Swinging Squares

You will never be lovelier than you are now./We will never be here again.

2011-08-30T18:42:00.005-05:00

Knitting mojo disappeared for awhile, but has returned. Podster Gloves still in progress, but all that's left are the caps--really liking them. You can see the main feature of the gloves in these photos: the flip-top thumbs that will let me text in the cold. I think I want to make a hat to match the gloves, it occurs to me, so I'd better get on that before winter comes. (Next winter. Let's not kid ourselves.)

One If By Land, Two if By Sea, or: Sybil Ludington Rode Twice as Far.

2011-02-23T00:41:00.003-05:00

If this is the future, where is my jetpack, etc., etc.

2011-02-20T13:24:00.006-05:00

IT'S A POST IT'S A POST! On a long-abandoned blog! My apologies, loyal Reader; I imagine you've gone on to greener pastures.

I have been plugging away at my knitting, but have recently been experiencing something of a renaissance in it due to Knit Picks' decision to carry a Noro/Mini Mochi knock-off called "Chroma." It's a good deal softer than Noro, although its colors are less vibrant.

I'm using the colorway "Rollerskate" stripped with Elann Sock It To Me heathered dark gray, which I've had stashed for a very long time, to make Glenna C's Podster Gloves (PDF). I wanted mittens in fingering weight and I wanted something that I could still text with, because that's how we roll in the 23rd century. I have a sneaking suspicion that the mods I have made to this pattern (not many) mean that I am essentially knitting socks for my hands. Pic is from my phone, because that's how we roll, etc., etc.

It's getting to be spring--the groundhog said so--and all I want to do is cast on for new projects, so I've got many in the works, including a granny square blanket that will probably not be finished until I retire (try not to hear my bitter laugh, Reader). I don't know if anyone has told you, but crocheting is hard work--more physical than knitting. Should've used a bigger hook. (That's as good a thing as any to end this post on, right?)

Knitting and wool and sheep, oh my!

2009-10-23T10:36:00.007-05:00

Hello again!
As you have seen and read below, I knitted my first hat for The Bolter and Lilyriver received my third scarf. See, I saved the Earth a little bit while making them presents because I used Caron's Simply Soft Eco yarn (made from recycled bottles) that I bought at Wal*Mart. My local Wal*Mart has since stopped carrying this yarn (what gives?), so it's a good thing I still have some white, pink, black, blue and green skeins left over from my various summer projects because I love that stuff.

Since then, I made Natalie Larson's Star Crossed Slouchy Beret and have started KnitPicks' Moguls Scarf, which is for my boss.
My slouchy beret is not nearly as awesome as the others I've seen online, but it was my first attempt at cabling and that came out pretty well. (The sizing was off because, I think, I did not use the correct sized needles. It's not really slouchy, whoops.) I used Red Heart Worsted Weight yarn from Wal*Mart.

I went to the Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, N.Y. last Saturday with some good friends. The Dutchess County Fairgrounds was packed, just packed with people. I saw tons of neat hats, scarves and sweaters--all, I assume, were handmade. One of my friends kept shouting out to people who were wearing patterns she recognized. They all beamed with pride and responded with how long the project took or what type of yarn they had used. Such positive energy all around!
And beautiful yarns. By Saturday afternoon, many yarn booths had empty cubbies and hooks. I hope vendors had reserves for Sunday's knitters.

The festival, being about SHEEP and wool, featured animals! Cute white, brown and black animals. Sheep, goats, alpacas and llamas. I cannot begin to describe how a sheep auction works or what an auctioneer says during one, but the auction I saw was like no other I've known. It all sounded like gibberish at 90 mph, but sheep were sold and everyone participating knew what was going on.

Anyway, despite the cold weather and strep throat I was battling, I had a great time and learned a lot about yarns and techniques.

I have decided that after I make my hat with ear flaps (pattern TBD) and the Mogul Scarf, I'm going to learn to make socks. I need socks.

Until next time, buy a newspaper, feed a journalist. (I am Lois Skein, after all!)

Behatted.

2009-10-09T10:29:00.004-05:00

A new hat for my birthday, courtesy of Susan! Thanks so much, dude. This was, I believe, Susan's first hat, and it's great--I love the colors! She's been experimenting--as her previous posts suggest--with multi-color stranded knitting. I believe she is currently working on a cabled beret. Lilyriver was also gifted with a nifty scarf; and now we're just waiting for the weather to get cold. I did hear a report that it might be snowing in Catskill....

Two-colored zig-zag scarf experiement

2009-08-12T18:58:00.001-05:00

Greetings and felicitations!

I finished yesterday my first two-toned scarf, made for my sister. Who just moved to Virginia. Timing, folks, timing.

Anyway, I found in Wal*Mart some Caron Nature Spun simply soft eco yarn made from recycled bottles. I now have five skeins of this stuff, which really is super soft. The colors are nice, bright, and the yarn has a little shine to it. I have no idea how the stuff will fare in the winter.

My sister's scarf was a real learning experience. I sort of followed Barbara Breiter's Odd Ball Scarf pattern, but as you can see, I pretty much did my own thing.

The scarf has some gaps and bumps where I switched colors (I will have to learn to twist my colors a more evenly next time) and pulls from where I stretched one color across another color (in the back). I held the color with a stitch from another color, so basically had the yarn pulled across the back. I thought I had provided enough give to keep the scarf flat, but I didn't, and it got all puckered. So, yesterday I snipped the pulls and tied the ends off so the scarf doesn't unravel. Breiter suggested cutting the yarn into pieces and weaving in all the ends. I should have followed her advice and will next time I do a multicolored project.

Luckily I have a nice sister who said the flaws made the scarf look more home-made and unique.

Confessions of a new knitter

2009-05-28T21:11:00.003-05:00

Greetings all! I am proud to announce that I am probably two hours away from finishing my first scarf.

This scarf has taken me at for what feels like an eternity to come as far as I have with this project.

I should say here that I have only made a pot holder before this scarf. No picture folks, it has holes and something like an appendage.

Back to business. The scarf is made with Red Heart yarn I purchased at my friendly, neighborhood Wal*Mart. It is 30 stitches wide, and is currently about 3.5 feet long but will probably top off at just under 4 feet. We'll see how close I come to that guestimate.
I thought of the pattern myself and is pretty simple. Hey, I am new at this and really only know how to knit and purl. Nothing fancy. (Actually, there is a good chance that my stitches are not executed well. I learned to do this online and with some e-mailed instructions from lilyriver and The Bolter (thanks, guys).) Back to the pattern. It goes like this: the first row is all knit stitches; the second row has six purl stitches, six knit stitches, six purl stitches, six knit stitches and six purl stitches. After 25 rows, I switched the order of knit and purl stitches just to give it a little something extra.

So why has this project taken me so long? The first two attempts yielded scarves that were something like 80 stitches wide. Yikes!! I unraveled my first attempt after about 20 rows. However, I used about half a skein (about 50 rows maybe) before I unraveled the scarf, which more closely resembled a very small blanket. I was at home for Easter at the time and my sister was shocked when I took the thing apart to start over.

I have a problem casting on that perhaps you will read about. Perhaps not.

Some other problems I have encountered include knots (thanks to The Bolter I no longer fear cutting a knot out and weaving in the loose yarn ends into a project) and adding stitches. My stitches are not all uniform in size or tightness. But I am getting better at that.

One saving grace of using multi-colored yarn is that the colors help me see which stitch may need to come out or what part of the knot can be loosened by pulling what end. I just bought some monochome yarn for my next project. We shall see how well I fare. We shall see.

Until then, happy reading and happier knitting.

Pocket full of poseys.

2009-05-19T11:19:00.003-05:00

Let me tell you, Reader, sometimes a knitting project just goes right. As Lilyriver can attest, I normally start a project at least three or four times, often in vastly different and generally inappropriate yarns and needle sizes, before it starts doing what I want it to do. But this Hemlock Ring blanket and I were MFEO, in internet parlance. I convey emotion through chatspeak because I spend too much time on the internet and have forgotten how to read books.

But no matter. My semester ended a week ago, and since then, thanks to the help of three quarters of a season of Fringe and half a season of DS9, I cranked out most of the aforementioned Hemlock Ring blanket. I can think of no better way to decompress. It was damn near cathartic. You'll have to forgive me, Reader; freedom, even temporary freedom (time marches on; one must prepare to teach one's summer course), makes me ecstatic.

Generally, by the end of a large project, I want to die. The thing about knitting is that most of the work is rote: the repetition of a particular pattern over and over again to achieve a desired result. But I was born in the eighties, and I demand instant results! This is because of music videos, as I understand it. Nevertheless, this project remained enjoyable up until the last 536-stitch repeat of five rows, at which point I started to wish the baby I knit this for was less of a human and more of a Polly Pocket. (The eighties, you know.)

Project notes: I used the Rainey Sisters' helpful compilation PDF, and I followed their feather-and-fan chart all the way, three repeats past Brooklyn Tweed's. The link above takes you to Brooklyn Tweed's project page; he adapted the pattern for a blanket from a doily. His blanket is a HW/Bulky-adult-lap-blanket. To make it light, small, and machine-washable for a baby, I used Knit Picks Comfy worsted weight in Honeydew with a size 8 needle. The yarn is cotton/acrylic and everything you could hope for in a blanket yarn. It's very light and easy to work with (read: not splitty); for this color, at least, shedding was minimal. The blocked blanket (sigh: the pictures are from while it was being blocked; if you want artistry in project photography, surf on over to Brooklyn Tweed) measured 52" in diameter.

A sucker born every minute.

2009-04-27T23:17:00.003-05:00

Reader! God help me. I'm typing this mostly because it's either that or sit on my hands: that's how badly I want some of this new City Tweed yarn from KnitPicks. I love all the colors--all of them, even the yellow--but it's the Jacquard that's sending me over the edge. Someone better start posting negative reviews on Ravelry soon to kill my ardor here. It's not like I don't have plenty of yarn, and hell, it's not even like I don't have plenty of tweed yarn. But this yarn appeals to my baser, bargain-loving, sweater-project-fantasizing instincts.

For god's sake, Reader, send help.*

*By help I mean a few skeins of City Tweed.

Morning tasks are often mixed: I have spun yarn for twelve ells of cloth, and you have killed Kjartan.

2009-04-21T09:05:00.004-05:00

It has come to my attention that I have been woefully neglectful about keeping up with this blog, Reader. And this is true. My knitting has been rather sad lately: I'm just about done with the first Palette striped sock I blogged about four months (yikes) ago and am just about done with the pair of striped socks I blogged about for months ago (double yikes) and am working on the second sock of a pair of Gentleman's Fancy Sock I started, but did not blog about, four months ago (kill me now).

(At right is said Gentleman's Fancy Sock, which for reasons I do not understand scanned in black-and-white. The sock, I assure you, is dark blue.)

I knitted a little bit on my March Basic Cardigan: I've just got the sleeves & the finishing left on it, but the truth is that I've almost entirely lost interest in the project. I'll have to wait until my interest in it revives. These things go in cycles, you know.

Despite being surrounded by the wreckage of all of these half-finished projects, I'm contemplating starting yet another project: a baby blanket for my new baby cousin, Celine. My hesitation in this--aside from the fact that I've been incapable of finishing much of anything since Christmas, apparently--was that I have not knit anything for her three sisters, but I figure that none of the girls would be jealous of a blanket knit by a person they've either never met or don't remember. I'll keep an eye out for Hannah Montana sweater patterns or whatever.

Perhaps, Reader, you could weigh in on the blanket patterns I'm considering:

Pinwheel Blanket in solid or stripe
Star Blanket
Ribbon Blanket in solid or stripe

I'm thinking either the Star Blanket in a solid or the Ribbon blanket in light green and light pink. I'll ask you what I ask my students: thoughts/feelings?

Things that smell after three days.

2009-01-02T00:48:00.007-05:00

All right, all right, another picture of mittens in a bush. Seen one picture of mittens in a bush and I suppose you've seen 'em all, but bear with me.

These mittens were really fun to knit--every last fish, even, and we're talking triple digits here. The pattern is spillyjane's Swedish Fish, a bit modified--I took out a column of fish and made some minor adjustments from there. I started out by knitting the pattern as-is but, as usual, my gauge was way off. I wanted mittens, not oven mitts.

I have one minor critique of the pattern: the decreases at the top are worked on the edge of the needles--I did the project on two circs, as I do all colorwork--rather than one stitch in, and that left me with giant gaps. I added a whip stitch border to the mittens (not as horrible as it sounds, I promise) that fixed the problem. This may very well be a me-problem and not a pattern problem, but if you knit these, you should keep an eye on the decreases.

The yarn was, per the pattern, Knit Picks's Palette. The common complaint about Palette is that it has a limited range of colors: there are currently about fifty color choices, but no good choice for orange, for example. (I bought a ball of Tumeric, but it was both too dull and too close to the yellow). Colors are discontinued relatively quickly, and, at least when I ordered, there were maybe ten colors on backorder. Luckily, I had a great deal of flexibility with color for this pattern: the recipient only requested that the main color not be white. My first thought was that I'd go eighties and do black as the MC and sort of neon colors for the fish, and I still like that idea pretty well. Obviously, however, I went with blue--the fish are swimming, see--and I like the contrast colors. I'm a little iffy on the red--it's more saturated than the other colors except for the MC. I think a good orange would've helped balance it out.

As a yarn, though, I think Palette is great. The dyeing, admittedly, isn't amazing; the colors aren't very rich (although this, of course, depends on the color--and I think Palette has some pretty damn amazing heathers, which didn't fit my vision for this project). However, it's a soft yarn and only gets softer with washing, and I love the way the finished product feels. This is a particularly good thing, considering that I have almost five full balls of it. I started a striped sock, at left, from the leftovers, but I think a smarter way of doing this (the mitten) project would be to get a ball of self-striping with long color repeats.

Leaves on grass.

2009-01-01T18:08:00.003-05:00

Friends, Romans, loyal Readers-- the Squirrel and Oak mittens all done, and just in time for a pretentious New Year's Day photoshoot. I offer you the obligatory dead leaves shot! See, there's an oak leaf on the mitten, and those are some dead oak leaves!!1!one! I think!

Well: the mittens turned out pretty well and all that, although I have to admit that there were one or twelve tense moments when I realized that the squirrel mitten (not pictured here, but available on the Rav) was actually larger than the leaf mitten, even though I knit them two days apart. I suppose once I had the first one down I was less anxious about the second. I put the larger mitten through a delicate, low-spin wash cycle and it came out about the right size.

I think Lion Wool is great stuff--it's sturdy, but not scratchy, and it doesn't feel like it'll pill overmuch. I also think the color palette, while limited, is very good: they're modern, bright, and well saturated. I like this yarn enough to consider it for a sweater project--if, you know, I ever finish any sweaters. I think it's not quite as cost effective as it ought to be; it's 85g and 158 yards to a ball, and I think it's priced the same as Patons Classic Wool (no longer merino), which is around 220 yards to a ball. But if I could only shop at big box craft stores and had no Cascade 220 at my disposal, I'd still pick Lion Wool; and I'd consider Lion Wool seriously for any project that needy a hearty wool.

The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

2008-12-20T22:44:00.006-05:00

Posted below about the mitten saga, Reader--a story that is sadly bereft of visual aids. No one wants a picture of a half-frogged, tear-soaked mitten.

At left, a picture of a project I finished in November: the Norwegian Star Earflap hat. The yarn is Debbie Bliss Luxury Donegal Tweed, a wool/angora blend. The yarn is wonderfully soft and I love the angora halo (I am not sure it can properly be called a halo? but anyway, the angora fuzziness). The problem with this hat is that it's not actually super, super warm. The yarn is very light. If I were to knit this hat again, I think I would do it in a bulky or a heavy worsted yarn.

And here's my current stockinette sock-in-progress, knit mostly in the movies. The yarn is Knit Picks Felici in Coney Island. Felici is soft but surprisingly durable--the pair I knit in Felici Pebble has held up well so far. I like the short color repeats on this one. I am including two shots of what is clearly a very boring project because the picture with the bag is truer color-wise.

In that picture you can see my travel-sock set-up: the bag is from Etsy seller stuckinillinois. Her craftsmanship is excellent and her prices are more than reasonable. I do the travel sock on two circs, though I prefer to knit socks on DPNs, so I don't drop stitches. I don't need to look at a pattern anymore--I'm on pair seven of these, so I should hope not--but I carry instructions from Double Diamond Knits in case I forget (again) how to do the heel cup.

All right, that was dull as dishwater. Just be glad you got photos this time, Reader.

Sinners in the hands of an angry god.

2008-12-20T22:06:00.003-05:00

I have a tale of woe for you, Reader. I suppose it's less a tale than a catalogue of blights upon the soul. Sit down; get comfortable. You might need a drink for this one.

I have made at least--at least!--eight attempts to knit the Squirrel & Oak mittens from Hello Yarn. I should note that I have knit these before. I have knit these successfully before. Indeed, I'd count the previous incarnation of them as one of my most successful knitting projects ever. But Reader, I have grown prideful. I wanted to replicate my success. And I--well, I should say now that I don't think this is all my fault. The pattern said to use sport weight! I was just following the pattern! But no. I can't blame the pattern. The pattern worked once for me, even. The devil must be in my needles! It's got to be the needles.

Attempts I have made to knit the Squirrel and Oak mittens:

With Elann Peruvian Quecha. I hate this yarn. It's scratchy and sheds like hell. But I had some on hand in a deep purple and a lovely contrasting light pink, and I, despite the voice in my head telling me no, cast on anyway. Got about a third of the way through the first mitten when I realized that the yarn wasn't going to get any less horrible even if I really, really wanted it to.
With Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light. Kept casting on, knitting a few inches, and hating how my colorwork looked. While this pattern calls for a sportweight yarn, I found the Ultra Alpaca Light--ostensibly a DK, but seemed like a light DK--too thin.
This one hurts the most. With Mission Falls 138. This is the DK version of Mission Falls 1820, and I chose it because 1820 is a robust, elastic wool. I should've known this one was doomed when the yarn tangled so badly whilst I was winding it that I had to spend two hours fixing it. Cast on, knit three inches, and frogged no less than three times. Finally got it going at a decent tension. Spent most of yesterday on the leaf mitten. Kept ignoring that the mitten was floppy (i.e., the gauge was too loose*) until close to the end, when I realized it was looking too long. I decided to block it to see if I'd like how it looked better then. Guess what happens to superwash wool knit too loosely, Reader? Guess what always happens to superwash wool knit too loosely? It grew, Reader. It grew and it grew, and like any possessed thing, it had to be stopped.

I shot this one in the head and put it out of its misery. And mine.
With Lion Wool. I'm about three inches into the first mitten. I do not have the heart to continue just yet. Who knows what might befall this mitten? Maybe the yarn will spontaneously disintegrate. Well: I know one thing. Like a captain and her ship, this mitten and I share a destiny, and we'll be going down together.

*Yeah, all right, I'll admit it: I didn't do a gauge swatch. They're mittens, for heaven's sake. I knit this mitten on size 4 circs and assumed that would be tight enough, since yarn actually calls for sizes 5-7. I know I'm a loose knitter, but I didn't think I knit that loosely. Had the same problem with the Ultra Alpaca Light too.

This song is for the rats.

2008-11-05T10:46:00.009-05:00

Have to photograph a couple of things for you, Reader, and will do so--well. It is probably best I make you no promises, don't you think? I knit an earflap hat lately out of Debbie Bliss Luxury Donegal Tweed, a wool/angora blend that's really wonderful Must also photograph for you the scarf I turned into a sweater for my new Dell Mini (I think we can guess what my priorities are if the computer gets a sweater before I do)--it's the old cabled scarf that I began two years ago and hadn't had the heart to pull out.

Current projects: am working on some flip-top mittens (Urban Necessities pattern) out of Malabrigo in an absolutely stunning rich blue. A bit fiddly because the mittens have fingers. Still working on the March Basic cardigan--have not actively knit on it in a few weeks because I'm afraid it might be too small. The last incarnation of this sweater was too big. Goldilocks does not have the fortitude to try for "just right" just yet. Have the back done (pictured) and one side.

A word is elegy to what it signifies.

2008-09-21T20:50:00.002-05:00

I have failed, failed, failed you, Reader. I wish I had more knitting news to report, but, alas, my progress has been limited; I have not quite shaken my desire for rote stockinette. I'm working on the March Basic cardigan with the yarn I reclaimed from my Wicked, and it's going along fine. I finished a pair of stockinette Trekking socks and have started another in Knit Picks Felici, color Provence.

I knit another Odessa--it's a brilliant pattern for sure, and I can see myself knitting more of them in the future. I gave it away before I photographed it, though; I did it in a very, very soft Berroco Jasper, color Brown Santiago (3810), and was mildly disappointed at the murkiness of the colors. I thought the self-striping would be more apparent. The pattern is luckily charming enough on its own. I hope.

What made me think of you, Reader, is that I'm feeling the faint stirrings of desire for lace, of all things, and have been admiring the Seascape stole and shopping for laceweight in a deep, rich blue. What I really ought to do is knit myself an earflap hat against the coming winter--coming slowly, of course; thanks, global warming--or concentrate on my sweater, but I've been feeling a bit anxious that I haven't challenged myself enough.

But of course I'm thinking about knitting again because I should be thinking about books and poetry and teaching, and I'm off again now, with sincere apologies. Next time there will be pictures or blood.

A Warm Welcome Back?

2008-08-26T15:04:00.005-05:00

So, it's the last week of summer, and I've finally finished something that seems worth sharing here. This is the Arabesque afghan I started for my sister back in February and just finally mailed to her this afternoon. I used several brands of cheap worsted weight wool (mostly Knitpicks Wool of the Andes, but also Ella Rae Classic, Brown Sheep Nature Spun, and Paton's Merino), and I can safely say that they are all more or less the same, or at least not different enough to matter. The most tedious part of the whole process was the 4 rounds of single crochet I did for the border. Each round took an entire evening to work! But it gives a nice finished edge, so I'm glad I slogged through it. This project also gave me the chance to take advantage of all the spaces our awesome new apartment offers for cat-free blocking. I taped together a "blocking board" out of moving boxes, pinned the afghan down at the crucial corners, and left it on our not-quite-porch to dry entirely unmolested by Joe and Hazel. Very exciting.
I realize that a return to blogging after such a long absence really merits a more interesting post, but I'm not feeling up to much more than a set of progress shots, so here they are, as proof this thing got finished, whether or not it gets lost in the mail! Next up, an Impossible Wedding Afghan: one month to finish Knitty's Totally Autumn in 8 skeins of heather green Cestari yarn. So all I have to do it knit it 7 times faster than I knit the last afghan! Never let it be said I shy away from crafty challenges...

She was wise, subtle, and knew more than one way to skin a cat.

2008-07-06T14:46:00.003-05:00

I haven't been challenging myself much knitting-wise lately, Reader; I've been waiting for the right project and contenting myself with miles and miles and miles of stockinette for socks. It's soothing, but not exactly productive in the right way if you've already got almost more pairs of wool stockinette socks than you need for a Jersey winter and certainly more than you need for a Jersey summer. One of these days, though, I'll post about the sock yarns I've used; I've done enough now that the comparison might be a useful one.

Above is a pair I finished a couple of weeks ago out of Opal Hundertwasser, colorway Der Blaue Mond. The way the yarn worked out--complementary if not identical--was mostly an accident, but I kind of love it. The thing about Opal is that it's pretty unpleasant until you wash it--like, not terrible and not scratchy, exactly, but not a bucket of joy to work with--but it's durable, and I fully intend to be wearing these socks at the End Times.

More interestingly: I completed an Alan Dart toy cat pattern with the fussiest finishing I have ever done in my life. The pattern is total genius--I set out looking for something as realistic as possible I had to knit the thing twice because I was also teaching myself basic intarsia wrong and I made a less-than-stellar yarn choice. The yarn was Berroco Comfort DK, which is a good acrylic, but it's acrylic and splitty. It would have sufficed if I hadn't also needed to redo the intarsia, but I couldn't make myself do it unless I had some other incentive, so I switched to Ultra Alpaca Light. Now, I love Ultra Alpaca generally, though it drapes too much to use for a lot of things, but the off-white is just wonderful--I never wear white and would never gravitate to it as a color, but in alpaca it's creamy and looks like it would spread like butter. It was a pleasure knitting with it on this project.

The finishing, though: gross. I need to learn how to do it properly. I just kind of made it up as I went along, which meant there was a lot of redoing of seams. I think it turned out basically all right--certainly better than I had thought it would. I had to do a last minute substitution on the eyes, so the cat looks perpetually startled. I wound up using felt for the mouth and nose--I've never learned to embroider--and I think it works okay. She was named Esme by her new parents, and sometimes I get pictures of her adventures.

Lastly: another pair of socks, 3X1 rib. I did the first sock maybe a year and a half ago and decided that I may as well do the other earlier this summer while I was in such a productive sock-mode. The problem is that I had written down, in various places, three different needle sizes and had no idea at all which was the correct one. This wouldn't have mattered so much--a 0 and a 1 and a 1.5 only vary by .25mm each--if I hadn't been using a variegated yarn that pooled absolutely dreadfully. The picture at left is of the first sock. I didn't take a picture of the second, but just imagine the foot of the first sock, only going all the way up. The pooling doesn't bother me so much--I never knit matching socks, so whatever--but I loathe the way the yarn pooled on the second sock. I wanted the tops to have the same variegated and the feet to have the same flashing, and no amount of playing with needle sizes was going to give me that. I think this yarn--it's Jojoland Kaleidoscope--was the first hand-dyed yarn I ever bought, and I didn't know a thing about hand-dyed yarn and only a little about my own color preferences. I didn't think to consider, for example, that how a yarn looks in the hank doesn't tell you how it's going to look knitted up--and of course there's no real way to find this out, either, without knitting it up; but now I know enough to know that wow, orange is really not my scene, even if it is a rich autumnal orange and even if it looks lovely mixed into purple and green and blue. Despite all my smack-talking about these socks, though, I do kind of love them, the way we all loved troll dolls for awhile: they're ugly as hell, but charming when you get right down to it.

Part III: Pictorial Motifs from The needles excellency

2008-06-03T13:37:00.006-05:00

I have saved the best for last, Reader. While I was looking through The needles excellency, I was startled to find this design:

Why was I so surprised, you ask? Does it contain the text of Cardenio in its little squares? Does it prove the existence of the Knights Templar once and for all? That Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone??!!!!

No. I hope you're not disappointed, Reader, because it's better than all of those things. You see, the picture was already hanging on my wall:

My aunt made this when she was in high school, and after we cleaned out my grandmother's house, it went to me. My grandmother was an excellent crafter, and my aunt is, too, and they're both responsible for my continued (if all-thumbs) interest in knitting*. And, it turns out, seventeenth-century needlework. My aunt says she found the design in an old Dover pattern book. Isn't it neat to see it in color?

*Nana taught me how to crochet a long time ago, among other things. Unfortunately, I think I never learned how to crochet much more than rectangles, but you'd be surprised at how well crocheted rectangles work as Barbie gowns. My aunt sent me her knitting needles, crochet hooks, and other supplies, all of which are in heavy use at Casa Swinging Squares.

Part II: Pictorial motifs from The needles excellency

2008-05-20T19:28:00.004-05:00

Lest you think I have forgotten you, Reader--well, I have not. The needles excellency doesn't contain many pictorial motifs that would be knit-daptable, so, um, these are kind of weird.

The birds are kind of cute. The flowers on the right scream "Feed me, Seymour!" to me and also look vaguely dirty.
And on the off chance you have some Renaissance Faire hunters on ye knite liste:
Why that, um, hunting dog (?) on the left has a pelican beak, I do not know. Maybe it is really a jackalope. Oh, wait, no, I guess it's a hare looking backwards at a hunting dog that is roughly the size of a man. I know people were shorter back then, but that's a little ridiculous.

One more part to go in this scintillating series!1!!one!!1

Part I: Decorative motifs from The needles excellency (1631)

2008-05-15T12:25:00.010-05:00

I finished a dreadful paper earlier this week about Renaissance needlework, and through the course of my research, I found a very popular needlework tract called The needles excellency*. Published by John Taylor in 1631, The needles excellency (download here) is a pattern book, designed--so Susan Frye, Jones & Stallybrass, etc. say--for women of the lower gentry who wanted to emulate the needlework of their social betters, who could afford to hire professional embroiderers to draw them any design they wanted. By the seventeenth century, you could, apparently, get the designs drawn (printed?) on the cloth for you at the printer's**. The book begins with a moderately hilarious poem about how great needlework is ("Hey, it's pretty useful, and it keeps the ladies from talking too much") and five sonnets about famous (dead) needleworkers: Catharine of Aragon, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth, Mary Sidney, and someone named Elizabeth Dormer, who I've never heard of***.

More to the point, though, the motifs themselves are pretty nifty, and I think some of them could be easily adapted to colorwork projects for knitting. In this post, I've linked to some of the decorative designs that I liked best; in subsequent posts, I'll link to some less abstract motifs. The top image has my two favorites: the designs are bold and crisp and would lend themselves to multiple-color fair isle really well. (Click on the images for a much, much larger view.)

*This being the seventeenth century, a time of verbose and specific book titles, the full title is The needles excellency a new booke wherin are diuers admirable workes wrought with the needle. Newly inuented and cut in copper for the pleasure and profit of the industrious.
**I think I'm citing Frye here.
***It's a bit of a motley crew--the women are clearly invoked for their celebrity, but why these particular women, I don't know. The sonnets make much of the former three as a line of queens. Elizabeth was sort of widely known to have abandoned her needlework when she assumed the throne. The most famous needleworker, at least in the late sixteenth century, was probably Mary Stuart, that notorious Catholic thorn in Elizabeth's side.

I'd make my horcruxes out of stash yarn.

2008-04-14T14:26:00.004-05:00

Hilariously, Opal is apparently releasing a line of sock yarn to coincide with the release of Half-Blood Prince in the fall. I'm not surprised that the marketing of this movie extends to yarn--I'm more surprised that they haven't thought of it before, frankly--but I will admit to being puzzled by 1) the absence of Hermione-branded yarn (Ginny, Hedwig, and the Weasley twins--or one of them anyway--have a skein*) and 2) the choice to focus on character-inspired yarn instead of doing something more obvious, like house colors. I suppose they thought the appeal would be broader this way. I'm sort of unclear on what the colors have to do with the characters at all--except for Hedwig and Draco, and maybe the Weasley twins if you're generous--but this is one of the most enjoyable consumer fantasy products I've seen in a long time.

*Then again, the choices here are pretty weird too--like, why pick the scene where Ginny's in a bathrobe? (Not sold that that's what's going on there, as the label's pretty fuzzy.) Why choose only one Weasley twin? (Unless the other just isn't visible, but again, not clear.) I'd also think that Snape would be an obvious choice for a colorway (greens and smoky grays and blacks). It seems to me that whoever put this line together got a folder full of promo pics and probably attached them to some yarn that was already in development. Alternate scenario: the pictures were fed into a program that extracted the colors and the yarn was developed randomly that way. The point, in any case, is that it does not appear that a great deal of thought went into this.

20,000 leagues under the sea.

2008-04-06T09:49:00.004-05:00

Oh, Reader, I keep starting projects in a bid to avoid my poor sweater. I just keep looking at the thing--I've got about 5-6" done (I think) on the right front--and thinking about how long it's going to take me. I think I'll just have to wait until the mood strikes me to work on it again. I don't want another failed sweater--which reminds me; I need to take apart the Lucy cardigan and the Wicked sweater and repurpose the yarn. I'm surrounded by yarn at my desk. I have the idea that I'll be able to get more organized when I get the giant filing cabinet of my dreams (why, hello there, tax refund), but really I suspect that this will encourage me to get more stuff.

Current projects on tap (take my word for it; no pictures yet):

I'm working on the Embossed Leaves socks from Favorite Socks out of KP Risata. I'm not finding the Risata splitty, as some have said. It's certainly sturdy.
I finished a hat of my own "design" out of Cascade Pastazza, a llama/wool blend. It needs blocking. It's just a simple zig zag cable from one of the Harmony Guides. The real story of this hat is in the color of the yarn: it's a deep blue/purple that rivals the best of Noro. It's the kind of blue I like to imagine is made out of ground up lapis lazuli--like an illuminated manuscript or a Renaissance painting.
I started another hat--I think the pattern is called "Claudia"--but I'm bored by it. No fault of the pattern.
I'm supposed to be getting a toy cat pattern via the mailz--it's a pretty sweet pattern, but I'm sort of nervous about the skill level I imagine it's going to require. Toys seem to need a lot of "finishing" work to make them look good, and I have little experience with finishing.

Well: not much to photograph in all of that, but I'll get you some pictures soon, Reader.

Rip Van Winkle

2008-03-12T20:46:00.004-05:00

Never let it be said that we here at Swinging Squares would disappoint you, Reader: ask and ye shall receive. I've actually had precious little knitting time lately. I do have a few in-progress things to offer up to you, however.

First, I have begun working on my third sweater project. Yes, it's true that I have yet to actually complete a sweater. But I think this one's gonna work out. It might not work out for roughly a hundred years, but eventually, I will have this sweater. Or a picture of myself in my head wearing this sweater...while petting a unicorn.

What I have to show you is my sad little swatch, which I didn't even block. I know; I know. It's terrible. I should've blocked it. But I have convinced myself that it's okay if it's a "little off" in size. This is the kind of thing all knitters do at some point and then warn others about. A swatch, for those non-knitting folk out there, is simply a test square of your pattern so you can see what your gauge is (how much space each stitch takes up, more or less). For my swatch, I did the pattern stitch in size 5 needles (the bottom) and size 4 needles (the top), and ultimately got closer to the pattern's specified gauge with the size 4 needles.

The sweater is the Katharine Hepburn Cardigan from Lace Style, and I'm doing it in Louet Gems Opal, color Caribou. The yarn is normally rather expensive, but after weeks of agonizing about a suitable replacement, I found a great sale on it at Purl Soho. Anyway, I'm pretty pumped about this cardigan, but the cables and lace pattern makes it a bit fiddly--it's not hard by any means, but it's time consuming. This sweater is also knit in pieces and then seamed, so we'll see how that goes. I'm working on the right front piece now; no heart yet for the back. Miles to go.

I am making better progress on my plain stockinette travel socks--I've got one of a pair done in Knit Picks Felici, color Pebble. Jenny's Felici socks have worn really well (she is generally less hard on her clothes though, I think...) and have a less wooly hand than some of my hardwearing socks (is "hand" appropriate here? I have no idea). Anyway, I am not so excited about the brownness of this sock. Now, don't get me wrong; Bolty loves brown. I am generally a conservative dresser ("semi-professional," as described by Jenny) and brown is about as wild as I get for a sweater or pants or shoes. But I like my accessories to have more color. I will, however, happily wear these socks when they're done--I've been able to wear handknit socks most days this winter.

The Iceman Cometh

2008-02-12T22:58:00.004-05:00

Bedecked in my lovely hat, striped scarf, un-blogged flip-top mittens, and beige tweed wool socks, I braved the winter today and lived to tell the tale.

Colin Cloutes Come Home Againe

2008-02-06T09:06:00.001-05:00

I changed up the blog design a bit to add Ravelry progress bars (inaccurate for now due to a Top Sekrit Knitting Project) and the Flickr badges (L. is giving up the shop for awhile), and Reader, I am pretty damn irritated. I know just enough about coding to be dangerous, which is to say enough to know that fixing the width of the progress bars and badges to fill the righthand column in a more visually pleasing manner is possible, but not enough to do it myself. Flickr claims that the badges have to be that size, which is probably a lie, but certainly means that no amount of half-assed fiddling on my part will fix that. The Ravelry progress bars, on the other hand, are very customizable*, but despite fairly clear instructions in the Ravelry fora, I am at a loss. I'll figure it out eventually. I'll never be hungry again, etc., etc.

More successful, however, was my latest FO: the Noro Striped Scarf, concept/pattern from Brooklyn Tweed. Apologies for the lameness of the photos, especially considering Brooklyn Tweed's utterly amazing ones. I had plans to take this outside and photograph it pretentiously on a withered tree stump out front, but I wanted to mess about with the settings on my camera to see if I could have any success taking shots indoors and--well, this is very boring, but suffice it to say that I got a few good shots of the cat and merely serviceable ones of the scarf.

The scarf itself, though: love it. It's about seven feet long and 7.5" wide (I cast on 49 instead of 39 to make it a bit wider than Brooklyn Tweed's). The yarn: Noro Silk Garden, colors 8 and 270. There has been, on Ravelry, a pretty ridiculous series of debates about Noro yarns: blah blah blah they tend to be scratchy, thick-and-thin, and full of vegetable matter blah blah blah but it is art blah blah blah blah. I really enjoyed Silk Garden (composition: silk, mohair, wool) for the same reasons everyone does: the saturation of the colors is remarkable, especially the dark blue. I cannot envision myself ever using Silk Garden or Kureyon (pure wool) for a garment for the same reason--the colors--I think it works perfectly on a scarf.

*L. and I have discussed our desire to make macaroni and glitter pictures for Casey.

desperate times

2008-01-20T18:40:00.000-05:00

The plummeting temperature of our apartment has us wondering if we shouldn't abandon our current projects and instead put all our efforts into knitting some gd INSULATION.

Not to dramatize the situation here, but I've literally had to take breaks from typing between these tiny paragraphs to warm up my hands. I guess if I can't actually knit insulation for the apartment, I could do the next best thing and knit some insulation for my mittens.

Or I could abandon absolutely everything and follow the example of one Raveler who posted today about knitting herself a coffin. I bet it would be warm in a knitted coffin.

Tricot Treat!

2008-01-16T13:26:00.000-05:00

That's right, I'm treating you to the very most obvious pun on French knitting vocabulary! Because you know me -- I only deal in superlatives, and lately only the guiltiest superlatives: the longest lunch, the earliest bedtime, the bare minimum and, of course, the last minute.
But there is always time to spare for a bit of knitting, especially if it's the easiest possible knitting, like the tube scarf I'm working on in some yarn I bought at La Droguerie, an amazing yarn store I visited in Paris. That's right, the scarf is literally just a tube. See?
I cast on 70 stitches, joined without twisting, and just took off knitting. I'm a little over halfway finished, having just started on my second of 2 skeins. I'm thrilled with the results and a lot less concerned than I expected to be about the simplicity of the "design." I tried various ribbings but was disgusted by my tension problems. I CANNOT get the first purl stitch of the column to look nice! Luckily it turns out that the yarn requires very little from me in order to look beautiful. It's actually two yarns held together (one a 100% bamboo and one a laceweight mohair), an idea I ripped off from a sample scarf hanging on the wall at the store. The friendly clerk helped me coordinate the colors and wound the two strands together in skeins for me, and I was so pleased by my success in conducting this transaction in French that I hardly noticed the price (27 euros, yikes! If only it were dollars!).

Like I said, the store itself is wonderful. It's in the neighborhood of Les Halles and the Saint Eustache cathedral, and it's pretty big for a French store of its kind, or at least seemed so to me. One side is devoted to yarn and patterns, with all the available colors in each yarn hanging unwound from hooks on the wall. Deeper in is a display counter of buttons, most simple and sophisticated but some very silly. On the other side of the store, they sell beads stored in jars like penny candy and embroidery supplies. When I was there, it was crowded and just past twilight, so I did not take any photos. However, a few days later, I was shopping at Printemps and paid a visit to the Phildar boutique on the top floor of the store, and I can show you that, if from a bit of a distance. I wish American department stores gave as much space to craft supplies.

Finally, I made one other yarn purchase back in Dayton that was just as exciting to me as the ones I made in France: my first skein of handspun yarn, made my the mother of one of my oldest friends. Her website is here. She showed me her spinning wheel, her fiber stash in the attic, and her imposing yarn storage room, barricaded with impenetrable walls of rubbermaid containers. From one such container, I chose a lovely blue and orange wool, which Joe says smells nice and wooly. After a bit of experimenting, I chose the Opera scarf pattern, which blessedly consists of just a single row to memorize. I'm in a race against spring with all this scarf knitting. Wish me luck!

Catch Up, Catch All

2008-01-09T19:25:00.000-05:00

You know how once you fall out of touch with someone, part of what keeps you from making contact again is the guilt you feel over the initial neglect? Along with the pressure of reporting on months' worth of living in a single and inevitably newsy letter? I guess these are my lame but honest excuses for having abandoned blogging this fall and holiday season...But today, fooling around with Picasa, I found a solution that has once again hoisted me back in the blogging saddle. So I offer you, first, a compilation work-in-progress photo of all the gift knitting I did for this year's birthday and holiday season:

Then, of course, there are the corresponding FOtos (hey, it's my neologism and I'm sticking to it):
Needless to say, each of these gifts has a story and a reason for being just what it is, but I think this time the stories will just have to remain unwritten. Nonetheless, I think we can all agree that the most "special" of all my knitting projects turned out to be Uncle Louie's Orange Hat, which as expected inspired much good cheer and not a few jokes of questionable taste at this year's Christmas party. That photo deserves a blowing up:
If I have half as much fun in 2008 as Uncle Louie is having in this picture, it will be a good year.

Knit One, Kill Two

2008-01-04T01:35:00.000-05:00

Our favorite Lois Lane gifted us some lovely sock yarn for Christmas: one skein of Trekking Pro Natura in colorway 1601 and two balls of Zitron Lifestyle in colorway 1876. She also passed along some of the knitting mysteries by Maggie Sefton, which I love without ever having read a page for the spectacular puns in the titles. Needled to Death, people? A Deadly Yarn? Does it get any better than this? No, it does not, Reader. You of all people should know.

I'm sure, however, that your mind has never left the yarn, and I can't say I'm surprised. I was faced with a terrible choice, Reader: which yarn should I choose for the simple sock project that would take my mind off the sweater debacle? If I were a stronger person, I'd have waited until Lilyriver came back from France and let her decide what she wanted, but I, I am sorry to say, am not so good, nor so patient, and I've been eyeing the Zitron Lifestyle for awhile. It did not disappoint. It's a 100% superwash merino sock yarn, and I'm guessing the base yarn is Louet Gems, because it feels just like Koigu. It's just flat-out a pleasure to knit with such a well-spun, elastic yarn. I cast on 64 on 2.5mm dpns, did 5.5" of cuff in 3x1 ribbing and a 2.75" gusset. As you can see, I've finished one sock since Tuesday, and I'm about halfway through the foot on sock #2--I've never knit socks this fast before. Admittedly, this is partly because I've been glued to my Heroes season 1 boxed set, but a lovely, non-splitty yarn really helps. (I broke out the DPNs for the first time in awhile, and I think that for me, DPNs are faster than 2 circs. 2 circs have many other advantages, but I don't think DPNs can be beat in terms of speed.)

The drawbacks: the yardage for the Lifestyle is scant. Not quite Colinette Jitterbug scant, but two balls (100g) total only about 340 yards instead of the more standard 400ish. I had to rip back my first sock and start the toe decreases earlier so I'd be able to make them long enough to accommodate size 10 feet. I finished with maybe 2-3 yards left. Most people would find the yardage just fine, probably, but I like to make the leg part of my socks pretty long. The yarn is thicker than, say, Trekking (100g of Trekking Pro Natura has about 460 yards), and the ball band says you could get away with needles sized 2-4 (US) instead of the usual 0-2 (US), which helps make up for the comparatively little yardage. But that brings me to drawback deux, which is the durability factor. I've mentioned here, I think, that one of my Koigu socks got a hole on the bottom after less than a half dozen wearings and washings. I also knit those on 2.5mm (that's a 1.5 US for non-knitters). (I patched up the hole with some regular wool in the hopes that it would felt, and so far it seems to be working fine.) I tend to be hard on socks, so I'll be watching these to see if the Koigu/Louet Gems hole was a fluke or if I just need to stick with sock yarn that has some nylon in it.

If you want some of this, I'd recommend Astrid's Dutch Obsessions; while she's shipping, naturally, from the Netherlands, she charges $6 a ball instead of $10, and she has all the solid colors of this yarn, which are numerous and not widely distributed in the States.

Sweater autopsy

2008-01-01T19:03:00.000-05:00

My First Sweater (TM) has turned out to be my Waterloo (a joke that never gets old, right? Right? Hello? Is this thing on?), Reader. I chose the Wicked sweater from Zephyr Style, a top down raglan (I think?) with a boat neck and some cabled details, and I used heathered burgundy Cascade 220. I will admit that I had my doubts about the Cascade 220: it didn't seem all that special to me, but it's cheap and known to be durable. As I used it, I came to appreciate its softness and springiness--I don't think you can go wrong with it. I do still think the donegal tweed version looks stupid. Sorry, Cascade.

This pattern is known to run large, so when my gauge was 20 stitches/4 inches rather than 18 on size 7s, I decided to just go with it. Reader, I can picture you muttering to yourself: Aha! Foreshadowing! This turned out, however, to not be the problem. Neither was it a problem when I realized about halfway through the collar that I'd forgotten to do the twist stitch and decided I didn't care. The problem is that the sweater is terribly unflattering. I've had this confirmed by Lilyriver, who tactfully noted that she thought it was too big. That might be one issue, despite the theoretical 2" of negative ease I thought I'd built in. Issue #2: worried that the sweater would be too small, I didn't do the waist shaping. I have a men's sweater that doesn't have shaping, so I didn't think the waist shaping would make much of a difference here. It may have, but it wouldn't have helped issue #3, which is that worsted-weight yarn and size 7 needles makes for a somewhat bulky knitted fabric. As acknowledging that it's possible that I might only be able to wear fine-gauge sweaters would cause me no small distress, I've decided that the real problem is issue #4: what was supposed to be a boat neck came out like a crew neck. I thought this might happen from some pictures I saw on Ravelry. Since patterns are resized according to a formula and not by reknitting the garment in each projected size, I think the neck doesn't doesn't quite work on the larger sizes. I think a v-neck would have helped the sweater look less bulky and would have given it a little more style.

For now, I'm not going to reknit it. (I actually still have a sleeve and a half left to go.) I'm tired of the yarn and I'm not sure I could fix it enough to make it wearable outside the house. I may eventually go back and experiment with waist shaping.

Happy new year, Reader!

Waiting for Godot.

2007-12-23T00:07:00.000-05:00

Silence for so long, and then a pictureless post? I know; it's terrible. I promise not to make you any promises, Reader, since we know how good I am at fulfilling them. But you have a right to know of avery important development since I last wrote to you: I have decided--and this is not a decision I entered into lightly--I have decided--perhaps you'd better sit down--to sell all of my yarn and take up the noble art of Moon Sand instead.

In lieu of an actual post, I offer you a comic. Drawn by someone else.

2007-12-12T08:53:00.000-05:00

nataliedee.com
Courtesy of a loyal reader.

A real post will follow in the next few days, darling Readers, perhaps with a preview of my selfish, selfish winter break knitting plans, but Bolty has some papers that aren't going to grade themselves. The thing is that I think the ideal TA for this course probably is a robot, but Mechanical Man Corp. hasn't gotten back to me yet on the Bolterbot2000.

We'll bend it to our awe, or break it all to pieces.

2007-11-24T23:05:00.001-05:00

I have been holding out on you, Reader: I've got two pairs of mittens and two pairs of Fetchings I haven't blogged about yet. The Fetchings are a bit of a disappointment. One pair, out of Lion Wool, is just okay: the yarn isn't very exciting for a gift and I'm blah on the color. I did the other in Manos, and while I like the Manos (I don't love the Manos, may the dear lord baby Jesus strike me dead), I'm afraid they're too big. The problem is that Fetching is kind of a dainty pattern as opposed to a sturdy one, and I am a sturdy knitter. Manos is a sturdy yarn, Lion Wool is a sturdy yarn, and everything I knit comes out sturdy; so why I thought these things would add up to a dainty pair of Fetchings is rather beyond me. I have a friend who might like the Manos ones, and the Lion Wool ones will probably languish until in a fit of pique I claim them for my own. Maybe I'll try dyeing them I color I like better.

As for the mittens: I won't mince words, Reader. I looooove them.

I recently finished two pairs: one for Lilyriver for her birthday (only a week and a half late!) and one for an unnamed recipient.
At left is the right mitten of L.'s pair--it's a wretched picture, and I apologize, but that's how we roll in my woods. I do not know why I just said that, but it's staying. I'll attribute it to mitten ecstasy. That is how we roll in my woods. Anyway! The yarn is Frog Tree Merino Melange, which is, hands down, the softest yarn I've ever touched. Unfortunately, I had to frog it approximately 403840983029843 times, and it got rather pilly in the process. A bit of alchemy happened in the blocking: it got sturdier, rather than softer, when wet. The finished product reminds me of a very decadent cupcake*.

What's the pattern for this delicious mitten, you ask? Why, it's a one-of-a-kind Bolty original. Two-of-a-kind. There are two, I swear. And, okay, it's not really a Bolty original, per se, as I basically just applied a cable** from the Vogue Stitchionary Vol. 2 to my favorite easy mitten pattern at freevintageknitting.com. Put away the hot poker, Reader. You and I have no secrets.

The second pair of mittens isn't even badly photographed--indeed, it's not photographed at all. They're flip top mittens based on an amalgam of patterns and they are damned fantastic. I used a spring green tweed, the Queensland Kathmandu I've blogged about before. Flip tops are absolute genius. I realize that I call every new knitting thing I learn "absolute genius," but it's true. It is also true--and if you're an Expos teacher, you'll spot the "secondary emerging thesis" of this post--that when I learn a new technique, I have to frog like a maniac. But I don't mind frogging overmuch***.

At the moment, I'm--or rather, was--working on a cabled hat from Cables Untangled--it's a ribbed hat with braided cables in a gorgeous red tweed (also Queensland Kathmandu), or, at least, that's what it's supposed to be, but I'm beginning to wonder if I'm not fated to get past the ribbing. I started it in size 8s (the pattern recommends size 7s, but all I had with me whilst visiting E. this past week were 8s and 6s) and the hat was freaking huge, so I frogged about 5 inches of ribbing and switched to the 6s. Three different pairs of 6s, Reader. I only had 4 of my 5 size 6 dpns with me, and there were way too many stitches to fit comfortably on those needles, so I made E. take me to Jo Ann's on the way to the airport, where the only size 6 circ I could find was 29" long. I bought it thinking I'd just Magic Loop, but the cable was very stiff, so when I got home I borrowed the 16" cable and size 6 tips from my Celtic Cabled Scarf and was happily knitting away when I realized that I'd misread the pattern for the increase row and had to frog back to the ribbing. Then I thought I misread the cable pattern and frogged again, only to realize that I hadn't misread it at all. Demoralized, I have put the hat back in its plastic bag for now in favor of starting another pair of flip top mittens out of some lovely Beaverslide McTaggart Tweed. Which I have also had to frog twice. I told you, Reader; I've no secrets from you.

*A cupcake that looks like a hand. Wow, this suddenly got creepy.
**It's called the Seven Sisters. The ribbing is ktbl1, p1; the cable is a basic 12-stitch cable following the ktbl1, p1 rib.
***This is a lie.

Measure for measure.

2007-11-18T14:11:00.000-05:00

From: E.
Date: Sunday, November 18, 2007 12:08 PM
Re: the most important thing for us: hair products.
To: the bolter

Actually I've been blackballed from all of the yarn shops in Denver for "casting off" on too many patrons and sending them to the hospital.

----- Original Message -----
From: the bolter

Date: Sunday, November 18, 2007 8:49 am
Subject: Re: the most important thing for us: hair products.
To: E.

also, i have been hunting down yarn shops for us to visit!!! are you excited???

Later:

the bolter: You have no idea what casting off means, do you?
E.: It means punching people in the face with brass knuckles.
the bolter: It's hard to disagree with that, actually.

The Last of the Time Lords.

2007-11-04T00:54:00.001-05:00

There have been some complaints, Reader, about the late scarcity of posts that feature actual knitting, as opposed to chatter about yarn shopping*. Well**--I do take the point. Thus, as your happiness is of paramount importance to me, I offer you one completed pair of Nikki Sixx-inspired Knucks.

Specs: 1 skein of Jo Sharp Silk Road DK Tweed, in some browny color I'm too lazy to look up. This yarn is the same as the Queensland Kathmandu I have already noted that I love (really, it's the same; I don't know what the deal is, but the Queensland Kathmandu comes from the same manufacturer and is generally a dollar or two cheaper--or more, if you find it on closeout at Webs...). I'm giving some thought to using this yarn in the far distant future*** for the Katharine Hepburn Cardigan. Anyway, the Knucks pattern is genius; it's knit fingers-down, which seemed to me to be a cockamamie scheme if I've heard one, but it worked out well enough. I somehow managed to do the gusset in a different way on each glove. It's not terribly noticeable and doesn't affect the fit, so I've decided it doesn't matter. They are a gift for a non-knitter who will, I hope, forgive me. I hope she's feeling kind about my elementary embroidery skills, too. Maybe I should redo the "8" before I send them.

I do hope Lilyriver will soon post about the very excellent hat she knitted me for my birthday; I may otherwise have to take matters in my own hands.

*I realized today--yesterday--well, see below; time is relative--that I have been buying yarn in various shades of green, to the extent that I am in serious danger of becoming mightily sick of green before I've even knitted up a skein of it. Okay, that's totally a lie; really, what I'm feeling is the strong desire to buy some more yarn--maybe this time in a rich blue.
**Hey, Daylight Savings Time just happened! I've been watching Doctor Who on and off all day and am feeling especially inclined to believe I have just gone back in time.
***Spring Forward?

The roots of debate and the hope of dialogue.

2007-11-01T14:10:00.000-05:00

Can we talk about how my new favorite yarn in the whole world is on closeout at Webs and my first instinct is to buy a truckload of it or maybe the whole warehouse and then I think, hey, maybe I should pay my bills instead? But how I really just want to buy yarn? Yeah. Let's talk about that.

What's black, white, read, etc., etc.

2007-10-24T12:20:00.001-05:00

No, not my Milton paper (wish me luck or something)--this.

It's a bit weird to me that the artist insists that turning your newspapers into yarn is good for making "tangible" memories--you can't read the paper, she says, but sometimes you can see snatches of dates or words. Playing devil's advocate for a moment, why is it necessary to "justify" art by insisting that a piece has tangible value? It's not a huge leap from "tangible" value to capital, either; making memories tangible also makes them buy-able, so sign me up for an October 24, 1983, newspaper yarn rug, you know? Is it an accident, I wonder, that the article reads a whole lot like somebody's trying to sell me something? And that her text (which seems to have been translated from the Dutch) reads like a catalogue? And I, a trained (indoctrinated?) consumer and moreover used to the insistence that 1) "indie" yarn is hand-dyed art and therefore I should feel better (more organic? more artistic?) about using it because it's not commercially made, and 2) that you can put a price--often a high(er) price--on "indie" hand-dyed/hand-spun yarn, immediately went looking for her web site so I could see how much the stuff cost. It doesn't--it's part of her portfolio and she just graduated from a design academy; she's selling herself (1).

(1) I happily sweep intentionality off the table, but I do wonder what her statement is; it's not a terrible way to think about memory--bits and pieces woven into a larger tapestry (or sturdy doormat)--or about (god help me) "culture." The idea that something else (/"different") can be made out of newspaper.

I wonder if the stuff is as flammable as newspaper usually is. On a more technical note, I wonder what she's plying it with--there's some kind of thread, it looks like, wrapped around the newspaper tubes. Is she using a spinning wheel? Or is she doing it by hand? I was also surprised at how colorful the tubes were; I forget that newspaper isn't--well--black and white anymore.

Caught up in Webs

2007-10-18T08:25:00.000-05:00

So we may not have made the pilgrimage, but we did get some relics from the fiber arts mecca that is Northhampton, MA. This tote bag is so sturdy. It will be perfect for yarn I mean books then next time I have a lot to carry home from the yarn shop I mean library. And it's cat approved, too. Check out that skein sticking out from the top -- that's my first even skein of Noro Silk Garden, and it is so special I'm almost afraid to use it. Should I follow Sarah G's lead and tackle a beanie or should I plan on a Fake Isle hat? Or do I dare attempt these lovely mittens, as difficult as they look? Luckily, I do not have time to make any of these things, so I can just enjoy this moment of anticipation.

And speaking of pilgrimages, tomorrow is the Yarn Harlot! There is a lot that has to happen before we get there, but it is nice to have something to look forward to.

Dear Abby,

2007-10-14T14:56:00.001-05:00

Is it possible to accidentally buy yarn?

I realize that this entails, say, the googling of "yarn shop," and a few errant keystrokes in the sale section of Knitch, but--you know, given enough monkeys and enough typewriters, you get Hamlet, right? It's harder to explain one's wallet accidentally unzipping and one's credit card number accidentally appearing on screen, but weirder things have happened. Look at Michael Jackson.

Send me your thoughts as soon as possible, c/o debtor's prison.

Signed,
Not That This Has Happened To Me Or Anything

The sun also rises.

2007-10-12T06:31:00.001-05:00

I don't want you to get too excited, Reader--perhaps you'd better sit down--but we are going to see the Yarn Harlot a week from today. A week and eleven hours from right this very moment. This is all thanks to the sharp-eyed Sarah G at Yardage, who, I think we can logically conclude, must have some kind of super power, because she found this out even though Stephanie hasn't put it up on her website yet.

I have been doing some knitting myself, although not quite as fervently as Lilyriver. I have been working on some gift knitting for friends I won't write about here, partly because progress has stalled out. I've also been working on a pair of Knucks--also a gift, but for a non-reader of the blog, I think--that I plan on embroidering with Nikki Sixx's knuckle tattoos. It's rather more difficult than I expected to find you a picture of this. She would know in a heartbeat, but--well. ETA: Aha! Top right. I will be so pleased with myself if I can make the embroidery look halfway decent. The Knucks pattern is practically genius, as it's knit top down and comes together fantastically well. I'm using Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed, which is about 85% wool and 15% silk and cashmere, I think, and it knits up beautifully. I ordered a couple skeins in Aran weight to use for a hat I'm planning. Uh, for myself.

The Way We Were

2007-10-09T08:22:00.001-05:00

I don't believe I ever shared a photo of my last finished project of the summer. This is Stefanie Japel's Orangina, knit in Lamb's Pride Cotton Fine on size 4 needles. It was a very satisfying project because it's made me believe that I might have it in me to be a lace knitter. This is not to say that I want to chuck all my other projects and start knitting my way through Victorian Lace Today, but it's nice to know that a pretty shawl in a simple lace pattern might not be beyond my abilities. I'm very impressed with the yarn I used for this -- it has a little wool in it, which really does help it to hold its shape, I think. It's been blocked and worn several times and washed and worn again and it's only improving in appearance, which I'm thrilled about. Most of my projects seem so fragile once they're off the needles and on my body, but this feels like it's meant to be used.

Yet, alas, summer is beginning to fade and there will be less and less use for lacy cotton tops. Look how happy and carefree I am in the photo! I don't expect to look that way again for-- what's the date, again? -- oh, about four or five years.

More than one way to wear a hat...

2007-10-04T22:24:00.000-05:00

...especially if the hat is accidentally oversized and floppy. Lately I've been just ambushed with work and have been able to steal so few moments for knitting that blogging hasn't seemed as exciting as it once did. I have finished two hats recently, however. One of them, a cabled Utopia hat in my new favorite worsted weight wool, Mission Falls 1824, was sent away before I took pictures of it, but the other has been photographed from literally every angle. It's Ysolda's Urchin pattern from the latest edition of Knitty. I knitted with desperate speed with the first super bulky yarn I could get my hands on, Paton's Rumor, which is full of acrylic but comes in lovely colors. The hat is just plain too big, but it's also kind of fun.

And I'd like to close this post, such as it is, with a shout-out to our good friend over at Yardage, whose awesome new knitting blog has nudged me back in the saddle.

Postcards from the edge.

2007-09-21T13:56:00.000-05:00

Don't think I have forgotten you, Reader! I have not. But my knitting energies have lately been redirected into some gift projects for friends and I can't share them with you--partly because I am not sure that I'll wind up having the time to complete them. Apparently, I'm not allowed to knit instead of writing papers, nor am I allowed to knit my final papers. I'm disheartened, but I'll press on.

A few brief notes: I tried the magic loop technique and found it to be quite cumbersome. I only did a few rows with it, but jockeying the needle into place interrupted my flow. I can see trying it again in the future; there are certain practical benefits to it, the chief amongst them being that it only takes one needle and one is thus spared half the trouble when needle-hunting and half the expense of buying new needles when one realizes that one has approximately 4308240328043802843 size 1.5s, but no size 2s.

Secondly: I'm using Lion Wool for the mystery project, which is a 100% worsted weight wool. I'm suspicious of wools that advertise that they are good for felting, which usually means that they are either scratchy or poor quality, and I'm suspicious of all Lion Brand products because I succumb easily to internet-born yarn snobbery peer pressure. But it turns out that while Lion Wool is not by any means a soft yarn, it's actually a quality, sturdy workhorse yarn. I do remain puzzled as to why Lion Brand has chosen to put it out in 85g skeins instead of the 50g or 100g that one usually sees, but I got my 85g on sale for 3.25, so I dare not complain too loudly. A limitation of the yarn is that it doesn't come in very many colors; there are only a few of the colors to which I could say I was genuinely drawn (although there are many that would do)--and no heathers at all. And I test-felted a bit of it and they were right--it really does felt well. A side note: Lion Wool is also available in a few variegated ("print") shades.

Lastly: there's been a promise made concerning a visit to yarn shop in Princeton next Wednesday, and it's like I'm eight again and I'm about to get an American Girl doll for Christmas.

We join this program already in progress.

2007-09-07T22:18:00.001-05:00

All right, darlings, I've finally done a little sweater scanning. I've got about 10" of a project 18" for the bottom of the Lucy cardigan. The stitch pattern is so simple that I'd probably be gouging my eyeballs out if it weren't for the yarn--I've gone on a bit about the Berroco Ultra Alpaca before, and I won't do it again here, but it's fantastic. Not so great for stitch definition, as is the case with most dark yarns and most alpaca yarns; the scanning picked up the patterning in one dimension much better than the eye can actually do in three. But that's okay, because it doesn't matter, really, and I think when blocked, it'll be a little bit crisper. My other potential problem is that while I'm ly(tru + mad + deep) in love with the Peat colorway, it turns out that dark green actually doesn't go with a great deal in my wardrobe. I think the green's too dark to go comfortably with black or navy blue, and reds are out unless I want to look like Mother Christmas. Brown could make me look like a tree, and greens, possibly too matchy, and anyway, the only green shirt I have is more lime than earthy. So I'm left with light blue--and the feeling that this might be a good excuse to start collecting shirts in the purple family. But first Bolty's gotta get paid.

Cheap shots.

2007-09-07T14:23:00.000-05:00

Nononononononononononononononononononononononono
nononononononononononononononononononono NO.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

2007-09-03T19:58:00.000-05:00

I have some bad news for you, Reader: the Summer of Crafting Fun is sadly at an end. Tomorrow, there are books to be read; papers to write; students, god help me, to teach. In other words, there is music to be faced. In such situations, there's only one thing to do: tie up one's belongings on a hobo stick and hit the rails.

I am ending the summer with four WIPs, violating, of course, the rule of 3 that I had semi-established for myself. Nevertheless, I think they're all projects I have a reasonable chance of finishing during the fall semester (knock on particle board). First, I have my Lucy in the Sky cardigan. I have not offered any pictures either here or on Ravelry because, quite frankly, they would be extremely dull. I'm working on the bottom now, which is about 18" of a knit/purl diamond/King Charles brocade-ish pattern; I'm about 8.5" in. I love love love the yarn; it's a 50/50 wool/alpaca blend from Berroco called Ultra Alpaca. The colors are designed, they say, to mimic plant-dyes. I chose, as I believe I have mentioned before, the Peat colorway. Anyway, it's soft like alpaca, but has the sturdiness and elasticity of wool, and it's not as painfully expensive as one might imagine. Also, it smells like the upholstery in a new car. If you have ever smelled pure wool, especially if it's been sealed in a Ziploc for awhile, you will know that this is a good thing.

I am also still working on my pair of plain stockinette socks from the Colortweed. One down, one to go.

Thirdly, I'm working on the Celtic Cable Scarf from Kraemer Yarns. I'm using Peace Fleece in the Tundra colorway. Now, I love the Peace Fleece colors and I love the mission of the company, but man, this yarn is hard to knit with. It's very scratchy. The thing about Peace Fleece, though, is that it softens well when washed; I rinsed the bottom four inches in ordinary tap water and noticed a large improvement. I think with a little Eucalan, it should be good to go. Some projects you want to have more than you want to knit them. But I've only got about a foot done out of a projected six, and the cabling demands my full attention, so I'm in this one for the long haul. ETA: Apparently I said the exact same thing with respect to "long haul" two posts ago. Don't think I'm not paying attention, Reader.

Fourthly, I've got my Almost Argyles going out of Knit Picks Essential in Grass. I had to rip a good inch or so back due to a pattern mistake, so I'm still working on the gusset. The other problem is that the Essential really does get as fuzzy as everyone says it does (you can sort of tell in the picture). It didn't look so hot when I was done frogging that bit. The experience I'm having with the Essential is really the opposite of the one I'm having with the Peace Fleece; while the Essential is soft and lovely with which to knit, I'm quite nervous about washing it. Someone on Ravelry suggested washing the socks inside out so the pilling happens on the part of the sock you don't see, which seems to me to be genius advice.

'Til next time, Reader--and do let me know if you've figured out how to charm yourself a bottomless purse.

Beach Blanket Bingo.

2007-09-03T18:00:00.000-05:00

Gratuitous blanket shots:

a list and a promise

2007-08-28T19:48:00.000-05:00

The promise comes first: I have a few works in progress and even one finished project that are still awaiting a photo shoot, and once that happens, I will return with a much more visually interesting post. But for now, I can say at least the my Orangina is a success, a wear-it-to-work and-feel-pretty success. I was concerned about the gauge difference between the section knit flat and the section knit in the round, but blocking appears to have solved the problem, and it is easy enough to wear a garment with the less expertly executed lace in the back. Since finishing Orangina, I've become involved with several new projects.
I'm a bit worried about technical/gauge issues (similar to those I encountered with Orangina) for my Snow White sweater, a gorgeous pattern from Ysolda Teague that I really could not be more excited to be knitting. While swatching, I realized how awful my ribbing tends to look, and some research led me pretty deep into stitch theory, so deep that I emerged nearly convinced I should make the become a Combination Knitter. For now, though, I'm not putting labels on myself -- I'm just wrapping my purls clockwise, and the result is a much neater if not altogether perfect ribbing. I'm using Paton's Classic Merino and so far I'm really pleased with it.
I'm also still plugging away at the plain stockinette socks in KnitPicks Felici that I started so long ago for the camping trip. I'm about halfway through the foot, and in this case too, I'm loving the yarn. I should probably be concerned about how it will wear, but for now, I'm just looking forward to wearing such soft socks.
Also on the horizon is a blanket for my sister, possibly even a crocheted one! But more on this later. For now, the focus is on finishing one more project, any project before classes start next week.

Three Hail Marys and an Act of Contrition.

2007-08-23T01:04:00.000-05:00

Come closer, Reader. I want to whisper this in your ear. You have to promise not to tell, though. Cross your heart and hope to die.

I started a new pair of socks tonight in order to avoid my sweater project.

I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

2007-08-18T23:12:00.001-05:00

Turns out I do remember how to crochet a little bit, Reader; I've been crocheting my blanket squares together and it's turning out rather nicely, especially if you squint. What blanket squares, you ask? I excavated them in the closet of my old bedroom, just underneath an ancient (primeval, even, in that time B.K.: Before Knitting) experiment in needlework. There were perhaps 45 of them, all as you see at left. Er, yes, all of them, varied only in color ("dark sage," "sage," and "off white") and skill, which is to say that proper finishing remained as elusive to me as it did to so many impoverished nineteenth century girls.

In any case, these squares are not very much, but I thought I ought to put them together anyway, just to see if I've learned anything. I've learned a little, it turns out, but it's taken something I knew B.K. to finally make the thing come together: a little crochet magic. Crochet was the first yarn craft I learned that didn't involve copious amounts of glue; my grandmother, who was an excellent crafter, taught me back in the days when a crocheted square made a fine garment for a Barbie. I'm using one of her hooks to put the blocks together, and afterwards I'll add a border, because a little crochet can fix a multitude of sins. The squares, alas, are not the same size. I should have known I was tempting fate with all those pyramids.

She Stoops to Conquer.

2007-08-13T17:09:00.001-05:00

The Squirrel & Oak mittens, with my sister's initials knit into the point. As I noted before, totally ridiculous, but I love them. I just bought Terri Shea's Selbuvotter and will use it to do more sophisticated Fair Isle mittens, but I had a lot of fun with this project.

Selbuvotter is a neat book with a rather literal premise--Shea recreates Selbuvotter mittens she has found in various collections down to mistakes in yarn, needle size, and thumb construction. The book, subtitled A Biography of a Knitting Tradition, is not meant to be a pattern book, but it's not precisely a biography either. It is perhaps more accurate to call it a painstaking record of a localized movement. I got interested in college in literary textiles and have been contemplating how to take a more materialist approach to my own work, so I have great sympathy for the project undertaken here.

The search for origins.

2007-08-08T23:54:00.000-05:00

You'll have to bear with me for a moment here, Reader: I'm feeling nostalgic. Nay: sentimental. Pull up a seat to the fire and pour yourself a glass of sherry; the impulse will pass, and we'll come back to our senses.

Upon investigating the closet of my childhood bedroom this past weekend, I discovered the wreckage of my first knitting project, the predictable garter stitch scarf. The fees for our knitting class got us a ball of worsted weight yarn (I got light blue; at some later point I acquired a ball of dark blue) and a pair of size 7 straights. Reader, I confess that my mind was not on knitting that evening; rather, I had attended the class in order to make some friends. I lucked out on that score, but less so on the knitting--I was the last person in the class to figure out how to cast on (or so I remember) and my efforts were...imperfect, to say the least. It's hard to imagine now, having knit so many stitches on so many projects, how I repeatedly failed to end up with the correct amount of stitches at the end of a row. There's a point in knitting where a new technique just begins to make sense, and that was true for me from the basic knit stitch on.

Eventually, I put that shapeless blob in a drawer and learned to knit other things, and by "other things," I mean "hats." I believe I made about a dozen hats by Christmas, and occasionally those hats have turned up, like so many bad pennies, to haunt me. My enthusiasm for hats waned eventually and I returned to what I will generously refer to as a "scarf," but really had about as much in common with a scarf as this blog does with Anna Karenina. So the first thing I did was to start over, although I preserved that initial piece of knitting for a long time and may have it somewhere still. I decided to jazz up the garter stitch by doing stripes of the two blues and I worked at it diligently--or, at any rate, I must have; I don't remember how long it took or when I finished it. But it did get finished, and I seem to have gotten to wear it a few times before the scarf began to return, dust to dust, to a pile of yarn. I had, you see, Reader, simply tied square knots at the color changes and blissfully snipped off the ends. I did not know any better, and I did not have to vocabulary to find out more about finishing techniques or weaving in ends in a book or online. The weight of a garter stitch scarf knit on size 7 straights is not inconsiderable and the square knots came out quite easily. Now that I know a bit more about these things, I could probably try to fix the scarf, or reknit it, but I think it's probably better to leave it as it is. I'd like to say it's for the poetry of the thing, but the truth is that I've rather lost interest in garter stitch scarves.

Oh, dear. I actually meant to blog about the mysterious bag of afghan squares I found underneath the scarf; those I have decided to reclaim and put together properly. I even had a picture for you, Reader. Well: coming soon to a multiplex near you.

Proof of life.

2007-08-03T22:02:00.000-05:00

I made a ridiculous pair of mittens--I won't reveal what they are, as they are a gift, but they are a fine example of how great Fair Isle knitting can be (is it Fair Isle, or just two-color knitting? I don't know what the rules of the technique are). I did most of mitten numero uno in Telemark, but the colors I chose (Royal and spoiler alert Squirrel Heather, appropriately enough) didn't offer enough contrast--and the Telemark isn't soft at all. I didn't think it would be like rose petals and clouds, but I wasn't expecting it to be like twine. I love the colors Telemark is offered in, however, and I appreciate its sturdiness; I'll just have to think of an appropriate project for it. In any case, I frogged that mitten and cast on in Merino Style, which is a real pleasure with which to knit. I don't think I've ever knit with softer yarn. The color range of the Merino Style is somewhat less impressive; I'd love to see some heathers or at least some colors with more richness and depth.

In the meantime, I've begun a Celtic Cable Scarf (PDF), pattern from Kraemer Yarns, in some Peace Fleece I purchased from a fellow Raveler, or whatever we're calling ourselves. The Peace Fleece had me worried because the fabric was so stiff with the cables and the yarn's general rugged wooliness, but I blocked it this evening whilst on the needles and it really does soften up like everyone says. Given a bath in some Eucalan and a dash of extra lanolin, it should be an excellent, long-wearing scarf. Um, however, I calculated that I will need to complete at least 30 pattern repeats (16 rows long), and so far I've been going at the rate of one a day. It certainly moves more quickly without a cable needle, but damn, scarves are a long haul.

I am currently away from Chez Bolter and Lilyriver, but I have been informed that my new yarn for my Lucy Cardigan (Berroco Ultra Alpaca in Peat) is both soft and durable and that I have no more excuses for putting off the next stage of my knitting career: SWEATERS.

a short honeymoon

2007-07-26T22:21:00.000-05:00

The best thing about finishing this is the freedom it's given me to move on to other less doomed projects. I thought about making this for months and months, bought the yarn, used it for something else, bought another yarn, bought more of it with the intention of devoting it to another since-abandoned project idea, and just generally dithered about the whole thing until my co-craftblogger finally, and rightly, told me to just cast the hell on already. I did, and I feel better now that it's over.

The only problem is that yarn...it's Jaeger Trinity, way on sale at Webs and very cool-looking, in just the bright shade of yellow my mom loves to see me in. But after I started investigating it on Ravelry, I became convinced that there is no way it's not going to stretch out and render my poor little cami unwearable. But I pressed on anyway since I didn't know what else I would ever do with such dangerous yarn, and the finished product looks pretty good, for now anyway. After a day's wear, I did detect the stretching I was dreading, so I took it off, stuck it in the closet and haven't thought about it since. And looking back at these photos, it's even boxier than I realized. Damn it, why can't I shift into an appropriately triumphant FO-blog-post tone for just a few minutes?! I have a couple ideas for full-sized sweaters in the works, and my goal is to have a least one clear success before the semester starts.

Supply your own "monkey" pun. I can't do all the work.

2007-07-24T16:02:00.000-05:00

Finis. Thank the dear lord baby Jesus. These are my Monkey socks in Koigu. I should have known that these socks would move along so slowly; they're called "Monkeys," and people who know me know that I have been rather vocal about my dislike of the dirty, nasty creatures.

Malodorous monkeys aside, I'm not sure why finishing these was so much like pulling teeth. Koigu is an excellent yarn--the base is smooth and elastic & durable and substantial without being scratchy, and the variegated colors are ingeniously done. I changed my mind about whether or not I liked the colors approximately 403280493820 times while I worked on the socks (ultimate verdict: B+), but I can, in any case, appreciate the artistry involved. The pattern is a Cookie A, and it's simple, but charming enough to sustain interest through 25 pattern repeats in greater folk than I. This sock pattern is the most popular one on Ravelry, probably because it's a Cookie A, it's not very difficult--and, as it was designed specifically for variegated yarn, it gives one something to do with all of those hand-dyed sock yarn skeins internet-savvy knitters are required by law to purchase from "indie dyers." I don't think this pattern is quite as clever as some of Cookie's other patterns, but it's clever enough.

In any case, really, I'm glad to be done with these because it means I can start something else. (I did put these socks down for about a week to do another top secret project, but I can't tell you about it, because then I would have to--well, you know the drill.) Right now, I have about half a dozen projects in the queue. I think next up are some more mittens, but on the horizon is a sweater project. Don't even get me started on the yarn woes for that one. Let's just say that some people, namely me, never learn when it comes to bargain hunting.

Wilderness crafting

2007-07-17T10:18:00.000-05:00

I wish I could knit myself a new camera.

2007-07-10T16:22:00.000-05:00

I just got all geared up to post pictures of a bunch of new projects only to find after uploading them that they are all hopelessly out of focus. I wanted to share my progress on my Honeymoon Cami, my second pair of felted clogs, and my stretchy Railway socks, but now I'm feeling out of sorts with technology and we will all just have to settle for a photo of the Koigu socks I finished a week or so ago. This blog would be so much more awesome if I (a) were more motivated and (b) had any photography skills whatsoever. In any case, the socks:

Resurgam.

2007-07-10T16:21:00.000-05:00

Well, Reader, there's been a lot of knitting this past week, but none of it has felt very satisfying to me. At left you can see one completed Monkey sock, and it's fine, if a bit loud for my taste--I'm not yet completely drinking the Kool-Aid on variegated yarn--but I need the revulsion to go away and the love of Koigu and matched pairs to return before I can do serious work on its mate.

In the meantime, I tried again on the lace scarf, and it took me an hour to do two rows, of which one was all purls. Bolty needs some faster progress than that in this heat. I'm going to try yet again with some fingering-weight yarn instead of lace weight. Eventually.

In the meantime, I'm working on a nifty cabling project. I don't have pictures of it yet. I think my affair with the afterthought thumb might be over, though, which is kind of a bummer, as I have yarn for many pairs of afterthought thumb mittens.

I also overdyed some bright green sock yarn a more usable teal, but it's veeeeeeery dark teal, almost black. Not quite the effect I was going for. Oops!

Knitting becomes a full-time job.

2007-07-04T09:42:00.000-05:00

We got our beautiful, beautiful Ravelry invites on Monday and have been dedicating ourselves to social networking through knitting. By that I mean that we are each other's only Ravelry friends, so if you, Reader, happen to have an account and want to friend us, for god's sake don't hesitate. We are thebolter and lilyriver, as usual. Memo to people with sock patterns: please. Please. Please. Do not photograph your socks in a pair of sexy, strappy high-heeled sandals. It weirds me out.

Gave the blog a facelift, too, with a little Photoshop assist from my mom. The irony of using a template with dots for a blog called "Swinging Squares" created an irresolvable conflict in this blogger's positronic brain.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

2007-06-30T08:38:00.001-05:00

Dear Knit Picks,

Please stop* making new sock yarn. I have no willpower when it comes to sock yarn.

Sincerely,

Brokey McBrokerson

*By "stop," I mean a little-known usage of the word that implies "for god's sake, keep going." Check the OED if you doubt me.

Consumpta nocte.

2007-06-28T16:04:00.000-05:00

It may not appear that there has been progress, Reader. It may even appear that this blog, like Enron, promised big things, but, due to a quasi-legal accounting system and amoral trading practices, has actually delivered nothing but rolling blackouts to the state of California. I assure you that this is not the case. Pay no attention to that bank account in the Cayman Islands. That's my retirement fund, and I like to fill the hot tub with Cristal.

No, I measure progress these days by Buffy episodes watched; and we, dear Reader, are almost done with the third season. That's a lot of episodes. We have slogged through some not very good ones for the sake of the knitting time they bring us. All for you. All for you. Except for when it was for me.

First up: finally, god help me, I finished the mates of the two socks I've been blogging about for ages, and they're blocked and ready for wear just in time for a hot, humid Jersey summer. If you have a yen to visit Jersey in the summer, ever, put your head inside of a plastic bag and breathe in your own warm, damp carbon dioxide for awhile (not for too long; don't hurt yourself. Also, never use plastic bags to line your baby's crib. That's a free tip from you to me). That's what it feels like, and now I've saved you money on gas.

In any case, I've been living with those socks for a long time, and I'm tremendously glad they're over. I am quite excited about them, however, and very much look forward to wearing them. I'm up to I think four pairs of handknit socks for the winter. I have made socks before, but I've never really had ones that were up to being worn, like, out of doors.

Secondly: I made the Odessa hat for our friend Rosey, who sent us each a felt pillow she had sewn herself. I made the hat out of Lavish Fibres alpaca in charcoal grey. The Odessa is a very popular Magknits pattern by Grumperina, and calls for a DK-weight yarn and about a hundred beads, so I used a worsted weight and no beads, and felt like such a badass. Or I made a boring hat; it's hard to tell. The pattern is a really excellent one--a combination of ssk and yo spaced several stitches apart creates the spiral of the hat, which is most visible from the top. I hope Rosey has some very tall friends who are really into hats. I also hope Rosey isn't allergic to cat hair, because the kitten likes alpaca almost as much as I do. I washed it, Rosey! I swear!

Oh, a final note: I used a circular needle for this hat, the first time I've ever used one. This will become important in just a few moments.

Third: this is a sweater knit by Lilyriver to clothe one small, naked mouse, of whom I have blogged about extensively. Like Graham himself, the sweater was sort of an experiment. Lilyriver has been working through a book called The Sweater Workshop. Graham's sweater was a final exam of sorts, and she did a bang-up job of it--it's really amazing; it has all the details of a big sweater, only very, very tiny (it is unfortunate that Graham is not really the ideal sweater model, as he lacks both a neck and shoulders). L. would blog about this herself, but she's been lying on a chaise drinking mint juleps since she finished it.

Finally--finally--we have reached the part of the post where I show you a picture of a work-in-progress that is not the thing I said I was going to work on the last time I posted. I, too, have succumbed to the lure of Koigu. I'm doing the Monkey pattern from Knitty, by Cookie A, mostly because I was reminded of it on the Yarn Harlot's blog about when I decided to work with this yarn next and partly because I love Cookie A's aesthetic and most of her patterns are way harder than this one. Inspired by my foray into the world of circular needles with the Odessa hat, I've decided to do these socks on two circs. I'll keep you posted. Probably.

So much progress, it's almost too much progress...

2007-06-23T19:01:00.000-05:00

So the Summer of Crafting is going along just about how we imagined it back during the Winter of Drudgery. I rushed to finish the camisole I talked about earlier, and since then I've knitted -- and felted! -- several other objects. First, the Fibertrends Felted Clogs in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes. These pictures of one of the pre-felted clogs are pretty much their own reward, so I won't comment much on them, except to say that while the clog has obviously shrunk considerably since the photo was taken, Hazel has progressed through a few dozen growth spurts. She has of course not yet fully emerged from her kitten cocoon, but she's much less pliable now and I'm not sure if she'd stand for such humiliation these days. I guess we will see when I knit another pair of these clogs, since I'm pretty certain that I will. In fact, I'm pretty certain I will knit several pairs -- if you're reading this, you'll probably get a pair. For these, I duplicate stitched my first initial in the contrasting color before felting, which gives the finished clog a nice Laverne-and-Shirley vibe, I think. I've got all kinds of ideas for how to embellish other pairs (but don't worry, I swear to you that none of them involve novelty yarns!) and I'm quite excited to get them underway, especially now that I've gotten a feel for felting in my apartment complex's crappy and expensive washing machine. Aside from the clogs, I also felted a navy blue oven mitt, this time in Wool of the Andes Bulky (see? I try new things -- this time it was bulky!), for Father's Day. I don't have pictures of that one, but it's just a big stiff navy blue glove, so you can probably imagine what it looks like. Instead, to prove what an impartial two-cat owner I am, I offer this photo of Joe inspecting the finished left clog.After my felting binge, I finished the Child's First Sock from the Nancy Bush book, however, aside from turning out far too small, they are so full of mistakes that I can't quite bring myself to photograph them. I also kind of hate the yarn I used; every time I look at it, I relive its scratchiness and tendency towards splitting. I may be exaggerating how badly these turned out -- we'll see how I feel in the fall when I try to wear them. Instead, I'd like to share with you my work on a Very Special Pair of Socks, during the knitting of which I have overcome many difficulties and learned some important lessons. Well, okay, only one of two socks is finished so there may still be more lessons to learn, but nevertheless I'm feeling pretty proud of myself. I used the Koigu I bought at School Products on our tour of NYC yarn stores and I have to admit that it really is just about as excellent as people say it is. I'd originally intended to knit up my Trekking Pro Natura but after considering a ridiculous number of patterns and failing utterly to get the toe of the Sherman Sock properly underway, I switched to the Koigu in an attempt to rouse myself out of the resulting funk. Luckily, an amazing Knitty tutorial, Amy Swenson's Universal Toe-Up Sock Formula, made everything click for me. I don't know enough about short-row heels and toes to judge whether there is anything particularly innovative about this pattern, but Amy's instructions, the Ridged Feather stitch pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks, and the magical Koigu have produced what has definitely been my best sock-knitting experience so far. I've just bound off the first sock, and I'm still jazzed enough to want to start the second one right away -- well, as soon as I weave in those ends.

Assorted FOs, if one is liberal with the definition of "FO," as one, one hopes, will choose to be.

2007-06-12T12:26:00.000-05:00

First, the promised Corazon mittens from the Knitty pattern. I used, as I noted below, an alpaca/silk blend from Knit Picks, and its shininess made it largely camera-proof. Mittens, it turns out, are rather awkward to photograph. In any case, my experience doing the colorwork vastly improved once I got it into my head how to knit without tangling the yarn: always keep one color under and the other over. It's slower at first, but you don't have to untangle the yarn every row or whatever. I did not come up with a good picture of the palm. I was frankly a bit relieved about that because the back is noticeably uneven. The colors, as you can see if you follow the pattern link, switch every stitch and I found it very difficult for about the first mitten and a quarter of the second to keep it looking as nice as I wanted to. That improved somewhat once I was able to keep my yarn straight.

Here's a close-up of the stitchwork on a mystery hat. As you can see (I hope), I did my first cables. I looooove cables, you guys. They're total genius. It was a hell of a breakthrough for me once I was able to comprehend that you don't have to knit stitches in the same order. That's all a basic cable is: stitches knitted out of order. I think for my next fancy sock, I'll use Nancy Bush's Conwy pattern, which features tiny braided cables. I did the hat in a worsted weight alpaca I purchased from the Inter-America Group on eBay. I think that the next time I do a hat, though, I will use bamboo needles, which are of course much lighter than metal ones. The metal ones were heavy enough to cramp my wrists a little bit.

Finally, I offer you two lonely socks. One is the Eclipse sock I've been blogging about forever; I've just finished the gusset decreases on its mate, so "all" I've got left is the long, slow march to the toe. My progress on this sock has been hampered by its tedium. I desperately want the pair to be done so that I can start another plain stockinette pair in Meilenweit Colortweed, of which I, um, have three different shades. The other sock is my Vintage Sock project, the Child's French sock. It is nigh impossible to photograph it adequately, so I hope you will take it on faith that it is as it ought to be. I am extremely worried about blocking this sock; since it's not a superwash wool, I can't count on the drier to shrink it back to size if it grows. I suspect that it's going to grow quite badly because the pattern called for 72 stitches across 2.5mm needles, which equals a lot of extra yarn for a sock. I am waiting to block it until I finish the pair (I am working on the heel flap of the second right now) because if it blows, I'll never finish and I'll just have this loose thread hanging over my life forever and on my death bed I'll say, I should've finished those goddamn socks, and I'll find out that hell is really just me tediously working on the other sock forever knowing that there were no elephants in hell to wear this huge never-to-be-finished goddamn sock [redacted for length and increasing hysteria].

One kind of gross thing is that this yarn proved to be a frigging beacon for cat hair. My cats are awesome, but I really don't feel the need to knit anything from their fur. As a side note, I'm using Knit Picks DPNs and they are really excellent. (As for the color of the sock, the picture of the full sock represents the color much better than in the close-up.)

Seriously?! I want a do-over.

2007-06-10T11:08:00.000-05:00

What kind of yarn are you?

You are Dishcloth Cotton.You are a very hard worker, most at home when you're at home. You are thrifty and seemingly born to clean. You are considered to be a Plain Jane, but you are too practical to notice.
Take this quiz!

In place of a real post, I offer you a yarn quiz.

2007-06-09T21:35:00.000-05:00

What kind of yarn are you?

You are Shetland Wool. You are a traditional sort who can sometimes be a little on the harsh side. Though you look delicate you are tough as nails and prone to intricacies. Despite your acerbic ways you are widely respected and even revered.
Take this quiz!

Why didn't we think of this?

2007-06-06T14:52:00.000-05:00

Hand-dyed yarn inspired by TV shows -- brilliant, right? There's even a Law & Order colorway. Quick, somebody disable my paypal account!

FO in the house!!!

2007-06-02T20:51:00.000-05:00

Now the only question is whether the finished object will go OUT of the house...

So, yeah, I finished the straps and the seams and wove in the ends on my tank top tonight, and though it it certainly far from flawlessly made and I do have some qualms about it, the more I look at it, the more I think it may be the most wearable knitted garment I've yet produced. Just to recap, this is the razor cami from a free (and quite popular) pattern from Katie Knits. (Having looked around on the site, I've decided I also want to knit everything Katie Knits. She makes just the kind of fitted sweaters I hope I can learn to knit for myself.) I used just over 4 skeins of a cotton/modal blend yarn, Knit Picks Shine Sport in Silver Sage, and I followed the pattern pretty much to the letter, except that I didn't do the constrast edging at the top and I made my straps with I-cord instead of ribbing. This pattern was really a lot of fun to knit because it required just the right amount of concentration and attention to detail -- not so much that I couldn't properly watch TV while knitting, but not so little I wanted to hang myself with yarn out of boredom by the time my knitted tube was 16" long. The true test of this project, though, will come when I attempt to make an outfit with the cami and get through a day feeling comfortable in it. If that happens, I'll really feel like I completed something.

Next up, I need to finish the second of my pair of Vintage Socks, but before I do, I will probably cast on the Fiber Trends felted clogs I've been planning to make (it seems like everyone knits these, but here is one example I like). I already have the yarn, Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in avocado and blueberry (Okay, so we really like Knit Picks... We do not, however, like Knit Picks' pattern for a knitted tie. If there are any fathers reading this: DON'T WORRY, we will never knit you ties!). I even bought new needles and ordered the pattern from a seller on eBay. So there is a lot invested in this, my first adventure in felting. And though I've come to regret the Christmas of the novelty yarn scarf and I can promise there will never be a Christmas of the knitted tie, I can't promise that if this pattern proves as fun as I expect it will that 2007 won't see the Christmas of the felted clog...

Mirabile dictu!

2007-06-02T20:34:00.000-05:00

So I've spent the last week or so--countless hours of television!--attempting to reproduce the Knitty Corazon pattern (more or less), and I've finished the mittens, finally. They're blocking now and I'll post pictures when they're done drying. In the meantime, I'll show you the nifty new trick I learned. I've put the picture at left because, um, it makes the post look better, but think of it as a preview of the amazing, incredible, unbelievable (POW! KAZAAM!) afterthought thumb. It's genius, you guys.

First, I made a few modifications to the pattern. Quite obviously, I used different yarns. I decided to go with Knit Picks Elegance, a 70% alpaca and 30% silk blend, in coal and barn red (I'm not normally a red person, but I'm matching two scarves I already own and a hat I made a long time ago. This red is lovely as reds go, however). I love alpaca, even though actual alpacas are kind of weird looking and certainly not as cute as sheep. Alpaca is so soft and lightweight--and still warm, apparently, although it's already pretty damn warm in New Jersey right now. It's sort of like sticking your hands in flour. The Elegance developed a fuzzy halo, especially on the palm, where the colors alternate so frequently. It makes the colorwork less precise. I think the effect is neat, but may be a drawback to alpaca yarn if you don't like that.

The modifications to the pattern itself: those of you who know Spanish would, I imagine, recognize immediately that the word "corazon" means heart (I think?), but I spent my college years (and now, alas, part of this summer) on Latin and I didn't realize until right before I was going to start knitting that the design is actually made up of hearts. That's a little too cutesy for me. I made a minor change to the design and substituted a contrast color stitch to a main color stitch on the joins between each heart and made the effect more sort of abstractly floral. I also made the cuffs about 3" instead of the 2" called for by the pattern, and used size 2 needles for the cuff & top (I wanted to make sure I had a snug fit) instead of size 3s. Finally, and most noticeably, after knitting the top shaping decreases, kitchenering the top, and blocking the first mitten, I realized that I still hated the point at the top, and also that the mitten was way too long, so I ripped it back about an inch.

But! The amazing trick I learned by working this pattern was the afterthought thumb. It's so cool. I am really inching to start a new pair of socks so I can try out the afterthought heel, which works along the same principle. You knit in a piece of waste yarn in the spot where you want your thumb (or heel) and then slip the stitches with the waste yarn back to the left needle and continue working in pattern. Then when everything's all done, you come back and "unzip" the stitches on the waste yarn and pick them up. It's total genius. I did have to reinforce the base of the thumb, as the picked up stitches can make a bit of a mess at the joins, or, at least, they did for me. I imagine that none of that really made sense, and I can't say it really did for me until about the fifth time I read the Corazon pattern and meditated on what it means to "unzip" for awhile. It will suffice to say that it's awesome.

A dollar short.

2007-05-31T19:26:00.001-05:00

I have photos for you people (notice that I boldly assume the plural) and projects to share, but I can't find my camera cord. In the meantime, I encourage you to imagine a finished RCC Eclipse sock and a finished Child's French sock, as well as a pair of mittens about 3/4 of the way done.

the fruits of my leisure

2007-05-28T14:37:00.000-05:00

I (finally!) have some new listings to share. A pair of them, in fact. They're nothing too different as I'm just getting warmed up again, but it felt nice to get out the supplies again after leaving them so long neglected (especially the ones that accumulated during the paper-writing blitz). I've got a huge stash of briolettes waiting, so I fear there is much wire-wrapping ahead....

Aside from the jewelry making, I have also been knitting quite
intensely this week, knitting with a goal in mind, for once. I had decided awhile back I wanted to make a tank top and for a long time I vacillated between the Honeymoon Camisole from Knitty and the Summertime Tunic, one of the free patterns offered by Interweave Knits, but a week ago I came across this pattern for a lace camisole and knew it was perfect. I took this picture of my progress a couple days ago, but now, three discs of TV on DVD later, I'm only about 3" from the top (it's knit in the round from the bottom up). And so my goal is to finish it and wear it before it gets so hot here that I can't bear to put on any clothes at all.

We Take Manhattan

2007-05-24T21:19:00.000-05:00

In all the excitement over the new kitten (her name is Hazel and so far we have learned that she might like yarn, which is good because we have a lot of yarn), our LYS visits in NYC (are you down with the lingo?) have gone undocumented. Yesterday we hit four knitting stores in Manhattan:

School Products, where we each got some amazing Koigu sock yarn. I remain puzzled about the name, as they really do sell only yarn. They seem to have good deals on higher-end fibers. I have really only shopped extensively for sock yarn and worsted weight wool & alpaca, so I can't tell you how good the deals are. They did have gray worsted-weight superwash wool for $12/lb. It's also available on their web site. Koigu is more or less the only sock yarn they have, but if you're just going to carry one, that's a good choice. I haven't shopped very much for Koigu, but it is really delightful: soft, squishy, and spun really well. We were the only people in the store, which was actually pretty spacious for a Manhattan shop.
Yarn Connection, which was okay--they had some reasonably priced cotton that Lilyriver briefly considered for a tank top, though she ultimately decided against it. Very limited sock yarn selection--looked like maybe they were a little low on stock? Business seemed pretty slow.
Knitty City, which was our favorite. They had a lot of sock yarn: Claudia Handpainted, a little Koigu, a few colors of Lorna's, Louet Gems, a limited selection of Regia & Trekking--all for the typical retail prices. I didn't buy anything, though I was very much tempted by the Claudia Handpainted in "Stormy Day." The shop looks like it has a lot of customers and a lively group of employees teaching classes.
Yarn Company, which did not appear to have sock yarn. We didn't have time to ask them if this was really true or if we just missed something, but in the words of the immortal Keanu Reeves...Whoa. Okay, I totally should have known; they don't have any on their web site. There weren't too many people in the shop except a clique-ish group of women knitting around a table, and they ignored us--if it's important to you to get a "Hello" when you walk in the door, this might not be the place for you.

We also hit a really excellent used bookstore. Lilyriver found five volumes of Va. Woolf's diaries and I got a couple of novels I'd been wanting to read (Grendel and The Thin Place). So, in short, we came back with some sock yarn (and a little lace weight) and books, neither of which we have room for. After this whirlwind shopping tour, we had an excellent dinner with Susan, who kindly agreed to meet up with us after a long day at work.

We missed Seaport Yarns and PURL Soho, both of which were farther south in Manhattan than we wanted to go. PURL, especially, is supposed to be great, and their web site promises a fine selection of Lorna's Laces.

I do not need, nor should I buy, anymore yarn for a long time, but if I did...I probably wouldn't make a point of getting it from a LYS. It's sacrilege, I know, and I do understand the value of supporting local businesses and microcommunities, etc., etc., but you really can't beat the selection you can find online--and I really enjoy bargain hunting.

Tiny kittens: good for decoupage?

2007-05-24T13:03:00.000-05:00

Don't tell Joe, but I think this kitten might get a sweater.

7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7x7

2007-05-22T16:04:00.000-05:00

I learned to knit my first year in college in a class with Lilyriver and Rachel. I was the last person in the class to figure out how to do it and I'm pretty sure the woman had despaired that I ever would. But I did, eventually, and that winter I knit approximately 430284038204 hats.
I read Jurassic Park 11 times in fifth grade. I rewrote (or, rather, began a rewrite of) Jurassic Park to incorporate a new character named Liz (then my favorite name), who was a thirteen-year-old math genius (I wanted to be Malcolm). I wrote about fifty pages in double spaced, 12 pt., dark blue New Courier bold.
Until I hit seventh grade, I did all my computer writing in 12 pt. dark blue New Courier bold. ETA: My mother expressed some concern for my font choice, but I reassured her that I now actually kind of hate Courier. I do, however, like faux-antique typewriter fonts.
I also began a story about two identical twins, one good and one evil. Their names were Dana and Delaney. (My mom loves China Beach.)
When I was very young, I had nightmares about an episode of It's Garry Shandling's Show, in which Garry is trapped in a deep manhole in front of his house with a broken leg. I'm afraid to look it up and find out I was actually, like, 12.
I like to read signs backwards. I have decided that if I ever have a soap opera, I am going to set it in a town called Timil Deeps.
I don't really think the cat needs a sweater, but I definitely want Lilyriver to knit him one.

tagalong

2007-05-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

Since Rainsend tagged our blog (I feel so included! I guess blog rings really work after all!), I've decided that replying should be my first official act of summer. Technically, summer started yesterday after we turned in our papers, and I guess the Goodwill excursion, TV marathon, and ice cream binges were pretty summery acts...but this is the first day entirely free of academic writing, so here is some entirely non-academic writing. Here we go.

7 Things About Jellenifer:

7. (This one has a special limited audience.) I am not now, nor have I ever been, knitting the kitten a sweater.

6. I'm a terrible, hesistant, erratic driver. It's a miracle I've never been in a real accident. I think the problem began early: at 9, I ran my bike into a stop sign. (No, they don't have moving stop signs in Ohio.)

5. If I listen to music while walking, I have to walk in rhythm (with my left foot on the down beat). This strangely does not apply when I'm jogging.

4. I twist my hair, sometimes even in public, sometimes even in class. I worry it's an obnoxious habit, but I can't stop. I'm doing it right now.

3. In high school I ate an orange every day as part of my lunch. I was really proud that I could peel them all in one piece, and I liked the smell of the peels so much I would save little bits of them in my locker and coat pockets.

2. If I sit in one position too long and especially if I squat down to look at a bottom bookshelf or something else low to the ground, I black out when I stand up and it takes a good ten or twenty seconds for my vision to return. The official internet self-diagnosis is orthostatic hypotension, but I think mostly I just need to drink more water.

1. A confession: I know so few other bloggers that the second half of this process (the tagging of other bloggers) will have to be deferred until I can find some people to tag...

I think this just means I'm bored with my paper.

2007-05-19T20:45:00.000-05:00

You appear to be a Knitting Adventurer. You are through those knitting growing pains and feeling more adventurous. You can follow a standard pattern if it's not too complicated and know where to go to get help. Maybe you've started to experiment with different fibers and you might be eyeing a book with a cool technique you've never tried. Perhaps you prefer to stick to other people's patterns but you are trying to challenge yourself more. Regardless of your preference, you are continually trying to grow as a knitter, and as well you should since your non-knitting friends are probably dropping some serious hints, these days.http://marniemaclean.com
Take this quiz!

An elitist in every genre.

2007-05-19T20:33:00.000-05:00

What Kind of Knitter Are You?
You appear to be a Knitting Purist. You are an accomplished knitter producing beautiful pieces with a classic feel. You sometimes lament losing half of your local yarn shop to garish novelty yarns. Perhaps you consider fun fur scarves the bane of knitting society and prefer to steer new knitters towards the wool and cotton blends. Some might call you a bit of an elitist but you know that you've been doing this craft long enough to respect the history behind it and honor it with beautiful piece that can last a lifetime. http://marniemaclean.com
Take this quiz!

Summer preview edition!

2007-05-19T12:26:00.000-05:00

Pretty soon, faithful Reader, there will be more posts of joy for you. For example, I have finished one of my stripey socks and am about to turn the heel on the other, and I'm about halfway done with the foot of my Knitting Vintage sock, and--and!--Lilyriver has successfully done a short-row heel on her Knitting Vintage sock. We have plenty of projects in store which, no doubt, will be copiously, and perhaps needlessly, blogged for you, including a tank top, felted clogs, and jewelry from Lilyriver, some mittens and a lace scarf from me*, socks socks SOCKS, perhaps a Clapotis or two...and maybe even more yarn dyeing, if you're lucky.

In the meantime, I will offer you a little Googletainment in the form of a keyword that someone used to get to our blog:

liver of sulfur silver mirror

*And, god help me, I have the pattern and the yarn picked out for my first sweater. But we'll see if I get there any time soon. This will not come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, but I really enjoy endlessly planning projects, possibly more than actually doing them. For an example of a more responsible crafter, we might look to Lilyriver, who wisely looks no more than a project or two into the future.

Intersession

2007-05-14T16:26:00.000-05:00

Phew. I've finished my third final paper and I'm feeling just absolutely unable to start the last one right now, so in the meantime, I bring you this photo of all the crafty progress I've made in probably the last....oh, god who knows how long. This the "Child's First Sock in Shell Pattern" from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks, which is such a wonderful book I just want to crawl inside it and knit my way out again, which I will do in T minus 6 days...

The yarn I'm using is some weird superwash wool that according to its label is from Germany but looks as though its been on the shelf at the LYS long enough to actually qualify these socks as vintage. I chose it because I liked the reddish brown color and because, as the Bolter puts it, "it was the only viable sock yarn" in the whole store.

Dialectic dichotomy word salad.

2007-05-11T16:19:00.000-05:00

Good news: I kitchenered the toe for my first sock out of the Regia Canadian Classic Eclipse...Christ almighty, I need to learn a shorthand way of writing that out, because I also have RCFC Winnipeg and RCC Brasil and it's hard enough to keep track of my 43280483209 potential projects. Anyway! Good news: I kitchenered the toe for my first sock out of blahblahblah.

Bad news: Um, I somehow dropped a stitch while doing it. I may not be an adventurous or particularly skilled knitter, but I have kitchenered a lot of toes and haven't dropped a stitch doing it before. I will admit that I was up until 5:30 last night grading exams (stupidly, so stupidly; totally my fault I was up that late) and today I'm wandering around in a bit of a fog. I was walking to the kitchen to refill my coffee mug and took a drink of what was left in the cup and actually somehow forgot how to swallow properly. I definitely dribbled coffee down the front of my shirt. I do that on a good night's sleep, though, as Lilyriver will undoubtedly attest.

Good news, the sequel: Dropped stitch aside, the sock looked really cute with one of my many, many clogs.

Bad news, the sequel: But I totally had to rip it back. I frogged about two inches of the damn thing. I probably could have rigged something up, but I figured I may as well do it right. We'll see how long this kind of ethical crafting lasts.

Good news, Part III, and unless it's Prisoner of Azkaban, you know that's not really a good thing: This will allow me to correct a couple of other errors. First of all, one of my feet is slightly longer than the other (like, by a quarter of an inch or so), and I always forget which it is, and apparently, while sizing this sock, I picked the wrong one. So the sock worked on one foot, but it was a stretch, so to speak, on the other, unless I wanted to risk its untimely death. Secondly, and this is why I ripped it back so far, there were a couple of loose stitches that I had hoped would even out when I washed the socks, but...in for a penny, in for a pound.

I hope these socks appreciate what I've done for them. I am so tired of this yarn, you guys.

The latest from Lilyriver Labs.

2007-05-04T10:24:00.000-05:00

Invisible sock yarn!

Some assembly required.
Specs and ordering info to follow.

Knitting that's always already being (having been?) done.

2007-05-03T21:59:00.000-05:00

Sock WIP #1
Plain stockinette pattern, Regia Canadian Fashion Colors Eclipse.
Note also the wimping out on the short row heel.

Sock WIP #2
Hetero life partner to the above.

Sock WIP #3
Trust me on this one, Reader; it's the Child's French Sock. The yarn is Chinese; it came from a destasher on Etsy. It's way prettier than my knitting, alas.

The other shoe drops.

2007-04-26T21:26:00.000-05:00

After all the business about the sock patterns I wanted to knit, I cast on tonight for an entirely different sock--a pattern called Child's French Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks (again, not a pattern for children, depsite the name). I'm doing it up in a Jawoll superwash that's kind of a spring green. I'm kind of in love with the yarn. Also, I love that Jawoll comes in cute tiny skeins and I don't have to hand wind it. Anyway, I did about ten rows of the ribbing at the top during a couple of episodes of Arrested Development...and will probably now have to abandon the sock for the next month while I write my papers. I do still have my other two plain stockinette socks going, and those should be good for study breaks.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I fail at having a reasonably-lengthed attention span.

Edited to add: Wait, I actually did have this one on my list. Congratulations, me. I guess?

about time

2007-04-23T22:53:00.000-05:00

I'm so pleased because I've finally been able to list a new item in my shop after a ridiculously long dry spell. And for the first time in weeks, one of my ideas actually worked -- and worked both times! So at least the time I should have spent reading wasn't totally wasted.

Here, then, is my second pair of silly space-themed earrings. We think they're almost what you might even venture to call "funky."

Part Two: Sock Patterns, or Socks As Traffic Violations

2007-04-23T07:47:00.000-05:00

I think I've decided what kind of socks I want to make with my Lorna's Laces: Jaywalkers, by Grumperina. I would like to take a moment to register my annoyance with people/publications who do their sample socks in variegated yarn. You cannot see what a garment looks like if it's done in busy yarn! I mean, my LL yarn is by no means for the faint of heart, but...I'm just knitting for myself. I only know really what the Jaywalkers are really supposed to look like because tons of people have knitted them. At any rate, it turns out that someone on Flickr has already done Jaywalkers in the LL Motherlode colorway, so you, Reader, and I can have an idea of what my proposed Jaywalkers will look like (I hope). The pattern, in case it isn't clear, makes zig zag stripes; normally, the yarn would knit up something like this. I have no clue what that person did to make the yarn photograph like it has a cold, but the colors are truer in the Jaywalker photo.

Part One: Sock Patterns...no, don't run away! Come back!

2007-04-22T14:25:00.000-05:00

Um, so I've been looking at sock patterns like crazy lately, mostly because of the massive quantities of sock yarn I've been buying. Trolling for sock patterns and yarn does not equal actually knitting socks, but for the next month, what with the papers and whatnot, my knitting will be sparse and boring. (I cast on for the leg of the mate of the Regia Canadian Colors Eclipse sock I've been working on--no, the first one's not done yet, for, though I decided to go with the simple flap heel, I have not gotten any farther than knitting the flap for it--so I could have something to work on during the movie I projected last Wednesday. Between that, some library knitting, and the pilgrimage to the Princeton* library yesterday, I have maybe 3-4 inches done. My dilemma now is that dropped from 2.5mm needles on the leg to 2.0mm for the foot seems to be a bit too much of a difference, so I think that I'll move up to 2.25 mm needles after I turn the heel. A tighter fabric is better for the heel anyway, right? That would mean, however, that I will have used needles of four different sizes at various stages of this sock, which is ridiculous. Anyway! I hope to continue to plug away at these socks whilst I work on my papers.)

In any case, I thought I'd assemble a list of some patterns I'd like to try, and perhaps the largely silent, but copious (she says optimistically), readers of this blog may care to weigh in (anonymously if necessary) on which they find appealing and what they definitely do not.

I have Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Sock Patterns, and I love nearly all the patterns; from it, I'm especially interested in:

Gentlemen's Socks. This is my favorite out of the book; the stitch pattern is understated and visually interesting. I'd probably do these in a similar kind of yarn--I am really in love with yarn that's plied with two colors like the Lana Grossa yarn because it produces such a neat heathered effect. I don't have any of the Lana Grossa yarn because--well, if you know me, you know that my buying habits are often perplexing, in that I like to stalk things that I really want and not buy them for a long time, buying, instead, other, cheaper things that are sort of like what I want but are not quite good enough. Luckily, all yarn, some of the more outlandish jacquard patterns notwithstanding, is "good enough," so I can wait until I find a fine deal. Maybe.
Miranda Sock; on a model. This is my second favorite pattern. I think I'd do this one in a single-color yarn, or at least a subtly-variegated one. I hate the calf shaping on the sock, though--why is that necessary? It's not as tall as a knee sock. Unless I'm feeling like I really want to learn how to do calf shaping, I'll just use the stitch pattern.
Child's French Sock; another picture. Nancy Bush has adapted this pattern for a child's sock to fit a larger foot. I have the perfect yarn for it: some Chinese red/subtly blue-plied sock yarn I got for a song from a destasher on Etsy.

That's all for now, Reader.

*Lilyriver has referred to Princeton as the "pleasure palace of the privileged," which is as apt as it is alliterative.

straight to the source

2007-04-20T19:07:00.000-05:00

The Bolter swears it will never come to this, but if we ever become the kind of fiber artists who want to cut out the middlemen -- ALL of the middlemen -- I've found a supplier for us.

shrugs

2007-04-19T20:19:00.000-05:00

Well, the shrug is finished, and I think its name pretty much sums up how I feel about it (although it does look nice on the lingerie/yarn chest we inherited last weekend). Everything went according to plan and it was incredibly simple to make, but I'm just not in love with the color or the ruffles on the sleeves, which are the very elements that sparked my enthusiasm for the project to begin with. I keep imagining it in black with nice understated cuffs, which I think is just proof that I really do have a fashion sense as boring as my younger sister always says it is -- as if I need another black layer in my wardrobe! But the ruffles were fun to make at least, and I did come away very impressed with the Lamb's Pride yarn, which feels soft yet substantial against the skin. As you can see in the sleeve detail, even the simple 1x1 rib in this pattern shows up well, so I can imagine more complicated stitch patterns would look really sharp. If I make any interesting (or unbloggably boring) scarves next winter, I will probably use this yarn again. In fact, maybe I should just sew up the rest of the shrug and keep it as a nice tube scarf...

Anyway, the shrug is done, long live the shorts! Luckily I seemed to have coordinated my knitting projects so that I am never without something in pink to work on. Last night I finished the crotch increases on my shorts, divided the round into the two legs, and did the cable cast-on that forms one side of the crotch seam. This was my first encounter with the cable cast-on, and I have to say we did not exactly hit it off. For some reason the plys (?) of my yarn kept coming apart as I was making the new stitches. But I muddled through and now I think I could finish these damn shorts in one or two good TV marathons, which is exciting but also a little unsettling because I have no idea what I want to knit next. Perhaps something that will make me look cuter in pictures...?

Labyrinth.

2007-04-17T21:24:00.000-05:00

Well, Reader, there has been knitting, but there has not been productive knitting--at least by me. Lilyriver finished her lovely shawl and should make an appearance with it on soon enough. The lace scarf, I'm sorry to say, is going back in my box until I can give it my full attention. Ready, set, May 25.

As soon as my camera battery has been replaced, I'll post pictures of the haul Lilyriver and I got from my grandmother's craft stash. I am pretty pumped about using her needles, especially some of the lovely wooden ones. We also took home her beautiful hardwood lingerie chest, and it's the nicest thing we currently have in our apartment...so we're using it to store yarn.

Learning that my classes today were cancelled, I decided not to get a jumpstart on the papers looming like vultures over my head and instead learn how to make short-row heels. Seven hours later (the seven hours, I'll note, includes frequent yarn-browsing breaks), I have a short-row heeled sock. I do not have a picture of it because my camera battery is dead. I do not have joy coming off me in waves because the heel is full of holes. I'm itching, itching to rip it out and do the usual flap-gusset heel, even though I know I'll never get the short-row business down if I give up now. My short-row heel isn't hideous, and may, with a few clever picked up stitches, be serviceable, but it's not as pretty as all the ones I looked at on Flickr. Mine has this problem and this* problem. The latter problem is fixable through picked up stitches. The former really isn't. It's gotta come out. The only thing that I need to decide is what I'm going to replace it with.

But see, what's killing me is that I've already done the heel three times. For my first two tries, I used two different tutorials and couldn't quite make heads or tails of them. For my third try, I used this one by cosmicpluto, and I know--I know--that there's nothing wrong with the tutorial.

But no, I'll persevere. I'll rip it out a do it a fourth time. But not today. Dear god, not today.

*The other thing that makes me sad about that green patterned sock is that it's yet another discontinued Knit Picks Simple Stripe yarn that I covet. Covet, covet, covet.

I never thought it could happen to me, but....

2007-04-13T18:46:00.000-05:00

Remember how I was all like, Pooling? Who cares about pooling? Pooling's great, you damn yarn whiners.

Famous last words.

All I did was drop down a size and a half in needles and the yarn made that crazy giant purple and blue stripe on the foot! It was, I admit, really fun to knit; I could hardly believe my eyes while it was happening. But what happened to the green? How will I ever replicate that effect on the second sock? The answer to the second question is, of course, that there's no way I can. I'm more likely to knit the face of Jesus in the second sock than I am to get that stripe back. And it's cool, but suddenly what I thought might be a tasteful (HA) autumn sock might instead hop in a van and spend its summer following the Grateful Dead.

In other news, I cast on a new sock (not that one's mate, much to the dismay of the long-suffering Lilyriver) with my Regia Canadian Classic Colors Eclipse, and it's knitting up so quickly and easily that I feel kind of bad about it. I have done another couple inches since I took that picture. Another wild colorway, that's for sure. The Regia yarn, it turns out, is really excellent for socks--it's spun quite tightly and doesn't split. It really seems like it'll last forever even if I machine wash and dry. It isn't as soft as the 100% merino wool sock I just made, but I'm sure I'll get more wear out of it.

What fresh hell is this?

Drive-by post: knitting as investigative journalism.

2007-04-12T07:51:00.000-05:00

A yarn empire exposé.

Yarn yearnings: YThe yaccidental yconsumer.

2007-04-11T14:08:00.000-05:00

Through various accidents of fate, I have wound up with:

1 ball Regia Canadian Colors Eclipse (#4745).
2+ hanks Lorna's Laces Motherlode.

You may notice that neither colorway are ones I identified as having wanted in my previous yarn post. The LL came from a blog sale, and I got a great deal; the Regia from eBay, when I resolved that I would get the Canadian Colors Brasil--but the only seller listing it couldn't find her last ball, so I agreed to let her substitute the Eclipse instead.

No more yarn, seriously. No more yarn.

P.S. I finished a sock this morning. I swear the yarn is getting used. Just...not as quickly as I acquire it. Get ready for A Summer of Crafting Mania! (TM).

P.P.S. Don't tell my mom, but I switched scarf patterns. She totally looked! (It's genetic.) Also I decided I didn't like the Knitty pattern after all.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

2007-04-08T09:28:00.000-05:00

No pictures today, Readers: there are none to be had. I am annoyed. After five years of yarn over-avoidance, I thought I may as well learn how to do them, and give one of the Knitty patterns a try. Everyone does Knitty patterns, y'all. And I wanted a break from my sock, the colors of which have become increasingly nauseating as I proceed. I chose this pattern (warning: the person who gave birth to me should not look. However, if I saw a warning like that directed at me, I would totally look. But I read the last page of a book before I read the first one) and some Knit Picks Gloss.

And I have frogged and frogged and frogged. RIBBIT.

I have not made it through one ten-row pattern repeat yet. I have not even made it past row five. I drop stitches. I wind up with the wrong number of stitches. I emote through italics. Everything about the pattern is easy--even the yarn overs, which, it turns out, I was wrong to avoid--but sort of impossible for me to fix without taking out a couple rows.

I've rolled it all back up into the ball for now. This is a sign, probably, that I need to work on the presentation I have to give this week. Or take a nap.

In which it proves startlingly difficult to photograph a sock.

2007-04-05T22:01:00.000-05:00

Today, Readers, I gave my beige tweed socks a test drive, and while I can't say I'm falling over myself in rapture to the joy of hand knit socks, they were lovely. I think they felted a bit on the bottom, which should not have happened but may prove fortuitous as it should make the fabric stronger.

But the purpose of this post is to showcase the sock at left. I've done the cuff and the top of the foot in a 3x1 rib using size 1.5 dpns (for the foot I'm using 0s). I made the cuff a bit longer than I've done before--it's around six inches--and that might cause me some trouble, as I have some concerns about running out of yarn. I'd just do the toe in a contrasting color, so it wouldn't be a disaster, but it's making me think about learning how to do socks via the toe-up method. In any case, it's another simple design, enabling me to knit while I'm reading (sort of) or screening films in the dark or whatever. The real pleasure of the project is the yarn, which, as I've mentioned before, came from kaleido's Etsy shop. It's 100% merino wool, meaning that it's not superwash and therefore must be handwashed, but 1) I'd probably handwash them anyway and 2) the yarn, without the nylon and the superwash wool treatment, is quite amazingly soft. One may, I realize, have some reservations about the colors (this is not a sock for the faint of heart), but as I've said before, sock knitting is all about putting one's pesky "taste" aside in favor of more interesting knitting. The picture at right I include because it's truer to the actual colors of the sock.

Oh! And the Brittany folks came through and sent me replacements for my snapped needles free of charge. In fact, they sent me an entirely new set, so if you'd like two five inch size 0 dpns, you know who to call.

already gone

2007-04-04T23:21:00.000-05:00

They've already changed the homepage, but luckily we captured the screen -- I was top row center.

They really like me!

2007-04-04T20:16:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post to share some Etsy excitement: a pair of my earrings is right now being featured on the homepage! (Don't worry, I'll post a screencap soon, too.) Amandamade (who sells some highly covetable quilted bags) chose them for her treasury, which was chosen for the front page, and just like that, I've hit the big time! Okay, so in the grand scheme of things, it's no big deal, but I've got to say it feels pretty good. And not only this surprise but also a fantastic Easter package was waiting for me after class today. I just want to curl up in bed with my chocolate and my laptop and stay there until summer.

Conform. Consume. Obey

2007-04-02T12:31:00.000-05:00

I feel like I'd be a better person if I patronized one charming vendor instead of hunting for "bargains" on eBay, but part of the fun of yarn-buying is the thrill of the hunt. Without further ado, the sock yarns I'd love to buy if I were independently wealthy and/or could knit fast enough to justify adding to my stash:

Regia Canadian Colors in Brasil (#4741) or Canadian Colors Fashion Collection in Winnipeg (#4734). Yes, this is yarn from a German company made in Italy in colors inspired by Canada. Or, in the case of the 4741, yarn inspired by Brazil from a German company made in Italy in a line made for the Canadian market.
Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, in Vera, Watercolor, Baltic Sea, Aslan, Gold Hill, Pioneer, or Argyle. I am really enamored of LL's colorways--you can look for yourself if you'd like. They're a gold standard, as far as I can tell. People have all kinds of pooling problems with this yarn and bitch about it constantly (not so much in the link I sent you to, just wanted to give you an idea of what pooling is). I'm not sure I care overmuch about that; it's kind of a neat effect. What stands between me and LL bliss is the roughly $9/hank price tag (it takes two hanks for socks), which, again, I can't really justify. People do talk about this yarn like it'll cure cancer, though.
Opal Feelings #1704.
Opal Hundertwasser #1432, Der Blaue Mond--this looks especially great knit sideways, and I'd really like to give my sideways pattern a go. The pattern I have is an Opal one, I think, and it's in German, meaning that I could chalk up the knitting as a learning experience vital to my scholastic career. That totally justifies the $14-$20 price tag, excluding shipping, right? Right?
Knit Picks Simple Stripes in Vineyard. This yarn has been discontinued; a helpful lady at Knit Picks tells me that they stopped using one particular factory in Italy and thus haven't been able to offer striped yarn since. I'm really annoyed because someone was offering two skeins on the Destash blog for $4 (including postage!), but they got snapped up before I even saw they were there. I hope people don't mind that I'm creepily linking to pictures on their blogs....
Everything in kaleido's Etsy shop! I'm working on a sock in this right now to take my mind off the Almost Argyle Almost Disaster sock. Downside: handwash only.

Short Takes II: Southbound and Down

2007-03-31T22:13:00.000-05:00

It feels a little strange to take out a project not to work on it but to photograph it for the blog, but I'm inspired by the Bolter's beautiful post about her beautiful finished socks. My shorts are far from finished, but I have made some progress this weekend. I finished the waistband (and the elastic I plan to put in it arrived today!) and now I'm working my way through the long middle section of stockinette, with only one set of increases every twelfth row to look forward to. Things will get much more interesting once I arrive at the crotch (what??), where I get to divide the piece into two rounds and work a bunch of mysterious bar increases. Then I will have to decide whether to follow the pattern and duplicate stitch a cutesy heart on the leg or to dream up some other fun embellishment (or just leave them as they are, since I guess it's possible that hot pink knitted shorts don't need much in the way of decoration). I'll have to give this some thought.
This weekend I also reopened my jewelry (making) box, having finally recovered from the disappointment of last weekend's failed projects. I made several pairs of earrings which I plan to list throughout the week -- tonight I just listed these, but they've so far seen little action. Nonetheless, I'm pleased with them and their perhaps too kitchsy title. We have much to be pleased with here tonight, it seems.

My only friend: the end.

2007-03-31T21:38:00.000-05:00

That's right, ladies and germs: a finished pair of socks! That I am keeping for myself! Forever and ever and ever or until they get holes and probably even after that!

Get ahold of yourself, Bolty darling; you might scare the children.

In any case, the beige tweed socks are done, and they are delightfully warm, and I have only found one mistake (a purl in the ribbing where I should have knit). The yarn--Phildar Preface, as I've mentioned before--is really lovely, both in terms of the colorway (it's hard to to tell from the photo, but the yarn is actually variegated) and feel. I think the brand is Canadian (?) and moderately difficult to get ahold of--mine came from Double Diamond Knits. In any case, I also have a couple skeins in a flat brown; I might use the leftovers from these socks to do heels and toes on those and make some cute socks for next winter. I see yarn in my sleep, you guys.

In sadder news, I'm going to have to frog the green almost-argyles yet again due to purl laddering. My new plan is to put the argyle pattern on only the front of the sock (32 stitches) and do the back 32 in plain stockinette, which seems to come together much better at needle joins. I think I'll probably have to wait until I have better technical skills to do the pattern as it's written.

Pepsi One: Can 4

2007-03-31T19:58:00.000-05:00

I have spent many an hour painting today, and many miles to go before I sleep. It turns out that painting around the trim is approximately 98734543798 times easier than using the roller across the walls. The last time we painted this bathroom, I did the rolling and, reasoning that it was easier to spread more paint than eke out a little, I caused quite a few drip marks, which I'm suffering for now. Suffering both because I can't quite sand them away so they're besmirching my current efforts, and also because my consequent change in strategy means that I'm pressing the roller like crazy to get a thin coat and my palms are blistering. It feels too late to give in to the drip marks. And yesterday it became undeniably clear that a second coat will be necessary-- I imagined I'd get it all done today, but it's 8pm and I still have a bit of the first coat to finish. For that matter, every five minutes I have to leave the room entirely to let the sweat evaporate a little. I'm thinking about that scene in X-Men where the anti-mutant senator, post-torture, wades nakedly up the beach, drained of color, and I can't understand how I could have sweated so very much and still have big legs. Something should have washed away.