Lesson learned

The other day, I was fishing through one of my craft cubbies (don't we all have those?) and I dislodged my embroidery scissors. I didn't really hear them land, but I didn't think about it. When I went to retrieve them, I found this:

Boy, am I ever glad that my foot wasn't there. That's a wooden floor it's buried in. That's not good.

So, now I am a bit (lot) more careful with what I am doing with my scissors in storage. I am aware that if they fall, they're potentially horrific stabbing devices.

And that's what silence looks like

In truth, not much knitting has happened since last I wrote. Sure, I chugged away on the dark blue socks, but they're apparently mistake-magnets for me. Don't know why. But I have unpicked them more than I have any other project in a long time.

So, no news but I felt like saying that I am still alive.

Maybe I'll make myself a penguin sweater in green and black and white (with a little tiny ugly patch of pink)

At the risk of being too too terribly Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, I offer you an image of the sock I on which I am currently working. The image is not so much meant to impress you with the quality or quantity of sock in it but with the background. It's supposed to illustrate how very travel-y I've been. That spike in the distance is the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, under which a number of Frenchmen were decapitated during the French Revolution. The sock and I were both resting in the lovely comfy chairs provided in Parisian parks. I do like those reclining chairs. I started that day in a different city and finished it in a different country, but I had a very nice lunch in the Tuilleries, so once in a while the travel offers its own reward.

But only once in a while.

My travel schedule, by the way, continues apace for the next few weeks, so I am not likely to return to daily posting for some time. I am, however, likely to finish one pair of socks.

A nice run while it lasted

Oh, well. I couldn't keep up with the internets while I was travelling. That's the way it goes some times.

I have been knitting that sock. Photos to follow. However, I've been doing a LOT of unpicking on it, too. Like, more than I think is normal. Too tired, I guess. It's the third time I'm knitting this pattern. I should be able to manage it, don't you think?

Socks again

Yes, I went and got another skein of sock yarn and I plan to turn it into another pair of ricks. They're so comfy. And good travelling knitting. It's what I gotta do.

Late & irregular posts will be the norm for the next little while, most likely.

A thousand and one words

I generally don't do much to a photograph after I've taken it. Once the shutter has opened and closed, I consider most of my task complete.

One thing I will do to post-process, especially when photographing knitting is to crop the picture. As my somewhat limited abilities go in the world of photography, I think that framing is a key part of the package. With cropping, you can re-frame to change the dynamism, remove unwanted visual clutter, or just plain old clarify the object of the picture. Plus, it's fast and not complicated.

My shallow depth-of-field lens is a 50mm fixed-length jobbie. Get yourself one. It will only set you back $100-$150. You can take a lovely, artistic image of any (stationary) object in just about any light. However, the fixed focal length means that framing isn't easy. Especially because the nearest focal length is something on the order of 1/2 a metre. I want to take this picture (from yesterday),

but instead I have to take this picture:

I cannot get any closer to the thing and have it in focus. That is the maximum amount of space the swatch can occupy.

I admit, I like them both. But one is a picture of knitting an the other is just art. You only see the shape in the real, uncropped picture. You don't see the knitting. Since I was trying to show images of knitting yesterday, the cropped photo was the choice I made. If I were trying to express something ... enigmatic (but not to do with the craft of knitting), I would be better off choosing the uncropped.

A thousand words?

This is what the dull grey swatch (which I took off the needles last night) looks like:

If I work it, work it, work it, I can take a picture that looks like this:

More attractive, sure. Still dull and grey. I think that photographing knitting with a very (very) short depth of field is a sure-fire way to get an attractive picture. It's a cliche by now, to be sure, but there is a reason why people take arty pictures of their knitwork in this fashion. It draws in the eye to the detailed stitchery and yet you still get the impression of all of that luscious, fluffy out-of focus stuff.

The other option I have is to frame it interestingly or position it interestingly (we're letting it be a given that the dull grey thing itself is manifestly NOT interesting).

The final thing I might do is to give it a really lovely background. That option wasn't available to me this morning, but I thought I'd mention it here as another way things that are dull as ditchwater can be used to generate photographs you'd want to look at.

Grey, dull, grey

The swatch is still dull and grey, but I've knit a few more centimetres. I'm thinking hard about whether or not this will be a good travel project. On the one hand, it's a good candidate because it's straightforward and there will be a lot of knitting to be done (it's small-gauge). On the other hand, I'm using a cone of yarn, not balls, and that can be awkward to carry, especially when there are lots of other things that I'd like to have close to hand like computers and so forth that are a very different shape.

Thinking, thinking.

What else is there, though? I could nip out and get another ball of sock yarn to keep up the good sock travelling trick, but I feel like my feet are OK and summer is on its way. I'd like to have something on the go more appropriate.

I hope to be visiting some family, including some rather new family (under 12mo) and I could pop something off the needles for them EXCEPT that they're just about to move to Dallas, and I cannot believe that there is anything about knitted goods that fits in a Texan lifestyle, especially as summer rolls in.

Still thinking.

Spurred

I did crack out the ol' needles (which I think of as kneedles, since they're knitting needles and my propensities for conflationary typos are mighty) and start a swatch. For a boring sweater. A boring grey sweater. I need one. I need a boring grey sweater that I can wear over boring shirts and boring trousers at work. I need it to be a little bit warm, but not so warm that I regret it by the time the heat of the day kicks in at noon. I need it to be practical, not embarrassing and not particularly one thing or another. Just vanilla, please.

Actually, more like cinnamon, which is the spice that goes with so many foods it's hard to believe in. We occasionally discuss the two major food groups: "chocolate" and "salsa". This is sort of a way to separate the world into savoury and sweet foods, although there are a surprising number of things that are difficult to restrict to just one group. Anyway, cinnamon is definitely OK combined with chocolate and it's definitely OK combined with salsa. So, I'm looking for a cinnamon sweater, I guess.

Hopefully, its plain-ness will help it be a quick knit so I can move on to the next (interesting) thing in a hurry. You'll note that there are no photographs of the 10 or so rows of plain grey stocking stitch I managed before bed. Brace yourself for more no-photo posts. I guess we could have some very dull photo posts. There is this thing about being able to take something dull (like 10 rows of grey st st) and photograph it in a way that suggests it is the coolest most desirable thing around. It's not a skill I make claims to. Nonetheless, the blog is about skill-building and spurring. Watch this space ...

Uh oh

I shouldn't have gloated about posting every day for two solid months. Hubris. I learned about that in school. (I also knew someone who had a "hubris" key on his computer. It wasn't a key that secured his downfall through the proud assumption that he was better than the gods; rather it was a key that, when pressed, would type the whole word "hubris", saving him 5 keystrokes.) The well is pretty much dry. You may have noticed that I'm telling you about stuff I did ... a while ago.

I haven't been knitting much in the last little while. It comes and goes. I'm travelling again soon, and no doubt that will help churn some material out of the needles (although it's a lot of overnight flights, so I hope to be asleep rather than up all night knitting). But I don't have a plan for the travelling and I don't have much to tell you about in the interim.

That said, part of the purpose of keeping a blog and forcing myself to post every day is to spur me into action of some sort.

Spur, spur. Let's see what happens, eh?

Past actions, other

Another thing I did while this blog was asleep was to make "Owls" by Kate Davies. You knit it in really bulky yarn and I was knitting it while I was travelling and travelling within travelling, too (long transit rides between UBC and SFU, as a matter of fact) so it zoomed off my needles at a tremendous pace. I can't remember how few days it took, but it was definitely less than a week. Most of the torso was knit in a day; I had to stop knitting on the return bus trip because I had not brought the pattern with me on the assumption that several inches of tubular knitting would take longer than I had available (lesson learned!).

Update on the pits & bottom

The hairy armpits are partially pocketed. It's fussy work and I am not loving it. I suppose I would feel the same about weaving in the millions of ends. Some people just leave 'em. I wish I were some people. Nonetheless, here is a picture of the trimmed arm steek ends and pocketed cycle ends to prove that I haven't completely neglected my duties towards the finishing of this sweater.

I also fixed the base of the sweater. It's got a bottom which won't curl up, I think. I hope.

I have been wearing it, anyway, but I haven't blocked it yet, so I probably should hold off. Definitely.

Great lace coaster

I knit a little lace coaster. It took but an evening. It's from Marianne Kinzel's book (of course) and it's only one plain square of the deck of cards pattern. I obviously don't have the book close to hand, or I'd be more specific. Anyway, it's a fine little square and a quick knit.

I knit so tightly that it pulls a little to one side. I hope that the blocking will deal with that issue, but even if it doesn't who cares? It's going to be able to keep my glass separate from my bedside table, and that is all I ask of it.

Other paths

The other day, I was out of energy and generally feeling like crawling under the blankets (only, given my mood, calling them "blankies") and letting the day go by. I wanted to knit, but I didn't have the resources to actually make anything. I thought I would try my doily idea, but that fell through pretty quickly when I was looking at tiny stitches and tiny needles and tiny thread and trying to concentrate.

So, I got out some very bright sock yarn and opened up "Unexpected Knitting" by Debbie New.

That's a great book. That's a book that has a lot going for it. It lives up to its title completely. I haven't knit much from it, I have to admit. I made an ouroborus sweater for my (ever more handsome) nephew. It had an orange stripe and a variegated red background (ravelry link) and was mindbending to knit. I knit a calyx hat (also ravelry) and it, too, hurt my brain to get it going. Debbie New wants you to think, really think about what you're knitting.

But, at the same time, she's keen to go for really simple stuff, like garter stitch. I needed a bit of distraction but not a huge challenge and certainly not anything that mattered. Not a project; just a game. Debbie New came through for me in the form of what she calls "Labyrinth Knitting".

You knit things along very long bendy paths. You knit them in a way that the long bending paths are space-filling. The actual number of rows isn't large because the length of the row is huge. And there are a few practice blocks for people in my state who can't face thinking and yet want to be having fun doing.

This is a nice way to get colour into the mix. I returned to my bright orange and added some bright red and a bit of yellow. The colours are, I grant you, rather McColours, but I happen to like the way those brights go together and I wanted a striking effect.

I got it.

Now I want to think about what a larger sweater would look like. What would it be like to have a full-on fair isle pattern going? Probably pretty nice, I think. I think there might be an interesting and fun sweater in that.

TWO!! ha,.. ha ... ha!

I'm not the count from Sesame street, but I am chuffed with myself for managing to go two solid months posting every day. I am certainly not going to pretend that I'm posting much, but I'm posting often and that's better than can be said for the previous months.

Also, I made a mitten. It's got a thumb that is too short for its intended recipient and a fingertip-tip that is too pointy for its intended recipient, but I think that it's good enough to eventually be joined by another one. It was airplane knitting on that second journey.

It's a mitten with fingers. It's one of those glove-like things. Hard to describe (shoulda taken a picture, huh?). It's a fingerless glove only with a little pocket that flips over the fingerless fingers to make it into a closed mitten. Yes?

I don't mind the added fooferah of the fingers as much as I thought I would. Looking at the photographs in the pattern before starting, it really seemed as though I would be fussing with knitting little tubes for ages. However, the actual doing was nothing like that bad. It's only a few rows per finger and (of course) they whip by because there are relatively few stitches on the needles.

lace curtains

Hey! Guess what I finished that has nothing whatsoever to do with fair isle knitting? It's the rose leaf curtain design from "The First Book of Modern Lace Knitting" by Marianne Kinzel.

You want to know something about Ms Kinzel? She had a lot of blocking pins. A lot. I have a lot of blocking pins, and I can't keep up with her outrageous blocking pin demands. Thank heavens I have wires. And a generally lackadaisical attitude towards pointy picots.

Overall, I am pleased with this. I can't believe that I can generate a whole curtain from a single ball (actually, a little less) of DMC. That's unreal. I'm not used to using cotton, but I think I could get used to it, if that's normal. I find myself thinking of places we might be better off having a doily-ish object. This is silly. I'm not a doily-keeper and my house doesn't lend itself to doily-keeperage. But, now I'm thinking of the next thing and it might just be ... a doily!

past actions: overall

One thing that I really haven't learned is what colour the thing will appear to be overall. Which colours will absolutely catch the eye? I know that there is some colour theory and I was trying to work through the nice book by Margaret Radcliffe "The Essential Guide to Colour Knitting Techniques", but somehow the reality of a combination of colours is a surprise. There isn't actually all that much in the way of blue-grey and orange in the swatch I made with palette yarn. But, to me, it looks like there is an awful lot. And there is some quite nice straw colour going on, which gets turned into a not-nice orange when it's put near the orange-y ones or the red. The blue was a huge surprise. I think it was called "wallaby". On screen, it looked like a nice transition from green to grey. In reality it is horrible in combination with either.

Even the red, which I like very well, gets muddied and dragged down by the combination with the straws and oranges.

The photograph doesn't quite communicate what colour(s) the swatch appears to be. Somehow it isn't a combination of the colours I got. They are changed dramatically by their neighbours, and not just by their next-door neighbours. The flavour of the whole neighbourhood is important.

That was a learning experience, too.

past actions: stripes

One nice thing this exercise cemented in my brain is that I like the thing of having thick stripes and thin stripes. I think that works. In fact, I think it works to have a thick stripe effectively framed by two thin stripes. With a small-gauge yarn like this, I could have considered going so far as to frame with the same stripe (maybe inverted) above and below a wide strip. With the thick yarn I made my sweater with, that would be too much, but I think that it's rather a nice idea with fine yarn.

I like the stripes that are similar, but variants. I like that they're separated by something very different.

past actions: unsuccessful failure

I so desperately want this one to be better than it is. It's a pattern I like and a pair of colour sets that I like and I thought should compliment each other. When placed side-by-side, you wouldn't have any difficulty keeping them distinct. However, when they're all piled together like this it is just hopelessly muddy. Such a shame. Too dark, too similar, too brown.

past actions: successful failure

This one is a successful failure. I like a number of things about it, but I'd hate to incorporate it into an actual sweater. I like the colour flow of both the foreground and the background. I like the browns and the reds and how they set off the straw colours in the middle. I like the way the middle appears to be luminous because it flows from dark to light.

I don't like the way the pattern is completely muddy at the edge. There was a lot of action in the pattern out there at the peripheries, and you wouldn't know it at all looking at this picture. I don't like the way the straw colour takes over. I like the browns and reds better than the straw colour & I'd like them to be a little better shown than they are with that scene-stealer.

past actions: success 5

This one, despite being rather pale and slightly difficult to resolve, I like. (I like, with reservations the orange to the south, too, but let's focus on the grey one here.)

Somehow the colour distinction is enough for the edges to seem to me to be something fluffy rather than muddy. I don't think that this is merely a matter of it being a light shade. I think that the grey/pale yellow match-up is distinctive but subtle.

I like the way it gets darker and more distinct at the centre, too.

past actions: success 4

Did I mention that I liked the dark brown/green stripe to the south of the previous pattern? I do. I think this one showed me, among other things, that a short burst can work well. Even with colour changing over only 2 colours, it can be a good thing and work. I also like the effect of the hard stripe boundary.

past actions: success 3

I really like this one. It's got good colour flow, it's an old standby pattern that I think works well. The foreground and background are clearly delineated. I think it's good. I also think it's complemented better by the brown-background pattern to the south than it is by the pale-background pattern to the north.

I like the way the colours in the background flow, but I wouldn't want actually to wear something those colours. I'll return to that idea later.

I like the foreground colours, though. Can't say enough about that deep, rich brown and mellow wine-dark red.

past actions: success 2

This one I think is actually good. There is enough contrast between the colours to see every line in the pattern, but there isn't that bright colour contrast stealing the show. I like the wine-coloured red and the way it melds with the browns.

I don't much like the actual pattern itself, but that's not important. I was working with colour, here.

Past actions: success 1

This brown stripe is one of the ones I think worked well. It goes from a very dark brown and a light grey to a paler brown and an orange-y yellow. I like the combination and I think the colour flow is nice and smooth. Even with the orange-y yellow, which doesn't run smoothly, I think it works as a central stripe.

I guess that's a good lesson for me: a single incongruous stripe down the centre of the pattern isn't the end of the world; it can be nice, even.

Another of the things I think make this pattern work well is the fact that the contrast between each pair is strong enough that it's possible to see the pattern the whole way through. All too often (examples to follow), I ended up with pretty colour flow but a mushy mess when it came to the patterns.

I also like those browns. I like brown in ways that I didn't 15 years ago. That's neither here nor there, but I was aiming for brown-ness with these yarns & it's good to know that I did achieve it once in a while.

Past actions, transitions

One thing that I really want from a nice fair isle sweater is a good, smooth flow of colour from one shade to the next. My original sweater is not of that ilk: it has 2-colour stripes. But I like the look of the smooth colour flow and I wanted to try my hand at making it happen.

I had purchased a lot (for me) of palette yarn from Webs. I chose the colours from the website (of course) which has the disadvantage that you can't hold two strands up to each other, so they might not actually run as smoothly one to the other as it appears from the computer screen.

That said, I did have some success. I thought I'd write a little bit more about that over the next few days.

Past Actions

A year or so ago, I tried ordering a large-ish quantity of wool from Webs, the online yarnseller. They speciallise in some 100% wool called Valley Yarn, which seemed pretty much perfect for fair isle. It comes in lots of colours (Palette) and it's hairy enough that it should double-strand nicely.

Over several weeks, I tried a few things with it, including learning how to two-strand and pick at once. And I tried some colourwork patterns. I'll spend some time telling you about it, maybe.

Anything else?

I've been working on a big slow project that may be finished soon. I've been making a lace curtain for the smallest window in the house. I actually started it before this blog re-boot, so it's very much a grandfathered project. It's nothing to do with fair isle, but neither are socks.

Except, of course, that anything I'm knitting does affect everything else that I am knitting, if only because while I knit the curtains, I am not knitting the next fair isle project. Or the latest, either. While I knit socks, I am not working on fixing the cuffs of my sweater.

Still, it's a pretty thing and I'm glad to have worked on it. I'm not sure whether or not I will ever make another lace curtain. It is a lot of making for something which either will look a bit kitschy or will look like something one could have bought for way less than my hourly salary X the number of hours I spent on it. I knit to learn, I guess.

Storm Shadow

I now have the ends of two skeins of Tanis Fibre Arts yarn: one is in the colourway "Storm" and the other is in the colourway "Shadow". Although, if pressed, I would have guessed the other way around, "Shadow" is the paler partner. They look as though they would, together, make something beautiful, if only I could think of what it should be. At the moment, I am thinking of rather small stripey socks. I might be able to get another skein in a different colourway and make a pretty baby sweater. Something, anyway. So lovely a combination should be celebrated.

Travel socks

I've called them "rickrack" because they're a) the pattern Rick from Cookie A's book "Sock Innovation" and b) replete with 90-degree angle turns, like rickrack ribbon.
I like the colourway. It's "shadow" from Tanis Fibre Arts, photograph a coupla days ago. It's a pleasant grey-light-blue combination.

They were great to work on while travelling. I figured out how to kitchener without a tapestry needle (because I think that will still get removed from your on-board luggage), so I was nearly done by the time I got home. They passed pleasingly quickly, especially given that I knit them throw-style because I like my socks good and tight and I know that my throw gauge is much tighter than my pick gauge.

I made this pair a couple of repeats longer than the first pair. I knew from experience that there was absolutely no reason to worry about running out of yarn. And I knew from experience that I prefer socks slightly longer than your average pattern offers.

sucking it up, mk. 2

The bottom of the sweater is in need of a re-do. I haven't re-done it, but it's time for me to, once again, suck it up and do it right. The sweater is (potentially) lovely, and I shouldn't let one bit of it be crappy. It is very hard now that it's (mostly) done, though. I would prefer it to stay done.

I'd like it to be flat like that. But it's only flat like that if I'm actively holding the edge down off-screen. Sigh. Sucking.

Another picture

Here is a picture of the skein of yarn I used to make the second pair of Rick socks. It's light blue, I would say. I like that colourway a lot, and I like Tanis fibre arts' yarn a lot, but I think the next pair of socks I make will be a single colour.

A picture

Here is a picture of the 4-stitch-wide pocket over the ends of my strands of knitting on the arms of the sweater I recently finished (except that I haven't actually finished all of the pockets, yet.

Oh, geez, pictures soon

You know, I just noticed how long it's been since I last put a picture on this site. Whoops. I mean for it to be visually interesting, really, I do. But lately my camera and I haven't been bonding. It's been dark or if it hasn't been dark, I've been thinking that I'd rather be out in the sun than in a sunny window taking photos. I know, it's all very well, this "posting every day" thing, but it's a bit of a poor show to post without images for weeks. Sorry. Pictures. I'll get right on that.

Am I the only one whose urge to take snaps ebbs and flows? Surely not.

What next, next?

Much as I have enjoyed the sock knitting (and I have), I need another project now. I will soon return to travel mode, so at the very least I need something to keep my hands occupied while the earth rolls by beneath me.

I don't want it to be a big, elaborate thing (for the reasons stated earlier), but I don't want it to be another pair of Ricks, either. I am obsessive and compulsive but not insane.

Mittens? I like the idea of making 2-colour lovely things, but two balls of yarn on the plane and all the fuss and bother of thumbs... it seems like trickiness.

Baby garments? My friends and relations have been squeezing out a few of late. Perhaps I should share my knitting with others. Again, with the fussiness, but then I have added motivation of wanting to finish before the thing gets to be, say, pubescent.

A big, unelaborate sweater?

Lace? There's plenty of that to be made out of a single skein or ball.

Don't know. Need to choose soon.

Working socks

The work that I travel for is often shift work, and sometimes, when I'm feeling nice & like the people I'm sharing the shifts with are people I want to be generous towards, I take the attitude that since I've come from a time zone 4 hours earlier, it's easier for me to take shifts that are crappy (like midnight to 8 AM) than it is for the locals. On the other hand, sometimes I take the attitude that I've done my share of those crappy shifts and some young thing with something to prove (possibly involving machismo) should take a turn.

Anyway, I took my turn to do the night shift and I used some of it to knit. The work is periodic and, for the most part, a matter of being watchful, rather than active. It's ideal for knitting. Better yet, the particular place I was working on this occasion has at least on other knitter. It's nice to know, at 3 AM, that there might be someone else knitting in the building.

I finished sock one on the night shift. I even grafted the toe up, without the use of a tapestry needle. I hadn't brought one, and it wasn't necessary. I started the next sock almost immediately. I did stop after I'd got to the end of the cuff. But that is one heck of a productive night.

I have a colleague who brings knitting or crocheting to every meeting she attends. That way, she says, the meeting is guaranteed to be productive. I wish I had the nerve to do that. I wish I could concentrate on the meeting as well as the knitting, but I know I can't and I know that the knitting would win. And I'd lose my job. And rightly so.

Instead, I will occasionally knit in caught moments between monitoring things on the night shift and celebrate a done sock in the darkest hours before dawn.

Aeroplane socks

The bad thing about a long flight is that it's a long flight. I live on the Atlantic ocean and for one reason or another, I get on aeroplanes and fly to the Pacific ocean more than once per year. I agree, it's not the right way to live in this day and age. It should, definitely, be possible for me to conduct collaborative activities without crossing the continent. Mine is not a line of work that intrinsically requires the burning of vast quantities of liquified former dinosaurs. Except that it turns out that I take a lot of long flights for my work.

The good thing about a long flight is that it's a long period of time without the usual interruptions of work as we now know it. There isn't really an in-flight equivalent of checking your email every 3 minutes. Some people find long flights to be the ideal time to catch up on work. I don't. I am tired and stressed and easily distracted and, furthermore, I like to have a lot of space to about which to spread whatever it is that I'm working on. This isn't an option on an aeroplane. I could, and sometimes do, take advantage of being tired and, at the same time, stuck in a seat for several hours, and just sleep the whole way. I find myself less and less able to manage that, though. I don't know what it is about an older body that makes it less willing to conk out in public, but whereas I used to sleep like a baby the instant we were in the air, I am now usually awake from take-off to touchdown.

On my most recent long flight across the continent, I mostly knit. I live in not-the-centre-of-the-universe, and so therefore almost always need to stop somewhere in the middle of the continent and change planes. That's OK, but it slightly interrupts the knitting rhythm. On the most recent flight, I was so engrossed in my knitting that I got a little worried when we landed and actually spent a good chunk of the stopover reading instead of knitting. I thought (for once) that my wrists could use a break.

The sock is a fantastic travel project. People are not kidding when they say that. It's small and therefore portable. It has large stretches of leg and foot which are basically interruptible. It has punctuating moments of counting and trickiness about the heel. Yes, it's better if you have a tape measure**, but if you don't it's not the end of the world if you need to try the sock on. The only disadvantage of the sock is that it is finite. I came bloody close to finishing the first Rick just on the flight out.

I was hoping to have this pair of socks be the project I took on two trips, but I think it will end up being the project for only one.

** I didn't bring a tape measure with me, and I was kicking myself because the instructions call for the heel flap to be knit until it is 2.5 inches long. But then I worked out something so clever I feel I must share it with you. I was working from a photocopy of the pattern; the photocopy was on standard letter paper (the north american standard, that is). Letter paper is 8.5 X 11 inches. 11 inches - 8.5 inches is actually 2.5 inches. So, all I needed to do was to make a diagonal (45 degree) fold on the sheet to make the bottom align with a side. Where the other side crossed the page was now 2.5 inches below the top. So handy!

Snow socks

I admit it, sock knitting happened before I left home. There was snow, and time, and ... well, one thing led to another and there I was with a well-started sock on my hands. In my hands, actually. My rhythmically moving hands. My rhythmically moving, yarn-weilding hands.

What is it about knitting? Why can I do it for hours and hours? Why do I find it so difficult to set it down in the middle of a row? Why does time travel differently when string is being turned into fabric?

Why isn't blogging like that?

Socks, all the time, socks!

As mentioned before, I have some travelling to do & I wanted a small, portable project for the long hours in airports and on planes.

I've got some nice light blue/grey wool from Tanis fibre arts. The last time I had wool from her, it was the lovely colourway storm (which is dark blue/grey). What I did with it was to knit up a pair of Ricks from Cookie A's book "Sock Innovation".

This time, I un-skeinned the yarn and had a look at the patterns for socks I had on hand. I admired a number of other socks in the Cookie A book, but in the end, I opted to make another pair of Ricks. I do like them. They're an ideal combination of easy and difficult. They've got payoff for handknitting (you get socks that have mirror symmetry) and I know that they fit.

Designing decisions

I made short little pouffy cuffs at the collar and wrists of this sweater because that's what I like. I didn't want a big focal point at those places. I don't want a big focal point at the hips, but if I made a little pouffy cuff there, it would end up being a focal point. What I want is something that can anchor the fabric and make it not curl. I also want something that can act as a frame to the patterning of the sweater.

I want, therefore, something short, plain (not corrugated ribbing, say), but structurally significant.

My first try was a few rows of rib in needles several sizes smaller than the body of the sweater had been made. I also decreased by a stitch, but that was just to settle the even/odd problem. But that popped out at the bottom, worryingly, as though it might not be dedicated to the task of holding the end up. I thought about letting the problem get solved in blocking, but instead, I think the right thing to do will be to un-pick it and replace it with something tighter.

I haven't yet decided if I should get rid of some stitches & stay with this needle dimension or keep the large stitch count and reduce the needle size. I suspect that I am near the limit of what varying needle size can accomplish. Eventually, the bulk of the yarn makes the decisions. So, I guess I'll reduce the number of stitches by some reasonable amount, say, 5%.

What next?

Like all red-blooded knitters staring down the barrel of an almost-finished project, I keep finding my mind turning to what's next.

This fair isle thing has been a blast and a half and I should start the next thing soon before I've forgotten all of the good lessons I learned. However, I am going to be travelling a fair bit in the next little while (for work, all you would-be housebreakers -- only one member of my household will be away) and I would like to have a little portable project to take with me.

I have knit a few pairs of socks (all designed by Cookie A) and enjoyed that. I didn't think that I would, given that it's a lot of work for something I don't want to stand out. But I do understand the pleasure of a compact project. I understand the delight of a nice bit of architecture (and what is a heel if not architecture?). I also, now, know the fabulous warmth of woollen, well-fitting socks.

I have a pair of socks worth of yarn waiting in the wings, too. That helps.

However, I think I'd better return my brain to the project at hand. That really, really, really wants finishing. I really, really, really want to be able to walk around wearing that sweater. I'm itching for it to be on. Must stop blogging. Must start knitting.

Hooray! Error fixed.

After I'd got my brain around the problem, it turned out that I could in fact manage to fix the stitches that had escaped from the bottom. It was tricky to remember what a stitch should look like upside down, and trickier still to reconstruct the ones that were lost over two rows and two colours. But I'm a pro, right? (Wrong.)

However, I am pleased to announce that the stitches are so very convincingly re-introduced that I can no longer remember which ones they were.

That is all. Today is a busy day.

Hooray! A month! Boo! ANOTHER error.

I have posted every day since January 11. Yey for me.

When I went to pick up the stitches for the cuff at the hips (those that I had casually put onto a holder when I started, to avoid designing at the outset), I discovered that a few of the stitches had come free. URK! Many, many days had gone by since I started. The sweater had been swung all around the place, it had been tried on a few times, and it had been stretched and squished and stored. Apparently, the knot holding the scrap yarn became undone in all of that turmoil.

In retrospect, I am lucky that so few stitches became free.

But I must say that fixing up from the bottom up, being something I don't have much experience with, is much harder than picking up from the top down.

Sucking it up.

Sometimes I think that the only difference between fine work and rough work is the willingness of the maker to go back and correct mistakes.

I spent several hours fixing a slight problem in the second sleeve. It wasn't a big mistake; I had skipped a row when I was picking up so there was a little bit of pull or curve on the outer fabric of the sleeve. I easily could have left it and hoped that I could flatten it out in the blocking.

But instead, I sucked it up and unpicked back to a point safely before the mistake. I then started the pocket knitting again, picking up much more carefully than I had been.

My opening statement is of course an oversimplification. There is such a thing as skill. There is practice and learning and style and technique. But at any level of actual skill, there is a range of workmanship. That range, I think, comes from what I would call "care", because it depends on how willing the worker is to suck it up and fix errors.

Second sleeve

I took better photos of the start of the second sleeve. I had 8 stitches on a scrap-yarn holder. The row after I knit that one, I started 8 new stitches of steek (which have already been cut in the photo below).

I knit those 8 stitches in the usual way, except the last stitch I knit together with the first pick-up on the side. And when I came round to the beginning I knit the last stitch on the edge together with the first of the held stitches. This helps to keep away those gaping holes that sometimes appear at corners.
I then did a round of pick-up-and-knit. It's different from pick up, in that you don't really put the picked up stitches onto the needles (as I did with the 8 held stitches, above).

You simply stick the point of the needle through the stitch you're picking up and knitting from. For my sleeves, that was the torso-side loop of the first (or last) steek stitch. None of the steek stitches are visible on the outside of the finished sweater.
And then you bring the yarn around as though you're knitting in the usual way (except that there is only one needle involved).
And then you've got a stitch.

My stitches occupy slightly more space than my rows (if I knit 25 st by 25 rows, it'll be wider than it is tall), so I needed to pick up fewer stitches than the full number of rows available. I worked out what I thought was a nice pattern, with even spacing between the rows skipped, but no skipped rows at vulnerable points like the shoulder top or armhole corners.

This is the first time I've done the calculation of where to pick up stitches and how many I should have. For previous sweaters, when I've picked up stitches at the shoulders, I have picked up every stitch and then been slightly surprised at how the sleeves puff up a bit. These shoulders (while not being perfect) don't have the puffy problem.

What is in a name?

You may have noticed that I've been labelling the posts about my pink and green (and black and grey) sweater "Blomidon". You may not have noticed it. Whatever.

Blomidon is a place. It's a peninsula on the west coast of Nova Scotia. Better yet, it's that curly bit that sticks into the Bay of Fundy from the right side. It's also staggeringly beautiful. The beaches are a rich red.

(There is a jumpy bug in that picture. Can you spot it?)

At low tide, there is a lot of pink beach. It's so pink, and the beaches are so huge at low tide, that you can see it from space. Or from Google maps, anyway. The Bay of Fundy has some of the most dramatic tides in the world. Blomidon is a wonderful place to watch it because beside the glorious stretches of red sand beach, there are exquisite red cliffs.

The cliffs are topped with lush green growth. And they are elegantly striated with clay.

Occasionally, a gigantic boulder will tumble onto the beach (remember that the huge tidal forces of the Bay of Fundy tear into the cliffs twice a day) and you can see how nice the greys and pinks look.

So, clearly this sweater is a Blomidon sweater. I didn't choose the colours to make it so, I just selected what I could from the yarn store's selection. I like the way it ended up being about one of the prettiest places in my neck of the woods, though.

Trying it on

I meant to say the other day when I was showing pictures of the first try-on, that I am also pleased with the way things look at the join. I had a bit of uncertainty about whether or not I should do the whole top pattern or only half (which is where the torso ended). But I'm very glad that it's the whole thing; it looks right, especially given the way the top of the shoulders are joined.

I'll also draw to your attention the fact that you can't see the "shirt collar" envelope holding the steek ends from the sides of the neck.

Did I mention that I'm pleased? Because I am. Pleased. Yes.

Hairy armpits

I believe I have already shown you what the sleeve looked like at the join.

That is a lot of loose ends. It makes for a messy, hairy armpit. Every time I change yarn colour there are two ends (the beginning of the new and the end of the old). That's true on the sleeve, and that's true on the torso. And then there are all of the steeked rows on top of that.
I needed to do something about all of those ends! So, when I finished the sleeve, I knit the cuff. I made it in the same manner as the neckline, knitting 9 rows of k1p1 ribbing ending on a row where I k2tog with the stitch 9 rows earlier. Then I cast off, but not all the stitches. I left 4 stitches on the needle so I could make a little envelope.
But I couldn't hope to incorporate all of the hairy loose ends in the envelope with them flopping about willy-nilly. So I tied them off (in pairs, as usual, although this time, it was the start/finish pairs). Then I carefully clipped the hairs to manageable lengths.
And then, all that was left was to knit the envelope.

Oh, yes. And the other sleeve. That thing.