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Oh weekend long, we do love thee.
You kindly let us sleep till three.
Our brains recover with ample rest,
And feel much more able to meet life’s test.

Dear Ellen,

That pretty much sums up my 4 day weekend.  We did go to the Gibson’s for fellowship and feasting on Thanksgiving, and Marian was here for 3 of the days, but really I mostly slept.  And when I wasn’t sleeping I should have been doing homework and some cleaning, but instead I knitted.  And I am happy.

I finished the Hat for a Warm Necks and found that it was a pretty pleasurable knit.  I’m not sure it’s the hat for me…I like to wear my hair pulled back and found that the bottom was pulled away from my head allowing a neck draft when that really wasn’t the point.  I did take my hair down for a picture similar to your current Ravatar though.  That worked well, but as I said, I don’t typically have my hair loose, especially outside.  I noted on my project notes for the Winter Sky Hat that it blocked out very large…but then I threw it in the dryer and that worked well to tighten it back up.  I’m sure this had everything to do with the fact that I knit it out of fingering weight yarn on your recommended needle size.  Marian was eyeballing the hat while here…it may be for her.  Actually would work well for the way she wears her hair and the gray and blue would look very nice with her hair and eye color.  I have a few notes for you on pattern adjustments…the only critical one is to correct your tree of life chart (left side midway up).

I finished the Robin’s Egg Vest too.   It had languished for quite a while.  I had finished the right side on the drive from Colorado and then it got away from me.  And then I didn’t want to get it out because I’d have to figure out how I had done it.  I finally did and have it complete.  I particularly like the way I did the shaping for the neckline and armholes by slowly shrinking the cables.  All one piece, no seams,  and it blocked out to perfect size.  I suppose I should write this up too, but it probably won’t happen.  Once I send it off to Mom for Christmas, I won’t have it to count the stitches and reverse engineer what I did.

My last little project is truly little…yet it really pleases me.  I did a tiny toe up sock form my sock blocker key chain.  The pattern that accompanies the key chain is top down — and I really prefer toe up.  I’m not sure why, especially for a project where you really aren’t concerned about running out of yarn if you make the cuff too long, but I do.  I made up my own version…and included a tiny lace stitch.  It doesn’t show that much, but I know it’s there.  Now I’m making one with seed stitch.

Love, Jan

Dear Jan,

Slicing a sweater in half is serious business, and I’m sure Karen thought leaving an incision open for several weeks was far too long, but finally we’ve sutured everything back up and the patient is doing very well.

At the beginning of the operation, I first had to tink back a row to get the right pattern going for the Kitchener graft.  Not a challenge - I just didn’t check to see where I’d separated.  I decided to take advantage of this and use the unraveled yarn for the graft.  Unfortunately, right about at this point, I figured out I’d made some errors already (over-confident!) and rather than unravel that long yarn, just cut it.

Before I had to reopen the wound, I did figure out a slick technique to prevent my very long yarn from getting fuzzy from pulling through so many stitches.  Before pulling on the yarn, I stretched it between pinched fingers.  This effectively narrowed the diameter of the yarn, letting it slip through the stitches with much greater ease.  It also prevented the twist from being pushed along the yarn from the friction, which always leaves you with yarn twining back on itself and is quite a bother.  The three pictures here show this technique in progress - 1) pinch, 2) use the left hand to pull while maintaining tension with the right, 3) ready to reposition hands.  It turned out that the Sylvan Spirit yarn I’m using was tough enough I didn’t need to do this with the shorter lengths I ended up using, but for a soft yarn this technique could be useful for even fairly short strands.

I got half of the graft completed yesterday,

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and the remainder today.

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I am so much happier with the new patterning - old pattern then new pattern shown.  No contest.

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and the fit is still working, too.

On to the neck and sleeves!

Happy remainder of your Thanksgiving weekend to you.

Love,

Ellen

Hi, Jan,

You’ve knocked a lot of balls out of the knitting park lately, and you’ve inspired me.  On this rainy vacation day, perfect for tea and handwork in your lap, I have determined to line up some long unfinished projects that are just missing a half hour’s attention in order to be complete.

The challengers:

Microgreens, an EZ surprise sweater that I thought would be wonderful in this sock yarn but turned out itty bitty - maybe a doll sweater?  Or a preemie sweater?  It has languished, lacking only buttons, in my knitting pile for a year and a half.

Drosophila, a fairy purse from a class I took years ago.  Now that Susan Rainey has provided me with a slick strap idea (actually, she did that months ago!), I am determined to finish it in some form.

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This linen shawl has come close to being turned into a dish towel several times.  Its provenance is about 8 years PR (Pre-Ravelry) with linen from my local yarn store.  All that remains is to finish weaving in the ribbon yarns - clearly I like knitting more than weaving.

Finally, the freshest project, just started on Sunday - Thanks for the Harvest Mittens knit for the daughter of our CSA farmer.  I need to nip the length of that first thumb and knit up the second.  The yarn is Mochi Plus - exciting color runs with no repeat of the color pattern (hence, fraternal twin mitts), but it is a tiny bit loosely spun and hence wants to split a bit.  Not a disaster, just takes a bit more attention.

I have some packages to wrap up and the mortgage check to get in the mail, then the rest of the afternoon will be devoted to pushing these through.  I’ll live blog it - I know you crave the suspense.  (ha!)

3:36 p.m.  Where does the day go?  Well, I’ve got my packages mailed (even one to my disbelieving daughter, who pointed out my careless lack of pun focus in the comments) and my farm share picked up, and spent an inordinate amount of time sorting through my buttons to pick out ones for Microgreens, but now it’s time to rumble.  First up - Microgreens.

4:04 p.m.  And first down - why did it take a year and a half to get this done?  Next up - Drosophila.  I’m going to get a handle on that little thing right now!

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4:41 pm - Drosophila - done.  I’m not sure I’ll ever wear it, but done.

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5:52  Mittens complete!

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11:15 pm - finally finished with the shawl.  I did take a break to cook dinner and eat, but getting all the ribbon yarn untwisted took a little longer than I hoped.  And the resulting fringe is pretty wimpy.  I’m not sure that this won’t be frogged and turned into dishtowels at some point.  I’ll wear it a couple of times this summer first and see if I warm up to it.

So, it took a lot longer than half hour each, but I’ve cleared some of my UFO’s off my mind.  My new goal is to avoid immediately casting on 4 new projects.  I do have one (maybe two?) that are itching something fierce, but I think tomorrow I’ll try to focus on getting that gansey back together.

Love,

Ellen

Dear Ellen,

This week has been a fairly good one for knuckling down and taking care of many loose ends…some knitting and some metaphorical.  I moved along a few projects at work, got my paperwork straightened out for my next class, caught up on some of my office keeping at home and pulled two knitting projects out that had gotten pushed to the side.One of those two is the Robin’s Egg vest for mom.  It’s intended to be her Christmas present, so it was about time I got back to it.  It had been sitting to the side since our move east.  On that drive I had worked out how I wanted to do the decreases and shaping for the right front…no, I didn’t take any notes.  Why bother?  I was going to do the other side right away and I could surely remember how I did it for a few days, right?  Yeah, you know what happened.  And the greater the temporal separation the less inclined I was to pull it out and figure out what the heck I’d done so that the sides could match.  I finally pulled it out and took it with us yesterday.

We went to Fair Winds where the dogs got to run and play, Dale stacked piles of rocks and cleared brush, and I knit and frogged till I figured out what I had done and repeated it in mirror-image for the other side.  Now I’ve got the back to do, but as it doesn’t have to match anything, it should go quickly.

The other hadn’t been sitting very long, but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, so it was a great risk for going dormant.  And since it’s your test knit for the Gansey hat, I didn’t want to do that.  I pulled it out this morning and sat out in the lovely fresh air on our deck and decided A) I’m going to finish in this colorway and B) I’m going to do a simple arrowhead pattern in the back “customization” area.  I had been trying to be too clever and chart our our logo, but the graph paper wasn’t knitter’s graph paper (so distortion of pattern when knit ensues) and your point about the colorway not allowing clear distinction of the pattern made it untenable.  My choices were to totally frog and redo in a “more appropriate” yarn — which would also require redesigning to eliminate the distortion of the logo — or to forego the logo and stick with my yarn choice.  I decided that I really like the muted, subtle effect that the colorway was giving to the rest of the hat.  (Remember, I’m the one who did a whole cloth quilting pattern on a marbled gray fabric and loved it, despite the fact that you have to slow down and inspect the quilt to make out the stitchwork?  Same here…you have to slow down to appreciate this and I like it.)  I ripped out the whole section and reworked what I had done.  I referred to it as an arrowhead, but I was really thinking about the wild geese I had seen and HEARD flying over head while at Fair Winds yesterday.  And, to be clear, that’s the front of the hat in the picture above, not the reworked back.

I’ve also knit up my basic toe-up baby booty pattern in a pink worsted with a nice ruffled effect at the cuff edge.  I’m calling them carnation booties because it looks kind of like a carnation if you gather the two together around the cuffs.  I’ve been asked by a Raveler to make my Cutie Patootie Booties pattern available and I will…along with these and some other variants.  I’m thinking of offering a combo that includes these and maybe a few other cuff options.  “Baby’s First Cashmere” is the name for the toe-up variant of the Cutie Patooties (which were cuff down).  Could be part of the Snack Knitting book…never heard back from you on that idea by the way.

I’m going to enjoy the rest of a very quiet Sunday.  Dale is out sailing and the doggies are exhausted from running around the property.

Love, Jan

Hi, Jan,

Remember the Ronco Popeil Knit a Row a Minute machines?  This hat is about that fast.   It was the hat I started at the Sleepout for the Homeless and finished the next day.

Recipe for a hat to fit a small/medium woman’s head (21-22″ circumference as worn):  2 skeins (50 grams, 35 meters per skein) SandnesGarn Canto, (a yarn that varies from super bulky to worsted weight all in one skein), one 36″ 7.0 mm circular needle (or 7.0 mm dpns if you prefer), and a few hours of time.

Cast on 48 stitches.  I used a 36″ circular needle with the magic loop method, mostly because I didn’t want to lose dpns at the sleepout.  You could, of course, use a 16″ circ plus dpns or just dpns - your choice.  Join in a tube - be really careful not to twist as this yarn plays tricks with your eyes!  Place a marker at start of round.  Knit straight (though your fabric will undulate because of the nature of the yarn) for  6 inches and start decrease rows.  It’s hard to measure,  just try it on and see if the depth is right after 3-4 of the decrease rows.

Decrease:

Row 1:  *Knit 6, k2tog*, repeat ** 5 more times (42 st).

Row 2: Knit

Row 3:  Knit 5, k2tog, repeat ** 5 more times (36 st).

Row 4: Knit

Row 5:  Knit 4, k2tog, repeat ** 5 more times (30 st).

Row 6: Knit

Row 7: Knit 3, k2tog, repeat ** 5 more times (24 st).

Row 8: Knit

Row 9: Knit 2, k2tog, repeat ** 5 more times (18 st).

Row 10: Knit

Row 11: Knit 1, k2tog, repeat ** 5 more times (12 st).

Row 12: K2tog around, 6 stitches remain.

Finishing: Cut yarn and run through the remaining stitches.  Cinch tight and weave end in on wrong side.  Weave all ends in.  I recommend you get someone else to take your picture, rather than holding the camera out as far as possible yourself, for obvious reasons.

I had about 15 g of yarn left.  I figure that increasing the cast on to 54 and starting the decrease section with a set of *k7, k2tog* followed by a round of plain knitting would make for a hat for a med/large woman’s head and very little yarn left.  You’d start the decreasing about half an inch earlier in this case.

The fabric is pretty cool.  And this colorway reminds me of a goldfinch in winter.  Can’t have too much of that!