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

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?

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

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.

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.

My only friend: the end.

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.

Be bold; be not too bold.

A joyous post may follow sometime soon about how I learned to walk and chew gum at the same time, but for now, I will note that though I am almostbutnotquite done with my current sock project, I decided to attempt something slightly more challenging--a knit/purl one color argyle pattern from Knit Picks--and am feeling rather exhausted. One problem with knitting on double points is that it can be difficult to pull the stitches tight enough at the joins between the needles; this is particularly a problem if one is trying to join two purl stitches. A way out of this, at least mostly, would be to use two circular needles. I, however, kind of hate circular needles, in the way that one hates things that flummox one, and am not especially inclined to try either the "magic loop" technique with one circ or the double circular needle technique or the double-circ-two-socks-at-once technique either. In any case, I'd forgotten how much trouble the "laddering" effect can be, and it pretty much ruined my first attempt at the argyle pattern; you can see why in the picture. I had to frog about fourteen rows. I decided to go down a needle size (the pattern recommends 2.75mm; I went down to 2.25mm) and also go from using five dpns to four, eliminating one joint and possible site of ladders. The pattern repeats in increments of 16 four times, so having five dpns worked out nicely, but after redoing the 14 rows I ripped out, I think it looks a little better.

The yarn is Knit Picks Essential in Grass, and it's really soft, especially for a superwash yarn. I'm worried about durability, but so far I'm really pleased with how it feels.

Turning over a new leaf.

Quick post of the sock work-in-progress, which I've been messing with whilst I make a dent in my Urania reading. One advantage of a giant book is that it'll stay open on its own. I am not reading or knitting very efficiently, but at least I've turned the heel correctly and begun the long, slow march towards toe decreases.

Lilyriver will post later about our visit to our local yarn shop ("LYS" in knitting blog parlance, apparently; one learns so many things on the internet) so she could get yarn for a shrug. I did not need yarn of any kind, but I got some anyway. I am now on a yarn freeze, for real*. It's called Tofutsies, which I'm sure we can all agree is totally appalling (I'd be happier with "Tofoot," I think), and it's made out of wool, soy, cotton, and crab shells, of all things. I think I'll give this a go next because I'm really excited about the texture. With all of those things in it, you wouldn't think it would be as soft and slick as it is.

*Well, unless I find some Lorna's Laces at a bargain price.

Purgatorio

DAMN DAMN DAMN. I finally finished the leg of the tweed sock. I did the heel flap. I knitted about twenty rows of the gusset. And then, while reading tales of knitting horror stories over at the Knitter's Review forums, I realized that I FORGOT TO TURN THE HEEL. I'll have to frog the project back to the heel flap and do it all again. This is not the first time I've forgotten to do a heel flap, either. I hate frogging. I do, however, love the verb.

I really shouldn't complain; at least it's not a sweater that's almost done.

Oh! A happy end, of sorts: Brittany, the maker of the needles I snapped last week, apparently will replace broken needles for free. I'll be happy to have the shorter needles again because it makes the knitting go a bit faster. I think for my next pair of socks, I'm going to try size 1s (2.25 mm--some needle makers call size 2.50mm 1s, but mine are the smaller size). I still think 2s are too big, but the 0s take for-flipping-ever. How people have the patience to knit intricate sweaters is beyond me. Apparently, you can get needles down to size 00000000 (.50mm)--that's eight zeros, folks, and I can only imagine that's like knitting with a strand of hair.

Short Takes

After a week of intense intellectual application, the kind I suppose I'm meant to relish but which has actually left me feeling a bit weak and listless, I dove back into my big box of crafts last night after seminar. Unfortunately either none of the ideas I'd been storing up for days and days were feasible or my few skills totally failed me; in any case I used up two hours and eight inches of sterling wire and came away with nothing to show for them except a few half pairs of sick-looking earrings. I was forced to retreat to the old plastic bag bag, my most mindless project of them all, but at least this meant I was able better to enjoy our evening of delicious TV on DVD.
Tonight I'm hoping for better results, as I have finally committed myself to the little knitted shorts, for which I'm using a free Knitpicks pattern and their Shine Sport cotton yarn in Orchid. As you can see, I'm still working through the ribbed waistband, but I can say already that the Shine Sport yarn is at least as delicious as good TV on DVD. Though it's still early to count on success, I'm hoping these will be the perfect pajamas for my first summer in our sweltering New Jersey apartment-box. And if I really apply myself, perhaps I can finish them by Sunday and wear them when we go to meet at the train station the prospective English grad student we're going to host! Because nothing says "Yes, by all means, come to grad school!" like uncomfortable displays of eccentricity.

Your epidermis is showing.

The mouse body is finished and, as I was told I had to name him, christened Graham, and now I'm going to put him in a drawer and never look at him again. No, that probably isn't true, but I have to say that finishing him off gave me a world of trouble. I've always been a bad finisher (cf. backlogue of sock projects) and even when I do come to the end of a project, I tend to rush with the details (cf. failure to proofread papers). I got the head on the body all right, if not smoothly, and the ears turned out okay, but the limbs; oh, god, the limbs.

The pattern directions were simple and straightforward: thread yarn through one arm, pass it through the body, thread through other arm, repeat until secure. I, um, had to improvise with stuffing, and used deconstructed cotton balls instead, and the yarn needle just did not pass through the cotton. I threaded it between the knitting and the cotton instead, which made the arms hang a little funny, and, at any rate, they weren't secure enough for my taste, so I secured them to the body at the shoulder sockets with a few more stitches. The mouse looks like he's about to be crucified, but at that point, I figured I could fix it with the sweater. The mouse legs had the same basic instructions, but I, having learned nothing from the arms, managed to attach the right leg crookedly. I tried to snip it off so I could reattach, but it was impossible to figure out what could safely be snipped without damaging the mouse body, so I did some triage and gave it up for lost. Maybe I'll make him the crutch I linked to the other day and he can hobble around like Tiny Tim.

The sweater, which, as I have noted previously, was my favorite part of the pattern pre-knitting, but, as you may have gathered by now, that didn't go very smoothly either. I used some leftover self-striping sock yarn (DGB Confetti from doublediamondknits.com in gray, light blue, and navy) and made each sweater half. I wasn't happy with the way the colors knit up--since the garment is so small, the stripes really just look like huge blocks of color, and the light blue and gray are very similar--and I was even less happy with the size. The pattern indicated, somewhat vaguely, that the sweater could be made up and then put on the mouse, but looking at the mouse's giant head and childbearing hips, I realized there was no way that was going to happen. Then it turned out that the sweater was too small around the neck to even be sewn on. I tried again with larger needles in cotton Knitpicks Shine and modified the pattern a bit...and, after panicking and making the neck too small, that doesn't work either. I need to think it through again...but not any time soon. Sorry, Graham.

So, in the end, I have a crippled, naked mouse with a Messiah complex.

Never (again) the twain shall meet:

You've got to climb Mount Everest to reach the Valley of the Dolls.

You may look at these mouse bits and wonder why the mouse has no right arm or tail. The plan had been to push through and finish the mouse body today so I could do the mouse sweater tomorrow and then maybe after that get on with my life, such as it is, but it's hard work playing Frankenstein. Also, I'm sick of all the TV I have on my computer knit along to, and I'm maybe even sick of watching TV altogether. Here's an equation for you:

Four (4) hours of Firefly + two (2) episodes of Top Model + one (1) episode of Top Design + one (1) episode of Criminal Intent + two (2) hours of Gattaca* = 5/6 of a mouse

It might be horrifying for you to discover that the state of New Jersey is paying me to watch five billion hours of things I've mostly already seen and knit children's toys.

*admittedly, a movie, and not by choice, and I spent the entire time trying to untangle the mess I'd made of the end of the hank of the yarn.

Ziegfeld Follies.

Like butterflies from cocoons, Lilyriver and I emerge.

My new project--and no, I'm not done with the sock yet, but I deserve something new, and do not even ask me about the tote bag project--is this mouse pattern from fuzzymitten.etsy.com. I thought a toy would be a quick, fun project, and while I can't say I was wrong about the fun--quick, not so much. It took me three hours of (admittedly, tired and somewhat distracted) knitting to make the tiny mouse leg at right. I'm using the Lion Brand organic cotton I bought awhile back, and the yarn, while incredibly soft, is kind of a pain to knit with because it's quite loosely plied. I learned how to do a few things to shape the foot, though, so it was time and effort well spent. You can see in the blow up that some of the stuffing peeks through the knitting around the ankle. I'm pretty sure it's the nature of the stitch (this crazy "p2tog tbl" business that made me feel like a real knitter once I deciphered what the hell it meant) and not my un-mad skillz, but we'll see how leg #2 goes.

I'm most excited about the tiny mouse sweater with functional pocket, especially since Lilyriver has forbade my putting clothes on the cat. I'm not saying that I really think pet clothing is a good idea, but come on, y'all, tiny sweaters.

When weird knitting happens to good people.

Christ on a what?* (pdf)
Nononononono
Making you feel weird inside.

*joke (TM) Lilyriver

Where's Waldo?

Broken needles. Broken dreams.

One thing I have learned from knitting blogs is that one really can knit anywhere, anytime: the movies, the doctor, waiting in line, hanging upside down on a gyrosphere. When I say "one," I mean, of course, "people who are not me." I brought my newly-begun sock (mate to beige tweed below) to the airport to pick up Lilyriver's sister, Lilyriver Deux, and nearly made myself carsick on the turnpike. If you know me, you know that I was not driving.

My knitting stayed, forgotten, in my tote (the Roxy bag from thisgalissewcrazy.etsy.com--the shop owner, Theresa, is lovely!) all day. At the movies this evening, I discovered the carnage: two of my size 0 birch doublepoints had snapped.

I sang a dirge for the tiny, toothpick-sized shards in my hands as the credits for Reno 911: Miami rolled. My fellow moviegoers gave me dirty looks, but it was only because they didn't understand.

Secrets and expiation.

At right are the dark secrets of my soul: unfinished sock pairs. My collection drives Lilyriver crazy. And I understand this, I really do.

And I'll come totally clean: the two socks on the far right and the bright blue sock won't ever have mates. The bright blue sock is obviously deformed. The yarn is a Jawoll cotton blend, and it's light and nice, so I might reclaim it. The yarn of the other two, however, really isn't. It's Lion Brand Wool-Ease worsted, which I was horrified to find is 80% acrylic. It's way too heavy for ordinary use and doesn't breathe well. Also, I pillaged the yarn to make mittens. I do, however, intend to finish the other three pairs. I have two of the one, but I still need to weave in the yarn ends and block them. I am most excited about the beige tweed socks. I cannot think of an appropriate joke to mitigate the effect of revealing that I am excited by beige tweed socks. The yarn, however, is a fingering weight (I think?) Phildar Preface, and it's quite soft and (I hope) eminently wearable. With that sock, I finally got my pattern modifications down. --I'll take a moment to note that my yarn supplier for the finishable socks is Judy at www.doublediamondknits.com.

You have to be a sock knitter to understand some of the astoundingly awful sock yarn on the market. Logically, you know and I know that multi-colored stripes are usually ugly. But I, with an all too easily accessible PayPal account and an itchy mouse finger, look at this stuff online and think: self-patterning yarn? What is this miracle? I must have some! Two balls! Twelve balls! But I'm not going to lie: I have no perspective when it comes to yarn. In sock yarn, I've got some brown Phildar Preface waiting for me, and, from knitpicks.com, some green and some reddish brown tweed. I will come for you, yarn, and it will be glooooooorious.

Quote of the day, from Lilyriver, opening a package of knitting supplies sent from home: "I remember these needles! They're like old friends."

Dye Another Day

Warning: it is not likely the awful puns will cease any time soon. I seriously almost called this post "Hooked on a Felting."

To refresh your memory, Reader: the Tiny Tote at right was born out of a swatch of Kool Aid-dyed yarn and I-cord. Call it Ishmael, if you'd like. I decided to try felting it, both because of the larger felted tote bag project I've got going and because I needed to do my laundry anyway.

I tossed the bag in with a load of T-shirts and underwear and hoped that it wouldn't dye my clothes pink. It came out of the wash as it did in the picture at left, and I encourage you to click on the picture to get the larger version if you'd like a sense of how the felting works. Wikipedia tells me that it has something to do with scales on the wool and the zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
In any case, the washer, as you can see, felted TT (TM) a little bit, but not overmuch. Small things, I gather, are supposed to be more difficult to felt than larger projects. I probably should have put it in a pillowcase and with less other stuff (you do need something to agitate the wool, like a pair of jeans or a towel), but it costs $1.50 to do a load of laundry here and I've got bills to pay, if you know what I mean.

But I wanted the bag to be more awesome, so I worked at the material in a basin of hot water in the kitchen sink, and that seems to have done the trick. It felted excellently, as you can see, I hope, at right, and didn't take more than maybe 20 minutes to do. I can't imagine doing the felting by hand on a project much larger than a mitten, say. In the interests of full disclosure, I will note that the water became slightly pink, and not because I was working my poor fingers to the bone. The color of the tote didn't appear to fade, but it's certainly not entirely colorfast. In ordinary usage, I don't think the color would rub off, though.

And the surprise (trendy, bourgeois) usage: a little iPod bag. There are some obvious flaws to this, the biggest being that one's headphones obviously can't fit in the bag unless one uses earbuds. In the picture, my Phyllida stands in for Ellen's Buddy; here's to hoping for a long, happy, copyright-violating future for everyone.

Dyeing Young: A Yarn Story

Apologies for the crappy spacing with the photos. I've fiddled with it so the text doesn't spill over onto the photos (at least in Firefox), but that seems to be the best I can do.

The yarn, it turns out, is a bit stiff and scratchy. I'm trying to mend this with a wash in some extra-moisture baby shampoo, but it's never going to be sock yarn. I suspect that it will felt well, though, and I'm regretting already that I didn't wait for it before I started my bag. Granted, when I started the tote, I had no idea that children's powdered drink mixes would become the new governing passion of my life. To the right is a swatch I started of the cream on size 4s.

I chose Black Cherry Kool-Aid for my first go at this because I thought the color would be quite rewarding. I was not wrong, though I ran into a few problems, as I will note below. I made a solution of one part vinegar to three parts water, more or less, plus the packet of Kool-Aid. One set of instructions I read said the vinegar wasn't necessary and another said it was. This, luckily, is not nuclear physics, and I do not have a positronic brain. That I know of. Anyway, I dropped two khaki-colored bits and two cream-colored bits into the dye bath in the hope that the khaki would yield a more muted tone and the cream a brighter one. They came out, however, more or less the same, as you can see in the photo. As you can also see the photo, the yarn bits soak up the Kool-Aid entirely. This was an anticipated effect, but still very kool.

The problem I mentioned above is clear in the photo at the right: the yarn bits did not dye evenly at the point where I tied them together. Lilyriver has suggested I wrap them more loosely, perhaps with some thread, and I think that's probably the way to go. I suspect also that a bit more Kool-Aid might be in order (when is it ever not?).

I will post later today, I hope, with a swatch done in the dyed yarn, although with my rate of accomplishment lately, you might read "later today" as "sometime before the revolution comes."

Sitten here knitten my mitten, kitten.

I finished these mittens awhile ago, but I am moved to post evidence of completed projects instead of evidence that I buy a lot of yarn. I have made many, many socks (I cannot, however, say that I have made many pairs of socks), and mittens are, of course, in the same vein, but not something I had tried before. I made them out of stash yarn, which made the project doubly satisfying. Technically, I think, aside from a few bits around the thumb gusset, I did fine, but I miscounted the stripe rows, and one gray stripe turned out slightly larger than the other. For my next pair, I think I'll either reduce the stitch count or use smaller needles, because these are slightly too large. I used this pattern in the adult female size and supplemented a few unclear parts (i.e., the direction of the increase stitches on the thumb gusset) with the pattern in Knitting for Peace (a fine book, whatever you think of charity knitting). Oh, one last adjustment: I used size 3 dpns instead of 4s because I didn't have 4s.

Wearing the finished mittens makes me feel like high-fiving people. Alas: almost as soon as I finished them, it became too warm for them.

Crafty consumerism

Avoiding the responsibility of creating something myself, I found this fine t-shirt for those who are crafting.

I can feel it calling in the air tonight (hold on).

I think it's possible the sweater on the bottom of this page is eleven years old and still looking good because...