I spent a lot of time working on the poncho yesterday.  I figure about three hours all together and you know what?  It doesn’t look like I did hardly anything.  I mean, I’m counting the rows (so I’ll know when to throw the dice again to change colors) and last night, around 11-ish, I decide that’s probably enough for today.  I look over at my tally sheet, all ready to be impressed with how much I’ve accomplished and what do I see?  11 rows.  That’s all the progress I made for three hours work.  I’ve got another 11 rows to go in this color.  At this rate, I might have the poncho done for next winter.  Well, at least it’s simple work and the colors are nice…

Piss. Moan.  Whine. Mmblegrumblebitch.....

Think I can bluff with just a pair of fronts?

The second front for the kimono is complete and I think I’m going to focus on getting this completed before I worry any more about anything else.  I want to bring this with me in March and that looks do-able, even at my usual sedate working pace - if I just concentrate.  I should be able to get the back cast on tonight.  That piece will take a while but once it’s done, there’ll just be the sleeves and the front/neck band.

I was leafing through the new Knit ‘n Style yesterday in the store, and guess what one of their patterns was?  The Kimono Sweater - direct from Crystal Palace.  I don’t buy this particular magazine unless there’s a pattern I can’t live without (unlike Interweave Knits or Knitter’s which I’ll buy regardless).  Why would I buy this issue when the only interesting pattern (to me) is one I can get for free?  Why would they publish this pattern when it’s freely offered on the web?  Curious…

Prototype for the Sasquatch fingerless glove

On Friday, in response to my pondering the fingerless gloves, Pam asked: “Would it need some ribbing though, to stop it being a bit loose?”

Turns out she’s absolutely right.  I swatched this Sunday morning, substituting a cable/bobble pattern I like better than the one in the pattern.  Cast on, worked an inch or so of ribbing, did a couple of pattern repeats, a bit more ribbing and cast off.  My concern had been that the mitts would be too tight.  I needn’t have worried.  This thing is loose - even around the widest part of my rather substantial arm.  Loose, I tell you - like a caftan.  Like the front tooth of a six-year-old.  Like a two-bit floozy.  This thing is loose!

I still like the basic pattern though so, amending Pam’s suggestion somewhat, I think I will add cables to take up the slack and act as ribbing down the arm.  I probably won’t get back to this until the weekend (see above mentioned resolve re:Kimono) but it will be fun to play with cable patterns in my head until then.

Noro virgin no more!

Thanks to the enabling of Steph over at And She Knits Too!, I ordered 6 balls of this Silk Garden.  I can’t wait for this to arrive.  I’m thinking a feather and Fan type stole maybe.  We’ll have to see what happens when it gets here.  We’ve all had the experience of obtaining a yarn for a specific project only to have the yarn utterly refuse to cooperate until you figure out what it wants to be.  So, the stole is what I have in mind, but the Silk Garden may have other plans :)

Keeps life interesting!

The only problem with working on a couple of big projects is that they get boring.  I get bored with working on them and I’m sure you get bored hearing about them.  Oh they’re still beautiful, I’m still looking forward to wearing them and I have no regrets about yarn or pattern or color or anything like that.  It’s just that they’re big.  Big. BIG! Of course, part of the reason for that is that I’m big.  I’ll admit to being fluffier than I should be, but even at my ideal weight, I’m still a big girl. 

When I was in high school (and I wasn’t at all fluffy then), the company from which we were purchasing our class rings handed out a set of plastic “sizer” rings to each of us.  The idea was that we could play with them for a week and find out what size ring suited us best.  There was a set for the girls and a larger set for the boys.  I had to use the boys set and I had to order a boys’ style ring.  It was humiliating.  (My hands are identical to my father’s - in shape, configuration and size.  When he asked me for mittens last winter, I was able to make him a perfectly fitting pair by using the pattern I had adapted for my own hands).

The knitted gloves I mentioned in last Friday’s post became my weekend project and I am happy to report that they are indeed fast and easy to make.  I also admit that I did a bit of farting around with materials because of the above mentioned large hands.

The pattern calls for 4 oz of worsted weight yarn to be worked on size 8 US needles.  I used a strand of Woolease and a strand of Imagine mohair blend yarn worked together as I wanted to increase the size slightly and I wanted the gloves to be thick.  I did stick to the size 8 needles though.  The 4 oz. stipulation is overkill but probably a useful precaution.  I started with a single full skein of each of the yarns and had leftovers of both.

37 stitches on needle, 5 rows worked.

The gloves are worked sideways with each finger being cast on when you come to it and bound off when you finish with it.  In the above picture, the little finger is complete.  The next step is to bind off 10 stitches.  When you’ve done that, the pattern instructs you to place the remaining stitch back on to the left needle.  Unfortunately, at least for me, this resulted in a sizeable gap between this stitch and the next one.

10 stitches bound off, 15 stitches cast on and worked back to the bind-off point.  Gaposis!

The pattern then has you cast on the appropriate number of stitches for the next finger.  The picture shows the cast on stitches having been worked back to the bind-off point.  I found that a slip-knit-psso followed by knitting into the front and back of the following stitch worked pretty well to close the gap while maintaining the correct number of stitches.  I did try K2tog and SSK (followed by the increase, of course) but neither of them provided the right...er...closure.  The slip-knit-psso gave the best results.

Halfway home.

At this point it’s beginning to resemble something you might recognize as a glove but it’s only one side.  The second side has to be completed.

The whole nine yards - note the double width thumb.

This is what it looks like when you’re finished.  Funny looking, isn’t it?  Now you just fold it in half along the thumb and sew up the side seams and fingers.  Mattress stitch is a bit fiddly because you’re sewing cast-on and bound-off edges together (except for the tips of the fingers).  But once you get the hang of it, it goes smoothly and looks terrific.

The thumb is worked over 12 rows and that’s just a tiny bit snugger than I’d like, though not uncomfortable.  If I make these again (and I’m already thinking about funky ways to vary the appearance) I’ll give the thumb another couple of rows for a skosh more room.

All sewn up.

I grant you, these still look a bit strange, but they fit surprisingly well and feel pretty good!

Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up…

Now that I have the final items completed I can take measurements and use those in combination with a gauge swatch to vary the size of the yarn and the needles.  You could also put those bind-off stitches on holders and graft the fingers if you wanted to avoid the appearance of a seam.  I’m also thinking about making a pair that’s longer on the arm and changes colors for each finger.  I think that would be lots of fun :)

But I’m easily amused :)

It’s snowing like hell here today.  It had just begun around 6:30 AM or so and we seem to have been acquiring an inch per hour since then - the heaviest snow we’ve had so far this season.

This fellow is gnawing at the suet sitting in a little grate on the side of the feeder.  While the suet is primarily there for the birds (particularly the woodpeckers, since they love it) I haven’t the heart to chase him away.  It’s too nasty a day; let the little bugger have whatever he can get.

I’m declaring another vacation day from the two big projects. I’ve been following Lisa’s glove-fest over at blogdogblog and admiring her beautiful work.  As I’m still in the negotiation stage with DPNs (especially the minute sizes) I’m not likely to undertake this kind of meticulous work just yet.  Someday maybe...but in the interim, there are these:

The Sideways Gloves look like a fun project.  They’re all garter stitch - though I imagine that can be played with - and I think they’d work up reasonably quickly.  I don’t think I’d make them in brown though :( Maybe red, or turquoise or violent violet :)

Those would be for outdoors wear.  But my hands get awfully cold indoors as well and keeping them wrapped around a mug of hot tea or coffee doesn’t let me get much knitting or blogging done :) So the other possibility is this:

This pair of Fingerless Gloves looks like it might fit the bill admirably.  I might not make them quite as long as the pattern does and likely I’ll mess with the cable as well (what’s life, if you can’t mess with cables?) but they also look like a fun and reasonably quick project.  Since the DPNs used for these are large enough to be seen with the naked eye, I should be able to manage them!

::rant mode::

I was leafing through the winter “Knitter’s” last night and noticed one of the little girl models (3 or 4 years old) had pierced ears.  About a year ago, Myria and I were walking past the jewelry area of a local department store when, suddenly there was an ear-piercing shriek followed by heart-rending sobbing.  Both of us about jumped out of our skin.  Looking around, we saw the jewelry clerk with her “gun” to the head of a 2 year old, about to pierce the other ear.

I’m not against pierced ears - I’ve got several holes in my own lobes.  But I was old enough, when the procedure was performed, to know what I was doing and that it was going to hurt.  For a young child, this can’t come as anything but a frightening and very unpleasant surprise.

Why not wait until the kids are old enough to make an informed decision of their own?

::rant mode off::

Anyway, this is shaping up to be a stay-indoors-and-relax kind of day and I’m going to take advantage of it.  Put on the kettle, dig out another pair of needles and play!

Stay warm everyone and have a wonderful weekend!

Sadly, I think the geraniums have about had it.  They never really recovered from the move a year ago.  They used to sit in the kitchen windows of our old apartment and bloomed off and an all year long.  Lovely thing, to have flowers growing in your home all the time.  But we don’t have the space in the new apartment that we used to have in the old.  The two geranium plants are sitting in a living room window now.  They are not happy there but there isn’t anywhere else to put them.  And, while the cats left them alone in the old apartment (I have no idea why; they were easily accessible) here, the cats seem to have gotten the idea that the geraniums are snack food.

I’m nearly done with the second front piece of the kimono sweater - just a couple of inches more.

I ran across a question about using hair dye (the permanent type, I imagine) on wool a week or so ago.  No real answer was offered, but I was intrigued by the idea.  The palette would be somewhat limited but that’s not necessarily a deal-breaker.  I wonder if it would damage the yarn though.  Hair dye is a lot more expensive than Kool-aid but it might be an option worth pursuing at some point.  Of course I’m thinking about the front/neck band for the sweater for which I have plenty of yarn in the same color as the sweater but which might be a tad more interesting if it were done in different, assorted shades.

Got underway with the next color stripe on the poncho yesterday.  I think it looks wonderful :) However, the ever increasing diameter of the thing (2” every other row) has made me think about something I hadn’t considered before.  Have any of you ever seen a size 10 circular needle that was 150” long?  Me neither… Gonna have to figure that out at some point because the ebonies are only going to suffice for another couple of days or so…







This is a closer look at the increase section.  It’s not real obvious on the circular needle, but points are forming nicely which is just what I wanted.  I seriously doubt that I’ll fringe this thing, but four big tassels at the points might look nice or, I wonder what I could do with braids?







I was looking through the winter InKnitters last night, and came back to this.  It’s just the kind of drapey, non-binding thing I prefer to wear when I have to wear an outer garment of some kind - something I generally resist. There’s enough interest in the patterns used so that it might be a fun project at some point.  I even like the red - wouldn’t that be snazzy?  I think I’ll take a pass on the gaucho hat though…

I’m off to visit my dad today and to replenish my almost empty coffee stash.  Can’t live without coffee :)

P.S.  Having recently finished up a jar of store brand orange marmalade, I opened a name brand this morning to slather on my English muffins.  Swoon!! You mean this stuff is supposed to taste this good?  Ahhhhh!!!

Random Thoughts

This morning, I don’t have a thought in my head except that I am enjoying the sunshine after yesterday’s grey sloppiness.  I saw sparrows and a nuthatch at the feeders this morning and that also made me happy.  My coffee tastes exceptionally good and am looking forward to working some more on the kimono sweater (nearly finished the second front) and the poncho (for which I rolled the dice last night - 32 rows of “Waterfall” coming up!)

Order is a nice thing to have - in moderation.  Knowing where the measuring spoons are when I need them is good and it’s nice that the supermarket always puts the tomato soup in the same place every week.

Chaos can also be good.  I could keep my stash in rigid order, synthetics here, blends here, cottons here, wools there, all ordered by weight and color.  But then I wouldn’t get the heady explosion of colors when I open the cabinet doors that I do now.  I have a general idea of where to find what I’m looking for.  Even if I didn’t, pulling things out to search for something I know is there is a journey of reacquaintence with things I might have forgotten about.

I have started many journals over the last 30 years and they all fall off after about 6 months.  I know how useful it can be to have that kind of reference to the person you were at a particular point in time, but something in me rebels at making that kind of regular notation.  The connections I make with my former selves tends to be more lateral than straight-forward. 

When I find a book (or a story, or movie or piece of music or art) that I love, I tend to go back to it again and again.  These are my touchstones and if my reactions to them and appreciation of them changes, it’s because I have changed.

Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” overture was the piece of music that explained to me that Classical music could be interesting, entertaining and even invigorating.  It is an old friend now and the last time I bought a CD player, I brought this CD with me to test the sound of the machine.

Likewise, Orion was one of the first constellations I was able to identify.  When I first moved out of my parent’s house in New England, 2000 miles away to the midwest, I watched it from the window on the bus and didn’t quite feel as alone as I had thought I would.  A friend was coming with me, you see.  And it has become a habit to look for it wherever in the world I happen to be - my silent, glittering travelling companion.

Of course there are books.  I have been a compulsive reader since my mother taught me how.  “The Folk of the Air” by Peter S. Beagle, “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein, and “The Keys of the Kingdom” by A. J. Cronin and “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee are all things I return to periodically.  I’m not sure I can even quantify why they are so important to me but my library has never been without a copy of them.

And I spend a fair amount of time, as I’m sure we all do in our own ways, trying to unscrew the inscrutable.  I don’t pursue answers to the question of life, the universe and everything out of desperation but because it pleases me to do so.  Also, because I can’t not do it :)

My mind seems to have a knack for pattern recognition and I couldn’t turn it off if I wanted to.  I suspect that’s at least part of the reason for the compulsive reading and acquiring of new information and abilities.  You never know what kinds of things are going to connect up in your mind and the broader your information base is, the more likely those connections are to occur.  Not that any of this takes place on anything like a conscious level, mind you…

Light and dark, order and chaos...it so often depends on where you’re standing.  I find myself, more and more often these days, trying to acquire the middle ground so I can see some of each and there are occasional side trips into one or the other as well.

I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

I’ve got kind of a busy day on my hands so this isn’t going to be much of a post :)

I did get the next ball attached to the kimono sweater and another inch or so worked.  I’ll be bringing that with me today to work on in the quiet spots.  I also got another few inches done on the poncho and succeeded in transferring it to the second, longer circular.  It wasn’t difficult, but I hadn’t done that before and you know how it is when you have to do something for the first time.  Turns out it was easy - thank goodness!

Since I got the two additional colors, I’ve been thinking seriously about random stripes.  Ryan, Are you listening?  So how do I come up with a method that’s truly random.  I’ve got dice I can toss to establish a number of rows - that might work, because there are 6 of the little buggers.  There would be at least 6 rows worked in any given color (determining which color is another exercise entirely) or there could be as many as 36 rows worked.  This is an appealing idea!

We’re due for more sloppy weather today - bleah.  I guess I can’t complain too heavily.  We haven’t had much in the way of snow here this year; it’s the temperatures that have been killer.  I know other parts of the country have been getting buried in the white stuff so I’m counting my blessings, believe me.  I guess I can put up with a little slop after all :)

Myria continues to improve; she’s gone back to her blogging which is definitely a good sign :) She has some beautiful photos over there that you might want to have a look at; she is a wonderful photgrapher!

Hope you all have a warm, pleasant and creative day!

Saturday afternoon, my dad and I had lunch in the restaurant at the Ashworth Hotel on Hampton Beach.  I can’t tell you anything about the hotel, as I’ve never stayed there, but the restaurant is wonderful.  The food is superb (try the Chicken and Shrimp Alfredo - heavenly!) and the windows look right out on the sea, not 20 yards away.

Saturday, the sea was the exact color of the poncho-in-progress. 

On the way home, we wound up stopping to pick up a couple of things and I wandered over to the craft section, remembering the thought about using other colors in the poncho, to see what was available.  I had imagined a deep pink or maybe magenta and possibly a purple or violet - contrasting colors, but reasonably harmonious :) Well, there wasn’t anything in the way of either pinks or violets - in fact, the yarn section was a bit bare overall. 

But there were a couple of colors that caught my eye and I stood and stared at them for a while.  One was the color of the sea on a gray, overcast day (Windsor) and the other the color of the Caribbean sea on a sunny day (Waterfall).  And I thought of the way the ocean had looked while we were eating…

Left: Modern
Middle: Windsor
Right: Waterfall

The poncho now has a name - The Sea Blues :)

When I got home, I attached the Windsor and worked in 2 x 2 ribbing for about 2.5” and then began the increases.  I’ve been working the cowl around on 96 stitches, so I placed markers every 24 stitches and used two markers side-by-side to indicate the beginning of the round.  Increase in the stitch before and the stitch after the marker every other round.

It quickly became apparent to me that I was going to have a problem when I put my work down, remembering whether i was on an increase row or a knit-straight-through row.  After thinking about it for a while, I came up with a plan (echoes in my head of Kevin Bacon in the original ”Tremors” movie: “I gotta goddamn plan!").  Before putting the work down, work to a marker (any marker).  If it’s an increase row, work the increase just past the marker - two stitches on the needle.  If it’s a knit-straight-through row, work to the marker and then work another four stitches.  Now, when I pick up my knitting, I look to see how many stitches are worked past the last marker and that tells me which row I’m working.

Now all I have to do is remember...LOL!  Some days my forgettery is a lot better than my memory so we’ll just have to wait and see how it all works out.

As you can see, I’m getting a lot of stitches on this needle and am going to have to transfer to a longer one pretty soon.  I’ve got my ebonies out and ready.  All I have to do is carefully (don’t want to get the wooden needles wet) soak the connecting cord in hot water to straighten it out as it’s rather curly at the moment :)

This morning, I got to thinking about that whole container/bowl/jar thing again.  I don’t know where the thought came from because I was trying to read (a novel that has squat to do with knitting), but it wouldn’t go away.  Down went the book.  Out came the needles and scrap yarn.

Cast on 10 stitches, knit 20 rows, pick up around the edges and work the resulting 40 stitches around for a while :) Bind off and edge as desired.  This is shallow because I was just playing with the method.  The votive is there to give you an idea of the size - or lack of it :) Please don’t burn anything in a knitted container!

Thanks to the good offices of a steam humidifier and the soothing inclinations of chamomile tea, Myria has finally been able to get some constructive rest and is doing better.  As she never gets sick, this episode has been most trying for her.  Things seem to be looking up - at last!

I didn’t work on the sweater at all this weekend (hanging head) but I’m planning on getting on with it this week.  I should be able to finish the front in an afternoon and get the back started before long.  I will, as usual, keep you posted :)