WIP Wednesday: After a Brief Pseudo-Patriotic Diversion...

Apologies for one more week of showing you all the same thing, but at least this week it comes with some additional content that serves as my excuse for one more week of the same thing.

That's right, the Berocco sweater is still on the needles, although if I can put in some quality time over the next few days you might not see it again until next Friday (possibly this Friday if for some reason I manage to get ahead of myself). The below (admittedly poor quality) photo is of the back, the front, and one sleeve done and another sleeve just about to start the shaping for the sleeve cap. Following that, I have to seam the shoulders then pick up and knit the collar, then finish seaming, then wash and block.

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Regarding sleeve caps--I hope they fit. The fact that my stitch gauge was DRASTICALLY different than the pattern stitch gauge was never a problem at all until it came time to shaping the sleeve caps. The pattern, as it should, calls for some gradual shaping for 36 rows and then more rapid shaping for the rest of the shoulder. However, because I had fewer stitches, I ended up just decreasing 1 stitch on each side of each right side row to end up with the requisite number of stitches after knitting the requisite number of rows. I'm really worried that the shoulders won't fit into the openings right and are going to fit oddly, but there's not much I can do about it right now (well, there is, I can pull it back and try to do even more complicated math, but since math and I are sworn enemies, I'm not sure that's the best strategy). For now, I plan to seam the whole thing together, block, see how it goes, and rip back the sleeves from there if I need to. Might not be the plan with the least knitting, but also it might be, so I'm willing to risk it.

And now for something completely different!

Two years ago I dyed some yarn to match the US Men's National Soccer Team's super cool jerseys, affectionately known as the "Bomb Pop" kit after the novelty Popsicle treats that used to be popular in the 1990s (maybe they still are, I don't know). Fast forward to last summer when I started actually knitting it into socks (which, it turns out were too big). I managed to finish one, but then the magic of the World Cup and the Gold Cup (the big international soccer tournaments the US was in) ended and I put it down, saying I'd re-measure and make the next sock later. So...that brings us to now when the USA was hosting the Copa America Centenario and I decided to cast on the correct number of stitches and knit sock 2 whenever I was watching the tournament. I took measurements (spoiler alert, incorrectly) and used Lara Neel's book "Sock Architecture" to cast on toe up and get working.

Which is where adventures and shenanigans begin.

As we began this weekend (since it was a patriotic holiday here in the US I figured I'd just knit the sock all weekend and see about getting it done since I was already past the heel turn), I got about 13cm into the leg (they're tall socks because (a) I like tall socks, (b) that's how the yarn dyeing worked out the easiest, and (c) that's soccer style socks) and then held it up and thought "the foot looks really short". I'd tried it on before and convinced myself that it fit, but I compared it to the too big sock (which actually fits fairly well in the foot, it's just too wide) and it was about 4cm too short for my foot (because for some reason I'd measured the length of my foot as 20cm instead of 24cm. So, I ripped it all the way back to where I'd started the gusset, re-did the math and blissfully began the foot. Where, instead of remembering that I needed to knit to 78 rows (I was already at 66), I had in my head that I needed to knit to 98 rows and then start the gusset. I realised this at around row 102, counted back to 78, ripped out again, and finished the weekend merrily at 19cm of cuff.

 

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Which is where it will stay until the US Women's National Team's Olympic matches. Maybe I'll get this one done. And then I'll be right back where I started the year with one sock completed.

WIP Wednesday: Knitting Polygamy

You read that right, everyone...I have more than one thing in progress! It doesn't happen that often (and honestly I wish it weren't happening right now), so you might want to take a moment to commemorate this day with me. I want to tell you that I hope I won't still have two things in progress next week, but unless something changes with my schedule and I get an unexpected run on knitting time, I'm pretty sure you'll be seeing these both again next week. That's the problem with knitting two things at once...it takes so much longer to finish anything.

Okay. So. First up is the Queen of the Waves shawl I had started two weeks ago out of some Kauni I had. I took photos last week with the intention of updating you on where things stood, but school/work won out and the post never got written. As of now I'm probably slightly less than a quarter of the way into ball 2 (finished ball 1 last Thursday) and am in the part of the shawl that is mostly garter stitch with only a few pattern rows, so hopefully that plus the rapid decreasing will help it go faster than it looks like it's going to go on paper when you think to yourself that you have more than 100 rows to go and you've only completed 70 rows in two weeks WITHOUT working on a second project. (Trying to get these both done by the end of February. I might be killing my chances of even finishing one by undertaking both. The tragic irony of me trying to become a polygamous knitter when faced with deadlines. It's the real reason I only knit one thing at a time.)

Here's where the shawl was last week (for reference and since I have the photos):

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And here's where it is this week:

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So, yeah. Some progress, but not a lot considering how far I managed to get between week 1 and week 2. The Kauni is really growing on me (I thought it might be slightly too scratchy, but it's not at all). It does have a lot of random veg matter in it though, so if that's a thing that bothers you, steer clear. I'm a bit surprised at the way the colours are striping in it since I honestly thought this was going to be a true gradient from dark to light. It's a bit of a pleasant surprise.

Before I leave this WIP, here's a closeup of the pattern stitches so you can perhaps get a better idea of what's going on with it. It's slightly bothersome to actually create because you have uneven stitch counts and lots of yarnovers that you need to drop which get hung up on the needles, but really it's only a few rows and it's not that bad. The pattern is easy to memorize/follow. I keep ending up with the wrong stitch counts, but it's a shawl so I'm rolling with it.

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Okay. Wow. Posts get long when you haven't updated for two weeks AND you have a second WIP. Yikes. I'll try to make this quick.

Also for the Knerd Girl Knits 2016 Bad-ass Women Craft Along round 1, one of the challenges is to knit from an historic knitting pattern. I desperately tried to find something that would be roughly the era of Outlander so I could double-dip into the Subway Knits Outlander KAL, but the earliest patterns I could find were Victorian era. One of the sites we were directed to was the Knitting Reference Library at University of Southampton, and I have a soft spot for Southampton, so I basically didn't consider looking anywhere else once I couldn't find pre-Victorian patterns. So, after going through a lot of books of doilies and all manner of impractical things I had no desire to knit, I came across "Weldon's Practical Needlework" which has patterns for all sort of things, but most specifically for my needs, a pattern for fold-over "Club Stockings" with a Union Jack, which basically means a regular sock with a fold-over section that has a Union Jack intarsia on it. And if you've been around the blog for a while you know how I can't resist putting a good logo on something.

Problem was, I didn't have the yarn I needed. I could have produced all the colours I needed (save white) in Knit Picks Palette, which does very well with colourwork, but because it's for socks, it needs to have nylon in it, which Palette does not. I had the grey and the red in Imagination, but not white or blue. And since I'm on a limited purchases plan, I was a bit stuck as to what I should do. And then it came to me. I pulled three balls of the heavier weight superwash wool sock yarn from my undyed yarn stash (yeah, I'm using business yarn for personal purposes. People do that all the time and it's not like anyone was buying it in a hurry lately) and dyed some up. 2 balls grey (which has now become the Lonely Mountain colourway thanks to fortuitous circumstances) and one ball half blue, a quarter red, and a quarter undyed. I was trying to estimate based on weights needed in the pattern, but the pattern is truly for knee-highs for men, so the stitch counts are very different than mine. I'll probaby have yarn left over, but there was no real sense in not just using the full skein.

So here's where it is now:

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(and here is the intarsia disaster mess I need to weave in at some point but have been putting off):

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The knitting is going fast, but I'm still skeptical that I'll be able to finish this sock and knit another sock by the end of February, even if it were the only thing I was working on. Also I pulled the floats too tight so it's puckering weird in the straight red column. It looks a bit too "homemade" for me. Odds are good I'll end up redoing this or doing it in a different way. But I do love the idea of the foldover sock! I think I'll make them for all my footy clubs someday.

So that brings us to the end of this very long post. I can almost guarantee you that I won't have a finished object for FO Friday, so I will hopefully see you back here next Wednesday with progress updates.

WIP Wednesday: Socks and Hats

Well... part of a sock and one hat. Still, I know it's a bit weird to see me with more than one WIP. It happens on occasion.

The sock is yarn that I dyed inspired by one of my favourite football teams (Real Madrid) and their amazing pink/black/white kits they've been wearing all season. They were (until today...) competing for a second straight European championship, and I dyed the yarn while watching them beat their in-town rivals and cast on the sock during their match last Wednesday then knit some more rows on it today. They lost, but I'll still wear my socks proudly.

The colourway is "Real Fans Wear Pink" and the base is my superwash sock base, which is 75% Superwash wool and 25% nylon in a fingering weight.

The sock pattern is from Socks a la Carte by Jonelle Raffino and Katherine Cade. It's a pretty cool book that gives you a bunch of different cuff options, a bunch of different leg options, and a bunch of different foot/toe/heel options that you can combine together to make your own unique socks and hopefully will inspire you to design your own. There's even a cool flip book part in the back that lets you see how the cuff/leg/foot combo you choose will look together.

Since Real means "Royal" and the Real Madrid logo has a crown in it, I went with the top that looks a bit like a crown. Since they're one of the most high profile teams in the world, I chose the cuff called "eyes on you" since I thought it was only appropriate. I still haven't decided on a foot/toe/heel, but I'll let you know when I get there.

Second...return of the stochastic hat. I first posted about this two weeks ago and then subsequently finished the hat. However! It was way too small even for my tiny head, so I knew it wouldn't fit a regular-sized adult. I left it alone, figuring I'd finished what I needed to for the challenge, but over the weekend I found myself project-less and having just completed another Turn-A-Square to use up some acrylic I bought for a different project (more on that when I talk FOs), I ripped back and re-started this hat. This time I changed some things.

For one thing, I'd run out of the red yarn when I got to the crown shaping, so all of a sudden there was a hard grey line against the red. It didn't look as bad as I thought it would, but it still wasn't what I wanted. For another I knew I needed to be sure to control the floats. So, what I did was rip back to where I'd joined the ribbing together, then knit 10 rows straight in grey before jumping in to the stochastic pattern at row 11. I've now knit 11-25 in the stochastic pattern and will begin the crown decreases in straight red. Hopefully I have enough. I'm playing yarn chicken right now. I'm hoping to wrap up the crown decreases tonight or tomorrow.

FO Friday: Do Not Speak to Me of Dragon Fire Socks

I know I said I was hoping to have these done by last Friday so I could show them off, but (1) it takes a longer time to knit the feet portion of socks than I think it does and (2) I was taking a class at the local fibre festival that specifically said I needed a project to knit and it occurred to me that if I finished the second sock on Friday night then I wouldn't have anything to knit during class, so I stopped working on them and swatched for the hat I posted about on Wednesday instead.

Anyway, they're done now. I wore them the other day and I LOVE them. They fit so incredibly well and were absolutely lovely to have on my feet all day. Fantastic pattern. I highly recommend it.

 

It remains difficult to take a picture of my own feet, but I tried to give you a sense of the chain mail cable pattern on the front, the unique foot detail that's actually a really cool alternative gusset placement, and the leaf detail on the back of the leg. 

They look complicated, but the patterns are all super easy to memorize and they knit up really fast. The yarn does hide the pattern more than I wanted it  to, but it striped up in a fortuitous way and I feel like you can see the pattern well enough.I'll probably knit another pair with a more solid yarn sometime because it's such a great pattern, but I'm happier with these socks than any of the other handful of socks I've knit.

To recap:

Pattern: Do Not Speak to Me of Dragon Fire by KnottyKnerd (I was test knitting, but will link the pattern as soon as it becomes available.)

Yarn: My own custom dye that I made just to knit these socks "Elvenking", but is now available in my Etsy store.

My review... buy this pattern as soon as it's available. These socks are awesome. (And the yarn's not so bad either!)

FOs: House Stark Fingerless Mitts and Fifth Doctor Socks!

It's still not Friday (but it's kinda close) and these have been finished for two weeks now, but better late than never, right.

In my post about my resolutions for March, I alluded to these finished objects, so I should probably show them to you. Plus they're pretty awesome.

First: T.A.R.D.I.Socks by Anna Richardson (round 2)

It's really hard to photograph your own feet.

So... I mentioned above that this is round 2 of these particular socks. I also mentioned in my resolutions post that these socks resulted in a net gain of yarn. Here's the story.

You can first start here with the story of how I decided to knit myself knee-high socks for my Fifth Doctor (Doctor Who) costume even though I had never knit a single sock before in my life and previously had no desire to do so. So I knit myself knee high socks out of a cotton/bamboo/spandex blend yarn (because the costume was originally for summer) following a pattern that's lovely and beautifully charted, but presumes you've actually done some moderate amount of sock knitting and are using wool and know how to adjust socks to fit your feet. Needless to say, I was setting myself up for failure before I even started. So I knit them over the course of 6-weeks desperately trying to finish them in time for the convention I needed my costume for (the only time in my life I've ever knit more than one thing at a time. I will never do it again.), and I was pretty proud of myself. For one thing, I've heard many people who attempted these socks either don't finish or take forever to finish since there's a lot of purling and cabling and charting and they're REALLY LONG, so I was pretty impressed that I not only managed to make socks that look like socks, but that they were also socks that experienced sock knitters don't even finish. So I put them on for the convention and they were HUGE. Four inches too long, too big in the gusset, bunchy in my shoes and didn't stay up if I took more than 10 steps. So...they were socks, but they weren't socks that fit.

Fast forward to now. I needed to re-wear the costume for a Doctor Who panel at a convention in April, and I knew I needed to re-make the socks. I'd been trying to knit my way through the basic sock patterns in Wendy Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up book so that I could have some knowledge of how to make socks fit my feet, and I'd also knit the (still don't fit) butterfly knee-highs to try to figure out the calf sizing. Armed with this knowledge, I ripped out the socks (3.5 balls of RIDICULOUSLY SPLITTY YARN), re-wound, and started again with a modified pattern. I dropped a needle size so I didn't have to modify the width, but I took out a portion of the chart and recalculated the row count so I could shorten the socks and still keep the calf shaping. I managed to use about 55 fewer yards (50 fewer meters)/15 fewer grams of yarn this time, which is where the net gain came in. But the socks are the right height and fit better around my calf (though still not perfect, but I devised a solution with a ribbon that holds them up just fine) and I'm much happier with them. They are a bit of a slog though, so I can definitely see how people who don't need them for a specific purpose on a deadline would get tired of doing it. The only reason I made it through without quitting was that I knew I needed them for the costume.

In addition, this yarn is terrible. I won't mention what it is here (although you can see it if you look on my project page), but I don't think I'll ever knit with it again. I chose it because I wanted lighter weight and hopefully cooler socks to wear with the costume in the summer, but the cotton and bamboo don't have the memory to hold the socks up and the spandex makes the yarn INCREDIBLY splitty, making it very difficult to work with, especially when you're knitting and purling and cabling with yarnovers. I'm not impressed and it definitely wasn't fun to knit it twice.


Second: Game of Thrones House Stark Fingerless Mitts

These are for the Game of Thrones swap package I put together (which I'll tell you about as soon as a package actually arrives for me and I can do a sent/received post like I did for the Downton Abbey swap). These are my own design, modified from a very basic fingerless mitts pattern. I've done the same sigil on a hat and on an eReader case, so it was just a matter of modifying the stitch count and re-charting it. The grey main colour is Knit Picks Palette in Ash and the sigil colour is Knit Picks Imagination Hand-Painted in the Castle Walls colourway, which screamed Winterfell to me from the moment I saw it.

These were super quick and easy to knit up and my recipient loved them. I'm not really into fingerless mitts (I find them hugely impractical) but I'm thinking about modifying the other designs I have (Targaryen, Lannister, and Night's Watch) into the fingerless mitts too. Someday I'll write up the patterns for actual. I started writing up the hat pattern, but I never finished it. These are super fun and a great way to show your support for various houses. If you're interested, I sometimes list the hats (and may eventually list the eReaders and the fingerless mitts) on my Etsy page. Let me know.

FO-ish: The Great Knee-High Sock Saga of 2015

I alluded in my last post to not having made very much progress on my resolutions because I spent pretty much all of February that I wasn't in the dye lab or doing freelance design work knitting the same 400yds of BFL into socks. Which still don't entirely fit, by the way. I don't regret my decision to rip out what I had and re-knit the socks, and I learned a lot of valuable things about sizing knee-highs to fit that are coming in handy on my current project, but still... I just took a month to knit pretty much nothing but a pair of socks and I kinda feel like I've let my overly ambitious self down.

So here's how it went:

Knitting Firsts: Part 5 - Bamboo Yarn and proper needles

The Fifth (Seventh) First: Bamboo Yarn

Both for the T.A.R.D.I.Socks and the lace sweater I’m using a bamboo blend yarn. It’s my first time knitting with any level of bamboo fibre, though it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I’ll do proper yarn reviews when I talk about the WIPs or FOs (whenever I get to them), but suffice to say that I love one of them, I’m frustrated as hell at the other one, I bought my first set of big girl circular needles, and I will forever insist on knitting bamboo WITH bamboo (or at least wood … but preferably bamboo).

And that wraps up my series of post about knitting firsts. Thanks for reading. Happy knitting. Feel free to share your knitting firsts or any tips/tricks/experiences with any of my firsts either in the comments or by sending me an email, Google+, or Twitter message.

Knitting Firsts: Part 1 - Knitting Class

The past month (or so, I’ve been lax in posting all the things) has been a month of a lot of knitting firsts for me and I thought I’d share them with you. Because I got long winded, I’m going to do these as a series of posts.

So…we shall begin with…

The First First: Knitting Class (and tangentially … sock)

Because I’m the sort of person who thinks to herself “but why shouldn’t I do it the most awesome and hard way possible on the first try instead of easing into a thing”, I decided that for the femme Fifth Doctor costume I’m working on for a con upcoming in July (and then another one in August and then office Halloween in October) I should not only knit a vest (which is done and I really need to post photos of it but haven’t) which is easy and I KNOW how to do and will be nbd, and sew a skirt which is using a pattern I’ve already sewn and love and is also nbd, I should also knit myself socks. Knee high socks. Knee high T.A.R.D.I.Socks. I made this decision at the end of April and then told myself that before I could cast on said knee high socks I had to finish the mittens of repeated epic fail (more to come once that situation sorts itself out) and also my SO’s cardigan. Which, as previously discussed, took me until the middle of May. So I somehow decided that between May 15 and July 3 I would finish the half completed vest, sew a skirt, also knit another sweater that I wanted to make for a trip I have on July 9, and knit knee high socks that by all reports take experienced sock knitters months to years to do because they are SO DAMN ENORMOUS. Oh, and did I mention I’ve never knit a sock before in my life and while I conceptually understand that socks have heels and toes and legs and feet I don’t have a clue about how to adjust that to fit my actual heel or toe or leg or foot? Did I also mention that these socks are toe up and leave most of the adjusting to the knitter? They are.

Which brings me to my first first … my first knitting class. In a timely fashion, my LYS sent me an email that they were having a “knit a sock” class for the first two weeks of May. I’d never taken a class there before, but I learned to sew by taking classes so I figured what harm could it do. Granted this was a cuff down sock on two circular needles using worsted weight yarn and not a toe up sock with patterning and self-adjusting on 4 dpns, but at least I could understand the basics of sock mechanics. Hopefully. The short answer was, I found the people in the class not that awesome (much discussion that made me cringe at the levels of fail on various levels) and the teacher was distracted at best and almost no one but me actually made any progress or seemed to understand knitting in the round, but the materials I received and the comprehensive instructions on how to figure out what size your feet were and how the parts of the sock went together accordingly were hugely helpful. And at the end of it all I had a sock. Just one, but a sock no less. I want the cuff to be longer, but I ran out of time, so I’ll probably end up ripping it out and making it taller ( which can wait until closer to winter because worsted weight wool socks in the summer are just … no), but I have a sock.



So there you have it. My first class and my first very plain, very boring, ultimately well fitting sock.