Where to Begin?

I should have photographed these sticking out from the edge of my house's foundation. I'm afraid they're starting to look like something the Wicked Witch of the East might have worn.

I took this picture in our backyard, which, due to extreme effort on my part, is way less jungly than it was at the start of the weekend. I seriously considered re-zoning some of the weeds as hedges, but thought better of it. It was crazy overgrown back there. It still is in patches, but at least the bits of lawn have been reclaimed. The roses are starting their spring blooming period and the yard smells quite nice -- if you ignore the organic turkey poop fertilizer I just put on the grass.

I hope I can walk tomorrow.

Yesterday I mentioned that this heel has a French heel and that it was all mysterious, with the stitches for the heel divided between two needles. I don't know what I was thinking, but socks knit on DPNs usually do have the stitches divided between two needles. I've just re-read some of the front matter in Nancy Bush's book, and realize that just about every heel I've ever knit has been a French heel -- as opposed to Dutch, German or Welsh. So, no reason to panic. There is one odd thing about the heel...

Rather than the beginning of the gusset round starting at the middle of the heel (where the two needles cross at the top of the heel) and moving onto the right gusset, this pattern calls for the gusset decrease rounds to begin at the beginning of the left heel flap (where you can see the working yarn trailing off in the picture). The only reason I can see to do this is because one can -- the heel has just been turned in the contrasting color, and since the pattern calls to start working with the main color, why not start wherever you want to?

The main problem I'm going to have is remembering to do the left slanting decrease (Sl1, K1, PSSO) first in the round, and the right-slanting decrease (K2T), second.

All Aboard!

Okay -- the Bomb Pop Socks didn't hold my interest as long as I thought they would. Looking forward to this morning's knitters' meetup, and dreading the thought that my fellow knitters might think that I don't ever knit anything else, I decided to start another pair of socks.

I had some KnitPicks Essentials yarn that I'd had for a while and that I thought might work well with another pattern in Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks. The pattern is called Gentleman's Sock in Railway Stitch. Although the other pair I just finished from this book was called "fancy," I fancy that this sock is the fancier of the two patterns. It uses two colors of yarn after all. The two colors I'm using are called Pumpkin and Fawn. I'd originally gotten the Fawn to knit a stranded knitting pattern from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks, but that didn't work out so well. The Fawn yarn can be seen in a round ball at the top of the picture. I'm thinking these colors will play nicely with each other.

Among the interesting features of this pattern are the railroad stitch and again, the shaping of the leg. If you look closely, you can see where the decreases brought a 5-stitch pattern down together, forming a "Y" on the leg. Also, the instructions say that rather than have all the heel stitches held on one needle, half the stitches are on one needle and half on another. This heel is called a French heel. I'm sure it will make more sense once I get to that part of the pattern.

A Gentlemanly Pair

A relaxing spring break at the in-laws resulted in my most quickly knit pair of socks yet. From cast on to cast off -- nine days. Not a record by any means, but the quickest I've ever been able to make a pair. Here they are all finished -- the Gentleman's Fancy Sock(s).

Before getting into the sock wrap-up, let me mention a fantastic exhibit that we went to see while in the Metroplex this weekend. The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth has an amazing exhibit on, Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World, 1690–1850. It features works from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston that rarely get shown. Such beautiful paintings! I found myself as interested in the fabrics and scroll containers as much as the art. The works by Hokusai (of the Great Wave fame) toward the end of the exhibit were my favorites, especially Libo Admiring the Waterfall.

Back to the socks...

I really like them, despite a big mistake resulting from my inability to read a pattern closely. The instructions dictated the number of rounds to knit for the leg. From the cast on, 20 rounds of knitting for the cuff ribbing. Then, each of the next 90 rows is dictated. However, because I read repeating a 20 round section as repeating 10 rows, my sock ended up having a leg that is 10 rounds (or about 3/4") short. I like socks as long as they can be, so I'm bummed that I did this. I noticed the mistake while making the second sock and rather than undoing the first sock, decided to make the same mistake in the second. Turns out this mistake was fortunate, because it's doubtful I would have had enough yarn to finish both socks if I hadn't left these 10 rounds out. So it all worked out.

I'm still not sure what I think about the tweediness of these socks. They definitely look better in photographs and from a distance than they do up close and personal. I was telling Jeff that they look like someone took a nice pair of slate gray socks and barfed a Colombian or Romanian flag all over it. To be fair, there are green bits, too, but they don't show up at all.

I think this little distraction may have been the thing to get me back on track with the Bomb Pop socks. Let's hope so.

Spring Break Knitting

Got a new phone this week, and wanted to try posting a picture to Blogger from it. Not the best quality, but kind of cool for on-the-fly posting!

Sideways

I got an amazing amount of work done on this pair of socks. I had a lot of sitting time -- it's spring break, it's been raining, and our niece and nephew were here for a sleepover this weekend, so I got a lot of needle time whilst watching Pippi Longstocking. Keep your eyes open if you watch this movie -- it has a knitting scene!

It's been good to get out of the knitting box for this project. I've had to look at socks in a different way and was forced to try new things. The biggie for me was the sideways grafting at the toe. Rather than grafting the top to the bottom, the sides are grafted together creating a solid horizontal band across the toe. It feels a little strange on my toes, but it's very appealing, visually.

There were other odd details. For instance, there is a little row of purls down the heel flap. Not sure why -- a way of keeping track of the center of the flap? Also, rather than pairing the k2t right-slanting decreases with ssk, these socks paired the k2t with s1 k1 psso. I've never really used that left-slanting decrease before, and I think it mirrors k2t better. Why don't more people use this in patterns? Maybe I just don't get around enough, patternwise. I may start substituting this for ssk more often.

Overall, I like this pattern. The sock fits quite well. I'm not sure about the tweed yarn, though. I think it would have worked better in browns or greens. This slate colored yarn with bright red and yellow bits is a bit much. It looks better from a distance than it does close up. But as yarn, it knits up nicely.

Now on to the second sock. The instructions don't mention knitting a second one, and the name of the pattern is Gentleman's Fancy Sock (singular). I'll go out on a limb and make a second one -- because that's the kind of daredevil knitter I am.

Sock Fancy

I got tired of looking at the yarn of the Bomb Pop Socks, and I just needed to get away from them for a while. So, I cast on for a sock from a book I got for Christmas, Knitting Vintage Socks: New Twists on Classic Patterns by Nancy Bush.

I chose the pattern for the "Gentleman's Fancy Sock." I liked the alligator-style pattern. It didn't look too difficult and it seemed like it would fit me. I've been knitting from Charlotte Schurch's book so much that this approach seemed a bit alien at first. This is the first sock I've ever knit that has decreases shaping the leg. It's strange to think of Victorian knitters (Bush pulls many of her patterns from a popular 19th century British needlework periodical) concerning themselves with the shapes of men's legs. The stereotype is that Victorians didn't think about such things at all -- which, of course, meant that that's all they thought about all the time. My legs are not what I would characterize as "shapely," but we'll see how it goes.

I'm using Knit Picks Essential Tweed for these. The tweedy bits are a little unnerving, popping up in odd patterns, sometimes deeply entwined in the main yarn, sometimes hanging off the side of the sock, barely attached. One extra large chunk I dubbed a "cancerous growth," although I learned at the knitter's meetup this morning that "slub" is the appropriate term for these tweedy bits.

On the ZimmerZipper sweater front, I'm still waiting for a chance to go out and buy a zipper. I'm hoping to drop the whole project off at the tailor's early next week.

Sunday Steeking Sunday

Today was all about the steek.

In preparation of going over to my sister's house for her much-needed assistance, I ran a line of orange yarn (you may recognize it as being left over from the Textured Blocks Throw knitted earlier this winter) right down the center stitch. It actually looks kind of cool. Sort of a "cut along the dotted line" approach.

The steek consists of this center stitch, plus two stitches to either side of it. Most of what I've read about steeks has been from the standpoint of stranded knitting, in which you alternate stitches in the steek area to make sure that all the strands are interwoven and interlocked with each other. So I planned a five-stitch steek, which I realize now wasn't necessary. I guess I either have a little two-stitch facing on either side of the cut, or I'll just live with four extra stitches. Maybe that will give me some wiggle room after large meals? I'll discuss it with whoever puts in the zipper.

My sister was so patient with me trying to explain what needed to be done. She was a real whiz with the machine. It was nice to sit around and chat about our mom's sewing, and our granny's sewing machine that just sews straight stitches and which my sister still has. All in all, it was a great way to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

She basically sewed a straight line, using small stitches, straight down the middle of the gutter in the middle of the stitch to either side of the orange line, and then sewed another line in the gap between the row she'd just sewn and the next one over. And voila!

The next step was to head downstairs to the dining room table for the cutting of the steek. My niece and nephew were both curious about this step and asked a lot of good questions. I had started to pull the orange line out (for some crazy reason), but sanity prevailed. It made a great guide for figuring out where the middle of the cutting row was. It didn't take all that long. In the meantime, my niece Kathleen's cat, Hannah, had to help. It's a good thing I hadn't already woven in the ends and deprived her of all that fun.

This last picture shows the final product. Boy, this thing is easier to get on and off now that it is a cardigan! As you can see, I still haven't tacked the neck down. I need to do that, weave in the few ends, block the whole thing, and then take it to a tailor to put in the zipper. Thanks to my nephew Christopher for doing such a great job on the photography.

Earning My Stripes

It's been a while since I've posted! What can I say -- work, life, out of town trips, etc.

The ZimmerZipper sweater is still waiting for a trip to my sister's for machine sewing the steek. I ditched the crochet steek idea when I realized how thick that would make the zipper area. Hopefully this will happen this weekend some time. Sisters are the best. Love your sister! Especially if she has a sewing machine and knows how to use it.

So I've concentrated, when I've had the chance to knit, on my Bomb Pop Socks. Oh, the trials and tribulations. I finished the first sock -- twice -- the first time, thinking I was running out of yarn, I put the toe decreases in too early. Turns out I had plenty. So I ripped backed and added half an inch to the sock. Then I decided the baby cable ribbing, while decorative and all, detracts from the stripiness that I went to great pains to dye into the yarn. So I started the second sock as a more straightforward plain sock.

And now I'm seriously thinking of changing it again. Grrr. Here's the deal. I want this to really show off the stripes, and I think a toe up sock with the short-rowed toes and heel would do that best. I'd finally gotten back to embracing gussets and picking up stitches and turning heels, but I think the toe-up method would just work best. I've been spending entirely too much time on these socks, but I need them to be right.

One of these days I will knit another pair of socks.

90% Done

My sweater using the percentage system is almost done! Here's a picture of it off the needles. Still left to do: weave in the few ends I have, cut the steek (yikes!), block it, and take it to a tailor to get a zipper put in.

I'm thinking of using Eunny Jang's crochet method for sewing up the steek. It's something I can do without having to resort to sewing, at which I suck. I did this on the tea cozy a few months ago, and I think it worked okay. I'm still going to have to tack it down to the body of the sweater somehow, but maybe I can just baste it down. Anyone with ideas along these lines, feel free to chime in.

Here are a few detail pictures of the collar. The top one shows the whole thing spread out. I purled a row at the point where I wanted the top of the collar to be. Then, I knitted a section the same length again, and folded it back in on itself. I'll tack it down later. That way, I can have a non-ribbed collar that doesn't roll.

We'll see how it works -- and looks. The main idea I was going for here was to have a high-ish collar that didn't cling to my neck. Kind of a roomy Nehru look.

Moo

I'm working something of a split shift today because I have to talk to a class late this evening. So I had time to get a haircut and run by the house during an extra long lunch. And this was waiting for me in the mail -- all the way from London.

Moo cards. Moolicious Moo cards. Aren't they neat? They're about the size of half of a business card, printed on very sturdy card stock. They come in a neat little plastic box. And they're all pictures from my Flickr site. The other side has the address of my knitting blog. So I can include this with knitted gifts, or hand them out at the knitter's meetup, etc. Several people at the meetup had something like this, and I thought, "how cool!"

I know that at the outset, I had intended for this blog to be a way for me to track my projects -- a kind of personal thing. But at some point you have to share, right?

Moo.

It's a Series of Tubes

Like the internets, this seamless Elizabeth Zimmerman sweater is based on a series of tubes.

The sleeves are finished (perfect knitting for watching the Westminster dog show over the last few evenings), and tonight I attached these tubes to the main tubes of the sweater. Some tube math:

To recap, the sweater is 188 stitches around. Ms. Zimmermann calls for 8% of the total circumference stitches (15) to be put on holders at the armpits. That is, 15 stitches from the inside of the sleeve are matched to 15 stitches from the sides of the sweater. All the "outside" stitches are incorporated into the round knitting. I've done four rows so far and it looks like it's working.

I think I'm going to use Kitchener stitch to graft the pits. I started to do this before joining the outside of the sleeves to the body, but then I thought better of it. I should listen to Elizabeth, don't you think?

Round and Round...

This is my progress after a week. Well, after 5 days, actually. You see, I started over.

If you look at the picture from the previous post, you can see that the ribbing is the same width as the body of the sweater. I realized that I should have cast on fewer stitches and then increased after the ribbing. Since this sweater is all about the percentages, I picked 75% of the original number of stitches (188, not counting the steek), and cast on 140 stitches plus 5 for the steek. Then, after the ribbing, I just increased one stitch after every 3 to get up to 188 (+5). So far so good. It's just knit, knit, knit, knit, knit, and then some more knitting. The sweater is about 14 inches long right now, and in about 4 inches I'll be at the armpits at which point I'll need to stop and start on the sleeves.

I've only used 2 of the 10 hanks I've purchased so far (the picture shows the sweater right after I attached the 3rd). I think I'll have plenty of yarn to finish.

ZimmerZipper

The attempt at Avast will have to wait. I've abandoned that idea and have embraced the idea of doing a zippered cardigan using Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage system as outlined in her book, Knitting Without Tears.

The basic idea is that you knit up a swatch on a pair of needles (duh!), figure out the gauge (in this case, 3.75 stitches per inch), figure out how big around the sweater needs to be (in this case -- big -- 50"). Then multiply to get the number of stitches to cast on (188), plus five stitches for a steek to be cut later -- a total of 193 stitches. After that, things get weird. It's basically like knitting a story problem. Ms. Zimmerman has quite a free-form approach to direction writing. If two needles are travelling toward each other at 45 mph....

Anyway, this picture shows the results so far. I did 12 rows of 2x2 ribbing, and now it's just knit knit knit until I hit the pits. I'm still on the first ball of yarn and I'm getting quite a lot of fabric out of it. We'll see. I've fooled myself before.

Thanks to Caro at the meetup group for walking me through the idea. It gave me quite a boost of confidence about the whole idea.

Other project updates:

I got the first Bomb Pop sock done, but felt it was a little short for my foot. I really thought I'd used to much yarn already, but when I weighed the sock against the yarn I had left, I realized I could afford to make this sock really fit. So I've ripped back down and have to retackle it.

I also washed the acrylic Sherbet Baby Blanket before sending it out to the new little one for whom it's intended, and it pilled like crazy. I washed it on the gentlest cycle and dried it on really low heat. I'm think the extra tumbling because of the length of drying time might have been the reason for this?

Bad, Bad Dog!

Did I mention that this yarn smells good?

Jeff and I decided to go to out for dinner this evening and this is the scene that greeted our return. That's the guilty party in the background doing a very poor job of looking innocent.

Only one of the hanks got really chewed. I put the ragged scraps on my swift, and by felt-splicing the pieces, I think I was able to salvage it. I had ordered one ball extra, so this will be it. It will be for swatches and any seaming.

I may not seam at all. I swatched a little this evening, and it appears this yarn won't work with the Avast pattern. I thought I would be able to get it down to the required gauge, but it just won't work. My next plan of attack is to use Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage system to do a zip up cardigan. I'm still thinking, though. Hers is a rather chatty approach to patterning, and I'm not sure I'm brave enough. We'll see.

In the meantime, rest assured that if we had a dog house, Silas would be in it.

The Best Kind of Mail

Today, I got this. I read a post on Janna's blog recently in which she described a yarn sale she had taken advantage of. I copied her and took advantage of it too.

I'm now the proud owner of 10 hanks of Beaverslide Dry Goods 2-ply fisherman's weight yarn in the colorway Tamarack. I had to check Wikipedia (gasp!) to see what a tamarack was. I wasn't sure if it was really dark brown or really dark green. Either would have been fine with me, but as it turns out, it's brown -- with flecks of light brown and an occasional greenish-yellowish streak. You can see for yourself if you click on the picture, click on the "All Sizes" link above the image at the Flickr site, and then choose original. It's quite me.

I don't know if it's what they feed the sheep in Montana or if they keep their wool stored near cinnamon, but this yarn smells good. And another thing that I've never seen before: this yarn's dyelot number is 1. That's right: 1. How cool is that?

One day -- soon I hope -- it will be this (only in a larger version).

La Fée Verte

Having recently begun knitting with one of the hanks of yarn I dyed with Janelle at Christmas, I decided to dye the other one this weekend while the weather was nice and I could dry it outside.

I knew I wanted to do green and I knew I didn't want to bother with stripes this time. I also knew I wanted to dye by baking rather than boiling on the stove, as I did before. It turned out pretty well. Janelle had heard from someone that using straight Lemon-Lime Kool-Aid might be a bit, well, bright, and that one could use a purple flavor (yes, I realize that flavors don't have colors) like Grape to cut the neon-ness. I set up four glasses with various amounts of purple added. Purple did cut back the brightness and didn't show as its own color. Then, at the end, I decided I wanted a slightly darker mottling effect, so I added perhaps a bit too much purple to some green. It came out kind of olive. I wish now that I'd left out that last addition.

All in all, though, I'm happy. Another slight issue is that I didn't make sure that the dye got through to the inner strands of the hank. It got through, but it's very light. It definitely took up some dye, but not much.

Whilst casting about the recesses of my brain for something green to name this after, I came up with Absinthe, the popular green French libation of 19th century distilled from wormwood. It was often called "The Green Fairy." I think that fits.

Da Bomb

Last night I cast on for a pair of socks using the Bomb Pop colorway of sock yarn that I accidentally invented back in December. Not accidental in that I just splashed something on some yarn, but accidental in that I didn't come anywhere close to the colors in my head. I was thinking purple and two shades of dark blue. This didn't happen. Instead I got blood red, peacock blue and powder blue. Plus pink in the areas where I didn't get the yarn in the pot in time to soak up all the dye. Plus some white parts that didn't get dyed at all.

I'm using Sensational Knitted Socks for the pattern again, this time using a four-stitch pattern called Baby Cable Rib. It seems appropriate for the color. I'm already thinking that the chances of me wearing socks like this are slim to none, so I may not go through with it. We'll see. I worked on these at the knitter's meetup this morning and people seemed to like them. Someone suggested that I dye over the whole thing with some other color after I'm done to tone things down into the murky color palette that I dwell in. I might try that.

I dyed the red parts in 12" sections, thinking that this would wrap around the sock several times, making nice wide stripes. It turns out that the red stripes make it around once and then maybe a third of a round again. Overall, the stripes are much narrower than I imagined. The overall effect is more dainty than I would like.

When I got home, I decided to split the ball into two even sections so that I wouldn't get carried away and not leave enough of the yarn for the second sock. I got close -- 1.6 ounces on one side and 1.8 on the other. 50g (half of the 100g ball) equals approximately 1.76 ounces. Our little electronic kitchen scale doesn't carry out to two decimal points. Does anyone have any ideas for a good scale for yarn purposes -- something that does both metric and U.S. customary units?

Cedar Point

The cedar socks are complete! I started these a few days before Christmas. The first one took me three weeks to complete (I got sidetracked by the baby blanket) and the second one took me one week. Ah, the vagaries of sock knitting.

I think I did my best job ever in picking up and knitting stitches from the edge of a heel flap. It just clicked for me visually this time. And I'll definitely use Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn again. It was my second time knitting with it, and I love it. Such tiny little smooth stitches. I'm going to love these socks.

I'm really happy with this stitch pattern. It's a 3x3 rib, slipping the center stitch in the knits and the purls on every other row. It makes it all quite snug -- a plus for people like me who have issues with saggy socks. The picture on the right shows the exact same sock pattern with the same slip-stitch ribbing, only on a more shapely leg -- and knit by another knitter. One of the advantages of this ribbing pattern is that it tends to negate pooling. I'm not exactly sure how, but notice the pooling evident in the large tan part at the top of the cuff? It doesn't exist in the leg of the sock. Pretty cool.

Knitting Vacuum

As a self-taught knitter whose mentor lives over 1,000 miles away, I've been bothered off and on that I seem to knit in a self-imposed vacuum. I'm very content, for the most part, to sit still and knit (see blog title), but every once in a while, I get this itch to see what everyone else is doing -- talk stitches, needles and yarn, spin figurative yarns -- you get the idea. It's kind of bothered me for a bit. Every so often I get together with the handful of knitters I know, but it's never more than a few times a year, if that.

I feel that knitting, like our dog Silas, abhors a vacuum.

So, this morning, fighting my natural introvertedness, I went to the South Austin meeting of the Austin Knitting and Crocheting Meetup Group at Cafe Caffeine. I had a blast.

I got to meet other knitters, some experts, some just starting. I got to chat with folks about non-knitting topics. I got to show off my cedar socks that I've been working on, and I got to drink some delicious coffee -- all on a drizzly winter Saturday morning. It was great! I was made to feel quite welcome, and, as a male knitter, no one treated me like a freak of nature (which has happened when I've knitted in public before). I'm definitely planning on going back.

To top it all off, Leslie put in an appearance in a matching Royal Stewart Tartan beret and mini-skirt. He didn't knit, but one can imagine him doing so.

It was the perfect Austin day. Thanks, everyone, for a great time.

Burning Cedar

One down, one to go -- the curse of the sock knitter.

I finally got a chance to finish up one of the cedar socks I started on Christmas Eve. Now that the baby blanket is done, I can devote more time to this. Im still not comfortable with having more than one project going at a time -- I'm trying to reform, but I've never been a very good multi-tasker.

I'm very pleased with how this sock is going. It has a few hiccups -- a laddered section where I should have ripped back rather than trying to salvage the stitch with a crochet hook, a split bit of fiber on a slipped stitch that really stands out, and having to frog back the toe halfway after losing track during the Kitchener stitch on the toe -- but nothing major.

As usual, click on the Cedar Socks link on the right to get more pictures of my progress, including my vastly improved ability to pick up and knit along the edge of a heel flap. Thanks, Sharon & Janelle, for this wonderful birthday present. I've really enjoyed knitting with this. I don't think there is a color that is more "me."

Silas approves. I guess that's what really counts.