August 2007

On Wednesday night the stash revealed some remaining variegated pink-based wool I’ve had for a while. I had this idea that I wanted to try a small sweater with neck and armhole steeks as practice for the sweaters/cardigans I want to make for myself. Since I wasn’t sure I had enough to make a small sweater, I decided on a vest. Here it is with the uncut v-neck and armhole steeks I put in:

What better place to cut steeks than in the Arboretum in Golden Gate Park? Warm day, nice breeze, happy kids running after cavorting squirrels. Much less nerve-wracking than brandishing the scissors at home. Here is the vest again, post-cutting:

I threw caution to the winds and neither sewed nor crocheted along the edges before cutting. The wool is blue-faced Leicester and seems fuzzy enough to hold up on its own. Finishing the neck and armhole edges will come later, probably not for several weeks as Mr. MmmYarn and I are going on vacation for 2 1/2 weeks and today and tomorrow I’ll be busy with details, packing, and, most importantly, deciding on vacation knitting.

Right now I plan to bring two skeins of sock yarn for socks for me plus some scrap sock yarn for baby booties as my airplane knitting. I had to go buy little bamboo needles for that; while I know for sure I can take metal needles on flights leaving the U.S., I couldn’t get British Airways to definitively say I could take them on the flight coming home. We’ll also be travelling by train and by ship; for those, I have some dark teal Artfibers Tsuki and the sharp Addi Turbo lace needles to make the Myrtle Leaf Shawl from Victorian Lace Today. Although perhaps I’d rather take the Zephyr for the Peacock Feathers Shawl… Decisions, decisions. The really important stuff is taken care of: we both know exactly where our passports are.

There was a bit of bus knitting this week:

Pattern: own; k1, *yo k2tog* on every row
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM, 100% merino wool, color P13794
Needles: size 6
Finished size: 4″ x 62″

I am supposed to finish plying August’s fiber bundle today or tomorrow, but with all the travel stuff on my mind I don’t think I’ll get to it. Lily of the Valley will also need to wait.

Last week’s bus knitting, another spiral hat:

Pattern: own (K3P3 rib, multiple of 6 minus 1 so it spirals on its own)
Yarn: Cascade 220, 100% wool; 1/5 skein color 9452, heathered blue; 1/5 skein color 8011, heathered gray
Needles: size 6
Size: Child

I mentioned to Mr. MmmYarn that I didn’t really like these colors for a hat (since I make a lot of stuff to give away or sell it doesn’t usually matter whether I like something as long as I like knitting it); I liked the bright teal and yellow one from a few weeks ago better. He laughed, and pointed out that I carry this every day:

Ahem. Enough said. The hat actually matches it quite well…

This week’s bus knitting is a Koigu scarf in a simple stitch pattern:

Yesterday I worked on calculating the weirdness at the end of the Lily of the Valley Shawl and actually finished knitting the last 2 inches of it, then grafted and saw the rows didn’t line up. I undid the graft, flipped the ends around, and re-grafted. Humph. Threw it on the table in frustration. I’ll give it another go today, and if I’m successful I’ll block it. Since it’s warm out (wow, the blocking gods must be happy today) I might even get it to dry before the sun goes down so I can get a picture.

And so my audience of about 2 readers doesn’t die of boredom with all the spiral hats, I leave you with a picture of an art car Mr. MmmYarn and I saw yesterday at the farmer’s market. I like the flowers on top. This photo was taken with a phone camera with the car in the shade and sun streaming toward us so it looks a bit like a watercolor, but it’s just a trick of the light:

Remember those two round shapes I showed off at the end of my last post? They turned into a small bag.

Here is one side:

And the other side:

Pattern: own
Yarn: 1 skein Noro Kureyon, 100% wool, color 180; about 1/4 skein Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted, 85% wool, 15% mohair, color M-08
Needles: size 7
Size: medallions are 9″ across, bag is 11″ across with the brown border/strap

*With gratitude to Elizabeth Zimmermann for using this phrase on page 109 of “Knitting Around.”  

That little bit in EZ’s book always gets me to giggle. She mentions an old Pogo joke (aside: Pogo, it turns out, is an old comic strip (Wikipedia is a wonderful thing)). Howland’s talking about the math formula for a circle, pi = r squared, and his friend Churchy corrects him with “Pie are round, cornbread are square.” Hihihi. The math geek in me appreciates any geometry-related joke.  

My pi here is definitely round. Coincidentally, each medallion measures 9″, the right size for a pie. Anyway, I cast on each medallion from either end of a single ball of Kureyon and worked each round and round, pi-fashion, until I ran out of yarn. [See “Knitter’s Almanac” if you need an explanation of pi for knitting.] Then I invisibly cast on for the strap and worked back and forth in stockinette, eating up one medallion stitch every row, until I decided it was time to stop and form the handle. There are no seams anywhere, just the one graft where the handle ends met up. It’s a little puckery but it will definitely hit a washing machine someday so it can shrink down and based on past experience with Lamb’s Pride I believe it will flatten out. I’m not so sure I like the full-circle at the top as it seems to want to gap unattractively. While it’s blocking I might fold the tops over each other, then add a button and buttonhole. But all that stuff has to wait until it’s been felted and I see how it comes together. I have a picture in my head of a future design similar to this, except I’ll make the body of the bag the shape of a wedge of watermelon rather than a full circle.

I wish I had a washing machine so I could felt it now.

In my last post I mentioned knitted Princess Leia buns; this week I learned someone out there has crocheted a Darth Vader helmet. Now that’s a resourceful use of beer cans!

I made two hats this week.

Hat #1:

Pattern: own
Yarn: 100% recycled silk (label says “Recycle Silk Ball,” “hand made in Nepal”)
Needles: size 5
Size: adult medium to large

This started out as a small bag, but I had it squashed up on a 16″ circular needle and never bothered to measure either gauge or the bag itself. I put in yarn over holes about an inch from the top (now the bottom) to leave space for a drawstring and left plenty of yarn to create a twisted cord tie, but when I cast off the bag it seemed rather on the big side. Not at all the little bag I pictured. So I put it on my head and found it was the perfect size for a hat. Frog, frog, frog, back to the yarn over row to remove the holes, then I knitted the end bit again. And this is what I got. I really like the colors in this one. If watch caps didn’t make my head look so weird I’d keep it. This silk is hard on the hands; probably would have been easier if I hadn’t used size 5 needles, but I wanted a tight gauge for the bag… which then turned out very well for the hat. 

Hat #2:

The decreases at the top look interesting:

Pattern: own: K3P3 rib, with knitted stitches in gold and purled stitches in teal
Yarn: Cascade 220, 100% wool, some color 8892 (teal) and some color 7826 (gold)
Needles: size 5
Size: child large

I got such a kick out of the two-color tan and cream hat I made last week that I pictured how one made in stripes might look. I was happily surprised with the result. The little bloops where the teal and gold meet make it interesting. Even though I used the same yarn and needles as I used for the brown and cream hat, this one ended up smaller. I suppose carrying the yarn on every row instead of on half the rows made the hat tighter. On the whole it’s still really flexible, stretchy enough to fit over the balloon I used for a head model, but not as stretchy as the other one.

This week’s bus knitting, when I stand back and look at it, looks like some sort of bra, or model breasts, or perhaps funky Princess Leia buns if I were to connect the pieces with a headband:

Trust me, I’m not making any of those things. Although the idea of knitted Princess Leia buns is kind of tempting. (Remember the Hallowig that knitty.com had a while back?)