Warty Bobbles

Blog Clog

I have a rare quiet 45-minute chunk of time this morning and thought:  ah ha, I’ll write a blog post.  So I sat at my computer and…and…and…I got nothing.

 

Oh, I have lots thoughts swirling around my brain – they are just about non-knitting.  Family gathering plans for next week, kids-coming-home-from college travel arrangements, paperwork that has be get done before the family-gathering and the kids-coming-home, a dinner date, a funeral, personal-maintenance appointments (due to the family-gathering), and a grocery list that isn’t going to write itself. 

 

And if I can shove all that aside, there’s still Christmas.  Card lists, gift lists, baking lists, theater tickets, decorating schedule, travel arrangements.  George and I sat down and made a pre-emptive strike on Christmas this week and… (okay, I did not mean that exactly the way it probably sounded -- I mean that we sat down and plotted out December) and the larger pieces of that discussion are still dominating my mental radar.

 

So, although I am knitting along in the usual fragmented fashion (a little lace gusset here, a nice twisted rib sleeve there, a pink brioche gauntlet that makes the family raise their eyebrows and murmur behind my back), I just cannot pull my focus around to writing about knitting.

 

So, the question is:  Why post at all?

 

Well, firstly because Sarah has threatened to break into my blog and post for me if I let it go too long – she says she will title it:  Why I Like To Have 5 Balls Of Yarn Hanging From My Needles.  And since she thinks I am demented that way, I am just being prudent in thwarting her on this one.

 

But mostly, I am posting today because I figure other knitters are going through the same kind of the-Holidays-are-upon-us stress and I just wanted to say, hey, I’m there with you, sisters (and brothers, of course – although I suspect our knitting brethren don’t quite get the avalanche of extra Holiday duties that we ladies do).

 

Quite truly, I love Thanksgiving and I love Christmas.  And I am well aware that it is the bounty of my blessings (my family and friends, my work and my craft, my home and my cats) that is making me kind of crazy just now.  So, it’s all good – and perhaps being coherent is over-rated. 

 

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Max's Second Thanksgiving Sweater

I finished Max’s sweater last night (and tonight I am finishing it again – more on that in a moment).  It is knit from a super-bulky single-ply Peruvian wool is a gorgeous teal with hints of purple (Cascade Magnum).  As Sarah said, the sweater knit up “in about five minutes” -- 2 sts/inch and 3 rows/inch.  It is our own improvisation of a drop-sleeve pull-over (basket weave worked in the round to the armholes and then a ribbed yoke and short funnel collar).  Simple sleeves – though I ended up leaving the cuff open (i.e. I did not sew up the first 2”) because it would have been kind of tight otherwise.    

 

It took me longer to finish because I kept putting it off.  Finishing is not my favorite anyhow – and with yarn as thick as my finger and stitches the size of marshmallows, well, I figured it wasn’t going to be pretty.  I decided to sew it up with a finer yarn and it actually worked out well enough.  I also put off weaving in the ends (could I have just left them hanging like dreadlocks and call it a design element?).  But last night – with Thanksgiving looming and that nagging I-just-want-to-finish-something feeling that overwhelms me from time to time when I have a number of projects going – I settled in front of a movie and just did it.  Not too bad – though I hope everything stays put (a perpetual anxiety I have about woven-in ends).

 

The sweater is kind of a beast, but I like it.  It can stand by itself (almost).  It is kind of like armor and I am hoping Sarah will knit up the Viking Hat kit she bought at Stitches West last winter.  With his Scandinavian/German coloring, Max would look positively Wagnerian!

 

We put the sweater on Max this evening and it was all very nice.  Except.  Except that it was a little short.  It is generous through the shoulders and the length of the arms, but the body looked skimpy. @$#%&*$#.   Nothing to do but heave a great melodramatic sigh, pull the sweater off the child, dig out the remaining tangle of gargantuan yarn and do a pick-up-and-knit ribbing around the lower edge.  Naturally, there was a knot in the yarn and I had to cut and re-attach it.

 

When I get done posting this blog, I am going to drag myself back to my knitting, finish the ribbing, and weave in the 4 dreadlocks.  Hopefully, I will not have to finish this sweater a third time.

Holding Strong

I have declared that I am not knitting gifts for Christmas this year and I am holding strong.  I have about 6 design projects going and there are deadlines involved.    Good sense has been prevailing.  I am holding strong.

But my resolve was suddenly and sneakily attacked by the Noro Silk Garden Striped Scarf in the Yarn Harlot’s blog this week.  Probably the chic-est scarf I’ve ever seen – completely gender neutral and knit of, mmmm, Noro Silk Garden .  Two colors (think of the possible combinations...!)

Wow, everyone in my family would LOVE that scarf!  They would WEAR that scarf!

No, no, no…..I am not knitting for Christmas this year.

I did a little math in the shower (don’t judge).  Just to reinforce my resolve.

One husband, 3 daughters, 1 son, 2 sons-in-law:  7 scarves.   Six feet of 1x1 ribbing per scarf.  42 feet of 1x1 ribbing.  That’s a lot of ribbing.  And I really do not enjoy knitting ribbing.  That’s a lot of knitting for someone who does not enjoy knitting ribbing.

Although the beauty and surprise of the variegated Noro yarns weaving themselves together into a tapestry….well, that would be exciting…NO, NO, I am NOT knitting for Christmas! 

Not 42 feet of ribbing in, let’s see, 25 days in December and 17 days left in November. Exactly 42 days.  A foot of ribbing a day (okay, subtract Christmas Day, but add today and it still makes 42 days) everyday including Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.  Without anyone seeing me – because no one in my family would buy the idea that I was swatching a foot of ribbing a day of Noro  in 6-foot strips for no reason.

Okay, the challenge would be exciting – perhaps the challenge of hiding and knitting combined with the tapestry-of-Noro aspect of the project would balance the mind-numbing 1x1 ribbing….

BUT I am NOT knitting for Christmas this year.

Holding strong.  Holding strong. 

 

 

Casting On For Taking Off

We are flying to Spokane tomorrow to see our son, Geoff, and I am a little nervous.  Not about the flight itself or flying in general – I am a bit frantic about what knitting to take.

I have been a bit spoiled by car travel:  just fill up the baskets with yarn, drop in as many pointy needles and sharp scissors and odd-looking accessories as desired, apologize as sweetly as possible to whoever loses foot space to that box of merino that just arrived (how fortunate!) by post, and off you go.

With air travel, it is a matter of how little knitting stuff I can get away with taking as well as how much knitting stuff I can get away with taking.

I don’t think I should arrive at the flight gate laden with baskets like a market woman.  And I do not want to imagine what might happen if they see an x-ray of my collapsible aluminum swift in my luggage.  Further, in spite of passenger information online that says knitting needles are okay, I do not intend to subject my Lantern Moon beauties to seizure should some security crack-down occur. 

So, there are dozens of questions buzzing through my brain:

What am I going to knit in the car to the airport/at the airport/in the plane/in the rental car from the airport?  And do I have cheap, short, innocent-looking needles to knit it on?  And will it be something I can slip the needles out of (should I have to surrender them to someone official) without saying something that will get me in trouble?

If I bring only simple knitting, will I have to bring a lot of extra yarn as it might go quickly?  Will I get bored with it should I have time to sit quietly and knit in the hotel? 

If I bring only complicated knitting, will I have to bring charts, cable needles, reference books, etc.?  And will I find it too much to deal with while traveling and doing mom-and-dad/college-kid-visit-stuff – and then not be able to knit at all?!

So far, I seem to need innocuous airplane-safe knitting, simple knitting (without too much yarn), and complicated knitting (without too much support stuff).   Do I have any projects going that fit any of those categories?  Am I going to have to cast on 3 new projects for a weekend trip?   And can this be done without an emergency trip to the yarn shop?

 

A Versatile Border Technique

I have a weakness for complicated knitting.  I find stitch patterns exciting and I love combining different yarns in the same piece – happily working several panels of lace, cables, textures all at once with 2, 3, 4 balls of yarn hanging off my needles.

Sometimes, though, I want to use a bulky yarn next to a dk weight yarn – or some such combination – and the two will not work up well on the same size needles.  I have resorted to putting one yarn on a larger double-pointed needle while knitting the other yarn on a smaller straight needle.  It is a little awkward and sometimes the stitches vary more in height (a super-bulky yarn knit on the larger needle towering above demure lace-weight stitches worked on a finer needle) than I would like.

All in the past!

I searched through  The Principles of Knitting (June Hemmons Hiatt)   and found an add-a-border technique that allows me to execute one panel in a thin yarn and then work up a second panel in a heavier yarn (on a larger needle) while simultaneously cozy-ing the two together as if they had been intarsia-ed.  In the immortal words of Queen:  It’s a kind of magic!

One knits up the first panel with a slipped-stitch right selvedge.  Then, one picks-up-and-knits the right selvedge edge with a long double-pointed needle (or a couple of them if necessary). 

Then, with these nice live stitches all along the selvedge of the finished panel, one knits the second panel and joins it to the finished panel on each right-side row by working a slip-knit-passover decrease utilizing the last stitch of the row just knit and the live stitch on the dpn.  Turn and work back along the wrong side.  Turn back and work the right side, perform the little do-si-do move with the next stitch on the dpn and so on.

I can pick up every other slipped stitch (or 2 out of 3) to even things out as the stitches worked on the finer needle are probably shorter than the bulky stitches.  

 

It looks a bit surreal at first – sort of a Salvadore Dali kind of knitting, but it is not at all awkward to do.  The dpn just sort of hangs in back of your work until it is time to join stitches.  Now that I have worked half the selvedge stitches – and there is room on the dpn for my rather narrow 2^nd panel – I can just skip the other straight needle and work my new stitches onto the dpn.

 

In addition to handling the bulky/dk issue I faced, this technique could be used to add width to a piece of knitting or to make invisible side seams or to attach an edging.  It is a great “afterthought” technique.  If you have not done a slipped stitch selvedge, you can use a crochet hook to pick up the stitches on every other row (each join occurs on the right side row only – so each join represents 2 rows.

And then there are even more possibilities if I should want to work perpendicularly – i.e. with normal live stitches on a straight needle, I could start working a 2^nd panel across the top at right angles to my work…. 

It is starting to get a little trippy, so I will stop here.

Just a little Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-Di-Ay for the very cool Border Technique that is making my complicated knitting a little simpler!