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.