Orange crush

Cold days call for warm colors.

I took a break from knitting for a couple of days to turn out some sewing FOs in cheery colors.

First up, a shirt in very ORANGE!! cotton. I’m kind of torn about this one. At first I felt like it was a cheery, citrussy, summery piece, but then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and had thoughts of those orange vests people wear to pick up litter on the freeway. (Orange is not really in my comfort zone as far as clothes go, but I’m trying to expand my horizons.) Furthermore, Rahul was very critical of the A-line shape and said it was “smocky” and made me look “tubby.” I didn’t like this, and he said, in a very logical way, “But you aren’t tubby! My point is that it makes you look tubby but you’re not. I just thought you’d want to know if it looks bad.”

“But I like it!”

“Well, then don’t listen to me! If you like it, you should wear it!”

This exchange was completely infuriating because it was making me really mad, but at the same time, I knew I was being illogical and unreasonable. I showed him about five tops from Lucky with a similar shape and he said he believed me, but that still didn’t mean the top was flattering. I realized that my desired outcome was basically for him to change his mind about the top, which wasn’t going to happen. It doesn’t feel good to realize you’re being a pitch-perfect negative female stereotype in the “Do these jeans make my butt look big?” genre.

Here’s the shirt.

Pattern: The Titus Summer Blouse pattern from Renegade Sewing, from Stonemountain and Daughter Fabrics in Berkeley. I think the pattern was made up by one of the store employees–I haven’t seen any references to it online aside from other people who bought it in the store. When I was back at home for Thanksgiving, my bestest childhood friend Sarah showed me two or three of these blouses she had made from this pattern and I loved it so much I ran out and bought it right away.

Fabric used: Some kind of orange Indian cotton with a red warp and yellow weft, or vice versa–is this considered a chambray? The pattern calls for 1 7/8 yards and I was a little bit short of this–1 3/4 yards or 1 1/2 yards. If you’re short of the main color, you could easily use a small amount of a contrasting color for the yoke, either the lining or both sides.

Started: 12/29/07 (cutting out the pattern and fabric)

Finished: 12/30/07 (sewing everything together)

Size: Small (I might want to add a tiny bit of width in the yoke next time–the shoulders seem slightly too narrow on me.)

Mods: Changed the cutting layout to allow for the amount of fabric I had–slightly less than what was called for in the pattern. The pieces seemed to be laid out in a very simplistic way–the U-shaped yoke pieces are facing the same direction on the layout, so you waste big squares of fabric in the middle of each U. I rotated one of them 180 degrees and moved it up and closer to the other yoke piece so that the “U” shapes interlocked. I guess if the fabric had a nap, that might cause a problem? Two of the four yoke pieces just serve as lining for the other two, though, so as long as the two pieces on the outside were pointing the right way, I don’t think you would have any problems even if they were cut upside down.

Notes: This is a very simple and easy pattern, a great confidence-builder for a sewing klutz like me. It only has three pattern pieces–yoke, sleeve, and body–and basically everything is gathered, so it’s easy to ease pieces into other pieces when you’re putting it all together. Despite its simplicity, I managed to sew quite a few pieces together inside out or backwards and spent a lot of quality time with my seam ripper. Maybe I should have used pins.

I used some of the leftovers from the ORANGE!! blouse to make some adorable coasters. I love them!

Pattern: Pulled Thread Coasters from Simple Gifts to Stitch, by Jocelyn Worrall

Fabric used: ORANGE!! cotton, 10 x 15″ piece; blue botanical Anna Griffin Blythe cotton from Purl Patchwork, 30″ x 5″ piece

Started: 12/30/07

Finished: 12/30/07

Notes: I love the book this pattern came from! It has so many utterly simple but really cute ideas–a sophisticated pleated vinyl purse, a clamshell change purse that you squeeze at the sides so it opens like a snapdragon, a wide-wale corduroy leaf pillow cut on the bias so the corduroy wales mimic leaf veins. And of course this simple but lovely coaster pattern. I got it from the library but I might have to buy it for myself at some point.

These coasters are made by pulling threads out of the warp and weft of the fabric with a seam ripper at marked intervals, revealing stripes of the contrasting warp and weft colors, then cutting the resulting fabric into squares and backing them with a contrasting fabric. It’s a very fast and easy pattern; it probably took me less than an hour to make these six coasters, including time spent carefully picking out threads.

The complementary-color combination of blue and orange cheers me up every time I look at it.

Here’s a glimpse of a little knitting WIP. It’s sort of kind of orange. Close enough, anyway. It’s the Heartstrings Flared Lace Smoke Ring (I first saw this pattern on Eunny’s blog) and I’m knitting it in Elann’s new Kidsilk Haze clone, Silken Kydd, same silk/mohair fiber content at half the price, on size 6 needles.

This colorway, Baked Apple, is already sold out. I bought it to see if it would make a good substitute for KSH in Liqueur, but it’s not that close. Baked Apple is more of a russet red, on the orange side of the spectrum, rather than a burgundy or wine color.

I’ve never knit with Kidsilk Haze, but I think the mohair in this yarn is probably not as high quality. It feels perceptibly rougher in the skein than KSH or Artfibers Tsuki (comparison of KSH and Tsuki here), although I don’t find it itchy. I think the hairs are probably longer, thicker, and crimpier than KSH. The silk is very lustrous and strong, and the color of the yarn is nicely saturated.

This yarn seems to be neverending. I guess that’s a good thing, but I feel like I’ve been knitting and knitting and my knitting gets larger but my skein never gets any smaller. I cast on for this project while we were staying with Rahul’s parents in Missouri, on the day after Christmas, and the pattern is actually easy enough that it’s my new TV knit–it’s a very repetitive ribbed lace stitch pattern, in the Pomatomus family, so I just need to glance at the chart at the beginning of each row.

Aside from making things in bright colors, I’ve been listening to this song about the “Paul is Dead” urban legend to keep myself cheerful.  It’s the happiest song about a conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard.

Happy New Year!

e.e. cummings: little tree

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see      i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would
only don’t be afraid

look      the spangles
that sleep all year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i’ll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won’t be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you’re quite dressed
you’ll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they’ll stare!
oh but you’ll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we’ll dance and sing
“Noel Noel”

Merry Christmas!

A quick post before I go downstairs for some dinner with the in-laws. I have finished 3.75 more Fibertrends clogs in the past two days–a pair for the boy, and a pair (with narrower sole, fingers crossed…) for me. One sole and a bunch of felting left to go!

Merry Christmas, everyone. Thanks for reading! I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season.

Twisted Koolhaas and felted clogs

I screwed up!

So a few days ago, I finished making my presents, went down to Hobby Lobby to get gift bags, wrapped everything up, wrote up little cards and care instructions, put everything in big boxes and drove down to UPS to mail them, with a great sense of pride and accomplishment swelling in my chest.

Then I found out it would cost $63 for each of my two packages to get them to California by Christmas! I don’t have that much holiday spirit. So my presents won’t arrive till the Friday after Christmas.

Here are two more of the Christmas projects I finished.

Pattern: Fiber Trends Felted Clogs

Yarn used: Unfortunately, I have no idea of how much yarn I used, since one was handspun and the other was recycled. Some amount of my neverending hyacinth violet Lopi, some amount of black walnut-dyed handspun Romney singles, both single-stranded. The yarns were really hard to felt–I had to run them through the washer on hot three times, and they still came out kind of fraternal, but at that point I had run out of other clothes to wash with them and lost patience with trying to get them exactly the same size.

The Romney singles didn’t felt very evenly or completely, as some areas were very energized and others were quite underspun and soft–but it did felt to an interesting and pleasing kind of boucle texture that worked well as the trim/contrast color on the clogs.

I quite like the lavender and light brown combination.

Needles used: US size 13/9.00 mm

Started: 12/13/07

Finished: Finished knitting 12/16/07. Took another day to felt, and one more day after that to caulk the bottoms.

Size: Women’s Small. Pre-felting, the clogs were roughly 13.5″ long, 6.5″ across instep at widest point, 21″ around ankles, and 6″ high.

Post-felting, they were roughly 11″ long. 5.5″ across instep, 14.5″ around ankle, and 3″ high.

Subjectively, this meant that they fit my feet reasonably well lengthwise, but were very loose around the instep.

Mods: I accidentally knit the outer sole and bumper in the main color instead of the contrast color. The bumper was showing little blips of the wrong color and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Then I looked at the pattern again and realized that I was supposed to knit them in brown instead of lavender. Hence the brown blips showing up where I had picked up stitches.

The other thing I did was, instead of purling, to just turn around and knit the other direction in the round where it calls for 6 rounds of reverse Stockinette stitch at the ankle. I figured it was being felted anyway, so why not? I don’t usually hate purling that much, but it really wasn’t fun with the big thick needles.

Notes: I made these for my great-aunt for Christmas. I don’t know what size shoe she wears, so perhaps they’ll fit her better than they fit me.

Some research on this pattern on Ravelry revealed that there are two versions of this pattern, and you’re SOL if you bought the old version and want to upgrade to the new one. You just have to buy it again! I thought that was pretty annoying.

I knit the old version, AC-33x, printed on teal paper. The new version is labeled AC-33 and is printed on white paper. The newer version is apparently narrower than the old version. It seems like the new version would fit my feet much better than the old version, but I’m not sure I want to shell out for the pattern again. The designer suggested that I could leave out one or two plain rows from the sole to make it narrower, but apparently there are many other changes to the new version, including the decreases being moved around to different places.

I wear a women’s size 6.5 or 7, but after testing the pattern this time, I think I’d make the women’s size small despite the admonition that it’s only suitable up to size 6. It seemed still quite loose on me.

I added stripes of latex caulk to the bottom for traction. Nicole’s advice was to use latex caulk instead of silicone caulk, which gets very slippery when wet. I took this advice, but despite her excellent clog-caulking tutorial, I totally forgot to buy a caulk gun and ended up digging out caulk from the container with DPNs and slathering it over the soles–hence the somewhat skimpy amount shown here. The only color I could find was white, which seems to get dirty VERY fast, but better that than super slippery clogs. Unfortunately, I didn’t put enough on the soles to find out how effectively they retain traction on wet surfaces. They seemed pretty good, but there is so much exposed felt, I’m not totally sure, and I found the clogs getting so dirty from my sliding around the bathroom floor that I decided to stop all clog-testing immediately in the interest of keeping them looking at least somewhat new.

I have a lot of Lamb’s Pride worsted stashed away to make this pattern again–twice, once for myself, once for my boyfriend. I feel kind of sad that it didn’t fit me that well, but perhaps with a more quickly felting yarn and the two plain rows removed from the sole, it will be OK this time.

For my great-uncle, I made this:

Pattern: Jared Flood’s Koolhaas, from Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts 2007, now also available as a single pattern from the Knitting Daily pattern store

Yarn used: Plymouth Encore Worsted in 0149 Light Blue Heather, left over from my Tilted Duster, about 0.75 skein

Needles used: Size 6/4.0 mm for the ribbing, US size 8/5.0 mm for the rest of the hat

Started: 12/17/07

Finished: 12/17/07

Size: 18″ around, unstretched; 8.25″ high.

Mods: When I was knitting the first Koolhaas I made, I thought it would be interesting to try using twisted stitches instead of cable crosses. So I used the following twisted stitches throughout the hat:

Where
“1st st” = closest to needle tips (distal)
“2nd st” = farther from needle tips (proximal):

1/1 LPC: knit 2nd st through back loop from behind and leave on needle, knit both sts tbl, drop from needle.

1/1 RPC and 1/1 RC: k2tog and leave on needle, knit 1st st again, drop from needle.

I prefer working right crosses with twisted stitches, and I think they look cleaner, so I substituted a right cross instead of a left cross on rows 3 and 7. However, I didn’t notice until I got to the decreases at the crown that the decreases would start spiraling the opposite way. Oops. Because I was in a hurry to get this done, I wasn’t about to rip back or rewrite the decreases to use k2tog, so I just let the crown go the other way. Perfectionists will doubtless be disturbed to their core by the untidiness of this substitution.

Notes:
The twisted stitches have better stitch definition than the cables–they really pop!–but they also cause little tiny holes all over the knitted fabric. They’re faster and less fiddly to do, I think, but in the final analysis, I think the original pattern’s 1-over-1 cables are superior.

The holes are really only visible when the fabric is stretched out, so if there were an application for this pattern with positive ease, I think the twists would be a suitable substitute. However, since this hat is a few inches smaller than the average head, the holes do become visible when the hat is worn.

The twisted stitch version came out a little bit larger than the cabled version. I don’t know if this was partly due to the difference in yarn, but the needles were the same and I knit them right around the same time.

I took some side-by-side photos and some closeups so you can see for yourself and decide. Obviously, the brown hat in the photos is the Koolhaas made the proper way, and the blue hat is the twisted stitch version.

Cable pattern, stretched out:

Twisted stitch pattern, stretched out:

Handmade holidays

I’m SO close to done with my Christmas presents! No pictures or links back to the FO posts right now, I’m just trying to get this all straight in my head. (You can find all of them via the category links on the sidebar, though)

Finished:

- Prismatic scarf for my mom–my 2 skeins of Manos Silk Blend in Wildflowers turned into this lovely scarf, which I’ll blog about soon.

- Forest Rib scarf for my stepdad–brown and green Plymouth Boku in mistake rib, 2-row stripes

- Vintage Velvet Redux scarf for my little sister–felted pink Touch Me in a narrower version of the Vintage Velvet scarf from Scarf Style

- Slate Snake scarf for my dad–Patons SWS Kureopatora’s Snake

- Birch and Oak scarf for my stepmom–Noro Silk Garden in natural colors, 2-row striped mistake rib

- You Bastard scarf for my grandma–super-soft, pain-in-the-butt Camissimo mistake rib scarf

- Kureopatora’s Snake–in red Plymouth Boku this time, for my aunt

- Koolhaas for my great-uncle–in heathered blue Plymouth Encore left over from the Tilted Duster (will blog this soon)

- Felted clogs for my great-aunt–lavender Lopi and light brown walnut-dyed handspun singles (will blog this soon)

-  February Baby Sweater for my cousin’s new daughter

Need to make:

- A present for my boyfriend. I’m trying to make him an illusion scarf featuring the IU logo. Unfortunately, I knit up the first chart I made and discovered that the logo looked waaay too long and skinny. Back to the drawing board.

- I think I want to make a Kate for my cousin’s daughter as well. I got a skein of Berroco Plush from Good Yarn Karma a while back and have been trying to think of something appropriately non-selfish to make with it. I think a toy for a baby would fit the bill.

- I think I’ll give my already-made 1×1 rib Boku scarf to my boyfriend’s dad, and make a needle box (the 6-sided Etui Victorian needle box) for his mom, who does crewel work. I gave a kit for this box to my little sister and my mom gave it back to me when my sister wasn’t looking, saying she was sure my sister would never get around to making the kit. I made the square one for myself and it sure was a pain in the butt, but it makes an incredibly cute little object, and it would be useful, too.

- I realized I’ll have to make candy or something for my boyfriend’s aunt, uncle, and cousin, who will be around at Christmas as well.

I felt like I made so many things, but somehow it doesn’t even seem like that much when it’s all listed out, considering I made some of these projects months ago! Well–11 or 12 knitted presents total. I take it back; I guess that’s a good total, considering it takes me at least 6 hours for every present. I think I’m in good shape for a completely handmade set of holiday presents this year.

If I have time (which I bet I won’t), I’ll put the thumbs on those Dashing mitts for my friend in New York, do a scarf for my best friend with the yarn she bought me a while back (but I already gave her a hat and the Shaped Lace Tee I made when I was back home around Thanksgiving, so I’m not stressing over it), and maybe we’ll make some cookies or something for our friends here in town.

I am now starting to get stressed out about wrapping all these presents and writing out gift cards. Ack! Will think about it later.

In stash news: I got some DPNs (both Harmony and metal) from Knitpicks, and the rest of my Telemark so I can finish my Selbuvotter mittens, so maybe I’ll have some mittens to show here soon as well. I made a little swatch with the Harmony DPNs and really enjoyed using them.

Asp #2. Now with 100% more awesomeness

Presenting the second rendition of Kureopatora’s Snake. As I mentioned in my last post, I like this much better than the red version I made. Totally 100% more awesome for sure. (Yes, hello, I am from California.)

With the completion of this scarf, I only have 4 more Christmas presents left to make. Or 6, depending on how ambitious I get with gifts for the almost-in-laws. A scarf for my boyfriend, a scarf for my mom (in progress), and I’m thinking maybe a hat for my great-uncle and some felted clogs for my great-aunt. I’m so ready to be done with my Christmas knitting!

Pattern: Kureopatora’s Snake

Yarn used: 2 skeins Patons SWS in 70041 Natural Slate

Needles used: US size 10.5/6.5 mm

Started: 12/10/07

Finished: 12/12/07

Size: Roughly 5″ x 62″ before blocking; roughly 5″ x 67″ after blocking. It stretches quite a bit when worn, so it’s most likely longer and skinnier than that when being worn rather than laid out flat on the floor.

Mods: I made the scarf 26 stitches wide instead of 30 stitches wide, to compensate for the larger needle size, and it came out to a very good size. I just love this pattern. I tried knitting it months ago in Patons SWS in Natural Geranium, kept getting confused and going the wrong way with the entrelac, and frogged it in frustration after just one repeat. I eventually tried again, and was surprised to find that it wasn’t that hard after all, and was in fact a very addictive pattern, unlike a regular, interminable 1×1 rib scarf. I put up more detailed notes about keeping track of the entrelac in my writeup of the previous snake scarf.

Notes: Apparently, I never got over the high school idea that blurry, monochromatic photos = Great Art. In these photos, I’m even wearing a long black dress I bought in high school! (The schlumpy black Ally Sheedy-type cardigan is from Target.) I set out to take some moody, wintry pictures a la Norah Gaughan’s self-titled Norah Gaughan Vol. 1, specifically inspired by the picture of this scarf. Lots of red lipstick and black eyeliner and dozens of totally ridiculous photos later (America’s Next Top Model, I ain’t) I managed to pick out a few photos that I wasn’t completely embarrassed to put up. To my surprise, the scarf came out looking way too warm in color when I converted the pictures to grayscale, so I left the photos in color. If only my skin and my walls were Goth white.

Woe is me, oh, I am so emo.

I thought this one came out kind of neat because my face is blurry but the scarf is not:

Perhaps superior workmanship will make me happy?

I am so tired by the tragedies of my life, I think I need to lean on this wall for a while

I think I just don’t have the kind of cheekbones that lend themselves to great Serious Art photos full of dim light and interesting shadows, and should stick to smiling and taking snapshots of myself like a normal person.

The ones on the balcony of just the scarf came out nicer, I think. Less drama!

Knitting knitting knitting. The media in the rest of my life has been full of knitting lately. I saw a play as part of a series called Sex/Death V the other day that involved someone getting stabbed to death with knitting needles. It reminded me of this Stephen King short story I read where a woman’s drowned husband comes back from the dead and shows up in the living room as a dripping wet zombie, and she stabs him in the eye with her needles.

There’s been a lot of talk about knitwear in the Golden Compass. My favorite from the movie was not the Gyptian garter stitch coat that’s generated so much buzz, but the pointy little imp hat in bulky marled yarn she wore while they were walking towards Bolvangar. It has a rolled brim and a pointed tip. I wish I could find a picture. It looks similar in overall shape to the meathead hat.

I’ve also been reading, and really enjoying, the Fables graphic novels by Bill Willingham. One of the key players in a major battle is a witch who knits. I highly recommend the series to anyone who enjoys graphic novels and/or fairytales.

I saw this link to KnitML on Craftzine and it’s all kinds of amazing in theory, but reading the sample sock pattern made my eyes glaze over. Maybe it just takes getting used to.

updating blogroll

Quick request: I want to update the links in my blogroll. If you’re reading this, your blog isn’t listed, and you would like it to be, please let me know. Offer does not apply to those who sell cheap pharmaceuticals. Thanks!

Of babies and snakes

Babies first, then snakes!

Pattern: Baby Sweater on Two Needles (February), from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac

Yarn used: 2 skeins Nashua Cilantro in Geranium, snagged for $5 a skein from the bargain bin at Uncommon Threads

Needles used: US size 9/5.5 mm

Started: December 5, 2007

Finished: Knitting finished December 8, 2007; ends woven in and snaps attached December 12, 2007

Size: All measurements taken pre-blocking: 8.5″ long from neck to hem, 22″ chest, armholes approx. 7.5″ around, garter yoke approximately 3″ long, yoke worked to length of 5″ before separating sleeves from body

Mods: I ran out of yarn, so I knit the body first, noticed I was running short, and knit only 3 garter ridges before binding off (the pattern calls for 1″ of garter stitch at the border). I bound off the sleeves immediately, rather than knitting sleeves, due to the extreme yarn shortage, so it has cap sleeves rather than long ones–I toyed with the idea of getting another skein of Cilantro mail-order, but decided that this wasn’t going to be worn for warmth anyway, so the short sleeves would be OK.

I also used 4 pearl snaps in the yoke rather than buttons, for fear that the recipient would tear off sewn buttons and eat them. Hopefully the snaps will stay put. They had to be applied with a hammer! I have never hammered a knitted object before, and it was kind of fun.

(When I was going through my button box to find the snaps, I found these sushi buttons I bought from Reprodepot and realized they would have been adorable on this sweater! If only they made sushi snaps.)

Notes: This sweater is so adorable I can’t stand it. I want to make a giant baby sweater (as unappealing as that name sounds) for myself sometime.

Edited because in my hurry to get out of the house to see The Golden Compass (it was OK, but how could they have left out that vital last scene from the book?), I forgot to add my notes about the pattern and the yarn.

The pattern, though pithy, shouldn’t cause anyone any great distress if they understand the basic concept of a top-down sweater. The only puzzling thing was the “pick up 4×7 stitches” instruction. Apparently, this just means to pick up 7 stitches 4 times–14 stitches under each arm.

Stitch markers can be easily employed with the gull stitch pattern, and I recommend it. After knitting across the entire body of the sweater only to find my stitch count was off at the very end of the row, I put in a marker at every repeat and found the going much easier. The only problem was that I used rubber bands, and they have a maddening tendency to get stuck to the needle or cable and slide under the stitches. I clearly need to invest in some more “real” stitch markers.

The yarn, a matte cotton-acrylic blend, was a dream to work with–thick, round, bouncy,  with great stitch definition, and stretchy beyond the point of Rowan Calmer and into bungee cord territory. You can see that the stretchiness exacerbated some tension issues in my garter stitch, but I don’t care–I’d definitely work with it again.

The light these days is not so great, so the red didn’t come out very true in my photos. It’s a bright cheerful red. The last picture is probably the best.

Here is the sweater, fetchingly modeled on my balcony by a bottle of laundry detergent.

My cousin is adopting a one-year-old baby girl from China in the next month or so, so I’m sending the sweater along with the rest of the Christmas presents for the family. Hopefully it will fit the recipient at least as well as it fits the laundry detergent. I don’t know much about babies, but the CYC seems to think it should fit a size 2 baby, whatever that means. She’s small for her age, so I’m hoping she is size 2 or smaller.

Anyway–I have another Kureopatora’s Snake completed! This one will go to my dad for Christmas. I’ll do another photoshoot with the snake scarf modeled before I send it off–just wanted to put up a few pictures in the meantime. As I predicted, fewer colors work best in this pattern. Last time, I used Plymouth Boku in mixed reds and there were just too many colors in it–this time, I used Patons SWS in Natural Slate, and couldn’t be happier with the results. Look at how gorgeous and elegant this is! I totally love it.

Birch and Oak

I love boring colors lately!

Despite my issues with Noro Silk Garden–the price, mainly, and then all the little squiggly white fibers in the yarn that remind me of quinoa–I fell completely in love with its natural colorways, 267 and 269, after seeing 269 on CosmicPluto’s blog. When I was at Article Pract and spotted both colorways in their bins of Silk Garden, it seemed like a great opportunity to support a local yarn store/do some souvenir shopping/cave in to my greed for these colors. So I picked up one skein of each and cast on for another stripy scarf almost immediately.

Noro Kureyon comes in natural colors as well (149 and 211, I think), but I don’t think they’re nearly as nice as the Silk Garden. Kureyon has a matte, felted finish to it, making the colors look almost like flat pigments on the surface of the yarn, whereas Silk Garden has a subtle, rich shine from the silk and mohair, with the color and texture broken up a bit by the little white quinoa-fibers, and consequently the color looks much deeper. I don’t mind the flatness of Kureyon’s texture when it comes to its specialty, rainbow/crayon colors, but I think the natural colors definitely look nicer in Silk Garden.

(If you’re wondering how Plymouth Boku compares, it is very softly spun, lacking the felty, hard quality of Kureyon, and it’s not shiny like Silk Garden–I think the silk content in Boku manifests in small, pale, tweedy flecks in the yarn, sort of like in Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool.)

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed every stitch of this project because of the fabulous yarn. Maybe one of these days, I’ll plonk down $100 and make myself a natural-colored, stripy Silk Garden pullover.

The Birch and Oak Scarf

(I’ve been playing with Picnik!)

Pattern: Child’s Rainbow Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts

Yarn used: 2 skeins Noro Silk Garden, one in color 267 (oak browns), one in color 269 (birch whites)

Needles used: US size 10/6.00 mm

Started: November 24, 2007

Finished: November 26, 2007

Size: 5″ x 53″, pre-blocking, 5″ x 60″, post-blocking

Mods: Mistake rib worked over 29 sts (I don’t remember how many the original pattern uses). I also used a slip-stitch selvage (slip last st of each row purlwise with yarn in front, knit the first stitch of each row through the back loop).

Notes: I had intended to make the scarf for either my dad or my stepdad, since it’s in such nice, neutral colors, but my stepmom, a fellow knitter (less obsessed than I) and lover of yarn, kept gushing “I think that’s the most beautiful yarn I’ve ever seen!” so I think I will give her the scarf instead. She won’t be that surprised by it, since I showed her the scarf in progress when the plan was still to give it to my dad or stepdad, but I think she’ll be pleased by the change in plans. I think my stepdad will get the brown and green striped Forest Rib scarf instead, and my dad will get a scarf in Natural Slate Patons SWS.

The greatest mathematician in the world goes out in the snow

The first real snow of the year was today–by “real,” I mean the snow actually stayed on the ground for more than a few minutes. It seemed like a good time to take some pictures of my finished You Bastard camel scarf. (Click on that link if you missed the earlier posts and want to know why it’s called You Bastard.)

Pattern: My own–mistake rib worked on 27 stitches

Yarn used: 2 skeins Karabella Camissimo, currently $6 per camelicious skein from School Products, color 18109

Needles used: US size 10.5/6.50 mm

Started: December 3, 2007

Finished: December 5, 2007

Size: 7″ x 55″, pre-blocking, 7″ x 72″, post-blocking (that’s a lot of extra length! Wow.)

Notes: It doesn’t look like much, but it’s really soft and fluffy. So soft and fluffy, in fact, that I decided to rejigger my holiday gifting plans and give this to my grandma, who will probably really appreciate something else warm and cuddly, rather than my dad, who will probably receive a more interesting-looking scarf of some kind.

I will not, however, tell her what I named this project.

The photos from a sunnier clime were taken in 2002 at the Benicia Camel Races, which, in addition to adults trying to ride angry camels, also featured a children’s emu race. This was one of the most hilarious events I have ever seen in my entire life. The emus could run much faster than the children who were nominally herding them towards the finish line with their brooms, and the emus, with their pea-sized brains, were having a really hard time figuring out what was going on. So usually the emus would eventually turn around and run back after the children, who would drop their brooms and scream. The emus would be puzzled and frightened by this, and turn and run back towards the finish line again for a few feet, stop, look around, turn and run back the other way… eventually, I’m sure one or two of the emus finished the race, and a good time was had by all those who were not permanently psychologically scarred by the experience.

Just so it’s not all snow and beige drabness, here’s a picture of the Plymouth Boku Hyphening* mitts I’m making for my friend Ken.

As I related in earlier posts, I ran out of yarn while I was making these in New York, and made them shorter in a desperate attempt to squeeze two mitts out of one skein of yarn, but failed. Now that I’m back home with my Boku scrap stash, I just need to insert afterthought thumbs and weave in the ends, and they’ll be done.

*Get it? Like Dashing, but shorter? hyuk hyuk.