Cuteness Reigned...And it didn't Rain!

Fun was had by one and all: Jennifer (& Simma) , Wendy (&Dave) , Charlene, Rachel ( and Dave, Sammy, and Millie) , and Holly & Joel.

Perfect Pie Shawl

As many of you know, I love to make pies. So when I saw a pattern that was kind of inspired by a pie, I couldn't resist. This pattern was very fun to knit. It is a Veronik Avery pattern in Weekend Knitting (Free Library has a copy). It has a reversible stitch pattern that employs short rows to make the pie shapes. I used two strands of yarn held together: a sock yarn called J. Knits Superwash Me (handpainted green) and Habu's silk and mohair (white, which they don't seem to carry any more). It created a very soft and cuddly almost pearly color. I love it!

A Gauge Swatch?

I want to knit my husband another hat and I wanted to use this pattern, which is from the Komi Region in Russia. But I would knit it in muted colors: blue and charcoal. So instead of making a big old gauge swatch, I started to make a mitten. I have the same yarn in red and white. Then I started to realise that I never wear mittens, even though I love knitting them. I do wear my fingerless gloves. So I thought I would try some "fingerless?" mittens. The yarn is great: Tiur, Dale of Norway. I got it from my 93 year old grandmother who can no longer knit :-( But I am hoping to make her proud and knit some good stuff with it.

Spring Has Sprung

Hermit Thush and Mockingbird by Sharon

Aren't they great?

Shrinky Dink

I have been de-stashing and this bag was a great project to rid my self of many yards of yarn. I bought the yarn at the Maryland Sheep and Wool and I dyed it with cochineal. Then I attempted to knit myself a vest and ended up frogging that. Then I took half of the dyed yarn and put it in an iron bath and the yarn came out a purple. I knit this bag in four days! I started at the base and holding two strands of the purple I knitted until I got partway up the side. Then I switched to one strand of pink and the other purple. Then I finished with two strands of pink. I am showing before felting and after felting here. Now I need a very big button. Does anyone out there have one? If so please bring it to the S&B!

Done, again

Here's another pair of mittens. Simma loved my Latvians and requested a pair. I still had some alpaca yarn left over from a hat that I had made her a year ago. She had bought the yarn in Australia when she was there Jan07:
I used other yarns from my stash, so it was very satisfying to use that up and not buy anything. I had to rip these back several times because I kept loosing track of when I should change colors and also where to place the thumb. (those pesky thumbs!) But I am happy with how they came out. Very soft!

Gimme an N. . .O. . .R. . .O

NORO sock yarn! What's it good for? Absolutely nothing! N! O! R! O!

Well, ok, I exaggerate. The new Noro sock yarn is not good for socks, I'm guessing. I knit a small swatch and found the fabric too floppy and shapeless (it's single ply) and I worry it might be too scratchy. I've also read that it tends to bias when knit in the round (also because it's single ply).

So I used it to make another one of my reversible scarves. This is very narrow -- maybe only 4" wide -- and very long. Meant to wrap around the neck a few times and then you can tie it in a bow.





The pattern is a variation of the Indian pillar stitch. Kind of labor-intensive to make but also fun and, yes, reversible. This baby is something like 8 feet long and there's still plenty of yarn left. I'd say thumbs down for socks but thumbs up for a project requiring lace-weight yarn. The color shifts are really cool.

Done and Done

Finished. Very happy with these and I'd like to start another pair soon. Or is it vest time? Sadly (happily?) the weather is nearly too nice to wear them, though they were welcome on the ride in this morning. Now where is that graph paper...

Amazing Stupidity, Amazing Brilliance

I am DONE!!! I am very happy with these mittens. My daughter wants them- she's not getting them:-) They are too special to me. (I will make her another pair.) I love the yarn. I am totally sold on Jamieson's Spindrift. I even bought (at great expense) the shade card.

Ok, so here's a funny story. I really wish I had taken a picture of this. I was about three rows from being done with the second mitten. These are three short rows because it was the thumb. Maybe ten minutes from being done, when I finally noticed that I had been knitting my second mitten with the thumb in the same place as the first mitten. In other words, I had knitted two right hands! How stupid is that?! Especially since I had the other mitten with me the whole time and was using it to compare the patterns. I could not believe how stupid that was. So I had all these complicated plans about removing the thumb and snipping (ha!) my knitting and grafting the thumb back in. But Wendy (and this is where the brilliance comes in) said that all I had to do was rip back the decreases at the top of the mitten and shift the whole thing a quarter turn, and then re-knit the top of the mitten. Saved!! So I did that and now all is well. You can see in the mitten on the right how the jog where the new rows start is now in the palm instead of at the side. But who cares? (I do a little bit, but not enough...)

Stitch & Pitch 2008

The Phillies held their first Stitch & Pitch event last year and, apparently, it was a big enough success to follow up with a second one this summer. Not planning on giving birth this summer, as I was last, I hope to attend. I think it would be really fun if a group of us went. This is planning far in the future, as the game is not until August 5, but I thought I would just get a bug in folks' ears. This will give you all plenty of time to think of a pattern for a felted Fanatic!

Tree Man Hat

Since Hal's birthday is in February, and he has a shaved head, I take great pleasure in making him his annual hat. He wears them all the time, even in the house, as seen here. I especially like this hat. Its that old 70's ski hat and you can get the pattern online here. We used to wear them when I was growing up in snowy Syracuse.

The wool has a story. I have always wanted to make a hat with wool that was dyed from trees. I had been telling H (Master Arborist that he is) that his helping me find bark that I could dye with is a no-brainer. Something we could do together! Not to mention that he loves to peel bark off of branches almost as much as I enjoy knitting. So when he trimmed our birch tree in the front yard, I asked him to peel the bark from the branches he had cut.

Also, a while back, he had mentioned to his boss that I would like some oak galls. (His boss had access to a lot of them because they are a problem in his area. We couldn't find them here.) I got enough of oak galls to pass them out to all my artist (they made ink) and knitting (dye) friends.

So this is what I did: I used the oak galls to mordant a nice large skein of white handspun that my mom had bought me in New Zealand. I separated out three small balls and dyed two in some dye from osage orange woodchips (yellow), then took one of those and added it to an iron modifier (basically rusty water) to turn it olive green. Then I took the larger skein and dyed it in the birch bark, which had been sitting for a week in water and simmering all that day. It came out a nice brown. Then I left the other small skin in the birch bath for much longer and I got an even darker brown. I was so happy with the results! In knitting the hat, I used some tan alpaca I had around for the inner lining so that it would be soft. The dying process can cause the wool to become a bit harsh, and I think that was true in this case. So I felt the liner should be soft. Below are more pictures of the process. I really love this hat!

All Thumbs

My mittens are finished and blocked. Amazing how the blocking really smooths them out and makes the fabric flat and cohesive. I wasn't really liking how the cuffs were relating (or not) to the design on the hand. So rather than doing little teeny checks on the thumbs, which was my plan, I decided to repeat the grey and white stripes instead. I think it makes the whole design more unified. I really like these guys now.

I'm not sure why one mitten is so much taller than the other. The one on the right I knit first. Maybe I'm easing up on the tension?


See how my braids are going in two different directions? Pretty cool, huh. Just don't ask me how I did it.

Very Fun S&B

Isn't this great?
Pineapple and paper!
Click on the link to the right to see more...

A Really Cool Blog

I have emailed a few of you about a blog that I think is really great, but I want to be sure you all know about it. This woman lives in Finland and has a business dyeing wool with plants and mushrooms. The colors are so beautiful. And, she translates all her posts to English. AND, she is selling mitten kits. Her current post shows some of her mittens. Be sure to scroll down to see her mushroom dyings. Awesome. Click here. WW and I are contemplating an order....

Second Sock!

I am ready to finish the second sock. I started last summer so it's about time. The yarn is wonderful. It is called Sea Cell from Fleece Artist. It is 70% wool and 30% sea cell - from sea weed. Wendy ordered it from Kitty Knoddy and it costs $23 a skein. It feels like silk!

Easy Head-Hugger Hat

Hi, I just finished knitting this hat - really fun. It is knit in triangles. Now I have to sew it up! Here's a link to the pattern.

Finished, kinda

Very, very happy with this mitten!

Not so happy about all the weaving in I gotta do...

Progress Report

Angela and I had our own little S&B this afternoon. Here's how we are doing on our Latvian Mittens. Angela is following one of the patterns in the Upitis book. I am doing a kind of sampler of six-stitch patterns. (Ang says that is not very Latvian of me :-) I cast on 66 stitches and I felt it would be easiest- and maybe kind of fun - to find and make up as many six-stitch patterns as I could. I may not even make the two mittens the same, but just keep thinking up patterns. We shall see. BTW, the green line is thumb marker.

Almost There. . .

It's not easy to take a photograph with only one hand. This is the best I could do. I'm almost ready to begin my decreases. Lizbeth Upitis recommends beginning the decreases when you're at the first (top) joint of the middle finger. She says from this point figure an additional length equivalent to about half the width of your mitten. So a 4" wide mitten will have about 2" of decrease length. That seems like a lot to me.

(And yes, I know my cuff is totally out of control. I don't know what I was thinking. My only defense is that I knit the cuffs while sitting at gate 25 of Terminal A of the Philadelphia airport. It was my only solace, so I just kept knitting. And knitting. And knitting.)

I might begin my decreases earlier than that. Like do one more 4-row pattern repeat and then start. I don't want to end up with mittens so long I can't really wear them. You know, like having claw hands or something.

The thumb hole is an entirely other issue. Looks like I'll have a lot of stitches to pick up. This is all a learning process, right?? Stay tuned.

What is that you say? I have to do another one after this?

Knitting and Purling in P.R.

So before I get to my mitten progress, a few gratuitous shots from our vacation in Puerto Rico. I got most of my knitting done on the front end of the vacation, when we stayed for three days at a little eco-resort in the middle of the rain forest, "El Junque." No tv. No radio. Heavenly. Here, a couple of snaps taken from our balcony:


We hiked a lot in the forest, traversing boulders, a raging river, and jungly pathways. Here's some giant bamboo, maybe where size 15 needles come from?

And lots of really, really good coffee fueled our trip. Interestingly, the coffee was very different in each area. I preferred the stuff up north, a bit mellower than the dark acidic blend in the south. They take their coffee very seriously. Below is a set-up in a diner in San Juan where they frown on you having more than one cup. (And there are no free refills.) I had three that morning, it was so good. I didn't care about the waiter's scowls or the extra couple of bucks on our tab.


So on to the knitting. After futzing around for about a week with various (way too complicated) designs, I settled on a checkerboard-tiled pattern along the lines of what I'd originally wanted. It's pretty simple. Just four colors with brown being the main repeat. The checks are 4 x 4 on the outside, 2 x 2 on the palm, and will be 1 x 1 on the thumb.

(Back)

(Palm)

I'm not too thrilled with the cuff and am thinking when I'm finished with the bodies of both mittens I may cut them off and rework them from the wrist down. We'll see. I had to MacGyver my thumb hole with a little piece of floss, since I didn't have the right kind of yarn to thread through there to hold the stitches.

Moving along. Slowly

cast on for my second mitten but haven't gotten much further than that. still trying to settle on a final design. the reds there in the background are crying out for me to do something. crosses? a bit concerned about my gauge but i think i'll just forge ahead and hope for the best.

...and be sure to check out this.

Blocking Madness

Lest anyone out there think there is no reason to block...

I made the sock on the right a few months ago and blocked it then.
I made the sock on the left recently and here it is in its pre-blocked state.

This was a little disconcerting. I love this yarn, but I was not real happy to see all this dye coming out. It soaked in a bath of Euclan and tepid water.

Ok, this really worried me! Look how much bigger the sock on the left is! I was sure that I had taken careful notes and cast on the same number of stitches and knitted the same number of rows, measuring and re-measuring.
It is risky making socks two months apart. Maybe I shouldn't have done that...

And look how much more yellow the sock on the right is.
Everything was going wrong!
Could it be that when they dried, the sock on the left would shrink a bit
and return to its normal color? I didn't know that could happen.

It did. Phew!
By the way, the pattern is Monkey at Knitty.com
Very fun to knit. A little harrowing to block.