Knits

Hello! Well still busy here. I was meant to go back to the UK yesterday, but I’ve extended my stay for two more weeks and may extend it further. I’m anxious to go back to the UK and finish moving and start my new job, but obviously I’m also anxious about leaving.

While it’s been sunny, it’s not actually been very warm especially when that strong breeze comes up. It’s been coming up pretty early in the day too so by the time I’ve done all the little things around the house and the morning fog has burned off, the breeze is up and it’s too cold to sit outside. Can’t win. We got a teeny, tiny bit of rain as evidenced by the raindrops on the tulip above.

I’m so restless that I’ve not done as much knitting as one would hope with all the sitting around I’ve been doing — waiting for phone calls, waiting for my sister to come out of appointments, etc. I did however knit a Kittyville hat for her oncologist who is about to give birth to child number two. It came out kinda big, toddler-sized, which I think is actually nicer since newborn hats don’t fit for long. So why a Kittyville? Well the oncologist and nurses always like the hats she comes in wearing and the cat one is pure sister — everyone loves that one. I thought it would be a nice memory for the doctor to have a hat knit by me for her baby that is part of my sister too. It came out really cute with the patches of calico colour. Yarn is Di’ve Butterfly.

Not much else to report. Time to go have a shower, finish up the laundry, make a couple of calls, and then go visit my sister (she got admitted to the hospital w/ mild pneumonia on Sunday). Hope you’re all well. At some point I should catch up a bit w/ blog reading… I’m sort of scared to look at my feed as it’s gonna have a ton of unread posts.

Hello! Well, I’ve been in bright and sunny California for a week now. It’s actually been pretty nice — generally it’s really foggy for half the day and it’s not been bad really. I’ve sat outside a few times and knit and enjoyed the warmth. I even had to go out and buy a tank top (vest) and shorts today because I didn’t bring anything suitable for lounging in the sun.

Things are going as well as they can. The first few days were really hard — very emotional. Now it’s just hard because I can’t really leave her on her own for too long (mostly because I have to keep my eye on her so she doesn’t fall or something and make sure she takes her meds on time). I’ve completely changed my body clock although about 3 or 4 I feel like I need a nap and then I get tired and ready for bed by 10 or so which is early for me.

So anyway - several things to show you. The first picture is only a fraction of the amazing gift Jillian sent me. It includes a nice grass bag, two skeins of Claudia Handpainted in Blue Fields, a set of Rosewood DPNs, some hand lotion and chapstick, and that cool “blooming” tea. She also sent the Kittyville hat she knit for my sister (which she has worn most days since it arrived last Wednesday) and a thing of coffee and biscuits. Mmmm.

 
Claudia Handpainted in Blue Fields

I’m so impressed not only with the generosity of knitters, but people in general, whether you know them or not, whether you’ve talked to them every week or only exchange Christmas cards. I’m generally pretty grumpy about people, but it’s good to know that most people are kind and have heart; I need to remember that more often, not only when there are bad times.

I also started the Neighbourhood Tunnels sock from the Socktopus sock club so I could knit it on the airplane. I’ve just started the heel flap (I actually haven’t done much knitting since the plane ride). The picture shows the yarn a bit brighter than it is. To me the pattern seems to be obscured by the yarn, but maybe that’s down to my technique. My yarn overs don’t seem to be creating very large holes (and I’m not knitting through the back loop). I think maybe I’ve changed how I do yarn overs although I can’t figure out how they might be different. I was going to follow the pattern as written, but because I was in a rush to get these started to take on the plane, I didn’t do the toe as stated so it’s probably going to be a bit wonky.

Oh the Laburnum socks are still going (starting the cuff on sock two) and I saw other people also had problems with them biasing so it’s something with the way the pattern pulls.

Time to go do some more knitting and relaxing before bed… I’ll be back soon with an actual finished object.

Dudes, seriously. I was pretty happy with this project when I was all done with it last night. And then this morning when I snapped the pictures I had to then dash off to work before I could see how they came out. So I got home and downloaded the pics and they came out pretty good and just looking at the project I’m even happier with it than I was last night.

This was the first project I’ve done that involved cabling for a significant portion of the project; and while the cables aren’t big, chunky, complex things, the number of crosses and complexity was new to me. I just love this and I think my sister will too. She picked this hat out a couple years ago, but I just wasn’t ready to do it (even though I did try).

I need to practice my cabling in general as I do want to eventually make Rogue or something with cable work. I think the heavier gauge yarns do lend themselves to tidier cables, but practice is still needed.

Just poking my head in to let you know I’m alive. I went up north last week on Wednesday, went into my new job on Thursday and trained a new person and met a number of my new colleagues. THEY ARE SO NICE! It’s such a change (not that most of my current coworkers aren’t nice, but they weren’t so open and helpful right off the bat). As far as the other goal of finding a place to live… I may be found a place. I’m trying to decide right now, otherwise it’s another trip north very soon.

On the train ride up I knit a good bit of my mosaic sock. I waited too long to try it on and ended up having to rip out over an inch of it. I’ll be going up a needle size. I then continued to work on the baby chevron sock and got a lot of it done. I even put it on waste yarn and tried it on after I’d started the cuff. And last night I finished it off and bound off w/ (literally) a centimetre of yarn left. And I went to put it on in all it’s gloriousness to find out… it doesn’t fit! How can this be?! I tried it on well after the decreases and cuff were started. If you have a US 8/8.5 foot and ankles skinnier than mine (fat chance) you can have a sock. Otherwise I suppose I’ll rip it out and go up a needle size there too.

And finally, I am tackling Shedir again (third time lucky?) — this time in Rowan Calmer Kiwi. My cables look awful. I hope they straighten themselves out once it’s all stretched out on a head.

I don’t have a lot to show or say right now despite many evenings of knitting.

First I think I am going to blatantly rip off Two Black Sheep and use song titles for post titles because I really hate trying to think up post titles. I am also going to blatantly rip off Sknitty (and many others) by using the title FO: [project name here] when I have finished objects to post. This will all start with the next post.

I do have one finished object… the Lake Park hat which I mentioned back at the end of September. Knowing I was going to run out of yarn, I set it aside until I decided what to do with it. Turns out a very kind person in the US had quite a bit of leftovers in the same dye lot and sent them to me for nothing but good karma. Now I have a little over one ball to use on something else! The hat came out a bit snug, but it’s nice and warm. You can’t see the “leaves” as well as I’d hope, but oh well…

Next, I’ve made some progress on my Stepped Fret socks - I’ve turned the heel and am decreasing the gusset. I also started a pair of socks using some yarn I was trying to destash - Regia Crazy Color 6-ply. I had originally bought it for some gloves/mittens, but then decided I couldn’t be bothered hence the destash. I decided to actually knit some socks with this because I thought the heavier weight might mean a finished object faster. I’m using a baby chevron pattern and having some technical problems so it’s not progressed as fast as I would’ve liked.

I don’t know if you can see it in this picture (click to make supersize), but the knitted column that falls between the two yarn overs (middle of the sock), is coming out in a zigzag. It’s not as apparent when the sock is stretched on the foot which is good (because I generally don’t care what a sock looks like off the foot), but I’m wondering why this is happening as I can’t think of it really happening before. Is it the yarn? Is it something with my technique? I’ve tried a number of things to correct it —
twisting the stich when I knit it,
if I knit it normally then on the following round, I twist that stitch
twisting the yarn overs

and nothing seems to actually help. It seems the best to just knit as normal on all rounds.

There are mirrored decreases too — a k2tog followed by a ssk. The ssk was looking very wonky too so I’ve cleaned it up immensely by doing my usual slip 1 knitwise, put it back on the left needle and then k2tog through the back loop; on the following round I then knit the decreased stitch through the backloop.

These socks have lots of little experiments in technique in them.

The other thing I tried was slightly different short row techniques for the heel turn. Since I knit the backwards heel flap because of my high instep, I just use the short row to get the heel cup. I used the double wraps as chronicled by misocrafty and Cosmicpluto — the difference being misocrafty passes the wrapped stitches over the knitted stitch while Cosmicpluto actually knits the wraps. [Click for big.]

Again, it may be hard to tell from the picture, but I certainly found a difference in the techniques in my knitting — especially when picking up the stitches on the knit side. On the left, the baby chevron sock, the knit side pick ups and subsequent psso came out loose every single time (I re-knit this turn 3x) with very visible holes — the exact thing this technique was to help remove! On the right, the stepped fret sock, the wraps on both sides are much tighter. I did find it difficult with both techniques to actually pick up and put the last set of wraps on the needle.

Anyway, I’ve re-knit the baby chevron heel cup again and it’s much better.

I’m away again this week for work and house hunting! Fingers crossed I find something so I don’t have to make another trip north. It will be another item to tick off the list and make me feel less crazy. As for Trigger, I spoke to soon last weekend. She was still sick through most of this week, but is now on some medication and will hopefully be back to normal very soon. I think the long course of antibiotics may have wrecked havoc on her intestinal fauna and she needed some probiotics to get things rebalanced. Fingers crossed there too.

Well, I’m back home. My UK home. Not that I have a house back in the US, but you know what I mean.

It was nice to visit with my mom and sister over Thanksgiving and for my mom’s birthday. I even went and saw my dad down in Los Angeles which was quick, but nice. It was an odd sort of trip because I felt tired the entire time no matter how much sleep I got. It ended up that I didn’t do too much at all — no drive down the coast (or up), no real “sight seeing”, not even any clothing shopping like I had planned. I did a bit of knitting and bought (for me) quite a bit of yarn and knitting accessories. Despite not doing much, there’s actually a lot to show and say so I’ll split it up into a few posts.

First, the knitting. I showed you the two completely finished items in my last post — Clapotis for my sister, and Charade socks for me. I still have to write up the full details. I knit another Little Cables Hat for my friend who picked me up at the airport and drove me to my mom’s. I didn’t get to give it to her since she left very early the day after Thanksgiving so I’ll put it in the post (or actually will ask my mom/sister to do so since I left it behind). I also knit one of the Victorian Cabled Wristlets. I could’ve easily knitted both of them, but I’d only brought half a ball of yarn — the other half I had used to make a swatch to decide whether to purchase a sweater’s worth. Hopefully I can knock out the other one this weekend (if I can find the swatch). I love this wristlet — the yarn is sooooo nice and makes me sad I didn’t discover it before it was discontinued. I did buy a sweater’s worth though, heh.

I also started some house socks for my sister - there’s only toes to show so I’m not showing. I also started a pair of Marigold Socks for myself with my Piece of Beauty sock yarn in Sweet Grass. This yarn is so pretty. It’s the newer yarn that she’s dying and it knits up much nicer than the previous yarn. I liked the previous one, but felt like there was no elasticity in it (or I was pulling it all out) whereas this is just right. It also has this nice sheen that doesn’t seem to show until it’s knit up. They’re moving pretty swiftly. Another pair I wish I could’ve done two at once, but as I started them as a project to knit on the plane, I didn’t want to risk losing my cable needles.

Oh, and finally, a picture of my cardigan on me. You only get a picture of the back side of me since I rarely can take a nice picture — I always gotta pull faces or do a stupid pose.

I have lots of stash enhancement to detail, plus books and other related purchases. Plus some photos from the few times I did get out.

I also barely got online (my mom has my old computer which is just dead slow as is their connection) so I am trying to catch up on blog reading which isn’t easy since I was behind before I left! Hope you’re all well.

Well, I said I had a couple of toddler-sized things to knit. When I went off to spend the night in London for two nights I took a rather extraneous amount of knitting with me and as I stated, I did very little of it. I did cast on for the toddler-sized hat, but once again found that I generally have to start a hat on DPNs and them move to a circular before moving back to DPNs to do the decreases so I didn’t get past the cast-on for that. However, last night I re-cast-on and knit 2/3 of the hat before I had to head to bed. I finished it up this morning in no time. I’ve been sick with a cold since Thursday afternoon so couldn’t be fussed with pissing about with the camera to get more colour accurate photos. Read all the details on the Little Cable hat on it’s own special page.

I’ll probably make another for the other toddler that needs a hat, but I think I will use up the remaining yarn from the above for the ribbing doubled up with white and then double up the white for the rest of the hat. Maybe I’ll be able to knock that one out tonight too.

I finally completely finished that first sleeve of my cardigan and I love it. It’s probably a bit too fitted really, but I kinda love that since I’m past the days where I go out in baggy clothes. It will make it better for laying as the peanut butter of my layer sandwich — a fitted long-sleeved t-shirt inside and a coat on the outside. I’ve also finished the increases on the body and have maybe 2-4 more inches to go including the edge and the second sleeve. Because I briefly had amnesia with the first three balls of yarn, I’ll have a few ends to weave in, but for the rest of it I’ve done the sexy spit-splice. Despite knitting this sleeve three times, I’m really happy with it — it’s my first sleeve ever!

My friend, A, who is in Brussels doing her PhD sent me a belated birthday gift which included Belgian Chocolates (of course, and if she hadn’t she wouldn’t be my friend anymore haha) and a sachet with a lace kitty on it. If you didn’t know, Belgian lace is kinda famous. She also sent this other thing with some cute little apples embroidered on it. I didn’t know what it was at first and a co-worker said a shower cap.

…and nothing to show for it!

Isn’t it frustrating how you can knit and knit and knit and yet you don’t really see any progress? I guess it doesn’t help that I’ve had project ADD this weekend. I’ve mostly worked on my cardigan. I haven’t secured my additional balls of yarn, but I have several good leads. I’m going to finish up the fourth ball and then start a sleeve and see how much cardigan and sleeve I get in order to determine how much yarn I need. I don’t want to get two balls to find out I need three or vice versa. Also, I seriously, seriously need to learn continental knitting because it seems to take me days to purl a row.

I’ve also finally turned the heel on my second Charade sock. This has been sitting untouched for quite some time and I’d really like to get it finished. I need to pick up the gusset stitches and proceed. Hopefully I’ll get most of that done this evening… I’ll first focus on finishing up the fourth ball of yarn for the cardigan as mentioned above.

I also started a hat because it’s hat weather. But you know what, I don’t think I have enough yarn! Argh! I’m using the same yarn I used for the Marigold hat and I’m just shy of 50g since I had to use a bit of a second ball for my sister’s fat head. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a decent sized hat from this even if it isn’t one as long as I’d like. I’m doing another Marnie Maclean pattern - the Lake Park hat. She’s got matching fingerless gloves to go with it too, but I won’t do those.

I purchased my first Posh Yarn this evening. Annoyingly I put the one colourway I wanted in my basket and two others and then decided I didn’t want both of the others so I went back to see the colours to decide which to keep and in those few seconds, someone else snatched up the one I really wanted. Argh. I bought something similar though. I plan on making a mini-scarf with some of it.

Speaking of mini-scarf, have you all seen this? The Pidge. It’s all over the Ravelry knitting forums. Apparently they quickly revamped their website to remove mentions of the actual yarn they’re using (Karabella) and pictures of the people “hand knitting” the items. They are actually knitted on a loom of some sort and, according to some people who are experienced with said loom, the stitch pattern they use is a very basic one and thus it takes maybe an hour or so for someone to “knit” the mini-scarf. I mean, more power to them really since they’re getting press and people are paying several hundred dollars for the convenience of a simple item, but I think their information is rather misleading.

Other things I’ve managed this weekend:

• Photographed & listed several items of clothing on eBay that I decided to get rid of back in August — many of them still with tags or otherwise unworn.
• Baked a butternut squash for the first time. Half of which made it into risotto; the other half will be made into soup this evening.
• Usual household things like laundry although you really probably couldn’t tell since as much as I tidied, I also made a mess.
• Watched Reality Bites for the first time since the mid-1990s. It really made me feel like I was back in Santa Cruz.

Trigger is on the mend. She’s not really amused by the twice-daily antibiotics, but the swelling is almost gone. She is impressed with the high frequency of mushy food and/or food with some chicken broth on it.

Oh yeah, I cut off most of my hair last week. Actually I paid someone to cut it off for me because I’d look bald-ish if I’d done it myself. That’s my signature pose.

I’ve fought it. I really have. I’ve fought this onset of autumn not because I don’t love autumn (it’s my favourite season), but because summer forgot to happen. The most summery weather we had was back in April for a week or two. We had a few days here and there during “summer” that were like summer, but there was never a continuous string of nice days. Now the days are noticeably shorter, the temperature has plummeted, the leaves are falling, and the air is crisp. Ah well…

I had another good week. I went to a staff conference (all of our organisations across the UK and Ireland) and received two mentions in the opening address as well as being asked to stand up. Only one other person got a mention and that was a colleague in my office. We are obviously rockstars. It’s really because I’m heavily involved in the two largest (inter)national projects our parent organisation is doing.

Anyway, it’s been another week of not much knitting. I’m getting close to putting in the heel on my second Charade. I also started Cosmicpluto’s easy raglan cardigan v.2.0 in Noro Silk Garden. This is the first time I’ve actually knit with Noro and it’s a little rough (luckily I’ve had very little straw and *fingers crossed* so far no knots), but it’s not terrible at all. The colours are very pretty, but not as dark as they seemed in the ball which is slightly disappointing, but I’m find with it. I think this will look great with my jeans and chocolate brown corduroy trousers. The only problem is that I think I may be a ball short. I want full length sleeves (the sleeves in the picture on the pattern look to stop mid-forearm) and I want to be sure it’s long enough. I am nearly to the point where I separate out the sleeves and I may very well do those before continuing with the body.

I did do the test knit I mentioned before. It’s a cabled hat and somehow my row gauge went completely bonkers so what should’ve been an adult-sized hat. So now I have a toddler-sized hat which I think I’ll give to my friend for her daughter. I messed up one of rows in the cables early on and didn’t notice for ages. I’m not talented enough to ladder down in a cable so I left it. The pattern is by Amy O’Dell and is now available in her Etsy shop.

Since Jaeger yarns have been discontinued it’s obviously been flying off the shelves since retailers are tending to sell it at about half price. I got a ball of Extra Fine Merino Aran in Peacock and knit up a swatch. It’s held up very well living in the bottom of my backpack the last two weeks. I went ahead and bought A LOT of it, but in Juniper. I also bought some Rowanspun Aran in Hardy which is a nice oatmealy colour. Thanks to the autumnal light, I couldn’t get a true colour shot (I also didn’t try really hard).

It’s my birthday on Monday so tomorrow The Boy is going to take me to Kew Gardens. Hopefully fellow expat and her wee daughter will come along too. Watch out for pictures of flowers and Henry Moore sculptures soon. And hopefully more regular updates. Apologies for the lack of comments and replies to your comments/emails — I’m way behind on lots of things.

 

Hooray! I’ve managed to finish something thanks to lots of time sitting on trains this past week. Okay so they don’t match, but it’s still a pair, no? That’s Anastasia on the left in Knit Picks Memories in Pansy and Charade on the right in Piece of Beauty in Dark Matter. I gave up with trying to use up all the Knit Picks on that sock because I was getting tremendously bored and I still have another sock to do. They’re still rather tall (9″ from the floor) and I have 11 grams of yarn left. Charade are also tall, 7.5″ from the floor, and I wasn’t sure how much yarn I’d need for the ribbing so I stopped the pattern and did the ribbing to find that I could’ve probably added another half-inch. Oh well.

When I finished casting off the Charade, I was so eager to cast off Anastasia that I got right to it. When I had 10 stitches left I realised I’d actually forgotten to do the ribbing hahaha. Ooops. So I ripped out the cast off and finished it off correctly. I can’t find a name for the bind off I used, but it is definitely very good and stretchy for toe-up socks. You k2 as usual, slip those two stitches back to the other needle, k2tog, k1, slip the two stitches back to the other needles, k2tog… rinse and repeat. When the sock isn’t on your foot it flares a bit, but it looks neat and tidy and fits great. Enough details since they’re not really done, heh.

Both of these socks fit really well - they’re snug, but not tight. I now realise that I knit my Saucy socks too loose and I’m somewhat tempted to rip them out and reknit them on a slightly larger needle so I can follow the pattern and have 3 repeats of the pattern horizontally instead of four and not have mismatched toes. Maybe some day.

Other projects? I’m doing a test knit for a cabled hat. I hope to get it done this weekend. I only started this morning and I forgot that cable patterns mean lots of purling - bah. I hate purling so much I might try to figure out backwards knitting.

 
Jaeger extra fine merino aran in peacock — Rowan all seasons cotton in native (it looks tea-dyed and I love that) — RYC bamboo soft in pompadour — Rowan calmer in kiwi (I’m not a yarn sniffer, but Trigger is)
 

I still haven’t finished uploading my pictures from Paris. There aren’t even that many. Hmm. I’ll do that today and post about Paris tomorrow.

I do have a funny story to share. Last weekend my ex-pat friend K came up to Oxford. The plan was to eat, drink, knit, and whinge as needed. We set out to a pub near the river. After walking about 2 miles, we get to the pub to find out it’s burnt down. I don’t know where I’ve been because it’s one of the more famous/popular pubs and it burnt down in May hahaha. Oops. So off we went for another mile or so to this other famous/popular pub that K went to often when she was a student in Oxford about 10 years ago. They’ve done it all up and it’s kind of sad that it’s lost it’s old pub feel — dark, low ceilings, exposed beams, small rooms — it’s now very open and bright.

We had a drink and two women stopped to comment on how unusual it was to see two young people knitting. K said “It’s the new smoking”. I was knitting Charade and they said they couldn’t believe what tiny needles I was using. It was nice to have people stop and compliment us. We then ate and set off back to the city centre. We decided to cut across Port Meadow in an attempt to cut the time it took to get back to town since the next stop was to be the QI Vodka bar for a delicious girly drink.

As we’re about 2/3 across the meadow, the ground started getting a bit squishy. You may have heard about parts of Oxford getting flooded about a month ago. Well this was part of it since it is sort of like an island between the River Thames/Isis and the canal. Now, K and I weren’t really prepared for this type of walk. She was more prepared than me since she had on sneakers and jeans while I was in a just-below-the-knee skirt and mary janes. Water started pouring into my shoes. A bit ick at first since it was smelly and dirty water (there are cows, horses, sheep, all matter of bird life that reside in this meadow). Then the land started looking deceptively solid. We’d take a step and sink to our ankles in mucky water and mud. And then midway up our shins.

This is long, but funny.