You see that line, where the tree decor begins? That’s how high Joe can jump and successfully wreak havoc!

Happy Holidays!

Center square is complete!

Sorry about the surly photo - it’s tough photographing your own head! Also, the colors are wonky here - the photo below is much more true to color.

Pattern: Center Square, from Knitty
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk DK (teal) and Plymouth Indiecita Alpaca (blue)

This is a great beginner fair-isle pattern. My hat is a bit different from the pattern - my yarns were lighter-weight (both dk-weight-ish), so I cast on 4 additional pattern repeats to make a 20″ hat. The pattern’s final measurements are a 15.5″ hat, and the hat is streeetched out to fit.

The hat isn’t blocked, nor have I woven in the ends. I doubt that I’ll do either - this was more of a fair isle practice project than something that I made to wear. The top is a bit poofy where the corners of the decreases are (you can see a better photo of the top here), I’m not sure if that’s an issue of my gauge or larger stitch count or if will go away if I block the hat.

I think that I’ve got a grasp of two-handed fair-isle now. However, knitting continental is definitely pretty slow for me, and my gauge in continental is still a bit looser than knitting english. I really love how knitting two-handed keeps your yarns neatly separated and non-tangly. I hate tangly balls of yarn! Am I ready for the Anemoi Mittens? Maybe.

It is very difficult to photograph a black hat.

Pattern: Sherwood, from Knitty, in hat form
Yarn: Plymouth Galway, knit tightly on size 4 needles.

I really like the Sherwood pattern. Really, really like it. But you should check out the charts - that’s crazy talk! The whole sweater is charted out in one massive chart! There has to be a better way of representing what is essentially a repeating stitch pattern.

In any case, I turned the cute sweater into a hat. I cast on 14 pattern repeats, staggered the cable action and voila! A hat! A fairly large hat, suitable for my brother’s big head. I knit this super-tightly so that it will be nice and cushy - his last hat was knit from Lamb’s Pride Bulky, so it was super warm for those Buffalo winters.

Is that photo above too dark? How about this one:

Not much better. Silver digs the hat, though!

I made my first ever knitted object out of Galway - a 2×2 ribbed scarf for Rob. It turned out a bit too short (the cheapo me didn’t want to splurge for another ball of yarn) and I mistakenly purled the stitches through the back loop. I had bought this ball of Galway for a pair of gloves, which I never got around to knitting. It’s wooly and tweedy and lovely and I would definitely use it again.

This is the last of the holiday gifts - I previously knit two pairs of socks for Rob’s parents and a lacy scarf for my mother. I don’t know how people can blow through a pair of socks in 5, 6, 7 days. I just don’t get it. It seems like they take me forever. Never again! But I’m now done, so yeah! No last minute gift knitting this year!

The Asymmetrical Cardigan grows. Slowly. I’m a touch over halfway done with it. Will it be complete by christmas? No way. By New Year’s? Probably not. It’s going so slowly and has become so massive that I may not even bring it up north for the holidays with me.

I’m a bit (read: extremely!) concerned about running out of yarn. I weighed everything last night, and I’ll have right around one skein (200ish yards) to knit the collar, buttonband, and sleeve cuffs. The sleeve cuffs are pretty long, and things are going to be tight. I received the extra skein of Malabrigo that I ordered from ebay, and it’s also a wonky color - it contains much more forest green than what I’m using. But I may have to use it for the cuffs in a pinch.

But the thing that really concerns me? That the right front is two different shades of green. I can barely look at that photo because it pains me so. There’s no way in hell I’m ripping it, though.

So, I’m looking to the future. I joined the Stranded Colorwork knitalong, and it’s all I can do to not cast on for the Anemoi Mittens. My darling Webs had a closeout on Rowan Cashsoft 4 ply recently, and I happened to have a gift certificate for the amount of 4 balls plus shipping, so the deal was sealed. It’s soft and squishy and yummy! I was originally planning on a more tonal color scheme in Koigu, but you can’t beat the price of FREE!

However, I’ve never done fair isle before. I’m thinking that I should start out with something a bit simpler and larger gauge for my first project. Enter Center Square. Remember how I was so not dying to knit anything from the most recent Knitty? All lies. I went through my stash of oddball worsted weights to see what I could use, and came up with this:

Wow, that’s a lot of red, blue, and black. You can click the photo to get all the details. I settled on two colors of (mostly) alpaca - yarn I’d probably never use up otherwise (because, hello, Houston was 79 degrees this past Sunday!). We have some teal Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk and blue Plymouth Indiecita Alpaca. Both are actually DK weight, which means I’ll have to futz with the pattern and swatch. I think that I’ll be able to get away with adding 4 extra circles around, and I’ll wind up with a hat that doesn’t streeeeetch so much around your head.

Coming up next - how hard is it to photograph a black hat? Very!

Pattern: Thuja, kind-of
Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot (Bark Brown) and Koigu KPPM (not sure of the colorway, leftover from the Retro Rib socks)

The Thuja pattern on Knitty is knit with Artyarns Supermerino, which is a worsted weight yarn (and one of my all-time faves). I basically modified the pattern for a fingering weight yarn, knit tightly on size 1 needles. My pseudo-Thujas are worked over 80 stitches (knit 4, seed 1, repeat), but knitter beware - I knit tightly, especially on my shiny tiny needles.

The contrast heels and toes? I originally knit the cuff, worked a flap heel, then realized that I was going through the Bearfoot pretty quickly. Having a cheapo scale is very, very useful and confirmed my suspicions. So, I used some leftover Koigu (heart!) to add what is now a design feature.

Rob’s dad has larger feet than Rob, so hopefully the socks won’t look so… pointy. As always, misocrafty’s short-row tutorial creates perfect hole-less heels. Overall, I’m pleased!

The Asymmetrical Cardigan from Knitting Nature, aka The Book of Bizarro Construction. The photo shows the fronts of the cardi - what you do is knit the fronts, bottom-up, then cast on a ton of stitches for the sleeves, knit the body and sleeves together (with some shaping for your neck), bind off a ton of stitches, then knit the back. Fold the sweater along the shoulder-line, and seam. Very, very soon this sweater will NOT be portable in any way. The patterning is pretty neato, very three-dimensional - those stitches really pop.

I’ve memorized the chart, but not before frogging back to the ribbing (before the photo was taken) because I was knitting the crosses in a way best described as willy-nilly. It was a complete mess, and not consistently so between the two fronts. Lesson learned - don’t hold a conversation and watch tv and think that I no longer need the chart. Gah. The yarn held up pretty well to the frogging, despite its delicate nature.

I’ve made a few modifications to the pattern. First off, I added a slipped slevedge stitch on both sides of each piece. The pattern calls for a selvedge stitch on the outer edges where you eventually seam the cardigan fronts to the back. However, you knit the button band (and collar) separately and seam them to the sweater, so it deserves its own ready-for-seaming edge. I’m also adding some standard waist shaping to the pattern.

I’m knitting the sweater using Malabrigo, which is very, very lightly spun. So lightly spun that my cast-on tail was literally disintegrating from the stress of being pulled out of and thrown back in my knitting bag. It was getting super fuzzy and blooming, so I finally decided to weave in the tails as I go. Hmmm, this doesn’t make me terribly confident about how the sweater will hold up to long-term wear. This makes for a sad kelp. However, the yarn does have killer yardage (216yards / 100grams), is reasonably priced for the yardage, and is beautifully dyed.

The yarn is a lighter weight than the pattern calls for. This means that I need more yardage than the pattern requires, so I’m on a quest for an additional skein that will somewhat match the yarn that I’ve already bought. Yarntopia is sold out of the olive, thanks to moi, and it’s not available elsewhere locally. This presents a bit of a challenge - the photos that you see on online retailers don’t necessarily reflect the dyelot of what you’ll eventually get. I’ve already bought a skein from Pure Knits, which has the most lightspeed shipping anywhere (I bought it Friday, shipped Saturday, arrived Monday, yeah!), but it’s a much different color so it’s going back. I think ebay may be my best bet here.

The last note on this sweater is that the Malabrigo is a different gauge than the pattern. This pattern and its bizarro construction means that recomputing for a new gauge is pretty tricky. Also, the pattern repeat starts at a different spot for different sizes, and I’m not entirely sure why. I know that the pattern lines up perfectly between the two fronts, but that still does not fully explain the chart starting and stopping points. I’m sure all will become clear when you join the two halves at the back of the neck. In any case, I’m not super eager to be futzing with those start and endpoints, so I’m simply knitting a larger size (but still following the length measurements for the original size), making some small adjustments for width below the arm shaping (it’s safe to move the left front start point and right front endpoint). Lastly, the pattern’s schematic implies that the Finished Width measurements in the pattern exclude the button band, which is 2″ wide. Something to watch out for, since I don’t want to be adding an extra 2″ of ease.

Will I finish this by the time we travel to the northeast for the holidays (T-minus 10 days)? Unlikely!

So the new Knitty is up (overall: not much that I’m dying to knit rightnow. Where are all the sweater patterns? Is this a result of all the superstar designers getting book deals and becoming tv stars?). Anyway, you need to click here right now and scroll down the third photo and OMG that turtle is naked!

I may just have to knit a naked turtle.

I swatched the Malabrigo (in pattern, which happened in the wee hours of the night yesterday because I forgot to bring the book to the s+b and mistakenly swatched in stockinette) and realized that the Asymmetrical cardigan pattern calls for a bulky-weight cashmere yarn. The Malabrigo is a bit thinner than that, which means that I need more yarn. Gah! But the Malabrigo? Like buttah! Every damn skein had a knot and it will pill like a mofo and I don’t care!

There’s no knitting content here, since my camera is in Italy (with Rob). I know, posts are pretty boring without the pretty photos! Well, I have one photo:

Mates of State this past weekend. Fun!

Ok, there has been thinking about knitting. I’m trying to decide on my next project. I want a cardigan, now. This whole knitting thing - it’s really preventing me from buying sweaters. Well, first there’s the whole living-in-TX thing, so I don’t have a huge need for sweaters. Then there’s the look-at-the-label-acrylic-blend-too-expensive-hell-no-I-can-totally-make-this thing. Then I never make This, whatever This was. Anyway, I want a sweater NOW before I travel to the northeast for xmas, and here are my options:

1. Ivy. I’ve swatched this in some old-skool Lang yarn that I bought from Webs eons ago. My gauge is off (6.5st me vs 6st Ivy), so it will involve thinking and math. I’d also probably change the bottom part to not pull in so much.
2. A sweater from the mind of kelly knit from my schmancy Rowan Cashcotton. I swatched this already, too. But this will involve tinkering and thinking and is unlikely to be completed in a timely manner.
3. The Asymmetrical Cardigan from Knitting Nature. I saw a post on the knitalong recently, and I want! She knit hers in Malabrigo, so I may or may not have bought a bunch of olive Malabrigo from Yarntopia today.

Also, I joined the Stranded Colorwork knitalong. Nope, never knit fair isle before. I bought this pattern, which is awesome in a Japanese woodblock, Legend of Zelda (cartooney Legend of Zelda, like the wind waker one, which btw I had played to death on my little gamecube and me and the mapfish are likethis) sort of way. I can’t wait to knit another pair of useless (in TX) mittens! I’d love to hear suggestions for solid-colored fingering weight yarn - I can get Louet pretty easily, but I want more pretty colors. One LYS here carries Koigu, but very, very few of the solids.

Lastly, I baked yesterday. I usually try to stay a reasonable distance from food preparation at all times. I hate, hate, hate cooking. Rob is my master chef. However, his birthday was on Tuesday, and I decided that I Will Bake a Cake From Scratch. So, last night I grabbed this recipe and some fancy chocolate and got cooking. Baking fun:

1. The recipe called to melt chocolate in fresh brewed coffee. Yum. However, for the first time since we moved here, we are out of beans. I had to dash to Starbucks to pick up a quick cup of coffee, and they were closed! What coffeeshop closes at 9:30? Doesn’t that seem crazy early? Anyway, the door was open (lights on, I hadn’t a clue that they were closed) and the guy gave me a cup for free so he wouldn’t have to mess with the closed register.
2. Wow, it is very easy to make a massive mess with cocoa powder.
3. Using our teeny food processor to chop chocolate is fun! It makes the most horrible little noise as it churns away!
4. I now own Corn Syrup. Please, if anyone in Houston needs some light corn syrup, you are more than welcome to take a hit off of my supply.
5. The cats like to lick butter. Ew.

I successfully did not burn one single-layer cake and a dozen cupcakes. Yay! The cupcakes are tiny because I’ve never made cupcakes before and I was pretty conservative when filling the little shiny liners. The cake is in the freezer since Rob doesn’t come home for a couple of days, and the ganache to frost it with is in the fridge, rock solid. Hopefully it melts up easily!

Pattern: Lacy Serpentine Scarf, from Heartstrings Fiber Arts
Yarn: Handmaiden Sea Silk (70% silk, 30% Seacell), color Glacier.

First, the pattern. The scarf is knit lengthwise, which is perfect for the variegation of the yarn. My small swatch showed a little bit of pooling of the gold color, but knitting lengthwise solved this completely. The scarf is a fairly simple lace pattern - only three distinct pattern rows, you definitely get the hang of it after awhile. That didn’t prevent me from making a big mistake - I forgot to work one of the rows, as you can see here. I kind-of noticed on the flight back home, but was entirely too lazy to do anything about it.

The yarn. Sea Silk, you are:

1. Soft.
2. Drapey
3. Shiny.
4. Mucho awesome.

As Knitter’s Review pointed out, there’s very little seaweed in that Seacell - it’s mostly Tencel with 5% seaweed. But seriously, who cares? Tencel is hot hot hot these days (well, as hot as a fiber can be), and it’s shiny and soft and works for me. The yarn as a whole blocks out like a champ, and the end result is drapey as all hell.

Behold the miracle of blocking:

Yum. The colorway of the Sea Silk isn’t quite my thing, but I think that my mother will love it. It seems much less intense knitted up than it was in the skein. Also, the color striping is subtle enough that it doesn’t distract from the lace pattern.

One caveat about the yarn - frogging is somewhat dangerous. I ripped out a few rows when I noticed a mistake, and it was like literally watching the remaining scarf unravel before my eyes (at least before I could get all 303 stitches back on to the needle). Ok, perhaps that description of the situation is a bit extreme, but the yarn really is extremely slippery. I ended up frogging to the row before the mistake row, then unknitting, stitch by stitch, the (303 stitch!) row. Knitter beware!

The yarn + pattern worked out great - I have 18 grams (of a 100 gram skein) left over, so this is a great one-skein project for your Sea Silk. In fact, I wish that I had worked another pattern repeat, because I think that this scarf is going to stretch lengthwise (and therefore get skinnier and skinnier widthwise) with wear.

Overall, I consider this project a success! Rob even gives it the stamp of approval, where the stamp is actually a swig of beer.

Random

Houston weather == wacky. On Wednesday Houston hit record highs, for both the high and low temp - 83 and 70 degrees, respectively. Then Thursday, the apocalypse descended and it went from an early high of 71 down to the 40’s at 10am. Yes, you read that right - 10AM. Now the high is in the 50’s for the next few days. I’ve never seen so many worn handknits at the Houston Stitch+Bitch - everyone was taking advantage of the weather to wear their scarves and sweaters!

And last but definitely not least, Gilmore Girls hearts the yarn!