My own stitch design

I doubt that there are any new stitches to invent, particularly one so simple as this, but I can honestly say I came up with it on my own. I started with the idea of a knit one, purl one rib with the pattern staggering sideways every second row. It certainly didn’t come out the way I visualized it, but I decided that I liked it enough to finish the washcloth.

A washcloth I designed

Second hat for Alex

Ribbed Dulaan Hat

Originally uploaded by jorahlavin

This goofy picture is of yours truly wearing my second “hat for Alex.” This is made from the same basic pattern as the first one, with my edits.. K2/P2 ribs instead of the garter stitch, and I made it on circular needles, size US 19. It went VERY fast. I really like this yarn for the kind of jumbo-needles project.

Aethelwyne Mitten aka “Myr’s Elven Friend”

Aethelwyne-Mitten-03

Originally uploaded by jorahlavin

I finished the first Aethelwyne mitten today. This one is a fun project. I’m hoping to cast on the second one tonight, though my day has not turned out as I expected at all, so I won’t be too surprised if I don’t get started on it. (sigh)

This pattern is from Knitting New Mittens & Gloves by Robin Melanson. I made it with Noro Kureyon yarn I picked up at Charlotte Yarn a few weeks ago. I know I’m probably missing a lot of the colors (because of my color vision problem) but it looks mighty colorful to me! Myr picked out the yarn, and the mittens will be for her. So far I’m very pleased. The bobbles and the method for the thumb opening were both new for me.

As I said, the project has been fun… and very quick. I started this one on Sunday afternoon, got just past the bobbles and realized that I’d messed something up bad and had to tink back to the ribbed cuff and start fresh with the bobbles. The second effort was so much better. I did part of the body during a long phone meeting at work, got to the top of the finger point Monday evening, and did the thumb on the train on Tuesday.

Grey Cabled Mitt

Grey Cabled Mitt

Originally uploaded by jorahlavin

My latest fingerless mitt. I’m almost done with the second of the pair (hooray for not suffering from Second Anything Syndrome this time!) but I have an odd mistake and a silly mistake. The odd thing is that this mitt has two extra cable wraps than the second one does! How the heck did I do that? The silly mistake is that I stopped the end cuff short on the first mitt, then forgot to note it on the pattern, so the second mitt has a longer bit near the fingers. Oh, well!

My first “Hats for Alex” hat finished

It ain’t much, but it only took about an hour and a half. Including stitching it up. I gotta get a shot of the top. I did something kind of interesting with the crown.

The Grand Yarn Tour… July 5, 2008

My lovely bride and I went on a shopping trip we could ill afford yesterday. We dubbed this The Grand Yarn Tour. I’d heard that Charlotte Yarn was having a customer appreciation day on Saturday and Sunday, the 5th and 6th, so we decided to drive up there, even though gas prices being what they are, I think carefully about every trip.

We started out by having a bit of breakfast with some friends from our neighborhood, then we drove cross country to Pineville and The Yarn Shop by Rainy Day Creations. This is the shop I think of as my “home base” LYS, not only because it is our closest shop but because the gracious staff has always been encouraging to a guy knitter. The shop was packed with people. I took a quick look at the yarn, but I was being tough with myself, having committed to buy no yarn on this window-shopping day. I headed back to the needle nook in the back, determined to find some short dpn to replace the 8″ #1 needles I’m using on the Tangerine Sock. I found some nice Addi Turbo 4″ dpn, and as I was turning to leave, Myr pointed out an Ashford drop spindle:

She is such an enabler. After pointing it out, she said that I should feel free to use her spindle for learning to spin, and I was forced to point out that I much prefer to own my own stuff, so that was added to the pile of stuff on the counter. The lady who was helping us ring up the order turned out to be the spinning teacher, and gave me some hints on washing the fleece I bought at the Southeast Animal Fiber show last fall. If I can get it together, I’ll be washing my first half pound or so of fleece today. I have to scrub out the shower first, so who knows if I’ll be able to leap that hurdle!

Next we drove to Michael’s so that Myr could price “canvas stretchers” for some lacework she’s doing. She also raided World Market to check prices on three-fold screens for the living room. I stayed in the car and transfered the Tangerine Sock to the new 4″ needles.

Finally we were on the road to Charlotte Yarn… whoops, no, the next stop was actually Hancock Fabrics so that Myr could look for Gutermann silk thread in a particular shade of purple. No joy. Apparently no one in the area sells a full line of Gutermann silk.

At long last we left the South Blvd. area and cut across south Charlotte on Woodlawn and then north to CY, where the Customer Appreciation Day was in full swing. We toured the swap area, dismayed to realize that we’d brought not a single dollar with us, and went into the shop, where Myr got Remi to find the right colorway of Noro Kureyon to match the sample mittens hanging on the display (I’m planning to make the mittens using the Aethelwyne pattern from Robin Melanson’s book Knitting New Mittens & Gloves). This is my first Noro, and I’m very interested to see what the ruckus is about. I’m wondering if I can fully appreciate the colors; I went through most of my life thinking that I was seeing “lame” rainbows and only realized in my late 30s that my color blindness was robbing me of half the colors that Myr could see. So I know I’m probably missing the real thrill of this yarn. Myr was actually gushing about it. She doesn’t get that excited about most yarn!

I went back outside and showed Jane how the Tangerine Sock was coming along. I’d gone from 56 stitches to 64 stitches on her suggestion after showing her the sock at Guild, and she was very supportive this time as to how I was doing on the pattern I’d settled on (a “mini cable” I found in Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch), but was concerned that the sock was still too small. I took her advice last night after we got home and transfered the bit of sock to a circular needle and had Myr try it on… yup, she could barely get it over her heel with great effort, so the poor thing is going to have to be ripped …again. I’m obviously going to have to swatch with the new needles. Sigh.

I soothed my distress by having a nice burger supplied by CY. Amazing how food can help with disappointing news.

I also went back and chatted with a lady sitting in the swap tent area who was trying to get rid of some wool yarn. I convinced her to let me send her the money for the yarn via Paypal, and she seemed so relieved to be rid of those six skeins that she loaded my knitting bag with a bunch more yarn she seemed to be pulling out of her purse! I was really surprised, but the yarn was all really nice stuff and I just kept saying “yes, I’ll take it” and “thank you so much” until she stopped. I’ll try to get a snapshot of the yarn later today. Whoever you were, Mystery Lady, thanks again! You have my card, please send me a PM on Rav.

We got back on the road and headed west, back along Woodlawn and Billy Graham to 85, and out to Gaston County to visit the new yarn shop called close knit Knittery and Press in Gastonia. We rarely get out that far west, so Myr had to make a quick stop at Mary Jo’s Cloth Store on the way. As an aside, Mary Jo’s location has always somewhat alarmed me… the mall it is part of strikes me as one of the most disreputable I’ve ever seen. This visit, I noted that most of the mall has been gutted. You’d think a bomb… or many bombs, had gone off. Harris Teeter and Mary Jo’s are still running, everything else is closed. Good news is that my new craft has apparently given me a small level of immunity to Mary Jo’s. I went all the way to the back of the store and returned to the car with no hint of a panic attack such as I experienced the first time I visited. I now know that the zombie-like women staggering around in the aisles are no danger to me, they are merely victims of extreme shopping trance.

On to close knit! Once we found the lovely shop on South Oakland St., we spent a very relaxed half hour getting a tour of the new store from Sheri, the proprietor. This converted house is light, airy, and the rooms are large. Sheri has a classroom with a massive work table, and even though the store just opened, a good variety of yarn. We saw yarns and brands that we’re fairly sure are not available at other yarn shops in the Charlotte area. By now, however, I’d spent about $60 more than I intended to spend, and we left without having enriched the shop. I hope that the store does well. Gastonia isn’t the wealthiest town in North Carolina, but in addition to being a really nice store, I suspect that it is the only place you can get quality yarn in a large part of that county.

At long last we wended our way toward home. I am not a born shopper, and I was worn out. I completely forgot to stop at Wal-Mart to price a replacement for my coffee thermos, which came out of the commute on Thursday in many bits of shattered glass. Thankfully, dinner was an easy one of leftover ribs, drumsticks, and potato salad with fresh corn. I was so zonked that I was asleep by 9:30.

Done Some Monday Afghan

I went to a great event this month, the Charlotte version of the World Wide Knit in Public Day (a.k.a. WWKiP Day). The Charlotte Knitting Guild (who organized it) and a raft of local yarn shops and other sponsors (who donated supplies and raffle prizes) created an event that I hope will recur every year for many years. I was got there late and had to leave early, and as I was slowly and sadly trudging away with my knitting, my cooler, and my folding chair, I heard someone calling me on a bullhorn. I walked back to find that I’d won an afghan kit from Charlotte Yarn! The kit included a circular needle, ten balls of Encore® Worsted yarn, and a book of afghan patterns. It is produced by Plymouth Yarn, and the booklet has 15 designs by JoAnne Turcotte, the Design Director of the company.

I probably would never have done a piece this large without the kit to get me started. I am about to finish the second repeat, doing 3 to 6 rows a night just before bed. The pattern is easy enough to do while watching a movie. I think I’m going to like the finished work a lot, but the white color is doomed in our house. The poor thing is already covered in black cat fur.

A couple of quick snapshots

By the way, my nickname for this project is a joke about how slowly I knit. The pattern book is called “Done by Monday Afghans.” The intro describes a person casting on after work on Friday and finishing up on Sunday evening after a relaxing weekend of knitting by the fire. I’m estimating that it would take me three such weekends to finish this project… so yeah, I’ll be done by Monday. Some Monday!

Stress and knitting

I only learned to knit nine months ago, but since then I’ve fallen into the pattern of stressing about unfinished projects. Last night, I knit three rows on the afghan, then set it aside to get ready for bed. I realized that I had no expectations about this particular project, and it was fine to get it done whenever. That realization was nice. I felt relaxed about working on the afghan a little at a time. I decided to treat all my knitting like this. After all, I’ve got more than enough other expectations …both external and internal… supplying plenty of stress, and don’t need my hobby to be another source of the lovely stuff.

Hope I can keep this perspective for a while!

Excuses, excuses… just show me the post, already

I have a bunch of ready-made excuses for why it has been six weeks since I last posted here (trip to New England, work is crazy, no time at home… et cetera, et fracking cetera… weep for me), but none of them matter a bit. Reality is that I could have posted any time, but I ended up watching Battlestar Galactica DVDs or surfing Ravelry instead. I finally did get started on some knitting, continuing ever so slowly on my next set of fingerless gloves (the Cabled Fingerless mitts by Carissa Browning) and starting on the afghan kit that I won at the Charlotte World Wide Knit in Public event a few weeks ago (many props to Charlotte Yarn for the kit and the Charlotte Knitting Guild, which organized the event). But of course I haven’t gotten photos of any of this. Perhaps this weekend I’ll break through the malaise I’ve been stuck in and get moving again. I actually installed a new WordPress blog on my old server at madstone.net. Not sure what I’ll do with yet another blog, but what the hell.

Help a knitta, mebbee win some nice yarn

So one of my Ravelry friends is running some research on hand and arm sizes, and she’s offering a prize of some nice wool yarn as potential “payoff” for doing some (ahem) manual labor and posting your info on her blog:

http://knitasaur.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/i-have-creepily-scrawny-wrists/

Have at it, and let her know you heard about it from me!