KnitWerk

Husband and brother have October birthdays. We hosted the big joint celebration last weekend with a house full of overnight guests. While both have a fondness for sweets, their tastes are distinctly different, so we had two separate birthday cakes. Husband prefers lemon-y, coconut-y desserts—a bit mystifying for my family of chocoholics, but they love him, and choose to overlook this eccentricity.

With house guests returned home, and no hope for late trick-or-treaters, we’ve got a house full of sweets:

1. 2 bags of leftover Halloween candy. There was a big drop off in kiddie numbers this year.
2. 3/4 of Chocolate Potato Cake (great, great grandmother’s cherished family recipe—it may sound gross to the uninitiated, but it is fabulous)
3. One entire homemade coconut cream pie. We’ve already eaten the other one.

Someone, please, take the sugar away.

Feet of happy mom

I really have knit three pairs of socks this month—honest! Here’s the most recently finished, shown first, since they were the first gifted.

It was an experiment; one of Mom’s feet swells, so I wasn’t sure that I could make a sock that fit well. Super-stretchy sock yarn plus a pretty lace pattern equaled success.

Halloween accessory, or true identity revealed?

Younger, dreadlocked stepdaughter made it down from the redwoods for the weekend. Her Halloween costume has clarified something that I think we already knew. She picked up some ears for her costume yesterday, and hasn’t taken them off since… there’s something about them that’s just right somehow.

Normal California hippy, or actual woodland elf?

We took a nice, long car trip up the coast over the extended holiday, so I had lots of knitting time. I finished two pairs of socks: the new Sockapal2za socks, as well as a pair for my husband. First, for my pal, Errant Ankles by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer of Heartstrings, in a pretty, denim-colored Koigu KPM.

Project notes

• The pattern is a free tutorial on the socknitters site.
• While it’s nice to have this excellent pattern for free, there are some down sides. I’m accustomed to tersely-written patterns that save space. I was really annoyed by the tutorial format, since the actual directions are tucked in between pages and pages of long explanations. I wanted to start right away, but had to read through all this stuff to find basic things like how many stitches to cast on. To print the full pattern as written requires pages and pages of paper.
• The good part to the tutorial format is that you get to peek inside the design process. Also, she discusses many design options, and includes directions for alternate options. Once I calmed down and started reading, I found it pretty interesting.
• Though it’s written for sport-weight yarn, I used fingering weight Koigu. One of the extra credit sections discusses many options for changing gauge, and it was a snap.
• This was my first banded heel and spiral toe. Pretty heel! I love the fit of the spiral toe, too—I hate the feeling of extra fabric folding over my feet in shoes, and these are wonderful for pointy-toed people like me. Hmmm… I share this sensitivity with my father… maybe he would find this style comfortable, too? Dad, speak up if you’re interested.
• The lace pattern is super, duper simple. There are really just 3 rows to memorize for the entire sock: first section odd numbered, second section odd-numbered, and all even-numbered rows are the same. The diagonals come from the natural bias of the fabric. Easy, peasy.
• I knitted both at the same time on the magic loop. I highly recommend it for the lazy, disorganized or easily distracted knitter (like me). This is the perfect solution to the second sock problem. Also, some tweaking of the toes and heels was required to accommodate the change in gauge, and this allowed me to do the shaping at the same time, no notes required. Finally, I can see that this would be helpful for knitting a more complicated lace pattern, since you do the same row pattern for even longer.
• Summary: thumbs up from Sara! I’d definitely knit this pattern again, and I’ll be doing all my socks two-at-the-same-time from now on.

Now all I have to do is package ‘em up and mail them. In the mean time, they’re lounging near the window. The Koigu is pretty, with an almost nutty texture, and a slightly-varied color reminiscent of favorite old jeans:

This was a fun and challenging project. You’ve probably heard about Backtack, a exchange for crafty types. You send fabric to someone anonymously, who then makes things to hold notions for another anonymous blogger using the fabric they received. Since you’re basing your project on fabric that someone else sent you, there’s a huge loss of control involved that had me pretty stymied in the beginning. I got a late start, and then ran into a number of hurdles once I finally created a plan.

The blogger sending me fabric asked me what my pal would like, and after emailing the future recipient a few times and checking out her blog, I said, “send color.” I got a very fun package in the mail that included (very) colorful fabric, some lovely candles and lots of fun notions:

And then I pondered the situation. Happily, my pal is one of those types that posts nearly every day (unlike, ahem, bloggers like me). She posts a lot of photos, so I got a better sense of her taste. Except for type, I noticed that she never used black, and she loves stripes.

Last winter I started collecting wool sweaters from the thrift store. A search through my stash of fabric and wool put the whole thing together: I would make a knit bag out of a wool sweater (I made another one earlier; more on that later), focus on the bright solid fabrics, and pull the whole thing together with a happy stripe. I hope this suits her taste:

It’s a small project bag for socks or a hat, a large knit bag, a needle roll and a zippered pouch. Detail shots follow; y’all might want to just stop reading here, unless you’re interested.

This monogram is the detail on the whole project that took the longest. My pal and I share a love of letterforms, it seems. She likes to use her initials, so it was a detail I wouldn’t give up. Luckily, I had the sleeves to use for my experiments. Precision gave me trouble, even though I designed it with very simple letterforms. Transferring a design onto fabric caused problems, as well. I tried a bunch of stuff:

• Needle felting: While the sweater felted well, needle felting on the resulting knit felt was too difficult for the detail I wanted.
• Needle punch: The project is based on clean, bold color with crisp edges. I saw a needle punch kit in our local quilt shop, and was interested right away. Haven’t done it since I was a kid, and I liked the idea of raised letters and the texture. Ha! Wasted a bunch of time with this one; experimented with three different interfacings against the felted sweater fabric, and none worked well. Finally, I decided to work with regular fabric and applique it on the bag. This worked, but it didn’t have the look that I wanted. Again, the edges weren’t crisp enough. (I don’t have a picture. If anyone’s interested, let me know)
• Embroidery with pearl cotton: I liked the pearl cotton in the circles, but it was too thick for the typographic details.
• The solution: satin stitch embroidery with 3 strands of floss. Using fewer strands of classic embroidery floss did the trick in the blue and the white text areas. I made an applique (couldn’t get the design on the dark felt otherwise), and stuffed it before stitching it on.

By the time I was done with all this, Husband suggests, “Change your name! Keep it!”

A closer look:

The bag is lined, with pockets on one side and a zippered pouch on the other:

Obviously, someone enjoyed her new bias tape maker:

The small bag was a last-minute decision. She told me that she does small projects. The knitting bag I made earlier with the felted sweater method turned out a lot smaller. I still had a few scraps of lime green, so I created something she can use for small things. It’s reversible; on the other side, it’s predominantly green, with stripes on the bottom.

I loved this project. I can see a lot more little fabric bags and zippered pouches in my future—they’re so quick and easy! The knit bags from thrift store sweaters are a much bigger project, but I’ve got several more in the wings in various stages of completion. You’ll be seeing more of those from me.

I finished this a while ago – it was a very quick project. Just got around to taking a photo:

I’m really happy with it. It’s not a wear-it-every-day scarf, but it will have its uses. I have a big collection of eclectic accessories that I like to wear on a regular basis. This one is, I admit, a little strange, but I love it. Unfortunately, it’s become a little warm to wrap that much fabric around one’s neck, and the scarf really only looks good if it’s fully wrapped around at least once.

Some notes:

• It’s my first project ever—in many years of knitting—where I used the exact yarn, in the exact colors.
• Except—I didn’t like the tomato red with the other colors, so I left it out. It’s too orange for me, but will make something nice for someone else (trying v. hard not be cynical, and see extra, seemingly unnecessary color as attempt to sell more yarn). There’s plenty of the others left over to make more roses.
• Larger needles help the roses to curl, but I preferred the result on US 7’s instead of the recommended 8’s. I think the end-most mauve one in the photo was the first rose finished on the 8’s
• I don’t often use chenille, but I loved it in this pattern. It’s very soft, and the color selection is amazing.
• I enjoyed the crocheted trellis. It’s been a long time since I did much with a hook.
• It was a satisfying, very quick knit project. I started and finished within a week.

All in all, a success!

In other work, I’ve been sewing the purple purse together by hand whenever I can stand it, and I’m about halfway finished with Clapotis, knitted with my Interlacements yarn from Stitches West.

Literally.

I’ve been a bad blogger. Haven’t been able to spend a second longer at the computer than common business courtesy requires lately – I’ve been late responding to all non-business mail lately. No pressing crises, just an anti-computer attitude. Sorry, everyone! Spring beckons.

I must tell you, though, my Secret Pal rocks it hard. I got a happy box in the mail last Friday: four cool mix cd’s in this batch – two whole CD’s of 90’s indie-alternative-type stuff, with some much-admired-though-never-acquired stuff, in addition to a “Chill Out” mix and an “Irish” mix (how did Secret Pal know of ridiculous obsession with Irish musicians?). It’s very, very cool.

Not only that, but hitching a ride in the box was the softest burgundy alpaca yarn. This stuff is seriously yummy:

No one in the household can resist the alpaca, apparently. A mere second after this frame was snapped, Wilson started to eat the yarn (I mean, I’ve been tempted, but—no). I quickly rescued the yarn, only to find The Husband touching it fondly later: “This would make me a great pair of socks,” he said. “Or a scarf. It’s my color.”

Hmmmm… the man does cook me dinner every night (I know), but this would also make a great Flower Basket Shawl…

Tricky. Must carefully weigh happy spouse points against selfish knitting desires.

In other news, over the weekend I finished the Flower Trellis Scarf from Scarf Styles – photos later – and I started to sew up the purse made from the purple needle felted sweater:

I learned a few things:

1. It might be better to do the needle felting after cutting the pattern pieces. It would be a lot easier to get the proportions right. I think the flowers I added after cutting to the back side of the purse are in better proportion to the whole.

2. Felted sweater fabric is thick. Super, duper thick. Observe:

I made it through the first couple of seams OK, but my presser foot won’t go up enough to let me sew the strap on. I tried, in an ill-advised, ill-tempered way, to adjust my machine late at night, but it just didn’t work out. I may try again later this weekend. If it doesn’t work, I’m stuck with hand-sewing (are you serious?) or taking it with me to Mom & Dad’s in late April to try one of Mom’s machines. Fingers crossed.

...even though there’s been, as yet, no knitting.

Got a notice from Purl Gurl that Debbie Stoller was going to be at Oakland’s Article Pract for a little book signing. We had emailed briefly about a possible carpool to SF to see her, but my schedule has been dicey, so that was not likely to happen. The Oakland thing was perfect, though… thanks, Purl Gurl! My stepdaughters both got interested in knitting around Christmas, so I let each of them take a Stitch & Bitch book. I’ve been itching to get another copy—there are projects in these books that I want to add to the list soon. Now I’ve got my very own signed copies:

I was too shy to say much, but she seemed really nice.

When I got home, I was greeted by a great package from the Bronx:

They’re beautiful, purple-y and comfy. Thanks so much, Nancy! I really appreciate all of your hard work.

I just realized that I never posted a photo of the finished socks I made, currently on their way to Austin:

I ordered the yarn for this one a few weeks ago when things were crazy at work, and there wasn’t much knitting time. It was raining and dreary then, and the promise of the chenille roses lifted my spirits. For the first time in my long knitting experience, I’m using the exact yarn in the exact colors called for by the pattern. It seems weird somehow to use specified yarn, but I’m a sucker for analogous reds, so it seemed a good choice. The yarn, it turns out, is delicious:

The bulk of this one—the trellis—is actually crocheted. I started late last night, and have already finished most of the trellis and one rose, so it should finish quickly—hopefully before it’s too hot here to wear it again. It’s a nice change from US #1 needles—progress is happening fast. We’ve had some gorgeous spring days in the last few weeks, but if current dreary weather patterns hold for a while, I should be able to wear it at least once.

I just joined the Scarf Style Knitalong, since there are at least 3 more scarves I want to make from this book. It’s fun to knit for me, for a change!

I’m tickled pink that Suzie tagged me for an interview. I’m very new to this blog scene, so this is my first time being asked to participate. Thanks, Suzie!

1. Tell me more about your mom’s yarn store. Where was it?

It was in Chico, California. The exact dates are all a little fuzzy now, but Mom started working in the shop when I was in elementary school. She purchased it soon after, and finally closed it in 1990, my senior year of college. I walked to the shop after school every day, and started working there in junior high. That experience changed me in so many ways… I was painfully shy. Customers came in all the time with problems, and at first I didn’t have the confidence to help them—I deferred all questions to my mother. Soon, she said, “Sara, you know how to fix this. You need to let people know that you can help them.” At 12 or 13, I began to help people of all ages out of knitting problems. So began my lessons in poise and projecting confidence. I do not exaggerate when I tell you that I use those skills to this day. Working in retail for a family-owned business is a wonderful way to learn not only about customer service and integrity, but also about presenting yourself confidently.

2. Top 10 songs played on your ipod?

A Minor Incident – Badly Drawn Boy
Shipbuilding – Elvis Costello
These Days – Nico
Orange Sky – Alexi Murdoch
Such Great Heights – The Postal Service
7 Chinese Brothers – REM
Gone for Good – The Shins
Needle in the Hay – Elliot Smith
Dry the Rain – The Beta Band
Float On – Modest Mouse

Hmmm. These are all from the same playlist, my mellow collection that was a true comfort during stressful deadlines last autumn. Must merge my new Secret Pal mellow mixes to this one, as they would all play nicely together.

3. What’s the ratio of things you knit for yourself vs gifts for others?

Ugh—I don’t want to think very hard about this. When I consider my knitting since last summer, only two projects out of 15 were for me (one of them being the scarf I started last night). It’s definitely time for some selfish knitting.

4. What are your favorite East Bay Restaurants? I’m always looking for new ones!

Mmmm…. we go to Lark Creek in Walnut Creek for all special occasions (birthdays, anniversaries, Tuesdays, etc.). Prima is another great one, though we haven’t been for a while. One of my new faves is Cafe de la Paz in Berkeley. Killer mojitos! Le Cheval in Oakland is really loud and busy, but terrific Vietnamese food.

5. Is there anything you regret not buying at Stitches?

Sock yarn eluded me. The Koigu booth was tiny, swamped, and pretty well picked over by the time we got there on Sunday. Sock yarn skeins are awfully small in the visual chaos that is Stitches—I think I just overlooked many opportunities in all the clutter. I tried really hard to buy something at Brooks Farm, but by Sunday the colors left were either too pastel-y for me, or too similar to something I already had. I’m looking forward to the TKGA National Conference in Oakland. Hopefully, with this much lead time I’ll be able to get my sisters, mom and both stepdaughters to come.

whoops – later edited to add:

Please let me know if you’d like to be interviewed!

OK, so my fantasy knit-all-weekend-thing didn’t go exactly as planned… I’m almost done, though! One more pattern repeat, then the toe. I’ll be able to wash and block them tomorrow, so I estimate a Thursday or Friday mail date.

Hang on, Sockapalooza pal! They’re a’comin.

Oh, it’s hard to make something for someone I don’t know. I have enough of a hard time choosing patterns and yarn for my own projects. I’m new to sock knitting, so I wanted to use a simple pattern and feature the yarn in the design. Unfortunately, none of my LYS’s have a good selection of red handpainted sock yarn, Stitches was a bust as far as sock yarn goes, and going into the long weekend, I just wanted to get started. The deadline is looming.

I settled on a solid-color Koigu in a beautiful crimson red. That’s cool; I’ll use a pattern with some texture. I can deal. I really wanted to use the Diagonal Rib Socks pattern from the subscriber section of IWKnits, but it’s at 7 stitches per inch, and I like this yarn at 9 s.p.i. So I settled on the Waving Laces Socks from IWKnits Spring ‘04 issue:

The first leg is coming along nicely. The lace pattern is easy to memorize, it’s fun to knit, and two purl stitches on either side of the repeat make it nice and stretchy. But now I’m torn by doubt. I’m not sure it’s working in this color. Something about the red with a lace pattern just isn’t hitting it for me. I’m seeing these on a matronly woman in a kitchen full of geese with bows on their necks. Doesn’t seem right somehow. If, by chance, the recipient is a 20-30 something, would she like these socks?

Am I nuts? I’m close to ripping the whole thing and doing the extra math required to turn them into Diagonal Rib socks… Hmmm. Opinions welcomed.

I received an anonymous package from New Jersey today. Secret Pal has struck!

A closer look

Included in the package was an iTunes certificate, a box of chocolates (yum! they’re gone already), and four terrific CD’s. Somehow Secret Pal was able to step into my head and came up with mixed songs to surprise and delight my taste – wonderful! Two of the CD’s were from an official bootleg of last December’s NYC Pixies concert. I haven’t made it all the way through the concert yet (a long conference call interrupted my listening pleasure), but I can report that three of the songs from the mix tape were on my intend-to-purchase list, and even better, there were a couple of bands I hadn’t heard before – and I love them.

Secret Pal scores big time. Thanks so much!