Hats off to fall

I finished my warm, wooly hat made with patent stitches.  This is a total copy of the hat I made for Ed last Christmas.  It is a donation for the Strawberry Hill Nature Preserve Annual Auction, which is in October.  Can’t you envision someone striding down a hiking trail wearing this?

I learned this patent stitch technique from Merike Saarnit at Knitters’ Day Out 2009.  It is really cool.  The resulting fabric is squishy and smushy and very warm.

The yarn is Malabrigo Worsted, which is a very, very soft singles yarn.  It should feel great on someone’s head.

…and I still have more yarn!  This hat weighs 73 grams.  I have 38 grams remaining of the light green yarn, and 29 grams of the dark green (total 67 grams).  I could probably squeeze another hat out if I made it just a bit shorter or narrower.  That’s great value from my original two balls of yarn.

Knitters’ Day Out 2010

This year both of my classes were on Saturday.  I arrived a little early and had a few minutes to buy raffle tickets and dash into the marketplace.  I managed to snag a scarf pattern (very simple, so simple I probably didn’t even need the pattern, but profits went to ovarian cancer research so I bought it) and a ball of sock yarn.  I had heard about this Debbie Macomber Blossom Street Collection Petals Socks yarn (a mouthful) and was interested to see it in person.  Its fiber content is 50% fine merino superwash, 20% angora, and 30% nylon, and it is unspeakably soft.  Touching it sold me.  Hopefully the nylon will hold up its end of the deal because those other fibers are quite delicate.  All the colorways are very pastel and the yarn self-patterns in a subtle, tonal sort of way.  I got the blue kind (big surprise, I know): My morning class was called “New Ways to Knit.”  Our teacher was unable to be there due to a family emergency, so we had a last-minute substitute.  No handouts, no lesson plan.  That was a bit disappointing.  But I did walk out knowing how to knit and purl Portuguese style, as well as knit backwards.  I may actually use these techniques.  I think it would be fun to do an entire pair of socks using a different knitting technique.

Kris and I popped into the marketplace before lunch and did a little damage at The Mannings booth.  They always stock a good selection of Cascade Heritage sock yarn, both solids and handpaints.  I found a skein of David’s Eyes, which is dreamily beautiful.  Kris is making a pair of Night Gulls socks out of it, and I just had to have a skein for myself.  See? They also had Knit One Crochet Too’s Crock-O-Dye sock yarn, which I hadn’t seen before.  It is 65% superwash wool, 20% nylon, and 15% silk.  I got a soothing green color (Kris got a great brownish-mustard colorway):All this sock yarn was sitting next to a pile of patterns for Candace Eisner Strick’s Swip Swap Socks.  I bought the pattern last year but hadn’t yet figured out what yarn to use.  It calls for a solid and a handpaint.  Hmmm, can you see where this is going?  Pretty soon I had picked out two more skeins of Heritage to go with the pattern: Cinnamon and Olympic Forest: Since I was already firmly committed to four skeins of sock yarn, Kris (wisely) made me put down another skein of Heritage I was clutching.  Actually, she took it right out of my hands and reshelved it.  Thanks!

At lunchtime, I met up with Kris, Julie, and Allison (Kris and Julie are Gettysburgians and Julie’s sister Allison always drives down from Brooklyn for this event).  We made some new friends at our lunch table, and Connie (whom I met at the Anne Hanson class in Frederick earlier this year) also joined us.  We had fun comparing notes and showing purchases.

It was almost time for my afternoon class, but I popped over to the marketplace to check the raffle ticket winners.  Guess what?  I won second place!  The prize was $50 of KDO money to spend in the market.  KDO money is kind of like Monopoly money:Wow!  Too bad I couldn’t apply this “vendor tender” toward my previous purchases. 

Off I went to class, mightily distracted by my unexpected luck.  My afternoon class was Slip Stitch Sampler with Kathy Zimmerman.  I thought that slip stitches would be a fun way to introduce more color to my knitting.  Here is the sampler I started: I may use this technique when it’s time to knit my Cap for Kids for next year’s KDO…  It is fast and fun.  I’d like to see what happens when I use 3+ colors.  The very top section uses 3 colors, but the rest use only 1 or 2.  I can see this technique using up a lot of small amounts of my stash yarn.

Speaking of Caps for Kids, here are some shots of the winning hat donations: After class, I returned to the market with $50 to blow.  First, I indulged in some fiber: This is 6 oz of “Magic Wand,” a blend of 70% wool, 20% kid mohair, and 10% silk from Steam Valley Fiber Farm in Trout Run, PA.  Because of the mohair and silk, I’m hoping to make a sock yarn from it.  (The quest continues…)

I returned to The Mannings booth and got that skein of Cascade Heritage Hand Paints green yarn that Kris made me put back earlier: And I also succumbed – finally! – to the Crazy Zauberball craze.  This yarn has very long color changes and knits up rather like Trekking XXL, which I also like.  And it is wound so fetchingly into balls.  The KDO money seemed a good excuse to splurge on a ball:And after that, I bought a diet Coke and headed home.  Another great year at Knitters’ Day Out!  This is such a nice event and I look forward to it each fall.  Next year it comes a little earlier than usual: September 9-10, 2011.  Mark your calendars.  9-10-11, easy to remember.

Sock Update

My sock work accelerated late last week due to some unanticipated air travel.  First, I finished my mom’s Christmas socks: The yarn is Claudia and the colorway is “Plumicious.”  Since I used the same stitch pattern (rib-and-welt) that I used for the Pansy Socks, I’m calling this pair Plum Pansies. I had 2 inches of yarn left after finishing the toes.  I cut it a little too tightly on this pair!  My friend Kris started a pair using this pattern, too.  It really is quite attractive. 

This stitch pattern must have gotten under my skin earlier than I realized.  As I knit on these at lunch with Heidi a couple of weeks ago, she said “that’s like the cowl I made that you liked.”  Sure enough, the Darkside Cowl (free Rav download) uses this stitch.  I put it in my queue ages ago.  I meant to unravel a scarf I don’t wear anymore to make it, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

I’ve also been zooming along on my Ecology Socks, which use the new Felici sportweight yarn.  These go super fast because (a) the yarn is sportweight, and (b) they are all stockinette: Sock #1 is done.  I’m past the heel on sock #2 – or rather, the spot where the heel will be, as this is an afterthought heel.  I just put half the stitches on waste yarn and kept on knitting my tube.  I bet I can finish these at the office this week – they go that quickly.  If you need to make some gift socks, this yarn could be a good option!

I went to Knitters’ Day Out yesterday and will report on the fun in my next post.  It was fun!  And, umm, there was a bit of stash enhancement…

Sock yarn … ?

Here is what my 50/50 BFL/mohair from Bedford looked like as singles in three bobbins:

And here it is all plied up: Total yardage is 308 yards and it weighs 4.1 oz (116 grams).

Is it sock yarn?  Ummmm….. maybe sport weight sock yarn. 

Most sock yarn comes in 100 g put-ups.  If I express the yardage I got in terms of yards per 100 g, I got 266.

Compare to Felici fingering sock yarn at 436 yards/100 g, or Felici sport sock yarn at 328 yards/100 g.  Not so close.

BUT….  I think mohair might be heavier than wool.  I couldn’t verify this quickly in either of the Clara Parkes books on my shelf, though, so I’m just not sure.

Hmmm.  I’ll just have to keep spinning to figure this out.

Piquant Pam

You may be wondering what ever happened to Pam’s prize socks.  I sent her a bunch of links and a few questions to begin what I assumed would be a lengthy consultation about what type of socks she would love.  She emailed me back super fast (in way under an hour) and sent a link for a Knitty.com pattern called Tangled Garden: Knitty.com readers know that the difficulty index goes like this:

THE KNITTY LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY INDEX [Kind of like a menu. But not really.]

Suitable for beginners.
Relaxing, not mentally taxing.
Knitting as therapy.

Tired of scarves? Ready for something more challenging? Try these.
Fun things with zing. A twist, even.

A little something for the seasoned knitter.
Daring but not exhausting.

Suitable for those with a lot of experience. Or patience. Or both.
These babies have teeth.
Hoo boy.

All I have to say is, thank goodness Pam is only Piquant and not Extraspicy!

Seriously, though, this pattern will stretch my skills a bit and be really fun to knit.  Plus, I can use Allison’s Simply Sock Yarn Solids for them, which is completely fitting, given that the Summer of Color contest also utilized that yarn.

Pam wanted pink and green, as shown in the pattern photo, but she deferred to S1 to select the yarns from the color cards (which Pam can’t see herself as she is in Cleveland).  S1 deemed Pink and Wheatgrass to be best, so that is how we shall proceed.  Here is what the sample yarns look like when I scan them (I think they’re a little more vibrant in real life): I will need to place an order soon!

New sock projects

In addition to those hats I’ve been working on, my to-knit list also includes a new pair of socks for my mom.  The first pair I ever made for her popped a giant hole (bad photo taken with a flash! but it’s the only one I have…).  This doesn’t surprise me at all – that pair was made from Koigu, which is 100% superwash merino.  That, plus the fact that I knit these a long time ago when I was working socks on size 2 needles, made them not very durable.  I had a similar pair of my own (same Koigu, knit in the same era) that have been toast for a couple of years now.  When Koigu pops a hole, it POPS a HOLE.  Totally non-darnable.  I love the Koigu colors, but I will never ever knit socks with it again!  (Garments for other parts of the body would be fine, though.)

Anyway, she wanted another pair in a similar colorway.  She likes red, but red on the pinky side of red, not the orange-y side.  I kept my eyes open for the perfect yarn at MDSW this year, but didn’t find it.  Then I spied some Claudia on sale at SSYC, and emailed her photos of a few colorways.  I know, I know, Claudia sock yarn is 100% merino.  I’m sort of breaking my own rule. But at least it’s not SUPERWASH merino, and the socks I’ve made with Claudia in the past have held up very well.  Plus, her colorways never pool when I knit them.  I hate pooling sock yarn.

Mom picked Plumicious, which looks like this on the Claudia site:

Because I really liked the way a handpainted multi looked in my Pansy socks, I’m using the same pattern again for these.  Here’s what I have so far:Time to put a heel on!  I’m getting some striping action on these, but at least it’s not pooling.  I think Mom will like these.

I knit some of these at work, but frankly, I’m pushing it a little.  I need my little cheat sheet to keep track of which row I’m on. 

Last Saturday my family went to Hersheypark, thanks to the tickets my kids “earned” by doing Newspaper in Education activities earlier in the summer.  I wanted to take a sock with me, but it needed to be more mindless than the Plum Pansy up there.  So I grabbed some Felici and cast on.  This time, I chose a ball of the new(ish) Felici Sport.  This meant that I didn’t know for sure what size needle to use, or how many to cast on.  I guessed, then adjusted, and then adjusted again (third cast-on is the charm!).  In case you need to adjust, too, I cast on 52 stitches on a 2.5 mm needle (I usually do 64 stitches on a 2.0 needle for fingering weight Felici).  This stuff knits FAST.  Here’s what I got done on the drive and while waiting in line for a few rides: You know how I feel about Felici.  I am just as thrilled with Flici Sport.  These slightly thicker Felicis will feel so great in the wintertime.  I might have to stash another colorway!  (This one is Ecology, by the way.)

I’m planning to knit an afterthought heel on these, so that the striping pattern continues uninterrupted down the front of the sock (like I did for the Positively Pink socks last summer).

What sheep and books have in common

Here’s some random but interesting information for your Tuesday.  Ever wondered why those really old books – the folios – are such an awkward size?  Blame it on the sheep.  Apparently medieval books were sized according to medieval sheep sizes.  That’s a Shakespeare First Folio held at the Cornell University Library.   Too bad there’s not a sheep pictured next to it, for scale.

Folio, quarto, octavo, sixteenmo, thirty-twomo…  all based on the size of sheep skins.  Read all about it!