What I've been up to lately

Wow, I just remembered this blog -- can't believe it's been nearly four years since I posted anything here! But I just haven't had much interesting to say, especially about knitting; oh, I still knit (and crochet), of course, but there are enough very informative pages and blogs out there and I don't have much to add; plus, when I have notes about a specific project, they go on Ravelry. So if you want to see my latest knitting exploits, check out my project page there.

Lately, I've found a new obsession: chain mail. It started last month, when I attended a charity event called Can't Stop the Serenity, which was a showing of Joss Whedon's "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" and "Serenity". In addition to the movies, they also had an auction to benefit various charities, and one of the items up for sale was a chain mail version of the hat the character Jayne Cobb wore in one of the episodes of "Firefly" (Google "Jayne hat" if you want to see what it looks like). Well, I had seen knitted versions of the hat before (and the one in the show was also knitted), and always meant to make one at some point, but the chain mail Jayne hat was just so silly that I really, really wanted one. I put in a fairly high bid in the auction, but I didn't win, so I decided to learn to make my own.

On the advice of a jack-of-all-crafts friend, I found urbanmaille.com, which had not only some really good tutorials, but also beginner-level kits for bracelets to get you familiar with the basics. I bought the set of all three and made two the first weekend and the third a week or so later.

Then I bought some cheap little rings from the local craft store and practiced the European 4-in-1 weave. That didn't go so well; it was hard to keep the rings from moving around and I ended up having to pin them down to keep them straight. Still, I ordered some colored anodized aluminum rings for the hat, and started to make it when they arrived. That went much better; turned out that those cheap little rings were horrible, and the real ones were much easier to work with. I finished the hat in a little over a week, and I'm pleased with how it came out.

My next project was a necklace to go with my Renaissance fair costume. I have also finished a matching headband and earrings.

More long-term: probably some more jewelry for me, and some for Christmas presents. I never know what to get anyone, so I love it when I can think of things to make. My mother goes crazy for anything I make, so it's nice to have something new to surprise her with.

I'm wishing there were something like Ravelry for chain mail -- as it is, I just post my projects to Facebook. (I could post them to Ravelry itself, I suppose, but if you try to choose "Other" as a craft, you get a request to please not post non-yarn-related craft projects. I could defy them, but you know, it's their site, and it's free, so I figure they get to make the rules.) And now I can talk about it here, though I'm not sure if anyone actually reads this besides me.

Swirl pullover

I know, I haven't posted anything to the knitting blog in ages; that's not because I haven't been knitting (I just counted and I finished 7 sweaters, plus a crocheted bunny, since then), but more because there just hasn't been anything unusual or interesting to write about. Since I finished the Celtic Knot Raglan in April, all my projects have been pretty straightforward, skill-wise.

My current one, though, is somewhat different: not quite two weeks ago I started Norah Gaughan's swirl pullover. It's definitely an odd pattern: you work the swirl in the round (which I did on two circulars since I'm not even sure they make DPNs in size 10.5 -- which is what I had to use to get gauge), and then when it's done you start working in rows, first on the front, then the back. It's hard to explain -- I didn't understand how it worked just by reading the pattern; I had to do it before it made any sense -- but the front is worked starting with the top and right edges of the swirl; you work in rows with a right angle kind of like the number 7 (well, on a digital display, anyway). Row and stitch gauge have to be spot-on for this one because it's worked in several different directions. And the back is almost as weird as the front; this is definitely not your usual bottom-up or top-down sweater. (I believe the designer now refers to it as "that damn thing".)

Tonight I finally learned the Kitchener stitch! I had been trying to figure it out from books for a while, but I could never completely understand it, so it occurred to me to Google and see if anyone had posted a video (duh - considering that I learned to knit pretty much entirely from knittinghelp.com, you'd think I'd have thought of looking for a video earlier), and lo and behold, there was a great one on YouTube. So tonight I turned off the TV so I could concentrate, fired up Ray's laptop, played the video, and a couple minutes later I was doing the Kitchener stitch! So the side seam of my pullover is now done. (Since they were already bound off, I did the shoulder seams the way I usually seam: crochet slip stitch on the wrong side. It's sturdy and can easily be pulled out if I screw up. And I don't have to estimate how much yarn I'll need beforehand, which is something I suck at when sewing seams: I usually end up with way too much and so it takes ages to pull it through.)

Anyway, at this point I have finished the body of the sweater, and will start the sleeves tomorrow. I am afraid I don't have enough yarn, though; I started with 14 balls (100 yards each) and now, with the body done and the sleeves, neckline, and hem still to go, I have only 4 left. I may have to swing by Nature's Yarns tomorrow and hope they still have some with the right dye lot (I bought this there several months ago). It would suck to get this far and not have enough to finish.

Edit: Success! The LYS had six balls of the same dye lot. I bought four (800 yards for the sleeves should be plenty, right?), and they're holding the other two behind the counter for me just in case -- I said I'd call on Monday to let them know if I'd need them. Also, it turned out to be serendipitous for the lady working at the yarn shop: when she saw the pattern I was working on through my clear knitting bag, she mentioned that she'd been looking for that pattern for several years now, so I said she could have it if she wanted it, because I had accidentally bought two copies -- the card-stock one I had with me plus an online copy. She gave me $4 (which was the original cost) for it. I'd been meaning to offer the extra one up on Ravelry or somewhere, but had been putting it off because I didn't want to deal with mailing it, so this worked out well.

Celtic Knot progress report

I'm now starting the fourth repeat of the Celtic Knot Raglan pattern, and it is actually starting to look like a sweater. I've been pulling on the floats after the first stitch of a new color to make sure they aren't too tight; there's a bit of puckering near the top of the sweater before I started doing that, but I am not pulling it out now. I figure that I've got 3-4 more pattern repeats to go on the body. I was able to try it on (carefully) tonight and it seems like it's going to fit.

Latest photo is here.

What I've been up to lately, knitting-wise

Last month I started my first Fair Isle project, a raglan pullover with a Celtic knot design from Sweaters from Camp. I experimented with both the one-handed and the two-handed techniques, and finally settled on one-handed (Continental). I'm a Continental knitter -- I suspect that holding the yarn in my left hand comes naturally to me thanks to my many years of crocheting -- so I just couldn't get used to the "throw" method with my right hand. Still, even now that I have the technique down, it's going very slowly; I'm just about done with the second repeat of the Celtic knot pattern. I think that the main reasons it's going so much slower than I normally knit are 1) the pattern is different on every round, so unlike with repetitive patterns, I can't just memorize the repeats and therefore I need to constantly refer to the chart; and 2) I'm paranoid about the tension of the floats in back -- I keep having to pull on them to make sure they're not too tight so the knitting won't pucker. So it's slow going. I should have started with an easier pattern, but I picked the first raglan I saw that I liked -- I didn't want to tackle steeks yet.

In another round I am planning to put the sleeve stitches on holders and continue just the body, so I'm hoping that will mean I can get more than 2-3 rounds done in a day, since they'll be smaller.

As a travel project I'm making a pair of anklet socks (Girl's Best Friend from Knit Picks). I'm using some yarn left over from this top -- I wanted socks to match it. Of course, the pattern is different, but I don't think it matters much. I finished one sock -- took a couple weeks because the only time I work on it is on the way to work every day (when Ray's driving -- he drives in the morning so I can knit while it's light, and I drive home). There were a couple serious mistakes in the pattern that confused me until I Googled and found Knitty's errata page. The pattern is a downloadable one -- you'd think that if it has mistakes it would have been easy to fix it directly. Or at least they could have alerted me to the errata page when they sent the download link...very annoying. One of the errors was in the turning of the heel and I must have ripped it out and redone it 4 or 5 times before I turned to Google in frustration!

In non-knitting news, I'm taking a sewing class the next two Saturdays. I bought a sewing machine months ago and it's hardly been used because, frankly, I kind of suck at it. So hopefully this class will help some.

Another sweater, Christmas, misc.

I keep forgetting that I have this journal. Well, I don't think anyone actually reads it anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter, but since my LJ is read by more than just knitters, I thought I'd put this post here.

After some struggle, I was able to finish the Marching Cables sweater from the Oct 2007 Knit 'n Style for my mother's boyfriend for Christmas. (See this post in the LJ Knitting community for more details and notes. I don't really feel like typing it all in again.) As you can see from the picture, it fits him pretty well, and he seemed to like it. He's a hard guy to buy for, so I figured I'd make him something this year instead.

My best Christmas present this year was the KnitPicks Options needle set. I already have the Boye Needlemaster and the Denise sets, but you can never have too many needles, right? I love the smoothness of these, and I like the thinner cords and the fact that there's no bend in the place where the cord screws onto the needle (well, mostly; that bend in the Boye ones allows me to tighten the needle onto the cord without the little key thing, which is impossible with the KP ones...luckily I have at least 4 or 5 of those keys!). I will probably use the Boyes as spares or when I need to string more than one cord together (something the Options can't do), and the Denises when I travel by air, just to be safe. (Knitting needles are supposed to be among the allowed items on flights, but there's also that little disclaimer that TSA has the right to do whatever the hell they want, so I'd rather not risk it.)

I just did something totally nuts. I really want to tackle the last knitting technique I'm interested in that I haven't tried yet: Fair Isle. I took a class in it at Stitches East but still haven't attempted an actual project (mostly because steeks scare the heck out of me...so I think my first project will be a raglan). Anyway, I know that Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting is one of the definitive works on the subject, but what I didn't know until I started Googling for it tonight was that not only is it out of print, but the few copies floating around are hideously expensive. So I just bought a copy on eBay for an embarrassing price (well over $100). Oh well, my birthday's in a few days, so I'll chalk it up to early birthday present. I just hope the book is worth the price.

And I just have to take a second for a mini-rant about copyright law. This is a great illustration of why US copyright law sucks so much: even an out-of-print book, which is not making any money for its author, cannot be legally reproduced, and therefore old copies are selling at a totally outrageous price. If I weren't worried about getting caught, I'd see if any friends would be willing to chip in a few bucks towards the price in exchange for me giving them a complete copy. I mean, I'd feel some ethical qualms about doing that if the author were actually losing anything from this sort of activity, but as it is? Only the fear of legal and financial penalties keeps me from doing it. If copyright law were sane, a work would revert to the public domain after a certain period (maybe 2-5 years?) of being out-of-print, unless it were specifically renewed by the author. But no, corporate interests are responsible for writing the laws, so the rest of us get screwed. Yes, I'm bitter.

Purple sweater

Well, I finished my purple sweater. I'm not sure how I like it; because of my tribulations with the hand-dyed yarn, the sleeves are noticeably different from the body:



Ah well, live and learn. I think I will stay away from hand-dyed yarns in the future. They're pretty, but making something that doesn't look weird or have discernible color variation between skeins (even of the same dye lot) is too difficult.

Argh!

Today I rediscovered, much to my chagrin, a downside to working with hand-dyed yarn. I joined in a new ball (same dye lot and all), and found after a bunch of rows that there was a noticeable difference between the colors in the new and old skeins -- the new one was much darker. Since I was working on the front of the sweater, this was really bad. So I ripped out an entire evening's work and took stock of the remaining yarn. I found that of the two hanks I hadn't yet wound, one was the same shade as the rest of the sweater and the other is the darker shade of the rows I just ripped out. So, I will use the two dark skeins for the sleeves and hope it doesn't look too weird. At least it'll be symmetrical.

Maybe this will teach me to do alternating rows with different skeins when I use a hand-dyed yarn from now on. That's the way you're supposed to do it just because of the potential for problems like this, but I'm lazy and so tonight I paid the price.