Designing

In addition to doing some knitting and spinning, I've been playing around with some design ideas for a while, and I just now emailed off a couple of proposals for The Sanguine Gryphon's Fall pattern line.

The inspiration for the pattern line is Steampunk (hurrah!), and I came up with a pair of mitts and a vest that I'll be working on. Even if they don't get accepted for TSG, I'll still work them up and publish them myself or through someone else.

The mitts were inspired by Tower Bridge here in London, which is a veritable Monstrosity of Victorian architecture.

But it is pretty...the mitts look like this:

This pattern is even already written up and ready to go. Although now I'm thinking that an elbow length version might be nice, as well as a shorter, more manly wrist length version. We'll see...

The second pattern is for a women's vest with a deep V neck. The swatch looks like this:

This is knit in the same overdyed yarn I used for Manon, and I like the way the stitch pattern looks in a semi-solid. I'm torn between liking it better unstretched, as above, or stretched out.

I like the laciness of this, but am also drawn to the cushiness of the unstretched version. We'll see...all I've got beyond these swatches is a very poorly drawn sketch, and some scribbled notes. Maybe I'll get to working on it one of these days. I'll keep you posted on the proposals in any event.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog silence.

Hey, it's Friday!

While I have not been blogging so much, I have been doing some knitting and plying. I've been working on the third pattern from Sock Madness, and am on to the leg of the second sock.

This yarn has been in my stash for at least the length of Devil's life, so I'm glad to have finally found a project that seems to be working well. I think this is the third or fourth pattern I've tried with it...

There has also been plying. I've now got five bobbins full of two ply, and am midway through bobbin #6. My prediction is nine total bobbins-ful, but I have no real logic to this. The first bobbin, I managed to fit two bobbins worth of singles on to one with only a few yards difference between the two (!), so I'm winging it here.

Plying this has been nice because it is totally mindless. I get the wheel going, let the singles run through my fingers at a particular speed, and there they are, ready to go. Thank goodness, because after all the trouble spinning the singles, mindless is a very, very good thing!

FO: The yarn that was supposed to be Tempest is now something else!

Pattern: Tappan Zee by Amy King
Yarn: Yarn School Corriedale Cross, ~675 yds.
Needles: US 5/3.75 mm bamboo circulars
Start/finish: 26 March - 26 April 2010
Gauge: 20 sts/32 rows in 4 inches
Comments/modifications: What a lovely and quick (despite my time line) knit! A top down circular yoke is not a sweater style I've knit before, but it was really fun. The lace pattern in the yoke keeps it from getting too monotonous, and the yarn colors helped with the monotany on the body. I made one major modification: instead of binding off the sleeve stitches when I got to them, I put them on holders. My thinking was that I wanted to put sleeves on when I was done with the body, and make them as long as the yarn held out. Once I was done with the body, I decided to keep the cap sleeves for the moment, so I bound off in knit from the wrong side. That way, in the fall when it starts getting cooler, I can pick out that bound off edge and knit the sleeves down.

I love the diamond detail at the bottom,

which matches the diamonds in the yoke.

Now for the yarn. I blogged about the spinning last spring/summer, but discovered when I started swatching, that the yarn need a bit of TLC. As you can see,

I was a wee bit tense when I did the plying. Perhaps I was a bit overplied myself, what with the move and all, but there is some serious skew in that stockinette. Add to that the fact that the yarn was not so pleasant to knit with (read: wiry, stiff and scratchy) and I decided that I needed to do something to take out some of the plying twist.

I took the three skeins I'd planned to use for the sweater (based on relatively similar grists) and ran them back through the wheel to take out some of the plying twist. I basically put the brake band on tightly, and re-plied the yarn with the wheel spinning in the same direction as when I spun the singles. I more or less let the yarn run onto the bobbin with only a little bit of tension, but if I came across a section that was really over-plied I held on a bit longer. Reskeined, rewashed, redried, and reswatched.

Much softer, much less noticeable bias, much more pleasant to work with. I've gotten a wee bit obsessed with grist recently, so I noted what these skeins came in at: 253 yds at 1094 ypp, 285 yds at 1140 ypp and 225 yds at 973 ypp. I started with the heaviest grist on the top, since the skein I have left for the arms is also around 975 ypp, and I wanted the lighter fluffier stuff in the body.

So all in all a great success. I desperately need to find the right buttons for it, but that may have to wait for a bit, since we've now entered The Month of Nonstop Houseguests. We currently have four parents and four girl children, aged five and under, in our house. As soon as the extra parents and children leave, we get an old friend from Tucson and his SO for a few days, and then a couple weeks later, Nana arrives. So forgive me if the blogging is a bit hit or miss for the next few weeks. Maybe I'll be able to get back here regularly when we finally have a functioning government!

A decade

Just FYI: there's no actually knitting in this post. So maybe come back in a couple of days, if that's more your cup of tea.

Ten years ago today, I was sitting in a waiting room in a Boston hospital, waiting for my mother to come out of surgery. A few weeks before, she'd called me at my aunt's house in DC to tell me that her GP had found a lump in her breast, and she'd been diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. I was in the midst of finishing my dissertation, and it felt like someone had just pulled the rug out from under my feet. Thankfully, my thesis was mostly written, and I submitted it and flew to Boston the day before my mom had a lumpectomy and further biopsies to see if her lymph nodes were involved.

Thankfully, the cancer was localized, the lumpectomy was successful, my mother took Tamoxifen for five years and has been cancer free ever since. Seven days after her surgery, she and my father were in the audience for my dissertation defense. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever had the privilege to witness.

My mother's cancer was my first experience with my parents' mortality. Since that time, I've moved across the country, gotten married, had two children of my own, and then moved across an ocean. My mother has retired, moved from the city to mostly rural Maine, and jumped in to grandmother-hood with her full enthusiasm. She gave my Dad a puppy for his birthday this year, and he arrived a few weeks ago. She has more strength and love and determination then almost anyone I think I've ever met. And I am so grateful to her doctor for seeing what was there on her mammogram, and recognizing it for what it was. I am grateful to her for getting the mammogram in the first place. And I am so grateful that my daughters have the opportunity to experience what a fabulous person their grandmother is.

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This post was inspired by the people who should be here this spring, and aren't. You are so very much missed.

FO: Cool beans

As previously mentioned, I am "participating" in Sock Madness IV (if by participating, you mean lurking on the forums, oooing and aaahing over everyone's socks and occasionally knitting one of the patterns). While the true contestents are now at the beginning of Sock #4 (ribbed and cabled knee highs!), I've finally finished Sock #2.

Pattern: Cool Beans by Heatherly Walker, Round 2 of Sock Madness IV
Yarn: Knit Picks Essential in Bare and Pumpkin (overdyed brown), approximately one 50 gr ball of each
Needles: US 2/2.75 mm and US 1/2.25 mm
Start/finish: 29 March - 27 April 2010 (clearly I will not be making it to the later rounds of the next Sock Madness, so I'd better submit another sock design so I can get all the patterns!)
Comments/mods: This was a really fun, and surprisingly quick pattern to knit. For the first sock, I only did four beans on the leg instead of the required six beans - I was a bit worried about having enough yarn to finish both. I also got completely confused by the directions for the colors on the heel turn, so I just kept the stripes in pattern (which ended up being the right thing to do). The first sock used 21 gr of each color.

For sock 2, I decided that, while sock #1 fit me just fine, I wasn't very happy with the fabric. It seemed too loose to wear well, so I went down one whole needle size for the second sock, and used US 1/2.25 mm needles. Same number of beans and everything, and I liked the fabric much better, but the second sock was a bit small for my gargantuan tootsies.

You can see the stitches straining on the right sock - poor things!

So my dilemma is this: at least one sock will have to be frogged and reknit, so do I a) frog the big one, knit it again on US 1 needles, and hope I can find some coffee lover with feet the right size or 2) frog them both, and use US 1.5/2.5 mm needles in the hopes that I'll get a sock that is just right for meeeeee! I do love the coffee, but I know a number of smaller footed coffee lovers as well. Hmmmm...I might even be able to knit the correct number of beans on the leg if I do the smaller size.

Decisions, decisions. In the meantime, I'll leave you with the wrong side of a heel flap to look at.

Looks kind of cool, doesn't it?