EYE OF THE CLEANING STORM
Well, the easy part is over. The house is now scrubbed to within an inch of its life.With so many familiar things stowed itlooks oddly sterile, almost hotel-like.
Amusingly enough the Real Estate Gal asked me if – being a knitter – I might put together a basket of yarn in suitable colors, and pose it invitingly next to the sofa. She said it was the visual equivalent of boiling a vanilla bean or baking bread before an open house. So it was off on a trek to the storage cubby to retrieve some yarn in order to tart up the family room. Today I expect a herd of real estate people to amble through, in preparation for this weekend’s official viewing. Now for the hard part – hurry up and wait for what we hope will be multiple offers.
In knitting, I’m still mid-sleeves on the Suede T- knitting time being at a premium through all of this. So instead of posting a boring snap of too many stitches of olivenylon squished on a too-small needle, here’s an oldie. I knit this for my older daughter back in ’92 or so, and I wish I were a better photographer. It’s in a DK weight cotton from Lane Borgosesia whose label drifted off into infinite space before the advent of the Yarn Review Collection. It features hearts and OXO cables, both from Walker’s treasuries; embellished with clusters of embroidered bullion knots.The knots weredonein scraps of a matte-finish sport weight cotton.
I was quite amused when two years later Knitters published a similar OXO/heart cardigan on the cover of its Aran issue. Mine however is unique – if for no other reason than for my inexperiencedbumbling around witth the button band when I was noodling it up.
- Note the odd number of heart-shaped buttons. There are seven because my spacing was off, and I was too lazy to go back and redo the button band for six.
- Note the fact that the button band is on the non-traditional side for a girl’s garment. When I was at this point I looked down at what I was wearing and did the same thing, never stopping to think that I was wearing a man’s chambray work shirt at the time.
- Note the less-than-effectively centeredhorizontal buttonholes. I didn’t know back then that during wear buttons "migrate" to the outside edge of the buttonhole slit. If I were to do this today, I’d not center my buttonholes in the band. Instead I’d skew them a bit to the inside edge, so that when buttoned, the buttons appear better aligned down the midpoint ofthe band.
Still for all these defects, this is a much-loved piece. Daughters #1 and #2 both wore it and enjoyed it. It lasted well, enduring grass stains, dripped ice cream, and a rather messy day of strawberry picking all followed by rather aggressive laundering. Now it’s at the cusp of being outgrown and is one of the things I intend on packing away rather than handing down to another wearer.
More Horror and Hands of Velcro
My hands are now officially made of Velcro. Or perhaps they just feel that way. The Better Living Through Chemistry people have managed to devise a set of cleaning products SO efficient that they have scoured me of integument. The only way I could work on the Suede T (made of a super-grabby nylon yarn) was to lather up in enough hand cream to fuel a brothel for a fortnight. Which might have been fun but all that lubrication was wasted on knitting. [grin]
In all the packing, another resident of the Chest of Knitting HorrorsTM has surfaced. I can’t quite figure out why this one has sat unattended for so long. It was started about two or three years ago, shortly after Lorna’s Laces introduced Shepherd Sock in the custom color Socknitters’ Rainbow – a hand dyed yarn in a riot of colors. I loved the colors, but it seemed to me that two skeins of it for a pair of socksmadea heady investment. I wanted to do something that showcased the brilliant Rainbow yarn, yet that leavened the total per-pair cost by introducing another yarn. My intent was to publish the result as a pattern on wiseNeedle. Perhaps stripes? Hmmm….
I played around with some stashed yarn for gauge. The yarn that best matched the Socknitters’ Rainbow was Dale Baby Ull – one of my all-time favorite yarns. This machine washable Merino is soft, very easy and forgiving to knit, and perfect for stranding, so I decided to do a simple stranded pattern instead of plain old stripes. One thing I did remember – I favor toe-up/short-row heel socks. They’re a bit narrower through the instep than traditional square or Dutch heel cuff-down socks, so I’d have to keep the stranding pattern loose and simple that it did not constrain the sock’s stretch. (I found this out the hard way after knitting a pair of socks with peerie patterns, that ended up being SO tight I couldn’t get them on). I did want to carry the stranding up through the short-rowed heel. Here’s the result:
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 Pattern chart |
I like the way the happy chaos of the multicolor yarn is tamed by the solid charcoal black. I also like the movement of the little square checks as the focal points shift from stripe to stripe. (For those of you who are wondering – the little coiled wire thingy is a Strickfingerhut. I use them for all my stranded colorwork.)
I appear to have finished one sock, but pooped out shortly after the toe of the second. Why did I stop?I didn’t even remember beginning this project.My only clue is the bag in which I found the hibernating pair. It looks like I was working on them at about the same time as I lost a job, when Start-up #1 augered in after its funding fell through. That was around January ’01, and is still a painful memory (at the time. I drank the Koolaid, and truly believed that we’d pull off the venture). ’01 was not a good year. Iwent on to another start-up company, that one tooteetered on the edge ofthe Big Death before fall of that same year and canned 75% of the staff. Ever since I’ve been a freelance proposal drone. But that’s neither here nor there and largely irrelevant to knitting.
Apparently this pair of socksmust befraught with Painful Associations because until I found it I didn’t even remember that I had been working on it. My choices are now finish off the things, or dispel any lingering curse by ripping them back and making something else again. Sometimes being lazy is a good thing, as it reinforces the fact that I don’t believe in curses. I’ll put the bag aside instead of packing it off to the cubby, and finish this pair of cursed socks after I’ve tucked in the Suede T.
WORKING REPORT – SUEDE T
O.K. Enough blather. Back to actual knitting…
Progress continues to be made on my Berroco Suede Shapely T. I’m now up to the armhole decreases on the back (this shot shows the front folded in half, and the back still on the needles. The entire front is here):
It’s been slow going however – and not because of the pattern (which is great), or the yarn (which is annoying but I’ve gotten used to it.) I’m afraid life has intruded into my knitting time. We’ve made an offer on a new house, and I’m now in the middle of a cleaning and de-cluttering frenzy, getting ready to put our current place up for sale. Here’s a snap of the new place:
Knitting relevance? This 1912 bungalow has a striking well-preserved Craftsman-style interior and a large dining room. While I don’t have a dining room table yet, I will finally have somewhere to display my now estivating Kinzel Tudor Rose tablecloth. So I better retrieve it from the Chest of Knitting HorrorsTM and finally finish it off. Plus, although you can’t see thehouse’s interior,I think there’s scope here for some knitted lace curtains as well.
So laugh if you will, I’m off to pack up my closet-dwelling stash, and The Chest of Knitting HorrorsTM
WORKING REPORT – SUEDE T
Progress continues to be made. I have now finished the front (complete with darts), and am starting the back. The Berroco Suede yarn continues to be annoying to knit, but produces a quite pleasing fabric. An additional note though – it’s HEAVY, even compared to a similar gauge cotton. This will end up being quite a weighty T-shirt. Jury is still out on the warmth factor, but the thingbeing 100% nylon, it probably be on thetoasty side.
I’m planning to finish the border around the neck with an abbreviated strip of the same edgedesign I used earlier. I’m also especially pleased by the dart shaping. Being far from planar myself, flat cut Ts never quite fit me correctly. I’m looking forward to seeing how the Shapely T fits.
TRIVIAL QUESTION
A couple of people have written afternoticing the origin ofthis blog’s name. They’ve asked if hobbits knit. I’m not a gushing "look what they’ve done in the movies" follower, nor am I aline-by-line memorizer of JRRT’s canon, but I’m pretty familiar withthe books.
I can safely say there is absolutely no specific textual reference in Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit for knitting.
Hobbits do wear mufflers (though obviously, never socks) but how those are made isn’t detailed. This however didn’t bind the imagination of the movie makers.There is considerable debate among the fan-boy/fan-gal set thatdoes costume replicationas to whether or not Pippins’ scarf in the recent filmswas knit or woven. Although most of the other specialty textiles in the series were woven, I thinkthe scarf wasknit, using lozenges of purl weltingin a contrasting color broken up byslipped knit stitches:
The sametexture/color pattern is foundin this Schaefer cardigan. Still, I’m not going to run out and make one myself. I’ll leave that for the truefan-boys/gals.
WORKING REPORT – STROLLING DOWN THE PATH
Well, here it is. Nine months in the making – my Forest Path stole is finally finished. (Pattern from Summer 2003 Interweave Knits). Biggest Lesson Learned: There’s a reason why most people knit lace in white or light colors. I encourage anyone wanting to do this (or any piece) in black to have their head and eyes examined. Not necessarily in that order.
We start with a clean sheet on the carpet, a sodden mass, eight three-foot long lengths of 1/16th inch brass tubing, and assorted straight pins:
Threading the tubing through the edge stitches was a bit tedious. It would have gone faster had the tubing nice knitting needle style points. The ends though didn’t snag very much, they were quite smooth. The only difficulty was that the adhesive used to attach the price labels in the hardware store was difficult to get off. Rubbing alcohol didn’t do it. I needed to resort to nail polish remover.
I have to admit, I’m pretty pleased with this one. I like the Suri Alpaca. For the record, I used two full skeins, and managed to eke out 21 tiers of motifs. I had only a tiny bit left over. My stole ended up being 29" x 75" (73.6cm x 190.5cm). Now with the Spider Queen and the Forest Path under my belt – both gifts for others – I’m looking around for killer lace shawl or stoleto make for myself. What to do next? Possibly Hazel Carter’s Alcazar (no affiliation, just gloming pix), or one of the many spectacular Niebling designs worked atshawl-let rather than doily scale (pix of many can be found off of Yarn Over, Nurhanne’s knitted lace website.) But there remains one problem: I am not the lace-wearing type…
WORKING REPORT – VARIOUS
Progress continues to be made on my two current projects. I’m just below the armholes on the front of my Shapely T in Suede, that places me smack in the midst of the short rows that provide extra fullness in the bust (and that make the piece live up to its name). I’m looking forward to seeing how this topography overlies my own. In the mean time, I can report on my quest for blocking wires.
Having read so much about the effectiveness of threading stiff wires through the edges of lace pieces undergoing blocking, and having struggled with pin blocking my Spider Queen shawl last year, I decided to treat myself to blocking wires. Here’s the Spider Queen all finished, laid out on my living room floor:
And a detail of it mid-block. I was fortunate enough to come across a pair of flat checked bedsheets in an odd lot discount store a couple of years ago. The two-inch squares are VERY convenient if you need to lay something out evenly. You can see how the pins worked o.k. with this piece, which has lots of dagged points along the edges. The Forest Path stole however is straight-edged, without points. I was afraid that using pins would distort the edges.
Since no local knitshops sell the wires packaged up for this use, I went to several local hardware stores instead. I was looking for long straight lengths of non-corroding wire, preferably stainless steel. I didn’t find them. Instead I settled for brass. I had two choices in brass – 1/16-inch rods and 1/16th-inch tubes. Both came in 3-foot lengths. I opted for the tubes because they were more flexible than the rods. I bought eight at $1.65 each. They were slightly oily and sticky, so I washed and dried them thoroughly. Tomorrow I plan on washing my Forest Path stole and blocking it with my new wires. Pix will ensue…
WORKING REPORT – SUEDE T
My T-shirt in Berroco Suede progresses. I have gotten used to knitting with the Suede, but am not loving it. But I do like the look and the Shapely T pattern. Here’s document of my progress:
The Shapely T pattern starts off with some garter stitch, and then includes some short-row shaping to make a rounded shirt-tail style bottom edge. I’ve increased the depth of the border below the shaping. I used a row of Indian Cross Stitch (Walker, Vol 1, p. 112), framed by garter stitch ridges and a row of elongated knit stitch (wrap yarn twice per stitch on Row 1; k1, drop extra loop on Row 2):
Because my bottom edge will be deeper than the original pattern, I cast on more stitches than the pattern called for, and hid some evenly spaced decreases in the garter stitch ridges. With luck, my extra width will compensate for wrapping a wider bottom edge around the shirttail shaping on the hem, and I’ll end up with (mostly) straight side seams.
String-Or-Nothing 