Needles & hooks

Other stuff I did with my hands

I caught a bug:

Yes, I started playing with chainmaille. My sister Lisa, a much more talented jewelry maker than myself (that’s fine, she can’t knit), made some pieces that fascinated me a few years ago. Since then, I have perused bead magazines and sent her ones that have neat chainmaille patterns in them. Last week, I stumbled upon Bead & Button’s Wirework issue. I picked it up for her, but showed it to a friend, Kim, who has a thing for maille. And Kim realized that she could make it herself. And in looking into it online for her and Lisa, I realized I could probably do it too.

After a couple of days surfing maille sites and not knitting sites, I’d ordered a kit, but decided that wasn’t quite quick enough for me. And I passed a bead store last night and bought a small pile of aluminum jump rings. I used to do a lot more with beading, but got bored with it because it was so much effort for so little product. But after an hour with a couple of pairs of pliers, I had that bracelet. Here’s a close-up:

It’s not perfect. They didn’t have the size jump rings I wanted in stock, so I had to go with some slightly bigger and my aspect ratio is a little large for the pattern I was going for. In knitting terms, my gauge was too large for my yarn and thus the fabric is too loose. But it’s still not bad for a first try and it’s very shiney. I could insert some beads into it too, and I might. It’s a toy project after all. Can’t wait for my kit to arrive. It appeals to me for the same reason that knitting does, there’s a mathematical aspect to it. But it’s also something of a puzzle, which is also very fun.

So, that wasn’t all I did last night. I also did this:

Those are a bunch of different brownies for a bake sale at work to benefit my Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk. I have another 6 recipes to try tonight. All my friends brought in pans for me to use so that I could just keep baking. My kitchen is perfect for mass baking like this, I’m going to miss it when it sells. Speaking of which, how do you hide 6 pans of brownies so that the house is ready to show at a moment’s notice?

Sssshhhh, don’t open that cupboard!

Comments: 8 — Posted under: Almost Random

Knits are best modeled…

This is what became of the baby surplice jacket and hat:

His mom posted more photos of young Julian modeling his new duds. Sadly, the sock bind-off was too tight, after all my sock fussing. Fortunately, Alex can fix them. And the hat, an improvised design that I’ve made before, was a big hit. It was last time too. I guess I should write up some directions for it. It’s pretty easy, but I designed it so that there’s almost no sewing to finish it. It’s really good to use up the last bit of yarn you got for a baby sweater project. Or that one ball of hand-dyed that you just couldn’t put down.

Comments: 5 — Posted under: Knitting

Planes, trains…

The latest entry in the “places I’ve knit” series…

That’s the latest in the Princess Cover-up. Here’s a better view:

Oops, that’s obscured by guest kitties. They quickly determined that the knitting was neither threatening nor interesting. Let’s try again:

Anyway, that’s about 3 and a half pattern repeats. According to my gauge swatch, I need a full 6 before I start the armholes. I’m flying home from San Francisco tomorrow, so I should have plenty of time to do that on the plane.

Comments: 1 — Posted under: Knitting

How do you test it?!

My bosses brought around one of their new bosses to meet people in my group a little while ago. When in my office, the new guy noticed The Glove and asked if I’d made it. One of my bosses replied “she knits almost as fast as she types”. What kind of experiment can we do for that? Typed words per min vs stockinette sts per min?

Comments: 3 — Posted under: Almost Random

2-sock Addendum

Just wanted to clarify something about the baby socks I wrote about in the last post. 2 socks at a time from the same ball of yarn is fine. I usually knit my socks this way if I’m not trying for twins in a self-striper. You make a center-pull ball from the yarn and knit one sock from the center and one sock from the outside of the ball. Easy. Sometimes it gets a little twisted around itself, and you just untwist as necessary.

The trouble I had was trying to knit two socks at a time from 2 balls at a time. I was using both balls the same way - knitting one sock from the center of each, and one from the outside. And what with the fact that I was knitting one yarn every round and one yarn every other round and the twisting and the solid color ball was disintegrating, well, it was a scaring mess very quickly.

That’s two different balls (all though the solid burgundy has completely lost structural integrity (seriously, it’s burgundy, not brown)):

Now I’ve been thinking about the topology of the thing (and if two socks from one ball makes your head spin, don’t think about this), and I think it should be possible with a little care and a little more planning. But I was going for quick and dirty, and it just didn’t seem to be working. Of course, I spent about an hour with the separating and untangling and rewinding, so with my maybe 10 rounds that I’d knit, I’d have probably been ahead starting over. But they’re done now. And I’m putting it out of my head.

Comments: 0 — Posted under: Knitting

The Kitchen Sink Post

I got lots to say, so this post will be all over the place. Hold on to your needles, it could be a bumpy ride.

Baby Socks!

First up, a FO for you. Remember this:

When I went to Webs on Glove Tour ‘07, I brought the tiny bit of yarn I’d attempted to make socks with before and found a nice ball of Rowan Cashsoft DK to go with it to make full sized socks. So again, I started my two-at-a-time-toe-up socks, deciding that I should just use little fair isle accents of the multi-color yarn. I started each sock from opposite ends of each ball. And pretty soon, I had this:

And I learned that you really should only do that with one ball at a time, because you just can’t untangle. So I wound out huge amounts of the solid color and cut the yarn and went through heroic efforts to untangle each separate ball and rewind. There are no pictures of this process, because my hands were busy with the yarn, and my cat is too lazy to be bothered with the camera.

Finally, I ended up with these:

They’re slightly fraternal, and you can see how well I managed to match the dark burgundy shade of the multi-color. Because there are huge sections of “solid” on each sock. Fair isle with identical shades is pretty forgiving, just not all that satisfying. In the future, I would just cut the yarn and start up at a new color, but I didn’t want to rip these out yet again. How many times can you rip out baby socks, seriously?! And in the end, I only used about 1 color repeat on each sock, so I still have plenty of that micro ball left. So it’s going to the mom along with the left over Cashsoft (now in 3 mini balls as well) and she can decide what to do with it.

Documented Cotton Allergy?

That out of the way, I’ve moved on with the Princess Coverup that I showed you this swatch for:

Working from my measured gauge and the measurements of the recipient, I added a pattern repeat to all the pieces to make it a little wider. Now I’m fearing that my gauge swatch lied and that it’s going to swim on her. Not necessarily what you want for a swim-coverup. I’m doing all 3 pieces at once so they will all be the same length and here’s what I have (about one full pattern-repeat):

Knitting away on it today, my nose started itching. Sort of the way it does when I handle bunnies. Uh-oh. It’s made with Debbie Bliss Pure Cotton, and I’ve never had issues with cotton before. Then I looked at my pants:

Clearly, this yarn is shedding just like a bunny. Fortunately, this project has to be quick. Unfortunately, I have two cross-country flights coming up, also known as enforced knitting time, so we’ll see what happens to my nose in the Mile High Knitter’s Club.

Exercise in Restraint

Thursday was the beginning of the summer clearance sale at my LYS. In the past, I have been very, very bad at this sale. Shopping it takes dedication. They sell all their close-outs in sealed bags, usually of a single color, and either you buy the bag, or you don’t. No buying single balls. In some ways that’s frustrating, because I might want to buy a few balls in a variety of colors. However, sometimes you just find yourself buying way too much of everything because “wow, a whole bag of Aurora 8 in my favorite color?! And in my other favorite color?! Oh look, I love that color too!” (And the sales staff remembers you doing it for years, hi Pat!).

Anyway, what with planning to move and with the recent excursion to Webs, I didn’t go on the first day. Although I pass the store on my way to work and that morning I passed by right as it was opening. I really had to think twice not to stop. I went back on the way home on Friday and ended up with only one thing I couldn’t put down:

That’s 9 balls of Andes in a blue jeans/melon colorway. No, I have no clue what it will be. But that’s never been an obstacle in the past.

Glove Infamy

I also showed off my Moo cards when I was at the store, and, well, outed myself as the creator of The Glove. Turns out not only had the staff heard of it, but so had the other customer who was checking out when I was! And the suggestions keep pouring in on where I should show it off…Stitches, Rhinebeck, Manchester. If only I could send it off on a trunk show, but really, you need the chair to fully appreciate it, and that just doesn’t ship well. Maybe I could send it off on a good-will tour — trusting on the large vehicles of knitters everywhere to cart it from one store they shop at to another, sort of a perverse chain-letter (or Geocache Travel Bug) until I meet up with it again at some distant store in the future. But anyway, few yarn stores I’ve seen have room to display it anyway. It’s just too huge.

A couple of Glove sightings:
sparklej
The Harlot

Okay, with that, I’m going back to knit and ponder cotton and bunnies. Amazon.com and Tivo have a new thing that lets me “rent” movies from Amazon and download them to my Tivo. This weekend, a bunch of movies starring Oceans 13 stars were 99 cents. The Good Shepherd is up next.

Comments: 4 — Posted under: Knitting, Almost Random, Retail Therapy

Pocket Blog

I haven’t seen anyone post about these yet, so it could be that I have my head in a hole, but I’m sharing anyway. If you’ve already heard of them, pat me on the head and scroll down to the actual knitting content below.

From time to time I talk to people about this blog and there’s never anything convenient to write the whole URL down on, so I just offer up “you can google ‘needles & hooks’ and I’ll pop right up”. When I was planning to go see The Yarn Harlot, and planning to bring my Giant Glove, I decided to splurge on something a friend of mine had shown me, fun little mini-photo cards: Moo Cards. You upload photos, you pick what you want the back to say, you give them your credit card, and $25 and about a week later, you get 100 fun little cards.

I picked a selection of images of my finished knitted items (a sample of the blog, right in a box):

Sadly, they didn’t arrive in time for my Harlot visit, but next time you see me, I can hand you one. They really are tiny:

Now for the knitting content…

Most of the stuff I bought at Webs will be used as raffle prizes when I ask you all to donate to my Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk one of these days soon, so I’m not going to show it to you now. But I did get a few things for projects. Including a pile of white cotton for this:

That’s a swatch for this vest, which I’m knitting long as a beach cover-up for a friend. I’ve only got 3 weeks before she goes on vacation, so you’ll be seeing a lot of it.

Comments: 5 — Posted under: Knitting