July 2008

This yarn jumped out of the pile on Sunday night, saying “knit me!” This week’s bus knitting is a little sweater:

It’s coming along quickly. The sleeve in the picture is nearly done and I’ve already worked a few inches on the body. I’ll join body and sleeves and work a raglan yoke in the round until I get to the point at which I want to start the button placket for the front. Then I will work back and forth. I’m still thinking about what kind of a collar to put on it; I’ll have to decide that once I see what the placket looks like.

This little hat came and went so fast I didn’t even get a chance to post it as an in-progress project:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Schoeller Esslinger Fortissima, 75% wool, 25% nylon, color 085 (navy blue) held together with Froehlich Wolle Blauband Maxi Ringel, 80% wool, 20% nylon, color 7705 (blue stripes plus a green one)
Needles: size 2
Finished size: Toddler
Started 7/25 and finished 7/26/2008

On Thursday I soaked and blocked the finished sleeves of the Apres Surf Hoodie. I had some tense moments while the yarn was wet, pinning out the suddenly and suprisingly gargantuan sleeves. My gauge swatch, that I actually soaked and blocked (an unusual move for me), apparently lied! The sleeves were supposed to be 23″ long total and mine were nearly 31″ when I pinned them down. I actually pinned the sleeves very loosely, stretching them widthwise very minimally and lengthwise not at all.  Dry, my gauge is off by 1/4 stitch and 1/4 row per inch. I can easily adjust for that and need not worry that my sweater’s sleeves are better suited to an orangutan than to me. I have forgiven the gauge swatch.

Now it’s Sunday night, the little hat is finished, Apres Surf is at a non-portable stage, and I have nothing for the bus ride tomorrow. Back I go to the giant pile of yarn I strewed across the bed this afternoon, to see if I can find something that jumps out at me.

Oh, one more thing! The recipient of the 4 chemo hats I wrote about last month finally got them, and while the Swirl Cap is indeed too small (as I expected), she likes and wears the other three. I am glad I was able to do one little thing to help out.

Last night was the annual S.F. Giants Stitch & Pitch baseball game. I joined two ladies from my knitting group in the stands and cheered along while working on the hat I started Monday night (emergency bus project for Tuesday):

This next photo is a gratuitous one I took at my friend’s request. The player at bat had rather an impressive rear end; unfortunately, my phone’s camera doesn’t zoom or even have a lot of power to begin with, so you’ll have to use your imagination. Or look up player #33 and hope to find something other than a head shot:

The game was pretty good. I found it to have a little less action than the 3 other games I’ve been to, so I spent some time admiring the WIPs and many hand-knitted garments in the stands around me. Some of the babies had exquisite little sweaters on, clearly the children of or closely related to some great knitters. With the bus ride to and from work, then back out to the ballpark and watching the game, I finished the hat, another of the rebel-baby color choices:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Zitron Trekking Pro Natura, 75% superwash wool, 25% bamboo, color 1603, held doubled throughout
Needles: 2
Finished size: Toddler
Started 7/21 and finished 7/22/2008

Fortunately, I come prepared for just such a calamity, so the back of the Apres Surf Hoodie saw some baseball action too:

I know, not much to see there yet.

The giveaways at this year’s game were a Stitch & Pitch baseball hat and apparently a giant pile of Malabrigo that I missed out on by waiting until the 4th inning to go get my freebie. I found 5 large, empty tables and one table with a small pile of black hats. Here we are, in our hats, enjoying the game:

Sorry for the blurriness; a stranger took the photo and she wasn’t familiar with how my phone worked. I’m on the right.

The Giants won, 6 to 3.

Tonight I found my apple cozy / fruit sock engaged in doing something else altogether:

This actually worked very well. I was concerned there might be felting because of the steam generated by my tea but the cozy is doing just fine.

Friday’s pink hat is done:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Fearless Fibers 100% Superwash Merino Wool in Peppermint Pink, held doubled throughout
Needles: size 2
Size: Toddler
Started 7/18 and finished 7/20/2008

The yardage in this Fearless Fibers yarn was very generous: 550 yards to 4 ounces. I made a pair of socks for me, booties for my niece, and this hat (with the yarn held doubled only for the hat) and I still have enough left over to make stripes in something. A great bargain!

I’m trying to use up some sock yarn scraps so you’ll be seeing a few more hats here in coming posts. Perhaps also interspersed with progress on the Apres Surf Hoodie. Sleeves are almost finished.

I went to the movies yesterday. Between getting there early (the folks I went with had us get there 30 minutes early so we’d get good seats; apparently this one was popular) and the 20-25 minutes of previews, the little hat I had cast on in the morning looked like this once the movie started:

Had there been advertisements before the previews, too, I’d probably have hit the crown decreases before the show even started. Why, if a movie is scheduled to start at 8, doesn’t it start at 8? If I wanted to see advertisements and previews, I would get there at 7:30. But it turned into good knitting time for me, and, mercifully, there were only previews to listen to before the show.

The Apres Surf Hoodie sleeves are nearing the caps.

Wow. I do try to post more frequently but every once in a while life gets in the way. I’m glad I ran out and snapped photos yesterday evening just before sunset because today the thick fog and heavy wind would have prevented good picture taking.

Last week’s bus booties are finally done. The nearby cafe has those silver tables you frequently see my knitting posed on, but the fellow there had just packed those up so I made do with an obliging mailbox. I won’t tell you how often the wind skittered those little booties right off the curved edge of the mailbox. Mmm… bright booties in jelly-candy colors:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Zitron Trekking XXL, 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon, color 158
Needles: size 2
Size: newborn - 6 months
Started 7/3 and finished 7/14/2008

This Trekking XXL seems slightly thinner than other Trekking XXL I have used. I usually use size 2 needles, and did for these booties, but for the Jaywalkers I made a few months ago I ended up going down to size 1s. These booties will hit the washer and the dryer tomorrow so they can tighten up a little.

We visted Mr. MmmYarn’s parents over the weekend. They live just outside the same town I lived in until I moved here 6 years ago. That town used to have a yarn shop but that one closed in 1999. By coincidence, I ran into the former shop’s owner at the local farmers’* market on Saturday morning, and as she also ran the knitting group I used to attend and knows how gung-ho I am about knitting in public and with others, she told me about knitting and beer that afternoon in the garden behind a new shop that opened in past year or so. Well, now, I couldn’t pass that up, could I? I couldn’t have any of the wonderful-looking home-brewed beer (driving, you know) on that warm afternoon but did find a consolation prize (Click for big, as usual. This skein is quite pretty):

Plus I got to catch up with 2 people from the old gang. Very nice indeed.

Lest you think I’ve been a lazy knitter, making only a pair of booties since my last post, I did knit an entire scarf out of some of my handspun but it’s too short so I need to frog and re-think the thing, plus I started the Apres Surf Hoodie:

The yarn is Baruffa Aerobic and it’s a very brilliant spearmint green; the dull color here was caused by the sun dipping down below the tops of the buildings a minute too early. That big line on the right sleeve is where I blocked my sleeve/swatch, which turned out to be exactly the gauge I needed so I put it back on the needles and forged ahead.

In family news, the little baby surprise jacket I made of Tofutsies back in March and the matching booties I made in April have a wearer to go with them as of very early Tuesday morning.

* I see this written as “farmers,” “farmer’s,” and “farmers’,” and I never know which one’s right. They all could be, I suppose, depending upon your interpretation of the phrase.

This is a simple scarf I made last week, using Sailor’s Rib:

Pattern: own
Stitch pattern: Sailor’s Rib (Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury, page 4)
Yarn: Tess’ Designer Yarns Cultivated Silk & Wool, 50% silk, 50% wool, no color name or number, no dye lot
Needles: size 6
Size: 5.25″ x 44″ after blocking
Started 6/28 and finished 7/3/2008

I cast on with cable cast-on and bound off with Elizabeth Zimmermann’s casting-on casting-off (p.24 of Knitting Without Tears). I am very happy with how this turned out visually as the two ends are nearly identical.

The yarn pooled a little in an interesting way, giving an almost zig-zag effect between light peach and dark peach. I have another skein of this in turquoise but have not yet decided what I will do with it. This scarf is on the short side so probably not another scarf.

The reverse of the Sailor’s Rib pattern is interesting, too. Right side of the pattern is on the left, wrong side on the right:

Yesterday’s Rising Bubbles scarf is based in garter stitch, so no purling, but if you’re new to knitting or to using yarn overs to create holes, you may not know exactly how to deliberately offset your yarn overs to create a diagonal line of holes.

You can tell you are on even-numbered row in the pattern when, with the work facing you, the diagonal line slants to the right. The other way to tell is to look at the yarn over. It will be really loose, just the yarn over with no knit stitch above it. The pencil points to the loose yarn over stitch that needs to be knitted (click for big):

Once you are on an odd-numbered row, you need to know where to place your yarn overs. To offset yarn overs and create the diagonal line of holes, you need to work them one stitch to the left of where you worked the yarn over in the previous odd-numbered row. In this photo, the pencil points to the knitted stitch directly above the yarn over worked in the previous even-numbered row. Knit this stitch, then work a yarn over, knit 2 together on the next two stitches:

This is what the completed yarn over, knit 2 together looks like. The pencil points to the yarn over:

Now, how can you tell when you are ready to begin with row 1 again, especially if you’ve changed the stitch count? In particular for this scarf, you start a new pattern repeat when you have 6 garter stitch stitches to the right of the yarn overs as you go to begin a new odd-numbered row. In this photo, ready to begin an odd-numbered row, the pencil points to the 7th stitch, the knit stitch above the previous yarn over. This indicates it’s time to start with row 1 again, placing the 2nd yarn over in the row one stitch to the left of where the pencil points:

The blue scarf is done and as someone in my knitting group wanted the pattern, I wrote it up and put it in the sidebar. Although it was sunny yesterday, the wind was still too much for a lightweight scarf. It’s hard to take a decent photo of a swiftly moving object. At first Mr. MmmYarn held the scarf in place so it wouldn’t whirl around quite so much:

But then I remembered our camera has a rapid-fire setting to take many photos in quick succession and came up with a good photo among many, many wind-blown ones. A supportive bush was also helpful in accomplishing the task:

Pattern: own: Rising Bubbles, available as a free PDF download in the sidebar
Yarn: 1 skein Louet Sales Kidlin Pixie Lace Weight (50g and 250 yards per skein); 49% linen, 35% kid mohair, 16% nylon; color 65-1162-3 Flag Blue
Needles: size 4
Size: 6″ x 53″ before blocking, 7″ x 65″ after blocking
Started 6/22/2008 and finished 7/3/2008

This is an easy garter stitch scarf, no purling at all. The diagonal yarn over pattern is worked only on even-numbered rows so this makes great mindless knitting once you either understand the pattern or have it memorized.

The linen in Kidlin Pixie made this scarf a little stiffer than I like, but washing it made it more pliable. I made a couple of these scarves in Crystal Place Kid Merino and Rowan Kidsilk Spray last year. Here are the photos again so you can see what Rising Bubbles looks like in variegated yarns:

Coming tomorrow to help those of you new to working with yarn overs, a tutorial on how to tell where you are in the pattern.

I was really taken with Stringativity’s fruit socks when she posted those and they stuck in my mind from the time I read that post. Yesterday morning when I got up I knew I would be going downtown later and I decided my mid-morning snack of an apple needed some wooly protection (fits in the purse better than a plastic container, plus it’s collapsible when empty), so I whipped up a fruit sock of my own before I left the house. Mine’s in a worsted weight yarn:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Mountain Colors Hand-Painted Yarns 4/8’s Wool, 100% wool, color: Deep Grape
Needles: size 5
Finished size: a couple of small plums to large apple (the ribbing is stretchy)
Started and finished 7/4/2008

I am happy to report the apple traveled well. There was no bruising and no stray lint adhesion. Plus just looking at it in its cozy makes me smile.

Here’s how I made it: I started with 4 stitches, increased out to 8 on the next round, then did an 8-point increase on every other round until I had something that looked big enough (turns out it was 48 stitches). At that point I switched to k2 p2 ribbing. It turns out the roundness of an apple really sucks up length of ribbing. I had to make the ribbing a full 4 inches tall to completely cover my test apple. I then worked one round of k2 yo p2tog to create eyelets. The next three rounds I worked evenly spaced increases because I wanted a ruffled top. The last step was to braid a short cord so my apple could be snugly tied into its cosy.

Here is the ruffled top all tied up. It reminds me a little of a flower: