Making progress

The great thing about colourwork is being able to see progress with every row. Each row builds upon the previous, adding to a developing picture.



Right now, I find this progress very rewarding. I know with certainty that each line of the chart brings me closer to finishing a pair of mittens. When I finish them, I will have a tangible product representative of my efforts. (And warm hands next winter).



It's helpful to have a rewarding project on the go when other things seem like excercises in futility. I wish I could believe that each CV I distribute and each job application I submit brings me closer to getting a job, but I have yet to see the evidence. Haha. In the mean time, I have plenty of time to knit, I suppose.

Entomology Mittens by Adrian Bizilia

Check out more WIPs at Tami's Amis.

yarn dyeing addiction

I dyed more sock yarn the other day (75% wool, 25% nylon). This time, I didn't attempt to keep the colours separate or mix them evenly. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I like it!



I used yellow, green, and blue - the other colours mostly ate the yellow, producing yellowy-greens. I used way too much green paste, and some bits ended up almost black, and small sections here and there stayed white.



I haven't reskeined it yet, and I look forward to some pretty crazy pooling when I knit it up.



I quite like the accidental approach to dyeing: pour some here, pour some there, spill some everywhere = awesome multi-coloured yarn!

So tell me. If this was for sale, would you buy it? Why or why not? ;)

That's better.

When I last posted about my Twisted socks, I was on the point of frogging them due to pattern-reading failure.

I did, and the difference is pleasing, though not especially obvious in the photos.

Before: note the loosey-goosey slip stitches


After:


(I don't actually have a pink kitchen table.)
Hurray! Twisted slip stitch rib, as it was meant to be. See how much tighter and cleaner it looks? For once, I'm happy I frogged.



The frogging adventure set me back quite a bit, but I'm catching up now. Yay for neon green socks!

future

It's hard to believe that in less than a year, I'll be getting married under these trees!

Don't worry, this isn't going to become a wedding blog, but I might babble about my wedding knitting when I get that figured out. I suspect the fact that I'm more excited about knitting a wedding shawl than finding a dress marks me as an obsessive knitter.

Yarn: Team Sweden?

Armed with a supply of citric acid crystals that may last me for years (provided I don't take up canning or something), I dyed some more yarn the other day! The citric acid was brilliant - no horrible vinegar fumes.



The base is 75% wool, 25% nylon, and it's not super duper soft, but did soften up after dyeing. It feels hard-wearing, so let's hope it is.



I used Wiltons golden yellow and royal blue, and Eunny Jang's tutorial for creating self-striping yarns, so I'm excited to see how it knits up. I plan to do a "vanilla" sock for the first time in my life...



Blue is darker than it appears in this picture, but the yellow is about right.

In my head I've been calling this Team Sweden, because the colours remind me of their national hockey team colours.

Twisted slip rib - ur doin it rong

Chugging away at my Twisted socks, I idly glanced through the pattern, something I have not done since casting on. (Uh-oh)

The abbreviations list caught my eye--specifically "Slp." Slip stitch purlwise? But... that's what I've been doing all along, when instructed to Sl1!

I'm so used to following patterns that assign the abbreviation Sl to slip purlwise that I automatically started slipping my stitches this way on these socks. Completely missing the whole "twisted" part of this slip stitch rib. Whoops. In fact, there's a bit in the pattern notes that specifically says Sl means slip knitwise... but since I only looked at the pattern to see how many stitches to cast on, I didn't notice. My bad.



What you see here is a regular, untwisted slip stitch rib, created by slipping the knit stitchs purlwise every other row. Pretty, but not what this pattern intended. I briefly considered leaving it and continuing in my nontwisty rib for the rest of the socks, since it looks okay. Ultimately, I think I like it better twisted, so I think I'll rip back and actually follow the pattern. (Deliberate disregard for pattern instructions is all fine and good, but since I chose this pattern because I liked it as written, I'm going to stick with it.) Sigh. Commence frogging!

oh, interweave

I received the Interweave Knits Summer 2011 issue recently. This is the first I've received as part of a gift subscription. I wouldn't have subscribed for myself, since I tend to buy individual issues that appeal to me, but I'll see how a whole year of Interweave sits with me now.

I rarely find stuff I like in summer issues, since I'm a winter-weather knitter for the most part. However, since there are a few wool items and it is not entirely packed with tank tops, I thought there might be more for me. There are some interesting articles, so I'm not actually that disappointed with the thing, but I doubt I will end up knitting anything from this issue. Still...

Yanked from the Interweave website in flagrant defiance of copyright.

Sorry about that, guys!

I quite like the Dockside Cardigan, above, and it's even supposed to be wool. The sloppy, looseness of it makes me think I'd never use it, since I generally prefer more fitted garments.

The Cumulus Tee also intrigues me. I like the weird thing happening at the neckline / sleeves, and it looks comfy. If I didn't already have a billion other things queued up with a sense of immediacy, I'd consider making this. Maybe I will one day!

Hahaha. Mystery solved?

So remember this neither-success-nor-failure I showed the other day?



Sock yarn that turned into bouclé when I hand-dyed it...

I realized that it's plied around elastic thread. Not sure how I didn't notice the stretchiness when I was winding it into a skein, but anyway. I'm still not entirely sure what happened, but maybe the elastic didn't do well in the nearly boiling water, or maybe my poking and prodding messed around with it.

WIP: Twisted socks

I burned myself out on socks last year, making three pairs as Christmas gifts, and haven't knit any since. Needing a project that doesn't take too much concentration, I finally cast-on for some more.



I dyed the yarn last year (apparently I like green), but have been hesitant to use it, since the base is the same as the yarn I dyed with easter egg dyes that faded horribly. If this fades similarly, I'll just dye it again, I think.



The pattern is Twisted by Jodie Gordon Lucas from the Spring+Summer 2010 issue of Knitty.

Check out more WIPS at Tami's Amis!

Return of the Wiltons

I went diving in my mom's yarn stash when I was home, and came up with some neat stuff. My mom isn't really a Knitter with a capital K (though she did teach me to knit back in the day), but she still has a stash, and lucky for me she is very generous with it.

I walked away with some weird sock yarn.



Gedifra Fashion Trend Sportivo is apparently discontinued, and although I wasn't too keen on the colours of these skeins, I can always use sock yarn.



Thinking this would be a fantastic candidate for overdyeing, I attempted my first hand dyeing since moving to Edinburgh, using some Leaf Green Wiltons icing colour.



It turned green, as hoped, but I'm not sure this counts as a success for a few reasons. First, I had a hard to getting the dye to set and I have lingering fears it might just all wash out later. Secondly, the yarn was really loosely plied to begin with and seems to have unevenly unplied itself in the dye pot. It almost looked like a bouclé yarn when I took it out, so I'm not sure what happened. I tried weighting the skeins when I hung them to dry and that helped a bit, but I'm not really sure how it will knit up. Good thing I'm not heavily invested in this yarn. Has this happened to anyone, and how did you deal with it?



So. A fun experiment that wasn't altogether a success or failure. I want to do some more dyeing soon, but I'll need a bigger pot and I may invest in some citric acid. (I say this every time since I hate the smell of vinegar, but I never get around to it.)

Yarn time

I alluded to acquisitions of the yarny variety on my trip home, and now I'll start rolling them out.



This is my first ever purchase of Lorna's Laces yarn. I've wanted some for ages, but I don't frequent many places that carry it. (Other than on the internet). On a mini yarn-crawl with a friend of mine, this skein of Shepherd Sock in the Lakeview colourway jumped into my hands and wouldn't be put back.

I think it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Haha. I love yarn, and I also love hyperbole, so there you go.



Mmmmm yarn. I suspect this will sit in my stash looking pretty for a while before I figure out what to make with it, but I'm okay with that.

FO: Simple City shawl

Pattern: Simple City by Eskimimi

Yarn: Zauberball in "Cranberries", from Stephcuddles



Mods:
Almost nothing. I moved the KFB increases on the ruffle edges in one stitch because I didn't like how they looked when done at the very edge. This is practically inconsequential, though.



Notes:
Appropriately, this was a simple project. The ruffle nearly drove me crazy and has made me wonder if attempting a Citron would send me over the edge entirely. Haha. Ten rows never took so long until I tried ruffles! Still, I love the result. The Zauberball is gorgeous, although it is a brighter red than I usually go for. Watching the stripes develop was super fun. I love how the bind-off row ended up being darker most of the way around.

The pattern isn't written with a garter tab cast-on, so if I make it again I'll probably add one. Doesn't really bother me, given how I'll wear it, but the top edge of the shawl has a bit of an indentation.

The finished shawl has a wingspan of about 1 m, and it wraps cozily around my neck bandit-style!

See more FOs at Tami's Amis

win

I recently won a giveaway at Ohdessa Knits.

Not only did I receive two awesome mitten patterns (Regal Mittens and Memento Mori Mittens), but I also won a kit to make some colourwork coffee sleeves.

Check out the adorable mini-skeins! So fun.



I am especially excited about the Memento Mori mitts - skulls! Day of the Dead! I definitely want to use a yarn with long colour repeats for the background colour, like in the original. Hmmm.

Thanks for the generous giveaway, Ohdessa!

What I've been up to

I got back yesterday from a visit to my hometown across the pond.

It was great visiting family and roaming around my old haunts, showing my dude what the place looks like when it isn't covered in snow.




When we left Edinburgh, spring was well underway, but Ottawa spring started while we were there, so I got to see the first flowers twice.


And I dropped in on some friends.



I also did some knitting and acquired some yarn - more on this another day!

WIP: Outside the Comfort Zone

I have been feeling the need to challenge myself more in my knitting, since I've fallen into habit. Not that habit is bad, but I'm craving some more knitting that requires thinking.



On that note, I've started the Honeybee Cardigan by Laura Chau - this has been in my queue for aaaaages. The main challenge is the lace pattern, which is active on both right and wrong sides of the knitting, involves dropped stitches, and all kinds of manoevering. Whee! Of course, I'm only on the bottom ribbing so far, but I did do a lace swatch to get the feel of the pattern, and it was pretty interesting.



The other thing that pushes this project out of my comfort zone is the colour. Raspberry pink! I don't usually wear much, but I got this yarn super cheap and I couldn't resist. If it turns out I really can't handle the colour, I'll see about dyeing it. I'm kind of looking forward to having such a bright cardigan, though.

To the sea

In the interest of having more fun and to distract myself from job hunting, I've been striking off in different directions and seeing where I end up. The other day, I stumbled upon the Firth of Forth. Somehow it's easy to forget that I live within walking distance of salt water.


Oh hello

Stumbled might be the wrong word. Still, there was an abrupt moment when I emerged from the "woods," and the damp forest smells were immediately replaced by salty sea smells.



Exploring my surroundings does me good, although I have to keep reminding myself of this.

WIP: Simple City

My current WIP is the Simple City shawl/scarf by Eskimimi.



Zauberball garter stitch blob, hurray! I love watching the colours work up, and I am enjoying the way the stripes are getting narrower as the triangle gets bigger.


Oooh squishy...

Yarn and pattern were gifts from Stephcuddles in the blog hub swap last year - finally getting put to good use!

Free Pattern: Danube Cowl

It's up! I got over myself, and chose a palindromic pseudonym because palindromes are fun. You can now download the Danube Cowl pattern for free! Hurray! I hope you like it.

Details

Yarn: Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend, 100g / 270 m skein
Needles: 4.5 mm / US7

This cabled cowl is knitted flat with a provisional cast-on. The ends are grafted to form a long loop suitable for wrapping around the neck. Knit in a wool-silk blend, this cowl is warm, cozy, and super soft.

Cabling without a needle makes this project go faster. I like to use this method as described by Grumperina.

See this tutorial for one way to graft the loop together in pattern.

Thanks to Novanz, Smokeandashes, and ZooGirl for testing. Let me know if you find any more errors/wrong things.

Download Danube Cowl Now

Knitwear design and privacy dilemma

I'm feeling a bit conflicted right now. Having gone through testing for my first "design," I'm finally ready to release the pattern to the wilds of ravelry. I've been delaying due to underconfidence and self-consciousness, but I finally got over it and decided the pattern was ready. Sort of.

I'm used to being mostly anonymous on the internet. I've had various internet handles over the years, and on this blog I use my first name, but I'm not prepared to publish under my full name. The thought freaks me out. Is this irrational? It's not that I have a super-awesome career that I want to keep separate from my knitting life, although I may one day... A good compromise, I thought, would be to put my pattern up under my first name and initial.


Gratuitous photo of cave from my Lake District adventure, just so this post isn't pictureless. Yay, the closest I'll ever get to spelunking! :P

Alas. Ravelry doesn't accept this. At the moment, they require a full first name and last name to assign to a designer page. (I tried entering my last name as an initial and it yelled at me. Boo.) I could come up with a pseudonym, but I don't like the pressure to choose a totally perfect new name for my knitting identity. I didn't think this was going to be so stressful!

So, input appreciated. Did anyone else have a similar crisis of self-conscious anonymity? Those of you who have patterns up on ravelry, do you use a pseudonym? Why or why not? Help me, I'm paralyzed with indecision! Haha.

FO: Little green spring mitts

My green mitts are complete, in time to be seasonally inappropriate.



Pattern: Calculation by Natalie Selles

Yarn: Sweet Paprika Messa di Voce

Notes:
Those of you reading along may remember I only had 42 g of this yarn left, so I was worried about running out. I needn't have worried. Upon finishing, there were 11 g left. Plenty! (What did I do before I had a digital scale?) In fact, next time I would keep knitting for longer lace cuffs in order to use up even more of the yarn. This pattern is great for partial skeins and small amounts of yarn.

It's way too warm for mitts surprisingly, but I'll keep them on hand for the next coldness. Up until now the only mitts I had with me were my pink Endpaper Mitts. I'm fairly relaxed about being non-matchy, but nothing else I have is pink, whereas I have a lot of greens/blues/purples. These are in the same yarn as my Herbivore scarf, and I suspect they will be very useful if I decide I want to start being matchy.



I'm done apologizing for how inaccurate the colour is, but just another reminder - the mitts aren't actually teal. As much as I love teal and wouldn't mind if they were, of course.

2KCBWDAY7 - knitting time is every time

Last day! For some reason I'm finding this week a lot more overwhelming than it was last year - maybe because there are more participants? I've been bending over backwards trying to read as many blogs as possible, and it's tiring! (Oh poor overstimulated me haw haw.) I want to thank everyone for their comments - I'm doing my best to check out all your blogs, even if I'm not commenting on everyone's. Hearty thanks to Eskimimi for organizing this whole thing again.

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble coming up with anything interesting to say about my knitting time. Sometimes I knit in the morning. Sometimes I don't knit all day. I knit at knitting group. I knit on trains. I knit in front of the computer, sometimes. Yeah.

You'd much rather look at pictures of lambs than hear me blather, though, wouldn't you?


The Lambs of Grasmere

Thought so.

Something to aspire to - 2KCBWDAY6

I feel like I'm repeating myself. Almost every time I make a list of knitting goals, I put double-knitting on that list. I've never tried it yet. The possibilities of this technique fascinate me; reversible and double-thick results!

Other than having an overly long queue of other things, and being easily distracted, I can't explain why I haven't attempted double knitting yet. Is this the year I'll finally try double-knitting?

The Four Winds hat by Alisdair Post-Quinn is gorgeous, and might be a good place to start.

Something different: 2KCBWDAY5

I'm late on this one because I spent the last few days hiking in the Lake District, and I didn't get myself organized to schedule a post in advance. As it turns out, it's a good thing I didn't; I entertained the idea of going yarnbombing for yesterday's nonspecific topic, but again didn't get myself organized.

While exploring on my trip, I realized someone beat me to it.


Yarn art in Grasmere, Cumbria.

It looks like there is moss growing on it, but in fact, it seems to be moss-coloured bouclé yarn.





Does anyone know anything about this? I found these sculptures in the Quiet Garden at Rydal Hall. I'm sure it is a deliberate art project, but in my haste to post I haven't done any research (by which I mean googling) yet.

For more Knitting and Crochet Blog Week posts, search 2KCBWDAY5.