AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

boot socks!

My brain is doing its standard jukebox thing, where I take any song I've heard (mostly musicals) and subbing words in and out. Now it is: Wool, wool, wool, wool, fabulous wool! Sadly, I don't even remember the original song. 

However none of that matters, because I have boot socks. I shoved them on sock blockers, because they are thick enough that you cannot really see the shape when they aren't on the blockers. They become kind of lumpy looking and weird. 

Doesn't matter! Now I have the tiniest ball of the red left and at least half a skein of the white. While I would love to keep up the red and white theme as I stash bust myself some winter necessities, I am pretty sure I cannot do that without buying more yarn. Hrm. Or maybe everything will just be mismatched.

The next thing I should make are mittens or gloves. I've been using the "magic gloves" that you can buy at convenience stores. They are OK, but their one size fits all doesn't really work for my long fingers especially if I have any nail growth at all (I clipped them really short again yesterday, but it was really too late). When I slip on these gloves I can see where the yarn has already stretched too thin and is about to tear. I might get another week or two out of them without my fingers bursting out the ends, but there is a lot more winter to come.

on a bandwagon

So, Twist Collective is doing a Finish Fest (rav link), which I found out about on Twitter. This nicely dovetailed in my year of being Stephanie only with shorter hair and way less writing skill and humor. Last year Stephanie did a self-imposed sock club while I signed up for two separate yarn clubs, one that was all sock yarn (yeah Loopy Ewe) and another that was mixed (Smart Ass Knitters World Domination Club). I also later in the year signed up for the Dream in Color color of the month, which I can opt out of each month. Many of these yarns were sock yarns. Tons of sock yarns. Plus I had the sock yarn I was buying as a matter of course when I didn't have a color for a project in mind. Plus (yup, another one) I had socks I had started in previous years that were half done or less. Now I have a dresser drawer full of freezer bags of sock projects. One for each month of the year.

January was a gentle start with my Embossed Leaves. I started these in March 2010 shortly after the Red Line yarn crawl. I bought the yarn at Windsor Button: Madeline Tosh sock in Clematis. Now if one of my friends wasn't super sensitive to wool, this would be the perfect yarn for her. Black with hints of purple. It is a favorite of mine and is perfect with my work uniform (not an actual uniform, but with as much black as I wear it might as well be).

I took my time with these socks for a number of reasons. I knit them for myself on size 0 needles, the only way they would probably fit my feet. And I tried out the super tiny circular needles from Clover.

My mini review of the Clover mini circulars was that I hated them. I was pressing on the cable with my pinky finger, which was causing some uncomfortable rubbing. They might work fine for someone else (hey, if you want to try them, let me know and I will mail them out to you), but they were just not for me.

I finished the first sock with the needles and then swapped to dpns for the second sock. The second sock flew by. It was the first item in my rotation and I spent 7 hours powering through the second sock (I don't actually remember how far I was on the second sock when I started the rotation, so your mileage probably will vary). 

I'm feeling pretty good about the rotation by the way. I started off the new year with a pile of WIPs most of which are old enough to be called UFOs instead and have finished two items (5 skeins of yarn) and have only bought 2 skeins of yarn. For me, this is stellar!

 

searching for a hat pattern

This spring I did the Red Line yarn crawl, and I spent most of my time (fine, all of my time) in the first two stores I went to: Stitch House and Windsor Button.

At Windsor Button there was a yarn tasting. I had brought needles, and I tried many different skeins of yarn in this little column of Rowan-ness. The rep who was running the tasting had a free pattern, a double knit hat pattern using sock yarn. I think it is this hat (ravelry link), but I don't remember the pattern having ribbing, something you don't need to make in a double knit hat, because the stockinette naturally stays flat.

Should I make the Double Layer sock yarn hat, or continue searching for the pattern (I theoretically have it somewhere in the house... heh)? Or maybe just wing it, making my own double knit hat? It's not like I haven't made double knit items before. Most of them have been flat, but that isn't a reason to not do it.

I need to decide soon, because I signed up for the Puck This January 2011 Hat Trick. Three hats isn't impossible to do by any stretch of the imagination, but would be a lot easier if I had three hat patterns and yarns to make what I want (note, this is a yarn to pattern matching exercise, not a claim I don't have yarn with which to knit a hat. I'm not insane and I certainly have yarn).

So, suggestions for hat patterns? I tend to wear beanies even if they make my hair look ridiculous when I get to work.

it's that time of year again

October and November are two of the busiest months. Halloween (which I am not going to finish my costume for), holiday bazaar season, NaNoWriMo, my husband's birthday and Thanksgiving combine with the desire to do gift crafting into a hideous mess of sleeplessness and potential crankiness.

Over the last couple of years I have determined that doing custom orders is not working for me. I bust my butt making samples that no one buys and then spend my next 3-4 weeks making orders for which I often need to buy new materials. It is just not very tenable. So, this year I am making small things: hats, coffee cuffs, wrist warmers and the like. Most of these things can be done in a day or two, and I hope to have 30 to 40 items ready by the time I actually doing the holiday bazaar. I don't want all of December to be filled with making more stuff. Like I said, not exactly tenable especially when I have to then carry this stock for another season. Yuck.

I need to make more dice bags. One of the coolest things I've made is still the prototype dice bag I made for my husband. It doesn't quite match my standards for crafting excellence (mostly the sewn in lining), but it gets the response I want pretty much any time it is pulled out. He uses it and it is super geeky. I liked making it, and it is one of those things that can be assembly lined so I can work on parts when I have the energy to do so. Of course, I might not have the right materials anymore. We'll see. I have a lot of yarn in the stash.

Then there is NaNoWriMo. National Smut Novel Writing Month. What? I am planning on writing a m/m paranormal romance. Blame Chris. She got me hooked on reading a lot of books that were not part of my normal genres (sci-fi and fantasy) starting with the JR Ward books. None of this is high fiction, but I tried writing that story 2 or 3 NaNos ago and it flopped miserably. The meet-up is this Saturday and writing will commence after midnight on October 31st (as soon as it is November).

Can I knit for 2 hours a day, write for at least 1 hour a day and walk the dog for at least 1.5 hours a day and not become a crazy woman?

Probably not. But only time will tell.

no knitting to see here

Look at the video (yes, blame my friends for this one). You are getting sleepy. You are getting weird.

Yeah, I am knitting, but I am only knitting over part of my commute every third day or so and at night while we are watching anime. It is taking me 15-20 minutes to do a row of the lace pattern, so I figure I will have something worth showing in about 2 weeks. More quickly if I decide that I no longer love the Dragon Quest IX and instead want nothing more to do than knit, knit, knit.

My lunch breaks are spent on cross-stitch and thinking about dessert and seeing if I can cause earworms, because I am evil. Cross-stitch takes longer than knitting, so there is really nothing to show there either!

Turpin's big hairy...

Judge Turpin's ball is so large!

I made a scarf for a guy in the show in the last week. I picked up the yarn, Cascade Magnum, a super bulky on sale at the Stitch House in Dorchester. All of the Cascade yarns in stock are 40% off for this month, which made the price I quoted him for a scarf pretty reasonable. 

Per normal, I wound my ball on the train into work. Normally my yarn balls are, well, normal size. I mean, a ball of sock yarn only gets so large if wound from a hank. This was enormous. I wonder what people thought as we were snapping a picture of the yarn.

I started the scarf the morning of the Friday show, and was more than halfway done that day. I showed it to our Turpin and he loved it and wanted a bit more length, so I took out the cable I put in the end, and knit until I had only a few grams left (thank goodness for a digital scale), and added the cable and last bit of ribbing back in.

The finished scarf is about 4 inches or 5 inches wide and about 64 inches long.

The project was simple, a long ribbed scarf with a single reversible cable on each end about 3 or 4 inches from the end. It took a single skein of Magnum.

Now, in the last year or so there were a couple of super bulky cardigans using this yarn, which felt like they were completely out of my price range. If the sale is still going on, I still love the sweater (the one I'm thinking of is a cabled sweater from Vogue Knitting that used three skeins of this stuff). However, the yarn itself was pretty hairy, soft and squishy which is good, but had a tendency to leave little hairy yarn particles on my clothing as I was working it. I don't know if worked up and blocked it would be better, but it might be easier to take a bulky spun yarn (rather than a huge underwoven single) and double strand it for the same effect.

blessed!

I've been blessed by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Saturday I started the Pile-Able Pups from MochiMochi Land. I'm rejiggering the pattern for a completely different gauge, because I wanted to use a yarn that was wool-free, affordable (aka, found at the AC Moore I found myself at on Saturday) in an appropriately girly color. What I found was this Beehive Baby Sport yarn, which looked like a center pull ball.

It lied to me.

The center pull string was really somehow attached to the outside yet looped and twisted around the inside of the ball. Within minutes I had a stringy mess. Thankfully I was in a whimsical mood, and was mostly amused by my spaghetti nature.

I'm using this site to lazily recalculate all of the numbers for the pattern. Of course, I have a lot of knitting left to do and only today to get it done in. I always wish when I pull something last minute like this that I could knit faster or take time off from work, which is even sillier because I wouldn't necessarily get more done by staying home.

I have about 60 rows to finish before I can do the feet, tail and ears. I wonder how long it will take...

mailing packages

I am really bad about mailing things out.  I have two cards with letters in them that are over a month old (letters I wrote in mid-October).  Today won't be any different in that regard.  It is cold and wet outside, with an icy rain that cuts through my layers of clothing in a wink.  If I'm not going running, an activity that will keep me warm, then I'm probably not going to the post office either.

Thankfully tomorrow's weather is supposed to be if not warmer at least a bit drier.  I won't need to worry about whether or not the packaging will be soaked through before I get the packages sent off.  One of these packages is really important though, and I cannot delay any later than Saturday.

Yup.  Finally have the Red Scarf finished.  It's been washed, blocked and I just trimmed the woven in ends this morning.  I have a gift card and a little note to send along. 

This was my second attempt at working with Rowan Calmer.  Actually, attempt is the wrong word.  Experience.  The first time I knit with Calmer it was a beige yarn being knit for baby hats.  A fun experience in a less than fun color.  Color is important to me as a knitter and I have a harder time getting excited by a beige project than something in bold interesting colors.  This scarf, which I started sometime this summer, was a much better experience.

I bought the yarn at my first trip to Snow Goose, a cute shop in Milton.  I loved going there, and have been avoiding going back.  It's too nearby to give my bank account any piece, at about a 30 minute walk away.  It is safer to go to Windsor Button, which is deadly close to work, because there I do not have a lot of browsing time.  It's either the short space I allow over my lunch break (because I like to have my lunch too) or the single hour a week they are open after I get off work.  Not that I don't manage to get into enough trouble with the short trips for yarn. 

I was a little worried that the two skeins wouldn't really be enough for a scarf, so after I finished blocking it I hung it on a hanger in my craft closet.  I'm not sure that it lengthened the scarf out any, but it at least made me feel a little better.  It's just not as short as I thought it was.

So, tomorrow will be mailing day.  I have a scarf and a couple of letters that I should get out the door, and maybe I'll become a fast enough knitter in the meantime to start and finish another one in under two weeks.

a break from the baking

I do a lot of baking, but like most activities it goes in waves.  Right now my schedule has been knit, knit, bake, smu.  By the end of the month it will look more like: smu, smu, eat, smu, smu, sleep.  The joys of NaNoWriMo.

This giant cookie is just that.  I found a recipe at allrecipes.com, but really any good cookie recipe will do.  Your cookie will be a bit thicker than normal and just spread the cookie dough out in the pizza pan until it is between two inches and an inch from the edge of the pan.  Mine ran a little onto the ridge of the pan, but it came off all right with only a little cracking (which isn't even visible in the photo).

One of the many suggestions for this is to make two slightly less gigantic cookies by spreading the batter in two 9 inch cake rounds.  Doing this could make one delicious mondo cookie sandwich.  Yummy!

I've been very lucky this month.  I have been donating to the Red Scarf Project¹ (and my scarf is soaking in water now before being spun cycled to dryness and blocking).  Norma is spearheading another fundraising drive for the project and has some fabulous prizes donated from all over knitterdom.  

I went to look at the site over the weekend, because she is still doing daily (or near daily) updates and found out that I won the beautiful mega sock prize.  Between that and the great sock exchange that I'm doing with another knitter, I am awash in knitterly goodness.

¹I was not a child in the foster care system, but when I went off to college my parents didn't send care packages or anything like that.  Being left on your own, especially as a first generation college student, can be very lonely.  The packages help show that you are still important and loved when everyone and everything you know feels so far away.  I always felt very lonely when people in my dorm got packages especially around the holidays and Valentines.  So, I can imagine how special receiving something as simple as a scarf with a gift card for a little something nice - restaurant, fast food, iTunes, etc. can be.

nasmuwrimo

Pronounced: Nah Smoo Ree Moh

Yesterday I reached the point in my story that I am starting to feel uncomfortable writing in public.  It doesn't matter that my hand writing isn't exactly large, the fact is that I started adding the smu to my no.  For some reason that felt like a no no when I was writing on the way home.

I was excited to find at the beginning of NaNoWriMo that I apparently have learned something from my constant knitting on the subway system.  Before I could T surf.  I had the art of staying upright mostly OK, though there are some days that just suck on the balance front.  Then I started to knit, and I knit socks and scarves standing on the train.  I could probably knit a full sweater that way, except the pieces are too heavy.  I've graduated to writing on the train.

I was on a very packed train last night, but I couldn't stomach the idea of not getting another page churned out.  I'm going to stay pretty far behind until I hit the weekend, so the stolen moments on the train are important.  I was standing near a pole, so I could grab on if I lost my balance.  I had a pen in one hand and my notepad gripped tightly in the other.  I was writing smut.  I know it.  There is no other way to describe it.  Not Anita Blake past book 8 smut.  More like college students fumbling smut.  It's still smut.

Currently, when I'm not writing smut, I'm either looking for something to read (right now it is Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman) or I'm knitting icord.  That ball was at least 14 yards of icord.

I had this idea for a scarf or neckwarmer with the starting premise being icord, based on the bag that was in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue of KnitSimple.  I blythely ignored the fact that my largest needles are US 15, and the pattern called for US 19.  That was more than enough of a difference that I am holding off on making more worsted weight icord.  I wonder if I can sew the googly eyes on and the ball together and sell it as a toy.  If it is sewn tightly enough (without the eyes), then I can probably put a squeaker or something inside and it could be handy for dogs.  It seems like a waste of time not doing something with all of this icord.