DesigKnit

I had another productive evening last night after group meeting. Yup, that’s right. I did no knitting, but I managed to find more blogs to read! (To be fair, I got home at 9:30 and bedtime is 10, so it wasn’t like I had a lot of time to work on those holiday socks anyway…) Anne Hanson’s blog is my hands-down favorite. It’s one of those places that you go to sit at the feet of a great teacher and just absorb knowledge. There are few people that I really feel the need to emulate, or that I aspire to become. I am pretty happy just being myself, generally. However, sometimes you run across someone whose skill and knowledge knocks you flat, and leaves you wondering how on earth you could be more like that. Anne is one of them. (At least as far as knitting goes…I know her in no other way.) She has the most beautiful designs, and there’s always a great discussion of the process of achieving them, from conception through to blocking. I want to try every single one, and I would be in great danger of never reemerging from lace, except that I have so many things going on right now that I must finish first.

Well, I was poking around on Knitspot before heading off to bed for the night, and noticed that Anne linked to Kim. Given the high esteem in which I hold Knitspot, I decided to try this blog that Anne linked to. Kim, in turn, linked to several other blogs, among which is Susan’s. There, I found another process knit blog. I am very excited, as this is my favorite kind (I appear to share this taste with Kim). It just so happens that Susan sent out a plea for links to her blog today. I fully intend to figure out how to put one of those “list of blogs I read” panels on the side of my screen someday, but I have been too lazy to do it thus far. Since I have no readers, having not yet announced my site, posting these blog sites here will have no immediate impact. However, it’s just possible that someone will find them buried in the archives someday when I have “gone public,” and will find a new blog to haunt as a result. I’m guessing from what I’ve seen so far that there will be more posts on these new blogs in the future, as they seem to be the kind that I will find myself talking about frequently. I have a sneaking suspicion that this will not be the last time that I link to these new pages. But now, for the first time, I would like to introduce my non-existent (and hopefully, my future) readership to Susan and Kim. May you enjoy their sites as much as I do.

As to the title of this post, I really have to wonder if this is becoming an obsession. I really have a lot of blogs that I read now. Google reader lists at least 11 new posts a day, and I don’t even know how many there are in my list. I do find myself reading and posting when I should be knitting. I’m not sure that I approve of this new obsession displacing my old one (the old one being knitting, of course). Hopefully they will learn to peaceably coexist, because I would hate to give up blogging. =)

Temptation has arrived. In this case, it is in the form of a very soft skein of superfine merino laceweight from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. Remember the Irtfa’a that I was so excited about?

The yarn came today! Oh no! How am I supposed to do Christmas knitting with such temptation sitting only inches away? I am dying to start on this project, but I need to finish Christmas knitting first. Oh dear. It’s a good thing that I enjoy the anticipation of a project as much as the starting. Otherwise a month might kill me. I already feel myself bargaining with my self discipline.

“If I do one sock today, can I just cast on?” or “How about 5 rows of Irtfa’a for each sock finished?”

I love lace. Isn’t the yarn gorgeous? I like it even better in person than I did online, and even online I was tempted to buy one of each of the entire Raven clan (good thing it’s expensive enough to put a stop to that kind of impulse shopping!). It is super soft, and it has incredible colors. It’s sitting by my chair so that I can take it out and look at it and pet it on occassion. It’s going to be a long month…

Baby bootie practice sock #1 is complete, pattern followed to the letter (I think). This took a little longer than I expected (almost 2 hrs for one bootie), but I have a feeling that that’s probably because today was a teaching day, and I’m slogging a bit now. Tomorrow is group meeting night, so no knitting to speak of, but I should be able to finish the pair on Thursday, and maybe start the other practice set, too. I’ll be back to toe socks in no time! (And, I’ll have baby crossed off the Christmas list to boot)

Mischief found and approved Branden’s new handwarmers last night.

Artemis cuddled with the sock yarn

That last position was a bit hard to knit around, so we compromised

She didn’t seem to mind

Think that’s a happy cat?

On November 8th, the Yarn Harlot posted on her blog about a visit with Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton. She (and most of her readership) were simply astounded to discover that Ms. Hamilton knits with a hank of yarn simply laid across her lap. I read through the 292 comments after the post, and all I could think was that knitters should just relax sometimes. There aren’t any rules, and if knitting with an open skein works for Cornelia, then I see no reason to break into her house in Sweden and wind her yarn. I know the post was written tongue-in-cheek, but still.

As an avid breaker of all knitting rules, I decided that I had to give this a try, a vote in favor of the much out-voted Swede. And I love it. Yes, I do. I have had more tangles trying to use a skein that pulls from the center; nary a one has turned up while knitting this skein. You might have noticed it open and free in one of the pictures in my last post. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s a great way to soak up the colors and revel in the texture of the yarn as you knit. And my cat agrees.

This is Mischief. She has made one appearance already, I think, which means that her sister will need to feature in a post soon, also. Just to be fair, of course. Can’t treat the cats differently, especially when Artemis is my cat. Mischief is an ardent lover of all things soft and fibery. She doesn’t pull at them or chew on them or attack them. She kneads them. And when she kneads, she gets this look on her face that tells you she’s in the seventh level of heaven (does heaven have seven levels, or is that hell???). Her whiskers come forward, forward, forward, until they touch in front, and she just has the oooooohhhhhh…… look on her face. She stopped by last night to appreciate Sarah’s sock yarn. This is such a common phenomenon with soft knitted things (whether they’re being worn, in the laundry basket, or just laying around, she will find and knead them) that we have given it a name. When we go to a yarn store, a yarn must pass the Mischief Test to be worth buying. In order to pass the Mischief Test it must be so soft and wonderful that you stand in front of the yarn bin and just feel it for a while. If you have that eye-rolling, half conscious dopey expression of pleasure on your face, it will be Mischief approved. This sock yarn is definitely approved.

And, even after the Mischief Test had been given and passed, I have not had a single tangle. I have had a cat sleeping on my lap while I knit all night, and no problems. Actually, I think the hank is less attractive to them than a ball; it doesn’t twitch around as much, and it looks less like their toys. If they do start to get a little wild-eyed, one speaking of their name in The Voice nips the attack in the bud. They know that The Voice is a warning before the squirt bottle comes out, and they know better than to push it when my yarn is involved. So, they stick to the kneading and occasional sleeping on my yarn, and I knit on. And now, I knit on from an open skein rather than an overwound little ball that will roll off across the floor despite my best efforts to restrain it. Thank you, Yarn Harlot and Cornelia Tuttle Hamilton!

Of course I have to post about the socks. How could I not? My family won’t miss a month of reading about knitting on my blog anyway. And at the end of the month, they’ll get to read about their gifts in progress. Which means I get to talk about toes.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I bought Cat Bordhi’s new book New Pathways for Sock Knitters along with all the yarn yesterday. I figured there was probably no better way to learn about different and exciting sock patterns, and that this was probably a good place for me to start. I know I’ve said before that I don’t really follow patterns. I’m not sure that I managed to convey that it is simply impossible for me to do so 99% of the time. My one exception so far was Elijah. I did manage to follow the pattern from beginning to end on that project. I usually don’t even pretend that I’m going to use a pattern; it’s usually just a matter of time before I give in to the off-road knitting style.

So, I bought sock yarn and a brand new sock book with all kinds of crazy architectures designed to keep me glued to the pattern and dying to know what happens next. What’s the first thing I do? That’s right; even before I had chosen a pattern, I had something to add.

You know when you see something and it just screams out the name of a person on your shopping list? Well, one of the Bearfoot yarns was just dying to become socks for my sister. I’m not sure why, but it might as well have had her name on the label. It was also crying out that it couldn’t be just any socks. These had to be over-the-top special socks. I am going to use the spiraling corolis pattern (see, at least I have picked a pattern now!), which is a very cool swirly architecture that wraps around as you go up the leg. I love it. But this yarn needed something else. Toes! That’s right…toe socks. The coriolis pattern is a toe-up sock, so it’s easy to replace the standard toe with something with a few extra digits. So, I settled down last night to make toes. Ten of them. Here’s the first one.

Now, this would be particularly funny if you had heard me giving Branden a hard time about being “difficult” because he wanted the start of fingers on his latest pair of handwarmers. It wasn’t really all that hard, but I had to give him a bit of eye rolling over needing fingers. There’s a certain amount of irony in the fact that the very next project I chose is one that has ten toes. Good thing he knew I was kidding. Here are the first 5 toes, all lined up for grafting.

I really don’t know why on earth making toe socks is amusing me so much at the moment, but it is. I think it’s mostly because I know how much Sarah loves toe socks. I can hear the squeal from here, I think, and that’s pretty amazing considering we’re 3500 miles and a month away from Christmas. Really, though, I can’t think of any other way to explain why making 10 tiny little tubes and then grafting them all together should make me giggle to myself while wrestling with up to 6 stubborn needles.

This picture was taken in the midst of the grafting process and just as I discovered that I had dropped a stitch and needed to work it back up to the holding needles. Branden looked over, was impressed by my porcupine of needles, and ignored all statements claiming that this was a private moment between me and my yarn, and it needn’t be photographed, thank-you-very-much. It did work out, though, and I moved on to the second set of toes. All grafting is now complete, and I am very glad.

Sometimes you try something and decide that your method is just perfect. Sometimes, you know there must be a better way. The latter is the case on these toes. There must be a better way to make them. I am telling myself that I don’t have time to spend a week finding a better way to make toes. Maybe after Christmas. But there is a better way. I just know it. Sarah might end up with a lot of toe socks if she’s not careful (I can’t stand to wear them, and she’s the only one I know that loves them, so she’s first and last in line to inherit toe prototypes.

Now that I’ve gotten a little off-roading out of the way, I do fully intend to go back and do Cat’s book justice. I will begin at the beginning, and read the introduction, and do the little warm-up socks at the beginning before diving in. I will. No, really. There’s a lot to learn from her patterns, and I am very excited to learn it. All I need is a little self-discipline and some quick-knitting yarn…

The conundrum of blogging. I had planned to send out a link to family and friends this week letting them in on my little blogging endeavor. But now I have a pile of yarn waiting to become something for them. I can either post about it anyway and ruin the surprise, or I can just not tell them for another month. Of course, that means that I’ll pretty much be blogging to myself for another month. Which I’m perfectly ok with. If you can’t talk to yourself, just who can you talk to? But then, I’d like to think that the blog is on its way to a readership, however small. Still, you can’t keep secrets and blog about them too. What to do?

I’m guessing that I’ll probably blog anyway, not tell anyone, and then they can read about the process of creating gifts after they open them. Of course, that means that this early blog content probably won’t get read, but that won’t be the end of the world, I suppose. At least it will get me in practice, and if I decide I don’t like it, I need not continue in a month. Of course, my family aren’t the only ones that will ever read the blog, but my guess is that they’ll be my largest readership, at least for a while. I’ll have to think on this some more. I have a whole post all ready to go on the first pair of socks. Do I post it? Or do I wait? See how having a blog suddenly complicates little things like holiday surprises?

I posted just a few days ago that I’m not a big fan of sock knitting. I want very much to be in love with sock making, but I’m just not. So, what did I do today? Yup, that’s right. I decided that I am going to do holiday knitting after all. And what am I making? You’re so good at this game…you guessed it! Socks.

So, why on earth would I choose to make too many socks in too little time when I don’t even like making socks? Yes, it probably has something to do with me being crazy. See, I have this theory. Usually, when we don’t like something for no particular reason it is mostly a case of not being familiar enough with it (think little kids and peas…). When we get some practice, we realize that it’s pretty enjoyable after all. So, I’m going to confront my lack of love for socks head on, and try a bunch, in all kinds of different styles, and then if I still don’t like them I’ll be able to say that I tried, at least.

I bounced this little brainstorm off of Branden this morning, and told him he should probably take this opportunity to save both of us the next month of sock making pressure. He didn’t take the opportunity. Instead, he said that my idea sounded logical to him, and that I should give it a try. I have to give him big points for being supportive, but I’m afraid he doesn’t score too well on the saving me from myself front. I guess we can’t be perfect in everything, can we?

Of course, I have no sock yarn. This meant a trip to the yarn store. My favorite local store for sock and fancy yarn is the Weaving Works. They’re a little on the expensive side, and for most things I prefer the Fiber Gallery, but for fancy yarns and sock selection they can’t be beat. It’s so hard to choose! I love the colors out this season. We managed to get one color for every person on the list, and I was even good and didn’t get any extra skeins, despite Branden’s belief that I needed some for me, too. I will either love socks and get more yarn after the holidays, or I will never want to see another sock again, in which case the yarn would languish forever in my stash. And really, what kind of a life is that for a beautiful yarn? I am not always so disciplined. The large pile of project yarn that I already had in my arms might have helped.

Isn’t it beautiful? Three (three!!!) skeins of Bearfoot, some very fine alpaca that will take forever to knit for a certain picky grandfather, some Lana Grossa, a bit of Colinette, and an Alpaca Sox. Mmmmm….

And for the next few days (before reality hits and I realize how many socks I have to knit in 3 weeks), I will be revelling in new projects. Here’s to delusion!

We also did some book researching this weekend. Barnes and Noble sent us a coupon for an extra 15% off of any book in the store (in addition to our member’s discount of 10%), so we headed over there and took a look at some knitting books. I’ve been wanting to expand my reference section a little, and I’m at a point in my knitting where I want to learn some good solid pattern design theory. We spent a couple of hours sitting on the floor in front of the knitting books section, and ended up with Knitting in the Old Way, by Gibson-Roberts and Robson, and The Knitter’s Book of Yarn, by Clara Parkes. I’ve started the KBY, and it’s looking really good so far. I’ve heard rave reviews all around, so I’m pretty excited.

I was tempted by a few other books, namely those by the Yarn Harlot and the Reader’s Digest Knitter’s Handbook by Montse Stanley. Christmas is just around the corner, and I’ve had some questions about gift ideas, so I figured that maybe I should leave those until after the holidays, just in case.

Here I am, a week into blogging, and already falling behind. (It is easier to let things slip when I haven’t even told anyone that I’m blogging yet, though…)
I haven’t announced that I’m blogging to anyone yet; I wanted to get some actual content up before sending it around, so there’s a little less pressure to post regularly. Yeah. That must be it, right?

This has been a very nice 4 day weekend. I wish every week could have a 4 day weekend. I used to really look forward to going into lab to get work done, but I’m afraid it’s been a while since I’ve actually wanted to go to work on Monday. I tell myself that it’s just some mild burn-out, and I hope I’m right. It would be a real pain to finish 5 or 6 years of grad school and then realize that I don’t actually like what I do anymore. But that’s a topic for another day. Today, we discuss how much fun it has been to not work for the past 4 days. We spent Thanksgiving with friends, some of whom we saw last at Thanksgiving last year. Time does fly, doesn’t it? It was really nice to catch up with everyone, and we’ve all sworn now that it won’t be another year before we get together again. The holidays seem to give off this wonderful feeling of invincibility, where you can make promises about finding time for things without having to think about whether or not it will really happen. I hope it will, though. I always mean to keep in touch better, but then life happens and I don’t. But then, maybe this is the year. =)

On Friday I cooked a turkey for us, along with a shorter list of side dishes. We are now set on leftovers for a whole week’s worth of eating. Who says you need fast food? Just cook once a week and then have fun reinventing leftovers. I’m excited about this week’s cooking; turkey pot pie, turkey soup with orzo, mashed potatoes and gravy, leek and potato soup, etc. One day of cooking, a week of food. Pretty productive, I think.

In between turkey cooking activities, I managed to finish the first of Branden’s new alpaca handwarmers. I’m now extra in love with the Frog Tree alpaca yarn. Not only is is silky soft, it knits up super-fast. I’m using a garter-stitch rib combination from Vogue’s Stitchionary, which ends up looking like a herringbone pattern. I was afraid that it wouldn’t show up nicely with the dark and fuzzy yarn, but I like it. The lighting has to be just right for it to show up, but it’s definitely there.

I also finished and blocked my Bearfoot scarf. I love it! I fell in love with the yarn this summer on our LYS tour, and bought it for a linen-stitch bag that I have yet to make. It didn’t mix well with the other yarn that I chose, and so it needed a new project. While it’s technically a sock yarn, I wanted to use it for something that gets seen a bit more than a pair of socks. I started out making a very lacy short-sleeved sweater shell, but chickened out and decided that there wouldn’t be enough yarn. So, I decided to go with a scarf. The lace endeavor had taught me that this yarn would not do well with a complicated lacy pattern; it’s varigation is just too strong. So, I wanted something a little less intricate, fast to work, but still a little on the lacy and light side. I ended up going with a vertical rib broken by the double eyelet rib in Walker’s first book.

It turns out that I had underestimated the Bearfoot. When I made it into a ball, it looked like there wasn’t much there. I was afraid I’d run out. I decided to just start and see how far it would go; at worst, I’d have to frog it all and start over with another idea. Well, that ball took forever to run out. I’d be sure I was almost at the end, and I’d look at the ball and it hadn’t gotten any smaller. At first, this felt like it was just the normal middle of the scarf takes forever syndrome. But then the scarf was getting really long, too. And longer. And longer. All told, it ended up being about 7 feet long. From one skein of sock yarn! I am so impressed. It’s gorgeous yarn, and there’s a ton of it packed in that one skein. It didn’t look like much unblocked, but after blocking, it’s a really pretty little lace. On size 6 needles, I got about 420 square inches, I think. And that’s not even stretched!

We hit a coffee shop Saturday morning and I finished up the handwarmers while basking in the unexpected fall sunshine. It’s been gorgeous this weekend; the sun has been out every day, which is an unusual and welcome occurrence in November in Seattle. We found the perfect window at Peet’s, and spent a few hours just soaking up the wintery sunshine. Soft yarn, warm sun, time with my husband, and a cup of tea. Not a bad way to start the day! We did the same today, and I’m about a foot into the matching scarf now. I think I may see more Frog Tree in my knitting future. Not the immediate future, though (more on that in the next post).

(Doesn’t he make a good hand model?) It’s a little easier to see the pattern in this one:

I also got some spinning done. Much to my disappointment, the Romney wool isn’t getting any softer as I spin. I’m going to leave the spinning saga for another post also, but for the moment it’s sufficient to say that I’m about to have a lot of not very soft wool yarn. I have no idea what to do with it, either. Any ideas?

I’ve only added another inch and a half to the cable sweater, unfortunately. After about 2 hours of working on it, my hands were really not happy with me. I’m afraid to push it much, because once they get bad, there’s no more knitting until I manage to appease my carpal tunnel. So, the sweater moves along very slowly. It’s annoying; I’m very excited about that project, and sweaters are my favorite kind of knitting. But then again, I am getting all kinds of small projects done, so I guess it’s not all bad.