KarenJoSeattle

Magic (Cast-on) Toes

Well, it's a start.

I needed two tries to get my cast-on right. I used Judy's Magic Cast-On. I finally remembered that Cat Bordhi's book had an explanation that worked for me, though I should say I'd done the cast-on a couple of times before I had that book.

Since the Knitty article, Judy figured out how to start this without a slip knot. That version is the one on Judy's site and in Cat's book. With this twist you have no lumps, bumps, or holes at all. Just remember to pull up the extra yarn tightly as you switch from one needle to the next. That little area of laddering is the only issue I've had once I get the technique going.

This cast-on works best with circular needles. They let you pull one side onto the cable and get the needle out of your way. Cat said at the workshop I took from her that you can start with a circular and switch to DPNs after the first round. I just can't see why I'd want more needles in there when I'm working on small stitches in a constricted space.

I love this cast on. It give a better, smoother toe than any other technique I've used, toe-up or top-down. I still find the whole toe bit fiddley, and I tend to make my socks too large, but that just gives me things to work on improving.

Random Drivel

I'm on the computer because I need to write two articles for my local Knitters Guild newsletter (done!) and research fence post caps (working on it). But I just can't keep myself from checking out what else is going on. I do need some breaks. Anyway, here's just some random stuff to fill time and space and get them off my chest.

What's with Blogline's slooooow updates today? I set up a post for 7AM yesterday and they didn't pick it up until 9AM today. The last time they updated me before that was 9PM Saturday. Have they developed slacker ways while I was off?

I came <this close> to hosting Lucy Neatbyovernight after she talks to my Knitters Guild Wednesday. I live 3 blocks from the ferry she needs to catch the next day. But it worked out that she needs to meet with Suzanne (of the Madrona Winter Retreat) while here, so that's where she's staying. Not that I would have posted photos of Lucy in her jammies or anything. Since our internal clocks would be three hours off and hers would be wound down by a long flight, I didn't expect more than pouring her into bed and then getting her and all her workshop samples to Bainbridge the next day. Still, the idea was cool.

Who would have thought that there were whole companies and Web sites devoted to just fence post caps? I guess quite a few people would have since there are quite a few of them. Part of me thinks redwood should cost that much, since it takes a long time and a lot of resources to grow them. Part of me wishes she could feel fine with throwing up a cheap fence that looked it and would fall down soon after she left. But I've dealt with others' cheap fences and have seen the difference a nice one makes in a landscape, so why waste a tree's life for a shoddy thing when I can do better?

I really, really need to start a sock before my Friday workshop. I haven't turned a heel for about a year and I'm enrolled in a workshop on taking your socks to new places - the kind of places that only Lucy's socks usually go. I have commitments from 11 AM to 7 PM tomorrow, so I need to start tonight.

I do socks toe-up, so I don't really have to finish one to get back in the hang of it. Now, Lucy's Sock Techniques 1 DVD includes sections on knitting socks on two circulars or one long circular as well as on DPNs. I do two circulars and don't own sock-sized DPNs. The workshop materials list includes three sets of them in the appropriate size for your yarn. It usually takes me at least two tries to find the right size needle for a sock yarn.

So, do I really need to buy six sets of DPNs AND to knit a sock with them before Friday? Do I need to just get over it and get comfortable with more than one way to knit a sock? The knitting on DPNs certainly won't happen, at least not to a finished sock. I guess I'll ask Lucy Wednesday night and do what I can Thursday.

Where the Heck Did Those Short Rows Come From?

The projects I've knitted during my blogging absence have all been pretty simple and variations on a theme.  I played with adding some prettifying columns of YOs to the Generic Garter Stitch Scarf in Noro as popularized by, though he says not invented by, brooklyntweed/Jared. When I've finished my current one, I'll post photos and yarn requirements for a couple gauges in a couple sizes each.

One of these scarves gave me fits trying to figure out where and how I kept making a perplexing error.

Now, you need to know that I'm a counter. I habitually count my stitches or talk them in my mind while I knit. Sometimes I won't when knitting a really basic stitch while reading or watching a movie. Or I may not when I knit something requiring attention to a chart.

But on something like this my mind would repeat 'knit 1, knit 2, knit n, YO, K2tog' all the way across the right side then count the stitches as I knit back. It's part of the rhythm of my knitting and it can be useful in catching errors.

Except when it doesn't.

At least a dozen times on this one scarf I had to rip back for as many as three spots where I had somehow short-rowed. A couple of times I ended up with these odd rows when I very careful counted everything and marked rows to keep track.

I never could figure out how I did them. And I only did them in this scarf, not the other three I did as variations on the theme.

I do believe in ghosts. I do believe in ghosts. I do believe in ghosts - at least in my brain.

Does The Wizard of Oz still run on TV every year? If so, why not?

Saturday Sky photos v. technology's limits

Yesterday while my camera downloaded photos onto my computer for my post, my gaze wandered to the view out the windows. Right then Mount Rainier floated on a bed of fog while the low sun lit the snow patches on its peak and the varied patterns of cloud strata above cast different depths of shadows on themselves.

I reached for my camera. And I promptly came to the limit of the cable connecting it to my laptop.

With effort, I waited patiently for technology to run its course while my light changed subtly. I have seen, and sometimes missed, better skies for photographing. But I hadn't posted a sky photo for a while and I like them and think I take pretty good ones.

Obviously, the moment did not completely pass before the equipment finished the task I'd given it.

Thursday I ran into an enlarged version of this issue as my husband made some large updates and downloads and then backed up my laptop. He hadn't finished by the time I returned from an appointment. I wandered aimlessly around the living room for a few minutes. Every time I thought of something to do, it involved my computer. Check the stock markets, read some blogs, see what's on TV that night - none of these or other tasks/amusements could happen right then.

Finally I settled down with Twyla's book for a bit, then watched a TV show I'd recorded. The computer finished before I did. E-mail got checked and the world hadn't ended while I wasn't looking.

But I realized as I read Twyla on setting up routines to free your mind, that really I'd come up against an interruption of one of my routines. I get home from some task, I make tea, I do a couple things on my computer. Maybe I only have a few minutes or maybe I spend a while; either way, it's one of the routines that frame my day. Not having access to it disrupted my pattern.

Goodness knows, I have plenty of other things to occupy me. I may try to emphasize some of those things more and break this pattern myself. I'd like to get in more reading of books not just the computer, now that I have time to read something again. Not all routine frees your mind or is useful. Most doesn't and some isn't.

Nesting With my Yarn

Let me tell you something that does not work. Linen stitch does not resist the pull of a cat's claws. At least it doesn't at the gauge I knit it in my cats' throw.

Well, at least now that I've accepted that, I don't need to finish crocheting a crab-stitch edge all the way around and back. But I do need to find where I stashed the poor thing a few months ago when I was cleaning up for company so I can use it in one of the cat beds (thus no photos of the issues). They do love it, so the project was worth it. Or will be once I find it.

For the new ottoman throw I'm going to try double stranding this Silk Mountain by Noro (nice FO photos in that link to the Noro site) in a seed stitch. I know the seed stitch won't show very well in the boucle, but I've found the stitch fairly good at resisting and hiding cat pulls on other projects. And I like to knit seed stitch. I knit continental, i.e. I pick, so I can get a nice rhythm going.

I think I may take this to California when we go down for the holidays. I always need a lot of semi-mindless knitting then. We go for six weeks.

But for now I'll just enjoy and decorate with the unknit yarn for a bit. It fits in well with the other things. And it wasn't much less costly.

Boy, am I out of the loop!

I just found out Stephanie will be at Third Place Books on Monday, October 6th. I do have 3598 posts on my Bloglines, despite a few random efforts to read/delete them over the last few months. Fifty-one of those are Stephanie's, so you know I've been seriously out of circulation for a while. Seriously.

I have a couple of local friends whose blogs I've kept up on and one on perfume I'd read when I needed an evening to completely escape. I'll chip away at it, but please don't be offended if I'm not back commenting on a bunch of blogs right away.

And thanks for the comments on my last post. It's nice to see people still showing up here. It's less nice to see that Typepad still hasn't fixed their issues with not getting e-mail notification on comments delivered. I'm sorry I can't take time today to dig up e-mail addresses to reply. I have to take my cats to get their teeth cleaned, pick out new doorknobs for the house in California, and go to my aesthetician/friend for a facial, manicure, and pedicure. It is nice to be home and fairly back to normal.

Oh, and I'd better fit in some serious stretching with my workout so I'm a bit less stiff in my Pilates lesson tomorrow. All the packing, lifting, and driving have left me feeling old and creaky. Sometimes it hurts if I sit and knit for too long.

Plus, Twyla Tharp has been in Seattle for several weeks setting two new works on the dancers at Pacific Northwest Ballet. (For those who aren't dance geeks, that means she's choreographing new dances by working directly with those who'll be dancing them.) We got to observe her working in the studio with the dancers before my last trip. In the last week we've gone to a studio rehearsal, seen her demo/lecture on the dances, gone to a signing of her book on creativity, and tonight went to the dress rehearsal. Watching her and listening to her daily routine makes me feel old and creaky. Not that I'd want to live the way she does - just to move the way she does. But I'll never get up at 5:30 every morning to do an hour of stretching and an hour of other exercise or eat a half a pound of roast beef for lunch every day, so I guess I never will. Then, again, I bet I'm better at knitting than she is. Maybe. (Photo from The Gap's publicity archives.)

Washcloth #1 - 1 Day, Washcloth #2 - 2+ Weeks, Blogging it - 3+ Months

Yes, I know it's more like 5 months, but I like the 1-2-3 symmetry. It also gives you an idea of how long I've been planning to get back to the blog.

Since the first of the year I have staged, listed, sold and moved three houses. That includes my mother's house, which took as much work as either of my own despite help from my four siblings and my mom. Her house and the one we had in California got combined into one house, requiring lots of downsizing, yard sales, a sale and auction of my father's collection of Arts and Crafts antiques in Berkeley, and installation of the remainder into an antique mall in Monterey, both a few hours drive from our new house and each other.

About the time our California contractor started building a garage for the new house down there while we sorted our island house up here to put into storage what we wanted to keep for a future house to share with my husband's parents, I came to the realization I absolutely had to let some things go. Sorry the change was so abrupt. Anyone who's been through even one house sale and move should understand.

I have been doing some knitting; mostly simple stuff for my sanity. I do have some things to share in the near future. And I have some knitting events coming up.

Anyone who can get to Seattle on Wednesday, October 1st needs to know that Lucy Neatby will be speaking at a special meeting of the Seattle Knitters Guild that evening. She'll be in town for a series of workshops through Churchmouse. Yes, I'm signed up for ALL of them.

And, sorry again, I forgot to get a photo of the second washcloth before I sent it off. Here's one of the remains instead.

It's nice to be back.