Mikknit

Chris blew out several pairs of socks at the end of this winter, and since darning socks is extremely low on my list of priorities I knit a new pair for him. I’m hoping to make him a few more pairs before wool sock season rolls around again, we’ll see how well I do with that.

Big brown socks!

I talked him into a patterned pair this time instead of the plain ribbing or stockinette that we’ve usually gone with. Cables always seem to make a project go faster for me! I landed on Filey (Ravelry link) by Ingleside Belle. It’s a nicely-written pattern, as far as I noticed, but I mostly just used the pattern charts and knit the heels and toes in my usual manner. Here’s my project link - it goes to Ravelry but it should be publicly viewable!

I used KnitPicks Essential Sock Yarn (now called Stroll) in Auburn. I like the yarn well enough - it’s certainly well worth the price I paid for it! The colors are lovely and I love the slight variegation from the kettle dyeing.

I’ve got another pair of socks on the needles now - one of the ones from Sensational Knitted Socks that’s intended for self-striping yarns. I’ve also got to start on another baby hat - my friends keep getting pregnant and I can’t not knit for a new baby! This mama requested the Sweet Baby Cap that I knit for another friend, so I get to knit another one - I’m so excited to knit it again! It’s a fun, easy pattern and so, so adorable. I’ve got to toss through my stash for the perfect sock yarn for it, though. There’s got to be something appropriate in there.

I enjoyed participating in the 2010 Knitting Olympics but didn’t manage to finish my project in time to get a gold medal. I had some good reasons for not finishing - Chris, Grace, and I took a trip to San Francisco, my friend had her baby (I was her doula), and I went to a couple great concerts. I finished up on Monday, so I really wasn’t *that* far behind. I probably would have finished it on time if I hadn’t needed to rip back a lot of work twice. Ah well. The challenge was fun and I’d definitely do it again!

Slinky Ribs from Custom Knits, knit in Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, color 52 (Ravelry link)

Overall, the pattern was great and I only needed to make a couple modifications. #1: I raised the neckline a couple inches - that below-the-boobs thing only looks good on certain people and I’m not one of them! #2: Added short row bust shaping. The front of the sweater was going to be significantly shorter than the back without short rows, which is not at all the look I was going for! I followed the directions in Big Girl Knits and am really happy with how well they worked out! It takes some thinking to make sense of the directions and it definitely pays to check your math (twice, if you’re like me), but it’s well worth the time and effort.

Also, I love Silky Wool! It was great to work with, even with the occasional piece of vegetation in the yarn, and it feels great on! It’s really nice for next-to-the-skin wear and it feels like I should be able to wear this well into warmer weather. Probably not in the height of a MN summer, but definitely through spring and early summer. I’ve got 10 skeins of another color in my stash and I’m looking for the perfect pattern for it - any suggestions?

On the needles now: Baby Chalice Blanket in Plymouth Encore color 7129. It’s zipping along - I started it a week ago and I’m already about halfway done. The pattern’s not hard to follow but it’s not so mindless I lose interest. A good combination, generally. And the size 8 needles I’m using seem huge compared to the tiny needles I usually use, so progress is fast.

I’m all ready for the Knitting Olympics, are you?

Pattern: Slinky Ribs (Ravelry link)
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, color 52 (which is NOT anywhere near a green despite what their color card says!), purchased at Borealis Yarns several years ago, probably in 2005 or 2006.
Needle: US 4 KnitPicks Options

I’m all ready to cast on during the opening ceremonies tonight!

It wasn’t all that bad. I crocheted the steeks and ended up dropping my steek stitch down, then cutting the ladders - somehow that was less scary than cutting the intact stitches. Don’t ask me why, it just was. Sewing the sleeves into the armholes was pretty simple. Who knows if I did it “right”, but it looks good and is secure so in the end I did it right enough.

He loves it. He’s worn it every day since I finished it - if he wears it today that’ll be six days in a row. This from a guy who insisted he wouldn’t wear a sweater for years. I have no idea what finally convinced him, but I’m glad he changed his mind!

Not a fake smile!

We’re talking about his next sweater now. Cobblestone is a front-runner. We’re talking about Beaverslide Dry Goods yarn for it, but the price is giving me a little pause. It’s so lovely, though! We’ll have to see.

While that’s under consideration, I’m working on a couple other things. First of all, a sock (naturally). The pattern is Sunday Swing from the Summer ‘09 Knitty. Yarn is some Berroco Sox Metallic that my aunt brought me. The yarn feels a bit scratchy due to the metallic thread, but it feels just fine on my feet. The pattern’s easy enough but I have to pay attention to it (just a bit, though) so it’s not so boring I want to cry. Good thing, too - boring never gets finished.

Still life with sock and chart

What’s that in the picture, you ask? A bike chart, of course. I’m working out a mitten pattern with that bike on it. The chart knits up just fine - I had to make a couple modifications to the chart as I test-knit it, but I’m pretty sure that happens just about every time you convert something from a drawing into knitting. Here’s how it knit up:

Not bad for the first shot, right?

I already know I need to use a bigger needle - this doesn’t stretch nearly enough for my liking. I need to revisit the handlebars a bit, too. There’s a white stitch in there that just isn’t showing up as much as I’d like it to, and there are a couple spots that need fiddling with, but ultimately it’s pretty good! I’m planning to make the pattern (or just the chart) available once it’s finished, so watch this space.

I’m off to work on my sock and stalk the First Avenue site for Spoon tickets.

So I finished the sleeves for Chris’s sweater:

And now I have to do something scary:

I’m using Eunny Jang’s extremely well-written tutorial for my crocheted steek, it worked on my swatch, but it’s still scary to think about taking a pair of scissors to this big piece of knitting. If I fuck it up… well, it’s not going to be pretty - there’s a lot of emotional crap knit into this sweater (to put it mildly). My sanity may not *quite* be riding on my success here, but it might not be off the mark to guess that there could be tears and a fire if there is failure.

So it’s been just over a year since I last posted. There’s been a lot going on around here, between my shoulder getting screwed up and making it painful to knit for much of 2009, the depression that was exacerbated by the removal of my favorite creative activity, and life in general. The depression lifted in November and life is beautiful again - I’m so thankful for everything in my life. It really feels like I got a new chance at everything and it’s amazing.

But enough about my crap, I know you come here (or at least you used to) for the knitting content. My Ravelry page is mostly up-to-date with project information, if not pictures of all the projects, so you can look there if you’re curious what I made last year. This year I’m hoping to share my projects with you here as well as on Ravelry, starting with this one:

Berlin Muster socks (Ravelry link)

I loved knitting this pattern! It wasn’t a chart I could memorize or just work out from reading my work, but that wasn’t too much of a hardship. The pattern is only 60 stitches around, which would normally be far too small for my wide feet. I took the designer’s suggestion and added a couple stitches to each purl panel and knit all the way down past the heel before trying it on - the sock could have fit my foot and my hand! The lace pattern is extremely stretchy, so most people should have absolutely no problem with it as written. My only modifications were to cast on 68 stitches and to knit the ribbing a bit longer than the pattern specified. I then decreased the extra 8 stitches on the first row after the ribbing and continued as written. It’s great, although they were a tad snug in the instep when I put them on this morning. They’ve stretched a bit so it’s all good now!

The title of this post is not only in reference to the resurrection of the blog but also to the resurrection of a project. I’m going back to the project that screwed up my shoulder in the first place, but this time around I’m going to be more careful with it. It’s the Aran Sweater from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac (Ravelry link). I knit the entire body of the sweater in the month of January and the twisted stitch pattern caused some pretty nasty tendinitis in my right shoulder. It’s been in time-out for nearly a year and I’m finally feeling up to working on it again. The sleeves aren’t nearly as cable- and twisted stitch-heavy as the body, so I’m pretty confident I can knit them without destroying my shoulder again.

Did I mention that my husband’s a tall beast? Wow, what a project.

Here’s a close-up of the pattern.

I’m knitting pretty much according to the pattern, but I had to add a number of purl stitches to each panel. I have no idea how many, now, but it was a few inches’ worth. I’m so excited to finish this but the steeking is intimidating - I’ve only done that once and it was a Lopi sweater, which is a much different creature in my mind. I’ll probably take EZ’s suggestion and have a nice glass of wine before I cut, just to steady my nerves. Hopefully I’ll get to that this month!

I’ll make no promises, but I do plan to blog more frequently this year. Not that I can really beat last year’s inactivity…

May 2009 bring you lots of yarny goodness and warm woolies!

I think I’m going to be back here for a while. With one kid in school full-time and the other one in preschool a few days a week, I feel like I’m finally getting my brain back to some semblance of functionality. I’m not knitting any faster, though. Can’t quite figure that out, except for the fact that I’ve been trying to work harder on cleaning and cooking for my family. Not always succeeding with that, but when you get a huge box of vegetables every couple of weeks it’s harder to justify ordering in or going out for dinner. It’s still a chore to convince the kids to eat this stuff, though - they’re not huge fans of winter squash, potatoes, carrots, or the other root vegetables that we’re overstocked with. I suppose I need to just start cooking what I like and laying in a store of PB&J and quesadilla supplies.

On to the knitting!

Garter Rib sock in Panda Cotton, Kiwi-Mango colorway

I’ve been knitting socks for a long time now, close to 8 years. In all that time, I’ve focused pretty much exclusively on wool and other animal fibers for my socks. The one pair of socks I’d knit from a cotton blend (cotton-wool, I believe) didn’t turn out great and I figured it was best to just leave the cotton socks to people in warmer climates.

In this time, I’ve been knitting socks for lots of the people I love - my husband, my mom, my sister, one of my aunts. Another aunt has made comments implying envy over everyone else’s handknit socks (we tend to compare socks at family gatherings - there are two prolific knitters in the family), but she has a genuine wool allergy and had assumed that she was out of luck due to wool content in all of the cotton sock yarns. I stumbled upon Panda Cotton at Borealis and decided to give it a try. My impression from knitting with the stuff is that it’s very nice - the bamboo makes for a lovely soft fabric, it’s not so elastic that I need to worry about my tension, and it feels nice on my hands. I have no idea how it will wear, but I can see myself knitting with it in the future. It gets a little bit splitty in the casting-on, but if you don’t have to frog your work and redo the cast-on a couple times it’s not quite so bad!

It would appear that I’ve used up all of my sitting-at-the-computer time this morning, so off I go.

7 months have passed since I posted here. What can I say - life got busy and I felt like I had nothing of note to say. I still don’t have much to say, but I just wanted to pop in and remind folks to vote. This election is hugely important, and we all need to get out there and make our voices heard.

I am incredibly excited and also scared to death of what’s going to happen - will my candidate win? Will the other guy win? Where will the new president lead our country - out of Iraq? Into happier economic times? Away from global warming? I know what the projections are saying, and it’s thrilling to read, but having gotten my hopes dashed in the last election I’m holding back a little bit, just in case.

I have about a block to walk to my polling place. Hopefully the wait will be reasonable and I’ll be able to get in a decent bike ride afterwards, to ride off some of the stress of anticipation. I’ll be bringing my knitting with me, of course. I’m never without that - I even haul it with me on my bike rides, knowing full well that there’s never time or inclination to knit during rest stops. As for what I’ll be working on, it’ll probably be socks - always a good waiting-in-line project. Or else a hat - this *is* Minnesota after all and while it’s been in the 70s for the last few days, snow is projected in just a few more days. Hats are always good, especially when the kids have grown out of last year’s hats.

And off I ramble. Good luck everyone, be patient with your neighbors in line and with the election workers. We all want the same thing in the end, we just have different views about the route to take there.

Yes, I’ve actually knit something with my handspun yarn! Don’t all fall over from the shock, okay? I had this skein of sparkly red yarn sitting in the closet for about a year, and due to the motivation provided by a knitting stash game (we get points for the amount of yarn knit up over the course of the game, and there are prizes!) I pulled it out and knit it up. Plus there’s the whole Minnesota winter thing - I really did need a scarf.

I thought Argosy would be a neat pattern to try out, and it was - very fun. I knit the scarf up over the course of 2 days or so, so it was a great quick knit. I think I might’ve liked the scarf wider than it turned out, but since I wasn’t sure exactly how much yarn I had I just knit the pattern as written. I ended up running out of yarn about 3 rows from the end, so that last little square is a little less than square, but hey - I used up the entire skein and didn’t even have to trim the ends after they were woven in! Now *that* is efficiency.

Wool, mohair, and sparkly stuff, knit up on a US 5 needle

The picture that convinced me of the immediate need for a haircut - it’s much better now!

Thanks to the lovely (ha!) weather we’re having, I’ve gotten lots of use out of the scarf. It is nice and warm, certainly, but the mohair is scratchier than I’d prefer. I did put some conditioner in the rinse water when I washed it, but that didn’t completely take care of it. Any suggestions?

Oh, and only 5 more edging repeats on the blanket! I hope to have an FO report tomorrow, but of course the kids’ behavior will determine whether I get it done today.