Belatedly tangled

Three Sweaters I: finding closure

It's summer. I am starting off by trying to declutter an awful lot of things, including the knitting pile next to the couch: several little canvas tote bags, mostly stuffed into an Amish-made basket, all full of the wool and tools of abandoned projects.

I knew there were three sweaters, mostly done; I've been afraid to go look at them in part because I know we have moths sometimes, and the project bags are not sealed well enough. It's been years. (Of course it has.)

I finally went to look. I found no moth damage. I am in shock. Also, I still like all three sweaters.

One is now officially done. This is a February Lady Sweater knitted in Mountain Colors, probably Weaver's Wool? The yarn feels heavier than DK but only Weaver's Wool seems to come in the unreasonably large put-up I remember. This yarn had moth damage in the skein, and I am in shock that the sweater seems to be intact. It was all knitted, even the ends (not very many!) woven in; it only needed its buttons sewn on.

You know what? I hated the buttons I'd gotten for it. So I ordered a lovely silver shawl pin on Etsy. Now the sweater is done.

Where it was in place and time: I worked on the body lace of this sweater as I waited at the nursing home in California for Ray to die.

Dark Socks

Two new pairs: the first from last summer's FSH-fueled knitting, the second finally finished afer the first-trimester exhaustion exhausted itself.

Mona Schmidt's Oolong from twist collective, Fall 2008. My most favorite sock designer ever!

Dream in Color Smooshy, Lipstick Lava. Size 1 Addi Lace Turbos.

(And yes, I got the Fluevog Illeanas after seeing them in the twist photo shoot... and they are my most favorite high heeled shoes ever.)

Nancy Bush's Anniversary Socks, from Favorite Socks.

In Sundara Sock Emerald Over Charcoal (Seasons Club I, Winter). Yes, I am crazy enough to buy into the whole Sundara thing. For round II I signed up for two seasons, even...

Because I am, indeed, crazy, I ended up mirroring the lace and the cables on the second sock.

Seduced by a Mystery (Sock), again

So I was just hypnotized by the November mystery sock, over at Sock Knitters Anonymous. I hungrily knitted each clue as it was posted. I read the threads where people carped at the designer, amazed at what can be misunderstood in directions.

And the resulting socks really turned out lovely. It's a graceful design, and the elements work well together. I especially liked the alternative heel stitch.

January's, it seemed clear that I should skip. I'm just not into intarsia or figurative patterns.

But March? There's one clue up, and it's a doozy. A provisional cast-on, two vague inches of stockinette, and then some entrelac. The designer's replies to questions have suggested that the entrelac will pretty much stop here. The carpers found a significant error, now repaired, on the first day, but:

But. I can't see anywhere this is going, with the provisional cast-on and all, but to have a wide hem at the top with the entrelac on the outside. Shouldn't there be a purl ridge for the turn? Am I going to be reknitting all that green to put one in? (And why the garter rectangles? The color is enough -- and Koigu is even the recommended yarn for this pattern -- that the texture isn't necessary.)

Also: my gauge is WAY off. I magic loop tight, but I DPN loose, and this is already an inch and a half too wide. As long as what's knitted so far is the top of the cuff, that's fine. My calf muscles will appreciate the shaping, and since I have 3 skeins of Koigu, I should be able to make the leg long enough to get, hmm, eventual fit.

I'm sort of hoping that the rest of the sock will be pretty plain, so that I can just Stashbuster Spiral the body in the 3 colorways of Koigu that I'm using. (The color situation is just my personal nightmare. Don't let it bother you. Too much Koigu, all in singleton skeins.) But it seems likely enough that I'll want that purl ridge that I don't even want to start the second cuff.

Still, it's spawned one idea: can't you see a silly girly hat? Maybe in some of the Ella Rae Palermo I have sitting around... a quick scan of Ravelry didn't turn up anything using garter entrelac points to get a crown-like brim. HMMMMMMM.

Plus it's just fun to be speculating like this. What is the designer thinking?

Streamlining Streamline, with help

Over at Punk Rock Knitters on LiveJournal, sarakate has given a thorough rewrite of the first few rows of Streamline. (Remember? the toddler sock pattern that was my very first?)

I'll check through the details and revise the pattern when I have a chance, but I'd bet a lot of money on everything she says being correct.

If anyone finds any other issues, or has any other comments, please do let me know.

Leftover Mitts

So a little while ago the Yarn Harlot posted a lovely pattern for a bulky-weight cabled hat, which she called the Unoriginal Hat.

I saw it and thought, I bet that Rowan Big Wool that's been languishing in my stash for a year now would work!

I knitted up the hat on the flight to Weatherwood last weekend (yes, it's that fast of a pattern). But it only used one skein of Big Wool, and I had two. Hence, the armwarmers in the picture above, and featured in the picture below.

They're as easy to knit as the hat, and use the same yarn, same needles, same gauge, even the same amount of yarn. (I had 4 yards left from the first skein after my hat. The mitts used all but 7 yards of the second skein.)

Pattern and notes under the jump.

Two pairs of legwarmers

I've been trying to figure out legwarmers for Miss T. They're useful; she twists and crawls, so there's often a gap to fill between socks and pants. Also, she has a pair of rainbow striped Babylegs that she loves.

I've made two pairs now, one from Lovesticks Frankensock (yes, I joined the Sweet Sheep's Self-Striping Sock Club -- I think my issues with stripes have become obvious by now):

and one from Artful Yarns Candy in Bubblegum:

Basically same pattern; the combination of ribbings is stolen from Nancy Bush's Madder Rib Socks, in Knitting Vintage Socks, and there are some increases along the leg, and a picot-ish bindoff on top.

So, the hard part for me with child knits is whether the child likes them. She loves both pairs as armwarmers. But screams that the first are "too tight!" if we try to apply them to her legs. The Babylegs have a degree of elasticity that can't be achieved in handknitting. In some sense the legwarmers are big enough; they fit on my arms comfortably, and are snug like socks on her. I wondered if the wool was the problem, which was why I switched to something as wildly different as the soft, nubbly, mostly cotton and slightly elastic Candy for the second pair. I also knit them to be much looser.

She will at least wear the new ones on her legs, which feels like a small victory.

Stash enhancement this weekend: locally raised and handspun worsted-weight alpaca. Each color they had felt different, and this has just unbelieveable body and a little sheen. I'm hoping to get a mesh scarf out of the 250 yards I got... I'm not normally a yarn petter, or an alpaca lover, but in the car on the way home I couldn't stop myself from pulling this out to stroke and admire. (Then again, the project I'd brought along had been making me carsick, so I didn't have anything I could just knit on.)

Axioms

0. Finishing is better than starting.

1. Knitting is better than blogging about knitting.

2. Blogging about knitting is better than reading other people's knitblogs.

3. Reading other people's knitblogs is better than shopping for yarn.

Tonight I'm knitting, although it's on something new. (And basking, still, from a compliment I got on a pair of stripy socks.)

Pulling it all together

Via Jo (who has been writing from time to time about her knitting) I've started reading Casaubon's Book. This old entry, on her knitting forbears, and on how the author started knitting again as an adult, just blew me away -- a moment of living fully in the complications of someone else's past (instead of the complications of my own, which are becoming all-consuming again).

Meanwhile I've got startitis and have bought too much yarn online etc. etc. I was going to bitch about Firestarter -- why, especially, is it written for only one size, namely, TINY, at least at my gauge, when it would have been pretty easy to include modifications for a 66 or 72 stitch start -- but then Yarnissima herself caught my project up at Ravelry, and asked to include it among the many lovelies knitted by others on the pattern page, and my annoyance melted away. That's my blurry orange thing up there on display!

(This is even the bad side, the one where I made even more mistakes in my bumpy bumpy bumpy twisted stitches.)

The yarn is Crown Mountain Farms Sock Hop, handspun by happy (I hope) elves. I love it to tears -- and yet, the little devil on my shoulder keeps complaining about the orange thing. That was all they had left by the time I made it to the site, see.

Not snippy at all

Ordinarily I get all snippy about patterns. Why did the designer do this in that silly way? Why, I could do better myself. I'd get rid of that seam. Make this stitch pattern element line up with that shaping. Or why not put a lovely edging on the whole thing?

(The answer, by the way, is generally BECAUSE IT WOULD BE A GIANT PAIN IN THE BUTT TO DO IT THAT WAY INSTEAD, as I discover when I try modifying whatever it is.)

But the Modern Quilt Wrap? I love the design more and more and more as I get further in.

The match of yarn and pattern? Perfect. Look, it's just hard to knit with Kidsilk Haze. The garter is dead simple and makes the fabric a little heftier in its fluff, while the the modularity keeps the number of stitches being wrestled with at any one time nice and small.

The distribution of colors? More careful than it first appears. And the variation in stripe width from square to square, and from stripe to stripe, keeps it from feeling too regular. (For both I'd love to know if the designer planned it, or just knitted and then took notes on what she'd done.)

Running the blocks of small squares on the diagonal keeps any tension weirdness well-distributed through the wrap. And alternating direction on the mitered blocks also helps balance out any drift, while keeping the overall feel pleasingly irregular (see, varying stripe width).

May particular version has some weirdnesses. I made the first row of blocks solid Drab, first because it was supposed to be swatch out of stash, but then because I thought it would look good. But I made it mirror image. Since it's solid I don't think it matters much (and I'll probably do the other end, if I ever get there, as a solid block of garter), but still. And I've had to monkey a little with the colors. I have only six, so some are paired -- avoiding adjacencies is non-trivial.

Little slippers, with pattern

So I'd seen lots of people talking about the new Cat Bordhi book, and about how she says you can put the gusset shaping anywhere and it will work out okay. I knit up these little slipper socks for Miss T. while I was waiting for my copy of Cat's book to arrive. Yes, there is a gusset to go with that heel flap, but the decreases are tucked into the purl ribs; you go from 2/3 rib to 2/2 rib very gently. I ran the ribbing down to the end of the toe, too.

While the gusset shaping ends up being similar to one of Cat's architectures (Cedar, in particular), the rest of the sock is actually based on Charlene Schurch's toe-up-with-gusset design from More Sensational Knitted Socks.

Mostly I wrote up a pattern because I wanted to try writing up a pattern. They are cute little slippers, very quick to knit, very satisfying in the hand, very pleasing to the recipient (who spent a morning wearing just the first one; she wouldn't take it off, even though the mate didn't exist yet) but in the end the fit and finish on a 40-stitch sock are going to be less than ideal, especially on such tiny feet.

(If you made them at 8 st/in, they might be great newborn booties, though!)

I am sort of happy that the pattern is self-contained---I'm going to knit up something from Cat's book (just as soon as I finish the 80-stitch Gentleman's Fancy Socks that drove me to sport weight toddler slippers in the first place) but when I do I'm going to keep track of just how many different pages I need to turn to in order to finish one simple pair of socks.

Please send me any comments or corrections you have on the pattern!

Download Streamline Toddler Slipper Socks

UPDATE, NOVEMBER 2007: See sarakate's comment in Punk Rock Knitters (at Livejournal) for a rewrite of the first few toe rows. I expect that everything she says is true (especially given her discourse on increases), and I'll go through the details and update the pattern when I have a chance.