Mindless knitting

It's my practice to have several ongoing knitting projects, and there's always one I think of as "mindless." This means I can do it automatically, so I can talk to others while knitting, or stop and start it often, as when I'm traveling and have to sit down/get up/embark/disembark/board/deplane, etc., and not worry about losing my place. My place in the knitting, that is.

The Knitting Goddess once observed that all knitting design was nothing more than rectangles and tubes. With this in mind, and knowing well my own limited ability to combine shapes, I decided that my current Mindless Project would be a long rectangle knitted of lace-weight mohair on #9 needles. (I use a circular so I don't worry about dropping stitches when it's packed away.) Said project accompanied me during a recent trip to a shockingly beautiful part of the world called New Mexico. Ultimately the project will become a very lightweight, warm, and lovely shawl/scarf thing.

I'm using Schoppel Mohair Lady yarn, 80% mohair, 20% nylon, in 50 gram balls. One ball yielded about 18" of generously wide shawl, so I'm thinking maybe four or five will do the entire job. The color, teal, is gorgeous; the yarn is not so wonderful to knit, however, even though it looks great. Mohair knitting is not for the faint of heart. It snags and slips, and it's a horror to frog. (At the unfortunate Brandon Mably workshop I attended last winter, I did learn one useful thing--that if you have to frog mohair, put the yarn in the freezer first. Apparently mohair is a very juicy kind of yarn, and freezing will tamp down the cling action.)

So, we had a wonderful week in New Mexico (the usual suspects: Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos), and I met some great fiber people, bought some amazing hand-dyed yarns, and all the while knitted my Mindless Project.

Outside the Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe NM

We came home, unpacked, unpacked, unpacked (translation: still unpacking), I caught up on things, knitted this and that, and suddenly realized I couldn't locate my Mindless Project.

In typical extremist fashion, I ripped through all my usual hiding places, interrogated H whom I trust to know where everything I've lost is (he didn't), replayed endless scenarios of when and what I'd been knitting in the week since our return, and finally decided I'd lost my knitting. I began to mourn it. I had sleepless nights. I considered a fairly reliable but desperate last-ditch tactic--to begin knitting the project all over again. This would once again validate my Theory of Duplicates, which goes thus: If you lose something, buy or create an exact replacement. This guarantees that the original will reappear.  I was very reluctantly screwing up my courage to do this.

But then I noticed a tote bag on top of a shelf in my closet. I opened it, and there was the knitting! 

Calloo, callay, O frabjous day! she chortled in her joy.

It's remarkable how impacted I am by a vast, though somewhat repetitive, cycle of self-created dramas. Most of them are pointless and downright neurotic. At least this one had a good ending, even if it temporarily disproved my concept of mindless knitting .

Earbud sleeve: a free pattern!

Some weeks ago I walked around New York City noticing how everyone was wearing earbuds, or, if their ears weren't plugged up, they had with artful insouciance slung earbuds and attachments around their necks or stuffed them into breast pockets as if they were spaghetti ascots. Instinctively I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to carry this off, because I am woefully maladroit in the tech-toys department, and deliberately uncool.

Perhaps this explains why it's impossible for me to keep my earbuds from tangling, no matter how carefully I roll them before stowing in a cute book-replica box that had once held a bar of soap. I pondered this a while. It then struck me that I could perhaps knit a cord cover, so that I wouldn't have to spend twenty minutes trying to straighten the buds before using them. (Proof of uncoolness: I use earbuds only to talk to H on my cellphone. This is because he claims to be unable to hear me during cellphone chats if I'm holding the phone near my face.)

I cast six stitches onto a #2 dpn, picked up another #2 dpn and began knitting an I-cord with leftover sock yarn. After an inch I decreased, over two rows, to four stitches, then stuffed the base (the plug) of the earbud wire into the knitted tube. The only thing one needs to keep in mind while knitting an I-cord tube around a wire, is always to bring the yarn around the back of the wire each time a new row begins. Work with a small ball of yarn, too, to keep the process manageable.

I continued to knit until the entire wire was swathed in I-cord up to the fork, where the wire divides to each earbud. At this point I consulted the Knitting Goddess, who advised me to increase to eight stitches, using the K1 M1 increase, then put four stitches onto a holder.

I continued knitting first up the left wire, then, picking up stitches at the fork, up the right wire.  I stopped when I got to the microphone, although you might want to stop earlier, and I cut the yarn, leaving a four-inch tail.  I removed the dpn.  The tail was threaded onto a yarn needle, and the needle drawn through the open loops, the yarn cinched, the tail cut, the end woven into the tube.  The same closure was effected for the left wire.  Et voila!

The next step was to figure out what to call this garment. I thought Earbud Sweater would do, but my pal, Pink Mohair, saw it yesterday and said, "It's not a sweater, it's a COSY." Then Neuroknitter saw it today and spontaneously announced, "It's a SLEEVE--an Earbud Sleeve." Amen to that!

So here it is--an Earbud Sleeve that keeps your wires from tangling! In a world where so little can be controlled, how thrilling is that?!

Photo credit:  R. Grahn

The next "IT" accessory?          Photo credit:  R. Grahn

September serendipity

This beautiful yarn came into my life recently, sent by Theresa Walker of Great Bay Woolworks. It's loosely plied, undyed, with a silky sheen, and it's 100% New Hampshire-raised wool. The texture is best for outerwear, though the Knitting Goddess thought it would make a great pillow done in a log cabin pattern like last year's afghan. (If I do that, I'll have to add a fourth color, however.) I'm asking you, gentle knitters, for advice. What should I make from three 200-yard skeins of of genuine New England farm-raised wool, that most likely would knit up best on size 5 or 6 needles? Let me know by blog comment or email.

If I use your pattern suggestion, I'll send you a great knitting book from my personal collection of great knitting books!

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around...

So, I knitted a blanket for my friend Florina's son, due to appear in October 2013.  The Baby Shane blanket pattern, by Tanis Fiber Arts, is one of my favorites, and among the yarns I used (for the red and butter-yellow stripes) were Rowan Pure Wool Aran (yellow) and Classic Elite's Waterspun, (production discontinued), in an iodine red. I washed the blanket in Woolite in icy cold water, without agitation, and rinsed it in icy cold water, without agitation.  After draining the tub and rolling the blanket in a series of towels to absorb the moisture, I was horrified to discover that some of the red dye had bled onto the yellow yarn.

The Knitting Goddess, whom I consulted, said, "That's why you should always make a swatch." She did some research and found a product called Carbona Color Run Remover that sucks up "fugitive" dye. I did some research and discovered Carbona for sale at a nearby Walmart. I drove to Walmart.

Entering Walmart was almost as dismaying as discovering the dye damage. Why is it that the killer shark theme from "Jaws" starts to pound in my brain the minute I set foot in there? Why does everyone inside that big concrete box look like an inmate of a halfway house? Why did I have to walk the entire six mile length of the store before I could locate the laundry products aisle? Is it possible that some people are born knowing how to navigate a Walmart, or is this a new field of academic research?

At long last I found the product, purchased it, and discovered, on reading the box at home that it works only in "the hottest water permitted by the fabric care label."

Neuroknitter thought I might be able to wash the blanket in hot water if I didn't agitate it. I called the toll-free phone number on the Carbona box and got a recording that said the office was closed, and if I had ingested Carbona I should immediately call a Poison Control center.

I discussed this with H, who, under torture, will confess that he holds a doctorate in chemistry. He examined the list of Carbona's ingredients. Then he said, "I think you should knit a swatch with those yarns, wash the swatch as you did the blanket, then, when the dye runs, try the Carbona in hot water and see what happens. But if you ask me, I think the blanket really looks okay, and Florina and her baby won't notice."

I knitted a swatch a couple of evenings ago, during the CBS news, local and national. I measured the swatch prior to washing.

I washed the swatch exactly as I'd washed the blanket. Guess what? The dye didn't run.

My laboratory.

The testing ground and materials.

Woolite added to icy cold water begins to foam as they mix.

Swatch immersed in Woolite and icy cold water.

Swatch after rinsing and drying. No runs. No significant shrinkage either.

H told me that I needed to repeat the experiment until the dye ran, so I could see if Carbona and very hot water removed the color run without shrinking the blanket. I repeated the experiment.

The dye, as you can see, still didn't run.

H again opined that neither Florina nor baby would notice anything amiss. My friend Maa-gret said the effect was like a madras fabric. It looked like it was meant to be that way. Meanwhile I was thinking, suppose I do wash the blanket in Carbona and the dye comes out and the blanket doesn't shrink. That would seem the best possible result, but...did I really want a newborn to be wrapped in a chemically-treated blanket?

I showed the blanket to the Knitting Goddess, who told me that the dye must have run because the yarn was "crocked." 

The Free Dictionary (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/crock) says this is a term originating in New England [possibly because of New England's historic and role in the U.S. textile industry?] meaning

v. crocked, crock·ing, crocks

v.tr.

To soil with or as if with crock.

v.intr.

To give off soot or color.

The Knitting Goddess said, "Really, it looks fine.  No one will notice the bleed."

If no one notices, then maybe the dye didn't run after all? Just like the tree in the forest, which, when no one is around, falls ever so silently...?

Three strikes, it's out...

The Knitting Goddess constantly stresses the value of The Swatch; therefore I must obey.  So I had a project in mind, a knitted toy, using some interesting bouclé yarn, but it absolutely wouldn't cooperate.  The pattern calls for #6 needles, and on that size it's almost unknittable.

I went up to sevens, then to eights (in photo). It's still too dense; moving the needles requires herculean strength.  At this point I realized the pattern isn't viable with this particular yarn.  And, it's way too hot here.  The project is now officially shelved.

My inner critter keeps telling me to remember that if it's not fun, I shouldn't be knitting it.

Jolly good, wouldn't you say?

Tangerine Tango is the new beige...

Gentle knitters, I've been thinking about colors and why some of them are always thrillingly luscious (rosy pink, dark red) or comforting (navy, natural) or safety nets (black, brown), while others make us gag or engender a love-hate relationship. Let's consider, for instance, avocado green or "harvest" gold, which were a big deal in the 1960s and '70s, to the extent that many people actually bought kitchen appliances, shag rugs, drapes, etc. in those colors and regretted their tragically expensive choice within a very short time. Once enveloped by avocado green and harvest gold (a murky yellow-brown evoking ?) those fond feelings simply evaporated, and then where was the love?

Well, it's 2012 and now orange is in--specifically a shade called Tangerine Tango, which is Pantone's Color of the Year. The Knitting Goddess tells me the Color of the Year, flogged in fashion and décor, is an industry-generated ploy. For me, orange is the color equivalent of a scream for attention, since where I live you can't, by law, walk in the woods without wearing orange, else you risk being taken for wild game and shot at by a local yahoo who's out there proving his manliness. In fact, the one orange hand-knitted item in the house is a scarf I made H a while ago, specifically to increase his visibility when we stroll with Lola in nature-land.

Yet rather than feel that Tangerine Tango is a color I might grow to hate in the manner of avocado green and harvest gold, which I truly detest, I think of it as a color I'd grow to ignore because in a way it's so ubiquitous--the outerwear we don to maximize visibility in the woods, strip-mall signage, Halloween clichés, Fanta and Cheetos. Perhaps that's the inevitable fate of any Color of the Year, to become beige-i-fied.

These musings prompted me to inspect the orange yarns in my stash, and to compare them with natural oranges (tangerines, actually, and the last of the carrot harvest). There is a tonal harmony here, but a little orange goes a very long way, and I enjoy it best in combinations.

Here Lola unhappily models my (now) Evolved Sweater (formerly known as the Evolving Sweater), which as you can see features orange in combination with an eclectic assortment of colors and yarns.

Heartfelt

It's a self-evident truth that V-day is nearly upon us. Recently, as I perused the assortment of regular daily emails that fly into my Inbox, I happened upon this from Knitting Daily, a charming and completely free-of-charge felted heart pattern designed by Mags Kandis.

In a eureka! moment I realized that my knitting of these lumpy little valentines would accomplish much in one fell swoop:

• I'd use up scraps of yarn;
• I'd practice "wrapping" stitches, as the pattern called for;
• I'd practice short rows;
• I'd try out a knitting app I'd downloaded onto my Iphone;
• and...I'd end up with several funky knitted heart-like things.

Well, it all worked like a charm, I'm happy to say. 

Knitted heart in primitive evolutionary stage.

Does not this open-faced heart resemble a ginko leaf? And gingkos are evolutionarily both primitive, in the sense of being very ancient, and also sui generis among trees.  (Don't ask why I know this.)

Following the 18-row pattern, I did a long-tail cast-on (thanks to the Knitting Goddess, who demo'd it for me and led me through two practices), reviewed the wrap-and-turn process of short rows (again thanks to the Knitting Goddess, who was, I think, born knowing all of this very useful stuff), and worked my way down the lines. But...I'm not a diligent note-taker, and it soon was apparent that I needed an aide-memoire.

Then I recalled that a few weeks ago I'd done a search in the App Store using the keyword "knitting," and had found a few gizmos to download.  (About these as a group, stay tuned for a future post.) One, Knit Counter Lite, seemed like it might be just the ticket, and I must say it was. With a mere tap of my pinkie, I kept track of rows and where I was, exactly, in the midst of them.

This might not seem like such a big deal to those who enjoy the tactile sensations of paper and pencil to tick off the rows completed, but I am the kind of person who starts with a paper and pencil and then gets annoyed because I don't want to put down the knitting to use them, so I say forget that, and I then do promptly forget where I am in the pattern.  With the Knit Counter Lite app, I could hold the knitting and simultaneously add each row with a tiny tap, or subtract  if I ripped one (or more) out. No longer was I lost nel mezzo del caminn, as it were.

I can't remember if this app was free of charge, and my Iphone won't tell me. A more sophisticated Knit Counter by the same company (Cordless Dog) costs $3.99 to download, and it's probably worth the price of admission, as it does quite a bit more than the Lite version.

Practical-minded knitters are undoubtedly wondering what I plan to do with these fuzzy felted hearts...and so am I, though Ted thinks they make a great bikini.

At this point I'm not worried about their purpose, but more inclined to say, along with M. Pascal, "the heart has its reasons...."

(Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.)

It's turkey time

Everywhere I look I see another one.

Outside....

Narragansett Turkey (a heritage breed) #1 of Coggeshall Farm, Bristol, Rhode Island

Naragansett Turkey #2 of Coggeshall Farm, Bristol, Rhode Island

inside...

Bell & Evans, purchased yesterday at Dave's Marketplace, East Greenwich RI

in trees.

Espied today roosting in a greenhoused calamondin tree.

The Knitting Goddess has oft remarked to me that she hates holidays, much preferring ordinary life. I am beginning to understand the wisdom of this view. Why do we futz around for these events, allowing ourselves to be buffeted by the Stürm und Drang of lengthy travel, artificially-induced interpersonal dynamics, gluttony, acid reflux, and the deep boredom of chitchat with people we don't know?

The yin-and-yang of Thanksgiving at my house this year:  everyone invited has canceled at the last minute. This is providential, as the dishwasher--an almost new Bosch--died last week. Thus, all is in balance. (File for future reference in case you're contemplating the purchase of this brand. It's the second Bosch that died within weeks of purchase. The first was replaced gratis by the merchant. Stay tuned for an update after the repair-guy arrives later today.)

We are left with too much food, most of which we'll freeze. Our Thanksgiving will be minimalist, just H & moi, the turkey-craving cats, and the always-ravenous Lola who will repeatedly proffer the paw, roll over, dance unbidden in circus-dog circles, and whimper pathetically while her people serenely enjoy their repast.

Gentle knitters, thank you for reading this blog so loyally. For that I'm truly grateful. I look forward to seeing your photos of what's on the needles on Friday (send them to me!), as we celebrate Knit Something Day (November 25). May your Thanksgiving meal be tasty, and may peace be with you and your yarn.

Autumn Postcards

This canoe appeared on our river, the Wood, several days ago.

A second crop of raspberries!

Nasturtiums!

A green pumpkin.  It will not turn orange.

The Knitting Goddess demonstrates how to begin a cable cast-on for the thumb of the mitten.

The Knitting Goddess is helping me with yet another weird pattern. This one is for mittens, and I decided to try it with the wool I dyed. My next post will detail the vagaries of the project. It's a tale all-too-familiar, perhaps, and not for the faint of heart. Du courage, mes chers amis.

The undoing

After I'd started this sock, the first of a pair, I realized with utter dismay that I had joined two different dye lots and the colors were painfully off. There was no yarn left of the dye lot used for the cuff.

The Knitting Goddess suggested I rip it out and start over. This was worse to contemplate, because the pattern is intricate and what I'd done so far represented hours of concentration. The sock went in a basket where I'd see it every so often, and I decided to consider her advice over a longish swath of time.

Whenever I looked at the sock it bothered me. Actually, it more than bothered me. It upset me. I thought of ways to balance out the color differences, by adding other colors, or doing contrasting embroidery along the join. As soon as I entertained another fix-it idea, I was overcome by ennui.

Today, six months later, I took her advice.

Molly says:  "Learning how not to be attached is a drawn-out and circuitous process."

For the birds

The Knitting Goddess distributes snippets of leftover yarn on the driveway, for neighborhood nest builders.

Rosy-Breasted Grosbeak

Bluebird

Osprey

Loss and gain

Stonington, CT

Those who grew up before the Age of SPF and PABA often, as mature individuals, endure dermatological procedures that remove sun-damaged skin lest it morph into full-blown cancer. Such was H's lot this morning.  While he was being scraped, peeled, and stitched on the tenth floor of Rhode Island Hospital, the Knitting Goddess and I walked along the mighty Seekonk with our loyal companions, Brownie and Lola, discussing the merits of wool versus acrylic, a conversation prompted by my wearing of a pair of thirty-year-old acrylic mittens (knitted in an overall seed stitch by mother, who is late--to borrow a term from Mma Ramotswe), and KG's wearing of a pair of equally ancient acrylic gloves in a nordic pattern, inherited from an elderly relative.

KG maintains that acrylic garments can be as warmth-providing as wool. I disagree. To test our hypotheses, we have decided to knit two pairs of comparable mittens, hers in acrylic, mine in wool. We will engage an impartial scientist to measure the heat retention of said mittens as they are worn on a suitably cold winter day. I am sure you, gentle readers, will be as curious about the results as KG and I are. Stay tuned.

Shortly after our return from this bracing expedition, I was summonsed by H to bail him out of hospital hell. Then we were on our way to the River House, where four angry cats awaited, screaming for breakfast. H had come through his surgery stoically and with only one large bandage on his face. We decided to reward his fortitude with lunch in Stonington, Connecticut, a twenty-minute drive from our rural hideaway. Afterwards, we strolled to the water's edge. It was there that we encountered Owl.

He's about a foot high, five or six inches wide, and rather compact. Readers, you know my proclivity for homeless animals. There was no way I could leave him on the wharf, feathers ruffling in the wind. We scooped up the little beast and brought him home.

It turns out that he loves to watch me knit. This I discovered as we drove back and I, riding shotgun with Owl on my lap, picked up a rather lurid sock currently under construction and began to work. Owl nudged it with his beak and rubbed his head on the ball of yarn. When we arrived home, I put him in a basket with the almost-completed pair, and it was clear that he was in a state of avian bliss.

I promised to knit him a scarf from the leftovers.

Lola isn't certain how she feels about him.