And... we're back

I've had to stay away from the blog because I had news (such news!) and I simply couldn't blurt it out. First off, I've quit my job. While I liked the people I worked with, there simply wasn't enough work around to keep me entertained. Now my husband and I will be moving back across the country to California. Again. Luckily, I seem to have lured a new knitter into the fold, so someone can use my heavy wool. (Wave a bit of math in front of her and she's putty.)

I'll be working for a very well known company in the San Francisco bay area, doing exciting things in exchange for more money. I'm really looking forward to it, even though I'll miss my Boston friends.

Knitting updates next time, where I think I've frogged Phroggy enough to nearly finish the thing, the beginnings of a new sweater, socks for my mother, and enough underspun handspun to choke a small child.

My camera came a waltzin' back home

A camera! With which I can take pictures! (Oh, and yes, my husband came home, too. I've been a little distracted since then.) Please blame the quality (or lack thereof) on the evident ability I have to forget how to take a good picture in only a week.

I've been staring at this sleeve for over a week now and muttering "rip? no rip? rip? no rip?". After a few days of that, even the voices in your head think you've got a screw loose. Anyway, I just can't tell if it's a little snug around this giant knitting muscle I seem to have developed in my forearm.

More than that: does this spiraling-cable motif look nice? There are really two cables, each spiraling around (and spawning extra ribs to increase the sleeve size towards the elbow). I have a plan for the shoulders which should look good... but how is this? If it's bad, tell me now!

Fresh Stripe Socks

What? A finished object from Krista? That must mean I'm on some sort of break or something! Yes, here's what I have to show for two weeks of spring break.

Socks for the husband, Lorna's Laces Fresh Stripe Shepard Sock, size 3 needles. I had quite a bit left over from each skein, even with his size 11 men's feet. I'm pretty happy with how these turned out except for that weirdly baggy effect around the ankles, but he seems to like them :)

The pretty colours of spring (tra la)

My camera walked away, so I can't show you the lovely teal/white wool fiber I dyed and am spinning up. Somehow my camera seems to have followed my husband to Switzerland and I haven't found the cords for any of the other cameras in the house.

But I'm thrilled with how these came out. Clockwise from top left: mohair boucle (purple with teal highlights), giant skien of (originally natural-white with brown tweedy flecks) teal, two little skiens of Cascade 220 (one largely green, one purple/black), merino/tencel sock yarn in red and ambery orange, giant skein of teal happiness, and crimson red silk. (I'm really looking forward to spinning up the silk, just to see what it's like!)

I hope you like them as well, Sandra D. :) I'm having trouble figuring out exactly why one needs to wear a mask when working with acid dyes, but Lucy suggested that people who inhale too much dye powder tend to acquire interesting neurological problems. I gave up robotics because of all the soldering already: I figure that sooner or later, I'm going to need my brain, so I'd better not screw it up!

What can I say: right now I have a thing for teal/ocean blue. I have some summery knit plans in those colours that I'm really excited about. Knit content is a bit delayed, though, because I skinned/bruised my hands belaying while rock climbing this weekend. I did spend part of my weekend doing other fun crafting things, though: pictures as soon as I find a camera.

Email problem

If anyone's been trying to email me in the last few weeks, the email address I've been leaving on blogs and had here wasn't working. (I tested it, so I'm not sure what happened or how to fix it. My geek cred is taking a hit here, I know.) If you'd like to find me, you can reach me at chialea punctuation-here gmail other-punctuation com. I'm very sorry about that!

Dye yarn, dye!

Lucy offers a class in dying. Never one to pass up a chance to mess up someone else's kitchen, I couldn't resist.

I'm also not one to pass up a chance to wear silly clothing. Nor am I one to pass up a chance to take pictures of other people wearing silly clothing.

I'm not quite as thrilled with the lightheadedness produced by wearing a mask for several hours. The words "neurological disorders" are enough to keep the mask firmly on, but I think the words icing colours" might be in my future instead of repeating this in my own kitchen. (Cornflower blue + teal might make a nice ocean blue...)

We squirted...

(Why yes, that yellow DOES make pee-coloured yarn. Someone checked. Does that blue liquid remind anyone else of diaper commercials?).

We soaked...


We played with intestines...

(I kid, of course. That's really a liver.)

Next post: the results!

Phroggy takes a step

Phroggy is torso-ized!

Excepting the small matter of bra straps, I think it would be cute as it is. I may take a bit out of the bust to adjust for the weight I lost, but I think it's coming out pretty nicely. If it's bad, tell me now so I can rip before I get very far on the sleeves. (The sleeves are a bit wild, so I'm going to need some stylistic help on those!)

The flowers that bloom in the spring

(tra la)

I always thought one of the first signs of spring is flowers. Apparently that's not the case in Boston. There's nary a bloom in sight, but the spandex is blooming all over the place. Hail the joggers, those rosy urban robins!

Kitty doesn't have enough fuzz

Kitty has been shedding rather abundantly, and I believe he misses all that fur. Why would I think such a silly thing? He's either trying to be a cat in sheep's clothing or a cat filled with sheep's clothing.

He's sitting on my entire fiber stash right there. Sandra D, I need some help to catch up to you! (Actually, what I really need is some help in spinning this stuff into actual yarn. Does anyone know of a good book?)

Then he decided to eat the coned yarn I was skiening... this one earned him a time out locked in my husband's office to stand on his keyboard for a while.

Not all my fibery pursuits have been taken over by kitty, though. Here's a close up of the (former) raglan yoke of Phrog.

Instead of decreasing on the raglan lines, I'm decreasing up the center of the chest. While I like the overall effect, the cable join in that picture is just not helping. (Nor is the fact that the kitting is all scrunched up, but that's easily fixed!) True to its name, Phrog has been partially frogged again. I'm happy to say that the Silky Wool is holding up well to the knit/frog cycle. There is some grass to pick out, but that's a reasonable exchange for the nice feel of the yarn. (I'm told that processing the yarn enough to get out that last bit of VM is what makes some yarn feel odd.) I'm also thrilled with the yardage; I am going to finish the entire body in three skiens or just over! At about $7/skien, this is going to be a wonderfully soft, cozy, wonderful sweater at an impressively low price.

Lystessa, I'm so thrilled you like Phrog, and I'd be happy to write you out a pattern for your measurements. Phrog is actually a reasonably simple pattern, especially if you don't need a bust dart or a lot of waist shaping. I'm actually happy to write out a copy of whatever I've knitted for people, if they want it, just in exchange for asking nicely. (Bribery never goes over badly, either.)

Tagalong spinnity

Something followed me home from knitting group last night. Let's all blame Lucy, ok?

I promise details later, but I spent over 11 hours at work yesterday before knitting group and need to run back over there now. I'm going to assume it's a good thing that work keeps on wanting me to come back, but it's cutting into my toy time!

Radioactictive phrog

Phrog is moving right along, though slowly. Who'd have thunk that knitting a ribbed and cabled sweater in sportweight yarn might take a while? (To be fair, I've been writing a pattern for my lovely step-grandmother on the side and made some more roving into utterly unusable yarn.) (To be perfectly honest, I was also procrastinating on the four different pieces of math I needed to do, not even accounting for some rejiggering I needed to do to account for the fact that I lost 10 pounds in the last few weeks.)

It's a little more obvious now that Phrog is another variation on the tailored cables theme. The cabling serves as a straight line that contrasts to the curves on a woman's body. There's nothing that makes something look as much itself as the presence of its opposite.

Now all I need to do is split and knit the rest of the body flat before "swatching" for the sleeves. In this case, read "swatching" as "start knitting the sleeve. rip it out and call a mulligan if it turns out wrong." Knitting is all about deniability, unless and until it felts. Then you're just screwed.

Meet Phroggy

I've frogged this green sweater so many times I think it's earned its name. Phroggy is a Delphine Wilson inspired sweater (I love her work!), worked in Silky Wool. Because I'm not sure how this lovely soft yarn will wear, I'm making the sleeves in a contrasting colour. That way, I can always replace them to 'fix' the elbow-holes I inevitably wear into my sweaters.

This is another "Chialea's wingin' it" original. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see how the ribs are gradually shaped to give the sweater waist shaping. Silky Wool makes a much clingier fabric than I would have thought; Phroggy is actually designed with more ease than I put in my last sweater, but looks very curvy when worn.

Called to the dark side

Why, hello there!

The dark side came calling this weekend. Oddly enough, it sounded a lot like Lucy. (Incidentally, she's not kidding about "full service". How many yarn stores will let you walk in dripping wet and offer you a towel?) Lucy's smart about teaching people how to spin. Firstly, she realizes really quickly if her students can't distinguish left and right.

Secondly, after she teaches you how to use the spindle, she lets you have a go at the wheel. Hot damn, is that thing addictive. Thirdly, she has incredibly cool relatives who would distract you if you thought that spinning was hard.

I'm sure that spinning is a lot harder if you're trying to make non-crappy yarn. This is my first yarn, a fluffy worsted-ish weight wool.

A fair bit of the crappiness of that yarn comes from my desire to have a spinning wheel. See, the spinning wheel lets you make the fiber go round and round at the same time you're drawing out bits of it to turn into yarn. As I have an incredibly poor sense of my own limitations, I started trying to do this about five minutes into spinning on the spindle. (I'm pretty sure that Lucy didn't see my poor attempts at this, because I didn't hear her thump on the floor laughing.) My tentative conclusion is that this spindle is not designed for this, because if you spun the spindle with one hand and drew the wool with the other, you'd end up stretched out at arm's length incredibly quickly. As hard as I tried, there's no good way to spin from there. Perhaps if the spindle were heavy enough to spin on its own after you got it started, you could spin standing up... or buy a spinning wheel.

So, I've come full circle (har har). I want a wheel. In particular, I want a wheel that will actually fit in our apartment and that I won't want to get rid of in a few years. I'm looking around for one, but in the meantime I'm spinning away.

Evolutionary contradictions

Recently, my walk to work has looked like this:

While skating to work is rather fun, I'm not a fan of my cheekbones freezing right off my face. This brings to mind a certain oddity: why are Scandinavians known for high cheekbones when they live in such a cold place? One might think that having one's cheekbones freeze off would be evolutionarily disadvantageous. Spherical heads seem rather more practical, as (in three dimensions) they have the lowest possible surface area per unit volume.

I guess we can chalk this up to sexual selection, along with the peacock's tail. Me, I'm thinking of coating my head with putty until I reach spherical perfection.

Oopsies

It's been one of those weeks. First, I got stuck on a grounded plane for several hours on my way to California and back. Because of this, I missed my connection. Then the airlines canceled/delayed the next possible connections. I was less than pleased when they offered me alternatives that involved red-eye flights and extra connections. Every time I went into an airport there was chaos that just couldn't be blamed on the passengers.

Oopsie #2: sea of foam!


Oopsie #3: I assumed that if dye was coming off my socks, it wasn't going to stick to other socks.

It looks like I was wrong. I loved this cheery colour (though I wouldn't wear it outside of my boots!), so I'm sad to see the green dye stains. I'm not sure that Socks That Rock makes socks as cushy and comfy as Artyarns supermerino, but I'm happy to give it a try. More warm socks are always good!

Yarn: Socks That Rock heavyweight in Sun Drops
Needles: Crystal Palace size 3 DPNs
Pattern: toe up socks over 40 stitches with magic cast on and 10-deep short-row heel over 24 stitches

Airline travel hell

I've been traveling. While visiting my family was great (and the CA weather is lovely), getting here was a bit more complex than I had anticipated.

Apparently every single child has this week off. In combination with the fact that everyone in New England is going crazy with the winter, this means the airport was in full on Hieronymus Bosch mode.

Conveniently, there were no lines at security. Unfortunately, this was because no one could get checked in. Ultimately, they kept flights for 3+ hours waiting for people to check in. (I was early, because I know where the magic business-traveler-not-checking-baggage kiosks are.)

Now it's back to the airport for me and my Socks That Rock. I'm crossing about everything that can be crossed that it won't be like that again.

A sad day for socks

Dear New Pair of Socks,

You sock!

Love and kisses,
The Feet




I knitted this new sock out of Socks That Rock in Sun Drops. Don't get me wrong, it's great yarn. (The colour is wonderful for the first real storm we've had this winter, too.) There are a few things that I've learned, though:

1. This yarn has a very abrupt tension at which it becomes stiff, and it's a good bit looser than I usually knit socks at this weight. It's just fine on size 3 needles if knit a bit loosely, so I needed to go down from 48 to 40 stitches to accommodate this.
   
2. This yarn isn't as forgiving in a heel. Because it goes stiff at the slightest bit of extra tension, my high instep is not getting along with this sock at all. See those stretched stitches? See the line where they're cutting into my ankle-foot junction? My feet just aren't up for being strangled in that fashion.
   

I don't know what to do with this sock. Adding more stitches will make it too loose. What it really needs is a deeper heel, but it can't be deeper unless I make it on more than half the stitches (this is the only solution that I think will certainly work). Anyone ever solved this problem?

Neverending carnival of excitement

How could I have knitted so many pairs of Artyarns Supermerino socks and not know that they make self-patterning sock yarn? Cathy and Sandra D, you rock for picking out this yarn!

Aren't those fabulous? I love the spiraling stripe of different colour stripes. (Click on the photo to enlarge it; the entire sock is pink/dark stripes, but the spiral is formed of a bold salmon and grey on a background of pink and brown. It's a spiral of stripes on stripes!) I wonder if the other yarn I have from them will do the same thing. Sadly, these mark the last socks for my trusty bamboo needles, which started trying to kill me with splinters. They've been found guilty of pointy treason, and will be burned at the stake or put out to pasture.

Pattern: my standard 48-stitch toe-up sock with magic cast-on and 9-deep short-row heel (may I suggest an afterthought heel instead?)
Needles: treacherous size 3 crystal palace bamboo needles
Yarn: Artyarns Supermerino in colour 141

I've gotten tired of knitting random bits of a shawl while I wait for my tailored cables sweater to dry (every. few. inches.). I'm a bit tempted to leave the sleeve as-is.

It's kinda punk, don't you think?

In any case, I'm starting another sweater. Meet Phroggy:

All I have is a Delphine-Wilson-inspired swatch, because I swatched, washed the swatch, cast on, frogged, then totally ignored the swatch, switched to different needles and a different pattern, and started cranking away. I'm winging this one much more than anything I've done before. If the waist decreases work out, I'll let it out in public.

Now the kitty wants to be petted. He'll breathe his terrible kitty-breath in my face until I do, so I'd better go for now. Here's hoping for a bunch of snow so I can work from home and be productive tomorrow!

Just call me the crazy lady

I went out today to be the crazy lady at the crazy movie with the crazy socks. If you were at Ruslan i Ludmilla today, hi from the crazy lady who kept giggling all the time. (A special "hello" to the woman in the row in front of me with what looked to be a hand-knit shawl in white mohair and cabled legwarmers.) I managed to pay enough attention to the movie to learn several valuable lessons, however:

1. Only trust blondes. (The hair dye manufacturers are obviously missing a huge marketing opportunity with this one.)
   
2. If the blond hero swings a sword in the general direction of your regiment, you should all fall down in unison. He won't bother checking whether he hit anything.
   
3. Women are either dark-haired (and thus evil) or blond (and thus dumb as a box of rocks wearing a silly hat.
   
4. Blond women wear white panties. Dark-haired, "magically seductive" women wear colourful, extremely shiny panties. Some of these magical women apparently got lost during the filming of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and wandered into the Russian Castle Anthrax, wearing only shiny panties and gauze. The other magical women apparently all had hip-high-slit inducing wardrobe mishaps.
   

I haven't even gotten into the flying dwarf with the 50-foot-long beard, so perhaps knitting socks was not even registering on anyone's weird-o-meters.

I've made some more progress on my tailored cables sweater. It's really a lot slower to knit something when you're both designing it and it has to be blocked to look reasonable. (Go, go oily coned yarn!) The good news is that every time I wash the yarn it looks better. The bad news is this means that the farther up the sweater you look, the worse the yarn looks. In any case, it's drying again, so I took some pictures. I've added a vee-neck and armscyes for set-in sleeves.

This is best shot I can get in this light of the detail of the shaping at the bottom of the sweater. I've twisted the cables together as they merge.

Yarny reprieve

Do you know that feeling you get, as you move towards the end of a project, that you're going to run out of yarn? WEBS came through for me. I wasn't running out of yarn for my current pair of socks; I was running out of yarn for any more pairs of socks. (Cascade 220 superwash just doesn't cut it for socks, in my opinion.) Artyarns Supermerino to the rescue!

Kitty brought his passion for sitting on things to this new and challenging project. Unfortunately, even after I rescued the yarn from his fuzzy little clutches, I can't decide what to knit with next. Any opinions? (Colourways visible at Artyarns.)

• 101 Purple, Gold, Navy, Brown, Olive, with Turquoise highlights (it looks pretty yellow to me)
  
• 123 Sea blues and greens, with periwinkle (much more saturated in person than on their website, even when largely hidden under the cat)
  
• 141 Salmony pinks, red, brown, tan (more salmon in person)