When Things Go Awry...

… sometimes it’s just easier to rip the knitting back down to the lifeline, which I eventually did, but not before attempting complex string surgery…

A Complex Lace Knitting Project

I know I’m supposed to be spinning: it’s the Tour de France/Fleece, after all. But I’ve been sitting on my hands for a long time, itching to get back into a complicated lace project. I have some beautiful laceweight silk I’ve had for longer than I can remember where I bought it, and since the Diamas shawl calls for exactly this kind of yarn, I stopped fighting the urge.

All knitting is basically looping successive rows of string together. When you mirror the stitches on the back you get the familiar smooth front and bubbly back most people are familiar with. You can cross these stitches (cables) or you can insert pairs of yarnovers with decreases to make openwork lace. This particular pattern also features nupps, an Estonian-style bobble in which seven knit stitches are inserted into a single stitch in the row below and then gathered together at the top, making for a textured highlight.

I have some travel coming up and a good lace project to get my teeth stuck into will be great. But I’ll insert a second lifeline when I get to the end of the current chart (there are three), in case I mess up. I finally broke down and paid for a subscription to KnitCompanion because this is a complex enough pattern that I can use the extra help keeping my place. Ripping back to where you made a dumb mistake is never fun….

Knitting Socks for Summer

My knitworthy sister is the happy recipient of handknit winter socks for her birthday which falls in November: she lives in a cold place and nothing is better for keeping your feet cosy than wool socks. Our feet look very different than they did when we were in our 20s, and I’ve been able to modify her socks to fit perfectly without constricting the toes but also without bagging.

On a recent trip she informed me that she had plenty of wool socks, but was wondering if I could knit some cotton lace ones for summer like we used to buy in Spain? I found a bamboo/cotton blend yarn and have been working on a prototype for her. I’m going to send this single sock to her. If it fits I’l just match the second one; if it doesn’t, more work’s required.

I’ve never published a pattern before but if this is successful I might offer it to others.

Details: picot turned cuff, openwork lace, slip stitch short-row heel, slip stitch instep, roomy toe.

Hwaet!

I’ve been really good about keeping the number of knitting works-in-progress (WIPS) down to a manageable level. I finished a shawl this weekend that had been on the needles for a while.

I cast on another shawl (need my lace fix) almost immediately and then, last night, I cast on my Beowulf socks (the first lines of the poem are carried through one sock then pick up on the next where you left off. The yellow yarn I bought is a little lurid compared to the recommended yarn, whose name is “South Side Chicago.” Since this was (still is?) a notorious slaughterhouse district, I can only assume the inspiration for the colorway was soiled straw. I can probably mimic this effect if I throw the socks in some walnut ink when I’ve finished.

I can think of at least eight people I’d make very happy with some socks like these, but full stranding all the way down is slow. It’s very fun, though, but it’s a high-concentration activity. Hwaet!

A Wooly Weekend

On Saturday I left Numenius at the Let’s Draw Davis event so I could go to the Meridian Jacobs Open House. Lots of lambs — over 60 — and spinning, felting, a festival atmosphere. One group from Elk Grove brought their picnic and their Chardonnay and had a rare old time.

I’ve been spinning some Wensleydale and took my wheel along so I could spin with a small group. It’s a lovely fiber to spin and I was able to get this one much finer than my first couple of attempts. The luster is astonishing and knitting with it is reminiscent of mohair (don’t make mistakes because ripping it out is a pain).

On Sunday, after a trip up to Cold Canyon, I attended the memorial service for a friend and fellow knitter, “Nancy Seyden.” She was an amazing person and a fantastic advocate for disability rights in our region. She was a kickass knitter. She was also a docent at the Yolo Wildlife Area and I have donated my Delta socks (framed by my sister and with a generous donation from 100 Acre Wood in Norway, Maine) to the Foundation in her honor.

Baseball’s back. It’s fabulous. Spinning and baseball on the radio, how can you go wrong?

Lace and Pirates

I must be out of my mind, because I’ve taken on a lace scarf designed by a knitter in Germany. It’s knit in 24 sections, each one divulged on a new day — an advent calendar; the last section will be released on December 24. Like I had nothing else to do in December…

Nupps are not a traditional German knitting technique, having been perfected in Estonia — but with YouTube and Ravelry, everyone’s tradition is now up for grabs. So this sampler scarf has as one of its sections a version of the Estonian lily of the valley pattern. No doubt we’ll get Brazilian frog patterns at some point next week.

I was working on this (I find nupps fiddly but not impossible as many of my co-knitalongers seem to have found) on Friday when I heard giggling in the other room. Numenius had found a pirate radio station which was playing big band swing music, and whose frequency he tracked down to a pirate known as Wolverine. The music changed to songs from across the 20th century with a moon theme.

We have rain, and more rain, yet Cold Creek was still not running on Sunday when we went up there for a short hike. Hoping this changes soon. I’m thinking about newts and where they are going to be able to spawn.

Around the Baseball this Weekend

I did this

and this

GO GIANTS!

Wayfarers From The Land Of Knitting

We’re in Corvallis, Oregon this weekend for a wedding. The wedding is tomorrow late afternoon; today there was a mixer for the guests. We were talking to the bride’s parents for a bit, and Pica was certain she recognized one of the guests. She got into a conversation with him, and he turned out to be the rabbi who is officiating the wedding. Pica tried about everywhere in her past where she might have run into him — nothing seemed likely. “Ravelry?” he suggested, thinking of his online social networks. We were awestruck — never in a million years would Pica have thought of a connection through that most famous of knitting social websites. His username on Ravelry is RabbiDave; Pica was pretty sure she had seen his name there. But Pica was still convinced she had run across him in person. They eventually solved the mystery. When Pica was traveling to Maine back in March, she got stuck in Portland, Oregon for a day. Having a free afternoon there, she wandered into the store The Yarn Garden on Hawthorne Blvd. and got into an animated conversation with the clerk about her trip to Maine. Behind them entered a guy who was very intent on looking at the sock yarn. That was, it turned out, our rabbi, who lives up in Portland. The bride is also on Ravelry; conversation strayed little from the Land of Knitting hence.

Done (Housework's Next)

Lost in Socks

Handspun. Trying to knit a pair of twined socks during the winter olympics. Today’s discovery: they are going to be VERY SNUG around the ankle and I don’t know if I can block twined knitting enough to make a difference… Project here on Ravelry. Nearly finished one sock, the second will need the entire foot done before Sunday night…