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.

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!

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!

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.

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!

knitting up a storm

I've been knitting a lot of socks since I got laid off!

Raphael's Summer Berries socks - plain stockinette, round heel - Colinette Jitterbug SW merino


Flaming Sangria socks - plain stockinette, round heel - Dragonfibers Ramen SW colonial


PBR World Finals 2008 socks - plain stockinette, round heel - Fortissima Socka Mexiko

concealed wraps -- who the hell cares?

I'm turning a heel from Cat Bordhi's Big Book o'Insanity, and I had a revelation. I don't give a damn about concealing the wraps. It's an annoying, fiddly, time-consuming chore and I'm not doing it anymore.