Mikknit

I’ll have a new pair of socks to wear tomorrow - the Gentleman Socks are finally done! I don’t know what it was, if it was just my winter malaise or the twisted stitches or what, but these socks seemed to take *forever*. Probably no more than 3 weeks, but long enough. I’ll have a picture tomorrow, as it’s too dark for a proper picture right now.

What’s next? Well, another pair of socks is pretty likely. I’ve got my bin of sock yarn sitting in a place where I look at it every time I go past the sewing room, and the bright orange Silja is calling my name. It’ll undoubtedly be another pair out of Sensational Knitted Socks, for me of course. If nothing else, I *definitely* deserve more handknit socks.

I *think* tomorrow will be the night to get back to work on the Peace Fleece sweater. It’ll be nice and quiet here and I’ll be in charge of the remote, so I can just turn it off if I need silence to concentrate on math and frogging. Plus, I’m meeting a friend for coffee on Wednesday, so I’ll have someone to commiserate with.

In the meantime, though, I’ll drag out the dishcloth in progress if I need to do a few rows. Nothing like quick progress on something so useful to make one feel accomplished.

Thank you all for your kind and supportive words. It feels so weird to not have my grandma around anymore, even when we knew it was coming and had prepared ourselves for that. Here is her obituary, if anyone’s interested in reading. She was an incredible person, as was my grandpa (his obituary). It’s hard to imagine how they packed so much into their lives, but they did.

And now for the knitting content:

I can finally reveal the mystery project I teased you with a couple weeks ago - it was the Mittens from Halland from Folk Mittens, by Marcia Lewandowski. They were a gift for my mom and she was totally surprised, so I’m guessing that maybe she didn’t happen to come across my blog post showing them.

I used Cascade 220 and size 3 bamboo DPNs, which was a lovely combination. I was a bit worried about knitting worsted weight yarn on such small needles, but there wasn’t much trouble with splitting yarn (a problem I tend to have with bamboo) and the fabric wasn’t insanely stiff. Just perfect, as a matter of fact!

I found the little bit of snow around my parents’ house for this picture - it’s ridiculous that we had more snow in the Twin Cities than they did up in Ashland!

I knit her initials into the cuff of one, she thought that was pretty cool!

Since I finished the mittens, I’ve been a little aimless. I finished DH’s maroon & gold U of MN Gophers socks on Christmas Eve and cast on for the first knee-high out of the grey handspun. That’s still on the needles - I’m cutting it close trying to use as much of the yarn as possible and first I started the ribbing too soon, then too late. I may go back and undo some of the calf increases since the fabric is stretchier than I’d anticipated, or I may go all the way back to the ankle and decrease some there to help it stay up better. My ankle has the same circumference as the widest part of my foot, but what’s snug on my foot is loose on my ankle. I don’t understand that one bit!

I’ve also been working on my Peace Fleece sweater and finding out that Peace Fleece holds up really well through repeated frogging. I’ve been learning a lot about how to fit a sweater to my body, which is great, but I’ve been re-knitting the same yarn over and over again. First I did the front and back down to the underarms and that came down to the bottom of my bra band, a little too low. Went back and took out an inch or so before the armsceye increases and redid the increases, still way too long but I didn’t try it on before doing the short-row shaping for the boobage. Screwed up the math on that part pretty badly on the first attempt, didn’t center my short rows properly on the second attempt, and got it right on the third attempt. I promptly tried it on and took a look in the mirror and oh boy did it look bad. After much consideration and consultation of other patterns, I ripped back to where the front and back were each about 6″ narrower than the desired width and increased those stitches at the underarm. Voila, perfect! Barbara Walker tells you to increase until your work is 1-2″ narrower than the desired width at the underarm, and that just makes the armhole way too sloping for what I want. Now I’ve got about 2.5″ to knit straight until I start the bust shaping (which I thankfully don’t have to recalculate), then after hours of short rowing (again) I’ll get to do some decreasing for some waist shaping. Or maybe I’ll do a sleeve, just to get it out of the way and to break things up a bit - I don’t think I want to do both sleeves one right after the other, just for the tedium.

I’ve been wanting to break this up with a little sock knitting but I don’t want to work on the knee high handspun sock. I *did* get a ridiculous amount of Trekking XXL for Christmas (love you, mom and sister!) as well as the gorgeous yarn included in the last installment of the Scout’s Indie Swag club; plus there’s my slightly obscene sock yarn stash. I may break out the Schaeffer Anne that’s been marinating since 2004 - it’s got the sort of eye-searing colors I love and God knows I need more handknit socks! I suppose we’ll see what happens. I want to at least get to the point of starting the bust shaping before I get sidetracked, but we’ll see. I do need a portable project that doesn’t involve counting.

But first, the sweater. I’m hoping that I’ll have it to a point where I can show you a modeled picture soon. But only if you promise not to laugh at me, okay?

I haven’t had much knitting of note lately, hence the lack of bloggage. I’ve mostly been working on the maroon and gold socks for Chris, and when you’ve already seen part of one maroon and gold sock there’s no need to show you the second one at roughly the same stage. I’m partway down the foot of sock #2, so I should have it finished during holiday travel time.

I’ve been feeling a little directionless in my knitting lately, since I only had a couple gifts to knit and otherwise it was just socks. I’ve been wanting sweaters more lately but of course I only have one cheapo store-bought sweater and one overly bulky Lopi sweater to my name. There are three stalled-out sweaters in various stages of completion in my stash - the orange Peace Fleece one, the teal Silky Wool one, and the red Nature Wool one. The Peace Fleece one is the most recently abandoned sweater and therefore was in the upper strata of the stash (oh yes, my stash has strata. Scary!) making it easy to find. I slipped it off the needle and onto waste yarn to try it on - I had a suspicion it’d be a bit big, and I was correct. It’d have comfortably fit at the 6 month point of my pregnancies, which is not the look I was going for. It turns out that as big as my gut is, it’s much smaller than my chest, which is the measurement I was basing the sweater on. Um, duh. I may be fat, but that doesn’t preclude garment shaping - there’s nothing that looks more schlumpy than a fat woman wearing a tent. Ripped it out and now I’m starting with the Seamless Set-In Sleeve sweater from Knitting From the Top, by Barbara Walker. I’ve scrapped her directions for the provisional cast-on since it doesn’t turn out right when I do it, instead going with the more failsafe crochet cast-on. I have high hopes for this sweater! I’m going to be more careful to get correct measurements and pay more attention to things this time.

To make up for the lack of interesting knitting progress, I do have some spinning to show you:

First off, some fiber I got from the lovely PippiKneeSocks. I think this was her Nightfall of Diamonds fiber - 70% wool, 20% nylon tinkle, 10% sari silk (or was it 20% sari silk and 10% tinkle?). This stuff spun like a DREAM! The whole time I was spinning the singles I was sitting here thinking “This stuff is so pretty, I want to lick it!” - I think I’ve been listening to Lime & Violet too much lately. I don’t know what I’m going to do with this yarn yet, right now all I’ve been doing is carrying it around the house with me and petting it.

2-ply, about 180 yards, 2.95 ounces

Next, the sample fiber that Pippi tucked into the box with the sparkly stuff. I spun this up as finely as I could and was THAT fun! I definitely need to do more of that. It came up at about 166 yards/oz, which looks like about laceweight or so. Too bad there’s only about 50 yards - I’m at a loss as to what to do with it.

2-ply, about 50 yards, 0.3 ounces

Yarn with a dime for scale. As you can see, I have some work to do on my spinning consistency.

Finally, I’ve got the wool/mohair mill end fiber that Kerry convinced me to buy at Detta’s sale last month. This spun up a bit more thickly than I’d intended, more like sportweight yarn instead of fingering, but still within the range of appropriate weights for socks. If you can believe it, I fit all of this on ONE bobbin. Yes, it was about 10 yards from leaping off the bobbin and wrapping itself around the post that the bobbin spins on, but it fit!

2-ply, about 480 yards, 6.2 ounces

And for kicks, a bonus picture:

Mmm, pile-o-yarn!

I doubt I’ll be back to update before Christmas, so let me wish you all a happy holiday! I hope Santa leaves something lovely and wooly in your stocking!

I’m not doing a ton of Christmas knitting this year, but I have chosen to do a couple things, just because it’s much easier for me to think of something to knit for someone than to think of something to buy for them. Plus, I’ve gotten into the habit of giving my mom and my sister something handmade every year for Christmas, so I guess maybe it’s becoming more of a tradition. Plus, I can’t just make socks for myself all the time - I need to knit for someone else from time to time.

So here is one of my Christmas knitting projects:

Oblique Openwork pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks, using Silja in color 393

Silja is one of my favorite sock yarns - I’ve got two pair of socks I knit for myself out of it between 3-5 years ago and both are holding up wonderfully - no pilling, fading, or wearing through. I had to darn one pair, but it was because one ply of the yarn got snagged on a nail and broke. A little duplicate stitch and it’s as good as new.

Also, my package for the Knitters’ Coffee Swap arrived the other day! I am so glad I joined this swap - I not only got an awesome package of yarn & coffee, but I got to have a blast choosing things to send to my swap partner. Here’s what she sent me:

Two skeins of handspun yarn from a local spinner, a skein of handpainted sock yarn from RubySapphire Yarns, a nice big tote bag, some stitch markers that she made, some 100% Guilt-Free chocolate, and of course some delicious locally-roasted coffee (not shown because I’ve already started in on it).

Thank you so much, Sunne! And a big thank you to Knittymama for organizing the swap!

I’ll leave you with some teaser photos of my next Christmas knitting project, which is also my project for the Stranded Colorwork Knitalong. I can’t show the whole thing because I think the recipient may read the blog, but I can show a little bit of it:

As I said in a comment on a recent post of Vicky’s: Stranded knitting - it’s better than crack!

As I promised last Wednesday, here are the pictures of Arlo’s sweater (finally). It is SO difficult to get a good picture of this kid - he never stops moving!

Here’s the sweater unmodeled

(please excuse the funky sleeve positioning - I neglected to photograph this *before* he wore it and of course he got food on it)

“Reach for the sky!” - the only way I could get him to hold still

I’m pretty happy with the sweater, though I think I made the neckband too wide. I’ll have to undo the bind-off and rip it back a couple rows, maybe. He seems to like it, though it’s hard to tell since he’d really just rather be naked.

I’ve been craving some stranded knitting lately, so when my aunt offered to buy some yarn for me on a recent visit to Borealis Yarns, I grabbed a couple skeins of Cascade 220 to make a hat for Arlo, who was desperately in need of a nice warm hat. I pulled out my (very battered) copy of Hats On! by Charlene Schurch and cast on for the Danish Earflap Hat. I believe I started this on Wednesday night and I finished it Saturday evening. A nice quick little project, good to have when Chris was out of town all week for work. I had some difficulty with the earflaps, mostly because I apparently can’t count, read patterns, or do short rows. No clue why it was so difficult, but I think it took three tries before I got it right. After that, the rest of it went off without a hitch. Arlo won’t keep it on, of course, but that’s why it’s got ties! I figure he’ll figure out how to untie it ASAP, so I’m going to have to dig out one of the cord stoppers that I have kicking around the sewing room. That ought to keep it in place. Maybe.

Excuse the white blur - Mimi desperately wanted to be in the picture and I had to snap this quickly before she jumped up on the stool.

I enjoyed this project so much that I’m already planning my next stranded knitting project - a pair of mittens from Folk Mittens by Marcia Lewandowski. I’ve got red and black yarn for the Ullred Mittens and a plan for the matching hat in Hats On! in the future. I’m hoping to get the mittens done in time to use them as a Christmas gift, so I’ve got to finish up the sock I’m working on soon. I also want to make a stranded hat for Grace, though I’m not sure which one out of the book I want to do.

Oh hey, I promised a contest to celebrate my blogiversary, didn’t I? I’m going to make that a separate post so it’s easier to keep track of (for me, at least).

I finished my first project on Suzie the other day. I found a bag of fiber on top of the fridge, who knows how long it’d been there, but it seemed like it’d be a good candidate for a first project on a new wheel. Mill end fiber, probably wool/mohair from Brown Sheep (but we can’t say for certain, as even the vendor didn’t recognize it!), purchased at Detta’s Spindle a few years ago, probably in 2001 or 2002. The color shown in these pictures really doesn’t represent the true color, which is sort of a dead-grass color (grayish green?) with darker green shot through it. I’m going to continue to play with it, try to get a good representation of the color.

Both skeins in natural light, pretty but the color’s not quite right

Close-up, again in natural light. Still sucky color, but I love the detail. The yarn is under-spun, you can see here.

Indoors, with a flash. This is probably the best color representation I’ve got. Not thrilled.

I started another project practically as soon as this was wound off the bobbin, of course. I mentioned the *other* thing Kerry enabled me into at Detta’s sale - a bag of superwash wool/mohair fiber, white with shots of black in it. It’s asking to be sock yarn, a request I simply cannot deny. It’s spinning up SO nicely, but of course I didn’t take a picture of it. Hopefully I’ll get another chance to spin tonight after the kids are in bed and I can take a picture of my progress then. My wheel is making a clicking sound which was not remedied by having a certain screw tightened, which I was led to believe would work. I may have to take a closer listen and see if I can pinpoint where the noise is coming from - it’s not as easy with this wheel as it was with the Louet. Of course, I spun on the Louet exclusively for nearly 5 years and know its quirks as well as I know my own. This one, I’m still learning. I have to remember that even though I like to think I’m a good spinner and am mechanically inclined enough to troubleshoot things, I’m not intimately familiar with this wheel quite yet. Therefore, I need to cut myself some slack and not get frustrated if I can’t figure it out and need to seek help.

There’s been some knitting going on too, of course - while I was waiting on the return of the little bit of yarn I’d given Kerry, I whipped up a sweater for Arlo out of some Reynolds Signature (color 118) that Grace and I picked up at Three Kittens (their website seems to have gone kablooey). I don’t normally care to work with something with so high a percentage of acrylic, but they were having a huge sale and this stuff was 75% off - I got six balls (three of this color, three of color 108) for just over $8, so not so expensive that I can’t just donate it if I don’t like it. I think it took all of four days to knit the sweater, including having to rip the body back to the armpits once, having to undo the ribbing and lengthen the sweater, and then having to rip out the first sleeve and redo it because I’d miscalculated my decreases. *I* think it’s cute, though I don’t love the colors. Arlo doesn’t seem to want to wear it, but I think it may be because in the first day or two of knitting it I tried it on him several times and then took it right off again - he’s done trying it on, I think. It’s already been through the washer and dryer, though I see that it’s apparently supposed to be dried flat. Whoops oh well. Looks just fine and doesn’t seem to have shrunk or anything. Modelled shot to come soon, provided I can get the boy to sit/stand still for a few minutes.

I’ve got a first blogiversary project cooking (technically my first blogiversary was 9/13, but the first anniversary on THIS site is coming up on 12/6) - stay tuned for details!

Sewing!

My friend’s baby shower was yesterday and since I didn’t have enough lead time on the shower to knit something, I carved out some time in the sewing room and came up with this:

I hate to say this, but it’s causing a little bit of babylust.

I used the New Conceptions Baby Essentials pattern in size 0-3 months. I LOVE this pattern - it goes together so quickly and it’s very cute! The stripe fabric is a cotton/poly (I think) blend and the black is hemp/cotton jersey. I love the hemp jersey, it’s such a comfortable thing to wear!

Also made this:

Warm and snuggly for a Minnesota winter

Ducky flannel on one side and snuggly soft velour on the other. Very snuggly indeed.

And now, I hear fussing over the baby monitor. My break is over.

Since we’re celebrating Socktoberfest and I’ve been trying to get a post written all week (and failing, obviously!), I’ll go ahead and share my sock history for you, such as it is.

• When did you start making socks? Did you teach yourself or were you taught by a friend or relative?

I made my first pair of socks in 2001, I believe - either late winter or spring. I remember this only because I worked at AT&T at the time and remember grousing about it the entire time - I believe my exact words were “It feels like I’m knitting with string and toothpicks”. I taught myself from a pattern purchased at Creative Fibers

• What was your first pair? How have they “held up” over time?

My first pair was knit in Regia 4-ply, color 5218. They made a few trips through the dryer, so they’re a bit on the short side now, but it’s just as well as I didn’t knit them with negative ease - they were too loose anyhow. They rarely get worn due to poor fit, so they’ve held up just fine

• What would you have done differently?

I would’ve knit them a little smaller so they fit better! I also would’ve done more ribbing - the cuffs were awfully short.

• What yarns have you particularly enjoyed?

For knitting, I love Cherry Tree Hill. For wearing, probably Socka, Lorna’s Laces, Silja… the list goes on.

• Do you like to crochet your socks? or knit them on DPNs, 2 circulars, or using the Magic Loop method?

I’ve never crocheted socks and I probably won’t - I don’t do much crochet these days as it really hurts my hand. I prefer the two-circulars method over anything else. I’ve done DPNs and Magic Loop, but neither is as fast and easy for me as two circulars.

• Which kind of heel do you prefer? (flap? or short-row?)

I prefer short-row heels for my feet - they seem to fit much better than flap heels. However, I’ve figured out that in order to make flap heels work for me, I just have to make them shorter. Duh.

• How many pairs have you made?

I’ve lost count, but it’s got to be somewhere around 40 by now. I could try to figure it out but that’s asking for a big headache. Last time I counted was around a year ago, maybe a bit longer, and I was at 30 pair then. At the rate I go, 40 is a safe estimate.

I did manage to add a pair of socks to my tally this week - I finished my first pair of kids’ socks! I knit them for Grace and she loves them. Once I can catch her (she’s outside playing with some of the kids who live in my mom’s building), I’ll have to get a picture of her wearing them.

This means that at lunchtime today, the week is half over. Right? This has already been a long week for no good reason, so I’m not looking forward to 3 more days until the weekend. I’ve got a cold, so that’s part of the problem, and our bathroom is torn apart so I can’t take a shower (ugh)… so I guess there are a couple good reasons why the week is seeming so long.

But at least I can still loaf on the couch and knit, even if I don’t have the energy to do anything else!

I’ve been working on socks, since I signed up for Socktoberfest. In thinking about what I wanted to do for Socktoberfest - did I want to just continue my general sock-knitting habits, did I want to make Christmas gift socks, socks for me, or did I want to have a goal of knitting X number of socks? - I decided that I’m going to knit socks for the kids. I’ve got a ton of leftover sock yarn and it’s in amounts sufficient to make little-kid socks, for sure. But in order to do that, I want to have a clean slate at the beginning of October - I want to finish the socks I’m knitting for myself. Made some good progress on that front in the last couple days - I bound of sock #1 on Monday night and promptly started sock #2. I worked on that a bit yesterday, and I should be able to get to the heel today if I escape to the coffee shop while my mother-in-law is here to play with the kids. We’ll see if that happens or if I hide in the sewing room instead and finish up some of the stuff cluttering my desk.

Here are the socks as they are now:

Lana Grossa Meilenweit Fun - color 83, I think (I will edit this if I track down the ball band) on size 0 circulars, 72 stitches. I made those pants, too, by the way.

I also finished Grace’s sweater and it turned out well, but I don’t care for the buttonholes - they distort the shape of the buttonhole band in an unattractive way. No way am I going to redo them, though! I started this on Friday, Sept 8 and finished it on Sunday, Sept 24. I did have to start over a couple times, since I originally was doing it all in one piece but discarded that idea, then I cast on too few stitches for the size I wanted (I was sort of basing this on the child’s size 4 cardigan sweater in The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns) - turns out it’d have been just fine with fewer stitches, it’s quite big on her.

But cute though!

And without the distracting cuteness:

Guess who chose the ladybug buttons? Heh.

And now off to retrieve that sweater from my Mom’s car…

I feel like a huge crowd of guests has shown up at my door and I’m still sitting around in my pajamas at 6PM. Well, I *am* still sitting around in my pajamas, but that’s beside the point.

So if you’ve come over from Stephanie’s blog looking for actual recent knitting content, I’ll apologize. There’s not been a lot of notable knitting here lately, or at least nothing really interesting enough to blog about.

I did finish the knitting on a cardigan for Grace, at least:

Cardigan sweater pattern from Knitter’s Handy Book, Plymouth Galway color 605

This took me about 10-12 days to knit, with a couple start-overs of the back. I have yet to seam it (duh), and it’ll need a neckband and buttonbands as well. And buttons. I loathe sewing on buttons. But I should be able to finish it tonight or tomorrow, depending on how readily the kids go to bed tonight.

After I finished knitting Grace’s sweater last night, I cast on for a sweater for me. Yes, I’m actually going to take the plunge and knit something for myself other than socks! I’m using Peace Fleece in Sakhalin Salmon, and I love it so far. The yarn doesn’t have a ton of give to it and it’s a little “rustic”, but it’s pretty nice to work with anyhow. Maybe it’s the whole philosophy of Peace Fleece that’s making me so happy, who knows.

Not yet to the amorphous red-orange blob stage

I’ve got the ribbing plus one round of the body done so far. 2816 stitches down, about 928374100 to go. But at least I’m knitting it in the round, all in one piece - that way there’ll be no seams to sew at the end. But sadly, I’m knitting it in the round, all in one piece, which means that I’ll be carrying around an awful lot of sweater with me if I choose to take this out of the house. At least I’ll have plenty of opportunity to wear it this winter. Brr.