handspun jade aveline

I finished another Aveline hat - Handspun Jade Aveline! Woohoo! I love this pattern, and it calls for about as much yarn as I get from 4 oz.

This hat used yarn I spun in October. I could see a real difference between it and the yarn I used for the previous handspun Aveline, which I spun in January. I've become more consistent!

The pre-blocked hat:


On the blocking balloon:




Finished!

drowning my soul in drab

So some celestial prankster decided my colors for Akitu (first campout of the year) would be silver and white. Now, let me state, it could have been worse. It could have been powder blue or preppy pink. But this is bad. People my size instinctively avoid white, and it doesn't do much for my skin tone either. I happen to have a white skirt because I needed one for an extremely informal handfasting ceremony. I've got one white hipscarf from my bellydance stash. (Don't ask.)

So I decided that I'd knit 2 pair of white gloves -- one for dawn ritual and one for Saturday revels (the two times the costuming comes in). I figured that would be a nice personal touch to a generic pagan outfit of a cami, broomstick skirt, and hip scarf.

First of all, realize that I had to go buy yarn for this. I don't have white yarn! I've got a 10-pack of white eyelash I bought during a psychotic interlude, and some fuzzy white yarn to knit a toy penguin, but that's it. I don't do white. I knit in color. I rarely buy solid yarn -- it's got to have shading and tones if not outright color changes. (AHA! This is why I never knit fair isle -- I don't have solid yarn! I wondered about that, because I love knitting two-handed. It makes me feel like a real knitter. I should look for a solid to go with one of my Ranco variegated skeins and do a fair isle project.)

I decided to add beads to the gloves so I'd have something to keep me from going insane with boredom. The first pair were a long, hard, dreary knit. For some insane reason, I decided to make them long, and I had to leave off the thumb beading in case I drum in them, and the pattern is a 5x1 rib, so it was an endless knit. The only thing that got me through was deciding to Kool-Aid dye these mofos after the campout. THAT will be righteous. These are for evening revels. Pattern is Glacial Gauntlets of the Wolf.


The second pair has gone from being an enjoyable knit to DROWNING MY SOUL IN DRAB. It's not the fault of the gloves -- the pattern (Lace Cable, Barbara Walker, A Treasury of Knitting Patterns) is rather delightful and the beads running up the seam are quite nice and I'd love to knit these gloves again in a nice variegated yarn that would make me happy instead of making me DREAD KNITTING.



UGH. No more white for me! And might I add that I'm not thrilled to be knitting to a deadline again either. And yet I do it to myself... sigh.

UPDATE: Decided to scrap the second pair. They were not making me happy. I'll knit that pattern in a pretty orange.

tom forrester spindles

http://www.the-wheel-thing.com/products/Spindles/forrester.html

http://www.geminifibres.com

http://www.geminifibres.com/product/spinning/spindle/pyography.htm

Forrester Dervish

http://www.thebellwether.biz/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_15_107&products_id=340

http://www.geminifibres.com/product/spinning/spindle/geometric.htm#Duelwhorl

beading setup

I went to Hobby Lobby today for some miscellaneous beading supplies. Everything still fits in the one big container, so that's good.

I stumbled into the ideal setup for adding beads to knitting. I've got a glass custard cup sitting in a round Glad plasticware container. The wee crochet hook and cable needle stand between the containers. It's large enough to wedge against the chair and provide a stable platform for beading. (My eyesight isn't good enough to spear beads sitting on the end table. Too far away.) I'm delighted, because it just fell together and it's perfect for my needs.

beads at earthfaire.com

http://earthfaire.com/

Oh bloody hell, I'm in trouble. They have a page for each bead color with a large photo! I want them all.

Metallic Gold Iris 6/0
Purple Lined Amethyst AB 6/0 peacock prism fingerless gloves
Berry Lined Lt Topaz AB 6/0 beautiful!
Metallic Olive 8/0 SPECTACULAR!!!
Garnet Lined Ruby 8/0 gorgeous
Transparent Topaz AB 8/0 not remotely topaz at all

beaded gauntlets

The pattern is Glacial Gauntlets of the Wolf. I modified it to a 5x1 rib from a 5x2, both for fit and because I just prefer x1 ribs. The beads are from http://millhillbeads.com -- size 6/0 jet. I love these gloves! I'm about to start a second pair (white with hematite beads for Akitu, and possibly a third (the peacock yarn might like to be this).

i got my beads!

I got my order from Mill Hill beads! I can start Glacial Gauntlets of the Wolf! And make new stitch markers when I'm in the mood! Which isn't now! But I have my beads! The first 3 are the ones I've been looking for!

Hematite: 16081 & 18081

Bronze: 16221 & 18221

Opal Smoky Topaz: 16609

Black rainbow: 16374

buttercup & berries

Finished my second yarn of the year -- Buttercup & Berries. Only 131 yards, but it is so soft and beautiful!

Roving from http://juliespins.etsy.com


The singles


Plying


Finished!

puttering around

I've been having one of those weeks in which I knit a lot, but produce very little. I keep trying different cable patterns for gloves, but I can't find a yarn/cable combo that I like. (Except for my current pair of gift gloves. I finished the left glove on Tuesday and am quite happy with it.) I can't even knit socks decisively this week -- I want some ornamentation on the socks I'm knitting out of the birthday yarn from Lyl, but nothing I try is making me happy. Yesterday I finally got a project moving -- my Sloochie hat -- but I had to spend over half an hour ripping back to fix stupid mistakes.

I've been taking some refuge in spinning. I wound off some singles to free up a couple of spindles and played around with various roving/spindle combinations. I wound the singles for Buttercup & Berries onto the plying spindle and started plying. I started Zaria2, which is going to be a 3-ply light fingering weight, and Fan the Flames, which is going to be a 3-ply worsted.

cables - the basic rules

I'm knitting my third pair of Stulpen gloves, and I've figured out a few things about cables and working with cable charts.

For all the cables I've worked thus far, you always

1. Knit the knit stitches and purl the purl stitches.

2. Pass knit stitches over purl stitches.

Huh. So if I highlight all of the symbols that indicate a front cross, I can glance at the chart to see if I'm crossing in front or behind, and the cable tells me everything else. A doorway of comprehension has opened in my brain!

mill hill glass beads

http://www.millhillbeads.com

16221 - size 6 bronze
18221 - size 8 bronze

my first handspun hat!

I made a hat out of my handspun! I'm so excited! It's another Aveline hat, using my first handspun of 2009.

I started with superwash merino roving (colorway 'hot') from http://juliespins.etsy.com.


It became a 3-ply.


The unblocked hat.


On the blocking balloon.


Finished! It's soft and smooshy and gorgeous!

defeated by fingers -- why?

When I knit my first pair of fingerless gloves/biker gloves, I was so proud and excited. I envisioned knitting gloves for my friends and people actually told me they would welcome such a thing.

Little did I know that would be the first and only time I managed to do fingers well. I tried for months in 2007 to make another pair, and I just couldn't get the goddamned fingers to flow from the body of the glove. I tried winging it, I tried following patterns, I tried different yarn and needle sizes, and I just couldn't do it. I can't be having with fingers that stick out randomly, or bunch the fabric, or don't lie flat when the glove is lying on a table. Standards, I have them. And they make me crazy. (Sometimes I think I have standards solely to punish myself for failing to meet them.)

Making fingers just grow out of the body of a glove is one of those things that seem like it should be easy.

1. Divide the sts on the back of the hand by 4, jigger the numbers so the index and middle fingers have more sts, eyeball it. Once satisfied, place stitch markers and divide the palm sts using the same numbers.
   
   
2. Move pinkie sts to dpns. Knit to pinkie. Using new yarn, knit the pinkie in the round, casting on a few sts between it and the ring finger to make a tube. Knit, bind off, weave in ends.
   
   
3. Using your main ball of yarn, pick up stitches between the ring finger and pinkie and resume knitting in the round. Knit a couple of rows to stabilize the cast-on stitches.
   
   
4. Using new yarn, knit the ring finger, picking up sts between the ring and middle fingers. Knit and bind off.
   
   
5. Using new yarn, knit the middle finger, picking up sts between the ring and middle fingers and between the middle and index fingers. Knit and bind off.
   
   
6. Using main yarn, knit index finger, picking up sts between the middle and index fingers. Knit and bind off.

And yet, as simple as it seems, in practice, not so much. I got so fed up in 2007 that I didn't even TRY in 2008. In December, I cast on a pair of knucks, because they are knit from the fingers down. I've worked a pair before to test it, and it worked beautifully. I figure that if I can master top-down construction, it will help me reverse-engineer the process so I can figure out how to knit fingers from the body of the glove. I haven't touched them, though, because I remember how bloody defeated the last attempt at fingers made me feel.

Sigh. I need to work on them, though. I need to conquer this ridiculous problem, because I want a drawerful of gorgeous gloves for me and I want to knit some for friends. Fingerless mittens have been a nice stopgap measure, and I think I'd be more apt to give those as gifts because the fit is easier to manage, but damn it, I want biker gloves, and I want a lot of them!

king of the idiot savants

Sometimes, such as when a friend hands me knitting to fix, I feel like a knitting rockstar. I sure as hell don't know how to do everything, but I'm confident that I can learn anything I want to. (Except, it seems, how to deal with fucking laceweight without having a brain hemorrhage.)

Sometimes, however, I feel like a goddamned IDIOT who should just sell off all her supplies and twiddle her thumbs for a hobby. I was working on another Aveline hat, this one made out of my own handspun. Somewhere around the third row of the crown decreases, I realized something had gone wrong a few rows back. The nice

Here's what it's supposed to look like. From left to right: a k3, k2tog, yo, k2 sequence that alternates rows with plain knitting.


See? Perfectly goddamned simple, right? I had gorked something up between the k2tog and the yo a few rows back, so all I should have to do would be to drop the k2tog and the yo back the the original screwup, and knit the two stitches back up. IT TOOK AT LEAST HALF AN HOUR. I don't know what kind of idiot possessed my brain last night, but I couldn't get it right. I couldn't find the problem. Instead of a nice ladder of yarn waiting to be picked up and reknit, I had a crossed ladder, and I couldn't seem to see where the problem originated from. I glared at it and swore, and ripped back further, and finally realized there was a problem one stitch to the left and ripped THAT down and finally I had a neat uncrossed ladder of yarn and 3 stitches waiting to be picked up. Of course, I forgot the first crown increase, and had to rip back and fix that, but FINALLY it was fixed and looked indistinguishable from any other repeat.

I would just like to know WHY something perfectly simple took so long to fix -- a yo followed by a k2tog? Why was that hard? Why did I have to work so hard to fix it?

plying, blooming

I think one of these days soon I'm going to spin some singles, Navajo ply them, and play around with how much twist I add. (I chain in one step and then add twist.) I want to ply one length the way I usually do -- eyeball it and guess. Then I want to overply one length and underply another.

I want to run this little science experiment because I don't know how much my yarn will bloom when I wash/whack it, and I'm getting to a point where I'm not content to be surprised. Take my last yarn, Hot. I started knitting a hat with it tonight, and while I'm not unhappy with it, I wonder if it would have bloomed more if I had added a bit less twist. (Or it could have been limp and lifeless.) On the other hand, if I had added more twist, I think I might have ended up with a still-soft but firm and sturdy yarn. (Or it could have been wire.)

I'm going to run this experiment using SW merino, since that is what I work with most often. I'd really like to be able to produce a 3 or 4 ply worsted that is round and soft and smooshy, and the bloom is what makes it smooshy.

For Ravelry members, the first post in this thread on blooming is what prompted my interest. Look at the before/after pictures!

lyl's 5-rib mitts

I knit these fingerless mitts for Lyl's birthday.





I used Barbara Walker’s Loose 5 Rib Braid from A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. I knit them to fit Lyl's hands, and they do! HOORAY!!!

cables

Last night I finished my 3rd pair of cabled mitts, and I've been going through Barbara Walker's First & Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, trying to decide on my next cable pattern. Evidently, cables are addictive. I now have to buy Cables Untangled, because this Ravelry project uses a stitch from it.

For someone who really doesn't like cables, I'm getting awfully interested in them.

the magic of blocking

I was thrilled with my merino/silk Aveline hat before it was blocked.


In fact, I contemplated leaving it alone, because I was slightly afraid I'd fuck it up in the blocking process. I've never actually blocked anything before -- I mainly knit socks. But I figured, people block for a reason, so let's do it. I carefully soaked the hat in Eucalan, squeezed out the excess water, and pulled it over a roll of paper towels that I had wrapped a towel around.

And it is breathtaking!


I get it now! Look at the way the eyelets opened up, and look at the soft drape the fabric has now! I cannot WAIT to finish my Strangling Vine scarf and Leaf Lace shawl so I can block them!

finished - Curio's stulpen gloves

This is my 3rd finished project and 1st gift knitting for 2009. These are Curio's stulpen gloves. I wasn't too happy with the fabric this produced, but he liked it, and that's what's important.

2008: celebration of socks

11 pair of socks in 2008! Hee! I only managed 2 in 2007! 9 for me, 2 for others. Not bad at all, especially when you consider how much of my time I spent spinning this year!

my first hat!

It's an Aveline Slouchy hat in MadelineTosh Pastoral chamomile. It's so beautiful! I ordered a skein of MadelineTosh sock in chamomile so I can make matching gloves, because I plan to wear this a lot.

charting

I am addicting to charts -- so addicted that I make my own in Excel. Tonight I charted out the pattern for my next fingerless gloves.

1st finished knitting of 2009!

I cast these on January 3rd and finished them January 7th! Stulpen fingerless mitts.





Note the wild rainbow blanket? That is a gift from Badcat, who made it for me! Isn't it awesome? It's the only reason I stayed warm on Monday afternoon when the power was off!

1st finished yarn of 2009!

Hot SW merino roving from http://juliespins.etsy.com. 3-ply, 141 yards.

Hot - Roving


Plying




Plied


Washed/Whacked

fingers of stupidity

I can't knit for shit today. Everything I touch turns to frogging. So I spent the evening updating my stash on Ravelry.