So True

knitterary -- [noun]: A lewd street performer 'How" will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

New Sock, Take Two

I was going to knit the jaywalkers next, but the yarn needs to relax before I work it again. Or so I told myself. What may be more true is that I still have the urge to knit something brainless. So I reached into my sock stash and pulled out two skeins of Schoeller Stahl Fortissima Colori/Socka Color. This yarn looks and feels like cotton ragg, even though it's 25% nylon and 75% superwash wool. I have a blue and cream ribbed cotton ragg turtleneck and bought this sock yarn to match. It's been withering in my stash for almost a year! Time to knit the darn things.

These will be 2x2 ribbed all the way down the cuff and across the top of the foot to match the turtleneck. Simple, mindless, goof-proof knitting.

Actually, I foresee quite a lot of mindless sock knitting in my future. I signed up for the Summer of Socks. Yay! Three months of dedicated sock knitting, starting on the summer solstice and ending on the fall equinox. I just can't describe how appealing that sounds right about now. Plus I'm really looking forward to clearing out some of my sock stash. I know, I know, sock yarn doesn't count as stash. But really, there comes a point when you just have to 'fess up. If you run out of storage room, it probably counts as stash.

So this summer will be a lot of socks, and when my brain wakes up, the Silver Creek Cardigan. Three months of that ought to cure what ails me. And by September I'll be more than ready to tackle the next challenge. Starmore, anyone?

Why Karamazov?

In the comments, MB asked why I would read "The Brothers Karamazov" at all. There's a chilling story there. Last fall, on another message board -- unrelated to writing, editing and knitting, but something I stumbled on and found entertaining for a short while -- people started discussing this book. None of the females had read it. Several of the males had, and raved about it, and began discussing which of the brothers they identified with most. I found the discussion interesting and it made me curious about the book, which I happened to own but had never read.

In hindsight, what chills me about this conversation was how the men appeared to be in agreement that all men fit into the mold of one of the brothers, one way or another. As if drunken fool, religious fool, and overeducated fool are the main three archtypes which men strongly identify with these days. And let's not forget choice number four, enslaved murdering bastard. Hoo boy, now that's the man we all want to marry. Did anybody besides me just lose hope for the future of the human race?

Oh wait. As long as there is still frozen sperm, we're okay.

p.s. I.O.Crapghan 1 sk Dead Fart

Finish-Itis

Today was one of those days. I started by looking at my home office desk and moaning. Same manuscript has been sitting front and center for far too long. So I finished editing it. And that sort of inspired me to finish some other stuff that's been laying around for too long.

So I finished the above pile of shit. Don't read this book unless you want your brain to die a slow death. I don't have anything in particular against Russian literature (loved Anna Karenina) or Victorian by-the-pound novels (loved Middlemarch), but this book just flat out sucked. It's basically a murder mystery, except there's no mystery about it. All you have to do is read any random five pages of this pro-patriarchy gibberish, and you know that the bastard son is the murderer. Sins of the father and all that. And then he confesses something like 150 pages before the book ends, but they still convict the wrong brother.

But it's done now. I can cross it off my list, and I'll spare you the rest of my rant about how not one of those brothers was even remotely likeable. Unless you like cult members, drunken libertines, or arrogant snowmen.

Wait. I said I would spare you the rant.




















I also finished these. Skacel Trampoline knit toe-up on size 1.5 needles. You might have heard me bitch about these socks recently. Ahem. I had to go up to a size 6 (!!!) needle to get a decent cast-off. But I love the look and the fit and the feel, so it was worth it in the end. Even if my cast-off edge looks a bit wobbly in this picture. And in reality. But at least it won't cut off the blood flow to my feet anymore.

And then ::drumroll::

















Wall Street is finished!

::confetti::
::tootie horn::

I do have a few ends to weave, and I'd like to re-block it, but that's no big deal. It took me a few tries to get the armholes right. But I think they look okay, the neckband looks okay, and all in all, it turned out about as well as I could have hoped.

The Vitals:
Pattern: Wall Street Vest from Best of Arans and Celtics

Yarn: Filatura di Crosa 501 -- 15 balls. I have roughly 30 grams of yarn leftover. That's about 80 yards, a little over half of one ball. This means the vest actually took about 1975 yards, a dab more than the 1960 called for in the pattern. That's pretty darn close.

Started: December 29, 2006
Finished: May 28, 2007

Trips to Knitting Jail: Three. First when it gave me tendonitis, second when the shoulder decreases didn't work out even remotely well, and third when the armhole absolutely refused to be picked up in pattern. All three of those jail terms were my own fault. I tried to knit it too fast, which gave me the tendonitis for partof January and all of February. I am numerically challenged and miscalculated the shoulder decreases. (Though, in my defense, there were inconsistencies in the pattern that threw me off.) And then, finally, the armhole -- I sewed the side seams before picking up the armhole edges for the ribbing. The pattern instructs you to do the opposite -- ribbing, then sew the seams. I foolishly forgot to decrease two of the picked-up stitches (the selvedge stitches, no longer necessary if the armholes would be knit in the round) and so my 2x2 rib wouldn't come out right. (If my brain hadn't been sent into a stupor by that godawful Dostoevsky book, I might have avoided that error.)

Overall Rating: This was an easy knit and an easy pattern. I'd caution anyone making it to add two stitches, front and back, so that you can center the repeats on the cable charts. (I don't know if that's an issue in all sizes, but it was in the 52" size.) I'd also recommend doing the shoulder shaping with a less sharp downward slope on the neck side, because it puckers a little there from the cables and the neckband ribbing pulling at it. But other than that, I'd give this pattern high marks for quality and results.

Kris Kris Kris Kris Kris

Sock B.K.C. (Before Kris's Comment).



















Sock A.K.C. (After Kris's Comment).

I told Kris her comment had earned her a blog title, and I wasn't kidding. Much. In order to really understand the impact of Kris's comment, maybe you should understand a little better where my knitting mind has been lately.

For a very long time, I was a casual knitter, and I knit casually. I knew knit, purl, cast on and cast off, and that was enough for me. I made sweaters -- stockinette, drop shoulders, with ribbed cuffs and hems. I also made cardigans -- stockinette, drop shoulders, with ribbed cuffs and hems. I made shawls and blankets -- stockinette squares with ribbed edgings. If I wanted to get fancy, I alternated knit and purl stitches for a moss stitch, or superfancy, in grids of four for a basket weave effect.

That was enough for me. Until.....

I suspect anyone reading this blog understands about the "until...." One day, some great cosmic finger flips a switch in your head, and you become a Knitter. It's more than just a hobby. It's a lifestyle.

Part of the transformation to Knitter for me involved a new sense of adventure. Double points. Socks. Cables. Dude, inset sleeves. I felt like nothing was beyond my knitterly grasp.

But sometimes there's still that pull from the old way, and lately, I've been feeling it hard. I want mindless knitting. I'm tired of riding the learning curve. I want to knit something plain and easy that -- here's the key -- I don't have to think about.

For me, plain socks qualify as mindless knitting. They didn't used to. See how that learning curve works? One day, you're all fingers, fighting with five damn needles, all of which want to either fall out of your knitting or poke you in the nose. The next day, socks are mindless and soothing.

So I finished the Country Garden socks, and then I finished my carry-along socks, the trampoline disasters. Still wasn't enough. Still wanted to park my brain outside my knitting bag.

So I cast on the grey striped socks. Knit, knit, knit, letting my mind occasionally dwell on the way the stripes looked, but for the most part, ignoring the product. And enjoying it, for the most part. Because these socks would redeem me after the great trampoline cast-off debacle. They would be easy, and fast, and require no extra thought or planning of any kind. I could knit them on auto-pilot and end up with a great product, thereby proving that I don't suck after all. That I really do live on a higher knitting plateau than before.

Except ... something felt off. I would look at those stripes and look at those stripes, and love the way the flecky bits of white looked. But the stripes themselves? Hmm. Something was off. Never mind, keep knitting, they're only socks and they're serving their purpose. Don't overthink them.

And then I pulled them out at the SnB anniversary bash, and people started noticing the cool flecky white bits, and Kris walked by on her way to the buffet and said (brace yourselves),

"Wow, with those broad stripes, that yarn would make great jaywalkers."

::sigh::

Of course, she's right. I've never knit jaywalkers before. I'm going to have to think about these socks after all. And maybe the great lesson in this for me is that knitting is something I think about now. There are moments when it's mindless, but these moments are interspersed between hours of study and thought and planning.

And maybe that's okay. Change isn't always bad, right?

Shrink and Bloat

First, the shrink. While I'm climbing Mount Laundry tonight, I decided to split the pair of Cherry Tree Hill socks and wash them in two separate loads. On purpose.

One look at the picture above should tell you why. The sock on the right has been washed. The sock on the left has not.

I've heard from others that CTH tends to shrink, and this certainly did. Even so, I havc to say that the yarn held up beautifully in the wash. It looks fresh off the needles. Just smaller than before.

I made these socks a little roomy because I'd heard about the shrinkage. Lucky I did! The extra half-inch added to length and girth has disappeared, and then some.

Now, the bloat. And boy oh boy, is there a lot of that today.

Yesterday was another insanely busy day. Between 5:30 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., I managed to eat a best-ever cereal bar ("This Blueberry Walked Into a Bar..." from Trader Joe's -- yum!) and drink a coke all day. So by the time I got to Kris's house for the SnB anniversary party, I was hungry with a capital HUUUUUUU!

Walk up the stairs into her house, and the first thing you see is a dining room table positively groaning with homemade goodies. Homemade salsa and guacamole hot enough to set your hair on fire. Just the way I like it! Homemade brownies and peanut butter bars. A lovely cheese tray and veggie tray -- I nailed the veggies like Cookie Monster with a pile of tollhouses. That made me think it was okay to eat one of every dessert. What? I ate healthy! Carrots and cauliflower are healthy! OK, so there was like a 1:1 ratio of grape tomatoes to cookies, but still. Veggies were well represented.

I still haven't quite recovered from the sugar high. But when I do, I will name a blog post after Kris and tell you all how she, with one casual comment, managed to pull the rug out from under my shiny new sock mojo.

And a book report--

With my belly all bloated and the sugar zinging through my veins, I ended up wide awake half the night last night. Finished the Gigi Grazer book, "The Starter Wife," that ended up in my suitcase at RT. The book is about a 41-year-old woman named Gracie whose husband, a truly unlikeable Hollywood producer, decides to divorce her before their prenup expires on their tenth anniversary. I had a lot of problems with this book, some editorial (lots of small point-of-view glitches that pressed my pet peeve button), and some just bizarre (Gracie's best friend is named Will, and Debra Messing is playing Gracie in the made-for-tv movie, and I couldn't stop obsessing over that). I was also put off by the general value system of these characters, though the idea is that Gracie snaps out of it and grows some dignity by the end. But you had to read a lot of pages about youth-obsessed, spoiled, super-competitive Hollywood bitchiness before you get to the payoff, so that was a challenge for me. Other readers might not mind so much. Me, I just don't consider age spots a physical threat akin to leprosy.

Anway, that was what I thought during the first 2/3 of this book. The last third redeemed the whole thing for me. I won't tell you what happens in case you choose to read it someday, but it got good. Really good. I even forgot to tsk tsk whenever I ran into another little snag that should have been edited out. And for an editor, that's saying something.

But really, I have to read something a little less commercial next just to cleanse my palate. Maybe I'll finish the Dostoevsky even though I lost interest in it when he revealed who the murderer was. And still a hundred pages or more left to read! I'm hoping for some surprise twist ending, a hope which will surely wither on the vine. But I might as well finish it, if only to get it off my night table. That sucker takes up a lot of space!

Keeping It Honest

This isn't a real post. This is just to acknowledge that, yes, I promised to C-word one skein of Dead Fart for every knitted item finished. And, yes, technically, I finished those trampoline socks, though they need repair and are in jail until they promise to be better behaved. Or until I get smarter. Whichever comes first.

Anyway.

So I made good on my promise, and the crapghan is now 60" on the long side, 56.5" on the short side. I short-rowed twice and it only gained me a half inch!

In answer to Vicki: Yes, the pattern is mainly shell stitches with a border which will be added after the body is hooked. This is what granny called a "single" afghan. She has a recipe for a "double" in which two layers of shell stitches in contrasting yarn are ... I keep wanting to say double-knit here, but it would be double-crocheted. Or something. Whatever hookers call that stuff. The end result is a bulletproof reversible afghan that weighs about four hundred pounds.

Mojo-rrific

It's baa-aaack! My sock mojo -- nearly cursed into permanent oblivion by the triple threat of reckless knitting, tiny needles and stretchy yarn -- returned in full gale last night.

It seems the cure for a bad sock knitting experience is to ignore the bad sock (Bad sock! Naughty! Go to jail, you horrid thing!) and knit new socks.






















Plus, it helps when the little white bits separating the bands of grey look like birds flapping. Or maybe like crested waves on a cloudy day as you're flying over the ocean. Or something else cool and interesting, which I haven't quite resolved but which keeps me knitting in the attempt to come up with one really good metaphor for flecks of white on a grey field.

I could have knit the armbands on the aran vest last night. Or a few rows on the sleeves to the cabled cardigan. Hell, I maybe could have even fixed the insane cast-off on the trampoline socks. (Side note: Do we think that the fact that this yarn is called TRAMPOLINE might have maybe clued me in a little to how stretchy the yarn is? And might maybe a tiny bit have helped me realize that casting off with my normal one-needle-size-bigger-plus-death-grip-on-yarn cast off would basically turn my sock cuff into a tourniquet? Hmm? Maybe?)

But it's been a rough week, and overwork is taking its toll, and last night I wanted something mindless. The thought of trying to decipher the second half of the instructions for short-rowed cabled sleeves almost made me weep with exhaustion.

I even skipped Masterpiece Theatre -- a biography of Mrs. Beeton, no less -- and popped in a video of Talledega Nights. Luckily, I was zombied out, so saw just enough of that movie to realize how dreadful it was, but not enough to really suffer.

In the end, the comfort of endless spirals of stockinette worked its magic. It's good to have the sock mojo back. Damn, but that was a long week without it.

Wee Widdle Socklet

Don't you just love fresh starts? That's the lure of casting on. We get to begin anew with something that we still haven't screwed up ... yet.

This is the new Regia sock, about an inch into the cuff. (2x2 rib on size 1 needles, if you're interested.) Regia doesn't have clever names, or even unclever names, for its colorways, but this one is labeled Farbe 5752 which I think is the colorway. Partie would be the dye lot, yes? The rest of the ballband is in German, so I'm assuming Farbe and Partie are German terms. For blog labeling purposes, we'll call this one Regia grey striping socks. I think that makes more sense than sticking to the German numerical classification system.

Whatever. It's kind of a nifty assortment of greys with a few dots of smoky blue mixed into the jacquard portion of the pattern. It will knit into thick stripes of charcoal, mid-grey, and a greenish grey, with small stripes of white and smoky blue jacquard separating some of those stripes. I think it will work.

I looked at the Charlene Schurch sock book for ten thousand hours (ok, maybe a slight exaggeration) trying to choose a stitch pattern that would complement the yarn. In the end, I got lazy and decided to use my standard sock recipe for self-striping yarn. knit, knit, knit, knit, around and around in a spiral, with a heel thrown in for a brief dollop of knitterly interest. But hey, it works, and I can make this pattern in my sleep by now.

This will be my carry-around sock for the next couple months. It still amazes me that while waiting in line at the bank, the drive-through, etc etc, you can knit entire socks. Maybe that's one of the consequences of city living, but we sure do seem to wait around a lot.

At some point today, I hope to have time to fix a disastrous cast-off on my recently finished carry-along socks. Normally, I wouldn't cast on the new socks before completely finishing the old ones, but this is a special case. I mean "special case" in the sense of "almost lost my sock mojo and made a giant bonfire out of my sock stash because of this rotten thing." Details of my spectacular failure to follow.

Diet Food

I went to the yarn store today to buy the new IK. This is the same yarn store for which I have a 15% off coupon just about burning a hole in my wallet. I intend to use that coupon to pick up some sweater yarn, but not until after Stitches. Because I am not buying yarn until Stitches, remember?

I think I did okay today. The purple dishcloth cotton is needed to finish off some, well, dishcloths. Imagine that! I needed this solid purple to do a coordinating trim on some leftover variegated from my learn-to-entrelac project last summer. (Entrelac wash cloths ROCK! One side is smooth, and one side is scrubby. Love em!) So I don't mind spending two dollars on a single ball of cotton that will allow me to clear out some old stash. And I don't think it counts as a diet-breaker.

And the sock yarn? Everyone know sock yarn doesn't count! But seriously, you can all be proud of me. I had two skeins of Cherry Tree Hill supersock in hand, and was fondling some very, very intriguing On-Line. Instead of buying the lot, I went for the Regia in grey and black. I wear a lot of grey and black, and there are very few sock yarns to match. So this was a good buy, and it will be knit as my next carry-along project. (My current carry-alongs, the trampoline socks, are one botched cast-off away from FO status.)

All told, I spent around $23. For me, this is practically miraculous self-control. Woot!

Kris Is So In Trouble

Knifty Red tagged me. So here we go ... Seven things you don't know about me. I'll leave you all to decide whether these seven things are worth knowing.

1. I onced crashed the post-party for the Tony Awards. What the heck. It was there, and so was I.

2. I almost got arrested with the Psychadelic Furs. Ah, the 80s. We all got away, except for a roadie who spent the night in jail.

3. You can't name a color I haven't dyed my hair. Once again, the 80s.

4. I wrote my first short story when I was seven. It was about a magic ice cube. My mom still has it.

5. Indianapolis still feels like home even though I haven't lived there for almost 6 years. When I dream that I am home, home is one particular apartment I had in Broad Ripple.

6. Bread is my favorite food. I have made countless dietary changes to cope with a metabolic disease, but I will never give up bread.

7. I love working in publishing. I've worked in other fields, but publishing is where I belong. I sometimes joke that my epitaph should say, "Born to edit, doomed to write." Except I'm kind of serious about that.

I'm supposed to tag seven other people and write the rules of the meme in my blog, so here goes. blah blah blah...... You know, I've really never been one for rules. Maybe that should have been one of the items on my list?

Random Tuesday

In honor of Becca and her fledgling yarn company, this blog entry will be Random Tuesday after my favorite colorway at Froebe Fibers.

I asked Miss Six to pick a number between one and ten -- she is a marvelous random number generator -- and she picked fourteen. See? Totally random. As her second choice, she picked seven. So here are seven random things for a Tuesday night.

1. The Red Heart Afghan a/k/a Dead Fart Crapghan is hooking right along. I finished a skein of that insanely bright and hideous yarn, and decided to measure. It's 52" measured along the left side, and 56" along the right. That is one whopping gauge glitch. Told you I suck at crocheting.

2. I'm doing the equivalent of short rowing to try to even out both sides of the blanket. I'll crochet to about the midpoint, then turn and crochet back. I'll intersperse these half rows with a few regular rows. It should be more or less invisible. Especially given that anyone who stares directly into this crapghan will have his retinas burned to a crisp. That tends to hide a lot of sins.

3. To celebrate finishing a skein of Dead Fart, I cast on the sleeves for my husband. The pattern uses short row shaping to create these nifty little sleeve points over the back of the hand. I am so digging this. But I've only knit four or five rows total, so there's still plenty of time to grow jaded. (Ha! As if that were possible! I heart Silver Creek yarn!)

4. Miss Six, our very own mermaid, lost a tooth. She says this makes her scary face even scarier.



















I think she might be right about that one. Sure scares me.

5. This is the view from my home office window. If my slush pile gets too big, I can't open the interior shutters and enjoy the view of my little courtyard. Which is darn good motivation to keep the slush pile low.
















6. If you take a closer look at the right side of that picture, you'll see this:

And now you know why my window is ajar. That 6-foot lilac hedge is perfuming my entire house. Love it. They grow under the spare bedroom window, which is also cranked wide open.




7. I finished the Marie Antoinette book. Good stuff, and a truly random read. Someone handed it to me in Houston as I was awaiting my airport ride, and it was someone other than the author. Usually, at publishing conferences, the reverse is true. I stuffed it in my carryon because my other baggage was already locked. Good thing I did. There was far too much turbulence on that flight to risk any knitting, and I devoured half the book before the plane touched down. If you enjoy historical fiction, this one is definitely worth snagging from the Border's 3-for-2 table. The author manages to paint a sympathetic picture of Marie Antoinette while still demonstrating how this woman became a lightning rod for French discontent. Clever, clever author.

There you have it. Random Tuesday, times seven.

My Secret Shame

I'm very sorry to have to show you all this picture. This is about four feet of the butt-ugliest blanket known to humankind. Yes, it's really this bright. And yes, it's really crocheted. Sorry to say.

I have a strange relationship with crochet. It was my gateway drug, the craft I learned at my grandmother's feet that led me to all my other obsessions. The pattern for this hideously patriotic blanket was one of grandma's two signature patterns, and I'm the only one who knows her patterns out of her 60 or so descendents. (Yes, really that many, and no, I don't know the exact number, because after the first few dozen, who can be bothered to count?)

In her life, grandma crocheted like a machine, pumping out blanket after blanket at a rate that would make a superhightech robotics factory look lazy. Need a blanket for a queen sized bed? Give her three weeks and 6 pounds of Red Heart, and you got it. As did everyone else in our family. We all have mounds of hand-crocheted afghans, so many that we began to treat them as if they were disposable. Or easy to make. (They're not.)

When Grandma passed away, my nieces and nephews were still quite young and hadn't yet been deluged with acrylic. One of my nephews has a baby blanket from her hands, but Gran got a headache one day when he was still in diapers, and that was it. No more crocheting and, eventually, no more Gran.

I decided to make these afghans for my nieces and nephews as a way of continuing her tradition, but the truth is, I don't really like crocheting. It makes my tendonitis flare up, and anyway I'd rather knit. (Who wouldn't?) So these blankets really are a labor of love, with the accent on labor. I slog through them, dc after dc, and occasionally shove a half-made blanket into the back of the closet to give my wrist a break and to return with relief to my knitting needles.

The above afghan is over two-thirds done, but I've been ignoring it for months. It's number three of five, and the young lady destined to receive number four is frothing with impatience because her big brother already got his. (His was the first of the five. Seems like a loooooooooong time ago that I gave him his. Long enough ago that when he unfolded it, he gleamed and said, "You made mine big because when I grow up, I'm going to be big like my daddy!" Ah, the all-too-fleeting hero worship stage.)

This red, white and blue abomination is intended for my fifteen-year-old nephew who is mad for all things military. He also likes Nickelback, baseball, and the fact that he will get his learner's permit this year. He picked out the color scheme, and I'd like to deliver a finished afghan before he's old enough to realize how insanely ugly this thing is. The only way to do that is to force myself to it.

So I hereby pledge to crochet one entire ball toward this afghan for every knitted piece I finish. By knitted piece, I mean piece. Not garment. One sock, one sleeve, one hat -- these are all pieces. One piece knitted, one ball crocheted. Given that it takes at least ten balls of crapalicious Red Heart to make one of these afghans, I don't think I'm in danger of giving up crochet any time soon. Sorry to say. sigh....

Surrender

This is what sheep look like when Bethany squeals at them. They turn fleece and run.

Notice the babies. All together now --- aaaawwww!

Seriously, though, here is the story behind this picture. Becca says this proves we are all three years old.

As we were leaving The Fold with fourteen!! hundred!! dollars worth of knitgoodies, heading down the long driveway, Kris suddenly noticed that the front paddock was full of sheep. She politely informed us of this fact by shouting something along the lines of, "Oh! Sheep! Oh! Sheep! Oh!" And then she opened her car door and hopped out to investigate.

Did I mention that Becca was driving? As in, Kris jumped out of a moving vehicle? Yeah. It's that Fold mojo. Something about that place makes us all a bit, well, yanno. I'm convinced it's the yarn fumes. You breathe the air in that place, and suddenly it makes sense to run out of a moving car because there are sheep in the paddock.

So of course -- because as art imitates life, so knitters imitate sheep -- we all jumped out of the car and followed Kris down the short slope to the paddock. In our haste, some of us may have failed to close our car doors all the way. Or we may have left them totally agape. Whatever. Which leaves poor Becca alone in a vehicle once full of knitters, rolling down a driveway with her doors open, as Kris in her excitement tries to remember the word for baby sheep.

But Kris was in better shape than blogless Bethany, who gave up all pretense at language skills in favor of squealing like a little girl. Bethany's got her a powerful set of lungs, dudes. That girl can get some volume. Loud enough for the sheep to panic and bolt for the back paddock. Loud enough for Toni's son to dash out the front door, half a desperately needed sandwich in hand, to ask if we were all right.

Knitter's alright
Spinner's alright
They just seem a little weird...

(*Sorry. Too much Guitar Hero lately. I can't seem to get Cheap Trick out of my head.)

Someday, the sheep may muster the courage to return to the front paddock. As for us getting any smarter -- well, someday the sheep may return to the front paddock, and that's going to have to be enough to satisfy us all.

Fold Report, or, The Fellowship of the Wheel

We band of naughty knitters, we sisterhood of the clicking sticks, journeyed far (like two whole counties away) under indescribable conditions (a/k/a Becca's new hybrid, indescribably cool) with one common goal: a spinning wheel for Kris. Okay, better make that two goals, cuz some of us really really wanted to buy yarn too.

We braved traffic (294 sucks ass), ferocious weather (well, more like a light spring rain), and death defying obstacles (the i-290 split) in search of only the greatest yarns. Nothing could keep the intrepid knitters out of the yarn room at The Fold. Not even the snarling fangs of Cerberus himself.


Okay, okay, he's hardly the demon dog of the underworld. But we did have to occasionally step around him to get to a new shelf of yarn. That counts, right?

Here is my total haul:

From the left, that's a skein of Austerman Step (the one with aloe), Socks That Rock in the In The Navy colorway, two skeins of Gypsy Girl sock yarn, and an eight skein pyramid of Silver Creek merino in the Royal colorway.

I have to take a minute to plug the Silver Creek yarn. I have no idea who makes this stuff, and have never seen the yarn anywhere but The Fold. But I have to tell you, it's a dream to knit with. The colors are incredibly saturated and rich, and it knits into an indecently soft fabric with crisp stitch definition. Plus the skeins are enormous -- 306 yards of sportweight per skein. I mean, most of you know the size of a STR skein, right? Look at how much larger the Silver Creek skeins are by comparison. That's a lot of quality yardage for the price.

Something tells me I'll never be able to go to The Fold without buying more of the Silver Creek yarn. I'm already thinking of the rosey-mauvey color for Fulmar.

Here's a better look at the sock yarn. That bright blue in the Gypsy Girl is an exact match for the Royal Silver Creek. I haven't knit with the Gypsy Girl yet, but I'm very intrigued by this yarn. The colors are insane -- wickedly bright neons, flashes of black and white, combinations that take your breath away. Which means I may have to buy more of that, too.

But not until after Stitches Midwest. I'm declaring a temporary moratorium on yarn shopping so I can save for Stitches. Only three months until the market doors open....

Reposting Sock Picture

I find it fascinating that a picture can be on my blog, all happy and bright, for a whole day before suddenly morphing into an X box.

Blogger hates me.

One Happy Spinner

I just had to post these pictures of Knifty Red with her new toy. Saturday's trip to The Fold was a big day for her! I'll always remember the way she was practically vibrating with excitement, caught in the moment between trying the wheel and owning the wheel. Should she or shouldn't she? was the key question of the day.

You know, we sometimes feel guilty when we buy things like this for ourselves. We're indoctrinated to believe that our needs must never come first. We can debate that one infinitely, but regardless, there's a difference between putting others' needs ahead of ours, and never ever putting our own needs on the list at all.

I'm proud of our girl for getting this wheel. She wanted it. She could afford it. She'll certainly use it. She harmed nobody by buying it, and she will benefit many by using it. Including, most relevantly, herself. Her stress level will fall when she uses it, and she will have the pleasure and satisfaction that comes only when we challenge ourselves to make something good.

So the answer to that key question, should she or shouldn't she?, is: Of course she should.

FO: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Country Garden

Lest you all begin to worry that this is a blog about misbehaving UFO's and yarn p0rn, here is something I managed to finish. And I didn't have to put them in jail even once.

So, here are the Cherry Tree Hill Supersocks in Country Garden, by the numbers:
Cast on: 64 stitches
Cuff: 1.5" of 2x2 rib
Leg: 7.5" including cuff
Heel flap: About 2.375", give or take an eighth of an inch
Gussets: decrease to 56 stitches
Foot: 6.75" up to the toe decreases
Toe decreases: two per side, every other round knit plain, until 20 stitches remain.
Started: April 18
Finished: May 6
Number of states this sock was knit in: Three (Illinois, Texas, Indiana)

Sometimes nothing is so comforting as the around-and-around of a mindless plain sock.

Later, I'll have a report on our field trip to The Fold. The sheep survived, though they may never return to the front paddock without crying a little. And Toni's son withstood the onslaught quite well. We hear they expect him to stop twitching and whimpering any day now.

Un-Seam-ly

I've run into a few bumps while seaming the vest. First is that, despite knitting the exact same number of pattern repeats up to the armholes on both front and back pieces, and despite careful blocking with a ruler (sheesh!), the selvedges are not the same length. sigh.... I'm trying to ignore what this might say about my row gauge. Seems like after about twenty years of knitting, I ought to be more consistent than that.

That was glitch number one. Glitch two? Somehow I never notice this before, but the selvedge stitches are stockinette on one piece and reverse stockinette on the other. This means the trusty mattress stitch won't quite work. After consulting the Montse Stanley book and fretting for far too long, I decided on a version of a running stitch with backstitches every two to three inches. (I'm sure Montse would not approve.)

The results are decent but not flawless. I'm sure if you look closely, you'll be able to identify the side seam here. Shoot, you probably won't even have to look closely. But even though this vest is a gift, I've decided we can all live with the result. We have no choice, really. The way the pattern is designed, the chart repeat, if followed faithfully according to instructions, isn't perfectly centered but has an extra two-stitch channel of reverse stockinette on the left border of each repeat. If I had thought the pattern through before knitting it, I could have either added or subtracted two stitches to compensate for this, and my seams would be neater. Too late for that now.

And, because glitches always come in threes, glitch number three, the granddaddy of them all, comes in at the shoulder seam. I can't show you this now because blogger only lets me publish three pictures per post, but I'll get up a picture of the shoulder seams next time.

I've just described to you how the pattern has an extra two stitches on the left of each chart repeat. If you think about it -- if I had thought about it for ten seconds before casting on -- you'll quickly realize that this means the pieces are patterned off-center, meaning the patterns can't match at the shoulder seams. They just can't. I've jacked around with these seams for around three hours tonight, and I'm giving up. I can get them to the point where they don't look like a train wreck, but I can't get them to match, and that's that.

Oh, well. Next up, ribbed armbands. But not tonight. Tonight, I need the comfort of a plain sock, around and around, nothing but knit-knit-knit for miles.

Tomorrow, The Fold. :D

More Merlot Than Merino

RT is a party conference, and let's just say that I entered into the spirit of the conference. Though I had few obligations other than pitch appointments, one speaking engagement, and the desire to network, I found very little knitting time in Houston. I didn't touch the Cascade 220 superwash aran watchcap for my nephew, and I knit less than the equivalent of one sock on the CTH Country Garden socks.

I did, however, manage to rack up a $150 bar bill in a single day. They say my lips and tongue turned purple from the merlot, just like a kid with kool-aid. I will admit to these things, and nothing more. I don't care who has photographs of what -- I'll still deny it was me. (*giggle*)

Unfortunately, the requisite RT hangover morphed into the requisite conference cold. Bleurgh. So there's been very little knitting and very little progress to report. It's hard to work up a knitting rhythm when you have to blow your nose every 6.3 seconds.

But there is good news looming on the horizon. The lovely and talented MB has arranged an outing to The Fold for Saturday. Two area SnB groups will be converging and ransacking the place while poor Toni is off at Maryland Sheep & Wool. Toni will leave behind her son and her dog to contend with us, but even though the son is fully grown and the dog is a German Shepherd, we know we can take them.

Citizens of Murengo, brace yourselves.

How a Magazine Saved My Sanity

For all the fuss and bother over which knitting to pack, I ended up with very little knitting time. The airport? Dead loss. I flew from Chicago to Houston on a morning when the worst weather in the country was in Chicago and Houston. Plus, it was O'Scare, which sucks even on a clear and sunny day. There wasn't an empty seat in the waiting area -- no knitting when you can barely find standing room in the midst of that chaos -- and the flight was jammed with frantic people who were all about to miss connecting flights to Trinidad and Aruba and other places much more exotic than Houston.

Which leads me to why there was no knitting on the plane. I got stuck in a middle seat, which is never comfortable for anyone. But let me tell you about my neighbors.

To my left, a very large man with a very bad cold. He spent the first half of the flight hocking phlegm into a barf bag, and the second half snoring and sprawled and twitching. Let's just say the man occupied some space. I'm not exactly petite, either, but I can fit in the seats. He had our row so jammed up, though, that I couldn't even lower my tray table. I couldn't even see his.

And he was the good neighbor. To my right, I had a walking stereotype, one of those sweet lil ole southern gals who mistakes ignorance for a virtue. She had never in her life been on an airplane and was terrified. Hell, until three days before that, she'd never been outside of Texas. But she had memorized her bible verses, and she had a hank of hot pink hair with glued on eyes that served as a stuffed animal/keychain/security blanket, so she was ready for the occasion.

She liked to talk. Unfortunately, she had only three topics of conversation. One: how much she loves Jesus. You know, I'm never going to take anyone's religion away, but that doesn't mean I want to hear about it. Okay, maybe if the plane had been on fire and plummeting to the earth, I wouldn't have minded a few prayers, and probably would have let loose with an OH GOD or two myself. But once we got above the weather, we had a nice easy flight, and she really didn't have to complain quite so much about not being able to use her cell phone to call her prayer partner. Really.

Anyway.

Her second topic of conversation: hunting. I've been a vegetarian for eleven years. 'Nuff said.

Which left topic number three: Why she hates Chicago. My hometown.

Yeah.

The flight sucked real bad.

Luckily, I had managed to get my knitting magazine out of my bag before my enormous snot-filled neighbor claimed half the row, and I was able to read it if I kept it folded back around on itself -- absolutely not enough room to open it flat -- so I microscopically examined the current Knitter's, page by page, as a way of avoiding the conversation of the critter-killin', bible-quotin', pink-troll-strokin', Chicago-hatin' pain in my ass.

I read that magazine for three solid hours. Practically memorized it.

Without even cracking the Knitter's cover again, I can tell you that I want to knit the brown lace-up Norah Gaughan vest with the bell motif on the lower edge. I've already deciphered the pattern and figured out how to alter the neckline edging to avoid the crochet shell trim. That's the item I'm most likely to knit from this issue.

I'd consider knitting the dolman sleeved sweater called Liquid Silver, the one with the tied, slashed sleeves, but that I want less depth at the armholes. I also loved the blue cabled hoodie, the one with the matching skirt, but don't know if I love it enough to knit it. And the pattern Fracture, the one with the drop stitches cable-twisted through the body of the sweater, fascinates me but might be a little too 80s flashback. The tank from the cover has an 80s Issey Miyake feel to it, too, (what is it with the resurgence of 80s fashions?) but I think in darker colors -- black, steel grey, eggplant -- it could be tres chic in a retropunk kind of way.

Someday the memories of my awful flight will fade, and I will recover from my bitterness, not to mention the persistent shoulder cramp from sitting like that for hours. But for now all I can say is -- Good thing I saved the magazine for that flight, eh?