Net Crochet

Sarah here. This past month I crocheted this scarf/shawl. I finally have some nice pictures of it and I wanted to share. I crocheted in net stitch and I think this really shows off the Kureyon colorways.
I used two skeins of Noro Kureyon # 139. It took me a loooong time to figure out what to make with these two skeins because I really liked them and wanted something special. The finished product is very stretchy and light, perfect for spring, fall, and sometimes cold summers in the Northeast.

Knitting Under The Gun

Wow. I must want it to feel like Christmas year-round. It seems that at every moment a deadline (or several!) is looming. My dad and two of my brothers came down to visit this past weekend, and my intention was to send him back with belated gifts for different family members: my mom's Mother's Day socks, my sister Hannah's crochet purse, the Knitted Babe for littlest sister Rachel, and a bunch of crocheted hacky-sacks for my two youngest brothers (not the two who came to see me). So. I also had 5 dishcloths to finish for my Knitted Dishcloth Class I'm teaching at Major Chain Craft Store, which really should have been done by the begining of this month, but certainly by yesterday, since the first class is on Friday (!). For whatever reason I was putting off the dishcloths (it was hard to pick only five that would cover pretty much anything you'd want to know about knitting!)

Want to know what I was able to finish? Well, it's a bit too much to put into one post, so I'm going to space it out.

For now, here's the Babe:

Click on her for gallery of her fashion shoot and details.

All knitted items were worked up in Knit Picks Pallette.

Was at Major Chain Craft Store yesterday, and noticed that they needed a sample of the crocheted One Skein Scarf from Happy Hooker. I took home a ball of Paton's Classic Merino, intending on starting it after I had completed the blanket. Somehow, 5 hours later, I had this:

(Did anyone else realize that this was an 8 foot long scarf?! Woah!)

Project notes to follow once this is dry and I can take a proper picture.

tiny felt

So, did you hear it? I was in Cast-on yesterday. I sent in an audio comment with Odeo, and it was cool because I could play it back and re-record if needed. The surprising thing was actually hearing myself on the show. I don't know why, but I figured she wouldn't play it.

Last week I knit the ballet shoes for the Babe, and they turned out huge. These were knit to gauge, so I don't know what's up.

Anyway, I showed them to Knitting Friend Laura, and she suggested hand-felting them to size (I've knit the doll and all accessories with Knit Picks Palette sock yarn). I don't know why I'm surprised, but it worked really well!

With the little ties sewn on the backs of them, they look even cuter. Last night I sewed her tutu together, and a pair of sweat-pant/capris. A few more items of clothing and she'll be ready for her final photo shoot, and then off to NY! My little sister is waiting.

Dishrag

So. I've knit this same dishcloth now three times. Three. Well actually, I finished it once, ripped back twice almost to the eyelets and knit back in.

Here's the first attempt:

The trouble seemed to be that when I switched to DPN's, my gauge changed (got tighter). I went up two sizes in DPN's, ripped back and re-knit twice, and here's the final outcome:

Looks kind of similar, does it not? My husband, seeing that I was getting my butt totally kicked by a mere washcloth, suggested blocking. (My husband does not knit, but aparently he's a genious.)

Here it is, drying after a severe blocking:

I should probably go straighten it a little more, but can you believe it? That's the same washcloth! No rippling! I hope that it dries like this. We shall have to see.

First timer

This weekend, I traveled to the Island of Fair. That is to say, I learned Fair Isle (two-fisted!) for the first time! I also learned to properly mattress seam (I think). This knitted babe has taught me much. It's nice to try out new techniques on such a small, forgiving subject. This doll will be for my 8-year-old sister, so I know she'll forgive any mistakes, but I am trying to get it as near perfect as possible. Here's the Babe's new sweater:

I will get a better shot of this once I finish the entire wardrobe. I also knit the ballet slippers, but they came out huge, although on gauge. Hmm. My friend Laura suggested hand-felting them down to size, which is probably what I will do. I don't feel like knitting other ones, and sturdy shoes probably wouldn't look all that wired since...well, they are shoes, after all.

This doll has to be finished by this weekend. That's my deadline. I think this is the third deadline this thing has had, but I'm going to try and make this one, for real!

Also, I've been working on some Dishcloth samples for a dishcloth class I'll be teaching at Major Chain Craft Store:

(Note the computer print-out of the Mason-Dixon Dishcloth (PDF). If you're new around here, scroll down about two entries.)

Anyway.

Hmm, I think this is my first green Project Spectrum post. Yes, all of the washcloths will be based around a green theme. It helps that green is my new favorite color.

So a few weeks ago, right around the Maryland Sheep And Wool Festival, my friend Laura (mentioned above) said she was going on a trip. I knew that she was going to be in the area of the festival, but she didn't mention it, so I figured it was because she was bitter that she'd be so close but couldn't make it there. I didn't ask her anything about it. Last night at Stitch N Bitch, we were all getting ready to go when she pulled this out of her bag.

She mentioned offhandedly that she'd picked these up for me in her travels. And the place she happened to get them from was...well, yes, The Festival. !!! So here I was, choosing not to mope that my plans to go there had fallen through, and the festival came home to me! Laura is one of the most thoughtful people ever. (Thank you!!) I look forward to spinning this. I may even try dying it before I spin it, although I'm a little scared to get it wet before it's spun. I know that people do it all the time, but I'm still feeling a little apprehensive about it.

My dad and two of my brothers are driving down from NY this weekend, and my dad is bringing me some roving.

You saw it coming, right? My fiber collection is turning into a stash.

Utility pole knitting

I might have gotten a lot of Wool-Ease yesterday. I don't really want to talk about it.

In other news...

This is extreme knitting at it's finest. David Cole is my new hero. (I think!)

Knitting with utility poles



Also, has everyone seen the handspun skein at Go Knit In Your Hat? Woah. Not sure what to say here. It sold for around $250 though, so someone must know something I don't.

I can finally reveal my pal in Sockapalooza! It was the talanted Sigga Sif. She just posted a picture of her foot in the socks I knit for her. I was unprepared for how thrilling that would be. =) So anyway, if you've never been to her site, go check it out, because she knits some seriously cool stuff.

Stash Enhancement

Wow, the squeaky wheel really gets the grease, huh? If you haven't checked the comments yet, please do. Just in case anyone's wondering, I do realize that Wendy's book "Wendy Knits" was the least of the offenders, since there was only one "free online, pay for in book" pattern included. Mason-Dixon's book is probably the worse offender.

I guess that my answer to the problem is, I think it's fine to discuss in a book patterns that are free online, and to include links to it. I do not, however, think it is ethical to include said free patterns in a book.

Also, I have realized that Wendy's book is more for people who subscribe to her blog, rather than the knitting world at large (like Stephanie/Yarn Harlot's books do, appealing to every knitter). That just goes to show that it pays to look inside the book first if you don't "know" the author.

The socks were completed at 11pm last night. I love it when I hit my own deadlines! Here they are:

Pattern: Bell Lace Wool-Ease Socks
Yarn: Wool-Ease Denim #114
Cast on: May 14th
Cast off: May 18th
Modifications: Instead of a 1x1 rib on the cuff, I did a 2x2 rib since I wanted them to be extra stretchy and clingy so they would stay up. Also, I lengthened the ribbing from 1-1/2" to 2" for the same reason. (These are to be used as hiking socks, after all.) Also, I substituted an Eye Of The Partridge heel for the Plain Slip Stitch heel, because I'd never done one and was experimenting. I also went down two needles sizes to make these a little tighter, since now I know that socks can stretch out and that's no fun. It's better for them to be a tiny bit too tight at first, I've decided.
Notes: These socks were fun and easy to work up. The lace pattern made the project feel like it was flying, and was super easy to memorize. (Yarn overs every 5th row, so you hardly have to think about it.)

Here's a close up detail of the lace and the pretty Eye Of The Partridge heel:

This pair took exactly one ball of yarn. At the end, I was nearly running on fumes. Here's how much yarn was left:


Yesterday, hearing rumours of a yarn clearance sale, I went to Hobby Lobby. I had my 11-month-old, Max, with me. We trolled the aisles and confirmed that yes, the Wool-Ease was going for almost half price. (!!) They only had a few colors left, and before I knew it, I looked down and noticed my shopping cart was nearly full of the stuff. I started to walk away, so proud of my find, when I looked down at the pile again. What was I going to use this stuff for? Am I really in love with Wool-Ease? Wouldn't I rather spend my money on some more quality stuff? Shouldn't I save my money for that oportunity? It was difficult...but I put back most of it. I ended up with three balls of green/blue to make one of my boys a sweater. Then I noticed some LB Landscapes (twisted colors in pure wool), but notice the restraint: I only bought two balls of it, because they were the only ones left that I really liked. Yes, I should be awarded a medal at this point. "Shopping based on what I really need/want vs. a good sale." (Don't worry I'm patting myself on the back for you.)

(Shhh, don't tell anyone, but during all of this critical decision time, I may have given Max his first lolly pop to stretch out my shopping time.)

Sparky arranged the little stash enhancement pile all nicely for you to see:

Of course now I'm thinking, "but the black would have been cute with the blue as matching intarsia skull-and-crossbones sweaters for the boys..."

If you need me, I'll be at Hobby Lobby.

Rant

*ETA: Log Cabin link, courtesy of Sonja, in the Mason-Dixon tirade.

Before I begin my little tirade, let me show you my progress on my mom's socks:

I feel very accomplished. My goal is to finish them tomorrow. Then I need to work on my little sister's Knitted Babe (the poor thing is getting clothing veeeeery slowly), and make up a bunch of beanie bags for my little brothers. My dad and two of my brothers are coming in two weekends, so I intend to send them home with knitted goods. That's my intention. We'll see how all that goes.

Ok, on to my little rant:

A few weeks ago I was ordering some books from Amazon.com and was in an expansive mood. This book came up in the "other people ordering blah-blah ordered this as well!", so I was a sucker and bought it, sight unseen, the day before it was released.

I hadn't ever even read her blog. I guess I was thinking "the Yarn Harlot's books are awesome and so is her blog, so here is more of the same". Anyway, it arrived with....shoot, can't remember. I think it was the Vogue Knitting Stitchionary Vol I. Something with big color photos and such. This book is entirely black-and-white on the inside, so it didn't grab me at first. Once I started reading it though, I noticed several things. The book reads kind of like a blog in book form. If you're new to the world of blogs and online knitting groups and such, this will be a helpful and non threatening way to find out about all of it. For me, I was just thinking "who's Wendy?". I put the book down and came back to it later.

The stories got more interesting to me (probably distancing myself from the colorful books was a good idea before reading this again), and then I noticed the chapter on socks. "Surely this will have something for me!" I said to myself. I've never knit socks toe-up. She knits all of hers this way! She has a generic sock pattern in the book!

She has a generic sock pattern on her blog! Wait. Read that again. Yes, now go check here. Yup, that looks like the same pattern to me. That makes me a little mad, but thankfully, I didn't notice any other "free online, pay for it in book" patterns. But isn't that wrong? Hopefully this is an isolated incident.*

Then I got a sudden flashback memory of when I was reading Amy Singer's Knit Wit. I had checked it out from the library, and noticed a pattern I'd seen before...in Knitty. Thinking this is just some little oversight, I continued to page through it, and noticed at least 4 patterns that had already been published by Knitty, and are free. What the heck?!

A few days ago I was listening to a knitting podcast (sorry, can't remember which one at the moment) and they were reviewing Vogue Knitting's On The Go Shawls (I think?), and mentioned that several of the patterns were simply recycled from other Vogue books or mags.

Recently I bought the Mason-Dixon Knitting book. One thing everyone's raving about (do a google search) in blogland these days are the dishcloth patterns in here. One person even wrote "this is why I bought the book". Should I leave a comment on her blog and mention that both dishcloth patterns are available for free online? That would be mean, so I won't but it made me pretty mad. Thankfully I like some of the other patterns as well, and the narrative of the book is pretty engaging as well. (Another plus is the HUGE, BEAUTIFUL color photos. The book itself is pretty huge, actually.)

Here are the free patterns:
Mason-Dixon Washrag (pdf)
Textured Slip-Stitch Dishcloth
*Log Cabin Knitting (thanks Sonja!)
And I may be wrong, but I suspect the Heartbreakingly Cute (One-Piece) Baby Kimono is out there somewhere too. Free. (Let me know if you find it first.)


Perhaps this should be included in KnitSpot's "We're Knot Taking Anymore" (top right corner of her blog)

All of this pisses me off. Authors and publishers should make sure that they're giving us what we pay for. Not just something we can get for free, packaged nicely. I could do that for myself, thank you.




*I have given the book, Wendy Knits, to a friend who is a new knitter. She loves the scarf patterns in there, and I think it'll be a good intro to the whole knitting world. I decided not to keep it only because it seemed too basic, and anyway I'm not currently emotionally attached to Wendy. Maybe I'll start following her blog though, and then perhaps I will regret this. Who knows? I'm sure that I could always check this book out at the library though if the urge to read this again should strike. And thankfully, whenever I decide to knit toe-up socks, I can print them straight off her site. For free. I'm not bitter though.

it's all about socks

It was some point just before Mother's Day that I realized I hadn't gotten my mom anything. I didn't even make her a card. Whoops. What's a knitter to do? Cast on that day, of course. This is what I knit on The Day:

It's the Bell Lace Wool-Ease Socks and they're so quick! I wanted to make her some hiking socks that could be described as beautiful, and I think these fit the bill. I'm loving the eye-of-the-partridge (is that what it's called?) heel. I'll have to shoot a close-up later. I'm knitting them from some Wool-Ease that was in the stash. This is her favorite color.

Also, I knit this the other day in anticipation of teaching my friend to knit socks.

It's a baby sock of my own design for Max. It's a little to short for his foot, so I need to rip it back and knit a little more, but they're very cozy (knit from Plymouth-something that's just like Wool-Ease)

The pink/purple squishy baby blanket is about half done. I'm not including a photo until I begin to edge it though, since it looks exactly like it did before, only bigger. Yeah.

Ok now, gotta run. I'm off to see the Lady Doctor. Yuck. At least I'll have some knitting time in the waiting room (gotta look on the bright side, ya know?)

Package from my very own sockaPALooza

So sorry to leave you all hanging. Remember this?

Of course you do. Ok. The story. Our neighbor above us had just stepped out, and 10 minutes later we were drowning in our indoor tropical storm. About 5 minutes after that, we heard someone go back into the apartment, and then a flury of running about and a shop vac was clearly heard.

A little later, the neighbor (whom we had yet to meet) came down and knocked on our door. Severely embarrassed, he told us how he had balanced a Styrofoam tray of steak over the sink and started water running over it to thaw it out. Then he had to run out to the store to get something....and forgot the water running. He apologized many times as he watched the water run and splash down into our kitchen, then went back up to his apartment to try and get things cleaned up.

The water dripped for over an hour, and my husband emptied those two buckets 3 times each. That's a heck of a lot of water. The matainance man came over yesterday and painted the water-stained portions of the ceiling.

Everything has dried out, and thankfully, we were home to put the buckets in place and clear the area. My knitting bag was sitting right up there on the breakfast bar when the water started, so everything in it may have been ruined, had we not been there. (Makes my heart jump just thinking of it!) So we're fine, the ceiling didn't fall down on us, and our kitchen has been restored to it's former state of clean and dry. An interesting thing to note: we assumed that there wasn't much insulation in the ceiling since we can hear the neighbors clearly upstairs. Now that we saw the water running out of the holes where the light fixture wires are run, we realize that there must be pretty much none at all. At least there won't be any mildew and awful smell, since it was able to all drain out and then dry quickly!

Ok, on to knitting content.

My sockapalooza package has arrived! When I got the mail last night, I found a blue bubble mailer, and immediately tore into it. This is what my incredible sock pal, Anita, sent me:

I have got to be the luckiest sock pal around. One skein of Bearfoot Mountain Colors! Four ounces of silky, pink/peach/purple Merino! And the absolutely gorgeous Simply Lovely Lace Socks. Check out the detail of the heel. Didn't she do a perfect job? I love these! Even though it was hot last night, I wore them until bedtime (I admit I was tempted to sleep in them!) and showed anyone who cared to look (and probably a few who didn't). Thank you, thank you!!

Here is the card she sent me with a little family of Suri Alpacas on it:

Finally, I "get" all the excitement surrounding a swap, or in this case, a round-robin. While planning the socks for my pal, I started reading her blog to get a feeling of what, exactly, she would like. She wasn't very specific in her preferences, so I chose a colorway based on things she's chosen to knit for herself. Then I picked out a pattern that seemed to suit the yarn and the occasion (knitting for a skilled knitter!). During the nights and days spent knitting them, the places I took them, the people I visited with, the stores I shopped, I imagined these stitches hugging the feet of someone living across the ocean from here. This knitted fabric, this carefully chosen pair would be walked in, on soil I may never see. Exciting, interesting, inspiring.

Now, a week later, I have opened my very own package, and slipped my feet into a pair of socks knitted especially for my feet. Someone knit socks for me! (Did I note that this is a pattern I'd intended to knit anyway?) Not to mention, they took time to find out about my favorite things -- sock knitting and spinning! Thoughtfulness, all around.

This, my friends, is the beauty of sock swapping.