FO: Manon

Self-portraits

Pattern: Manon by Norah Gaughan, in Norah Gaughan Vol 1
Yarn: worsted-weight no-name wool purchased in Florence, then dyed using Jacquard Acid dyes. I had two big skeins of this, and ended up using just over one, so I've got plenty left for something else.
Needles: US 9/ mm
Gauge: 18 st/24 rows = 4 in
Comments/mods: To start off with, I think this is the best sweater I've knit for myself so far. I loved the construction - the peplum gives a lot of visual interest, but the upper body isn't to busy - and the way the pattern fits together. The dyeing worked out incredibly well; there some varigation to the yarn, but it doesn't pool or stripe or do anything terribly funky.

Thankfully, IM took some other shots

I did a number of modifications, so I'll try to remember them all.

1. I knit the fronts and backs together, splitting at the armholes and then finishing each section separately.
2. I left off the daisy chain stitch on the lower seams.
3. I completely ignored the directions for the sleeves and knit them as set-in top down sleeves a la Barbara Walker. Since my arms are somewhat generous for the size of the rest of me, I can avoid having too tight sleeves this way. I did knit the cuffs separately as in the directions and then mattress stitched them on.

Now I have to decide on some kind of closure. I've been wearing it open, which is fine for this time of year in Houston (or the weather last week in Houston, since it was 80 degrees today!), but I suspect I'll need something to keep it shut next winter.

One last self-portrait...ooops!

Delayed Fiber Friday: Night Sky

Fiber: Superwash BFL, colorway "Night Sky", Hello Yarn Fiber Club, December 2009
Spun/plied: 10:1, ST folding Lendrum
Yardage/wpi: 245 yds, 2 ply, 9-10 wpi (bulky weight).
Comments: Devil and I sorted through my fiber stash last week to finish taking some pictures for Ravelry, and I actually opened the bag and touched this stuff. It was so soft that I started spinning it that night.

I've found recently that my motivation to do much pre-spin prep has been non-existent. So I split each 4 oz piece of top in half and spun straight from the end. I wanted a lighter yarn (poofy-er that is) then I usually get spinning worsted, so I made a conscious effort to not smooth too much with my front hand. I spun one half from each of the two 4 oz lots I had on to separate bobbins in the hopes that the colors would line up pretty well with a minimum of barberpole.

I only had to splice a couple of times on the second skein, so I'm pretty pleased with it. There's some barberpole, but only with complementary colors, which is what I was looking for.

So now I have three of X spinning projects done that I need to complete before April. I think I'll be getting back to the wheel in a serious way as soon as we get back from London!

Alliejay is not the only one with hat issues

A few weeks ago, one of my knitnight buddies finished a hat* on a Thursday evening a few weeks back and tried it on. She has now learned how terrible an experience that can be, since the reaction was "That looks like a foreskin." (Nice girls we are, really. Come join us!)

I have the long lost sibling of The Foreskin Hat. Allow me to introduce you to The Condom Hat:

Or The Booby Hat. Whichever you prefer.

Oh dear. This is the second iteration of My So-Called Hat, and it's not really going according to plan. I started the seaming, took a look, stopped and said to Ironman, "What does this look like to you?" You can guess the rest.

Riiiiiiiiip. Thankfully not much reworking was required.

Pattern: My So-Called Hat by Becky Herrick
Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted, in Bobby Blue, less then one skein
Needles: Initially US 7/4.5 mm, but US 8/5.0 mm were the way to go.
Start/finish: I started the initial incarnation over the Christmas holidays (12/27) and finished with Version 2.1 on 2/9/09. If I had worked on it more devotedly, it would have been much faster (Version 1.0 was done in 2 days if that gives you a better idea of how long this hat could take).
Comments/mods: I may be the only person in the Knit-verse who has not made My So-Called Scarf, so I had lots of fun with the stitch pattern. For Version 2.1 I cast on 134 stitches (2 more then called for in the pattern) so I could work a 1-stitch stockinette selvedge to make for smoother seaming at the end. There was also a mistake in the original pattern that called for working a turning row and then starting with the wrong side pattern row. This would result in a hat that has the right side showing on the brim and the wrong side showing on the rest of the hat. So I started with the right side pattern row and it came out fine.

To de-condomize the top, I ripped back to the second-to-last set of decrease (I think I had ~30 stitches) and worked p2tog all the way across on the wrong side. At that point I had in the neighborhood of the right number of stitches, so I just broke off a long tail of yarn, threaded it through the live stitches, and used the end to mattress stitch the seam.

Voila!

Yikes! The iMac cam is no good for nightime photos. The true color is somewhere in between these two.

So now I have one new warm blue item to wear next week. Manon has a body but no arms. If no one talks to me on Thursday night I might be able to get them done by Saturday, but I suspect I will be knitting sleeves on the plane. Hopefully my fellow first class** passengers won't be too worried about my terrorist tendencies.

* She has now fixed the problem and has a lovely beret. And a new pair of socks!

**I have never flown real first class in my entire life, and I am disturbingly excited about it. Now everyone think happy, buoyant thoughts for oil prices so this move actually comes through, 'kay? Thanks!

I shudder to think of the therapy bills

that will result in my future because of the pictures I am about to show you. But so be it. They are too good not to share.

Wednesday morning, I noticed when Boo woke up that her right eye looked a bit swollen. Sure enough, someone (damn February mosquitos!) had bitten her right at the corner of her eye, and her lower lid was reacting in typical Boo-fashion (welt, welt, welt!). I didn't think much of it until I picked her up at school.

This is how she looked when we picked her up on Wednesday night.

Mosquito: 1, Boo: 0

The next morning it was even worse, Benadryl not withstanding, so we made an appointment with the doctor. One ped visit (complete with every parent's favorite words: Staph infection), and one large bottle of antibiotics later, we had this:

And as of Saturday morning, her eye looked totally normal, if a bit discolored around the edges. Poor thing. Thankfully she didn't seem at all bothered by the fact that her binocular vision had disappeared overnight. Or that she looked kind of freakish. In fact she took great glee in going up to unsuspecting people, sticking a finger in her right eye and shouting "Skeeto!" It worked better while it was still visibly swollen (the cashier in the grocery store yesterday just smiled and nodded).

Thankfully, Boo had some new socks to console her in her time of travail:

Pattern/yarn: the same as Devil's pink girly socks, only using Grumperina's helical stripe technique and two shades of Kool Aid dyed Knit Picks Bare sock yarn, dyed in Fall, 2006.
Needles: US 1/2.25 mm
Gauge: 7 sts/inch
Comments: Socks for the girls are my new love. Fast, sweet, and they use up yarn amounts that are silly for almost anything else. I'm still hoping I'll finish the geeky nerdo genetics socks by the end of the month, but in case I don't I've got February's pair covered.

FF: Preppy longwool

When I was a kid, we used to go skiing at my Dad's family's place in Maine. And for a stretch there (maybe from ages 8-12), everytime we went up, I would read The Official Preppy Handbook. You know, just to keep in touch with my WASP roots and berate myself for the things I was doing wrong. I specifically remember the whole section on the Official Colors of the Preppy - pink and green.

The last few weeks have found me on a complete tear through some fiber. I finished up four separate spinning projects last month, a fact which boggles my mind. I think the fact that Ironman was on a business trip made a big difference, because I could sit and spin to my heart's content after the girls were in bed.

This is my second batch of stuff spun from fiber that I dyed at Yarn School, and my first experience with a longwool.

You can see from this picture that the beginning materials were somewhat retina-searing. This is 8 oz (4 oz spun, 4 oz top) of Masham wool which I dyed with Emerald, Chartreuse and Fuschia Jacquard dyes. I had never heard of Masham before, but it's one half Wensleydale (I have 12 oz in my stash - what will I do with it?) and has a pretty good staple length. I wasn't really sure how to spin it, so I went semi-worsted, longdraw-ish from the fold, and then chain plied to maintain some striping.

This picture gives a sense of the fibers. It was pretty nice to spin, although some places seemed a bit sticky. I attribute that to operator error in the dyeing process.

The colors muted themselves quite a bit in the finished yarn (thank Allah)! I ended up with 120 yds* of self-striping 3-ply, 10-11 wpi (about light worsted weight). It should be plenty for a lined hat or some mittens - since the yarn isn't terribly soft (a characteristic of most longwools), it would behove the recipient to maybe use it for some outerwear.

And if I get worried that maybe it's too subdued, I can just look at these pictures. Yikes!

* Total I-am-an-idiot-and-thank-Diety-my-day-to-day-existence-does-not-depend-on-my-ability-to-do-arithmetic moment: while calculating yardage for this skein I realized that I have been off by a factor of two in figuring my handspun yardage for who knows how long. Because you know, X loops in the skein times the # of inches divided by 72 does not equal yards. Thank god for calculators. And sweetheart, stop laughing at me.