Away with January!

I am not sad to see January go...not one bit.     Even though the sub-zero and the snow have been excellent knitting weather, it has been just a bit too much.

The mukluks turned out really well and I will make two more pairs as gifts fairly quickly.   One pair will come from stash yarn.....not too deep in the stash...and another pair from new yarn purchased so that the recipient had some choice about the color.

This was a nice, quick project and was still fun by the time I finished the second one.   I have a couple of other projects to work on before I do the next pairs....so I am hoping that the fun factor holds.    The little ones in Wisconsin will likely get these too.

The project that I am most in love with at the moment is a Family Affair throw from one of the Yarn Girls books.   This is one of those projects....love the yarn......love the needles...love the stitch markers....love the knitting bag........      This project is also a gift for someone.    The yarn is Burrow Bulky in Ultramarine...a beautiful bright blue.    I am using interchangeable Karbonz.....great tips and smooth action.   The stitch markers are from my collection....and frankly are markers that I had forgotten I had.    The bag is a relatively new one from tanneicasey that I bought on Etsy.

Dolly, my feline overload, was helping me knit the night before last.   She poked her head in the knitting bag.   The rest of her soon followed.   After turning around a few times she settled in for a bit.   All I could see was a little reflected light from her eyes.  I pet her a little and continued to knit.   I can assure you that this knitting bag holds three skeins of yarn, a twelve pound cat, and then some.

Now it is time to set my knitting goals for February.   I don't think the goals will be too lofty as I feel like being a slacker a bit.  I do want to assess stash and see what can come out and be made up.

Yarn Snobbery

I will admit that I like to knit with nice yarn.   There is no point in knitting with yarn that will create a rag no matter how skilled (or not) the work the knitter puts out.   Does that have to be expensive yarn?  Not really.

Willow Yarns  and Knitpicks are great examples of inexpensive yarns that knit up beautifully.    Right now I am knitting a throw out of Willow's Burrow Bulky.    Burrow has the same put up as Plymouth Encore, has truly lovely colors, and a really nice hand.    I have a small stockpile of this yarn for projects that are in queue.   I have completed a couple of projects in Willow Daily.   Both of these are sweaters for little girls.

I was very happy with the way that these sweaters turned out.   The receivers loved them as well.   The green sweater would have looked much nicer if I had machine washed it and dried it.  It really needed to be handled that way.  I learned my lesson so the brightly colored one didn't have that wrinkled look.

One of the reasons I like to knit with the less expensive yarn is that I feel more able to take risks.   I can experiment with ideas, rip out what I don't like, re-knit, and rip until I have things right without worrying about what I am doing to very expensive yarn.  With this freedom, I learn a lot.

Another reason is that the less expensive yarn lines tend to have more "wash and wear" yarns.    When I am knitting for children with two working parents, I try not to send garments that have to be coddled for fear those garments will become garments that will not be worn.   If I send something that does not get used, I don't send anything else to that household.   I want the sweaters, hats, socks or whatever worn until they are worn out.   That is what those things are for.

When I can, I do like to knit with high end yarns.   Just like I don't eat Godiva every time I eat chocolate, I don't need to use Jade Sapphire every time I knit.

Thoughts about warmth and design

This morning, early, I was headed to the bus.  I was wearing hand knit wool socks, wool mittens, a wool hat, and a large wool cowl...with a down coat.    I was warm.   I did not mind the subzero temps as much as I thought I would.    Fortunately, I have reached the age and temperament at which I care less about glamor and do not mind looking like a yeti in the morning.

Right now I am working on a Diane Soucy pattern -- Adult Mukluk Slippers -- using an nice Brown Sheep bulky in black with a silver sheen.    Last night, as I watched a foot shape emerge from the short rows dictated in the pattern, I was struck by the genius some knitters have for structure.   When I began the slipper, I could not conceive how this was going to work.   Having faith in Diane Soucy, I have blindly followed instructions and am delighted at what is happening.   I will put up a picture of the results when the slippers are done.

Another example of simple, elegant, and brilliant design are the decreases in the Man Hat.  I like this hat so much that I have made it twice.    I will admit the first time I made the hat, I had to do the decreases at least twice....the second time was smart enough to put in markers.   The way that the ribbing works in the decreases never ceases to please me....and I know that I could not have worked that out.

These people inspire me and give me a goal...I would like to know what they know....and understand how they see knitting.

The mukluk slipper yarn came out of the stash.....that is all to the good.

Thoughts on the Stash and Mental Knitting

This morning, as I was sitting on the bus bench and enjoying the weather, I was thinking about my stash.   Like many knitters, I have a lot of yarn.   Please, please don't make me define 'a lot.'  It is better for everyone if that is amorphous.   Suffice that it hovers at the tipping point of joy into burden.

Yes, I admit it is often easier to buy something for a project than to look for something in the inventory I stock in my own store.  It certainly can be easier than figuring out which of the locations the exact yarn I vaguely remember having is tucked...if I haven't given that yarn away to someone who needed it right away and could not get to a real yarn store.   That is why I now want to make it a project to get the stash down to a more manageable level.   Don't expect me to define that either.

This is also a year when I want to learn new things, stretch my knitting, and have more fun with it.

One of my knitting friends, Mary, does a lot of what she calls theoretical knitting.....she thinks about knitting a lot.   When the theoretical projects appear on her needles, the projects are fun and interesting.   At Tuesday knitting this week, she was wearing a heavily cabled Jared Flood designed hat knit up in a lovely hot pink Malabrigo.  Her work is beautifully executed and it looked wonderful on her.  She was kind enough to let us all fondle the hat...squeezing the yarn and testing the softness...instead of just lusting after it from a safe distance.

Mary's virtual knitting skills are like a virus...I do that now too.   That is how some of my challenges are coming about.   I am noodling on a few ideas while I work through my looooooong list of projects using my pattern stash.  

Now that the hat is behind me, I am moving along.   There is another intarsia challenge in the pipeline that I for which I am mentally gearing up.   Inspired by Mary, I am going to do a heavily cabled hat for another friend.    I am even going to go into the boxes...the many boxes...to pull out yarn for a pair of slippers I want to make.    Watch this site for pictures and progress!

It All Started With A Random Thought

I had decided that it was time to push myself a bit and work my way up to an intarsia project that I am planning on doing in a bit.

The thought of a hat with our departmental symbol came into my head.  Part of it could be done in intarsia..part in colorwork.  I like colorwork.....and need to work on my intarsia skills.

Using multiple tools, I figured out the graph for the symbol.  I realized that I was going to have to use fingering weight yarn and 0's for the hat to make the hat look close to what I had in my mind.   That meant......oh dear....00's for the facing.   After using a ruse to get the measurements of the intended victim's head, I did the math to figure out what I wanted to do.

I did not, in my giant stash, have the right yarn.   I ended up going out on-line and finding some Cascade Fingering weight to get the right weight and the right color.   While I waited for the yarn to come, I watched Lucy Neatby's Intarsia video to get ready.

Lucy Neatby is a knitting genius.   Watching what she does in her videos is like watching someone do magic.   When she shows how to do intarsia, a happy knitter is imbued with the glorious feeling that anything that can be dreamed is possible.   If only this lasted through that knitter's actual project.

I will say, that other than the ritual cursing of the collapsing, breeding, and tangling yarn butterflies, this one was fun.    I learned a lot...and I am happy with the project.

One day in the late and lamented yarn temple Borealis, I overheard Lucy Neatby teaching a class.  She told the knitters that the inside of their knitting should be as tidy as the outside of of their knitting.   Mrs. Gasper, my 4-H sewing leader, taught us that about the garments we made under her direction.  She also was an excellent teacher.  I had not thought of her for a long time before those words brought her to mind.  Now every time I hear Lucy Neatby, I also fondly remember Mrs. Gasper.   Here, for both of you, is the inside of the hat.

I did not make a pattern for this, but did the entire thing with back of the envelope calculations.  I DID THE MATH.   I will admit that I set up calculations in Excel to make sure that I got the decreases exactly right.

The recipient was allowed to model and see it today before my knit group sees it.  He likes it and says it fits like a glove.

While, yes, I would have loved to decrease the mighty stash, I feel the trade off of the increase in knowledge was a good one!

The Stash Has Taken Over and I am Crawling Out

I have been ignoring the growth of the stash again, and now have decided it is time to really get at it.

It is also time to push myself a bit and learn new things.