Persistent Knitter

Here’s a happy recipient of some of the socks I have knit in the past:

Ain’t she cute?

A dance revolution that is. We just picked up Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix for our Xbox. We got the dance pad/game pack combo; and so far it’s a hit! Katie loves to jump up and down on it; and it’s a great workout. See?

In an effort to lose some of the post-pregnancy weight without really trying too hard at it, I thought playing this game might be fun. So far so good! Yet you don’t really realize how uncoordinated your feet are until you try this game. I’m all left feet, and there is no way I’d ever play this in "public" at an arcade unless I was much much much better at it. A friend today told me about his friend that was waiting in line to play at Dave & Busters (basically an arcade for those of you not from this area) with a bunch of nine year old girls. Heh. Luckily I can play in the privacy of my own basement.

What about knitting?

Well, I’ve actually been making progress on some stuff.

Hardangervidda’s sleeve:

The Shhh don’t tell my husband this is for him sock:

On this one the pattern calls for a moss/seed stitch heel. I did about an inch of it, and decided I didn’t like it because it didn’t draw in and get thick like a Sl1, k1 heel does. So I ripped it out and started over. (Gee, can I knit anything without ripping part of it out?) I’m much happier with my "standard" garter-stitch edged Sl1, k1 heel.

I need to stop making progress on knitting stuff for a while so I can get the binding finished on our new winter quilt. Have you seen the weather forecast lately? brr! I love it!

I was so excited yesterday to finish weaving in all the ends on Alex’s new socks. I felt like such a proud mommy that he was going to be so cute wearing cute little handknit socks. I imagined myself (in my fantasy world of look how great that mom is, with her perfectly behaving children) strolling down the street with my perfect baby wearing his perfect hand knit socks. I had planned a gorgeous photo for todays blog entry of my perfect baby wearing his perfect socks.

Reality Intrudes.

I washed them last night. They shrunk.

Duh – Cascade Fixation is COTTON.

When I tried them on pre-washing, they seemed huge and like they had more than enough room for shrinkage. I guess not. Pptthhhbbb.. They shrank in length more than width. And Alex’s chubby/chunky legs don’t like to keep them on. You can stretch them over the length of his feet, but 3 minutes later, without much work on the part of Alex, they are dangling off the tips of his toes.

Anyone know of a deserving baby out there whose feet & legs aren’t quite so huge that needs baby socks? They are still perfect socks, just not for my perfect baby :)

Plan B on Alex baby socks: Cast on either 28 stitches (k2p2 cuff) or 30 stitches (k1p1 cuff. not as cute) and make the foot looooooooooooooooooooonger. I think the 32 stitch cuff is a bit too big and isn’t tight enough to hold the sock on his foot. I have plenty of the same yarn leftover so he’ll never know the difference!

Apparently the only thing I can finish these days is baby socks :) Alex’s socks are done! Yay! Every member of my immediate family has handknit socks now.

Here’s a finished shot:

(note that you can’t see all the ends I haven’t woven in yet because they are artfully hidden)

Basic pattern:
I used Cascade Fixation for these. Cast on 32 stitches. K2P2 for a while. Then did Lucy Neatby’s garter stitch short-row heel on 20 stitches (approx 60%). This was a fun and easy heel to do. It looks a bit "poofy", but in baby socks I think that’s a good thing. You do wraps with this type of heel, but you don’t knit into them so they are super easy and really close up the holes along the diagonal of the heel. I went down to 6 heel stitches left before "turning" and doing the other half of the heel. The toe is also from this same article. It’s just a garter stitch toe with "normal" decreases. I followed this plan:

R1: Dec rd (k1, ssk, k to last 3, k2tog, k1) twice
R2: Purl Rnd
R3: Knit Rnd
R4: Purl Rnd

Repeat R1 & R2 until you have 12 stitches left (ends with Dec rnd)

I was going to graft the toe, but was at work when I finished it, didn’t have my tapestry needle with me at the time, so had the brilliant idea to do a three needle bind off. I turned the sock inside out so the slight ridge is on the inside. Since Alex will never really walk in these socks I don’t think the small ridge at the toe will bother him.

The article on garter stitch heels suggests to use a different color the first time you do it, and I wholeheartedly agree. It really helped to figure out what was going on as I followed the instructions. It’s easy to memorize too – I did the second one without really looking at the directions again.

“…Where is Everybody?” From Shrek (which stole it from another movie before that, but I don’t know which one)

I have too many projects in my knitting basket/bags! Two sweaters in the basket (Hardangervidda and moss/cable cardigan for Katie), socks for Alex (Cascade Fixation), socks for Katie – not yet started, socks for DH not yet started (but I have selected pattern and yarn). I need to focus ab it and get Alex’s socks done. I’m doing his first because I have mommy guilt that everyone else in the house has a pair of hand knit socks but him. Yeah, he’s only 4 months old and he’ll never know. But I will!

New Stuff
I just ordered and received two sock patterns: Hedgerow Socks & Parallel Socks. I’m planning on using the Hedgerow pattern for DH’s xmas socks this year. I’m using Trekking XXL doubled and just cast on last night. Not sure I’ve got the right number of stitches, but we’ll do an inch or two and see where we are. (No pictures, no time, plus am trying to finish Alex’s socks for a photo shoot :)

Needle Sizes
So I stopped by one of my LYSs today. It’s one I don’t go to frequently even though it’s the closest. They have alot of fru-fru scarf yarns, some basic yarns (which are more expensive than at the other LYS I do frequent more often) and stuff I just generally don’t knit with very often. Plus they don’t carry needles that I like (except for Addi Turbos).

Anyway, I was having a discussion with the clerk (sales person? LYS Employee? Person behind the register?) about what I was currently knitting. I mentioned I was knitting baby socks with Cascade Fixation and she asked me what size needles I used for that. She’s a fairly new knitter that has been introduced to sock knitting fever and was curious since she hadn’t used that yarn before. (They carry a lot of self-patterning sock yarn and scarf yarn at this shop). I told her I don’t know, but I think they were 2.5mm. She said, “Oh, what US size is that?” My reply, “I don’t know, I don’t trust US sizes anyway”. So we had a long discussion where I educated her about mm sizes and how even though it says “US #1″ on it, doesn’t mean it’s the same size needle. I showed her two different brands of needles on her own shelves to demonstrate. She seemed a bit startled :) It was actually a very pleasant conversation and hopefully I didn’t come off too rabid with my hatred of the inconsistencies of labelling needles.

Gas Mileage
I’ve been tracking my gas mileage in my new car, since one of the reasons I traded in the SUV was to get better gas mileage. Getting a V6 won’t help it tons, but here’s the results:

SUV mileage average over 3.5 years: 18.5 mpg (according to their little trip computer thingy that calculated it for me)

1st tank: 18.5 mpg (bleah!)
2nd tank: 19.99 mpg (better)
3rd tank: 21.6 mpg

The EPA mileage (city/highway) is: 19/26 for my car.
All my driving is city, except for the 1 mile stretch of toll road I get on to go to/from work which probably works against me as I insist on getting up to at least 70mph before I get done with that short stretch.

Another funny note, as I was putting the new plates on my car today outside the DMV, a Subaru WRX (also in pretty blue) drove by and someone in the car shouted at me “WRX is better!”. Silly boys.

I’ve been working on Hardangervidda’s sleeve. Last night I had my husband try it on. He said "The cuff fits great, but it seems awfully big back here". (Back here referring to the area with the needle still in it). Harumph.

I tell him that he needs room to bend his arm, and he doesn’t want it too tight. He said "Ok, I’ll trust you". Then I fiddle with it on his arm for a few minutes, take it off measure it a few more times. Think about it some, then decide I need to compare it with a sweater he already wears to see if it really is too big.

The sweater on the bottom is one he’s had a while, which fits pretty good, but is too big around the chest. You can’t see the left side of the pic, where Hardangervidda is slightly smaller in the chest than this one. So looking at the sleeves, the cuffs start out about the same size, but Hardangervidda’s sleeve really poofs out dramatically. Part of this is that you do a lot of increases right after the block ribbing (before the 2nd colorwork portion), but part of it is that I’m just increasing way too often. Some calculations I did yesterday tell me I don’t want as many stitches at the end as they say I do. Pattern gauge is 6 st/inch, mine is between 5.5 and 5.75 st/inch on the sleeve.

I measured the amount of room between the armpit on the store sweater and the top of the shoulder where it would be on a drop shoulder and that is 9.5". Hvidda’s measurements say in this size I should be at 10 3/8". That’s not too different. So what’s wrong?! Because my gauge is different, I am increasing the width faster than if I were exactly on gauge.

So. What to do?

Well, I’ll be ripping the sleeve back to the start of the plain stockinette portion. I’m going to use my actual stitch gauge and calculate how often I should be doing my increases and to what final stitch count (aiming for somewhere between 9.5 and 10" for the armhold depth) I also know that my row gauge is 7 rows/inch (pattern calls for 7.5) so that will help figure this out as well. Luckily I haven’t really spent that much time on this part of the sleeve because it goes so fast (esp since I got my great 16" length Addi Natura circular). So re-knitting doesn’t really bother me too much. (This makes the 4th or 5th time I’ve ripped back on a sleeve for this sweater though. heh)

No updates on Hardangervidda, I was too tired to take a picture. I am getting to the point where I need to measure & calculate to make sure the sleeve won’t be too huge. It’s looking good so far.

I found this free pattern in my blog-wanderings today: Bright Striped Sweater. It’s for a toddler or larger. You could have fun doing different colored stripes and use up some of your stash!

Oh and since I’m just posting links instead of anything really useful or interesting – Check out this Sheep Game (found on the string or nothing blog)

Speaking of stash… gotta get back to knitting!

More non-knitting links: Cool Picture
Check out this picture of Hurricane Ivan.

It seems I’ve acquired a few knitting needles over the past year.

Now how could that happen?

All of them are circular needles, with the exception of my DPNs. I had my grandmother’s whole collection of aluminum straight needles at one point, but I decided I didn’t want to use them, ever, so gave them back to my mom. (Is that needle snobbery?)

I had/have one of those fancy circular needle holders that I bought at my LYS (for the tune of $30. Yikes), and it just doesn’t do the job. First, it doesn’t have enough pockets. Second, they all face one direction so you get a huge bulky lump in the middle. Third, you can’t tell what size the needles are unless you label the pouches, and then you end up with a bunch of needles in one pouch, and only one in another pouch. And you can’t tell the lengths either without pulling out the whole bunch and then you’ve got a mess on your hands. Here is what it looks like with no needles (I forgot to take a pic before I took all the needles out):

Being the overly-organized person that I am. I kept the ziploc pouches that my needles came in. (most of which are Addi Turbos or Addi Naturas, a few Crystal Palace circs here and there.) Why? Probably because I realized that I would someday want to put the needles back in their little pouches.

Before the fancy needle holder, I tried one of those fly-tackle fishing bait bags, but it really wasn’t adequate for what I wanted to do. Plus it just wasn’t "pretty":

Yesterday at Target, I picked up a cool expando-flexy thingy for a whole $7. It’s designed to hold paper and organize household information, so it’s big enough to hold 8×10 pieces of paper, and has half the pockets are half height. It’s semi-see through, so you can see what you’re getting at (in theory). It’s just plastic, so maybe it won’t stand up in the long run, but it’ll work for now. If I really like how it works, maybe I’ll make a fabric version of the same thing (although then I lose the see-through-ability, unless I can find some plastic-type substitute, like maybe some screen grid material stuff? Hmm.. the wheels are churning).

Now, I can put my needles back in their (labeled) ziploc baggies they came in, then organize them according to sizes. Smaller needles can go in the front pockets and larger ones in the back. I can easily open the whole thing up and dig through my needles. It closes securely (something the fancy one I bought doesn’t do) so I can take it with me places without fear of loosing a needle if it shifts.

And here is what it looks like open:

I still have about 10 more needles to put into this container (currently in projects, or in the basket for the project. I’ve got 5 or 6 in the Hardangervidda basket by itself), and I should make an inventory of size, length and type. I assume I might outgrow this container someday. In that case I might look into doing a fabric version of the same thing. Or just get a second expando-file. Or something else.

And just for fun, this is what I have my DPNs in:

And opened:

I have been having fun searching the internet for interesting patterns that aren’t in english since I saw the bunch earlier here.

Alison, over at The Blue Blog has made some really adorable items for her twin sons from Phildar patterns. Some of the patterns she has used are from the Tricotez Calin books. (I have no idea how to get the special characters to show up, but there’s supposed to be a ^ thingy over the a). You can get a really good idea of what’s in these books/magazines by going to the Phildar web site. For instance, the latest one is here.

I wanted to get my grubby little hands on a copy in person, but that’s apparently easier said than done from here in the English-speaking United States since the local distributor went out of business or away or something. Phildar just recently started putting out English translations with them, but you still have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get one. Luckily enough, the awesome guys over at Threadbear Fiber Arts have done the hoop jumping for us! I called them up, placed an order and less than a week later, behold:

The big clump of papers are the English translations. They seem decent enough (although I haven’t read them in detail) and so far the only thing that drives me nuts is that whoever put them together didn’t put them in any sort of discernable order. Here’s a peek at what the non-English insides look like. First, a totally adorable pattern.

It only goes up to 24 months in size (and I haven’t figured out how big that really is because my Americanized brain doesn’t understand centimeters), but resizing probably wouldn’t be that hard for a toddler size.

Here’s how the layout of the patterns looks:

Now, I can’t read French to save my life, but a lot of the words are obvious. Just looking at how they have laid out the pattern on the page makes me like it. They use different colors for each of the different sizes, making it very easy to follow along and see which size is for what. There is a good amount of white space in the pattern, so you aren’t re-reading the same damn paragraph 10 times to find your place (*cough cough* dale *cough cough).

Overall, the patterns have a fresh feel to them. I like the different colors too – I may have to get some Phildar yarn to play with.

Katie’s new sweater
I started Katie’s Debbie Bliss sweater. First I used the needles suggested in the pattern. After about an inch or so, it looked 2-3" wider than the pattern stated for that size. Since Debbie Bliss pattern sizing tends to be HUGE anyway, and my fabric looked a little bit loosey-goosey (technical term) I decided I would go down a needle size and get closer to the real meaurements. As it is Katie will be able to wear the sweater for quite a while.

Rip Rip Rip.

Now I’m back to where I was and a bit further on the back:

(horrible picture, but you get the idea. The camera used the flash and washed all the texture out)
The knitting goes pretty fast. I made myself a cheat card with the three different patterns on it. I’ve almost got it memorized, but having to actually knit on the wrong side (where it’s not so obvious where you are) is messing me up a bit. This is also my first project with cables in it. It’s a relief to have no color changes and something more interesting than stockinette too.

Michelle asked in a comment:

… Mine seems lumpy in the fair isle parts. Has that ever happened to you? Is that normal? Most important, is there a way to fix it? It’s my first fair isle so I expected a bit of lumpiness but I’m hoping it’s not permanent lumpiness.

Michelle is talking about Bjerk, which is also in the same book as Hardangervidda. Like Hardangervidda, it has a higher proportion of stockinette to it than fair isle. In Bjerk, there are quite a few three color rows, and that is a lot of yarn to be carrying along the back of your sweater. If you have a lot of twisting of your yarns, you could definately get some lumpiness.

Another thing to look out for is the tension of your floats on the back of the work. I can’t claim I’m very good at it yet, but I’m getting better with practice! If you’ll look at this picture of Hardangervidda you’ll see how the fair isle part is drawn in a bit more than the stockinette portion below it:

I’m hoping that blocking will help some of this out, as I don’t feel that the draw in is too drastic. The best advice I’ve been given on this is to spread out the stitches on your right hand needle before you switch back to the next color. This way the float is long enough. On really really long floats, you might twist your yarns to catch the long float as you go. Somtimes I do this, and sometimes I don’t. Maybe I’ll be brave and take a picture of the inside of the sweater :)

For Bjerk, I think I’ll duplicate stitch the third color. There really aren’t that many areas for that third color and the floats required to do so are really long.