I did something yesterday that I almost never do any more - I bought a knitting magazine :)  Interweave Knits Spring 2009.  I’d like to tell you it’s because it had several patterns I was interested in - and it’s reasonably true that there are at least three things in there I’d like to make.  That’s my basic magazine rule; there has to be at least two patterns (and preferably three) that make my pulse pound before I’ll buy a magazine.

But really, I bought it for the Fountain Pen Shawl.  Not only is it a beautiful and not-too-difficult piece of work, I happen to love fountain pens - always have.

I’ve had 4 hanks of Kntipicks Gloss just waiting for the right project to sing for them and I have been thinking about a lace weight shawl for a long time now.  I’ve even started a couple at different times but eventually I lost interest in them or they otherwise told me they weren’t interested :)  So the yarn was there and any number of appropriate needles - all I needed was some inspiration.  And I got it when I saw the photos at the above link.

I even dragged out my Harmony wood needles for this.  My only complaint ever about them was that they are dark and a little difficult to use with dark yarn.  I thought I’d give it a shot though, since I imagined combining this yarn (wool/silk) with my lovely, slick, Options needles would be a recipe for dancing, screaming, cursing disaster :)  And you know what?  If I turn the light on over my shoulder, it isn’t too bad after all!

I very much like the way this looks, though the scale is smaller than I had imagined.  On the other hand, I have plenty of yarn and can do a couple more pattern repeats if I’m not satisfied with the length when I get to what the pattern suggests.  It is simple enough not to be scary (I’m easily threatened by lace) but, I hope, not so simple that I get bored with it.

In fact there’s only one thing about it that I don’t like - nupps.  I know, I know - time honored technique and tradition and all that.  Trying to purl a bunch of yarn-overs together is not my idea of a good time.  So I’m using beads instead.  While they’re not terribly apparent in the photos, they actually look very spiffy!

Just an aside…  I’m liking the Gloss lace weight but I have the feeling that it’s a bit heavier than usual for lace weight.  Not that I have any objection to that - heavens no!  I’m really very grateful because my fumbly fingers would have a tough time with something really fine.  I’m sure cobweb would just make me cry :)

I think I’m going to have to order some of this in the undyed form to play with in the dye pot!

It snowed again today - heavy and wet.  I know it won’t last long because the temperatures aren’t going to even get down as far as freezing for the rest of the week.  But goddamn, I’m tired of this - whinewhinewhine…

Heh :)

Clearly, Goldie knows what to do on a day like this!

Me, I knit on the second tote in an admittedly lazy fashion - a few rounds here, a little TV, another couple of rounds, pet the cat, etc…

Cocoa spent the day chewing up her cardboard toys between naps.  I guess there’s something about a snowy day that makes for a sleepy feeling all around :)

The weather critters are promising us some sun for tomorrow.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed: I so want to see the sun.  And I’m absolutely desperate to get the windows open again!  When the apartment is shut up for winter, some tiny (but loud!) part of me always feels like it is suffocating.  I know spring is coming - there’s a whole fringe of green coming up on the side of my dad’s house, the temperatures are going up if slowly and reluctantly and hell, we’re into daylight savings time.  An artificial marker it may be, but a marker it is never the less.

So why is it the closer spring gets, the more impatient I am for it to arrive?

I made a discovery last week - kind of stumbled in by the back door :)

I knit English style.  When I make a stitch, I let go of the right needle to manually bring the yarn around the left needle.  I know about Continental style knitting where the yarn is tensioned in the left hand and sort of scooped through the stitch by the right needle (picking, as opposed to throwing).  I have tried it many times over the years because it’s supposed to be so much faster.  It may be because I’m just not dexterous enough or because I’m left-handed but I knit right-handed.  In any case, my fingers just don’t seem to be able to move the right way.

I didn’t waste any time worrying about it, just continued knitting and throwing as I always did.  Then, a couple of years ago, I learned about knitting backwards.  Really, this is a way of purling back from the front so that you don’t have to turn the work, nor shift your hands nor let go of the yarn.  It makes things easier in several cases.  For plain stockinette work, it’s a dream - things go quite a bit faster,  For things like bobbles and entrelac, it’s a dream come true.  I always did like bobbles but making them was a pain in the butt.  Now, it’s a pleasant little diversion from the regular row (or round) of knitting.  And I never even tried entrelac (barely knew what it was) before I learned about knitting backwards - and you all know how I feel about entrelac :)

My only regret about the knitting backwards thing was that while it covered purl stitches, nowhere was there any suggestion about how to do knit stitches.  I did, eventually, figure out a way that worked, but it’s awkward and still involves bringing the yarn from the back to the front of the work in order to make the stitch.  For some reason that I couldn’t quite pin down, this seems to be a much clumsier maneuver when working back from the front than when working forward from the front.

A few weeks ago, a knitter who designs and knits beautiful shawls and whom I knew to habitually employ the knitting backwards technique (see the Yahoo group Mmario Kknits) mentioned a way of making a knit stitch (while knitting backwards) that didn’t require bringing the yarn to the front of the work.  It was compared to the Norwegian purl technique (video tutorials here and here), a method of purling from the front that didn’t require moving the yarn to the front of the work.  I had investigated this technique a while back, but it’s aimed at Continental knitters.  There’s really no way for an English style thrower to accomplish it.  So I promptly forgot about it and moved on.

And yet, the idea of being able to knit as well as purl from the back of the fabric without having to shove the yarn back and forth kind of haunted me.  I went and looked at the Norwegian purl videos again.  And then I observed (closely this time!) where my hands and yarn were when I was knitting backwards - yarn tensioned in the right hand and being picked, not thrown.  And it dawned on me finally, when I knit backwards, I’m knitting Continental style!  Well, whaddya know!

So I went back to review the Norwegian purl videos.  I kept trying to figure out how I could adapt this to create a knit stitch when one was working backwards.  Periodically, when I was working on the blanket, I would try one thing or another as various ideas occurred to me and last week, I finally nailed it :)

I will try to put a tutorial together for those few who might be interested in this sort of thing.  I realize this is kind of esoteric, but it’s pretty cool all the same :)  English going forwards and Continental going backwards!

Seed stitch and ribbing will never be the same - and this is going change the way I knit forever!

“The best thing…is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.

There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you.”

The Once and Future King
T. H. White

...a coupla things…

I spent the afternoon browsing the web, researching yarn dyeing and I kept running into two things, generally offered as assertions, that didn’t make much sense to me.

1.  After you have dissolved your dye in the dyebath, if the color is too strong just add more water.

On the surface, this seems to make sense because if you add more water to your dyebath, your dyebath does appear lighter in color, less intense.  However, assuming that both the quantities of dye and fiber to be dyed remain the same, the amount of water is irrelevant.  Well, you do have to have enough so that your fiber isn’t crowded.  But if you use, say, half an ounce of dye to dye 100 grams of wool, it doesn’t matter whether you do this with one gallon of water or 100 gallons - the resulting color will be the same in both cases.

2.  How do I set my yarn?

This one really confused me because with some small exceptions, I have never had any problems with the dye being fast and not crocking or bleeding.  It seems to me that there are three reasons why this might happen.

1.  Not enough acid
2.  Not enough heat - either too low a temperature, or not applied long enough.
3.  Too much dye.

That said, I consistently have problems with blues and greens in terms of exhausting the dye bath.  Since I usually use Easter Egg dye, my tentative conclusion is that these colors somehow contain more dye than other colors.  The thing is, once the yarn has been washed, rinsed and dried, the color is stable and will not crock upon subsequent washings.

For the last couple of months, I have been responding to comments privately.  I had been responding in the comments section of the blog but, after reading some folks’ thoughts on this, decided to switch over lest someone get the impression I was just doing it to up the comment count.

I have decided this is bullsquat :)

The reason I always answered in comments is because I was trying to foster a conversation.  It didn’t always happen, but sometimes a comment would foster a response which then might, in turn, provoke someone else to share an opinion or an experience.  And I finally realized that if I continue to respond privately in e-mail, that hoped-for dialogue will never happen again.

So I am going back to responding to comments in comments :)

Hope your Friday wasn’t too stressful and that your weekend (daylight savings time, remember!) is fun.

I finished the Ilene bag (see previous post for pattern links) and am very happy with it.  The size is perfect I think - big enough for larger items but not so big that it’s immovable when full.  I knit the handle to about 14” which works well for either hand or over-the-shoulder carrying and the whole feels sturdy and solid.

The author warns that the stitch pattern for the bag’s body biases and offers a means to counter that tendency.  I didn’t bother with it because I don’t really care.  So long as that bias doesn’t affect the bag’s ability to carry things I can’t see why that would matter.  Besides - it kinda looks cool.  The stitch pattern is very simple:

Round 1:  *YO, K2tog*
Round 2:  Knit

For the next bag, I might try this instead - just to see what happens…

Round 1 *YO, K2tog*
Round 2:  Knit
Round 3:  *YO, SSK*
Round 4:  Knit

...or on Round 3, I might try doing *SSK, YO* to see how that works.  Actually, I confess that I’ll probably try out the options before I ever start the next bag because I’m terminally curious :)

I also got a start on the third panel for the blanket.

My mindless, TV knitting :)  The yarn, as previously, is Classic Elite La Gran mohair but the solid is one I dyed some time ago.  Originally it was a pinkish color that looked dirty to me (it wasn’t, it just struck my eye that way) so I decided it was a good candidate for the dye pot.  This color, Indicolite, was the result of a great deal too much liquid, blue food coloring.  Given the gorgeous shade though, I’m not sure it really was too much after all.  As Myria is fond of saying, “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!”

We have babies again.  We had been sure that the degus were both female but they presented us with another litter in February so that’s clearly not the case :)  There were 10 pups this time.  Honest to god, I have no idea where she was hiding them all before they were born.  She did appear to get somewhat more zaftig, but we never suspected the horde (For the Horde!) she was actually carrying!

They’re about three weeks old now and will be going to the pet store in another 5 or six weeks.  Cute little fellas…  As strongly as I feel about not breeding animals (this is an apartment for heaven’s sake - not a farm!), even I have to admit that babies - any kind of babies - have a unique charm and are lots of fun to watch.

Jade is in the coveted sunspot in the living room.  The sun shines in that window all day long and both cats like it for their afternoon naps.  Unfortunately, she vacated it shortly after this picture was taken and Goldie promptly took advantage of the vacancy.  She won’t get it back now as it would take a bulldozer and an act of God to get him out of there.

Maybe my lap will do for a while :)

We had planned on doing our weekly shopping tomorrow (Monday).  Normally we do it on Tuesday when we’re going to be out for my chemotherapy anyway, but this particular Tuesday is going to be a looooong day at the oncology clinic so we figured to get the shopping out of the way before hand.  Except that we’re supposed to be getting (in our area) about 15” of snow…

So we did the shopping this morning and I guess we’ll probably be staying in tomorrow :)

I have finished the first two panels (and started the third) of the mohair blanket.  Panel 1:

...and Panel 2:

After calculating the amount each panel is going to take (they’re about 9” wide and about 65” long) I have come to the tentative conclusion that I may not have enough yarn to make a good sized blanket.  I’d like it to be about 54”-56” wide.  That will require six panels and I don’t think I have quite enough yarn for that.  Eh, if I have to buy a few balls to finish things up, I can do that.  I must say this has so been an exceedingly easy and pleasant project so far - stockinette with garter stitch borders and the occasional row or two of eyelets.  What could be simpler?  You can probably tell I’m having fun with this :)

I finished the last hat.  I wanted to do something a little different with the top, so I played with making the bobbles out of a different color than the body of the hat.  I imagine there’s a way I could have stranded this but I was afraid of the length of the floats it would leave.  So I worked each bobble with a separate length of yarn.  It’s totally do-able but maybe only once in a while because it is kind of a pain in the butt.

Finally, there has been legislation proposed, here in Massachusetts, for a surcharge on plastic grocery bags.  Without getting into the eco-arguments for or against, my first reaction is: You mean I’m now going to have to pay for these cheap-jack bags that fall apart half the time and spill my stuff (and sometimes break…) across the parking lot or down the apartment building stairs?  Not in this lifetime!  I don’t honestly think the legislation going to pass this time, but I do think it will pass eventually.  So I started this:

This is Hannah Ingalls’ Ilene bag.  There is also an Ilene Bag available on Ravelry.

I’m liking the pattern quite a bit so far and the only change to it I have made is to convert to worsted weight yarn and larger needles.  I want to keep to about the size indicated in the pattern - at least for this first bag - but I didn’t have ay sport weight yarn nor enough of any DK weight, which might have been an acceptable substitute.  Well, the fiber isn’t cotton either, it’s acrylic - which will be strong and sturdy as well as washing and drying very easily.  Making this will give me an idea of acceptable size range.  Do I want it taller?  Wider?  Maybe sectioned inside?

I think I’m going to be making quite a few of these things!