Wool For Brains

What can you knit with a single ball of Kidsilk Haze? You could do worse than this. This is a Sivia Harding design, the Angel Pearls Beaded Scarf (available as a download from the Knitting Zone for those of us who don’t want to wait for international shipping). The beads are 8/0 jade with a silver lining (ebay seller Reeds Beads) leftover from a sock project. It’s actually not knitted from Kidsilk Haze but Alessandra Kid Seta, same composition, same yardage. If you took the label off I couldn’t tell it apart from the Rowan version. The beads act as a handy pattern marker, there is only one row in the pattern repeat that has two beads so that makes it easy to see exactly how many repeats you’ve knitted. According to the pattern I could have knitted one more repeat but I’d had enough of it by then and it was long enough. After blocking it came out to 6″ by 60″ which is “long enough” in my book. It’s been finished for weeks but it’s had to wait for me to be in the mood for blocking.

Yesterday when I said that I had no projects lurking in the wardrobe that was true in so far as it went but I didn’t disclose the one that was lurking in the knitting bag failing to knit itself. This has been on the needles since September, it had an earlier start than the blog but you’ve never seen it. There have been glimpses of it but it wasn’t something that I was proud of. From the outset I’ve known that it wasn’t right but I’ve stubbornly kept on with it. The photo shows it two rows shy of the central motif, the spiders and webs of the last band have been a pain in the behind as I can’t read my knitting on one of the sections and I have to count all the way across. Every time I get to the top of the pattern I think I’m done but then I find I have to repeat it again. That’s usually the point where I stuff it back to the bottom of the bag.

This is the Inky Dinky Spider Stole, in Cherry Tree Hill Suri Lace Alpaca on a 3mm needle. It’s a project with a history. Once upon a time (back in 2005 when I started knitting again) I saw this stole knitted in this yarn and I decided there and then that when I was good enough I was going to knit one just like that. I bought the pattern and stashed the yarn, starting with two skeins that I had bought for something else, and continued to dream about the day that I would be good enough to knit it. Time passed. By the time I was good enough to knit it (small slippery hairy yarn, lace patterning on every row) I was experienced to know that the yarn and the pattern weren’t right for each other. A complex pattern needs a plain yarn to show it off, not one that is purple, turquoise and black. I knew it was not going to be a good combination but I cast it on anyway because that was my ultimate dream knit, the dream yarn and the dream pattern. I had a good hard look at it right at the start and I knew it was wrong then. The voice of my inner knitter was very clear about it but I had my fingers in my ears and wasn’t listening la la la lah. My rationalisation was that this for me and if I liked it that was all that mattered. It’s about the process not the product. I pinned it out and had a good look at it in October and I should have ripped it then because it wasn’t working. Progress was slow because my heart wasn’t in it, it was not a pile of poop but it wasn’t right either and to knit five repeats of a 30 row pattern that you don’t much like really needs you to feel the love. It would look just as pretty in garter stitch with a bit of a border and if I’d done that it would have been finished long ago. I pinned it out again yesterday and imagined myself wearing it. I would be forever feeling the need to explain that I really know better than to knit a complex pattern in a busy yarn.

Just because it was my dream knit doesn’t mean it was any good. I pinned it out, made a cup of tea, had a good look at it and ripped it out. Now that I’ve done it I don’t regret the decision at all and wish I’d done it six months sooner. It was pretty though and in a strange way I do miss it. On the other hand I feel only joy when I know that I don’t have to knit that spider and web chart another five times on the other side.

These two black books tell the story of my recent knitting projects, even the ones that never made it to a cast off. They start on 10th November 2005 because that’s the day I decided that I needed a knitting journal rather than a random collection of bits of paper that were too easily lost or converted to shopping lists and then thrown away. The first little black book had about three updates a week, each starts with a list of what’s on the needles and what’s finished or ripped since the previous entry. In the later pages it tells me what I was spinning at the time. It’s why I can say exactly how many socks I made last year and how many more were started but ripped. The back of the book has the good stuff, the shorthand for grafting because I can never remember how to start, the Sirdar Indigo vs Rowan Denim swatch test, the pattern notes for the husband sweater, the stitch repeat for several sock patterns, the yards per pound of various sock yarns, the list of things I’d like to knit/spin next. Over a year I filled the book, there were about five pages spare when I treated myself to another one. My son helped me decorate the second one with suitable stickers. You can see that he defines his mum by tea and sheep, in part this is because there were no alpacas in his sticker collection.

The really useful thing about the book is the list of what’s on the needles. That includes everything that’s not in the state of yarn so all those half finished items stuck in the wardrobe would be on the list (if I had any, which I don’t, at least not at the moment). I can look back and see when I started things and consider why it is that they aren’t yet finished. That’s really why I ripped so many socks, their continued presence on the list made me consider exactly why it was that I didn’t want to knit them and address what it was about them that was in some way wrong.

The one thing I cannot get to grips with is writing down what size needles I used. Socks are easy, thin yarn is on 2mm needles, normal yarn is on 2.75mm. As I only have two sizes of double point needles that could possibly be construed as sock needles it’s not rocket science to reconstruct what needles I used. I either decide that I can remember what needle I used or I think that it’s not important. Before you recoil at the thought of needle size not being important let us consider the hated hat. It’s just a hat, I’m only making one of it so there are no parts to match at a later date and I’m never going to want to make another. What earthly use is there for making a note of the needle size? Well, once you’ve made the hat and decided that although it is pants there’s a possibility that the yarn could sub for Noro in a sweater you could use the hat as the gauge swatch. You could if you knew the needle size, if not then you have to knit another swatch.

Note to self, write down needle sizes because you never know when it might become important.

My email address is fixed now so WFB shall bounce no more. It was a two person fix, presumably one of them held the internet down whilst the other hit it with a big hammer, but fixed it is. I am also mended (without the assistance of two people and a hammer), after two days where I was not wanting to knit anything I then returned to normality with a bit of convalescent knitting. When you’re feeling iffy there is nothing to beat garter stitch on big needles especially when it’s something that you’ve previously knitted dozens of times before. This is a multidirectional scarf, the pattern for which can be found all over the internet, in something that looks a bit Noro-ish. It isn’t of course (don’t like Noro, won’t pay for it), it’s this yarn that was previously seen in a hat. I personally think it looks a whole lot better as a scarf than a hat, it’s a good example of a pattern showing off the best features of your yarn. Yes, I know it’s only a stripe but it’s still a design feature. I ripped that batt up with the full intention of making it stripe because those of us with woefully short attention spans find colour changes endlessly entertaining. I didn’t rip the hat, it’s a perfectly good hat except for it making me look a right turnip so it’s gone in the give away box.

I like the yarn, it’s soft and squidgy and delicious to knit. I like the colours in the yarn more than the colours in the original batt even though they are the same. The thing I like more than anything else is that the solid colours aren’t really solid at all. Every stitch is different and that made it so much fun to knit. It was fun to spin too although I think that I would have had a more even yarn had it not been for the silk. I still haven’t decided whether the silk was worth the effort. The soft and fluffy layer caught me by surprise on a couple of occasions leading to blobby bits of silk and yet I like the effect that had in the finished yarn. The last time I looked Noro was far from smooth so I’m not weeping over the knobbly bits. This scarf is mine, my head may get cold in the playground next week but at least my neck will be warm.

We had a birthday at the weekend and although Daniel is still too young to have his own blog he’s done a guest post about it on his dad’s site. He’s asked twice for his own blog and been told he can have one when he’s 13. Presumably by then he’ll be too sullen and uncommunicative to want one. You will note that his favourite word this month is “weird”. Everything is weird, the weather, having the crust fall off your toast, spiders but I have to agree that it certainly was strange when all the lights went out and the fire alarm went on and off and on…

Well, it’s like this. I’ve had two days of being mummy to a child who is off school but not sick so there’s been no spinning and not much knitting. My prime knitting time is after his bed time and it was then that I realised that I had a solid black sock, a dark brown sock, a black-with-splodges sock and a heap of dark coloured lace. The only thing that I could see to knit was the red sock and that was at the stage where it needed to be tried on for fit, on a foot that doesn’t live here. I couldn’t start the second red sock because the yarn for that is currently in the form of two bobbins of singles. As I was too idle to go upstairs and get another ball of yarn I gave up on knitting for the night. This lack of desire to seek out wool should of course have been a sign of forthcoming illness because I have the lurgy today (and as a result, there will be no post tomorrow)
I do still have something to share. If you have children of a certain age you may well be familiar with K’Nex. It’s a construction toy where the pieces just snap together. I have now graduated to my own models, starting with the drop spindle and moving on to the tensioned lazy kate. You can make your single with the drop spindle and then just pop the whole thing into the kate, taking off the tyre so that the string passes over the wheel to tension it. Alternatively you could use it with wheel bobbins, these are Ashford ones with the singles that will be the second red sock. I quite fancy a K’Nex bobbin winder but I need to give some thought to the gearing on that.
Hopefully by Monday I will have recovered from my shivers and actually knitted something.

I did say that I wasn’t buying any more fibre until I’d spun 2kg of what I have. So far I’ve spun one quarter of that but I bought this anyway because it was Mother’s Day on Sunday. Other people may have had flowers and chocolates but my gift will last longer, not need watering and not add inches to the hips.  I don’t have any carded fibre in the big heap so it is truly different from anything that I already have. Have I rationalised my purchase enough yet? Until recently I’ve not been able to spin the nice fluffy carded stuff and as a result the wonders of the bottom shed at Wingham Woolworks were denied to me. When they do custom carding the extra bits are bagged up and go in the bottom shed, they aren’t on the catalogue and they are one-offs. This means that the drop dead gorgeous one that I had in the scales and put back a fortnight since is now gone. There’s no point in crying over sold fibre so this one came home with me instead as a consolation prize. This is carded wool and silk, mostly red and green, with a bit of dark blue, brown and an odd turquoise stripe. This is the batt in repose on my dining chair to give an idea just how big the carding machine is.

It’s been threatening snow here so what I’m most in need of is a hat. I made a quick bobbin full of somewhat rustic aran weight yarn (the lumps were a design feature) and went for the don’t-try-this-at-home hang it on the radiator drying method so I could get it cast on as quickly as possible. This is based on the Fake Isle hat from Magknits except that I messed with the shaping a little and (rather obviously) it’s all one colour. I was going to knit it as the two colour pattern but I wasn’t certain how long the stripes in my yarn would turn out to be and as it happens I had no plain yarn for the contrast colour. The plan was to have it done ready for standing about in the school playground on Tuesday afternoon and I did finish it for Tuesday lunchtime. This was in between playing Monoploy and Pokemon cards with my son who is now off school sick. I had the hat but no place to wear it.

This was a good thing because the junior fashion consultant, when asked, said that it made me look like “a torpedohead”. The senior fashion advisor, when he came in from work, was more diplomatic but agreed that it was not entirely flattering. When pushed he agreed that “torpedohead” was in fact an inspired description. I have looked at the photos of people on whom this style of hat look good and they are all much younger than me or have more hair than me. My hair is so short that little if any shows from underneath (and if you think I’m showing you a modelled shot you can think again). Anyone who thinks they have enough youth or hair or both to carry this off can have it, otherwise it’s going in the big box with the scarves. I shall stand shivering in the school yard on Thursday secure in the knowledge that my son will not think me a torpedohead.

I did say there was another pair of socks to show, well they are spectacularly unphotogenic so they are waiting off stage until I have absolutely nothing else to rabbit on about or they suddenly become interesting. As they are solid black (at the moment at least) this may take a while.
I’d also like to apologise to anyone who has ever sent me an email to caroline@woolforbrains.net because it looks like that address doesn’t work by any usual definition of the word “work”. My techincal support team (hi sweetie) is sorting it out whilst I try to remember who I’ve ever given that address to since October. If you wrote and never heard from me it’s not that I’m rude beyond belief, it’s just that the internet hates me.

Remember the half baked bag that’s been in progress since October?
It’s felted now, oh my, is it ever felted (well “fulled” but let’s not split hairs). I had another pair of grubby jeans to wash so the bag went through a 60 degree wash again. It leaves a little to be desired size wise but it’s certainly thick enough. Should I ever make another it needs more than one wash, but less than two if it wants to be a bag. The words that spring to mind are “substantial”, “beefy” and just plain “thick”. I wasn’t aiming for any particular size but it’s just too dense now for a bag, it’s so thick that it stands up on its own. This of course changes it instantly into a bowl and I have a use for one of those. It’s just the right size now to hold all the bits and pieces that I have hanging about the wheel (oil, wpi gauge, yarn samples). The subtle colouration is now so subtle as to be non-existant but the soft fuzz of the mohair is still there and I like that very much. I suppose that I got away lucky as the yarn was all left overs, some was bfl, some mohair/romney and there was a fair bir of wensleydale too. I didn’t take the advice of felting a swatch in case the different yarns felted differently but it all worked out ok.

Anyone have a use for the strap?

I’ve sampled and swatched for the swing jacket until I’m sick of it. The long and short of it is that I don’t like yarn that knits to 3.5 stitches to the inch. That shouldn’t be too surprising, anything above 4 ply is thick wool to me bearing in mind that most of my knitting is socks (small yarn on small needles) and lace (smaller yarn on bigger needles). I like the idea of chunky yarn and a fast knit but I don’t like the reality. The swing jacket is now off the list.

I do really want to knit Ophelia but the yarn is a challenge. I have the swatch from when I tried to make it the last time, that’s the one at the top and the merino yarn cost me a penny a gramme. I decided that what I wanted was a yarn with a longer colour run that showed the pattern better. I’m not sure why I thought this as it looks fine to me now but I sold the yarn on ebay so there’s no going back. I could knit it in a plain colour but that rather defeats the purpose of the pattern. Would Jaywalkers look so good in a plain yarn? I also suspect that I’d get bored with it before it was done whereas I’m always excited by the prospect of a colour change. In my size it calls for sixteen 50g skeins of hand painted sock yarn. That’s over £100 for Cherry Tree Hill (the second sample) Lorna’s Laces or Koigu (CTH is bang on for tension although this colour leaves much to be desired). Something like Opal would be much cheaper but I can’t see that there’s a colour that I’d wear in a sweater. The budget says that buying hand painted yarn is out.

I could in theory paint my own yarn whether that is commercially spun or home made. I’d like the sixteen skeins to be similar and the only way I’m going to get that is by dyeing them all out of the same dye batch on the same day and cooking them all together. If I steam one and bake another they will most likely be different. If I paint one and have it hanging around for hours whilst the others cook then that too will be different. Whether I bake, steam or boil I don’t have the facilities to process 16 skeins. In simple terms, my cooking pot isn’t big enough. This has been the sticking point for ages, I don’t want to pay huge money for pretty yarn but I can’t make it myself. I have the germ of an idea now and I can see a way forward. In the summer my mother’s south facing concrete path is so hot that you cannot walk on it in bare feet. Is that hot enough to set the colour in wool? A little internet research would say that it is, four hours in a black bin bag on hot concrete should do the job. There will of course need to be a test skein before moving into overdrive on the dyeing but it won’t be for a while, we have snow forecast for this week. In the interim there will be yet more socks..

In case anyone is wondering about the white sample at the bottom, you saw it previously as this. This remains an option for Ophelia, I had some concerns that my poor washing would mean that it wouldn’t dye successfully but I’ve tested that already. My first sample feels fantastic, is a dream to knit but is clearly too big. I’m finding this a challenge to spin because it has a staple length of over 6″ (8″ on the bit I just measured) and in dealing with that I’m not getting enough twist in the single. More practise is needed.

Especially for Sophie-of-the-comments

(and no, I didn’t run out of yarn, it was a design decision to make laundry easier as my husband has a similar purple pair)

Except really it’s Red Nose Day

Go and nosify your own photos here

Viva Pinata has now been on the TV for a week and a half. So far I’ve manage to resist the hints for a knitted Fudgehog although I’ve given some thought to the need for short row shaping in the round, in fairisle, and the requirement to get the centre of gravity in the right place to stop the top heavy thing falling over all of the time. I’m hoping that I can get away with not advancing beyond the Taffly but there’s nothing wrong with having a plan in reserve. Some things don’t knit up well. For a wing you need a degree of stiffness that not even felting is going to give you so I could have knitted the body of a pig but not the wings of a swan. Our Pigxie is the result of a day off school, a balloon, glue, construction paper and less mess than you might imagine.
That is a new sock sneaking in there. I was hoping to trick the camera into a true colour representation of something red but it worked not so well. This yarn is changing colour as planned, you can just see the stripes in the ball. It won’t be very stripey because one ply is more or less solid red and the other changes between rhubarb and custard. So far I like the solid red sections the best. The two plies are not the same red, one is more pink, and the combination of the two together works really well. A close up would help with the description, for that you’ll have to wait for the finished shot. That’s going to be a while because I have yet another pair of socks started that you haven’t seen yet. For that you’ll have to wait until Monday (no posting on Friday)