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?