Monthly Archives: April 2009

Knit-picky

Posted on April 30, 2009 | 12 comments

I started the second Kai-Mei/Lai-Wah sock. And it’s just a little bit different. Can you see what I changed?

I shifted the ribbing over by one stitch, so the K2 would flow out of the center of each 4 stitch twist at the top of the cuff. I like how it looks more symmetrical with the twist, instead of coming out of one half of the twist. That’s how knit-picky I am! Here’s the new cuff.

And here’s the first cuff for reference:

Oh, I bought these sock blockers at Twisted. I decided that it might be easier to photograph socks on blockers than to do the contortionist thing that I usually do. But I think I’ll still be doing that sometimes, too. These blockers were made by Twisted co-owner Shannon’s parents, and they’re really nice.

12 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged kai-mei, Knit, knit socks

Rough start for Ishbel

Posted on April 27, 2009 | 16 comments

I started Ishbel last night. I started Ishbel last night. I started Ishbel last night. I started Ishbel last night. I started Ishbel last night. Yes, I started Ishbel five times.

The first three times, I used my beloved Lantern Moon ebony circulars, 4mm/US6 as specified in the pattern. The problem was that the needles are nice and slick, and that wasn’t a good combination for me with the slick 100% silk. I decided to try my Lantern Moon rosewood needles, because they have a little more texture to them. But I only had them in US 5. After working the beginning again, I realized the 5’s were too small.

I went to my needle stash looking for bamboo, and I had a size 6 circular. Just one. Where are the rest? Whatever. I really wanted to start, so I did, even though the needle is 40 inches long. Looks ridiculous, and is a bit cumbersome!

Feeling a bit desperate, I called my friend Liz to see if she had a shorter circular. Yes! A Takumi Clover 16 inch circular. I transferred over, and after a couple rows I realized that the needle was grabbier than the long HiyaHiya, and I didn’t like it. Transferred back to the HiyaHiya and worked a couple more rows, just out of sheer stubbornness. But I think I really need to go buy a shorter needle tomorrow. I like this needle for this project. It’s slick enough, but not too slick. And the join between the cable and the needle is exemplary.

I guess no one needle is perfect for everything. It’s good to have options.

16 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged ishbel, Knit

Mitered square, redux

Posted on April 26, 2009 | 10 comments

Here’s the second mitered square. Looks just like the first one, except it’s 10 inches (as requested), not 11 inches, on each side. Much better! This picture is truer to the color than yesterday’s post.

In other news, we had a house finch building a nest in the wreath on our front porch last week.

I was excited to see an egg in the nest. But apparently, Mama Bird got spooked. When she realized that it was a high traffic area, she decided to get out of Dodge. I think she broke the egg and split. See the piece of speckled shell on the left edge of the nest?

We had a nest in the same place a couple years ago; it was sweet to watch the baby birds grow. But it gave the parents a lot of angst with all the comings and goings through the front door. I guess she’ll be nesting in the shrubs instead, but that means no pictures! Here are a couple pix from 2007.

We worried when there was one left behind. We named him Louie.

and rejoiced the next day when he flew away!

10 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged birds, Knit, mitered square, nest

Blue, blue, my yarn is blue

Posted on April 25, 2009 | 12 comments

I taught a fun class over at Twisted on Thursday night. “Tink, Drop, Frog: How Do I Fix This?!” It’s aimed at relatively new knitters, and has a lot of hands on practice. We put their swatches through their paces! All the students had taken a class on knitting in the round with me, so it was like a reunion party. I think we all had a good time, and they came away with some new skills. I’m teaching this class again in July, and already looking forward to it.

Before class started, I bought a little something.

One skein of Claudia Hand Painted Yarn, Silk Lace 20/2, 100% silk, 1100 yards/100 grams in Deep Blue. I had to wind it by hand; apparently silk tends to slip off the swift at the shop. Cathy helped me at knit nite, thank goodness; 1100 yards is a lot! I wound most of it, found myself in a tangle, wound another ball from the other end and got most of the rest. One section was beyond my patience that night, but I don’t think I’ll need *all* of the yarn for my project. What project? Ishbel, a lovely shawl by Isolda Teague. I saw this knit up on several other blogs, and it called my name.

The yarn is so much finer than the worsted weight mitered square I’ve been knitting. It will be a shock to the fingers! But the needles aren’t tiny (4 mm/US 6), so that will help!

Here’s my completed mitered square. I used leftovers from the stash: Plymouth Galway in navy, Crystal Palace Taos in a blue variegated.

Isn’t it interesting how subtle the Taos looks when it’s surrounded by navy? Much different than it looked in Athena, where the colors were concentrated in entrelac blocks instead of strung out along a long row.

Unfortunately, I was a little too confident of my gauge, and never re-measured after the first two color stripes. Gauge for worsted before was with KnitPicks Wool of the Andes and Lantern Moon Ebony needles; this square is slightly heavier Plymouth Galway and Clover Bamboo needles. Two variables that I didn’t take into consideration. The 10 inch square measures 11 inches. Since you can block knitting bigger, but not smaller, it’s back to, um, square one! This was a very soothing knit, and I think I just needed to do it for the quiet joy of it all. More joy to come.

12 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Knit

Tagged afghan square, ishbel, Knit, yarn

Mitered squares, topsy-turvy

Posted on April 23, 2009 | 3 comments

I’ve been making a lot of socks, knit from the cuff-down. I know you can knit them toe-up, too; I just haven’t, yet. Well, once, but I never finished the first sock.

I’m knitting a mitered square for a Ravelry group project Afghans for Afghans blanket in honor of Kay and Peter. So why not turn that idea upside down, too? Instead of starting with the long edges and decreasing down, what if we start at the point, and increase up? Anything to mix things up a bit! And no gauge swatch required, because you’d stop when the square reaches the right dimensions.

Here’s my first attempt:

Cast on 2. Knit the first row (wrong side).

Row 1: KFB (knit in front and back of stitch), place marker, KFB

Row 2: Knit.
row 3: K to stitch before first marker, KFB, slip marker, KFB, K to end

Repeat rows 2 and 3 until square is desired size, changing colors as desired, ending with a row 2. The symmetry lover in me would probably bug out not knowing if the stripes would all be the same number of rows. I’m that way. But maybe I’d get around it by making all stripes just two rows (1 garter ridge), or 4 rows (2 garter ridges), and carry the second yarn up the side of the block, twisting at each color change. Binding off was a bit tricky; my regular knit bind-off was too tight and the piece wasn’t very square. I changed to a suspended bind off, and that made it looser, but there’s still not a nice pointy corner on the bound off edge.

I also tried this with yarn over increases on each side of a center stitch, like this:

Cast on 3. Knit the first row (wrong side)
Row 1: K1, yo, place marker, K, place marker, yo, K1

Row 2: Knit
Row 3: K to marker, yo, slip marker, K, slip marker, yo, K to end

Repeat rows 2 and 3 until square is desired size, changing color as desired, ending with a row 2. Again, I used a suspended bind off to keep the edge from pulling.

You could use any increases you like, as long as you increase just before and just after the center. Some need a center stitch to separate them, and some don’t. I can never remember which M1 increase leans left and which one leans right, but paired increases would look nice. Here’s a link to KnittingHelp.com‘s excellent page on increases.

I’ll add this information to the mitered square pattern page, just in case someone else wants to mix it up, too.

After all of that, I’m making my current mitered square in my usual way, long edge first. It needs to be 10 inches square, and I know that I get 4.5 sts/inch in garter stitch on US size 8 needles. 10 inches times 4.5 st/inch is 45 sts for each 10 inch edge. 90 stitches for my square.

Knit on!

3 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, ravelry

Tagged Knit, mitered square

Condolences

Posted on April 21, 2009 | 1 comment

I was saddened to hear that Kay Gardiner’s husband Peter passed away last Saturday. My deepest sympathy to Kay and her family. Kay is the co-author of the Mason-Dixon Knitting Blog, and the two Mason-Dixon knitting books. I met Kay and Ann last fall at a book signing at Powell’s. I don’t think she’d remember me, but I loved being able to meet her. I hope that she knows that the blogging community is here sending a collective hug and lifting her up.

Ann suggests knitting something for Afghans for Afghans in remembrance. It must be time to get back to the mitered squares…

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Where did my week go? (knitting content, eventually)

Posted on April 19, 2009 | 12 comments

Well, that was a busy week! Easter on Easter, a Passover Seder on Tuesday, flew to LA on Wednesday to see Springsteen, home on Thursday, 16 crafty moms celebrating spring birthdays Friday, worked a high school fund-raiser event on Saturday. Sunday starts all over again…

LA is different from the Pacific Northwet. They have flowers like these growing in hotel parking lots.

And funny looking trees.

The last time we saw Springsteen in LA, it was in 1985 with 90,000 of our nearest and dearest, here.

This time it was at the LA Sports Arena, right next door, with 20,000 of our closest friends. Here’s the obligatory crappy cell phone pic. We were to the right of the stage, pretty high up, but the venue is small enough that it didn’t feel like we were on Mars. Bruce was stupendous, as usual. Three hours of fun; the man knows how to put on a show.

I did take my knitting! I had just finished my Shur’tugal socks, and didn’t have any good airplane knitting on the needles. Although I want to knit with beads, and do Chrissy Gardner’s toe-up sock from Twisted’s Single Skein Club, both require either attention or charts or tiny things that don’t make for good airplane knitting. What’s a knitter to do? Cookie A to the rescue!

I love the Kai-Mei pattern in her new book, Sock Innovation. It’s written for fingering weight yarn, and I only had Louet Gems sport in my tiny stash. No problem; I adapt things all the time. But something about this pattern made me want to completely play with it and make it my own. Here’s the process so far.

I started with 48 stitches, because most of my sport weight socks are 48-52 stitches around. I decided on a 2×2 rib instead of the 3×3 in the pattern, because I like to put twists in my ribs so I can use them to count rows. My first attempt had a right twist on every rib every 6 rows, but that was boring. I decided to alternate columns of right twists with columns of left twists, and offset them so the right twists and left twists were 4 rounds apart. I used the twisted cast on edging that I used on my Leyburns, because I thought the twists would complement the twisted rib.

I was cruising along on the plane and later in the hotel, when I heard the 1 a.m. tiny voice say, “ribbing sucks in a lot. Sure that will go around your leg, but it would look prettier if it wasn’t stretched to the max…” Right-o. Let’s try 56 stitches instead.

Since I was ripping it all out anyway, I thought I’d play with the twisted cast on. What if I used stockinette stitch instead of garter stitch for those first four rows before the twist? I could take advantage of stockinette’s natural tendency to curl, and hopefully get a tighter, tidier edge. I like it better, and I like the not as stretched out ribbing better, too.

Here’s a better look. Garter edge first:

Stockinette edge:

Side by side! Garter on left, stockinette on right:

What do you think?

Almost done with the first sock; more soon!

12 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged kai-mei, Knit, knit socks, springsteen

Sock Innovation: a book review

Posted on April 14, 2009 | 12 comments

I seem to have become a sock knitter, again. I went through a phase about 10 years ago, and finally decided that skinny yarn knitting wasn’t for me. But a funny thing happened this last year. I seem to be knitting a lot of socks. Granted, the yarn is never skinnier than sport weight, but there are a lot of socks coming from my needles.

Because of my skinny yarn aversion, there has been a lot of adapting stitch counts and heels and all the good things that go into socks. And there has been some sock designing to go along with that, based on things that I’ve learned along the way. Nothing too fancy, but I’ve liked the results.

I was cruising Amazon the other day, and I looked at Cookie A’s new book, Sock Innovation, published by Interweave Knits. That cute little “Look Inside” feature? It had me at this from the opening pages: “I have biases and preferences that will become apparent. All the socks in this book are knitted from the top down, and most have ribbed cuffs, a flap heel with gusset, and stockinette wedge toes.” Knitter after my own heart!

The first half of the book is a very thorough tutorial on how to design socks, beginning with the basics of sock construction, working through inverting stitches, working with charts, adjusting stitch patterns to fit your needs, and how stitches affect knitted fabric. All of this information is great for adapting existing sock patterns or designing your own socks. And if you just want to knit socks? There are 15 exquisitely detailed sock patterns that are ready to go. If you knit with fingering weight yarn. But the tools are there for adapting, or designing, and for me, that’s the best part of the whole book.

Since I’ve finished my Shur’tugal socks, I need something else on the needles. Funny that I have so few works in progress! The baby sweater isn’t making me happy, but I can solve that with a trip to Twisted’s sale this weekend for a yarn I like better. But what about a portable knitting project NOW? I’m thinking Kai-Mei, from Sock Innovation. Except it won’t be Kai-Mei, because I have Frankensteinian plans…Kai-Mei is the inspiration, but somehow I think Cookie would be pleased that I’m taking her instruction from the beginning of the book and running with it. Knit on!

12 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged cookie a, Knit, sock innovation

Think pink! and purple, and…

Posted on April 13, 2009 | 26 comments

Dragons!

The Shur’tugal (Dragon Rider) socks are done. And I love them! The color pooling has been vanquished (except maybe a hint of a pink puddle on one side of each of the ankles), the spiral has been embraced, and all is well.

Details:

Shur’tugal by Alice Yu (Socktopus), knit for the Ravelry Socks that Rock 2nd quarter Knitalong.
Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Mediumweight in Bleeding Hearts
Size 1 Lantern Moon Blond wood Sox Stix (I really like these 6 inch needles!)

I modified the pattern to from 56 stitches to 48 to compensate for the heavier yarn and to escape the color pooling I had with 56. The socks look narrow, but they are a perfect fit. The fabric is pretty stretchy; I think they would also have fit at 56 stitches, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as pretty. And these are very, very pretty.