April 2007 – The Knitting Doctor

Five Rows Short Of A Sleeve

Or, Where I Am In That Crazy Never-Ending Eggplant Sweater

I really am going to finish this one of these days. For those not keeping track, I started this way back in December of 2005. Not 2006, but 2005. It sat in time-out for most of last year due to a variety of issues. I’ve been pretty sporadic about working on it, but I swear, I am not starting one more thing until this is done. That’s the first of two sleeves, and seriously, I’m thinking it would be preferable to just amputate an arm at this point. I don’t mind seed stitch, as I don’t mind purling, but given the miles of seed stitch in this sweater, I am getting heartily sick of it. That cable pattern going up the sleeve is of course the same one repeated across the front and back, so it’s all just boring at this point.

Not boring:

The Easter Egg socks are just wonderful. I love this yarn, even if I clearly can’t take pictures. While the yarn is a bit fuzzy, it’s my photography skills, or lack thereof, that makes them THAT fuzzy. I now have proof of why I buy as much yarn as I do for the stash. I only have one color of this yarn, this one, and they don’t make it anymore. Do I need any other evidence? I’m about ready to turn the heel on this one, my favorite part of sock knitting.

And in the category of funding my yarn retirement program:

Oh my. This is Dream In Color sock yarn. I was following clues on the internet one day, and found this. A few quick emails back and forth to Kris, the owner of Sonny and Shear, and she had a order on the way to her online shop. It came last week. It came, I ordered, it was delivered. She of course normally mails things, but we belong to the same knitting group that meets weekly, so she delivered it to me Wednesday in person. She had it in a brown paper sack so I could sneak it into the house without any interrogation. It sort of reminded me of a drug-dealer handoff.

Turns out I didn’t need to sneak it in. John took one look at that brown yarn, and claimed it as his own. (For socks for me to knit for him, not for him to knit!) Go buy some of your very own before Kris sells out of the stuff.

We’re off for another adventure tomorrow. We’re using a week of timeshare to go to Hilton Head. My sister-in-law Ena will be there for part of the time. She emailed me to say that she’s learning how to knit, so I’ll have a partner in crime while I’m there. Woot! You’ll have to excuse me, I need to go pack knitting projects.

Added Later:

I promised Teyani a photo of my knitting spot in the kitchen:

When we remodeled, we got rid of our kitchen table and put in comfortable chairs for people to hang out in while we cook and chat. It’s turned out to be my favorite place to knit. When I’m in the kitchen by myself, I turn one of those chairs around to face the lake. Perfect!

Grits And Sticks!

World Grits Day was Saturday. We decided to celebrate the occasion with a dinner party. Kris and her family were invited, along with a few other guests. (Hey, I’m not above bribing the contest-runner with food and chocolate martinis!)

The menu was all southern. We had John’s famous Cheese Biscuits for appetizers.

The rest of the menu included shrimp grits, greens, and cornbread. And chocolate cake for dessert.

The whole thing involved lots of butter and cream, and yes, chocolate martinis. It’s not southern without lots of butter and cream. A real southerner would have put bacon grease in there, too, but we were looking for ways to cut calories.

Anna Grace had fun, once she realized that Riley the dog wasn’t a vicious wild beast.

It was Patti’s birthday, so we had chocolate cake for dessert. Ok, we would have had chocolate anyway, but the birthday made it legal.

Even the dogs had fun. Here’s Rae the Corgi, having worn herself out completely, and ready for a nap.

And the dinner was over, table was cleared, ready for cake, when I remembered the whole point of the dinner was to take a photo of the grits and sticks. We rescued some leftovers and made a valiant attempt to recreate the plate. It was much prettier the first time around.

Riley’s Pink Wallaby

Project Specs:

Pattern: Wonderful Wallaby, by Cottage Creations
Yarn: Cotton Ease, in Pepto Pink (not the real color name!)
For: Baby Riley, my new great-niece (or is it grand-niece?)
Started: February 2007
Finished: March 29, 2007
Needles: KnitPicks Options circulars, and Swallow dpns, in size 4mm for the cuffs/bottom rib, and size 5mm for the rest.

Modifications: None. If I make this again, I’d do something
differently with the split at the bottom of the v-neck. There’s a loose
stitch there that gaps, and I think there are ways to knit that stitch
so it doesn’t do that. I saw a version of this on Brooke’s blog with a cable up each side of the pouch and around the hood. That would be fun to do.

Bad Cat!

And in the time it took me to get that last post together, Lucy was quietly busy behind me.

I got up from the chair and turned around:

I was going to offer this yarn* to someone who wanted to make a Shedir. Lucy had other ideas for it.

*See the previous post for what it looked like a moment ago. At least she didn’t shred the hat.

And Another FO!

I am apparently on a finishing roll. Here is Shedir, finished yesterday.

Here’s how much of the partial ball of Calmer I had left. So this hat took 1 full ball of the Calmer, plus 9.2 grams of the second ball. Further notes on yarn usage are in the Project Specs below.

And an action shot. Sorry, you don’t get to see my face. I’m still in my jammies and pre-shower here. This hat does a great job of covering up bedhead, by the way.

Project Specs:

Pattern: Shedir, from the special Knitty breast cancer awareness issue.
Yarn: Rowan Calmer in Flamingo, left over from my Audrey sweater.
Needles: 3.25mm needles, I used a bamboo 16 inch circular (this brand) for most of it, and Ivore double points once I got to the decreased part of the top.
Started: Version 2 was started on March 18th. I really started it about a week before that, but had to rip it all out due to a cable misadventure.
Finished: April 13th.
For: ?? This one’s going to Rebekah for her charity chemo hat collection.

What I learned: I’m pretty much done with knitting with Calmer. It’s great for chemo hats, as it’s very stretchy and soft. But it splits like crazy, and if you drop a stitch, forget about it. The sproinginess of the yarn makes it just disappear down the line of knitting. This pattern, however, is pure joy. Jenna Wilson, the designer, also did Rogue, and she is a genius with cable design. I learned a lot about how cables are built while doing this one.

On the running-out-of-yarn thing. The pattern calls for one ball of Calmer, and I didn’t quite make it with one. However, to be fair, Jenna says right in the pattern instructions that one ball cut it pretty close for her. I also didn’t bother with measuring gauge, and it’s entirely possible that knitting these on a smaller needle would have made a difference for me. I just went with the size needle that the pattern called for, in a let-the-force-be-with-you way.

This is also a very deep hat measured from brim to tip, a good thing if you have no hair and want to cover everything up. If you are making this just for fashionable wearing, you could make it shorter and get it out of one ball of yarn. That central section of cabling is a 8-row pattern, repeated 5 times. You could leave out one, or even two, repeats, and have a plenty big hat.

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What’s next? I dragged this sleeve out of project oblivion and started working on it. I really need to finish this sweater. It’s the Laurel Hill sweater from one of the Jo Sharp pattern collections, and the yarn is Jo Sharp DK wool. This yarn is just lovely to work with. I have the front and back pieces done, and am partway through the first sleeve. I had to do a little bit of math contortions to rework the sleeve increases, which I might explain in a future post. Here’s where I am. The pins are to keep track of sleeve increases. I’m increasing on each side 25 times, so I put the string of 25 pins on the sleeve, and take one off to mark the increase row each time I complete it. And yes, I still use a cable needle. I have an unreasonable love of double points and cable needles.

Last, but certainly not least, is an action shot of the Wallaby sweater and baby Riley. I had her momma take photos now to show how tiny she is in comparison with the sweater. This is the smallest size in the pattern, and is more small toddler size.

This photo just cracks me up.

And a close up to show just how pretty she is. I’m pretty convinced she’s going to be a redhead, like her grandma, my sister.

Don’t forget, today is World Grits Day! Kris is asking us to show our Grits and Sticks photos. We’re having our grits for dinner tonight, so my photo will be up tomorrow!

Uh-Oh, There Goes The Neighborhood

John and I were running errands earlier this week, and on the way home, saw this sight:

A new yarn store! It’s not open yet, and when I peered in the window, it’s still an empty building. So why is this so exciting? It’s less than a quarter of a mile from my house, people. A yarn shop I can walk to from home. I’ll keep you posted.

I obviously didn’t get around to doing the requisite “Happy Easter” post. We had a quiet day at home, with little lamb chops cooked on the grill. We had to grill them in between hail storms, but that’s sort of normal for spring weather around here.

For dessert, I served Peeps and chocolate sauce. Here’s my “recipe”.

Put Peeps on plate.

Nuke them in your microwave for 20-30 seconds. This is the exciting part. It’s hard to get a good photo of the blown up Peeps, as they collapse quickly once you take them out.

Add chocolate sauce, and serve.

Don’t laugh until you’ve tried them.

In knitting news, I’m still working on that Shedir hat. The pattern calls for one skein of Calmer. Here’s how far 1 skein got me.

In case you’re wondering, I’m on row 58 of an 83 row pattern. The rows get shorter pretty quickly from here, but still. This was yarn left over from when I made Audrey, so fortunately I have more:

I wound up that partial ball and weighed it on my handy-dandy drug-dealer’s scale*.

15.6 grams. I’ll weigh what I have left and let y’all know how much more than 1 ball this sucker takes.

*Have I mentioned how much I love my drug-dealer’s scale?

The Daily Bread

Here’s what’s on the table this week. Note that I almost missed the photo opportunity. I left this out to cool before putting it in a storage bag, and before I knew it, a third of the loaf was gone.

Pecan Maple Buttermilk Bread

1 Tbl butter
3 Tbl maple syrup
1 cup water
1 1/2 cup white bread flour
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
4 Tbl buttermilk powder
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp yeast
1 1/2 Tbl gluten flour
2/3 cup golden raisins
2/3cup chopped pecans

I made the dough in the bread machine, and added the raisins and pecans towards the end of the kneading process so they didn’t get too mashed up. Knead it a bit by hand before you shape the loaf if you need to so that the fruit and nuts are dispersed evenly. It was baked at 350 degrees to an inside temp of 190 degrees (use an instant read thermometer). My oven runs a bit hot, so you might need to up your oven temp to 375.

Go here for my generic bread instructions.

You could add more or less syrup to taste, or use molasses for a little different flavor. You could also use different nuts, walnuts would be great, but I had pecans so that’s what I used. If you can’t find some of those ingredients, check out this online store. This bread is lovely toasted, with either cinnamon sugar or jam on top.

For something similar, but with a little less of a free-form recipe, check out Rose’s Cranberry Walnut bread from a couple of days ago. She uses a starter with hers, so it takes longer.

After reading her instructions for the cranberry bread, I realized why my Daily Bread turned out a bit dense this time. She suggests adding the fruit by hand, not in the bread machine, as it breaks up and will result in a compact loaf. So next time I make this, I’ll let the bread go through the initial dough cycle, and then take the bread out of the machine and add the raisins before it goes through the first rise.

Enjoy!

Finished Projects!

I actually have finished knitting something! Two somethings, to be precise.

First up is the Baby Riley birthday present. It’s off in the mail, so I can safely show it here. A couple of you guessed correctly, this was the Wonderful Wallaby pattern.

Project Specs:

Modifications: None. If I make this again, I’d do something differently with the split at the bottom of the v-neck. There’s a loose stitch there that gaps, and I think there are ways to knit that stitch so it doesn’t do that. I saw a version of this on Brooke’s blog with a cable up each side of the pouch and around the hood. That would be fun to do.

What I learned from this project: I have never knit a whole sweater in the round before. I’d still do most of my adult sweaters in pieces, as I think you have a little more control over the blocking process with flat pieces. I also don’t hate doing seams as much as many of you do. Mattress stitch seaming is actually fun to do, once you figure it out. For kid items, the in-the-round method is perfect.

Although I have a ton of Cotton Ease in the stash, this is embarrassingly the first thing I’ve made from it. The new colors are much more subtle, though again, for kid stuff, the bright crayon colors of the old CE can’t be beat. For cheap yarn, this stuff knits up wonderfully. I think I’d go down a needle size next time I use this yarn. I only used 2 balls plus a little from a 3rd for the smallest size in the pattern. CE has great yardage for the price.

I’d also note that the smallest size in the pattern is for a largish baby/toddler. This won’t fit a newborn, but that’s OK. Most new moms get loads of newborn items that the kid grows out of before they even get a chance to wear them. This probably won’t fit her until the winter months later this year, which is a good thing, considering that they live in the Phoenix area!

My other finished project:

Pattern: My generic, top down, picot hem socks. These have a 72-stitch circumference.
Yarn: Dicentra Designs superwash sock yarn, in the color Solar Energy, purchased from Teyani at Crown Mountain Farms. Don’t click that link if you are trying to limit your yarn acquistion. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Needles: Pony Pearl dpns, in size 2.00 mm. Yes, I knit the whole sock with that size.
Started: Remember this post?
Finished: This morning, in my jammies.
For: me!
Modifications: This is one of those logic puzzles, I think. Is it possible to call it a modification if you made up the pattern yourself?

What I learned: I shouldn’t try to cast on with size 2.00mm birch needles and drink martinis at the same time.
Seriously? Knitting a whole sock on 2.00 mm needles is not any harder than knitting them on bigger needles. This yarn is a bit thinner than some other sock yarns, but the finished sock at this gauge has a very nice feel to it. I really like this yarn, and will probably buy more of it when my next “free” day rolls around.

By the way, the Brittany Birch people did send me a replacement for that broken needle. They sent a whole set, not just the one needle. So if you ever break one, just email them and tell them your sad story.

What’s next on the sock knitting list? Well, since Easter is this coming weekend, I couldn’t resist this lovely hank of yarn from my stash.

This is Bunny Luxury, from Joslyn’s Fiber Farm. It’s an angora/wool blend, in the color Easter Eggs, and is approximately a sport weight. I don’t think she sells this particular blend any longer*, but it is amazingly soft. I thought this was an appropriate yarn for the season, even if there is no chance that I will finish them by Easter of this year! I just dare you to look at her yarn colors without buying something.

I’m off to wind up yarn.

Next time: Another installment of The Daily Bread.

*This is not the same yarn as the Bunny Heaven that she has currently available. The Bunny Luxury is 80% wool and 20% angora.

And The Winner Is…

Actually, “winners”. First off, thank you all for the lovely mailbox full of comments. Now I know how to get the lurkers out of the shadows; give away free yarn! There are a lot of great knitting tips in those comments from my last post, some I already know and use, some I once knew and had forgotten, and many new ideas. If you have a minute or ten, go back and read all the comments.

So then, how to pick a winner? As you recall, one prize, the Opal sock yarn, and the Cherry Tree Hill Alpaca Glitter, was to be chosen randomly. Whew, no decision making there. Using the handy-dandy Random Number Generator, Kathy is the winner of this lovely little pile of yarn. Here’s her tip:

“Let’s see…favorite knitting tip for me is keeping track of which circular needle to knit from when knitting with two circs. I take the working end and give it a tug. The correct end will jiggle, letting me know which one to knit with. Makes it easy to figure out which is which :-)”

The other prize is for my favorite tip of the bunch. Now that one was not so easy. In the end, I picked Bridget’s tip, on not drinking and knitting at the same time. How could I not choose that one, even if she didn’t think it was a valid knitting tip?

“I have no actual knitting tips, though I wish I did. I have learned though, that at least for me, one glass of wine is plenty, if I don’t want to rip it all out the next day. Hardly a tip, but it does work!”

Bridget gets the Heritage lace yarn and the Mountain Colors Bearfoot. Given my past history with the bourbon-related mishaps, I’m surprised that more of you didn’t suggest this.*

Thanks for playing, everyone! Not only did I get lots of great tips, but I got leads to a bunch of new-to-me blogs.

Next post, actual finished knitting projects!

*Of course, just because I liked her knitting idea the best, doesn’t mean that I’ll follow her advice. 😉