Cattywampus

Comfort Knitting

Sometimes I am baffled by my own actions.

I have all this gorgeous yarn, way too much of it, in fact.  I have lists of lovely, complex sweaters and shawls and socks pages and pages long that I would like to knit.

But what am I knitting?

A faeorese style shawl from scraps of sock yarn.

All blues/purples.  I was going to use random colors, but then I realized I could just use this color family and make it work.

I am going to switch color every 4 rows, alternating between blocks of stockinette and garter stitch for some texture, and I'll use some of the colors at certain intervals through the shawl - if my math of how much I have of each yarn works out in real life.

There are a few reasons for this.

1. I've been wating to do something with my sock yarn for a while but didn't want to make a blanket and this idea just poppped into my head friday afternoon.

2. When life gets complicated, sometimes a little boring knitting is just what you need to stay sane.

Which leads me to Duke, who is slowly losing his battle with the cancer.  The doc stopped the chemo, she thinks we're losing ground and says that there's no point in continuing to pour chemicals into his little body when we don't think they're making a big difference anyway. 

So, he's on his own, fighting off the cancer as best he can.  He still doesn't know he's sick, but it's just a matter of time now, and it's breaking my heart.

I'm also absurdly worried about Pixie, in the logical part of my brain I know she'll be fine, that while she doesn't know what's going on, she understands what's happening on a level that only an animal could know...on the other hand, she's NEVER been alone.  Never.  I had Duke first and they've only been separated three or four times since (11 years), when one or the other of them had to have a procedure done at the vet.  I just don't know how she'll react and if she'll be able to adjust.

There are some other things going on with us that are making my brain zoom around in frantic little circles spewing WHAT IFs in every direction my thoughts turn and I'll update you as I can, but I can't yet.

Also, there's this.

The mystery knit along I joined in the fall.  You can't see the ends because it is approximately 7' long, which is WAY too long for a scarf like this.  It just looks silly.  So I'm going to frog it and reknit it into something better.  

Oddly, after this experience, I have joined the next mystery knit along, but I am using MUCH smaller needles.

I guess between this scarf and the circle jacket I feel as though my attempts to knit beautiful, complicated things are biting me in the a$$, hence the shawl out of scrap sock yarn.

I'll leave you with a question.  If you had this:

What would you do with it?

I'm excited about jumping into the fair isle game, but there is so much yarn and SO many colors, I'm having a hard time deciding where to start!

A Travesty (aka the swirl sweater update)

The swirl sweater.

First, I will just say this:  If you decide to make any of these sweaters, I HEARTILY recommend skipping the cuff section and just picking up and knitting cuffs afterwards.

The reason it took me so long to get to this point is that I was doing intarsia with three balls of yarn (cuff 1, middle of sweater, cuff 2, and back again), and I started this part in mid-october.  I stopped knitting this part after 4 rows (of about 50) made me so angry I couldn't fathom doing it ever again.  I picked it back up over the Christmas holiday break and sat down determinidely to finish it.  It didn't make me any less angry this time, but (stubborn as I am) I wasn't going to be defeated.

What I have been temporarily defeated by is a lack of yarn.

The pattern called for 806 yards.  I purchased 800 b/c the yarn came in 400 yard skeins and it never fails that I use 100-200 less yarn than a pattern calls for.  I don't know why, but it's pretty average, I NEVER underpurchase, but 6 yards short didn't seem like underpurchasing.  

See where my needle is?  One side is finished, the other side is soooooo close.

Honestly I don't think 6 yards would have finished this up, but 400 certainly would have.

Of course, this isn't just any yarn you can buy off the street (or from an LYS), this is Lisa Souza yarn, yarn that was dyed just for me.  

I can hear you groaning all the way over hear.  I KNOW!

The good news is that Lisa Souza is fantastically awesome and I sent a yard or two back to her and she is going to try to match the color for me.  The OTHER good news is that this is TOTALLY on the bottom of the sleeve and if it's off a little bit it shouldn't be noticable.

Here's the big picture:

Can you see all those ends?  (Oy Vey!)  I am not sure when this is going to get seamed up, but I am not looking forward to the weaving.

Also, can you believe this is actually going to be a sweater that I will wear out in public?  It's a little hard to believe looking at it right now, but it looks just like the diagram in the book, so I guess I'm doing it right.

I will say this: the next one of these I do, because seriously, all of that aside, it was totally fun to knit, I am using cascade 220 and I am TOTALLY spit splicing the ends in between ridges so I don't have to seam in the ends.  Totally.

Let's chat about needles.

What kind of needles do you use?

Do you find that you are obsessive and once you find a set you like, you buy all your needles in that kind and just knit with those?  Or do you switch from bamboo to metal to plastic without worrying about the effect that it might (or might not) have on your gauge?

I'm curious.

I recently decided I had to switch my needles.  I had been using Knit Picks Harmony interchangeables and I loved them, I still don't have a bad word to speak about them, for what you pay, they are fabulous.  Even though I decided to switch to something different, I still love the needles - but it's the construction that was an issue.  Within about a month, I had 3 different needles sort of pop apart, like the glue holding the needle into the metal casing just came undone.  If you call customer service, they will absolutely replace them when this happens, but I had gotten to a point where this was starting to be annoying.

So I turned to Ravelry to see what else was out there.

I knew I wanted wood, metal seems to tire my hands, so that was off the table.  I found Dyak Darn Pretties and after reading OODLES of things online, I decided to spend some of my stash selling money to buy these.  They are a bit pricey, but they are handcarved, made by a small business, and made in america, so for all that, I was willing to spend a bit more, and besides the reviews won me over, hands down.

Apparently, I discovered the Darn Pretties at about the same time as the rest of the knitting world because some time over the late summer/early fall the company got so many orders that it extended the delivery time significantly.  I ordered mine labor day weekend and was initially given a 10-12 week lead time.  In late October, yet another one of my Knit Picks needles broke and I had to make a decision (if I wanted to keep knitting on that project), wait for the Darn Pretties, order a new needle from Knit Picks, or try the Knitter's Pride needles that Webs had recently come out with.

I contacted Dyak Craft and was told that there was a delay on my needles, so I decided to try one of the Knitter's Pride needles - and since the issue I'd been having had been with interchangeables (although granted, not at all with the part that was interchangeable) I decided to try fixed in the size I most commonly use, 24".

This is all a very long way of giving you my comparison of the Knit Picks Harmony vs the Knitter's Pride Dreamz.

Honestly, either of them are a good bargain for the money, even given the above issues I'd had in the past with Knit Picks needles I have found their customer service and replacement policy to be top-notch.

I think the Dreamz cord is a teensy-tiny bit more flexible than the Knit Picks cord, but I doubt you would notice that anywhere other than trying to do magic loop in a tight space, so to speak.

As far as I can tell the points are the same amount of pointiness and they feel the same in the hand.  The Dreamz needles felt a little sticky at first, but it wore off after the first few rounds.

(Knit Picks on the top, Dreamz on the bottom)

It may be as simple as which type of colors you prefer - do you like multicolor needles, or do you want every size to be a different color so you can tell them apart?  

Or, if you can wait a bit, and you have a bit of extra cash from Christmas, maybe you want to try the Darn Pretties.  I'll be sure to let you know what I think about them once I have them in my hot little hands!

Happy New Year!

I have no resolutions to share with you.  Not because I don't want to share, but because I'm not making them...

I have a few things I'd LIKE to do, but I think making resulotions is just a bad idea, personally, I mean, I'm just bad with absolutes one way or the other.  I need a little wiggle room in my life when I'm trying to change habits.

I'm going to continue to try for the 2 for 1 stash reduction (use or sell twice what I buy), this year it ended up around 1.5:1, but that is extremely better than I was doing before.  I have no idea what my ratio was before, but I can gaurantee I was bringing in WAY more yarn that I was sending out.

I will go through my stash AGAIN and see what I can sell.  I'm not selling anything at bargain basement price, but at about 10% less than what I paid for it, that way I'm not throwing away my money.  It isn't going out the door like a fire sale, but I've had pretty good success with people buying things here & there.  You can see what I currently have listed here. 

I've been keeping a spreadsheet of what I knit and what I've purchased and I can see a definite trend in my purchases.  There were a few trips (like the yarn crawl to NYC) that I bought without really thinking because something was SHINY, and I haven't knit up any of it.  Then there is the time I ordered from WEBS to get the yarn for Scott's sweater...and I had to buy enough yarn to get the discount.  

Basically, I can see a difference between my impulse purchases and buying yarn that I legitimately wanted to make something out of immediately.  I think if I focus on curbing that this year I can cut down even more on my purchases.

Another thing I want to do is MORE FAIR ISLE!  And along those lines, I asked for the Palette sampler from Knit Picks from my darling hubby, and he actually got it for me!

It is this great big box of yarn and I would like to dive right in and swim in it!  SO PRETTY.

Also, along those lines, my mother and I are going to a Norwegian, Fair Isle and Fareo knitting retreat in April , how fun is THAT??  I'm super excited.  I'm honestly not sure I want to do any of the projects they have listed, I may bring my own instead, but I am hoping I can learn oodles while I'm there and really work on my technique.

Along the lines of stash busting, my mother gave me this handspun for Christmas last year (from Coldbrook Farm in my little hometown, they keep a spinning flock of Rambouillet) and I couldn't figure out how to best use it.

I FINALLY settled on a pattern this past week and it quickly knit up into this.

It's a lovely shoulder shawl, I love the red accent along the bottom.  The pattern is Comfy Shawl, from Miriam Felton's Twist and Knit, patterns designed for handspun and/or yarn that you may not have QUITE enough of.

You can see the grading of the color in the flash picture below.

I am making good progress with the quilting, I don't seem to have the same sorts of issues with that as I do with the knitting.  It's different in so many ways, and for all of those reasons it's much easier to work a project linearly.  Decide what to make, pick out fabric, cut the fabric, sew it all together, quilt it, bind it - voila - quilt!

I have a quilt in the 'sew it all together' phase right now.

It is all different shades of blue from fat quarters and scraps.  I always think these are a good idea when I start and then end up flummuxed when trying to put the blocks together because there's no "right" way to do it.  You have to do it so there is some pattern through it, but when it's all one color it is much more difficult.

One thing I do is take a pic in black & white before I sew it all together to make sure everything looks right.  Here is how this one looks in black & white.

I'm always amazed by that; how color values just jump out at you in greyscale. 

That's it for now, I have one scarf/shawlette waiting for a photographer and my Swirl jacket is so close to being done I can almost taste it, so I'll be back soon!