KarenJoSeattle

Fly-By Posting of Sweater Progress

I just realized that my sweater actually looks notably different than it did the last time I posted a photo, so here's a new one. I haven't knit a lot each day, but at this gauge it adds up quickly. The body now measures nine inches below the underarm.

 

Today I bought a 40" circular needle for use on the bottom edge. The 32-incher I had in it felt too congested for comfortable knitting. Plus I can get a better idea of the fit when I try it on without having to transfer some of the stitches to a second needle every time. I have a bunch more of this yarn, so I know the needle will get used.

Unfortunately, by the time I get this photo edited and posted I won't have time to blog anything else before I need to get to bed. Not that I have anything else to blog.

Putzing Along

Sometimes I think about what to write in the blog off and on all day. I compose paragraphs in my head, edit and rearrange them. Then later in the day when I usually actually write posts my brain seems to think I have and just stops thinking about it. Or it starts to shut down before I have photos edited and time to sit and type so I succumb to the need for sleep instead of the urge to post. A lot of good blog fodder misses it's chance to actually get used.

It would help if I could actually write a short post now and again.

On Sunday I met up with some of the other Seattle knitters in the NaKniSweMoDo Ravelry group. I think everyone else who showed up had met at least once before. They picked a convenient coffee shop as I walked one block to the bus and got off right next door.

I already knew Jessica (Ravelry link) from Guild. I finally got to meet Dorothy (Ravelry link) in the flesh. Thanks for organizing the details, Sharon (Ravelry), and let's do it again. Five of us made a nice sized group for conversation. Amanda (Ravelry) made the fifth. (Now I feel a bit better about the state of my blog posting after looking at everyone else's.)

The weather felt very appropriate for knitting on my cozy cardigan. I got snowed on a bit while I waited for the bus home. The photos are from that evening. Half an hour after the sun break (a Pacific Northwest weather term) fog and snow moved in with the dusk.

I cast off the second sleeve on the ride home so now I'm motoring down the body. At least I'm motoring until I get to the point where I want the pockets. I want to try out the technique for double-knit pockets Lucy Neatby showed at the class I took last year at Madrona. I know I'll need to dig out my notes and find the relevant DVD so I can figure out what to do. I know I'll need to redo something at least once. The process is a bit fiddly but it results in a beautiful pocket.

 

This Economic Crisis Is Messing With My Knitting

Until yesterday my current sweater project didn't look very different from the last time you saw it. I spent most of last week still trying to figure out how to figure out which companies will continue to have enough Free Cash Flow to fund their dividend at some semblance of its current rate when Free Fall was a more relevant term and many people much smarter than I am had no idea where things headed.

On Wednesday before the board meeting of my knitting guild (I'm the newsletter reporter) I got the stitches at the underarm picked up and knit my first round with decreases to deal with my extra gully stitches and hole-closing requirements. I needed to count my stitches and expected to have to do some math, so didn't knit on it during the meeting. I should have followed my first impulse and just started knitting as my numbers came out right on and I could just follow what I did on sleeve #1. Too often I'd get more knitting done if I would followed my instincts rather than waiting to figure something out. I doubt I'll change that situation much, though, as I'm a figurer.

Yesterday I toted the sweater along on a busy day. I swung by REI (the flagship store - this is Seattle) after Pilates where I had a nice chat about knitting needles with my cashier when she spotted the Addi Naturas in my bag. She's a recent convert to these particular circulars, but has a nice collection of wood and bone straights from the 50s and 60s that she inherited. These kinds of moments are part of the reason I like the clear project bags I use. That and the being able to find the project I want without opening each of the way-too-many things I have going at once.

Then I got to spend time in one of my current favorite ways - while sitting under a nice warm dryer in a clean, well-lighted space on a winter day first to set color and then conditioner I knit four 5-row decrease repeats on my sleeve.

I only made it through two more decrease repeats today and am about to give up and go to bed. I spent a lovely day with my husband but it involved a lot of walking and time on my feet and I'm pooped. And my feet hurt.

After two different possible sets of accompaniers bailed on us, we walked up to our favorite quick-meals-at-odd-times restaurant for lunch. They were hopping, and apparently had been last night as they discovered a couple of things they were out of. The place we went to eat on Thursday night was also very busy; much busier than they usual recently. I like this economic indicator. I want my favorite places to survive.

From lunch we walked up to the Science Center to see Lucy - the actual 3 million-year-old fossilized Lucy. They also had a big crowd, mostly because the exhibit closes tomorrow. Attendance had been so much less than expected that they were in danger of losing a lot of money and most of the museums slated to get Lucy before she headed permanently back to Ethiopia canceled their runs. I don't think our museum will break even after the bad timing of horrendous weather and economic downturns during the holidays, especially the weeks all the kids were out of school. But I think they will end up better than expected as attendance really picked up at the end of the run.

From Lucy we wandered over to look at a couple kinds of giant cockroaches and twig insects before we went in to the tropical butterfly room. We wandered around the 85 degree giant terrarium looking at butterflies whose each wing could cover my palm. It made a perfect stop on an especially cold Seattle day. Plus you guys get butterfly pictures.

On the walk home through a little light snow turning to hard bits of sleet we stopped for coffee and donuts. At 6PM on a Saturday downtown, people occupied most of the tables and kept up a steady stream of boxed donuts heading out the door. We sat sipping our coffee as we watched the sunlight fade and streetlights come on through their wall of glass.

This is my kind of economic research. 

300

With this one, I have now posted 300 times to this blog. By my count I started about 650 days ago, so that makes just slightly less than a post every other day, even with a couple of decent-sized gaps in there. My numbers don't compare to Margene's, but I'm happy with them.

Except the part where I planned this post to happen a few days ago and it didn't doesn't make me happy. My ISP has had a few issues lately, including that several-day outage in December. As part of the fix they and the phone company have a program to change out a bunch of stuff for their DSL connections. Plus they had a big maintenance session planned. None of that went as well as hoped. In the past week we had, I think, four outages of our connection lasting from several hours to a day and a half. On the plus side, I think they learned that a web site no one reads routinely does not make the bed forum with which to notify customers of a planned service outage that will make it impossible for them to see said site. And that one person's middle of the night is another's prime work/web surfing/product shipping/research hours so it really helps to know of a planned outage ahead of time, especially when it lasts much, much longer than planned.

So,on something completely different, last Tuesday I rode that same bus, this time with my current sweater project. Since I spent the ride there and back picking up stitches to knit the neckband with the major part of the sweater still crammed in the knitting bag, I don't think many people on the bus had a clue what I was doing. But I got something I often procrastinate about done and done well enough to make me happy on the first try.

Then I set it aside until today. My hands got overworked at Madrona ( surprise, surprise) and needed some rest. And I had a pile of stock analysis I needed to do this week, despite not having a reliable Internet connection or a decent crystal ball. Fortunately, I had a stack of hard-copy analyst reports and Value Line charts to keep me occupied. Some of us actually find this stuff interesting.

I'm guessing I lost a few of you back there, but did you know there is a Ravelry group for knitters who make their living through some form of economics? (It's not very active right now - I guess everyone's busy with other things right now.) I met another Karen , who knew a friend of my friend Karen who was also at Madrona and over our Three Karens Who Knit lunch she mentioned the group. There really is a group for just about anything on Ravelry, including Knitters Named Karen.

Besides, pretty soon most of you will know more than you ever wanted to about economics if you don't already. You can start with the old joke about how if you put five economists in the same room they'd come up with six theories to explain current conditions - one wouldn't be able to make up his mind. Or my favorite, the one about how if you laid all the economists end to end they wouldn't reach a conclusion. Those are the kinds of jokes Economics professors told their classes in 1975. We needed the laugh then, too.

I took today off to clear my brain and to knit. My sweater now has both a neckband and a sleeve. Tomorrow it may have two sleeves, or at least one and a half. And I should have something to share besides my opinions on oil pipeline Master Limited Partnerships.

Off Like a Thundering Herd

Not only do I have the Motley Crew-Neck blocking, but I have four days worth of knitting on my next sweater. I may actually finish this one before the end of the month.

OK, so it's Cascade 109 Tweed at 3.25 spi on 7mm/US10.75 needles and a basic top-down cardigan from Karen's Unpattern, but it's a sweater I need and will use for days hanging around home or casual walks and errands. And it will knit up quickly. I've done knitted-on front bands in seed stitch, will pick up and knit a seed stitch neck band and trim the cuffs and bottom with seed stitch. I did a garter stitch detail on the raglan line that echoes the seed stitch trims.

I haven't done many buttonholes and I believe they'd look funky at this gauge regardless, so I'll blanket-stitch them with some crewel yarn, probably double stranded. I have some nice classic black buttons in my stash. And I'll do my first real pockets also trimmed with a seed stitch band. I'm debating if I should do the pockets in some lighter-weight gray Cascade 220 I have in my class-yarn stash. If I feel adventurous, I could double-knit them. Maybe.                                                 

Cascade seems to have discontinued the yarn. Either that or everyone cleared it out at the same time to make way for Spring and Summer stock. Actually, it's not on the list of cuurent yarns at Cascade's site. I bought 3 different colors marked 40% off of Cascade's already reasonable price. And I got free shipping. This is color 7616. It feels soft, not at all scratchy, but shows no sign of wear where I cast on and ripped the first few rows four times.

I have enough for probably five sweaters. I hope we don't get tired of it.

THE Barbara Walker

The list of instructors for the Sock Summit this August in Portland, Oregon went up today. Stephanie also has the list with bios on today's post.

I don't knit a lot of socks, so I'd been non-committal about this event. When I got the e-mail earlier today and went to the site, I noticed with interest that Priscilla Gibson-Roberts (best-known to me for Knitting in the Old Way) made the list.

Then I read through the entire list with the mini bios and credits on Stephanie's post and caught my breath when I read that Barbara Walker - THE Barbara Walker of the stitch Treasuries and Knitting From the Top - would attend and teach.

Who cares what she's teaching, the big question is what are the odds of getting in to that class?

Can you imagine a conference where classes by the likes of Lucy Neatby and Nancy Bush are not the first to fill because more famous people and people who rarely if ever do so will also teach there? I really appreciate Stephanie telling us she's as geeky and gob-smacked about these people as we are.

I hope they have a very good plan for class sign-ups. Where do I enroll?

Jumpstarted - Up and Running Again, I Hope

About 6 weeks ago, during the first week of January, I sat on a bus across from a young woman carrying a snowboard. She'd likely gotten it as a present and taken it out that day for its first runs. The colors and designs still looked clear and unmuddied, in contrast to the bottom foot or so of her insulated pants. She obviously enjoyed her turn as the point of interest on that bus run.

I envied her a bit. Usually I ride with my knitting for a good 20 minutes of progress each way and an opportunity to sit and knit over coffee after my appointment. But that day I had just a book with me. It was a knitting book, but still, books are common on the bus and I'd grown used to being among the less common.

We'd taken our usual multi-week trip out of state for the holidays, but this year I picked up the cold from hell on the way home. That day I was "well" enough to go out, but hadn't managed to start a new project and had nothing in a pick-up-and-knit state.

Two weeks later I sat on the same bus reading the same book, now overdue at the library, on my first day back out following another stint in bed struggling to breathe. I still hadn't cast on anything, or posted to this blog, or caught up on my e-mail, or all the other thousand things I needed to do to get back to normal life. It took another week of sleep to feel up to playing catch-up and I'm still nowhere near there yet.

But, a bit over a week ago I came to grips with my self-imposed impending deadline of at least one (I'd started with a plan of 3) new sweater for the Madrona Retreat and the fact, hard as it was, that I actually had to knit something for that to happen.

So, in fits and starts, I finally picked my November NaKniSweMo top-down sweater back up as my first NaKniSweMoDo project, re-watched Lucy's section on one of her DVDs about picot bind-off and cast off the friggin' body of the sweater. I did get the neckline edging picked up and done - twice - and started on one of the 3/4 length sleeves before I had a day of running around so I could be gone for 4 days at Madrona. The sweater actually got finished, other than blocking, Saturday night in the hotel bar. That is, finished if the slight wonkiness still in the neck edging blocks out. If it doesn't, I'll undo the bind-off and try going down yet another needles size - I went down 2 already - and decrease in a few more places to pull the edge in yet more - I did decrease 10% of the stitches after I picked up and I decreased a few around the edge when I bound off. Karen thinks it's the 'liveliness' of the Socks That Rock that makes it want to stand away from the body.

But, despite not finishing anything in time to wear it there, Madrona was as exhilarating and exhausting as I expect from it and I've already started the next sweater. Plus, I have a ton of blog fodder now that I can make myself sit down and get back to it. I think I'm up and running again.

Merry Christmas

 

And a Happy New Year.

Hope your day is good.

Look, It's a Hand-Knit Christmas Gift

 

 

I don't do knitted Christmas gifts - that way madness lies. But earlier this year when I knit endless Noro scarves for mindless projects during all of the packing and moving madness, my SIL admired the colorway on one of them.

Then we drew her name so I'm giving it to her for Christmas.

I did the basic garter in Silk Garden scarf that has been popular for a while. I didn't think I could handle stripes at the time. Instead to add some interest and make it a bit more feminine, I added columns of YOs.

Of course, I forgot to measure it before I wrapped it, so I can't tell you just how large a scarf I got out of two skeins, but it's plenty long. I washed it and shaped it a bit to dry and that did open up the yarn-overs nicely. They look slightly different on the back than the front, but not enough to make a distinct sidedness to it.

I knit more of these in various sizes. At some point I'll post them all with size and yardage.

Travel carefully if you go anywhere today or tomorrow. Happy holidays to all.

I Swear It's a Swatch

I know this looks like a good start on a sleeve for my first NaKniSweMoDo sweater and we still have a week and a half until 2009. I feel the need to swatch this by knitting a part of the sweater to figure out how the cable and rib pattern I'm also improvising as I swatch will actually work. This is my third version and I'm debating if it still pulls the purl stitches to much. I really don't want them to look like openwork when it's done and blocked.

I knit and washed a flat ribbed swatch. I plan to use the change in gauge there to figure how my gauge on this sleeve and, by extension, the garment will change. I used the weaver's trick of making an outline of my swatch pre-washing so I now know this Alpaca/Jacob blend bulky yarn will get wider and shorter.

My master plan is to base a sweater on a sleeve whose stretched dimensions look good when worn, allowing for the % change that will happen with washing and blocking. I count on the elongated chained cables I've alternated with a plain rib not to change that % too much.

I'll figure my numbers for a saddle-shouldered (with a sleeve cable continuing up the saddle) EPS from this derived gauge. The cowl/turtle neck of 2x2 rib should echo the 4 1/2 to 5" of plain rib at hem and cuff. I'm aiming for something fitted, but not too clingy, to offset the bulky nature of this yarn, though in slightly-stretched ribs I get more like 4 to 4.5 than 3 stitches per inch.

Wish me luck. I'm flying by the seat of my pants here.

Here is today's morning newspaper article on Seattle weather and another photo gallery or two. Keep in mind that Seattle gets an inch or two of snow maybe once or twice a winter, sometimes none at all, and frost maybe a quarter to a third of winter nights. At this time of year many days run a high of 45F and a low of 40. It hit 14F at the airport today and broke a 1954 record for 24-hour snowfall there. Only in Seattle would baristas consider themselves essential personnel at a time like this.

Meanwhile, here at my holiday home in the foothills of CaliforniaI (I know it's hard to keep track of where I am. I get confused sometimes, too.) I just dealt with all-day rain in the high 40s. My nephew, on the other hand, had his Christmas-break flight out of Portland cancelled and should now be somewhere just inside California on his drive from Olympia, Washington, if he made it over Siskiyou Pass.

The cat, though, is all better and back to being a demanding pain in the rear. I love her dearly.

Wish You Were Here

Most of the time we were back up in Seattle I dressed like this. The temperature did not get above freezing for the five days we were there. This did give me an opportunity to use my wrap that I knit over a year ago. I got a complement and more than one passerby who turned to check out my warm and, I hope, not too dorky look.

After we left the weather got worse. Since then it's looked like this. And this. Plus this and this. A short ways outside the city looked like this. The incoming storm will bring high winds as well as snow.

I know other places are colder, icier, and snowier but Seattle doesn't deal well with weather like this both because of all the hills and because we rarely get it. I really hope things thaw out before we need to drive home over passes next weekend.

Here where I am in the foothills of Northern California today the temperature got above 50F and the sun shone. Unfortunately, I didn't make it outside. Instead I spent the day hanging with a sick kitty. (Why do they never get sick during office hours?) Winne had a goopy eye, was lethargic, uninterested in food, felt hot on the top of her head (the only part that wasn't snuggled up to something), and was not bugging me all day for a lap and undivided attention. She was definitely sick.

She's doing much better after a day of just lying next to me while I swatched, caught up on blogs and occasionally changed the load in the washer and dryer.

I'll try to post some of the swatches over the next couple of days. It's all the knitting I'm managing right now and writting a post seems to be hard to get around to, too. I'm sure most of you are in the same place this week. I did decorate yesterday and today. I may bake tomorrow. Happy holidays to everyone.

Preparations - NaKniSweMoDo 2009

I figure if I actually plan to knit a dozen sweaters next year, I'd better do a bit of preparation. Also, the weather in Seattle right now (1" to 2" of snow last night, high of 29 today with 15 to 25 mph winds and a low of 19 tonight - very cold for us) definitely feels right for sweater planning, especially bulky sweater planning while I catch up with everyone after a couple of days with no internet.

I've browsed sweater projects on Ravelry and added a bunch to my favorites for later consideration/ideas. My plan for the year involves working with Elizabeth Zimmerman's bottom-up EPS 'patterns' and Barbara Walker's top-down ones. I like the design-your-own, seamless style of pattern and have knit several of Karen Alfke's Unpattern, and I'll make at least one of those for the Seattle Knitters Guild KAL, but I want to get comfortable with both of these other types in a couple of variations. I also want to do two or three things using cables and get nice and comfortable with them, too.

I bought enough of this sale-priced bulky-weight Cascade Tweed 109 for four cozy-soft house sweaters. I also ordered a copy of the OOP Rowan Plaid book for some patterns and ideas in this gauge. I haven't done a lot of bulky-weight stuff so thought a guide to what works would help.

I started swatching for my first sweater of '09, a ribbed and elongated-cabled Cowl-neck saddle-shouldered EPS, in a 3spi yarn blended from alpaca and lilac gray Jacob. This should be a fairly quick project to give me a nice mental boost at the start. More on that with photos tomorrow when one of my swatches has dried.

And I assembled a selection of yarns to swatch so I can dive right into a project as I need one. Here I have the Tweed 109 in the center with, clock-wise from the top right corner, a dark gray Jaegar Extra-fine Merino Chunky, Tahiki Donegal Tweed, Jo Sharp Silk Road Aran, Noro Silk Mountain, and Rowan RYC Alpaca Soft.

In some of these yarns I have more than one color and project's-worth. Besides these I have a life-time supply of Jaeger Extra-fine Merino DK, with a sweater's worth of gauge swatch, and my Jaeger E-f Merino Aran EPS/giant swatch that I need to frog and restart plus two more project's-worth of that yarn.

I think I'm ready to get ready.

Houston, We Have Yet Another Problem

Today I wound a skein of my alpaca/Jacob yarn for swatching on my quick trip up to Seattle and back. My little metal and plastic swift I have at this house did a Herculean job of holding the 392 yards of 3spi yarn.

The ball winder didn't work so well. I had to basically hand wind the last 100 yards. Even using the crank made things move too fast for the ball and yarn to coordinate their moves. The little yarn guide was just in the way.

This ball will not come out of its bag for the duration of this trip if I can help it. I sure Hope the TSA agents understand.

I chose this skein because it was the smallest. The others three have 50 to 100 yards more. I wanted to be sure I had plenty of yarn.

It may be time to break down and order myself something like this. Merry Christmas to me

Wish me luck with security.

I Forgot to Give This a Title So I Am Now

Yesterday I made a deal with myself I couldn't post for the day until I'd finished the seeded rib bottom and picot bind-off of the body of my Motley Crew-neck. I'm still not quite finished, though I do only have the bind-off left.

It is a nice sweater body, though, isn't it? I'd try it on for you so you could see the little bit of short-row bust and waist shaping, but I only had two 24" needles in a size smaller for the rib here with me so trying on involves a few dropped stitches and I really didn't want to deal with that tonight. Trust me, it fits very nicely. I expect it to continue to fit nicely since my generous swatch changed not at all in size when washed.

I usually just finish out the ball of yarn I'm working with after I split off the body of a top-down sweater and then go back to do the sleeves without the weight of an entire sweater hanging off the needles and filling my lap. That became problamatic this time. The skeins have 350 yards of yarn each and I'm alternating two of them since they're hand-dyed and variegated and I don't want pooling or noticable changes between skeins. I also knit my swatch from one of the skeins I started the sweater with so that one ran out long before the other one, which actually still hasn't. I would have still had a ball of yarn hanging from the sweater body while I worked on sleeves and I know from experience that doesn't work very well. I also knit much of this in the car where a sweater body was easier than an attatched sleeve would have been.

Maybe it's my gauge, which is running just about a half stitch shy of 6spi over 4 inches and 8 rows per inch, but an inch of progress takes me a long time on this sweater. That's between four and five hours of knitting for the three inches of fancy rib you see.

Now, I rarely just knit, but usually read blogs on my laptop or watch taped TV shows at the same time. At least I do when the project is as uncomplicated at this. So I can't say it's five hour of concentrated knitting, but K3 P1 a round then P3 K1 a round doesn't really require concentration.

I should get the bind-off done tomorrow. Then I'll wind a skein of my alpaca/Jacob bulky yarn and start a swatch/sleeve to make sure I pack the right needles. I catch a plane tomorrow evening and the sweater's too bulky and the start of the sleeves too fiddly for travel knitting.

Besides finishing the 3/4 length sleeves on this sweater I plan to do two or three swatches for next year's sweaters before the end of the year. I think I need a running start at my dozen sweaters and swatching before next year doesn't feel like a cheat. I often swatch ahead of the start of a sweater.

And I expect simple swatches will be about all the knitting that can get done reliably and correctly given that I'll fly to Seattle and back, fit in a major holiday with two different families, and drive back to Seattle before New Year's Day.