January 2009

Warm, sunny, practically windless weather continues, so today I went for a long walk in Golden Gate Park. Once I reached Stow Lake, I took a break and worked a little on the orange and yellow cardigan. This is it, dangling by one two-thirds done sleeve, enjoying a view of the Chinese Pavilion:

After several attempts at knitting the sleeves in the round, I gave up and decided to go flat. Stranding that tiny circumference on small needles just wasn’t working for me.

It has been warm here this week. Even bordering on hot for this time of year with temperatures going up into the high 60s, such a relief after weeks of shivering in our apartment. This means I have great light for photographing finished knits. Mr. MmmYarn and I went for a short walk in the park yesterday and this was my view:

These socks are bright and crazy, just like I like them:

Pattern: own
Yarn: nearly 1 full skein Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock lightweight, 100% superwash merino wool, colorway: Rockstar
Needles: size 1
Size: women’s size 9.5
Started 9/12/2008, unraveled and re-started several times so real start date for this version of the pair is 12/22/2008, and finished 1/12/2009

This is my first and only skein of Socks That Rock and the yarn does rock: it’s soft and comfortable, easy to work with and feels sturdy even though there’s no nylon content. I hope they wear well. Do these look like the feet of a Rockstar to you?

I tried a brimmed 3×3 spiral rib hat and I like how the folded-up brim slants in the opposite direction of the body of the hat:

Pattern: own
Yarn: about 4/5 a skein of Cascade 220 Quatro, 100% Peruvian highland wool, color 9440
Needles: size 5
Size: adult small
Started 1/14 and finished 1/16/2009

The Quatro yarn is interesting: each of the four plies is a different color. To my eye it reads as a dark pink/purple overall when I look at it from far away, but the plies are fuchsia, salmon, lime green, and dark purple.

Spinning is coming along slowly, as usual. I have one more singles of purple to finish before plying:

And I unraveled the yoke of my Icelandic pullover this morning, hoping to focus on fixing that this weekend, because I know it will get cold again.

I have a finished hoodie, and I also have finished hoodie photos to share:

Pattern: Apres Surf Hoodie by Connie Chang Chinchio, as published in Interweave Knits, Summer 2008
Yarn: 8 skeins Baruffa Aerobic, 100% wool, color 985
Needles: US sizes 2 and 3
Size: medium for the body, small for the sleeves
Started 7/6 and finished 12/29/2008

I remember back in July that I serendipitously came across this yarn listed in my stash spreadsheet, and realized it was pretty thin, and wasn’t there a sweater I saw recently that required a pretty thin yarn? Found the magazine and dug out the Aerobic so I could double-check the yarn label: yep, it matched the desired gauge for this sweater. What luck! When I washed and blocked the first 4.5 inches of sleeves that I was using as my gauge swatch, the knitting gods were on my side and the gauge was spot on, allowing me to forge right ahead.

It looks pretty good from the back, too:

After reviewing the schematics and checking a few sweaters I own and measuring my arms, I decided to make the small sleeves and medium body. This was no problem at all when it came time to sew it all together. I had a moment of panic, though, after I had sewn only the shoulders as the front and back hung down nearly to my knees. Funny how a nice, sturdy, side seam will pull in all that length and translate it into width.

This is the only hooded sweater I have made and I had some doubts when I was shaping it, how the shape I was making could possibly turn into a hood. I followed the instructions blindly and got a nice hood. I made it only 10.25″ long rather than 12.25″ before beginning the shaping, having read a few notes from folks (blogs or Ravelry) saying the hood was too big otherwise. Mr. MmmYarn finds the hood comical, how it’s pointy at the top. Rather like an elf hat:

One minor quibble is that the hood, when up, is rather gaping in the middle of the neck area. When I look back at the photo in the magazine, the model is holding the sides of the hood in a saucy way. She may have been posed that way to try to hide the gaping, or perhaps the maker of the magazine sweater picked up a better lacy-section-to-stockinette-border ratio than I did and the sides of her hood do not gape and the model is posed that way for artistry’s sake. My neckline is definitely wide with the hood up:

The sweater looks lovely and fits me well and I have worn it several times already. It’s a little too cold most days to wear it in the house; even though it’s wool, all those lacy holes let in a lot of air. But come spring, it will be out and about reguarly.

I made relatively good progress on the orange and yellow baby cardigan during the past week, but tonight ripped back to the 8th row after test blocking today:

See that puckering just below the garter stitch yoke? Even blocking will not fix that. It means I need to make the yoke deeper before each round of increases to avoid it. Sigh. The good news is that I really like the polka dots.

Ta da! I present to you Mystery Stole 4. It amazes me, always, how lace changes after blocking. Here it is as an unimpressive, crumpled mess:

And the beauty it turned into once I got it on wires:

Pattern: Mystery Stole 4 (Serendipity Stole) by Georgina Bow Creations
Yarn: 1.75 skeins (2 oz, 630 yards each) JaggerSpun Zephyr silk/wool, 50% Chinese Tussah silk, 50% merino wool, color: Channel (I wonder if they mean Claret and not Channel, but it’s clearly labeled Channel)
Needles: size 4
Started 9/5/2008 and finished 11/28/2008

The yarn is simply fabulous. This is the first time I have used Zephyr and it both feels great while knitting and finished wonderfully after blocking. I am looking forward to hauling out the teal Zephyr I bought for the Peacock Feathers Shawl when it’s time to get going on that one.

Although mystery projects appear to be popular in blogland and on Ravelry, I doubt I’ll do another one. I thought it would be fun doing something completely unexpected, and while I really and truly enjoyed knitting it (and the instructions are good), the resulting stole is not my style. I like more traditional patterns. But that’s just my personal taste, and since I make lots of items to give away or sell, I tend to make lots of things that don’t fit my taste. I still enjoy making them. Please understand my statement is not a criticism of the stole itself, just of my picky taste.

Anyway, likes and dislikes aside, the instructions are well-written. I chose to knit both halves at once and managed to accomplish this in 7 weeks. There was a huge gap of time during which I didn’t work on it at all, hence the long start to finish time.

I had some problems with executing the grafting directions. The designer asks you to work one extra row at each end of the stole in a smooth waste yarn, then graft, following the path of the waste yarn. I found this completely impossible and ended up doing a three-needle bind-off of those two waste yarn rows, then grafting over the bound-off row of waste yarn. Afterward, I snipped the waste yarn to remove it and snipped a bit too quickly (Mr. MmmYarn, watching me, actually cringed but didn’t say anything until I discovered the hole), so in addition to testing my grafting skills, I got the added bonus of testing my repairing skills. Which I am happy to say look pretty good. I then had to tighten my graft stitch by stitch as going over 3 waste yarn rows made it really loose.

My mom saw the work in progress when she visited in November and wanted to know how I got the beads on there. I showed her my tiny crochet hook, to which she responded, “how do you even see that?” I guess she has a point. Here’s my attempt at getting a photo of the hook, on a dime for scale, and its head is so tiny that the camera can’t really pick it up. This was the best shot (click for big):

See that big, glittery pile? I was concerned about not having enough beads when I bought the replacement beads in Paris. Ha! Foolish knitter! I have plenty of beads left over to use in another project someday.

As usual, shawls and stoles are a great knitting deal where you get lots of knitting for a small financial investement. Those skeins of Zephyr were under $11 each, meaning I made this whole thing for $20 of yarn and probably $3 worth of beads (given I paid $15 for the beads and have a LOT left over). I couldn’t say for sure how many hours I spent on this thing, but I’d venture a guess at 80 hours. So what’s that, 28 cents an hour? Now that’s entertainment.

In November, I made Mr. MmmYarn a blue hat. He offered some critiques and I re-made it. He likes his new blue hat with a brim enough that he offered to be my hat model:

Pattern: own
Yarn: 1 2/3 skeins Wolle Roedel Universal Superwash, 100% superwash merino wool, color 835
Needles: size 3 and 4
Size: adult average
Started 11/29 and finished 12/7/2008

That folded-over brim creates both warm ears and, for him, a more flattering look than the short little brim. So now I need to edit my pattern in progress to include this option.

Yesterday I got inspired to stash-bust a little and wove a scarf, the whole thing in only one day. It always amazes me how quickly weaving goes as opposed to knitting: Mr. MmmYarn helped me warp on using his currently unused rigid heddle loom just before noon and after about 4 hours of weaving off and on throughout the afternoon I had a scarf. Here is the weaving in progress:

I used a bunch of yarns that have been in the stash since 2001, left over from a sweater. The stash dive was interesting and inspiring. Mr. MmmYarn saw it all spread out yet again. Yes, I allow him to see it. Knitter’s Review this week made me grin, saying this about bringing out one’s entire stash: “If you live with others, choose a day when nobody else is around to witness the gluttony. This needs to be a private moment.” I reveled in the gluttony and it felt great to use up these oddballs. Mr. MmmYarn knows the yarn makes me happy so he said nothing. What a great guy!

I threw the finished scarf in the hot washer this morning to full it and this is what I have now:

Warp: Brown Sheep Nature Spun worsted weight, 100% wool, color N91 (Aran)
Weft: Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride, 85% wool, 15% mohair; Bulky: color M-10 (Crème); Worsted: color M-140 (Aran), color M-135 (April Green), color M-14 (Sunburst Gold), color M-125 (Imperial Yellow), color M-110 (Orange You Glad)
Sett: 10 epi
Finished size: 8.5″ wide x 64″ long including fringe

I didn’t measure any of the weft yarns, simply pulled off varying lengths and ended rows whenever I felt like it. Usually I naturally end up doing a very exact repeating stripe pattern; this is the first time I managed a true random pattern without thinking about it. The fact that the work gets rolled away out of sight every 6 inches or so really helps with randomness.

I tied the tips of all the fringe with thin cotton thread before fulling and this kept the fringe separated while it went through the washer. Afterward, I trimmed the longer fringe down to match the shorter and removed the thread from the shorter fringe with a seam ripper, then ironed the scarf to remove washer wrinkles. All in all, I like it.

We rang in the new year well. We stayed home and made Indian food: Balti chicken and a cauliflower curry, served with one of our special bottles of Ledson wine and followed by leftover Christmas cookies and Mayo dessert wine. I managed to stay up until midnight while we watched the NYC ball drop but collapsed into bed very shortly thereafter. Mr. MmmYarn is hardier than I and stayed up a few more hours. Right now he’s in the kitchen, working away at a Corsican beef stew for tonight’s dinner and insisting on giving me a break from housework.