knitting in the dark

I know I said in my last post that I shouldn’t be knitting for BQ since he hasn’t worn the socks I made him ten months ago, but he special requested either a scarf in green or charcoal or argyle socks with his initials. Adding initials inside the diamonds of the argyle pattern would require big diamonds which would require intarsia, which I don’t particularly like.

So I made him a Henry Scarf for his birthday. This is the second scarf I’ve knit from this pattern - and I will not be doing another any time soon if I can help it! I timed myself doing this one and each row takes me between 14.5 and 16 minutes to complete; multiply that by 126 rows in this instance and you get 1827-2016 minutes or 30.45-33.6 hours just to knit the darn thing! And that doesn’t include weaving in the ends or blocking.

This was his present for his birthday the first week of December. I’ve been visiting my parents in the Seattle area since then so I haven’t seen him wear it, but he said he wore it yesterday when it was 17 degrees in New York and that it was nice and warm.

pattern: Henry Scarf from Fall 2007 Knitty (ravelry project link)
yarn: 6x Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Baby in “340039″ Forest Green
needle: 3.25mm
started: 23 November 2009
completed: 14 December 2009
mods: I did five 24-row pattern repeats across 488 stitches, which is more than recommended, but I wanted to make sure the scarf was going to be long enough since the last Henry I knit was a couple inches short of the desired length and BQ is taller than six feet.
dimensions: 70″ x 7.5″ before washing; I expect some shortening after a wash as my swatch suggests it will shrink up by about 8″

Every year I knit my father socks for Christmas: 2006, 2007, 2008’s pairs. This year they were even completed before the big day and he was able to open a pair instead of a project still on the needles!

(modeled by my lovely mother)

pattern: my standard top-down sock with textured stitch pattern
yarn: leftovers from other sock projects, nothing fancy
needles: 2mm steel dpns

My mother and I think they might be a bit short for him (by maybe 1/4-1/2″), but he claims they fit well so I’m going to leave them alone unless he complains at a later date.

Come to think of it: I made a pair just like this in a different color for my boyfriend for Valentine’s Day 2009 and never blogged about them. Let’s see if I can find a picture… yup, sure enough, here they are:

(they’re a little big on me!)

yarn: Cascade Heritage, which I LOVE

My boyfriend (BQ)’s father wore red socks every Saturday when BQ was little. Apparently he wore dress socks with his office clothes all week and wanted to let loose on the weekend! And BQ’s mother used to knit his father socks! I thought it would be a sweet Valentine’s gift for him, perhaps compounded by the fact that both of his parents have been dead for years. But I haven’t seen him wear these yet (ten months later!) so I guess I shouldn’t be knitting anything else for him…

Welcome to 2010. I have missed spending time here at knitting in the dark so I’m back!

And I’m committing to posting every day for the month of January (eeep!). There is a large backlog of finished objects and planned posts around here - some already even have drafts written!

This was a very productive fall season for me - personally, professionally, and in terms of knitting - and winter is looking good so far as well! I have a lot of big plans for 2010. Stay tuned.

It is happening… I have hit that time in life where my friends are having their first babies. Fortunately, I am only close enough to one of the couples to warrant knitting something for their little bundle of joy (otherwise I’d be buried in baby knitting!). My mother made someone a Dale of Norway Riller cardigan a little less than a year ago - and I figured I would just use the same pattern for my friends Ryan and Megan instead of finding another baby sweater pattern. And of course I wanted to use yarn out of my stash so I modified the sweater to use aran-weight Rowan All-Seasons Cotton instead of the suggested fingering-weight Dale Baby Ull.

I wouldn’t usually choose such a traditional pastel color scheme - I love strong colors on little ones - but I already owned the yarn and they didn’t know if it would a boy or a girl. I figured I’d choose buttons after the baby was born to personalize it.

They had their little boy last Thursday and I went shopping for buttons yesterday and nothing really popped out at me so I bought supplies at Fiber Notion in Park Slope to make my own fabric-covered buttons and embroidered the baby’s initials and a little sailboat on them. My embroidery skills could use some (okay, a LOT) of practice, but I’m pretty happy with the way they came out; the kit made it really easy, but I don’t know how well they will hold up. Hopefully long enough for him to outgrow the sweater!

One of the most exciting aspects (for me, anyway) is that my total cost for this project was only $3, excluding shipping it to them.

pattern: Riller (ravelry project page)
mods: less stitches to use thicker yarn and knit seamlessly in the round bottom-up and then down the sleeves

In other knitting news, my friend Rachel who has been living in Australia for the past ten months sent me some tweedy wool yarn from New Zealand for my birthday earlier this month!

I think it might just be enough for a wooly vest… the tweedy grey is so great. Every gift she’s sent me from down under has been lovely - I received a super cute pencil case from kikki.K for Christmas that I’ve been using to hold needles and swatches and knitting tools…

And since it is Sunday afternoon, I am off to my newly formed knitting group. Have a great day!

I’ve been on vacation this week at a friend’s house on Cape Cod and it has rained (heavily) all but one day since we arrived! Yesterday we ran some errands and checked out the local shopping. I stopped into the disorganized and crowded Yarn Basket in Mashpee (no website). There was so much in the store that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, but the elderly owner DID have a nice collection of both basic and more exotic sock yarn to one side - and we all know I love souvenir sock yarn!

I ended up with yarn for three pairs - this first ball is ONLine Supersocke 100 Circle Color (rav link), which I’ve never used before, to make a pair of socks for my host friend:

This is the famous Noro Kureyon Sock (rav link):

I haven’t ever owned or knit anything out of Noro, so I’m really looking forward to some stripey socks out of that ball. I also purchased some Noro Silk Garden Sock from a fellow Raveler earlier this week, so that should be arriving shortly as well!

And the last purchase from the Yarn Basket was Froehlich Wolle Special Blauband:

I’ve made at least two pairs of striped socks from Blauband in the past and I think it’s a good strong workhorse sock yarn like Regia: not super-exciting to knit up, but a long-lasting product. This color is gorgeous and softer than I remember and I can’t wait to see how it looks knit up!

We’re leaving tomorrow and the weather is not supposed to improve before that, so my plan for the next 24 hours is to just keep working on the cardigan I’m designing/knitting for myself and possibly making into a pattern. Sometimes rainy summer vacations are great!

It was a few months ago now, but I started this hat on a Thursday evening and gave it as a gift that Saturday, so I’m calling the pattern Thursday. Not a terribly creative name, but neither is the hat. This hat was made for a man who likes things masculine and simple. The pattern is plain enough that a regular man (one that wouldn’t want anyone commenting on his hand-knit items) might actually wear it with some regularity. And a person could use a less fuzzy yarn to make it even more manly if necessary.

And since it’s only Tuesday you have plenty of time to get to the yarn store or do some stash-searching and knit one of these as a Valentine’s gift…

>>Thursday:

yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Suri Merino, less than one skein (approx. 95 yards for 5″ version)
needles: set of 3.5mm dpns
gauge: 22 stitches and 29 rows over 4″ in un-stretched 3×1 rib pattern

Sized to fit most average heads. My head is on the larger side and the recipient’s head is on the smaller side and it fit each of us with equal comfort. Thank you to ribbing.

K = knit
P = purl
SSK = slip 1 knitwise, slip another knitwise, knit those 2 slipped stitches together through back loop
K2TOG = knit 2 together

>>Main Portion:

Loosely cast on 100 sts (I used a long-tail cast on because I like the border it makes, but you could use a tubular cast on for increased stretch). Divide between needles and join in the round, being careful not to twist.

*K2, P1, K1, repeat from * 24 times to end of round.

Repeat this round until 5″ from cast on edge (or 6″ for a hat that covers ears more fully).

>>Decrease Rounds:

1: *K1, SSK, K3, P1, K3, P1, K3, P1, K3, K2TOG, repeat from * until end of round. (90 sts remain)
2 and all even rounds through 18: follow stitches as set in previous row - K the knit stitches and decreases, P the purl stitches.
3: *K1, SSK, K2, P1, K3, P1, K3, P1, K2, K2TOG, repeat from * until end of round. (80 sts remain)
5: *K1, SSK, K1, P1, K3, P1, K3, P1, K1, K2TOG, repeat from * until end of round. (70 sts remain)
7: *K1, SSK, P1, K3, P1, K3, P1, K2TOG, repeat from * until end of round. (60 sts remain)
9: *K1, SSK, K3, P1, K3, K2TOG, repeat from * until end of round. (50 sts remain)
11: *K1, SSK, K2, P1, K2, K2TOG, repeat from * until end of round. (40 sts remain)
13: *K1, SSK, K1, P1, K1, K2TOG, repeat from * until end of round. (30 sts remain)
15: *K1, SSK, P1, K2TOG, repeat from * until end of round. (20 sts remain)
17: K1, place marker to designate new start of round, *SSK, repeat from * until end of round (at marker). (10 sts remain)
19: *SSK, repeat from * until end of round. (5 sts remain)
20: cut yarn with a long tail remaining, thread through remaining five stitches and remove from needles, secure.

>>Weave in ends and block if desired.

(my apologies for the photos - I didn’t take a proper set before gifting… I’m sure I’ll make a second at some point and will try to remember to update)

Forgive me interwebs for I have sinned - it has been more than a month since my last post. SO much work on my plate usually leads to my getting buckets of other stuff (knitting, cleaning, etc) done as well, and this season has been no exception! Since I last checked in here I have knit a hat, two pairs of socks (one for the Knit Outside the Sox contest and one as my yearly tradition for my father’s Christmas present), and have started a third pair (belated Christmas gift for my friend Janie)…

This is the pair I knit my father:

pattern: made up

yarn: Fortissima Socka

started: 22 December 2008

completed: 31 December 2008

But I still haven’t finished seaming Demi or my NaKniSweMo sweater. As predicted, I have a sleeve left to complete, but I’ll get there… eventually.

For Christmas I received some lovely fiber-y gifts from my family (and some lovely non-knitting related items as well). My similarly-fiber-obsessive aunt Kate gave me an Ashford Turkish Spindle and some lovely (and local - the farm is about 20 minutes from my parents’ house) Vashon Alpaca Fibers to learn to spin. I wasn’t planning on taking up spinning, but I’ve been dreaming about it recently and I’m excited to learn to make yarn… especially since she picked a perfect gift without any hints! And my mother gave me the items necessary to turn this Koigu I received Christmas 2006:

into this:

I’ve always considered a swift and ball winder to be a knitting luxury; I’ve been winding balls by hand since I was just a little kid… and why spend that money when I could be use it to buy more yarn! But now that I have the goods I wonder how I managed to be so patient in the past!

Here’s wishing everyone a happy and hopeful 2009!

Last weekend I decided to start a new sweater and participate in NaKniSweMo 2008 (ravelry link)… apparently I missed the memo about the month being half over already! So I knit up some swatches and washed and blocked them and cast on for Notre Dame de Grace last Monday - the 17th.

I doubt I’ll finish the whole sweater by the end of the month, but I’m going to try anyway. And this is on top of the currently hectic work schedule… crazy! This new sweater is probably also partially to avoid attaching the sleeves and sewing the buttons onto Demi. I really dislike attaching sleeves…

But anyway, this is how far I got Monday:

Not too bad, right? That’s about a quarter of the body before it splits for armholes (yes, I’ve adjusted yet another pattern to be knit in the round - who needs seams?). I have a feeling the sleeves will be my downfall; sleeves always take a lot longer than I think they will - and a lot more yarn. Maybe I should cast on a sleeve and alternate work between the body and the sleeve?

And this is a picture of the pirate girl playmobil keychain that the FAO Schwarz salesman gave me Wednesday in front of a mountain of reddish double seed stitch that night:

And I finished the back on Friday while watching Casino Royale. I’m glad this pattern is so simple; I would have been too busy watching the movie to work on something more complicated! I do believe he is my favorite Bond yet.

I’m just about halfway through the five skeins of the Ultra Alpaca I bought this summer from WEBS, so I’m a little worried that I will run out of yarn before finishing the sleeves, but hopefully it’ll be just right! I’ve been planning to knit this sweater since the pattern first came out - I bought the magazine right away strictly because of this sweater - and it seems the perfect time to be knitting it up ’cause it’s just now becoming cold enough here for a sweater under my coat.

And I will have lots of knitting time on the train this week as I have to go to Boston for work…

On my list for Rhinebeck was yarn to make the man I’ve been dating a hat (upon his request). I had not yet picked a specific pattern, but I have always admired the Koolhaas design (ravelry link). Wait a second - “always”?!? - didn’t it come out just a year ago? Ha! Moving on… I am, however, decidedly NOT a fan of the library building in Seattle that inspired the design.

At the back of a bottom shelf at the Oak Grove booth (ravelry link) I found a lovely merino/angora blend (which they don’t seem to make anymore) in an almost-solid midnight blue called “ink.” It was a perfect match for the Koolhaas pattern and not at all itchy for his clean-shaven head. I was pretty sure it would only take the 150 yards found in a single skein, but I decided to buy a second… just in case. But what if I wanted to knit a second hat out of the same lovely yarn? I ended up buying all three skeins on the shelf; they were very reasonably priced and are the perfect color to make hats for persons with fair skin and blue eyes (which just happens to include the man and my entire family and myself).

During my first week in Baltimore we had our evenings off, which meant plenty of knitting time in front of the TV in my hotel room (a double treat since I don’t have a television at home). I finished the hat in just two days. Then I tried it on. And it hasn’t left my head since. It’s not masculine enough for the man anyway (he confirmed this when he saw it yesterday), which means I’m keeping it and knitting him something plain and based on a hat I bought at J.Crew eight years ago and still wear frequently. And the third skein will become a duplicate Koolhaas for my mother as a birthday or Christmas gift. I wonder if she stops through here regularly enough that I just ruined the surprise… I guess there’s only one way to find out!

pattern: Koolhaas by Jared Flood
size: smaller
yarn: Oak Grove 25% Angora 75% Merino, color: Ink
needles: 3.75mm INOX dpns
started: 23 October 2008
finished: 25 October 2008
notes: I didn’t change the pattern at all; it’s perfect as is.

I finished my first planned Christmas gift of the year during Socktober…

I started these Hederas (Ravelry link) on a train to Connecticut to visit a friend and her fiance,

started the second of the pair on the bus up to Rhinebeck for the Sheep and Wool Festival and finished them on the train to Baltimore where we did the tech rehearsals for the first national tour of the How the Grinch Stole Christmas musical (Coming soon to a city near you! If you happen to live near Boston, that is… next year we’ll be expanding to others, though).

These socks are a gift for my friend who just moved to Australia with her boyfriend (his job relocated him for the next two years). After completing the pair I realized that Christmas happens during the summer for those persons living in the southern hemisphere - oops! I associate Christmas with cold weather and wool socks and the like. Oh well. I’m pretty sure she’ll like them as she has admired on more than one occasion a pair of Hederas that I knit for myself.

The yarn is Trekking XXL, which I love for gift giving because it tends to hold up pretty well to being tossed into the washer and dryer and I would never expect people to hand wash items I knit them unless they are specifically requested. Her feet are just a touch bigger than mine and I’ve made her a pair of socks before that fit her, so hopefully these will also as I probably won’t see her for quite a while to make adjustments.

pattern: Hedera out of Spring 2006 Knitty by Cookie A
yarn: Trekking XXL color 145 from The Loopy Ewe WEBS
needles: my trusty sidekicks, four INOX 2mm dpns
started: 11 October 2008
finished: 24 October 2008
mods/notes: I shortened the heel flap, but I think that’s the only change. Also, I <3 Hederas - if you like to knit socks haven’t knit the pattern already then you should.