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Dear Ellen,

I loved your little froggy visitor and had to show you a toady friend I discovered on our  last trip to Fair Winds.  I helped him escape Ruby out of harm’s way.

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We made it back to the farm this weekend as well.  And we spent our first night on our property!  Dale was resistant at first, but I think if you were to ask him now, he’d claim it was his idea.  We had a wonderful time.  We stopped by the mercantile (I love that our future county has a mercantile) and picked up a pair of bib overalls for Dale so he can avoid constantly having to pull up his jeans.  He loved them…I may have a struggle to keep them on the farm!  We got a lot of work done both days and spent a delicious night by the fire listening to the insects, looking at the stars and roasting marshmallows.  Here Dale is searching for an honest man ridiculing my baby Coleman lantern.  However, I proved that by using it, it is possible to knit by the campfire, though I ended up correcting a few issues the next day.  We will be camping again soon…Dale went out and bought another sleeping bag and a blow-up queen-sized airbed at the sale at Sport’s Authority today — a sure sing that he’s hooked.  A portable camp toilet is on my wish list, though I managed in the woods just fine.

The knitting I was doing is the Annis Shawlette from Knitty.com.  I’m calling it my Crescent Beach Shawlette because the pattern has a lovely crescent shape to it and the colorway is Ocean Memories which brings back college memories of visiting the ocean at Crescent Beach, FL when I was a student at UF.  Man, I’m flying through this pattern!  LOTS of fun once you get the first few rows out of the way.  And this was my first experience with nupps, so I had a bit of experimenting and learning to do.  For instance, I found that you can’t be too inattentive when you are completing the nupps.  The first stage is easy, in same loop *K1, YO* three times, K1 so you end up with 7 live stitches in one loop.  Coming back on the purl side you purl all 7 loops together.  (Thank goodness for pointy tipped lace needles!)  My issue was that I tended to either realize I was at the nupp a loop too late (I kept trying to purl the first loop of the nupp as its own stitch) or I managed to drop a loop during the operation.  In my defense, remember that this was knitting by the campfire!  No worries though, I corrected my occasional dropped loop or extra stitch in the daylight by dropping back a row to redo or as is seen in the photos, by doing a bit of stitch collection after the fact.  Very easy — I just found a bit of the same color repeat from the end of the ball, wove it in to catch at the back of the nupp, brought the needle to the front at the top of the nupp where the loops are collected on the single purl stitch, caught the loose loop and returned the needle back through the same hole pulling the top of the loop through to the back and then securing the yarn end.  All better. I only have 15 or so rows to go and it’s all easy stockinette short rows.  These introduce the nice crescent curve to this shawl.  A fun knit and fast.

Making progress on my Hsssssy Fit Mitts too…they’re Stephen West’s Diamondback Mitts.  I’m making them for a friend’s brother — he’s been just great helping with challenges her family has had and works outside in all weather, so thought they’d be a nice way to show him some appreciation.  I love the pattern, but am thinking I’d reverse the rows of main color so that the cabled stitches are in the second row vice the first row of main color rows.  As it is now, the cable stitch is worked over some already stretched stitches as they’ve been slipped over the contrasting color.  The look is fine, it works fine, I’m just curious to see if the stitches look a little more even that way.  I’ll have to see.

TGIF is temporarily finished.  I say temporarily as I think that in about 30 minutes I’ll be downstairs ripping out half of the shawl collar/button band.  STUPID mistake on my part regards buttonhole placement.  The distance of the lower buttonhole from the bottom edge is way out of proportion with the width of the button band itself.  I knew it and yet decided it wouldn’t matter much and pressed ahead to include sewing on buttons.  And I decided I needed four buttons — which places the top button a little too high to let the shawl collar open like it wants to.  Once again, I should have trusted my instincts when the warning in my head popped up in the first place.  After living with it for about a week and a half, I know I have to go back and do it right — three buttons, better placement…and maybe a different bind-off.  I may not get back to it for a few weeks though…I’m trying to stay on task with Single Skein September knitting.

It will be another crazy week at the Pentagon.  Luckily only 4 days thanks to the holiday!  Hope you had a great Labor Day and have a great week.

Love, Jan

Dear Jan,

I don’t mean the kind that these two get into, though we have plenty of that.

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I’m referring to spinning silk hankies, which I tried for the first time this week.  There’s a good article on it in Knitty; I concur with everything Amy said, especially about the hankies being gossamer thin.

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It’s a simple thing to poke your fingers through the middle of a hanky and stretch it out into a long loop.  You can draft it in this manner until you get it all stretched to the end thickness you desire, or you can leave it a bit thick and draft some more as you spin.  I tried both, liked both, but the kitties liked the longer loop better so I stuck with a shorter one.

Just break the loop (if it is hard to draft or to break the loop, move your hands further apart, even 18 inches or so, to let the long silk fibers slip past each other)  and start spinning as with any pencil roving.  As you continue to draft, you may see the fiber bunching up in the fiber supply hand - not a problem, as you just grab the far end and tug and voila! everything goes smooth again.

Given that there are short and long fibers in the imperfect silkworm cocoons that go into hankies, the resulting yarn is textured with little slubs and bits that don’t spin out perfectly evenly.  But they have all the luster you’d expect in silk, and I’m sure they are going to work for my purposes.

What’s that you ask?

Here’s a hint…

To be continued…

Love,

Ellen

Jan, we can’t take long on this post - I still have to finish my swatches for tomorrow’s classes!

Well, Ellen, if you had done your homework earlier, you wouldn’t be in this fix.  Mine are already done.

Yeah, and mom always loved you best, too.  (Tough love!)  But that’s ok, after the fun today I can get over that.

It was a lot of fun today.  Sorry I missed the first half of Lucy Neatby’s Short Row Wizardry class. (Thanks, Delta.  What do you mean you had to go hunt for a replacement tire???!)  At least I caught the exciting ending.  I no longer look at short rows as basic pains in the *ss.  They really have utility and the Japanese method is slick!

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I really like the Modified Conventional bind off she taught.  Knit one, slide the stitch back onto the left hand needle, and without removing the right tip, slip it into the next stitch just like normal.  Then knit them both right off the needle!  So quick, so smooth.

That it keeps the bind-off loose was an added bonus, as was meeting Meg Swansen and Amy Detjen over at StevenBe’s.  

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Indeed.  But the real fun was Cookie A, such a delightful sense of humor.  And what a great collection of socks! (Steven right in the middle!)  I appreciated how willing she was to just chat with everyone in the class.  And I feel more confident about designing my own cables and stitch patterns after her class.

Me too.

And - don’t forget the handsome men wearing knitwear. Stephen West - predicted to be the next Jared Flood on the right, Tim - Junior Fiber Executive on the left.  We’re all wearing Stephen’s designs.)  Bonus!  Disclaimer: Neither as handsome or wonderful to me as W, but W doesn’t design as much knitwear, truth be told.

Hey -  What about Jessie?  She was so busy running around the shop making everyone happy today that we didn’t catch a photo of her.  We’ll amend that tomorrow.

Speaking of which, I still have to go get my swatches done.

Did I mention that I have mine finished?

I give you… toe socks!

Details: The sample sized socks Cat Bordhi uses to teach her Sky Sock architecture in her book, New Pathways for Sock Knitters.  I used ShibuiKnits sock yarn and size 0 (US) dpns.

Interesting heel - one more variation of wrapping and turning. The twist introduced into the wrapped knit stitch seems to be correct - it results in a nice flat lying stitch when the wrap is then picked up later. And the addition of knitting two stitches plus a wrap together at the start of the first post heel round (or is it really the final heel round, at any rate, the first round where instep stitches are involved after the heel) makes for a very tight join - no holes.

I’m looking forward to knitting these in a size that will fit a bit more of my foot.

Love,

Ellen

P.S.  Here’s a mneumonic for Cat’s left leaning and right leaning increases - the Left leaning increase lifts the Lowest of the stitches one would lift to increase (the grandmother, as Cat calls it), hence the one two stitches below the one you just knit. The RIGHT leaning increase lifts the stitch RIGHT below the stitch on the needle (Cat’s daughter stitch), hence the stitch right below the first stitch on the left needle.

Hi, Jan,

We got the weekend off to a great start with a nice longish but not killer bike ride and a great dinner of grilled salmon and fresh raspberries - and I am having so much fun working on ‘brainless’ now that I have the gauge and needles that fit the sock.

I can’t stress enough what a lesson this was for me.  Sheer cast-on-adrenaline had taken me to slightly past the toe when I was working on the size 0 metal needles.  But my fingers hurt and the yarn squeaked and split and it was, honestly, painful to knit.  I gave it a few days rest that extended to six weeks.  And now, in the 5 days since knit group where I frogged that start and changed to size 1 bamboo dpns, I have a sock complete to the gusset.

This yarn, Three Irish Girls Adorn sock yarn in colorway Aiden, that I loved in the skein and then disliked on the needle, is now so much fun to watch as it knits up.  Look at the different patterns on the two gussets!  And the striping in the stockinette is charming and changes to pooled stripes during the gusset pattern.  Never a dull moment.

I must be channeling the yarn this week as on a walk through a wetland near our house a few days back I was compelled to photograph the blooming cattails (female flowers on top - wild!).   Colorway look familiar?

So, to review - listen to your knitting!  If it isn’t fun, something’s wrong - change it!  If the yarn squeaks, something’s wrong - change it!  If your fingers hurt, something’s wrong - change it!.  Knitting is supposed to be a pleasure.  When it isn’t, take the time to figure out why and… change it!

I hope your change of location is going totally right and no one is squeaking about hurt fingers.

Love,

Ellen