Questions

While thinking of various projects and possibilities, I have come up with some questions for which I have no answers. As I puzzled and puzzed about who could help me, I thought to ask you, my readers, if any of you have the answers. So, here are my questions, and if you know an answer or have an idea, please leave a comment. Thanks!

Question 1: Can a felted piece of knitting be cut with a scissors into pieces without unraveling? Could I knit a big rectangle, felt it to its felting limit, and then cut it like I would a piece of fabric before sewing? I would think this is possible, but I am unsure. I really, really want this to be possible.

Question 2: M gave me this lovely tea-for-one with blueberries on it.



As I was drinking herbal blueberry tea from it (yeah, yeah, nauseatingly cute, deal with it) yesterday evening while knitting the second gingerbread cable sock, I thought how much I would like a sock yarn with the colors in my tea-for-one. I don't know of any company that makes a blue-white-green variegated sock yarn. Do you?

Question 3: You may remember from the official 2007 Molecular Knitting State of the Stash post that I have over 2000 yards of Lamb's Pride worsted in Periwinkle. I want to knit a sweater with it, most likely cabled, and I am on the search for patterns. Many that I have found use either a regular worsted or a bulky weight yarn, and swatching has yielded unfavorable results. Why can't I find any patterns in a heavy worsted/aran weight? Where are they? Please, please, let me know! I don't want to have to try to knit Victorian Lace Today in heavy worsted. I also don't yet feel up to designing a whole sweater (I've only knit 2: a patterned gansey-like sweater and a cable-rib cardigan).

These are my current questions. If you have an answer, please let me know! Tomorrow: one mitt down, one to go.

The State of the Stash

Wendy and her friend L-B have christened 2007 the year of "Knitting from Stash." They have set up some very flexible ground rules, and they have invited anyone who wishes to thin out their own stash to join them. I won't officially join the Knitting from Stash movement, because unlike Wendy, who writes about a "stash room," I have a stash tupperware crate. But in the interests of record keeping, and because it is an article of the Molecular Knitting Constitution, I present, The State of the Stash. Don't laugh.

Since sock yarn doesn't count toward Wendy and L-B's stashes, I won't show you that. Instead, let us survey the yarns I have purchased with lace in mind. I took this photo in natural light, and I thought my camera was set for that, but all the reds/fuschias are WRONG. But, anyway, it's dark now, so we shall make do.


The green, conspicuous by being the only yarn not red, purple or blue, is Sea Silk in Sunlit Glade. That was a special color in a kit from Colorsong Yarn. I have 2 skeins of it and no intention of actually knitting the pattern from the kit, I just liked the color. Above is Frog Tree fingering weight suri alpaca in bright red, which I bought because I am a sucker for red yarn. I have about 1000 yds. Nestled next to it is a cake of Jaegerspun Zephyr in Admiral (1100 yds) and a skein of Schaefer Anne in Blue Violets (560 yds). The big Merino Lace skein in the middle is actually fuschia in color and not red (1000 yds). Next to it are two skeins of Knitpicks Shimmer in Happy Dance and Morning Fog (5 skeins total--I can knit a shawl for California) and a skein of Knitpicks Shadow in Vineyard. The ball at the bottom is Sea Silk in Berry. I think we can safely say that I am primed to knit lace. I've told myself that I have to start a lace scarf from Victorian Lace Today this week, as I joined the VLT KAL when it first started. The berry Sea Silk is heading for the needles! I mean that, really.

For yarns that I have in sweater amount quantities, you may start to see a color theme in my yarn purchaing.

Upper left is Berroco Ultra Alpaca in Cardinal, a Christmas gift, so it must get knit up this year. It is for a seed stitch jacket that I may start to knit as soon as I finish the Landscape Shawl. All WIPs and no FOs makes Brenda an anxious knitter. To the right of that is a skein of Cascade 220 for a brocade jacket that very faithful readers may remember me mentioning back in the dawn of time (the color is better in the link back). Next is the evil Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in Cottonball that completely failed to maintain gauge back in November. All is now frogged. And on the delicate subject of frogging, the Lamb's Pride Bulky in Raspberry and Worsted in Periwinkle saw significant frogging today. Gone are two sweater backs and one front. I have about 2000 yds of each, so I'm thinking big and probably cables, but I haven't gotten any farther than that. I love the raspberry color, it's such a deep red. Finally, I found 1400 yds of Bryspun Kid 'n' Ewe, which I bought about 5 years ago cause I liked it. I need a project for it. It really is a lovely dark red-purple that looks like total garbage in the photo (sigh).

There are a few single skeins in my stash and a couple of specialty yarns I've shown you earlier, but otherwise, the above is pretty much it. I look best in cooler rather than warmer colors, but I think I may be a little heavy into the red-blue-purple yarn. I may need to buy some pale yellow yarn as an antidote. No, I won't be limiting myself to just stash, but I will be knitting a lot of red.

Alice Starmore and Citrus

First up, if you have always wanted a like-new copy of Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting, I am selling my copy through my parents on ebay. They are mingmags37, and the auction ends Thursday at 10 pm PDT. I bought the book new, looked at it a few times, and that's pretty much it. Just thought you might like to know.

Second, Sunday afternoon was glorious here in Molecular Knitting's little corner of California. I took myself outside for a tromp around the neighborhood to admire all the citrus trees heavy with ripe fruit.


Grapefruit tree


Lemons! Sidecar anyone?


Fabulous oranges

Many people don't pick the fruit from their trees, which I think is a shame. I was very tempted to knock on a couple of neighbor's doors and ask if they wanted to fork over a dozen or two lemons, but I feared that would be considered too rude. So, I just coveted them.

After my walk, I put in some heavy knitting on the Landscape shawl. 34% done! 4 rows from starting the next chevron, which is moss stitch. Once I get my chuck roast braising in the oven this evening (I'm still rendering some bacon to brown the roast in the bacon fat--evil, but oh, so yummy), I'll get to that next chevron (and pretend the Christmas tree still isn't up). So pictures of progress soon. I was very relieved to make the 34% mark with some of my first of three balls of yarn left. I bought what should be 200 extra yards, but the first ball seemed to be shrinking fast and I was stuck in the 20 -something percentage-complete for a long time.

Did you see the letter Trek's black sweater vest sent her? I hope my gingerbread cable sock didn't see it, or I think it may get some epistolary ideas of its own. It's been a single sock for a long time. I even had to wear grey store bought socks today, and I think it noticed. I know the Harlot's UFOs have also occasionally written her. I hope no one reads our UFOs, A Tale of Two Cities, or they may start a revolution. I'll have to get to its mate soon.

Screaming Red Mitts and Ice Cream Sundae Socks

Christmas Knitting. Check.
Christmas Beading. Check.
Christmas Shopping. Check.
Christmas Laundry (we travel). Check.
We fly Thursday! Must leave home by 5:30 a.m. to make flight! Ack!

M cut out a few of my Christmas beading gifts as too much (they were for his relatives). M's mom did not need handknit socks and beaded jewelry. He also suggested one piece for his sister for Christmas and the other I had designed for her March birthday. So, we did a little shopping at amazon for her. But now I am back to knitting and beading just for pleasure. No longer worrying about foot sizes vs sock sizes. No longer fretting that an elderly grandmother will find a necklace too heavy or not be able to manage a clasp. Now it's just deciding which sock yarn I want to knit first and how long I want to make a scarf.

In anticipation of flying and wanting small things to knit, as M is 6'4" tall and broad shouldered and I am invariably a little squished in my seat, I started a few small projects. First, my hands have been freezing, and the mitts I made earlier from chunky alpaca are too thick for other than reading (and sleeping!). I love Eunny's Endpaper Mitts, and I nearly swooned when I saw the lovely green/cream color combo that Diana of Streets and Yos knit up. However, I have never done stranded work before, and my hands are cold now. So, I went over to Knitspot and ordered Anne's pattern for Fine Cabled Mitts. I'll save the Endpaper Mitts for 2007 (my neighbor knits and has offered to teach me how to do stranded knitting, yay!). Unlike Anne, I did not have any cashmere sock yarn lying around, but I did have enough left over Wildfoote sock yarn in Jazz Time, or screaming red, as I like to think of it. I am almost done with the first mitt.

The pattern is pretty easy to follow and I really like how Anne designed the thumb gusset. I did make my usual cabling error of doing the second cable one row too early (cabling one row of a 6 row repeat means cabling every 7th row, not every 6th), but here it turns out to be fortuitous, as I have short fingers. There is no way I can do all 10 repeats of the cable pattern and not turn the mitt into a mitten (I had to do less repeats in the chunky alpaca mitts too), so cabling every 6th row instead of 7th lets me get more cables in. The nice thing about the Wildfoote is that it is machine washable. My gauge is looser than the pattern calls for (also contributing to needing a shorter mitt) by a little bit, but my hand width was just over the size max for the smaller mitt size, and the mitt seems to fit as great as it can with dpns sticking out all over.

I also started a new pair of socks, which I now think of as my ice cream sundae socks. The yarn is Fleece Artist Merino in the colorway dyed specifically for Simply Sock Yarn Company's first anniversary last June. The colors look to me like rich vanilla ice cream with hot fudge and raspberry sauce.

Looks tasty but a little dry.

The pattern is garter rib. I tried a few others that were more complicated, but they were too much with the huge color contrasts in the yarn. BTW, the sock is leaning up against my favorite mineral from my collection of minerals, which has long, cylindrical, hexagonal aquamarine crystals in it. That's a long non-gem quality aquamarine crystal to the left of the sock. This sock is so proud; I usually don't lean them up against something so pretty and valuable.

Last week while using an old scarf, I realized that I don't like to wrap a scarf all around my neck so both ends hang in the front. So I tried on the Grapevine scarf to see if I had knit enough if I didn't plan to do so much scarf wrapping, and I have. Tomorrow I hope to block! Photos will follow.

Now I have to go debate which sock yarns from my stash to take over our trip. We fly 2300 miles each way, and then we also have two 450 mile car trips between our parents' homes. I used to drive that and let M be passenger (let's just say he refers to me when he is driving as his "onboard navigation system" I'm a horrible backseat driver), but last year I had learned to knit socks, so M got to drive while I knit (which nicely cut down on the "navigation"). I think it's a wonderful tradition. I want to make a pair of Jaywalkers, as I am the only knitter on the planet who hasn't and I have some striping Trekking XXL, and Cookie's Monkey socks, which look fantastic. Now, which yarn for those...

Let's do Lunch!

The problem with knitting projects that are large triangles or rectangles is that progress shots aren't exactly a thrill. So, although I will talk about one of my projects, lets get to it through a small tour of the knitting blogosphere.

First, I am still playing with templates for this blog. I will probably try to design my own from scratch. With M's help that should be very doable. Right now this new green template doesn't make me as mad as the other template I was using. So, faithful readers may find a different looking blog from time to time. I also want to get a better picture of me, but that may prove more difficult than learning CSS code. I also found out from reading someone's blog today, that she finds blogger doesn't always leave the email address of commenters even when they leave an address. I didn't know this could happen. If you have left me comments and I haven't emailed you or commented on your blog, it's because I don't know how to contact you. Does anyone else have this problem? Is there something I can do to fix this?

When I was a kid, my mom would sometimes comment about a person that they would be "a good person to have lunch with." What she said she meant by that was she thought the person would be interesting to talk to, would make my mom think in new directions, would be a good and fun person to know. Lunch is a conversational meal, usually without alcohol or romantic overtones, so conversation, especially on topics of mutual interest but not necessarily getting to know all the facts of a person's life, is the key. I think many of the people whose blogs I read are people I would like to have lunch with. I've decided from time to time to write a little about my interaction with these people through their blog content and possible mutual commenting. I have been highly influenced in many creative and positive ways by knitting bloggers, and I feel the need to codify my appreciation.

Last post, I mentioned my quandry with the Grapevine Scarf. It's so pretty; it's annoying to knit. What to do? What to do? I wondered what Cara, who only knits what she loves, would do. And Cara told me. I don't know how she knows when I reference her blog (there is still a lot I'm learning about blogging); but she knows. She was my first commenter back in August! You never forget your first commenter. But anyway, she suggested that I try to get through the Grapevine Scarf for a bit by knitting 4 rows a day. I thought I could do that; it's only a scarf after all. I decided 4 pattern rows a day; purl rows hardly count (it's a scarf). So, last night, that's what I set out to do. But I did 6 pattern rows, which made a whole repeat. M was sitting next to me and he commented that the scarf was almost 30 inches long, and I said no, it wasn't even two feet yet. "Measure it," he said. 28.5 inches unblocked. Apparently, my almost supernatural ability to judge volumes does not extend to judging inches knit. This was a revelation! Each repeat is about 1.5 inches. If I could do two repeats a day for 10 days, the scarf would be long enough, and I could use it over the Christmas holidays in the Midwest where it is actually cold. I am motivated! Thanks to Cara's advice, I realized I was much nearer to finishing a beautiful scarf than I gave myself credit for. Now, if I only had her ability to take photos! If you have never followed her links to her nature photos, you are missing out. She has a very creative eye and really sees like a camera.

Although, I am not an official member of Eye Candy Friday, I don't have a digital SLR camera (yet), or Cara's super talented eye (notice how my horizon cuts right through the middle of my photo), I leave you with this picture of the California coast north of San Francisco (I've got two repeats to knit!). It's so beautiful it's hard to take a bad picture. This is at The Sea Ranch in late October right before sunset.

Counting to 10

Is it just me or is beta-blogger driving other people nuts? I think I am going to have to sit down with HTML, XHTML, & CSS and just figure out how to make my own template. I am not finding Beta-Blogger easier to use, and what looks like a nice page element in the edit template and layout sections, does not look nice on the actual blog. So, I apologize for the mess of the Works in Progress and Knitting Together buttons. Tomorrow I hope to have a new post with actual knitting content, for I have blocked the scarf for M's Dad (Thanks, Mom, for the blocking wires! They ROCK!), and I want to talk about what I think is a nice looking heel flap that I made up to go with a 5-stitch repeat based upon a K3P2 rib. But right now I am going to knit on my Aran Pocket Shawl and let the soothing knits and purls of a seed stitch basket weave take away my ire with Beta-Blogger.

I love seed stitch

I love seed stitch in diamonds.


seed stitch diamond from my first sweater

I love seed stitch in mohair.


seed stitch edgings on my second sweater

I love seed stitch in handpainted yarn.


detail from seed stitch chevron of Landscape Shawl

But I love seed stitch in basket weave most of all.


Aran Pocket Shawl

This past weekend I was freezing (I hadn't yet realized the thermostat was set for 64), so after making chocolate chip cookies and losing my excuse to have the oven on, I felt I needed to knit with a substantial yarn. I was curious as to how the Aran Pocket Shawl from Folk Shawls would look in the Berroco Ultra Alpaca* I had. So I taught myself the cable cast-on (great and easy!), and gave the shawl chart a go. I've wanted to knit this shawl for a long time (because of the seed stitch), and I am really pleased how it looks in this yarn. Now I switch between the Landscape Shawl (great during TV) and the APS (great to take my mind off the day and relax). I'll just have to make sure my next shawl isn't green!

Speaking of Folk Shawls by Cheryl Oberle, Trek recently acquired a copy and is considering a KAL. So, if you would be interested, let her know.

*For those faithful readers who vaguely remember this yarn in the start of the Cambridge Jacket, well it's toast. I didn't get gauge well enough for it to be my first cap-sleeved sweater. But I like the yarn better in the shawl, so all is good.

New LYS! and a Sock of a Different Color

Saturday my friend Nancy and I set up a beading afternoon, and we needed to go to our LBS, which is in a small complex of restaurants and shops built around a courtyard. At the entrance to the Courtyard stood a sign telling everyone to go up to the third floor to the new YS, Knitter's Playground. I had to go (Nancy is a soon-to-be knitter; after all she wasn't a beader until she met me either). So after the bead store we took a look. I didn't have my camera with me, but believe me when I say it was fabulous. The owner, Rebecca, was smart enough to specialize in yarns and knitting that wasn't being carried well at the other LYS. So she had a lot of sock yarn and LACE yarn. She has all the Fiddlesticks and Fiber Trends shawl and scarf patterns. Wanting to support her business venture, I made a little purchase.


Jaeggerspun Zephyr in Admiral
She also carries Fleece Artist (but not the sock yarn) and Hand Maiden Yarns. They are expecting a shipment of Sea Silk: every colorway, over 100 lbs of Sea Silk! I am psyched. She also carries all the Brown Sheep yarns, which are some of my favorites for sweaters.

Last time, I showed a sock WIP for Michael's grandma for Christmas. I was hoping I was knitting the right size. I was not. But no matter! Grandma has very narrow feet, and last July I knit a sock that I thought would fit my medium-wide foot, but the yarn over cable pattern made it too narrow. I can get it on, but the fabric is pretty stretched, so I think it will be perfect for a narrow foot (we are both size 8.5 luckily). So now I am over half finished.


The yarn is Fleece Artist Merino in Renaissance. I can't say enough good things about Fleece Artist Merino. It wears well, keeps its shape and colors, and is very soft and warm. Pooling is also limited in the medium size women's socks I've been knitting. At Simply Sock Yarn Company, Alison has procured FAM in some of the Hand Maiden colorways.

Next time, I hope to show a FO, which is waiting for blocking. Until then, happy knitting!