The Knitting Pirate

Monday was a terrible day in which nothing went right, so I was determined to make Tuesday a good day in which everything went wonderfully. I started off by wearing my new socks – because really, how can I be in a bad mood if I’m wearing new socks? And on the way home from work, I stopped at With Yarn In Front to show them off… and to pick out some cotton yarn. My swornbrother Michael is going to become an uncle in just a few more weeks, and I thought it might be nice for me to knit a little something for the baby.

I browsed around the store for a little while and eventually decided to get a ball of Plymouth Sweet Caroline, a 100% cotton, worsted-weight yarn. Three strands are solid-coloured, and the fourth is variegated in the standard baby colours. It was a tossup between a colourway that was mostly pink with the one variegated strand, or the white one that I got. I went with white because I don’t know if Michael’s sister is a fan of baby-pink! The yarn came with a free pattern for this lacy Baby Bunny Hat, perfect for a little girl to wear in the springtime.

The pattern is written for the hat to be knit flat and seamed, but I decided to knit it in the round. The WS rows are only purling back with no lace, so I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult.

“Cast on 101 stitches,” the pattern said. I got out my DPNs and measured out a length of yarn for my usual long-tail cast-on, very carefully counted out 100 stitches, and knit a full round before I realized that I’d forgotten to add stitch #26 to the fourth needle. Rip, rip.

I cast on again, 101 stitches this time, and knit a full round before I realized that the first row of the edging is actually the wrong side of the work, and when the pattern said “knit” I should have purled because I’m working in the round instead of flat. Hooray for reading comprehension! …so I cheated. I turned the work inside out. Voila, a purl round! Then I worked back the other way, and I used the tail from the cast-on to fill in the little hole that was left.

This might be the least terrible cotton yarn I’ve ever worked with. I never find cotton to be as nice on the hands as wool, but I knit the edging and a full pattern repeat last night and my hands aren’t complaining. In addition, the yarn is theoretically machine-washable (excellent for baby clothing!), but the label had no care instructions. Cold-cold? Delicate cycle? I want to include a little tag with the gift, but I don’t know what to write on it!

Finally, a completed project to show! Ribbed socks for Michael, in Cascade Heritage Paints #9922. He bought the yarn for me back in November, and I broke the queue to cast on for them.

This is my new favorite sock yarn. It’s smooth, yet squooshy. It got a little splitty around the SSKs, but so does most yarn, since working that stitch takes some of the twist out. The colors were evenly distributed without any garish pooling. There was a little bit of pooling over the gusset, which is expected, and a vague hint of spiraling down the foot.

It’s a simple pattern, but I am considering writing it up for publication anyway. Like the Highwayman Armwarmers, it would be a freebie. This time around I would use a Creative Commons license, most likely Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike – in other words, you can distribute the pattern as long as I get credit; you can’t sell the pattern itself but you can sell the items you knit from it; and you can make changes and distribute them under the same license. I’m a big supporter of Creative Commons licensing; why keep something to myself if there’s no good reason to do so?

(Speaking of the Highwayman Armwarmers, one of my readers was kind enough to inform me of a typo in the pattern. It’s been corrected and a new version has been uploaded, both here and on Ravelry.)

Most commercial sock yarns are the same. Opal, Regia, Lang Jawoll, Lane Cervinia, Online… I’ll get about 36 stitches to four inches on US #1 needles. Without even thinking about it, I know that I should make a 64-stitch stockinette sock for myself with these yarns. I know that with Trekking XXL, I get 45 stitches to four inches on US #0 needles.

But now here is a new yarn, Cascade Heritage. It looks to be about the same thickness as the ’standard’ commercial sock yarn. I know I have to make these socks slightly larger, ’cause they’re not for me. But swatching? Pfft. I’ll just start the sock with 72 stitches, I say to myself. The cuff can be the swatch… and oh, man, that’s large. After twenty rounds of cuff and five rounds of sock leg, I stretched the cuff out around a tape measure, and there would be no negative ease in these socks at all. Okay, well, twenty-five rounds isn’t much to rip out and start over.

Second try, 2×2 ribbing over 68 stitches, and I realized that while the socks are a much better size, I don’t really like the way that 2×2 ribbing will flow into 3×1 ribbing on the sock leg… so I ripped it out again, only six rounds this time, and started over with a 1×1 twisted rib on the cuff. Since there will be 3×1 ribbing all the way down the leg and top of the foot, I’m not relying on the cuff to hold up the whole sock. I like the look of the twisted rib, and it will fit nicely into the body of the sock.

I really like the yarn so far. It’s very smooth on my hands, and slides nicely across the needles, and what little I’ve knitted up felt pleasantly squooshy. I can’t tell yet if the colors will pool, flash, or distribute evenly. I’m hoping for the latter, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it does something funky across the gusset.

I haven’t knit much in the past couple of weeks. There always seems to be something else to do, people visiting, places to go.

Half of the blues and greens Falkland is spun into singles that should ply into a striping heavy fingering weight yarn, and I’ve split the other half to be the same. I took a pair of pliers to my spinning wheel to open up the eyehooks just enough to let me switch the brake band around so that it will work better for plying. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before watching the New Voyager video that recommended it – of course a spring-tensioned brake won’t work if the bobbin is turning towards the spring!

My friend for whom I’m making Napramach asked me again about it last night. I haven’t touched it in weeks, but now I’m reminded that I need to get back to it. It takes a lot of concentration and unbroken blocks of time, which seem to be in short supply lately.

I cast on for the second handspun BFL sock, and am through the toe increases and into the foot. It will probably be my Thanksgiving knitting, as it’s stockinette all the way up. That makes it perfect for knitting while talking.

For my birthday, my parents gave me a gift card to an arts & crafts store. This weekend, armed with the card and a 50% off any one item coupon, I went shopping! First I got an Ott-Lite, so I can see what I’m doing even in the dark. I’m hoping that my not-full-sunlight pictures will come out well with this new light source. The one I got clips to a table edge or stands on its own.

Then I picked up a set of crochet hooks, just to have. I do want to learn to crochet, kinda-sorta-maybe, but at the very least, hooks are useful for picking up dropped stitches. I think the two sides of the Napramach bag are supposed to be crocheted together, too. So the hooks will come in handy.

I also picked up nice pair of Fiskars short scissors with an extra-fine tip for snipping yarn, a set of craft acrylic paints for painting designs on the loft supports in my room, and a spray can of matte finish for the Ashford bobbins. Some of them are unfinished, and it’s probably not a good idea to leave them that way for too long.

I’m about 75% of the way through the BFL fiber, and hope to have it done, plied and finished this week. It’s been a while since I’ve picked up any of my knitting projects, and I’m starting to miss them!

I finished knitting the first side of the Napramach bag this afternoon, hooray! The two-color bind-off was not nearly as complicated as I had thought, which was a relief. And while I haven’t mastered the art of knitting with one strand in my left hand and one in my right, I’ve at least gotten to an acceptable skill level with it. I expect the second side to come out better than the first, just by virtue of practice. Unfortunately there’s no obvious front or back to this bag, or I’d be putting this piece in the back. I’m going to start the second side right away, or I know I’ll avoid it for almost as long as I avoided starting the project in the first place. I’m a terrible procrastinator, and I’m working to conquer that trait as it’s something I really don’t like about myself. So, here goes for side two of the bag!

It obviously needs some blocking… and there are just a few ends to weave in. Actually, I don’t think I’m going to weave them in; I think I’m going to tie them to each other. Since the bag will be lined, no one will ever see them. Okay, so I’m not quite half done – I’ve marked the project at 45% complete. I think the knitting will be 90%, the crochet bits 5%, and the lining another 5%. I have no idea what the crochet instructions mean just yet, but I know someone who can help me figure it out (Hi, Sarah!) and I’m eager to learn! There are so many great crochet patterns out there that I’d love to try, mostly amigurumi, but some freeform stuff as well. Aren’t those spiffy?

These are the colors of the Napramach – tan, brown, two shades of blue, red, and gray. (The pattern called for a more silvery-gray than what I have, but that was out of production at the time, so darker gray will have to do.) They go nicely together, the red standing out against the more subdued colors. And they each have a little bit of the others’ colors in them. The red and tan have tweedy bits of blue; they all have tweedy bits of tan. I really like tweed yarns.

And THIS is the most perfect fabric ever. So ugly it’s beautiful, covered in camels, and just the right colors for the bag. It just doesn’t get better than that. She is absolutely going to love this. I ordered two 18″ squares, which should be more than enough. If there’s enough leftovers, I might sew a little drawstring pouch and give her that, too.

For a project that annoyed me so much to have to make (especially when I found out that she thought I was making her something simple like a Booga Bag), that I procrastinated on for approximately two years, I seem to be enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. It definitely helps that it’s going a lot faster than I expected! I’m stretching my skills and rising to meet a challenge, and that’s always a good feeling.

I seem to be getting the hang of this project. Mostly I work with one yarn in my right hand and two in my left, because I’m still not very good at knitting with the yarn in my right hand. Purling is still confounding me. English-style knitting seems like an exercise in wasted motion. I know many people who knit English who are considerably faster than I am (I’m looking at you, Janis) so I know it’s not a bad style… it just seems like a lot of movement! Anyway, the written instructions deviated from the chart yet again, so I’m ignoring them and just following the chart now. It’s knitting, after all, and no one’s going to notice if there’s a fudged bit here or there.

With a little bit of blocking, this will look pretty spectacular. I’m trying to remember to leave nice long floats so that there’s room for the knitting to stretch. Because I’m going to line the bag, I’m not worried about the floats getting snagged on anything. I’d like to find some horrifically gaudy camel print for the lining, since the recipient’s favorite animal is the dromedary.

I feel as though I’ve gone up a level or two in Knitting (ding!) and although I don’t like the way the pattern is written, I do like the way the product is coming out. Except for these decreases in the middle. They all slant properly, but I wonder if a centered double decrease might not look better. Ah well, too late now! I hate thinking “if I knit this again, I would change…” because I really, really can’t imagine myself ever knitting another one of these bags. Of course that jinxes it, and twenty years from now I’ll have a sudden Napramach craving…

This is as far as I got with the Kureyon sock on the airplane. I love watching the stripes emerge, the subtle shifts of colors that lead to new interplays. Figuring out how to carry the unused yarn up five rounds without having it show through is interesting. I’m not sure I’m doing it right; the floats are longer than I’d like, but so far nothing peeks through. So far, I really like this yarn. Except for the knot, but I was kind of expecting that. It’s certainly not as soft or squooshy as, say, Dream in Color’s “Smooshy”, but it’s not as rough as sandpaper, like some people have said. And while there are some underspun places, I haven’t had trouble with the yarn drifting apart.

So this is what happened with Napramach: the first row in the chart has two stitches and doesn’t say anything about increases. The second row in the chart has four stitches. Figuring that meant I’d have four at the end of the row after I did the increases, I bravely knit on… and when I got to the colorwork, I was short by two stitches. I ripped back to the beginning and did an increase in the first row, so that I’d have the proper four in the second… and when I got to the end, I had an extra two stitches. So I just skipped the increase in the last row, and I’m sure no one will ever know the difference. I plan to line the bag with something gaudy, preferably a camel print. Riya will absolutely love it.

Mom loved the gloves. She says they fit her perfectly. I thought the fingers might be a bit long, but she assures me that she wants a bit of extra room at the fingertips in case she grows her nails out for anything. Unfortunately, because it was a dark day, I wasn’t able to get any pictures that did any more justice to the gloves than the one I took the other day. But yeah, they came out really well. My brother commented, “When you decide to do something, you really take it all the way – that’s great work!”

She also asked me if I knew of any good baby blanket patterns. I sketched out one that I’d knit a few years ago, before I had a camera, that’s fairly basic. It has a seed stitch border, then alternating stripes of seed stitch and stockinette, and one of the stockinette rows has a run of (k1, k2tog, yo, k1) to make little eyelets. My guess is that without a real pattern written out, she won’t want to figure out how to translate my sketch to her blanket, but that’s all right.

And in more about Mom’s knitting, she is 3/10 done with the Upstairs Shawl (link in German) that she’s knitting for herself with KnitPicks’ Alpaca Cloud in Smoke Heather. I am so happy that she’s getting back into knitting more than just baby sweaters and blankets! Even though the shawl was going to be for herself, she’s considering giving it to her closest friend. One of these days, I will convince her that it’s all right to knit for yourself!