The results of the last slipper experiment were lumpen and sad.  However, I can report success on the current version!

Slipper

This one not only looks like it’s supposed to, it actually fits!  Will wonders never cease! :)

Not a clubbed donkey foot

The original pattern calls for seven identically sized pieces to be arranged like this:

Arrangement of pieces

My thought had been that this shape could be made all in one piece (yes, I know I need to get out more) and so I took measurements, calculated gauge and set out to try it.  Made this way, it is a less effective stash-buster (though you could, of course, use as many varied colors as you liked) but requires a lot less sewing up.  While I don’t mind sewing, less is definitely better!

I made this to fit my size 10 foot, so my guesses about small and medium sizes are just that - guesses.  I think they’ll work but you’ll have to try it out for yourself and see.

One Piece Slipper

Materials:  Worsted weight yarn
Size 7 or 8 (US) needles

Terms:  inc - increase
dec - decrease
K2togB - Knit two stitches together through the back loops.

Cast on 2 sts.
1.  Increase in both stitches (4 sts)
2.  Knit
3.  K1, increase in both following stitches, K1 (6 sts).
4.  Knit.
5.  K1, inc, K2, inc, K1 (8 sts)
6.  Knit.

Continue like this, increasing 1 stitch at each end (just after the first and just before the last stitch) of every other row until you have 20 (22, 24) stitches.  Your last two rows would be:

K1, inc., K14 (16, 18), inc, K1
Knit.

Now begin decreasing.

K1, K2tog, K14 (16, 18), K2togB, K1
Knit

Continue like this, decreasing 1 stitch at each end (just after the first and just before the last stitch) of every other row until you are back to your original 2 sts.

Now begin increasing again and this time, continue increasing until you have 40 (44, 48) stitches.
Your last row for this section would be:

K1, inc, K34 (36, 38), inc, K1.
Knit.

Begin decreasing again, only until you have 20 (22, 24) stitches on the needle and then increase back up to 40 (44, 48) stitches.  Now you’re going to begin shaping the heel.

1.  K1, K2tog, K15 (17, 19), K2tog, K2togB, K15 (17, 19), K2togB, K1
2.  Knit
3.  K1, K2tog, K13 (15, 17), K2tog, K2togB, K13 (15, 17), K2togB, K1
4.  Knit

Continue this way until you have 4 stitches left - this goes quickly because every decrease row eliminates 4 stitches.  Then:

Sl2 tog knitwise, K2tog, pass slipped stitches over.

You have one stitch left.  Cut your yarn leaving a 4 or 5 inch tail.  Draw the end of the tail through the last stitch and pull tightly.

Now comes the fun part :) Referring to the above schematic, sew A to B, C to D, E to F and G to H.  Then sew I to J and K to L.  And there you have it!  I recommend sewing thing together in the order given because it’s easy to get a bit confused - but, of course, you can sew it in whatever order appeals to you :) Using different colors for the various sections makes it a bit easier to see which side gets joined to which.

Scarf Progress

The microfiber scarf is coming along very nicely.  I’m really pleased with the way this yarn works up even if it requires a little care to work with.

Pattern Play

I had wanted to do this whole thing in lace until I found out that the yarn is really too slippery to hold the pattern well.  But I discovered that little bits of lace, supported by the surrounding stocking/seed structure work just fine!  So now I have seven repeats of seed/stocking blocks, followed by seven repeats of stocking/lace blocks.  I’m tempted to go on varying patterns all down the length of the thing, but the blocks are only 5 stitches wide and I don’t know whether I can come up with enough different things to do to make that feasible.  Perhaps just alternating the seed and the lace is a better idea?

Grumpus, Jr.

Goldie is Fluffy’s son.  Unlike his father, he hates having his picture taken :) Here he is, ignoring me and hoping I’ll go away.  He is otherwise, an extreme attention hog which can be very frustrating depending on what you’re doing (or trying to do).  But if you point the camera at him (making sure he can see you doing this) he’ll go off and occupy himself elsewhere until he’s sure all possibility of photography has passed :)

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Well, I’ve decided that I am going to use the Katia microfiber for the dressy scarf.  I was kind of so-so about it until yesterday when I worked up a swatch of Fir Cone lace to see what that would look like.  The label recommends size 3 or 4 needles for this yarn, so I used 6s to work the lace.  (Side note: In Monday’s comments, Sheila - of Fiber Raven Soire fame - suggested that using larger needles for lace swatches might yield better results.  She was absolutely right.  Lace illiterate that I am, I never even thought of it!) The pattern worked up reasonably well but I learned a couple of things while I was trying to pull the swatch around to stretch the lace.

Working with this stuff is like working with satin; it’s very soft and very slippery.  It makes a sumptuously drapey fabric but does not work well for loosely constructed things - like lace :) Perhaps a more experienced knitter than I could have made it work but to my eye, Fir Cone was always going to look raggedy and that’s not what I wanted for a gift.

Another thing I learned is that I love the way this yarn works up.  That’s what decided me that whatever pattern I decided on, it was this yarn that was going to be used.  I can’t describe how nice the hand of the fabric is.  Sinfully luxurious?  Soft as a baby’s tuchus?  Slithery as a silk snake?  You could compare the drape to silk or rayon but the microfiber is less “fragile” than either of those materials.

Anyway, this is what I came up with last night:

Stocking and Seed

I know it’s pretty simple, but it’s working up nicely and uses the yarn to good effect, I think.  I’m using size 4 needles for this.  I’ve got four balls of this yarn and I think that will be enough to make a pretty nice scarf with.  Actually I’m hoping three will do the trick because I’d like to think about an edging for this - though I’m not sure I have the nerve for that just yet :)

You don’t want to make mistakes with this stuff though.  When I frogged the lace swatch, I removed the needle and pulled on the working end of the yarn.  About half the swatched frogged itself instantly.  Did I tell you this stuff is slippery?  You can tink without too much difficulty, but do it carefully; a dropped stitch is a disaster.  It also has very little twist so you need to take a little care not to split stitches.  That said, except for working the cast on row, splitting hasn’t been much of a problem.

Blocks Close-up

The slipper is coming along and I hope to be able to complete this second try tonight or tomorrow.

Slipper, redux

I’m usually a barefoot kinda gal around the house but the weather has been so cool here - despite the fact that we’re rapidly approaching June - that I wanted something to keep my toes warm.  I suppose that even if it goes up to 90 tomorrow and stays there, I’ll get to use them come fall or winter.

We have been debating for a while about getting a bread machine.  We’re both very fond of good bread but the bakery prices are getting into the unreasonable range.  We reasoned that with a bread machine, even the cost of good bread flour and yeast wouldn’t come anywhere near to what bakery bread is costing these days.  Yesterday we finally decided to go for it…

But we found that they seem to be a dying item.  (Side note: I blame Atkins for this.  Even our favorite Chinese restaurant now has “carb-conscious” dishes and I’m terrified that the Atkins diet is going to become law before long.) Target had an Oster and a Breadman model.  Best Buy had the same Oster model.  Wal-Mart had nothing at all.  We got the Oster at Target (who had the best price).

Last night, I opened the box to get the manual so I could read through it and familiarize myself with what it does and how it works and so forth.  Guess what?  No Manual.  No recipe leaflet.  No warranty paperwork, no parts list, no survey card.  No paper of any kind!

!@#$%^&* (fill in curses of choice).

So it’s going back.  I may try to find another one, but I’m wondering if this isn’t an evil omen from the Atkins gods :)

Have a wonderful holiday weekend everyone!

I wound up running around yesterday and so didn’t get a lot of knitting done.  I did start another slipper, based on the theory that I know what went wrong with the first one.  I decided to use different colors for the different segments in hopes that this will visually facilitate stitching the thing together.

The hunt for the dressy scarf pattern continues.  I’m thinking about using this:

Ooooooh, shiny!

You may recall that I acquired this some time ago and it has been marinating in the stash since then.  It’s really pretty microfiber - the closest to silver I have ever seen in a non-metallic yarn.  Though there’s practically no twist to the stuff, it isn’t difficult to work with and is absolutely gorgeous :) What I need to do is work up a small swatch and wash and block it.  It is synthetic so I don’t know how or even if it will block.  Before I decide on a pattern that’s going to need rigorous dressing, I’d better find out, eh?

“Hey!  Pay attention!  I need petting, here!”

The monster is very spoiled for attention after his week of not feeling so hot.  Myria and I were falling all over ourselves to tempt him to eat, scratch his ears, anything to help him feel better.  Now that he’s back in the pink, it is his opinion is that this should continue.  No he doesn’t smell bad or anything, but he’s spoiled never the less :)

Happy Thursday, folks :)

Lessons Both Ways

Monday, we had a couple of hellacious storms - thunder and lightning of biblical proportions and rain that would have made Noah nervous.  The first hit in the afternoon and if it had gone on, I would have passed on my Monday night SNB.  Don’t like to be driving after dark in bad weather.  But things seemed to quiet down and by the time I left, it wasn’t even raining anymore.

But, at about 9:00 PM, it all started again and there we all sat, needles in hand, jaws in laps, watching another monster storm through the windows of the Border’s caf.  At one point the rain was so heavy, we couldn’t see the cars in the parking lot.

The worst of it was over by the time we left, though it was still raining.  I navigated my way home at a fairly measured pace as visibility was no better than so-so and there were lakes in the streets.  There wasn’t a lot of traffic either, thank goodness, but when I was about 3 miles from home on a long, straight stretch, a young man in a muscle car roared up behind me and swung into the oncoming lane to pass, He was doing about 60 mph and he threw up a tsunami as he went by.  Lily (my car) doesn’t handle “wet” well in terms of keeping the windows clear so I always have the driver’s window open when driving in the rain and, of course, I got soaked by the tidal wave.

I also slowed way down because, for a minute, I couldn’t see anything.  This was a good thing because when the windows cleared, I saw this speeding youngster try to pull back into the right lane right in front of me.  He turned too sharply, slammed on the brakes and promptly lost all control of the vehicle which jumped the curb, piled into a fence, nearly turned over, popped it’s trunk and stalled.

I was completely stopped at this point and waited to see if the kid was all right.  He tried to get the car going again, but that wasn’t happening.  Then he got out of the car and started to run around it in something of a frenzy, wringing his hands and running them through his nearly non-existent crew-cut.  There was no blood and he was moving normally.  It was clear that he was unhurt, though very upset.

You know how you sometimes wish for instant karma?  When someone cuts you off, or shoves you out of the way and grabs the last sale item?  You think how pleasant, how gratifying it would be if some small kind of cosmic justice were to make itself known?

It isn’t gratifying at all.  I was so glad the kid was unhurt (and that no one else had been hurt by his lack of judgment) that there wasn’t any room for smugness.  I would have thought I’d feel something along the lines of “it-served-you-right”, but I didn’t.  Despite the impromptu (and cold) shower all I could feel, as I drove the rest of the way home, was gratitude that both he and I were okay.  He was probably in trouble - but that’s way better than being dead.

So we both learned something.

The Cheap Easy

Okay - on to the latest “creation” from Robbyn’s kitchen.  It’s probably only new to me, but I pass it along anyway, just in case.  This makes enough for two and with a small salad or a vegetable, is quite a nice dinner.  It was born (LOL) in the usual way.  That is, it was the night before shopping day and there wasn’t much in the refrigerator.

Spud-go-’round

Take two medium or three small potatoes (we like the Yukon Golds - yummy!).  Wash them off and peel them if you prefer.  I like potato skins so unless they’re really grungy, I leave ‘em on.  Now get a fork and poke each potato four or five times.  If you’ve had an especially bad day, poke ‘em some more; it won’t hurt anything and you may feel better afterwards :) Put them on a microwave safe plate and stick them in the nuker.  Our microwave has a setting for potatoes but if yours doesn’t, the manual should give you an idea of how long to cook them.  In our oven, three potatoes take about 10 minutes to cook.

The rest of the fixin’s

Once that’s going, get the rest of the stuff ready.  That can include almost anything you have hanging around.  Here I’ve got about 6 oz of corned beef (cut into cubes), three large mushrooms (sliced) and a few slices of Provolone cheese (which was cut up later).  You can use anything you have here.  The original meal was made with several torn-up slices of smoked, Virginia-style ham and cheddar cheese - any bit of meat and/or vegetables that you have hanging around will work fine.  Cheese is a nice addition too, but not necessary.

Once the potatoes are cooked, remove them from the microwave and cut them up.  You don’t have to be fussy about this, just chunk them.  You can do this right on the plate.  Butter them, if you like.  Then layer on the other ingredients.  Order doesn’t matter much - I like the cheese on top :)

Then put the plate back into the microwave for another 2-3 minutes to heat the rest of the ingredients through and melt the cheese.

Ta-taaaa!

I should have nuked this for another minute or so to get the cheese a little more melty - but it tasted pretty good anyway.  I know, I know, it should have been Swiss cheese with corned beef.  I didn’t have any and the Provolone worked fine :) Those little specks on the surface are freshly ground black pepper.  I put pepper on everything.  Well...not ice cream…

From beginning to end, it only takes 12 minutes or so and only uses one plate and one knife.  Fast, easy and pretty, darned tasty.

Enjoy!

As far as production goes, this weekend was not exactly what you’d call stellar.  It got cold here Friday night so I was looking for slipper patterns and ran across the old multi-square one.  You know, you knit (or crochet) seven little squares and then assemble them into this:

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Schematic

This is then sewn into a slipper shape by connecting various edges together.  Kinda cute!  But I thought I could maybe avoid knitting seven separate little squares (and therefore, having 14 little yarn ends to tidy up) by knitting the whole thing in one piece.  This seemed brilliant to me, so I took the directions and fiddled with them, hauling out my very spotty knowledge of Euclidean geometry to get the width of the base diamond shape.  It was supposed to be 3.25” on each side.  So, theoretically, a^2^ + b^2^ = c^2^, the diagonal should be about 4.6”.  Theoretically…



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Step 1

Okay - cast on 2 stitches, increase each end every other row in garter stitch until a width of approximately 4.56” is reached.  Then decrease in the same fashion until you’re back to 2 stitches.  Seems reasonable, right?



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Step 2

Then increase back up to twice the width and then decrease back down till you have half the stitches, that is, the width of the single diamond shape.  Now, you’ve got those two pieces hanging off either side of the end - what do we do with those?  Aha!  Those are going to get sewn up the center for the heel, so why not just knit them together to begin with and decrease as we go along!  I tell you, I was very pleased with myself for figuring this all out.  Mrs. K’s little girl is no stoopnagle!



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Step 3

So, now I had a 1 piece version of the schematic and had even managed to avoid the heel seam.  Cool beans!!  Right?



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Slipper?!?

This is what I wound up with.  I pulled it apart and sewed it together twice and it still looks like it was made for a club-footed donkey.  And even if it had been the right shape, it wouldn’t have been the right size.  Make that a small club-footed donkey.

Right - stoopnagle it is :)

Oh well…

So I set that effort aside to marinate and began trying swatches for a fancy scarf for a dear friend who’s birthday is coming up in August.  There was this…

.

EEK!

...and this…



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ACK!!

...and this.



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OOOK!!!

The first (from the Barbara Walker Treasuries) is a combination of Gull-wing lace and a Gull cable which I thought was pretty poetic.  It might work if the cables framed the lace rather than the other way around but I have my doubts.  The second (from Vogue Knitting) is a cable, bobble, seed concoction called Hollow Oak.  It looked lovely in the book but less than lovely in real life and really, a bit clunky for a fancy scarf.  The third (365 Knitting Stitches a Year Calendar) is called, for some enigmatic reason, Crocus stitch.  It’s not terrible and seems to work up nice and flat - but it’s awkward as the dickens to do (therefore slow) and I only have until August.

I just wanted you to know that I did knit this weekend :)

Note: As I was proofing this post I figured out (I think I figured out) what the problem with the slipper is.  Stay tuned for further developments - LOL!

Here’s a scarf pattern along with both cable chart and “pithy” instructions.  It is intended to echo the design elements of the Pinwheel cap but should go reasonably well with most other things.  A minor warning - this is cable intensive and there are cable-crossing on every right side row.  Being able to cable without a needle (see tutorial on the sidebar) is very useful and saves a lot if time.

Open Cable Scarf

Materials:

Worsted Weight yarn
One pair US size 7 needles

Terms:

C4B Slip next 2 sts to cable needle and hold in back, k2, then k2 from the cable needle.
C4F Slip next 2 sts to cable needle and hold in front, k2, then K2 from cable needle.
FC Slip next 2 sts to cable needle and hold in front, P1, then k2 from cable needle.
BC Slip next st to cable needle and hold in back, k2, then P1 from cable needle.

For chart readers, simply work three knit stitches at each edge of the scarf and between the cable panels.


Cast on 39 sts

Row 1: *K3, P1, Sl1 wyib, P1, K2, P2, C4B, P2, Sl1 wyib, P1*; repeat from * to *; end K3.

Row 2:  *K4, P1, K2, P4, K2, P2, K1, P1, K1*; repeat from * to *; end K3.

Row 3:  *K3, P1, Sl1 wyib, P1, FC, BC, FC, P1, Sl1 wyib, P1*; repeat from * to *; end K3.

Row 4:  *K4, P1, K1, P2, K2, P4, K2, P1, K1*; repeat from * to *; end K3.

Row 5:  *K3, P1, Sl1 wyib, P2, C4F, P2, K2, P1, Sl1 wyib, P1*; repeat from * to *; end K3.

Row 6:  *K4, P1, K1, P2, K2, P4, K2, P1, K1*; repeat from * to *; end K3.

Row 7:  *K3, P1, Sl1 wyib,P1, BC, FC, BC, P1, Sl1 wyib, P1*; repeat from * to *, ens K3.

Row 8:  *K4, P1, K2, P4, K2, P2, K1, P1, K1*; repeat from * to *; end K3.

Repeat rows 1-8 for desired length.  Fringe or trim as desired.

The width of the scarf can be easily adapted by adding or subtracting garter stitches or, if much greater width is desired, another cable panel + 3 garter stitches could be added.

Okay, I thought I’d do a status report :) Just to, you know, keep myself honest here.  I don’t have any pictures as things don’t look appreciably different than they did the last time you saw them.

Flower Garden shawl

It’s coming along slowly.  I get a pattern repeat in every couple of days.  Still like the yarn, still like the pattern but I had an idea about fiddling with the shape of the shawl a bit.  I’m thinking about splitting the width (when it’s sufficiently wide) and working rectangularly (?) down the front(s).  The result would be something similar to Joan Hamer’s “Big Snuggly” (at least that’s what I’d be going for) except not quite as all-encompassing.  I love her idea though, and think about making a winter wrap that way.  I’m not much of a coat person; I always find them to be constricting.  Something like the Snuggly would provide warmth and freedom of movement - what a concept!

Bella sweater

This, sadly, is somewhat stalled.  Not fatally, I don’t think, but for the time being, anyway.  I recently replaced my old notebook with a new one where I don’t have to search for a little blank white space in order to write something down.  Despite the fact that I went through the old one to make sure that any important information had been re-recorded elsewhere, I somehow forgot about my Bella notes and out they went :( I believe I can reconstruct things.  It would, at most, mean starting a aleeve over from scratch.  Not really a big deal.  But there was also an error in the pattern that I couldn’t get resolved and I have to figure that out too before I can go forward.

Dublin Bay Socks

I cast on for the second sock and started working the ribbing.  Got about an inch done before I began dropping stitches right, left and center.  Scrubbed and tossed :( I had this problem with the first sock too.  I don’t normally go around littering the place with dropped stitches and I can’t quite figure out why the socks should be particularly prone to this problem.  Do you have any thoughts about it?  Does it have to do with little needles and serious tension?  Maybe I am that much of a klutz when working on a small scale :)

The Sea Blues Poncho

This gets worked on often on Mondays at my SNB as it’s just knitting around and around, increasing every other row.  In other words, I can talk and not have to worry too much about making a serious mistake.  The diameter is quite “generous” now and it takes quite a while to make any progress, but I’m still plugging along on it and it’s looking good.  I have been thinking it might have been a mistake to work the body straight down from the cowl in one piece, though.  I’m worrying that there won’t be enough support at the neckline for things to hang properly or wear well and am trying to figure out what to do about that.  But, I won’t need to address the issue for a while yet :)

Crystal Palace Kimono Jacket

This is, I’m afraid, indefinitely stalled.  I can’t see myself frogging it - at least not yet as I still have some hope of finishing it.  But I’m not holding my breath :)

I think that’s about it.  Lately my mind has been playing with the possibility of hats.  I have made the Sideways Short-row cap on two needles but wasn’t really satisfied with it.  Now that I have a little (very little) dexterity with DPNs, I keep thinking I should try a more standard pattern and see how that works out.  That said, I’m really no more a hat person than I am a coat person.  But I keep thinking that I just need to find the right hat.  Chery’s mention of Anna Zilboorg’s “Fine and Fanciful Hats” a little while ago and Ryan’s production of the beautiful “Coronet” have served only to add fuel to this fire :) Not that I consider that a bad thing!

A friend is taking me to lunch today for my birthday - I hit my demi-centennial on Tuesday :) We’re going to raiding a Chinese buffet and I’m looking forward to both the food and the company.

And you know what?  50 ain’t so bad.  I’m still glad to be here!  And I’m glad and grateful that you’re all here too.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone :)