Etherknitter

Polar Express

The mittens have not had a formal debut.  Winter weather returns soon, and the mittens will have their days.

The gauge (huge) guaranteed a fast knit.  The pattern is here.

Polarknit yarn, colorway Mallard (There is even a Polartec tag on the yarn ball.)
Needles:  Crystal Palace dpns, #11 US

Mr. Etherknitter bought me a netbook this week.  I cannot understand how I have lived without this technology.  Computer for the knitting bag?  Yes!  Blogging at Rhinebeck?  Yes!  WiFi interface and a real keyboard?  Yes!

He suggested I knit a case for it.  He nominated Polarknit yarn for the honor.

Sheer genius.  It isn't often that a nonknitting husband can predict AND create the future like that for his knitting wife.

Knitblogging has saved my sorry knitter's a**. 

Why?

Because if I didn't have an outlet to scream about my stupid knitting mistakes, my knitting and my entire stash would have been tossed into the fireplace by now.

What?  I can hear you thinking:  "There isn't a Renaissance fireplace in all of Europe big enough to burn that woman's stash."

So?  What's your point?

Oh, never mind.  I don't think I have the ego strength to discuss this with you right at the moment.

I was threading blocking wires through the Birdsfoot scarf.  I wondered how to block it viciously, and still retain the scalloping at the edges.  I found that if I located the center stitches in the scallops, threaded the wire through that, and pinned the valleys, it might work.  So I threaded the wire through the opposite end after finishing the first end.

Wait.  I must have twisted the scarf while threading.  I untwisted it, laid it flat and looked.  What did I see?

Shocked disbelief washed through my stunned knitterbrain.  Three repeats before the end, I had switched the wrong side to the right side and the right side to the wrong side. 

Burning the scarf and the stash came to mind, briefly.  The idea of leaving it as is also muscled its brutish way into the options list.  No one would know, and no one would look closely enough at this rustic yarn.  Even if suspicion crept into her brain, the nodding knitter would be too polite to say anything.

But since I would know forever and ever (hallelujah! hallelujah!), I have to rip it and reknit.  Then the next miserable thought occurred.  Did I do it at the end of the scarf OR AT THE BEGINNING?

The only break in this discouraging sequence of events was that it happened at the end of the knitting.  Then I silently cursed my compulsive and thorough weaving in of ends, and proceeded to start the backwards progress task.

Is the knitting goddess laughing at me for thinking that I had run out of blogfodder?  I have little doubt.

The weather outside is frightful, handknits are so delightful

It's not working.  I'm okay with that.

The pattern showed three dimensional texture.  I cast on and knit three or four rows.  Using sport weight alpaca yarn to substitute for worsted weight cashmere was the deal killer.

I voiced my doubts to Mr. E.  We decided that knitting one repeat of the pattern (16 rows) would be enough to see what the yarn and pattern would produce. 

There is not enough textural stiffness to the alpaca to make the definition of form required by those inward pockets.  The weight and drapiness of the scarf will stretch the pockets even more.  The scarf will then look like simple lace.

I bailed before he did.  He understood and agreed.  

Last night, we walked to a restaurant near the hospital.  Our path took us around buildings, and then into the teeth of the storm.  Dinner in town would give the commuters time to finish their version of Boston bumpercars without our participation.  We would head home later on empty streets.  The plan worked well.

As we walked into the wind, snow blowing through my teeth,  I turned to the DH.  "It is now that I truly appreciate the value of handknits."  I was wrapped in two scarves (Irish Hiking, and a commercial cashmere), a hat knit of angora by my mom over 15 years ago.  My hands were covered by alpaca mittens knit by someone vending at Rhinebeck 2007.

I'm working on a new fashion look.  It is two complementary (or not) scarves worn together.  You can wrap one around your neck and let the other hang in front.  Or you can wrap both.  Or you can wrap neither.  It is a versatile combination, and it is warm when the weather outside is frightful.  Let it snow let it snow let it snow!

Aftermath

I just can't ignore good blogfodder. 

The pine tree landed just so.

It came from up here.

The man with the chainsaw came to make short work of it.  And this picture shows why men love chainsaws.

Z is for Zocalito

You've been here before.  M is for Mask came from Zocalito.  I knew this was my ABC Along Z when we turned the corner into the alley on a snowbound, cold, windy night, and saw riotous color. 

My hands became numb as I took picture after picture.  I had no worries.   I knew a margarita was waiting for me.  The illusion of warmth is fine with me, because the real thing is not far behind. 

The food is great, too. 

Judith MacKenzie-McCuin #2 - Control

Everything you do to the yarn will change it.  The plying post started the discussion at the later stages of yarn creation.   Washing and fulling the yarn reduces yardage by ~20%.  Winding the yarn into a ball takes twist away.  Knitting Continental adds twist, knitting English subtracts twist. 

The control starts early in the life of a yarn.  Judith's first comments were directed at wheel adjustments.  I thought she was being politically correct:  the spinner is not at fault, it is the fault of the wheel.  But then she sat down at my wheel.  "This pulls like a dragon!"  She laced the yarn across the hooks, and take-up was less vicious.

I have spun laceweight from Ashland Bay roving without fighting the wheel.  But there was a crucial difference between when I had spun the laceweight, and the class.  My cotton drive band had died.  I replaced it with a thicker polyethylene band, since I use the Schacht in Scotch tension mode.

I dialed the Scotch tension down.  There was no sweet spot between too much take-up and not enough take-up.  Judith's point was made.  A thinner drive band provides less friction on the pulley, and therefore allows a greater range of take-up, and more control.  A thicker drive band facilitates faster takeup.  This is easy to remember:  thinner drive band makes lace easier, thicker drive band makes thicker yarn easier to spin.

Trial and error through my spinning hours has shown me the truth of her next point of control.  (I didn't need to go through my sceptic phase on this one.)  The preparation of the fiber, and how it has been treated often defeats the spinner.  It can be a barrier to producing the kind of yarn you want.

Top that has been dyed has floated around in the dyebath enough to disrupt the alignment of the fibers.  It is still top, still more aligned than roving, but it is not the prep that came out of the combing mill.  Her solution is to expectorate on each palm, rub the top between her palms, and then spin the fiber.

I'm sure you've either seen this, or heard about it.  Her goal is to compact the top in order to get a more even yarn. 

Judith has even more to say about roving.  She doesn't predraft.  Her observations:  spinners predraft roving because they let too much twist into the web.  (Predrafting the roving means that there are fewer fibers to fight once the twist escapes their control, and they are able to keep drafting without stopping.)  She implies control should be learned, rather than worked around.  Predrafting also facilitates uneven yarn, because it is impossible to predraft fiber along any length with an identical amount of fiber in each inch. 

Let's hold there.  The last Judith post will be about worsted vs woolen spinning.   This picture is Judith with the puppet she made for a Spin-Off article.

My most favorite of my Judith pictures.  She bubbles over with life, and joy, and confidence, and serenity.  And she would laugh out loud to hear me write that about her.

((Addendum:  Typepad has been very ill over the past week.  If you have left me a comment, and I haven't replied, I apologize.  Typepad has not been sending the comments to my email.  There is not enough information left in the comment format to always retrieve an email address from the blog.  I've opened a Help Ticket.  They aren't listening well. 

This is dribbling into the last of my daily posting.  (I had not signed up for December.)   It was fun to continue until Typepad burped.  I accomplished my NaBloPoMo in November, and was thrilled to have met the challenge.  My revitalized blogging goal will be something closer to 2-3 times per week.  I so appreciate your support, comments, insights, encouragement, and expertise.))

Chicken Little was right

The fear of running out of yarn has played a dominant role in many of my WIPs.  It has been a treacherous backnoise in my sock knitting, until I was able to calculate how many yards I use in a regulation Etherknitter sock.

Nobody listens to me anymore.  Mr. Etherknitter just smiles and nods knowingly.  My knitter friends are perpetually in denial.  They nod knowingly, and murmur what we soothingly say to all our knitter friends.  "No, you won't.  It'll be fine.   There's more left there than you think."

So how does the story end? 

Wool Peddler's shawl.  I ran out of yarn with seventeen stitches left to bind off on the last row.  I had Russian joined all skeins to minimize waste.  There was not one spare inch to clip and use.

I emailed Judy.  The yarn had been purchased two or three SPAs ago from her.  She mailed me a yard of the silk/merino, in the same colorway, different dyelot.  You can't tell the difference.  (Thank you, Judy!)

The exciting fact about this FO:  it is my first completed triangular shawl.  Yippee!

Plying: Judith MacKenzie-McCuin #1

I practiced Judith's plying technique today.  Since a full JMM post has been an overwhelming task, breaking it down into parts might get the job done.

I transformed into one of those obnoxious people very early during my SOAR week.  They are the ones who start sentences with "Well, Judith says......".  But spinners understand the reason for the reference.  She has settled into representing a gold standard for technical information. 

If you will turn to chapter 6, page 101 of your handbook, Teach Yourself Visually: Handspinning, you will find a concise pictures of what the hands need to do for making a two-ply yarn.  (Did anyone else make the mistake of thinking her first book was too basic?  Ha.  I thought I was hearing advanced gems from her lips until I came home, looked at her book more closely, and saw that it was all in there.  I am humbled.)

If your yarn goal is a woolen spun yarn, use less twist in the single and more twist in the plying.  The idea of less twist is to make sure the single is not spun into wire in order to hold the fibers together in the single.  Use enough twist to keep the yarn together.  Plying will add strength, especially to downy fibers.  (Shorter staple fibers are what she recommends we choose for woolen spinning.)

If your goal is a worsted spun yarn, the singles should have more twist added during spinning.  She recommends choosing longer stapled fibers, with less crimp.  You can predict that socks and lace are well suited to worsted technique.

None of this is revelatory to more experienced spinners.  She extends the logic.  Everything you do to yarn will change it.  Some of the changes are more subtle.  English and Continental knitters change the twist of the yarn in different directions when they knit.  For throwers, tighter ply will make up for the untwisting that happens when the yarn is looped around the needle.  Pickers need tighter twist in the single to make up for the untwisting that happens when picking up the yarn with the tip of the needle.

Two ply yarns open outward and define stitches.  More definition is obtained.  Three ply yarns bloom inward, to fill in the stitch.  Less definition occurs, but less yarn is necessary to create the garment.  I wrote all this down faithfully, then found it on page 96. 

Judith's nonverbals in class communicated more than what she would write in a published book.   "A Woolee Winder is a fine tool, just not for spinning."  She thinks the wheel is made less responsive by this spinner's helper.  My Woolee Winder will only be pried from my cold, dead hands.  I like mine for plying, and for comfort spinning.  I suspect Judith thinks that a spinner who uses one takes less time and fewer interruptions to inspect the yarn as it is being formed.  That habit can be formed without relying on having to change hooks.  But it does take an extra level of discipline to make that decision and follow through with it.

She dismissed Navajo plying.  While acknowledging its utility in keeping color runs together, she does not call it plying.  It is "a crochet chain with ply twist in it".  I'm tending to agree with her on this one.  I don't like the way the yarn lies between the loops.  The plying twist (in my hands) varies.  I think it reflects light differently than a traditionally plyed yarn.  I'm getting less lazy, and splitting my bobbins by weight or yardage, and then doing a traditional two or three ply.

I purchased a rustic roving that is probably Rambouillet/alpaca.  I spun two bobbins (equal by weight) of slubby yarn, without picking out nepps or VM.  Short backward draw, woolen spun, now in two-ply process on the Golding.  It is being transformed into a soft, open yarn.  I'm liking it.

Y is for Yikes!

The sound of tinkling glass woke me this morning.  Disorientation rapidly coalesced to comprehension.  Ice was falling off the roof as I listened to the sound of rain. 

The drive to work was watery, but without skids.  This far east in Massachusetts escaped much of the chaos.  Patients arrived late at the hospital, docs were also late, but most had come from New Hampshire where life was slippery.

We pulled into our driveway after dark, tired.   The Fates have their ways.   We did not escape unscathed.   Icicles coated the needles of the top half of a pine, lying straddled across other trees, the lawn, and the asphalt.  There is more damage obscured by the cold drapes of night. 

I'll think about it tomorrow.

 

Knit Night

Each week, I am a voyeur.  Sadly-Blogless-Connie (the new spinner) and Lorrie (blogging-in-name-only) do tightrope acts in fiber.

This week, Connie did the reveal of her Icelandic fleece washing technique.  I had to take a picture of its exquisite, meticulous detail.  She plans to flick and spin each lock. 

Lorrie is making a vest for her DH.  She decided that the fronts of the vest should be identical twins.  That she is making the vest out of Noro Kureyon makes this the highwire act.

She started with 13 balls of Noro.  Last night, she was juggling five at once to get the colors to match.  I couldn't tell if she was the spider spinning her web, or the fly caught in the spider's web.  You be the judge.