Calling LisaB

LisaB recognizes my dis-en-head-ied torso! I'm going to regard that as cute rather than creepy. :) As I don't remember Lisa's email address and I received other requests for it, I'd like to point out that I wrote up a bit about the math behind short rows. (The Carolina Machine Knitting Guild will also be publishing this tutorial in an upcoming issue of their newsletter.) If anyone has any problems with that, please just email me at leakATEcsDAWTcmuDAWTedu (apply obvious transformation to email address). If it would be more helpful for me to go through the steps I take to create or transform a pattern, I could do that as well. Just ask! The FedEx truck and people who wanted free furniture showed up, so I'm almost home-free at this point.

Cool blue sahara

In between packing boxes, I finished up my Sahara for the Sexy Knitters Club knitalong. I guess this makes me sexy. Or perhaps it makes me a knitter. Or perhaps a club. (I have been known to be a bit blunt.) The colour isn't quite true; it's more of a dark denim-y blue than a navy blue. In all the moving chaos, I haven't had a chance to block the sweater yet; I expect blocking will make it softer and drapier than it already is.





I made the following modifications:

• Decreased the neck depth. I felt the sweater looked better proportioned on bustier people with a shallower neck.
  
• Reworked the bust/waist shaping. I made the bust larger, the waist smaller, started the shaping further down (under the fullest part of my bust), and changed the shaping accordingly.
  
• Added a bust dart. I put bust darts in all my sweaters. They fit much, much better with this feature.
  
• Increased neck trim. I needed four repeats of the neck trim pattern to meet in the middle of the neck.
  

Yarn: Silky Tweed, somewhere around 7-8 skeins. I have a lot of this floating around, so it was a bit difficult to count in the moving chaos. Silky Tweed is soft and lovely, but a bit splitty, even with Stumpi Bluntos.

Needles: One Addi Turbo 16" circular in size 4. If these had pointy points, they'd be perfect! In this case, I appreciated the dull tips, because the Silky Tweed was splitty enough on its own.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to CA we go!

We're moving. We're really, really moving. We're moving via FedEx (and USPS media mail for the books). This is actually the cheapest way to move, if you don't have really expensive furniture (or can just ship the few pieces you care about some other way) and are willing to sell/give away on one end and scrounge/buy on the other. Tips about FedEx:

• They will pick up from your house. You'll need a commercial account (be sure to get one in advance), but then you can print out labels on your home printer, stick em on, and get someone to pick up the boxes.
  
• Their online system can crash. You can then end up with 500 boxes entered instead of 92 and have to poke their system into being a little more reasonable.
  
• If you try to ship that much stuff, FedEx may very well send someone out really early. They won't be there to pick up your stuff. They're there to check that you're not playing some weird data-entry-based practical joke on them. Then they'll see this:
  
  Then they'll claim to send out a real truck. (I can't vouch for the real truck showing up yet, unfortunately.)
  

In fiber-related news, I finished spinning up virtually all of 8oz of Colonial Wool top. Please, keep in mind that this is the 5th yarn I've ever created and be gentle.

It's a bit underspun, so I treated it a bit roughly so it would full a little bit and help with the structure. I'm feeling ready to tackle a few pounds of BFL fiber for a cabled sweater for myself... once my spinning wheel comes out of a box. (Perhaps once I get a WooLee winder as well. I fear the Joy is probably not the best production wheel out there. I really want something with some higher ratios and a bit more oomph for big projects and to stop changing hooks all the time!)

I've pulled out the hemp from last summer to try to make an honest yarn of it. I've swatched and tweaked a bog jacket into a light summery cardigan.

Unfortunately, sitting in a box all winter has not improved this yarn. It's giving me chemical burns again. I'm not going to be smart and quit while I'm ahead; I'm going to be smart and get myself some latex gloves. Let no one say I'm not determined in pursuit of my art!

To give my hand a break, I'm trading off with socks made from Ellen's Half Pint Farm wool/nylon sock yarn. Aren't they wild? Socks with nylon are often too hard on my feet, besides Mountain Colours and Lorna's Laces, so I'm hoping these work out better than certain other socks.



Just a warning for those of you who are planning to move: moving brings out the evil in your pets!

How kitty beats the heat

Shaved legs!

Sorry for the delay. I had to take kitty in to the kitty dentist (you can see how thrilled he was in the above picture), then ran off to Seattle for a bit, and now we're finishing the packing. We're doing a scorched-earth move: everything that doesn't fit into a box gets sold, donated, or thrown out. Anyone in the Boston area want a perfectly nice couch with included very nice soft green machine-washable cover (protects from kitty!)? How about some end tables (beat up but matching coffee table included) or bedside tables (IKEA)?

New Hampshire S&W part 1

First off, let's take a look at what I didn't finish before NHS&W.

It's Phroggy! Everything fits remarkably well except for the bust. (What do I expect by losing 10+ pounds? Luckily, the sweater is fixable.) I've bound off the neck several times now and I just can't get it quite right. I think Montse Stanley will have to come to my rescue. I didn't worry about it, though, since it was too hot for sweaters anyway. Ah, the perfect time to shop for wool!

This was my first fiber festival and I had a blast, even though I found precisely nothing on my shopping list. (I didn't walk away quite empty-handed; a hank of sock yarn and a few ounces of fiber jumped in my bag.) Luckily, Morgaine of Carolina Homespun was there (a store from San Francisco called "Carolina" at a New Hampshire festival, no less) to soothe my fears of running out of fiber when I move to CA in a few weeks and find my poor packed wheel.

There was tasty, tasty fiber there (if not the BFL I've been craving).


We even found out what happens to Susan's hair when she's shorn.


Next up: fleece-bearing creatures other than Susan.

My goodness, I'm knitting from a pattern

I've wanted to knit along with the Sexy Knitter's Club for a while, but quite a few people there seem to have a predilection for bra-unfriendly designs. Given that I (and probably everyone around me) would be happier if I wore a bra, I waited until Sahara came along. (Yes, I'm knitting from a pattern. Kinda.)

I've been knitting away at it in my last week of work (I'm now temporarily unemployed, pending the move to CA), during endless discussions about how to move (scorched earth option), and kitty's dentist appointment (he now has one fewer tooth, but all the drugs). (BTW, the muffin-top look is an optical illusion. I even checked after squinting at this picture for a while.)

Changes to the pattern:

• Gauge. Knit with Silky Tweed at a smidge over 5.5 stitches per inch
  
• Neckline. Closed off the neckline early for (I felt) a more flattering look on me and ease in bust adjustments.
  
• Bust. Added quite a few extra stitches in the bust and a short-row dart.
  
• Waist. Nipped in the waist more than on the pattern, and adjusted the seam decreases/increases to reflect this and the extra room in the bust.
  

Hey, for me, this is following a pattern!

You spin me right round, baby, right round

I promise, not too many more terrible spinning references, if for no other reason than I'll run out of them soon. Here are a few things I've spun and dried lately: teal/white hand-dyed (my hands, no less) wool/tencel top and purple merino roving.

I was just playing around with these and trying to discover the many secrets involved in spinning yarn that doesn't suck. One lesson from the purple: pre-drafting results in far more even yarn. One lesson from the teal: I rampantly undertwist, so I can't spin a balanced yarn without rampantly underplying.

My current spinning seems to suffer from this problem as well (far more than it has to, as I'm trying to keep it consistently underspun), so I plan to make a cabled DK-weight yarn from it. Once I've spun that up, however, I'm pretty much out of fiber. New Hampshire Sheep&Wool to the rescue! I think that I might just have a little BFL fleece and some bits and pieces of other wools follow me home, wagging their fluffy little tails behind them.

Please, no more frog for Phrog!

I'm hoping that I don't jinx myself by posting this, but I think I've finished the knitting on Phroggy. (See, spirits of knitting screwups, I said "think"!)

Phroggy now has sleeves with a pair of cables twisting in a helix around the arm. (Each arm has a different direction of spiral and and different direction of cabling.)

The sleeve is a rather odd raglan. The body is a standard decrease-every-three-rounds raglan, but I wanted something that fit my shoulder and followed the line of the body. I measured the distance around my shoulder (raglan-line to raglan-line) in several spots and simply interpolated between them to design this sleeve. I put a few stitches at the armpit (blue marker) to form the underarm, knitted straight for a while, then did a decrease-every-two-rounds decrease for the remainder of the cap. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this works post-blocking, but it seemed to be fine pre-blocking.

Once Phrog dries, it'll have its seaming (har) moment of truth. Then I may need to take some of those increases out of the bust, because I've lost a bunch of weight. Perhaps it will be an appropriate temperature to wear Phrog at New Hampshire Sheep&Wool, which will be my very first S&W ever. I'm a woman on a mission, so Lucy said she'd help me avoid doing something terminally stupid. (No, I'm not buying another spinning wheel. Yet. Plus, I don't think Lucy would consider that terminally stupid.)

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.