Socks and the Magic Loop

I am not a big fan of sock-knitting.

I know.  The HORROR!  Saying that to a group of knitters is blasphemy.  It's like waving a red flag in front of a bull.  Like telling a group of environmentalists that you don't recycle.

Like brushing your teeth at my mother's house with the bathroom door open.

Don't ask.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, right.  Sock knitting.  Never been a big fan.  It's those skinny little DPN's.  It's that never-ending miniature knitting.  It's my short attention span, resulting in the dreaded Second Sock Syndrome.  It's all of that and it's also that it has never resulted in a pair of socks that didn't felt into oblivion the first time I washed them.

But, my friend Ruth loves wool socks.  And she had two balls of sock yarn sitting around and no time to knit.

Enter Christmas and my lack of funds.  I offered to knit up the two pairs for her as a gift.

I am now, once again, a sock knitter.

Only this time, I am armed:

My arsenal is also growing to include these.  And these.

My recent foray into the world of lace knitting and the discovery of Addi Turbo Lace needles brought to light the fact that my hatred of circular needles was merely a hatred of CHEAP circular needles and that good quality stuff makes all the difference in the world.  So I'm taking the plunge.  I read the reviews and asked around and decided that KnitPicks have the right balance of price and quality that I need.

So, Ruth gave me a favoured pair of socks from her dresser and her husband's to use as templates and I await my delivery of needles in order to start (that's just a little test swatch sitting there):

More to follow...

Lace. The New Frontier.

I told you that the first shawl was a gateway project, didn't I?

Well, I wasn't kidding.  I started a Hemlock Ring Blanket with the yarn my grandmother gave me last summer:

It looks like a giant jellyfish, doesn't it?  The yarn is an acrylic/cotton/linen blend.  I hate hate HATE acrylic, but am not one to look gift yarn in the mouth.  Besides, I've decided that I'm making it for her anyway.  She obviously liked the yarn, as she had bought it to make herself a sweater and gave it all to me when her arthritis got in the way.

I love it and can't wait to start another one (for me, maybe?) in wool.  It's so much easier than I thought it would be.  Not something I'd give to a beginner, of course.  But if you're knitting sweaters, mittens or socks, you're ready for lace, by God.

Open-collar surgery

I promised that I would show you the process for the surgery I performed on my recently-completed cardigan.  The reason for the surgery was that I found the original neckline to be much too small and tight around my neck.  It was comical, actually.  

The challenge is this: the cardigan was knit from the top-down.  It's easy enough to rip out knitting, if you start at the end and backtrack, but it's impossible to go the other way.  Meaning, you can't rip out from the beginning {go ahead, we'll wait here for you as you grab an old swatch and try it for yourself...oh good, you're back - I was right, wasn't I?}.  And the beginning of this sweater is the collar.  So ripping back to the right place for a nicer collar was impossible.

That meant that I had to cut the knitting to the spot at which I wanted to start the collar.  With scissors.

Then, I had to pick up the live stitches and start the collar.

In a nutshell (ha, that's laughable...when has a nutshell ever managed to contain me?), here is the step-by-step:

 The unsatisfactory collar.  The little stitch holders indicate where the buttons will go.

 A close-up of the front neckline.  You can see that the collar dips down in the front, like all crew-neck necklines.  That stitch holder represents where I wanted the new neckline to sit.  We (Tora, Chris and I) had established that I would be ok with a boatneck neckline, meaning that it would not dip down in the front.  That meant that shaping would not be required - I would be working with a simple straight line of stitches.  Thank heaven.  I was not going into shaping territory.

 I used a super skinny circular needle with a super long cable (this makes it much easier to manipulate the stitches) and started picking up stitches in a straight line around the yoke of the sweater, in line with that stitch holder.

I found it more helpful to flip the sweater to the wrong side - it was easier to see the rows clearly enough to stay in a straight line.

 I kept going until I got all the way around, making a few mistakes here and there - no big deal.

Once I had threaded all the stitches onto the needle, out came the scissors.  I very carefully snipped one stitch, just above my circular needle.

 Peekaboo.

 This process of unwinding the yarn took a bit of time, but that circular gave me the confidence that things weren't going to get out of hand - it essentially acted as a stitch holder.

I ran into a few spots where, for some inexplicable reason, there was a snag.  The old collar was getting discarded anyway, so I just cut the offending yarn until it came free.

When all was said and done, I ended up with a wider neckline, all nicely placed on a circular needle and ready to be knit back onto my regular circular with new yarn.  A few of the stitches were out of line - I had picked up a few wrong stitches, but I just corrected all of that when I knit the first row back onto my regular circular.

Now, this is what the collar looks like:

Questions?  You ready to take on open-knit surgery?

And So It Begins

Now that I'm finished The Epic Cardigan, it's time to think about the next one.

Only, this time, I'm doing some advance planning, armed with some freshly-obtained knowledge.

I referred to several sources for tips on design and fit.  I took a photo of myself and used it as a template to draw designs on.  I swatched.  I think I'm ready to cast on.

Just need some proper circular needles.  Oh, the anticipation!

Flutter by

Just dropping in to say:

Have you seen this?

Yup.  That's right.

Me want.

Some more knitting

In my last post, I alluded to the fact that I had finished some knitting projects.  Holy crap, did I ever.  Considering that I am not the fastest knitter, that I work 40 hours per week and commute for an additional 7-1/2 and that I spend so much time cooking for myself, I can not get over how much I accomplished when I put my mind to it.

You already saw the shawl:

I don't know if I mentioned this already, but I used this project to teach myself the Continental Method.  You can see where I did that - about halfway through this shawl, the knitting gets really crimpy and wonky.  That's where I switched to Continental.  I did it in the hopes that it would ease some arthritis I can feel starting up in my right hand and yes, it did help a bit.  I still have to keep an eye on things (being a designer, I depend on my hands in a major way and don't want to jeopardize that), but the Continental is much faster than throwing and makes purling so much more comfortable.  Plus, I find it to be much more comfortable to sit in chairs with arms and other constrained spaces while knitting.  If you want to learn more about it, check this little video out:

I also finished THE SWEATER.  You remember THE SWEATER?  The one I started way back in JANUARY?  Of 2010?  Geez.

Yikes, excuse the Holiday Hair, will you? 

It was a long process and one fraught with challenges and frustrations, but I learned a lot from it.  Namely, I need to start thinking about "ease".  That is to say, how loose or snug I want to wear things.  Technically, the sweater fits.  But it's loose and somewhat shapeless.  I need things a bit more form-fitting.  And I need to start knitting my ribbing up in smaller needles than the rest of the body.

Here is an incomplete synopsis of the process, in case it interests you:

 Feb 2: Yoke complete, underarm stitches on stitch holder.

Mar 7: Body complete, including placket and collar.

Mar 14: Realized that the sleeves weren't fitted enough and converted them to 2x1 ribbing.  One sleeve complete.

April, May, June, July, August: languish, languish, languish, languish, languish

Sept: Trip to Cape Breton.  Both sleeves complete, but body deemed unacceptable.  Chris provides a good solution (some 2x1 ribbing at the waistine), necessitating a ripping-out and a re-knitting of the body.  Also on the chopping block: placket and collar.  Obsession about button choices.

Oct: Open-collar surgery, following solicited advice on the ripping out of said collar and re-knitting.  More on the process in an upcoming blog post.

Dec: Got off my proverbial arse and finished the damn thing.  New placket, new collar, buttons and button holes.  Ends woven, blocked and ready to wear.

Phew.

A New Year, A New Yarn?

 Ok, so I know I haven't called in a while, but I have an excuse.  It's.... um... well ok, I have no really good excuse.  I was working my tail off on some work-work:

 ...and of course busting my hump trying to get some Christmassy work done:

(un-blocked lace knitting looks like a pile of noodles)

 (ahh, much better)

...which didn't get finished in time to send off, but who cares?  It's for my mom and she likes getting things all year-round, so I just sent her a homemade market bag for now.  This will get shipped off this week, if I can remember to go to the post office.  It's exactly how I hoped it would turn out and is the perfect size for her.  I used this pattern (Rav link) and this yarn and found it to be quite easy to follow.  If you decide to try it out, let me know because I have a few little tips.  It's the perfect gateway project into lace knitting.  Good thing?  Bad thing?  It remains to be seen...


Anyway, I finished A LOT more knitting, but I'm not going to unveil it all right now.  I'm going to draw out the pleasure and get more blogging mileage out of it.  Not good for you all to get everything you want right away.  Ha!


Christmas was pretty quiet around here.  We FINALLY got a major project finished (well, truth be told it's only about 90% finished, but I don't care):

You wanna see what the "before" looked like?  Ok, brace yourselves.  Here it is, on the day we moved in, 4 years ago:

Nasty.  Sorry to have done that to you.  Hope you don't have too much trouble sleeping tonight.

It was a major undertaking and will likely prove to have been the most difficult portion of our renovations.  It's a tiny little room and the only bathroom we have, so it drove us a little crazy.  By the end, I was so tired of contemplating it, that I just kind of let it drag on forever.  My husband had to step in and take over, after one of my many frustration-induced meltdowns.  Not my most shining moment.  Although I am proud to say that it is fully functional and I didn't kill anyone.  Win, win.

In terms of Christmas gifts, we had dubbed this "Frugalmas", so it was pretty light.  Mom sent over some little treasures and treats.  The hubbie gave me a box full of wonderful wool socks.  I know that sounds pretty paltry, but you have to understand something about me: I DESPISE having cold feet.  I sleep with socks on, even in the summertime when the rest of me is broiling.  And we just recently discovered that the reason we were freezing in our offices at work was not that the insulation is sub-par, but that the heaters were not working.  Winter has not really hit yet (we got our first "real" snow on Christmas Day - pathetic), so it wasn't unbearable.  I had adapted to it by wearing 3 layers up top (camisole, long-sleeve T, wool sweater) and wool pants below and wool hiking socks in my Docs.  Hence the wool socks for Christmas.  Ironically, my coworkers got fed up over the Holidays and went on a reconnaissance in the boiler room, discovering in the process that there was an air-lock in the system and our heaters were not working.  Took them 15 minutes to get it fixed and now I'm sweating all day long.  Better to peel layers off than have to knock the ice off the toilet bowl every time nature calls like we were going to have to do, I say.  Eventually we'll find a nice balance.  In the meantime, I have multiple pairs of comfy socks - one for every day of the week.


I gave him several pair of handmade pyjama bottoms (I only make him whine for 3 years before I deliver the goods) and I made him a new pair of spring/fall mittens a few weeks ago:

(no pattern, just improvisation with superwash merino)

It's my husband's birthday this week, so he received some additional funds from his parents with which to spoil himself, so he bought some snow shoes.  You know those traditional wooden snow shoes with the teardrop shape and the rawhide laces?  Yeah, modern snowshoes don't look anything like those.  Hi-tech.  What a difference.  As a short-legged girl who grew up waddling around on those massive wooden suckers, I have an aversion to snowshoeing.  I might be tempted to give his a try, though.

As a little treat, he used some of his leftover funds to buy me some new leather mittens:

 

They're dressy-ish but tough and functional and are kind of the mitten equivalent to my favourite shoes.  Plus, they have an added little bonus:

Sweet!  Knitted mittens are all well and good, but there comes a point in the winter where I need something a bit more substantial and have never found a nice pair (I detest gloves) that I can wear with my dressier coat.

I'm still very much enthralled by podcasts and have listened to over 100 of Kelley Petkun's (the owner of KnitPicks) while I've been knitting.  She covers many many many topics that I'm not even going to list out here, but one thing she touches on is audiobooks.  I've listened to them before, but not since I got my iPod.  So, when I received the customary iTunes gift certificate for Christmas, I logged on and bought the trilogy she recommended: "A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman", which is essentially the story of Pride and Prejudice, told from Darcy's perspective.  Yes, please.  It's awesome.  I can't seem to put it down.  It's making me want to interject "Indeed!" and "Blast!" into conversations and use words like "feigned", "absurd", "ardent", and "reticence".  Not to mention "cravat", "waistcoat", "pelisse" and "frock".  Modern English is so boring.

I also bought the latest album from Justin Rutledge, "The Early Widows".  Wow.  Listen for yourselves.  This one's called "Be a Man" and was co-written with Michael Ondaatje.  You know, the guy who wrote "The English Patient":

"Somewhere there is salt in the air of a season that touches the hem
of an island so northern
Some air is knitting a day for a woman whose eyes are upon the horizon"