Wool For Brains

Here is the obligatory knitting shot for knitters who have no interest in spinning (yet). This is a left Magic Mirror mitten, I’m somewhere between the thumb and the finger shaping at the moment. The colour is all wrong because I took this at night and it’s wobbly because if I used the flash it killed the cables but I felt that I should show some knitting before moving swiftly on to the contents of my parcel. My parcel is much more exciting to me but I understand that if you don’t spin it might not be so interesting to you.

This was what I’ve been waiting for. It’s a Christmas present for me but it needs a quick test before it disappears for a month, it might have been damaged in transit or maybe its previous owner didn’t look after it properly and it needs an overhaul. There’s no point finding this out on Christmas morning when the shops are shut (yes, I have this enduring fantasy that I get to play with my toys on Christmas Day). Did that sound like a good enough excuse for playing with toys before Christmas Day? I had plenty of time to get ready for its arrival, to the extent that I filled all of my bobbins ready to ply.

The Lodger on dvd Surprises are all very well but there’s nothing to beat getting exactly what you want under the tree. I love my Kromski Sonata very much and I’d love to be able to say that it does everything I’d ever need but that’s not true. I can’t treadle as fast as I can draft, I like making skinny yarn and that means that my hands have to slow to the speed of my feet. This is not consistent with my “want it now” mentality and the result is my continued refrain of “not enough twist in the single”. I’d like to perfect a super speedy long draw but it’s not currently that speedy at all because I have to wait to build up enough twist in the single. There is a faster flyer for the Sonata but it’s not that much faster and so I didn’t think that would be the solution to my problems. Hopefully this is going to be the solution that I’ve been looking for. This is an electric wheel, although as you can see there isn’t a wheel at all. Instead of your feet making the flyer turn there’s a motor that does that and because the motor runs faster than I do it makes it a faster wheel than any I own. I thought it would be sensible to get a feel for it with plying and I seem to have mastered that. The two things I wasn’t sure of were would it fit on the coffee table and how would I manage to make yarn if I couldn’t count treadles. So far I can say that it fits quite nicely, I can work the on/off switch with my toes and I hope I can work up to changing the speed and the tension with my toes too. I’ll have to come back on the second point when I’ve done something other than ply.

Although I have (as always) been a very good girl this year, I probably should confess that I haven’t been as good as you might think. This is second hand, yet another purchase from The Loom Exchange.

If I disappear for a while you know why, I’m tidying up the fibre stash. I’ll be back when my new toy is removed from me or when I’m sick of spinning. I’ve always joked about the possibilities of increasing my knitting productivity by using my feet, but it does really look like my long toes might be more use in spinning than I ever thought.

I did have one parcel arrive last week, it was too big for the letterbox so the postman kindly hid it in the bin. I managed to recover it without ending up head first in the wheelie bin but it was a close thing. This was the latest kit from the Tsock Flock Club, the Frozen Margarita sock. I particularly liked this one because you could put the various elements where you wanted, the worm from the bottom of the bottle of Tequila I moved to the toe, I had a scattering of lime slices and two branches on my cactus. I was worried about how much the cactus would pull the cuff up, there is additional ease in the pattern to allow for this but I still made sure that I didn’t start the second branch before I finished the first. I messed up the cuff in that I misunderstood the instructions and used the laceweight doubled, it’s not so frothy as it was supposed to be but not so dense that I fancied unpicking the graft and unpulling the ends that I’d sewn in. At the moment I’m still undecided as to whether to beg for more yarn and make the second cuff the same or rip this and do it again properly.

Stargate: The Ark of Truth dvd This is the next installment of the Tsuspense project. It still looks very much like a sock to me, functional rather than decorative because of the plain stockinette section on the sole. This time we had a yellow band with flames so I got the colour prediction right based on Richard of York giving battle in vain. I’ve still got just the one on the go, when we hit the line in the pattern that says “make another the same” then I will, until then I’ll stick with the one.

Linking with Richard giving battle in vain, this is the second Tsock from the last kit. The first one ran off the needles but I waited weeks before starting the second. The pattern is for one red sock with a white rose and one white sock with a red rose. I thought about it long and hard and after a few weeks I came to the conclusion that I’ll never wear a pair like that because I am not a wearer of odd socks. I think that I have enough yarn to make two white socks, I’ve made them shorter because I didn’t want to add calf shaping to a sock with an all over pattern and there was more yarn in the kit than was needed for the socks to allow for the mitten pattern that club members received afterwards.

It should be all Tsocks but it isn’t. It’s been cold, I’ve lost one of the pair of handknit gloves that fits me and I’m left with the shop pair that don’t fit well at all. What a dog walker wants is mittens, so that’s what I’m making. It’s not an ideal combination because the slight hairyness of the Wensleydale obscures the cabling but it will do, I’m not wanting to win best in show with them, I want warm hands in the mornings. More photos next time, unless of course the parcel arrives…

Perhaps you were expecting to see a parcel today? That makes two of us then. It’s all my fault, when I was speaking to the lady who is going to be posting it I heard myself saying “Oh, don’t worry about it, I don’t need it until Christmas anyway”. What I actually meant to say was “I want you to be on the doorstep of the post office tomorrow with your nose pressed against the glass waiting for it to open because I want it now”. Somehow it came out all wrong.

The blog will have to make do with a scarf instead. This started out as some deliberately blotchy roving because I wanted the light areas that you get from leaving white. It’s not the sort of fibre that you often see for sale because it doesn’t look pretty but it does make for interesting yarn. This has been finished a while, it was what I was knitting when I had my stinking two week cold because it was simple without being boring. It’s garter stitch with short rows to make wedges of colour rather than side to side stripes.

I had two false starts. I knew that the yarn was going to change colour randomly and that the colour runs were going to be fairly short. My first idea was to have something that used short rows to add depth to the edge, ending up with something with a deeply ruffled edge. I know that is difficult to believe looking at the bowtie that I produced before I ripped it but if I’d gone on longer that extra fabric at the edges would have had nowhere to go except to ruffle. It would have worked but it was going to eat yarn and the fabric I was making was too dense for the ruffle to drape nicely. It was a good idea but not for this yarn.

I then turned to one of the patterns from Modular Knits. In the book this pattern is made into a short sleeved top and it looks stunning. It used to be one of the patterns that I’d always stop at but not any more. It would certainly have made the most of the colour changes in the yarn because it’s not worked in rows across the piece, each of the squares is knitted individually. I now know that I will never knit the garment in the book, it took forever and there was no way that I was going to finish this row never mind knit a scarf in this pattern.

Attempt three went back to the bowtie but by making the short rows on alternating sides I eliminated the yarn eating ruffle. It worked well enough but really this scarf was all about the yarn. I made a centre pull ball and then used it from the outside so I could see the new tartan colours emerging as I knitted. I knitted until I had to stop because I ran out of yarn. The good thing is that I can make another whenever I want, I could never make another exactly the same but that’s part of the fun of making your own yarn. In all the world there isn’t another scarf just like this one, even if I used the same dyes again the yarn might be similar but would not be the same. Does it sound as if I miss it? I do, I really enjoyed knitting this, it was just so much fun and that’s what I want from my knitting.

Next time, new Tsocks or…..a parcel. We can but hope.

The knitting bag is back under control again, after a week of casting on for everything in sight I don’t have that much to show. This is the start of a lacy top for my mother, it’s not surprising that this has survived because it had a good start. I made three swatches, one too dense, one too big and one just right. During the process I proved that making all the purl rows plain rather than patterned was a great deal faster but spoilt it totally. The yarn is a wool/silk mix that came on a huge cone from ebay at a steal and it is nicely textured. The only problem I’m having with it at the moment is that the dog wants to snuggle up and sleep next to the cone thereby causing the yarn to catch on various dog body parts (ears mostly) and not reel off. Once this sleeve is finished I’ll wind some balls off so that the dog can sleep next to his new best friend while I knit.

This is a spider’s rear, just in case you were wondering. I saw Cynthia’s and decided that this was a must have for Halloween 2009. I’m glad I started early because I’ve discovered that a crochet hook makes my right hand have the same trouble as my left hand so this probably going to take me until October to finish. I think mine is going to be a bit smaller but as long as it is in proportion to its legs then I’m fine with that.

Sadly this didn’t survive the week. It had a promising start in that I could see clearly what I wanted to knit. It was to be a simple scarf using all of the various colours in zig zag stripes. It was a nice idea but doomed to failure from the outset. I can either have enough pattern repeats to make an actual pattern or I can have a scarf, there’s just too few stitches to have both. This has a future as something much wider but that’s not what I fancy knitting right now so it was off to the yarn drawer with this one.

There were more projects started last week but in the words of a certain B Simpson – “I didn’t do it. No-one saw me do it. You can’t prove anything!” Coming next time, either the results of me stalking the postman or another finished object and me whining about my parcel not arriving.

This is me in the process of tidying up the spare bedroom. To the untrained eye it might appear that I was slacking off from the actual tidying to sit and spin but this is totally untrue. What you can see here is me packing down a big bag of carded fluffy bfl into a much smaller skein of yarn. I did stop at the stage where it was on three bobbins and needed plying because I’m hoping that the postman is going to be bringing me a plying aide very shortly. When it comes I’ll need to test it before it goes away until Christmas and of course I’ll then be wanting something to ply.

Irresistible move Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo trailer I have never seen an evil moth in the house but just because you’ve never seen one of the pests doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. I know that there are some big spiders hanging out under the floor upstairs (this one is dead, in case you were wondering) and I think that they would see off any new arrivals but I wouldn’t like to bet my stash on it. I usually turn everything over twice a year, in June and December which just so happens to be immediately before Woolfest and Christmas. This works out happily because the tidying up process also makes room for any more fibre that might possibly make it into the house.

Bridge to Terabithia hd

The Snows of Kilimanjaro download If I’d started sorting though the yarny things in bags sooner this wouldn’t have the contrast neck. I found another bag full of this yarn, enough to knit a second chicken jumper, except that would make it the third jumper because I made another yesterday. That one has a contrast fastening but in that case I am sure that I only had the one ball of the ginger yarn. Earlier this year the knitters on the Sheffield Forum were asked to knit jumpers for battery hens that had come to the end of their productive life and were being rehomed. If you’ve been a chicken at the bottom of the pecking order you arrive featherless and until they grow back things are a bit chilly, especially when you’re possibly experiencing the big outdoors for the first time. I didn’t knit hen jumpers than, it was around the time when I thought I might have to give up knitting permanently and I didn’t really want to go out on a chicken jumper. Good cause or not I didn’t want it to be the last thing off my needles. The other thing was that the pattern did not have any sizes or tension and as I have well documented issues with tension I could have ended up knitting a sweater for a quail. The reason that I ended up knitting one after all was that someone local to me asked me if I could knit them a sweater for the ex-batts they were going to be receiving. The deal was (with them and with anyone up there who happened to be listening) that after I came back from my hospital appointment for the dodgy hand I’d knit them a sweater, if I was allowed to knit at all. The first was for the promise, the second was because I’m grateful but the third would need the addition of cables or short rows because it is after all a slab of rib enlivened only by the smallest bit of shaping. I imagine if I saw a shivering chicken I’d rush straight to the needles but in the absence of chickens with goosebumps I’m done. In the words of my son “I’m bored with this now”. My endless gratitude for an extension on my knitting time need not be expressed in chicken jumpers, there is so much that I want to knit now that I know I can.

My hand is no more fixed than it was before but I’m optimistic that given time and the ministrations of the NHS it will be. I’m certainly more positive that I might be able to knit my way through the yarn stash even though after putting all the yarn back where it should be I now have problems getting the sock yarn drawer shut.

I did sit down yesterday and write down all the things that I’d started and it wasn’t a big list at all. I made a second list of things I want to start right now this minute but haven’t cast on for yet, admittedly that list was quite long but as they are still imaginary projects I can have as many of them as I like. The numbers have been kept down because one thing I cast on was handed over to my mother to knit and another project I’d cast on was handed over to my son. (Of course as soon as I said that I thought he’d finished with knitting he decided otherwise) These are not now my projects and don’t count. It all seemed reasonable and manageable so I swatched for a cardigan and cast on for a scarf (I would have cast on for the cardigan too if I could have found the right sized needles). At some point I’ll start to flap about the number of things I have on the needles but not just yet because it’s not all starts around here.

These are the imaginatively named “black scrap socks”. I had severe second sock syndrome, the first one whizzed along but the second was not much fun. These are just small patterns that can be followed without needing to look at a chart, if you made them in a more sensible colour then it would make tv knitting. I did think that I would run out of the black, the ball started to look a bit small after the heel but I made it with about two yards left over. I’m thinking that this is not a good approach to using up the bags of left over sock yarn, they took over a year to finish and it is more productive to whizz around with four balls in a spiral.

This is the second attempt at a festive hat for my husband. The first version was going to be another Tannenbaum hat using Cascade 220 rather than sock yarn. It scaled up well enough, it was a bit on the small side but it would have done at a push. If it had looked better then I would have carried on but the beads were too small for the branches and it wasn’t looking good. I ripped it and set off again with a version of this pattern but using the star from the top of the Tannenbaum hat. It looks a bit plain at the minute but that’s because it hasn’t been decorated yet. Decoration is an end user responsibility as it doesn’t involve yarn and needles so I’m done now.

• The X Files video

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo movies

• Pokémon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew trailer

I have some other finished things to show but I also have a pile of ironing so they will have to wait for another time.

One sign that I am feeling better is that I’m in the grip of startitis. I’m having one fantastic knitting idea after another, I know that this is my rekindled enthusiasm for knitting talking because they can’t all be fantastic projects. What usually happens when I’m mad keen like this is that after a few inches I come to my senses and realise that the reality is less fantastic than my vision of it would have suggested and then I rip it out. Sometimes I knit on beyond all reason because I’m still too involved with what it looks like in my head rather than seeing what it really looks like on the needles. I haven’t reached that ripping stage yet and I’m still in the throes of new starts. A quick count makes it five since Saturday and there’s no sign of me getting in touch with reality just yet. By the end of the week the fittest projects will have survived and I will pretend that the rest never happened.

Bridge to Terabithia move There has also been sensible knitting, just to make myself feel better about all those new projects that are taking over the knitting bag. I can feel the questions now so I’ll just deal with them straight off. No, I did not run out of yarn. The socks are just over four years old and the much mended toes had gone through again so it was time to replace them. No, I did have some of the original yarn left over (although not much because I’ve made the rest into spiral socks) but it wouldn’t have made for a better match. When I knitted them they were a rich brown, gold and a deep red the same as the small ball in the photo. The first wash changed them beyond recognition and then they faded still more on subsequent washes. No, I didn’t dye it, it was expensive commercial yarn and yes, I was not pleased. No, I don’t mind the look of the toe at all. There are many reasons for knitting socks, they can be an expression of your artistry and extreme cleverness but these were made for keeping feet warm. They will still do that and make an even better job of it now that they don’t have a hole in the toe. Once they are in shoes you can’t see the toe and besides which, they aren’t mine.

If you know me in real life there’s a fair chance that you know what this is and have knitted one or two of these already. The rest of you can ponder its function until the reveal. There will be an honest to goodness running out of yarn mismatch here unless I can put my hand on another ball of this yarn. I’d set off hoping that there might be enough but I’ve reached the stage where I can’t kid myself any longer. I’m decreasing but not as fast as the remaining yarn is. I don’t think the future owner will be bothered though, it’s another example where warmth is more important than artistry. Having said that I have just realised that I should be decreasing every other row and not every four rows so when I’ve ripped a bit out I’ll have more yarn to work with. I bet that it’s still not enough though.

• Kissing Cousins movie

I also have some finished things, with ends sewn in and everything but that’s for another time.

My main leisure activity in the last week has been coughing. I’ve had lots of practise and I’m now really good at it but I feel it’s time now to move on to something else. I’ve not really felt like doing much of anything, I couldn’t be bothered to knit but I’ve not been too sick to spin. That may not be entirely true, I have been spinning but I’m not convinced now that I was really up to it. Fortunately other people have been productive and I can claim some input into their activities.

Blast! video

This was the 2008 Morris Halloween pumpkin. My part in this was that I grew it, I had planned on having two but the slugs saw off the smaller one while it was still thin skinned. It was suitably round, a lovely colour and a good size for what we wanted it for so I was pleased with my work. I think the boys made a good job of the carving too, nothing fell off and needed sticking back together with toothpicks this year so it was a job well done. David toasted the seeds and they were surprisingly tasty, even Mr Vegetable Hater was eating them of his own free will.

Penelope the movie

I had a hand in this hat too. I planned it (although I had no choice over the colour), cast it on and off and sewed it up. I also added in the occasional row once it had reached the stage where it wasn’t growing any more because even using unspun pencil roving on broomsticks it still didn’t knit up fast enough. The knitting was done by the model and he was pleased with it. You can tell that because he’s wearing it in the house with his pyjamas, having worn it all day. I did have plan B for if it didn’t fit or he didn’t like it, I was going to felt it into a bowl. This is pencil roving on 7.5mm needles and it’s just a plain rectangle with enough stitches cast on to comfortably fit from the crown to the ears with a few extra stitches for the turn up. We then knitted until it was long enough to go around his head, sewed the two ends together and pinched the top up. If he’d used something thinner then I might have made eight pleats at the top rather than four. Alternatively I could have gathered it and added a pom pom, thereby guaranteeing that he’d never wear it. He might have retired from knitting now, there were murmurs about wanting to learn to purl (daddy can purl) but all interest seems to have faded away for the moment.

This is the small and well behaved skein of yarn that I made last week. There is another skein three times the size that can’t come to the blog until it’s been rewound. I don’t know how it happened but I ended up dropping the niddy noddy, catching the half wound skein on the back of a dining chair and dumping the yarn in a loose pile on the floor. As a result I can say that I have 200g of double knit yarn with some yardage. I did originally have a plan for this which was for it to be a cowl in feather and fan. I know that I didn’t want solid black sections, which is why I left the black out of the second half of the fibre. I wanted something subtly striped because I remember being pleased when I saw it striping on the bobbin. It’s all a bit vague, before I started dyeing I decided on a better use for the yarn that would need 200g of fibre, dyed it and then couldn’t think what the second project was. I blame it all on lack of sleep.

This is my plying assistant who does not have a problem with sleeping. His role here, as in any team production, is to stay out of the way and not help. It would appear that it is perfectly possible to nap while your head is going up and down on the treadle. He seemed happy enough there but I was worried about his ear getting caught underneath and so he had to settle for sleeping on the floor instead.