How It Should Look

These are close-ups of an afghan my grandmother made circa 1976. We can date it because it was made to match a gold velvet sofa my mother bought during her bicentennial redecorating mania. Everything in our family room then had eagles on it. The adjoining bathroom was papered in stars and stripes -- even the ceiling. Ah, the 70s. The entire decade suffered from an excess of bad taste.

So the afghan was made in two shades of gold, a yellowish gold and a burnished orangey gold. It's big enough to lay flat on top of a double bed without any overhang, so we have periodically used it as a bed blanket.

Some of you have asked for an explanation of how to make this pattern. (For the rest of you, feel free to stop reading here. This is about to get really confusing and crochet-y.) It's basically just interlocking shells with these wormy things holding the two sides together. Each shell is made from five double crochets into the center stitch of the 5-dc shell below it. But you don't just crochet into that center stitch -- you have to catch the wormy thing over your hook and bind the old shell and the wormy thing together while making the new shell. I don't know if I'm explaining it in a way that makes sense. It's one of those "you get it when you see it" things. Also, chain one between each of the shells--that chain one will be the place where you anchor the worms with single crochet stitches.

The worms are made by chaining 6 and then single crocheting into the chain one between the shells in the row below. So the pattern goes something like this:

Cast on 4 stitches per shell, plus one at the end. Make this chain as long as you want the blanket to be wide. We'll call this Color A.

With Color A, make a 5-dc shell into every third stitch, then chain one. So it's like this: *skip two, 5-dc shell into third stitch, chain one*, repeat between *. You'll have one stitch left on the cast on chain at the end of the row. (Except somehow, I always have two leftover. That's the magic of me and crochet.) Do not turn the work.

Then you drop that yarn and switch colors. Attach Color B into the leftover stitch on the Color A base chain with a single crochet. Chain 6, single crochet into the chain stitch at the end of the Color A shell below. And so on, all the way across to the end. At the very end, chain two or three -- I'm totally not sure which, so end up changing my number from row to row. Then turn the work.

Still using Color B, make a 5-dc shell into the center dc of each shell below. This is where you have to lay the wormy thing on top of your hook to bind the two colors together. Don't forget the chain one between the shells. (That reminder is mostly for my own benefit. I tend to forget that part.)

Go all the way across and drop Color B. Pick up color A and repeat until you have a blanket.

Or something like that. God help any of you who try to follow my instructions. I'm sure it would make more sense if I could show you. Or maybe not, all things considered.

Buckle Up!

It's going to be a bumpy ride!

This is the start of the crocheted crib blanket using my grandma's pattern which she called, simply, the double afghan. She crocheted thousands of miles of yarn into this pattern during her lifetime. Every night for at least an hour or two, she'd sit in her chair with a pack of L&Ms and a bag of Jay's to keep her company while she worked on blankets for the entire family.

She taught me to crochet. If you can call what I do crocheting, that is. I'm not good at it, and that's not false modesty. My loops are never the same size. My shells lean as if they've all been italicized. This would bother me more if I cared about the craft, but I don't. I'm a knitter. Crochet just happens sometimes. You know, sort of like droughts and plagues and other disasters.

My grandmother passed away almost fifteen years ago, and I'm the only one in the vast clan to know her pattern. All those people -- seriously, at least fifty people in that branch of the family -- and not one of them picked it up from her besides me. That has always mystified me.

In any event, when my uncle found out his wife was pregnant (thanks to some help from a fertility clinic), I immediately resolved to make them a crib blanket in grandma's pattern. She would have done it for them, had she lived long enough to celebrate this miracle with us. And I hate the thought that all the rest of us got one of her blankets, but this baby, this miracle child of her adored youngest son, will never know her or her blankets. I'm a little choked up now thinking about that.

I bought the green yarn right away and used it, with a spare skein of white, to practice the stitch. (It didn't help.) And then I waited to learn the baby's gender. It's a girl!

The pink yarn arrived today, and I picked it up and brought it home. It has taken me almost two hours to work that little bit in the picture -- basically the cast on chain, plus a row of "right side" shells and a row of interwoven pink "worms" which will serve as the base chain for the "wrong side" color.

Trish asked me today how long it would take me to make this blanket. I'm already panicking about the June 1 shower date. And given that it took me two hours to work that pathetic little strip, thanks to my complete inability to count to three, five, or six, I think we're in for a race against the clock.

My mantra for the next fifty days: It will be worth it, it will be worth it, it will be worth it....

Catherine Partial

Woo hoo! I made it to the armscyes on Catherine Parr today. This piece measures 15.875" in length. So this will now go onto holders as I knit the sleeves. When the sleeves are done, I will knit the armscyes to fit the sleeve caps. (I'm modifying the drop on the sleeve caps to take out some of the underarm bulk.)

I just cast on the sleeves for Fulmar, too! So. Looks like I'll be a sleeve knitting machine this spring.

By the way, Catherine Parr is an incredibly easy knit. If you're looking for an easy Starmore to get your feet wet, this might be a good choice. The mix of stranded knitting and cabled knitting means there's enough variety for knitterly interest, too. And it goes pretty quickly for a sweater with this much detail. All in all, a happy project.

Behold The Power of My Will

Remember when I said I wasn't going to cast on any more socks this month? Yeah. I remember that, too. Except, when I made that statement, I forgot two tiny details. First, I always want a plain sock on my desk to pick at while I'm reading submissions. And second, when it comes to statements expressing an intent to avoid knitting, I am a liar. I may say I won't knit this or that, or I won't buy yarn, or I won't cast on new things. But saying it ain't doing it. We ought to all know that by now. Me especially. Except somehow I don't understand this about myself, which makes me question just how smart I really am.

So I cast on the Sockotta sock above, thinking it would make an awesome desk sock. Except I hadn't knit to the first color change before I realized the truth about this yarn. It's about half cotton, meaning it's stable, not too stretchy, and it's knitting into a fine and dense fabric on size 0 needles. This means, for comfort's sake, I ought to make the sock ribbed all the way down to give it some stretch. Not plain. So this cannot be my desk sock. (And it will probably take nine years to knit it, given the whole size 0 thing.) (You'd think I would have learned a lesson from the penelope socks, which secretly unknit themselves at night. Curse of the size 0s and all. Again, me = not so smart about some things.)

Can we all see where this is going yet?



























Yep, those would be my new desk socks. The yarn is Sisu, and I love the way it feels. I can't wait to wear them. All I want to do is knit! And knit and knit! That's how lovely this yarn is.

And just like that, I have three pairs of socks OTN again.

Mean People Suck

One of my knitting buddies had a bad experience with a LYS owner recently. It's the shop with the dogs -- if you live around here, you know the place. They're very nice, lovely dogs, and I am a dog person. Just the same, I understand the many complaints about the dogs, because I also don't want my yarn to have dog hair in it. I find myself inspecting skeins in that shop very closely to be sure they're clean.

So I'm not a huge fan of this place to begin with, and my friend's recent experience made me decide never to shop there again.

My friend B makes the cutest little dolls and toys. She took them with her when she was yarn shopping recently, and the dog-yarn shop owner gushed and enthused and begged her to teach a class at her shop on how to make them. (It's an open secret that the dog-yarn lady is not much of a knitter herself. To put it gently. All of her shop classes must needs be taught by outsiders.)

So B thought it over, and agreed to teach the class, and went on ravelry to the dog-yarn shop forum and posted pictures of the finished projects. Sort of like teasers for the class, right?

And the dog-yarn lady immediately fired off an angry ravelmail demanding that B remove the pictures because the toys had not been made with yarn from her shop.

shaking head

Now, okay, I'll give you that some shops treat outside yarn like contraband. And I can understand their reasons for doing so. But really. This is too much. B was just trying to spark a little interest in a class that the dog-yarn lady is too incompetent to teach herself. That's my opinion, not B's. B's feelings were hurt by the nasty tone of the ravelmail, but I don't think she thinks of herself as a victim of the dog-yarn lady's incompetence. I'm the one who sees it that way.

I've had other bizarre experiences in that shop, such as the time the dog-yarn lady asked me, a perfect stranger, to explain to one of her other patrons how to fix a botched piece of knitting. She kept insisting, "No! No! She must pull it apart and start over from the beginning!" -- but I was willing to look for another solution. There was, and the problem stemmed from a technique error, but every time I tried to explain that, dog-yarn lady would interrupt me to insist that the whole thing should be frogged. I was so annoyed that I finally agreed with her just to end the conversation. (Can you tell I carry some guilt about that? The poor knitter is probably still making the same technique error, ripping and knitting the same yarn over and over, all because I got sick of trying to fight through the dog-yarn lady's mouthiness.)

I didn't buy anything that day, but I rarely buy there -- I rarely go there, and even when I do, I'm usually disappointed in her selection. That's a personal issue and one I'd be willing to overlook, but for the repeated instances of problems with the owner.

So that's it. I'm done with that shop. Never going back again. You can be rude to me, and you can stock trendy beginnerish yarns, but when you're mean to my friend B, that's where I draw the line.

Thank the good lord above for Nana's. Trish and Cory might be a couple of mouthy broads, but only in the best way. Love those ladies. Love them even more when I compare them to the other area shop owners. And would love them even if they didn't have a shop, because they're knitters through and through.

And that's all I have to say about that.

April Knitting Goals

It just occurred to me today that April is upon us. I made it through the entire day yesterday in a state of hyperawareness of potential April Fools gags, but somehow missed the fact that this meant it was also the first of the month.

Can't get anything past this sharp-eyed gal, can we?

My goals from last month were:

1. Finish the Socks That Rock Sapphire socks.
Done!

2. Finish the Malabrigo hat.
Done!

3. Finish the current ball of yarn on Fulmar.
Er. Half-done! Woot? I was going to decrease the sides for the sleeve modifications and knit the entire ball of yarn I started at the end of February, but then decided I'd better knit the sleeves first. So the back is knit to the point where I suspect the decreases will be made. Once the sleeves are knit, I'll be able to knit the sleeve caps to precise measurements instead of to my guessy math.


4. Knit Catherine Parr to the armpits. That's about another two inches.
Er. I did knit another two inches. But I mismeasured how far I had to go to get to the armpits, so I knit as much as I thought I would, but I'm still not to the armpits. This is also part of what motivated me to hold off on the armhole decreases for Fulmar. The reason for my mismeasurement -- a complete inability to accurately translate Starmore's metrics to inches -- made me worry about my Fulmar math. Better safe than sorry.

In March, I also finished the monkey socks and knit a scarf to match the malabrigo hat. Not a bad knitting month, overall.

This month, April, my goals will be:

1. Order the yarn for the baby blanket and get started on it.
Technically not a knitting goal because I will use my grandma's c-word pattern. It's tradition. The baby shower has been set for June 1, and I hate making anything to deadline. And I'd much rather knit than c-word. So this ought to be a bumpy ride. (For those of you who remember the crapghan, my other malingering c-word project, I can report that I've got only 2 skeins of Dead Fart super saver to go before I can attach the border and call this one done.)

2. Push Catherine Parr.
I'll be using this project to take the edge off my angst from all the c-wording. This will be my go-to project when the sight of the hook makes me want to cry.

3. Resist the urge to cast on everything in sight.
I've got startitis bad these days. But I have projects to finish! If I must cast on something new, I'll cast on the stranded mittens to match the malabrigo hat and scarf. At least that way, I'll be completing a set.

That's it! The crib blanket will be claiming a lot of my time until it's done, so I don't want to make too many goals.

As a Matter of Fact, They DO Rock

Here are the Socks That Rock Mediumweight Sapphire socks. I think it took me about two months to knit these. Of course, I knit plenty of other stuff along the way, too, so it's not as if the slow knitting was due to a lack of knitting time. I am still busy, but not busy like December. I just have too many things on the needles right now, and that's slowing down my rate of finishing things. A different problem altogether!

With these socks completed, that leaves only one pair of socks OTN. I think I may try to hold it at that for a while to give me some time to catch up on some other knitting. I have three sweaters on the go right now, and a big stranded bag project, and one pair of socks, and this is enough. I don't also need to be knitting multiple pairs of socks and hats and scarves along the way.

(Even so, why do I yearn to cast on something new now? It's a consequence of finishing something, I know, but still....)

I've also finished the scarf to match the newsboy cap, but I have yet to weave the ends and block it. Pictures will follow eventually. And guess what? With this wave of finishing, this means I have officially knit more yarn than I have purchased this year, by about 175 yards. This is a good feeling. It won't last. I have to order yarn for a baby blanket this week. But at least for a few days, it's good to know I'm in balance.

In other news

This morning, I got an email from someone I do business with on occasion. I giggled all the way through this email, which struck me as a brilliant spoof of a silly situation we've been dealing with at work. I thought it was an excellent April Fools joke and very nearly forwarded it to a half-dozen people.

It wasn't a joke. *facepalm*

Thank God I didn't forward it to anyone. Of course, its author was not amused when I emailed her my congratulations for such a witty prank. *headdesk*

Can I go back to bed now and call this day OVER?