Instead I’m working on the February Fitted Pullover.  It’s a nice, quick, instant-gratification lace knit perfect for the upcoming warmer months.  I tend to knit a lot of chunky, cozy, cabled sweaters for everyday wear so it has been nice to work on something different.  I feel like I finally have enough daily wear handknits to start adding some occasional wear handknits to the sweater stack.

The goal:  I have the body knit.  It is now Friday.  My goal is to have the neckline and sleeves done by end of day tomorrow so it can be blocked overnight and worn to Easter dinner on Sunday.  It should be doable, as the sleeves are 3/4 length with no fitting until the sleeve cap.  Just in time for my birthday too!  What better way to usher in 35 than with a sexier-than-thou fitted red lace sweater?

I’ve also had the Random Rib Socks on the go, and am past the gusset on the second sock.  This is the first pair of socks I’ve actually done the second sock for in over a year.  Scary.  But just in time as most of my socks are now looking rather threateningly threadbare.

In other news, I’m working on getting myself back into race form again.  I don’t think I’ll be ready for the Bluenose, but there’s a whack of other road races and fun runs in Nova Scotia over the next several months so I’m not overly concerned.  Yesterday I went for a nice long 10k brisk walk just to get my body used to locomoting itself for a long distance.  Handknit socks + long walk = seriously damaged feet.  I knew that going into it too, but I tend to test this every once in a while hoping that my feet have toughened up.  Alas, no, they have not.  Since my blister count is in the double digits, most of which are on the SOLES of my feet, training is on hold for a couple of days.  Le sigh.  At least it will help me reach my knitting goal for the weekend, if not my fitness goal.

The fibres:

All singles were spun Z.  A two-ply (overplied) was spun S.  The two-plies were plied together Z.

In the yarn on the right, the two-plies were all one colour, that is, one two-ply of red, one two-ply of blue. Then these were plied.  In the yarn on the left, each two-ply used both colours.

Not surprisingly, the yarn with the two-tone two-plies blended the colours more than the two-plies of solid colours.

The knitted samples:

As expected, the knitted sample with the two-tone two-plies has much smaller spots of colour and is more blended or speckled.

These samples are destined to become Feline Dim Sum.  The fibre feels like burlap so it is not destined for any garment.

There was an unexpected effect.  I always ply my yarns.  I tend to agree with Judith MacKenzie McCuin in that yarns should be plied unless there is a reason not to do so.  In my standard 3-ply or chain-ply yarns, the singles are spun Z then plied S.   So the final yarn has an S twist.  When cabling, I still spun my singles Z.  The first plying was done S, then plied again Z.  So the final yarn had a Z twist.  I found that the yarn unplied while knitting.  In some places it was almost like holding two 2-ply yarns together rather than a cohesive plied single strand of yarn.  Next time I cable I will spin S-Z-S.  I also plan to experiment more with cabling, such as cabling a two ply with a single, and trying other fibre combinations such as wool and silk or cabling yarns of different thicknesses.

New to the needles:

Vivian the Second.  Modifications are somewhat extensive as I am knitting this baby out of a light worsted as opposed to the chunky that the pattern calls for.  Since I need to multiply my stitch count by 1.25 to get gauge, I am knitting the size 44 on 4.5mm needles.  I’ve also added two of the small cables to the back on the inside edge of the large cable.  This change is mostly to limit the amount of seed stitch I need to do as seed stitch just makes me go buggy.

Twice in the last week I have gotten an unsolicited compliment on my original Vivian (one of the unzippered, yet-to-be-photographed knits I alluded to above).

Another pair of Random Rib Socks. I’ve noticed that the Random Rib Socks on Ravelry have fewer than 10 projects which both saddens and surprises me.  I think that these socks are a perfect merger between simplicity and funkiness and am surprised that they haven’t taken the knit world by storm.  I made a pair for my Dad three winters ago and he loves them.  I chose that particular pattern because they seem so very conservative at a distance but reveal a much wilder sensibility on closer inspection.  So very apt.  I’m making a pair for Joe out of Trekking Maxima in Colour 905.

Next up to spin and knit, likely into Tempest, the most recent spin-a-long from All Spun Up.  This gorgeous fibre is a blend of Alpaca, Silk, and Merino.  The contrasting colour will be some natural black alpaca from Village Farm Alpacas.

Now for the Knitting Past. I’ve saved the best for last.  Last weekend I happened upon a whole pile of vintage knitting magazines and pattern books at my local Value Village.  This is the crown jewel of the small stack that came home with me:

The gloves!  The pearls!  The sweater set!

First, the yarn. 3 ply fingering weight in BFL / BLF-Silk.  From left to right:

3 ply natural BFL

2 ply natural BFL, 1 ply Ice Caves

1 ply natural BFL, 2 ply Ice Caves

3 ply Ice Caves

The Ice Caves is a BFL/Silk blend in a club colourway from All Spun Up.

This is an adult sized sweater in a fingering weight yarn on 3.75 mm needles, so it is taking some time.  I am almost ready to divide for the armholes.

The transition from the all-dyed yarn to the 2-dyed, 1 natural yarn is smooth and I am pleased with it.  The transition from the 2-dyed to the 1-dyed, 2-natural ply is a bit more pronounced than I’d like.  I suspected it would be.  I used a slightly lighter section of the dyed roving in the lighter yarn, concerned with how it would ultimately transition to the all-natural yarn at the top.

The way I have been doing the transitions is to knit to a part of the skein that is more or less halfway (as I will need about half of each skein for the body and about half for the sleeves) that is also more or less a match for the beginning of the next skein before dropping the old and joining the new.

If I do this again I think I will mix up the dyed roving in the intermediate yarns a bit more.  Hand dyed rovings don’t give a uniform effect anyway, so a wider gradation within each yarn would be okay to be able to have more places in each skein where the transition to the next lightest works out.  I think that a greater variation in each skein will make the transitions less obvious.

Another solution to this would be to do more than 3 plies.  It might be a good excuse to do a cabled 4-ply yarn.  The main reason I stuck to a 3-ply fingering weight was because I had only two 4 oz rovings of the Ice Caves dyed roving and I wanted to ensure that I got a sweater’s worth of yarn.  While the spinning portion of the project would be endless, it would be nice to knit out of a heavier yarn.  As it is I cast on 200 stitches for the circumference of the body, it would be nice to have something that goes a bit faster.

Though you can’t see them that well in the photo, the needles are Knit Picks Harmony Interchangeable needles.  I love them.  Sometimes they do come untwisted at the joins, but I just check them periodically to make sure everything is still attached.

I find it interesting, then, that most of my hobbies involve the use of both hands and, what is even more interesting, my one-handedness has not been a hindrance.  When spinning, it is my left that I use to draft.

So what’s the point and why the Noro Scarf, you ask?  Well, I have always been a staunch English Method knitter (that’s the one in which the yarn is held and guided in the right hand – I had to look it up).  Despite years of being told that Continental Method can be much faster and certainly makes ribbing much less of a PITA, I have shied away from attempting this method.  Enter the Noro Scarf.  I began this two years ago and got as far as what is depicted here before I could not longer bear the thought of even one more row of K1 P1 rib.  It is for my husband.  He just l0oked at it and asked what it is and where it came from.  He no longer remembers requesting this scarf and picking out the colours.  It’s been that long.  I am now resurrecting the project.  I became inspired to learn the Continental Method since watching my mother attempt it on the afternoon of Christmas Day.   I also have ahead of me the prospect of two – 11 hour car rides withing the next four days.  Methinks this is a perfect opportunity to finish a project and learn a new technique.

Wish me luck.  I am, however, bringing another project as a fall back plan.  I am ambitious but not naive.

I leave you now with a bit of teh kewt.  Monk rather graciously submitted to being a yarn model this afternoon.  I think his ebony colouration really makes the colours in the yarn pop.  The yarn is the Norwegian from my previous post.

Socks for Dad

Yarn: Belfast Mini Mills Specialty Sock Yarn

Pattern: Just a basic 72 stitch sock with a 2 x 2 cuff

Striping: Fibonacci Sequence, from cast-on cuff 21 rows in charcoal, 13 rows in blue, 8 rows in green, 5 rows in red

My dad really likes the handknit socks I make him.  He dropped some hints to this effect around Thanksgiving.  It is challenging to make him socks, however.  He has size 11 wide feet.  The yarn I like to use is Handmaiden Casbah, which is a mere 230 yards per skein.  The one and only time I made socks for him out of Casbah I had about 2 yards of yarn left over.  The knitting gods were smiling upon me then, but there was also a gentle warning in that mere two yards of yarn.  I don’t think I will be so lucky twice.

Annis Shawl for Mom

Yarn: Fleece Artist Nyoni.  I don’t see the Nyoni on the Fleece Artist website.  I dug this particular skein out of a sale bin, perhaps it has been discontinued.

Modifications:  I did not do the nupps.  I would like to try nupps sometime, but was not sure if they would look good in the variegated yarn or if I had enough yarn to do the nupps.  It turns out that I do have quite a bit of yarn left over.  This is not the last Annis I will make, next time I will do the nupps.  I also added a garter border, with a k2tog, yo repeat on the right side of the fabric between the garter ridges.  This was to prevent the curling that others have found with this pattern.

I often do not like lace in variegated yarns but I think this one works.  The variegation is fairly subtle, enough to provide interest but not so much as to overpower the pattern.

This  is a nice, easy to memorize, lace pattern.  It is just enough lace without being overwhelming for someone who, like me, is just venturing into the world of knitted lace.  I like the crescent shape.  It has the style of a larger triangular shawl with the versatility of a rectangular shawl.

Mom’s belated birthday yarn

Fibre: Yarn Chef in Soothe and Spunky Eclectic undyed, both merino/bamboo, 2 ply

The yarn transitions gradually from the light green to the aqua to the dark green.

730 yards fingering weight, 8 oz.

I gave mom the fibre for this on her birthday last summer but only now have gotten around to finishing the yarn.  The bamboo makes this yarn super shiny.  It took 3 hours to ply and wind off.  3 hours.  For real.

Crown Mountain Farms Fibre Club November

Fibre: Norwegian in club c0lourway Mandala

Worsted weight, approximately 170 yards, 4 oz

This one is for me.  It is a bit overspun.  I have not spun Norwegian before.  I think it prefers to be spun a little more loosely.  I am intending to use this in stranded colourwork hat.  It was a nice fast spin to take the edge off of the endless bamboo/merino two ply.

Coming Up…

Also in the works is an Urban Aran Cardigan (for myself) and a pair of Freshman Cable Socks for Joe. I will post pics when they are complete.

I’ve signed up for another year of the CMF Fibre Club so am trying to get some of last year’s offerings spun up.  My goal for the next 6 months or so is to spin and knit exclusively from stash.  The stash is getting a bit out of control (which is a nice problem to have) and my student budget is starting to frown at yarn and fibre purchases.  It’s kind of nice to go through the stash and rediscover all of the awesome goodies that have been lying forgotten around the house.  I am choosing to approach the stashbusting in the spirit of discovery rather than the spirit of deprivation.  Getting rid of the old will help make room for the new.

I am planning to combine it with a worsted weight commercial yarn (likely in black) to make  a hat-scarf-mitt combo.  For the hat I’m leaning towards a striped Odessa with a wide black brim. Rfor the scarf a sideways knit garter stitch scarf with alternating garter ridges of black and handspun and possibly some white.  I am planning to do the scarf last as it can be most flexible in terms of how much handspun is remaining.  I have yet to decide on the mitts, they will likely have handspun cuffs, maybe in a corrugated rib, and solid body.  Or maybe striped mitts.  I have about 355 yards of handspun, I will see how far I can stretch it.

The Original Fibre:

The Yarn:

And a Close-up:

I am continually amazed at how different a yarn can be from its original fibre.  This had short sections of colour, so they blended and heathered nicely, which knocked out some of the really high tones.  I prefer the final product to the original fibre.  Once again a fibre I was not over the moon about ended up to be a yarn that I loved.  I have always found it easier to spin a fibre right away when I am not completely in love with the colour.  The ones I love at first sight sit forever waiting for … well, I don’t know, inspiration?  my worthiness?  that whisper of what the perfect yarn will be? … who knows?

From left to right: Psychedelic Sheep, Toadstool, Joe (though he looks more like John Lennon in felt form…), Apple, Peach, Chili Pepper, Turtle.

In detail:

Psychedelic Sheep.  The colour is mostly due to not having any white, black, or other natural colours in nice curly lock form.  I do, however, have a few bags of ‘Fluff’ from Friends Folly Farm in Maine, hence the electric kool-aid effect.

Fruits and Veggies.  Just ’cause.

New craft = FUN!

Blackrose knit in Handmaiden Casbah.  Size medium.

Mods:  I knit a 20 row cuff and did only 7 pattern repeats on the leg.

One of the nice things about this pattern is the way the gusset decreases are worked into the edge of the lace pattern on the plain rows.

Honeycomb in Vermont Fibre Company O-Wool, Balance.  This only took a year and a half.  I was very motivated when I first started it in December 2008 and I knit it to near completion.  Then, for reasons I can’t recall, it was put aside only to be picked up again about two weeks ago.  It is now done except for the blocking.

In the ‘New Venture’ category, I finally decided to face the challenge of spinning a boucle yarn.  This is the Crown Mountain Farms Fibre Club offering for April – Wensleydale in club colourway ‘Sunrise Over Kangchenjunga’.  I followed this tutorial.   I spun the Wensleydale as a worsted z single, using a fairly tight twist for Wensleydale (which is still less twist than I would use for most animal fibre).  I plied s with thread, pushing the Wensleydale into loops then plied z with thread to secure the loops.  I gave it a nice bath and Voila!

In non-knitting news, the four-legged Clover has recently been joined by this:

What you see here is a very loving and very pregnant stray who showed up on our front deck looking for a warm dry place to stay.  One very stressful car ride to the vet later, she was deemed to be healthy, so we moved her in.  Kittens anyone?

This one, however, is not thrilled by the presence of the new member to our household.  Despite the fact that she was once a stray that someone brought in out of the cold and delivered to the SPCA where I adopted her seven years ago.

Who’s a sucker?  Oh yeah, that’d be me…

I always get a bad case in the spring.  Just at that time when the weather is finally warming, water is running in ditches, small streams become swollen, and any patch of dirt becomes an unnegotiable mud sinkhole, my startitis hits an absolute annual peak.  I first noticed this tendency about 13 years ago when those knotted hemp necklaces were all the rage.  Being particularly prone to crafty hubris of all sorts, I carried a partially complete knotted and beaded hemp belt through I don’t even know how many moves, until it finally made it into the ‘things to go’ box many years later.  While I first noticed my tendency to annual spring startitis at the age of twenty, I believe that the tendency stretched much much further back.  Back to the days of cross-stitched x-mas ornaments begun in August (my mother: Are you SURE you will finish this one?, me: Of course!, reality: eventually donated in one of my semi-regular moves), or baby quilts, or tie-dyed clothes, or… and the list goes on back in memory.  I could really do with an equally strong case of finishitis coinciding with the autumn equinox one of these years.

This year began innocuously enough.  In preparing for a long car trip (approximately 30 hours each way) I did what any knitter would do – prepare.  I kept it modest this year, remembering my overpacking of knitting last year, and remembering my poor track record of actually getting any knitting DONE, never mind finished enough to warrant multiple projects, and kept it to two projects.  I returned home with less than one sock and about 8 inches of a scarf knit.  That was two weeks ago.  The sock is now complete, its friend is about 3 pattern repeats out of 7 leg pattern repeats complete, and the scarf is complete.  So far so good.  Though I have not yet knit a single stitch past my last posting of something like 3 weeks ago on the Apres Surf Hoodie.  And I’m trying to narrow down a choice of knitting patterns for the April Sock Knitters Anonymous Challenge.  And woefully behind in my spinning.  And almost halfway through a scarf I intend for a friend as a graduation gift in less than 3 weeks.  Nevermind the various projects begun over the last twelve months that I completely forgot about until looking for a 4.5mm or 5mm circular to – you guessed it – swatch another project and realized that the reason I can’t find one of them is that it is on a WIP.

Given all that, what do I find myself doing this morning?  Yep, winding a skein of yarn to start swatching a new sweater for the mister.

Here is a picture of one of my vacation-knitting projects -  the not-so-complete Lacy Baktus I cast off last week.  I really wanted to use the entire skein for this scarf.  This scarf is knit by increasing to the halfway point then decreasing to the end.  I judged the halfway point by weight, allowing a few grams leeway so I would not run out of yarn before the end.  But, as you can see, there are more than a couple of grams of yarn left over.  Now I want to rip it back to centre, add about two more pattern repeats and increases, then begin the decreases, hopefully using up all of the yarn.  The yarn is handspun merino/silk/bamboo in the All Spun Up fibre club colourway for August-September 2009.  ETA: July of 2020.

The second piece of vacation knitting, doing double duty as my March challenge for Sock Knitters Anonymous is a pair of Blackrose socks.  The yarn is Handmaiden Casbah, a gorgeous blend of merino, cashmere, and nylon.  The yarn is a bit on the thick side of sock yarns, so I usually knit it on 2.5 mm needles.  I am making the medium and probably should have made the small, but they are alright on, so I can live with them.  I may actually finish these by the April 30th deadline.

Up next is another Lacy Baktus, this time knit out of the Crown Mountain Farms Fibre Club handspun for March in colourway Bannockburn.  I loved this yarn in the fibre.  I loved it in the skein and in the ball.  I do not love it knit up.  I am torn between frogging and shelving it or finishing the scarf and overdying it in a dilute blue to green-down the yellow.  Feel free to chime in with your two cents.

On the plus side, every time a yarn works out or does not work out from a fibre, I like to think I learn something.  Though I really  have yet to learn, despite the slowly growing stash or the many many ‘before and after’ posts on Ravelry, that the fibre and finished yarn often bear virtually no resemblance to each other.

Going back in time, I began Laeticia, designed by the incredibly talented Stephanie van der Linden for Twist Collective Spring 2009 before going on vacation.  After finishing the first sock, I decided to leave the project at home, wanting something requiring less concentration for car knitting.  Behold the kiss of death for sock knitters everywhere – I have not yet cast on the second sock and it’s been over a month.  Things don’t look good.  I also wavered between knitting the yarnovers regularly and tightening them through the back loop, so the open portion of the leaf pattern is not consistent.  My only reason for this lack of consistency is that I kept forgetting which way I was knitting the yarnovers, so I kept switching.  That’s all, just isolated brain malfunction.

While seaching for a circular needle to swatch a new project, I came across this.  This is a Smocking on the Move designed by Teva Durham for Interweave Knits.  I began this last summer after buying the wool at Belfast Mini Mills during a trip to Prince Edward Island.  What you are looking at is both sleeves and about 6 inches of the back.  And the missing circular needle.  Having remembered that I was once working on this, I may resurrect it.

In the so-close-to-being-done-I-should-just-finish-the-!@#$ing-thing category is the Honeycomb I began in December of 2008.  Though the yarn is not really ideal for this project (too heavy) I do really love the yarn – Vermont Organic Fibre Company O-Wool.  VERY appropriately named.  It’s an organic  wool/cotton blend.  I’ve got about half the front and the neck and armhole edgings left to do.

Finally we come to the moment of truth.  Up to this point what I have on the go, and what I am comtemplating starting, seems perfectly reasonable.  I am sure that there are knitters out there that would scoff at my mere 5 or 6 active WIPs (we won’t discuss how many WIPs I have that are inactive and likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future, Pomatomus I’m looking at YOU).  However, when I found myself frantically searching for a free circular needle and winding the yarn you see below, I did have to acknowledge that I had contracted a bad case of startitis and maybe (emphasis on the maybe) should think about finishing at least one of the above projects before starting on a new sweater.  Maybe.  What you see below is destined to be another sweater for the mister.  It is from MacAusland’s Woolen Mill in Prince Edward Island (acquired on the same trip as my Belfast Mini Mills purchase).  It is a very rustic wool, saturated with lanolin and studded with bits of hay.   I was inspired by the article in the Spring/Summer issue of Twist Collective about knits for men.  This will eventually be a two-colour saddle shoulder sweater with a turtleneck.  The body will be in the grey, the sleeves and turtleneck in the green.  My search this morning did unearth a couple of circular needles in a couple of gauges, but on further reflection, I think I should knit a few token rows on at least one of the above projects before starting a new one.  Maybe I’ll find that new project love I once had for them, the same new project love I feel for the wooly rustic sweater I’m contemplating.  Maybe.

Not pictured above – the Apres Surf Hoodie.  No change since last post.

Now I will get back to the other part of today’s planned activities – haunting the mailbox in anticipation of a delivery of the latest All Spun Up club fibre.  I think I am the only person in Canada left to receive mine.  I have plans for it.  Big plans.  Sweater plans.  As it is a BFL/silk blend I am hoping it will be a colourway that will  coordinate nicely with the pound of oatmeal BFL I’ve been sitting on for the last year.  Or the two pounds of white BFL I’ve been hoarding.  La la la!  I DO love the spring!