Jane of All Trades

So I resisted the urge to title this “Freaking Aurgh II”.  There are, I suppose, enough unintended upsides to strive for a tone of optimism.

I love to start socks, but I have a real problem finishing them.  In fact, I only knit socks two-at-a-time, because if I knit one there is approximately zero chance I will ever finish the second.  But then I’ve noticed that when I do knit two-at-a-time, I peter out after the heel turn on both socks…  Which would seem to imply that I have some sort of mystical inner sock threshold, an attention span of One Sock Equivalent.  I can knit one whole sock, or two half socks.  Perhaps even four quarter socks–maybe I should knit baby booties. 

Instead, I decided to cast on a new pair, even though, at last count, I had 4 pairs already on needles.  One pair has been on the needles for well over a year:

I hate that pair.  I should really just frog it, but I’m through the heel turn, so what’s my problem?  Austermann Step in some self-striping colorway that I figured I should knit in a wavy pattern to make more interesting.  But the main interest is that knitting fan-and-feather on this this yarn makes me wants to stab myself.

Then there’s this pair:

This is Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sport in Bittersweet (the first sock yarn I ever bought, nearly two years ago–which I promptly knit into one sock, which I then eventually frogged), in a pattern of my own devising which I am super-stoked about.  But apparently no amount of stoking can really motivate me much past the heel turn.  Incidentally, I was knitting these using one of Cat Bordhi’s freakishly ingenious heal gussets (riverbed), which I love for its fit.  But that made me realize that what I really hate about flashing in hand-dyed yarns is when they start to flash differently–typically when you increase stitches over the heels.  So I frogged back to do a short-row instead, and kept this issue in mind on the following two pairs:

This is a pair of men’s socks knit with two strands–one of Lanett baby wool (black) and another of some hand-dyed fingering weight ebay purchase.  I wanted a thick sock.  Though looking at this picture I am starting to worry that they may not look hetero enough for the intended recipient.  ack!  Too pastel???  These also stalled because I am unhappy with the heel.

And finally:

Ah, my ambitious “Legoland” socks, knit while standing in line at Legolandwith my family.  I love the yarn (STR Medium) and especially the colorway (Fire on the Mountain).  I wanted a pattern to show that off, so I used a variety of slip-stitches on the toe and heel gusset (another Cat Bordhi sockitecture–Ridgeline?) and then went into a ribbed entrelac pattern after the ankle:

It was, sadly, just too busy.  So I frogged it, which made me sad because I didn’t want to undo all of my Legoland effort.

But frogging them made me feel slightly justified in casting on a new pair (Broken rule #1: Too many UFO’s).  And my daughter was going to be at the dentist getting a filling (poor baby) so I reasoned that I should just cast on one (Broken rule #2: Courting Second Sock Syndrome) in the interest of simplicity and portability.  And to make sure I could knit while making eye contact as needed with my daughter, I decided to knit a plain stockinette (Broken rule #3: Boring, see rule #2 above) sock.

Um, I’d never done that before.  With plain stockinette, which in larger garments I find distressingly repetitive, the sock seemed to fly off my needles.  I knit this in one day:

 And ended up having to cast on the second sock for the dentist visit. 

I also made a strategic decision.  Back to that flashing issue: 

I liked the way the colors were spiraling up the sock, but I really didn’t want a big column of pooling as I turned the heel.  So I thought about doing a short-row heel, but then figured that an afterthought heel would be even less disruptive.  So I knit the entire tube, knitting one row across half the sock in waste yarn.  The pic above shows it after the waste yarn was removed and I picked up the live stitches.

 Then I knit ”another toe,” which the Yarn Harlot insists is anatomically identical to a heel.  Hmmm.  Verdict:  I’d do it again, though I need to refine my decreases slightly. 

In fact, I did do it again, right away, feeling positively Phelpsian in my sock-knitting personal-record-breaking.  But then, as I knit the second sock last night while watching the DNC (and, later, Jon Stewart’s send-up of same), something insidious began to happen.  Same ball of yarn, same needles…

Different gauge.  Way different.  Freaking aurgh.  The colors are spiraling differently…  eh.  So I put them down, went to bed, and tried, this morning to loosen the tension a little.

Here we see last night’s tension in the lower half of the picture (way tighter than the first sock), then the blue waste yarn where the afterthought heel will go, then this morning’s tension, which is looser than last night’s tension–so much looser, in fact, that it’s EVEN LOOSER THAN THE FIRST SOCK.

Wah.

Yet I knit on.

So the past two weeks afforded me two great chunks of knitting time: the kids’ swimming lessons, and the Olympics.  During that time, I knit the sleeves of the Phyllo Yoked Pullover:

then started the body and knit upward from the hem to the underarm:

(Contrary to what it looks like in the crappy, poorly-lit pictures I took, both the body and the arms are made from the same color yarn–though neither color here is quite it.)

If you’re looking at this bodice and thinking, “What?  It’s a crop sweater?” or maybe, “She must have a really short torso,” well, you’re almost right.  See, I was knitting this tube on a shorter cable circular–maybe 26 inches.  And so it was all bunchy.  Around about the waist shaping (accomplished by dropping down a needle size, from a US 7 to a 6) I thought it was, perhaps, a bit too bunchy.

But I persevered, against all doubt, in the face of overwhelming odds, just like a slightly less-than-fit Olympian.

Then, when I was all done, I knit it off (gather after bunch after fold) onto a 41″ cable–you know, just to see what it looked like.

It looked like the bodice of a Sweater Knit for Two.

So it’s not that it’s too short, in the picture above, it’s that it has a bad aspect ratio.  It’s too WIDE.  Way too wide.  wide enough that I had to take out FOUR of those pattern repeats.  And size down my needles.

The irony here, of course, is that not only did I swatch and then do the requisite math (I’m using a heavier yarn and had no expectation of actually hitting the guage specified in the pattern), but then I deliberately *knit the sleeves first* so that they would be like a really big swatch, and I could verify that everything was working out as planned.

What went wrong?  Aurgh.  Insert wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Perhaps my math was off, though I double checked it.  Perhaps my guage shifted wildly, though I was sober while knitting and it doesn’t look much different than the sleeves.

Perhaps…  Perhaps it’s a trick of the cotton silk yarn!  That’s it!  It stretched.  Yes.  Laterally.  It stretched laterally under its own weight while I knit!

That’s the ticket…

So I frogged it.  And re-checked my gauge, and re-calculated the math.  And I’m re-kitting it, still in the hopes that I will have it ready to wear when I go to Vermont in a couple of weeks.

It’s looking kind of small.

SO I started this project…

…out of Malabrigo, which I love.  It’s going to be an afghan…

…or a lap blanket, depending on how soon I run out of money.

Because it turns out that a blanket’s worth of Malabrigo is a lot of money.  I’m really enjoying knitting it, though.  Malabrigo is like fluffy handdyed butter, and it knits up beautifully, and the color changes keep my inner short-attention-span knitter entertained.  I’m using the leftover odds and ends to make an all-Malabrigo patchwork, so if you have any, feel free to send them on by.

So Monica asked for pictures of the doggies–the same doggies that entertained themselves for hours with my possum roving.  Here they are…

This is Kona:

And this is Jack:

Jack’s a bit languorous.

But sometimes Kona goads him into action:

And sometimes he’ll trade sleep for a belly rub.

And then he retreats to his den:

I would have more pictures of Kona, but whenever she sees the camera, she pretty much rushes to kiss it:

Simple enough question, but…

A few weeks ago I was on a self-imposed march to finish my many UFO’s.  That lasted for a little while, and I did make some progress…  And then I got the itch.  Several. 

My latest newly-started project Is the Norah Gaughan’s Phyllo Yoked Pullover from Knitting Nature.  Like manyall of projects in the book, it is equal parts genius (Oooh–interlocking spirals!  How did she think of that?) and perplexity (What woman (other than the fetching young model) really wants her nipple poking through the eyelet yoke?).

So there will be modifications.  The first is I am knitting everything in the round, and starting with the sleeves so I would have a small area to try out my gauge and the stitch pattern.  I’m taking the motif from the yoke and incorporating it around the hem and cuffs, because I’m not a big fan of the rolled hem on this design.  It took me awhile to get the pattern to work on the cuff, which I am attributing mainly to the late hour.  I knit and frogged this 3 or 4 times:

But I am happy with it now.  Once I had mastered it, I put it on waste yarn, knit the other cuff, and then put them both on a large circular to knit them together so that they would be unavoidably identical.

The cuffs are belled, seriously belled, and I sized them down a bit.  Then I knit them fairly closely through the forearm and started working increases around the elbow.  Which was great.  Smooth sailing.  I got all the way up to the bicep before realizing that perhaps I had worked too many increases, and the sleeves were a tad bit too big, and then I pressed on, knitting almost up to the armpit before admitting that I really needed to frog back to the forearm and re-knit.  I hate that.  I especially hate it when I am working two-at-a-time, because all of my care in having identical items is sure to go awry when figuring out exactly how far to frog back.

Aurgh. 

But I did, and re-loaded them on the needle, and it’s back to the races. 

Other changes:  I’m using Misti Pima Silk in olive khaki, knit at a gauge of 19 sts X 23 r to 4 inches.  This is a larger gauge than called for (21 sts) and so the requisite math ensued.  Plus, the overall look is a little more rustic. 

Plus, I will probably hold off on any eyelets until I am above the nipple level.

So I promised pics from the conclusion of the Tour some time ago…  And here they are.

Here is the total lot, about 800-ish yards of heavy worsted weight two-ply natural colored oppossum blend.  Traveling from right to left in order finished, more or less:

Here is a close-up of the first skein.  This is the one that was underspun in the single, then underplied and set once, then run back through the wheel to tighten up the plying.  Not, of course, intentionally.

And here, for comparison’s sake, is the last skein.  I still struggle with twisting adequately in the single stage, though my plying improved considerably.  Also, I’m nowhere near as consistent overall as I’d like ot be, but I am much better than I was when I started.

So here’s a major thank you to Katherine for hosting the Tour, and getting me to take this on in the first place.  See you all same time, next year.  Now, it’s time for some much-neglected knitting.

YAY!

Ooh yeah baby, that’s right.  I’ve met my self-imposed Tour de Fleece challenge.  I spun up every last tuft of that bizarro mystery fiber, and I have a total of maybe 800-ish yard of heavy worsted weight two ply.  Best part about the challenge?  This fiber would’ve languished for-freaking-ever in my stash, getting spun up in bits and pieces.  Because it wasn’t sexy–there were no great process decisions to make, no colors to watch blend or pop or merge into interesting new things, no fancy techniques.  It started out being several big lumps of animal-brown hair and it turned into many hanks of animal-brown yarn which, while a very gratifying transition indeed, was less than…  riveting. 

Which brought about what was *really* the best part of the challenge.  Even better than watching the fiber turn into yarn was watching my spinning turn into slightly less mediocre spinning.  Again, less than riveting, but very, very gratifying.

Tomorrow there will be pictures.  Tonight there is quiet triumph.

So the Tour de Fleece is coming to a close.  Here is what I have done so far:

That is about 600-ish yards of two-ply yarn spun from the “Magical Mix” possum blend roving.  I have about 5 ounces left to spin and ply.  This should be doable, but it has been a busy, busy, busy few days.

You can see the colors changed across the ‘bumps’ of roving–ranging form a light greyish brown to a distinctively reddish foxy-y sort of color.  I am still debating dyeing the whole lot of it…

I confess, my spinning has slowed down for the past couple of days.  I have picked up some knitting projects again, and taught my daughter and her friend to spin on a drop-spindle (which was too fun), but the Tour de Fleece spinning has slowed.

So I figure today is as good a day as any to take a look back at some previous spinning projects.

 Here we have the first yarn I ever spun.  I used a drop-spindle and some blue-faced Leicester (BFL) roving I dyed using Kool-Aid.  I was thrilled with the colors, less so with the process of spindle-spinning.

Here is more from the same roving, the very first yarn I even spun and plied on my Baynes wheel.  It was eventually knit into a very floppy hat.  Fun colors, though.

Around about the same time, I dyed this BFL and spun it.  Also Kool-Aid.  The colors made me very happy, though I’ve had trouble photographing them accurately.  Very robin’s-egg blue.  That roving was eventually spun and plied and knit:

 Into this very fun pattern from Knitty (Yes!  See that?  I believe I have just successfully hyperlinked some text!  Hot damn!).  I love this pattern (alright, it’s Foliage) and have knit it several times.

And finally, there is this lovely roving (Merino, I think) which I hand-dyed (again, the Kool-Aid).  I divided the total roving in half, and dyed each half for a long color change sequence.  Then I spun half of it, plied it, and knit it into a capelet for Daughter #1, starting with the red at the neckline and transitioning to the blue along the hem.  The second bump will eventually be knit in reverse order, blue along the neckline, for Daughter #2, ideally while she’s still small enough to wear it.  I should get some pictures of the capelet…

I have this issue when I’m spinning, and if you know how to solve it, do tell.  Let’s say I have two bobbins of singles and I’m plying them together.  Inevitably, I will run out on one bobbin before the other.  I know, in an ideal world, that my singles would be totally even and consistent and I would have the same amount on both bobbins, but it never happens that way.  So then I’m left with some random bit of single, and what to do?

In this case, I was plying the previously-mentioned superwash Merino.  Here, by the way, is the finished product, after setting the twist:

It’s about 150 yards of heavy-worsted.  I ran out of the peachy colorway first, leaving me with a bit of the ‘may flowers’ single left.  I switched Navajo plying (for a video demonstration, check out The Joy of Handspinning here: http://joyofhandspinning.com/spin-navajo-ply.shtml).  Navajo plying is a technique for plying from a single source.  The salient characteristics: It turns a single ply into a triple ply (meaning a.) you get a nice, thick, cushy yarn and b.) you end up with one-third the total length you started with) and it preserves color sequences.  Navajo plying is easy to do but hard to explain, which is why I recommend viewing the video if you’re unfamiliar.

Here is a close-up of the finished product in the two-ply section:

And here is a close-up of the Navajo plied section:

Because of the way you Navajo ply, it will tend to keep different-color segments of the single together, which can work to your advantage or disadvantage, depending on the effect you want to achieve.  In this case, I didn’t particularly want to preserve the color sequence, but i had that pesky bit of single left over and I didn’t want to waste it.  Since the colors were compatible, I figured I would ply it and use it as a coordinating accent in whatever I eventually knit up with this yarn.

Which brings us to another problem:  What to do with those smallish skeins of handspun…