knitting in the dark

Today was a good day.

I blocked the sleeves and knit most of the button band of my Grace Cardi, which is my own design and will probably turn into a pattern at some point, and watched the final two episodes of Big Love Season 3. I don’t know why I love that show so much, but I do. I hope Netflix sends me Weeds Season Five next!

I also did some work - real work; far less exciting than knitting work - and brainstormed a little regarding my portfolio for applying to Masters programs in Architecture. I have eleven months before applications are due, but I’m trying to stay ahead of the game as I know myself and I have a serious tendency to procrastiate… and I should really pick up drawing again sometime soon. (See? Procrastination!)

While I am mostly trying to finish up a few works in progress this month (I finished seaming my Notre Dame de Grace tonight!) - I have also been doing a little spinning! I am currently working on a braid of Into the Whirled’s Falkland Inferno. After two afternoons I am about halfway finished with the singles…

January 20:

January 26:

BQ and I didn’t get around to taking photos of my recently finished sweaters on Tuesday, but we will be together again Sunday morning and he is pulling out his cameras - let’s hope for some nice weather and light for some finished object shots as there are two (nearly four!) sweaters ready to be debuted.

This year I am doing a photography 365 project - usually taking multiple shots during the day and choosing the one I like most or that best represents my day. I don’t use Flickr so I’m just saving them locally, but I’m enjoying it even without the community sharing aspect and this is my favorite image so far:

The camera I am using for this project lives in a little case I knit in August 2008 and travels everywhere with me. It’s amazing to me how clean the case is in this shot taken right after I finished! With daily use, the cream color has definitely become a little grimy…

pattern: none, but toadstool design is from Hello Yarn’s Mushroom Pulse Warmers pattern
yarn: Dale Garn Baby Ull
needles: steel 2mm dpns
completed: around 12 August 2008

I never bothered to weave in the ends - I figure they’re just extra padding for my camera and they haven’t annoyed me yet.

(ravelry project page)

Yesterday afternoon I blocked the pieces of my Notre Dame de Grace pullover (ravelry link) and it’s still drying this evening. That’s what I get for knitting the body and sleeves in the round and wet blocking! But it gave me a couple extra inches in length in both the body and arms, so it’s worth it.

I knit all but half of one sleeve in November 2008 and finished that second sleeve last week. I’ve been in love with the pattern since it came out in Interweave Summer 2007 and especially after seeing AStitchInThyme’s orange version shortly thereafter and I cannot wait to wear this! It’s nice and cold here so this would be a perfect layer and get lots of use right away.

I need to find time at home during the day with BQ so I can get some shots of recently finished sweaters while actually wearing them - I still haven’t posted pictures of Demi (ravelry link), which I finished December 26 (also started in the fall of 2008!). I think we might both be home Tuesday morning…

A while ago I went through old works-in-progress that had been laying around for a while. I found the front of this Rebecca dress that I started the week after 11 September 2001.

I don’t know what I was thinking combining baby pink and baby blue like that. This was also before I really knew about all of the benefits of a gauge swatch and it would have been too big if I had completed it.

I think it was my oldest WIP; I’m glad to have it gone.

I already used some of the rescued yarn for a friend’s baby’s sweater even!

This Mal Lace isn’t the yarn that’s been in my stash the longest, but it has been calling my name the loudest the past few months, begging me to make it into some sort of a rectangular wrap or scarf. But I’m having a hard time deciding which pattern to use. These are the forerunning options:

Sarcelle
Cold Mountain
Clapotis
Baltic Sea Stole
Lace Ribbon Scarf

Despite having knit loads of socks in fingering weight yarn and even some lacy socks, I’ve never knit with a laceweight yarn. I’m ready to branch out - help me decide! Oh, and since I have at least four more skeins of laceweight yarn hiding in my apartment I am sure I will be knitting up most of these patterns in the not too distant future; maybe this is the year of lace for me!

These socks were never entered into as a project on ravelry, so I’m not quite sure when I started them… sometime in October or November of 2008, I think. And I took these photos on 22 May 2009, so I probably finished them either that day or the night before - I’m usually pretty good about getting photos of socks right away (not so much with sweaters). As usual, there’s no pattern - I just made them to fit.

The blue is leftover Louet Gems from my first Henry Scarf. And the grey is leftover Classic Elite Alpaca Sox from yet another long-finished but never blogged or raveled project - mitts I made in February/March of 2008 right before I was hit by a car and couldn’t knit for weeks!

I love using up all my leftover bits of yarn - it makes me feel quite thrifty. I suppose I could knit up a sock yarn blanket or some frankensocks like most people who are into saving their bits… but I’m saving them for  Elizabeth Zimmermann Nether Garments (rav links). I promise I won’t wear them in public!

This July I met Nancy, the mother-in-law of my friend Janie. Janie’s wedding was in Maine this summer, so I stayed up there with her and her fiance Charlie for two weeks beforehand, playing and helping them prepare for the wedding. We stayed at Nancy’s one night - I stayed in the room they call “the Weavery” - and I felt like I was in fiber-addict heaven. The room has two twin beds and a chair at one end… and three looms, two spinning wheels, a drum carder, and bookshelves with weaving yarn occupying the rest of it!

Apparently Nancy at one point owned a fiber studio in their town, but had closed it some years prior and moved all her supplies to this room upstairs in her house. Shortly after we arrived she and I got to talking about knitting and spinning and she offered to teach me on a wheel, which I immediately accepted! We didn’t get to sit down with it until a week later after the wedding and cleanup were over, but she pulled out her Louet S-10 and taught me the basics one evening. And I was hooked on spinning once again.

Returning home to NYC with samples of some different fibers from Nancy, I started watching the ravelry.com boards looking for a simple used spinning wheel to puchase. BQ hinted that if I figured out what kind I liked that I might receive a wheel for Christmas. But in September I got lucky and found a used S-10 for a very reasonable price and pounced. It arrived a week later and was quite simple to put together. I quickly finished on my new wheel the Welsh wool that I had purchased to learn spinning on my spindle!

(more to come…)

I had said for years that I wasn’t interested in learning to spin. I enjoy too many crafts already - knitting, needlepoint, quilting and other sewing, I take photographs, draw and paint, and the list goes on. And once I start spinning, where does it end? I viewed it as a kind of gateway craft to dyeing yarn and fiber, weaving, or thinking that buying raw fleece and doing all the processing myself might be a good idea - but so far, none of those fears have come to pass. Last Christmas (2008), my fiber-loving aunt bought me an Ashford Turkish Spindle and two ounces of alpaca from Vashon Alpaca Fibers.

Apparently this fiber came from an animal named Clemente.

I jumped right in to learning to spin, surfed the internet for instructions, bought some wool top from Weaving Works, and made some yarn!

Not too bad for my first try, right? I discovered I loved making yarn but wasn’t sure if I loved the speed and motions of spindle spinning. I didn’t immediately abandon spinning completely, but I only poked at it for the following seven months… until I met Nancy in July.

(to be continued…)

I love knitting socks for my friends, especially when they’re clearly proud of their handknits. My friend Ben sent me a message that said he was wearing the socks I’d made for him this past summer and that he’d received “two compliments so far today”.

Ben picked the yarn while we were on Cape Cod this summer and I knit him a pair of (11″ long!) socks. These are made out of ONline Supersocke 100, which I had never used before but seems to be another good basic like Regia or Fortissima Socka.

The pattern is something I made up so that the sock would have some give to it when completed to allow for a good snug fit but allowed me to knit most of each round in stockinette.

Shortly after finishing Ben’s pair I visited my friend Janie, who now has her own knitting blog at JanieGirlCrafts, and she was knitting her very first pair of socks out of the same yarn! I had knit her a pair of Primavera Socks (ravelry link) out of Patons Stretch Socks for Christmas/Valentine’s/winter last year:

Let me tell you: NEVER AGAIN will I knit with this yarn. It was seriously icky. I picked the color because I knew Janie would like it and the price was very reasonable. But the stretchiness in combination with splitting every few stitches really made me glad when this pair was over and done with!

The Primavera pattern is very likeable though - easy to remember, simple enough to show off a yarn, and could be knit up into socks for a man.