Category: Knitting

Project Details:

Creamy Alpaca Warm Neck Thing

Pattern: Lacy Baktus
Needles: Vintage faux tortoise shell straights, 4.00 mm
Yarn: Classic Elite Inca Alpaca, cream, 3 skeins. From Deep Stash, Bin #1
For: Well, me. But John put it around his neck and thinks that it would be just the thing for roaming around the streets of Boston this week. Though he refused to let me take a modeling photo, so I don’t know. I think it’s still technically mine.
What I Learned:
1: It’s great to knit out of stash!
2: I really hate doing posts on my iPad! Really. It sucks.
3: Conferences are terrific for finishing things. I was the only one that was knitting, in a room of a couple hundred people. No wonder they were all dozing off.

Next up: the BROWN alpaca from the same bin. Stay tuned to see what it will be!

That’s my new knitting campaign title. I have no lofty goals for knitting through those boxes of yarn I posted about last week, except that I want to end next year 2014 with fewer storage bins than I started with. I also have no illusions that I’ll make it through a year without buying yarn. (a YEAR? Snort. I might manage a month.)

But my digging through the boxes and bins of yarn this past week has revealed that I have lots of lovely projects-to-be in there, and I aim to knit some of them this coming year.

I promised a new project now that the Pretty Thing is finished. Here you go. This is from Box #1 from a couple of posts ago.

That is the Inca Alpaca, well on its way to becoming a Lacy Baktus scarf. I’ve made two of these previously, and they are very versatile to wear. It’s also a nice way to brainlessly use up a whack of yarn. You start at one end, and increase until half your yarn is gone, then decrease till you’re out of yarn. This is where the handy dandy drug dealer’s scale comes in.

I weighed all three skeins before I started knitting, and when I was partly done with the second skein, started weighing again, stopping the increases just short of half the yarn. Clever, eh? I had to reknit about half of the first one of these that I knit, since I just guessed about how much yarn I had left.

I’ve also been working on this.

I may even be coming to terms with knitting those sleeves top down on two circulars. It won’t ever be my first choice of how to knit them, though. I’m hoping to finish this in the next couple of weeks. Then we’ll see what else I pull out of my magic bins to knit!

Yesterday while I was sitting around here feeling sorry for myself (cue up the coughing, sneezing, wheezing, sniveling), I decided to finish some long overdue projects from the mending basket.

First up are buttons!

The buttons on this sweater have literally been hanging by threads for awhile, enough so that I haven’t been able to wear it. That’s just silly, so I got out needle and thread and shored them all up. Ready for winter!

Next, an ancient Rogue, with yarns coming loose at the neck.

I know I have another ball of this yarn around here someplace. I’ll be damned if I could find it though. While I was rummaging around in the billion baskets and boxes of crap, I found this.

My swatch! After some unraveling to get one continuous thread I was ready to go.

And fixed.

That reminds me, why haven’t I knit another one of these?? This was a terrific pattern that was a lot of fun to knit. It’s not like I don’t have yarn around here.

Last but not least, a couple of pairs of socks. They’ve been in the mending pile for awhile, both with very thin nearly gone heels.

I actually got as far as getting out the darning thingee and threading a needle before I came to my senses. All four heels were shot, with tiny little stitches all needing duplicate stitch to fix them. I could probably knit a half of a new sock before I finish this project.

Those are going to the trash. I’m thrifty but not crazy.

R.I.P. The red sock yarn is Opal, finished in 2006, so they’ve done their duty. The other pair is Wollmeise, from 2007. I wear my socks a lot, these have both been worn and washed hundreds of times.

Will is not impressed.

Two posts in one month! Don’t anybody die of shock. For some inexplicable reason, I’ve had this whole week off, one of the side benefits of my very weird and erratic schedule. It’s a good thing too. I worked Friday and felt fine. Saturday I woke up with 6 days off ahead of me, lots of plans of what I was going to do with them, and a yucky case of the creeping crud.

I’ve managed to get a little knitting done, a bit of reorganizing in my office, and a lot of reading. And coughing. And sniveling. Sheesh I make a terrible patient.

Enough of that. On with the Project Update. With all that reorganizing, I think I actually found all the knitting projects on the needles. This is an embarrassingly boring list, as some of the projects have been on it for years. Here goes.

Sweaters first:

My Green Jeans Sweater, pattern is Corduroy, from A Fine Fleece. I am nearly done with one sleeve. According to Ravelry, I started this in May. That would be May 2012. I will finish this, yes I will.

John’s Old Friend sweater. Peace Fleece, plain drop shoulder, no shaping. Though I modified the neckline a bit. You can’t really tell from that, but the big piece is the back, I changed the neck shaping and did short row shaping for the shoulders. The original has a lower neckline that seems silly in a hefty wool sweater. It’s supposed to be warm, not leave your neck exposed. This one’s more recent, I started this in August of THIS year.

Then, the shawls. Both of these are dinosaurs. At least they are pretty dinosaurs.

Froot Loops Morning Glory, from Anne Hanson. First half done, second half well on the way. This isn’t difficult, though I do need to pay attention to the lace pattern. Vintage 2009, people. It’s about time I finished this.

Evenstar. Click on that. It really is very pretty. I just need to freaking finish it, but that beaded border is a bazillion repeats of the same really boring 20 rows, with the added fun of BEADS so I have to pay attention. Vintage 2010.

Then the little things. Sock, of course. I don’t think I ever did do a proper Finished Project post on the last sock. Lorna’s Laces yarn, Live Long and Prosper. Finished in October on vacation. Oh here they are.

Same old pattern, 72 stitch sock, size 2mm needles. These were knit on Pony Pearl double points.

Here are the new ones, started the same day those were finished.

They really are exactly that color. The yarn is Flying Sock, 100% Blue Face Leicester, color is Deep Ocean. Size 2.0 needles, same pattern as always, this time with a picot top. These are close enough to BLUE that I wanted them a bit girly so they didn’t disappear out of my sock drawer. You know how John is about BLUE. Those are Knitter’s Pride Karbonz needles (2mm), by the way. This is the first time I’ve used them, and I really like them. I have a set of the Blackthorn needles, which are similar except these have the shiny wickedly sharp tips.

Then for the semi-official UFOs.

This is the Pretty Thing cowl, in a deep reddish brown mink yarn. I need to pull this out of hibernation and finish it now that it’s cold outside. I might actually wear it. I have no idea why this became a UFO, since the yarn is divinely soft. The 16 inch short circular needles might be part of it. I really hate them. This is at least from this past year. I bought the yarn at Madrona in February of this year.

Last but not least:

Dog mittens! I know why I haven’t finished these. These were started for John, but they are way too small for him. They might even be too small for me. I suppose I should finish them and make them somebody’s Christmas present. Or maybe they would block a bit bigger for me.

That’s it. I’m not counting the big box of a billion tiny balls of sock yarn that at one time was going to be a Beekeeper’s Quilt. That is one of those “what the hell was I thinking” projects. I haven’t given up on it entirely, but I’m not taking it out to take a photo of it either. Those nearly forgotten projects take every opportunity to taunt you if you let them.

What about you? How many projects do you all have on the needles?

Oh dear, not again.  Where were we? Oh, right, Canada. I’m not going to “wrap up” the whole trip for you, but we had a grand time. I’ll hit a few highlights. We saw an awful lot of eastern Canada thanks to the whirlwind trip that my husband planned. After a couple of fine days in Halifax (including a YARN shop–imagine that!), we went on to Prince Edward Island. No, we didn’t do the “Anne of Green Gables” tour. We did however discover that they signpost yarn shops on the highways there. And distilleries. That’s my kind of country.

As we were whizzing down the road on our way to the ferry, John suddenly swerved sharply to the left down a secondary road. He had seen a sign for “Yarn Shop” with an arrow pointing left. I have apparently trained him well. It was the Belfast Mini Mills, which was down a tiny gravel road. It’s really a sheep and goat farm, but they make yarn there and have a lovely shop. They also manufacture yarn processing equipment for other mills, all in a couple of tiny farm buildings. One of the owners was nice enough to give us a tour of the operation.

And yes I bought some yarn. How could I not, when everybody was so lovely?

After PEI, we spent most of the rest of the trip on Cape Breton Island. The annual Celtic Colours music festival started while we were there, and we caught a couple of days of that before heading back to the Halifax area and our last few nights before heading home.

I did buy some yarn, but it was all local stuff that I can’t get elsewhere. I’ve totally given up on the “no more yarn buying” idea, but I am trying to limit it to unusual fibers and yarn I can’t get at home. In Halifax, I bought some lovely Shetland fingering and laceweight from sheep raised in Nova Scotia. Oh, I suppose you want to see photos.

That lovely wool is from the Last Resort Farm, in Nova Scotia. The brown stuff is fingering weight, and that gorgeous grey is lace weight. If I wasn’t already sold on this after the first squish, this got me.

It makes me happy to know the names of the sheep!

I also bought some pretty sparkly sock (or scarf perhaps) yarn in Halifax. The shop that all this came from is the Loop Craft Cafe.

That yarn is hand dyed by Yvonne from Yvieknits. She’s from Ottawa. Click to see the sparkles!

Here’s what I got from Belfast Mini Mills. The red is sock yarn, the orchid colored stuff is silk lace.

What I did NOT get at the Belfast Mini Mills was the huge skein of laceweight qiviut. I was sorely tempted, but the credit card was already groaning a bit at all this loot.

Last but not least, one lonely skein of yarn from Baddeck, where we stayed on Cape Breton Island. The little yarn shop there was lovely, but mostly had pretty standard stuff. I searched and searched for something I couldn’t find elsewhere and came up with this.

I know, I know. Fleece Artist Sea Silk is available everywhere. Not this skein. The color is “Baadeck Sunset”, dyed especially for the shop*. Click on that if you don’t believe me.

All I can say, I’m glad there is no customs limit on how much yarn you can bring back into the USA.

That’s all for today. Next time, perhaps a Project Update!

*No, I have no idea why the town is named “Baddeck“, and the shop spells it “Baadeck”. One of the mysteries of life. It just makes me happy that a town this size has a yarn shop.

Or,

 I Guess I Forgot To Blog

I know, I know. I just might have hit a record here for longest stretch without a blog post. I may not have been blogging but I HAVE been knitting. Here’s some proof:

Old Friend, 2.0. There has been some progress since the last post. This is great mindless TV knitting.

Same socks. I’m still working on them, finally rounded the corner and heading for home. They really are that bright. And no, that’s still the first of the pair. This is also great mindless TV knitting. (Or mindless work meeting knitting.)

Now here’s something that hasn’t seen the light of day in a very long while.

That’s my Froot Loops Morning Glory stole. This is NOT mindless TV knitting. I hauled it out of the not-quite-forgotten pile and started working on it again today. It’s very nearly half done. I haven’t played with this in quite a while, since I had never even finished setting it up in Knit Companion on the iPad. I started this back in May of 2009, according to the blog that never lies. Who knows when I worked on it last*, but it hasn’t been since I put Knit Companion on the iPad, that’s certain. I finished setting it up this morning and discovered that this is MUCH easier with the KC app. Anne Hanson, the designer, writes up a very clear pattern, but this is a relatively fidgety pattern, especially in the biggest Morning Glory section, which is patterned lace on both sides, and the pattern repeat shifts to the right and left wildly. I might actually finish it now that I’ve got it set up in KC and can keep track of things.

And why am I working on Ancient Lace, when I have two perfectly good lace projects on the go already?

Here’s something you don’t see around here everyday:

I couldn’t wait for it to actually dry to take a decent photo. It’s DONE! And it’s LACE!

I’ll do a proper post once it’s dry and I can take a photo with some daylight, but that there is Seraphim, by Miriam Felton. I started that in January. Of THIS YEAR, people! Criminy. It only took me 9 months to knit something that’s largely stocking stitch.

That’s all for now. We might just be planning a vacation in the next few days, so I’ll save that up as a surprise for the next post.

*Once again, the blog comes in handy. Here you go. That bit of industriousness apparently didn’t last long.

Yes, it looked bigger before. Yes, I’ve knitted many more rows than this. Unfortunately, the gauge fairy didn’t let me know that I was delusional until I had knit the ribbing and another four inches of sweater.

Gauge off, rip. RIP.

Start over, hopefully this time on the right size needles. For the record, the ribbing this go-around is on 4.5mm, the main knitting will be on 5.0mm.

I’ll report back later as to how this all works out.

Well crap. This is just what I needed, another project on the needles. You remember that purply-blue Peace Fleece from my last post, right? Well I really couldn’t control myself from casting on. There are all those Ravelry Peace Fleece group members that are doing their KAL, so I thought it would be unfriendly of me not to join in. Yeah, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. That’s the ticket, I’m just being neighborly.

I started with an ordinary long tail cast on, didn’t like it, ripped out. I decided to figure out how to do a tubular cast on. There are apparently more ways to do this than you might imagine. June Hemmons Hiatt (Principles of Knitting) sort of lifts her nose up in the air and sniffs at all of them. It seems like a tubular cast on is not for good old June, despite the fact that she details about a gazillion different cast ons in her book. Out came the Vogue knitting book, and pretty soon I had it figured out. There is also a nice explanation on Knitty here.

Cast on half the stitches you need for your ribbing. You knit a few rows with a contrasting waste yarn. Please make sure that there is really a CONTRAST in your contrast yarn. You’ll see why later. Then you knit four more rows with your “real” yarn, ending with a knit row.

Now you start your ribbing on the “wrong” side. You purl one stitch off your needle, then dip down into that row of purple purl bumps, pick up that stitch, and knit it through the back of the loop. Click on the photos to make them bigger so you can see.

Keep going with knit one purl one until you are done. The last knit stitch is really just half of a purl bump at the very edge.

Now you can start your ribbing. Knit the knits, purl the purls, and then you are ready to snip out your waste yarn. Here is where you will be glad you started with a really contrasting yarn.

Really, click on that photo. You’ll be glad you did. Cutting your knitting! It’s wonderful! Try not to cut the “real” yarn stitches. That would really suck.

And you have a very nice edge for the bottom of your sweater! Please excuse my poor excuse for a manicure. Yes, I have been known to trim my fingernails with my knitting snips. What can I say, I’m more into function than beauty.

Back to studying!* I scheduled this week as an education week, so I’m home studying for hours a day. I’m just enough of a nerd that I actually find this enjoyable, though there are a few too many distractions around here for my own good. If I finish reading my cardiology module, I’ve promised myself a little knitting as a reward.

*And yes, that is iced tea up there. Even I am not delusional enough to think I can remember anything about valvular heart disease after a glass or two of wine.