Category: Knitting

Isn’t this what everybody does when the outside temperature threatens to hit the low 90’s? Whatever, it’s only 68 here so far this morning, so if I want to knit a heavy wool sweater, that’s what I’ll do.

I finished the front piece this morning. (The back is under the front in that photo.) I’m sure you’ve all forgotten what this is, but it’s Peace Fleece wool, pattern is Old Friend, which is basically a boxy shapeless square sweater. My modifications so far have been to use a tubular cast on for the ribbing, and I did short row shaping for the shoulders.

On to the sleeves. We’ll see how far I get today before I pass out from wool fumes and the heat.

And yes, this is yet another project that will be for John. If it seems like he’s getting a lot of knitting love lately, he deserves it. This is also on the agenda today.

*And no, I have no idea why there are boxes of nuts and bolts on my dining room table. Who knows.

 

Time for the toe grafting, with a bit of yarn to spare.

5.5 grams, to be exact. Nearly done!

AKA,

Dog Mittens!

And here they are!

Project Details:

Pattern: Dog Mittens by Jorid Linvik
Yarn: Rauma Finullgarn, 1 skein dark navy, and 1 skein cream. Very nice yarn for stranded knitting. It’s not the smoothest shiniest stuff on the block, but it sticks together nicely, colors don’t bleed, and it blocks beautifully. This is where I got it, I think. There are many fine colors to choose from. It’s not the least expensive yarn of this type you can buy, but it’s great quality. The yarn was consistent, there wasn’t a single knot or thin spot. It’s firmly enough spun that I don’t think pilling will be much of a problem.
Needles: 2.75 mm KnitPicks double points
Started: December 5, 2008
Finished: July 4th, 2014
For: John!

What I Learned: It really shouldn’t take so long to knit a pair of mittens. These were a heap of fun to knit, and once I loaded the charts into Knit Companion, it was a lot easier to keep track of where I was. I learned that it makes a difference which hand you hold which color in two color knitting. I also learned gradually to keep my “floats” in the back looser so things don’t get bunched up. I also found out that if it takes you nearly six years to knit a stinking pair of mittens, your gauge is likely going to change from one mitten to the next one. Blocking fixed that just fine.

Verdict: I love them, John loves them. They are already stashed in his drawer, ready for the next cold spell.*

*Winter is Coming–

Here’s the sock in progress. I’ve been a bit worried that I’m going to run out of yarn on the second toe.

I weighed the yarn an inch ago.

21.8 grams left.

I knit another inch.

That one’s tough to see. 18.9 grams left. So roughly 3 grams of sock yarn per inch.

4 inches of sock left. So I should need 12 grams of yarn at most, but definitely less taking toe decreases into account. Unless my measurements are off, which certainly happens with sock feet. You measure it, you have 4 inches left to knit. Knit, knit, knit. Inches of knitting later, you measure it, and you have 4 inches left to knit.

I do have a back up plan involving a deep deep green and 1 or 2 row stripes to eke out the yarn if need be. We’ll see. My current plan involves knitting like a maniac because we all know that makes the yarn go farther.

I ran across this post yesterday. It’s a blog post by Jared Flood talking about color choices. This made me think a bit about my Color Affection shawl.

Jared talks in his blog about hue, or color, and value as the two important concepts to look at when choosing several colors that will go together in a project. Obviously the colors that you choose are important, they need to “go” together in some fashion that is pleasing.

The value concept was newer to me. If your colors are all great choices, but their values are too similar, your finished piece might be a muddy mess instead of having the colors pop out individually. Jared recommends using your digital photo application to convert a color photo to greyscale to illustrate this and to test your choices.

Here are my colors for my current Color Affection.

And what that looks like knitted up so far.

Here are the same photos adjusted in Lightroom to black and white.

Not bad, but there could have been a little more difference between the two lighter values. With stripes, I think it’s OK, but with a complex stitch pattern, those two light colors would just blur together.

Here’s the other color scheme I had contemplated for this shawl.

I don’t think that would work as well. And it definitely wouldn’t work in something like the yoke of an Icelandic sweater.

What do you all think? Is this something you’ve run into in your knitting? And do go read Jared’s post, and the follow up post that goes into much more detail.

Or,

Will she finish them today?

Stay tuned!

It’s been over a month. I have no excuse. Well, I do, but they are all lame.

Let’s just do a Project Roundup, shall we? It’s been so long that even I’ve forgotten what I’m knitting.

Oldest first, those dog mittens. I just need to sit down and finish these already.

This too. It would be very lovely to wear this summer, don’t you think? That beaded border–what can I say? It’s boring.

All of the rest of the WIPS are at least from the past year. Here’s John’s sweater. I have a little to finish on this piece, then just knit the sleeves already and I’m done.

Socks. And more socks.

I’m finding Color Affection very amusing at this point. The ivory and pale grey was getting on my nerves, then I got to that scarlet, and it was a whole new project. Short rows are fun! Not boring!

Last but not least, that Cathedral Stole. After I did a real swatch, I ended up not ripping it all out and starting over. I like the slightly more open lace in this yarn. It is mohair, so tends to fuzz up a bit and obscure the lace if it is knit too tightly.

Then there is Will.

He is not a WIP, but he was very interested in my knitting. I turned my back for a second and he was trying to paw the Evenstar lace into a cat bed. He almost became a RIP.

In other news, I’m back to 90 days on the Cold Sheep no-yarn-buying plan.

I had a near-miss yesterday while surfing the internet. Ravelry is very dangerous. I did manage to step away from the credit card just in time. On to 120 days.

OK, most of you said “rip that sucker and knit it over on the smaller needles”.  One or two said “leave it the way it is”. One person said “I’d use a LARGER needle”.

And a few basically said “who cares, do whatever you like”.

Damn. I ended up taking the smaller needle and knitting a real swatch. When I started this, I knitted a few repeats of the center of the lace pattern, decided I liked it, and knit away. I never really did finish a “proper” swatch, with washing and everything. I should really know better, especially with this yarn. It has a bit of a fuzzy finish, and it is mohair, so it’s very different from other lace yarns I’ve used.

Ignore the fact that the pattern is a bit off. I just did the center repeat section, and in the real entire lace chart, there are rows where that repeat borrows a stitch across markers across the row, so it doesn’t line up exactly in the swatch. But washing it and pinning it out, even in a “down and dirty” fashion, did even it out a lot. Also, this mohair doesn’t behave the way merino would, not surprisingly. It doesn’t hold the blocking the same way, so those holes collapse a bit when it’s unpinned.

I’ll wait till it dries to decide, but I’m thinking the lighter, “holier” look is going to work better with this yarn. I’m glad I didn’t rip, at least not yet.

Knitting is such an adventure!

I’m finally getting around to going through all the fine pattern suggestions you guys left on the contest post. I’m not even close to being finished looking at them, but here are a few of my (mostly) new-to-me favorites so far.

2011 KALendar shawl, by Carmen Oliveras. I linked one of the finished shawls, since there isn’t a photo on the main project page.

Claire’s Shawl, by Amanda Gill. Being an Outlander fan, I’ll have to make this one. I do think Claire would likely have worn something more practical and warm, however.

Recess for Grownups Mittens, by Annie Watts; very cute!

Sugared Violets shawl, by Rose Beck. I’m saving up patterns for fingering weight small shawls. It’s a great way to use up all that sock yarn I have.

Firmaments Lace Shawl, by Bonnie Sennott. I actually have the pattern for this one already. And y’all know I have the yarn.

Occhielli Cowl, by Connie Seibert. This would be great to use up those oddball skeins of yarn I collect.

Ok, that’s enough of those for one day. That’s only from about a half dozen of the comments. I’ve added all of those to my Ravelry favorites, which is getting very long indeed. I just need to plan to live to 140.

I am SO ready for nice weather to really get here. We had a lovely day yesterday, I think it actually hit 70 for a few seconds, and it was sunny most of the day. Today it’s back in the 50’s, we had a moment of sunshine, and now it’s cloudy and probably going to rain again. Again. I am so sick of rain, we had the wettest March on record around here. But the tulips and daffodils have bloomed, and the ducks have paired up on the lake and baby ducks can’t be far behind. Willie found his first baby bunny of the season yesterday. He has been cooped up inside all winter and is just getting owly about it. We really did try to make him be an indoor cat, but we finally caved and put in a cat door after he literally tore holes in every last one of our screens digging out. A few dead baby bunnies is a small price to pay, and we’d actually be overrun by bunnies if it weren’t for their few predators.

That’s all for today. I worked the weekend, so had yesterday and today off, I head back to work tomorrow. Here’s what’s on my agenda this afternoon:

I’m still taking a weekly flute lesson, which I absolutely adore. It’s challenging to find the time to practice, but I am making it happen. One of the local universities has a Community Music Program to teach music to non-credit students. Most of my teacher’s students are high school age, though the program overall teaches everyone from little kids to retirees. Oh, here’s a link. It’s a fabulous program for our community. I’m off to practice! My lesson is tonight, my etude is a mess, and the duet sounds experimental at best. And forget the solo, I sound like a screech owl. But I am having fun, so that counts, right?

That “free yarn” in the title always draws out the lurkers!

So it’s been a whole decade since I’ve been sharing my knitting, spinning, goofy knitting mistakes, cooking, and traveling, along with a lot of other fun along the way. It’s actually fun to go back through and read old entries to remind me of all that’s gone on around here in the last decade.

In honor of all of you sticking around for so long, there will be free yarn. LOTS of free yarn. I mentioned cake before, but couldn’t figure out how to upload that, so you “just” get yarn.

The contest rules? All you need to do is tell me your top FOUR knitting patterns. It can be for shawls, one-skein wonders, socks, whatever. It doesn’t have to be something you have knit before, it could be on your “want to do eventually” list, or even “love it but will never knit it” list. Go crazy, surprise me!

I’ll let this run until the end of the weekend, so let’s say you have until Sunday March 30th at midnight Pacific time. Then I’ll draw a winner at random. Your entry has to have FOUR different knitting patterns mentioned in order to qualify.

Want to know what you’re playing for? I thought so. Here’s a selection of My Pretties from the stash.

Door Number 1:

First up is a skein of Jitterbug sock yarn in Lagoon, a skein of Yarntini sock yarn in Gin, and Zauberball sock yarn in Cranberries. Each is enough for a pair of socks.

Next:

This

Behind Door Number 2 is a package with the following; a skein of Online Supersocke in Sierra, a skein of Yarntini sock in Sangria, and hiding behind those two is a skein of Lorna’s Laces Solemate, in Christmas at Downton. Each of these is also enough for a pair of socks.

Door Number 3:

This is a whole big pile of Ironstone Infinity ribbon yarn. The color isn’t named, but the photo is pretty true on my monitor. There are 9 skeins, a total of about 1400 yards.

Last but not least, Door Number 4:

Two skeins of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Bambu, this is 800 yards total, 100% bamboo in the color Henpecked.

The winner will get to choose ONE of those four packages! And I get to put the other three packages back in the stash (my precccciiiooouuusssss).

As a disclaimer, all of these are complete skeins and have been lovingly stored, but they do live in a house with assorted cats, dogs, and dust bunnies. If you are deathly allergic to any of those pets, take this as your only warning.

Oops. Forgot to blog again!

I have been knitting some, though the other hobbies have sort of overrun things around here (fluting and spinning for example). I still have all the same projects on the needles, let’s just highlight one for today, OK?

OK, so maybe that’s really highlighting Will more than the project, but I couldn’t get him to move. There was one little square of sunlight on the floor and he was not about to get off it just so I could take a photo. He gave me the stink eye, licked his butt, and then just stayed there, so I decided he might as well be in the picture.

Color Affection is coming along. So far it’s just oatmeal grey and off white, but I’m so easily entertained that oatmeal grey and off white delight me to no end. This is another one of those projects where you sail along for a while, gaily thinking “If I keep up this pace, I’ll finish this soon!”. Then you realize that for the section you are on (the grey and white stripes), it’s a 4 row repeat and with every repeat you add 10 more stitches to each row. I’m now at 187 stitches on the needles and have 8 more of those grey/white stripe sections, which means 267 stitches per row by the time I get to add that zingy red. I’ll be good and sick of long rows of oatmeal and white by then.

All the other projects look pretty much the same as when you last saw them. Socks are bigger by a bit, and I haven’t touched Evenstar in weeks. I did get quite a bit of John’s Peace Fleece sweater done at Wintergrass, but it still looks like a big purple-blue rectangle, so I’m not getting up to show you a photo.

On the Cold Sheep front, I had another little slip off the sheep last week. Peace Fleece got in some lovely lace yarn hand spun by women in Tajikistan. They had a nice little story to go with the yarn about how these women spin yarn to help feed and clothe their families. One skein provides enough money for them to buy a chicken, a loaf of bread, or a kilogram of potatoes. Tell me you could resist that.

Let’s just say I bought enough for a nice chicken dinner complete with potatoes and bread for the whole family. When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound so bad, right? Here’s another photo to help you decide.

That’s a pretty accurate representation of the color in that last photo. It’s the color of beautiful glowing rubies. Ruby Slippers, perhaps. So I’m now back at Day 8 of the No Yarn Buying, and not a bit sorry. This will be a very pretty shawl for me me me.

Last but not least, this week marks a special anniversary around Chez Knitting Doctor. I’ve been blogging for nearly a decade, can you imagine that? There might be cake and prizes later this week, so stay tuned.