The Knitting Pirate

Between the excitement of the niece and the holiday weekend, I didn’t get to do much knitting. But here is my (slow, slow) progress on the ostrich plumes scarf! It doesn’t look like much yet, does it? I do have pins, but they’re not very accessible at the moment. I can kind of get an idea of what it will look like when I stretch it out by hand, though of course it will have to be blocked for real after all the knitting is done. I’m considering a set of blocking wires; pinning seems like a real pain!

Now, what I don’t know is, how long should I make this thing? Originally, I was thinking that it would be something I’d wear with dressy work clothes, but the way the variegation is playing out, it doesn’t look too dressy. So now I’m considering how to wear a lacy scarf with less dressy clothes. I never thought of myself as a person to wear accessories. It’s a strange day when I wear more jewelry than my wedding ring and the stud earrings that I always forget to take out. Anyway, should it be a long scarf? A short one that I wear with a pin at my neck? A medium one that I can wrap around and let flow? If it helps any, it looks like it will be at least 14″ wide after it’s blocked.

In other, very cool news, I’m going to be in Ottawa on Worldwide Knit In Public Day. My plan is to take the sock and the Ninja to the Highlander, so that we can drink scotch while we knit in public! The sock is on hiatus until I actually start traveling, and is glaring at me from the corner of the desk. It looks so small and lonely. Maybe I’ll give it a few rounds so it doesn’t feel left out.

Wednesday morning, 7:00 am. Leap out of bed, grab sock yarn. Drive to hospital at just over speed limit. Wake up, begin using full sentences. We stayed in the room with my sister-in-law until the pace picked up, and then were sent downstairs to wait in the lobby, where I got started on my next pair of Jaywalkers. This little girl was born at 1:53 pm on May 23 – her parents’ third wedding anniversary. She is 5 lbs, 11 ounces – too small for her jeans, but I’m sure she’ll grow into them! I plan to visit this afternoon and give her the pants. I can’t wait to see the reaction to them! And you can bet that as soon as she’s old enough, I’ll be teaching Pirate-Niece how to knit. She may be a little uncoordinated for it just now!

The sock is good for traveling and waiting in lobbies (or airport terminals), but this is for working on at home. 660 yards of Morehouse Merino laceweight, wound up and ready to go. This is my tenth try and I’m up to the 12th row. Several of the first few tries were swatches, but I did mess it up a few times before I finally settled on size 5 needles. I think I’ve gotten the hang of the pattern now. Although I was fairly certain of my ability to count higher than ten (twenty, if I take off my socks), now I’m not so certain. I count stitches after every pattern row… and it goes like this:

*counts* 82, DAMN.
*recounts* 81, WOOHOO!
*recounts to be sure* 82, WHAT THE–
*recounts* 81, YAY!
*recounts* Okay, three out of five… 81! YAY!

Using this basic hat formula, I took the leftover Manos del Uruguay in green from my scarf, and in tan from a previous hat project, and made a whole new hat! At first, I was going to put a solid green stripe in the middle. Then I decided that it was time to try colorwork. I made up a five-row chart and got started with one yarn in my right hand and one in my left hand. Wow, is that awkward!

I’ve never gotten the hang of knitting with the yarn in my right hand, but this seemed like a good chance to give it a try. Five rows later, I really didn’t like what I had at all. The colors are too close to each other, and the one-stitch-then-switch stuff I’d been doing wasn’t showing up very well. I ripped it out, revised my chart to six rows and more green, and tried again.

I’m really not so good at taking pictures of myself, but I try! The best thing about hats is that they’re over quickly. You get something warm and functional for a few hours’ worth of effort. It may not be my favorite color, but it does match the scarf well… I’m not entirely sure I like the colorwork; I might have preferred a solid stripe. But I did need the practice, and now I kinda sorta maybe know how to knit with the yarn in my right hand, too!

Before anything else, I need to thank Pirate-Husband, who saved me from a hell of unseamed babypants. On Tuesday, after the nightmare of waistband stitches getting free, I tried to get the seams in and failed. On Tuesday night, Pirate-Husband gave it a try, but was also frustrated. Wednesday, I made four attempts to seam the pants, four different techniques, and still failed. (Oh, I could seam them all right. But the seam wasn’t showing. How odd.) Wednesday afternoon, Pirate-Husband came home from work and announced, “I know how to do this seam.” And he did. It was amazing. I am eternally grateful.

So! The pants are done! The baby can be born now!

I almost regret making them the larger size, because I’m going to have to wait so long to see them on my niece. They are the 12-18 month size, so it may be a while. I know that some babies are wearing 12 month sized clothing at 9 months old, but my sister-in-law is only 4’8″ and the baby could be on the small side.

The technique of a turning ridge was a new one for me in this project. I really like it! Well, with the exception of the live stitches coming off the waste yarn in the wash – but that was probably my fault. The ridge makes it so easy to get the fold in the right place. It’s a good thing I enjoy handsewing, because the next step was to very carefully take the stitches off the waste yarn and sew them down to the inside of the garter ridge. It’s nice and flat, and you can’t see any of the stitches from the outside.

These pants are the cutest thing ever. I can’t wait to see my sister-in-law’s face when she opens the gift. She has been saying that she doesn’t like too much pink, or cutesy, or ruffles, or anything that standard baby girl clothing seems to be. Baby jeans are perfect. I’m so excited! I’m going to be Aunt Pirate!

Knitty’s “Blu” pattern
All Blu entries

The pockets have been redone (twice, in the case of the front pockets) and I’m up to seaming. Again. I’ve tried three times and have failed to create a seam that can be seen from the outside of the pants. Don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but I can hear the ghost of my great-grandmother over my shoulder, saying, “You *want* the seams to show, darling? That’s… strange.”

Great-Grandma was a seamstress. She could go into a store, look at a dress from all angles, and recreate it at home. I’m sure her seams never showed. From her, passed down through the generations, I learned the importance of having a printed pattern match up at the seams, and how to tell a well-made garment from one that would disintegrate in the wash. Unfortunately, I did not seem to inherit her ability to think in three dimensions, and I’m at a complete loss as to how to put these pants together. YARRGH.

This niece, who is still not born as of right now, will be named for Great-Grandma. When she’s old enough, I will teach her to knit, and maybe she will intuitively understand what I do not. Then she can show me how to seam her own [expletive omitted] pants.

Yarrrgh.

No, that wasn’t strong enough. YARRRGH!

There, that’s better. What is this yarrrghing all about, you may ask? Well, I’ll tell you, because YAARRGH. I finished knitting both legs of the babypants. With the waistband stitches safely on waste yarn and the ends nicely woven in, I was only a little nervous as I tossed them into the washer. On hot. To deliberately shrink them.

The shrinking, as it turned out, was not a problem at all. The problem was that one of the pieces of waste yarn snapped, and waistband stitches went frolicking about. YARRGH! I spent a tense hour putting them back together, with the pants still wet from the wash. Cold wet cotton on my lap, cold wet yarn which didn’t want to go anywhere, especially not back into the proper stitches. Size 00 aluminum sock needles were very handy here. I think I got them all the way they were supposed to be – and if I didn’t, well, it’s on the inside and no one will see. As long as they don’t unravel, I’m fine with it. (I looked. The last stitch is a little loose. The rest of them are just fine. Woohoo!)

With the stitches recovered and a fresh piece of waste yarn holding them, I gleefully threw the pants legs into the dryer, then pressed them to an even size. I was so gleeful that I failed to take note of the difference between the front and back of these pants, and embroidered the front pockets, fly and button onto the backs, and the back pockets onto the front. YAARRRGH! I did not notice this until attempting to seam, which is not going smoothly because I don’t think in three dimensions and the instructions are a bit lacking, and I’ve never seamed anything where the seam was supposed to show before, and YARGH.

Instead of having completed pants, I have picked out all the embroidery, stitch by stitch. There are two separate, unembroidered pantslegs here. Her due date is tomorrow. YAARRGH.

Midori asked about the Pomatomuses in this comment, saying that she’s making a very small pair with a third of the stitches taken out, but is unsure how to do the heel. This seemed like a challenge to me… right then!

(I checked back in Midori’s blog and found that she’d already come up with a solution, but I’m going to post this one anyway. I’m curious to see how it differs from what she came up with.)

The original pattern calls for 24 stitches on each of three needles for the leg, so I’m going to guess that Midori has begun with only 48 stitches. If I were making a sock this small, I would be using four needles instead of three, and work the Chart A pattern once over each needle (four repeats = 48 stitches), instead of twice over each of three needles (six repeats = 72 stitches).

So then, the heel. In the original pattern, you begin with 72 stitches. At the heel, you put 36 stitches, or half of the original, on each of two needles. When you’re beginning with only 48 stitches, you would put 24 – half of the original – on each of two needles, then work the heel flap back and forth over the stitches on one of them. The original is 36 stitches for 28 rows. Math, which has never been my strong point, seems to indicate that the heel flap should now be worked for 18.6666 rows. How about 18? 18 sounds good.

Turning the heel, hrm. I’m figuring this out as I go along. In the original, it begins “sl1, k19, ssk, k1, turn work.” Well, 19 stitches is one past half. So, try “sl1, k10, ssk, k1, turn work.” Because you have eighteen stitches, half is nine, and one more than that is 10. Then work the rest of the heel turn. I haven’t done many flap heels, so I can’t say that I’ve got this right, but it should be a starting point for you to work from. On the RS, you will knit to one stitch before the gap, ssk, k1, turn. On the WS. you will purl to one stitch before the gap, p2tog, p1, turn. Do this until all the heel stitches have been worked. (I highly recommend putting in a lifeline after the heel flap and before the turning, so in case I’m incredibly wrong, you won’t have to rip back too far.)

Again, math seems to indicate that you will now pick up ten stitches along each side of the heel flap for your gusset. You now have the original 24 stitches on the instep needle, 10 stitches on each of your gusset needles, and uh… however many stitches left on your heel needle after turning the heel. You may need more or less gusset decreases to make the sock fit snugly, since your foot is so small, but if you put the sock on waste thread or lots of extra needles, you can try it on as you go.

Now you have 24 stitches (depending on what row you’re on) across the top of your foot, and stockinette stitch for the sole. The part of Chart B where it says “repeat twice?” Don’t repeat it. Voila, 24 stitches across the top. You can probably put the sock back onto three needles at this point, with the 24 stitches on one needle, and the others split onto two, then work down to the toe.

My first Pomatomus is about 10 rounds from beginning the toe. Almost done!

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom and to all the other moms out there!

My parents came to visit today. Pirate-Husband and I hosted the party, which also included my brother and sister-in-law (still pregnant). This is my mom, working on a baby sweater. Mom taught me to knit when I was a kid, maybe around eight or nine, and she is just thrilled that it’s become a hobby I love so much. I may have convinced her, when she’s done with this sweater, that she needs to do something for herself. A sweater, she says, would be nothing like what she needs… but a shawl, now, that would be just perfect. It seems that she goes to a lot of fancy events and is always cold in formal dresses. I showed her a few patterns I especially like, and I think she may be into the idea. She wants a pattern that doesn’t take too much thinking, because knitting is something she does while she’s doing something else. I think this could be managed.

My sister-in-law looks much more uncomfortable than she did when I saw her a few days ago. The baby will be born any day now! My brother predicts Thursday. I finished the knitting part of the pants; now they need washing, drying, blocking, embroidery, and seaming. That’ll all be tomorrow – *before* the baby comes.

It’s very difficult to work on a surprise knitted gift for my sister-in-law when I spend most of the day out shopping with said sister-in-law! (I didn’t buy anything, though there was this one flowery dress – not for me, for the baby – that I was tempted to pick up.) I did show her all the other yarny stuff I am currently working on, and the yarn acquisitions from the Sheep and Wool Festival and from Uruguay, and a quick spinning demonstration. I may have tempted her into learning to knit after the baby is born. That would just be too cool, wouldn’t it?

I am surprised to be as excited as I am about this baby. I’ve never been too fond of babies, but this one, being my kid brother’s kid, is an exception to the rule. Not to mention, my brother and sister-in-law are very cool, and say things like “You don’t have to change diapers. Heck, you don’t even have to hold her if you don’t want to. I’m scared of breaking her, and she’s my kid. Don’t worry about it at all.” I plan to knit many, many things for my new niece.

…starting with those pants, which are very, very slowly getting closer to being finished.

My order from 100purewool.com has finally arrived, and the yarn is just as beautiful as I had hoped!

The one on the bottom of my picture is the “Aquisgran” colorway (now retired). It is quite a bit more yellow and a lot less other-colored than I had expected. I’m surprised, but okay with this, because it’s still a good neutral color for babies. I’m just not that fond of baby-chick yellow, and was hoping for something more colorful. It’s all good.

The one on the top of my picture is called “Winter Joy,” and the picture on the website showed it in blue and tan. The one I got included quite a bit of green and brown, and very little of the lighter tan. Again, this is okay, just surprising. These two pictures on the right show you what the yarn looked like on the 100purewool website. Just a little different, no? The other two colors, “Verde & Amarillo” and “Trieste,” look exactly like what I was expecting.

The yarn is so soft, and the colors are gorgeous – even if they’re not exactly what I was expecting. I compared the feel to the Manos that I have here, and this new stuff is definitely softer, more like what I remember Malabrigo feeling like, though I don’t have any here to compare. It seems more even than Manos, and I’m really looking forward to working with it!

The basket is now officially overflowing! Last night I was eyeing the WEBS site and wondering what to pick up when I’m there, if anything. I do want to get some Cascade 220 for a felted purse design I’m working out, and something for another project that needs to remain a surprise (but I promise I’ll show pictures after it’s gifted). We shall see!