January 2008

So very cute, as usual. Anything for wee feet tends to be cute:  

Pattern: a little smaller than my usual bootie pattern because I did not have enough yarn
Yarn: unknown sock yarn scraps I got from a friend, feels like Regia; probably 75% wool, 25% nylon
Needles: size 2
Size: newborn to 9 months

These cut it close. I have only a few inches of yarn left. It wasn’t even enough to make the little ties so I fished out some black sock yarn and made ties with that.

We saw a break in the rain Saturday so I hauled finished items downstairs to get photos. The stripes on the linen scarf still remind me of exercise wear but I like how bold they are:

Pattern: own
Stitch pattern: Feather Faggot from Barbara Walker’s First Treasury, page 185
Yarn: Euroflax 100% linen yarn, 3/4 skein black (color 18-2223-17) and 3/4 skein hot pink (color 18-1234-1)
Needles: size 4
Size: 6″ x 72″

Although the non-elastic yarn was rough on my hands, I enjoyed working with it.

I joined the colors by twisting the yarns around each other at each color change, just as you would when working intarsia. Remembering to always bring the new color under the old one on right-side rows and over rather than under on the wrong-side rows prevents tangling and also creates a neat little ladder of color changes on the wrong side:

Working with linen reminded me of something I read a while back in Spin Span Spun by Bette Hochberg, something that really boggled my mind. A little explanation first: linen and cotton were (and still are, I suppose) fibers commonly used when creating something that needed to be strong but not necessarily warm. Linen was often used in sails. And the thing that really got me: the Phoenicians and the Romans and the Vikings and all those old pre-Industrial Revolution world explorers you learned about in elementary school sailed the Seven Seas in ships that had very large sails… and all those sails were made of handspun thread that was then handwoven into the sail fabric. Amazing.

I haven’t spun with linen yet. I wonder how hard it is. I tried spinning from a cotton ball once, spectacularly unsuccessfully.

This week’s bus knitting looks very festive:

Project Mom is nearly at its end. In mid-December she requested three pairs of brown socks. She picked out the yarn and I now have them all done except for the toe grafting, to be done after she tries them on again. Here they are:

Proper glamour shots and yarn details are forthcoming, after I next visit my parents and I finish the socks.

Then the project got a little bigger. At Christmas she handed me the hat I made her nearly 3 years ago and asked me to lengthen it. This is the original (pardon the bad photo):

When she gave it back to me, she put it on to demonstrate how short it was. Umm… not so much. I had originally knitted it long enough to allow the edge to fold over once to create a brim for doubled thickness over the ears (and I did this at her request) but she apparently has been wearing it all this time with the edge pulled down to just above her eyebrows, causing a huge poofy bunchiness on top of her head. I got the giggles, then asked her to pull the hat on all the way and fold over the brim. “Oh, so that’s how it is.” Yes, yes indeed. This also means her hiking buddy never pointed out how silly it looked just perched there instead of pulled down. Anyway, she asked me to lengthen it to allow for a triple thickness over the ears.

This is what I did yesterday. It sure is long enough now: 

Pattern: “Chameleon” by Nicky Epstein, Knitter’s magazine issue 49, Winter 1997
Pattern modifications: cast on only 80 stitches and worked longer
Yarn: 1 skein Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted, 85% wool, 15% mohair, color M-115
Needles: size 7
Size: adult

in-cen-tive, noun.  
something that incites…to action or greater effort 
   From dictionary.com

This was the thermometer when I left for work this morning:

And when I got home tonight:

The upper number is the temperature outside, the lower number inside. It’s also really wet outdoors this week. Why mention this on a knitting and spinning blog? Well, two reasons.

Reason #1: That lower number is great incentive for working on a bulky sweater, simply so I can have something warm to wear around the house. I picked up the long-term WIP Icelandic yoke sweater again this past weekend and knit the last 3/4 of the yoke. 

Then I tried it on and the yoke is several inches too big around in its upper half and a little too long, coming up to almost my chin already. This means I cannot wear the sweater yet. Pout. I plan to knit a few rounds of neck ribbing to see if that holds the yoke in and makes it lie properly, then I’ll have to shorten it. If it doesn’t lie flat after ribbing, out come even more inches and I’ll have to re-figure where to put my decrease rounds. How about a blurry close up?

Reason #2: While the black and pink linen scarf is finished, you will need to wait to see it. I have a higher standard for photos of finished items than for WIPs and this standard requires bright-ish natural light. This time of year there is not enough daylight by the time I get home from work on weekdays and the rain makes it harder to luck out with a dry and bright day on weekends. In the interest of attempting to show you the first finished item of 2008, I took the scarf to work with me today (and I have to say it got nothing done at all) and took some photos of it on a deep windowsill, but today was grey and gloomy and there wasn’t enough light to make it look pretty even by the windows, so you’ll just have to wait.

Huh, I just thought of a reason #3: it’s too cold to spin, so no spinning content for a while. Knitting is better because I can cuddle up a little under my WIP.

In sock news, #5 is done and I am cranking out the last one to finish the three pairs for my mom. Whew!

My second yarn purchase of 2008 arrived yesterday: 9 skeins of Black Water Abbey 2-ply worsted in the Jacob colorway. I bought it from someone who is de-stashing and got a great deal. Now that I have it, though, what am I going to do with it? If it were a brighter color, it could be a sweater for Mr. MmmYarn who is currently working out of our refrigerated residence. But it’s not bright, so it needs to be something else someday. I haven’t swatched with it yet but looking at how it’s spun I wonder if cabling will show up well. If anyone still reading this after all this rambling has used this yarn before, I’d appreciate any tips.

Just a quick post today.

The scarf is about 5 feet long now. And I’m getting a little sick of it, too, as the linen is rough on my hands. Here it is before my lunch break today:

And I’m starting to feel like some sort of sock machine:

This is sock #2 finished and #5 started, for those of you who are counting. The look of the finished sock in this photo reminds me of the elephant inside the snake in The Little Prince, but the bump here is the remainder of the skein and not a tiny pachyderm. I am not going to graft any of these until my mom tries them on so I am also not cutting any yarn until then (if I have to lengthen any of these socks, why weave in more ends than necessary?); tucking the remainder inside the finished sock seems the easiest method of storage.

Take 2 never got to be photographed. It was the same width as the first two-panel attempt, and about 8 inches into it I realized there was no way this was going to be a wrap as I don’t have enough yarn so I unraveled again and cast on with fewer stitches.

A scarf it is. Here is what it looked like this morning:

It is much longer tonight. Looking at it now, the color placement reminds me a little of 1980s-inspired exercise wear. Thank goodness I am not knitting with spandex.

Oddly, the black is much more pliable than the pink although both yarns are Louet Euroflax with the same weight and yardage per skein, at least according to the labels. I have read that different colors in the same yarn can feel very different because of the different dyes used and this seems to be such a yarn.

The original title of this post was “2007 finished items,” but I realized that was a bit of an exaggeration. I did not finish quite so many items. Here is the photo collage (made in about 30 seconds using Picasa) of what I did accomplish:

This is 47 items finished in 2007: 3 bags, 5 pairs of booties, 2 cage cozies, 15 hats, a mini Danish Skra-Troje sweater, 11 scarves, 1 shawl, 6 pairs of socks, 2 baby sweaters and a child’s vest. And only 4 of these items were made from published patterns. I see now that one of the scarves is in the collage twice; maybe Picasa thought it needed to fill in the gap as I was short a photo for this arrangement?

This list does not include two larger items I made but didn’t quite finish: the purple cotton sweater still needs buttons and the Lily of the Valley shawl needs 4 ends woven in and to be blocked. Ah, procrastination. It also omits the three bags I made for my submission to Knitty which I may not show on the blog at this time. And, as every knitter knows, it does not count the many starts and unravelings made in the course of a knitting year. All in all, an item a week. Wow. I obviously enjoy variety.

I did not meet my goal of spinning up one bundle fiber per month, but spinning made a good show in 2007 with 7 bundles spun plus a couple of small experimentals:

The 4-ply is still in progress. Sigh.  

I did well in Knit From Your Stash 2007, which I began after Stitches West in February. While I did buy a little yarn, I think fewer than 10 skeins, most of what I made this year was from my stash. I find it incredible that I made 52 items and still have LOTS of stash left over. Perhaps in 2008 I should focus on larger items, although I think 52 small items (1 per week) might use about the same amount of yarn as 12 big items (1 per month), don’t you think?

Last night I couldn’t stand the sight of the 3 pairs of socks in progress and instead dug out Barbara Walker’s first treasury and some linen I brought to the top of the stash some months ago. I knew I wanted bold lengthwise stripes and finally chose feather faggot stitch. Here is what I had at the end of my bus ride this morning:

And tonight I decided I did not like it, so I unraveled it and cast on for take 2, this time with hot pink on both sides and black in the middle. It is now almost back to the length it was this morning but you will need to wait for a photo as it is dark here now.

This is my first time working with linen (how did that happen? I’ve been knitting for years and years) and I can confirm it does soften as you work with it. The bit that I unraveled and am now knitting with a second time is far softer and pliable than the skein I did not use yet. And it continues to soften as it is worn and washed. Amazing stuff.

A few hours of my time got sucked into the black hole of Ravelry the other night. I put in my recently-completed Monkey socks, then spent time admiring the many other Monkeys listed in Ravelry. Incredible, how beautiful and different they all look, just by virtue of being made in different yarns. It had the unfortunate effect of making me want to immediately shop for gorgeous sock yarns but I refrained. After all, I shopped for sock yarn just last week (1 skein of Trekking color 158, luscious!) and, more importantly, Stitches West is next month…

Not so much progress, really. It was too hot and humid to knit the first two days we were in Mexico and in general during the trip I was more interested in reading than knitting. How on earth can you sip a mojito or piña colada with both hands on knitting needles? A book was a much more logical choice for that, not to mention booze really messes with my gauge.

However, sock #3 saw the beach briefly:

And sock #4 went to the Chichen Itza (I got a whole lot done in 6 hours on a bus as you can see )and also enjoyed the glorious ocean view at our hotel:

Notice how bent over the trees are? That wind is the reason we could not go snorkeling the whole trip. The seas were so rough that the harbor was closed for 3 days.

We saw large lizards on the hotel grounds on the warm days. Iguanas, maybe? On our last day there we went on a quick iguana hunt and found this one on one side of the pool:  

And this one over by the spa:

I am glad I packed very little knitting this time. I worked on part of a bootie on the airplane but wasn’t too motivated. On the ride home, my seat’s light bulb was out so it was too dark to see what I was doing with the black yarn (non-traditional bootie) even though Mr. MmmYarn kindly suffered through having his light on for me. Knitting-wise, it was a vacation. Probably good for the wrists.

I like other textiles besides knitting and was excited to look for Mexican embroidery on our trip. I did try but as we only took an organized bus tour, when the bus stopped we only got to see a real tourist trap of a market, offering some handmade items selling for a pittance but catering to the “I went here and all I got was this t-shirt” crowd, meaning a rough embroidered Chichen Itza or an “I heart Mexico” logo. It was too bad, really, as my local library has some great books on Mexican textiles so I know what can be found.

I am always on the lookout for great signs and the red “Severe Weather Area” sign outside all the restrooms (and only the restrooms; we looked for them elsewhere and did not find them) in the Dallas / Ft. Worth airport made me grin:

Perhaps they mean to imply one is in danger of a tornado only whilst using the facilities? Yikes! My guess is it’s the only place they could think of to put these things to ensure visitors actually read the warning about turbulent atmospheric conditions in Texas.

I got my Ravelry invitation a month ago but hesitated joining as the name “mmmyarn” was already taken. Weird, as a Google search back then yielded me as the only mmmyarn out there at that time. Searching yesterday, I found another blog with this name! But mine is older, hehehe. Anyway, I finally signed up on Ravelry last night as “mmmyarn1,” so look for me there under that name. So far I haven’t put much in there, mostly my books, but it is an interesting site.