Peaceful Knitter

Brrr, it’s cold out there! I am so lucky to be going on a Caribbean cruise tomorrow, let alone a knitting cruise. I just finished the embarrassing task of trying on and packing my swimming suits and summer clothes. It’s been a while since anything but my face and hands have seen the sunlight! I hope to find the other winter-pale people on the ship, slathering on the spf 45 sunscreen for fear of melting at the first rays of sun!

Now I need to think about what knitting supplies to take aboard. These are the classes I’m signed up to take with Debbie Stoller and Shannon Okey:

1. Slip Stitchin’ Away
2. Bead It
3. Felted Flowers
4. No Plastic, Please bag
5. Provisional Cast On
6. Sea Socks

In another twist of good fortune, all the yarn is provided for these projects. So, what to pack? I don’t think I’m the type to bring all of my favorite finished objects to show off, nor do I think I’ll be bringing my Stitch ‘n Bitch books for autographs. Basically all I’ll need is a small bag to carry needles, notions, and one project.

I’ll be gone for 10 days, so please hang in there and check back on March 8th. I promise you some wonderful posts when I return, full of sunshine and knitting.

Until then, happy knitting!

You may have heard or experienced firsthand the recent snowstorm in the Northeast. I think it’s been annoyingly dubbed Winter Storm Debbie or Destiny or something. When did we start naming snow storms? Anyway, Thursday night brought a generous amount of soft, sugary snow which created accidents, delays, cancellations, and plenty of opportunities to stay inside and knit.

Not that I avoided the snow altogether; we have a dog named Big Martha who loves to play in the snow. So while it’s a bit of a trudge putting on the snow boots and tromping out into the woods, it’s quite worth it once we’re there.

We’re very fortunate to have access to this area of woods and fields so close to our house. It’s a great place for a nature walk, and Martha can run around off leash. Her favorite game is fetch, with the added task of digging for the ball in the snow.

Her face looks perpetually serious, worried even, but I assure you she was very happy.

I was able to get some good shots of the winter landscape during our weekend walk. If it looks pale and cold, that’s because it was!

In knitting news, I was actually able to get a good start on the Citrus Yoke Pullover. I have had the yarn for months now, and even cast on a time or two. But each time something wasn’t right and I ripped it out. This is very out of character for me; I like forward progress in knitting, and very rarely frog something. But, what’s done is done, and I am now committed to finishing this sweater before…well, before I can’t stand it and frog the entire thing and knit a felted dog bed with the yarn instead. I can’t make any promises here. But since I get anxious when I have ufo hanging around for any length of time, it’s safe to say that this will get finished at some point.

How many ufos do you have? What is the difference between a work in progress and an unfinished object?

I have slowly started working my way through the first few swatches for the Master Knitting program. My knowledge and experience with knitting certainly has holes, and I am hoping that this project will inspire me to explore new territories.

Right off the bat I decided that I should bite the bamboo and learn the long-tail cast on. I know, I know…but when I learned to knit, my friend Natasha taught me the knitted cast on, which I think is perfect for a beginner. And frankly, I rarely saw a need for a different type of cast on.

That is until I was working on the seed stitch swatch; the cast on edge had a hole after each purl stitch. At first I changed from a size 6 to size 5 needles to see if that would tighten things up a bit. And it really helped with consistency over the body of the piece, but made no difference at the cast on. Sigh. Isn’t it aggravating when you realize that there’s a better way to do things than the way you’ve been doing them?!

So yesterday I swallowed my pride, cracked open Nancie Wiseman’s The Knitter’s Book of Finishing Techniques, and got started. I have never dealt well with how-to illustrations when it comes to knitting. It seems there is always some important action omitted from the series of pictures. Sure, the motion may be implied or understood by people who already know about knitting, but to the beginners it can be quite frustrating!

That’s where knittinghelp.com comes in handy. They have a great video demonstrating the long tail cast on. She describes it well, demonstrates it slowly, and shows it many times. After just a couple of minutes I had it down!

I restarted the seed stitch swatch on size 5 needles and immediately noticed a difference.

With this cast on method, you start with one row already knit. That means that the first row to work facing you is a purl row. I haven’t quite figured out what this means for certain stitch patterns yet, but it seems to be relatively unobtrusive so far. Here it is with a Knit 2 Purl 2 rib swatch:

So that’s the update. Now that I’ve taken the leap and started knitting these swatches, I’m pretty intrigued. I hope to keep this momentum going through all the projects.

There was a serious Northeastern snowstorm overnight, so it looks like a perfect day to stay inside and work on my knitting!

When I need comforted, there are a few core things that I can eat, read, watch, or do repetitively for relief: chicken pot pie, chocolate cake, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, You’ve Got Mail, Last of the Mohicans, and knitting a dishcloth.

I find comfort in being able to produce something so familiar you can let your hands guide themselves through the familiar territory of knits and purls. Knitting with yarn I already have on hand to create something bright and cheerful and useful is also immensely satisfying. In my career as a knitter I have probably whipped out a dozen washcloths for myself and others, and my degree of happiness with the process never wanes.

Here is my latest comfort, something I knit when I wanted to start a new project that I could finish in a couple of hours while catching up on TiVo.

• Yarn: Sugar ‘n Cream Cotton
• Needles: Size 7
• Pattern: Ballband Dishcloth from Mason-Dixon Knitting

What do you knit when you need a fresh start?

I’m on to Sock #1 of Pair #2 (read this entry for background info) Like a new love affair, things are off to a blissful start. The yarn is gorgeous and refreshing, the pattern is simple yet interesting enough to keep my brain engaged, and the whole thing is knitting up really fast.

• Yarn: Oceanwind Knits Merino in Shiraz
• Needles: Size 2 double points
• Pattern: Embossed Leaves Socks from Favorite Socks by Interweave Press
• Modifications: Plain 1×1 ribbed cuff, and simple stockinette toe with Kitchener seam.

There has been one tricky bit that I hadn’t encountered in a pattern before: a yarnover before purl stitches. To do a yarnover, you bring the yarn to the front of your work and typically follow with a knit stitch. This creates an extra stitch that, in this case, results in the open work lace effect. So I had to figure out how to bring the yarn forward, and then leave it forward for the next purl stitch, while adding a stitch! It’s not that complicated, but it threw me for a loop (pun intended) the first couple of times. I did it my own way by bringing the yarn forward, then wrapping it over the right needle and bringing it forward again. Sometimes I just don’t have the patience to look these things up and like to improvise!

I think my new sock strategy is working well so far. I was able to finish the first sock last night, and am actually looking forward to getting back to the previous pair and finishing up! And for now, who says a pair of socks has to match?

My second crack at the Kitchener seam went much better.

How do you knit your socks? Circular needles, double points, 2 at a time, toe up, cuff down? And do you finish a pair before starting another, or do can you leave a single sock waiting for its mate? I’m interested in the habits of sock knitters and would love to hear from you!

You didn’t think I was able to leave a recent 42% off sale with just a couple of skeins of Noro, did you? The truth is, I increased my stash by a third that week, between Becca’s generous stash-busting and the Yarn Garden’s Superbowl sale. So here they are, my new wooly friends and sources of inspiration:

Yarn: Jojoland Melody Superwash, color MS16, 2 balls (To be socks for my sweetie)

Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Solids, Natural, 1 skein (lacy footwear for me, perhaps?)

Yarn: Cascade Tuscany Grande, Sunrise, 2 balls

Yarn: Cascade Tuscany Grande, Celedon, 2 balls

Sidenote: I got a message on Ravelry asking if they could feature this photo on this yarn’s page!

Yarn: Cascade Lana D’Oro, black, 2 skeins

Okay, that’s the full truth, I promise! I have gone from a meager little stash that fit in a single layer in one box to something that resembles a corner in the messiest yarn shop you’ve ever been to. It’s a little out of hand, and I need to find a way to tame the beast before it crawls out of the over-stuffed box and smothers me in my sleep.

In the meantime, I have a lot of knitting to do! I have been resisting the urge to cast on every one of the above yarns because I need to tie up some UFOs before heading out on the Stitch ‘n Beach cruise on the 27th. I’m signed up to take 6 classes, and they each come with a project! So I don’t plan on taking anything more than a stockinette sock with me to knit on the train to New York.

This scarf was started out of a desire to indulge my need for color, texture, and an improvisational knit. I also wanted something I could work on without employing too many brainwaves. Mission accomplished.

• Yarn: Noro Iro, Color 56, 264 yards
• Needles: Size 11. I experimented with smaller needles but found the resulting fabric too stiff.
• Pattern: Cast on 17 stitches and work in seed stitch until you run out of yarn.

This is an incredibly generous scarf in terms of its length. I can wrap it around and around my neck and still have ends left over. When I stretched it out on the floor to measure just how long it was, Spike came to investigate.

He is just so good at the yoga standard, Downward-facing Dog. I’m a little jealous…

In retaliation, I decided to wrap him up in the scarf and see what would happen. He didn’t like it.

I think I’ll sleep with one eye open tonight.

I like to knit socks. As a finished object, there is nothing more luxurious and indulgent than a pair of rich, hand knit socks. As knitting projects, they are portable, complicated or simple depending on your mood, and reasonably quick to knit. Finishing a sock feels pretty good, a little triumph in the world of knitting.

But then there’s that second sock lurking in the background, with its repetitive pattern and familiar yarn. It seems counter-intuitive to cast on for the very same object you just finished! Second sock syndrome, some call it; I just call it the knitting doldrums.

I have a new plan to avoiding this fatigue: finish one sock, then start another, entirely new sock. Finish that sock. Go back to the second sock from the first pair, finish, return to the second sock of the second pair. Make sense? Out with the old, in with the new, then back again.

Sock 1, pair 1.

So I finished the first sock of the first pair, and was about to cast on for a new pair when something kept niggling at me. That toe is awfully funny looking, said my inner knitter. “I know, but it’s finished and I’m tired of looking at it,” I said. “Let’s just start a new sock.” And so I left it for a few days, looking like this until I couldn’t take it any more.

This is where the photo I accidentally deleted should appear. Trust me, it was hideous: pointy yet square at the same time…

That’s my sock with a three needle bind off toe.

I decided to try a Kitchener stitch seam instead. The goal of this seaming method is to have an invisible seam when you are finished. The stitches appear to continue in the pattern and in this case looks like stockinette. Brilliant!

Granted, it looks a bit Frankenstien, but trust me-it’s so much better than what was there before! And the technique is pretty simple, once I got the hang of not letting the stitches fall off the knitting needles.

Try it on your next sock toe. You might just turn out to be a Kitchener convert like me.

February an inevitability; it’s a month that reliably appears year after year, whether we want more winter or not, and damn whatever that groundhog says. There are many things I like quite a bit about winter: hot drinks, warm blankets, the first snowfall, candlelight, watching the dog roll around in the snow…and early darkness provides a wonderful excuse to settle in for the night and start knitting as early as 5 pm. In sweatpants. With hot tea. C’mon, I know I’m not the only one!

But there are things I desperately miss about the milder months of spring. Sunshine, the smell of wet grass, the first blooms of those bulbs you forgot you planted last fall, putting away the winter coat, driving with the windows down, and the sweet relief that the cold, dark days of winter are disappearing and new hope is on the horizon.

It may not be spring outside, but there are signs of new life inside my home. Enjoy.

I was inspired by this blog post to play with the colors on my bookshelves. I think about color a lot, and I definitely think about organization a lot, yet I hadn’t put the two concepts together in this way before.

Here’s what my shelves look like, organized by subject, with the fiction section alphabetized by author. Really.

Here are my knitting books:

And finally, my nod to While Tangerine Dreams: citrus-colored books.

What’s on your nightstand?