Mar

30

Please, please, dry.

Knitting
grafted row, wrong side

The grafted round from the wrong side

It’s done. The sweater that sucked the last six weeks of my life into a void of knitting frenzy has been drying on a rack since last night, first on the right side and now inside out to try to speed things up. I’ve learned a lot in the process and, for the record, I am never again going to graft 340 stitches in the round at 8.5 spi in two colors using wool with tiny barbed wires that cling on for dear life. EVER.

inside out sleeve

8-stitch floats in all the vertical bands.

The heathery hues also made it harder to see what I was doing. Yes, there were problems and I consumed an insane amount of chocolate yesterday.

neck short rows

A bit of short rows in the back of the neck

While I practice my patience today, I may take a break from knitting and run some experiments in the kitchen. How about something non-blue for a change?

Posted by | 7 comments
Mar

27

The Zen of undoing

Knitting

I thought I could do it all in one day. Not so.

Prepping for grafting

Prepping for grafting

The prepping alone took a few hours and this afternoon I won’t have time to do the actual grafting as I have a scheduled Italian conversation session with a student. Mañana…

concentration

One stitch at a time

By the way, thank you for all the virtual chocolate and encouragement. :)

Rip, snip, pull, repeat.

I had not expected the undoing to take so long. For someone like me — irritable, impatient, and constantly sleep deprived — this has been a Zen exercise, close to what I imagine meditation must be. I say imagine, because I tried it a few times and never quite got it. Not even enough patience for meditation.

The beginning

I considered mounting the stitches on two circular needles, to keep the sweater flat for grafting, but I was afraid that the needle would get in the way during the ripping operation and also that it would pull the stitches and deform them. So I opted for threading them with contrast yarn.

threading the live stitches

Threading the live stitches with orange yarn.

I accidentally snipped one of the blue threads too close to the work and I’ll have to be careful when weaving in the ends.

Undoing the last few stitches

Undoing the last few stitches

Finally done with separating the two parts of the sweater and counting my stitches.

Counting the stitches

I thought I'd better count my stitches to make sure the top part matches the bottom part.

In between pulling and snipping and keeping the cats at bay (they were very interested), I realized that the actual grafting will not be a straightforward affair because of a few complications:
1) two colors above and below the cut;
2) color changes in the grafting round (those pesky vertical bands);
3) a possible mismatch in the number of stitches that will involve a couple of increases or decreases;
4) the slight offset of loops that I am not sure how to handle at the color changes (the pesky vertical bands again).
But I will worry about that tomorrow afternoon, when I can get started.

I have a feeling that you will get tired of this sweater before it’s even finished.

Posted by | 6 comments
Mar

26

Cut

Knitting

I cut it

I did it. I cut the sweater at the top of the ribbing and I am reknitting the part riddled with mistakes.

Reknitting the bottom part

Then I will cut the section to be removed and graft the new bottom.

Kelvin investigates

Kelvin has been investigating and is now guarding the injured pieces. He and Piper have been keeping me company during the recent long knitting sessions. What would life be without kitties?

Guarding the injured sweater

Posted by | 7 comments
Mar

15

Math + surgery

Knitting

I am going crazy doing knitting math and making charts for my sweater in progress. Between some small but important charting mistakes and a major snafu in

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the knitting of the snowflake pattern in the lower body of the pullover, it has become clear that I will have to do major surgery on this baby. :( knitting charts Removing fifty rounds of 340 stitches each in two colors, reknitting them and then graft the last round to the upper part of the sweater will be painful. Very painful. Send chocolate.

Posted by | 11 comments
Mar

13

Sleeves

Knitting

I am working on the second sleeve of my sweater and excited about getting close to when I can put all my “tubes” together and start

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the yoke. This sweater marks many firsts for me: first sweater in the round, first seamless yoke construction, first stranded sweater, first attempt at designing

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a pattern. Too ambitious? Most likely, but I am learning so much in the process that it’ll be ok, however it turns out. sleeves Several years ago I did start a stranded color project, another pullover, that never got finished. This one will. I am figuring things out as I go, so it’s taking a long time, and knitting at a gauge of 8.5 spi is not speeding things up either. Some things never change.

Posted by | 4 comments
Mar

05

Slowly slowly

Knitting

knitting with cats

Supervised knitting

Knitting with Kelvin

Slow progress, but in good company.

Kelvin

Kelvin likes a good knitting session.
It means I am not moving around much.

Posted by | 9 comments
Feb

27

Unaccomplishments

Knitting

organizing my swatches

Organizing my swatches

It’s been a swatching frenzy for weeks. All these ideas in my head: stitches, construction techniques, colors… but I don’t seem to hit the right combination of idea and execution. Either the idea falls apart after a few tests or it looks good but either the yarn or the color is not a good fit. I’ve been slightly obsessed with Latvian braids and various incarnations of herringbone stitch, and in the past two days brioche stitch — the current name for what used to go by fisherman’s rib. Brioche stitch is particularly frustrating right now because it deflates completely after washing. While waiting for yarn to arrive from the UK and Denmark, I explored a few techniques. Nothing new to most of you, but new to me: Norwegian glove construction — I was really looking forward to knitting my first Selbu

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mittens. Instead, I practiced enough to knit almost one glove and as soon as I had the base of the thumb in place and could try it on, realized that it’s uncomfortable and I will forever stick to the less elegant side thumbs, or whatever they are called. If I knit a Selbu glove, it’ll be a bastard version with a side thumb.

Selbut est

Test to learn the Norwegian glove construction

Norwegian thumb construction

Norwegian thumb

Knitting with DPN — My friend Betta has been urging me to try them. I’ve been resisiting DPN since I tried them years ago and got nowhere, and I would never have learned to knit socks if it hadn’t been for Cat Bhordi’s “Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles”. But DPN have their uses and you never know when a technique is going to save the day. So, yes, I am practising and, no, I am not enjoying it. DPN are not going to replace two circulars for me any time soon.
Learning to knit with DPN

Learning to knit with DPN

Portuguese purling — This one is brilliant. I am still slow with it and I only practice when I have whole rows of purls, but purling Portuguese style is definitely something I want to become proficient at, for two reasons: to purl faster and to reduce stress to my right hand and arm, which are already showing signs of wear after just three months of knitting. Herringbone stitch — The two main versions I found produce quite different results, both on the right and wrong side of the fabric. You can see for yourself below.
Two kinds of Herringbone stitch

Two kinds of Herringbone stitch (front)

Two kinds of Herringbone stitch

Two kinds of Herringbone stitch (back)

Intarsia in the round — If I had to save my life by either knitting intarsia in the round or learning Basque, I’d probably try to learn Basque.

Posted by | 5 comments
Feb

20

Foraging for yarn

Knitting

The 2-ply Hebridean I ordered from Virtual Yarns got here yesterday; it only took 39 days. Apparently the US government have imposed new regulations that cause shipments over a certain weight to undergo extra checks, so now parcels by Air Mail from the UK to California take about six weeks to be delivered. Curses.

Hebridean 2-ply

2-ply Hebridean (Virtual Yarns)

That was the yarn I had meant to use to knit Caller Herrin for me and Ben, plus extra colors for tests. Now of course I

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lost the urge to knit hats given that spring is upon us in Los Angeles and Ben already got his hat in a different yarn. In the meantime, I found some yarns I’d never tried and bought a skein of Madelinetosh, two skeins of Spinni (Isager Strik) and one Lace Ball. The beauty of the yarn blinded me to the fact that they are all singles and I should have known better because I hate knitting with singles. Spinni is absolutely gorgeous and I have to find a way to use it, diagonal bias or not. This is not a yarn I want to hide in the closet and forget about.

Isager Spinni

Isager Spinni

Spinni worked single and double

The larger swatch was worked with two strands and the diagonal bias is much more pronounced.

Posted by | 4 comments
Feb

15

Valentine butterflies

Nature

For Valentine’s Day we went butterfly watching. From his college days at

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UCSB, Ben knew of a butterfly reserve just outside Santa Barbara, a two-hour drive from Los Angeles, half of it coasting the ocean. Even if we didn’t get lucky with the butterflies, it would be a good day out. When we got to the reserve, the sky was overcast and the temperature quite colder than in LA — Santa Barbara seems to have a microclimate of its own. As a result, the luscious greens of the ground cover were more saturated and walking around was more enjoyable. None of that southern Californian sun that washes out everything. The downside was that the butterflies were not very active. After walking around a path that took us through a beech grove, a few vernal pools and a wide field covered in wild flowers in view of the ocean, we reached the

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eucalyptus grove that is the local roosting spot for thousand of Monarch butterflies who migrate to California to overwinter. The butterflies gather in clusters hanging from the eucalyptus trees and from a distance resemble branches of dead leaves, then when the sun warms them up, they start fluttering around and you see that those dried brown leaves are not leaves after all. They detach form the clusters and reveal their bright orange inner wings. We didn’t see that many flying around, but it was a lovely way to spend the day. And if you wonder why Ben has his eyes closed in that picture, it’s because he was listening to the birds.

Posted by | 6 comments
Feb

07

I need to learn Swedish

Knitting / Language

Most of the things I am currently intrigued by originate either in Scandinavia, the Baltic countries, or other subarctic areas such as Iceland and the Shetland islands. Considering the smörgåsbord of languages spoken across those areas, Swedish seems my best starting point to attempt a language attack, as it has the largest number of native speakers and is widely understood throughout Norway, Denmark, and even Finland. In the past year I have read many books by Henning Mankell (all the Kurt Wallander novels available in English) and the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson. Not that I plan to read novels in Swedish any time soon, but I often wish that I could read Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish blogs and last

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year, when Julekuler came out and all the Scandinavians on Ravelry were knitting those cute Christmas tree decorations, I was left salivating. They tell me that Julekuler is being translated into English and will be published in the US in July of this year. Guess what I’ll be knitting this summer? And every time a new Marianne Isager book is published, it takes at least a couple of years for the English version to follow. For Strik a la carte it took a lot longer than that. What’s an Italian/English speaking knitter to do?

Strik a la carte, y Marianne Isager

Strik a la carte (2004), by Marianne Isager. Republished in English as Classic Knits in 2009.

While I consider the likelihood of learning enough Swedish to decipher knitting instructions, I savor a few Swedish blogs written in English (Tack, Asplund!) and keep myself entertained with Google Translate for the rest.

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