The Knitting Pirate

Last night I finished the first of four skeins for the baby blanket. Originally I’d bought three, but the pattern ate more than I thought it would, and Pirate-Husband helped me find another skein in the same dye lot. It’s coming along – and looking good – but I have to knit two pattern repeats on it each day so that it will be done before the (as yet unscheduled) baby shower.

The Bloo socks are coming along too. I’m past the gusset decreases in Sock One and I’m estimating four to five hours left on it, and then Sock Two. Last night I worked on them a bit, until I was too tired to remember not to knit straight over the ribbing! I also started doodling up the design for the tweaks, with plans for small, medium and large sizing. I just have to work out the heel and toe numbers, knit a pair to the new pattern, have them test-knit and the pattern proofed for errors, and then publish!

Due to scheduling issues (boss got a promotion and has been working long hours to catch up on the work) my carpooling has been temporarily put on hold, so I’ve lost several hours of knitting time per week. He’s been considering putting his foot down on work, so we might be able to start driving together again – and because his new position requires him to go back and forth between our locations, he’s offered to drive every day if I put in for gas! That’s a lot of potential knitting time for me, and a lot of mileage saved on my car.

I never thought I’d be saying this, but here goes:

I think I have too much yarn.

Not that I don’t love it, you understand. Not that I don’t take it all out of the basket every so often, arrange it in a neat semi-circle on the floor, and admire it. Not that I don’t pull up my stash on Ravelry when I’m having a particularly frustrating day at work and need to remind myself of what wonderfulness awaits me at home.

It’s more that I can’t decide what to knit next. I’m having a terrible time keeping myself from casting on another project just so I can try out another yarn – it doesn’t help that I really must work on the baby blanket, although I’m not fond of the acrylic yarn I’m using and one pattern repeat takes an hour which means I have about 53 hours of work left to go on it. Not to mention, I know that in a month I’ll be casting on for a new sock when I take Cookie A.‘s design class.

I want to try the Jojoland Melody that Pirate-Husband bought for me, and have those socks as a reminder of how awesome he can be. I want to try the Brooks Farm Acero that I got at Sheep and Wool in 2007, because it’s like nothing else I’ve ever seen. I want to knit with the Austermann Step yarn, not only because it’s aloe-infused but because I’m going to knit my own toe socks with it. I’m dying to try the Kureyon sock yarn and see what all the fuss is about. I’ve loved the Clessidra socks from the moment I first saw the pattern, and I’m starting to feel the first hints of fall in the air, so the idea of knee socks is incredibly appealing right now.

And those are just the socks. That doesn’t take into account the sweater I want to knit for myself, or the one for Pirate-Husband. It certainly doesn’t take into account the spinning I want to do, which only leads to more yarn – or the 150 yards of brand new handspun I have that I keep eyeing with not-so-secret longing.

But no, I’m not going to let myself start anything new. It’s just so nice to think about sometimes…

I had an incredibly urgent project at work today, and as a result I kinda strained my wrists. Lots of mousing, typing, and editing – but it needed to be done. I ate some ibuprofen and decided to give knitting a break for the evening.

So I’ve been lazily spinning with the drop spindle, doing a little bit at a time, resting when my wrists hurt and picking it back up after a while. I’m using the roving with which I was teaching at Pennsic. It’s quite fluffy and after several car trips is a little bit stuck to itself, so it takes careful drafting. I thought the spindle would be more suited to something like that, so I pulled it out and set to work. I’m coming up with something that looks as if it might make a decent two-ply sock yarn, though I think I’m probably not putting enough twist in. I have a tendency to overspin on the wheel and to underspin on the spindle.

The wool isn’t the easiest to work with due to its stickiness, but careful slow work is giving me a consistent single. Whether it comes out tight enough for sock yarn or not, I’m really liking the colors. They’re very subtle shades of green and purple that are lost unless you look up close.

While I was at Pennsic, I taught a friend to spin on the drop spindle, using the park-and-draft technique that worked for me at my first Sheep & Wool festival. Then she helped me teach two people to knit with the yarn and needles that I’d specifically bought for teaching and giving away. Everyone caught on impressively fast, and we had some great knitting circles in camp when it was too hot to do much of anything else!

The day after I got home, I plied the BFL that I spun up last week. I solved the conundrum of uneven weights by just going with a two-ply, then using the leftovers to practice Navajo plying. (I definitely need more practice with that.) It came out to about the same thickness as the first skein, so I have about 150 yards of yarn to work with. I’m thinking armwarmers or a hat; it’s very bright and autumn-colored. I also solved the problem of only having four bobbins by discovering that I actually have six! Two were hiding in the bag with the updated flyer, which is now on the wheel although I haven’t shortened the second drive band for the smaller whorls.

Then I tried to spin up some of the alpaca fleece, and wow, that’s kinda difficult. It’s very slippery and practically drafts itself into a super-fine single. The finer the yarn, the more twist is required, so I treadled super-fast for the super-fine, and it seemed okay as I spun. I stopped every couple of yards to test the strength of the single just to be sure. But the fluff kept slipping and breaking, and then the single from the bobbin would break as I unwound it to begin again. Obviously more practice is required with alpaca as well as with Navajo plying! (Advice is appreciated, too.)

I have five pattern repeats done, and approximately fifty-five to go. I will need to work on this blanket for more than an hour every day if I want to have it finished in time for the (as yet unscheduled) baby shower. Unfortunately my time knitting in the car has been cut, as my boss’s hours have changed and we’re not currently carpooling. There’s a possibility that we’ll figure something out soon, but for now I have to drive myself to work every day – how frustrating!

I knit this Baby Yoda Sweater (Ravelry link) for the older sister of the upcoming baby, and this week my friend remarked on how the new baby already had a hand-me-down handknit sweater to wear. It may be a little selfish of me, but I love knowing that the recipients of my knitted gifts appreciate the time and work that goes into them.

I do remember why I swore I’d never knit another baby blanket, though. They seem to go so slowly! Perhaps it’s good practice; eventually I would really like to knit a bedspread for myself, at least queen-size if not king. I do love the Lizard Ridge pattern, and have daydreamish images of knitting squares with friends and then sewing them up. But who would own the finished project? I think I’ll have to do it all myself.

I’m back from the War with lots of knitting behind me!

The Bloo Sock is (now) past the heel and into the gusset. I knit the heel flap and turned the heel, but either the numbers were off or I can’t count to 31, so I tinked back and re-turned the heel with my own numbers twice, as my own numbers were also off the first time. That’s when I realized I’d forgotten to center the ribbing over the instep. I stared at the sock for a while and gradually came to terms with the knowledge that I would have to rip back to the beginning of the heel flap, rotate the stitches, and do it all over again. After I came to that conclusion, I also realized that I’d forgotten to write down the proper numbers for the heel turn.

Being the perfectionist that I am, I did rip back. It took some frustration and a very small crochet hook to get all the stitches back on the needles in the right orientation. But I am happy to report that the heel turned without further incident and that I have written down the numbers so that the next sock will match. At this point I feel that I’ve really made enough changes to this pattern to publish it for myself.

Is anyone interested in test-knitting a ribbed sock at an almost ridiculously fine gauge? I haven’t yet written up the pattern, other than scribbled notes on the original printout, but I’m planning to publish in at least two sizes, possibly three. The perk will be that you get a free, if untested, copy of a pattern that won’t be offered for free.

My camera battery has died, but I’ll have pictures soon!

(I’ve written this post in advance and scheduled it for while I’m away. I am not on the internet while on vacation.)

On the way back from landgrab weekend, I was able to put a few pattern repeats onto the feather and fan baby blanket. I like how it’s coming out so far. The color works well no matter what sex the baby is. Although the lace isn’t as open as it might be if I were working with a natural fiber, it’s showing the pattern well enough that I’m going to run with it for the rest of the blanket. It takes about ten minutes to do a row, four rows to the pattern repeat, and I have about 50 repeats to go. The blanket will be right around a meter square when it’s finished. I think that’s a good size for a baby. Besides, if it’s any larger I’ll go crazy knitting it.

As I knit, I thought about the lace afghan that my mom made over 30 years ago… in an acrylic yarn. It’s still on my parents’ living room couch today. Maybe it’s not that you can’t knit lace with acrylic after all. (I bet Mom’s afghan would have looked better in a natural fiber with some blocking, but it’s pretty awesome the way it is.)

I also realized why Janis kept telling me that the feather and fan pattern is easily memorized, and that she can have a conversation right through knitting on it – it’s because it’s a lot less complicated than the one used in the Ostrich Plumes stitch pattern. Feather and Fan is (k2tog) 3x, (yo, k1) 6x, (k2tog) 3x. Ostrich Plumes is (ssk) twice, (sl2, k1, p2sso), (k2tog) twice, (yo, k1) five times, yo. It’s those “pass two slipped stitches over” that take my concentration every time, plus the tiny thin yarn that never seems to move the way I want it to. The blanket is so much easier than the scarf!

(I’ve written this post in advance and scheduled it for while I’m away. I am not on the internet while on vacation.)

So I spun up the last quarter of the BFL roving from Cloverleaf Farms, and only then did I get the bright idea to weigh what I’d done. One bobbin came in at 79 grams, the other at 86 grams. So now I have a conundrum – do I ply them together so that the second skein matches the first, but waste seven grams of yarn, or do I attempt to Navajo ply each of them and end up with one ~2 ounce skein of two-ply, and two ~1 ounce skeins of Navajo-plied yarn?

I’m leaning towards the two-ply option for two reasons. One, so I have matching skeins and therefore more usable yarn, if I decide to keep it for myself. Two, because my attempts at Navajo plying have so far been barely successful, by which I mean I made mostly tangles.

Next time, I will be smart enough to weigh out the split-up roving before I start spinning, so it comes out more evenly.

Also, I think I need more bobbins. Who’d'a thought that four wouldn’t be enough?

(Before you ask, I’ve written this post in advance and scheduled it for while I’m away. I am not on the internet while on vacation.)

For the Bloo Socks, I started Elizabeth Bennet’s Perl Sock Program to get the numbers, but then I started modifying. First I had to fudge the gauge in her form to get the 10% negative ease I prefer in a sock. Then I went with a k6, p2 ribbing instead of doing the sock in stockinette. I changed the type of decreases as well. How much modification would I have to do in order to publish this design as my own?

I’d love to be able to publish this and even sell it, but not if it’s copyright infringement. I bet I could change some more stuff about the pattern without too much effort and get to the point where it really is my own design, no worries. I have some thoughts about what I can change already, but I’m not going to give them away just yet!

When I was searching for patterns, I noticed that there weren’t many written for such fine-gauge socks. I’m getting 11.25 stitches to the inch, and most sock patterns seem to be written for eight to nine SPI. This could be my designing niche – I do love the look and feel of light fingering weight yarn. I have lots of ideas for socks, and I’m really looking forward to taking the class with Cookie A. in September and learning how to design what’s floating around in my head.

Pirate-Husband figured out that this is the sixth different sock pattern I’ve knit up, and suggests that if I do publish it, I should call it Number Six. I think that’s rather fitting, given the recipient, although after I make further changes to the pattern, it will actually be Number Seven.