If Only It Was Colder

I have retreated to my basement to avoid the noise of the roofing crew. Oh my goodness the noise.

Let's talk knitting shall we. I really do knit so I don't kill people and so that I don't inadvertently kill myself with my blood pressure. Of course, sometimes it doesn't work quite so well as we will see below. But it all turned out in the end. 

I love a knitting challenge. I am assuming that is why I like what is called "colorwork" knitting. For the non-knitters who hang around here that means you are knitting with more than one color of yarn at a time. In the case of the sweater that I just finished it meant that for most of the sweater I was knitting with two colors as one time and in a couple of spots with three colors of yarn.  It makes me look a lot more talented, knittingly speaking, than I really am.

I had wanted to do a Damejakka Loppa sweater for a long time. I love knitting sweaters. Love, love, love. I was also determined to knit this sweater from stash. How hard could that be? I mean I have, in some senses, reached SABLE as far as my yarn stash in concerned. SABLE being: Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. I knew that I was going to use Knit Pick's Palette because I seem to have a lot of that. So I dug it all out and started to arrange colors and I realized several things.

1.  I didn't have enough skeins of yarn for the main color so I would have to order that.
2. I didn't like any of the other color combinations that I was finding so I might have to order a skein or two.
3. I didn't have the right color for the contrast cuffs and button band so I would have to order that.

So much for only using stash yarn. But I placed my order and then I realized that:

1. I hadn't read the pattern correctly and I was short on how much I needed for the main contrast color
2. I still didn't like my color choices.

Back to more ordering. Finally I was ready. I faithfully did my swatch, grumbling all the way because....I hate to swatch. I knit a bit looser than some, it's a Continental knitting thing, so I went down a needle size. And that is when I realized that:

1. I didn't have the right length of cable for the needle size so I would have to order that.
2. I didn't have the right needle size with the right cable size.

Once THAT order arrived then I was all set. I cast on and away I went. 

Whoooosh! Before I knew it I was through the colorwork yoke and on to the miles of body. I was flying. But there was this little thing tapping at my brain saying something wasn't right. Something was off. I knew it and I didn't want to admit that my gauge was off. For the unknitterly of you, gauge is how many stitches you are getting to the inch. For some things, like socks and lace, I don't think that gauge matters all that much. But for sweaters, GAUGE MATTERS. It matters a whole heck of a lot. It makes the difference between whether a sweater is the size you expect or some other alien size. If knitters have any question about our gauge we like lie to ourselves and say things like...

"This will be fine."

"I got gauge with my swatch so it has to be right."

"I am sure that I can block this sweater to be bigger after I give it a good soak."

I was a half way through the body of the sweater when I finally sat myself down and had a good talking to myself. My gauge was wrong, even though my swatch was right. The sweater would be too small and no amount of soaking and stretching and blocking would make any difference. And so.....

I pulled the whole thing out. Oh the pain. Oh the tiny balls of yarn. But I knew it was the right thing to do. Sometimes gauge swatches lie to us. It was discouraging but what would have been even worse is to spend all the hours knitting this thing and then finding that it was too small. That would definitely raise the old BP.

I cast back on and got to knitting. Almost immediately I could tell that my gauge was right. The fabric just felt better. I made it through the yoke, I got through the miles of body, the sleeves when on without difficulty. And Monday......

My Damejakka Loppa was finished, blocked and ready to be worn. Of course on Monday it was also 93F so I quick put the sweater on, ran outside, had HHBL take some pictures, ran back inside and took the sweater off.

But Winter is coming and this is the first thing that I am going to wear when the weather is more cooperative. Now I am off to think about the next sweater to cast on. I have to use up the yarn from Maryland Sheep and Wool before I go again next year.

Maryland My Maryland

Oh life, you are so crazy. Right now, at this very moment in time, I am in New Orleans. Guys, I have never been to NOLA! I am still surprised by that. I have been as far away as Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, India, Peru, Australia. But I have never been to New Orleans. Heck, I spent 5 years in Texas going to school, and somehow I never got to New Orleans. I am taking pictures and banking memories for blogging.

But I have already digressed and we are only one paragraph in. What I WANTED to tell you about is Maryland Sheep and Wool. If you are a knitter or fiberist you may have heard of MDSW. If you haven't....

I am so sorry but we are going to talk fiber. And not the kind that is good for your diet and overall intestinal health. It isn't even fiber that is good for your budget. It is so NOT good for your budget. So, so, so not good.

So, almost a year ago, my friend Michelle for Crafty Flutterby Creations, who is also a KnitSib of long standing, asked if I wanted to help in her booth at Maryland Sheep and Wool. I thought about it for all of 5 seconds and said YES! I put that date right on the old calendar and periodically looked at it and contemplated fiber. I started saving a bit here and there so that I actually had a "fiber budget" to spend when I got a break. More on the fiber budget later. The first weekend in May found me in the car and on the way to the Howard Co. Fairgrounds in West Friendship, MD. Set up was Friday afternoon and it was hot, and windy and, well, it is on a fairgrounds where there is a lot of dust and straw and more dust and my allergies were all like, "Oh we are SO going to make you pay for this." They did make me pay for about a week after MDSW but I don't really care. All was set up and we had a fun time on Friday night with other knitters and then it was Saturday and back to the dusty, but thankfully cooler fairgrounds were I vended the heck out of myself. Sunday was pretty much the same thing with some rain thrown in. Lets just go to the pictures shall we.

There are two sorts of things that you are going to see at MDSW, other than the food, and that is yarn/fiber/crafting accoutrements....and sheep. Lots and lots of sheep. Barns and pens full of sheep of every description and color. 

This is Easter, so named because....she was born on Easter. Clever that. She is a Valais Blacknose sheep and I swear she knew how to pose for pictures. She was working the barn like Kim Kardashian. And her fleece! So soft and cuddly. If I thought it possible I might have tried to sneak her into my suitcase. 

And I also got to meet several women who I have known for a very long time but only on the Internetz. Cuz that is where ALL of the deep friendships reside right? But in reality Lola and Tina have been friends for a long time and I cannot tell you how excited I was to meet them in person. Please excuse my over abundant chinage. My wattle is genetic and must be born with grace and dignity. Who am I kidding, there are times when I look like a turkey right before Thanksgiving.

Also, I might have found my ornament for the annual Ornament Exchange. I was helping to set up the booth and looked down the row a bit to a booth that was two stalls down. And there it was. It is the only one that the woman made so it is one of a kind, because that is what "the only one the woman made" means. I am not showing it here but guys it is so stinkin' cute I just can't stand it. And now that I have actually put this up here I cannot then keep the ornament for myself. Sigh.

How did they know?? I needed another mug at Chez Knit like I needed a hole in my cranium. And yet, this came home with me because.....it called to me with it's siren song of pottery and I could not resist.

This is evidently a baby coffee plant. Someone walked by with it and said that she had bought it over in the plant area. She also told me that in about 5 years, if the plant lives, it should give her enough beans......for a cup of coffee. Somehow, the ROI on that doesn't seem all that appealing to me. I think I will stick with ordering my coffee from here.

Best. Yarn. Colorway. Ever. Dawn from Fairy Tale Knits is a genius. And she gifted me the skein so that is extra special. Now to think about what it wants to be. It has gone to live with the stash for a bit. Sometimes yarn needs to age, like a fine wine or Limburger cheese, in order to be all that it can be.

But let's be honest. Have you ever smelled, let alone tasted, Limburger cheese. There are not enough centuries left on this earth that will ever make that cheese palatable.

And do you remember, way up at the top of this long and rambling post, that I talked about my yarn budget that I had carefully planned for MDSW?

I blew that budget wide open in the first hour that I shopped. Yes, those bags of yarn represent ONE hour of shopping. One. Hour. And I went back the next day for a bit more shopping. Oh my stars and garters. Oh my aching pocketbook. Oh my smoking credit card.

I am not telling you how much I spent on this wool haul but just know that I brought back TWO sweater quantities of yarn plus various other skeins. When I started back to knitting almost 12 years ago I would have scoffed at the thought that I would pay $45 for ONE skein of yarn. I am not saying which of these skeins was $45 dollars but one of them might have had that price tag. My lips are sealed.

What is spent at Maryland Sheep and Wool STAYS at Maryland Sheep and Wool. It is just like Vegas, only it smells like a sheep.

The Mystery Box

We all know that I knit socks.

This year I am participating in something called the "Box O Sox 2017 KAL"

What is a KAL you might ask yourself. Don't you hate it when someone smugly uses an acronym that you don't understand? If you are like me, you sit there and try to work it out in your head cuz you just don't want to ask.

Knit
A
Long

There, that wasn't so bad. Now if we were talking about a SPAKAL then all bets are off right? (Spin A Long, Knit A Long). Oh we knitters and our incomprehensible speech. Thank goodness you don't sit in on knit night with the KnitSibs. You might need a knitting dictionary as we throw around terms and phrases like:

"I am loving this brioche knitting!"

"Is that an SSK or a K2Tog?"

"The charted pattern took me a bit to figure out but once I got the color dominance down I was on my way."

Where was I?

Socks. Yes, thank you. The Box O Sox 2017 KAL I think.

What IS the Box O Sox 2017 KAL you ask yourself. Well, it means that as I go along in the year 2017 and I knit socks, after those socks are finished, washed, blocked, photographed and put up on Ravelry I put them away in a box and I don't wear them.

I know. It is hard to believe. Let me say that again.

I do not wear them. I do not put them into podiatric rotation.

There is a specific reason for this. It is sort of like a gift to myself. I knit 12 pair of socks, one for each month, put them in the box and then on New Years day 2018 I open the box up and there are 12 pair of socks that have never been worn. Welcome to 2018!

Since I think I am going to do this every year I actually went to Hobby Lobby and got a special box and decorated it. Who doesn't want a box that has Sock Monkey paper and Llama/Alpaca washi tape.

And we won't even talk about my current obsession with washi tape. We won't talk about it at all. Not a bit. Not even about the 3mm washi tape that I buy. Nope.

I see the box every day when I go into my closet. And I think about the socks. And I can hardly wait for New Years Day. Of course, it has been a really warm summer so I haven't worn any wool socks for 3 months. But I still dream about them.

New Years Day is going to be so good.

It had better be because NYD 2017 saw me laid out on the couch trying to cough up a lung with the pneumonia.

2018 you had better be nicer.

Gauge Lies

I have been knitting for a while now. I am no stranger to the ways of the knitting Force. It is strong in me. Therefore you would think that I would know better than to cast on a sweater on a day when I was under the weather.

Did I tell you that I have been under the weather for the past few days? And by under the weather I mean that I produced a 103F temperature on Wednesday with a resulting cough that makes Chez Knit sound like a TB ward (HHBL is coughing too.) We went out to dinner with LaurenLeep and The Tech Guy on Wednesday and I remarked to myself as we were getting out of the car that I wasn't feeling quite "the thing" at that moment. You know those vague feelings of something not being quite right with your world but not sure what is wrong. Sort of like the lookouts on the Titanic right before the iceberg emerged.

Or not.

At any rate, dinner was fun as it always is. There was Italian food. There was wine. We laughed a lot. But every time that I got up to go to the bathroom, which was located in a rather chilly hallway, I was suddenly shivery. I sucked it up and persevered but the minute that we stepped out into the chilly night....I knew something was definitely wrong. Go home, dig out the digital ear thermometer, stick it in my ear and wait. You know you aren't going to like what it says when it takes an age to beep. 103F. How nice. 

So yesterday I wasn't feeling so up with things. In fact I spent the day in flannel pajama pants, a thing which I NEVER do. No really, I always get dressed in the morning. But yesterday I put on my flannel pj pants and my big old Star Wars sweatshirt and I spent the day on the couch, reading and watching the TV and knitting. You know you are really feeling bad when the thought of going to the basement to measure the swatch for the sweater you want to cast on is just too much effort.

But late in the afternoon I oozed my way down to the KnitCave and measured the swatch and Bang! spot on gauge. If the term "swatch" and "gauge" mean nothing to you, just know that a gauge swatch is a small or big (depending on how much patience you have) piece of knitted fabric using the needles and the yarn for your particular project. If the gauge is "off" that will mean that your knitted garment will not turn out to be the size that you were expecting. Think of all of the hilarious pictures you have seen of "boyfriend" sweaters that some hapless knitter produced without checking her gauge.

When knitting a sweater "gauge" is the mantra that we live by. It is the word that can mean smiles or tears depending on if you did your swatch and if you actually listened to what it was telling you. I did two swatches. The first one said to me in big bold letters, "YOU NEED TO GO UP A NEEDLE SIZE!" I listened intently, went up a needle size and the angels sang. So, in the midst of my fuzzy fever ridden day I decided that it was a good idea to cast on the sweater, which is using yarn that my MiL purchased for me in Lima. I can't get any more of this stuff and so I need to be sure that the sweater fits me, especially considering the fact that I am going to steek it. 

What is steeking you are asking yourself if you are not a knitter. Steeking means that I am going to DELIBERATELY cut my knitting right up the center. So counter intuitive to everything that we teach ourselves as knitters. But that is what the pattern calls for so I had better make sure that the size is spot on. Once the scissors do their job there will be no going back to reknit.

This is how far I got by the end of the evening. Oh how I love stranded colorwork. Knitting with two hands at the same time makes me feel like I can take on the entire world's issues and still have time for coffee and knitting. 

I am a knitter. Hear me roar!

The knitting was perfect. I felt like I had adulted a bit in an otherwise lying on the couch kind of day. But, there was that nagging, maybe there is a iceberg dead ahead feeling in the back of my brain. Looking at those perfectly done colorwork stitches, I just knew that the gauge was off.

But gauge swatches never lie, you are saying to yourself.

Oh yes, they do.

I know what some of you are thinking. You are thinking, "I bet she knit that gauge swatch flat, not in the round. That will mess with the gauge." You would be wrong. I did swatch in the round (an entirely fiddly process that makes my brain crazy.) The only thing that I can conclude is that perhaps the gauge was a bit off because I am knitting with both my left hand (my dominant knitting hand because I knit Continental) and my right hand (which always knits a bit tighter.) That is my story and I am sticking to it.

I woke up this morning and knew that I had to check the gauge on that sweater and sure enough, it was off. And then I had to make the painful decision to.......frog it. To be fair, I did not frog it completely because that would mean having to re-knit that blasted K1P1 ribbing at the bottom. I despise K1P1 ribbing and I wasn't going to knit that again. But I did pull out everything up to the first round of colorwork, a lesson in carefuly measured movements so that you don't pull out stitches that you didn't mean to pull out, which I did despite being careful. I put larger needles on the cables and then had to go through the tedious task of getting all of the stitches back on the needles and fixing any mistakes I made when picking up stitches. I am not going to explain that last statement to those who are not knitters because I can already see your eyes glazing over. It was tedious and there might have been some language involved that I am not going to share with you.

Just know that in about an hour I am going to back to where I was when I so happily went to bed last night.

Just remember boys and girls. 

Gauge lies.

I Love A Good Mystery

Let's talk 2016 shall we. Specifically lets talk socks.

I know, a post two days in a row. Try not to have a heart attack or anything. I am trying my best to get back in the swing of things blogically speaking.

As many may know, I live to knit socks. Oh I knit a boat load of other things as well, sweaters, baby blankets, Christmas ornaments, the odd toy, shawls, mittens. But what I really love to knit are socks. In fact, that is why I took up knitting again after a 30+ year hiatus. I read a book about why people knit, this one in fact, and I had this overwhelming urge to knit my own socks. I hadn't knit in 30 years and when I decided to knit again I had to pick one of the harder things to knit. I had knit only oddly shaped scarves and one amazingly scary blanket with dubious gauge and amazingly ugly colors. I have it still, tucked away so I can bring it out occasionally just to remind myself how far I have come. Thank goodness for the internet and plethora of knitting books because that is how I taught myself to knit socks. There was a LYS (Local Yarn Shop for the not in the know) in my old little town but the proprietor, rather than being enthusiastic about helping a very new knitter, said she would help, if I paid her $15/hour for the privilege. She is notorious for such behavior. I shall not name her.

Thanks but I think I can figure it out on my own.

Over the years I have knit a lot of socks, 100+ pair by my reckoning, although they are not all reflected in my Ravelry projects page. I occasionally just forget to put them up there. However, over the past several years, as my sock yarn stash has morphed into something that needs its own room grown I found that it became more and more difficult to actually pick the yarn for the next sock to go onto the needles. I would have sock yarn paralysis as I would stand in front of the closet of wooly goodness and scratch my head at what to pick next.

Hmmmmm, there might be a fair number of skeins of sock yarn on that shelf. I am not saying HOW many but trust me when I say......if I never purchased another skein of yarn for socks, I might be able to knit for the next 10 years and be satisfied.

And we KNOW that it is a pie in the sky dream that I am never going to buy another skein of sock yarn. Sock yarn calls to me like fame calls to the Kardashians. It cannot be denied.

So in 2015, to give my sock knitting mojo a boost, I came up with an idea. What if I picked out twelve skeins of sock yarn, wound them up into the center pull balls that I love, and then stuck them individually into plain brown paper bags, stapled the bags shut and then had my own mystery sock yarn thing going.

Oh my gosh I loved it. I average a pair of socks a month that come off the needles so every month it was like the anticipation would build, knowing that I was going to be able to open a new bag and see what I would be knitting with. On each plane trip we took this year (Arizona twice, Florida twice) I would wait until I was ON the plane before opening the bag to see what I would be casting on as the small tube of metal hurtled down the runway.

The whole mystery sock yarn thing was so fun that I am doing it again this year. Here are the yarns that will be waiting for discovery over the course of 2016. I do not know what patterns I will use, I leave that up to the little gray cells to figure out after the bag has been opened. Some of the skeins of yarn are from indie dyers both local and off of Etsy (which is a REALLY dangerous place if you love sock yarn), some are basic sock yarn purchased at a big box store, some have come from travels far and near.

By December 31st they will all be encased in their plain brown wrappers, just waiting to be revealed.

I can hardly wait.

And, just because I know you are dying to know, here is a sampling of what sockiness came off of the needles this year.

Quit While I’m Ahead.

Or to put it another way….

I was completely wrong about the yarn.

Just about a year ago, as I was rooting around in a cupboard at work, I found a discarded sweater. It belonged to no one. It wasn’t a style I was going to use. It was obviously wool. What would any self respecting knitter do?

She would bring it home and unravel it to repurpose the yarn of course.

That is what I did. The yarn has been sitting in my stash just waiting for the right project. I knew it would have to wait until the weather cooled because, it just isn’t all that much fun to knit on a wool sweater in the middle of summer. Call me crazy but sweaty hands and sweaty wool are not a great thing. But even though the weather has been warmer than usual for November, I felt that it was time to break out the reclaimed yarn and make something beautiful out of it.

I had already determined that the yarn was Worsted Weight and yes it was wool. You can tell if a yarn is wool, or at least a large percentage of wool, by taking a piece of it and lighting one end on fire. FIRE!!!! If it turns to ash as it burns and actually the flame goes out fairly quickly, it is wool. If it melts like the dickens….man made fiber.

By the way, just as your PSA for the day….do not do the burn test in the house. You think it will be OK but it will not. Wool yarn that you are testing smells like burning hair. BUT burning acrylic doesn’t burn, it melts, and sometimes it melts very quickly and hotly and drops onto the ground….or your floor. Do this OUTSIDE.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blather.

SO, I had the pattern all picked out. Nothing elaborate, just a simple sweater. I started my first (of three swatches) and had my first realization.

This is VERY scratchy wool. Don’t get me wrong, some wool is very scratchy. It is the nature of some wools to be like the woman behind the counter at Walmart on the day after Christmas. Scratchy and there is nothing you can do about it.

Then I realized that the yarn was not fun to knit with. I am being kind here. It was like a continual struggle with a thin rope of two year old child. You want it to do one thing. It is screaming at you at the top of it’s little wooly lungs and refusing to do what you want. Repeatedly. I knit, washed and blocked three swatches and I still couldn’t get gauge. It is not all that often that I cannot get gauge after THREE swatches. Sorry for the knitspeak. All that means is if I knit the sweater with the needles that I knit the swatch with I would have had a coat and not a sweater. A very scratchy coat that I was beginning to think might not be a good idea.

But being the person that I am, and being the fact that the yarn cost me nothing…..nothing except tears of frustration as I wrestled with it, I persevered. I gathered my supplies and I cast on during the Ohio State game last Saturday.

I managed to make it through one repeat of 12 rows and I could sense that I had made a mistake. Not a mistake in my knitting. No, I had made a mistake in the nature and essence of this yarn. This yarn was a vile and evil beast of ropey wool that would not be tamed. It was almost impossible to knit in my regular swift style. Each stitch was like climbing the mountain of knitting pain. By the time that Baylor lost to Oklahoma on Saturday evening I knew that this yarn was not long destined for my stash world. I made it through a second repeat of 12 rows and called it quits. Yes folks, I knit only 24 rows and a boat load of increases before I threw the knitting down in disgust (or it might have been disgust at the way Baylor was playing) and called it quits.

We are not dating.

We are not even seeing each other anymore.

 Ugly wool yarn you are dead to me! Off to Goodwill you go where someone else can find you and love you.

It will not be me.

The yarn for my sweater arrives on Thursday. Well, I had to buy yarn for the sweater! I didn’t have just the right yarn in my stash.

Stop looking at me and shaking your head.

I don’t see just the right yarn for my sweater in there, do you?

I didn’t think so.