2013 Best and Worst

It was the best of times

• Finding physio therapist that is really effective with a fun staff
• Taking two classes with the amazing and talented Shirley Paden
• Spending a wonderful day with Nicky
• Providing the reception for those taking Refuge and Bodhisattva vows
• Denise’s birthday party
• Visiting San Antonio and my best mate
• Putting a care package together for a found kitty
• Toupie: mad, bad, and totally cute

As always, friendship: that in the midst of all that life throws at us; it is the people in your life that make it bearable

It was the worst of times

• My right shoulder
• The cat bite that ended in a day at the hospital

Best Knitting Books of 2013

• Knit to Flatter by Amy Herzog
• Shetland Lace Knitting by Liz Lovick

Best Audiobook Listens of 2013

• Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition
• The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the American Dust Bowl

 

The Goldilocks Dilemma or Size Matters

I have now changed the size 1 needles used to knit the Diagonal Rib Socks by Ann Budd. When knitting plain vanilla socks for myself, casting on 56 to 60 stitches usually works for me. 56 stitches in sock or fingering weight wool fit comfortably on the 4” Knit Picks wood dpns. Knitting with sport or dk weight wool where I am generally using 48 to 52 stitches works well on the ChiaoGoo or Knitter’s Pride Karbonz 6” dpns. I found myself struggling in the past 24 hours to find a length that works. Finally, last night I switched to the 5” no-name bamboo needles and the 65 stitches fit comfortably, enabling me finally to pick up some speed in working the pattern.

I ran into the same problem when knitting Little Things by Veera Välimäki. Started on size 2 KP nickel, ripped and switched to size four ChiaoGoo Bamboo; ripped and switched to size 5 ChiaoGoo Bamboo and finally got a looser but still firm fabric and my knitting speed returned to normal.

I am so far happy with both projects. For the Diagonal Rib Socks, I am using Light Brown Hare’s Jackalope in the Kitten 2 colorway. I chose the pattern, first because my 2014 goal is knitting socks with stitch patterns and colorwork; and second because I suspected, and it has proved true, that the stitch pattern would prevent noticeable pooling. The yarn is soft and not splitty without that cotton candy squishiness that sometimes happens with superwash Merino and the stitch definition is good. Light Brown Hare also sells nice stitch markers.

For Little Things, I am using Black Welsh Mountain yarn that I bought from Countrybyrd on Ravelry. A nice rustic yarn that is a little hard on the fingernails, but which blooms and softens nicely after soaking.

 

The Year in Knitting

Just finished an analysis of this years knitting:

• 21 projects committed to at the beginning of the year (including finishing wips from 2012)
• 22 projects listed on Ravelry
• 15 projects finished
• 9 projects in progress
• 2 projects frogged
• Committed to knitting/crocheting 10K yards; currently at 7070 and climbing

No crochet projects started or completed.

I am in denial about the 2011 wips

I am in denial about my stash

I admit that there is a 99.9% chance that I will purchase yarn when I go to a yarn store.

 

The 35 Socks: Yarn 3AM Enchantments

After washing, these are buttery soft.

 

 

Why????

Why oh why do knitters and crocheters repeatedly find themselves victims of those who want to make money from their work? I am only going to provide the links to discussions on Ravelry on the issue, because I don’t want to be complicit in driving traffic to the owner of the websites. But free knitting and crochet patterns appear to have been universally harvested from designer websites, blogs, Knitty and Ravelry etc. to an advertising-ridden site that links the user to the pattern in most instances without the permission of the designer. Photographic content has apparently been used without the permission of the photographer, in some instances patterns have been renamed, and even though I admit to being graphically impaired, the photos on the site are horridly distorted to the point where I barely recognized the photograph of a pattern I know well. 

As revealed by a Ravelry user this morning, the images are inline linked in a way that website owners could end up paying for the traffic going to the free website. 

Here are links to some of the forums on Ravelry where this issue is being discussed: 

Knit Free Pattern Group

Friending

Designers Group

Rubberneckers

Socks: A Good Thing

My sole despair (no pun intended) at the beginning of this year was my inability to knit successfully a wearable pair of socks. I accepted the challenge of the Friends Group Sock Knitting KAL/CAL and committed to completing one pair of socks.  

Almost twelve months later, it actually took putting all my hand knit socks to soak in the same afternoon for me to realize that I’ve completed 5 pairs of socks and have another three pairs on the needles.

I’m going to use the Anatole France quote from our recent staff retreat to describe how I reached and exceeded my goal.

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

I’d been dreaming since I purchased the first skein of sock yarn in 2008.

I believed. I mean how hard can it be? After all, all knitting consists of two stitches: knit and purl, and I had those down. 

My plan: I scouted and saved to queue many different sock patterns on Ravelry. Pulled out Ann Budd’s Getting Started Knitting Socks. As well as The Sock Knitter’s Workshop  by Stephanie van der Linden. I studied both. 

I acted by starting with Ann Budd’s First Time Tube Socks. Simple knitting in the round. Found You Tube and printed tutorials on Kitchener Stitch. Voila! I had a pair of socks. I also enrolled in the Craftsy class, Knit Original Cuff Down Socks. Donna Druchunas became my video friend/mentor. I used the 30-second repeat, the bookmark, and the written instructions together and separately in my first two attempts at the Dutch heel. Voila! I had a two pairs of socks.  

Rearranging my stash, I came across the skein of 3AM Enchantments The One that had first inspired the dream of knitting socks. By this time, I had taken Shirley Paden’s Cast On class and had mastered the Old Norwegian or German Cast on. It made my ribbing perky.

I also knew that 60 rounds before the heel flap and 65-70 rounds after the heel flap made a perfect crew length sock for me. I was still struggling with Kitchener, but no longer needed to read the instructions for each stitch bound off. 

By Thanksgiving, I completed a sock, including Kitchener, without looking at any instructions at all. Upon another rereading, a lot of the instructions and examples in The Sock Knitter’s Workshop book by Stephanie van der Linden were not English as a foreign language but actually made sense. 

Sock knitting may not be a great thing, but by dreaming, believing, planning and acting, I can now add Sock Knitter to my list of life accomplishments. As Martha would say: And that’s a good thing.

 

Daughter of Time

Our office is moving. The organization has been in the same building for 12 years. We’re all suffering from 12 years of accumulated dust being liberated. I like our new offices. I won’t be alone on a floor any more, but everyone has an office with a door and either a window or skylight. 

I knit the skein of Quince Lark yarn that I bought at Looped Yarn Works. I used size 6 needles and knit a shaker rib by alternating rows of knitting and purling in the stitch below. Lark is a nicely balanced yarn, not overly processed soft and it has a lot of natural body. The colourway is Leek 131.

 

I’ve been sorting and rearranging stash as part of the summer to winter change over. I finished this wip started sometime in 2010.

 

Right now I’m swatching Knit Picks Telemark--a discontinued sport weight—on size 4 bamboo needles.

I listened to Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey on audio books while tidying today. Fascinating story. I still think the evidence is inconclusive about Richard III’s guilt in murdering the little princes. He had motive. His opportunity was having the princes under his auspices in the tower. But the Tudors and the Lancastrians also had motive and most probably equal opportunity with spies or people in their employ within the Tower. Gosh if you could resurrect people to get at the truth of what happened, the death of the two princes would be a prime candidate.

First Frost, 5K yards, and Crocheting

The first freeze of autumn occurred this week. I’d already begun the great clothing switch. Such a lot of work and mess, but fun rediscovering clothing items forgotten over the spring and summer. 

I’ve suspended work on the Helen Skirt to bang out a pair of fingerless gloves. It’s not cold enough for the convertible fingerless or the mittens, but there’s just enough of a nip to need something that allows the fingertips to snuggle while waiting at the bus stop. I’m using Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Tonal, a discontinued worsted weight yarn on size 6 dpns. 

 

At the Shirley Paden workshop earlier this month, I sat beside Phyllis, the crochet instructor at Looped Yarn Works. Phyllis gave me a link to a crochet site that explains how to read a crochet pattern. My aunt Fanny taught me to crochet. Not by reading patterns but by teaching me stitches and patterns. In teaching me, she taught me what to do but not the names of the stitches. So in my memory, I have several doily patterns that I can do. I found that I have no difficulty reading and crocheting patterns that are all symbols because the symbols make sense since they closely resemble the actual stitches. But put those stitches into words and I am lost. I was able to crochet the Shell Scarf because there were videos of each of the steps. I’ve been wanting to crochet a Crocodile Stitch scarf and was making no headway with written instructions or pictures of the steps. I found a video on You Tube and by the second row was off and running or crocheting on my own. I’m fascinated by how my learning is so different in knitting and crochet. In the workshop with Shirley Paden, we worked on a smocking stitch. I immediately recognized the process for creating the stitch from the stitch process diagrams in my Japanese stitch book. There was just the tip of how to prevent holes between the wrap and next stitch that will make the process easier when I use it in a garment. What I realized this week, is that with crochet I’m a completely visual learner. In short, I need to learn the way I was taught. 

Toupie had a bit of a mishap this week. I’d put out a string toy for him to play with. It has fuzzy ball at the end. Naturally, he attacked it. The next moment he was sprinting through the apartment. It’s not unusual for him to get a bit hyper when playing and it wasn’t until he made the third sprint from the front door that I paid attention. When he jumped up on the futon, I noticed the fuzzy ball went with him. Upon investigation, it turns out he’d got the string part of the toy wrapped around a hind leg. It took a minute to settle him and a bit for me to work the string loose. He sat there curled up with such a look of gratitude while I cooed and fussed to let him know he was okay. He’s such an odd little boy. Most cats I’ve had meow at the first sign of trouble. Toupie goes completely silent and has done so since he was a kitten. This tendency has made me very alert that when I don’t see him or when I call to him and I don’t get either a vocalization or an appearance, I immediately go to find him. He’s rarely in any trouble, usually curled up in some dark corner or bookshelf.