AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

driveway lake

It's been raining pretty much nonstop here since late Friday night. I kept hoping it would stop, but it didn't stop me from going to see Jared Flood speak at the Common Cod meeting on Friday or from going back the next day to take his introduction to colorwork class at Newbury Yarns.

It likewise didn't stop me from going in to the gym on Sunday to do my long run (I just couldn't stomach the idea of running outside, though in retrospect it wouldn't have mattered as I got completely soaked through regardless) and to pick up the latest Pokemon game. Now I have a Pokewalker, my little pedometer that can hold a pokemon as I walk around town. I feel super geeky and like a mini-exercise maven.

My husband got Victor something cute while he was out getting his own Pokemon game. Of course, I wanted a yellow slicker or some other rain coat for myself, so I spent part of the evening researching just that. 

Rain boots seem to be pretty expensive, but rain jackets have a huge range of expense. After last June, where we had twice the rain of the average month I would love to be better prepared for the rain. As it is, according to the weather data on Boston.com, we are at 5.27 inches of precipitation this month. A huge soaking downpour. As far as I know that doesn't include anything that has come down today yet either.

Needless to say, I have spent most of the last three days pretty darn soaked. I get in and my first inclination is to take a hot shower (not that I do that, but I still want to), and to drink vats of hot chocolate. I have been walking to the train station, but I think I'm going to forgo that today in favor of the bus!

Pictures of my swatch from the colorwork class to come.

I cannot be trusted

Yesterday I went to Windsor Button over lunch, ostensibly to get another size 6 circular and another batch of size 0 dpns (because 4 needles aren't handy if you want to try the little buggers on).  I knew I wanted to knit a pair of fair isle socks next (we will get into my stupid a little bit later), and while I have one skein of yarn that will work I needed a contrasting skein of yarn.

I did not actually intend to buy the contrasting skein of yarn yesterday.  Now I own a skein of Trekking in a nice ivory color.  It will go very well from the skein of yarn from the Loopy Ewe (purchased as part of the I didn't get to go to the sock summit or Loopy Ewe sock fest earlier this year).  While I want to make the Kikko Hanabishi socks, I will do a much better job if the pattern is stupidly scintillating.

Enter Meeresrauschen (ravelry link).  It has vertical stripes, which I am a bit of a sucker for.  It has a visual motif, aka non-abstract, which is a huge selling point.  And because I am a sad individual, the modeled picture is in a beautiful teal color with a wonderfully contrasting lemon-lime (ish) yarn.  Not that I don't know I can change colors, and will be changing colors, but I do fall for things in the blue family faster than things in the magenta family.

Of course, between finishing my last pair of socks and starting this pair of socks I accidentally (Whoops! *thud*) started another pair of socks.  My latest pair of socks are the Diamond Gansey socks from Wendy's book: Socks from the Toe Up. 

warning: colors much more vivid in person

I started this sock Tuesday night and am about ready to start the gusset.  For me, this is blindingly fast.  I'm not sure if this is because I really love the pattern or the yarn (this is the yarn made by Caroline for Claudia's 2009 MS Fundraiser).  The colors just glow in the sunlight, which made knitting on it this morning a real treat!  This is a wonderful yarn and I am really loving it, though I think part of the reason the sock is working up so fast is that it isn't ribbing... I am definitely all ribbing-ed out.

Now, why I am an idiot.  I was photographing this sock in progress with my finished socks in my bag when I got the battery dead warning from the camera.  So, no photo of the finished socks until I can get home and fix the battery situation. 

one step forward

Umm, and two steps back.

Last weekend, oh so long ago, I went to Snow Goose in Milton, which is a dangerous 30 minute walk from my home.  That is well within my comfort zone for walking distance (which is closer to a 1.5 hour walk).  Now I have the new Interweave Knits and Vogue Kniting from my subscriptions and had recently picked up KnitScene and The Knitter.  Dangerous magazines all.

There are 3 projects I want to make from IK, and at least 2 from VK, and one or two each from the other magazines.  I don't have the time or the stash to make all of these.  So, I picked the one I fell in love with and fell in love with hard.

The Vogue Knitting Rib and Cable Cardigan will be mine.

So, I walked to the Snow Goose, because I was tired of watching the guys play Dokapon.  Lois gave me a few suggestions for yarns, but I was unfortunately in the mood for instant gratification.  Worse, I had a specific color in mind.  I wanted to make this sweater in a grey that had a bit of a shimmer or sheen to it that would work with anything I would ever wear at work.  Ever.

So, I fell in love with some Wool Bamboo.  A poor choice.  It's a little more expensive, and has a bit less yardage on the skein, both annoying but possible to work around.  Worse, there wasn't quite enough yarn on the shelf for the sweater.  We estimated I needed three more balls of yarn.  Even worse?  The dye lot was from 2006 as I found out when Lois called me earlier this week with a shop in Alabama that had 4 balls left.

The four balls are mine and arrived on Friday. 

I can't imagine how many places Lois called in order to find this shop in Alabama, but I am grateful.  I'm going to go to the Snow Goose and get some of the yarn for the sweater.  And I will be back.  It was amazing service and any quirkiness (I thought I was being ignored due to a misunderstanding on my part) was purely a matter of confusion and minor problems of miscommunication.

Suffice to say that sometime this upcoming week I will be putting a yarn sale up on Ravelry.  I have some pretty nice yarn that I will probably never use, including a sweater's worth of Velvet Wool and some Euroflax Linen.  Come shop my yarn stash!

rip! reknit

I have this gorgeous skein of sock yarn from Woolcott (image snagged from the blog, saved to my server), but I apparently couldn't pick the right pattern for it.

I started off with a simple 60 stitch 2x2 rib, but then I decided I wanted a pattern.  Bad idea.  Apparently most of the sock patterns I liked would involve a special cast on, a different ribbing pattern, a completely different stitch count, or were for worsted weight or DK instead of sock yarn.  Well, I solved that by ripping out the 2x2 rib and recasting on for the Mock Cable Socks. 

I got halfway through the first repeat of the pattern and decided that I didn't like how it looked.  I'm pretty sure that I should have been doing my M1 as purl stitches, and so I had these odd ridges where briefly there was some garter stitch.  It's a very odd look over just one stitch in a sock.  Last night while watching Moulin Rouge (well, listening... that movie is like very odd crack or something... especially Like a Virgin) I ripped it all out again and went back to flipping through 25 Favorite Socks, of which I'm really interested in about 10.

I started over and am about halfway through the initial ribbing on the cuff for a pair of Retro Rib socks.  I feel like the last person in blogdom to have made a pair of these (almost: over 800 pairs on Ravelry).  The only way I could feel more like the last person ever is if I were making the Embossed Leaves.  That will happen as soon as I find an appropriate color/weight yarn in my stash certainly. 

This is, of course, a long winded way of saying that I managed to knit last night.  Not only did I manage to knit, I managed to knit on what I said I would knit on.  If I keep this up, I might actually finish another project this month!  [Or maybe not... there are only 9 days left to finish something!]

running through the blanket

Today my friend and I went on our long run starting from Harvard Square.  It was a pretty good run - on target for my half marathon pace - though wet.  The air was so full of humidity that even my short jog to the MBTA left me dripping sweat. 

Most of our run was along the Charles River, which theoretically cooled us off a bit.  On our way back to Harvard Square along the Boston bank of the Charles, I am pretty sure I saw a cormorant.  Of course, I don't run with my camera (and it now occurs to me that I did have my phone.  doh.), so here is an image from Lonetown Woods (the author takes a lot of beautiful bird photography, so if you want to see more hawks and sea birds and even vultures, please go look).

Next week's long run is supposed to be 8 miles, and will hopefully not be quite so muggy.  I also hope that it isn't in Harvard Square, because the Square is full of temptation.  There is Beadworks (though I normally go to Lush Beads), and Lush, and ice cream and coffee.  There is also Woolcott.  Sean, the owner of Woolcott, has started offering his own hand dyed yarn, which I first saw on Queer Joe's blog a few weeks ago.  The colors that Joe bought were super saturated jewel tones, which I love (love, love).  Each of the colors however are once offs.  Sean only makes a few skeins of each color.

Those were gone, but there were still some really pretty colors.  I bought a skein (and they wound it for me at the shop, so I could start right away) of Melon Cooler and some size 0 needles to make sure that they fit my feet.

No pictures of the Melon Cooler, but picture a bright spring green with golden streaks and little dots of red.  It is a beautfiul color, and I'll have pictures in the next couple of days. 

Now it is time to finish getting ready.  I want to visit my fishies at the Aquarium and watch the new Star Trek movie (again). 

sometimes the internet is full of stupid

Let's take for example mbta.com.  This site has a nice little trip planning tool, and I was wondering if it would be reasonable to try and make it to an after work social knit.  It's been ages since I've been to a social knitting event at a shop (I didn't really knit at the guild meeting, though I certainly could have).

There is a yarn shop in Dedham that I haven't been too called Sheep Skate.  I know I can get down to Dedham on the Orange Line and that the nearest Orange Line stop for me is Downtown Crossing.  I plug Downtown Crossing Station as my starting destination and the shop address as the end.  Easy peasy.  I choose minimize walking (and believe me, it didn't make a difference, because I did it both ways) and I get this:

These instructions are at best kind of dumb.  They say Walk from DTX (where you started) to Park Street Station, take the Red Line one stop, transfer to the Orange Line, and then take a bus from the appropriate Orange Line stop.

I changed this around a couple of times, and the only thing it changes is whether they want me to walk to a different stop.  It's like Downtown Crossing is a null zone and you are just not allowed to start from there.

It's probably not necessary to say, but I don't tend to do things after work.  It's just so much easier to schedule something on the weekends even if I am usually chronically overscheduled.

I need to call around to a couple of LYS and see if any of them have the Classic Elite booklet 9092 for sale.  That has the Portland Tweed Vest that I would like to make.  It will only take me about one more week to finish the cross-stitch project now that I have the floss (which like all variegateds does not look that much like the last ones I bought), and then I will be able to do the finishing work on a baby set and start a new knit for the train.  I'd like it to be this one, because the vest will be perfect for a couple of the white button down shirts I have for work.

Rhinebeck was my free day

I went to Rhinebeck with an allowance of sorts (cash only, all cards left behind, super limits to the amount of danger I could fall into), which was a great idea!  Rhinebeck was so wonderfully overwhelming that I was hard pressed to remember where some things were if I didn't buy them right away. 

The sweater that I had just finished was a total of 7 skeins, so I told myself that was the most I could buy.  I knew I wanted to buy yarn for the February Lady Sweater, something with a bit more color depth than I could get from a skein of Cascade 220 as it were, but not quite as dear as the Sundara yarn that the original was knit in (umm, yes, I drooled quite unattractively). I wanted the sweater to be about the same cost as it would be in Cascade 220, and I'm just between the sizes for the XXS/XS (mostly because I prefer a close fit for most of my clothing).  I also wanted to have the option to fall hard for other yarns... and oh yes, I did.

This will be the yarn for my February Lady Sweater:
 

At first glance it is just a nice, saturated blue, but it is really more than that.  It has hints of purple and brighter bits of almost magenta.  I have a close up, but I'm not going to use it.  It's just not the easiest to photograph.  Especially in my normal lack-of-natural light conditions.

Then K- and I went back to the laceweight (well, and some wondering around before that) and fell down hard!  I buy laceweight like some people eat potato chips.  With a reasonable thrifty mind, laceweight is the best bang for the knitter dollar.  It offers beautiful generous yardage, takes a goodly amount of time to knit up, and is often disgustingly gorgeous.  The biggest bang for my laceweight dollar is the Misti Alpaca, because those skeins are really affordable, but that doesn't mean I won't buy pricier laceweight...

Like  these:

  

The top is the Cashmere Silk from the Skacel both.  It's the only non-blue thing I got and is wonderfully soft.  It isn't quite enough yardage for any of the big shawls, but it is certainly enough for a Flowerbasket or similarly sized shawl.  Gorgeous!

The bottom is a slightly smaller than average skein of Clotho from Spirit Trail.  It's blue!  It's semi-solid! And at 437 yards is big enough for shawl or a stole.  There quite a number of options available from a quick search in Ravelry!

I blame Brainy

Sorry about that.  Alison mentioned a few weeks ago the Butterscotch Cardigan in the latest Interweave Crochet.  It's hard to believe, but crochet was the first fibery craft I really got into (umm, unless of course you want to count cross-stitch, which I've been doing since I was maybe 6).  Over the weekend I finally picked up the magazine, and the Butterscotch Cardigan is one of my top three design favorites in the issue.  Most of the things I have the skill for just weren't my cup of tea, but the Cardigan is pretty feasible as is the spiral hat (which I'll probably do first once I am done Convertible), but Alison was right.  The Shepherd Sock makes this a fairly pricey top.  Not completely outside of the realms of affordability, but not as thrifty as I'd like to be. 

So, I've been searching out alternatives.  I figure I can buy the yarn once I am down under 10 WIPs listed on Ravelry, which probably won't be until June.  I had this crazy idea in my head of double stranding a laceweight yarn.  As long as it wasn't too fine, I could probably get away with it.  Even if I had to buy 3 skeins, it would possibly be cheaper than buying 8 of the LL.  I do this sort of math all of the time as part of my browsing pattern online.  You know, I could probably buy the Comfort Sock or the Knit Picks solid sockweight yarn and make the project under $30... but I would probably enjoy the project more if I sprung for this slightly more expensive yarn.  A silly thing to do.

So, I emailed the Loopy Ewe yesterday late afternoon and within 10 minutes had an answer I could probably live with:  Lane Borgosesia Cashwool is one of the laceweights Sheri carries, and two strands of it together is pretty close to the apparent weight of one strand of the Shepherd Sock.  Even buying a third skein would still be pretty affordable.  So, now I know what I'm doing with my fun money in June!

Learning something new

Over 2 years ago I bought my first spindle.  I signed up for a spinning swap and got some pretty fiber and a second spindle (one that lights up!).  At Circles, I bought a batt (is that the right term) and some sock yarn from the gentleman from Dorchester Farms.

Yesterday, I called Lucy at Mind's Eye Yarns and scheduled an actual spinning lesson.

I've had a hard time convincing myself to try spinning at home.  Saru-chan seems to love what is worst for her (oh my poor yarn has had some awfully rough times), so I am hesitant but I want to learn.  Even if I decide I don't like doing it and sell or give away my little spinning stash, the learning will not go to waste.  I don't want to be the person who says that they can't get this or do that without making a conscientious attempt to truly try something.  Right now, those big areas are sewing and spinning.  I have made some half-hearted efforts, but not enough to feel good about discarding these activities. 

So, Saturday afternoon I'll see what I can learn.  I'll bring my boring learning wool and one of my pretty swap wools and see what I've been missing all this time.

With great alacrity

Warning: long and picture heavy (for me)

Excuse the mess.  Mondays are for Heroes, one of the few television shows we watch.  This week's episode was the penultimate one for the season, and so even Saru-chan was glued to the set.  She, of course, thinks there should be more kitty heroes and has been bug killing to prove that she could do Sylar in.

She watched for me while I was making fudge in the kitchen.  Isn't that good of her?

(This is one of the pictures my honey took... maybe someday our kitty will be featured on I Can Has Cheezburger.)

Of course, I didn't really want to write about Heroes (even if I wished I wasn't making fudge during those first 15 minutes).  I just want to write squee! and run around in little circles around the condo.

When I got home last night, I had my package!  I just couldn't imagine it.  Even knowing that The Loopy Ewe's reputation for speedy delivery I just figured I had submitted my order too late in the day to have it shipped over the weekend. 

It was waiting for me on the counter.  And I was good.  I pulled out all of the fudge ingredients, started dinner (well, it was only a frozen pizza - but I otherwise would have needed the fudge pot), and... umm, unfortunately completely freaked out at my hubby for both a chance remark and the realization that I didn't have all of my fudge ingredients anyway.

But to save the fudge, my husband did the unpleasant task of going to the grocery store and getting the evaporated milk, and the even more unpleasant task of going to Michaels for small round cookie cutters (I had this grand idea for cute pieces of fudge for today's last class, cut with cookie cutters to maximize the amount of people I could serve fudge to without actually bringing in more fudge... it worked, sort of, and I have the perfect cookie cutters for rolled sugar cookies).  Hubby is also a hero!

So, while the hubby was away, I opened the box.  Inside was a well wrapped package, which I stared at for a bit (I didn't actually take anything out for an hour or so... my self control can be amazing!).  Dinner was had, fudge was started, and I broke into the package.

I had ordered four skeins of yarn.  One in Regia Silk in black to use in Bakerloos and three skeins of Claudia Handpainted Yarns in a gorgeous Turquoise color.

Of course, all of this yarn plus more yarn from my stash may be intended for my Sockapaloooza pal!  I want to use the Turquoise for the Spiral Boot Socks in the latest Interweave Knits (Summer 2007).  I wasn't sure that they would fit my calves.  I feel like my calves are huge for someone of my height and weight... they are covered with muscles.

I actually went to Veronik Avery's blog to see if there was any more information, and emailed her.  I feel like it is the coolest thing that many of the knitwear designers have blogs and are so wonderfully open to answering questions about fit. 

So, if any of you have calves of about 14 inches (mine are about 15... I meant it when I said covered with muscles), the lace pattern stretches and will accommodate calf sizes up to 14 or so without looking overly stretched.  It will probably look stretched on me, but I am crossing my fingers that they will fit OK.  At least in this case, they are top down, so you know if they aren't going to fit pretty early on.  So, if you like blues and have legs (calves that is) smaller than 15 inches, then these might be for you!  Or it could be the Bakerloos.

Or maybe something made with one of these other yarns.

In the back are the Claudia Handpaint Yarns and the Regia Silk from The Loopy Ewe.  The burgundy (or maroon) is Lana Gatto's VIP - an 80% wool, 20% cashmere fingering weight yarn (it claims 22 stitches in 10 centimeters), which I was going to use for either socks or fingerless gloves.

Below that are two skeins each, in a green colorway and a green and purple colorway, of sock yarn from Dorchester Farms (75% washable wool, 25% nylon).  If you like jewel tones or brights (mostly for the Claudia Handpaint or the Regia silk used with the yarn dyed last week), then these might be for you!

I have more sock yarn in my stash, so maybe one of those is for you instead?  Or maybe I'm making socks for my mom with the Wildfoote (though given I didn't like working with it, maybe not?  I should probably give it a try again since it is in my stash), or some of the Regia 4 Ply, or maybe the Opal Handpaint that I bought before I knew how to knit socks just thinking it looked like laceweight...

Heck, if you like chocolate then maybe this yarn is for you!