Wool For Brains

This has taken me way too long to finish, I had a week off for a dodgy shoulder but the real thing that has held it up has been that I didn’t want to knit any more of the edging. I worked out the numbers based on my thicker yarn and to get the large size I needed 27 repeats rather than 31. I’ve worked this out several times and I know that it’s right (28 actually but seeing as the pattern has an odd number I rounded down). I’ve knitted and knitted and every five repeats I’ve stopped and checked the calculations again. It is really, really long and my inner knitter has deep misgivings about the whole thing. I checked the gauge on the pattern and 31 repeats gives an edging that is just under 2.5m long which is about what I have. I remain unconvinced about the whole thing.

The other slight hiccup was the yarn. I have three skeins and when I first looked at them I decided after close inspection that there were two the same and one very distinctly lighter. My plan was to use one of the darker skeins for the edging and then alternate the lighter skein with the remnants and the new ball in the body of the shawl. This would have worked just fine if the two skeins that I decided were the same had been as close in colour in reality as they were in my mind. When the first one ran out after half a mile of edging it turned out that the second was distinctly darker. How I laughed as I ripped out a foot of edging to alternate rows with the new, darker ball.

I’m hoping that it is now plain sailing with mindless short rows of garter stitch until I reach the ends of the needles. There is the possibility that I might run out of yarn before I get that far but I’ll deal with that if it happens. At the moment my inner knitter says I’ll be fine and she’s usually right so I’m not starting to worry just yet.

I do have other knitting although plain black socks are not the most photogenic project in the world. It struck me recently that if I intended making David another pair of socks to wear to band then I’d better get on with it. In another month or two we’ll have hit the season of flat grey light and early nights. Then won’t the time to be knitting black. I’m not convinced that there is ever a right time to be knitting black but there are certainly times that are less bad than others.

Next time there should hopefully be a long thin piece of lace to show, providing I manage to find somewhere to block it of course.

I had thought that last week would have been all weaving all of the time but the wheels fell off the cart when the endless cone of grey yarn that I’ve been using for weft since last summer came to an end. After that I needed to think about what I was doing, the third scarf made itself and then my plans for the next were scuppered by there being not enough of one of the yarns. I could have sorted it out easily enough but my lack of enthusiasm for doing so told me that I’d had enough. (Left to right, bag, bag, scarf, all have handspun warp, scarf has handspun for warp and weft)

The reason that I expected it to be a weaving week is that this is the view from my usual knitting spot.  They did a fantastic job putting the scaffolding up without interfering with access to the door or garage and we can still park as usual. It totally blocks out satellite tv reception but we can all live without the box for a week. I spent a few days attempting to not look out of the window but it was surprising how quickly I got used to it and then it was back to knitting as usual. (Check for positive language and lack of moaning – PASS)

This is the start of Amalia, it’s another crescent shaped shawl that starts with the edging and is shaped with short rows. The yarn is thicker than the pattern calls for and so I’ll need fewer repeats to get the same length of edging. I’m nearing the point where I should really work out just how many repeats that is before I overshoot, make it huge and run out of yarn before I finish.

I’ve been dyeing too, there’s a bit of a theme here caused by me having recently been on holiday although I have to confess that the sky was not that blue and the sand was not that golden. Front to back this is Dorset horn, Wensleydale, superwash merino lace and silk brick. The silk brick is staying home as it has a bleeding turquoise issue but the rest will be shop-bound when I manage to resurrect it. The shop went in holiday at the same time as we did but didn’t come back. I imagine it out there somewhere lazing on a beach, sipping cocktails and watching fantastic sunsets. It could at least send a postcard.

I really dislike having work done in the house. It doesn’t matter how much of an improvement there will be after everyone has packed up and gone, it’s the process that bugs me. I’m tied in while people come and go, the dog wants to drive them all away or have a sneaky sniff in their pockets, there’s usually dust and noise and it’s all just pants really. Previous home improvements have included having the fence removed and then the fence team vanishing for two weeks, having the shower ripped out and then finding that the specialist manufacturer of odd sized shower doors had stopped making them. There was the excitement of the replacement double glazed windows that were the wrong colour and the new oven that was white instead of stainless. I could go on but that’s enough to show that my experience of having work done on the house has not been totally positive. It occurred to me that even if the builders were busy putting in a dedicated wool room with voice activated tea production, a moth annihilator and an automatic wool desiccator I’d still whine about it. I am trying to be positive, to focus on the outcome rather than the process and to believe that this time things will go well. I am also trying to give myself something to think about if it all goes wrong. Not that it will of course, I’m being positive remember.

These are not colours I would have put together, it’s the pink that I’m not enamored of. To be truthful I don’t much like the green either. Happily these aren’t for me and the recipient likes them so all is well. These are Opal, wool with cotton for summer socks, and I bought the ball because there was a choice of two colours in cotton rich and the other was even less appealing. These will forever be holiday socks and you have to like them for that.

Guess what – I don’t like the colours of these either, all Finding Nemo with added pink. The selling point with this one was that it was cheap, when it’s £3.50 a ball it can be whatever colour it likes. I did plan on overdyeing it but when I was packing for my holiday it was close to hand. We will get to see what it looks like after a dye bath because I bought two balls (it was cheap remember).

I can’t rely on socks to keep me in a positive frame of mind this week so I’ve turned to weaving. This is a selection from the big black sack of yarn that periodically I feel ashamed about. I’m hoping that the feel good factor from using up stash yarn will see me through the week. I’ll weave until I’ve run through this pile of yarn or until I’ve had enough, the idea is that they’ll all be about 80″ long and 6″ wide and I’ll make them into one piece bags (like this one). If I was organised enough I’d wind the warps and bag them up with the wefts but I’m capable of changing my mind at any time about what goes together.

If that’s not enough to keep my mind off the noise then I have a fallback. Yet again I’m not sold on the colour but as it’s foster knitting and not mine that doesn’t matter. This is lace in superwash sock yarn again and I think I’m forming an opinion. More about that another time..

My plan was that you wouldn’t notice that I was away because the blog was left home alone to update itself in my absence. This worked faultlessly but seeing as the router went into a terminal sulk hours after we left on holiday no-one could see the blog, updated or not. I couldn’t see it anyway because there are still areas of the country where you can’t get a mobile signal (not on any of three networks) and that’s where we were. (If you are marvelling at the accommodation I should add that it wasn’t all ours, it has been divided into four.) Some of us learned how to read a tide table and had a demonstration on why it is important to know which way the tide is running. Get it wrong and it’s worse than just getting your feet wet because there’s no beach left at high tide and no way of getting up the cliffs. This is why there are tide tables posted here, there and everywhere except this is not effective if you don’t know how to read one. We met one lady who got it exactly wrong and thought that the height (larger figure in metres = high tide) was the amount of beach you could see.

This was the state of my holiday knitting at the end of the week, I’d planned to put beads on the lace except they hadn’t come by the time that I left. That means that I now have 40g of turquoise beads to add to the 40g of red beads that I put aside the other week. The socks still aren’t finished, they only need the toes grafting but I haven’t got to that yet. I could blame the mountain of laundry that I’ve been working on since getting home but that is clearly not an explanation as I managed to find time to block the lace.

This is Merope in some sort of cashmere/silk from the back of the drawer. I overdyed it but I think that it originally came in robin’s egg blue with big patches of undyed yarn (yes, it was cheap, that was why I bought it). It’s the same yarn as I used for the little flippy thing and I had no idea how much of it I had left. I made the small size (27″ by 58″) because I was worried about running out of yarn but I suspect that I had enough to make the larger size. I made life hard for myself by leaving the second chart at home, giving myself a choice between putting it aside or working from the written instructions. It took me a day to ponder it but the written instuctions saw me through to the end. I didn’t like it though and grumbled my way through each line but I can do it if I have to

I haven’t sewn the ends in, I know that I’ll not wear it so it has a future as a gift or a swap item. I’ve learned from experience that if I leave the yarn tails hanging it means that I can be certain that it’s not been worn and then there can be no confusion at some future date. (Modelling services again provided by Helga the hanger, it beats trying to get the junior photographer to photograph the things that I want him to)

I just have one more holiday photo to show, there’s no sense of scale on this so I could pretend it’s a fossil of huge proportions but it’s really small enough to cover with the tip of my index finger. It’s still a fossil though, even if it is tiny.

There’s still no hot knitting but the moderately boring stuff is moving along nicely. I will admit that these have some good points. They look ok from a distance, they fit well enough and their owner thinks they are fantastic. I’m just glad they are finished. It is a lovely pattern (Musica) but should I make these again I’d use thicker yarn. You can see his arm through the cuff, it’s a loose fabric and just not right. That put me off them right from the start and as a result I didn’t take as much care as I should have done with the floats and the pattern. There are mistakes front and back and all in all the quality is poor. When you are ten you don’t notice these things. I am not ten and I do.

I need not have worried about running out of the lime yarn, there was enough and to spare. I have a satsuma sized ball left over which is good because I have a plan for that already. I had bought the the main colour because it was bright and zingy, well it looked bright in the ball but after I’d worked the cuff it wasn’t looking zingy enough. I did think about making inch wide stripes but couldn’t face the joins so a spiral it was. They are another pair until wash day or a replacement for an eight year old pair (I had a recount, the oldest ones are eight not six as I’d first thought) Not even hand knit socks last forever.

I gave this a fair chance, I knitted on long after I knew that it was destined to be a flop in the hope that it would magically redeem itself. The pattern was just right for tv knitting, minimal beading, minimal lace but the yarn was all wrong. Schaeffer Anne is a lovely sock yarn, high twist, superwash and shiny but it’s not speaking to me as a lace yarn. Actually it was speaking to me, it was saying “I’m all wrong for this, I’m making a bouncy springy fabric that is never going to hold a block and I need to go back into the yarn drawer.” I did eventually see the light and slipped it off the needle and back into the ball. I now have 40g of silver lined red 6/0 beads to add to the bead box.

What am I knitting? It looks like it will be socks, socks and socks for a while because there’s less chance of messing up with those.

Sorry – blog has been broken this week, fixed now, more details (and knitting) next time

This is what you get when you check in to a £280 a night hotel. That’s not quite right, that should read “this is what you get when your husband checks into a £280 a night hotel”. There was one more, a cocoa covered truffle but that evaporated before the camera saw it. While I was walking the dog I was considering a blog post comparing my life to a box of chocolates but decided that the comparison was way off the mark. There are lovely choccies (cocoa truffle), average choccies (orange cream) and those that I will throw in the bin if I can’t find a taker (turkish delight). Over the last couple of weeks my life has been heavy on the turkish delight but where the comparison falls down is that some people do like sticky pink sickly sweet jelly, it’s just not to my taste. I don’t think there’s anyone who would like dog poop on their sandals, a blocked toilet and the dreaded “engine fault” light appearing on their new car all in the same afternoon.

My turkish delight moments are behind me now (or so I dearly hope), my knitting is picking up but I’ve still not hit form. I’ve only had three ripped projects this week so it’s better than last week anyway. Spinning is off, weaving is off so it’s knitting or bust at the moment. You might expect then that there would be rather more of it to show but there’s nothing in the knitting bag that I have a lot of love for so progress is slow. I don’t have anything that can’t be put down but I have a few things that I don’t want to pick up.

The toes still don’t match but at least now they aren’t two inches out. They fit and when they are on feet you can’t tell that one is two rows longer in the foot than the other. I’d love to tell you what the yarn was, something from a Ravelry destash that was cheaper than I can buy undyed, but the ball band went the way of all good things. These are husband socks because some of the six year old pairs really need to be retired now.

These are still not finished, I really dislike knitting them and they are probably the poorest quality knitting I’ve produced in years. This is all because the sock yarn I used doesn’t want to be knitted to the tension needed for the pattern. If I was to knit them again I’d probably use dk weight, I’d also lose the notes on the cuff because they are longer than I’d want to wear. There are mistakes front and back but if I’d taken the needles out to fix it I would have ripped them all the way back. The pattern is lovely, it’s a well balanced treble clef, but I’m not convinced that sock yarn is the best choice for it. Daniel loves them and that’s what matters.

These are not finished but have passed the point where I might have ripped them. I can’t decide whether I like them or not, I wanted something bright and cheerful and this had the added benefit of using up scraps. It shouldn’t be possible to make the snarled mess that I did working both socks at once from two centre pull balls but if they’d been any longer I might have had to cut the working yarn just to be able to sort the tangle out. I knew when I started that I’d rat it all up but I convinced myself that this time would be different, this time I’d keep everything separate and not make a mess. (Why did I set myself up for a mess? Well I wasn’t sure that I’d have enough lime to reach the toes so by working from a centre pull ball at least I’d run out in the same place on both)

I’m undecided on this too, I might like it when it’s done but at the moment it’s not guaranteed a future in the knitting bag. This is the start of the Maia shoulderette in Schaeffer Anne sock yarn. It’s a blood red colour rather than the pinky red my camera is showing me and there are beads on it, not that you can see them. My issue with it is that (again) I’m not convinced that this is the right yarn for the job. I haven’t knitted lace with sock yarn before and it feels all wrong somehow. It’s too slick and springy and I’m not feeling the love. I like the pattern though so that’s something. I suspect this might have a test block in its future, it’s always a dangerous place for a project to be because it’s vulnerable when it’s off the needles. It has to convince me that it is worth the effort and at the moment it is not trying hard enough.

Hopefully by next time I will have knuckled down and knitted some fingers as I’m running out of excuses for not doing it. “I don’t want to” is the real truth but that’s not good enough is it?

No doubt you were expecting to see a procession of new wips now that I’ve allowed myself to start some. I know that’s what I was hoping for but we don’t always get what we wish for. I’ve started and ripped so many things this week that by Saturday I was seriously wondering if I’d only dreamed that I could knit because clearly I was rubbish at it. Three projects have been ripped without photos, two were a clear mismatch of yarn and pattern and the other was just a “what was I thinking?”.

This little thing will probably be back in the yarn drawer by the time you read this. This is the start of a Pimpelliese, started from both ends with the plan to graft it in the middle and make best use of the 600 yards of yarn. The yarn is not the silk I showed before, that was mulberry brick and this is all sorts of tussah odds and ends. It’s not as shiney and I don’t feel the same love for it as for the other, this is just yarn. It’s been ripped once already and I don’t think that this incarnation will last the day. There’s nothing actually wrong with it except for that first repeat where I charted what the pattern said except that it didn’t say that at all and I created three stitches that had to be lost somewhere. The advantage of working both ends together is that they match so now it’s a feature.

I don’t like this either. This is the first of a pair of Musica handwarmers and the fact that it’s been blocked whilst still on the needles tells you a lot about my feelings for it. The only reason I haven’t ripped it is that Daniel has seen it, it’s for him and if I ripped it I’d have to leave home. The basic thing wrong with it is the tension. I cannot knit sock yarn to 7 stitches per inch even on 3.25mm needles. The black yarn is very slightly thinner than the white, they’re both slippery superwash so there’s no fluff to fill in the gaps where the stitches should be. This was the main piece of evidence to support my theory that I haven’t a clue about knitting, I have ladders, uneven tension, short floats and I can’t believe that I knitted it. Daniel will have to be coached to say “No, mum bought these in a shop and she says the quality is pants”. The terrible thing is that I have to make the right hand next. If I was making another pair I’d use smaller needles to get a fabric that looked right and then add the necessary extra stitches to the pattern. I thought about that whilst on the ribbing but of course I didn’t listen to me.

Fortunately when all else fails there is still a sock. What can go wrong with a sock? Don’t answer that, I already know. I am just surprised that I can still find new and inventive ways to mess up my knitting. I was knitting away on this last night (because of course I didn’t have anything else on the needles that was worth knitting) and thought I’d better check the length. I was pleased to find that I’d checked just in time, I was exactly at the point where the yarn changed to black and the toe shaping started. I hadn’t realised that I was that far down the foot, another row and I’d have been tinking back. This morning I’ve finished the toe, cut the yarn and noticed that the foot looked rather short, exactly one pattern repeat short in fact.

Hello. my name is Caroline and I used to be a knitter.

I’ve not eliminated the pile of wips but good enough will do. I managed to get the four small bobbins into one big skein, 1400 yards of skinnyish polworth. The bottom braid was dyed in beautiful British Columbia and came to me from a swap on Ravelry. I had plans for something huge and lacey, changing colour along its length. Unless I concentrate my standard skinny yarn runs around 700 yard/100g and that isn’t going to knit up huge. I got an undyed braid from the same person in a later swap, dyed that in vaguely similar colours with the aim of plying the two together to double the yardage.

I also finished up the baby jacket. This is Phazelia’s mitered baby jacket again with the same level bottom mods as last time. With this one I knitted the body before the sleeves thereby committing myself to knitting the sleeves in the round. The one good point about that is that when you reach the bottom of the sleeve you need to work each side seperately when knitting flat and if it’s in the round you don’t. Should I knit another I’d knit it flat because I dislike purling on dpns even more than sewing a seam. I think I’m done with these now, two was enough.

I did slack off on Sunday and play with some silk with the able assistance of my son. We made three pieces of silk paper (aka silk fusion), two of which I let dry flat for another day’s play. This is basically papier mache using silk fibre and glue (I do have photos of the process if anyone is interested). I haven’t tried it yet but it’s supposed to soften again when wet so it can be shaped at a later date. The third piece, in teacher’s favourite colour, is now a pen pot for her desk. The jam jar gives it some stability because otherwise there is no weight to it at all. There will be some more of this coming along because I have 200g of throwster’s waste to get rid of somehow and I’m not planning on spinning it.

The last piece of knitting in the pile (socks don’t count) was the toddler sundress. This is now in time out because although I’ve thrown lots of knitting time at it it is still many inches short. It’s not done but I am. If it hadn’t been in stripes I would have ripped it by now just to see it gone but I’ve plodded on (and on and on). It will lose 20% of the length in the first wash so although it looks a good length already it isn’t really. It is now going in a bag under the stairs for a month while I try to forget what it is I dislike about it.

I am now going to cast on for something fun. I’ve been a good girl and worked hard on the work in progress this week but I’m over it now.

After I’d trawled out the various bits and pieces of work in progress I decided to work hard on reducing the numbers. Every knitter has their own views on what constitutes an acceptable level of work in progress, it varies from one person to another but the number that they feel happy with is the right number for them. For me, at least this week, that heap is too big. It’s not just about the numbers either, I know that the reason that some of those things are not finished is because they are stuck. I need to decide whether the sock needs a toe and as that is not knitting it’s not happening. The blanket needs some sort of edging and I can’t decide what. The baby jacket ran out of interesting yarn way too early and the sundress is just no fun. If I cast on for something else then they will linger longer so I’ve put the silk out of sight for now. I decided to chip away at it, one win a day and by focussing on what I have already started I might take my mind off the silk.

Day one of the new wiploss programme (Tuesday) was a clear success by anyone’s standards. I measured the length of fabric, cut it into three and sewed it back together again. The reason it had been sitting about was that I couldn’t decide how to finish the edges, satin binding, candy cane binding, something with prairie points? In the end I did none of those and just hemmed the ends, leaving the sides as they were. I’ve pressed it, sewed the ends in from stitching the seams and it’s as done as a baby blanket needs to be. Final measurements were 36″ by 31″ wide, it’s a scrap sock yarn warp with superwash laceweight weft. It’s a clasped weft which means that it’s doubled and the doubled laceweight is just about the same weight as sock yarn. I used the 12.5 dpi reed, I started off with the 10 but it didn’t look right. It’s just as well that it came out narrower than I’d planned because otherwise it would have been huge.

Day two – there was measureable progress in that I filled a third bobbin with green polworth. The rest will fit on the very last bobbin and then I’ll have a massive plying session. I had this set aside for a Tour de Fleece project but I’m not much of a joiner and I’d filled the first bobbin on the Friday before the start. I watch the cycling every day and I spin most days but that’s as far as it goes

Day three – one sock down, one to go. This has been sitting on hold for a week because I needed to make the decision of whether to start the toe and that seemed to be too taxing in an evening. I spent five minutes during the day doing the measuring and then that got me past the stage that I was stuck on. The second sock is always easier because all I have to do is make it match the first, no thinking about “is the cuff long enough?”, “what heel should I make?”, “is it time for the toe yet?” just match and knit.

Day four (Friday) – The last bobbin of Polworth is done. I’ve gone right off green which is a bit of a shame because I have 8oz of it to ply now and by the time I’ve finished that I imagine that knitting it would be out of the question. I don’t really feel like plying it but it’s filling four bobbins and I don’t feel like winding it off for storage either.

That seems to be the right place to stop because if I continue I think I’ll be looking at a fail for day five. If I give myself the weekend off then there’s a chance that something might be finished by Monday but there’s no realistic chance of a win for tomorrow.

So what happened in a week? I was wondering what I should blog about and why it is that it’s been a week and yet I have surprisingly little to show. I looked at my last post and there was a clue in the pink silk. I stopped spinning when I’d had enough of it, 752 yards, 68g (I’m back to the international scale measure of the Tictac). This looks more purple than the pink fluff in my last post, that’s because when I came to set the twist I added a bit of purple dye to darken it. It’s my current favourite thing, I love it to the extent that I’m prepared to overlook that I don’t like knitting silk and I keep eyeing it up for a little shawl thing.

This is the other reason why I have nothing to show, it looks as if I had a quick burst of startitis somewhere along the line. The pink silk counts as finished but everything else is sitting around the halfway mark. The weaving needs cutting into three and sewing back together again, there’s a baby jacket that is stuck on the sleeves because my favourite yarn ran out, a toddler’s sundress that is going on and on without end and two bobbins of green that are waiting to meet the other two bobbins that I haven’t spun yet. There’s a lot of activity but not much output. I am telling myself that if I just focus then something will get done but what I want to do is ignore the rest and play with the silk.

I took some books out from the library this week because I clearly have nothing else to be doing in the evenings other than reading. It’s only a small village library but of late  the craft section has produced a few pearls, my prize this week was “Freeform Style”. We will overlook that it’s decades since I used a crochet hook for anything other than a provisional cast on or adding beads to knitting, I used to be able to do it and I’m sure it would come back to me. The project that caught my eye was the one on the cover, the big red wrap. There is no way I’d ever make it as written, it starts off by knitting a square rectangle 40″ wide and 48″ long and then fulling it to around a yard square and that is never going to happen. It would work with woven yardage, full it, cut it apart and then add wide pieces of crochet insertion to make a hybrid item that is much bigger than the fabric you started with. I suppose I really ought to start with a sample before leaping into major yardage which leaves me with the question of where do I keep the crochet hooks?

There were no more worms this week, no worm houses or worm workwear. I’m glad about that but I don’t think I’m off the hook yet. We’re now on a James Bond theme (the name is Link, Worms Link) and this is Mr Link finally tracking down the archvillan Goldenworm. The narration for this page runs along the lines of “and Worms says “I have you now, Goldenworm” and Goldenworm, disguised in his green knitted bodysuit says “Who’s Goldenworm?” ” My escape plan is to provide half a dozen drawing pads and hope for safety in numbers.