The Knitting Pirate

These gloves were a quick fun project. I started out using Sarkasmo’s Gnomittens pattern, but had to make a few adjustments. I saw that she had taken a lot of inspiration from Knitty’s Cigar‘s sizing notes, so I went there for the body of the gloves, and back to Gnomittens for the flip-top section, and I figured out how to do the thumb caps on my own.

I had to modify the pattern a bit to fit my hands and fingers, which are long in proportion to the width of my hands. My wrists are narrow too, so I started with 32 stitches and made extra long ribbed cuffs, then increased up to the medium size of the Cigar pattern, adding rows where appropriate for length and making notes so that the second glove would match the first. Of course this made the second glove go a lot faster than the first, since I wasn’t constantly stopping to try them on and take measurements.

When I started, I had no idea how to make the thumb caps. After making two mitten tops, I had the general concept down. The hardest part turned out to be getting the caps evenly matched on each thumb, and even that wasn’t so hard after all! They may not be 100% perfectly matched, but they’re close enough that I can’t tell the difference when I’m wearing them. With the tops on, the gloves are really warm! I am looking forward to testing them outside next week at the Stew Cook-Off. That’ll be the real test.

The mitten tops seem to stay well along the backs of my hands. If I find that they’re getting in the way, I can add a little loop to the top and a button to the cuff to hold them back, but for now I think I’m going to leave them as they are. I wonder how many people will ask me to make them a pair? When that happens I feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Anyway, things like this are why I took up knitting. There is no way I’d ever find a pair of gloves like this, perfectly my size, in a store.

The snow began on Tuesday morning, and I made a poor decision to go in to the office, thinking that it wouldn’t be that bad. It wasn’t long before they sent me home. Pirate-Husband had to hike down to the bottom of the mountain with tire chains for me, and I held my breath while we navigated our way up to the house.

I have never been so glad to be a knitter! There is so much warm wool knitwear in the house, that I have no fear of freezing. Pirate-Husband and I have both been working from home, which has been very nice. I’m halfway through the second mitten-top, and have only to figure out how to make thumb-caps. Those will probably be completed tonight.

Because Tuesday was so full of fluster, I ended up skipping the spinning I’d meant to do. Perhaps this coming weekend I will be able to sit down at the wheel for a while.

Because of the inauguration, I worked from home today. I worked until Pirate-Husband came home. We worked out, showered, had dinner, and sat down to a movie… but then I remembered! It’s Tuesday! *Spinning Tuesday*… and I hadn’t spun a single yard of yarn all day!

I wasn’t going to bring the wheel downstairs to where the television is, and I didn’t think I could concentrate on making even laceweight while I watched the movie, so I grabbed the heavier spindle, a 1.5 ounce Cascade Little Si, and the gray-green mystery wool. First I had to wind off what was already on the spindle, because it was heavy enough that it wasn’t spinning properly. Then I spun for about half an hour.

I’m coming out with a fairly consistent singles, but the spindle keeps stopping. Or spinning the wrong way. I try to draft as it’s spinning, but when I let go, the spindle jerks and stops. That’s not right, but I’m not sure what’s wrong. More practice is obviously necessary, and in the meantime, I’m getting yarn out of the deal.

Yesterday, on my day off for Martin Luther King Day, I saw the dentist, then got a haircut and new glasses. I’m pretty pleased with my new look! The hairdresser and the optometrist are conveniently in the same shopping center as With Yarn in Front, so while my lenses were being ground, I stopped in there to knit for a while. I had a great conversation with 11-year-old James about the benefits of magic loop vs. DPNs for sock knitting while he worked on a hat and I added some stripes to the Quick Socks. We talked about spinning (we both have Ashford Traditionals) and about our previous projects until my glasses were ready. All in all, a great day indeed.

All of the fingers on both gloves are knit, and I have only eight ends left to weave in. I find it easier to do that in daylight because the yarn is so dark, so I’ll take care of them on our next sunny day. The mittens and thumb-caps shouldn’t take long, and then I will have a pair of fleep-top gloves! I am quite pleased with the way the gloves have turned out. They fit my hands like… well, like gloves. Ugh, that was terrible, but it’s true – the modifications I made to the pattern were just right. I’ve gained confidence while working on this project, for sure. The next time a pattern needs to be changed, I will have more faith in myself that I can get it right.

Putting the gloves aside, I went back to the socks and began the heel on Sock #2. With some pauses for conversation and to wander the internet, I had it finished in two hours. This means that the socks are portable again! I plan to work alternately on whichever sock is shorter until they’re both finished. Pirate-Husband and I are going to visit my parents this afternoon for my birthday celebration, and I expect to put a few inches on one sock leg or another while we’re at their house.

Pirate-Husband is starting to complain about my yarn and fiber stuff being everywhere. To that end, this weekend I’m going to begin the renovation of my room. First, everything needs to be taken out of it. Then, I’ll paint the inside of the closet white, so that it’s easier to see stuff in there. I have a half-gallon of white paint left over from when we did the bedroom closets, or I wouldn’t bother. We’re going to replace the bowed particle-board shelves with wooden ones, and build a corner desk that fits underneath the loft. I have to pick a color to paint the room, and we’ll do that too. The high ceiling might be tricky, but I think we can do it ourselves. Once things are done, I can hang out in there instead of in the master bedroom! I think the wheel and carder will still live in the master bedroom, since there’s a perfect little niche for it there (and not enough space in my room), but the rest of everything will have a new home.

The room isn’t very large, as the ceiling slopes down to the floor, so I’ll be looking for the most space-efficient way to arrange things. In addition to the yarn and fiber collection, there’s a half-ton of other art supplies, many books, and two computers (a laptop and a desktop) to manage. I love organizing, although I’m not always very organized, so I’m looking forward to buying little baskets and things to keep all my stuff in.

What does this have to do with knitting and spinning? Not much, really, other than that I’ll be able to better organize my yarn, fiber and patterns. A well-designed, welcoming workspace in nice colors will make me more likely to spend lots of time in it. If you were building a work area that was going to be for computering, other art, and also knitting, what would you include? How would you set it up?

Although yesterday was Wednesday, and therefore not necessarily a Spinning Day, I couldn’t keep my hands off the new spindle. I’m starting to get the hang of getting it going at high speeds without introducing a wobble, and for the most part I’m drafting while the spindle is still spinning. If the yarn breaks, I have to do a park-and-rejoin sort of trick.

Today, however, I must get back to knitting. My plan is to first get through the heel of the second Toe-Up sock, so that the project becomes portable again. After that, I’ll put fingers onto the Fleep-Tops. I should be able to finish both the gloves and the socks before Winterlude. Not only does that mean I’ll have a new pair of warm wool socks to wear in the winter cold, it means that I’ll be casting on a new project with which to travel!

Actually, there’s a distinct probability that I’ll be casting on two new projects. Part of my travels are by air, which calls for a sock – small, portable, fits in my usual purse – and part will be a road trip, which calls for something bigger than a sock, because I can only knit on a sock for about an hour in the car before getting a headache.

It took an unsurprisingly long time to decide what socks I’d be working on. First I thought I would do another pair of toe-up stockinette socks. After all, I can practically knit those in my sleep! Then I thought no, I want to do something with a little more patterning to it. Nothing too complex, so I could still work on it and talk at the same time. Finally I settled on the Thermal Socks, which use the stitch pattern from the Thermal Sweater from Knitty. I’m going to use Noro Kureyon Sock yarn for them, but I still haven’t decided if I’ll work them top-down or toe-up. Given Kureyon’s propensity for knots, I will definitely be re-winding the yarn into two even portions before I begin.

For the bigger project, I am considering this Wavy Razor Shell Scarf in Noro Silk Garden. I have three skeins of it in beautiful soft blues, grays and purples. The only change I plan to make is that I will knit the scarf with five points, not four, because I agree with Grumperina that four is just not a good number. I don’t know why odd numbers of points look better to me. Anyway, I will be re-winding this yarn into balls as well, not only to check for knots, but because the scarf is knit in two parts, from the middle out. Two of the balls I have are from one dye lot, and the third is from another. I’ll start the middle of the scarf in the middle of that third ball of yarn, and no one will ever know!

I picked up this half-ounce drop spindle in gaboon ebony and african rosewood from the Spanish Peacock on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, I started spinning some laceweight from a sample of merino I’d gotten from Sheepish Creations, because I just had to try it out. On Monday, even though it wasn’t Tuesday, I spun some more with it. And now that it’s Spinning Tuesday, I’m debating whether to keep on with the drop spindle, or do some wheel-spinning today. I could also spin on the other spindle, which is half-full of some gray-green mystery fiber. Or I could take out the drum carder and work on processing some more of the alpaca fleece… technically that’s not exactly spinning, but it’s fiber prep *for* spinning, so I think it counts.

Laceweight takes a long time to spin. Longer than I’d thought. I’m not very fast at this, and I’m glad I decided to try the spindle with just a half-ounce of wool. I have no idea how much laceweight yarn I’ll get from this, but hopefully it will be enough to knit something small. Meanwhile, it’s really good practice at drafting finely. The fiber is dyed in a rainbowish progression. I split it in half down the middle, weighing to be sure I got it right. I’ll spin each half in the same direction, then ply them together. Hopefully the colors match up somewhere!

This year I want to try dyeing my own yarn and fiber. I would love to experiment with my own colors, and possibly even sell some of my work on Etsy. I’ve had the shop set up for a while, and it’s been empty since day one. Maybe if I get really good, I could sell some of my handspun yarn. I have some ideas for other things to sell, too. 2009 is looking to be a creative year!

This afternoon I finished the hand section of the second Fleep-Top glove. Still to do: four fingers and a thumb, two mittens and two thumb-caps, and weaving in almost thirty ends. I am thrilled with the way the gloves are coming out, and so excited that they’ll be done in time for Winterlude!

Yesterday, Pirate-Husband and I attended an SCA event about an hour from our house. We had a good time, but for me the highlight was purchasing a half-ounce drop spindle in ebony and rosewood from The Spanish Peacock. I’ve been admiring friend Janis‘s laceweight spindle-spinning, and when I saw this mini-spindle, I just couldn’t resist! I’ll be testing it out with a half-ounce merino sampler from Sheepish Creations.

I brought the Quick Toe-Up Socks with me to the event and knit the second one until it was very close to the heel turn. They were very blatantly not medieval, unfortunately, but I wasn’t about to start another project just for a one-day event. I’ve sometimes been tempted by the Eleanor of Toledo socks, but those are more than I really want to knit… and I doubt I’d be able to work on them and hold a conversation at the same time! No one complained; actually I got compliments on the evenness of my gauge and on the striping of the yarn, as well as on the non-medieval Kureyon Booga Bag which I was carrying.

This Friday will be my 31st birthday! I’ve already made plans for my birthday money; most of it will be going to build a new desktop computer for myself. My old one died, and now I don’t have a good machine to do graphics work on. As I’m a graphic/web designer in real life, this is kinda important! I’m also going to buy a pro account on Flickr, and probably a bit of spinning fiber as well. I love birthdays and think they should be celebrated with as much awesomeness as possible. How convenient that mine will kick off a three-day weekend!

Because Tuesdays are for spinning, I spent about an hour and a half at the wheel yesterday. I am working on what might be a heavy fingering weight three-ply yarn. The fiber is Ashland Bay merino in the Sandalwood colorway that I picked up at the 2008 MD Sheep and Wool Festival.

When I first tried to spin merino, I couldn’t quite get the hang of it. It kept slipping out of my fingers and breaking. Now I’m plugging along with more confidence, though it’s not as easy to spin as other, rougher fibers. Maybe if I practice with the alpaca fiber I’ve been carding, when I go back to the merino it will seem super-easy!

I have eight ounces of this stuff, so I expect to come up with enough yarn to knit something significant. What, exactly, will depend on just how much yardage I end up with and just how thick the yarn turns out. If it’s thin enough for socks, I might just do that. Or, because it’s not superwash fiber, I might knit something that will take less of a beating. In any case, one bobbin down, two to go!

I started the Gnomittens pattern and quickly realized that it wasn’t going to fit as written. The more I looked at modifications, the more I thought, “Why not just knit Cigar, off which Gnomittens is based, and then add the flip-tops from Gnomittens?”

So that’s what I’m doing. I had to modify the Cigar pattern a little bit, because my hands are proportionately longer than the pattern, but that went smoothly and I even remembered to take detailed notes so that the second glove comes out the same as the first. On Sunday evening, I finished the glove part of the first glove, and last night I cast on for the cuff of the second. I’ll knit both gloves first, then add both mitten tops.

I also plan to add a little flip-top cap for my thumbs, because when I showed the first glove to Pirate-Husband his comment was, “They’re really nice, and they fit you perfectly, but what’s going to keep your thumbs warm?” He’s a smart one, he is. I think I’ll keep him around for a while.