Knitasha von Stashenskeins

Never Rains, But It Pours

In a twist of fate I should have seen coming, the Fifi pattern and the denim yarn arrived here on the very same day.  Faced with the tough choice, I decided to make Fifi first.  Kate isn't ready to start the skirt yet, and we're going to knit it together.  Besides, I have been itching to start Fifi as soon as I saw it!

I made a mad dash to Yarn Haven on my lunch hour yesterday to get yarn.  The pattern calls for Rowan Calmer, but I knew I'd substitute another (cheaper!) yarn.  The French Girl website lists a few suggestions for yarn substitutes and Yarn Haven carries some of them, like Classic Elite Wool Bamboo.  I was about to buy some, when Dale came over with another suggestion.



The is Plymouth Yarn Royal Silk Merino and I just couldn't resist it.  It is so pretty, and I love to wear red sweaters.  It is 51% silk and 49% merino, so it is soft, shiny and bouncy.  (Now I sound like a shampoo commercial)  I think it will work well, we'll see.  I was a good girl and knit a gauge swatch, so I'm only on row 3 of the sweater - pictures another day.

Crazy weekend ahead of me.  I'm taking my older daughter and a friend to New York City to look at some colleges.  We are driving to Philly today, and then taking the train to the city tomorrow.  Should be quite an adventure.  I am a small town girl from Arizona who hates crowds, so I expect I'll face some personal challenges.  *gulp*  Say a little prayer for me.

Please Mr. Postman

No Fifi pattern yet.  No denim yarn for Indigo Ripples skirt.  Every day I rush home to check the mail and every day I have been disappointed.  I went to Yarn Haven for knitting last night, which would have been a perfect opportunity to pick out yarn for Fifi, but alas, it was not to be.  Maybe today, hope springs eternal.

So have I been sitting around twiddling my thumbs?  You know me better than that!  My mental health depends on always having something in progress.  If I go more than about 24 hours without a project, I get very twitchy.

So first, I worked on a little spinning.  I was shocked to realize that I hadn't touched my spinning wheel since before my beach vacation - almost a month!  I am certainly not lacking in fiber to spin, I just hadn't taken the time.  So I dug around in my roving pile and pulled out a hand-dyed batt that I ordered from Erica.  This woman takes care of her three little boys by herself while her husband is deployed and still finds the time to dye and card beautiful stuff.  Squoosh is the name of her Etsy store and even non-spinners can have fun shopping there, because she also sells her own handspun.  Very yummy stuff.

Anyhoo, Erica calls this color Tutti Fruitti.  It is mostly pink with a little yellow and purple thrown in.  The yellow fiber is silkier than the rest of the fiber and it didn't want to spin as smoothly, but I like the yarn I got in the end.



This is 2-ply like I usually make.  I have enough fiber left to spin up one more skein, and then I'll try to estimate total yardage.  If I have enough, I'd like to try a pair of those sideways garter-stitch gloves with this yarn.



Closer shot to show you the colors a little bit better.  Thanks again Erica, this fiber is cool!

Once I had my need to spin temporarily satisfied, it was time to find a stopgap knitting project to hold me over until I get some good mail.  You simply cannot show up to Tuesday Night Insanknitty empty-handed.  (Yes, that is the official name now.  Democracy in action.)



Not particularly shocking, I know, but you had to know there were more Monkey socks in me. 

This is really nice yarn.  It's Panda Wool by Crystal Palace Yarns - 46% Bamboo, 43% Wool, 11% Nylon.
I love these colors!  It's called Red Cinnamon, which may be my all-time favorite color name.  And of course, I love the Monkey socks pattern, so I really don't see how these socks could be anything but gorgeous.



The first picture shows the color better, but this close-up shows the sheen that the bamboo adds to the yarn.  So far, this yarn's only flaw is that it is handwash only, but that's a small price to pay for a pair of pretty Monkeys!

The Race Is On

I feel bad that I haven't posted since Wednesday, but it has been a little psycho around Chez Knitasha.  My girls started back to school on Thursday, requiring everyone to make some major body clock adjustments.  Unlike last year, they start at the same time and we all have to get up about 6:15.  Nobody in this joint is what you'd call an early bird, so there has been a fair bit of sighing and snarling, but the bus was made both days, so we're calling that a victory.

Having lived through the odd, abbreviated school week, we moved on to an eventful weekend.  Saturday morning, my youngest had an appointment at the "real" beauty salon.  We had done some at-home highlights at the start of the summer that had grown out to create a serious roots situation.   I decided we needed a professional to get her back to her original hair color.


"I can't believe Mom is taking my picture in the beauty salon!!"



"I love my new hair!"

With any luck at all, we are now close enough to her real color that touch-ups will not be required.  Between the cost for the color, the cut, and the tip, I had serious sticker shock!  Of course, the beauty queen announced that she's only getting her hair cut at the fancy salon from now on.  We'll see about that.

Saturday night we went downtown to a group of riverside restaurants known collectively as "The Docks".  We chose the Italian restaurant and I had the best spaghetti marinara I've had in a very long time.  Yum!  After a very good meal, we took a nice walk along the river and did some impromptu dancing to the music spilling out of the nightclub.  I actually took my camera with me (shocking!), here's the happy group with full bellies. (The extra kid is a friend of my daughters - I didn't just add random passers-by to the photo.)



For extra bonus points, find the knitting needles in the picture.  (It should get bigger if you click on it)

The hot and humid weather we'd been stuck in seems to have temporarily broken, so yesterday was absolutely beautiful.  Once I had slogged through the grocery shopping, I just couldn't waste the afternoon indoors, so I went to play nine holes of golf with my husband and my youngest.  "Play" is a bit of a misnomer - he plays and she and I just hack around.  But the weather was perfect, the sky was blue, and the kid got to drive the cart, so a good time was had by all.  And I finished the Spiraling Socks!  (What?  You don't knit on the golf course?  Jeez, I'm really starting to think there's something wrong with you people.)



I took many pictures this morning to try to convey their loveliness, but it is so hard to take pictures of your own feet!



It was so soothing to knit with a multicolored yarn and not have to worry about matching the colors on the second sock.  It's a good thing, too, because I used up almost the entire skein!



I haven't started my next project, because it isn't here yet!  There are actually two pending projects - I have ordered the pattern for this and the yarn for this and it's a race to see what gets here first.  Kate  is going to knit the skirt too, so we can commiserate and help each other along.  Donna is making Fifi, which is how I found the pattern in the first place.  Luckily, I also found pattern corrections on the web for it, so I avoided some serious frustration there.   So, whatever arrives first is what I'm starting next.  Can you stand the tension?!

In the meantime...

 

Full-sized

The baby Seeded Heart socks are done.  I took them with me to Yarn Haven last night to pass around.



A good time was had by all.  Knit night has become so popular that there was nowhere to sit last night and we overflowed onto the porch.  It was actually a nice night to sit out until about 8:30 when the killer mosquitoes showed up.  Karen filled us in on her crazy weekend, Sarah told us about her plans for a sock club starting in January, and I got to meet Jeanne!  We all gabbed and giggled so hard that we managed to make poor Jeanne turn her chemo-cap inside-out and work a couple of rows going the wrong way.  I helped her get it back on track - I owed her one for helping me get my blog going again.  Jeanne has some very big news brewing but won't spill the beans because she's afraid to jinx it.  We don't give up that easy, Jeanne.  "Vee haf vays of making you talk!"

The Spiraling Corialis Sock is well underway.  Surprisingly, a man-sized sock on #2 needles goes slower than a baby sock on #6's.  Who knew?  I am nearly done with the first one and am enjoying the process.

There is a lot of knitting on faith for these socks.  When you look at them on the needles, they really don't look like they will fit a human foot.



Funky, huh?  Very boot-like and boxy.  I was getting worried, so I finally slid my foot into it to see what was what.



Sigh of relief.  They are a little big, as they should be, but they seem to conform to my foot in a satisfactory fashion.  I'm going to knit the leg a little longer to make sure the spiral goes all the way around and then finish with a short band of ribbing.



Pretty cool!  That Cat Bordhi is all that and a bag of chips.

P.S. The log cabin blanky and the three pairs of booties for baby Alicia and the 7 washcloths for Rabbitch all got mailed on Monday - yay me!

New Plan

So, you know what this means:

 

Yep, I went to the movies last night.  Hubby and I went to a late showing of The Bourne Ultimatum.  I had enjoyed the first 2 movies of the series, so I figured it was a safe bet.  Very entertaining - almost non-stop action, lots of suspense.  Some of the camera work in the fight scenes was a little jarring.  You felt like you were almost too close to the action to tell what was going on, it was very chaotic.  But all in all, I had a good time.

When I tossed this latest washcloth on the pile that has been accumulating on my dresser, I realized it really is time to mail these off to Rabbitch.  I have to go to the post office Monday anyway to mail off the Baby Log Cabin blanket, so I will write down the address and take the cloths with me.  They should fit nicely into one of those soft Priority Mail envelopes, so there will be minimal packaging hassle.

Speaking of charity knitting, did you hear that Dulaan is kaput?  !!!  Seems that there was such a response from knitters over the past few years that they felt like the need for hand-knitted items had been met and now they plan on concentrating on other needs.  In all the years I've given to charity, I have never heard of one saying, "Ok, that's enough, we don't need anymore."  If we really have clothed all of the Mongolian orphans, then I guess that's pretty cool.  I'll have to keep my eyes open for another project I can knit for instead.

I finished the Little Coriolis socks halfway through my daughter's basketball double-header on Thursday night.

 

Notice how well I got the stripes to match up!!  Looking at this photo, I notice that I placed the socks with the diagonal lines slanting down toward the outside of the feet.  Cat's photo of the same socks in the book are photographed with the lines slanting inward to the arch.  Hmmm.  I like it my way better - what do you think?  I will have to be careful to position these ambiguously in the box when I gift them and then see how the baby's mom decides they should go.  A baby's foot is so flat that it probably doesn't make a bit of difference either way.

I had planned ahead and brought my new Bearfoot yarn, all wound up, so I could start on a full-size sock for my Dad right away.  With great anticipation, I turned to the next pattern and found...another baby sock!  Egads!  The temptation to skip it was strong, but this pattern does introduce you to "Judy's Magic Cast-On", so I decided it was worthwhile to work through it.  But my beautiful Bearfoot wouldn't work - too fine a gauge.  I headed out to my car and rummaged through my mobile stash.  (You don't keep yarn in your trunk?  Wow, you're weird.)  My only option in a worsted weight was some crochet-type cotton that has multicolored seed beads sewed into it at random intervals.  I picked this yarn up ages ago at a jumble sale, and I don't have the ballband, so I have no idea what it is.

 

Makes for a cute enough baby sock, though.  This pattern is called Charlie's Seeded Heart Socks and it falls under the same architecture heading as the Little Sky Socks I made first.  The magic cast-on is not used for the toe, but for the top of the cuff.  You cast on 30 stitches to each of the two needles, work 3 total rows of stockinette, and then turn it wrong side facing and knit the stitches from the 2 needles together onto a third needle.  (Sort of like a two-needle bind off)  This gives you a little tube of reverse stockinette at the top of the sock.  You join the ends of tube together and work down in the round.

 

Can you kind of see the heart?  This is worked on the instep upside down so that the hearts face the baby.

When the sock is done, you crochet a little cord and weave it into the back of the sock for an ankle tie.

 

Now that I have worked the magic cast-on twice (sock #2 is in progress), I can report that it is easier than the figure-eight method but still kind of fiddly.  I took Cat's advice and used one circular and one DPN for the first row, then switched to 2 DPN's once the stitches were a little looser.  This helped a lot!

I have made an executive decision that I will not be knitting the next sock in the book for my dad.  The next socks are "Bartholomew's Tantalizing Socks" and they just don't look like Daddy to me.  Instead, I am going to skip forward 26 whole pages (gasp!)  and make a pair of "Spiraling Coriolis".  Wait 'til you see these babies - they will knock you out!

One-Track Knitter

If you're not interested in socks, better just move along.  Nothing to see here.

Yes, my obsession with my new Cat Bordhi sock book continues unabated.  I finished the Little Sky pair Monday night at my daughter's basketball game. (Drawing the admiration of many Muggles around me, I might add.)



Of course, these would be a lot cuter with baby feet in them, but I don't have any lying around the house at the moment and the 11 year old wouldn't even try them on. (Kids these days!)

It wasn't long before I was casting on for the Little Coriolis Sock, and it wasn't long after that the cussing began.  Coriolis is a toe-up sock and Cat uses what she calls a figure-8 cast-on.  I don't think I've ever tried this toe before.  If I have, I suspect the memory was too painful and I blocked it out.  Dudes, this cast-on is a real challenge!   Cat notes that the figure-8 cast-on is easier on circs, so like always, I was doing things the hard way.  I'm glad this sock only starts with 6 stitches, because I think it took me three attempts each toe.  Sock #2 isn't far past the "Whirlpool Toe", but here's sock #1.



Recognize the Patons SWS?   This colorway is called Natural Navy, which is ironic, since this sock doesn't have a stitch of blue in it.  The colorbands are wide enough that I just didn't get to any blue.  I was hoping these colors would make for a nice manly baby sock, in case my sister has a boy.

Can you see the swirly line running from the arch up over the instep?  Wait, here's a close-up.



That is an increase line that substitutes for a traditional gusset.  The line in the back of the sock comes from slipping stitches as the heel flap magically appears.  These baby socks are so small and the techniques so surprising, that the heels really seem to pop up out of nowhere.  So fun!!

Remember when you first read Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitters Almanac and you had an overwhelming desire to knit each project in order?  That is how I'm feeling with this sock book.  I really want to go page by page and knit each lovely design, one after the other.

The quick glance through the book when I first got it was enough to inspire me to make immediate and unnecessary sock yarn purchases.  Even before I picked up the book, I had already picked out a skein of Cherry Tree Hill so I could enter the design contest.



Kind of a muddy picture, although this colorway is a little muddy in real life too.  I was trying to pick something that wasn't the same bright reds/pinks/oranges I always gravitate to, and this yarn is anything but bright.  Name of the color?  "Earth"!

Two minutes with the sock book and I was making a beeline to the Bearfoot.  I have always loved this yarn.  I think it is soft and luscious and the colors are fabulous.  It is also machine washable, which is imperative if you give socks as gifts.  It is my firm and prejudiced opinion that only knitters will take the time to hand wash knits properly, because only we know the time and effort that went into making them.  If you want the recipient to get to wear the garment more than once, superwash is the only way to fly.

Again trying to avoid my typical color choices, I ended up with a skein of "Lodgegrass".



Lot of greens and blues, but enough magenta and orange to keep me happy.  I'm thinking this will become whatever sock pattern comes next in my book, and I'll knit it for my Dad.  (Unless the next pattern is lacy - I haven't checked yet!)  I promise you this, if it is a toe-up sock, I will not be using the figure-8 cast-on.  Cat also teaches "Judy's Magic Cast-On", so I have high hopes it will be easier.  With magic in the name, it has to be good, right?

Guaranteed To Blow Your Mind

Remember the project that was too boring to blog about?  Well, I managed to scrape together the necessary motivation and I got it done.  It's a log-cabin blanket for my best friend' s brand-new baby.




The pink and white yarn is 100% nylon chenille from Plymouth Yarn called Oh My!  I used two skeins of each color.  The mint green is Berroco Plush, another 100% nylon yarn.  It is not identical to the Oh My! but was close enough when I ran out of the pink and I wanted to add a border.  I hand-washed and blocked it with pins this morning (for some reason the finished blanket was in no way square)  The final dimensions are 23" x 25", so not very big, but respectable for a car-seat blanket.  Once it dries, I'll mail it out with the booties I whipped up awhile ago.

With the boring mind-numbing somewhat repetitive blanket off my needles, I headed to Yarn Haven yesterday with a vague notion of looking for yarn to make the Cobblestone pullover.  I left the store without buying anything for it, but I still managed to spend over $100 on other things.  I blame Dale!

First of all, she said that Cherry Tree Hill is having a sock design contest.  You buy a skein of their sock yarn, knit up your design, and submit it.  They keep your socks and send you a new skein of yarn.  And the winner goes out to California!  (This is all what Dale told me.  I have not made it to the Cherry Tree Hill site to check it out myself yet.)  SO, one skein of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn went in the bag.

Then Dale said, "Hey, I have the new Cat Bordhi sock book!"  SNAP!!  I have been eagerly anticipating this book since I first heard she was working on it.  I mean, really, Cat Bordhi's crazy brain + socks?  How could that be anything other than cool?  I might have snatched the book out of Dale's hands, I really don't remember.  A quick glance through the patterns confirmed my suspicions: these are wild and wondrous sock patterns.



I was up until after 1:00 am last night devouring this book.  Cat is a big proponent of socks on two circulars, so I was a little nervous about the patterns, but she includes instructions for DP's as well.  Woot! Woot! 

The book suggests knitting a couple of pairs of baby socks to try out her techniques - one pair cuff down and one pair toe up.  Well, if Cat says "jump", I say "how high?", so baby sock #1 is on the needles already. 



The trial patterns are written for worsted weight yarn on #6 needles, so I'm using a little of the Patons Classic Wool left-over from my One-Button Cardi.  I am just getting to the "good part", so it nearly killed me to set it down to blog.  But with the eldest computer hog daughter soon to be home, I knew I needed to post while the posting was good.  She's got a weeks worth of email and facebook to catch up on, so heaven knows when I'll see computer time again. 

That's OK, the better to knit on my crazy baby sock, my dear!  Mwaahaahaa! You'll just have to hear about my other yarn purchases another day.

What I Knit On My Summer Vacation

Once the Monkey socks were done, I thought I'd get to chemo caps.  My original plan was to make two, but I had enough leftover yarn to make a third, teeny hat.



I would estimate that the blue and pink hat is child's medium, the green and pink hat is adult's large, and the pink hat is newborn.  (I wholeheartedly hope there are no newborns in NW Ohio needing a "chemo cap", but I figure there are always babies in need and the hat will find its way to one of them.)

Again, these caps are knit from 3 skeins of Berroco Touche', which is 50% cotton and 50% rayon.  I knit them in the round without a pattern - they are loosely based on the fruit cap by Ann Norling.  This yarn is very soft but doesn't have much body, so the hats are extremely drape-y.  I hope to make it to knit night at Yarn Haven next week so I can turn them in.

Once the caps were out of the way, I set out to tackle the Lotorp Bag.   I had two skeins of Noro Silk Garden that had been marinating in my stash since I can't remember when, so I was happy to finally have a pattern for them.

The knitting for this bag is really easy - just garter stitch with some increases and decreases.  When you are done, you are left with a very non-bag shape.



That is the dashboard of our car.  I got to this point while we were driving, and I couldn't wait to take a picture so I could sew it up.  The last part of the knitting is a long narrow strip that becomes the bag's handle.  (You can see a little of this on the far left)  I wanted the strap to be as long as possible, so I took yarn from the other end of the skein and did the sewing up, then I knit the strap until I had just enough yarn left to graft it to the other side of the bag.  To make the strap stronger and more stable, I tweaked the pattern and used EZ's I-cord selvedge on both edges.  I was very happy with the final results.



Hard to believe that wacky shape resulted in this cute little purse, huh?  I'm going to set this aside for my sister's birthday in October.  My youngest has expressed some serious interest in a bag of her own.  Don't you think SWS would be a cute yarn option?  I may have a skein or two lying around here somewhere.  : )

Once the bag was all assembled, I only had one day of knitting time left to me.  Luckily, I had slipped the perfect quick pattern into my suitcase at the last minute, along with a humble skein of cotton ombre.
Many short rows later, I had a very pretty dishcloth.



In fact, this turned out so pretty that I don't think I can bring myself to wash dishes with it.  It is nice and big, so I plan to use it for a pad to set hot dishes on the table instead.  Unlike a ballband dishcloth, this pattern is not quick to knit, but it is a lot less complicated than it appears.  After the first wedge (the final cloth has 7), I had the pattern memorized.  I was using a skein of Bernat Cottontots and I don't think I used up more than half of it.

I have been wanting to try this pattern from the first time I saw it on someone else's notebook on Ravelry, so I had it in my Ravelry queue.  That means that this is my first official FO that moved from queue to WIP to finished.  Pretty cool.  (If anybody is new to Ravelry, my username is yodaknit.  Come up and see me sometime!)

Now that I am home, I am half-heartedly working on a project that I tripped and fell into knitting without really planning on it.  It is not holding my interest very well, so I suspect I will have wandered off to something more exciting before the weekend is over.  Like maybe this?  Mmmmmm, yummy!

The Kindness of Web-buds

I am back, and all the credit goes to Jeanne.  This fine woman, who I have yet to meet in person, coached me via email and got my blog train back on the tracks.  Considering that I don't know the difference between a browser and a server, this was quite an accomplishment!  All hail Jeanne, queen of computers and the best web-bud a girl could have.

I have been dying to post, cause I have so much to show you.  I was all in a lather to show off my vacation knitting, but something else has come up that is waaaaay more important.  I got my package from my Sockapalooza pal!!

My pal's name is Michelle and she lives in Ontario.  Boy oh boy, did she spoil me!  Such a box of riches - it made my head spin.

A new Chibi needle case (Knitasha loves the Chibi!) and some flowery stickers.

A yummy skein of Drops alpaca - it is actually a gorgeous heathery purple.

TWO yummy skeins of Misti Alpaca in a soft gray-blue.   This is lace-weight and keeps whispering "shawl" into my ear.  I won't be able to cast-on for awhile, I'm too busy petting it.

Two skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in the Ravenswood colorway.  This picture is close to true, it shades from blue to green to brick red.

Beautiful card where secret-sock-pal reveals her true identity.

And last, but soooo not least, my fabulous socks.

Adorable Sockapalooza wrapper.

Fresh out of the wrapper, with that wonderful new-sock smell.

Look Michelle, they fit!!  These socks are so cool.  They are soft and warm and the colors are great.  These will go perfectly with jeans, although I may wear them with miniskirts instead so everyone can see and admire them.

Extreme close up so you can see how the color flows and some of Michelle's groovy stitchwork.  I am a lucky, lucky girl!

In related Sockapalooza news, Kate finally received her package from me.  I was sweating it out, as it took over 10 days to arrive, but it made it there safely.  Whew!  Kate says the socks fit, and she emailed me a great picture to prove it. 

Sockapalooza 2007 - two thumbs up!

Now that I've worn you out with all of that, I'm thinking I shouldn't try to cram all of my vacation knitting into this post as well.  I'll save most of it for next time, but I do want to show you one little thing.

My monkey socks are done!!  I love them, but I am just baffled at the striping.  You can see at the bottom of the photo that I was careful to start each sock at the same place in the color repeat, but all semblance of matching has disappeared by the time I got to the toes.  WTF?  I have no explanation, but unless I choose to wear them with sandals (not in this lifetime!), the world will never know. 

If you are one of the last 3 knitter's on earth that hasn't jumped on the Monkey bandwagon yet, what are you waiting for??

Dagnabbit!!

I am back from vacation in one piece, I have lots of knitting to show you, and I have been unable to access my blog from my home computer!  ARGGGH!  I can access it here at work, but of course my pictures aren't on this computer.  What's a blogger to do?  I suspect it all has something to do with the computer security update I downloaded yesterday, but I haven't figured it out yet.  The 17-year old computer technician in the family is still on vacation until Sunday, so I'm on my own.  I spent 2 hours monkeying with it this am to no avail.  Tonight, tech support will be hearing from me.  Pictures next post or I die trying!