Completed socks, and a pay it forward meme (aka FREE STUFF!)

I have finished the Jojoland Melody socks, and my fears about their not matching and my consolation that they would probably at least "go" have both been realized.



Look how very nicely they go together!



Aaaaaaand look how they don't actually really match so much!

It's all good, though.

Unfortunately my "on-deck" socks are not working out. I'm trying to knit Catherine, but it's coming out much too big, even down on 000s, and the pattern repeat is so long that I'm not seeing an easy way to modify the pattern to be smaller. I may try these again some day with another yarn (I'm using Cherry Tree Hill Supersock), because it's a pretty and simple pattern. But it is not the sock for me right now -- I've knitted the first couple of inches twice and there's just no way.

Now, I believe I may have mentioned FREE STUFF in the title.

Here is how the handmade Pay It Forward works (modified from other blogs):

I will send a handmade gift to 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange.* I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

I came across this idea on Mary Jane's blog. It's fun!

*First three people who comment on the blog, OR three people chosen at random from people who comment before I go to bed on Tuesday night, in case this is vastly more popular than I expect.

My semi-annual update.

Well this is about the worst blog in the world, isn't it?

I have actually been knitting! I made a Shedir for my sister's birthday, which came out nice. It's in Rowan Felted Tweed. I didn't take any photos of it. Maybe sometime next winter my sister will wear it and I can get a photo then.

I'm also working on a pair of Froot Loop socks, in Jojoland Melody.



I am just about to start the heel flap on the second sock (pictures soon, perhaps), and here is the thing about Jojoland Melody: it is very variegated. Or not so much variegated as self-striping. OK, it's a three-ply yarn and the color of each of the plies changes at different points in the yarn. It's kind of like if you plied three slightly different colors of Noro together. And the way it looks and the way it shades, I like it very much. However, these socks are not going to match in any conventional sense of the word "match". The colors are quite different from each other. I tried to find an end that would be in a relatively similar place in the color to where I started, but alas I could not. Still, even if the socks don't match, I think they will go, which is fine. You hardly even see my socks anyways, since usually when I am wearing wool socks I am also wearing long pants and clogs.

I am also working on the Sapporo Norwegian ski sweater. Here's a not-that recent photo:



Imagine that with about eight more inches of red stockinette, and you will know what it looks like now. This was actually take two -- I knitted a couple of inches before I realized that it was twisted. Curse you, twisted knitting! That made me very very angry, in a silent rageful kind of way.

This sweater has been my baseball knitting, although the sweater is getting bulkier and more lap-filling just as the weather gets hotter, and I'm afraid that as it gets a bit more complicated (I am just about ready to start the colorwork) it may be a little less mindless. So I may have to set it down until September or take it someplace air conditioned to work on it. Or I could just work on the socks more.

I do have another pair of socks on deck -- I have some great red Cherry Tree Hill something or other that I'm looking forward to using. Actually I just have a lot of sock yarn, period. And socks are great for summer. Right now I'm trying to decide what sock or socks I should take on the 2-week trip to Switzerland I'll be taking in August. Lots of train and mountain knitting!

Belated holiday roundup, cat sweaters, and the tiniest circulars ever...

Merry Christmas (or holiday of your choice) from the Korknisse! These guys were great fun to make -- they took maybe a half-hour each. The pattern is available in English, Dutch, and Norwegian, but really you can just cast on say 12-20 stitches on small needles and knit around in 1x1 rib until you have an inch or so for a sweater, then cast on the same number of stitches for the hat and start decreasing after a couple of rows. They were a big hit with my family, too -- I made them as last-minute gifts.

My roommate's cat Darwin does not wish to share any holiday wishes, but rather would like to tell you to stop making him wear freaking baby sweaters:



Her other cat, Watson, was marginally more sanguine about it:



The sweater is the 5 Hour Baby Sweater in leftover Wool-Ease. I knitted it several years ago and never even sewed up the arm seams (which made it easier to put on the cats).

As a little after-Christmas not-really-present for myself, I ordered some very tiny circular needles so that I could get to work on my Norwegian ski sweater. Check it out:



I cannot even deal with how tiny these are! They are size 0000. I don't know that I'll actually need to use them, but I got them sort of as insurance in case my knitting gets too loose for 00s and 000s. They're HiyaHiyas, and I haven't knitted with them yet but the join feels really nice and they're fairly inexpensive -- $7.50 each, I think, from The KnittingZone, who also had free shipping for orders over $50 (and, well, you can always use a couple of extra skeins of sock yarn to pull your total up to $50). And the shipping was fast!

So I should be casting on for the Sapporo soon. I can't remember the last time I made a sweater. I don't have any sweaters that I've made -- they've all gone to Goodwill. But I'm surely a much smarter knitter than I was the last time I tried, and I'm knitting it in the yarn that's suggested in the pattern and everything. It should be quite straightforward.

On a less ominous note, here are the Christmas presents I knitted this (last!) year:

For my mom, a Palindrome scarf for my mom, in Cascade 220 superwash:



I think maybe I need to make myself a light box or something if I want to photograph my knitting -- I'm only home for about 1 hour of sunlight a day, and the angle it comes in through the window is very inconvenient for photography. Suffice it to say, the scarf does not actually glow in person.

This scarf is completely reversible, which I thought made it great for my mom who is very classy in her dress and generally not a huge fan of things that look homemade. I think this was a nice "handmade, not homemade" present, and she seemed to like it a lot.

For my stepmother, an entirely different scarf, from the What-Not-Scarf pattern:



Another terrible picture, I know. At least the korknisse look cute! This is in Manos del Uruguay in a very nice autumnal colorway. It's probably about eight feet long. Another successful gift -- she put it on when she took the dog out on Christmas afternoon!

For my not-exactly-step sister, Dashing mitts in Berroco Pure Merino, a very nice superwash yarn that I will be using again for sure (very soft and squishy -- hopefully it doesn't pill up too much):



These seemed to be well-received. The kids are wearing those kinds of things these days, aren't they?

My most disappointing gift was this hat for my father:



The pattern is Spiral Hat (PDF) by Bethany Kok. I found the twisted stitches very hard on my wrists, at least with the yarn I was using (Jo Sharp Silk Road Aran, which is pretty and has great subtle complex color but which I probably won't buy again). Anyway, this hat is like the definition of "Meh" the pattern doesn't show off the pretty subtleties of the yarn, and I had to wear a wrist brace to finish it.

The happ-happiest season of all.

I am usually not much of a giver of knitted gifts, but this year, for some reason, I've changed my mind and I am going to be knitting lots. Tonight I finally, finally finished a scarf for my dad's birthday (a week from today). The pattern is Henry, by Mareike Sattler, from the Fall '07 Knitty.



Here it is, blocking. The final result is nice, but Sweet Christmas, it is one time-consuming sonofabitch. I did the math, and it's something over 50,000 stitches. For a scarf. Really not worth it, even for a fast knitter like myself. The yarn is KnitPicks Gloss, a very reasonably-priced merino-silk blend that I highly recommend. I may be making myself a sweater out of it after the holidays.

I also started a second gift project yesterday, another Knitty pattern: Dashing armwarmers/fingerless gloves, by Cheryl Niamath. These knit up fast, and are super cute. I'm using Berroco Pure Merino (Aran weight), which is soft and very warm and a bit splitty but also machine washable -- I do like to avoid giving people non-machine washable gifts.



I'm doing small projects (hats, scarves, mitts) for all my immediate/nuclear family members. And I'm really glad I just wrote that because I just realized I don't have anything planned for my sister's fiance. Oh well, I guess I'll have to make another trip to the yarn store! Boo hoo.

Thankful for quick projects

I checked weather.com a few minutes ago and it said it was 20°F -- ooh, I thought, not even two days after Thanksgiving and it's already winter. Then I check again and now it's down to 19°!

What I'm saying is, I'm really glad I made this hat on Thursday!



I go up to Maine for Thanksgiving at my grandparents', and that means a half-hour on the subway, a half-hour on the train, and an hour and a half in the car with my dad and stepmother and sisters each way -- prime knitting time, except for the return car trip which is in the dark. And somehow, the only project I'm working on right now is a scarf for my dad's birthday, so I couldn't bring that (it's Henry, and it's very nice, but I did the math and it's a freaking 50,000 stitch scarf -- what was I thinking?). I cast on for the hat on the subway (24 stitches, as opposed to 400-something for the freaking scarf) and I finished the knitting on the train on the way home. I hadn't realized how quick a project it would be, so I didn't have a yarn needle to graft it together at the end, so I had to finish that at home, otherwise I could have worn it for the subway ride (um, if it hadn't been over 50° out Thursday night).

The pattern is Urchin, from Knitty, by Ysolda. It's cuter than it looks in my photo. I used some handspun yarn that I bought off eBay five or six years ago and never really knew what to do with it. I wanted a big beret so that when I'm too lazy to dry my hair in the morning I can shove it in a hat and not freeze on the way to work -- most of my hats are close-fitting caps with no room for a bun. It didn't come out quite so big and poofy as I was hoping (my own fault -- I only brought one set of needles on the train and I probably should have gone up a size) but it's big enough to accommodate a bun or ponytail, and that's what I was going for. Plus, if I pluck out all my eyebrows and draw them back in with a pencil, I'll be able to blend in with my old Russian lady neighbors, many of whom sport kicky berets year-round.

World Champion Socks! Also, an impasse.

So if you are the type of person who cares about such things, you will know that the Boston Red Sox just won the Worlds Series and so can officially be called the Best Team in Baseball! This was a really fun playoff season for me because I've probably paid more attention to baseball this season than ever before, and especially because I got to attend the first game of the world series through being lucky enough to have an awesome dad who is also lucky.

But I also feel like I deserved to be at that World Series game, because the Red Sox would never have gotten there without my lucky socks:



I bought the yarn for these socks just before the Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years, back in 2004. Then the yarn kind of languished, half-knitted into a boring plain sock during the 2005 and 2006 seasons. I frogged that sock and started knitting these ones a day or two before the Red Sox home opening game, and posted about them on the day of said home opener. I finished them back in August while watching (on TV) a game in which the Red Sox pummelled the White Sox 11-1.

So clearly, they were lucky socks. I crammed them into my clogs (they're pretty bulky socks -- I'm thinking I need to get some bigger shoes for wearing with handknit socks) and wore them to the World Series game last Wednesday. The Red Sox dominated the game! I couldn't wear them during the second and third games on the series, but I had them with me anyway. And I proudly wore them on Sunday night, when the Red Sox finished off the Rockies. They're powerful socks! I'll be knitting another pair of fancy red socks next baseball season, if anyone wants to join me. White Sox fans and fans of any other potentially knitting-related teams are also welcome to join in.

I've started a Henry scarf. I've just about finished the second pattern repeat of seven, so that makes me more than a quarter of the way finished. I'm hoping to finish it in time to give it to my dad for his birthday at the beginning of December. Here's what it looks like now:


Nothing to set the world on fire, and very time consuming, but very nice too. The yarn is Gloss from Knitpicks, which is also very nice. I like it a lot. It's an easy pattern to memorize so long as you don't get bogged down with line numbers and things. I knit a lot of it this past week while watching baseball games.

I'm also trying to start the Dale of Norway sweater I've been wanting to do. I've got the yarn, but the trouble is I can't seem to knit small enough. I could buy new, smaller needles (we're talking size 00 and 000 circs, which are only made by one company anyhow), or I could try and train myself to knit tighter. I'm afraid if I tried to knit tighter, I would get less even gauge. I don't know. I may just suck it up and buy the tiny needles, though it hurts me to do it! And the yarn will split like a bastard. Alas!

Buy local!

My roommate and I have been getting a veggie share through the rather excellent Stillman's Farm CSA, and we have been enjoying it immensely although sadly it's coming to a close. They also have a meat share that I've been sorely tempted by, but it's a little spendy and I'm trying to cut back on meat anyhow, so I've stayed away. I love the CSA concept though, especially in places like New England where farming is not all that lucrative.

So imagine my delight when I heard about the Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm Yarn CSA! First of all, there's a Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm -- I had no idea. Second of all, goats on the beach:



Goats on the beach, y'all, goats on the beach!

I have been trying to confine my spending to the first weekend of the month* but I'm sorely tempted by this. On the one hand, I might get yarn that's not exactly what I would choose for myself, but hey, I never would have tried beets if I hadn't got them in the veggie share, so I'm not that frightened. I think I will wait until my appointed spendy time and buy it then if it's still available.

Oh, shares are $100 and they estimate you'll get around 10 skeins of yarn -- not cheap, but not ridiculous. Not Martha says the yarn is nice.

*Long story, but basically it's a way to keep my spending and consuming urges in check.

Hanami, and new directions

So, Hanami is blocked at last:


The good:

• OMG, the fabric is so lovely. The drape! The silkiness! And it is so lightweight and non-bulky!


• It looks basically just as advertised -- the petal effect is absolutely charming.


• My "mistakes" in the final dense-yarnover portion totally worked -- the effect is much more random-looking than in the pattern photo.


• It's done!

The bad:

• I blocked it out to a rectangle, but because of the relative tension of the middle (low-yarnover-density) section and the end (high-yarnover-density) sections, it was really hard to block so that the width stayed even top to bottom, and I wasn't comfortable with the amount of tugging I had to do.


• It's not as big as it was supposed to be. This is largely my fault, but seriously, I'm unconvinced of the utility of gauge swatches for lace. Maybe this is just because I don't like to swatch. But still! A 10x10" square of lace doesn't act the same as a 19x70" rectangle. It just doesn't! And I don't know how I could have gotten the same number of stitches/inch in both ends and the middle.


• It's a little itchy.

If I had it to make again, I'd do something different in the middle. Maybe I'd go up a needle size or two, maybe I'd even increase a few stitches at the beginning of the petal section (leave out a few decreases?). I really like the finished object (wore it to work today, even), but I wouldn't make it again as designed.

New things
So, I said I was going to learn myself to knit continental. And it's going pretty well -- I knit another Bzzz Hat with the yarn in my left hand almost the whole time. I'm also working on a simple 3x3 rib scarf in Noro Silk Garden. I love Noro yarns -- somehow they manage to make hot pink and acid green look like earth tones, and it is so cool. I'm going to start a Wisp out of the mohair-blend stuff I dyed a couple weeks back:

I want to see if I can handle decreases in continental. (I did not have fun with the decreases for the Bzzz Hat, but partly that's because I was doing them on two circs, which I don't really like but I was literally too lazy to go in the other room to get my dpns. I know.)

Today I made myself a needle wallet, because I was annoyed that I couldn't find all my 000 dpns. So hopefully this will help me hold onto my needles. I'm also going to get rid of some older Susan Bates aluminum needles, in case anyone wants them (I don't).

Coming soon
I think I'm going to try a Dale of Norway ski sweater. I really like the women's Sapporo pullover in the red and gold colorway, as seen here. I've been wanting to do a big colorwork project, and this seems like a really cool one. Now there's just the question of yarn -- I could make it in the recommended yarn (Daletta, by Dale obv.) but I could probably make it cheaper in something else. But I can't find any local shops that carry Daletta to see what would work for a substitution. If, say, I made it in a Knitpicks yarn, it might cost around $30-$40, as opposed to $80-$90 for the Daletta. Assuming there's a sensible yarn to substitute, which is hard to say when you've never seen the other yarn. I'm going to check A Good Yarn tomorrow and maybe call over to Woolcott to see if anyone can show me some Daletta.

And another thing
I never posted my finished Blackberry Mittens!

Bonus points to anyone who notices the slightly glaring error...

Big Day Off!

Yesterday I took the day off for no particular reason except I didn't feel like working anymore, and it was lovely. I did lots of creative things! Some of them involving knitting. but it says "craft" right in the subtitle so I will have no qualms about posting non-knitting content.

I made prints!


The apples are linoleum prints, and the pears are some kind of rubbery block printing material. The linoleum is a lot harder to cut, but I can get nicer detail with it, and the edges don't break off the way the rubbery stuff does. I haven't made prints in years. I really need to get new cutting tools, because apparently last time I used them I put them away wet, and now some of them are a little rusty and I suspect all of them are duller than they should be.

I love making prints. They are awesome. I think I might start a series of prints of microorganisms. Geeky crafty fun!

I also kept working on a dress I've been sewing up for a while. I already had the front, and yesterday I did the back and started work on the facing, which was confusing and made me stop because I was so confused. But I have an actual dress than can be put on now, albeit a dress that needs to be pinned at the shoulders.



This is basically a trial dress in inexpensive fabric to make sure that I can handle the pattern and that it looks OK on me. This pattern takes a lot of fabric, and I didn't want to practice on something nice. The pattern is "Vintage Vogue" V2903 -- I got it at one of those lovely JoAnn sales where all the patterns are $2-$4. It makes me look a bit broader than I would like, but partly that's just because I although I would like to look like a 1950's dress pattern illustration, my body dimensions, underwear choices, and posture are non-cooperative.

Knitting-wise, I finished the Hanami stole. It still needs to be blocked, though:



I tried to start blocking it last night, but it was too much work after a long day of craftiness. The middle is a lot skinnier than the ends, and I'm not sure the best way to overcome that. Also it is going to be smaller than it was supposed to be, even blocked (checked gauge at the beginning, where it was wider than it is in the stockinette section in the middle -- I probably should have only gone down one needle size rather than two. But it will still be cool I think. I wish I had blocking wires -- I think I'm going to get some soon.

I made a couple of little changes to this pattern -- I left off the beads, and I deliberately messed up the final part of the pattern. The number of "petals" gradually increases until the end of the shawl, when there are 32 rows of yarnover, k2tog (or psso), which looked too even for me after the messier bits above (you can see it in the last picture on this page. So I just stuck in random knit stitches whenever I felt like it. I think it worked out nicely. When I started my abortive attempt at blocking last night, I noticed that I had dropped a few stitches -- it was not easy to tell as I knit since the alpaca has a moderately self-grippy quality -- so I had to go in and fix those.

If I had this to knit over again, I would go up a needle size for the middle portion. Or something. The stockinette portion is just a lot narrower than the yarnover-heavy portions, at least the way I knit.

And a couple of quick updates:

I finished the Blackberry Mittens, although I don't seem to have any photos of them handy.

Also, many thanks to Naomi and Robbyn, I think I have salvaged the green dyed yarn -- I will avoid green in the future I think, but as long as I wash this stuff with gentle soaps and detergents I think it will be usable. I'm definitely keeping it for my own use, though, since I worry it might just be waiting to screw things up the next time it gets in the water.

Experiments in dyeing

So when I posted about my stash a few weeks ago, I noted that I had a big pile of oatmeal-colored worsted that I kind of hated and didn't know what to do with. Naomi suggested that I dye it, and what a bright young woman she is! I decided to use food coloring, because I didn't want to mess up my pots and pans with non-food-safe colorants. I used to have a pot I used for soapmaking which would have done, but I guess I got rid of that at some point (I haven't made soap in years) because I certainly don't seem to have it anymore.

Anyhow, I used the crock pot, roughly as described here. I'm very happy with the results overall.



Pretty!

These process pictures are from my second batch, which was royal blue with a bit of brown to soften it up.

The yarn soaking:

The dye stock mixture and food coloring bottles:

Dye and yarn in the pot:


After a few hours in the hot crock the dye exhausts:



And here's what it looks like dry!



I also did a couple of skeins of purple, and I dyed a skein of really hideous nylon/mohair blend grey laceweight red and black -- I think it is much less hideous now. I had a failure, though. My biggest batch turned out to not be colorfast. What do I do? I've been rinsing and rinsing, and the water's always green. I'm not sure whether it's salvageable. I'd really like it to be, since I'd like a third dark jewel-tone color -- I'm planning to combine it with the plain leftover oatmeal-colored yarn in a a hat and mittens, and a third color would be nice.