Happy Birthday Charles!

I am busting out of my thrice-weekly posting schedule (had anyone noticed that?) to wish Mr. Charles Darwin a very happy bicentennial birthday. As one of the parents of modern biological thought, he is a hero of mine (although I have yet to read either The Voyage of the Beagle or On the Origin of Species - must work those in to the list by the end of the year). And I am amused that my current sock project is somewhat applicable.

I guess these would be even more appropriate for Dr. Mendel's birthday, but his bicentennial isn't until July 20, 2022. By which time these damn socks had better be done!

On the docket tomorrow: yet another Fiber Friday post. 8 oz of superwash BFL spun up in three evenings makes for a happy Porpoise.

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.

A cubic buttload of sock yarn scraps and some wire

In the spirit of working on UFOs, let me update you on the progress of the Sock Yarn Blanket, aka my Albatross.

As you can see from the layout, it's moving along. I'm actually starting to think that maybe this puppy might see the end of the line in this century. I am ignoring the fact that I still have to fill in all those little triangles around the edges. Denial is a wonderful thing.

And, since you haven't seen an actual picture of the thing in more months then I care to admit, here it is:

And here's the stash of sock yarn scraps waiting for incorporation. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to the pile. I may end up not having to repeat yarns, which would be awe-inspiring.

Boo's birthday is at the end of the month. I'd like to pretend this will be done by then, but I suspect this will be a "Welcome to London" present for her instead. So be it.
***************************************************************************
My first experience knitting with wire:

Pattern: Bijouterie by Rosemary Hill, Knitty Winter 2008
Yarn: 30 gauge sterling silver wire (white beads) and 32 gauge silver-plated Artistic Wire (red beads), very small amounts of each, beads from here.
Needles: Bamboo US 2/2.75 mm needles
Comments: OK, knitting with wire is weird, but strangely satisfying (hello instant blocking!). These two pairs took me less then two hours to do, even with Alias Season 1 on the tube. I ordered the wire in December, hoping to have them done for Christmas presents, but it arrived two days after we went North, so no dice. I love them, and have ideas for all sorts of other incarnations for future gifts. Quick, easy, and gorgeous - what could be better?