Persistent Knitter

It doesn’t seem like very much, but I knit most of this on the bus over the past few days (you can only see a few inches of the width of it):

Thanks to little Katie hands for helping me hold it open so you could (sort of) see the pattern.

When we’re working to support our knitting habits, what do you look out at during the day? My new job actually has me located right next to a window!!!! Here’s what I see during the day:

It’s a great spot to be except for around 20 mins mid-morning when the sun shines directly in between the two buildings, washing out my view of my monitor.  I think that’s worth putting up with for the great view the whole rest of the time.

I’d love to see what other people’s views are. From work, home, or the drive in between (heck, even the outside of your LYS would be wonderful to look upon).  Post a comment with your blog address to share with us!

I have pictures of beautiful knitted things to post. Maybe that’ll make me feel better! I’ll try and get them uploaded tonight. It’s been a rough week. 

The bad things: First the kids were sick. Then husband was sick. Then husband is no-longer-needed at current contract job and told to not come back while home sick (no evidence of the two being related, but we have our theories. Hmph).  In laws coming this weekend, house is a mess.  Sleep is a definite luxury that doesn’t exist in our household this week. (Any tips on getting the 4 year old to stay in her own bed?)

The good things: Great knitting get together on Saturday (kids were slightly sick, husband was not yet sick, so I could go).  Got to see some great people there that I hadn’t seen in a while, including Joanne.  Gave her a demo of Knit Visualizer, to which she responded very appropriately saying how awesome she thought it was and that she wanted to buy it now, and was very excited for it to be done, etc.  Husband doesn’t have a job now, so he can clean the house for his family that is visiting.  The kids were well enough to go back to school this week.  & of course knitting time on the bus!

Looking forward to: Seeing the inlaws. I do like them, just stressed about the visit and house cleaning that’s needed.  Boo at the Zoo. The kids dress up in costume and we go visit the zoo. It’s fun and crazy with everyone in costume.  More knitting on the bus. I just bought my bus pass for November & ordered the one for December.  Plus, I really really like my new job :)

Do you ever have one of those days/rows?  I was working merrily along on the cow/pig/sheep sweater, and was starting a new pattern. Two rows of one color, then add in another color. 5 grey, 5 yellow, 1 grey, 5 yellow, repeat.  Sounds easy?  HA!

240 stitches around, and I get to the end of the row. I find out that I’m not in the correct place to end the row.  Good thing I sanity check at the end of the row. I start looking back and realize I’ve added 6 yellow in one place, right before the halfway point.  So I un-knit all the way back there. Which takes quite a bit of time as it was around 160 stitches to unknit.  Then I move forward again, glad that I’ve found the problem and there won’t be a funny looking cow.  I get to the end of the row, and again I’m not in the correct place in the pattern.

A Huuuuuge sigh.  I look back at what I’ve knit. Well, I don’t have to go back quite as far, but almost halfway. Another 100 stitches to un-knit.  I had put two 1 greys in a row, instead of alternating 1 grey and 5 greys.

After unknitting this second time, my bus ride is almost over at this point (and it’s a damn good thing I missed the faster bus, I really needed the extra knitting time today).  I start forward. And then realize I’ve done the same thing again, but luckily caught it before getting too far. I only had to un-knit about 5 stitches.  Then I did it AGAIN.  I was seriously ready to chuck the thing at this point.

I finished the row, and thank the knitting-powers-that-be that I actually came out right on the pattern this time. I don’t think I would have ripped back again. I would have just left the error in and had a funny looking cow.

No pictures of this event; how interesting is it to see it looking almost exactly like it did when I started? :)
I did manage to get almost through the whole next row before the bus ride was over.  I also realized why I like to wrap my yarns one way and not the other. It’ll make a good blog entry, but needs lots of pictures for explanation.

Speaking of pictures – for those who have suffered this far into my non-picture post. I do have other pictures lined up for this week. I need help deciding what lace project to knit next with my beautiful Helen’s lace weight yarn from Lorna’s Laces.

I can’t believe it’s been 20 days since I posted last. Sorry if you’ve been checking back and finding the same post over and over again.  I do have a few posts lined up for this week; so it’s safe to check back more often than once every two weeks.   I’ve been super busy with starting a new job, and trying to get Knit Foundry’s website fully up and running.  (For those of you who haven’t seen it, there’s pictures of our products now! check out http://www.knitfoundry.com/products.html . I’m still working on getting the online shopping cart on there. For now if you really wanna order, you can email me at order@knitfoundry.com and we can work it out with paypal!)

Since I started a new job last week, and it’s a longer commute. To help keep my sanity (not to mention avoid the stress of driving in hideous traffic) I’m taking the bus most of the way.  This affords me some excellent knitting time.  I haven’t seen anyone else knitting on the bus in the week that I’ve been riding; maybe it’s just not popular around here?

Regardless, I will persist, as it’s about the only time I’ve been knitting lately. 

My first day I took a sock to work on. Small; portable and the pattern has already been memorized.  I found that using DPNs while wearing a coat isn’t the easiest. I always seem to catch the end of the DPN on my coat cuff. Wierd, I know. Plus I’m worried I’ll drop a needle and have it roll away into the abyss that is the floor of the bus.

The second day I thought I might try something that uses a circular; but was still portable. I cast on a new project (of course) that I’ve had waiting in the queue a while. It’s a lace weight scarf.  I soon realized that this was not the project to be worked on a moving bus with the bumps and jitters, stops and starts involved.  Maybe when I get much better at knitting laceweight yarn in a lace pattern; but not for a while.

Finally I settled on Alex’s cow/pig sweater.  It’s in the round, so all stockinette, and on a circular needle. Perfect! I do have to consult the chart occasionally; but the pattern is very short, so easily memorized. It has 240 stitches in each round, so that’s plenty of knitting time without having to look at the chart.

Here’s the first shot of the sweater, taken a few weeks ago:

And here’s where it is now (the fingers in this shot are Katie’s):

Notice a subtle difference in the very first pattern row? I had used the wrong color! I’m following the exact colors in the pattern, so I didn’t want to have to keep remembering that I had messed them up. They do look better with the darker yarn.  The next row up are pigs. They look a bit crazy right there. The white dots are their eyes, and I’ll embroider in a nose & black spots on their eyes later.

This is the body of the sweater; and it’s lots of fun to knit. The color changes and patterns are fun to watch develop.  It’s the largest size, and I’m not sure how big I’ll really end up making it. I haven’t even done a sanity check on the body size, except it’s probably bigger than the pattern calls for.  The yarn is super soft (Dale Baby Ull) and while the color palette seems limited when I look at the yarn in the shop; the sweater is turning out very nicely with the colors I’m using.

My mom’s sweater is still marinating in the knitting basket. I’ve got some serious thinking to do about how to make the sleeve the right size. I think just knitting it longer might do the trick; but needed to think about it more.

Men who knit?  Not so farfetched.  There’s a whole site dedicated to them:

http://www.menknit.net/

So this weekend I spent some time spinning. This was helped along by the fact that my spinning group met Sunday.  I was very ambitious and took 2.5 fleeces to work on; in addition to the Merino top that I was trying to finish up.  One of the fleeces I took with me to get some opinions on it’s current state. I had washed it this summer; and it had turned Crunchy just recently.  Icky Crunchy. It wouldn’t separate and it was very very icky feeling. The concensus was that I should try to re-wash it. I brought the other fleeces along to compare their status with the crunchy fleece (and to have something to work on just in case I got bored by the purple).  Luckily the crunchy fleece was only a small part of a free fleece. If it weren’t crunchy it would be really nice.  At some point when I have time I’ll rinse it out; I’m debating using soap at all – I don’t want to make the problem worse, but I’m not sure the sticky icky crunchiness will get out with only a hot water rinse.  I’m quite willing to throw it out at this point – but would really like to save it.

So what did I spin? A two ply yarn, probably about fingering weight. I’m really pleased with how it looks plied up. Debbie always says "Plying solves all sorts of problems". That’s a paraphrase, but the basic gist of it.  My yarn was not super smooth as a single.  I was trying different methods of drafting out the yarn, and my ability at the different methods varied.  The look of the plyed yarn on the bobbin was really nice. (It looked like "real yarn" :) I wet it down last night and am hung it up without a weight it to set the twist. It wasn’t twisting back on itself too badly in skein form, but I thought it needed the extra encouragement to be nice to me when I start knitting with it.

I am hoping I can make some mittens or gloves out of it. That’s what
I told myself when I bought the fiber 2 years ago.  I need to check a
couple of patterns out and see how much yardage they require (I have no
idea what yardage I have, but I can count the number of loops in my
skeins to get an idea)

Here are the skeins (3.4 oz total)

A closeup of all the gorgeous yarn glory:

I had some singles left on one bobbin; but thanks to Rebecca, I know how to Andean ply (which is taking one length of yarn and making a two ply out of it without measuring, cutting or creating any waste)***. I told the husband that he was in charge if the kids woke up (one did), as I would be attached to my yarn and wheel for a bit of time.  Here is what it looks like all wound on my hand:

The single strand that goes across my palm is where I started, and then after winding on, the strand coming off the middle finger to the left is the final bit.   The way you wrap it ’stacks’ the yarn around your middle finger; similar to how you’d make a God’s Eye from yarn when you were 10 and doing hideous craft projects at camp. (I do remember liking Lanyards though)

Considering how much was on my hand, I thought I did pretty well in not having my middle finger bent down even farther. Once you slip it off the middle finger, you get a bit of a mess like this:

You have to be careful to keep the two ends of the strands held out, and don’t mix up the yarn on your wrist or it’ll get nasty to unwind.  I plied it on the wheel; which has it’s own problems. You can’t go as fast as you would if the yarn were on bobbins. You have to carefully work the yarn out of the mess so that it doesn’t make any knots. If done properly, it will feed nicely the whole time.  I’ve found the first 10 or so lengths coming off are a bit difficult to feed off your wrist.

I tried hard to make the same kind of ply I did with the first two skeins, it’ll be close enough. It was just barely 0.2 ounces; so I have 3.6 ounces total. I’m really crossing my fingers this is enough to make the gloves I want to with it. I’m actually very excited to knit with the yarn; we’ll see how soon it makes it onto the needles.

*** You can also wind it off into a center pull ball; and ply from both ends. I’ve tried that in the past, and if the singles have any life in them at all, it turns out to be a big huge yarn-tangle mess for me. Using my wrist as resistance as I’m unwinding seems to work just perfectly. Someday I will get a wooden tool to do the winding on; although having the ‘excuse’ to have the husband respond to the children getting up and down in bed is wonderful in some ways :)