Procrastination or…. Inertia!

I’m working on a knitting project. I started it for the Ravelympics and cast on during the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. My goal – to write a pattern that I would submit to Knitty once it was written and I had knit the sample. The idea is good, the yarn I’ve chosen I really like –  I get gauge!

So why have I sat on occasion paralyzed by it? And not only by the problem at hand – I’ve suffered this trauma for years. When faced with a problem I will do anything other than solve it – hmmm, those chips look tasty; oh, do we have ice cream? What? We don’t have ice cream? I’ll go get some!

You get the picture.

I’ve even been intending to blog about it right here. For two weeks now. The words run through my head. The thoughts crowd around, all of them brilliant, witty, perfect bon mots which, if I wrote them down would have people spreading the news of my brilliant thoughts all over the internet – Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and social networking sites I’ve never even heard of.

But no. Instead I sit, squashed under the weight of the responsibility I’ve given myself. Like it’s  a big thing.  The next big thing. And the ideas drift off, lost in the mists of my mind.

So today, I am writing this. I need to kill the inertia. And by putting fingers to keyboard, I’m at least doing something – attempting to understand this crushing inertia that sits on me. A fear of failure? rejection? work?  success? If I don’t finish this project then I won’t be rejected by Knitty. If I don’t finish this project then it will be there for me later. If I don’t finish this project I can put it away in the closet with a few other UFOs I’ve stashed away guiltily. If I don’t finish this project I’ll have more time for reading, searching the internet, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, drinking a glass of wine.

I am going to finish this project. Step one. Get back to knitting as soon as I’ve posted this to drafts. (I’ll read it in the morning with a fresh eye.) I’ll finish Right Front, I’ll rip Left Front 2, I’ll frog Left Front 1 (Oh, I didn’t mention there was a Left Front 1? Funny about that. Couldn’t convince myself to rip it out yet. I’ll need the yarn for Sleeve 2, after all.)

Update: Three days later.

Not only did I finish the second sleeve, but I also did lots of editing of the pattern today. The horizon looks brighter. Now – blocking and joining and all that fun. Tomorrow’s tasks already mounting up. I’ll have to go to bed and sleep on it.

Good night.

MFKR 2009

The Men’s Fall Knitting Retreat 2009 was one of the highlights of my year. Yes, Socksummit 2009 was wonderful but even more so was the oppotunity to meet and knit with 28 other men who all knit great stuff and share their pleasure and knowledge with all of us. A great experience for me and one I want to repeat year after year now – as a matter of fact once a month would be nice too.

The Dumas Bay Center was a great location – we had a wonderful meeting room, with windows overlooking a beautiful green lawn and the deep blue of Puget Sound.  The food was excellent – Chef Rob took care of us a little too well perhaps – all those desserts I enjoyed. The wine was generously shared and poured. My bed was comfortable and I had a great view of the Sound from it too. And the grab-bag of wonderful things provided by yarn stores and people was an unexpected and very happy surprise.

WonderMike was such a good host – he led all the group events and kept us on our toes and on schedule.

WonderMike leads the contest give away

Franklin was there – one of my favourite bloggers and a great person to know. He led the photography workshop and I have been using the ideas he shared with us ever since as well as telling others about it. Not all the photos you will see here were taken post class so don’t expect perfection yet.

Franklin has a big lens.

We toured too. Here is Skacel Yarns for whom co-host Brian works and designs great patterns. He showed us his Knit Boxers and I had to have the pattern – haven’t bought the yarn yet but I know they are going to be fun to wear around the house. I looked for the pattern on the website but didn’t see it there. You’ll have to wait until I’ve knit it.

Look at us in the reflection - all ready to explore.

Franklin Habit on the left, then Brian and his colleagues from Skacel.

We got a tour of Skacel’s operations. They are wholesale, but the opportunity to be surrounded by so much yarn was not to be missed. And yes we were able to buy yarn through one of their customers, Morgan, who was also at the retreat with us.

Here are some of the others who shared the retreat experience with me. I didn’t get everyone, but you will get a flavour of the group. I had just a little disagreement with WordPress here, and let it have its own way. Hence you will see not only the attendees, but also the animals of Moonshadow Farm which we toured on Saturday.

Daniel, Michael and Joe

Cat Bordhi (honorary man), Paul and David

Brian spinning wild colour

Troy and Ray

Brett

James (KiwiJames from New Zealand

Andy

Barth

QueerJoe

Kenny

Keith

Harry

Ron

Deb and Nancy of Moonshadow Farm

Mike gets a little lovin’

Family and Friends

Young one

A white alpaca, black top knot

Great hairdo

Feeding time

Youth of the pack

Michael surveys the scene

Andy and Morgan get serious

Andy and his great knit bag

We also got to tour Moonshadow Farms run by Deb and Nancy. It was such a pleasure to have them show us the animals – all those gorgeous alpacas, mothers and babies.

Deb and Nancy of Moonshadow Farm

And very friendly animals.

Mike gets a little lovin'

It was a great day – folks were enjoying the weather and the animals.

Yes, I had a great time. I can hardly wait for the next West Coast retreat – but I will have to settle for the fact that over the next year I will be cementing my links with the men I met here this year.

Hasta la vista.

Is This a Bag I See Before Me?

Ah, remember my plan to knit a messenger bag using Entrelac? Here’s how it looked in April of this year.

Entrelac messenger bag in process.

The plan was to finish it, then felt it severely, affix a strap and voila, a beautiful, hand-made, unique messenger bag for me. Here’s the bag finished with a lovely flap knit right in, I-cord bind off. Looking good.

The bag open. Note my foot for size comparison.

“The best-laid plans of mice and men” you say. Indeed. I finished the bag and went off to Spain before I found an opportunity to felt it. It looked bulky but I was looking forward to getting it into the wash and shrinking it down to wearable size.

Hah! Sounds so easy, doesn’t it. A couple of weeks ago, I finally took the plunge and got the bag into the bathtub where I was going to felt it with bath tub temperature water and a broom for agitation. You know how that went, I bet. It didn’t take long to realize that I was not the equal of a good washing machine.

But the problem is that I don’t own a washing machine – we use the machines supplied by our building which are housed in the basement. But since that was the only available machine, I took the soaking wet, heavy-as-lead bag down to the nether reaches of the building and dumped it unceremoniously into the machine, set the dial for hot water, threw in a pair of jeans as extra insurance and turned the thing on, then left it alone for the required half hour. I figured it would never felt to small, so no worries about that.

Back to the basement where I threw the mass into the dryer, set the dial, and let it go for an entire hour of heat pumping in – our dryers really put out heat, so I figured that could only help. Then I did my best to clean the lovely lint off the sides of the washing machine.

After it finished and was indeed bone dry, I took it out, cleaned out the lint trap and took the thing upstairs, where I showed it to my husband. Hmmm, not exactly small, this bag. Here’s what it looked like spread out on the hassock.

The bag after felting

It looks a little big, doesn’t it? A little. Here’s a close up of the felting – not quite as good as I’d hoped. But you can see the lovely I-cord bind off really well.

Felting close up

Yes it was bigger than expected. “How big?”, you ask. Really big. Well, my husband demonstrated that for me a couple of days after I did my felting. I was out knitting and when I got home, this is what he showed me.

Bag? Or Pillow?

Yep, this little baby is stuffed with a full-sized pillow, one with a pillow sham on it. And yes, that is a human-sized chair it’s gracing. Big? An understatement. Let’s say I’m not going to be carrying this around slung over my shoulder with a great looking strap. As a matter of fact it is about the right size to be a carpet-bag, which would be great if this was the Dirty 30’s and I was an itinerant salesmen, but it ain’t and I’m not, so there will have to be other solutions.

I have had suggestions – and yes, pillow is one. I polled a few people and asked what they thought of me cutting it down and making it messenger bag sized. But that would mean the edging would be missing from one side. One of my consultees suggested I could do that, then call it a “Deconstructed Aesthetic” (thanks, Rodger). Anyone else with suggestions for this rather large piece of fabric (which took hours of my time, and lots of yarn but not costly stuff, thank heaven) is welcome to comment and give an opinion. I’m looking forward to it as a matter of fact.

Tubular, Man!

I bought some great multi-colour self-striping yarn in Spain while I was walking the Camino de Santiago in the spring. It’s Katia’s Bombay which is also available in North America. I only bought two balls since I was travelling light, so I needed a small project to use it.

Katia Bombya without its label

While we were in Spain, my husband bought a couple of those light scarves that Spanish men can drape around their necks so casually and with such elan that one suddenly wants to move to Europe to be among such fashion forward people. Alas, that is not to be, but I realized that this brighly coloured, self-striping cotton yarn would make a great flingy scarf, so my project was born.

After looking around I found a lovely scarf pattern called Palindrome with a reversible cable which would fit the bill. On Ravelry the scarf is listed for 1029 projects, and that doesn’t include mine yet. It’s by Kristin Bellehumeur and is a very easy project, which may explain its popularity. And since it’s reversible it really is great to drape around a neck.

I did want the scarf to look good all over so I decided that I would find a tubular cast on to make the ends look good. I have used the Italian Cast-on before and it was perfect for this project, but I also had a little fun making it work for a 2 x 2 rib. 

Here is the cast on edge of my scarf

The Italian cast on is a 1X1 rib and I needed a 2X2 rib.  The Italian Cast-on is, in essence, a double fabric. By knitting the knit stitches and slipping the purl stitches on either side, one is making the front and back of the fabric. Creating the 2×2 rib also has the effect of returning the double fabric to a single one.

I don’t have a link for this so I photographed the process for you and provide it here in a few simple steps.

This technique can be done with or without a cable needle. I went without because it was one less thing to worry about. [See the note at the end of these illustrations for the cable needle instructions – text only.]

Click on the pictures to enlarge them.
Step 1, Knit the first stitch.
Step 2: Skipping the next purl stitch, put your right hand needle into the next knit stitch as if to purl.
Step 3. Slide both the purl stitch and the knit stitch off the left needle while keeping the knit stitch on the right hand needle – don’t panic.
Step 4. Let the purl stitch fall to the back then immediately scoop it back up on the left hand needle.
Step 5. Put the knit stitch you moved to the right needle back on the left needle, then knit it. Note, in the picture the right needle is in the stitch as if to purl. You’ll have to remove it to knit the stitch in the correct orientation.
Step 6. Purl the next stitch (the one you dropped in step 4).
Step 7. Purl the next stitch, then knit the next stitch.

Two knits, two purls, one knit, ready for step two again.

Repeat from step 2.

[Note: If you want to do this with a cable needle for safety reasons (nothing worse than a stitch you can’t pick up), at step 2  you will move the next stitch, a purl, to the cable needle and leave it at the back. Then knit the next stitch on the left needle, and return the purl stitch to the left needle and purl it. Then continue with the next stitches until you are ready to begin at step two again. But don’t you want to live dangerously? This could easily be in the book, A 1000 Dangerous Things To Do Before You Die.]

So that was the beginning  of the scarf. But what about the other end. I wanted the two ends to match, so I had to figure out the process for getting a tubular bind-off, and happily I solved that problem all by myself. Here’s  how. (Sorry, no pictures of the steps here.)

Here you want to get the stitches back to their 1×1 rib double fabric which is how you started. It’s easy really. You just have to reverse the process of slipping and moving stitches, thus creating a tubular fabric again.

Step 1: Knit the first stitch.

Step 2: Place your right hand needle into the second stitch on the left hand needle (a purl stitch).

Step 3: Slide the two stitches off the left hand needle letting the knit stitch fall to the front of the work.

Step 4: Pick up the purl stitch with the left hand needle then pick up the dropped knit stitch with the left hand needle.

Step 5. Purl the next stitch, knit the next stitch, purl the next stitch.

Repeat from Step 2 to end of the row.

To create the double fabric turn the work.

Row 1: Knit the first stitch, slip the next stitch with the yarn in front, repeat to end of row. Turn.

Repeat  Row 1 twice more. (Three times in all as with your cast on edge.)

To cast off in tubular knit you will have to divide your stitches.

Using two needles, slip the knit stitches alternately with the purl stitches to the front and  back needles. When you are finished you will have all the knit stitches on the front needle and all the purl stitches on the back needle. Now all you have to do is graft the sides together using Kitchener stitch. I recommend using the technique espoused by Knitting Daily in a recent post on their blog. It uses a third knitting needle and is easy to follow.

Can you tell which is the cast on and which is the cast off edge? Nope, neither can I.

So there you have it, my adventure with Katia Bombay yarn, knitting a Palindrome scarf and making it look great from end to end. Here is the scarf flung jauntily, in a very European Je ne sais pas flair around the neck of my husband. Looks great even if the weather outside doesn’t call for cold any time soon.

Geordie looking positively Spanish in his Palindrome scarf.

And here is the scarf coiled seductively as if it were dropped after an evening of cool weather dining outside on some lovely cafe patio in Madrid.

Go on now, make your own beautiful scarf with a wonderful cast on and cast off, and fling it ’round your neck for some insouciant European flair.

Toe-up or Top-down?

Which do you do? I’ve been knitting toe-up socks for some time and I have really enjoyed the process. I can now knit any sock using the knowledge I have about constructing a toe-up sock – the toe, the foot, the gusset increase, the heel flap, the gusset creation and the leg. See, it’s all easy – each part has its construction process, and if you follow it, there you are, a sock –  or two if you’re happy with the first one.

My most recent sock, however, is a top-down sock. Why? Because I’m going to the Sock Summit and I figured I needed a refresher so that I wouldn’t seem unknowledgeable in any of the classes I’ve registered for. Experience does count for something, after all.

I chose a very simple pattern called Faceted Rib Socks from the Little Box of Socks which I received for Christmas from Holli. I like the look of the pattern with the yarn I’m using, a 100% merino hand paint from Fleece Artist.

But it has not been a pleasant knit, not because it’s difficult, (it’s a 4 row pattern, easy-peasy), but because I seem to lose attention and after knitting blithely away, I have discovered at least 3 times that I’ve forgotten to knit one of the rows, so that I’ve needed to frog the sock, and get those silly stitches back on the needle. I also lost a stitch somewhere while knitting the heel (or maybe I gained one, who knows?), so when I discovered the missing stitch while knitting the gusset, I had to include an extra stitch so things would work out tidily. I also found that I lost interest as I knit, so that I often didn’t knit more than 8 rows before I would stop, put the needle down and do something else.

 

My faceted Rib Sock

But there are positives. Now that I’m knitting the foot, I have not forgotten to knit any rows, so it’s finally growing without frogging. Small mercies. And I’m knitting using Magic Loop, which is so sensible. One needle, no fussing, no dangling needles as in two circ knitting poking through my shirt and tickling my chest. Although I would change the name Magic Loop if I could – no magic here, it’s just circular knitting in a very logical, mathematical fashion – thank heaven for the person who invented circs to begin with. Now that I’ve begun to use it, I see no need to ever go back to four needle or two circ knitting for my socks ever again. (Although that didn’t stop me from buying a set of five sock needles because they were made of hardened birch – something about those needles said, “Buy me”!, perhaps as museum pieces for my collection.)

So now I have to get back to knitting them. I have to get to the end of the foot, decrease for the toe, do the kitchener stitch on that, and then cast on all over again for the second sock. At least this time, it should be less knitting, because I won’t have to knit the two extra inches I did the first time before I realized, after frogging, that the sock was perfect at the shorter size.

Stitch detail

 To get back to the question I asked at the beginning – top-down or toe-up? Well, to juggle language a little, toe-up wins hands-down. It’s easier for me because I have control over the length of the foot, I love using Turkish cast-on for the toe, and I really like not having to pick up stitches. Okay, I admit it, it wasn’t that hard to pick up those stitches, but it was still something I can do without.

Gusset detail

What did I learn from my top-down sock experience? Well, yes, you can still knit it using Magic Loop; I learned a new cast-on for me, Twisted German Cast-on, which does give a good stretch to the cuff of the sock; I didn’t suffer too much from having to pick up some stitches, even if I did lose a stitch somewhere or other. I also learned that I have a rather limited attention span, and need to focus just a little better when I’m knitting so that I don’t forget to knit a row every now and again.

Cast on edge

Another view of the cast on edge

But the most important thing I learned? I really love knitting toe-up socks and I’m going right back to it as soon as I finish this pair. Yes, I can knit top-down, but darned if I have to. Thanks to Wendyknits, Cat Bordhi and all those others who went ahead and figured out how to knit our socks from the toe I know that knitting toe-up is the more pleasurable experience for me. And if it isn’t a pleasure, why do it? That is the question and the answer is obvious – don’t do it.

Where have I been?

It’s been a long time. I have not felt the inspiration to blog as I should even though I have been knitting up a storm. Blame it on nothing. But today I put my Twitter feed up on my blog, so at least there will be new content.

Knitting up a storm: Designed and knit a pair of socks last week, knit two hats yesterday and today, finished off several other hats that needed additional decoration, started another sock today – same design, new yarn, hand-dyed, new recipient.

I think I may be coming back from my depression. That’s what this has been about – the non-participation I mean. I have other ideas to kickstart myself too. You’ll be hearing from me.

Anarchist Knitter Me!

I have a confession. I have considered entrelac one of my least favourite looks in knitting. I have seen some bad entrelac – a sweater in pale blue and white that made the woman wearing it look a lot like the Michelin man. It somehow seemed to be a technique that was more interesting in the theoretical sense than in real life.

But recently I have been guilty of actually knitting entrelac myself. And why? Because I feel that I need to learn more about knitting – to become a better knitter and to add to my knowledge of how knitting works. I have been discovering a few things and have recently been inspired by Anna Zilboorg’s Knitting for Anarchists. I told a friend that and he looked at me as if I had two heads – and immediately told me that I was no anarchist – to him I was a rule bound knitter who thought there was a right way and a wrong way to knit, and perhaps even that I thought that my knitting was the “right way”.

(I have included a link to the Amazon entry for Zilboorg’s book because if you scroll down far enough you will find several reviews that give you a better understanding of the book’s premises. One of the reviews is actually by Cat Bordhi.)

I admit it, I am certainly a rule follower, I like to follow a pattern, even though I have certainly done without. And I think I have been breaking out of that rule-bound shell. If you look back at my recent blog you can see my Elizabeth Zimmerman Seamless Hybrid Shirt Yoke sweater, which gave me a lot of unease, but which I feel I completed very successfully, even though I needed a little hand holding by a few fellow knitters to get through it.

But that wasn’t the first time I had knit an EZ sweater. I don’t have pictures, but in fact, about 20 years ago, I knit an EZ ski sweater in the round, using two colours, steeks and my own blocked out designs. So I certainly had a sense of adventure back then. I have also thrown myself into knitting lace, from a pattern, yes, but bravely, learning the ins and outs of the pattern as I went.

But let me get back to Entrelac. That friend I mentioned earlier has knit several entrelac pieces recently, including a sweater from a book called Out of Africa which he adapted as he went. The sweater is redeemed as well by the fact that it was knit in very fine yarn, so there is none of that puffiness that a larger yarn makes almost inevitable.

So I decided that I was not afraid to knit entrelac and that I would find a project to do. And since I have been knitting socks, and reading about knitting anarchy, I searched around and found the perfect project, the Entrelac Socks, designed by Vickie Starbuck, in Socks, Socks, Socks, edited by Elaine Rowley. The socks are done in the round, they are toe-up, they are entrelac – what more could I want. And I took my anarchist lessons to heart and taught myself how to purl backwards so that I could do the socks without constantly switching from one side to the other.

I was also inspired by the Yarn Harlot. A few weeks ago she posted a blog entry about the Toronto Pride Parade, and shared some of her yarn recommendations for Pride. And I happened to have a ball of Rainbow dyed sock yarn from Lorna’s Laces which has been in my stash about two years. Time to do something with it. So here’s your first look.

I have already finished sock number one. But there was I a little problem – sock number two would be a challenge since the yarn for it had already been knit into a hat. That hat was Half Dome from Knitty.Com. And I posted a picture of it on my blog way back in 2006. Here it is.

And here it is next to its friend the sock.

So obviously there was a dilemma here. But easily solved. I would rip the hat back, because to be honest I was never going to wear that hat, and nobody I knew was going to wear it either. And that gave me another challenge – what to do with yarn that has been a hat for two years. Boy, is it crinkly when it is frogged.

However, still acting as anarchically as possible for me, I remembered reading about how to get the crinkles out of knitting, so I first wound the yarn into a hank over the back of one of my chairs, then ran a nice sink of hot water, and after tying off the hank, I hurled it into the water and swished it around for a minute or so – and to my delighted surprise, it seemed that the crinkles came out instantly. I took the hank out, squeezed it to get out some of the water (someone suggested maybe I didn’t need to be as vigourous with the drying as I had described in an email), and then laid it on a towel to dry. A day later, that yarn was ready for knitting and I was happy because I could really consider that I could wear my Rainbow Entrelac socks at our upcoming Gay Pride Parade here in Vancouver.

So here I am, working on my anarchist skills, and knitting up a storm with some wild Rainbow socks. For those of you who like to get up close and personal, here is another look at my sock as it was growing under my needles. I’m working on sock two and it will certainly be finished in time for the parade. Look for me on the street – look down to see my socks, worn with Pride and a sense of accomplishment.

OMG – I just discovered that our friend The Yarn Harlot has knit the same entrelac socks, but her experience was somewhat interesting. Just for the record, I followed the instructions (such an anarchist) and had none of the problems that the Yarn Harlot had first, but which she apologizes for misunderstanding.
i

Victoria Fibre Fest 2008

There’s nothing like spending a weekend with yarn. This past weekend, June 21 – 22) was therefore a real treat. With my step-daughter Holli, I travelled over to Vancouver Island on the Spirit of Vancouver Island, one of the newer ferries in the BC Ferries fleet, where we did a little knitting after gorging ourselves on the Pacific Spirit buffet. We arrived in plenty of time so after getting ourselves settled in our accomodation, we made a fast trip to Bee Hive Wool Shop to check out the possible merchandise.

I couldn’t resist some lovely Fleece Artist yarns which were a steal at $11.00 for 100 grams of lovely coloured Merino 2/6 sock yarn – one in green tones and one in brown/pink tones, which will look lovely on my feet.

I couldn’t spend much more though because I needed to save some money for the Knit Out on Sunday, or maybe just Saturday when I was free. Holli and I enjoyed poking around though because I was looking for ideas for a sweater I’m planning to knit once the one on the needles is done. I found some good candidates, so I’ll be looking again in Vancouver when I’m ready.

On Saturday I had some time to spend before I met up with a couple of knitting folks from the GLBT knitting list, so I poked around on Government Street where I saw this shop.

Sweaters by First Nations Canadians have been part of the knitting heritage of BC for a long time.

Finally the hour came and I walked into the QV Cafe and immediately spotted Chris. No, I’d never met him before, but the yarn on the table was a big clue, as was his big smile in greeting. Chris and his partner Jeff are travelling in the Pacific Northwest and we’ve been planning this meetup since I’ve known about his plans. It was great to finally meet him and a short while later my pleasure was doubled when Allie arrived with her partner Haley. Allie lives in Victoria, while Chris travelled all the way from Vermont.

(Back: Chris, Jeff. Front: Haley, Allie)

We had a great visit – we talked knitting, we knit a few stitches and Chris vamped with my Hanging Garden Stole which I had brought to show off.

Of course we had to head to Beehive again so that Chris and Allie could check out the sales. Allie got some lovely yarns, Chris added to his collection and I bought two more skeins of yarn, Hand Maiden Casbah – which I have knit with before and at the time swore I would never knit with anything less! I am so looking forward to new socks with these two yarns – they are so delicious on the needles and underfoot.

After our SEXpedition, Chris and Jeff insisted that we visit Butchart Gardens together. It’s a gorgeous place, an old quarry that has been transformed into a Garden of Eden starting about 100 years ago. Chris and Jeff were very impressive with their knowledge of the plants we saw in the garden – they have an extensive garden back in Vermont.

Saturday night saw Holli and I attending the special presentation by Sivia Harding, the special guest of the Fibre Fest. Sivia talked about her journey from artist in oils to artist in yarn.

What’s amazing is that Sivia has only been knitting eight years. When one sees her work, it’s almost impossible to believe that eight years ago she borrowed a video from the Vancouver Public Library and taught herself how to knit. That simple act must have been an amazing cartharsis, to produce the beautiful work she is creating today.

For the Fibre Fest, Sivia was asked to create a special piece – which she had unveiled the night before at a dinner and fashion show. The work is exquisite, and the piece on display was raffled off. Someone is a very lucky person. Sivia’s shawl is called Harbour Lights and evokes images of lighthouses and ocean spray.

Of course there was an audience of knitters in attendance. Here’s a few of the folk who travelled from Vancouver to see the show.

Sunday morning dawned bright and early. My stepdaughter Holli Yeoh had a booth at the Knit Out in Saxe Point Park, so we had to get out to the site to set up her new tent. We did a great job, but it took a lot of work to get the booth ready for the first customer. We were still organizing kits when they arrived. There was a good number of booths at the Knit Out, with lots of opportunity to buy yarns, admire knitting and visit with the folk who came to mingle and buy. I had some great conversations and enjoyed meeting lots of fibre fixated people.

I’d spent money on Friday and Saturday, so I was a little reluctant to spend even more, but I found some great yarn by Rabbitch of Rabbitworks

which I couldn’t leave behind. After all, any yarn named Coffee Bean must have been dyed especially for me.

One yarn which I left at the Knit Out, but which I coveted greatly, was a hank of the most beautiful, natural silver grey, yak and silk blend, lace-weight yarn. I couldn’t convince myself that it should be in my stash without an idea to use it, but now of course, I rue the fact that I left it behind. But I know where the vendor lives, and since it’s very near where my brother lives in Kamloops, I have the feeling that the next time I visit him, I will be doing a little shopping.

Of course no Fibre Fest could be complete without a little fibre on the hoof. I wish I’d been fast enough to take a picture of the sheep we saw cropping a lawn on our way back from Butchart Gardens. But at least someone knew that we needed to see fibre in its most natural state so they brought a couple of lovely, graceful, miniature llamas to hang out with us for awhile.

A tale of some yarn and some sweaters

Just a week ago I was writing about my Seamless Hybrid Sweater from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Without Tears. The sweater was finished more than two weeks ago, and I really love it. It fits beautifully and looks really good on. I think I’ve finally found the sweater that is the best compliment to a man’s shape and build. Not that all my sweaters will be made that way from now on. I do feel the need for variety. So I’ve already started a new project and it’s well under way. It’s another EZ, and I’m as usual, having a little trepidation as it grows.

And here it is.

This sweater comes with a history – and I don’t mean the design, I mean the yarn. It started last year when I first found the yarn on sale at Urban Yarns here in Vancouver. It was Rowan’s DK Tweed, 100% Pure New Wool, in 50 g hanks, which is no longer on their list of available yarns. I gathered it all up to buy since the price was great and was ready to pay when I got the news that the yarn had already been spoken for, just not removed from the shelves quickly enough. I was a little distressed, but instead of crying and going home I asked if I could leave my name and number in case the original purchaser changed his (yes, his – what were the odds?) mind. And darned if I didn’t receive a call the next day that the yarn was mine after all. I rushed over the next morning on my way out of town, (holding up my husband who really wanted to be on the highway at 8:00 am, not 10:30 am which was what happened.

And at the shop I got the news that there was more of the same yarn available and did I want it too? Well, I didn’t want to end up with not quite enough of a discontinued yarn so of course I bought it – the price was right, did I mention that? And then I took it with me to fondle in the car on the way to Naramata on Lake Okanagan in BC wine country. But it took awhile for me to start knitting the yarn.

Yes, this yarn started its knitting life as another sweater entirely. I had decided that I would design my own sweater and that the tweedy yarn would look good with a cable. So I found a plaited cable chart in one of the standard knitting books and set out. I swatched, and I measured, and I cast on. And I knit. I knit the piece until it was about half way up the armholes when I decided that it was going to be too small. The cables pulled the sweater in and it was not going to look right. So I frogged the entire piece and spend an afternoon swatching again, to work out the correct size.

Now, you’ll think I wasn’t using all my brain cells when I decided that I could cast on fewer stitches and have a wider sweater, but that’s what my swatching was telling, and I have been taught to believe in swatching. Of course you know this is not going to work out, but did I? Oh no, I knit one full piece for the back and then half of the front before I realized that this sweater was not going to fit me either. I’m blaming this on the frogging – the yarn must have stretched when it was knit up the first time, and looked much wider for a time. But then the yarn relaxed back into its original dimensions and became the narrowest sweater imaginable. That cable didn’t help a bit either.

So I frogged both pieces this time, and left myself with two huge balls or yarn, because I had spit-spliced the whole thing and I wasn’t going to take that apart. And then I set the yarn aside again to rest, and get back it’s original size again, perhaps. I wasn’t about to swatch the yarn too soon.

That all happened over last fall and this spring after my trip to India. (Read about that, with no knitting content, here). And then I started reading EZ’s Knitting Without Tears and begat the Seamless Hybrid (described earlier in this blog). But I wanted to get this yarn back on my needles with a sweater I could love. I looked at several different books. all my books with men’s patterns, books from the library, and then found a pattern I admired in the Green Mountain Spinnery (GMS)book – knit in the round, very plain, set-in sleeves. I could do that, and wouldn’t have to worry about cables pulling my sweater in to make it looked stuffed if I was wearing it.

I did a swatch (it seems to be working), I cast on the requisite number of stitches on my circular needles, and I began to knit. And I really had intended to knit the sweater in GMS, but in the back of my head there was a nagging thought that I could do something else. And then I remembered the Kangaroo Pouch sweater in EZ. It’s a set-in sleeve design knit in EZ style with circular needles, but another kind of innovation – a sleeve that knits from a steek, and is shaped by making a sock-heel like construction. And I thought, why not! Why not, indeed.

Here you see the odd construction which explains EZ’s naming it the Kangaroo Pouch sweater.

You knit until you have the length you want in the body of the sweater and then you do something quite odd. You remove a number of stitches from the knitting path (the pouches – 30 stitches on each side in my case), hold them on some waste yarn, and rejoin the sweater with a few cast-on stitches over this space, so now you are knitting on 60 fewer stitches and there are odd gaping holes where the arm holes will be. And you just keep knitting around until you reach the armhole depth you desire, and shape for the back neck, before joining the shoulders. It’s then that you get brave and prepare the steeks for cutting, cut away, then pick up stitches to begin knitting the sleeves, at the same time reincorporating those leftover stitches which have been waiting so patiently back on their yarn.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I have about three inches of the planned nine inches of my sleeve depth done, and I will continue knitting around. I have checked out some steeking methods and have decided to use the wonderful tutorial offered by Eunny Jang on her blog. Eunny is the editor of Interweave Knits and a very talented knitter. I think I’ll trust her.

There’s lots of work left on this sweater. I’ll be blogging more when I get to the cutting and adding the sleeves. So stay tuned. But one more part of the sweater saga I’ve left out. When I started looking at the yarn, before I began this sweater, I discovered something shocking. Something I had not noticed before – how could I have missed it? There are two dye lots in my stash and it’s obvious that I had been blithely knitting along in the old sweater without noticing. I’m compensating for the problem in this sweater. You may have noticed the two balls of yarn in the first picture. I took the advice of a friend and decided to knit alternate rows with each ball of yarn to blend the colours as I go. And it’s working. Just one little thing – when I reach the sleeves, because of the construction, I will have to use one ball at a time until I finish turning the shoulder cap, so I’m crossing my fingers that no one will notice, or if they do, they will kindly think that it’s a design element. And that’s what I’ll tell them if they ask!

Swan Lake

Last fall at Three Bags Full I saw and fell in love with the Swan Lake stole by Melanie Gibbons of Pink Lemon Twist. My Hanging Garden stole was a great knitting experience so I knew I wanted to knit lace again. And I had a hank of wonderful lace weight yarn, Baruffa Cashwool, which I had purchased at Close Knit in Portland when I was there for the Knit Camp West event our knit list celebrated. If you are a Ravelry member, you can see the yarn in my stash at knitknigel.

While I was visiting Three Bags Full, I met Christa Giles who just happened to have the pattern unknit. So she gave it to me. That made me happy. And I was ready to knit.

A little background about this stole. It was the third in Melanie’s series of Mystery Stoles which are knit from clues provided weekly via the Internet. Now I had the whole thing at hand so didn’t have to wait for each week’s post before I could go on. But of course I had to follow the pattern which was broken into weeks anyway. I began by printing out the charts for the shawl and then started knitting.

The stole is knit beginning from a point so the knitting certainly zooms along at the beginning. From three stitches to 98 stitches happens fairly quickly. I discovered after knitting the first week’s chart that the charts for subsequent weeks didn’t fit on one sheet, so I had to attach them so I could knit a complete row. I used Scotch Tape.

The stole is also knit with beads and unlike the beading on the Hanging Garden, after the very first one, the beads are inserted using a crochet hook. I loved learning this technique. When you arrive at a place where a bead needs to be inserted the first thing you do is ready the crochet hook by threading a bead on it. Then you slip the stitch off the left hand needle using the crochet hook, slide the bead down the hook and off onto the stitch itself, then pop the stitch back on the left hand needle and it’s ready to be knit. Simple and worth the trouble.

I found quickly that if I wanted to knit this stole without disaster, I had to find a method to tell me where I was in the pattern. At the end I found I was knitting sitting at my dining room table, with a heavy metal ruler marking the line of the chart I was knitting. That worked really well, although my back complained some. I also found that I couldn’t knit many rows in a sitting – I needed a break after a couple of rows so I could maintain my sanity.

One of the amazing things was that I made very few mistakes – a good thing, since tinking the work was challenging. I even got brave enough to fix a few of my errors by going down to the row below where I’d made it. I certainly had much more success in keeping the errors to a minimum and as far as I’m concerned, every stitch in the stole is where it is supposed to be, because I fixed any errors I found.

As I mentioned, I began this stole in early November, 2007. On November 13 I left for a four month trip to India. So my stole sat at home waiting patiently for me to come back. I arrived home on March 5 and it took me more than a week to get back to knitting it. But I finally got it out and began to knit again. It didn’t take me long to get back into the swing of things, so I was moving along really well, very soon.

I needed to get the stole done. I had plans to take it to the West Coast Knitting Guild meeting at the beginning of April to unveil it, and then deliver it to its proper recipient, my very good friend Midge King who lives in Kamloops, BC, Canada.

The stole was a great success at the guild meeting, and then it was off to Kamloops to give it to Midge. Being the kind of guy who likes an audience, I waited to give it to her when she had her sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew-in-law and her great nephew over for dinner. It felt so good to give the stole its new home. The stole was really a pleasure to knit, I loved the challenge, I loved seeing what was coming next, I loved placing the beads, and I loved giving it away.

I can’t leave without showing off a picture of the stole as it was being blocked. The blocking did make a difference, of course. But being down on my hands and knees using every single blocking pin I owned was a labour of love. My back is not as young as it once. I also want you to see the beads I used, so there are two pictures here. The picture with the beads is before the stole was blocked. It also gives a nice idea of the detailing in the point of the stole.

I will leave you with a final photo. Midge is a crossword aficionado and in this photo she is comfortably wrapped up while she searches for a word. I am imagining her this coming winter using the stole as she relaxes at home, or maybe at the theatre some times. She just has to make sure she keeps it away from her cat.