KarenJoSeattle

I Have a Plan

Of course, that plan involved posting first thing this morning, but we'll just move beyond that if it's OK with you guys.

First part of the plan - I joined the NaKniSweMo group at Ravelry and have swatched for my sweater. Besides that I've wound five of the six skeins (I may get a pair of socks out of this, too) and I have my pattern out to copy, plus the copy from the last one of these I made, and tonight I'll fill in numbers.

That's STR heavyweight in Motley Hue - a colorway that so refuses to photograph correctly even Blue Moon doesn't have a picture on their site, though I got closer with the last two than I expected - to become a scoop-neck, picot-edged Unpattern. I bought this yarn, and quite a bit more, at Madrona last year. This February I'd like to wear a couple of new sweaters made with yarn bought there last year.  Plus there's the using yarn I already have/my stash is so far beyond SABLE status thing.

I want at least three new sweaters, preferably four, for the four-day retreat. Really, I just feel the need for some nice basic and wearable sweaters that I've made and this gives me a goal and a timeframe, so I'm aiming high. I'm very close to done with my Biscuit cardigan I just picked up again. I want the NaKniSweMo challenge to help me get through all the distractions the end of the year throws at me.

That's two sweaters. The other two I have in mind involve larger gauge yarns, one from Madrona and one recently bought on sale, and hopefully will go quickly. The patterns will stay simple to maximize the likelihood of completion - all versions of Unpattern, EPS, and maybe Barbara Walker From The Top Down.

I also plan to unofficially do a daily-blogging-in-November challenge. I won't join any of the official challenges and definitely won't set myself up for two challenging months in a row, like some people. One will be difficult enough due to multiple trips and a big holiday this month. I don't want to feel like I'm flaking on a group thing, or at least not on more than one group thing at a time. I already can't decide if I should pick up my ABCalong posts back at J, skip to U or wherever we are now, or just bag the whole thing.

So that's the plan. You can expect to see how well it goes in excruciating detail on a (hopefully) daily basis here.

Pretty Autumn Pictures to Fill Time While I Finish My Socks

Here are some pretty pictures to entertain and divert you while I toil away on the cuff of my sock. Hopefully we'll have some knitting-related photos this weekend

I took these photos over the last couple of weekends while we went out on different activities where we could enjoy the beautiful weather. Seattlites believe that on average we tend to get worse weather on Saturday and Sunday than during the week and apparently the records back up that opinion. This weekend, though, we'll push against and maybe break some old records with sun and highs in the mid-60s after possibly a bit of wet tomorrow morning. That comes to three in a row for nice weekends.

During my inattention to the blog in the same time period, I passed a couple of landmarks of the type traditionally blogged by those who actually post and generally keep up with things in Blogdom.

October 16th marked 1 1/2 years since I began this blog (and my 54 1/2 birthday). On that day I also passed 25,000 page views, according to the TypePad stats. I'm sure some people would find that number low, but it sounds nicely large and round to me.

A couple of days before that I launched my 250th post. That number would certainly have been higher without my 4-month long blog sabbatical.

I've toyed with the idea of joining whatever acronym aims to knit a complete sweater in the month of November. Apparently there's also one for a daily-posting challenge. I probably won't join any official sites for these, but my knitting and blogging could use the boost from accepting the challenges.

Plus, I need to start now if I want some new sweaters for the Madrona Retreat. That's four days and a dinner's worth of knitting retreat, so A Madrona sweater won't cut it. That counts as another influence on the sale-yarn-for-simple-and wearable-sweaters order - which shipped today.

And Madrona posted their class schedule. They also posted the list of five classes where enrollment will be done by lottery. The deadline to sign up for a chance at a spot in any of these is November 5th. I found others I want to take more, so I'll pass on the lottery. But I'll be hitting refresh to enrol as one o'clock on the 13th ticks over.

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.

We Have Liftoff

I passed 10,000 page views on my blog stats today. Such a nice round sound that number has.

On June 14th, not quite two months after I started my blog, I posted on my 1,00th page view. Now, five months later I have ten times as many.

That's a lot of eyes, electronic or organic, on my stuff.

Another big event happened yesterday. I received my first check for selling copies of my first pattern to a store.

The pattern is a revision of my little shawl to be knit from one skein of Handmaiden's Silken. It includes instructions for the crochet cast-on and for doing a beaded version by applying beads with a crochet hook.

I'm so excited.

Blogiversary Contest

Next Wednesday marks six months for my blog. Of course, I'm holding a contest to celebrate.

All comments left on posts dated from this one through midnight on April October (duh) 16th will be entered into the contest with two winners chosen by random number generator. Because I'm still having some issues with comment notification, I won't include comments left on posts from dates before today just in case I miss one.

I have two prizes. First I have a signed copy of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off. Then, a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Supersock DK in Moody Blues. I'll give the first chosen winner their choice of prize.

I have three things scheduled for the 17th already, so it will be late that night or the morning of the 18th before I post winners.

So welcome everyone and thanks in advance for stopping by.

Knit Surfing

No wonder I so often get behind on reading blogs. I keep finding new ones to add to my Bloglines list. Lately I've explored many of the links from one blog to the next and on to the next. I've ended up in some interesting places.

I try to stay with just knitting-themed blogs, but even that seems to get away from me sometimes. This week I spent some time reading back through a blog called Posie Gets Cozy who's author knits very little. Actually, today when she planned to start a cabled sweater and said it would be a first sweater, the post made for the first knitting content I've seen there.

Alicia does craft, in fact has just finished the final draft of a crafting book, but she does more sewing-based stuff. I don't sew much or well. She cooks a lot, too, when not up against deadlines. Many of her meals or food ideas wouldn't work for me due to my milk allergy and habit of not eating red meat.

So why am I there? Well, there's a feeling at crafting/cooking/gardening/making things and your life blogs that feels familiar and comfotable to me. And I like her writing style, though she gets more 'mushy' about things than I do - things like Clover the corgi puppy. The site needs a Cute Overload warning label right now.

And then I had to go back to find out what happened to Audrey, the recently previous corgi. And I got mushy. So, now I'm stuck on yet another blog and my sweater is not done. Blog reading slows my knitting way down.

At the other end of the blog spectrum, TECHknitting has resumed posting. Yes, I found an entire blog of knitting geek heaven - nothing but knitting techniques. A blog of well-written and illustrated posts on techniques.

The most recent post (September 28, 2007 - the posts don't have a permalink) covered a new method for left-leaning decreases that better matches a partnered right-leaning decrease. The one before (September 24, 2007) explained why the left-leaning decrease turns out so wonky as usually done.

I tried this new decrease on my sweater yesterday. How could I resist something called 'Sip Yank Twist Knit.' That sounds so much like making a left-leaning decrease feels when I do one.

What she's done is to take up the slack that gets inot the top stitch and transfer it to the stitch that will end up hidden on the back of the decrease. Then she twists that stitch to keep it there.

The top photo shows my first execution of this technique. My previous over-sized SSK stitch shows in the second, I hope.

Cool, huh?

Oh, and if you really want to challenge your mind, That Laurie's guest posts during the Yarn Harlot's push to a book deadline will do it. Laurie discusses various facets of top-down yoked sweaters, including some to use a limited amount of hand-spun yarn in the yoke. Unfortunately, That Laurie doesn't have her own blog.

Or fortunately - I do not need another blog to read.

 

Stars and Stripes

I finally got my blog links lists set up in the sidebar. I'm really sorry they weren't there before I got all that traffic from The Harlot. Still, most of my hits seemed to just be to my front page where I do have more than two weeks worth of posts.

The Free Patterns link also got hits, maybe from people looking for Karen's sock pattern. It's on Blue Moon's site and also for sale at Churchmouse Yarns. Check out her other designs here.

I, on the other hand, have one pattern up so far. I'm working on that.

The blog lists still need some work and lack a few links. If you see something amiss or know of a blog you think I should check out, please let me know.

I listed blogs I read regularly but did push that a bit for the list of Karens. I know I've seen lots of Karen/Karin/Karyn knitting blogs, but apparently I haven't added many of them to my feed service. Hmmm.

I knit up my sample mini-skein I dyed in my self-striping sock yarn workshop. When I dyed my full skeins I left out the grays I tried to do here. I aimed for olive only in the variegated stripes between the blues and grays, but found a small amount of yellow quickly turns black to olive. I need to experiment with adding colors to gray to make it richer without turning it into a different color altogether.

This sample actually turned out a bit smaller around than I'd do for a sock - maybe an inch too small for my 8 1/2 inch ankle so it looks thin though the gauge isn't especially loose. I knit 8 1/2 stitches per inch on US1s/2.5mm. I wouldn't expect a big difference in the layout or width of the stripes for a slightly bigger sock or slightly different gauge.

For some reason I kept dropping stitches at the change of needles with this yarn (which yarn?). I don't usually do that. Plus, after swatching all day I suddenly realized that I had almost the equivalent of half a sock, but I didn't cast on like I would for an actual sock and I used up more than half of what I had in this mini-skein. I may need to do shorter color repeats. This one measured about 40 yards for one full repeat.

I haven't skeined this hank yet. I need a bit more set-up to do so without tangling everything. This photo should give an idea of how it will knit up. I did more variegation in wider stripes here and separated them with narrower stripes of darker colors -- and another 40 yard repeat.

When this is knit the stripes will run down from the top of the photo and then back up. The colors at the top and bottom will not end up next to each other. They'll turn back on themselves and make a stripe twice as wide as it looks now.

I ordered KnitPicks Bare in several sizes and blends to use in my dye experimentation. The olive and blue skein contains 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon. Both took the color well. The blue skein is a merino but not superwash. It did not felt in the dye process, thought it fluffed up a bit more than the blend.

I'm not wild about the feel of these yarns. They don't have much spring in comparison to other hand-dyeds I've bought. I did find one spit splice and a couple of flaws when I was winding them onto the warping board.

But, then, the sample skein was either the Kona or Gems provided in the workshop, both well thought of, and I found a couple of flaws in a shorter run of it. No knots or splices, though.

I want to buy a couple of cones of yarn to continue learning with, but could see myself getting to a point where I knit for others with the yarn or even sell it, so I'll do some research before I decide what to buy. Right now I lean toward a superwash and nylon blend as that's what I tend to think I should buy in hand-dyed sock yarn.

But I do get swayed by great color combinations regardless of the yarn used. I assume I'm not alone in that.

The Harlot Effect

At 5:37 PM Pacific time yesterday The Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, posted her blog entry in which she linked to my blog.

TypePad tracks blog statistics on Greenwich Mean Time. Since 5PM Pacific time corresponds to midnight in GMT, my stats had just reset for a new day. I got the first hit from her blog at 5:38. Odds are good I had fewer than a half a dozen hits in the previous 38 minutes of the stats day.

At 4:39 PM today, 23 hours later, my Stats page looked like this.

Note the day's total (1337) versus the last seven days (1610) and the Lifetime totals (5367). I've only blogged for five months as of yesterday and I have worked on some ways to increase my blog traffic, though I've only done one KAL. The last couple of weeks I've averaged around 40 to 45 page hits per day.

TypePad timed an issue with my e-mail notification for comments to coincide with this week. If you leave a comment I'll try to find an e-mail address to send you a thank you. I really do appreciate those who stay and chat.

Next month for my six month anniversary I'll do a give-away of the second copy of Casts Off I got Stephanie to sign. Come back a few days before that to check on details.

Of course, you all are very welcome to hang around here between now and then if you like. I hope some of you do.

A Very Nice Week

I had a pretty nice week, knitting and knitting community wise.

I passed 100 posts and the four-month mark in my blogging.

I blocked one finished Pinnate Shawl and finished and blocked another.

I finally started my Mountain Colors cardigan.

I got a couple of boxes of yarn in the mail, mostly containing discounted (and discontinued)Jaeger Extra Fine Merino.

I had a post selected for Yarnival. Since january one hosted this month's edition, I've had two or three hundred people click on my post since Wednesday.

Wednesday evening I went to the Ice Cream Social at the Seattle Knitters Guild August meeting. I just joined the Guild and started going to meetings a few months ago. This one was all about socializing so I talked to several people I've kind of met at meetings or on the bus trip to the Lavender Festival last month. I also finally met Ryan of Mossy Cottage and got to visit with some of her recent projects in person.

I won the Weekly Link Contest at the Summer of Socks 2007 KAL with a link to hand and wrist stretches. More people stopped by the blog from that post. Thanks, Margene for being my source for the link in the first place.

Today Ryan, who's a sweetie herself, posted about Wednesday's Guild meeting and said some extremely nice things about me, as well as linking to my blog which brought yet more people over. One of those was Kim, from Knits with a Silent K, who apparently had made futile efforts (due to lack of information from Blogger) to find my blog after I commented on hers.

Then Jo Anne from Ottawa, apparently blogless but a repeat commenter on my blog, said in a reply to my thank-you e-mail that I'm on her daily blog list "right up there with the Harlot, Rabbich, and Franklin." Which both made me speechless and made a superlative end to a mighty fine week.

Post #100

As of this post I have 100 posts and 150 comments since I went live on April 16th. In those 17 weeks I averaged 5.9 posts per week. I'd set myself a goal of six per week, which I thought overly ambitious, so this pleases me -- pleases me a lot.

Those 150 comments please me even more. Thank you everyone so much for both showing up and responding to my writings, whether you comment regularly or only once. I really appreciate the effort and the interest it indicates.

Next week on August 16th I'll celebrate four months of blogdom. In so many ways I still feel like a newbie and in a few ways I've developed the habits of a regular blogger.

I now put my camera in my purse along side my cell phone almost every time I go out.  Most of the time I still forget to take pictures.

I spend half the day thinking about what I'll write in the blog. Then I totally forget I have the thing and go to bed or almost go to bed without an entry. I'd probably average closer to 6.5 posts per week if I didn't have so many days I just forget I need to post something. That doesn't count the days I remember when I'm already gathering up stuff to head to bed at my usually late time of 2 to 3 AM and am beyond being creative or witty or even very coherent.

I think of great topics and all sorts of things to say about them. When I sit down to write them up late at night I forget way too much of my plans and my mental sentences. I need to get back to jotting down notes like I did for, oh, about the first week. Oddly, I've jotted notes a lot in the past for various writing courses but can't seem to get into the habit now that I have something I write almost daily. I bought the nice notebook cover and notepads. Didn't work.

I post lots of pictures, mostly of on-topic stuff. I have fun composing my photos and like how they come out. The color on them usually varies notably from the object and I haven't taken the time to figure out how to get truer colors. I forget about those with slower connections.

My knitting and knitting community have really benefited. I have dozens of ideas for projects I want to do/design/knit. The days I don't knit have become rare. I finally got myself to a Guild meeting and I really like it -- so much so I volunteered to be a reporter for the newsletter. I made it to the Northend Knitters' KIP on Worldwide KIP Day even though it rained. I haven't gone to their pub knitting night yet though I said I would. I still have links to several local SnB-type groups, like the Purly Girls, I haven't gotten around to checking out.

I make a point of not just reading my growing roster of blogs regularly but commenting anytime I have something to say. I really enjoy 'visiting' with my new on-line community. I check out new blogs daily. But I haven't created my lists of blog links for my sidebar. I put off signing up on the Ravelry wait-list because it was more than I wanted to do at that moment so now a month after I did apply I still have 9474 people in front of me, down from 12,266.

Despite those deficiencies, even when I struggle to put together a post before I fall asleep sitting up or finish a project so I have something to post, this doesn't feel like a chore. It feels like doing something I want to do.

I really like it here.