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This wonderful children’s cookbook, Cooking with Pooh
I went to School Products today! It blew my mind. Thankfully, I didn’t have enough room in the luggage for a cone. But I did pick up enough yak/merino for a scarf or two. The washed swatch feels heavenly, wooly and soft…
Also, some fluffy cashmere-merino and some Camissimo, marked down from $16 a skein to $6. More later.
It’s the official truth. I have a pathological dislike for frogging.
I had this bright idea that I would make the friend I’m staying with a pair of Dashing mitts as a thank-you present, to be given to him by Saturday. So as I was on my way out the door, I grabbed a skein of Boku and the pattern.
I realized after having knit 80% of the first mitt that I had misread the yarn requirements. It requires 82 yards to make one mitt. Not the pair, as I had somehow assumed in my rush to get out the door. I hadn’t made a thumb yet; I bound off right away, a good 27 rows short of the length in the pattern, and figured I’d do an afterthought thumb later on.
I remembered the little note in the Fetching pattern about how they took 1 skein of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran to make, and somehow thought the Dashing would take about the same amount of yarn or less… despite being 9.75″ long…?
I managed to knit the other mitt (also thumbless) to the same size. Then I rolled up the remaining yarn into two equal balls, knit one thumb, and then realized that the amount of yarn I had would only knit a thumb about 1/4″ long.
My knitting notions bag has tons of scraps of leftover yarn in it that I could have used to stretch the yardage. Unfortunately, since I only brought carry-on luggage with me this time, I left my knitting bag at home, and only have a skein of angora with me as my second project–no help there for a Manly Project such as this.
I’m not sure what I should do…
1) Leave mitts as is, claim they are simply fashionable arm-warmers and do not require a thumb
2) Make an afterthought buttonhole and have fingerless, thumbless mitts like the ones from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
3) Rip a few rows to reclaim yarn and then perform afterthought thumb surgery
4) Rip the project out entirely and make a one-skein hat
5) Buy friend a bottle of wine instead
I hate to rip out my cute cables! Le sigh… bedtime now, and I’ll panic about it tomorrow.
So far my New York adventures consist of having a Pinkberry yogurt. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It just tastes like yogurt. Also, I think it gave me a stomachache.
I also had Korean food for dinner–bibim bap in a stone bowl. The waitress saw me starting to eat without putting the bibim bap sauce on it, chastised me, grabbed the bottle and squirted sauce all over my meal and stirred thoroughly till my bibim bap was blended to her satisfaction. I was faintly appalled.
Also: New Yorkers dress too well, particularly around the feet. The standards are set impossibly high. I wore a pair of nice boots, but they’re hell on the feet. I suggested to my boyfriend that I might wear sneakers to the office tomorrow (I’m visiting a different office, with different company culture, for the first time), and he recoiled in horror and informed me that to do so would be a terrible fashion faux pas, and that furthermore I would not be let into any decent restaurants were I to wear sneakers. I couldn’t remember what my coworkers were wearing. My feet are cramping just at the thought of having to wear my boots again tomorrow–and I didn’t even walk very far, probably only about a mile total.
It stands in stark contrast to Thailand, where everyone appears to wear whatever the hell they want on their feet, because the polite thing is to take off your shoes inside anyway. I distinctly remember standing in the Bangkok subway looking around at a car full of impeccably dressed Thai business people wearing flip-flops under their Brooks Brothers suits.
(Which reminds me. One final note. For the first time, I got a good look at the Brooks Brothers logo in the airport today. Was everyone else in the world but me aware that it consists of a sheep being airlifted by ribbons dangling from a Christmas wreath? Somehow I always associated their brand with dignity and class, not Quiznos-style animal tomfoolery.)
I got back from California (where I caught no visible signs of either oil spill or fire) to find that my Just Like a Peasant hat got mentioned on Stash and Burn. Yay! Jenny and Nicole, I wish I’d had time to hit you guys up for a yarn shop crawl while I was out there! I did plenty of yarn shopping, but unfortunately it was all snatched up in random hours or as side trips when hanging out with friends and family.
Hopefully I will have some photos and a report soon. My haul is totally gorgeous! And I finally got my hands on my major yarn crush, Noro Silk Garden in natural colors (267 and 269)–these have already been stripy-scarfified. If you’re curious, I stopped at:
Stonemountain and Daughter (Berkeley)
No time for Artfibers, more’s the pity. I walked right by it, but felt bad asking my dad to go in. He was already a very good sport, waiting patiently in Imagiknit with a magazine for half an hour while I wandered around overwhelmed by it all. (They put the price per yard on their price tags! How awesome is that?)
As far as knitting progress, I finished two scarves, got pretty far on my second Selbuvotter mitten but tragically ran out of black Telemark so will have to do another Knitpicks order, knit most of one sleeve of an Hourglass pullover in Fleece Artist BFL, and officially started Panicking with a capital P about finishing all my Christmas gifts.
I also had some knitspotting excitement: a Clapotis in the wild, on Mission, and the real, $165 Stewart + Brown hat in a tony Los Altos boutique. It’s not even actually cashmere, it’s merino! Also, it’s much flatter than my hat (which is already flatter than the knockoff pattern), with an elastic thread in the back, and the ribbed band can flip down to cover the garter brim, or up to be worn the way I have it sewn in place.
And my grandma finally wore the lace shawl I made her last Christmas!
And my stepmom finally wore the Jess jacket I made her, and it fit her perfectly when buttoned up! She underestimated the stretch and thought it was too small, but it looked very trim and elegant on her once she buttoned it up.
So that’s all good, right? But I came back from California to find a big problem at work, which will be solved by them flying me out to New York City early tomorrow morning. So I got back at around 10 PM last night after 12 hours of traveling, and I have to get on the airport shuttle at 5 AM tomorrow to troubleshoot what may very well be untroubleshootable.
I will be staying through the weekend in New York and have every intention of seeing some of the exciting fibrous destinations there. If you have any advice, will you shoot me an email or leave me a comment suggesting where to go? Or if not yarn shops, just your favorite places to go, things to eat, things to do. (On my not-terribly-sophisticated list: eat some bagels, go to the Met and maybe the Statue of Liberty, go to H&M and Anthropologie.) I already looked up School Products and it appears to be less than half a mile from my hotel in midtown Manhattan. I think the Habu storefront might be near there too. And I would like to make a trip out to Purl. What else should I do?
Three things that have made me happy in tiny ways today:
1) The Cal marching band’s Nintendo halftime show. Go Bears! I’m sorry I never attended any of your games.
2) The Raven Clan colorways from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. How did I miss this up until now? I love the idea, though I might not love the knitting of it.
3) The fact that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has “She Bangs The Drums” by the Stone Roses as one of the bonus tracks. (Fun fact: I went to see Ian Brown in concert in San Francisco last year and he flipped out and started a melee on stage.)
See you all later! Happy Thanksgiving in advance.
I don’t know if I’ll have time to do another detailed post tomorrow–I’m leaving for vacation on Thursday, until the 26th, and that’s that for NaBloPoMo for me. So here’s one more FO post, just in case I don’t have time to do anything nice with pictures tomorrow.
I’m off to California–to visit my family in the Bay Area for Thanksgiving, but also to take a quick trip with my mom, stepdad, and sister down to San Diego to visit Sea World, the zoo, etc. Apparently the scenic sightseeing portions of my trip will now also include the burned-out husks of San Diego houses and 58,000 gallons of crude oil coating the San Francisco Bay. California, I can’t leave you alone for a second!
I went out in the surprisingly warm sunshine and took some pictures with a proper Fall Color backdrop, a nice bright vermilion tree outside my building.
Pattern: Just Like a Peasant cap (PDF), a knockoff of this stewart + brown peasant cap
Yarn used: Valley Yarns Northampton in Chestnut Heather, approximately 1 skein. Unfortunately, I can’t be more precise than that because I started with “about half a skein” left over from my Koolhaas hat, and got into the second skein, and now I have “about half a skein” left over. I wish I had a scale! If I were buying in 100-yard skeins, I’d definitely get 3… in 220-yard skeins, not so sure. Hmmm. It’s used double-stranded for most of the hat, and single-stranded for the band that ties around the middle.
Needles used: Size 8/5 mm 16″ Denises for tie, size 10.5/6.5 mm 16″ Denises for main part of hat
Started: 11/9/07
Finished: 11/10/07
Size: Hat circumference: 19 inches, unstretched Hat depth: 8.75″ not including brim Brim: additional 1.5″ approx and about 11″ long
Mods: My gauge was off, but I didn’t really make any adjustments to stitch count for that. What I did change was:
- Knit hat in the round instead of knitting flat and seaming
- Knit hat to a depth of 8″, then worked decreases in 8 wedges:
- *k6, k2tog* around
- *k5, k2tog* around
- *k4, k2tog* around
- *k3, k2tog* around
- *k2, k2tog* around
- *k1, k2tog* around
- k2tog around
- 8 sts remain, cut yarn and draw through.
- This made a nice swirly pattern of decreases at the top:
- I found the original band way too wide (no, I didn’t do a gauge swatch, why do you ask?), so I instead cast on only 12 sts (came out to 1.5″ wide in 1×1 rib) with my new favorite trick, the Italian tubular cast-on, and used twisted slipped (chain) selvage. I slipped the last stitch of each row wyif, keeping needle in the stitch and turning the work, so I could then knit the first stitch of the next row through the back loop in one fluid step. I knit the band to 39″ and bound off with tubular bind-off. I could use some practice with it–regardless, I’m happy with the way it came out, so here’s a close-up of the nice selvage, cast-on, and cast-off edges of the band.
I sewed the band on crosswise (perpendicular to the length of the band) every inch or so, sewing between the outside of the hat and the inside of the band and going through “knit loops” of band (i.e. purl ribs when seen from right side), and I only sewed it on in the area above the garter brim. That probably made no sense to anyone but me, but just in case that description is useful, there you go. Anyway, here’s a close-up picture of the sewn-on band.
Notes: The gauge of this hat is so stiff that when you first put it on, it stands straight up like a surprised cartoon man’s top hat. (I forgot to take a picture of it in its “tall” state. Also forgot to take a picture of it with a piece of dark chocolate, to show off the color.) It needs to be deflated and artfully smooshed down to look nice. I tie the band in a single knot and push the brim around to the side.
The shape of it reminds me of a cloche, but also of a do rag.
I’m wearing the hat in one of my Kureopatora’s Snake pictures, too:
Original hat price: $165 + $2 handling fee = $167
Knockoff hat price: $4.99 + $5.25 shipping and handling (actually, I ordered several other things, so the price for just the Northampton was substantially lower) = $10.24. Mine’s not cashmere, admittedly, but if that’s an issue, Colourmart can set you right for $36, including shipping and handling.
Here’s one of the patterns eating up my stash of self-striping yarn.
These shapes and colors in these pictures remind me of Andy Goldsworthy photos.
Here’s a overhead shot of the entire scarf:
You can see what I meant about it probably looking even more effective in a yarn with fewer colors in it, right?
Here are a couple of shots of it modeled–the curves aren’t as pronounced as when it’s laid out flat:
Pattern: Kureopatora’s Snake, from String or Nothing
Yarn used: Plymouth Boku, color 5 (mixed reds), from WEBS, approximately 1.8 skeins
Needles used: Size 7/4.5 mm
Started: 11/11/07
Finished: 11/12/07
Size: 8 pattern repeats, not counting the set-up and finishing rows. 4-5″ wide, 66″ long post-blocking.
Mods: Just the length.
Notes: This is a really cool pattern–one of those few really unique scarves out there that isn’t just a stitch pattern applied to a long rectangle. It’s made up of the side triangles of entrelac worked in 1×1 rib, causing the scarf to wave back and forth in long, slow, trumpet-shaped curves.
I couldn’t get a full pattern repeat out of the last bit of yarn, so I frogged back and worked the finishing rows, ending up with quite a bit of leftover yarn–hence “1.8 skeins” instead of “2 skeins.”
I started this pattern a while ago with some Patons SWS, but got frustrated and gave up after heading the wrong way in the entrelac a couple of times. This time around, I paid careful attention as I was setting up the pattern, and only messed up once.
Here’s how I thought about the scarf pattern to keep from getting confused by the entrelac.
The stitches on the needles are divided into two sections: stitches you are actively knitting, and dormant stitches you “devour” with the decreases at the end of every other row.
For most of the scarf, look at the rows and see if you’re heading towards the center. If so, you’re on what I considered the RS, and you will need to increase at the beginning of the row, work to the split between the two sections, then ssk one stitch from the active stitches with one stitch from the dormant stitches and turn your work.
On the WS, just work p1, k1 rib (always starting with p1) across the active stitches.
The increases at the beginning of the RS rows are either (knit into the front and purl into the back) or (purl into the front and knit into the back) of the first stitch. When you’re increasing at the beginning of the row, look at the stitch you’re working into, and work the increase that starts with the opposite type stitch: for example, if it’s a knit stitch, work (purl into the front and knit into the back).
And if something looks weird in your entrelac, make sure you haven’t knit straight across the row into the dormant stitches.
Here’s a glimpse at another Boku project (colorway 7), a bicolor brioche scarf combined with leftover Northampton, looking all cheerfully chocqua and color-coordinated with my Sicily tablecloth:
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Plymouth Boku > Noro Kureyon. It’s soft and evenly spun, no knots, no vegetable matter, and it has gorgeous colors. Maybe not quite as lovely as Noro colors, and it’s not as luminous as Silk Garden because it doesn’t have mohair in it, but it’s much nicer to work with than Noro. It’s cheaper, too!
Oh, and speaking of snakes, here’s the next snake I’d like to make. I’m not really big into knitted toys, but he eats the mouse! How cute/horrifying is that? A: Very! I love it!
Two things that simultaneously amuse and annoy me:
My spam comments appear to mostly consist of apologetic or appreciative Greek car salesmen who have emigrated to China. In the last few hours, Makis, Alexander, Agapios, Loukianos, and Themestoclis have said “Nice…”, “Cool!”, and “Sorry 
” and they all come from sites with bizarre accretions of different car names suffixed with .cn.
Michaels‘ marketing tagline is apparently “Imaginate.” Actually, I’m not so much with the amusement on this one. It kind of just makes me want to punch their marketing guy in the gut.
On the plus side, all their yarns are on sale until the 17th. I’ve been jonesing for more self-striping accessory yarns as I deplete my Boku and Noro stash. Here are some stripy patterns I’ve been wanting to make:
- This Butterfly Hat looks great in self-striping yarns (Ravelry link here)
- I’m planning a Clapotis in Rowan Tapestry in Whirlpool, just like Goldtop or Kate’s
- I want to make a two-color brioche scarf with a self-striping yarn as one of the colors. Perhaps the leftover chocolate brown from my hats with the blue/purple/green skein of Plymouth Boku I have left over? (I certainly don’t remember buying that much, but it’s lovely stuff)
- I just made a really nice and addictive Kureopatora’s Scarf with Boku in shades of red. However, I think it would look even more striking in a yarn with fewer colors, such as Patons SWS in Natural Slate.
- One of these days, Lizard Ridge will be mine.
- The latest cover pattern for Yarn Forward was the cute Miss Potter fingerless mitts with a chevron pattern, knit in Rowan Tapestry.
- And I do want to make another Unicorn Pegasus Rainbow scarf for myself, perhaps in slightly less Frankian colors this time.
The knitting continues apace. I didn’t get a chance to photograph my latest FO, another Northampton hat, or my latest WIP, yet another scarf in Plymouth Boku. So instead, here are pictures of a deliciously shimmery scarf I knit a while back.
Pattern: Vintage Velvet Redux from Katydid Knits/Trillian42, a modification of the Vintage Velvet Scarf from Scarf Style
Yarn used: 3 skeins of Muench Touch Me in 3642 Pink Coral, bought on steep discount (“only” $7.18 a skein!) from Knit Happens, but still fiendishly expensive for the yardage
Needles used: Size 8 Boye Needlemasters
Started: 3/9/07
Finished: 3/17/07, except felting; felted 4/22/07
Size: 59″ x 3.5″, unfelted; 64 x 3″, felted. Finished with 42 repeats of the pattern.
Mods: None, but if I made it again, I’d put the broken part of the broken rib next to the cables, instead of the stockinette columns.
Notes: Like just about everyone else in the world, I hate working with chenille–it twists around and gets fuzz everywhere–but the finished product is really nice. After felting, the yarn got kind of smooshed and not really as voluptuously soft as it was before–I’m hoping that wearing it for a while will raise the nap of the chenille again. Mashing the nap down in the dryer did, however, make the scarf insanely beautiful. The ribbed cable and framing knits and purls are defined beautifully, all chiaroscuro curves and textures. Trillian42’s mods are brilliant, a great way to make only 183 yards of felted yarn go far enough in a reversible, cabled pattern to actually be a decent-sized scarf.
The bagatelles continue.
Obligatory super-close-up:
Zooming out:
Twisty hat goodness
The cleverly integrated and immensely satisfying crown decreases:
Pattern: Jared Flood’s Koolhaas, from the Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts issue
Yarn used: Valley Yarns Northampton in Chestnut Heather
Needles used: Size 6 16″ Denises for ribbing, size 8 16″ Denises and bamboo DPNs for main part of hat
Started: 11/8/07
Finished: 11/9/07
Size: approx 17″ x 8″, unstretched (my gauge was slightly off)
Mods: Possible errata? The pattern has you slip the last stitch to the right on rounds where the end of round marker moves to the left. I worked this stitch instead of slipping it, because I thought it might be a typo–it makes sense when the marker moves to the right, so you don’t work the stitch twice, but I didn’t see the logic when the stitch moves to the left, because then you have one stitch at the end of your round that’s worked for one less row than all the other stitches. Other than that change, none.
Notes: I am totally in love with this yarn in this color. Northampton is pretty similar to Cascade 220, but cheaper, at $5 for 247 yards (and that’s discountable!) and already put up in skeins, so you don’t have to wind it. It’s soft, and the Chestnut Heather is pretty much my Platonic ideal for a brown yarn. It reminds me of the bars of very expensive dark chocolate I used to buy at Bittersweet as indulgences. (I think moving away from Bittersweet is about 75% of the reason I lost ~10 pounds when I moved to Indiana.) Rich, dark, complex, delicious. It’s coming across as a bit too red in the photos, because the sun was catching all the tiny red threads in the heather mix. The color on the WEBS page is pretty true, maybe slightly lighter than the yarn in person.
I originally bought the yarn to make a Stewart & Brown peasant cap knockoff (warning, that links to a pattern PDF). I hope I have enough left over (approx. 1.5 skeins) to make it.
The pattern is fairly fast and easy, though the many, many cable crossings got kind of arduous, so I would like to swatch for this hat using left and right twists rather than cables, i.e.
RT: k2tog, leaving both sts on left needle; knit the stitch closest to the left needle tip again, drop both sts from needle.
LT: from the back, knit the second stitch from the left needle tip through the back loop, then knit both the first and second stitch through the back loop, drop both stitches from the needle.
Ariel Barton’s article in Knitty talks about other ways to do the same thing.
I messed up and neglected to do a few knit-over-knit left twists on one round, and ended up duplicate stitching over those crossings with a piece of spare yarn after an excruciating 15 minutes trying to ladder four stitches down about 5 rows and hook the stitches back up with a crochet hook. Not a good idea when there are as many cable crossings as this hat has. Anyway, I don’t think the fix is really noticeable. I am definitely not a perfectionistic knitter.
It’s been getting cold, and closer to Christmas, and both of those are inspiring a stream of little bagatelles…
I forgot to include my ball of gray Cotswold-angora roving in this picture (and the dishwater gray Hideous Panties) but I thought it would be nice to put together a little still life of the various grays, cool and warm, matte and shiny, that I’ve been working on lately:
In the back, my Lara sweater; clockwise from there, my feather and fan cowl in silver Artfibers Ming, pinned with a beautiful Perl Grey ringstick from Purlescence; my Dryad Mitts in Squirrel Heather Knit Picks Swish; and a skein of local, millspun alpaca from the farmer’s market–worsted weight, 50g/110 yards.
So the Ming Cowl is done, and I’m suffering from Ming withdrawal. Sigh… look at this stuff.
Apparently, I can make this heap of silvery gorgeousness look like a crumpled heap of grayish fabric when I wear it, but I think it’s beautiful anyway.
Pattern: the Luxe Neck Warmer from Knit 2 Together
Yarn used: Artfibers Ming, Color 08
Needles used: Size 10/6mm Denises
Started: 10/14/07
Finished: 10/25/07
Notes: This is the second time I’ve knit this pattern. It’s a nice pattern, if more decorative than truly warm.
So that’s one thing. Here’s another. The farmer’s market alpaca from the top picture quickly turned into another warm gray winter accessory:
Pattern: Cat Bordhi’s Cashmere Moebius Cowl
Yarn used: Alpaca from the Bloomington Farmer’s Market for the main part of the cowl; my own handspun angora for the edging. The white angora fluff I used (“roving” seems like such a harsh word) was from Breezy Manor, and was the leftovers from the second mini-skein I spun up and Navajo-plied for Last Minute Knitted Gifts angora booties for my friend Jen’s newborn baby.
Needles used: Size 10/6mm 40″ Addi Turbos
Started: 11/5/07
Finished: 11/5/07
Mods: I ran out of alpaca yarn, so I switched to the angora for the edging, made it through only rows 1-3 of the lace edging, then started to run out of angora as well and began to bind off. I ran out of yarn during the bindoff, and had to use the no-yarn crochet hook bindoff for the rest of it. Thankfully, the unusual shape of the cowl means that a tight bindoff will not impede getting the finished object over your head.
Notes: I loved using this alpaca. It felt so fluffy and light while I was using it that I felt like I was knitting with cake frosting, or whipped cream. It’s warm and utterly soft and fluffy around my neck, and the rather hard, overspun, rope-like twist I put into the angora is good for durability, and keeping the angora from shedding and flying away too much. I took pictures with my preferred way of wearing it–tight against my neck with the half-twist overlapping in front like a shawl collar, and the excess fabric folded down to tuck into my coat. I think Cat Bordhi’s version has a smaller circumference, which seems more attractive as an accessory but less warm for the chest. I might try the pattern again, subtracting one pattern repeat.
The pattern uses Cat Bordhi’s signature Moebius cast-on, basically a clever way of getting your needle through both the top and the bottom loops of a provisional cast-on, with the half-twist that makes the Moebius strip one-sided. The Girl from Auntie has a great series of posts about approaches to knitting Moebius strips, and Thomasina has compiled a big list of links to other Moebius patterns on her geeky knitting page.
- “A mathematician confided
- That a Möbius band is one-sided,
- And you’ll get quite a laugh,
- If you cut one in half,
- For it stays in one piece when divided”
Have you ever knit a Moebius strip using Cat Bordhi’s method? I definitely recommend it as something to try at least once–it’s fascinating. The cast-on is for the “equator” of the Moebius strip, and the knitting grows up and down from there as you knit in the round. All the lace lines in this pattern slant the same direction as you’re knitting them, but once you’re done, you can see that they are facing you from the right side on one half of the strip, and on the wrong side from the other half, so you have a half stockinette, half reverse stockinette cowl with chevrons of lace radiating out from its equator. You can probably see this best in the top picture I posted.
