This year I knit (and didn't finish):

There were also two more sweaters, a few pairs of socks (I do not wish to estimate how many - they are floating around in various cubies and bags and my car), some N7 fingerless gloves, and another lace shawl none of which I have pictures of because I am lazy and bad about taking pictures when things aren't finished.

I did sort of finish this:

As in - I knit the sample... the knit part anyway - because I can't at current actually crochet beyond a simple chain. So I guess I finished half of it. Or something.

This year I knit (and finished):

	(this is finished - I just don't have a picture because... I don't know why not)

In hindsight I feel there was a theme going.

3 Sided Magic Loop

I should say that am not a big fan of Magic Loop for socks.

Its not that I don't think ML is a useful technique. I use it a lot for sweater sleeves and collars and other larger things where I don't want to bother with switching needle sizes constantly or just don't want to buy four different needles all in the same size to finish a project with a lot of different sized bits.

But for socks I work substantially faster on double points. They are more enjoyable to me and easier to get up a rhythm with.

Still, there are some patterns that really should be knit with a method that allows you to work a round in halves instead of thirds or quarters.

Right now I'm working on the Thelonious socks by Cookie A and these are a good example. They have a large traveling pattern that moves across half the stitches of the sock at a time. To do it on DPNS you have to stop every few rows to redistribute and there are sections where you wind up with very short and very long sets of stitches on each of the needles. Its just awkward to knit them this way.

So I made the call to do them ML. Now, one of my big issues with ML (and 2 circs for that matter) is that when you work the gusset on a heel flap sock you either have to cram a bunch of stitches on the back loop or else you have to divide the sock in half sideways or at some other awkward angle. Its either uncomfortable or fiddly to do the way I was taught.

So this sock I am doing something different:

Three sided magic loop.

Its just like regular ML. But with three sides.

I'm confident I cannot be the first person to figure this out, but I still feel pretty clever right now.

Overambitious

I haven't been talking about my loom lately.

This is not because I have lost interest. Its not because I'm not using it. Its not because I don't love it lots and lots.

Its because I am a crazy person.

See, rather than warp up a simple scarf or something else narrow and fairly uncomplicated I decided that the first thing I wanted off my loom was fabric for a new knitting tote bag. I decided that it was going to be large (a bit over the size of my current go-to ravelry tote), it was going to be slightly felted (which means it needs to be woven even larger than usual) and it was going to be a large, dramatic pattern.

I found a large scale twill draft on weavolution, figured out how to read it (I hope) and got to winding the warp. Since I figured this would be a fairly time intensive threading and since I had two whole cones of Shetland wool I wanted to use up I decided to warp for two bags worth of fabric. I figured that way I would either get a Christmas present out of it as well or maybe be able to negotiate with someone more competent with a sewing machine than I am to make the bag itself in exchange for the second hunk of fabric.

This all sounds only a little unreasonable until you consider the fact that I have never actually warped a four-harness loom before.

So four weeks later this is how far along I am:

That's right - I have ONE WHOLE THREADING REPEAT DONE! On the upside I also have all the warp wound finally. Having my Dad on hand to hang the warping board this week is mostly responsible for that last part (its very annoying to wind onto a board that is leaning on the wall or propped on your lap).

I am at least 50% sure that I'm doing this right.

I'm also at least 80% sure there is some more efficient method to do this.

Sometime before I do this again I should try and figure out what that is.

Anyway, one repeat down and two to go.

I started winding the weft bobbins so that whenever this thing is finally tied up and ready to go I won't have to wait on that also:

This bag may not be done for a year or something but I'm still confident its going to be pretty awesome when it finally happens.

Kid & Ewe 2010

Sheep to shawl!

(but with 100% more Alpaca and 99.9% less sheep)

Up to the last minute warping!

Tied up & ready to go.

Our team hosted 4 spinners and me. Technically I'm a spinner too but all I did for the first hour was stand around taking pictures and then walk around the rest of the show trying to find out where the cashmere was hidden.

Later all these people gave me their bobbins and I plied like the WIND! Seriously I plied so fast no one could get a picture of me.

Then I wound the finished alpaca onto bobbins and blinked a few times and Susan had woven a shawl.

We finished in 3 hours. I am told this is some kind of record.

For some reason I forgot to get a picture of the finished shawl but it was pretty damn awesome. We had it done, fringe twisted and everything, almost two full hours before the end of the demo.

Afterwards I poked around all the vendors, eventually found where the cashmere was hiding (and narrowly avoided a good beat down for swiping some of it early), bought some kid mohair to keep it company and then my trusty navigator and I drove out to comfort and had lunch at High's cafe and poked our heads into the Tinsmith's wife (I really wanted to give them some money and take home more goodies but I'd exhausted every last alloted penny for the day and opted to be good just this once. Mom - I know what you are getting me when you come out to visit now).

Pretty good day all around.

Awesome - or why everyone should just do what I say

Okay, for a long time now I have been wanting knitting books to be more readily available in electronic format.

Really I want my knitting magazines to be delivered this way also.

There's a lot of reasons for this: I am tired of keeping track of paper copies, books and mags take up space I don't have (or else could be using for yarn), and copying patterns (because almost no one is going to carry around a whole book for 2 pages - disregarding the state most working patterns end up in at the other end of a project) is annoying, results in dubious quality prints and means hunting down a scanner/copier if you don't have one readily available.

In short - I want all my patterns on the computer, where I can easily print the bits I need and where they are not taking up shelf space and getting lost underneath yarn or bills or sweaters or something and if there was ever a genre of book that needed to make this transition - knitting & other pattern based craft books would be it.

Interweave made a sort of half-hearted gesture towards this by releasing all their back issues to CD recently. I like this in theory but you can't keep a copy on the computer without imaging the disc, there is no real discount for getting them in a format that is clearly less expensive to produce (not to mention as a subscriber I'm not even getting a discount for SOMETHING I ALREADY OWN) and anyway they didn't go very far into making it computer friendly or updating anything - just scanned everything into PDF (which really - I know at least a quarter of those patterns have had some kind of errata you could have bothered to fix, shame interweave).

They've tried to produce some specially made e-books as well. Where they seem to be falling short is in design and cost. There's an inherent value in something tangible that doesn't translate to e-copy. Its one thing to say... charge me 30% extra to get the e-copy along with my paper subscription, but something else entirely to expect me to pay 100% physical retail for a duplicate or worse yet, to pay more for the electronic version than I would a paper copy (I'm not going to point the finger to the thing that did that. If you saw it you know what it was and how ridiculous the pricing was for it).

Point being - I've been disappointed with the efforts so far.

There are exceptions. A lot of individual designers have produced outstanding downloads of their work on ravelry. I'd like to see more collected pattern booklets, but the overall quality of what I've bought there has been high. Some of the European magazines seem to be more on the ball as well, and though I don't read them as often its nice to know that I can get an electronic issue for 8$ online instead of paying 15$ for a paper copy that I might not be able to find locally anyway.

So all that ranting leads to this:

Today I saw the new Cookie A book was out and went to immediately check out the patterns. I love her socks. Would you know it - there is a pdf version available. It costs about 10$ less than the paper copy and its available RIGHT NOW which.. instant gratification is a big part of why electronic product works. Its also available as an ad-on purchase to the physical book for a very reasonable 6$. As far as I'm concerned this is how this kind of option should work.

I, of course, have it on my desktop right now and I'm very impressed. Its pretty (which is always nice) and though about half the patterns are not new, they are all updated with new samples, photos, schematics and charts. The anti-piracy takes the form of an unobtrusive header on each page that has my email and a transaction ID which does a nice job of discouraging passing it around without being out & out obnoxious like most copy-protection.

Props to Cookie A & One Leg Press. This is exactly how you should handle e-copy.

Now I just need to pick a sock to cast on.

*Besides the Cookie A book, this week we got the Stephen West booklet in at the shop and it comes with a code that lets you download an electronic version for free through ravelry. That's another great thing to see. Bravo.

HELP!

I was mostly a very good little yarn crawler. I told myself I was going for the freebies and the experience and that I'd limit myself to small quantities of things that I had a specific plan for.

And mostly I did.

I got some snarky gift cards, and some red-orange lace (because its going to weave perfectly with that copper tencel that's been sitting on my shelf forever) and some Nyoni because it matched my shirt that day and will also weave well blended with the purple (which did not match my shirt but did look really good with the teal) and some glow in the dark yarn.

Because last year I was kicking myself for not getting any.

It really does glow in the dark too:

And then I got to the Tinsmith's Wife.

I love that place. They have all kinds of unusual yarns... lots of indies and things you just don't see at the other shops. I wandered around for awhile trying to settle on something I wanted because really, I wanted half the store but I was trying to be good and nothing was jumping out and screaming YOU NEED ME.

And then I found the Malabrigo sock yarn.

Normally I would bypass this because, though I love it, its not that unusual. I can get Malabrigo in a lot of places. Its not crawl-level-special.

Except well.. when it is.

Because they had three skeins in Archangel.

Which is backordered to the end of time everywhere for some reason and also happens to be in my color obsession of the moment. Its all glow-y and pretty like.

It needs to be a cardigan.

Right now in my queue are these possiblities: Honeybee, Whisper, Celery, Myrtle, Tempest, Featherweight & Pas de Valse

I don't know which to pick.

I am currently working on another featherweight & Tempest was the cardigan to defeat me last year, but I'm not sure if those are strikes against them or not.

HELP! I need to cast on right now. RIGHT NOW. NEED.

Note to Self:

Starting a new project at ass-o-clock at night has not magically become a good idea.

Day 2: History Lesson

I'm taking a break about halfway through coating the loom in tung oil (and yeah, I really didn't set out to actually refinish her but that's how its turning out anyway) and thanks to my Mom's awesome research skills I have some more info on her.

Based on the size and this ad:

It would seem I have their 30" "mini-loom" and the wood is birch (this agrees with what the guy at Woodcraft told me so I'm pretty confident of that now).

Interestingly another ad suggests that the loom is intended to be threaded in the folded position. Also the sectional beam on mine was likely an add-on as its available without.

Of related interest the University of Arizona has an archive of the newsletter "Looming Arts" which seems to have been put out by Mary Pendleton. Her husband is the one that made the looms.

Day 1.5: Cleaning

My back & shoulders hate me but the loom is officially clean. In hindsight I wonder if I should have taken a picture of just how much nasty I scrubbed off so everyone could be impressed by my dedication to cleaning but... well... it was gross. I really could have gone my whole life without knowing what rotten felt looks & smells like and probably no one else needs to share in that bit of knowledge that hasn't already had to deal with it.

Besides the good cleaning I have stripped and replaced the rusted hardware, removed all the old heddles & heddle bars and sewn up new canvas straps for the front beam. I'm also slowly replacing the old pedal cords with hemp bands and new clips (I debated leaving the chain & cord on there but couldn't work out a way to just replace the clips which are really badly rusted).

Next up is reconditioning the whole thing & / or repairing the finish. This is the step where I stop having any idea what I'm doing but friends and hardware store employees assure me I can do this and not either f-up beyond belief or somehow permanently damage myself so I'm charging ahead.

Still looking for a reed & new bars (replacement heddles at least were easy), but I'm confident I will find them.

The "Thing"

I am convinced that every dedicated yarnie/fiberista/crafter/artist type eventually has that score that they will tell stories about forever and their friends will tell stories about and then eventually it will turn into a crazy niche-type urban legend about finding 50 balls of Cashmerino at the thrift store for 5$ or a Reeves wheel in a parent's attic or a dozen froggable cashmere sweaters at goodwill.

Like if you just stick with your crazy obsession long enough someone somewhere will leave you their entire stash of Noro or some distant relative will find out you spin and mention that hey, they raise sheep or alpaca or angora on the side and would you like a few prime fleeces for christmas this year?

And until it happens to you all you can do is try not to be too overwhelmingly jealous when someone shows up at knit night with a complete set of Addi Turbos they got at some estate sale for pocket change.

So.

Yeah.

I think this is mine:

Its a 30" 4 harness Pendleton jack loom (& yes, it folds).

It needs a new reed, heddles & heddle bars and some small bits of hardware here and there.

Also a really good cleaning.

I'm hyped. I've been wanting a 4-harness loom for awhile but its been a kind of a pipe dream. I don't have the space for the large looms that sometimes crop up on craigslist on the cheap and the smaller folding looms like the Schacht wolfs don't usually resell for much below retail on the rare occasions you can find one used.

This one is pretty much everything I could ask for. She's a good size - large enough for bigger projects but not so big that I don't have space to set up. She's well built - I'm not sure what the wood is yet but it seems sturdy and in pretty good shape in spite of having spent the last some-odd years in someone garage. She's even pretty - underneath a layer of grime the wood is warm with an attractive almost iridescent grain.

Oh, and did I mention that she was free?

Its OK if you need to hate me a little bit right now. If I wasn't me, I'd probably hate me a little bit too.

Nearly Instant Gratification

I finished my cowl and it is wonderful.

It took one skein of Merino 12 (and by that I mean exactly one skein - between the left over from the cast on and bind off I had exactly 3inches of waste which felt rather awesome actually).

It took 2 days to knit.

Okay... technically it took 3 days to knit but since the third day was compromised of midnight to 1am of the next morning that I stayed up to finish the last few rows I don't think it counts.

Its big enough to fold in half around my neck or flip up to cover the bottom of my face (should it ever be cold enough here to warrant that).

Pretty much its just awesome in every possible way.

Also I started the hat I was talking about:

Actually I already knit it into 90% of a hat, but then I had to pull it out and start over because a) it fit a bit funny and b) I wasn't going to have enough yarn and after the success of the one skein cowl I really wanted a one skein hat too.

I'm doing a modified Koolhaus pattern.

Its slower knitting than the cowl with all the twists but I still love knitting it.

After the hat I think I am going to be working on a shop sample out of -yarn I can't really talk about yet- I will say that its a yarn that I find fascinating - its not supersoft or brightly colored and its kind of tweedy which are all things that go against my usual preferences. It is curiously light and squishy, however, and made from a cross of sheep that I happen to think rather highly of. Its quite possible that I just might really like it for no particularly logical reason.

I am already considering that it might be a good yarn for that vest I promised my grandfather... or failing that maybe something to finally make the CPH out of because I really did want to do that one this year and I haven't spun fast enough to make it happen out of handspun...

Happy Yarn

Today I got to add a yarn to the Ravelry database.

Ask me how stupidly amused I am by that. =D

Also everyone should find some to squeeze because its awesome happy yarn and you need to knit with it. Seriously.

I am making a cowl.

Its going to be the smooshiest, most wonderfullest cowl anywhere ever.

Afterwards I think I will get some in green and make a hat. It will probably be the softest, most cuddliest hat in the world.

Let there be light!

So yesterday I finally gave up on the idea that my living room would eventually hold a couch -and thus be able to seat people should I ever actually desire for people other than myself to hang out here - and got a new craft table. Yay craigslist.*

This is really more logical all around since I suffer a desire for other people to share my space perhaps .05% of the time but NEED somewhere to work on yarny and other artsy-crafty projects 99.95% of the time. Having this spare desk means the sewing machine now has a home that is not the back of the closet, the skein winder does not require me to completely clear off my computer desk to use, and I have a big chunk of stable flat surface on which to put things like a lightbox.

For anyone that's never used a lightbox before, its one of the easiest ways to get a color accurate photo indoors without a lot of screaming and crying and some combination of grey cards and colorcards ** and a/or really competent flash or light setup.

I've managed without one since moving but my pictures have been a lot more varied in quality without it. This isn't helped by the fact that my apartment is north facing and never gets sufficient sunlight to mooch off of instead.

A few times I have trekked down the three flights of stairs carrying a box of yarn to take pictures out by the pool but this is not ideal for oh so many reasons and so mostly I've just let the picture quality slide a bit and hoped no one that wasn't me noticed.

For instance - this is what that Targhee I spun actually looked like.

And this is what my finished Ashland Bay Merino looks like.

This is the yarn that finally kicked my butt into replacing the light box because there is nothing like trying to get a decent photo of a really dark color in dubious lighting conditions to make you want to tear your hair out. The box I whipped out is 16x16x16 which is a little smaller than I'd like ideally - fine for 1-2 good sized skeins but a little cramped for larger quantities - but the smaller size does mean it slides out of the way easily and I can take some time hunting down a larger box in decent shape later. ***

The finished yarn is 704yds of 3ply, which I hesitated over for a long time. I tried a 2ply but just couldn't make myself like it even though it gave a more practical gauge in my swatch. This yarn is knitting to about 16sts & 24rows over 4"x4" which is really heavy for something I'd want to wear in Texas pretty much ever. On the other hand, it looks good knit up and has a nice stitch definition and I'd finally decided when I was doing my swatches that I didn't want to spin any more of the stuff to try and expand my yardage.

I'm happy with the yarn, even if I'm not sure what its going to be. Rosemund's Cardigan is a possibility, as is Hey Teach!, and Little Blue Sweater. Alternately I could go completely off my original plans and knit something that's not even a sweater with it.

I'm not really sure yet as nothing is screaming "KNIT THIS" right now to me. I am confident the right project will wander by eventually though.

* what exactly did 20-somethings do for furniture before craigslist anyway?

** which for some bits of colored plastic or cardstock are really ridiculously expensive

*** hopefully one with the banker-style put together so I can collapse it when not in use... I think U-Haul sells some like that

Color makes happy.

So I had planned to have the Print O' the Wave stole done this weekend, and I got pretty close. I'm one short end's edging and some grafting away from it being ready for blocking. I can't remember if I talked about this one at all. I've been working on it for about 6 weeks. The yarn is Jade Sapphire Cashmere/Silk in Tuscan Sunset. Its my favorite kind of golden yellow and its CASHMERE so of course I'm in love with it.

It's wound up being ENORMOUS. Like I have been draping it over my legs as I work and if it weren't lace it would make a lovely blanket. I'm pretty sure blocked its going to be about as long as I am tall (which - I'm 5'9") and unblocked its wide enough to cover my shoulders and back (this says a bit about how I've been managing the thing while working on the edging I suspect).

So its not done, but its close and I'm looking forward to seeing it finished even if the size means its a little (a lot) warm to be wearing right now.

I got distracted from finishing by my spinning.

I went to a workshop out in paige on Saturday for carding the colorwheel. We took the three painters and three printer's primaries and blended them with hand cards to get a full color palette. Its the kind of thing I've been meaning to try forever but was never going to get around to without guidance.

My carding abilities could still use some work but I really loved seeing how everything blended up and I tend to forget how different the effect is when using the two separate color sets. After we finished the wheels we went on to blend the two palettes and then tried adding in black/white/grey/tan to tone the shades.

I think I'd like to try this further and card a full shawl's worth from one shade through a neutral and into another to get a truly gradient-spun yarn for some lace.

Stealthy!

I may need a set of these DPNs just for the awesome geek factor inherent in using carbon fiber stealth needles.

The dog ate my homework

Or... I have a good excuse.

Really.

So, I wanted to have a nice picture of the second 4oz bobbin of Targhee to post today.

Unfortunately I do not have a full bobbin of Targhee to photograph.

I was actually pretty good about spinning. I spun through Monday and decided to take Wednesday as my rest day instead because there was just no way spinning was happening Wednesday if I wanted sleep to happen as well. And that was fine.

Then Thursday I threw my left shoulder out (how is somewhat a mystery - but somewhere between packing up the wheel to take to knitting group and the first half of my chai latte the joint stopped functioning correctly).

Friday I skipped due to the injury.

Saturday I spun, but pretty tentatively.

Sunday the shoulder was better and I resolved to get through at least 2/3rds of what was left...

And then I fell down the stairs and sprained my ankle.

Which yeah....

If its throbbing less tomorrow I will persist with only one treadle foot, but I am not holding my breathe (it hurts like hell right now and is all swollen up like a baseball and I'm mostly just praying its not like... broken or anything. It at least doesn't feel like I tore any major ligaments this time but seriously... hurts like hell).

So... maybe next week.

I have been knitting on my Print o' the Wave stole instead.

I would have a picture, but the camera is too far away so it will have to wait until I'm hobbling less.

This is not the blog you're looking for....

I have this idea in my head that no one reads this blog (except like maybe my Mom and a few close friends that just like to look at the pictures) because if I start to think that Other People are actually looking at my crazy I might have to go have a quiet mortified freakout in a closet or random dark corner somewhere.

Anyway this week I sent my mom the following email (verbatim):

[fangirling] OMG Jasmin from the Knitmore Girls commented on my blog! [/fangirling]

So, point being... you out there - reading this - You are not actually reading this. Its all a figment of your imagination. Everything you think you see me saying? Its all in your head.

There.

I feel better now.

I am kind of informally doing the Tour de Fleece this year.

By which I mean I am trying to spin every day of the tour but I don't have set goals that I am aiming for (considering the hours I am pulling at work just spinning every day is actually a pretty challenging goal). I really wish there was a winter version of this because summer is just never a good time for me to take on big endurance projects.

So anyway, what I am working on to start is 8oz of Targhee from yarnorama. I purchased and started it on the 3rd at the spin in and as of last night I'm finished with the first 4oz braid. I'm tentatively hoping to get through the second braid this week (not unreasonable) and then ply the last few days of the Tour with some merino spun up in between.

I brought home a lb of Ashland Bay Merino in English Garden along with the Targhee so I can finish the sweater yarn that started with the teal merino singles I finished awhile back. It has some of the same shades in it, but I'm hoping that plying a solid with a blended multi gives a bit more interest to the finished yarn. I don't expect to get that done during the Tour, but if I could get through 4 or 8 ounces that would still be pretty satisfying.

Alternately (read - if it gets here before I finish the Targhee) I purchased some Foot Notes pencil roving from Fiber Optic this week in the color "Ultraviolet" which I think (with a bit of firestar drafted in perhaps or plied with some holographic thread) will work out to make a pretty badass demon yarn. *

* For anyone that keeps wondering what the heck the the demon yarn is about - in Supernatural when a demon isn't possessing someone they are visible as this black smoke that often contains flashes of purple lightning. I tried to find a picture or video of this but all I could dig up was this fanvid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsMBlEQyeiM which does have the bonus of being set to a song by Imogen Heap and being generally well done even if the cloud shots are a bit short.