Supergeek wins over Reason

You ever work on something that just doesn't want to happen?

Or maybe this is just the way designing something from scratch always works.

Deadpool Mitts version 0.9 - the left hand is DONE. okay it needs the ends woven (of which there are a crapload) but the knitting is finished which is a big freaking deal because this is ALL I'VE WORKED ON THIS WEEK. The idea was floating around last weekend, and I ran out on Saturday to get a reasonably correct shade of red and let me tell you there is nothing like hunting down a particular solid color sock yarn at 4:30pm on a saturday when all the yarn shops around here close at 5 >.<

I ended up getting it at Stitche Niche and wound up overpaying for it, but at that point I was so damn happy that someone had it AND was open when I got there I would have paid twice MSRP just to not have to wait until monday or tuesday or god forbid to have it SHIPPED HERE.

Anyway, I started with a pretty basic plan and two shades of Heritage sock and by sunday evening I had most of a mitt done and OK it was like for a men's X-large, but still. Proof of concept, right? I redid some math and my color chart and started again. I was working on the fingers when a friend pointed out that my black yarn? Not black. Crazy dark navy. Not black.

ARGH.

Yeah, not gonna fly.

So I gave the evil unfinished mit away to be lost so I could forget about it and started again.

About 10 hours of knitting today later:


Its not perfect. I wound up duplicate stitching the design because the two yarns I'm using are slightly different gauges and trying to do intarsia kept ending up with ugly holes and uneven stitches. The fit is so-so. They're not my Porphyria that hug my hands all perfect like, but the slightly looser wrist section is kind of nice. Roomy-like. It warants further fiddling, but its not bad for a first (third) try.

I am sort of on the fence about where I ended the black section as well - on the one hand when I make a fist it falls right above the knuckles and looks BADASS, on the other when i have my hand straightened out it looks a little clunky. That's the problem with interpreting comic book stuff I guess. Those guys aren't fashion designers - they don't have to worry about if it looks dorky when the guy isn't standing heroicly because comic book characters ALWAY POSE THAT WAY.

Anyway - there will undoubtably be a version 1.5 or 2.0 or 1.89213 or whatever. Probably around when the movie gets released.

In the meantime I think I deserve special Uber-nerd consideration.

I outgeek you.

Srsly.

Geekout

Its a slow day. Slow enough that I actually got tired of knitting and had to go find something else to do for awhile.

Because I am wacky, and because I have access to Excel I gave into the dubious urge to whip up a Deadpool Colorwork chart (yeah - new level of crazy there). its 23sts x23rows and might need some adjusting for gauge (I need to like... find yarn and stuff first).

I'm thinking black fingerless gloves. >D

And also :


crappy camera phone picture of what I'm knitting on today. I love this. Its lovely. Its a lot of stockinette. I need to go start something that's not stockinette soon. Maybe this afternoon.

Surprise!

Wow - okay. So last night was my last time going to the Thursday night knitting group (Needles & Angels) and everyone surprised me with a party and presents. I don't know how my Mom kept it from me - she's usually a bad lier. Of course - I probably should have guessed something was up when she was stalling last night before we left... but oh well, clearly off my game.

This is the group that we did the Dye days with and I've really loved knitting with them and hanging out. I'm going to miss everyone when I leave. I got yarn & cards and a t-shirt and dye and rubber gloves and candy and gift certificates for yarn and pie and cookies and...

Anyway - it was awesome. I am a little embarrassed and a lot honored and flattered... And yeah.

I'll miss you guys. Thanks so much for everything!

Something Old & Something New

I am pretty well a slug when it comes to taking pictures of things, but since I'm sort of involved in packing up a lot of stuff (especially things that qualify as winter wear... like... say scarfs) I managed to snag pictures of some older FOs that I'd never gotten around to photographing.

First that Clapotis Scarf I was working on in WM yarn. I loooooooveee it. Its prettier in person. Seriously. And completely my colors. On the downside, wearing it like a scarf around my neck activates my "AAAAHHHH WOOL GET IT OFF GET IT OFF" instincts somewhat (somewhat equaling - I can last with it for about fifteen minutes before I start scratching). Which sucks. A lot. But its wide enough to wear like a mini-shawl and pretty that way. Proof all over again that animal fibers that touch my neck are bad, m'kay? So no, self, even if the rest of you is just fine with it you're still not making any wool sweaters.

Not that I could wear one in Austin anyway.

My most favoritest scarf that I made is this one - it was the first thing to ever come off the loom and its the awesomeness. Also, desipte being made from panda silk (which does contain a percentage of wool) it doesn't inspire my "GAH WOOL!" reaction. I am not sure if its the low amount or the nature of woven fabric but there you are. Its full of mistakes and has ugly, crappy selvages, but the color matches everything and its soft and warm.

There is also more recent stuff to show & tell:

My Kai Mei socks from last month. These won me free yarn in the April Sock Innovation KAL which is so awesome. Also, the socks are pretty nifty too. I'm passing on this month's KAL since they're doing the Kai Mei pattern (or Pomatomas... which I actually want to do but don't have the presence of mind of deal with this month), but I'll probably do one of the KALs next month with the prize yarn. :)

And finally, I finished this scarf just last week! It was my Mom's present for Mother's Day. It is crazy soft & delicious - bamboo & malabrigo lace merino. Mmm.... I hemstitched the ends, which was new and probably not done correctly (it is holding together just lovely and looks fine to me though... so whatever. Its a design feature).

Steam pressing made a world of difference on this one also. So far I've just been pulling stuff off the flip and giving it a wash, but I pulled out the iron on this one and it really cleaned up the selvages and evened out the weave. Even before that it was a pretty big improvement over what I've been weaving, but the pressing... really polished it up. I will have to do this for all my woven stuff now.

There is a bunch of stuff on the needles right now also - two sweaters (because I'm weird and yeah I've been afraid of starting one so of course rather than just doing a sweater I'm working on two of them now) some socks that I'm not completely sure about (Panda Soy is... interesting yarn, shall we say... more on that when I've gotten far enough to decide if I'm finishing or frogging) and I'm working on a woven band for my laptop bag.

Also there is carbonized bamboo on the wheel that may want to become a Whisper cardigan and yellow blended superwash merino that I am sort of not loving as much as I want to that was going to be socks. It may be going into the pause file soon. Perhaps I will get around to finishing that SW Merino/Tencel finally instead. Or else I will ignore both projects and go dye up some more Brown Sheep superwash. Because that makes awesome sock yarn. Seriously. And I like spinning it.

One track knitting

So the really good thing about being in a rut is that I seem to be accomplishing a lot within that rut. Last week I finished a pair of "Rick" socks (from Sock Innovation) in Campari Orange Wollmeise (80/20). They're pretty awesome. Very nice and loud. I am into loud socks right now.

The 80/20 is a little thicker than the 100% WM I've used before but it wasn't that noticeable until I tried to stuff the finished socks into my clogs and they bunched a little. -1 for finishing these just in time for the weather to warm up at last as well. Full length wool socks... even lacey ones, kinda much for summer.

I am 85% done with a pair of ankle high "Kai-Mei" socks (also from Sock innovation) in Panda Silk and they're looking to be a bit more weather appropriate. Panda Silk is yummy. It is all I can do not to go out and grab up more of it, because working with the stuff always make me want more of it. But really... I have at least six or seven balls of the stuff at home already that I should probably use first... We'll see how long my resolve lasts on that. Especially seeing as there are some new colors out....

When those are done my sock count for the year will be up to 5 pairs... 6 if you count as one the two singles that I gave up on getting pairs out of in January.

Did finally swipe a pic of puddle's Art School socks that I finished in February (I think it was February), which is only a month late and honestly pretty timely for something I was knitting for a gift (lousy gift knitter me).

A variation of the Bellatrix sock pattern in Cascade Heritage Paints which is a loverly yarn also. I have a couple of skeins in red and blue that I need to use soon. It was very pleasant to knit with, nicely squooshy and I'm told it wears pretty well (other people will need to be the judge on that one until I get a pair finished for myself to abuse).

The wheel has been kind of idle still. I'm able to spin again after the knee injury but not for really long periods of time. I did finally finish the soysilk I started sometime last year and its nice and soft and drapey.

Bled like all hell when I went to finish it, but I think that's somewhat the nature of the beast with soy. I do have some undyed roving I picked up at the Woolery to try my hand at next so maybe I can work out some way to limit the rivers of excess dye from seeping out of the finished yarn. The final yardage is a bit over 400 and its closer to a light fingering than a true laceweight. I'm guessing a lot of the added fluff is due to spinning it from the fold.

Not yet sure what it will be - if I got up over 500yds I was going to make an Aeolian Shawl, but its not quite enough for me to feel comfortable with that. I may weave with it instead.

There's some other things on the table right now - some yellow bling-y sock yarn being worked up on the wheel and another attempt and a first sweater, but I'll save those for when I have pictures and progress to show.

Woolery

Sometime around the start of the year it came to my attention that The Woolery was moving to Frankfort (Frankfort being the little known capitol of Kentucky where there is pretty much a grand total of nothing). This meant that there would be a major source of wheels/looms/fibers within a 30 minute drive of me - no more having to special order bobbins or spare wheel parts (which reminds me that I need to pick up a spare drive band and some wheel oil come to think of it).

Anyway, for a few months the opening day has been "sometime this spring" so I was pretty surprised when a ravelry post this week highlighted an ad in the Frankfort paper proclaiming they were now open. Since I had a free afternoon Monday I drove out to check it out.

The shop is located in downtown off of main street - you basically take 64 or Leestown (to 60/Versailles) all the way out and then get on Main until it turns into a one way street. The shop is the second one from the corner at the intersection of St Claire & Main. I got a little turned around finding it - the shop sign is pretty small but its fairly obvious when you've gone too far and it wasn't a big deal to loop around.

Inside is a big display of drop spindles and wheels along with some specialty goodies - I noticed they had some lux fiber samplers and some more unusual spindles - Navajo and kick plus some bowls for smaller support style spindles.

Most of the sample wheels were set up in the window - but there were also a couple of Lendrums on a table in the back. There was a pretty substantial supply of needlefelting stuff over there as well.

I didn't take any pictures of the knitting yarn they had - the selection there was pretty basic - I saw some heritage sock and the usual Cascade 220 but it in terms of knitting supplies it was just the basics - CP needles and general notions but nothing especially expansive or unusual. They did still have some empty shelves up around that part of the shop, however, so its possible they plan to expand on that.

Most of the best stuff was spinning or weaving though - the back half of the shop is shelves and shelves of weaving yarns with books lining the walls - there are bobbins and flyers in the area behind that and shuttles, hand cards and smaller tools (swifts, rigid heddle looms, ball & bobbin winders) between the back half and the front.

Separating the shop from the offices are a wall of mesh shelves stuffed to overflowing with spinning fiber. Spinner's paradise there - bags of just about anything you might want - there is some colored cotton in this pic, along with yak, cashmere, soysilk...

Anyway - grand sum being that its awesome. I managed to escape with only a spinner's control card (YES! Finally!) and some soysilk, but it was a close thing. I can see it being very easy to get carried away there.

I'm a little unsure as to how much longer I will be in Lexington - now that I'm done with school I'm worrying about working and there just isn't much here (not to mention I really want a job I can be at for 4+ years and I'm just not sure I want to stay this far north that long). But its a nice resource to have for however long I have it.

And I'm trying to keep all my options open for as long as possible - on way or another.

Otherwise - I finished my Misti Alpaca socks:

They're quite soft and comphy but I think I'll stay away from this yarn for socks in the future - ignoring my annoyance with all the breaks in my skein its handwash only and I'm probably too lazy for that most days. Gotta love how neatly they striped though :)

socks, socks, spindles and more socks

So pretty much what I've been working on since January is socks.

I kind of got off on a knitting jag where all I wanted to do was stockinette. Just plain, non-complex stockinette. No thinking, no counting, no charts.

The upside to this is that I had some very pretty handspun that I had been working on that was finally finished (oh and how fabulous was it - 4ply fingering weight superwash wool. Dyed by me, spun by me, and finally knit by me and let me tell you do I feel accomplished when I put these lovlies on!) and nothing shows off handspun like good old stockinette.

^ - Mmm, pretty handspun

I think some of my desire for brainless knitting stemmed from being in my last quarter of school and between work and 5 classes and then my knee...

Oh yes, my knee. I have not been able to spin in TWO MONTHS because of my knee (I have not been able to walk particularly either), this past week is the first one since the beginning of February where I have been able to sit at my wheel and work (the walking without a limp will hopefully come soon also). I won't go into the whole drama of what happened, but basically Ice + Me = Torn Collateral Ligament.

I suppose this should have been a knitter's dream injury, but mostly it was just an injury and it adversely affected my ability to knit about as much as it adversely affected everything else.

So I knit stockinette socks and played video games a lot (because interestingly video games seemed to require less coordination than knitting, and hitting 'reset' was somewhat less agonizing than frogging). Besides the handspun ones I finished I'm a cuff away from being done with a pair in Misti Alpaca sock. I also finally managed to finish the socks I promised Amanda for her birthday. Luckily for her most of what was left on them was the stockinette foot.

Anyway, this last weekend Cookie A's new book Sock Innovation came out and it finally shocked me out of the stockinette jag (being done with classes helped too) so I'm also working on some Wollmeise socks using the "Rick" pattern. I liked the description as much as the look of these. Someday I'll wear them to an autocross and they will make me go faster :D

Also this weekend I found a new kind of shaft to use for my drop spindles.

I had a gorgeous Mother of Pearl donut that I got in Austin back in December. It was too light to put on a regular chopstick but its a great fit with this pin. I was finally able to use some of the sterling wire I got as well for the hook. I really love this spindle (Its mine and you can't have it!), the shaft is only about 6" long so its about the same length as my favorite Turkish drops and it spins very well.

I'm considering trying to get more of these pins to make up drop spindles for etsy. I just really like the smaller size and I'm not sure many people are making shorter ones - it seems like this would be a great traveling spindle since its shorter shaft means a longer spin when sitting down. Not sure if there's a big demand, but it might be worth finding whorls for a dozen or so to try out.