Kirsti Knits

Not quite so long a wait!

2006-07-10T15:10:00.000-04:00

At least it's not been a month or more since my last update... but I've still got a lot of catching up to do. First and most importantly, I have a long overdue THANK YOU to my Sockapaloooza pal Laurie for some gorgeous knitting and great socks. Here's the opened box...

	They didn't actually travel very far - Laurie's based in Michigan too. And just to confuse me, she asked the guys at Threadbear to mail the package! Included inside the red tissue were some Red Wings goodies - pencils and a key ring .... and these:
The yarn is Fiber Gems Opal (navy) and Quartz (hummingbird). I've not seen or knitted with this yarn, and it's so so soft. I just love the colours - the flecks of blues and purples - and Laurie's knitting technique has me so so impressed. They are a little bit, and she suggested that I rip them out and reknit, but it feels wrong to destroy such wonderful wonderful work. Besides, I know I wouldn't be able to get anywhere close to that even tension and tight short row heel! So I'm going to try and tumble dry them after washing to see if I can shrink them without felting. Laurie, I'm sorry it's taken me this long to thank you - but I am so so pleased with these.
In the meantime, I've been finishing hats and starting some more. Here is the Shedir chemo cap, in Rowan "Calmer", for my friend Rose. I love how the cables look, particularly how the decreases worked to make the octagonal pattern on the top of the hat. It was absolutely worth the 110% concentration that the decrease rows needed!

And here is a finished Odessa hat, this time for me. I wore on Saturday night with my black pearls and a simple black dress, and got nothing but compliments on the 1920s style and how cute it was. It doesn't look quite so good when I'm wearing a T-shirt and squinting into the sun, but this does show how the deep bronze beads catch the sunlight.

And the final piece of knitting news ... I went to the Knitting Room in Birmingham today to return extra yarn I'd bought for Shedir, and they're clearancing out their Manos stock... so I picked up 2 skeins of variegated, and 1 skein of solid turquoise, at 40% off. Drool away...
	And I've started Yet Another Odessa hat. When I gave Rose the green one, both her teenage daughters (who act as her fashion advisors in chemo caps, scarves and other style matters) thought it was so cute that they wanted them too. So I've just started one in blue (actually, I had 3 beaded rows done before realising this morning that I'd forgotten to change up to the size 6 needles after the ribbing, so I had to rip it out back to where the pattern rows start), and have one in pink waiting to be done. Thankfully it's a quick enough knit that it should only take about 3 days or so.
I've also got to do some more Broadripple socks for my godmother's birthday gift, and am dreaming of starting on the alpaca lace shawl, so that I can at least get in on the tail end of the Amazing Lace summer knitting. And I'm off to England on August 5th for 2 weeks or so, so will have some good plane time to knit. In the meantime, I hope everyone is enjoying the summer weather, with good friends and family, and no dropped stitches!

Not sure I could manage this...

2006-06-26T22:36:00.000-04:00

.. but some art student has created a knitted Ferrari complete with embroidered badge.

My own knitting news isn't quite so impressive. I finished the Odessa hat and gave it to our friend who's going through chemo, before I could take a photo of the final product. She loved it, and so did her daughters, so I'll be making two more for them. Hopefully there'll be SOME Odessa pictures here soon. It was fun to knit (once the darn beads were strung) and quick too - I started on Wednesday night and had it finished by Friday evening.

I've also started the Shedir chemo cap from Knitty for the same friend, in Rowan calmer. It's a lovely yarn to work with, and really soft. I'm not 100% happy with how the cables are looking though - single stitch cables in cotton show up every tension error that I make. Hopefully after blocking it will look better.

We're off to Chicago on Wednesday for a gig - details at www.terrygonda.com if anyone reading this is in the area and wants to come along. Bring your knitting! I'm looking forward to 9 hours or so of knitting time in the car to get there and back home again.

More updates to come, including a very very overdue thanks to my Sockapalooza pal.

Ye Gods, she's still here

2006-06-23T12:46:00.000-04:00

Yep, I'm still around and finally had some time to get photos off my camera and resized and cropped in Paintshop Pro, and uploaded to flickr. (And as with most pf my posts, click on any of the pictures for a larger version. Especially the sweater pics. Really.) So this entry will actually contain some knitting content! In the 3 second "other news" bulletin: I didn't get my job back; I'll be starting an MA in Counseling at Oakland University in September; I'll be briefly visiting England in August to get the student visa; immigration paperwork sucks; so does trying to find health insurance that will cover the meds I need; and I had the most wonderful visit with my sister and adorable nephew which was the best soul medicine anyone could ask for.

And I've actually been knitting! Continuing on the sock kick (there's a pun in there somewhere), I made some Broadripple socks as a 50th birthday gift for my "folk sister" Sherry. Sherry loves purple, and claimed the very first object I ever knit - a scarf with blue/purple novelty yarn and black worsted - the moment it was off the needles. I was a bit worried as the only shoe size information I knew was "small" but with the stretch of the Fixation yarn, they fit perfectly. I now have requests from two other people for identical pairs!


	We drove down to Maryland last weekend for the big 50th birthday party, which was just great fun. And for the person who's complained that they wanted to see pictures of me (and because it was such a great party with such wonderful people)...

Me, Terry and musician Eric Schwartz	From left to right..Siobhan Quinn, Laurie Laba, Mary Pittari and me.
	Terry and I relaxing and listening to featured performer and exceptional songwriter Greg Greenway. Sherry and her husband Steve run a house concert series where we've played a couple of times, so absolutely knew how to put on a great concert. And wonderful food too.
So, back to knitting ... here's the other big project I've been working on: an Aran Sweater from the Harmony Guide to Aran and Fair Isle Knitting. It's a gift for a friend, who picked out the yarn and the pattern. It's my first sweater, so I'm a little intimidated about the whole putting-it-together process, but right now, I'm enjoying knitting away on the back.

And here are close-ups of the side and centre cable panels. The edges of the sweater and the middle of the diamonds are filled in with double moss stitch. I have to admit, there are occasional times I impress myself, and this is one of them.
And finally ... I'm also working on the Odessa hat, which I started on Wednesday night, with lots of help from Lynne with the bead stringing and is coming on rapidly. Although I did find a knot in the yarn and so had to restring about half the beads, which was immensely frustrating.
I'm still making slow progress on the Cedar Creek and toe-up Pomatomus socks from the previous knitting post, and about to start the Shedir chemo cap from Knitty's breast cancer issue for a friend who's going through chemo right now. And that's pretty much the update. Now I've got to also go and catch up on my commenting/visiting friends' blogs, which I've shamefully neglected over the past month too. Thanks for reading this far, and I hope it won't be nearly so long before the next update!

An explanation

2006-05-18T13:18:00.000-04:00

I've really neglected this blog over the past 2 months or so ... there is a reason why. I try to keep my posts on here mostly knitting focused, and not go into huge personal stuff, as that really isn't what I intended this blog for. But I figured I owed at least a brief post saying what's been going on.

Since mid-March, I've been having severe panic attacks that left me unable to get into work. All my old "don't tell, don't reach out for help" coping kicked in, so I pretended to the rest of the world that everything was fine, while the idea of even contacting my boss would leave me shaky, unable to breathe, sweating etc etc. Not good. And the end result was that I was fired on May 2nd.

This threw everything into turmoil, but has also had some really positive consequences. Firstly, I had to tell Terry what was going on - and she's been just amazing. Wonderful. The best partner I could have ever wanted. The fact that I was even too afraid to tell her what was going on is an indication of how skewed my perception of the world had got. Talking to my friends and family made me realise what an exceptional support network I have, and need to use.

Secondly: I'm now getting help from a variety of sources to deal with both the panic and the underlying stuff that triggered all this, and stopped me from getting the help I needed. I've put in an appeal to my job asking that my absence be taken as medical leave under the FMLA, and my termination be revoked. I don't know how long university bureaucracy will take to handle this; it's been a week so far, and nothing.

I guess that's the administrative system for you. But I have been knitting and have a bunch of pics to upload. My finished sockapalooza socks were sent off (and my pal left a lovely comment in my last blog entry). I received my own pair and they are just wonderful - I'm truly in awe of the construction and even tension and knitting technique. I've also started on an Aran cable sweater for my friend Gregg, and am halfway up the back. Plus today, because I wanted a change, I cast on for another pair of Broadripple socks in purple.

So now I've got all this out ... I'll make room for photos and stuff as soon as I can.

Yes I am still alive...

2006-04-19T13:38:00.000-04:00

.. but my laptop isn't, hence the lack of recent updates. It won't boot up in anything other than safe mode, and even then, it is constantly accessing the hard drive, and seems to have no memory at all. Not good. I'll have to find some geek squad or store to take it to, as I've tried running spybot and a virus scan to no avail - but I couldn't use live update for my virus definitions in safe mode, so that may be part of the problem.

So.. knitting progress since I last blogged. We have some finished socks (scroll past the inevitable space that Flickr inserts before a table - if anyone's figured out how to avoid this, please let me know!)


Full details on these are in my finished objects blog. On the left are my Jaywalkers, in Socks that Rock Fire on the Mountain colorway, and on the right are my Lorna's Laces socks from my "2 socks on 2 circulars, toe up, short row heel" City Knits class. I'm really pleased with the toe up ones. Here's a close up of the lace pattern, as modelled by my hand - hence the bad fit!
	We also have major progress on my Sockapaloooza socks. My pal had no real preferences except nothing fun fur or acrylic, so I dug this yummy Mountain Colors Bearfoot from my stash, and looked for a suitable leaf pattern to go with it. I love this Fiber Trends one, and the leaves are more distinct when the sock is stretched out than they look in this picture.
I had one false start on size 1 needles, and got worried after two pattern repeats in when it wouldn't fit over my heel, but they're knitting up just fine on size 2 Addis. I also had to reknit the toe of the first sock, as I managed to do the three needle bind off without re-arranging my stitches, so it was perpendicular to the sock toe. Ooops. My only concern is that they're definitely "autumn/winter" socks, and we're just starting spring ... I guess my pal will just have to hold onto them for 6 months or so. And so with 2 pairs of socks finished, of course, I have to start on some more.

On the left is the second Hippo Beast sock, this one being knitted toe-up, so as to reverse the pattern. I figured out how to turn the "end of pattern decreases" into "set up pattern increases" and the few rows I've got are looking good. My only concern is how much my guage has tightened up since knitting the first - I may switch to continental carry, as I do knit more loosely with the yarn in my left hand.
And on the right are my Socks That Rock sock club yarn. Again, very little progress, but I do love how the yarn is knitting up. The socks also have a fancy picot edging. Much as I hate knitting 3 rounds only for them to disappear and be folded underneath, I do like how it looks. Here's a close up:
I've got a couple of larger projects that I'm about to embark on as well. The first is an Aran cabled sweater in a pale blue for our friend and household angel, Gregg. The pattern is the "His and Hers" Aran Sweater from Aran and Fair Isle Knitting. The book is mostly a collection of stitch patterns and some history of both techniques, but this is the few actual object patterns in there. And I'm glad that Gregg preferred that one to any of the Alice Starmore designs!
	So I've swatched, and after going down two needle sizes, finally got guage. This will be my first "big" project and my first real sweater, and I don't want to mess things up from the start. So I swatched, and then washed and blocked the swatches before measuring them. The yarn was chosen by Gregg - it's Elann's Peruvian Highland Wool, worsted weight, in Blue Vista.
We've worked out a bartering system for this: for each hour I spend knitting, he will put in an hour of work on the house - painting, organizing, decorating, etc etc. Our house wouldn't look nearly as nice as it does without Gregg; so far, he's painted four rooms for us, used his flower arranging talents to make the place look gorgeous for our Christmas party, cleaned out our basement after it was flooded last year ... he's been a lifesaver. Hopefully this sweater will meet his standards!
Here's the other experimental project: I had such fun knitting ThreadyBear that I didn't want to stop the Fair Isle knitting, but I was having a hard time finding projects that I'd actually wear. I love some of the Philosophers Wool designs, for instance, but can't see myself actually wearing any of them.
So I combined my love of Fair Isle with my love for knitting Booga Bags, and have come up with a slightly larger scale booga base, with a fair isle pattern up the sides. I used motifs from the book above, as well as one or two that I liked in ThreadyBear, and have bought Cascade 220 in 7 colours: 3 shades of purple/dark blue; 3 shades of yellow/gold and a deep red for an accent colour. I just started casting on the base in purple, so we'll see how this turns out. My first design project, almost a year to the day since I picked up knitting needles.
	This book, however, contains a whole load of things I would like to knit. It arrived from Amazon yesterday, and I've already learned a whole lot about design and project selection from the first chapter, which is worth the price of the book alone. Then there's all these wonderful projects. Here's two that are calling my name at the moment:

There's also a gorgeous cabled skirt by the wonderful Jodi Green that could be a fun design to knit and I could almost see myself wearing. So that should be enough updates to keep people happy for a while - at least until my laptop gets fixed. And my mother is visiting from England this weekend, so I won't be around much til next week at the earliest. Thanks for missing me!

Home again, home again...

2006-03-19T09:15:00.000-05:00

Well, almost. Packing up and getting ready to leave Boston. But Stariel has put together some photos from my time out with the Magnificent Seven Knittyboard folk yesterday. Go look. There's even Jaffa Cakes.

Boston adventures

2006-03-16T16:57:00.000-05:00

Another quick post, because I'm heading out to Haaavad Square to meet some friends for dinner. But Boston is great fun (and the conference is just about bearable). I got to meet up with Ariel and Jenn on Tuesday night for coffee and knitting and yummy Indian food. And here's proof (picture shamelessly stolen from Ariel's blog:

I was also delighted to find a LUSH store 2 blocks away from the hotel. Lush was one of my affordable treats back in the UK, and there's nothing like walking into one of their stores and having your nose overwhelmed with all kinds of good smells. So I stocked up on Flying Fox shower gel, and Retread conditioner and massage bars and hand cream and various other goodies.

Plus I got to explore the Boston Public Library - I even became a guest member mostly so that I could look at their reference only copy of Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting - yes, the one that goes on ebay for over $200. It's certainly a wonderful book - great history and research on Aran sweaters, and some yummy yummy patterns too. But I'm not shelling out that amount of money for it! Hopefully someone will bring it back into print soon....

OK, that's the news update. Oh - and I'm getting together with a bunch of Knittyboard folk on Saturday afternoon, which should make for some fun adventures. If anyone reading this is around the Boston area, check this thread for more info. And now off for food. And if you want to have an overload of adorable cuteness, you really need to see the newest photos of my nephew. Can't wait to see him again.

Drive by posting...

2006-03-13T23:12:00.000-05:00

On the way to bed, before I leave for 5 days in Boston. Back Sunday. Work conference, but hopefully I'll have some time to eat good seafood and maybe even find a SnB group or yarn shop.

The poncho got finished and delivered to its recipient, who was overjoyed, and refused to take it off. Here are the pics:

The pink was a last minute, er, addition, because I used up all my purple yarn for tassles before I realised that I still needed to make the i-cord for the drawstring, and sew the casing for the string down. Oops. But I figured that by putting it in the fringe, it became a feature. Overall, it's a simple pattern and a quick knit - the main frustration is that the rounds keep getting longer and longer as you go on... but it was all worth it to see the joy on Evelyn's face. Oh, and doesn't it tone well with my blog colours?

A good day for free stuff!

2006-03-01T10:19:00.000-05:00

Well Monday was highly profitable in terms of knitting loot! Look at all this!

	I stop off at City Knits on my way home from work to stroke the new sock yarn they were expecting (and which hadn't arrived), and ended up talking and making plans for a fair isle felted bag that I'll design... and as I was at the counter, I picked up and flicked through a new book that was displayed near the register...
And found this! A whole chunk of pages that were printed upside down. (It's clearer if you click on the thumbnail to see the whole image). I showed Lynn, who went to call the publisher. And I jokingly said that if they let you keep it, I want it! ... and a few minutes later she handed it to me. The publishers are sending her a replacement copy, and now of course, she has to go through the rest of the stock to see if this was a one-off. It's actually quite a neat little reference book, so I'm glad to get it and save $15.
Then I get to our Monday night SnB at Sweetwaters in Royal Oak, to find a new face ... Kristina, the woman who'd started the group way before I ever came along. It was wonderful to meet her, and see the amazing work she was doing on the Sunrise Circle Jacket from Interweave Knits. And, to say thankyou to Julie and myself for keeping the group going last year, when for a long time it was basically just Julie, myself and Coley, she'd brought gifts from her yarn stash. Look at these - aren't they pretty?

On the left are two balls of laceweight yarn. The grey one is the softest thing I've felt for a while, and the greeny-yellow one has this amazing slight boucle to it, and should be fun to knit up and see how it looks. On the right are three skeins of Cestari natural yarn, a 2 ply worsted weight, with approximately 210yds per skein. The amazing thing about this wool is that a) it was "manufactured exclusively by the sheep and shepherds of Chester Farms, Churchville VA", and b) it's still got all the lanolin oils in it. So it'll make your hands wonderfully soft when knitting with it. OK Julie, it's up to you now.. let me know which one you'd like, and we can meet up to handover the yarn.
And the final, closing gift for the day.. was of course, this:
The Gold Medal for finishing in the Knitting Olympics. Nothing more really needs to be added.

Gold!

2006-02-27T11:03:00.000-05:00

So here it is. The finished Threadybear. I got the final ends woven in at 4:05pm, showed it off to gathered SnB'ers, and then gave it a basic block with a steam iron over a tea towel before going to bed last night. As per usual, click on the photos for a link to a larger image.


The front of the sweater.	The inside, showing off the nice neat stranding.
Here's a close up of the second sleeve (the left one in the picture above). I did a somewhat better job of picking up the stitches, so it's sitting closer to the top of the shoulder. This will lie flat when I spread it out, unlike the other sleeve, which has a small bump to it. So that's one more thing I learned: how important it is to really make sure that your picked up stitches go all the way to the top and aren't one row short.
The other thing that you can hopefully see from the above picture is that the left sleeve has a nicer curve to the bottom of it (I think). When doing the decreases for this sleeve, I left the first and last stitch of the row, and did my decreases on the two stitches outside of that. The first sleeve, I just decreased right at the edges, and so the line isn't quite as nice. Yet another thing learned. The pattern itself doesn't give any specific instructions about type of decreases; it just states to "decrease one stitch at the start and end of every third round". I used paired decreases (ssk at the start, k2t at the end) which I'm trusting made it look more even than if I'd just knitted 2 stitches together each time.
	And here was the other scary thing, the thing that made me fear on Saturday that I wouldn't finish. This is how much yarn was left at the end. Count it: 5 balls and one tiny thread. The sweater used 7 colours. The middle shade of the browns, I ended up having to tie the final 1cm long end from the last stitch to another yarn tail to get it to hold while I bound off the cuff. I don't know whether I just used too much yarn weaving in ends, or knit too loosely .... but if anyone else is making this sweater, be very very frugal with the two darkest shades for your main colour (F and G on the chart).

What else did I learn? Let's see: if you're cutting steeks, you don't need to be anal and weave your new yarn ends in past the steek, because once it's cut down the middle, all you'll have done is added unnecessary thickness to the other side of the sweater. In fact, Bethany, who is also knitting Threadybear, found a great article by Lucy Neatby on steeks, where she suggests swapping colours during the first half of the steek and just knotting the ends together. Of course, I didn't do this research, and so only read this after I'd finished knitting and cutting both my steeks. Oh well. Again, this project was all about the learning.

Now it's back to my 2 socks on 2 circs (yay!), my jaywalker socks, and a poncho for a friend's daughter who's about to turn two. The conversation went something like this.

Me:

Actually, it's not that bad. Although I've always hated the idea of knitted (or crocheted for that matter) ponchos for adults, they do look sort of cute on little girls. And Lynne at City Knits found me a nice pattern by Knitting Pure and Simple for a hooded poncho (scroll down about two thirds of the way down the page, and it's on the left hand side), and I've got some chunky purple Plymouth Encore and am well underway. It's pretty simple stockinette, with symmetrical increases, the same kind as the Jaywalker socks, to make the V shaping. It won't show up quite so much in a solid purple, but I couldn't find any variegated stuff that was the right colour. March 11th is my deadline for that, and then it'll be more socks for my Sockapaloooza pal. I've picked out the yarn, and almost decided on a pattern, so want to get started on that soon too.

So much knitting, so little time. But at least I got my Olympic medal. Thanks to Matt at Threadbear for coming up with the pattern and kit; to everyone for the support - real life and virtual - ; and to Terry for not going completely crazy wondering why I was obsessing and spending so much time on something that won't even be worn by a real person. And of course, to the Yarn Harlot herself for coming up with this crazy idea in the first place.

I might just make it!

2006-02-23T21:02:00.000-05:00

After a very productive SnB at Caribou last night, and a bit more knitting while waiting for Terry to come home, and then some work this afternoon and this evening ... I'm feeling slightly more optimistic about my chances of finishing in time. I switched from dpns to using two Addi circulars for the sleeve, and that's certainly made things a lot faster, and easier too.

So here's my progress, with one sleeve completed and the other ready to go:

That's one sleeve completed, with ends all woven in too. I'm overall pretty pleased with it, although the sleeve has ended up sitting too low on the shoulder, and making a kind of ugly bump. I'm sure a teddy won't mind, and I've certainly tried to rectify it when picking up stitches for the second sleeve. This is why I'm doing this project, to learn and avoid these mistakes on a full size garment. Plus, although I figured out that I should use paired decreases on the sleeves, I didn't think about leaving an undecreased "edge" stitch at the start and end of the round, like you do on socks. That might make a smoother seam, and again, I'll try that on the other sleeve.

Using the Addi's also made it so so much easier to pick up the other armhole stitches, especially as by putting the stitches onto the cable, I could stretch out the steek so it lay nice and flat for cutting. And, to make up for the lack of documentation of the first steek...

	Here's me just starting to cut open the second steek. Note the bottle of wine in the background. This is because the cutting was proceded by...
...this! Barefoot Merlot, highly recommended in combination with Addi Turbos for making your steek cutting a lot less stressful. And, to be precisely accurate, the bottle in the background was Monday night's Gewurstraminer that I tracked down for Terry's Christmas gift.
	And here's the end result: one open armhole. OK, it's a rather fuzzy picture, but you can blame Terry for that. Or the wine.

So now we're going to watch the women's figure skating and I'll see how far I can get with this sleeve. I'm not working tomorrow, so hopefully can get it close to done, if not completely done. We've got a busy weekend: going to see two shows at the Ark on Friday and Saturday night, staying over with some friends in Ann Arbor on Saturday, then a church membership class til 3pm Sunday. But I might yet make gold, even if I don't find a bear to model it by then. Heck, if necessary, I'll see if one of Amby's dogs will put it on...

Onto the sleeves

2006-02-22T08:34:00.000-05:00

Well, progress has been slower than I'd have liked, due to this strange thing called "real life" getting in the way. I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish in time for the gold medal - but I certainly don't regret tackling Threadybear at all.

Especially as.... I cut the first armhole steek last night. (Cutting the neck steek doesn't really count as it was only 3 stitches wide). Sadly I don't have pictures of me doing the Actual Deed, but here's the garment so far:


The back of the sweater, showing the completed pattern, and ribbed neckline.	The front neckline - it's slightly lower than the back. And look at the wonderfully neat stranding inside!
	And here it is. The armhole. I'm only about 2 rows into the sleeve so far, but the steek has already nicely folded itself inside the arm. It was a tad scary (and yes, that's British understatement), but so far, it's all holding together!

I'll be at SnB at Caribou tonight, and Terry's working very late, so I can at least get 4 hours or so done then. Plus I have Friday off work, and Saturday morning... so we'll see how it goes. And yes, to Andy and Suz and all the other people who've asked, I will be going bear shopping for a suitable model.

Thanks to everyone for all your comments and support, and discussion on the Curmudgeon's post I linked to in the previous entry. If you do read her blog, you'll see that she did "eat crow" and realise that the Knitting Olympics is not necessarily a 'sheep' thing, and that many people, including me, are getting a lot of good out of it.

What I'm learning

2006-02-18T13:25:00.000-05:00

Marilyn over at the Knitting Curmudgeon has challenged us Knitting Olympians to prove why joining 4,000 people in a time deadline isn't just sheep like behavior, resulting in nothing but progress reports.

So here's what I'm learning so far.

I like knitting fair isle, even more so when it's small and intricate rather than chunky yarn like my earlier fair isle hats.
How to keep my tension even, particularly tricky when some colours of yarn are much thinner/stickier than others, which are thicker and more fluffy.
How to follow a fairly complex colour chart, without losing my place or row
That working in ends as you go makes for much quicker weaving in, and that weaving the ends in every day is a lot less intimidating than leaving the ends to accumulate for a while.
How to knit steeks - and, pretty soon, how to cut them
An appreciation for generations of fair isle knitters who created these garments without the help of Addi Turbos, on really long double pointed needles.
That none of my teddy bears will be big enough to model the sweater when done! (And, because of the way the sweater is designed, with really low armholes, I don't think I can find a small child with the correct body shape either! Though it would probably fit very badly on Oscar)
To trust Matt in his choice of colourways. I'm actually really liking the browns and blues now.
That I can be a fairly productive knitter, and there is more time for knitting in a day than I'd otherwise have imagined. So "I don't have the time to start a big project" is no longer a valid excuse.
That I enjoy feeling connected to other knitters around the world. The deadline and finishing isn't as important to me as the process, and creating something beautiful that otherwise might have languished at the back of the cupboard for another 6 months.

Not too shabby for halfway through the games, eh? Still to come: cutting steeks, picking up a neckline and sleeves.

So now you've sat through all that rambling, here's the obligatory progress photos. Front and back, taken inside and outside today, while there's actually some sunshine here in Royal Oak.

I'm about 14 rows from the top of the sweater. When I reach there, I join the shoulders, knit some more ribbing for the neck and cut the neck steek. Then it's on to the sleeves. Not bad progress all in all. You can see the armhole steek stitches showing up quite clearly in both pictures, and, if I'd actually taken more time to read Matt's directions, I'd have outlined both ends from the beginning, and used blue (background colour) rather than brown. Oh well. It shouldn't make too much of a difference in the long run.

And now I'm going to see if I can't get another 3 or 4 rounds in before church this afternoon. I wish all other Olympic knitters a productive weekend!

Olympics day 5

2006-02-15T09:41:00.000-05:00

Threadybear continues to take shape. I'm about halfway up the body now. Here's the overall progress:


It's about 11" wide across, so I'm going to need to find a large bear to model it when I'm done. The two lighter blues are a little bit more distinguishable in this picture. There's 4 blues in total: the very dark accent colour, the darker shade (A) that's used in rows just above the ribbing, the medium shade (B) which is used in..hmm.. how to describe it. The row near the top with the deep blue and golden brown alternating dots? The rows just below and just above that one are shade B. Then there's shade C which is more of a heathered blue texture. That blue is surrounding the middle row of motifs - the band above the "flowers". Anyway, I'm still having fun knitting it, even though my right arm is starting to ache a little. I didn't do much yesterday, except for weaving in ends, so I'm about a day behind. But this still puts me halfway through the body, so I'm not worried yet.
Here's the fun bits: I've started the steek stitches for the armholes. These are the ones that I'll (eeps) cut into to open them up. I've marked them with the big black arrow. Of course, on Sunday night, I was knitting too late, and sailed past the row on the chart that was marked in green thinking "oh, isn't that pretty". The next morning, I realized that the green line was, in fact, the indication to cast on the steek stitches. So, after ripping back a couple of rows, we're now all set. It was only about halfway up the steek that I decided to always knit the final steek stitch in brown, as well as the first one, as I wanted to really mark where the steek started and ended. Hopefully it'll all be clear when I come to pick up the stitches to start the sleeve.
	And here's the other gratifying bit - the insides. One of the tricks in fair isle knitting is to keep your floats (the yarn that you're not knitting with that gets carried behind the work) as even and relaxed as possible. If you pull them too tight, the garment will get puckered; if you leave them too loose, then things can catch on them (not that a teddy bear is likely to have fingers or jewelry, but even so...) I'm pleased with how even this is turning out.

In other news, I've not been feeling so well the past couple of days. I'm going to rest today and see if I can make it to SNB at Caribou tonight.

Day 2's progress

2006-02-12T15:43:00.000-05:00

Here's how things are looking so far. I got a row or two ahead of schedule last night - good thing too, as I don't think I'll have as much time today. Hopefully I can catch up at SNB tomorrow night too. And there's a lot of ends to weave in piling up...

I'm feeling somewhat ambivalent about the colourway I chose. The two lighter shades of blue are pretty indistinguishable from eachother, which is a shame. But still, I'm more of a "process knitter" than a "product one" - it's the act of knitting and learning the techniques that appeals, more than whatever the finished object turns out to be. Otherwise, I'd be pondering driving up to Lansing tomorrow and buying a new kit from Threadbear and starting all over again...

Olympics - Day 1

2006-02-11T11:38:00.000-05:00

Well I cast on around 2:30pm, while watching the opening ceremonies. Some of the stuff seemed a little slow moving, but the "sparks" on rollerblades, the fireworks, the lighting of the flame itself, and Pavarotti were all rather impressive. And, speaking of impressive (heh), here's my Day 1 progress:

It's fun to be knitting fair isle again. This yarn is a lot more "grabby" than the Bazic I was using for the hats, which apparently is traditional for fair isle. Hopefully it also means that the steeks will "stick" easier. I'm glad I'm using Addi's though - I need all the needle smoothness and slippiness that they provide. It's definitely going to be a sweater for a large teddy bear - I've got one option of my childhood bear, Misha, who I got in Moscow for my very first Christmas. If it turns out too large for Misha, I may have to go "model shopping" closer to the end.

I did do some calculations, and I figure that if I can knit between 12 to 15 rows per day, AND work in the ends as I go, I should be on target to finish in time. Each round at the moment is taking me about 8 to 10 minutes, so that's basically 2 1/2 hours of knitting time per day. I got 16 rows done yesterday so I'm a bit ahead, but will have less time to knit on Sunday. Hope that all the other 3999 Olympic Knitters are doing as well!

Pre Olympic Report

2006-02-09T23:21:00.000-05:00

Well, tomorrow is the start of the Knitting Olympics, and I figured I'd give a progress report.

Following on from yesterday's post, Gundel suggested that the odd looking heel might be due to a tension thing ... so I did end up ripping out both heels and reknitting them, taking care to keep my tension fairly tight. Here's the results - not perfect, but definitely an improvement.

My right foot isn't quite as deformed as it seems in the final photo, and there is a tiny gap where one of the heels rejoins the foot, but for a first attempt, I'm pretty happy with it. Plus that'll be hidden by my shoe most of the time, right? Sadly, the finishing of these socks, and the Jaywalker, and the starting of the toe-up Pomatomus, and my Sockapaloooza socks will all be put on hold for... Threadybear!.

This is my project of choice for the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics, which, scarily, has more knitters participating than there are athletes in the actual games. (I'm also somewhat impressed that in a group of around 3000 knitters, I'm the only Kirsti-with-an-i.) I'm pretty well set: I've got my yarn, needles, pattern, all the notes from the Yahoo group. And the wonderful Amby has made us official "Team Detroit" tote bags to proudly keep our Olympic projects safe. Threadybear, by the way, is a traditional fair isle sweater, knitted in the round, with (eeps) 7 different yarn colours and (double eeps) steeks! Steeks are where I take a deep breath, and a sharp pair of scissors, and actually cut into the knitted sweater to make armholes. It's a somewhat scary thought, and hopefully the Olympic pressure will give me the courage to do it. I was going to calculate the number of rows so I could figure out what my daily target needs to be in order to finish in time, but that may be a tad too geeky even for me. Anyway, here's the "pre cast on" pics.

I'll try and update with Olympic progress over the next 16 days, but obviously most of my time will be actually knitting. Feel free to leave encouraging comments and cheer on my progress.

Short Row Heels

2006-02-08T15:40:00.000-05:00

Well class last night was a success. A short row heel was created and finished, and I think I pretty much understand the technique. Then when I got home, I did the heel on the second sock. It's definitely much faster than the heel flap/pick up stitches technique, and I think I prefer how it fits my foot. Here's the results from the top, from the back and from the side:

The minor problem is that I think I'm picking up my wraps incorrectly on the knit side of the heel. I love how the purl side looks, but the knit side just isn't matching it. Here's a closer look:


The nice, neat purl side	The not-so-nice, not-so-neat knit side

If anyone's got any suggestions as to how to improve it, I'd be grateful. What I think I did ... when I was on the second half of the heel, I'd knit to the wrap, slip the wrapped stitch purlwise onto the right needle, use the tip of my left needle to pick up the two wraps, slip the stitch back onto the left needle, and then knit all three loops together. Then wrap the next stitch (which means there are now two wraps on that stitch) and turn. Should I have been using a slip slip knit type stitch instead to keep the picked up wraps and the stitch together? Or was I somehow missing a wrap, despite being really careful to pick up the two wrap loops. I can't decide whether it's worth frogging and re-doing the heel, or just leaving it as it is, and trying again on the next pair.

I need to make a decision fast, coz this is the only knitting I have with me for the Red Wings hockey game tonight!

Hopefully this post will stay...

2006-02-07T10:07:00.000-05:00

Well I tried twice on Saturday to post about Mick Jagger and a red scarf knitted by my friend Lisa and the superbowl halftime show, but seeing as Mick never wore the scarf anyway, it's not too much of a disaster that blogger seemed to eat both of the posts.

Had a great time at SnB last night, and feel like I'm making good progress on the Jaywalker sock.

Here's its current state. Heel is turned, and the sock is back on the two circulars. Because of the curl to the stockinette, you can't quite see, but I'm about half an inch into the gusset decreases. I was glad I'd borrowed Amby's copy of Cat Bordhi's "socks soar on 2 circular needles", because I wasn't quite sure how you picked up the stitches after the heel turn. I like the sideways arrangement, and it's definitely going faster than the double points.

And, in a wonderful suprise, the doorbell rang on Saturday, and I found a box containing....

2 skeins of the most wonderfully soft, bulky wool from Wool in the Woods. It's 200 yards per skein, 17 stitches/22 rows to 4" on size 9 needles ... and was a gift from the amazing Poppy. I'd helped out my sister and her Yaya friends with a suprise gift for another Yaya who lives nearby, and this was my completely unexpected 'thank you'. I've got strict instructions to make something for myself, so I'm thinking some kind of shawl, with lots of lacy yarnovers to show off the gorgeous colours. If anyone knows a pattern, I'd be glad to get some suggestions! Anyway, thank you Poppy - it was above and beyond, and I'm very very grateful.

Tonight is my next 2 socks/2 circs class at City Knits - time to start the short row heels. Apparently, we're not allowed to leave until we've completed at least one heel. I didn't bother with pictures of the socks so far, because they're basically just like the previous post only slightly longer, with 11 pattern repeats. But tomorrow ... they'll hopefully look very different. I won't be SnB'ing on Wednesday night, because Terry and I have got tickets to go see the Red Wings play. (That's the Detroit ice hockey team for any non-americans reading.) But I'll be bringing my socks and knitting during the game - hey, it might be cold in the arena, right? Got to have yarn to keep me warm.

And now to work. Time to start the countdown til 6pm and sock class!

Blog stuff.. and sock stuff

2006-02-03T13:21:00.000-05:00

Blog stuff first. Until we come up with our "Team Detroit" button for the Knitting Olympics, I'm signing up for . Thanks Dixie!

And here is proof from snapshirts that my blog is getting somewhat obsessive about knitting socks:

At least Chocolate makes a good showing in there...

OK, now onto knitting stuff. Here are my current projects - all socks of course!

	This is the ubiquitous Jaywalker sock, in Fire on the Mountain sock yarn. It's perhaps knitting up with a tad too much bright pink for my tastes, though I love the overall pattern. These may end up with a certain family member who I know adores pink and bright colours....
And these are from my City Knits class - two socks at once, on two circular needles. That in itself is fun, but I'm also knitting these from the toe up, which is a new technique for me (and one that may pay off in other ways - see following paragraph!). I'm about two-thirds of the way through the foot, using an 8 stitch pattern called "Oblique Openwork" from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks, and it's worth clicking on the thumbnail to see the detail in it. The yarn is Lorna's Laces in "denim". I wasn't sure at first, but now I'm really liking how the pattern is working with them. Next Tuesday: short row heels!

And now for the lack of progress report. With the help of Karen Kendrick-Hands from City Knits, who gets even more obsessive about stitches than I do, we figured out how to reverse the decrease, and how to knit the rib so that the stitches would twist in the opposite direction from "knit through the back loop", thus solving the slant problem detailed in the previous post. However ... as you can hopefully see from this picture ... that opposite twist makes for a really thick ribbing, completely overlying the purl stitches, which again, won't work for the scale pattern. So I think I'm left with one option: knit the second sock from the toe up. The Sensational Socks book has a pattern for a toe-up sock with a heel flap, so it should be manageable. The gusset will look slightly different, with a horizontal line where the stitches are picked up, but that bit will be hidden inside my shoe anyway, right? And everyone will be so impressed by the pattern, they may not notice. Or else I suck it up and knit two socks the same. Any opinions?

So that's the knitting news. This weekend I'll be staying as far from downtown as possible while the Superbowl fever hits Detroit.

The Hippo Beast is conquered...

2006-01-26T13:58:00.000-05:00

..well, halfway at least. Yep, at SNB last night, I finished the first Pomatomus sock. I had to rip back about 2 inches, when it became clear that the toes were going to be much too long, and then have the frustration of picking the lace pattern back up. But I managed it, and here is the finished result:
Again, click on it for a larger picture. I'm really pleased with how it came out, and it feels really comfy too. So, of course, being rash and impetuous, I started in on the second one, with the plan of reversing the scale pattern. Here's progress so far:

I think I'm about 80% there, and probably should have swatched first ... but I wanted my finished sock! I realised that as well as reading the chart backwards, I'd need to change the "knit 2 together through the back loop" decrease into a "slip slip knit" or something ... but I'm not happy with how it's coming out. The scales and the edges aren't defined enough. Here's a comparison of both socks:
Part of it is the decrease; the other part is the twisted rib. If you look closely at the finished sock, the ridges formed by the "knit through the back loop" lie at an angle, with the right side higher than the left. This emphasises the longer curved edge of each scale, and makes the pattern stand out more. On my reversed version, I really want the left side to stand out, and I'm not quite sure how to do that. So I may very well end up playing around with some scrap yarn and see what I can come up with.

But it's still a very good feeling to have one finished. And in the meantime, I may just begin the Jaywalker with that wonderful Fire on the Mountain sock yarn.

I'm such a joiner...

2006-01-24T11:22:00.000-05:00

.. that I've signed up for not one, but two projects. The first is this one:

the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics. I'm going to use it as the motivation to knit Threadybear - the traditional fair isle sweater, steeks and all, but in teddy bear size. Which will hopefully make the idea of cutting - yes cutting! - into my knitting slightly less intimidating.

Olympic Update.. For anyone else participating who'd like something more than the default button, Jen has come up with some wonderful creative ideas here. I'm almost wishing I'd signed up for the "Drunken ~~Lack~~ Lace Team". I may have to ask them to make a "British Ex-pats Team" because joining any Team USA is just a tad too far, but I can't quite go along with the "We're Better Than All Of You" UK option. At least, not yet. Give me a week and my opinion may change. And that is the end of the Olympic Update

Also, thanks to Dana's prompting at SNB last night, I've also joined in with the fun of

- Sockapaloooza. I read a bunch of posts about the previous round, but as I wasn't even thinking of knitting socks then, I stayed on the sidelines. Now, however, with Pomatomus (aka the hippo sock beast) finally on the stockinette toe decreases, I'm looking forward to this. Basically, you sign up with your sock preferences and foot measurements, then you get someone else's information. You knit a pair of socks for them, while someone else is secretly knitting socks for you. Sign up is today only and the socks get mailed out in May - so there's plenty of time to knit, but you have to sign up now!.

Hopefully finished Pomatomus pics will be forthcoming tonight or tomorrow. Then I just have to start the second one... In other boring blog news, I've tweaked the sidebar to more accurately reflect my current knitting progress and goals, the new knitalongs, and I also removed my blog links - mostly because I now use bloglines to keep track of way too many blogs which would take up all the page were I to list them all.

KnitDetroit has vanished...

2006-01-20T15:13:00.000-05:00

In case anyone from the KnitDetroit email list is reading this blog and feeling as lost as I am ... I haven't a clue what's happened, and hope that it's just some glitch at Yahoo's end of things. In the meantime, we are using the discussion forums that Julie set up a while back: http://www.evilemo.com/knitdetroit. Hope to see some of you over there.

Now I'm off to pack for the weekend and, oh yes, finish writing the retreat theme song...

Sunday night update...
Amby has set up a new group, until we can figure out what's happened to the old one. Join up here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/detroitareaknitters

Oh, and we did indeed manage to write an uptempo song about failure, the retreat was incredible, and I managed to get about halfway through the foot of the Pomatomus sock. Hopefully I can get to the toes during tomorrow night's SNB.

And now for some knitting

2006-01-19T13:01:00.000-05:00

So I'm still on my "small fiddly things on tiny needles" kick to recover from all the Christmas knitting. I'm pondering taking on the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics with the teddy bear fair isle sweater as my project. We'll see.
Terry's socks got finished, as you can see here. I altered the cuff ribbing slightly for the second sock (the one on the left in the photo). It's a k2 p2 rib, but I started with only one knit stitch, purled 2, then repeated the ribbing ad nauseum and ended with the remaining k1. This meant that needles 1 and 2 ended with a completed 2 stitches, rather than the ribbing being "stretched" across two needles. As you can see from the picture, this gave me a much tighter cuff, and also avoided the slight ladder I was getting in the first sock. So that's all good. Terry loves them, but wishes I'd done ribbing all the way down the leg so they'd stay up better. Pah.
And now for the big project of the moment.. the Pomatomus socks from Knitty. This has become a matter of pride for me.I started off. Got through the cuff, no problem. Then I took them to Stitch'n'Bitch to keep working on them. Got to row 6 of the pattern and realised I'd made a mistake. Ripped back to where the ribbing began (with all the yarnovers and knit 2 togethers I failed hopelessly to pick up any earlier rows),and started a second time. Got to row 7 ... and yet again, something was wrong. Now it was personal. I ripped back to the cuff once more ... and headed home to give this my full concentration. This time I was sailing along, felt like I was reading the pattern and understanding how it was progressing and had almost finished the first repeat... when...
	See how nicely the scale pattern on the right of the sock comes to a sharp point in the middle? See how that fails to happen on the left hand scale. Yes, once again I'd made a mistake somewhere around row 5 or 6, and hadn't spotted it because I was so busy following what I thought the pattern should be, I hadn't noticed my count was off. I was too depressed to rip it out and start again a fourth time... so...
...I figured that there were two ends to the ball of yarn, and I might as well just start on the second sock right away. Thus saving my pride, and yet not abandoning the project. As you can see, this one is progressing quite nicely - and I was even able to work on it at last night's SNB. It's really a great design - the twisted ribbing makes for a nice tight fabric, and despite how complicated the charts look, most of the time you're just knitting the knits and purling the purls, and keeping the rib pattern going. Here's a close-up of the scale pattern as it should look:
	The yarn, by the way, is merino wool from the Fleece Artist, who also creates the most wonderful hand dyed colourways. So now I just have to figure out what to do with the second sock. I was pondering reversing the chart pattern so that the scales went in the other direction ... which would mean ripping back to the ribbing again, but for a good reason so I don't mind that! The other option is trying to weave in a lifeline just before the mistake, but that may feel like too much work. We'll see.
So that's the updates. Lots of yarn, and a fair bit of knitting going on. We're off on retreat this weekend and I'm hoping to get a good chunk of the foot done during the free time on Saturday afternoon. Keep checking for updates - I'll try hard not to neglect this blog so much. If nothing else, I now have to inspire my sister in her knitting efforts!

Sock Yarn Pr0n!

2006-01-19T12:43:00.000-05:00

So much for my self-imposed yarn diet ... I'm accumulating sock yarn like there's no tomorrow. But at least I'm knitting a bunch of it up. Here's the current stuff in the stash. And, as per usual, clicking on the thumbnails will give you a new window with larger images, for those of you who really want to drool.

	Lorna's Laces in their "jeans" colourway. I bought this at City Knits on Tuesday to use for the class I'm taking: 2 socks on 2 circular needles, knitted from the toe up with a short row heel. Lots of new techniques and hopefully a way to churn out even more socks! Sadly, Lynne wasn't feeling well, so the first class was postponed til next week. But I do have the yarn...

Here's the yummy Koigu Painters Palette Premium Merino that Amby bought for me at The Knitting Room's sale. Because you can never have enough purple sock yarn.. at least, not if you're me. And after finishing Terry's socks (be patient! Pictures are coming!), I've decided that I love working with this yarn. I really like how it knits up, how smooth and un-splitty it is, and how vibrant the colours are. So there's enough here for three more pairs.
	These are two skeins of "socks that rock" from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. The top colourway is "Fire on the Mountain"; the lower one is "Lapis". Yes, I am going to jump on the bandwagon and make Grumperina's Jaywalker socks, but because I like the pattern, and I really like how this yarn works with it, at least based on other people's blogs. And, just to add to its drool-worthiness, here's a couple of close-up shots.

And, finally, to show off just how wonderful a wife I've got, here's what she got me for Christmas. As you can see from the photos above, it's already been put to good use!

That's it for the yarn pr0n. Next post will perhaps contain some actual knitting!