24th to An Examiner.

I didn't get the yarn ordered for the Frost Flowers and Leaves shawl yet, mostly because the recipient and I are still tossing around yarn ideas. The color will be Iris ... but Iris Alpaca Cloud, or Iris Zephyr, or an iris-color in Cashmere, or Iris something else?

Homeschooling did manage to continue. I've even joined in. We received our Calculadders Masterpacks this past week, and I've joined my son in working through Book 2. I started off miserably with Two Wrong Answers, but have since picked my jaw up off the floor and am using the correct brain circuits to answer the questions. I don't know that I've read anything but knitting books and curriculum lately. Chesterton hasn't gone much of anywhere yet, and I need to get listening to Adler (Aristotle for Everyone) before the cassettes have to go back.

Our living room/school room is changing color from White Drywall Mud to Late Tomato. The improvement is immense, and the chaos is staying manageable. I knit while my husband paints. What could be more romantic?

Penny's Bag, or the Slip Stitch Swatch

Well, it's not really Penny's bag yet, since she hasn't made it. But it was her question about it that got both Rosemary and I swatching, trying to determine how a particular zig zag was made.

Here, without further ado, are the patterns. For technical niceties, please notice the imaginary asterisk immediately after the colon in each Row, and do not disregard the invisible 'Repeat from * to end of row' immediately following the . MC = main color, CC = not main color.

1. Row 1: (MC) K1 sl 1. Row 2: (CC) K. Row 3: (MC) Sl 1 K1.
2. Row 1: (MC) K1 sl 1. Row 2: (CC) K. Row 3: (MC) K1 sl 1.
3. Row 1: (CC) K1 sl1. Row 2: (CC) K. Row 3: (CC) Sl 1 K1.
4. Row 1: (CC) K1 sl 1. Row 2: (CC) K. Row 3: (MC) K1 sl 1.
5. Row 1: (MC) K1 sl1. Row 2 (CC) Sl 1 K1. Row 3: (CC) K1 sl 1. Row 4: (MC) Sl 1 K1.
   
6. As Pattern 5, but please insert a Row 2.5 in between rows 2 and 3. Row 2.5: (CC) K.
   

I'll be totally fair and admit that Pattern 3, the worst zig zag of the bunch, was my idea for 'best way to achieve zig zag.' After swatching Pattern 3, however, I quickly invented a new method, Pattern 4, and gave that a try. I think that one is the best of the slip stitched lot.

Patterns 5 and 6 were knit with a slip stitch technique, but they are not slip stitch patterns. So, what's the difference between slip stitch technique and slip stitch patterns? I dare not speak officially, since I have no reference books on the subject - although I hear Barbara Walker covers them quite well in one of her Treasuries. To my mind, though, a slip stitch technique is what you do when you're working with two different colors in one row in a Fair Isle style pattern, and you choose to only work one color at a time. You'll notice that in Row 1 of Pattern 5, I worked the stitches that were in the main color, and then in Row 2, I went back and used the other color to knit all the stitches not knit in the previous row. Some people prefer this method to working with both colors at once. Some authors heartily dissuade knitters from even attempting such a daring feat. Rosemary and I will go on record as cheerfully ignoring that advice, although in our own separate ways.

A slip stitch pattern uses a slip stitch technique, but goes one step further. It has elongated stitches - but not the kind created by extra wraps around the needle which are later dropped. Look at Pattern 1. See the humongous dark Vs? Those were created by slipping the dark green stitch in Row 3 of the pattern. They sure stick out like a sore thumb, and are meant to. Slip stitch patterns can be quite pleasing to the eye. One, a Mosaic pattern, is going to end up on the Tea Cozy I keep talking about making. Patterns 1-4 all have elongated stitches in them, stitches that were pulled just a bit larger than others in their row when they were slipped and had to stretch further than just the next row. In Patterns 5 and 6, no stitch is elongated since Rows 1 and 2, combined, knit each stitch once, and Rows 3 and 4 combined do the same. No stitches have to stretch anywhere.

In other knitting, I finished the second reincarnation of the Embossed Leaf Socks,
and made good progress on the shawl. In my scholastic endeavours, I am parsing portions of The Merchant of Venice, and enjoying 3rd declension nouns in the beta version of Elementary Greek: The Third Year (my title, not the publisher's).

Mom has been feeling a bit better every day since Monday, and today she actually feels good. I, being a dutiful daughter, told her to play sick for a few more days while her body continues to recover. Mom is working on a Hardanger bread cloth. I'll have to put a picture of it up here when she finishes it. It's her first Hardanger!

Does anyone besides me find it totally unfair that KnitPicks has come out with a new yarn? A Merino/Pima blend. I'm glad it's worsted weight. I can resist stuff that thick fairly well. If it was fingering weight, I'd have it in my shopping cart already. There's another new yarn, Spinnaker. A super bulky cotton they didn't even mention in their promotional e-mail.

This week I'd like to get about 200 rows done on the shawl, get another pair of socks on the needles, order the yarn for my next shawl, make some headway in G. K. Chesterton's 'The Man Who Was Thursday', and keep up with general house stuff. Oh, homeschool too.

Of Socks and Shawls

Life gets interesting sometimes. What was supposed to be a lovely day of shopping and girl stuff for my mom and I turned into a knitting marathon at Urgent Care on Saturday. I got quite a bit of my sock done, while mom wished the doctor would just hurry up and tell her she had the stomach flu so she could go home and sleep. It wasn't the flu, but half a sock, and X-ray, a CT, and other tests, we did have a diagnosis. I'll have more knitting time on the 22nd, because there's yet another test scheduled for then and I'm the designated driver. If the socks in the photo look familiar, it's because they're the second pair of socks made using the same yarn. First pair was a bit loose, and too long. So I tossed the pattern figuratively out the window, frogged both socks, dropped down a needle size, skipped a half-repeat at the toe, and reinvented the toe pattern to make the leaves line up. Plus, since I was at Urgent Care and away from my trusty scissors during heel time, I worked a short row heel rather than a flap. Um, I changed the cast-on too, so that it matches the description rather than the directions. I kept the lace pattern the same though, honest I did.

Stacy's lace shawl is unfortunately not growing very fast. In fact, it's gone nowhere since Friday, when I finished off the one ball of yarn I did have. More should be arriving soon. I quiz my husband, a trained postal professional, each time he comes home from the post office. Should he forget to bring it home after work, he has keys and can go right back to get it. I do know that I ordered enough yarn. One ball of Palette, with me knitting on size 8 needles, yields almost one complete pattern repeat plus a bottom edge. The pattern has 5 1/2 repeats, so six balls of yarn will do it. I did take a picture for Beth (Hi, Beth!). The bottom of the shawl is at the top of the photo, and my live stitches at the bottom. What you see is one full (give or take 3 rows out of 90-odd) repeat ... imagine 5 1/2 of them, and you'll have a 24x70 rectangular stole.

School continues, much to the chagrin of my children who would rather read and clean their rooms than work math problems or parse Latin anythings. The end is almost in sight. Our summer vacation will be in June, and it's Tradition to finish up the school year before vacation. (It's also Tradition to continue with some form of math, as well as vocabulary review, during summer break.) The editing for the Homer supplemental books is drawing to a close, or at the very least, seriously winding down while proof copies are being printed.

Still on my list of things to do today: renew my TKGA membership. I joined last year for the sole purpose of working on the Master Knitter classes (which were dangled before my eyes by the same Beth mentioned previously). Even though I've got the last level submitted, my husband tells me I should renew anyways. He also thinks there should be annual recertification required for Master Knitters.

The box goes out

Tomorrow morning, The Box will travel to the post office.


On Sunday, The Baby Surprise Jacket will be in the same building as the Baby.


On March 7th, the Sweet Pea Scarf Cowl (free pattern from KnitPicks) will be bequested to the wearer.


One of these days, the washcloth will get finished.

Saturday will see a Design Party for a scarf, and a yarn ordering party with KnitPicks is scheduled shortly thereafter.

Until then, I will be working on the Faux Russian Stole from A Gathering of Lace. I didn't exactly do a gauge swatch, but I did do the entire bottom border and 6-8 rows of the main rectangle. I discovered an error in the border, and frogged the whole thing that I might start afresh. I suppose I could have saved the first 2 repeats of the border .. but it would have taken more time than simply reknitting them. There's an odd sort of satisfaction in setting a ball of yarn atop a yarn swift and spinning the swift around while something unravels.

I have discovered - thanks to a homeschooling friend - LibriVox. I can download audiobooks onto my computer and listen while knitting! My daughter and I have enjoyed Sara Crewe, my husband and I are enjoying Mark Twain's 'The Awful German Language' and I'm nibbling at a book of Chesterton's from ChristianAudio's free book of the month.

I have no idea how far I will get on the shawl this week, especially as I only have one ball of that color at the moment, but the week promises to be busy enough that I will not be found knitless. For one, there's the answers to Homer Book B to finish off. Diagramming things like "Petruchio still kept growling and scolding at the servants so that Kate might see how unbeautiful thing an ill-temper was" is fun. I wonder what my collaborators would think if I used knitting needles as diagramming lines? With yarn (self-striping, of course) for participles?

I *am* going to get through Week 6&7 of Elementary Greek this week too. Third declension nouns in Greek have an uncanny similarity to 3rd declension nouns in Latin. Both are pesky, behave in a different fashion from their older siblings, and pop up with distressing frequency all over the place. I'm sure I am smarter than a noun, though, so with perseverance, they will be made to mind. I just keep repeating... "- os i a es wn si as" and all will be well. There are fewer cases than Estonian, thank goodness.

And it's done.

It's done. Tra la, tra la, tra la.

Whatever shall I do next?

The Neck

It's here. The time when I need to decide exactly what I am going to do with the neck of my sweater. Unless I put it off by weaving in all the ends first? That's a good idea.

Although I like the idea of a simple ribbed neck, I just can't see it on this. The neck is going to be too visible, given where it hits on the wearer. I'm leaning heavily towards a mitred hemmed neck. For pattern? How about a simple row - with 3 rows of black on either side - of the white band with black crosses? That seems understated enough not to clash with the rest of it.

I've got a new Olympic Knitting Goal: get The Box to the post office before closing ceremonies. Before next Wednesday, actually.

Lice-B-Done

Can it be? Can it truly be that I am *done* with lice on my sweater? That I have only four inches left on the second sleeve? The sleeve that I thought would be a good Knitting Olympics challenge?
After counting four times, I will affirm that this is the case. The sweater is drawing to completion. I have four inches to knit, one sleeve to attatch, one neck to design, knit, and tack down, a small plethora of ends to artfully weave and tuck, and some patterns to proof and polish. Wow. I *am* going to get this things done by the end of February.

A friend's blog led me to a knitting poll entitled "What kind of Knitting Needle Are You?" Being a sucker for knitting polls, I discovered that I am bamboo needles. I rather thought I might be a turbo, but I'm not displeased with the results. Bamboo needles do have their uses (apart from dog toothpicks) and turbos are not high on my list right now since they do not come in sizes to match my US needles.

In fact, why don't I do an informal survey right now. Let's call it "What kind of needles are you using?" (Okay you knitters reading this ... here's fodder for your next blog entry.)

• Norwegian sweater: Inox size 2. Also will be using Crystal Palace bamboo dpns size 2, Susan Bates size 2, and Addi Turbo size 1 (I-cord bind-off can get needle-intensive) and something in a size 1 for the neck, I think. If I own it, and it's between 2.0 and 3.0 mm, there's a good chance I'll be using it. I used the Boye Needlemaster 2 for the body.
  
• Dishcloth: Boye metal single point size 8
• Scarf Cowl: Susan Bates metal single point size 5
• EZ Baby Surprise Jacket: Boye Needlemaster size 8

The Baby Surprise Jacket is a, well, surprise. I started it last night, and hope to finish it by this weekend. It's for a good cause ... stash reduction cum baby's birthday present. Since the sleeve is going so swimmingly -- and I still cannot believe I am working at the rate of one sleeve every four days, not counting attatching it -- I decided I could stick in another project this week.

I love knitting.

To the right you'll see a photo of a) my fingers, and b) a kitchner'd seam. Knitting and purling are very different animals when kitchnering, and it's not the easiest thing to switch from one to the other, especially upside down.

In a future post, I'll have to share some Steek Slicing Pictures. This one has enough photos, though, and a Baby Jacket is calling my name.

Bamboo, hmmm.

The Angst of Knitting

The sleeve is progressing. Not, however, without some backtracking. Yesterday evening was particularly bad.

First, I had it in my mind that I was increasing until I got to 194 stitches. I did so, and began the first row of notes thinking to myself, "Wait a second - 194 isn't divisible by 12. 192 is!" And so I looked at my notes for the pattern, whereupon I discovered that 192 was indeed the magic number I was aiming for. I made the virtuous decision not to simply 'lose' two stitches in the current row, and frogged back four rows. That gave me the opportunity to see how the sleeve fit the sleeve opening - my silver lining - and it did indeed fit well. I got my stitches picked up on 000 needles, and began reknitting. Except somehow, I managed to put a fleck in a wrong spot. And after that, about 17 flecks went into a similar misalignment. Ick. Since I'd had enough of frogging, I decided to fix the stitches on the next round. I knit so quickly, though, that I was past them before I thought to look for them. And so it was the *next* round that saw me with wrinkled brow peering closely at my knitting. As the corrections went on, the brow became more wrinkled, especially when I realized that my first 8 fixed had a twisted stitch in the first corrected loop. Double ick. I still maintained my aversion to frogging, though, and fixed THOSE stitches with a crochet hook on the next round. After some simple rounds of black - during which I made no errors - I started in on the notes pattern. All went well, until I got to the second line of the second set of notes.

Double argh. I started the pattern one space over from where I'd started the white notes. No frogging, remember? I worked the whole second round slowly, swapping colors into the right places as I got to them. Let's see ... 192 stitches, or 32 note repeats. Two stitches to change per repitition. So I re-did 64 stitches ... that's still a large savings over tinking! Still, after that row, I put away my knitting for the night.

There's less than an hour of knitting until I can delicately cut open a steek, pick up 192 stitches around the opening (evenly spaced, of course) and put the sleeve on the sweater. Right side up, please. One sleeve, one neck, a scant two dozen ends, and the sweater will be MADE! Almost definitely before the Knitting Olympics are over. I'm starting to feel like the end to Master Knitting Level III is in sight. I have no delusions that all my swatches will pass, and I'm sure I'll miss a typo somewhere ... but still, once the box is out the door, I will be free until it comes back.

Free, that is, with respect to knitting projects that I have started and have yet to finish. Unfree, however, with respect to the list of things I am going to make/have promised to make/wish I could get the time to make. Still, those too shall pass, and they're a whole lot smaller than Level III *and* they have no paperwork.

Speaking of the Olympics, Torino would love to have the snow outside my window. I'd offer to send it to them, but that sort of thing doesn't work, and I rather like having a white view outside my window.

Progress

The sweater is moving along nicely. I've got some pictures of the back, a close-up of the front, and my progress on sleeve #1.











I hope to finish the first sleeve this week and get started on the second. And while I am working away on this, projects are mounting up in my head. Lace is the foremost, but twined knitting is a close second. I did get Anne Maj-Ling's Two End Knitting book, and it looks to be full of information. It's not a nice coffee table book, like A Gathering of Lace, and is quite scanty on photographs. I will just have to work out the various patterns in there to see what the result is, and play from there. A twisty-knit dickey sounds lovely ... or socks, or just about anything.

I finished the cabled hat. The red line is where I kitchnered. I'm hoping it will show up well enough in an enlarged form to be helpful to someone. Some day when I'm not working on the sweater, I will replace the red with some cream yarn, and bequeath the hat somewhere.

My current travelling project is a scarf cowl. After that, I think it will be socks.

The rest of my life is busy. I'm reading Kristin Lavransdatter, listening to 1776, and creating an answer key to Homer SW B. Yesterday, Runkle's Geography arrived, so we started that this morning. My son was delighted to have a real live geography book at last.

It's true I don't have camera batteries, but I do have a scanner! Here is a scan of the body of my sweater. The left edge is about 2" above the armhole steeks (visible in the photo as horizontal black and white lines ... sew twice on each white line, cut once on the middle black line), and runs up to the shoulders, which I haven't bound off yet. The neck steek is the short steek at the top right.

I decided not to worry about making my patterns be mirror images around the neck steek, or even balance. The big one balances perfectly, and that's what I was aiming for.

Sleeve 1 begins tomorrow!

Approaching shoulder seams ....

Pictures, you say? Sorry. My camera battery has given up the ghost, and new batteries are no closer than Thursday. Still, an update is in order.

The blue Noro hat has been frogged, reknit with a smaller circumference, and given to the recipient. The cable has been completed, kitchnered twice - once poorly, and once well - with contrasting red yarn, waiting for camera batteries and photos. But since it *is* my current take-along project, I also picked up the stitches around the length of the cable and have started on the stockinette portion of the hat. The dishcloths didn't get done on Friday, and I decided to consider the hat my Stash project.

I'm in the last 20 rows or so of the sweater body. The start of the neck steek is an inch ago, and I had to switch to smaller needles. The one issue I have now is ... to what extent do I want to make my patterns balanced on both sides of the neck? And across the back? If I decide to make things utterly perfectly totally balanced, I will need to go back several rows and regroup. I really don't want to do that.

Then again, that is easier than doing 20 rows and THEN deciding things do have to be perfectly balanced. Time to drag out my drafting tools and see what would be involved in balancing things. The problem is that they're being balanced on top of an asymmetrical design, and the places where I don't want the points to be with respect to the previous design is just the place where they would need to be if symmetry was my goal. Ah, decisions, decisions, decisions.

Several new books have come into my life lately. They are A Gathering of Lace, A Creative Guide to Knitting Lace, Country Knits, and coming to me soon via UPS, Two-End Knitting. My hands-down favorite of the first three is A Gathering of Lace. I can't decide what to make from it first. I also keep reminding myself of the tea cozy, the socks (and the two new skeins of sock yarn I got yesterday to do some two-color reticulated pattern sock experimentation with), and those dishcloths. It's a pretty good bet, though, that I will have a dainty shawl on my needles some time this year.

I'm listening to the Bible and 1776 on tape as I work on my knitting, and am just about finished reading Evita. After that comes Kirsten Lavransdatter. It's big, it's fat, it's three books in one, and I only have it for three weeks. I'll get it squeezed in somewhere. Same thing with my editing work. It's all getting done! A little bit each day makes the to-do list go away.

Multiplying projects

Here I sit, innocently working away on my Master Knitting project, teaching my children, learning about poetry right along with them, editing (on page 196 of 420!) and what does my knitting basket do? It acquires more projects!My camera batteries are getting weak, which results in fuzzy photos, but a fuzzy picture is better than no picture, so here goes! In the top of my basket (for photos only) is a little cable, the start of http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter03/PATTcoronet.html . I've added it to my basket so that when the WTKnitters group gets started on the February Learn-along, learning provisional cast-on, cable, kitchner, picking up stitches along and edge, and how to work with dpns, I will have a clue as to what the pattern is all about.Next in the basket is a semi-finished object, a simple hat in k4 p4 ribbing using one skein of Noro Kureyon. Unfortunately, it's a bit loose and a bit short (owing to my desire to finish the hat and see if it was long enough, as opposed to knit the hat to specifications and run out of yarn. I will have the recipient try it on for size, and either get a new skein and rip to the decrease point (a whopping 9 rows) or else rip the whole thing and knit it with 8 less stitches, thus getting enough yarn for the extra length. It is loose, so this is a definite option.
And on the bottom of my photogenic basket is The Sweater. It's moving right along, and either today or tomorrow I need to carve out some serious Design Time in order to plot what will happen to it above the armholes, which are in just a few flecks away. I'm not sure it's possible, but it seems that I may finish the sweater before March.The piece of paper in my basket is a reminder that Friday is Stash Clean-up Day (according to the Knitter's Review 2006 Calendar) and that my daughter and I are going to knit dishcloths out of stash yarn to commemorate the event. The coronet yarn comes from my stash as well, which means that half of my projects on the needle come from stash yarns! Is anyone else destashing this week?

Knitting Olympics?

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee thought of having Knitting Olympics this year during the same time as the Winter Olympics. My first thought was, 'Oh, the Olympics are this year?' I'd love to participate, but I'm not going to for two reasons. First off, I don't have a clue what would be a reasonable challenge to start and finish within 16 days. And secondly, I am going to be working on a sweater during that time frame. If the time frame lines up, I might see if A Sleeve would be something I could do in those 16 days.

With the exception of editing 200 pages (I'm looking at page 43 right now), my goals are all met. I wrote all the letters I wanted to, finished a sock (two socks, actually), finished up a skein of black this afternoon, kept up with Bible Study, and called to make a doctor's appointment. The doctor doesn't have his schedule in the computer yet, so we don't have an appointment, but I did try. School is moving along nicely - we did couplets today - the house is presentable, laundry is done, and no one is starving. It's been a good week.

The socks are from the Winter 2005 IK, and I like them. I will probably make them again in a slightly heavier yarn (I got 175 m/50 grams Rowan Wool 4-ply instead of 175 yds/50 g Koigu) and smaller needles. They're just a bit too large for me.

And the sweater. I have finished the ribbing - all 2 1/2 inches of it - and moved into the colorwork. My fingers are happy, and it's going well. There was a slight hitch when I got my latest package from KnitPicks with my size 2 Addis in it. They're not standard US size 2! Ah well, at least I realized it before I started knitting with them and got an odd gauge. I'm using my trusty Boye Needlemaster set, and the stitches are sliding along nicely. I'm not too sure if I like the little bitty triangles under the zig zags, but I also didn't want long floats there ... so they'll do. After the snowflakes comes the lice pattern, and I should have at least a week of knitting that before I need to make up my mind about the chest patterning.

Along with yarn and needles, I also got Sensational Knitted Socks, and am wondering which sock I will make first. Probably something stranded, since it is winter here, and my toes are cold. Except stranded socks aren't as easily carried around, and by the time I get ready to start them, it will probably be a lot warmer. Gotta get that hat / tea cozy / dishcloth / cowl done first!

Back to proofing ...

Hat done, new projects begun!

Tah-dah! The cable hat is finished, and I even kept coherent enough notes that I was able to reconstruct the pattern from them. It took a draft or two, but the pattern is written, and just needs a bit of i-dotting and t-crossing before I will put it in its page protector, ready for submission.

Since the hat is finished, and I've done sufficient swatching for my sweater, I of course had to begin another project to while away the time while my sweater yarn is in transit. I decided against washcloths, and am working on the Embossed Leaf Socks from Interweave Knits Winter 2005. I'm using Rowan 4-ply wool on size 3 needles (instead of Koigu on size 2) and I like them very much. I hope to finish sock #1 today, and get started with sock #2. It has the oddest tubular cast on I've ever seen. So odd that I wonder why it's called tubular.

Proofs of the next workbook arrived today, so I'll be beginning the proofing process after I finsh off the rest of today's to-do list. And as well as proofing, I will be constructing an answer key. I will have plenty of things to do in the next few weeks, giving me lots of practice in using my time wisely and well.

Goals for this week: Finish sock. Start sweater. Use up one ball of black yarn. Proof 200 pages of workbook. Keep up with Bible Study. Get caught up on writing letters to friends (a letter a day will do it!) and make a doctor appointment. (Oh, and homeschool, sleep, eat, clean house, and practice piano too. Lots of room for time management. And that doesn't count e-mail.)

The Joy of Knitting

The hat is moving along nicely. I thought today might see it finished, but my hands got a bit tired of wrestling with the 16" circulars, and I'm almost done - the next row starts my decreases, so I've about 12 rows to go, period - and since I really will need to order more yarn before really diving into the sweater ... well, I made a sweater swatch.

But before I did that, I made lots of small tables and colored many more small cells. Then I made copies of those tables, and pasted them all over the place. And moved them to better places. And changed them. Thank goodness for computers! Then, once I had a reasonable number of potential patterns to swatch, I had to decide how to swatch. Of course, I needed to swatch in the round. Why ever would I swatch with two colors otherwise? But maybe, just maybe, I could turn the swatch into two Norwegian socks? Why not? (Because sanity prevailed, that's why) So I cast on 60 stitches, did a rib for as little as I thought I could get away with, and started to Knit. With small yarns. And small needles (5" long 2 US, to be precise.) It was sheer bliss. Small yarns are good. Small needles are good. And the two together are what I was meant to knit, unless I need to have something done by yesterday. Then larger yarns on medium needles are warranted. But otherwise, I think I could cheerfully live with fingering yarn or smaller. The drape. The feel. The smell. Aaaaah.

Of course, one is supposed to *wash* a swatch before measuring it. Or at least get it off the needles. I couldn't resist, though, and a quick inaccurate check showed I'm right around my target gauge of 8 spi. The nice thing about designing a sweater is being able to work with whatever gauge I get, rather than 'get gauge. Or else.' I like how the tube looks, and ... it even fits as a sock! I stuck the stitches on a piece of scrap yarn (from the hat, where else?) and gave it a quick soak, press, and am letting it dry. Tomorrow I will measure it, and start calculating how many stitches my sweater needs where ... then comes plotting out which designs go where, and then comes the knitting! But perhaps not in that order. Once I figure out that the sweater needs, say, 352 stitches at the chest, I can easily cast on 316 for the rib and start knitting. For at least 2 hours, and then I'll run out of black yarn and have to order more. Sniff. Another yarn order. I'll have to be very careful about dyelots, though, because both the yarns that I used in the swatch were labelled 'Black.'

Designing the Hat

Well, the Sample Hat is finished, or at least as finished as it is going to get. When I began it, I wasn't sure if it was going to be a sample or not. By the time three inches had past, it was officially declared a Sample, and that gave me all sorts of freedom to goof, experiment, make unorthodox fixes, etc. As you can see in the pictures, I ditched one of the motifs I was planning on using, and brought in another one halfway through the hat. Then came the experimenting with decreases, and experimental finish. The hat is going to get frogged completely once I get the Official Submittable Piece of Perfection knit. It's got some ugly spots.














This afternoon has been spent with InDesign's table function, drawing cables and the like in small boxes. I'd rather be knitting. I think now is the time to write the pattern, though, so that I can knit from the pattern (gasp) and make any corrections if I find something is wrong. Now that I've got the basic patterns down pat - an invented 7 stitch x 6 row twisted lattice pattern, and a 17 stitch x 30 row cable bobble moss stitch pattern, I think everything else should go smoothly. All I need to do is start writing, and redo the top of the cable graph to show decreases.

Sigh. The hat is snug on Abigail and myself, but I think that any normal human knitting it on size 4 and 6 needles will come up with something an inch or two larger around than I did, so that's okay. Plus, the hat can be for a child. And you know, I never really counted how many stitches I had to begin with anyways. I was supposed to have 120, but I'm not sure if I did. And since it was a sample, I decided not to stop and count. Must be my bad attitude towards processes showing.

Due to car troubles (not ours) my afternoon of delightfully designing a Norwegian sweater evaporated. But in about 30 minutes, we're going to head over to the troubled car's home complete with yarn bins and books, and I'll have an evening of delightful sweater planning.

Then comes writing the directions. I would much rather calculate and knit than write directions. While I was looking for a Dale of Norway leaflet (unsuccessfully, it must be at my mom's house ... I was there when I finished the project, and we hadn't closed on our house yet), I found an old piece of paper in a 1986 Threads magazine. It has a very rough drawing of a sweater, with jottings indicating that the sleeve length is 18", the cuff circumference 9 1/2, armhole opening 9" high, 12 1/2" from armhole to hem, 40" around, 6" wide neck opening, with a dip of 2 3/4" in the front. It says also that 7 st x 8 st = 1", 300 for body, 264 for ribbing - tan + b grn gry b grn gry) 30 st ptrn, 180 rows 12 repeats, 100 rows to armpits, 30- subtr. blank column divider. 32x15 wide, p. 103 #2 and p. 103 #5. And from that, the sweater was knit. If I am interpreting the colors correctly, it's one that I gave to Luke Gilbert when he was in 5th grade in Tbilisi, and I have no pictures of it. I still have some of the b, but the grn got all used up in a pair of mittens, along with the gry. And I could reknit it today from those directions. Why would anyone want more? Shouldn't it be obvious that the page references go to The Complete Book of Traditional Fair Isle Knitting? (and that the sweater was Fair Isle?) And that the colors are blue, green, gray, and tan, from Harrisville Design's Shetland yarns, colors available in 1992? Probably not. But that is the sort of jotting I will do before my Norwegian sweater, and then it will get turned into an official sounding pattern.

Back to writing an official hat pattern.

Real vs. Fake knitting

I think I must be a product knitter rather than a process knitter. I dutifully worked on designing my Aran hat today, working cable swatches to determine all sorts of things about them, and felt the urge to do some Real Knitting. I wanted to go get some sock yarn and tiny needles, and start knitting something real. Swatches are well and good, but they are not Real Knitting. They don't end up as something other than a swatch. Especially if one is working on worsted acrylic yarn (to use up stash yarns) and getting 5 stitches per inch ... it has more of a claw than a hand. My daughter said "Ewwww. This feels waxy." But thank goodness, I am finished swatching. (I pray that I have swatched well enough and thought well enough that I won't go back to swatching in a day or two.) I abandoned the wrap-around-the-head cable (6 inches was a bit wide for a panel) and am doing a normal brim to top construction. And I've got the first 7 inches or so of the hat firmly planned out. At that point, I will do some more thinking about decreases. I got started with my Real Knitting (and not on socks, either) and am ribbing my way through my cast-on row. Twisted rib, which I keep forgetting and having to go back and fix those knit stitches.

My daughter, bless her large pointed needles (she's 15 1/2 inches into that mock turtleneck, working on size 15 needles with Super Chunky Woolease), found a source for the one question in my MK work that I could not. Nor could our local yarn store. We *knew* the answer, but finding a source in print was another matter. Fortunately, Teen Knitter's Club had the answer, and my daughter was reading the book while she was knitting. (Like mother, like daughter.) We're both happy campers.

No new pictures for my blog today, but if you'd like to see the Christmas stocking my mom made for a very special grandson of hers, you can go to my Yahoo Photos and take a peek in the January folder.

I am so glad to be finally knitting something real. So happy, in fact, that I'm going to head right back to it.

Note to Denise: January 27th is Stash Clean-up Day. Make plans now! Our plan is to make a pair of slippers from my stash. Dd will knit one, I'll knit the other.

It's the eighth day of Christmas

and I didn't take a single picture of my knitting to put on the blog. Today was a good day to do other things ... tax preparation, finding my desk, laundry, bake bread, clean bathrooms ... those things which don't really fit well into periods of intense knitting. I do, however, have some pictures of my daughter's knitting (except for the hat and striped sock, which do happen to have come off of my needles, but they're not the point of the picture.)

First, Julia models her fashion cardigan, knit in a lime green sportweight with a dark green collar. This was my daughter's first shaped garment, and we're quite pleased with how it turned out. Especially since it was designed for a 19" doll, and Julia is an 18" doll. The hat she is wearing is a modified pillbox design that I came up with today. After I finish this entry, I'm off to try another design.

Here, you see my daughter's first slipper. She started it on New Year's Eve, and finished it this morning. The mate for it was finished shortly before supper. Obviously, she did not particpate in my non-knitting day. She starts back up with schoolwork shortly, and while I can knit while she does worksheets, she can't (although she'd love to try), so I let her devote the day to her yarns.

That's about it. I am going to be diddling with hat designs for the next few days as I attempt to come up with something that will fit an adult head, be an appropriate showcase for a wide cable wrapping around the head, and have sufficient room left for bobbles and two other stitch patterns. I'd rather be knitting socks but those will come soon enough if I'm good and pretend to be a designer for a while. If I can't come up with a suitable hat 'framework' I can always do a standard brim to top cap. Or - horrors - maybe I'll end up making an Aran sweater instead, and I can design a Fair Isle tammy! Not that Aran sweaters are bad things, but I'd rather knit stranded than cable, and sweaters tend to be significantly larger than hats. Should have written down the directions for the Aran I invented in Tbilisi, then I'd be a step ahead of the game. It would need reknitting is something other than Soviet-era wool-cotton-bramble mix, however.

Tomorrow we're off to town to go hunting for some Super Bulky Chenille for my daughter's next project, a mock turtleneck.

Knitting Small Diameter Openings Mutterings

As a rule, I don't have long double pointed needles or short circumference circular needles. So when I began knitting the neck ribbing for the vest, I was faced with a problem. Do I work on my 4 7" dpns and drop stitches every time I look away from my knitting? Or do I use the shortest cable in my Boye Needlemaster Set (which has served me faithfully and well since 1985) and end up with a size 4 US (3.5 mm) hole in my right index finger? My finger took a month or two to heal from working the Rocky Vest back in April with those same needles. I grimaced, and decided to carefully work the 9 rows of ribbing and do a nifty sewn bindoff, eliminating the need to suffer through 9 more rows of enlarging the hole in my finger.

The sewn bind-off, however, did not cooperate, and provided its own frustrations. Once I graciously gave in to defeat on the matter of bind-off and settled in to knitting nine more rows of Small Diameter Opening, decided to try the Magic Loop method, which I've heard about only by name, on my Addi Turbos. Which, by the way, I got for 8.95 from my LYS back in 1994. Wouldn't it be nice if you could get Addi Turbos for that price now? But back to my story. I worked a row or two with the Magic Loop method, or at least what I came up with, and my index finger liked it, but it was slow. So I tried using 2 circulars, with one Addi and one Boye. That worked pretty well, especially after I switched to my longest Boye cable. It was still annoying, though. I'm not sure, though, if I want to give in a buy a mess of 16" needles in my usual sizes.

Last night found me knitting some Very Small Diameter Openings, of the sort I wouldn't even think about trying to fit on a 16" needle. Glove fingers! I didn't want to use my metal dpns, since there'd only be 3-4 sts on a needle and that would be a recipe for losing dpsn. And I wasn't about to drive 20+ miles on New Year's Eve to a closed LYS to get some birch needles. I decided to try double knitting. Of course, I decide to try this at someone else's house, far from my handy dandy knitting books and internet access. One of the things about being a fearless knitter, though, is trying to do things (like magic loop and 2 circs) that you only know of by name, and maybe a two sentence description. Double knitting worked out wonderfully for the mitten fingers. So much so that I even tried it for the thumb of the next mitten today, as I've misplaced the 4th dpn. I hope to find it in the car, but if not ... oh dear, that means I'll have to get a set of Brittany Birch to replace it. Rats.

I hope to finish the second mitten tonight - just the fingers and ends are left - and tomorrow, maybe attempt to find my house. My desk is due for a good decluttering, which is always fun. I like cleaning off my surroundings of accumulated clutter before I start a new project. And I've got two of them! The first is the cable hat (and sweater) and the second is the start of the new school year.

My daughter has been knitting up a small storm over the holidays. Yesterday she finished a cardigan for her 18" doll, and started up on some slippers. I'll have to get some pictures taken of the cardigan! Her next project, after slippers, is the mock turtleneck from Teen Knitting Club. Chenille! At her age, I had no idea chenille yarns existed.