i love to read! - blog contest psa

The lovely blog One Scheme of Happiness is having a really cool blog contest!  She has lots of great prizes, including a lovely necklace from pookeh (Sandra at I May Be Knitting A Ranch House) and some Brooklyn Handspun yarn.  To enter, you get to talk about your favorite books!  Which, if you are anything like me, is a very exciting prospect.  Go enter!  I want some more summer reading suggestions myself, so I’m totally keeping my eye on this one.

What books did I suggest?  Three recent reads which - now that I think about it - were all last-minute impulse check-outs at the library that totally delighted me.  I seem to have good library instincts!  Here they are:

Loving Frank by Nancy Moran - historical fiction about Frank Lloyd Wright.  As I noted in my comment, I’m not a regular romance-y reader, but this book was so much more than that.  Swedish feminism, architecture, Oak Park, travel…just read it.

The Sister:  A Novel of Emily Dickinson by Paola Kaufmann - Ok, I love Emily Dickinson.  Not just because she has my same name and ALSO I’m very aware of how trite it is to say that I love Emily Dickinson.  Whatever.  This book is also historical fiction, about Emily Dickinson’s sister.  It is so compelling, and now I really want to find some violet pencils.  Ahem.

Smart Girls Like Me by Diane Vadino - I guess this could sort of fall under historical fiction?  Because it’s about a woman in New York right before the big Y2K crap?  Ok, that’s a stretch.  The girl in this book is really neurotic, but I loved her.

Good luck everyone!

wip: lace ribbon scarf

As I previously predicted, this scarf has become my constant travel project. I’ve knit it through all my recent travelling, and on my new commute. For example, here I am knitting it in Tulsa, OK:

(The sun really blasts out the corner there, sorry.)

The fun thing about knitting this scarf (Lace Ribbon by Veronik Avery if you don’t recognize it) as a traveling/KIP project is that people are really drawn to the color saturation of this yarn (Koigu KPM). GFF bought me this yarn for my birthday at the end of March, and the color choice is totally her doing, btw. I brought this scarf with me to work on during our coop work shift last weekend, and everyone who passed through the check out line commented on it. The shift consensus was that this colorway should be named either “Saffron” or “Chrysanthemum.”

The color of the yarn is actually pretty accurate there. It’s luminous, for real. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough of it to make the scarf as long as I want it. With two skeins, it’s not long enough to wrap around my neck. I think a third skein would make it wearable, but I’m going to have to put off buying the final skein for a while until I’ve got some more cash flow. And I came to the end of the yarn I have for it yesterday! So I have to find a new travel project for a while.

Look at that lace pattern, will ya? I can’t get over it, myself. I also can’t tell you how truly enjoyable I’ve found it to be! I memorized the pattern pretty quickly, despite it having a 24 row repeat. It’s simple enough to keep track of as a traveling project, but interesting enough that I can knit it for an hour or so without getting bored, even if I’m not listening to my ipod or whatever. I’m anxious to wear this scarf, but I’m going to be sad when I’m through knitting it.

Speaking of sadness when finishing a project…I did manage to finish my Rusted Root this weekend! It came together very quickly at the end (no seaming, natch), and I’ve already worn it out of the house, although it’s really in need of a good blocking. Not sure when I’m going to get it blocked, but once I do I’ll have GFF take some pics of me wearing it and report back to y’all. It’s not perfect, but it IS my first finished garment and I’m danged proud of it!

wip: Rusted Root

(Not that I’ve been posting that much recently, but things are in danger of slowing down even more because I’m starting a new job and I will actually be in a real office all week long. I thought I’d spread out some posts about my current wips to give you some material for the next week or so. And hopefully at least one of these will become a FO by then! This one is dangerously close.)

So you know how there are some patterns that it seems like basically everyone has knit, and anyone who hasn’t knit it by now probably just doesn’t get their kicks from that pattern and so that’s that, no more of those FOs? It seems to me that Ravelry is changing that, because there are new rashes of Clapotis, Pomatomus, and - yep - Rusted Root all over the place. For myself, I never realized how cute this pattern was until I looked through pages and pages of cute knitters wearing their finished tops! All the different colors and styling really made me see the potential in this simple sweater. Ok, it also helped me to see that this sweater is really simple, and that people knit it really fast.

This is where the sweater was on April 16:

(Those are my Pomatomus socks!) This was three days after starting - but keep in mind that the “first day” was just swatching, and the second and third day (April 14 & 15) I was working for a tax preparer all day. At this point, I was almost through the raglan shaping, about to separate the arm stitches.

Five days later, April 21, I had this:

At this point, I was through with the waist decreases and starting a straight knitting portion before doing hip increases.  Since then, I’ve completed the hip increases and knit several inches…I just have a little bit more to knit lengthwise, then I’ll do the ribbing, the neck ribbing, and the sleeve finishing!  This is going to be my  first finished garment and it’s so close I can taste it.  (No pictures, sorry!)

Despite my new job and loss of daytime knitting time, I’m being extremely monogamous with my knitting right now (ok, I’m having a sort of on-the-road affair with my lace ribbon scarf, but this sweater could in no way be mistaken for travel knitting during rush hour on the subway in NYC) and making time for this sweater every morning before work and every evening while watching TV or waiting for GFF to come home for us to eat dinner or whatever.  I’m DETERMINED to wear this sweater a lot before it gets too hot for such a heavy (albeit cotton) top this summer.

Want an example of my extreme at-home project monogamy?  I’m seriously yearning to cast on for something new (in particular, I’m dreaming of slinky bamboo or silk tank tops - even though these don’t really make that much sense in my wardrobe - and new socks and lace shawls).   Yesterday, I spent over an hour pulling all my yarn out (I really don’t have that much)*, searching Ravelry for patterns to use with my most summer-appropriate choices, and basically just feeling all these different yarns.  I found a partial ball of Cascade Fixation and cast on 40 stitches in the round, knit 4 rounds (just to ease my yearnings) and immediately ripped out and rewound the yarn.  I mean, really, that could hardly be taken to count as cheating on my project!

So I hope to have this done soon, hopefully by next weekend, and I will post a FO report then.  In the meantime, I’ll try to post about my Lace Ribbon Scarf and the socks I’m working on (the second of which will be my traveling project when LRS is finished).  Happy Sunday knitting, y’all!

_______

*I can tell that GFF finds this extremely odd.  She can tell it makes me happy to look at my box of possibility, but she is a little confused when I also pull out my bag of scraps (you know, all the little leftover balls at the end of projects) and start to look at those, too.  But I’m not alone in this type of behavior, right?

in love with the lys

This is just a post to say that I love my lys.

On my way to the coop this afternoon, it was so pretty and warm and the trees were blooming and I was going to have to pass by my lys and I thought, well, self, let’s just take a peek towards the window.  (Self has no money to be spending at the lys or anywhere else OTHER than the coop right now, so even a peek was a big gamble to make with my lil’ ole spend-happy heart.)

So I peeked towards the window and saw these huge, fluffy, colorful skeins of yarn tucked under a shelf right smack dab in the middle of the storefront.  (I really wish I had a picture of this display to share with you.  Must. fix. digital. camera.)  The yarn was this amazing variegated chunky yarn from Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks.  Here’s a picture of one of their colorways:

Anyway, I obviously had to go in at that point.

I didn’t have any more money to spend inside the store than I had outside it, so I spent a lot of time talking myself down from buying the amazing sale yarns she had, and all of the summer-appropriate new stock. I did think I could use some split ring stitch markers, so I parted with a couple dollar bills and bought those to be supportive in some small way.

And then I spent almost an hour talking to the owner, Maxine.  People, she is amazing.  We talked a lot about knitting, and how you go about buying yarn for a yarn store (sounds hard), and about our neighborhood, and about the knitting tattoo I am planning.  And zines.  And magazine publishing.  And nonprofits we like.  And..and….and……And she was knitting a really beautiful 3/4 sleve cardigan of her own design out of another yarn from Chasing Rainbows dyeworks!  (That yarn has amazing yardage and the colors are un-frickin’-believable.)

I left the store feeling like I had met a member of this big community that I hardly ever meet face to face.  Knitters!  We are so awesome!  There is so much knowledge we can all share about knitting (and crocheting), and it felt so good to have the normalizing experience of speaking the same fibery language.  She invited me to come back anytime and just work on a project and drink some tea with her.  You betcha I’m planning on it.

FO: Hedera Socks

Several weeks ago I was going on and on about gift knitting I couldn’t talk about. Sometimes I forget about how the internet isn’t really private, so I quit talking about a knitting project I’d already put pictures of all over the place. I knit GFF’s mom a pair of Hedera Socks! Here they are:

Pattern: Hedera by Cookie A., from Knitty.com
Yarn: Soxx Appeal from Knit One Crochet Too in color 9553 Teal (bought at Downtown Yarns in NYC)
Needles: Knitpicks dpns, size US 1.5

This is the second time I’ve knit these socks, and I found the pattern really enjoyable again. I first knit a pair for GFF out of Knit Picks Essential, and happened to be in Tulsa when I was working on them. Debbie loved them so I decided to knit her a pair, too. The pattern repeat is four rows, easily memorized. I did 17 repeats of the lace pattern on the leg instead of the recommended 14 - I like my socks to be a little longer and I make them that way for everyone else, too.

(sorry for the blur!)

Soxx Appeal is super-stretchy, similar to Cascade Fixation, although it is constructed really differently. I originally knit one skein in the Baudelaire pattern (also Cookie A., but I swear I knit socks from other designers, too!). The sock turned out way too small, so I ripped and re-knit the yarn for this pattern. The yarn didn’t look so good when I originally ripped it out, but after being re-knit it looked fine, just like the other sock. It is supposed to be superwash but I haven’t tested it out in the laundry. I gave them to Debbie while I was there and she wore them around a lot, even inside a pair of shoes. They seemed to wear well and feel good! It was awesome to see her enjoy them.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a digital camera on our trip so I don’t have a picture of them on her…or as a pair.  Oops!  Maybe I will do an update post one day with more pics and info on how they have worn.

At this point, I would go to this pattern as a…go-to.  For gift socks, especially.  They go quite quickly for me now, and are pleasurable to knit.  I’d like to knit myself a pair of socks in this yarn, too!  It’s really soft and the stretchiness makes your socks a lot easier to get on.

Next up:  updates on what I’m knitting now.  (I’ve already decided to rip out the soysilk shrug I showed you a few posts ago because it was way too big on top of the fact that it was never going to be as cute as I imagined.  [My advice to raglan-in-the-round knitters:  try it on very early in the knitting!  Continue to try it on frequently!!  Even if it means putting in a life line every few rows and you find that really annoying and are convinced that you still need to increase about eleventy more times!!!]  After ripping that sucker out, I think I’m going to knit Ysolda’s Cloud Bolero in the Soysilk.)  Plus socks that aren’t Cookie A.’s, what may possibly be my first finished garment, and the must-have knit of the season — still to come at knitwhere!

yarnbombing: call for submissions

I just found this link via Craftzine.com’s blog.  Submission deadline is May 30, so if you have something you’d like to submit…hop to!

I am so nuts over knitting “grafitti” (otherwise known as outdoor, public decorations).  I would really like to come up with a submission for this book!  I’ve had some different ideas for public knitting/crocheting installations, and maybe this call for submissions will be an encouraging push to think something up.

Yarnbombing seems to be a fairly new blog, and promises to profile yarn graffiti groups around the world.  I’m definitely looking forward to watching this blog!  It’s a co-blog by friends Mandy Moore (tech editor of knitty.com, not the American former-singer, current-actress) and Leanne Prain (apparently she started a knitting group at a pub, which is what GFF always suggests I should look for).  Their book will come out in fall 2009 from Arsenal Press.

shrug it off

After the mini rock camp event on Saturday, I needed a whole weekend to recover my mental wellness. Sunday GFF and I spent the whole day napping, taking walks, watching Harold and Maude, and eating. And then yesterday, I did more of the same, but alone. Minus the napping and Harold and Maude, plus Project Runway. I still have these gift socks I’m working on, but I was feeling the need for a quick-and-dirty, large-gauge project, and I thought I’d give a garment a go.

As you might recall, I was the lucky beneficiary of a large box of odd balls of yarn from Skrillaknits stash, via the Ravely group Stash and Burn Groupies thread “Would you like to try?” Cirillia was getting rid of odd balls left over from projects, as well as some yarns that don’t match her season. Included in the box was three balls of Southwest Trading Company’s Phoenix soysilk in Rose.

When I first pulled those out of the box, I thought I’d make a third Clapotis with the yarn. I made my Mom a clapotis with SWTC’s Oasis yarn (another 100% soysilk yarn, but finer and sort of slinkier) and I love that one. But as soon as I started the set up rows with this yarn, I could tell that I wasn’t going to like the resulting fabric. So I started trawling around on Ravelry, and came up with this little pattern. It called for exactly the amount of the same yarn that I had, so I cast on right away and just started knitting.

I sat on the couch and knit away on this baby for several hours, watching Project Runway and listening to podcasts. That picture shows my progress after about 4 hours.

I kept going last night and knit some more this morning and here’s where I am now:

This is maybe the most accurate color representation.  I watched an episode of My So Called Life online this morning, and the color reminds me a lot of the kind of lipstick Sharon Cherski would wear.  This is not a color I would normally wear - certainly not in make up, but also not in clothing - but I kind of like this little shrug.  I’ve tried it on over one shoulder while I was knitting to gauge the sizing, and the color is cute.

My birthday is Friday and I’m going to a conference upstate, and then on vacation for a few weeks to warmer climes.  I’m hoping to have this done before I leave so that I have something new to wear for my birthday and my travels!  Shouldn’t be a problem.

this one goes out to my granny

So. I’ve been crocheting.

I’ve told you before that I started out crocheting before knitting, and it was sort of disastrous and bad for me and cursed — if you shouldn’t knit your boyfriend a sweater, you REALLY shouldn’t crochet him a slip-stitch acrylic blanket, fergodsake, and that goes double if you are gay. In my experience, it causes pretty bad back pain. I’m just saying.

This blanket is soooo much better.

I started out making lots of little granny squares that I was going to combine into an afghan at some point down the line.

But one of the things that appeals to me about making a danged blanket is being able to see it grow. I want it to be a massive and unwieldy pile of fiber that I can work on while watching Buffy on hulu.com. There’s not much a winter left, but while people are still wearing down coats and my radiator hisses, I want to be buried beneath fiber. Even in the form of cheap crochet thread like I’m using for this.

Plus what if I can’t figure out some good way to get these little squares arranged, let alone attached? What the heck am I going to do with hundreds of squares?

Better to crochet one ever-increasing square.

I don’t actually have enough crochet thread to make it into an actual blanket at this point, though. I might rip out my little squares when I need more thread for the big square.  And then buy some more at Hobby Lobby in my midwest travels.

I am having such a good time with these crochet projects! I’d forgotten how lovely and sculptural crochet can be. My mother used to crochet afghans some when I was growing up, and she taught me the basic stitches a long time ago. I’ve had to re-learn online for this project, and even though I feel totally lost reading any sort of crochet pattern (is it just me, or do the crochet stitch names seem to have nothing to do with the actual stitch?), I’m feeling the urge to crochet some more. I feel like it might be easier to make things fit well? Is that crazy? I found several projects I want to crochet through Ravelry, like the Victorian Shrug + Wrap on the cover of Crochet Me!, and the Spiraled Flower Shawl from Vogue on the Go Crocheted Shawls (by the same designer, will you look at that?).

Do any of you crochet?  Like, actual garments? Where do you find patterns?  Is there a free online crochet zine, like Knitty for crocheters?  I’m not sure I want to take the plunge buying these books while I’m in my early obsessive stages.

a taste of rock

I promise to have some fiber content tomorrow (I have updates on my Pomatomus socks as well as photos of my granny square mania), but I wanted to do a quick plug for a rock camp event we have going today. In conjunction with the premier of Girls Rock! (which was so awesome, by the way!), Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls is holding a mini Rock Camp in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at Union Pool.

Girls and Boys ages 5-18 are invited to participate in mini instrument lessons, band art activities, and general rockness!  Performances throughout the afternoon of camper and kid bands!  Plus the opportunity to bid on some cool raffle items and a Girls Rock! Limited Edition Fender Stratocaster Guitar.

If you’re in the area and you have some little rockstars of your own, bring them out!  Adults with kiddos get in free, and adults without kids are $12.  If nothing else, I gotta say — all the performances are going to be awesome.

Knitting content?  I’ll have my gift socks with me, and if you come say hi you can take a peek!

been gone so long

Oh my, that was an unintended break in posting. Would you believe it if I told you that I’ve been so busy with some new crafts that I didn’t have time to take any pictures or write out some thoughts? I clearly jumped the gun naming my blog, but I suppose that it’s pretty common for so-called “knit”bloggers to also sew or embroider or bake or or or…

I’m not a knitter that has a big problem with crocheting; I originally learned to crochet and tried to knit an ex a forest green afghan out of dk-weight acrylic yarn. Entirely in rows of slip stitch. (Even you monogamous knitters probably know about the slip stitch - this is what gives stability to some pieces or holds some pieces together.) I had to visit the campus health center for back pain the summer I was working away on that thing, and the doc prescribed me some heavy-duty muscle relaxers. The tension in that thing was so tight, I could barely get the hook through the loops of the previous row, and despite the fact that I didn’t rip out a single stitch and worked on the thing every night for months, at the end of the summer I had a rectangle of dense, stiff fabric that was neither long nor wide enough to be used even as a scarf. I have no idea what happened to it or the leftover yarn during my next semester, but I wish I had it around now to compare to the things I’ve been crocheting this weekend.

“Things?” you are probably thinking. Um. In the past 24 hours I’ve knit 13 granny squares. It all started because I sewed a no-cash wallet last weekend and then wanted to sew again. So I sewed another one. And then I sewed a bunch of triangles of scrap fabric together to make crappy little pyramids. And then I took another scrap of fabric and made a sampler with all the different stitches my cheap-y Singer machine can make (not that many). And it had only been an hour, and I couldn’t think of anything else to make without a pattern.

And the urge just struck me. I suddenly really needed to crochet some granny squares. I have a bunch of DMC Senso wool/cotton and wool/linen yarns my Mom bought and never really used last year, and a set of plastic crochet hooks I added on to a Joann.com purchase to get free shipping. So I just googled “how to make a granny square” and followed the directions in the first link (this really excellent one if you are interested in joining in the madness). And now I have 13 of them.

But I’ll tell you what. The madness does not stop at 13 granny squares. This time around, my crochet tension is nothing like that slipstitch crazy-making afghan. I feel more relaxed looping and scooping my double crochet stitches than I do knitting stockinette in the round. I got on Ravelry this morning and started trolling for crochet patterns to add to my queue. I came up with some beautiful sculptural capes, lacy tops, and tawashi. Tawashi are like fancy, cute dishrags, and although some are slightly more complicated than the infamous ball-band dishrag, they are just so fancy! and cute! Look!

I have a pair of gift socks just languishing on the needles now, because I have become obsessed with knitting teensy granny squares and glorified brillo pads. Forget public knitting — I’ll be on my couch with my hooks for a while.