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.

​​SML

 

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.

 

​​SMXL

 

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.

Stash Confessional: One Twisted Tree (again) and a Super Bonus Surprise

Today was a good mail day. In some respects I love it when 3 packages come at once (even if one of them isn't actually for me) and in others I wish they would spread themselves out over several days so I could keep the fun coming (although another one should be showing up sometime soon, so I guess it's a sort of best of both worlds situation). That said, these two things didn't arrive on the same day so I guess my point isn't hugely relevant here other than to say that I got 3 packages in the mail today and one of them was yarn. The other yarn arrived last week and cost me nothing at all other than knitting/sewing/reading a thing and/or donating to charity. None of which was a hardship in the least. 

So here's what's up. First... One Twisted Tree. You already saw a bunch of yarn from her after ZK. This is sort of tangential to that (although I did count it as its own purchase). After Danie handed me two mini skein samples that happened to be Hinkypunk and Knight Bus Escape and I out them next to each other, I instantly knew they needed to be a striped sweater (mostly the grey/lavender of the Hinkypunk with skinny stripes of the Knight Bus). The dark purple of the Knight Bus really brings out the grey of the Hinkypunk and the colours look beautiful together. All of this with he added bonus that I've been doing a Harry Potter rewatch so I'm in the mood. At the show, Danie didn't have enough of the Hinkypunk and mentioned that she doesn't dye Knight Bus Escape in sport weight (I knew the last thing I needed was to knit another fingering weight sweater), but if I contacted her and asked for a custom order she would dye it for me and ship it free. So that's what I did.
 

Yarn is One Twisted Tree in the Hinkypunk and Knight Bus Escape colourways on the Lavish base 100% superwash merino. 271 yards/skein. Sorry about the glare, but I didn't want to take them out of the plastic wrap since I don't know when I'll get to them.

​​SM

Second (although it arrived first) is my prize from the second round of the Knerd Girl Knits Bad-ass women Craft-Along 2016. The theme for this round was women in music. The prize I won (which is awesome!) is yarn that Kris bought when she was at a conference in Tempe, AZ. It's a dyer I've never heard of before and it's a gorgeous wine red colour. I absolutely love it and I'm sure it will become socks sometime in it's life.

Yarn is gherkin's bucket Quick step sock in the "Boudoir" colourway. It's 75/25 superwash merino/nylon. 450 yards of fingering weight.

​​SM

 

 So, that's the stash additions. Not too bad, really. One of them was free and the other I had already accounted for after ZK. Still, it feels like new yarn has shown up just like magic, which is always exciting. Who knows when they will actually become knitted items, but for now I'm happy to welcome them to the fold!

 

WIP Wednesday: Big Damn Heroes

As part of both Stash Dash AND trying to use up super old stash, I am apparently continuing to knit scarves/shawls even though I still don't understand how to wear them without looking like something is trying to eat my head. In this case, I did a bit of a stash sort to find which things in my stash had the greatest yardage and then went with what was oldest(ish....I fudged it a little). After trying several patterns that were supposed to use up all 1300yds of this yarn that I have (including crochet lace???), I was forced to abandon in favour of a project that is supposed to use up two of the three skeins and then hopefully I will not be tired of the yarn (or I will and I'll save it for later so I can knit it again, I guess) and knit another thing with the other skein. The kicker is that since this is specifically geek-themed yarn, I wanted to keep the pattern in the same fandom.

 

First, photos.

So, I get that it's nearly impossible to see unblocked lace knitting on a circular needle even with the zoom in on the pattern, but hopefully you can get some idea. Essentially this will end up being a poncho/coverup thing (which, again, I don't usually wear, but I am determined to make the styling on this one work without me looking clownish... I'll keep you posted on that.)

Yarn is one of the Nerd Alert yarns that my lys carries. This one is Wild Hare Fibre Studio Pinnacle Sock in the "Browncoat" colourway (SW merino/nylon). Sort of a story about how this yarn and I came to be together... A long time ago (3 years, maybe 4) I was working on my still in progress epic novel series that will perhaps be finished someday if I can figure out how to balance my hobbies now that I have reclaimed my free time. As motivation, I set myself reward levels for hitting word counts. At 50,000 (I.e. "winning" NaNoWriMo) Jonas promised to buy me this yarn. And somehow I ended up with three skeins because at the time I didn't know how to knit socks. Fast forward to now and I have learned that I don't really like highly variegated yarn in straight up sweaters because I don't like pooling or striping, so I had to find an appropriately named/themed pattern to keep it in the fandom (Firefly, for those who don't know the reference).

Enter the pattern:

Big Damn Heroes by Kimberly Golynskiy

 

For those not in the know, "Big Damn Heroes" is a line from the show (which one of the browncoat characters says to another), so it's basically a perfect fandom match. We'll see if it's a perfect garment or not. The rows are getting REALLY long and even though I have the pattern memorised, I can't seem to get through a lace row without having to tink and fix, so it may be done soon or it may take another lifetime. We shall see.

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!)

WIP Wednesday: Swatching for Socks!

I promised you wouldn't see the orange stockinette sweater again, and I'm making good on my promises. It's currently blocking. It's got some fixes needed, but we'll talk about that on Friday. For now, we're going to talk about the new project I started today.

To be fair, this is barely a swatch at this point, let alone a WIP, but it is what it is and it's sure pretty exciting to me.

Stash Confessional: Minnesota Yarn Shop Hop 2015

Well, you know how I was saying that I had a new way to keep the stashdown resolution and how I was going to do better? Well... I am doing better with knitting. I'm doing less well with not buying yarn.

So, every year several of the local yarn stores get together for what we call "Minnesota Yarn Shop Hop" over one weekend in April. The ultimate goal is for people to go around to all of the stores on the list (there are 17 this year) and there's a free pattern and an exclusive yarn and perks for donating to a local food shelf and prize entries and a grand prize entry for people who go to all the stores. It's good exposure for the stores and the indie dyers they work with and it's a good cause and it's a lot of fun. This was my first year participating. I wasn't going to really go all out, just have Jonas drive me to some of the stores that are closer to us, but one of my knitter friends ended up having Friday off and wanted to go, so I took the day off and went along, foolishly telling myself I wasn't going to buy things no matter what.

And then it ended like this:

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:

WIP(again): High Tea Cuffs

As anticipated, even after blocking the High Tea Cuffs by Andrea Jurgrau that I recently finished are FAR too small, even for my delicate little wrists, which means they 100% will not fit an adult human being, so I am re-knitting them.

I'm still using the Knit Picks Imagination Hand Painted yarn in the Ruby Slippers colourway and still using the 3.25mm DPNs, I just decided to cast on more stitches. The pattern repeat is 18 stitches and the last time I'd cast on 36. This time, I decided to cast on 54 stitches, although I worry this will make them too big this time around. My swap partner has gotten back to me with their wrist size (which is bigger than mine, but not a LOT bigger than mine), so I 'm going to just knit one of these (they go fast) and see how big it ends up. If it's more than 3cm too big for me then I'm either going to have to scrap the idea of making the matching cuffs and scarf set or I'm going to have to hope that if I knit this on a 2.75mm needle, I can just make up the difference in row gauge by adding rows to the ribbing and that it will still work out okay.

The cuff on the left is the original one I knit with 2 pattern repeats and the one on the right is the new one, just for comparison.

I'm hoping to have these done by the end of the weekend, so here's hoping you'll get a good FO post by next week. Unless it's all too large and has to be re-done yet again and then I finally decide to scrap the project.

Stash Confessional: Birthday money!

Hi again. I’ve got another stash confessional, though a smaller one this time. My wonderful mother, being the amazing, thoughtful, kind, caring person she is, bought me the perfect birthday gift of a gift card to my LYS with the instructions that I was to “Use this to make yourself something beautiful”. So, I took that as a license to buy some really nice yarn that I’ve always wanted and never purchased for myself.

I initially brought it in while the LYS was having a 20% off sale on all the things on the wall and tried to buy myself some Quince & Co. for a sweater, but the amounts and the colours and all the factors weren’t working out. Besides, I have one sweater quantity of Quince & Co. wound up and ready to be a sweater whenever I get to it and one sweater quantity of Quince & Co. on infinite backorder, so I figured maybe this was the yarn gods telling me this wasn’t the correct use of my free $50US. I left with nothing (proud of myself…not too often I can say that during 20% off everything on the wall day. Nearly the whole store is stocked on the walls…at least most of the practical yarn. It’s hard not to buy *something*), and decided that when I came back for my regular knitting night on Thursday I would buy myself something nice. Maybe finally buy some Madeline Tosh despite my opinions about Madeline Tosh or some Malabrigo.

Come back I did, and although I stood staring at the Madeline Tosh and Malabrigo wall for a good half an hour, thinking about hats and cowls and all manner of things I could make, nothing seemed special enough. Nothing seemed right. Then finally, I found it. A yarn store exclusive that oneof the local dyers created for a recent Shop Hop. Colourways inspired by the local Zoological Gardens. All the teal/blue/brown variegation I always wanted and never bought because what was I going to do with all that fingering weight sock yarn? Only now I’m a sock knitter! So I bought it. It’s not lush. It’s not luxurious. But it is the exact colours I love. And it is locally created and locally inspired. And it’s called “More Otter than Sea”. All these things were a win.

 

Now, of course, this didn’t take up all my money (close though…it wasn’t inexpensive sock yarn), so I had to think of what else I could manage to get 1 skein of and still be able to make something. The answer to that, it turns out, was Leading Men Fiber Arts. I’ve been hearing about their yarn (and meaning to listen to their podcast) for a while now, so I was excited to see it in the store a few weeks ago. The colours were beautiful and vibrant and, really, the big problem here was deciding what colour I wanted. I could only get 1 skein of sport weight, so I figure this will turn into a hat or a small cowl or maybe mittens, so it needed to match with my coats and still serve a purpose. Problem is, my coats are brown or blue. And the colours I picked up were either beautiful oranges (still regret not being able to buy that one) or grey or dark green. So, I was forced to use the tiebreaker method and buy on colourway name. Which means the grey won out just because they decided to name it London Fog. Now I need to knit myself just the right thing to take me back to a grey London day where you need the softest cowl to snuggle down into against the damp mist that chills you to the bone and everything will be perfect.

 

So…added some meters to the stash (720.5 m/ 200g), but it’s for a good cause and I'm still grossly ahead of schedule thanks to my destash.Besides, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one or both of these is used up before the year is out.

Stash Confessional: Minnesota Yarns

This week’s (month’s???) stash confessional is very different than most. Not that it doesn’t mean I didn’t acquire some stash, because I definitely did. Just that I lost significantly more stash than I acquired. Which, you know, is the goal. Still, it puts me decidedly ahead in the plan to be 24,000m lighter by the end of the year. That said, I’m pretty sure I’ll never again get rid of this much yarn at one time, so I suppose I should preface this with a “results not typical” sort of statement.

A bit of background for anyone who might be a new reader. As part of my “own less in 2015” goals, I made a commitment to knit or otherwise rid myself of 2000m of yarn per month. Which . . . considering a worsted weight sweater takes ~900m of yarn is pretty lofty if I were just knitting it all, but it includes knit AND destash. That said, I don’t have THAT MUCH yarn I’m willing to part with as destash, and after Sunday I have even less.

Sunday. I took a birthday trip north (halfway to Canada, as I like to phrase it) and made it a point to stop in to the LYS in town (home of Three Irish Girls) both because I had heard good things about the store (all correct) and because I wanted to get myself some TIG from the source, as it were. While investigating the store, I found out they’re a drop-off location for the charity knitting group F.L.O.C.K. (For Love of Charity Knitting). F.L.O.C.K. will basically take whatever yarn you want to give them and distribute it to various group members who want to charity knit for someone, which I think is great. I would love to do more charity knitting myself, but I also like knitting things FOR myself, so I don’t get around to charity knitting as much as I do in my dreams. I figured this was a good way to go through my stash, figure out what I would have probably designated into charity knitting projects once I got to it anyway, put it all in two giant plastic bags, drive it 2.5 hours north, and drop it off for other people to play with.

All told, I dropped off 4457.65m (2580g) of yarn from my stash. That puts me TWO MONTHS ahead on my stashdown goals, provided I don’t actually purchase more yarn. But you know where this is going, right?

As I said, my primary goal in hitting up the LYS was to PURCHASE yarn, and purchase yarn I did, though I’m incredibly proud of my ability to make decisions, especially in the face of a wall of Kauni and a front-and-centre display of ALL THE THREE IRISH GIRLS with the best colourway names and things I had never seen before. So I came home with 5 new skeins of yarn, all of them local to my area, some of them handspun by lovely people I would like to meet someday so I can praise them for providing me with handspun Border Leicester, for a total of 1453.6m (581g) of new yarn, which evens my destash to acquisition total for this trip to 30004.5m (1999g). Not bad. I count that a mega win! I’m still well ahead for the month of January and still knitting away on a project and swatching for the next.

This probably won’t be the final acquisition post for the month since my mother gave me a $50 US gift card to my LYS with the instruction to “Knit something beautiful” for myself, so I’m betting I’ll be back again next week with more stash confessions.

Which brings us to the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Stash confessional #1 for the year:

1 skein of Three Irish Girls Adorn sock in the “Cooler Bythe Lake” colourway. I actually had this and a “Land of the Loon” colourway that were SUPER similar, but Jonas and I rationalised that although both were awesome, the blue makes this one better. Plus, “Cooler By the Lake” was the tagline of my childhood hometown for a while in the 80’s/90;s so even though I know this meant a different lake, I still felt like it was made just for my home.

 

1 skein of Three Irish Girls Adorn sock in the “Cair Paravel”colourway. And okay . . . it’s named after the castle in Narnia. Do I need to rationalise it beyond that?

1 skein of Three Irish Girls Glenhaven Cashmerino Worsted inthe “Observation Hill” colourway. Which is pretty. And is named after a place in the city we were visiting (which is where TIG dye out of). But also there was a place in the city I went to University in (my second home) called Observatory Hill and I spent a LOT of time on that hill and I felt like this colour could also represent that place. Plus did I mention it’s pretty?

1 skein of super awesome amazing hand spun Border Leicesteryarn in the “Natural Dark” colourway from a local spinner. It’s 225m in a beautiful chocolate brown and I’m SO EXCITED to work with Border Leicester. No idea what it will become, but whatever it is will almost certainly be warm and happy and made with love from start to finish.

1 skein of super awesome amazing hand spun BLF/Silk in the “LanikaiHike” colourway (presumably inspired by Hawai’i) from a spinner that’s evenmore local to me. It’s beautiful barberpoled brown and blue (you know how much I love brown and blue together!) and is 240m of DK weight. Again, no idea what it will become, but it is sure to be made with love.

Note that despite a WALL OF KAUNI I did not purchase any. This doesn’t mean I didn’t have three different colourways in my hand at one time, it does mean that I decided that Kauni skeins have a LOT of yardage and I still haven’t decided what the three skeins of Kauni I purchased back in May are going to be, so I reluctantly returned them from whence they came because although I love Denmark and Danish yarns/knitting something fierce, 2015 is all about making good decisions with stash and I could walk away feeling comfortable with what I purchased.