Get this: next February I’m attending Cat Bordhi’s Visionary retreat in Friday Harbor, WA. Immediately afterward, I’m teaching at Stitches West in Santa Clara, CA. To maximize carpooling, minimize expense, and enhance the likelihood that I’ll actually be where I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to be there, here’s the game plan:
- 2/9
- Get up at o’dark-thirty. Have DH (Da Hubster) drive me to the nearest Amtrak station.
- Ride the train to Portland.
- Meet up with other Visionaries, carpool to Anacortes.
- Take the ferry to Friday Harbor.
- 2/16
- Take the ferry to Anacortes.
- Carpool to SeaTac, get dropped off while the rest of the car continues to Madrona.
- Fly to San Jose.
- Take the free shuttle bus to the light rail, and take the light rail to the Santa Clara Convention Center.
- 2/20
- Take the light rail and free shuttle to the San Jose airport.
- Fly to Portland.
- Take a long-distance shuttle home.
- Have DH pick me up at the shuttle stop.
So it’ll be planes, trains, automobiles… and some shuttles and a light rail. Sheesh. Everything but donkey cart.
Before a retreat in early September, I cast on for a cardigan, skipping my usual planning and calculating. I “needed” a substantial project to last me through the retreat. Current status: stalled, waiting for a chance to figure out the armhole and neck shaping.
Before heading to Tempe in late September, I cast on for fingerless gloves. I “needed” a simple, portable project while on the road. Current status: one pair of gloves is done, and a second, improved pair is nearly done but lacks two and half fingers and a thumb.
Before heading to Stitches East—which was fabulous, by the way; so many eager, capable, happy students!—I cast on for a pair of socks, based on a pattern that I designed and sold last year but that hasn’t been published yet. I “needed” a backup project, since the gloves were so close to completion. Current status: the gloves got put aside, and one sock is nearly done.
It would seem that I have a terrible case of startitis at the moment. Every trip is an excuse to cast on for something new. Or is it startitis?
Sometimes I wonder if I have an aversion to finishing things. Not finishing in the knitterly sense of seaming, weaving in ends, and blocking, but in the sense of completing. Calling something done, turning its not-yet-done potential into something concrete and solid. Oh, sure, completed sweaters and gloves and socks are all Good Things, but potential? The ability to become this, or that, or something else entirely? That’s pretty sweet too. That’s why we stash, right? We buy pretty yarn, without a project in mind, for its potential.
Eh. I’m probably just kidding myself. I probably have a garden-variety case of startitis. After all, what could a glove sans a few fingers become, other than a glove?
Blog fodder has been a bit sparse lately. Not much knitting. No stash enhancement. No trip to Rhinebeck. sigh
Rather, it’s been nose-to-grindstone, getting Charts Made Simple ready to go to the printer. Hoo boy, does self-publishing entail taking care of a million little details! Especially for a first book: choosing a printer, buying a block of ISBN numbers, getting and testing an EAN barcode, figuring out if a Library of Congress Control Number or Cataloging-in-Publication data is necessary… okay, you get the idea; the list goes on.
Disregarding the dreary details, though, I do have one fun thing to share with y’all:
the cover!
Go ahead, click on it, see the whole thing.
Well, okay, it’s just a draft—the swatch photo needs to be re-knit—but I figure it’s pretty close to the real thing. And after weeks of dreary details, it’s a sight for sore eyes. I’m pretty psyched.
I love my new River Twist gloves. Love the colors, love the way they fit. But I noticed yesterday that they aren’t quite perfect:
not quite the same
Can you see this mismatch? Despite counting rows and taking notes so the gloves could be identical, I somehow managed to create cuffs of different lengths: the left is longer than the right. sigh
Did I miscount? Did I misinterpret my own notes? Either way, the difference will stand. I could snip a strand above the shorter cuff, knit a couple more rounds, and graft everything back together. But I figure that the difference will make it easier to distinguish left glove from right glove. How’s that for rationalizing?
Besides, I’m already planning some improvements for the next pair, to be knit out of Twisted:
- I want to tweak the thumb gussets slightly. Normally, when I knit gloves, I don’t increase immediately after completing the cuff to the number of stitches I need for the hand. Rather, I work those increases along with the thumb gusset increases. But this means that the increase lines are kind of long: one runs into the palm, and the other runs into the back of the hand. The gloves fit well, but the increase lines look a little weird. So, for the next gloves, I want to alter the placement of the increases so they curve around the base of the thumb instead. We’ll see if that looks any less weird.
- I want to put some short rows across the knuckles. Usually I knit gloves out of feltable yarn, and rely on felting during everyday use (or, better yet, raking leaves or cross-country skiing) to felt the palms down and provide a snug, anatomically-correct fit. But I’ve been meaning to try a more knitterly approach for a while, and now seems like a good time.
With any luck, the cuffs will be the same length too.
Fingerless gloves turned out to be the perfect project to take on my trip to Tempe Yarn and Fiber. I got the first glove knit to the thumb opening before teaching All Thumbs on Thursday evening, so I was able to demo the process of setting the gusset stitches aside during class. In the evenings, I finished the hand and a couple fingers. Then I finished the remaining fingers on the plane ride home, binding off the thumb as the plane touched down. Having started the second glove yesterday evening, I’m now more than halfway to a new pair of gloves.
more than halfway
You’ll note I chose to knit gloves out of River Twist first, with another pair in Twisted likely to follow. The oh-so-colorful River Twist just seemed to be the right choice for bright, sunny Tempe. Besides, that ball of yarn was far smaller and more portable. Yes, I’m nothing if not practical.
fits like... well, a glove
Overall, the trip was a lot of fun. The folks at Tempe Yarn and Fiber bent over backwards to make me feel welcome and to make the classes successful, going so far as to move entire shelving units of yarn in order to enlarge the classroom space at the back of the shop. Thanks again, guys!
Next up: carving out some time to plan the armhole and neck shaping for the as-yet-unnamed cardigan in Creative Focus Silk. As nice as it is to have simple, portable projects lined up, I’m still looking forward to completing something more substantial.
Tomorrow morning I head off to Tempe to teach for a few days, and as I was gathering samples for All Thumbs, I discovered this:
lookin’ a little worn
My fingerless gloves are in serious need of replacement. These are the gloves I wear nearly every time I leave the house in the winter, plain black to match whatever jacket I’ve grabbed. They’ve been sitting on a shelf for months, and I’d forgotten that the stitches on the left index finger were starting to unravel. Sure, I could re-knit the finger—I’ve already re-knit one of the thumbs—but some of the stitches at the stress points between hand and thumb are showing signs of wear. Actually, the gloves are looking pretty worn all over.
So I’m tempted to knit some new ones. I could use a simple, portable project right now. (The cardigan in Creative Focus Silk that I started recently? It’s temporarily stalled. I need block what I have so far, to see if it’s time to start the armholes and the neck shaping. And, oh yeah, I have to figure out the armhole and neck shaping.) Pulled out of the stash, here are some yarn options:
yarn options
In the front, Mountain Colors River Twist. Back right, Blue Moon Fiber Arts BFL Sport. Back left, BMFA Twisted.
I love the colors in the River Twist. But could I wear them with a black and forest green jacket? Not sure.
The BFL is gorgeous. And the gloves would certainly wear well. But I think I want something a tad thicker than sport weight.
That brings us to the Twisted. A strong contender, there. Enough color interest to keep me from getting bored while knitting plain stockinette gloves, but subdued enough to go with any jacket.
Then again… I bet the River Twist and Twisted would work up at the same gauge. I could knit one pair, sizing them as I go by repeatedly trying them on, then knit a second pair to the same specs in the other yarn. Hmm… that’s an option.
Sometimes, I can really crank out the knitting:
cardigan in progress
That’s the body of a cardigan, knit from the bottom up through some subtle waist shaping to within a couple inches of the armhole shaping. It’s the Creative Focus Silk I mentioned in my last post. The game plan—after much head scratching and some sketching—is to have rib in the lower body and sleeves, and lattice patterning in the upper body.
Three things made it possible to go from the cast-on on Friday to what you see here:
- A weekend retreat. Nothing says knitting time like a couple days away from everything! (Though I am paying for it now with a phenomenal backlog of email and other tasks.)
- A profound desire to get through the mindless ribbing to the more interesting lattice pattern. The irony, of course, is now that I’m past the ribbing and need to cross stitches on every right-side row, progress goes at a snail’s pace and I long for the speed of the ribbing. sigh
- Letting go and just winging it. Normally, I write out at least part of a pattern, even if only in rough draft form, before starting to knit the sample. But hey, I needed something to work on at the retreat. And I’ll be able to decipher my chicken-scratch notes later, right? (Sure you will, says the sarcastic voice in the back of my head.)
To ensure the project doesn’t stall completely now that I’m home from the retreat, I’m imposing a Minimum Daily Knitting Requirement. It’s something I do to nudge myself into slogging through non-trivial knitting projects. I pick a given quantity—a number of rows, pattern repeats, or whatever—to complete each day. If I don’t finish one day’s MDKR on that day, I have to complete it the next day in addition to the next day’s MDKR. No rest for the weary! Keep up with the MDKR or else!
For now, I figure the MDKR for this sweater will be two rows. Sounds pretty measly, doesn’t it? But that’s kind of the point. Every day, I’ll sit myself down and work through those two rows… and, most days, I’ll find some momentum and finish more than two rows. The point is make sure I sit down and make some progress each day. Of course, once I divide fronts and back and I’m working on fewer stitches, I’ll adjust the MDKR—say, 4 rows on the back, or 8 rows on one of the fronts, or whatever it takes to keep the project moving along and end up with a finished cardigan.
Indecision
By JC | August 30, 2010
Lately, I can’t seem to make up my mind about anything.
For months now, I’ve been itching (no pun intended!) to design and knit a lightweight sweater. Possibly a cardigan, probably short- or 3/4-length sleeves. But other than that? I can’t decide on the yarn, despite several on hand that I really like. I can’t decide on the overall design, despite at least four ideas swirling around in my head. I can’t even figure out which stitch pattern I’d like to swatch next.
But I’m pretty sure I like this:
Creative Focus Silk
The yarn is Nashua Handknits Creative Focus Silk. A full bag came home from Stitches Midwest with me. Isn’t it an awesome color? I can so wear that color.
The stitch pattern is a modification of something I found in my favorite Japanese stitch dictionary, Knitting Patterns Book 250. I can see it paired with twisted-stitch ribs, or maybe with a simpler lattice pattern.
So, what’s holding me back?
Before I decide to move forward with a design, I like to be able to visualize it in its entirety. No designing-on-the-needles for me, not for sweaters anyway: I like to see where I’m headed. And for this design, I can’t quite see where I’d put that stitch pattern; how it would blend into the waist, armhole, neck, and shoulder shaping; or what the bottom edge treatment would be. Not yet, anyway.
So, what’s an indecisive designer to do?
More swatching, I guess. And some sketching. Or… hmm. A trick that’s worked well for me in the past has been to photograph a bunch of swatches, then create a digital montage of the stitch patterns. You can get a pretty good feel for how multiple repeats of the stitch patterns would work together, even though you only have to knit one swatch of each stitch pattern. Yes, that may be the way to go here.
Harlequin Slipper Socks
Finished! The slippers felted down nicely, forming a nice sturdy fabric. Even though it was 80+ degrees in the house, I wore them Saturday evening while they were still damp, so they’d conform to my feet. I now have left and right slippers, sized just right for wearing barefoot or with socks. (And they’re surprisingly comfortable when worn barefoot! Not the least bit itchy.)
Yesterday’s 90+ outdoor temperatures had these puppies dry in no time—quite the contrast to previous felting projects, which have taken days to dry despite being set on wire racks and pelted by a steady stream of air from a fan. Such is the difference between a dry Oregon summer and the rest of the year.
comparison study
On the left, needles of a size I normally use: 2.75 mm. Clearly within my happy range of 2.5 mm to 3.5 mm.
On the right, a change of pace: 8 mm. Great, big, honkin’ needles, if you ask me.*
The 8 mm needles were called into action for a felting project. (Shoot, I can’t imagine using them for anything else.) Gwen Bortner’s new entrelac book is going to be launched at Stitches Midwest, and to celebrate the release, several teachers are knitting Harlequin Slipper Socks before the PJ party on Friday night. It’ll be a hoot to see what we’ve all created.
So far, the slippers have been fun to knit, even if I feel all fumble-fingered using the 8 mm needles. I just have a bit to go on the second slipper before they can both go into the washing machine and get felted. I can’t wait to see how they turn out. A large part of the fun (for me, anyway) of felting projects is knowing that your stitches don’t have to be perfect, that you can just zoom along with your knitting because any inconsistencies are likely to disappear in the wash, and that you can adjust sizing as you felt.
Good thing, too. The size of these slippers definitely needs adjusting.
a slipper for two
*Okay, my Jumbotron needles are way bigger. But I don’t actually knit anything with them. Not outside class demos, anyway.