Henry IV & a Meme

Henry is inching towards the finish. I've done a little over 4 of the 24-row repeats. As I've mentioned before (a lot, it seems), I'm planning on stopping at 5 repeats. I estimate I have about 20 more rows to go. Which can take a while at 400+ stitches per row. Based on the current width (6.5"), I think I'll be just under 8" for the finished width, which is what the pattern calls for.

It's really interesting to me that the width gauge on this scarf if spot-on. While it was off the needles a week or so ago (see below) I stretched it out and measured it at 60" -- exactly what the pattern called for. But if I did all 7 of the 24-row repeats, the thing would be around 11" wide, which I think is too much. I'm quite surprised that I can get the guage horizontally and at the same time be so far off vertically.

Yes, I had this monster off the needles. True to form, I'd messed up the stitch pattern and then gotten back on track. I managed to not catch it for a few more rows. I tried doing surgery -- not sweater sleeve surgery, but putting the stitches on a cable needle and working down a few rows. I couldn't get things to line up again. I got exasperated and pulled out the needle. I fully expected not to be able to get the stitches back on, but after about 40 minutes of work, I did. The simplicity of the pattern really helped me with this -- very easy to see which stitches followed each other. Thank goodness I didn't have to frog the whole thing and start over. I probably wouldn't have.

Who am I kidding? Of course I would have.

Not sure what's up with gray-ness of these pictures. While I kind of like the color, photos in earlier posts are a bit truer to the color of this yarn.

Oh, and I was tagged by Julia a while back for one of those meme things. The last time it came around to me, I didn't pass it on -- maybe that's what I get? I'll be a good sport and respond, but I'm going to refrain from passing it on again. Like my genetic material, this dies with me!

1. I was born on my grandmother's birthday, and my niece was born on my father's (her grandfather's) birthday. I'm waiting to see if this happens again with the next generation.

2. I've been to the highest point in 32 of the 50 states

3. I used to be deathly afraid of heights, but I find this fear is decreasing with age.

4. As a child, I thought there must be a separate word for cousins if they were female, just like there were different words for "aunt" & "uncle" or "grandmother" & grandfather." I thought this because I only had male cousins.

5. One summer I typed up all the countries I could find in our set of the Encyclopedia Britannica on index cards and spent my time sorting and resorting by features like the names of their capitals, square mile area, and population. Much later, I became a librarian.

6. I only have 24 teeth. Most adults have 32.

7. I know the first and last names of all but one of my 32 great-great-great grandparents.

8. I prefer pie to cake if the pie contains fruit. If it's a cream pie, I'll take cake, please.

Henry III

I don't usually blog about non-knitting matters, but at a session this morning about blogs, I got the itch to post something. So with the magic of hotel wireless and being able to blog from my cell phone camera, here we go!

I'm in Albuquerque at the annual meeting of the South Central Chapter of the Medical Library Association. This is the great view of the Sandia Peaks out of my hotel room window. (Those aren't UFOs you see above the peaks. They're unidentifiable smudges on the window. I think...)

I really enjoy this corner of my professional life. For a professional organization, it's just the right size -- nothing so huge that you get lost and can't figure out what to do next. I'm always tired at the end of the conference, and I always learn so much.
Plus, there are several knitting friends that come to the meeting and it's a great opportunity to touch base. I've seen Janna and Becky -- who are both skilled enough to be able to knit and pay attention at the same time. I don't trust myself quite that far, although I did bring Henry along to work with.

Here it is so far. I've done three complete 24-row chevron repeats so far. As mentioned earlier, I think I'm going to just do 5 instead of the seven called for -- I think that will do for me. i haven't gotten to work on this much, being so busy, but I did a little KIP in the airport before I left.

What is it about the combination of me and knitting in public that encourages people to bring on the crazy? Whilst waiting for my flight to board yesterday, I worked on a few rows of Henry. I was sitting in a long bank of open seats, minding my own business, when this guy and his wife sit right next to me. After a few minutes of munching Fritos, this guy asks me, "Are those things allowed on a plane?" I assured him that they were. He pointed out that he could probably do as much damage with his pen, and took out his Bic and made some stabbing motions with it just to prove the point. I thought, "Okay, that's kind of scary." I proceeded to knit and ignore him.

A few minutes later he leans over conspiratorially and whispers, "You know, if the TSA would let us take baseball bats on airplanes, we wouldn't have to worry about those rag-heads taking over a flight!" Oh yes, he did.

I'm not usually a confrontational person and it can take me quite a while to get my dander up. But this guy got me from Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo to Selsun Blue in about ten seconds. I turned to him and said loud enough for a few people around us to hear, "I don't want to talk about this with you." The guy muttered "okay" and shifted in his chair away from me. A lady who had sat next to me a few minutes before snorted in what I hope was approval. The whole thing really shook me up. I finished my row and got up and sat somewhere else.

As I boarded the plane a few minutes later, I noticed that he was sitting in the first class section. A little under-qualified if you ask me.

Branched Out

The Branching Aran Guernsey is finished! I was a little miffed at today's cloudiness which kept me from getting very good pictures after work, but here they are.

What a ride. I knew this wouldn't be the easiest project in the world, what with all the cables and the strange 2-over-5 cabling, but little did I suspect that I would be nearly done in by overzealous blocking and not paying attention to gauge as much as I should have.

The surgery was scary, but now I know that it's possible -- yet one more little knitting mystery explored and survived. I can't deny that I've been looking at the ribbing at the bottom of the sweater and thinking, "You know, that could be a little bit tighter." No -- better stuff that genie back in the bottle. Because when it comes right down to it, it would have been better to get this done right the first time around -- time-wise, yarn-wise, and sanity-wise.

Anybody have any ideas for what to do with two 6-inch sections of amputated sleeve?

Surgery

I decided to put the sleeves under the knife -- or scissors, rather. I think the sweater came through better than I did.

Last night, I added the collar, even though I hadn't sewn up the right side yet. I thought that the gathering effect of having a nice trim collar instead of a large gaping hole would pull the sleeves in some. Turns out not much. So today I put on the sweater, and marked where I would need to cut back to add ribbing so the sleeve would fit. It was a disheartening distance. The safety pin shows how far back I needed to go.

Then, rather than start on that sleeve, I went to the same row on the opposite sleeve which hadn't been sew up yet. I very carefully threaded a circular needle on the right side of all the stitches in the row. However, since I was now looking at the fabric in the opposite direction of which I'd knit it, I was actually looking at the left sides of the original stitches. Take a pieces of stockinette sometime, mark a "V" with a stitch marker, and then flip it upside down. Everything kind of skips half a stitch. I would now be knitting in the ditches between the "V"s in the opposite direction.

But wait, it gets more confusing than that. Trust me.

Now came the scissors. The instructions I followed mentioned several approaches to making the cut. I took the one most complicated, and that has made all the difference. I ended up taking a deep breath and just cutting across all the knitting. At this point I discovered that I hadn't stayed on the same row all the way across. The second picture in this post illustrates this pretty clearly, in hindsight.

For the next three hours, I pulled little chunks of yarn resembling curly fries out of the resulting confusion. For most of the row, everything would be fine. Then, I would discover that the stitches I was carefully counting were part of a row with yarn that had been cut. I'd purposefully chosen a row that only had one small cable twist in it so that I would minimize my confusion, but in the process I ended up going back a few more rows to make sure all the stitches were on the same row. I almost gave up a few times, resigning myself to unraveling both sleeves and starting over. But I persevered, and finally got things straightened out.

How hard could it be right? I was just uravelling. But here's the deal. Unravelling from the working edge back to the cast on edge is just pulling on yarn and watching loops disappear. Unravelling from the cast on edge to the working edge is a whole different ballgame. Everything is interlocked -- especially if dealing with ribbing and cables. I knew this would be the case when I started, but dang! I had to use a darning needle and a crochet hook to unweave all the little scraps of left over yarn. Lots of pickin' and very little grinnin'. But it all worked out in the end. I think I'll cut the second sleeve a little differently.

The picture to the right shows the patient (and the impatient!) after surgery. The sleeve on the left side (which is sewn up), shows the original knitted length. The sleeve on the right side (which is not sewn up), shows the sleeve cut with a circular needle dangling off the new live stitches, ready for the ribbing to be added. I may do the cuff like the collar -- twice as long as required and then folded back in on itself. That way I can avoid having the cast-off edge showing. I'm also going to have to consider decreasing while I knit the ribbing, since I cut back into the increases of the original sleeve.

Whew! And to think that a week ago I thought I was almost done with this sweater!

Knitting Cliché

Before I became a knitter, most of my impressions about knitting came from cartooons and sitcoms. What can I say? I'm thinking of Morticia Addams knitting a sweater with three arms (the third one coming out of the chest) and numerous scenes of weeping wives having made sweaters with ridiculously long arms. Get out your hankies, folks.

The sleeves seemed a little long to start with, as mentioned in a previous post. I got the stitch and row gauge pretty good on the body of the sweater. Why not the sleeves? I think I know part of the problem. I blocked the front and back of the sweater about an inch wider than the pattern called for to give me a bit more room around my tummy. But I didn't consider that doing so on a drop-sleeve sweater would also add an inch to already long sleeves.

I'm not sure what to do at this point. I've sewn on both the sleeves and one of the underarm/undersleeve seams. Does anybody know if:

a) It's possible to unknit these from the cast on edge of the sleeves, unravel the yarn and start the cuffs working back out to a reasonable length, and, if so
b) Are there any good instructions on how to do this?

I'm going to pour through some books that I have, but I could really use some knitterly moral support on this one. I'm pretty devastated.

Postscript

I found this page, which describes a process that seems do-able:

Sweater Surgery

(Partial answer to the first question above: unraveling ribbing from the cast on edge is mind-numbingly tedious). The sleeves may have to go under the knife.

Greenstick Fracture

For those of you without rambunctious young nieces who have had run-ins with playground equipment, a greenstick fracture is a type of bone fracture usually seen in young patients. Children's bones, like Bryspun circular needles, are more flexible than the bones found in adults, or indeed, Addi Turbo circular needles.

When children fracture a bone through some accident or another, the bone typically breaks on one side but the break doesn't go all the way through the bone. Pictured to the right is a Bryspun circular needle exhibiting a greenstick fracture.

After bending several metal double-point needles and considering tonight's incident, I'm willing to admit that perhaps I have a problem. Anybody know of a rehab center for knitters who grip their needles too tightly? In the meantime, until I get treatment, my days of experimenting with Bryspuns are over. I'm going to get a pair of size 3 Addi Turbo circular needles with a really long cable tomorrow.

Snap!

Henry II

Just a quick update on the Henry scarf. I'm getting the hang of it. I took it with me to Houston to see our friend Tom in a play. It was quite good, and Tom was hilarious in it, as I knew he would be. We've all heard of "a play within a play" -- well, this was three plays within a play -- and one of those was Hamlet, so I think that makes a play within three plays within a play. I like taking knitting to Tom & Shelly's house in Houston. We always have a relaxing stay, get to just laze around and talk, and eat lots of food. I usually get much knitting done during all this.

The chevron pattern is really starting to show. The pattern calls for the finished scarf to be 8" wide. I've finished the first 24-row repeat, and I'm at just under 2". If I knit all seven repeats, the scarf will be closer to 12" wide. So I think I'm going to stop at five repeats. That should be put me around 9" wide or so. I could probably swing 6 repeats yarn-supply-wise, but something in my lizard brain tells me that odd numbers in patterns make the eyes happier.

I still haven't buckled and bought either a 42" or 60" size 3 needle, and the squeaking is still bugging me.

The Branching Aran Guernsey still needs sewing and a collar. I started blocking it on a Saturday. On Friday, while packing to head to Houston, Jeff went to get something out of the guest bedroom, and discovered that the sweater had been drying under the ceiling fan set at full blast for six days.

I'd say it's dry enough.

Oh Henry!

A perfect knitting storm occurred this week -- the fall issue of Knitty came out and I went on my maiden visit to The Knitting Nest. Purchases were made, money was spent, and soon I'd forgotten all about sewing up the sweater -- I needed to get started on Henry. I hadn't made a scarf in a while, and something about this knitted-but-almost-woven pattern made me want try.

I had issues from the start. First of all, I didn't have a size 3 circular that was long enough. I picked up a 40" Bryspun at Stacy's shop, but I have to say it's driving me nuts. It's too bendy, and I grab the needles to tightly. I'm seriously worried I'm going to snap it. Plus, I don't know if it's the content of the Silky Wool yarn I'm using (35% Silky, 65% Woolly), but there's a whole lot of squeeking going on while I knit, which is weirding me out.

I also had to cast on and start over three or four times. The designer writes in the instructions that the knitter should "check your work often to be sure the stitch pattern is lining up correctly," and boy, she ain't kiddin'. You cast on 227 stitches, but then the first row consists of K1, YO, K1, YO... already up to 450+ stitches. For the first few rows, it's hard to see the slipped traveling stitch lining up. The further I've gotten into it, the better I've been able to catch my mistakes early.

One of the neat things about this is that there is some sort of magic cast on with waste yarn that can later be removed. There's a lot stitch slipping going on in the first three rows, but I'm not sure how it all gets locked. Can anyone explain this to me/ You can see that I've just started unraveling the waste yarn in the picture at the top of the post. Undoing the cast-on edge was freakier than cutting a steek to me. I won't breathe easily until I've been down the whole row and know that none of those little edge stitches are going to explode.

Block Around the Clock

At my Saturday morning meetup I finished the second sleeve -- well almost. I'd forgotten a decrease on the second-to-the last row that I had to redo. But shortly after getting home, the major knitting on the Branching Aran Guernsey was done!

Knowing that I had some time this weekend, and knowing that I wouldn't have any the next, I decided to go ahead and see what I could do blocking and sewing-wise today and tomorrow. So into the tub went the parts for a good old fashioned Primitive Baptist full immersion. I'd thought about maybe just spritzing or steam-blocking might work, since I didn't anticipate a lot of stretching, but there were several places where the cabling got a little stretched during the knitting. I'm hoping that full immersion will wash away more sins.

I got some blocking wires last year -- turns out the kit has just enough for the front and back of a sweater along with the two sleeves. The sweater is supposed to be 26" wide, but I stretched things out a little bit more just to give myself a little, er, wiggle room. I was really surprised how well I hit guage on all the parts. The back and front were perfect, but the sleeves were about an inch longer than the pattern requires -- as mentioned earlier, not a problem. Everything is drying in the spare bedroom under a ceiling fan set on hurricane force. Silas is really intrigued with all the activity -- perhaps some instinct from his mysterious genetic past is directing him to do something with all these wet sheep he can smell somewhere in the house.

Tomorrow -- sewing.

Prehistory

When I was in college, I took a course called Prehistory. I was fascinated with the idea of a history course about things that took place before recorded history.

I started this blog about 10 months ago, and as I knit new stuff, I post about it here. But I've been knitting for two and a half years, and there are some "prehistoric" items that, perhaps, should be brought into the light of day. I've been adding some of these project to my Ravelry page, but for the benefit of my legions of readers and the great unravelled, I thought I'd introduce a few of them here.

This is an Alpaca scarf that was the first project I ever gave away. I made it about a month after I started knitting. My sister-in-law, Jenni, was along with me at the local yarn store when I bought it, and since she's always showed such enthusiasm and support of my knitting obsession, I gave it to her. It's the only think I've ever made from Alpaca. I loved the way this felt (as in past tense of "to feel" -- I didn't actually felt it). Just a basic 2x2 ribbed scarf. She looks lovely in it.

My littlest niece, Gracie was born a few months before I learned how to knit so I didn't have any little booties or other newborn paraphernalia ready for her when she came into the world, but I cranked this out when she was about nine months old. This is the first project that I knitted in public -- somewhere in the C concourse at Houston Intercontinental airport. We were on our way to visit our friends in Pennsylvania and to attend my first (and so far, only) Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. The pattern is the Big Bad Baby Blanket from the first Stitch 'n Bitch book. It was made by holding two strands of yarn together while knitting, which was new to me. I wasn't too keen on the color (it was the only baby-ish color of koigu I could find in my LYS of which there were 8 hanks), but it grew on me and turned out fine.

Little nieces are the perfect target for uncles who are honing their knitting skills. This is a sweater for Gracie, too. The pattern is called Double Scoop and it's from the Spring 2006 issue of Knitty. This was the first intarsia project I ever tried. I've looked at some others' attempts at the sweater on Ravelry, and it looks like I wasn't too far off the mark. I wasn't really pleased with the colors changed, although I wrapped the yarns when I changed, like one is supposed to. I remember doing this whole thing in something like two weekends. It was pretty easy to do, although sewing up the sleeve seams so that the stripes matched up was a bit of a pain. I seem to remember that you had to be one stitch off on one side in mattress-stitching the ladders so that when you pulled the seaming yarn taut, everything lined up. The pattern warned that this was a bit of a crop-top style, and to add a few inches for more modest toddlers. I wish I had done that. But she looked cute in it nonetheless.

I'll see about digging into more prehistory later. Lunch hour is over!

One Sleeve Down

I got up my nerve this morning and dared to take a cabling project to my Saturday knitting meetup today. I usually only take socks or something simple -- certainly not anything that requires a pattern. But today, I was close to finishing the decreases on the sleeve and I felt brave. It went well -- I was able to concentrate and still gab at the same time. I did neglect a decrease right toward the end, but I was able to fix it on the fly without tinking back, at the encouragement of my meetup fellows.

I really enjoy my meetup people. They're always interested in so many various projects and yarns and techniques. I always learn something and everyone is so encouraging of everyone else's projects. Such a fun way to spend a Saturday morning!

I'm a little concerned about the circumference of the cuff of the sleeve. Most of the sweater is knit on size 4 needles, but the waistband and cuffs (and probably the collar -- I'll have to check), are knit on size 2 needles. Yet, they look like they're going to be even wider than the rest of the sleeve! Maybe it has to do with the ribbing effect of the main pattern? Maybe I can fix it in the blocking or the sewing.

Another slight concern. The pattern says to do a bunch of increases, and then knit until the sleeves are 22 inches long. By the time I finished the required increases, this sleeve was closer to 23 inches long! Not too bad, vertical gauge-wise, but still... Normally, I like my sleeves a little on the long side, since I have arms like Charlotte Greenwood. So it's all good.

Only one sleeve, and a bunch of sewing, and the collar to go. Woo-hoo!

Ravelations

My Ravelry number finally came up today, fittingly, while I was at my Saturday morning knitting meetup. I'm in!

I've been sitting in this same spot since nearly 12:30 today (that's 6 hours!), adding projects, entering information about books, adding friends, attaching projects to blog posts, and generally going nuts. I haven't even gotten to anything having to do with stash or queuing up future projects.

I spent a big chunk of time deleting a batch of photos in Flickr. They were among the first I'd ever entered. When I first set up my Flickr account, it was flagged as violating some policy about posting pictures from other people (which I assure you, gentle readers, I was not doing). Could it be because I used she-who-must-not-be-named's name as one of my tags? I'm not sure. But the pictures entered at that time weren't showing up in my sets, and I couldn't get at them from Ravelry. I had to open up all the individual Flickr pages so I could keep the descriptions (18 tabs open) and copy them once I'd re-uploaded the pictures. Then I had to go back to my blog's earliest posts and re-connect to the new versions of the pictures. Has any one else had these kinds of issues with Flickr photos? Regardless, all seems well now.

Now I can stop obsessing about getting into Ravelry and actually get some knitting done. I added a few rows to my TOFUtsies 732 socks at the meetup this morning. And in the past week I've gotten a little more work done on the Branching Aran Guernsey. I've finished the front now, and I've gotten a good start on one of the sleeves. They go so much faster since they only require two pattern repeats across the row rather than the five required for the front and back.

Oh, and on Friday night, I went to my first yarn store opening. I was driving to work on Thursday morning, and heard that my local public radio station, KUT, was being sponsored that morning by Gauge, a new knitting shop. The spot gave the address and invited the community to come by their grand opening on Friday night.

It had a DJ, drinks, food, a hip crowd -- everything except those giant swirly spotlights. Actually, the might have had those, but Jeff and I left before it go dark. That's right. I dragged Jeff along. It was kind of funny -- several people from my meetup were there with their long-suffering spouses. What troopers!

There were too many people there to really get a good sense of the place, but it did have some lovely stuff on the shelves. And they were arranged by, what else, gauge. Someone pointed this out at the meetup this morning -- I couldn't figure it out for myself...

Labor Days

My Ravelry number is 342. That's it - three hundred and forty-two people between me and knitting organization nirvana. So, to keep myself from going crazy and checking my place in line every few hours, I kept myself busy this weekend by, well, knitting.

I finished the front (yes, really the front this time) of the Branching Aran Guernsey a few minutes ago. Whew! Here it is pictured lying on top of the back.

The neck and shoulder decreases drove me crazy. Just like the back, I really had to map things out. The instructions said to knit to 23.5" blah, blah, blah. But I decided to count backwards from the number of rows that the back had taken to make sure I would have the same number or rows on both sides.

Rather than breaking the yarn and knitting up one shoulder and then doing the other, the knitter is instructed to add a second ball of yarn and keep knitting back and forth using both balls. When the neck decrease instructions direct one to decrease "at each neck edge," they really mean decrease the beginning of each neck edge, not on either side. I couldn't figure this out until I drew a diagram. I stressed about it all day, and it looks okay, but I'm still not sure I did it exactly right. We'll see when I pick up stitches (one of my less skilled knitting maneuvers) around the edge of the neck for the collar.

I didn't make it to my knitting group this weekend, and I sure could have used it. I stayed home, planning to take care of some chores like replacing my burnt-out car brake lights (successful) and getting my lawnmower to a lawnmower repair shop to get fixed (unsuccessful -- closed on Saturday? -- what's up with that?). I'll do my darnedest to get there next week.

Just checked. Still number 342. Oh, right -- holiday. Grrr. I'm gonna go cast on for a sleeve...

Austin to Austen

While I was away this summer, I got an email from someone about knotted fringe. She had seen my blog posting about knotting fringe (see the bottom of the July 2007 archive page) and had a question about it.

When I responded, I got a quick reply from Laura Boyle at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England. The Centre, which promotes Austen-related activities in Bath, has a website that publishes articles about Jane and the world she lived in. At some point, her brother Frank,a naval officer, was visiting at home and made himself useful by knotting some fringe for the drawing-room drapes.

The website wanted to supply some instructions and went to the web to find something. Just like I did. Among other sites, they found my blog posting, and asked if they could reproduce it in their article. I was very flattered and glad to help. Of course I said yes. Here it is: How to Make Knotted Fringe.

Imagine, Frank Austen and I both knotting fringe for our sister/sister-in-law (shh!-- it's a secret!). As Jane wrote in Mansfield Park, "What strange creatures brothers are!"

1,067 and Counting...

That's how many souls are in front of me in line for a Ravelry invitation. I can't believe I didn't sign up for this when I first heard about it. I would have been among the first 5,000 to sign up and I'd be in by now. Grrr. The number has been dropping by about 100 a day for the last few days (oh, I've been checking!), so hopefully my number will come up soon. Here are the numbers from when I checked today:

• You signed up on June 27, 2007
  
• You are #11308 on the list.
  
• 1067 people are ahead of you in line.
  
• 17313 people are behind you in line.
  
• 35% of the list has been invited so far
  

At least there are more people that were slower than me to sign up than were faster than me. That's got to be good, right? Right?

In the meantime, I've been keeping myself busy. While still in Oregon, having finished the socks for Ed, I immediately cast on for this pair of socks for myself, also in TOFUtsies. I already have a pair of socks in a yarn that is visually similar, but I wanted some TOFUtsies for myself, and I wanted dark, subtle, simple me colors. This is in color 732, which, as far as I can determine, doesn't have a name.

I didn't manage to work on the sweater while in Oregon, but I did lug it up there and back, along with three balls of yarn. It's a miracle it didn't get mangled somehow. Since returning I've done three repeats of the 32-row pattern, and I think I've got two more before I start decreasing for the neck. I think it's looking pretty good, but it's getting big enough to cause menopausal symptoms as I work with it draped across my lap. That's the irony of me knitting in Texas. If I wait until it's cool enough to be comfortable knitting great wads of wool, I can't get the thing done before it warms up again!

I just checked my Ravelry position again. I'm no closer to the front of the line, but there are already 5 more people behind me. Heh heh heh.

Knitting-related schadenfreude is an ugly thing.

Happy Birthday, Ed!

I'm back from vacation in the fabulously cool Northwest. I didn't do much knitting, but I did manage to finish the TOFUtsies Footsteps socks, which I sneakily tricked the recipient into trying to make sure they would fit. Here, Ed is modeling them on the mini-balcony on the front of his townhouse in Portland, Oregon. We had such a great time up there. Thanks, Ed, for everything. A dozen pairs of socks couldn't thank you for all the great things you did for us as our host.

I managed to go to one knitting shop, as you can see from the previous post. I sent that from my cell phone, so it's pretty much just picture and caption -- not much room for more. Still, it's kind of cool to be able to blog from the road.

I took the sweater but didn't work on it -- although I should have at Crater Lake with evenings in the upper 30s! I kind of don't want to look at it right now. It was a bit of a shock getting off the plane -- and it's not even THAT hot. I've got to go back to work on Monday and I'm just not ready for it. Oh, and that two-weeks-worth of grass growth isn't going to mow itself.

But it's good to be back.

Me in front of Knit/Purl in Portland

Frack

Fans of the updated re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica will recognize the title of this post. Frack is a curse word from a galaxy far far away -- a five letter substitute for a four letter expletive with many letters in common, but one which can't be uttered on basic cable.

This word can also describe the first complete side of my Branching Aran Guernsey. I was under the impression, right up until the last six rows, that I was working on the front. Every other sweater pattern I've made (admittedly, only four -- and one of those was knit in the round), started with the front. But this one starts with the back. I was getting a little alarmed at how long it was growing before the neck and shoulder shaping, but I still didn't clue in until the last minute, due to an annoying process I resort to when I'm confused about a pattern.

Here's what I do. When I get confused, I have to read the pattern aloud to someone (Jeff) in hopes that verbalizing it will make the pattern make sense to me. In this case, I was confused about the decreases on the outside edges and on the neck edges. I had to diagram the directions I would be traveling with the two pieces of working yarn and talk the process through out loud. It doesn't seem to work in isolation -- I have to have someone present. Poor Jeff. He sits there patiently and nods at the right moments, even though he has little idea of what's going on. As usual, it worked -- I figured out how the decreases were supposed to work, and in the process realized that I was talking about the back instead of the front.

It's a little disturbing that I worked on this thing for a week and a half thinking I was on the front of the sweater. In fact, it's frackin' scary.

But on the other hand, I have the largest piece of the sweater done already. Everything else will be smaller. That's pretty frackin' awesome.

Celebrity Sighting

Last night, Jeff and I went to have dinner at a local eatery, the Kerbey Lane Cafe -- the one on South Lamar. We had just finished ordering and were leafing through copies of The Austin Chronicle, when I noticed that a woman in the booth across the way looked familiar...

It was none other than TV's Vickie Howell, knitting goddess and host of DIY's and HGTV's Knitty Gritty. How exciting! She was there with her husband and two sons. So I kind of gawked for a while, and then got embarrassed because I was gawking.

I waited until she finished her meal, and then politely approached her table, asked if she was Vickie Howell, and then introduced myself. I told her I loved her show and that it meant a lot to me because it started up about the time I started learning to knit. She was very gracious, saying thank you and introducing me to her family. I kept it short, and when they left they waved bye to me.

She was so incredibly nice. Like I knew she would be.

Branching Out

I started work on the Branching Aran Guernsey a couple of days ago. I've found it kind of hard to stop...

This is a really interesting pattern, based on an algorithm. As the designer, Nora Guaghan writes, "every time a line splits into two branches, one continues on the same path as the original line and the second veers off at about a 30°angle." This might seem awfully complicated and at first glance it is, but I'm amazed at how fast it's been to knit.

First of all there are only four cable combinations in the pattern. One is used only 3 times in the 32-row repeats and another is used only once. One is quite easy to do without a cable needle. The fourth and most complicated cable stitch involves holding five stitches to the back, knitting two and then knitting and purling the five off the cable. I tried doing this without a cable -- it was possible, but because I knit tightly the stitches got stretched. I'm using the cable needle on that one now.

Secondly, there is basically just one 36-stitch line repeated five times with a little laddered stitch separating. Not so bad when compared with the Irish Moss sweater I started last summer. It had three different panel patterns to keep up with. Plus, it involved twisting stitches on both sides of the fabric. Funny thing about this -- it's been well over 9 months since I've worked on that sweater, and I still started knitting into the back of the stitches during the cabling automatically.

So while I may not be able to read the pattern as easily as the last Aran sweater I worked on, I still think this one is going to go faster.

Because the branching can be hard to decipher with my lousy photography, I marked up the picture above, outlining the paths of the branches. The overall effect will be more striking once a few more 32-row repeats are completed.

Oh -- and all of this was done with less than one ball of yarn. I'm still going to worry about whether I have enough (because that's how I roll), but things are lookin' good.

The Chitin Runner

The first TOFUtsies Footsteps socks is done. In contrast to the fiber content, I'm decidedly un-crabby.

Well, maybe just a little crabby. This ball had a knot tied in it about 3/4 of the way down the foot of the sock. I hate this. Especially when the yarn is patterned. It threw off the striping a few rounds before the toe decrease. But otherwise, this stuff was fun to knit with. I went to Bluebonnet Yarn Shoppe yesterday to return some yarn I didn't need, and looked for some more of this yarn, but they only had really bright blues, purples, pinks and reds -- sorry, Jana -- I just couldn't do it!

Now, to cast on quickly before second-sock syndrome sets in.

The postman brought me some yarn today -- 12 skeins of Wendy Guernsey yarn in the color Shale. I got this online at a pretty good price. The pattern calls for 11 skeins, and this place had 12 left.

This pattern is going to be unusual for me, because I rarely use the yarn called for in patterns. It's always horribly expensive or a color I can't stand. But I really liked the look of this in the picture. This pattern is from Norah Gaughan's Knitting Nature, as was the Hex Afghan I finished a few weeks ago.

Why is it that many of the yarns used in widely-read knitting books disappear from circulation? Knowing that a well-publicized book with patterns featuring your yarns is about to come out, I would think that manufacturers would keep those lines available. But I have absolutely no grasp of the economics of yarn manufacturing. I should just be happy that I have the 12 skeins I need.

I'm going to need to do some serious swatching.. .

I Got Crabs at My LYS

It's not as fun as it sounds -- but still pretty fun.

Yesterday, I took a field trip out to Bluebonnet Yarn Shoppe in Cedar Park. I've had a link to this place in my sidebar ever since I heard about it, but hadn't made the trek out to visit. I'm glad I did. The staff (whose names, of course, I didn't get) were friendly and helpful, asking about what I liked to knit and pointing me towards interesting stuff in their store. I bought some cotton yarn for a place mat idea that I had (doesn't look that's gonna work out), and three skeins of sock yarn, one of which is being turned into this sock.

This yarn is called TOFUtsies and I got the color Footsteps (737). It's made of an unholy union of superwash wool (50%), soy fibers (25%), cotton (22.5%) and chitin (2.5%). For the curious, chitin is the stuff of which shellfish exoskeletons are composed. This is supposed to make them tough. This likely also makes this the first non-kosher yarn I've ever knitted with. I'm not sure how this chitin is collected. The yarn is made in China, though, so I'm hoping poisoned crab chow wasn't involved in the process. All that aside, the chitin is supposed to make this yarn extra tough.

That may be, but for all its toughness this stuff is surprisingly soft. That's one of the things that attracted me to it. I was also attracted to the colors, which are kind of Burberry-like and remind me of some tube-socks I had as a kid. These were totally white with one black and one tan stripe near the top -- very 1960s.

I also wanted to try and knit outside my box. I wanted to try some new fibers from the usual superwash. This is a little strange to knit with -- kind of floppy is the way I'd describe it -- but still nice. The ball band called for knitting this on size 2 needles, and I even tried that. But I decided I wouldn't look good in fishnet socks. Seriously, there were holes you could stick a pencil through. Who knits socks like that? So I stepped back into my box with one foot and switched to good old size 0s. Much better.

Also, over the last few days, I've resurrected my project of knitting little mini-mittens out of the scraps of yarn left over from previous sock projects. My plan was to do this as I went along, but you know how that goes. These had been backing up for quite a while. You may recognize, from top to bottom, the yarns used in the Gentleman's Fancy Sock, the recently completed Vinnland Socks, the Gentleman's Sock in Railway Stitch, and the Cedar Socks.

Vinnland Complete

I finished the second of the two Vinnland Socks today. In my typical, uneven, start-and-stop style, the whole pair took two months to make. Seven weeks to make the first one, one week to make the second. Special thanks to Julia for telling me that stitch chart had been corrected at the AntiCraft. I really thought I was going crazy, thinking that the "make one"-s and "make one purlwise"-es seemed to be quite random at the bottom of the stitch pattern. Once Julia pointed out that I was indeed not crazy (at least on this issue), I was soon on the way to having the pattern memorized.

I'd definitely recommend this pattern for those who want a challenging toe-up pattern. I did change it a little for myself, most notably using a wrap-stitch short row heel, rather than the short-row method outlined in the pattern, which called for a system using yarn overs. I did this out of laziness and fear -- I already knew how to do the wrap-stitch method, and I was freaked out about the complicatedness of the stitch pattern without wanting to worry about learning something else new. I sought a middle ground which made these do-able.

These socks were fun. They have a heavy, northern look to them. I think it's a combination of the vine-like pattern and the way the pattern weaves around both the front and the back of the sock. I also like how they appear cabled, but aren't.

And I like that I dyed the yarn myself.

Fringe Benefits

My first-ever large blanket-sized project, the Hex Afghan, is complete!

I knuckled down his weekend to get this finished. I knew that working the fringe was a step that I could quite easily postpone indefinitely, so I made myself sit down and just do it. As mentioned in earlier posts, I'm not entirely sure this fringe is structurally stable, but there is small chance that little fingers will worry the edges, so I'm trying not to worry too much myself.

The edges are not as fuzzy as they are in the pictures of the original pattern, but the book called for knitting this in an alpaca blend that I didn't think would be very easy to care for. I was shooting for something a little more carefree, hence the superwash. This choice meant that the fringe was a little flat, but I'm glad I attempted it anyway -- it's a nice touch. And, if it ever gets too wonky, it can always be removed.

This was a fun project. Another one in which the 'stages' were uneven. Knitting the thing itself only took a few weeks. Doing the fringe took several more.

I'm pleased. The title is apt, I think -- it's composed of little hexagons and it is rather bewitching.

The Anxiety of Freedom

I managed to finish the first Vinnland Sock today. I love it, I had fun, and most importantly of all -- it fits. I'm so much happier this time around and really glad that I stuck with it. I'm even starting to get the pattern semi-memorized so that I don't have to consult the pattern sheet quite so often.

I took this picture out on our deck this afternoon. Two things you should be aware of concerning this deck. First of all, it's dry. For the first time in two weeks. As of this writing, the last time it rained was 24 hours ago. We haven't gone 24 hours without rain in weeks, which is very freaky (as my niece and nephew would say) for this part of the world at this time of year. The second interesting fact about this deck is that it is slated to be replaced by a much safer and hopefully less rot-prone version. Can't wait for that.

One of the great things about toe-up socks is that you have the freedom to knit them as long as you want. With top-down socks, once you've turned the heel, you are committed on the length of the cuff. You're locked in. Not so with toe-up socks -- you just knit until you're happy with the length, you get tired of knitting, or you run out of yarn.

But this toe-up freedom breeds another problem: How do you know when to stop knitting the first one so that you have enough yarn left for the second one? Weighing the yarn would seem to be the answer. One of these days I'm going to get one of those really fancy electronic scales that drug dealers chemists use to weigh things by micrograms, so that I can split a ball of yarn exactly. But I don't have one -- just a kitchen scale that weighs ounces to the tenth of an ounce. It works okay, but it doesn't measure finely enough, and it doesn't do grams. I need something that does grams.

This time around I stopped knitting about where I wanted to. Actually, I wanted to stop earlier, thinking I had already used half the yarn, but I forced myself to keep knitting until the cuff was at least as long as the foot. I then tossed the sock onto my non-metric scale: 1.8 ozs. Would the remaining ball of yarn weigh more or less? I held my breath, put the ball on the scale, and breathed a sigh of relief: 1.9 ozs.

One of these days my luck will run out. But not today.

Oh, and I ordered some yarn today to make a sweater. For me. It's gonna be crazy cabley.

Vinndication

I was right. I was having major gauge issues the first time around with the Vinnland Socks. I didn't post a picture of the ill-fitting mess I made a few weeks ago, but trust me, it was bad.

Repeat after me: Trust the pattern...trust the pattern...trust the pattern...

Here's a picture of my first Vinnland sock with the short-row heel just completed. The pattern covers 16 rows, and rather than stop at 4 pattern repeats before turning the heel, I did 4.5. The only thing I had to remember was to start the back of the calf on row 8. Yes -- once you get past the heel, the pattern is on the front and back of the sock. Good times!

I also had to do a little decrease on the left and right sides after the heel, so that the 2x2 ribbing pattern would continue correctly around the circumference of the sock.

I'm very pleased with how this is working. And, because I know everyone out there can't resist the charms of a well-turned cankle, here's a picture showing the short-row heel in a little more detail. The orange strand is just temporary, holding all the little stitches in place while the sock takes a short vacation from the needles.

The Lunatic Fringe

I managed to block the Hex Afghan yesterday. It turned out lovely. And now to the fringe.

The instructions in the pattern rather obliquely read "...knot Fringe as shown in diagram." I am then presented with a picture of knots. But not how to knot the knots. It appears the author either thinks this is very apparent or something that any knitter should have picked up years ago. I'm not one of those knitters.

I started by doing square knots. I didn't want them to slip. I even made little cardboard triangle and diamond-shaped space holders to knot the yarn around so that I could get some consistency. Unfortunately, the two ends didn't drape together after knotting. Rather, they stuck straight out, looking like little Pippi Longstockings.

So I undid them and found a web site with instructions on how to make knotted fringe. This is the method I decided to go with. I'm still not entirely happy, because one strand is being knotted around another, but the other strand is just there -- it's not incorporated into the knot. Hence, the knotted strand, unless pulled tightly, can slide up and down the other strand like a ring on a shower rod. But, it does allow all the strands to hang straight down after the knotting, so I'm going to go with it for now. And, surprisingly, I've been able to eyeball things enough to keep the knots in a nice little row. Let's hope that keeps up.

Here's what I'm doing -- illustrated with rather murky photographs.

Step 1.

The right-hand strands are stretched the left, the crochet hook placed over them, and then the left-hand strand are draped to the right.

Step 2.

All the work is done with the left-hand strands. Here they are pulled under both the right-hand strand and the crochet hook, and then pulled to the left.

Step 3.


Then, the strands are draped to the upper right and caught by the crochet hook to be pulled back through the loop that has been formed.

Step 4.

Finished!

I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants here, folks, so if anyone wants to chime in before I get too committed to this method, please speak up. Until then, I've got to put in 80 strands of fringe, and make 320 knots...