Etherknitter

Saving the world from math

Fifteen rows, Part II of the Great Sock Project.  The yarn is a very intellectual yarn.  It is crisp, correct, defined and compliant.  I feel the unity of knitting with stitch definition such as this.  But it does not call out to my soul, as does cashmere, silk, or alpaca.  There is no sensuality in the stitches.  It will simply be a beautiful sock.  Lorna's Laces,  Tahoe colorway.

It will be a very examined and analyzed sock.  Part I of the Great Sock Project is complete.  I have measured every inch of sock knitting.  I now know that it takes me 162.33 yards to knit my average st st sock pattern.  I waved the scrap of paper with my numbers and math at Mr. Etherknitter.

"LOOK!  I am now the boss of my sock knitting!"  She laughed.  She danced.  She capered about the bathroom like a madwoman.

Mr. Etherknitter has gotten used to this reaction to FOs.  His college degree makes it possible for him to understand my numerical glee.  Then he outdid me.

Part II of the Great Sock Caper is to weigh each part of the sock process, crosscheck it with the measured math.  The measurements are heir to all permutations of measurement error possible with yarn.  How stretched does one measure the yarn segment?  What is the tension achieved by the knitter in different knitting sessions? 

I asked him if he cared about the humidity factor.  "What humidity....OH!", as a smile crossed his handsome, intelligent and co-conspiring face.  A difference of opinion arose.  He wants me to measure the weight of the yarn and the weight of the needles at the same time that I take temperature and humidity measurements next to the scale.

"NO."  I stamped my sockless foot.  "Do you remember Sleeping Beauty?  The post where I log in all the humidity measurements will be the knitblogging equivalent of the spindle on which she pricked her finger.  My readers' co-workers, cats, and significant others will find them, faces mashed into the keyboard, asleep for a hundred years, if I do that."

I am taking measurements to amuse him.  I will not inflict this on you.  The Java Applet is just one sock away from taking shape, morphing into existence. 

I was stunned to find that my size 10.5 foot needs only 325 yards of yarn.  I'll include ribbing, cuff, gusset, heel, foot and toe data.  Stay tuned.

Weaving in the ends is now a pleasure.  I am not a person who sews.  Yes, I have the current common cold, but I am not feverishly delusional.  (Yet.)  Lorrie dropped a silver sliver in my lap at knitting one evening several months ago. 

It is the most beautiful Chibi needle, hand-machined, as exquisitely detailed as only a talented metal-working knitter can create.  It matches the silver dpns she made, with the twists.  I love it unreasonably.

The stampede to FOs is going very well.  There will be a flood of blogfodder soon. 

Only the vest stands between me and my goal.  And not for long.  I ran into yarn tangles that a more controlled use of scissors will solve.  Picture knitting one side of the V-neck from the inside of one ball, and the outside of a second, and the other side of the V-neck from the outside of the first ball, and the inside of the second.  Confused?  Me too.  I'll label and chop soon, work one side of the V at a time, pick up a gazillion stitches around neck and armholes, sew two seams, after a three needle bindoff for the shoulders, and be done.

Sweating (and not) the small stuff

What goes before always changes what comes next.  Evolution inevitably happens. 

Intellectual evolution is included.  Jokes we thought were hilarious ten years ago are boring.  The internet has accelerated the process.  Remember the Dancing Baby?  That was so cool when it first appeared.  We've moved on.

Moving on isn't always comfortable, nor is it inevitable.  Kim's post about not blogging WIPs poked at me to evaluate what I wanted to do with that.  Blogfodder changes, just as we, and the Interweb does.  It is clear that we post what interests us, and amuses our friends and readers.  Sounds like a plan to me.

So, yes, I had a trainwreck of a WIP in that glovelet.  Whew.  I simply refuse to discuss how long I spent picking out the cast-on edge.  That wasn't the end of it.  I learned that from the cast-on edge, the knitting doesn't magically unravel like the cast-off edge would.  I picked several of the six rows of plain ribbing, stitch by stitch, so that the pattern would match. 

Then I gave up.  Furious, I picked out the cast-off row to unravel the whole damn thing and start over.  Naturally,  somewhere in the thumb stitches, it hung up and refused to move.  I picked up a scissors, and chopped the whole thing into little, teensy pieces so that I WOULD NOT BE TEMPTED to pick it back up ever again, to rescue the yarn.  I chopped it into little frustrated, angry pieces, and threw it in the wastebasket.

Pictures, thousand words, and all that.  Several hours later (Etherknitter to Mr. Etherknitter:  "Dear, could you not throw anything goopy in the basket until I retrieve the mittlet shreds?") I proved that blogfodder trumps frustration and the humiliation of dumpster-diving, suburban-style.

Life and knitting inevitably move on.  The mittlet has been restarted, and is at the end of the gusset increases.

The Sylph yarn swatch is moving along.  It glows.

Beth Brown-Reinsel gave a top-down Aran workshop in New Hampshire last week.  It is the sister to her top-down gansey workshop that others took in July at the TKGA conference. 

One masters the concepts while knitting a tiny Aran over six hours.  It is high-wire knitting to the speed of the William Tell Overture.  I never let my inaccurate stitch count get in the way of my forward progress.  As a result, I came home with concepts, and nothing that looks remotely like a a sweater.  But her ribbed neck cast-on, shoulder saddle construction, and great good humor were well worth the price of admission.  I sat at a table with Amy from New Hampshire.  She was wearing a handknit, handspun sweater which gave me renewed hope.

She had different wools, different grists, nay, even different species (alpaca!) spun and hanging around.  So she took a knitting from the top down sweater book, and figured out a sweater. 

She is a very talented fiberista.  But it also means that I should stop sweating making Mr. E's Coopworth sweater an exact grist.  That means I will have more fun AND faster progress.

Imagine that.

NB:  Do click on the William Tell Overture link.  I had to wipe away tears of laughter before I could finish posting the link.

Fall, falling, fallen

I cast off happily this morning, glad to be done with the pastel glovelets. 

That was the only happy moment.  Something felt wrong.  It was inchoate, made me restless, made me pull out the other glovelet to compare. 

After knitting six rows of K2P1 ribbing, I forgot to knit the next two-and-a-half inches before increasing for the thumb gusset.   My next knitting move will be picking out the cast-on edge, ripping out six rows of ribbing, and then knitting from the palm to the cuff in pattern.

These glovelets were started as mindless knitting for a roadtrip to New Hampshire to visit Kim to pick up my new wheel.

What?  New wheel?

Kim decided that her new Norm Hall ruled the roost.  Her cherry Lendrum Saxony came home with me.  It is a mesmerizing spin - quiet, fast, elegant.  We are still getting used to each other, but it's a very fast learning curve on a machine built like this one.

The cold flames of autumn are now dying embers kicked underfoot as the final garden chores are done.  This is the fall dress of the former Queen of Green, Acer palmatum dissectum.  Japanese maples are truly four-season beauties.  The low western sun singles her out for several minutes each afternoon.  Her gown will soon be puddled at her feet.  I wonder if plants have any sense of the long winter sleep approaching.

I HAD to cast on the Sylph yarn from Artfibers.  Reswatching is pretty innocent, right?  I'm just swatching for final gauge, and seed vs moss stitch for edgings.  It's not REALLY starting a new WIP.  Are you with me on this one?

I thought so.

 

Goal: Current WIPS done by 12/31/07

Multiple WIPS are circling the landing strips.  There has been an unwritten embargo on starting anything new.  The knit nook has migrated, WIP by WIP, downstairs, to form a still-life:

Mr. Etherknitter wanted to know how the young man in the picture came to have a knitting shrine dedicated to him.   

The one new project (fingerless mitts) that slipped onto some empty needles peeks out from the lower right hand corner.  The Samson merino/angora from the Nameless-Rhinebeck-Vendor-in-Barn-A is an odd color melange.  I bought it for the texture, not for the combination of hues.  It knits up somewhat more confused than my color sense usually permits.  Any leftovers will become baby booties, for which the colors will be exactly right.

The rest of the WIPs:  I'm up on the v-neck divide on the Straker vest pictures on the young victim.  LeafLace sits in the canvas bag on the left, awaiting a two-row-tink.  Socks (one finished, one on the needles) lie strewn across the field of battle.  I think the baby kimono is visible on the left, awaiting garter edge seaming.  There is a Reckless Abandon scarf deep in the pile.

The scarf for Nurse Beth is done.  Acker's Acres Angoras bunny blend (merino 60%/angora 40%),  2.75 skeins, Arrowhead lace pattern.  The color in the center pile is true.