Stranded

I started a new project and it's stranded!

Around here it's been all about the stripey yarn for so long, or maybe speckled or otherwise colour-mixy, I have neglected the possibilities for combining colours more manually. (Unless you count the sweater that killed my arm last January, of course.)

Also, it's finally getting cooler and I was excited to bring some Stoddart boot sock yarn back into play. This is, if you may recall, a now out of production wool/mohair yarn produced from the fiber of local animals, then hand-dyed by a brilliant colour artist and farmer. I will cry when I eventually work through my stash. In fact this week I spent valuable downtime hunting for someone else producing anything similar. Got nada. Either it's wool and mohair and undyed, or it's dyed and not the fiber combo I want, or it's not super local, or it's dyed in pastels instead of these vibrant hues. 

Lesson learned: there are times when it is one's duty to overbuy a favourite rare yarn. And thank goodness I did. No beating myself up for that choice!

Anyhoo, I got through the leg on sock number one and then stopped because I couldn't decide whether to make a tweak to my heel flap plan.

Normally, I start the heel flap at the start of the round. But that means the messy seam of the sock, where all the colours came in and no amount of tidy finishing conceals the fact, is on the side of my leg. 

 

What if I started the heel flap one-quarter into the next round, so that the messy seam goes down the back of my leg, were nobody's going to see it unless I'm already walking away from them? 

Like I say, I couldn't decide. I might do the other sock and get it down to the heel flap too, before I call it. I also have to choose whether to strand the heel flap this time too, to make it more hardwearing, or actually hold the yarn double. 

hmmmmm

AND I still haven't decided whether I'm felting the giant stranded sweater from last winter. But I'll get to it. I'm pretty focused on writing the next manuscript right now, a job I have only about four weeks left to complete. WHAT was I thinking lining up editorial feedback with such optimism.

But that's a problem for another panicky day. Right now it is SATURDAY and Saturdays are for happy times. Hope your weekend is great, whether it's a long Thanksgiving one like I'm having (hello fellow Canadian!) or just a regular long one or not a long one at all! See you next week and thanks as always for joining me, even if my head is kind messy and exploding with ideas and overcommitment.

 

 

Attack of the chompy sock

Today I curled up with a pair of in-progress socks and a fluffy mystery movie. It's been so hot lately... too hot to turn on a light after dark to count rows, and the daytime heat kept slowing me down so much, sockfesting wasn't an option then either. Still, I was due for R & R & K(nitting). It was taking me ages to get past the heel flap on my current sock project, and that's just not right.

I mean, one time I knit an entire fingering-weight sock in one day! nonstop movies, bottomless cup of tea, snacks for meals... we're talkin' bliss. I can't spare the time for that kind of thing now, but surely I can get past a flap.

Probably the slowdown was because I was debating a tweak to my go-to sock pattern - a slightly wider gusset, so there's less tension across the top of my foot. It's an easy change, just adding a couple of rows to the heel flap and an extra stitch to the pickup for the gusset, but I couldn't decide whether to do two rows or four. Me + Decisions = Paralysis.

Finally I settled on two rows (if it's not enough, I can try four rows next time) and got through the heel turn. 

WHEW. Progress!

I always like this part of a sock. You start off with a tube and end with a tube, but the heel flap and gusset is so cute and innovative and functional. 

It's also where you run into the most dangerous stage of Sock: chompy sock.

 

You have to be so careful of your fingers, because this is when socks are at their most hungry and aggressive. Fortunately this one was appeased by a long stream of radish slices.

Otherwise, I might not have been able to get this cuddly photo of the two socks together. Aren't they sweet?

I won't have to struggle so much about the second heel flap, now that I know exactly how long I'm making it. Where I'll have to think hard is when I get close to the toe decreases. Should I make the sock two rounds shorter to accommodate the extra rounds in the gusset, or not?

Probably the sensible thing is to stick with my usual, try them on, and graft the toe two rounds early if the foot's long enough. But you know I'm gonna agonize anyway.

Hope you get a little time for yourself this weekend - I've sure enjoyed mine.

Thanks for dropping by, and I'll see you next Saturday!

The great fabric hunt - part one

This past weekend, I focused on knocking down as many house decisions as possible.  I want to clear the slate so I can focus on the back yard plan and, you know, work... and maybe some knitting, so I have a new hat before winter settles in.  Apart from laundry room choices, this has meant choosing fabric! at last, something fun.  And yet... not.

 I think we need to start this post with something gorgeous.

All weekend I burned with love for this cabbage rose fabric from Sanderson, called Devonshire Place.  You never know from the online pictures - in person, the blue might look wrong, and the stone colour might be the wrong undertone for the paint we zeroed in on, and the scale might be bigger than my head - but it is cheery and bright and a cabbage rose.  I love cabbage rose prints.  They make me feel so happy and calm, I could look at them all day.

Looking at fabric usually makes me happy and calm too - or rather, jumpy-uppy-down excited because I love fabric so much - but it has been surprisingly difficult to find any fabric to work in our house.  I guess if I can only have one or two prints, it's natural to be picky, but this is getting ridiculous.

Here's the deal: Ray is going to want to paint the house in a month or two.  My dream is to have our house painted once, by professionals, before there's any furniture in it.  Not now and again in two years when I'm sick of the colours.  To achieve this longevity of satisfaction with our paint choices, I want them to coordinate with the fabrics we bought for love and perfection (and not for panic and proximity.)

Looking through the sample books at the upholstery store is a daunting task... and yet: they don't have everything there.  I've found a few likely patterns online I couldn't see in person until the swatches came in a week or two after we ordered them.  And as I might have mentioned, the prospects from last time all turned out to be awful, which is why I'm still looking. Cue the Time Crunch.

Thank goodness the house is taking as long as it is, huh?

And now, I will tell you today's story.

On Friday, I borrowed the fabric sample book for the upholstery I'd picked for recovering the old sofa we still love but have no space for, except in our bedroom.  It's just simpler if everything starts from that, right?

It's a nice soft fabric in a herringbone weave - a mix of cotton and linen and manmade fibers to make it strong enough for heavy use, and astonishingly, it's within our budget.  I'd chosen a neutral that turns out to be the colour of unbleached linen.

This bleh shade is not terrible in itself because we wanted a pretty inoffensive, flexible, low-contrast room this time - see "No More Paint For Me" policy described above - and Pete liked it too.  Then I noticed that the same fabric is good for drapes so I said, I haven't been able to find a single floral fabric I like yet; why not have our drapes custom made in the same plain thing? and Pete said, Great!

We found a paint colour that matches it, thanks to the huge paint boards I bought from Maria Killam.  These things are not cheap.  When I took her colour course I met many budget savvy professional interior designers in a position to make good use of them who had not bought even one set, let alone the two I did.  (That changed after they saw them in action during the course.)  But WHAT a time saver they are.  We are really hoping to choose only two, or maybe three paint colours for the whole house to simplify leftover paint storage, but you go through a lot of options before you can narrow that down.  In the course, I also received a Benjamin Moore fan deck and that's been helpful too.

There's the good news.  The bad news? The paint that matches our bedroom sofa fabric is called Cedar Key, and it's beige.  Designers call it 'greige' because it's a mix of grey and beige but for my purposes, it's beige.

I should have seen this coming.  Every picture I warm to when I look at inspiration images for the house have beige walls, or else some version of very dark grey - how could I miss that?  Plus, I just wrote a whole blog post the other day about all the pale colours that are making me breathe more slowly and calmly.

And yet I love colour.  I grew up in a house that was all beige and brown all the time apart from the turquoise walls in the dining room, and later the avocado banquette (left over from our second home's previous owners and never reupholstered.)  I feel like I've done my time on beige.

Okay, so we could choose a contrasting pale colour and not need to match the sofa and curtains. I could pick a blue or green or purple if I wanted; I'm sure there's one that would look lovely.  But that would mean even more time spent choosing paint.

Can you say, AIIIEEEEEEE.  Plus I wouldn't get that layered tone on tone look I'm going for.

Thankfully I found a lighter, more ethereal shade that doesn't exactly match the fabric but is still friendly with it.  It's called Pale Oak and naturally, it's also kinda beige.   Sorry - greige.

It was at about this point that I panicked and ran to Lynn for reassurance, and got it.  Also I spotted this peaceful bedroom at Laurel Home, with walls painted in Pale Oak, and that made me feel better too.

Yes, this looks like it could be a tiny shot of a hotel room, but that's kinda what I'm after - a room with just literal, not mental, baggage.  The better to sleep in.

What I have to remember is what I decided at the beginning of all this nonsense - that the neutral is just the background.  There will always be colourful knitting lying around, and we still have blankets and sofa cushions to choose, too.  Which is where that gorgeous blue cabbage rose comes in.  We were pretty sure it would work for cushions on the bedroom sofa, but Pete felt it would be too overwhelming as a print for the stairwell curtains.

Cue the doom music

This area is fabric problem number two.  At the landing on the stairs from the main floor up to the bedrooms we have a stacked window which runs four feet wide and will require a covering a little short of thirteen feet tall, if you include the drop to floor level and room for a curtain rod at the top.  And I do, because I can't really see cutting a curtain that big off at the knees, can you?  It's probably better if it goes most of the way to the floor, or at least as close to the floor as necessary to balance the gap at the top.

A thirteen-foot curtain is going to have to be custom made by someone, and unless it's a plain fabric or a simple stripe, it has to be made by somebody other than me.  I know my limits and matching a massive half-drop floral repeat is not within them!

That said, I don't want something plain or even stripey for that window - I want something we are excited to look at.  This has turned out to be the only place in the whole house where I can have a spectacular fabric (except maybe the laundry room and there are no guarantees there either) and I don't want to give up on that dream till I have to.

It turns out there is another complication.  Even though we are not fancy people, the fabric that goes into the stairwell is going to have to play nicely with the very fancy wall sconces that face the landing on the walls that frame the window, and which I found at a massive discount or I would never even have let myself aspire to them.  Forgive me if you've seen this before:

It probably doesn't look too crazy on the screen but, um, this fixture is 17" tall.  It's in scale for what is basically a massive air shaft, but having a pair of them is a pretty big statement.

That's a black metal strip at the top and bottom of the glass cover, and the ceiling fan at the top of the shaft, and the railing, and the custom curtain rod will all be black too, so having some reference to gold and/or black in the drapery fabric would be good.

HA.  Like I can pick and choose.

I've gone through every UK fabric designer I can find, plus Waverly, Ralph Lauren, and all the other standard American companies on the hunt for something that's right for us, drawing the line only at Lee Jofa because we do not have many hundreds of budget dollars to spend on just one yard of fabric, let alone ten yards.

Although if I was going to go with Lee Jofa, I'm sure I could find a way to live with something like Ashridge Print:

But I say No to Lee Jofa. Instead, here are the fabrics I found that made it as far as me showing Pete.

'Ottoline' from Sanderson, features both copper and teal.  I like it but I feel like the drawing style for the flowers is a bit 1960s, and Pete was a bit iffy about it too.

Sweet Bay, also from Sanderson, in Ebony/Ivory, is lovely but has an awful lot of green in it.  The rest of the house is more blues and caramels and red. 

This fabric is listed as being sort of polished, which put me off because I don't want a sheen but - spoiler alert! - I actually saw a different colourway of it today at the upholstery store, and the sheen is minimal.  So is the pleasantness of the way it feels in your hand (and it turns out the flowers are indeed the size of my head.)

Angela Floral in cream, from Ralph Lauren, comes very close to fitting the bill in terms of colour and print, though it's more weathered than I had in mind:

I asked for a sample today anyway and am crossing my fingers.  Maybe it will turn out to be the floral I dreamed of for our bedroom and couldn't find.

All of these fabrics are 54" wide, and to cover a 48" window two and a half times without a contrasting band of some sort, we need something that is 60" wide.  That's really, really hard to come by, so I was inclined to look kindly upon the only contender I found in that category.

This baby is 61", but it looks more than a bit like the wallpaper you'd see behind the misery-stricken heroine of a 1930s movie drama:

It's another Ralph Lauren - Vintage Ashfield - and in spite of the association I really like its simplicity.   There are other colours in this print that look less like old film, but they aren't quite right either.  The whites look like true white instead of the off white I need, and the taupey version looks like it would make our honey maple floors very very unhappy.  At least pewter gives a contrast and blends with all the black?

On a second pass of all the likely fabric manufacturers I found this print, which I'd rejected at first because the background is SO blue.

But I smiled when I saw it first, and I smiled again the second time and decided to show Pete, who smiled too.  So I asked for a sample and am crossing my fingers harder than is strictly comfortable.  It's another Ralph Lauren (Garden Harbor) and Ralph does not charge Lee Jofa prices.  Or even Sanderson prices.

While I was looking through the Sanderson books today I was able to see Devonshire Place, the fabric pictured at the top of this post, and it is - well, I say this with apologies to anybody who reads this and has decorated much of their home with it, but frankly I found it hideous.  The fabric is not a luxuriously woven linen or cotton linen blend, it's more of a figured weave with a texture pattern running under what is already a pretty busy print.  So it's not for us.

Then I noticed a washed-out, dreamy linen with faded cabbage roses in front of a tiny-petaled bloom and was seriously smitten.  The flowers were smaller than the palm of my hand, the colours were soothing, and I thought: bedroom?  Clearly I don't love love love the faux-unbleached-linen of our sofa upholstery for curtains.  But alas, the background of that fabric is a yellow beige and looked deeply horrible with the sofa upholstery we picked.  And every other shade of the sofa upholstery, in fact, except the yellow beige one, which I do not love.  So, no to those cabbage roses.  I'm not even going to show you a picture of that print because I am still sad about it.

But after that?  I flipped the page to this crazy bird print:

It's 'Swallows' (from Sanderson, of course) and it's a vintage design from the 1930s, which makes it perfect for the original age of our house, pre-facelift.  I love these birds, and love that the colours that pick out their details match the two paint colours we shortlisted for the bedroom sofa, and especially love the idea of birds flying against a blue sky on either side of our ridiculously tall stack of windows.

But - there's nothing in this print to make our fancy gold sconces feel welcome on the landing.  When I got home I did some more hunting and found this bird print on the Sanderson site - Finches.

This time I am beyond smitten.  The colours are right for the house, right down to the blue, and the print includes branches.  I love branches, a fun fact about me that you may have noticed if you read enough Hugs to see all the pictures I post of branches in the winter.

In fact, I think this print, in these colours, would look lovely and appropriate in every season - except maybe the fall?

If you look closely you can see that the birds and branches are not totally lifelike, as you would expect from a botanical print.  They are more like something Edward Gorey would draw.  And this is another huge draw for me because all my favourite books as a kid were illustrated by Edward Gorey.  This fabric is so perfect for us.

But... I need ten yards, and it's pretty pricey fabric for that kind of volume.  Not Lee Jofa pricing, but definitely not Laura Ashley pricing, and for a girl that has always been Laura Ashley On Clearance pricing - and even then, only for truly special situations - it's a little bit heart-attack-inducing to think of buying Finches for reals.  So I'm still looking.  (I'm totally asking for a sample of this one next time I go into the store, though, because perfect is perfect.  And maybe it won't be perfect and I won't live the rest of my life wondering What If.)

We've since found another couple of possibilities but really I think this is enough for the first part of The Great Fabric Dilemma. If you've read all this way down I would like to apologize for dumping my convoluted thought processes regarding what is clearly a first world problem all over your screen.  And I will leave you with a question:

Do you ever agonize this much over YARN??

Yeesh, like we needed another example of why knitting is tops...

Technical difficulties

UGH, by which I mean, Hello all!  Sorry I mysteriously disappeared instead of posting on Friday, or at any point earlier today, or really today at all, since I have no energy to prep and post the lovely knitting photographs I took for you over the weekend before I was felled by aNOTHer cold.

This is how my brain feels right now.
(you know, like a laminate counter sample I quite like for the laundry room.)

I knew this cold was coming, because I spent time with a sick friend last week who missed that critical 'lift elbow and lower head before coughing' maneuver a few times.  I think I may actually have been sneezed on as well.

Anyway: no surprise, and I did try to plan for a few lost days, but not well enough apparently.

Wondering what a sick Mary does when too miserable even to prep photographs, but not breathing well enough to sleep all day long?


Watch a lot of Miss Fisher on Netflix (recommended)

Accidentally taste a tiny bit of Vicks VapoRub by picking up a glass with a Vicks'd hand (not recommended At All)

Compulsively consume interior decorating tips online using a cell phone (if you like that sort of thing)

Accidentally read about how keeping your charging cell phone and other electricals next to the head of the bed can cause brain cancer (not really recommended)

Review locations of all electrical in house and probably locations of heads of beds (recommended, especially if it proves to be reassuring and/or fixable)

Knit, of course (always recommended)

Participate in resolving various family health crises (recommended if the situation demands it, as the alternative is invariably worse)

Ponder the wisdom of fixed-in-place brass decor accents lest they be a trend that passes (meh)

Recall the scraped-up 80s brass doorknob that managed the front door of the house for the past 30 or so years and is still perfectly functional and never offended the sort of people who dropped in (helpful)

Research insulation -


and here I have to stop and shake my head because OH MY GOODNESS.  or some other firm expletive.  Insulation is the most loaded topic I've had to dig into during this entire renovation project, even worse than window selection, and that is saying something because I strongly dislike our windows and especially the fact that I let us be pressured into them.  On top of everything else I don't like, they are impossible to get out through in case of fire, I doubt they even pass code in that regard.  AND they were the most expensive kind on the market.

Insulation is worse than the windows, because of the health risks that hinge on your choice.  Even the least offensive sort of traditional insulation - fiberglass, for example - poses problems like improperly protected spaces and mold if not well installed.  But some insulations, notably spray foam insulation, can trigger quite serious reactions and in the case of spray foam, is a supremely expensive nightmare to take out again if it does.  Some unlucky homeowners have had to sell their homes, because the foam has made family members too sick to stay in it.


Here is what I don't like about spray insulation, even if you spend enough on it to expect a safe installation:

It doesn't matter how wonderful the product is in theory, it's not a finished product until the spray hits the wall.  Or rather, until the A spray hits the B spray - it's like epoxy, it requires a chemical reaction right there in your home.  So quality control comes down to the installer's training, not careful factory conditions.

And not just the installer's training.  It's also the temperature of the day, which changes over the course of the day.  How wet it is, or how dry.  How tired the installer is, or how close to coming down with a cold.  No visiting sick friends for spray foam installers!

Also: it underscores the gap between Green for the planet and Green for human health.  Even if it's well installed, spray foam is not recommended for people with chemical sensitivity, and who's to say we might not offer shelter to someone with that issue, or be such a person ourselves?


Gah.  Three guesses what our beautiful house was designed for, before I knew all of this.  Of course.  Spray foam!

And because it's got a very high R value, you can build thinner walls than you need for fiberglass or mineral wool. Which means that to meet the city's requirements with another less chemically solution Ray would have to build up all the exterior wall framing with deeper timber and Andy and I would have to redo the kitchen design - and the order absolutely has to go in this Friday - to accommodate a space that is 2" shallower on all the exterior walls (quickfact: the refrigerator is already jutting out way farther into a narrow doorway than Andy likes.)  No pressure on deciding what to do.


Of course we all know what's best if you're not restricted by measurements, don't we?  Insulating with WOOL.  Actual wool.  Which doesn't burn nearly as fast as petrochemicals, doesn't take up nearly as much floorspace as hay bales, is never toxic apart from skin allergy which is contact-specific, and is a terrific resource in case one should ever run out of other wool to knit.

Had I but realized...


Anyway, that's me for today, getting a quick visit in under the wire (it's 11:30pm as I type these words) and getting up to go collapse under blankets right about... now.

Picking knits to pack

It's not so crazy here that I haven't noticed I need to plan for something to knit on the train to Ottawa in a couple of days.  Five hours of a soft seat with a window view - of course I need knitting!  I booked Business Class so I'd have wi-fi and a reserved seat with a power outlet and a lunch I don't have to plan for... so probably I should use the time to source more stuff for the house.  But I am going to try very hard not to.

In addition to what knits to do, I have to decide on what knits to wear, because it is super cold in Ottawa right now.  I can't face wearing my parka on a holiday so today I impulsively bought myself a very swish new spring coat and matching purse and am now trying to figure out how to layer hat, sweater, and massive scarf with it to make this work.  You know what?  It turns out the most flattering and comfortable hat I've ever knit myself is this one:

and it looks fantastic with the new coat, too.  But I never made the matching scarf.  GAAAAAAAHHHHH

I had a fantastic, and very warm, black and grey scarf I used to wear with it, but do you think I can find it since the move?  Of course not. 

I also never added this pattern to the Free Patterns tab.  Whoops!  I've fixed that now.  (It's the Hatcowl, if you missed it when I published it last year.)

Seriously though, I need to knit myself another of these in a colour that goes with a scarf or three.  It's dead easy - if you leave out the lace panel, which I like because it helps me figure out where the front of the hat goes, you're basically knitting a tube with eyelets at the end for a drawstring.  It is the PERfect knit for a train ride and audiobook. 

Or I could finish the grey lace gloves.

Or I could finish the hat I started for Bob, since Bob lives in Ottawa and I will see him and he would probably appreciate a warm hat this week.

Or... I could look for yarn and my 3.5mm circular needles.  I guess it all comes down to how selfish I am feeling.

(answer: super selfish.)

Think good packing thoughts for me, won't you?  And have a great day!

Fuzzy, fluffy knits

Owing to a shortage of handspun yarns (which has almost nothing to do with my having scooped up most of the giftable handspun for personal projects, ahem) I found myself digging into my yarn stash for the next few gift cowls.  What do you think of these two together?

I love them, personally.  Colourwise, and also for the way they both feel.

But there is a problem, because nothing is allowed to be simple when it comes to knitting, even simple knits.  It's kind of like golf, isn't it - you have so many little failures and missed shots, and then suddenly you get a fluke hole in one and you're more committed to the process than ever before.  Completely illogical, but compelling.

In this case, the problem is the fluff factor.

Can you see all that hair lifting out from the stitches?  At least it's staying put in this photo. When you're actually knitting, the little hairs fly everywhere.  It's a bad project for a knitter in black, or for a giftee who favours that colour even part of the time.

I don't really know what to do. On the one hand the colours are gorgeous. On the other hand, what would you wear these colours with?  besides black.  On the other other hand, the green yarn especially - 100% llama from Americo, now discontinued, I wonder why - is incredibly soft and buttery.  And on that hand over there in the corner, omigosh fluffy:

So... throwing it out there.  Should I go on, trusting that 100% llama paired with 100% wool will be warm and soft and a welcome gift no matter how hairy and sheddy the cowl is?  Or should I accept that hours of work has produced a very small cowl so far and a lot of fiber up my nose?

Yeesh, look at it - it might as well be about to devour the stripey yarn.  Though I guess if it did the knitting would be magically finished and I could relax already.  Hope you have a good day - I'm going to work a little on something else while I ponder this cowl problem.  See you tomorrow!

Handknit socks for springtime travels

It's pretty great when you're able to travel with a very compact wardrobe.  Lighter luggage means more energy for sightseeing, and maybe even more space for bringing home interesting things.  The trick is to come up with a good wardrobe plan.

Naturally, any really good wardrobe plan starts with choosing which handknit socks to pack - or in my case, make.

Yeah, I'm taking another vacation this spring, which is just weird because normally I go 10 years minimum between getaways.  This time it's to Boston, where I plan to do a lot of walking in warmish temperatures, and after the hilly strolls in Italy last year I am certain I will be much happier if I can pack many a pair of handknits rather than plain black cotton socks.   At the end of the days I wore cotton socks - hoo boy, were my dogs barking.

If it were just a matter of throwing some socks in a bag - no problem, I have tons at the moment.  But I like to coordinate them with my go-to scarf, which I am pretty sure I  have pegged as this nice floral one.  It was a Christmas present from a friend who never saw a purple thing she didn't like, and I rather love this colour combo myself.  It says Spring, it's got several colours that really suit me, it will cheer up my favourite things that are black, and it's the perfect size for travel.

This yarn from last spring's Vesper club is a perfect match for it, don't you think?

I was just worrying that one match wouldn't be enough when the latest Vesper club yarn turned up in my mailbox:

Pretty sure that's going to work too.

Ideally I'll find a third colourway or else a second backup scarf that matches one of these plus a pair of socks I've already made, but in the meantime, there is another question to consider:

Do I want full length socks to hide under pantlegs, or ankle socks to wear with skirts in warmer weather?

I could answer this myself (full length, always safest) if I wasn't acutely aware of how much faster ankle socks are to knit, and how useful in summertime.  Maybe I should knit them toe-up this time, and decide later, perhaps over tea and a travel guide.

It's a nice problem to have, either way.  Hope your day's knitting problems are as cheerful!

The guy cowl

Remember the other day when we talked about the importance of not setting knit-related precedents we can't handle?  Well, let's look at the outcome of all that.

It's another cowl, this time for Richard.

I never think about knitting cowls for men because even though Guys Wear Neckwarmers - I see it all the time around the city - I've never had to knit one for any of them.  That's because the more obvious Neckwarmer-Wearing Guys in my life swear by their polar fleece versions and Pete won't let me so much as hold up a skein of potential yarn for his reaction. 

(I may have mentioned this before: he's practically made me put it in writing that I will not only never ever knit for him but also, stop asking to do it.  I have no idea what this is about.  I'm pretty sure it's not personal but the alternative is that he just doesn't like knits and that is practically impossible for me to comprehend.)

Even when my original Shelter Valley Cowl ended up with Bob, it wasn't on purpose.  I had made it for myself (surprise!) but ended up not wearing it because it kind of clashed with my hat-of-the-moment, and then one time he was visiting and about to get in the car on an exceedingly cold day for a 5-hour drive so I made myself offer it to him for extra insulation.  He loved it, put it on right away, left it on, and gave me the heads-up that I can knit for him any time.  Also it looked great, all of which made it easier to let it go.

But when it came to knitting something for Richard, and I knew a cowl was all I'd have time for - or maybe fingerless gloves, when my needles came free again - I wasn't sure. At. All.

 I'm not even sure about fingerless gloves actually.

Some knitters just knit and gift all the time and have faith about how their work is received, but I've never been able to do that.  It has to be right, by my complicated standards which are probably related to preferring always to knit for myself.

To be right, you have to have inside information, like what will fit.  That's why scarves are so great really, except that they take foreeeeever.  All you have to do is get the colours right.  They are perfect for times when you are knitting for a Guy you only know well enough to have something for which you are grateful to them.

Or to put it another way,

GAH.

For this cowl, all I could do was pick the manliest colour in my stash,

which turned out to be exactly the same yarn base as I'd used for the Shelter Valley Cowl.  Bonus: Richard used to live near Shelter Valley.

Another bonus: this is Viola yarn.  You know, the amazing yarn Emily used to dye by drawing on her amazing colour talents, which she's no longer doing by hand in small batches, which makes every skein of this stuff pretty much gold.  Richard doesn't know why Viola is so precious, but I do, and that is something.

Best of all, Trish told me it would be okay.  This is another thing I've probably said before, but Trish is my Enquire Within Upon Everything, and she is always, always, right.  Cowls are practical, she said, and he can always regift it if he really isn't going to wear it.

So I made it, and then I buckled (okay, what really happened was I put it on and saw how perfect these colours are for me because they match my hair and eyes - man, it's just SO HARD for me to knit something not for myself ) and checked in with him and he said it sounded perfect.

Did I tell you this guy is knitworthy?  Because that remark says knitworthy in at least nine languages.

The end of this story is that I kinda feel now like I should be knitting something new for Wayson, who started this whole Domino effect.  And I think it should be a cowl, and I also think it should have a different stitch that doesn't fold over with wearing, so watch this space for another zippy free pattern in time for your holiday knitting (I hope.)

Meanwhile...

Pattern: Shelter Valley Cowl

Modifications: Same stitch count, but down from 4.00mm needles to 3.25mm needles for a firmer fabric, garter stitch border instead, and another half-repeat of the body pattern before castoff.

Yarn: Viola merino-cashmere-nylon worsted (same base is the original Biscotte yarn, which is still available) in Nightshade

Finished Size: 18.5" circumference, 6.25" tall


And that's me for today.  I sure hope any Guy Knitting you're doing is a lot more straightforward than this was!

The knitter's fair is coming

Way back in June I marked something very exciting on the calendar for this Saturday: The Kitchener-Waterloo Knitters' Fair. 

I love the Fair.  It's everything you want if you do anything crafty with yarn or fiber, and it's in a lovely building across the street from a pretty fabulous mini-putt with two different courses to choose from.  I've gone I think every year for the last few years and it's always been sunny and glorious outside, full of yummy things inside. 

Love love love the Fair.

This year I might not go.  Or I might!  (it sort of depends on Trish.) 

I shouldn't even think about going, because just now I have rather too much yarn that isn't yet made into anything.

But I can't stop wanting to go, because hello, too much yarn? What is that??

The only thing I could see myself getting more of is Stoddart sock yarns, which is of course crazypants because I still have some from the Knitter's Frolic.

Not much though.  Just enough for three pairs of socks.  That's hardly anything, right?  I have obviously blown through what I bought at the Knitter's Frolic in April.

Oh.  I guess really I only started out with yarn for six pairs, so I'm only halfway through, and technically that's plenty.  Especially since I'm spinning enough Stoddart sock yarn for three pairs more than that.

Also I have quite a few very sensible things to do at home on Saturday.

But I want to go anyway.  What is up with that?


Your Weekly Heartbreak

So, this happened yesterday:

When I got to my favourite parking lot I discovered that since my previous outing I'd I taken my travel sock out of my purse and put it somewhere else without, apparently, being aware of the fact.  It took me till late this afternoon to find it which was awful: I was beginning to freak out that I'd actually dropped it somewhere.  GAH.  And it was just one of two striped socks and the other one would have haunted me forever with its needles still resting mid-arch.

Anyway all is well now except that while I was looking for it I found another skein of sock yarn wound into two matching cakes ready and waiting to be turned into socks, on top of the 12 or so other skeins also waiting to be caked and turned into absolutely anything.

Couldn't this have happened after the Knitter's Fair?

There you go: I leave it to you to decide which is the bigger heartbreak.  And then you can go do something very nice and I'll see you later!

The concept of the crocheted square: persistence

The last time we talked crochet, we were looking at some different approaches to making a square, with stitches that look interesting but are easy enough to do while stiff with fright and minimal personal space in an airplane seat.

(I kid.  I won't be stiff with fright.  I'll probably shake instead.)

The problem is partly finding a good stitch, and partly choosing a yarn, but running through both of those factors is a biggie: and the biggie as about finding a purpose.  So here's my progress report.

Good stitch

I realized that while my idea of starting with a little circle and working outward did eventually produce a cool log cabin effect (thanks for making that connection for me, Leslie!) I kept messing up where to do the corners.  And if that's the case now, how would I manage with shaking hands?  Also, why mess with the stripe in that way?  I've found that simple knitting shows off self-striping yarn best, so what about simple crochet?

That's just single crochet there, in about a 6.5" square.  I like how the stripes sort of point into each other like a backgammon board.  The repetitive motion is addictive and it's hard to stop anywhere because you get to the end of a row so fast and then it only makes sense to turn and go on a bit longer.  These are extremely good qualities for my purpose.

Yarn choice

I love crocheting with my Vesper sock yarn - it's soft but sturdy in socks, and in crochet, where the yarn is coiled around in soft curls for every stitch, the softness is more pronounced.  And I have decided after doing tons of research on crochet patterns, and my gut reaction to same, that appealing-to-me crochet is about colour, which Vesper has in spades (and no running in ends between them, either.)

 Here's what I mean about colour being a perk:

At this distance even if you don't love these particular colours together - and I've decided I don't, really - you mostly see colour with a bit of texture.

This matters to me because the truth is, I don't love the look of a crochet stitch the way I melt for knit stitches.  Having done quite a few now I think it may be because crochet stitches are so tortured, while knitting lies flat and peaceful.  But when you add colour, you get these nice Vs wherever the change happens, so that even up close you get a sense of loving handstitch:

The other advantage of sock yarn is that it's very compact for the yardage, which is important because I'm hoping to travel with just my carry on.  So: sock yarn, yes.  Vesper sock leftovers... maybe?

I love the idea of using up scraps, but even though a lot of my leftovers have repeating colours, they don't add up to a Whole, if you know what I mean.  I'm picturing a patchwork quilt effect for when I eventually combine whatever squares I make, but I think I'd go well beyond the 'crazy' of a 'crazy' quilt if I tried this. 

It struck me that if I reduce the size of each colour blot and work the joins in white to break up the onslaught, whatever I get could still look great.  So I experimented with a 4" square:

I like this a lot better.  Maybe I'm just getting more experienced and keeping my tension more consistent, but I was able to keep the sides sharp at this size.  Also, the stripes look more like stripes because you can get a couple of rows in before one colour cedes ground to the next.

Purpose

You have heard probably about the concept of process versus product knitting?  Process knitters love to knit and have no problem ripping out one week's work specifically for the purpose of working more stitches.  Product knitters knit because they want the end result and the knitting itself is merely a means to achieve it.

Recently I've been wandering into process territory, experimenting with new stitches and seeing how different yarns behave.  But I still like to see something in return for the time I've spent on a project.  So if I'm gonna crochet a bunch of squares they gotta add up to something.

This is where my blanket obsession came in - but I think we can all agree now that even a throw blanket made out of 4" squares of fingering yarn is a bit ambitious, especially for a girl who likes to make other things over the course of a year.

Cushion cover?  Could be very cute... but I don't see using my Vesper stripies as an accent in any room in my house.  Nor do I see myself carting around a woolen bag.

(though maybe... a string bag? that could be useful on a trip, right?)

H'mmmm.

Conclusion

My goal for this year was to learn to crochet, and I've done it, and I'm happy.  I like making crochet stitches and I've figured out single, double, triple/treble, and slip as well as chain.  I can even do a slip knot by the third try!

But I have more work to do figuring out what end product I want from all the in-flight crafting, and what yarn I want to use to achieve it, and maybe even what stitch is going to be best, in spite of my liking for single crochet.

Yeah, I've been to the library.

I don't know - the more I think of this the more I wonder whether I can go more than a few days without knitting.  Even in a carry on, I'm pretty sure I could bring a very small blunt-tipped circular needle for making a few cowls, don't you think?

Speaking of which... I started another project last night, and I got back to work on my fingerless gloves for dining al fresco in Florence, so I'd better wrap this up.  Have a great weekend, and I'll see you on Monday!