Monkeys off and almost off my back

The Monkey socks are complete:


The sock on the right has been washed, the other has not. They soften a lot after washing, and seem less bulky.

I like 'em.

Master Knitting Level 1 Program progress

• All questions answered, with references.

Swatches

• Color swatch needs ends woven in
• Single cable cross swatch needs one more try to even out the right side stockinette edge, unless I can find one in the ziploc bags full of swatches that is acceptable.
  
• Cable of my choice: Still trying to decide between the Chain Link Cable, from A Taste of Aran Afghan, designed by Janet Szabo and the cable pattern called #115 from The New Knitting Stitch Library, by Lesley Stanfield. Whichever one I pick needs at least one more try to get the right stockinette edge looking better.

Report

• Need to do a bit more research on blocking non-wool fibers, as I don't have much experience in that area.

Project

• The hat is finished!

Cover Letter

• Finished and signed. I dated it Jan. 29, so my goal is to have it in the mail a week from today.
  

Ka-yoot!

The only thing cuter than a baby's hat is a hat for a low-birthweight baby. This hat is going to Caps to the Capital in the name of my friend Helen Brenna. I made Helen a pair of Pomatomus socks last year and this year I'm asking recipients of my handiwork to pick a charity item for me to knit in their name.

Yarn: Leftover Cascade 220 Quatro; less than an ounce
Needles: Knit Picks Options, US 8/5.0 mm and US 10/6.0mm using Magic Loop technique
Pattern: Save the Children's free pattern from their Caps to the Capital Action Kit. I knit this one in the round instead of flat, because I don't see the point of knitting a hat flat. Plus, for some reason, I have no 6.0mm straight needles.

In sock knitting news, I started the toe decreases on the second Monkey sock last night, but my eyes were rolling up in my head so I put them aside. I'll finish those this afternoon.

Master Knitting: Still working on the cable swatches, but they're getting better. I think what happened was that after I finally perfected my flat knitting tension last summer, I knit almost exclusively in the round, and my body forgot what it had learned.

I have a checklist for what is left to be done for the question/answers and I'm plowing through that list. Most of what I have to do is find references to back up my answers. There are a few questions where I actually had to look things up to answer them properly, but mostly my problem is finding references for some of the answers. For example, I have a very easy, straight-forward method for calculating multiple increases across a single row. Most of the time I can do it in my head. I had never looked up how to do this (never even occured to me), because it's basic arithmetic. I could find only one book that used my method, and that was Montse Stanley's Knitter's Handbook. Montse Stanley was a very sensible woman. The rest of the books have worksheets and multi-step calculations that give the same result, but are so complicated it's a miracle anyone can follow them. I certainly can't.

Oh, yeah, it was because I was going INSANE...

I ordered TKGA's Master Knitting Level 1 program about a year and a half ago. I worked long and hard on it the first few weeks to a month after I received the instructions, until I went over to the dark side and started feeling about my knitting the way I was feeling about my writing. I sucked, and the joy of the creative process had sucked itself out of my psyche. So I put it aside for a while and returned to knitting for pleasure. I still persued learning new techniques and worked on improving my results, but I focused on the pleasure I got from knitting for myself and others rather than picking apart . I wanted it to be fun. I needed it to be fun, so I could then translate that feeling to the creative writing process.

Months passed. I picked it up again, working to perfect stocking stitch, which I hadn't known was a problem before the MK Level 1 came along. I re-knit swatches, and saw that my technique actually had improved. I still rowed out at one end of my stocking stitch swatches, but my ribbing had improved vastly due to the Norwegian purl.

Eventually, enough time passed (a full year) that I needed to get updates to the instructions. They had been overhauled in a big way, and I liked them. So I decided to reknit most of my swatches using the new instructions. Finally, FINALLY, in August I somehow was able to get my stocking stitch perfect. But the instructions for the cable swatches mentioned something about "balancing" the pattern vertically, which I hadn't done. I had simply knit to the required length and cast off.

Based on what the new directions say, what I need to do at the top is add a couple more rows, so I have those two rows of purl stitches I have at the bottom of the swatch. No problem, right?

So I cast on, and suddenly, the right side of the public side of my cable swatches were total crap. The loose stitch on the left end of knit stitches followed by purl stitches were enormous. What the hell happened? I moved on to something else...I knit up the new hat project that is part of the Level 1 modifications and screwed up the gauge (see previous blog entries). I hit my frustration limit and put it aside. Again.

So the new year rolls around and I have a couple projects I want off my back. The MK Level 1 program is one of them. I cast on for the hat, and everything goes swimmingly. I finish it, block it and I'm pleased with it. Time to look over the rest of my work. Yesterday, I read over my answers to the questions and made sure I said what I wanted to say, and that I had all the appropriate references listed. Then last night, I cast on for Swatch 15, which is a cable swatch of my choice. Like I said, it looked fine before, it just wasn't perfectly balanced.


See?

Here's what I ended up with last night:

It's complete crap. Aside from the fact that this hasn't been blocked, the second repeat is short two rows in each vertical half -- which is a stupid mistake, easily corrected -- and I knit one too many rows at the top (again, easily corrected)...okay there are a lot of issues, but they're all bonehead mistakes I can fix. What I don't seem to be able to fix is the column of 2 knit stitches on the right. No other column of 2 knit stitches looks like this on the public side, nor on the private side.

I mean, look at this:



What confounds me is that if I knit an actual Aran garment or afghan, I don't have this problem, so I'm not clear what I'm doing wrong when I knit up these swatches. Again, and again, and again. I have tried knitting my favorite flat-knitting method, which is anchoring the needle at my hip and throwing with my right hand (this is how I knit the original swatch); I have tried knitting a combination of Continental, Norwegian, European untwisted, and English, I have tried that trick where you wrap the first purl stitch after a series of knit stitches in the opposite direction (which I never have to do when I knit an actual Aran prjoect), and all of these work sort of to solve part of the problem, but then another one pops up. Like I fixed the problem of the second knit stitch in looking all sloppy (doesn't happen on the purl side), but fixing it caused the end stitch to get REALLY awful.

What is clear to me, though, is why every few months I scream in frustration and put this @#$% project back on my shelf.

I will win this war. I will.

Sombrero completado

My hat project for the Master Knitting Level I program is finished!


The hat is resting comfortably around a balloon, perched on a wide-mouthed tea cup.

Yarn: Cascade 220, in three colors, the numbers of which I have no idea
Needles: Knit Picks Options, with the cord for 30" needle; US sizes 6 and 8/4.0mm and 5.0mm
Pattern: The one supplied in the Master Knitting Level I instructions.

For the first hat I made, back in September (the one I knit at the wrong gauge), I attached the I-cord embellishment at the top of the hat. I didn't care for it, so for this hat I decided to Kitchener the top closed. Shelly mentioned to me a few months back that the reason for the I-cord/pom-pom/tassel is to hide the circle of fastened off stitches at the top, so why don't I just graft it closed? Never occured to me that would be okay. Perhaps it's considered a more advanced technique, so they didn't mention it. At any rate, I asked on the TKGA MK forum if that would be okay, and they said yes, and to just write a note about the technique I chose and why.

So, yay. I merrily knitted along last night and then came across the last line of decrease instructions, that stated the final number of remaining stitches: 11. Crap. I hadn't ever tried grafting an odd number of stitches, and I wasn't sure it was even possible. It may not be, but I did it some how, and it actually is a really interesting finish for this hat, the way the decreases spiral in and then connect. So I'm happy. It remains to be seen whether or not the MK committee will be happy.

Here is the top:


[Note: I wove in the ends of the Pretty Petals socks at the ice rink this morning! Only two items left on my nerves.]

Master of my knitting domain

As part of my effort to be a Better Person in 2007, I want to clear out a few nagging projects. Those would be the ones labeled "On my nerves" in the sidebar.

There are three such projects.
1. The Not-so-pretty petals socks. I redid the toe that wasn't so hot. I cut the leg and ripped out the extra lace repeat and then regrafted the leg to the ankle. All I have to do is weave in the frigging ends. That's it. And yet they continue to swim at the bottom of my knitting bag.

2. The Samus cardigan. Still needs that zipper. One good afternoon is all it would take.

3. Finish my Master Knitting Level I course. I have most of the swatches done. Maybe all of them -- I can't remember. Most of the questions are done; a few need more refinement. I have to knit the hat project. I already knit it once, but I fooled myself into believing I had the right gauge with size 7 needles, even though I used size 8 needles with the same yarn for all my swatches in order to achieve the required gauge. I fooled myself because I tend to believe I "always knit to gauge." The pattern called for US 7 needles, so that's what I used. I checked my gauge while I knit. Several times. And each time I stretched and cajoled the knitting into looking like it was the right gauge. It is not. I think I could finish this baby up in about a week's worth of time, a couple hours a day.

If I can get those monkeys off my back, I'll be able to get back to my Monkey Socks guilt free.

What are the chances that'll happen?

I'm gonna dare me to do it. Just watch me.

Monkeying around

After the longest winter break on record (almost 3 weeks), the girls are back at school. I couldn't be happier. I need a routine again. A routine that doesn't include quite so much television and Wii in the background. A routine that puts the kids in bed at 9:30, instead of midnight (or later!)

So here's what I've been doing the past few days:

Cookie A's Monkey Sock
I'm using Cherry Tree Hill yarn, which reminds me of Koigu, only slightly different. Monkey is an easy pattern to memorize, and fairly quick to work up. I started the second sock last night, so this time next week I should have another pair of socks.

Here's what came in the mail Monday:

The yellow is okay. The brown, not so much. These are supposed to be the solid background and coordinating color for my Rainbow diamond argyle socks. I thought I had ordered a medium gray, not brown. I showed the website picture where I ordered the yarn to the girls and they both said it looked gray on the screen. Not to me. It would help if the color had an actual name, instead of just a number. Which, apparently, it does, on the German-language sites. "Choco brun." It would also help if I didn't have certain "color vision deficiencies." So now I have an ugly brown skein of yarn I will never want to knit into anything. Because it's ugly. Gah.

I also got this in the mail:

(the one on the right)

so that I will have enough to complete this:


It's a different dye lot, of course, than the first skein, but I figure since I'm working with doubled strands, I can switch to working with one strand of each, and then when I run out of the first ball, I'll work two strands of the new one and, with luck, the color change won't be noticeable. This is the "My so called scarf" pattern, which is simple to work, but nearly impossible to fix when you make an error. This isn't a color I wear, but it is a color my sister-in-law wears, quite a lot, and she's taken to wearing a lot of scarf-like accessories this winter to help disguise a surgical scar on her neck. As I look at the calendar, I realize her birthday is Friday. Friday! Crap, I've got to get busy....

Seven day socks

Six skeins of new sock yarn in one week weren't enough, it seems. I have decided to turn that Opal Rainbow yarn into argyle socks (using it for the solid diamonds), so I wanted the perfect complementary yarn for the background (a sort of medium grey) and the perfect contrast color for the diamond lines (in a bright yellow). So I ordered more yarn. From England. Because, you know, you can't get it over here.

Buy, hey, I did finish this pair of socks, and in 7 days. Rarely have I had that sort of single-minded fortitude in my knitting. Or time.


The Austerman Step socks mit Aloe Vera (I love saying, "mit Aloe vera"; I think it has to do with our extended-family trip to Italy when my mother-in-law was perusing a multi-language menu at a restaurant and somehow glommed on to the German column and ordered, "Schpaghetti mit tomahto." She kept telling people, "No sprechen der Deutsch.")

I'm pretty sure one pair of socks a week isn't going to do much to put a dent in my growing pile of sock yarn. My co-dependent knitting group is doing nothing to help me curb my sock yarn purchasing. It's like going to a bar for an AA meeting. "My name is Roxanne and I'm an alcoholic." "Hey, Rox, you can get the best and biggest Margaritas on the corner of Hamline and Thomas. They have a whole wall of different kinds of tequila!" Clearly, there is a reason why I don't ask my husband if he thinks I should buy more sock yarn. Sigh. I have a feeling I'll be sucked into the sock vortex known as Borealis some time in the next few days.

Besides tons of knitting time, the other thing I've had time for is movies, mostly of the romantic comedy variety, which will always be my favorite. This is a good sign for me, the alleged writer. The whole world of story evaporated completely from my brain a couple years ago. I stopped reading much, stopped writing, stopped watching movies. Knitting has filled some of the creative void, but in a different way than writing. Knitting is all about pleasing myself and having fun creating, something else that had been lost for me with my writing. It's a therapeutic sort of creating. Knitting also requires only certain parts of my brain at certain times. And it doesn't require opening a vein and bleeding onto the page.

Writing, on the other hand, uses the entire brain -- the creative, right side and the verbal left side. Character relationships, theme, motif, all that pattern-related, big-picture stuff comes from the right side; plot comes from the linear/sequential left side.

And then there's voice, the most important asset a writer has, and the asset that can't be taught.

Not writing has had as much to do with losing my writing voice as losing interest in story. Not feeling like me inside meant I couldn't express myself through my writing. Faking your voice is like faking your personality. You can do it, but everyone will know, and you won't be happy with yourself. These past six to seven months have been a gradual rediscovery of my voice in a non-threatening way. No pressure to produce for an audience (because, let's face it -- very few people read this blog, and the few who do are interested in the knitting), and certainly no pressure to survive a critique. For a while I was setting myself up for destroying my love of knitting via the Master Knitting program, but I stepped back from that and have worked on it only when I've been sure that I can handle being imperfect.

So. Knitting.

I started a new pair last night (Cookie A's Monkey socks) after swatching while Sophia had her skating lesson. The yarn is Cherry Tree Hill (I think. The label was separated from the yarn, so I'm not 100% sure. A look at their website leads me to believe the colorway is Country Garden) We've been spending a lot of time at the rink, lately. Sophia is preparing for her skating test Saturday. She's past the early, group lesson-type levels and is in "Freestyle 1" (there are 10 Freestyle levels). It's the first level where part of the test is a program set to music. Pretty exciting. She has a couple different spins and a couple half-jumps (a waltz jump and a half-flip) and gets to use the entire rink. If she passes, she'll compete as a solo performer in early March. Very exciting.

I have to go now, so I can try very hard not to think about buying more sock yarn. I wonder what time Borealis opens?

Resolve

In 2007, I would like to....

Knit a pair of argyle socks, incorporating variegated yarn in the diamonds.

Get those Flamingo socks figured out.

Design more projects myself.

Finish up my Master Knitting Level I program and send it in.

Knit an item for charity every time I knit for myself or a friend or family member.

Read.

Write. I'm ready, finally.

Happy New Year!

Surprise!

The thing I have resented most about being in my 40's is that my once-excellent memory has frequent, random moments of failure. My memory was failing so much a year ago that I went to the doctor, afraid I was suffering from early Alzheimer's. Apparently, I'm just a perimenopausal, middle-aged woman, and I have to get used to it. Well, crap. I don't want to get used to it. I don't like having to write things down in order to remember them.

Twice this week I have opened my front door to get the mail and discovered a small package addressed to me. I then looked at the return address and had no idea what was in the package, although I could tell it had to be yarn-related.

I couldn't remember ordering anything, let alone remember what I had ordered. I'm wasn't sure if this was middle-aged memory failure, or some sort of yarn-bender blackout problem.

The first package contained two sock kits I had ordered a couple months ago. They had been on back order, and therefore delayed for quite some time, so I could forgive myself for my intial puzzlement, but when I took a moment to process the return address, I realized what was in the package.

These beauties.



The colors, despite my attempt to color-correct in LView, are not quite right. The red is a deeper, bluer red. No so orangey. The blue is sort of right, but the photo is too dark.

The second package came yesterday, from Angel Yarns in far-off England. I had absolutely no idea what would be in the package. I assumed yarn, but what sort, I had no idea.

Imagine my delight when I found these inside:



Regia 4-ply in colors even better than they appear here.

And then this:

Be still my heart. I actually squealed, I was so delighted. I love variegated and self-striping yarns, but after a while, some of them start to feel awfully same-ish. Like I already have some pretty similar to what's begin offered.

But this.

This is so beautiful, speaks to me like no yarn has in a long while, I'm almost afraid to knit it up for fear that it will never meet my expectations. Almost. I had just started a new pair of socks the night before, though, and it took every single bit of self-control not to cast on a new pair from this Opal Rainbow. I did, however, knit long and hard into the night so as to hurry along the progress of the Austermann Step mit Aloe Vera sock.

Hmm. Apparently, the secret to good color matching is to photograph under my Ott Lite with no flash. Curious.

The sooner these babies are done, the sooner I can get to that Opal.

I'm beginning to think this whole middle-age thing isn't so bad. I get the best surprise presents, and they're always just want I wanted. I could get used to this.

Short Attention Span Theatre

So I ripped back the heel and gusset on the Flamingo sock and drew pictures and did math and tried to figure out how to make the @#$% toe-up foot work. And then I had a great idea: provisional cast on, knit the leg up so the chart is easier to read, then knit the heel and foot downwards so I can get the foot to fit right.

That's the sort of decision/realization/epiphany that is satisfying, but is not conducive to an immediate do-over.

So I started some mindless socks last night, and worked on them while we watched My Super Ex-Girlfriend on DVD, after we got back from our second night in a row out to dinner sans any other immediate or extended family members. Both nights we've headed out the door around 7:30, thinking we were on the late side, and were more concerned that the neighborhood restaurant would still be serving dinner than whether we could still get a seat. Well. It seems everyone in town is sick of turkey, ham, and egg nog, and it seems they are sick of it at 7:30 p.m. Who knew? Not us. And the first night we went out, neither did the tiny, neighborhood Asian Fusion restaurant.

Here are my new socks-in-progress:


Austermann Step, mit Aloe Vera und Jojoba Öl
Color 18, "vulkan" (volcano)
Needles: Knit Picks Classic circular 2.5mm, Magic Loop
Gauge: 9 sts, 12 rows/inch
64 sts

The Perfect Vacation

The girls are in NYC with their nana and aunt, having a great time. Michael just got home last night from his little ski trip. I stayed home and had my own fun.

I finished these for Al on Christmas Eve:


(obligatory photo of socks without ends woven in)

Here's a close up:


Pattern: GI Dennis socks, by Jeanie Townsend, which is free, if you're a member of Jeanie's yahoo group, TSKAL (TSocksKnitAlong)
Yarn: 2+ balls of Lana Grossa Meilenweit in color 1289, which I believe is called "Shades of Boring Manliness" (I used more than 2 balls of this because I made the legs longer than normal)
Needles: Five Inox 2.75mm dpns

Christmas morning, I drove the girls, et al to the airport. I spent the day sitting on the bed with the dog, eating food that was bad for me right from the containers --Ben and Jerry's Fudge Brownie ice cream along with diet Coke and sour cream and onion potato chips -- and watching Pride and Prejudice (the version from last year with Kiera Knightly) all the way through, with no one interrupting me at key moments. Then I watched The Family Stone on DVD, followed by Failure to Launch, followed by Pride and Prejudice again.

I also started these:

My first toe-up socks in Regia Silk, which is really slippery, but wonderfully soft. My stitches are a bit wonky on the foot. They were fine when I was increasing for the toe, but when I got to 64 stitches and started knitting plain rounds, I did what I always do at that point, which is to knit past the end of one dpn and onto the first couple stitches of the next one. Which resulted in crappy looking stitches, for some reason. I switched back to knitting the stitches to their assigned needles and it got better. Go figure.

I'm not a big fan of knitting toe-up, but this is one case where I think it'll eventually end up to my advantage. I'm using the heel flap and gusset in Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks. She has just one set of toe-up socks using this method in the book, and because of that, the directions don't seem to be as complete as they are for the cuff down socks, making this project a bit frustrating. The main issue I have is where to start the heel flap on the sole. This heel flap is under the heel, and done in stocking stitch, so knitting it to the length I would normally knit a flap results in fewer slipped end stitches than with the condensed heel flap stitch--which gives you more rows/inch than st st--which means the back of the heel doesn't come up far enough to the ankle once the gusset stitches are decreased.

These will be the Flamingo socks I began to design in November. The flamingo is in reverse stocking stitch, with twisted stitches and slanting decreases bordering it. I totally stole this idea from the Tsarina of Tsocks (www.tsocktsarina.com) after I received my long-awaited sock kits. One of the kits, Poseidon, has reverse stocking stitch dolphins, which is what gave me the idea for the flamingo socks to begin with, but her technique of outlining the dolphins is totally brilliant, so naturally, I stole it.

The Flamingo socks are knit mostly in Regia Silk, but will have fuzzy pink novelty yarn with bits of metallic gold used as embellishment on the wings and head. Maybe a bead or two here and there for added excitement. I decided toe-up would make the chart easier to follow because I'll be able to see the flamingo right-side up as I knit it, but for now, I'm struggling with the @!#$% heel flap and gusset.


Tuesday I watched Pride and Prejudice again, then I read the book to see what they had to cut/change in order to condense it to movie length. It's tough to read the slower paced, wordy, omniscient writing of the early 19th century when you're used to the fast-paced world of 3rd person limited fiction written 200 years later. I think this screen adaptation did the story great justice. Sigh. I totally get the whole Darcy thing now.

Wednesday I went to knitting group in the morning, and then went to Target and bought Pride and Prejudice on DVD so I could listen to the commentary (I'd been watching it on TiVo). Then my honey came home from Colorado, we went out for dinner, and here I am, ready for more knitting. Plus I'm going to go to the movie theater to see The Holiday.

Oh wait a minute! I just now thought of this...I'll do the decrease rounds less frequently so as to end up with a longer heel. Oh, duh. Excuse me while I go frog a gusset.

Aspen, we hardly knew ye

It's been a hectic few weeks, what with holiday preparations, celebrations, birthdays, end-of-quarter tests, and getting ready for an extended-family vacation in Colorado. Yes, Colorado, where the Denver airport has been closed for several days and won't open any runways until sometime this afternoon, and even then won't be back to full capacity.

Our flight was canceled Wednesday night. Michael received an automated phone call on his cell, just as we were sitting down for dinner at Applebee's for Nina's birthday dinner, telling us our flight had been canceled. He spent the rest of the evening, into the wee morning hours, trying to find a way to get us there. No go. Nina spent most of Friday evening crying. Four hours. I haven't seen her cry that long since she was a colicky baby. When I asked her what she was saddest about, she said, "Not seeing my family! I don't even care about the skiing."

In all my years of air travel, I have experienced airport closures, flight cancelations, crappy weather, overbooked flights, etc. and never once have I been in a situation where there was absolutely no way I could get where I wanted to go. I might be a day late, but I always got there. The combination of timing, amount of snow, lack of airports in the strip of the country (the nearest real airport is Salt Lake City, seven hours west of Aspen and they were completely booked, so we couldn't rent a car from there) all conspired to make the trip impossible. The earliest date we could have gotten there was Dec. 27, a day after the rest of the family would be leaving. We considered driving from the Twin Cities to Aspen, but the storm that hit Denver was moving up the path toward the Cities, so even that wasn't possible.

My reaction? As soon as I heard the news my shoulders relaxed, because I knew my evening wouldn't be as stressful. After dinner, I was scheduled to take Sophia to her skating lesson (she's working on her first figure skating program and getting ready for the test Jan. 6) and then we were to go home and finish packing, which is easy in the case of Nina, who is organization personified, but not-so-easy in the case of Sophia, who is entropy personified. So I didn't have to focus on packing.

Instead, I knit. I knit until late in the evening, and then knit for many hours yesterday. I finished these:



Mountain Colors Bearfoot, in Bitterroot
Needles: Inox 2.75mm dpns
Gauge: 8 sts/in
60 sts

I immediately cast on for Al's second sock, which has been waiting since August for its turn. I'm sure I'll work on a couple other things, too, this week, including Barbara's birthday scarf, which I'm making from a chartreusy-green Misty Alpaca I got from the SnB gift exchange (thank you, Connie!). I also want to cast on another pair of socks for myself, because I just don't have enough wool socks to satisfy myself, but I have so much sock yarn that I have stasher's guilt.

My MIL gave me a gift certificate to Needlework Unlimited for Hanukkah, which I used the first chance I could. I bought Sensational Knitted Socks, which is so terrific I can hardly stand it, plus some Brown Sheep Wildefoote, and more Mountain Colors Bearfoot (in Ruby River Red), and a ball of pink fuzzy novelty yarn with gold metallic bits to use as accent yarn for the flamingo socks I'm designing.

Off to knit...

Whew!

Projects for the Princesses due: Friday, 7 pm.
Projects for the Princesses completed: Friday, 6:20 pm

The Princesses* are a group of writer friends who have been together for something like five years. We originally got together as a study group, a combination of a reading group/critique group. We read books from a writer's perspective, analyzing them for plot, character arc, etc. Now we just get together to talk, eat, and drink. Friday was our annual December night out (we usually get together at one or another's house) and gift-giving extravaganza. Last year, my gift to each was a little hand knit sock ornament with a gift certificate for the hand knit item of their choice. Friday was the last installment of the knitted gift distribution.

I completed Tina's third mitten in the middle school commons while Sophia competed in the Academic Triathalon after school. The first mitten was cannibalized for extra thrums, so my plan to give her all three (a pair and a spare) was abandoned. After that, I wove in the ends of Mary's scarf because I decided I didn't think she was a fringe girl. Actually, I decided she wasn't a fringe girl when I realized I didn't have time. Katie's mittens needed their ends woven in, too. Anyone detecting a pattern here? I hate weaving in ends. Ro's mittens were completed the day before, ends and everything, so no worries there.

All gifts were loved and appreciated, and someone took a picture of them all wearing their knitted loot, but not with my camera, because I forgot my camera. Forgetfulness was my middle name Friday. I forgot to bring Tina's thrums with me to the Triathalon, so I had to make a trip home to get them. When I get the pics, I'll post them.

*We call ourselves the Princesses because that's what Monica wanted. Whatever Monica wants, she gets. We each have a princess name and often bestow princess-related gifts to each other.

New knitting - my favorite kind
Saturday morning I cast on a new sock while Sophia skated.


No, it's not Al's second GI Dennis sock, which is what I should have cast on for. It's a sock for me, in Mountain Colors Bearfoot. The color: Bitterroot Rainbow. It has a brownish base to it, with lots of touches of bright colors. I love this yarn. It's so soft. And deliciously warm. I don't appear to have second sock syndrome during the winter, when it comes to my own feet. (Sorry, Al.)

I do seem to have some sort of psychological need to have all in-progress projects complete by the end of the year, though, which is good news for Al and the recipient of the Seaman's scarf that has 3 balls of cashmere/alpaca/merino left to go and will be no hardship to complete. I make exceptions to the year-end "rule" for large projects like afghans and Aran sweaters, but I predict January will bring with it new enthusiasm for my FLAK sweater and my Lizard Ridge afghan.

Last thrum walking

This is where I was on Ro's mittens about an hour ago:


I had decreased the top from 48 sts down to 16, 4 sts per round and I had one last round of thrums to do before the final two decrease rounds. I needed 4 thrums. This is how many I had:


Not quite enough. I pawed through my knitting bag, looked under my bed, ransacked my bedside table, the box of yarn/projects near my bedside table, the storage bin under my bed. Two weeks ago I was walking around with thrums stuck to my back when I went to the grocery store, and now there isn't a single one to be found? Not a single wisp of roving?

I am nothing if not resourceful and creative. I have lots of black yarn. I cut a length of Cascade 220, separated the plies, folded the lengths into quarters, dampened them slightly and felted them the teensiest bit.

I had a thrum:




Now, for probably the first time ever, a picture of a finished object with all the ends woven in:


That's one down. Next up, Tina's third mitten. I made all the thrums this morning, which is what always drags out the making of the thrummed mitten.

Oops, almost forgot:
Yarn: Cascade Quattro (each of the 4 plies is a different shade of purple); black roving
Needles: Knit Picks Options, sizes 3.25 mm and 4.0 mm
Technique: 2 mittens on 1 circular, using Magic Loop, until I started to go nuts and put each of them on their own cable, switching the tips back and forth every couple thrummed rows.
Pattern: This is a free pattern from Yarn Forward. I learned to make thrums from the Yarn Harlot's Thrum FAQ

Gift knitting countdown

To do:

• Finish Ro's thrummed mittens. Deadline: 12/8/06
• Knit Tina a third thrummed mitten, because the first one was kind of flat and the second one was nice and poofy. Deadline: 12/8/06
• Make little napkin-ring thingies for eight friends (including the two above) that will hold this year's gift certificate.
• Graft LBR's sock back together. Deadline: 12/10/06
• Knit Al's second GI Dennis sock (remember to count repeats on leg first). Deadline: 12/18/06

Things not to do:

• Design kitschy flamingo socks
• Search Internet for funky pink novelty yarn
• Make the cat a moebius bed
• Make more Lizard Ridge afghan squares
• Start a pair of socks for myself
• Start another pair of socks for myself
• Plan all my vacation trip knitting.
• Start on my vacation trip knitting.
  
• Spend valuable knitting time blogging about how I'm not getting my To Do items finished.
  

Not-so-Pretty Petals

or
Mystery Solved
or
Kill Me Now

I brought the short-of-Koigu socks up from the laundry room yesterday to show to a friend who was over receiving sock knitting advice. After she left, I placed one sock on top of the other found myself puzzled, because they didn't appear to be the same size. How could that be? After I knit the 6 pattern repeats on the leg, I counted the number of rows on the first sock's heel flap 158 times to make sure the second one would be exactly the same length. I counted every row of the first sole to make sure I knit exactly the same number for the second.

Then I lined them up on the counter heel-to-heel, instead of cuff-to-cuff.


The pattern says to work six repeats on the leg, or however many desired. Apparently, I desired five repeats in August, which accounts for why I had some yarn leftover on that sock but not the second sock. Of course, while I was counting heel stitches and rows of knitting on the foot, I could have counted the number of lace repeats on the frigging sock leg.

Note to self: tell Cynthia she may want to search for sock advice elsewhere.

The genius women at knitting group today listened to my tale of woe, and then one of them (Connie? Beth?) suggested cutting the leg right above the heel flap of the longer one and ripping out the extra pattern repeat and then Kitchenering it back together. There are four rows of stockinette between the end of the lace and beginning of the heel flap, so it'll be reasonably easy to graft.

Thank goodness for that period of mourning I must go through after I discover a soul-crushing knitting error. Can you imagine how upset I'd be if I had ripped out the whole foot before someone suggested grafting?

In other news...
I have 9 days to finish 2 halves of 2 thrummed mittens, plus the extra thrummed mitten for Tina. Because I have a deadline, I am actively avoiding it by designing kitschy flamingo socks, involving eyelash yarn and beads for embellishment. More on that another day.

Balloon in a bowl

Nothing like a cool project that doesn't take a lot of time, and also teaches me something new. Here, you see the moebius bowl, pre-felting.

That Cat Bordhi, she can write instructions. Because that moebius cast on is not something just anyone could figure out.

I'm a multi-tasking mom. I sat on the couch, finishing up the decrease rounds of the moebius bowl while Sophia did homework and asked me questions, then I secured the tail, threw the thing into the wash with some dishtowels, and while they were agitating, I slipped into the "craft room" next to the laundry area of the basement and finished up a pair of pajama bottoms that needed the safety-pinned elastic sewn together and the casing hole sewn shut, and then the leg hems finished. By that time, the agitation was complete, I searched the family closet for a balloon and voila! Manos moebius.


While in the laundry room, I gave the Pretty Petals socks that spent the night drying on the wooden rack a squeeze and contemplated how much my mother really needed a pair of socks, particularly that pair. Very soft, those Koigu socks.

This morning, the balloon had deflated, but it had done its job shaping the bowl:


Again, I'm not sure I want to part with this bowl.

Mano a Manos

I didn't get out of the yarn shop yesterday with just a $4 skein of leftover yarn. I bought a hank of Cascade 220 in black, for Tina's third mitten, and this:


Manos del Uruguay, color 116, which I believe is called "Caribe." I've always thought of Manos as a rustic yarn, but it is, in fact, very soft -- a mixture of merino and Corriedale. I want a whole sweater made out of this stuff. I'm sure it wouldn't cost more than two or three hundred dollars. Sigh. Maybe a hat.

I cast on immediately (well, after I finished the toe on the Pretty Petals sock) to make a Moebius bowl. I completed the handle and made it half way or so down the bowl when I put it down last night. I probably would have kept going till I had finished, if it weren't a school day today. I like the 4 1/2 day weekend. Once the cooking was finished, I got a whole lot of knitting done.

The bowl will be felted and then sent to my math-professor father, who will undoubtedly appreciate the art of the moebius bowl. I plan to make a moebius cat bed once my holiday gift knitting is done. I have this crazy idea that the cat won't sit on my arm while I type, if I give him a bed to curl up in. He sits on my arm, because I won't let him sit here:

Cat-induced writer's block.

I forgive you, Koigu

Score!
My LYS, Needlework Unlimited, opened today at noon and I was there at 12:01.
First, they had the yarn I needed. It was even the same dye lot, but the lovely woman working back by the Koigu display told me something incredible when I told her all I really needed was about 5 yards. She said that Koigu sends NU the "loose ends" and that they had them on a table over by the needle point supplies. I didn't know what she meant by loose ends, until she explained that at the end of a dye lot, they have leftovers that aren't enough for a whole 50 gr skein, and they send them to NU, which in turn sells them for 25 cents a gram.

There were two of these "loose end" skeins in my colorway. One was a 35 gr skein (waaayyy more than I needed) in the same dye lot as the socks, and another was a 16 gr skein (still more than I needed, but less than half of the other one)in a different dye lot that, oddly, seemed to match better, colorwise, although the percentage of light green seemed quite a bit higher. There isn't really any dark green in it at all. It's the toe, though, so who cares? And $4, not $12, which made me very happy.


The next time I buy Koigu, I'm searching that bucket o' leftover goodness for a little toe insurance, either matching, or coordinating. Either way, it's a wonderful thing.

Oh, Noro, how I covet thee...

There are two types of knitting I'm not crazy about: scarves and afghans, mostly because of the rectangular sameness of it. Add garter stitch to it, and the revulsion is complete. I'm not clear at all about why the most popular first project is a garter stitch scarf. It's a wonder anyone goes on to knit anything else. My first project was a sleeveless, v-neck cotton sweater. It never occured to me to knit anything else. In fact, I probably didn't knit anything but sweaters for 10 years, when I started making fruit caps for babies (mine, and then others).

A year ago, for Christmas, I gave each of my close friends a gift certificate for a hand-knit item of their choice. To my dismay, three (three!) of them chose scarves. One wanted an Aran-style/cable-y scarf, which I happily knit, once I corrected the three major errors in the pattern.*

Another one wanted a black (black!) novelty-yarn scarf with bits of bright colors strewn through it. I finished that one in an evening. The third specified colors she liked, but nothing else. I made her a multi-directional diagonal scarf (still needs fringe, though). It's a garter stitch pattern, made tolerable by short rows and frequent increasing and decreasing. I was finished. Completado. No more scarves.

Until I happened to be perusing the Lion Brand website (I'm still not sure why I was doing that) and noticed they had a cashmere blend (more like a merino blended with a bit of cashmere and nylon) at a quite-reasonable price, which was discounted (a week later, the price went up and the discount went down). They also had a free pattern for what I felt was a very interesting item: the reversible cable scarf. Yes, a scarf. I ordered the yarn, and that was it. Until I found myself at the Knit Picks website a few minutes later (I think I was ordering more tips for my Options needles when I accidentally filled in the fields to search for cashmere blends.) Turns out Knit Picks has an even nicer cashmere blend yarn - Panache - which is baby alpaca, cashmere, silk, and superfine merino. And wouldn't you know it, there was a free Windowpane Seaman's Scarf pattern for that yarn. The next thing I knew, packages were arriving at my door filled with yarn I barely remembered ordering. I think this is the knitter's equivalent to a blackout caused by excessive drinking.

Somewhere in there, I found myself at the liquor store yarn shop five blocks from my house fondling Noro Kureyon and dreaming about Lizard Ridge afghans. Afghans! I had just finished Nina's Taste of Aran afghan, and I was thinking about making another afghan? Afghans are like scarves, only bigger. How could I be contemplating another afghan? I bought 9 balls of Kureyon that day -- every colorway the LYS had that I found appealing. Then I went online to find more colorways, and somehow I ended up with 10 more colors on a wishlist.

* I just looked at the designer's website, and she posted a corrected pattern just two days after I emailed her back in January. Which means I can happily recommend this pattern! It's absolutely gorgeous. It's Alison's Scarf by Annie Modesitt. I came across it originally on an Internet search, and then later saw it in my 2006 Pattern a Day calendar, too.

Climbing Lizard Ridge
Yesterday, I made this, the first of 24 squares:

Noro Kureyon, color 102. Everyone in the house finds this square repulsive, except for me. Michael deemed the square "'70s colors," Nina and Sophia thought some of the colors were okay, "except for the purple," only they didn't agree on which color was purple. Sophia wanted to know what I was planning to do "with that weird afghan you're making." This is the girl who huddles under the thin rayon chenille throw I bought at Costco. What possible use could this family, who lives in Minnesota, have for a wool afghan? Hmmmm.

After I made the square, I worked on my mom's Pretty Petals socks for a couple hours, getting past the heel flap, heel turn, and the gusset pick-up. A few more days and they'll be done!

Then I went down to the basement, where I had the Knit Picks cashmere stored, and knit the first of (approximately) five skeins the Seaman's scarf will take.


While I worked on this, Michael and I watched Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," trying not to get too depressed about the state of the environment and global warming.

All in all, a good knitting day, except for the derogatory remarks from the peanut gallery.

But back to the Noro...at knitting group the other day, someone mentioned that WEBS had good prices on Noro and that when you bought a certain quantity, you got a nice discount. I like Noro and I like discounts. So this morning, I went to the WEBS site, clicked on Noro, and guess what I found? Noro has a new cashmere blend, Called Noro Cashmere Island! It's a dk weight, and I like the colors. I started calculating how much of it I would need for a cardigan, what my discount would be, etc., completely forgetting that I had come to look for Kureyon for my Lizard Ridge afghan. You know what else I found out, while Googling for more pictures of Noro Cashmere Island? Noro makes yarn for machine knitting. I have a knitting machine. I have two knitting machines: my SIL's old bulky-weight, completely manual knitting machine, and my "regular" weight, quite-computerized knitting machine that I haven't used for 10 years.

I really have to stop Googling for yarn. Although, have you been to the Philosopher's Wool website recently?

Later....
I had to recharge my camera before I could download the pictures. While that was happening, I worked on my mom's Pretty Petals socks. As I headed toward the toe, I began worrying about having enough yarn. Koigu is on the skimpy side of yardage for socks, and I'd run out of Koigu when I made my first Pomatomus sock, but that was a 72-stitch pattern (Pretty Petals is only 64 sts), and I was just getting the hang of Norwegian purling, so I was using more yarn than I should have, which I could tell after I bought a 3rd skein mail-order, spent two months knitting other things and getting better at Norwegian purl, and then knitting the second Pomatomus sock using just one skein of Koigu and finding that sock was a bit narrower than the first. But I digress...

The first Pretty Petals sock, knit this past summer in time for my mother to try it on when she was here for a visit, used most of a skein of Koigu, but I had enough left over that I didn't worry about the second skein. Unfortunately, I used the leftovers from that skein as scrap yarn for various other socks. I say "unfortunately," because here's what happened last night when I was about half-way through the toe decreases:

I need about five yards of this. If my LYS, where I bought this last spring, doesn't have any, I'm going to have to rip out the toes of both and knit them in green. Koigu apparently doesn't make this colorway any more, and googling for KPPPM P149 gives me exactly one hit: this blog. (Note: I have since discovered that I misread the handwritten label for this yarn. It's actually P140, which I can find online. Thank goodness.) I have put out an APB to several yahoo groups and the TKGA forum, and I sent a note to Shelly, asking her if she has any in her impressive sock yarn leftovers stash (sadly, she does not). I actually filled out Koigu's Contact Form last night, asking them if they had any in their backroom, gathering dust, but clicking on the Submit button resulted in a minor explosion and a request for a login id and password.

Koigu, I love thee, but from now on, I'm knitting you toe up.