11.30.05
Posted in General at 10:41 am by Rachel
For once my lack of posting does not actually indicate a lack of knitting. It simply indicates a lack of daylight during my time at home (and it will be a cold day in hell before I succumb to photographing my knitting with a flash). We were away for all of the Thanksgiving break, so progress photos will have to wait until this weekend. To assure you all that I’m alive and well, though, I thought I’d dig through the archives and post a photo of my very first ever knitting project (circa 1999):
Yep, I started with socks. With colorwork in them. Fortunately I used bulky wool, which allowed me actually to make progress on the socks even with my very slow knitting at the time. Unfortunately, I used bulky wool, which renders these socks not only quite itchy but ludicrous and totally useless unless you’re planning to climb Everest. Which I’m assuming you’re not. (If you are, let me know and I’ll mail you the socks.)
However, they didn’t come out all that badly for a first-ever project, and they will continue to live with my yarn stash as an homage to my early knitting ambition.
There’s another reason these socks are relevant right now. Since knitting them, and in spite of all the rabid enthusiasm in the cyberknitting world for socks and sock patterns and sock yarns, I have had absolutely zero interest in knitting any additional socks. I really didn’t get the craze. What a lot of work for such a small, barely seen FO! I was even a little proud of my indifference toward sock knitting.
Except. You know that feeling you get in the back of your throat, where you’re not sick yet, but you know with dreaded certainty that it’s just a matter of time? That’s kind of how I’ve been feeling about sock knitting recently. That tiny tickle of sock temptation. Maybe if I take enough zinc the feeling will go away. But don’t be too suprised if sometime after Christmakah I finally give in and give socks another whirl. I am now taking recommendations for the Best Sock Yarn in the World.
Coming up on Lickety Knit: The cabled toddler pullover is completely finished — that last one percent in the sidebar is for photographing it and posting about it. Also the Ruffles scarf should be done by the weekend. Finally, keep your eye out for a mini-sweater update.
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11.20.05
Posted in Works in Progress at 6:02 pm by Rachel
Last week I received a medium-sized haul of Wool of the Andes from Knitpicks in assorted colors:
I ordered it to mix and match to make mini-sweater ornaments as Christmas gifts this year. I have 13 of them to make. Each one takes me between two and four hours, depending on whether it has stripes (though I’m optimistic that I’m going to keep getting faster). The pattern is fun, and I really like picking out the different colors for each sweater. And if I get completely bored with mini sweaters, I can always branch out into mini stockings or mini mittens or something. Hey, people like things that come in mini, right? I’m hoping I won’t burn out before I get a chance to make one or more for my own tree. At this point I have made three, and so far so good:
The one with the B is for the president of the university at which I work (I work in the president’s office). As you could probably guess, the name of the school starts with a B. I hope she (the president) isn’t too sick of college paraphernalia. Next up I’m going to do one with orange and blue stripes. Watch the blog for more pictures as my collection grows!
Compared to the last several weekends, this one was nice and mellow. Since we’ll be traveling to St. Louis for Thanksgiving weekend, it was nice to have some quiet time at home. Sadie thought so too.
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11.17.05
Posted in Works in Progress at 10:54 am by Rachel
I recently ordered three balls of Knitpicks Panache to make a scarf for my boss for Christmas. This stuff is pretty sweet: 40 percent baby alpaca, 20 percent cashmere, 20 percent silk, and 20 percent extrafine merino. And yes, it feels as nice as you’d suspect. It reminds me a bit of Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk, only it feels a little sturdier (though not at all less soft). It’s probably the priciest yarn at Knitpicks ($7 for a 68-yard ball), but it’s still a great price for the fiber content. My boss kind of goes for luxury things like that, so I thought it would be just the thing for her.
The only thing is that I didn’t know what kind of scarf I planned on making. A couple possibilities I had in mind just didn’t look right with the yarn (it’s bulkier than many patterns call for). After trying those, I opened Knitting on the Edge and Vogue Knitting to see if I could find a stitch pattern that might suit both the yarn and my boss. Several stops and starts later, I gave up on that — nothing looked quite right. (While the yarn did show some wear after being worked and frogged and worked and frogged and worked and frogged, I was impressed in general by how it held up.) I was getting a little anxious, because there are only 36 knitting days until Christmas and I can’t afford a lot of indecision time.
Fortunately, as I drifted off to sleep on Tuesday night, the perfect scarf occurred to me: “Ruffles” from Scarf Style, an obscure pattern from an obscure book. I certainly don’t expect you to have heard of it. I believe I am the first person ever to make this patt…wait, what? What’s that? You’ve made Ruffles, too? Really, that’s interest…oh, and you say you have as well? You’ve ALL made Ruffles? I am the last knitter on the Eastern Seaboard to make Ruffles? Oh. Well then.
Okay, so it’s a popular pattern, but I do think it’s just the right one for my boss, and I’m confident she’ll like it. Turns out it’s also fun to knit yet still easy enough to do while watching TV that requires some attention to be paid to it (”The Word” segment of the Colbert Report isn’t nearly as funny if you’re not looking at the screen). The bad news is that it will require two additional balls of Panache. I don’t know what brand of crack I was smoking when I thought I could get away with three balls on any scarf, especially given that my boss is over six feet tall. I had a moment of uncertainty when I realized that this would be a greater investment of time and money than I would normally allot to a boss’s Christmas gift, but she did push to get me a nice promotion this year, so I figure I can repay her with a scarf that’s actually long enough not to look laughable.
By the way, the color of this yarn could not be captured on a computer screen. It is luminous. Lustrous. I’d say radiant, but that doesn’t begin with an L, and it seems as though I should have three Ls. I’ll just fall back on “luxurious.” This color is probably best described as brown, but it has warm pinky orangey tones that make it much more interesting than a standard brown. I really want to try other Panache colors now!
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11.15.05
Posted in Finished Objects, General at 12:57 pm by Rachel
Pattern: Men’s Rustic Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
Yarn: Rowan Yorkshire Tweed Bulky in stout, olive oil, and string (those are colors, not yarn ingredients)
Knitting time: Probably 6-7 hours, but spread out over 2 months
Notes: I finally sat myself down to finish the scarf I was working on for my stepfather’s birthday. (Which was back in September, but who needs a scarf in September, anyway? It wasn’t late, it was just timed to the weather rather than the actual birthday event.) I couldn’t post any progress because he reads my blog occasionally. Hi Mark! Mark has promised me a picture of himself wearing the scarf (he threatened to send a picture of himself wearing nothing but the scarf), so I’ll post that when I get it.
This pattern is about as easy as they come, but I loved the way it looked. Very rugged and manly. Once I got going it knit up very quickly (I used the felted join at every color change, so I didn’t even have lots of ends to weave in when it was finished). As it is knit the long way, I only had 33 rows of 181 stitches. Hooray for bulky yarn!
I got to use a nifty technique I read about on the Knitty Board for the first time: after washing the scarf, I used a salad spinner to remove the extra water before blocking. It worked really well!
I also got to use my new blocking board for the first time. It really appealed to the obsessive compulsive in me to have all those perfect lines to adhere to. 
The only problem was that the scarf was too long for the board (most scarves would be), so I had to block it in two shifts. Trying to re-wet the second half of the scarf without getting the already-blocked part wet again was a little awkward, but in the end it worked out fine. It took a lot longer to dry, though, since I couldn’t use the salad spinner. I loooove the salad spinner trick. I want my very own knitting-dedicated salad spinner for Christmakah so that we won’t have to eat lint with our salad (or wear leafy green bits with our knitted garments).
I had enough yarn left over for about 2/3 of a second scarf, so I bought one more ball and made a similar but much more randomly striped scarf. I like how it came out almost as much as I like the first one. It is shown here pre-blocked. It will be a Christmas gift for my friend Eric (non-blog reader). Hooray, one Christmas gift down, 243 to go!
You may be asking, what are those brown Home Depot bags looming in the background of that photograph? Oh, those? Those are just the twenty-one bags of leaves that I raked on Sunday, that’s all. Five hours of raking (with a half-hour break for lunch). Therein lies my excuse for my extremely limited knitting progress recently. This picture does not begin to convey the volume of organic matter I gathered and bagged this weekend.
The good news is that I got some exercise and the yard looks much better. (Now, instead of dead patchy overgrown grass covered with dead leaves, it’s just an uninterrupted expanse of dead patchy overgrown grass.) The bad news? Well, I’ll give you a hint. The photo below was taken in my backyard, looking straight up, immediately after I finished raking.
I sense at least one more good knitting day stolen from me by the joys of homeownership.
One good thing came from my ordeal in the backyard: I discovered these crazy late tomatoes. Matt and I had given up on our tomatoes back in August because every single one got blossom-end rot. Given that it’s now mid-November, it didn’t really occur to us to check on the dying garden, but this weekend it was impossible not to notice, amidst all the nearly dead plants, these beautiful green tomatoes without a sign of blossom-end rot to be seen. We’ve been told that if we take them in and put them in a bag of rice they’ll ripen. Who knew our best tomato harvest would come three months later than expected?
Coming up on Lickety Knit: A big ol’ yarn shipment from Knitpicks (I will gush about the beauty and wonder of Panache), the nearly finished cabled toddler pullover, and impending panic about holiday gifts.
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11.06.05
Posted in Finished Objects at 5:08 pm by Rachel
Pattern: “Cozy” from Knitty
Yarn: Classic Elite Spotlight in white
Knitting time: About 3.5 months in fits and starts
Notes: This was one of the first patterns that caught my eye on my very first visit to Knitty, and when I realized during my yarn diet that I had yarn in my stash that just might work for this shawl, I cast on right away. I quickly began to worry that the pure white cotton (instead of the neutral silk that the pattern calls for) was going to look a bit grandmotherly. And, well, while this isn’t the edgiest thing one could possibly knit, in the end I’m happy with how it came out.
The pattern was my first attempt at lace, and I think it was a good choice. It quickly became clear how it worked, which was cool to figure out, but I’m embarassed to admit that even 53 times through the 8-row repeat I still had to double check the pattern to remember how each row began. However, with lifelines and compulsive counting of stitches, I finished the whole pattern without making a single mistake…until the very last pattern row before doing the half inch of garter stitch to finish the damn thing off. I instantly convinced myself that errors make handknits unique…so don’t look too closely at the edge.
The cotton really wanted to pull in on itself, so about a foot and a half along I realized I would have a shawl much narrower than called for. I put my faith in the blocking process and, indeed, pinned it out on my new blocking board to a generous 20-inch width. For two days while it dried I skipped around singing the gospel of blocking in my head. Then I unpinned it and within 5 seconds the shawl had sprung back to its self-determined width of about 16 inches. Oh well. It still looks purty. And I actually do think that blocking opened up the pattern a bit and stretched it a least a little.
Two thumbs up to this pattern and finished object!
P.S. My hair is not usually styled by rats foraging for lining for their nests. I don’t know what its problem is.
P.P.S. A special thank you to Matt, who responded with good grace when I showed up wearing a party dress and sneakers, shoved the camera into his hand, and ordered him to “be artsy.”
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11.01.05
Posted in Yarn and Tools at 10:49 pm by Rachel
The spending freeze seems to be essentially over, much to the chagrin of my checking account balance. But ever since Amylovie posted her schmancy new blocking board on her blog, I’ve become more and more tempted to procure one of my very own. A 50 percent off Joann.com coupon made itself known to me at a weak moment, and 10 days later it (the blocking board) arrived on my doorstep.
I have to say, I am not at all disappointed. The board is big, sturdy, and well made. It folds nicely and has a convenient handle. The pinning side is a rugged denim and the outside is a soft felt. I will get lots of use out of it for years to come. As impulse buys go, it turns out this was fairly low on the frivolous scale.
Yay!
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Yep, I started with socks. With colorwork in them. Fortunately I used bulky wool, which allowed me actually to make progress on the socks even with my very slow knitting at the time. Unfortunately, I used bulky wool, which renders these socks not only quite itchy but ludicrous and totally useless unless you’re planning to climb Everest. Which I’m assuming you’re not. (If you are, let me know and I’ll mail you the socks.)
