Persistent Knitter

I don’t know why, but I’ve been wanting to knit a blanket for a while. Nothing too complex, just simple and durable. My son loves the blankie grandma knitted for him, but it’s small; and my daughter loves playing with all of her blankets + his. I decided to start with her (which really doesn’t make any sense, since she has more blankets than he does, but she keeps stealing HIS, so maybe if she has a special one of her own, she’d leave his alone? Yeah – right).

Ok, well the desire to knit a blanket was solidified when I got Sarah Dallas Knitting from the library. It’s got an easy and cute multi color blanket in it. Alison has knit one that is so adorable; I couldn’t help but want to make one too.

I needed yarn, but I didn’t wanna spend a whole lot. I headed to my local craft store (which actually has quite a good selection of yarns) to see what they had. I found this:

Lion Brand Cotton-Ease**. It’s the ‘new’ Cotton-Ease, since Lion Brand decided to discontinue the previous line. I hope this wears as well as the original, as I went ahead and bought enough for the blanket.

The colors are laid out as they will be in the final blanket – it had to be pink in some form, and unfortunately they only had ONE pink color. I had been hoping for a dark pink and a light pink. I played up the purple (yes, that’s purple) and green to make sure target daughter liked it. She said she did. This also has the advantage of me not having to work on one big blanket that’s all the same color.

I’ll probably start with the pink, as it’s my least favorite out of the colors. Target daughter asked that the purple surround the green, so we’ll have a small bit o’ purple, then a green block, then the rest purple. The gray in the middle will be the seaming color. Target daughter has already asked for a BIG pillow to go with her blanket. I looked at her and said, “Let’s just knit the blanket first, shall we?”. She seemed dissappointed, but life is SO hard, isn’t it? :)

++ Update: Target Daughter has reminded me at least three times tonite to “Mama, dont’ forget to start my blanket tonite!” I told her I couldn’t start it until she was asleep, but so far that hasn’t led to her staying in bed any better than normal.

** I’d like to point out this is the first thing I’ve ever knit with Lion Brand yarn, as I’m normally such a yarn snob I wouldn’t deign to knit with anything that wasn’t at least some natural fiber. This at least is 50% cotton, feels pretty nice, and the store had a swatch I could fondle to see if I liked how it knit up. I almost went with a 100% acrylic something or other, but am glad I didn’t give in, this should feel so much nicer.

In the trek from Colorado to Washington, I entrusted my husband with the care of my orchids and other plants. Due to space considerations I was limited to one small box that could hold all the plant pots. They needed to be kept out of the cold (it was February after all) and treated gently. Well, they were kept out of the cold, but gentle wasn’t really a possibility. If any of them actually stayed IN their pots i’d be amazed.

Almost three months later I’m examining the plants to see how well they’re doing. I had just repotted some of them a few weeks before the move (probably not the best idea), and one had a little baby plant on it that had grown spontaneously near the top. It had roots jut hanging out in mid air and was growing quite well. The roots were about 2.5″ to 3″ long – so I cut that off the bigger plant and gave it it’s own pot. Well, it was bruised and beat up on the trip here, but it’s recovering quite well:

The yellow arrows are pointing out the new shoots coming out the bottom! I’ve been trying to water them just enough, not overwatered, but not letting them stay dry very long. The top of the plant had another two or four leaves out the middle that were broken off en route. I wasn’t sure if it’d survive, but it seems to be thriving!

A few of the other orchids aren’t doing so well. I won’t show pictures of those because they are just sad. I have one that hasn’t grown for two or more years. I had ‘rescued’ it from the grocery store. I realize now that was a huge mistake. I’ve bought one more orchid since we’ve been here to make up for all those that are dying; and i must have gotten it on it’s first day in the store, as it hadn’t had time to go into shock or be unhappy about the lack of light. It’s doing really well, hasn’t lost any flowers and still looks the proper amount of green on it’s leaves. (You can see that orchid here. It’s the one with the long purple spray of flowers)

I have been knitting! This shows the progress (head cut off due to totally stupid expression on my face):

You have to look closely to realize the arm in back has no sleeve : ) The whole sweater is basted together; so I’ll have to unseam it, block the pieces, and then put it back together in a more permanent way. I wanted to check the fit since I’ve been worried about it fitting properly . The lace pattern scrunches up quite a bit as you can see on the sleeve. It’s possible the sleeve will get too long when I block it. I’ll try hard to block it for width and not length. I detest sleeves that are too short with a passion, so I’d rather have them too long than too short.

New stuff! We always love new stuff. Packages in the mail are my favorite :) So here it is – My first toe up sock (which still looks funny to me, maybe when it’s done, It won’t look mutant), and a few new bags I’ve acquired:

The bags are GoKnit bags from Scout’s Swag shop. I had a hard time figuring out what size they really were just from the website measurements, so I ordered a few in each size. I got a large one (not pictured), 2 medium (1 shown on the left) and 2 smalls. I didn’t think I’d like the small ones as they just seemed too small based on the measurements from the website. Well, I love ‘em. I’m a bag nut anyway – so I had to have several.

Medium
The medium is great as you can put quite a bit in it; and it’s the most flexible size. I can see working on an entire adult sweater back or front and using this bag. Probably could keep an adult sweater that’s in-the-round in it, but might get a bit tight as you got towards finishing it. Right now it’s got a sleeve in progress that’s mostly done except for the sleeve cap. (Also both of the smaller bags fit into it as well, I just can never decide what to bring with me to work on!)

Small
The blue small bag has my green toe-up sock (shown), and there’s tons of room to spare. The small maroon bag on the right has a lace shawl, the p’cock in it. It might not fit as well when I switch to the 2nd ball of yarn, but for now it fits just perfect, except i have to fold my pattern in fourths instead of just in half.

Large
The larger bag I don’t like so much (maybe why it was shunned and not pictured here). It’s really too big to do the clip on thing like the smaller bags do, without me worrying about the small snap strap breaking eventually however, it’s perfect for carrying lighter weight spinning fiber, so I guess I’ll keep it and use it for that. :)

Conclusion
In the past I have made my own bags that resemble these pretty closely – the draw string closure, the stopper thingy that lets you keep it closed, the basic shape. GoKnits has an added snap thingy that lets you attach the knitting bag to your belt, your purse, or wherever, and also a snap loop in the bag that can help guide your yarn if you want (so far I haven’t used this one). The outside snap thingy is awesome. I like the material (rip stop fabric) because it’s lightweight, and doesn’t cause any drag on the yarn as your’e feeding it out. The colors available are great. The best thing? I don’t have to wait until I sew them. The fabric I have used previously was stuff I had in my fabric stash, so cost was minimal, but my most used bags were tearing and getting holes in them. We’ll see how these hold up over time. The GoKnit bags are a bit spendy, but worth it for a bag-nut like me.

I went to a new spinning group last night, and it was a total blast! I finished up the first bobbin of my BFL in colorway Hyacinth:

4 ounces of roving on the bobbin, and 4 more to spin. I’m planning on a two ply, my only worry that the colors will muddy up a bit.

Since I’ll be traveling with my wheel twice a month, and another spinner had these so I could see how they work, I think I’ll have to get a set of wheels to go on the bottom: http://www.schachtspindle.com/products/spinning/sw_accessories.htm . I still think the price is a bit much for what you’re really getting, I wonder if I can find them on sale anywhere.

I’ve also got a hankerin’ to knit this: http://www.fiddlesticksknitting.com/Grace_Large.html

I’d even like to do it in the yarn it calls for; but it’s a bit out of my budget these days. *sigh*. Maybe in 2 weeks I’ll look and see what’s in the stash that might work once we’re moved. (Countdown: 11 days)

I know. I know. The blog is called The Persistent Knitter. In my defense – I will eventually knit with this yarn. How could I not? See how pretty it is:

The roving is BFL from Chameleon Colorworks, in colorway Hyacinth. I’ve had it since last year, and it was one of the rovings/fibers that made the cut to come with me to the temporary housing vs being left in a box in storage with all the rest of our junk until May. I’m really loving spinning it – BFL is one of my favorite wools now. It’s so shiny and has good staple length and is of course, soft. I’m spinning this pretty fine – it’s probably just over 2 ounces so far on the bobbin. I’ve got 8 ounces total, and I’m going to do a two ply. So far I really like the roving – the dye job is excellent, penetrates all the way through the roving (a little darker on the outside, but that’s Ok) and the fiber is drafting nicely.

I am still working on Knit Visualizer 2.0. I’m making sure the color stuff is really solid, and that it’s easy to pick and use colors in your chart. I’ve been messing around with how the toolbar is arranged. I never did like it; but had learned to live with the way I set it up at first. Well, I added in a color picker – so that you can use an eyedropper tool to select either the symbol color or the background color of any cell on the chart; and it just got all stupid looking. I believe I’ve got a good much better solution now. Behold, the before & after shots.

In the before, the tools are shown in this order:

• Select (highlighted)
• Paint symbol tool
• Change Symbol Color (currently black)
• Paint Background
• Change Background Color (purple)
• Eyedropper tool
• Paint Selection With Background tool

And the after:

Tools shown in this order now:

• Select tool (highlighted)
• Paint Symbol tool
• Paint Background tool
• Eyedropper tool
• Change Background Color (purple)
• Change Foreground Color (blue)
• Paint Selection with Background tool

I think the 2nd screenshot works much better. All of the four tools are mutually exclusive, meaning you can only have one active at a time so it makes sense to group them. The way the foreground/background color swatches are drawn now mimics what most people are using to seeing in popular paint programs.

There’s some hot keys you can use to switch between the Modes – (S to flip between select and paint symbol; B to flip between Select and Paint background color). Also, the eyedropper tool will let you select the foreground color (click on chart, foreground color is changed to the cell you were over, or Right click and it’ll suck up the background color), then it automatically flips back to the “Select” mode. I can’t decide if I like this or not. I suppose you might want to select both the foreground AND the background color before proceeding. I’m also going to add a hotkey of “c” to switch to the eyedropper. When you’re in the chart you can just hit “c” and it’ll flip to eyedropper mode and voila – pick a color.

You’ll also notice the border color swatch over there on the right of each toolbar. This is the color to be used when painting borders. I just realized I didn’t give you a way to ’suck’ the border color off the chart… I’m already using Click, Right Click for foreground and background respectively. I suppose I can add in Control-Click to suck the border color. Does that seem too onerous?

You can also click on the color swatch to change the color and pick any color of the rainbow using this window:

It’s a very mac-like color chooser, but really one I had to design from scratch because the damn color choosers available out of the box all sucked big you-know-whats. You can click anywhere in the color wheel (the large swatch across the top changes to show the color you’re going to pick if you click “OK”), you can move the slider up and down to change the bright/darkness of the color. It’ll remember the last 10 colors you picked using this method so you can easily select them again. The top two boxes on the right will always be white and black, allowing you to easily switch back to the defaults.

The bobbin is full of 4 ounces of happy happy fiber (same fiber as shown here). I have ordered more of the same fiber, as I didn’t want to just ply it back on itself. I also want to make something with it, and it’s not quite enough for what I have in mind.

I spun it with really long color runs, and I’m not sure what the best way to proceed is. You see blue on the bobbin, but it’s got lots of pink layers too. I was thikning I didn’t want a mixed up mash of plied fiber. I do want it plied – probably just a 2 ply since I won’t be able to make what I want if it’s thicker. I ordered 12 ounces more (well, that was all there was left, how could I abandon the rest of it?). I’m debating what I’ll do with it. The fiber won’t show up until Monday (wasting a perfectly good weekend to spin it!) I have several options:

Option 1:
12 ounces of new fiber should give me enough to make a singles yarn of mostly blue, and then ply that with what I’ve already spun. In theory that would make a mostly blue yarn with stretches of pink/dark pink peeking through. That will leave me with a big pile of pinkish fiber though.

Option 2:
I could just spin shorter color runs, and then ply that together. that would mitigate big long chunks of blue with blue or pink with pink. They’d still show up, but they’d be smaller and less overwhelming.

Option 3:
Navajo ply. This will give me mostly solid runs, but make the yarn thicker. (too thick? Not sure). I’ve always liked knitting more heathered yarns vs the color A/Color B/Color A yarns (unless it’s socks). I think for the project i have in mind i’d prefer more subtle color changes.

Anyone else have other suggestions?

Any guesses on what the possible project for the yarn might be ? :)

I wouldn’t say this is the best sampling of my spinning; but I did turn fiber into a yarn like substance.

The fiber (separated into smaller chunks from the roving I received):

The final yarn:

Pardon the odd perspective on the yarn. I was trying to be ‘artsy’. ha. it’s sitting on top of my orchid plant pots. Owell, wierd yarn deserves a wierd photo. It’s spun thick and thin because I was too annoyed with it to be consistent. I think my main problem was I didn’t like the colors very much and the roving wasn’t drafting out as easily as I wanted it to.

The yarn will most likely become a blanket for my daughter’s Barbie. Said daughter really likes the colors. I’m glad someone does!

In relative size terms – if this yarn were made into a blanket for an adult, the gauge would be about 2 inches to the stitch. At least Barbie will be warm.