Knitting for a change

I haven't blogged about knitting since June, when I started Amsterdam Cardigan.

I finished the knitting Tuesday night watching Obama's acceptance speech and finished the seaming Friday while listening to the President-Elect's first press conference. As I did so, I thought of many reasons this is an Election-08 commemorative sweater.



Color: I dyed the yarn specifically for this project. It is a range of

• Browns -- 'nuff said.
• Orange -- when my biracial niece was little, she did not get why people were called black and white; it didn't match reality. She was adamant she was orange. OK, she was three, I was fifteen and it was the Seventies. I have to admit it was fun to hear her insist she was orange. I may have asked her about it a few times.
• Olive Green -- Damn, but we need a Green president! And olives? Well, we latte-sipping volvo subaru-driving elites like olives with our arugula.

International Cooperation: This Sweater has a passport.





The Blue-Faced Leicester is from England, milled in Italy and came to me via Virginia. (Thank you, Newly-Blue Virginia!) The pattern designer lives in the Netherlands, the stitch pattern is named after a French pastry.

Unity. I was going to run out of yarn, so dyed a second lot. The second lot was pretty close to the first, but not close enough. I only need about half a skein of the second lot, and it took work, some ripping and reknitting to unify the results.

All that unity meant that I had an extraordinary number of ends to weave in. I did much of the weaving in while at my doctor's office waiting for my annual check-up, which I am very privileged to be able to afford. May we all be so privileged in the future!

Conclusion: This is super soft wool in a super warm, comfy pattern. A great sweater to wear instead of turning up the thermostat. Knitting details on my ravelry page. (In the very off chance you care about the knitting details and are not on ravelry? Drop me an email.)

Cardigan math

I have 630 grams of BFL Aran to knit my brioche rib sweater. According to the pattern, it ought to take 750 grams of yarn. However, I am not using the recommended yarn or gauge. How close will I be, and if I won't make it, how much more yarn should I dye?

I have finished the back, which weighs exactly 180 grams.


Calculating from the pattern, I can figure the relative proportions of the back, fronts and sleeves.

Back: 7281
Fronts: 9082
Sleeves: 13518

total = 29881

means that back is 24% of garment and I would need 750 grams

Now if I make sleeves more narrow, reduce cuffs, make collar more narrow, I get it down to

Back: 7281
Fronts: 7970
Sleeves: 10536

total = 25787

means that the back is 28% and I need 637 grams. Sigh, so close.

Cardigan in progress

Wool2Dye4.com sells some nice yarns, including a BFL Aran that is just wonderful. However, it is not common for indie dyers to dye and sell this yarn. When they do, it is often hand-dyed in small batches in bright variegated colors.

It's not hard to understand why. While many folks will purchase hand dyed yarn over the internet, they usually want it for a one-skein project, like socks or a hat. There's too much risk in purchasing enough for a sweater. And cost. Hand dyeing is labor intensive so the cost of a sweater's worth of hand dyed yarn would be quite dear.

Why would indie dyers create sweater sized dyelots? That's another issue. I doubt there's much of a market. There's a lot of capital invested in dyeing a large enough dye lot of Aran yarn for a sweater. Most of the BFL Aran that gets purchased from indie dyers goes into knitting wool soakers. For those not in the know, that's diaper covers. They are awfully cute and seem practical but what a use for a premium yarn!




So I figured I would dye this yarn and make a sweater.




I had in mind a brioche rib cardigan, although I really didn't know how to knit one. I just love the brioche stitch and thought the yarn would work well. I figured the internet was my friend in figuring out the How.

Well, I found the gold mind! Brioche stitch heaven. Nancy Marchant has created one of the clearest and most useful sites on the internet. And a pattern for a simple brioche cardigan as well! Frankly, given all the information she provides for free, anyone who understands sweater construction could figure out that sweater on their own, but it was only five bucks, it would save some math and damn! She deserves the money just for the information on her website!





Of course there's something I hadn't considered. Brioche takes more yarn than stockinette. I am not sure I dyed enough for the sweater. Lots of back of the pattern calculations estimating square inches to knit and square inches per gram of what I have knit --- I may be really, really close.

I did take careful notes on the dyes used, I can probably dye another skein or two close enough to work -- maybe alternating rows on the sleeves, but I'll finish the back and do more calculations before deciding if I need to do that.

Fun with Dyeing

Here's what playing with saturation can do:




Store updated with these new colors and a few repeats.



and some new laceweight:

Accentuate the positive

Checking in with a few random notes.

• I ordered a laptop from the Buy One/Give One program of One Laptop Per Child. We've been following the OLPC program for years and happy to see that it is moving forward. Be a philanthropist and a geek at the same time for only $424 including shipping ($200 is tax deductible).



• I made Pumpkin Soup with Smoked Paprika from Elise's Simply Recipes blog and it was delicious.



• Progress on the Cambridge Jacket! I got the sleeves seamed acceptably and cut the steek and sewed in a zipper. By hand. My first zipper installation and it worked. The sweater fits Franz well and just needs a collar. How long will that take?
  



• I've been knitting other things as well, including lots of progress on the Large Triangle from VLT.
  



• Erika and I are doing well with our Hand Dyed Yarn Adventure. We've collectively sold 52 skeins of hand-dyed yarn. Oops, make that 53!
  

Getting Thing Done

Don't you just love getting things accomplished? Especially the small niggling things that have been on the To-Do list for ages. Like this stack of Tupperware with cracks that has sat on the pile of crap behind my computer monitor for at least a couple years. Lifetime warranty and all that, I could not find the address to return the items on their website. So I had to sit on hold for 30 minutes waiting for that nice polite young man with the thick Indian accent to provide it to me.

There's still a pile of crap behind my monitor (and next to it as well!) but every little bit helps.

In knitting, also some accomplishments. In the airplane heading east, I finished knitting two socks. All I needed to do afterwards was graft the toes. Anyone with experience carrying a tapestry needle on board? I didn't try. Neither did the two knitters I accosted en route. But you know, tapestry needles aren't sharp or anything. And they are pretty cheap, so losing it at security wouldn't have been the end of the world. Maybe I should acquire a plastic one, but I just don't fly very often. Regardless. They were both second socks, so after the grafting session in the hotel, I had two new pairs to wear. Alas, while Seattle weather has been in the wool sock territory for a month now, DC was still pretty warm.



BFL DK weight, hand-dyed by me. Top-down, garter rib leg and stockingette foot, US2 DPN, 48 stitches wide.



Knit Picks Fingering hand-dyed by me. Monkey Socks from knitting.com. Us2, pattern followed except I did a slip stitch heel flap.

More fun than socks that were too hot to wear, I finished a shawl in time to wear it to my niece's wedding. Zephyr wool silk lace, hand dyed by me. Luna Moth pattern (free on elann.com). US4 needles, who knows what gauge (I knit tightly in general). I did 7 full pattern repeats, plus the extra half a repeat to get the scallops on the end to point in the correct direction (following the pattern instructions). This blocked out to be almost 60 inches wide and 30 inches from top to bottom. It weighs exactly 50 grams, which means about 600 yards.

My blocking tools were limited, just my container of coil-less safety pins and a hotel carpet, so I didn't get the scallops as open and pretty as the ones on the elann site, but it still looked nice and I can always block it again.

Reading Lace

Did I mention that I've gone back to my old job? I think I drafted a post but didn't finalize it. Yes, the day my kid started high school (full time after two years of part-time school/homeschool) I started back at the bookstore.

Some folks fantasize about working at a bookstore just as some fantasize about working at their LYS. Truth is, it's not all standing around reading and having happy chats with customers about good books. And the pay? Um, small business, retail, part-time, those are not words associated with getting rich. But it does have its rewards and it is only part-time. The owner pleaded with me to come back. I don't know how much of that is that I was a model employee and how much of that is that I'm a warm body and they were desperate. Probably a little bit of both, but that's OK. I felt wanted and that's usually a good feeling. She doesn't know about the blog, but I'll have to write as if she'll find out eventually. That's OK. She's a great woman but she does drive me nuts sometimes. And I may mention that here. But nothing that I wouldn't say to her face. I am pretty candid and there isn't much that I wouldn't say to her face, regardless.

I will get access to galleys again and the discount is nice. I already have a list of books I want to order. I'll space them out to keep purchases less than my salary, but that is hard! My knitting book collection could use some expanding, especially Lace books.

Lace! Oh, how I love you!

When I started reading blogs I would read about folks who memorized lace patterns. Patterns that seemed infinitely complicated to me. And sure enough, my first lace projects were hard. I never got comfortable with the pattern in Cece. I persevered and finished the sweater, but each row was slow. Cozy, well, I could never get that pattern figured out. So many mistakes I ended up frogging it. It was only a few different pattern rows, but I never could figure out where I was.

Either something changed or I chose easier patterns, because lately I have been able to read the lace on my needles better. Most of Estonian Garden Wrap was done watching TV. This weekend I cast on for the Large Triangle in Leaf and Trellis in Victorian Lace Today. And to my surprise, I have A) become faster --- already have 10 of the 30 pattern repeats finished and B) Memorized the pattern. I haven't checked the chart since about repeat number 6. And even then it was just a glance or two. What I still cannot get over is that it is so mathematical, so logical, so easy to read, yet the result is so fluid and graceful and curvy.



I am using some wool I got from a vendor at Madrona. The photo does not do it justice. I was told that it was dyed by none other than Judith Mackenzie herself. That's not on the tag, which just says Davidson Corporation. I don't remember the vendor, but she was clearly associated with JM and Jessica was with me at the time and seemed to know the vendor. Anyway, the yarn is a beautiful green, a richly heathered deeply layered green. I loved the yarn at first sight, but didn't realize just how heathered it was until I started knitting with it. How do you dye yarn so heathered? It almost seems impossible, like that it must have been dyed before being spun, but I don't spin so have no knowledge of that.




I've been dyeing some lace myself, some Zephyr. I don't like strongly variegated yarns for lace, but have become so attracted to hand-dyed yarns that commercial dyed yarns just seem flat and one dimensional. My method of dyeing the Zephyr is to slowly add one color after another to get depth and variation within a limited palette. So far I have sold two skeins and have two more available at Yarn Forest. I have one more that I dyed to keep, but it is red. And we've been finding that photographing red is a challenge. And silk is a challenge with its sheen. So getting a picture I like of that will have to wait until I have more time.

Contest!

I thought I was going to have to blog about my dear departed chicken. The other night around 11 pm we heard her scream. I went out to her roost --- the rhododendron in front of the house --- and saw a raccoon hiding underneath. It ran off when I shined a flashlight on it, but no sign of Tasty. No signs of a struggle either, but it was dark. I searched again in the morning after it was light. Still no sign. An hour later, there she was on the back deck, perfectly fine! She's a tough old bird, she is. She did spend the day under the deck, except when I was outside she followed me around, sticking very close. I managed to lock her in the coop overnight. Will that work in the long run? Or will she seek out a new roost? Who knows.




Blog contest! I've been planning a contest to celebrate the opening of Yarn Forest, where Erika and I are selling our hand-dyed yarn. Tasty's escape gave me an idea of how to structure it. By far the most popular yarn for hand-painting and selling is sock yarn. By far the most common use for this yarn is knitting socks. What happens to those socks? How well do they hold up? We've been exploring base yarns and have our favorites, but by no means have we exhausted our search. So you tell us what you like.

Instructions: If you have hand-knit socks, tell me about the ones that survive the best. Which ones, after 6 months or 2 years of wearing and washing, do you still grab first to wear? Or which ones do you leave until it's almost laundry day and there's nothing else available? Leave your answer in a comment or send me an email (address is in my sidebar) and you will be entered in the contest.

If you don't have experience with the longevity of hand-knit socks, you can still be entered, just leave a comment about anything related to sock yarn or hand-dyeing.

One entry per person no matter how many comments you leave. Contest closes Monday September 17th at 11:00 PM my time (that's US Pacific Daylight Savings Time)

Two prizes! Two lucky winners will be chosen at random. One will receive a set of mini-skeins of our super soft merino we call Aurora 6.


The second winner will receive this skein of Aurora 6, one of a dyelot of two. Why? Because this yarn is prettier in person than we've been able to capture in a photograph. Frustrating but true. So while one of the skeins will be listed at Yarn Forest, the other is earmarked as a prize.

short post with pictures

Erika has listed some of my hand-dyed yarn in her etsy store. Go take a peek.

Here's some of my hand-dye that I kept:





One sock, BFL DK weight, shows the length of the color repeat using my jumbo niddy noddy. I love this sock and have been wearing it while I knit the second one. It's thicker than fingering, I knit this on US4s with 48 stitches.





Monkey Sock number one is also done. (Number two is almost at the toe.) This was some of my very first hand-dyed yarn. Cookie's Monkey sock pattern in knitty.com comes in only one size. I was worried that it would be too small for me, but it isn't. Close though. Knit-Picks Bare sock yarn, knit on US2s.


Look what Franz built. this has already been used, then dismantled to reuse the parts for winder version 2.

Coming to a store near you

Ready for Erika to pick up tomorrow, destined for The Yarn Forest.

The smell of vinegar in the morning

Looking at this photo:


one might get the impression that I've been dyeing today.

No, that's not quite it though. Long time readers of my blog know I started dyeing wool last spring as a lark, encouraged by the great dyeorama swap of 2006. I took to it like a duck to water, just loved the combination of technical details and artistic play. I dyed way more yarn than I could possibly knit, thought about selling some, but chickened out. That process seemed overwhelming and only for those folks who have more self-confidence than I sometimes feel. So, instead of filling my house with hand-dyed yarn, I stopped.

I've knit some, given some away, but still it was nagging me that I didn't take the plunge and sell some. The biggest benefit of that would be that I could dye some more. Well, Erika has seen my yarn, she's even knit socks from it. She got intrigued with the dye bug as well. But Erika adds something I was missing, an intrepid entrepreneurial spirit. We talked and talked, we dyed yarn, both together and separately and The Yarn Forest is born. It's an Etsy store for now, if it takes off, it will become a stand-alone store for more convenience for shoppers and sellers. She has "soft launched" the store but we hope to have a variety of yarns and colors available real soon now.

I went through my accumulated favorites getting them ready to list. One thing had been nagging me, though. I learned a lot through trial and error and didn't fully come to understand how to completely set the dye until I had been dyeing for a while. Since I could not remember exactly when I had dyed these skeins, I was nervous about selling it. Especially since I had had a terrible experience with a commercial yarn where the dye had not been properly set. Erika was able to take advantage of my experience right away. Just ask her how obnoxiously I demanded that she have patience and steam long enough and let the yarn cool for a long time before letting her look at her first hand-dyed! It was worth it though, her first skein rinsed completely cleanly.

This morning, I gave these precious babies a bath. As I immersed each one into the water, I held my breath. Would it bleed? A very small bit of bleeding and fading over time does seem inevitable. Even my koigu socks faded. I cannot promise a no-fade-ever yarn. The skeins that only very very faintly colored the water or left it sparkling clear passed the test. I rinsed them, added a touch of vinegar to the last rinse --- just to be sure --- and left them to dry in the sun.

The skeins that didn't pass are all getting a little help. These are immersed in vinegar-water and sitting in the sun. That will set the dyes better.



Next, they dry and get reskeined (they were skeined by hand and now I have a niddy noddy for a more professional and uniform size) and the next big test: how can I photograph them accurately? I've tried a variety of methods, but just am not good at photographing the colors well. See my flickr set of hand-dyed yarns, a mixture of yarns, some that will be for sale, some I have knit with, some in progress. Some photos stink, a few show promise. I just have to figure out a reliable way to photograph them well. Comments would be helpful.

One last thing, if anyone has read this far. What would you like to see in a hand-dyed yarn? I've dyed several base yarns and have my favorites, but what are yours? My signature yarn, the main one I have dyed, is a lovely, soft merino. I love this yarn. It knits up beautifully and feels so wonderful. But, it is thicker than most sock yarns and it is not easy care. It will felt if you machine wash it. But I do like my socks and wrist warmers and sweater and throw. I think this would make wonderful baby clothes for the parents willing to hand wash.

Therefore, I, like Erika, have been experimenting with more traditional sock yarns, mostly superwash. We are liking some of them a lot and will continue to look for more.

Multiple topics in one handy post

First: Happy Anniversary to me! I've been extra stressed lately and I forgot all about it. I don't feel too bad because so did my husband. It wasn't until I read Canadian Dorothy's blog that I realized what day it was. Turns out that she and I have the same wedding anniversary. So go over there and wish her and her husband many more years of happiness.

Second: Although I am really good with numbers in general, and dates in particular, for some reason, I can never remember my wedding date. I wrote three checks yesterday, all of them accidentally postdated, since my brain insists that we got married on the 18th. Oops.

Third: We went out for dinner, and while it was fine, it was less than perfect. We ended up taking Zach, so not necessarily a romantic getaway, but logistically it made the most sense. Time for romantic meals sans offspring are being planned. As we have rediscovered our inner carnivores after a long journey into vegetarianism, we were hoping to go to Jak's for bacon cheeseburgers. Alas, we got a late start and the dinner rush was underway, the wait was an hour. So we walked across the street to Ciao Bella. We'd had some really nice meals at the old Ciao Bella, but have only been to the new location once, and it wasn't memorable. Last night was memorable because of the awful service. Was it because we had our teen with us on a Friday night? Was it that they noticed we came from Jak's? Whatever reason, they treated us like dirt the whole evening. And my salmon was way overcooked (but the rest of the food was good). Not that they were too crowded or busy with much besides stopping to flirt with the two thirty-something blonds at the next table. I am usually a generous tipper. But last night, no way.

Fourth: I managed to get a lot of errands done yesterday and for the first time in weeks, felt that I had gotten several monkeys off my back. I almost have some monkeys off the needles too. This one just needs a wee bit of decreasing then some grafting. The second sock is at the heel turn.


Fifth: Anyone who's been reading my blog for a while knows that I have enjoyed dyeing yarn and that I am a bit of a math geek. I think that the geekiness is one of the aspects of dyeing I most enjoy. I like to take the time to make very long skeins, so the final result is a bit unusual in that it won't pool or stack in the same way as many hand-dyed yarns. That's not to say it won't pool. I have seen hand-painted yarn with that assurance, but I just don't see how anyone can make such a universal claim. My latest endeavor involves at PVC niddy-noddy that makes skeins more than five yards in circumference. Using a dye process with multiple mason jars simmering in a roasting pan, I can make skeins that won't repeat their color pattern for 190 inches of yarn. But there are still so many factors, the colors may still stack or pool. It all depends.

This swatch is done with Brown Sheep Wildfoot that I dyed using the above long skein method. It has 75 stitches, started on US1 needles, I switched halfway to US0s. The ribbing on US1s gave 5.25 rounds til the yarn color sequence repeated. The stockinette on US1s resulted in 5.5 rounds til the colors repeated. After changing to US0s (and going from about 9 stitches per inch to almost 9.5 stitches per inch) the colors repeated at 5.75 rounds.

What does this mean? Well the long skein and the fact that it took at least five rounds for the color sequence to repeat means that even hugely wide socks in a pattern that takes lots of yarn ought to be able to get a couple three rounds before the color sequence repeats. That should alleviate a lot of dramatically disturbing pooling issues. However, it won't remove them. If the color sequence repeats at exactly N or N+.5 rounds, one could easily get a stacking issue that looks especially nice or especially unbalanced. And having a the sequence repeat at other intervals might end up with nice spirals or weird streakiness. You just never know, do you?

Sunday's cooking

For a photo of this in the dye pot, see Erika's blog.

Swans or peacocks?

Time for a question.

For Mystery Stole 3, I dyed some yarn. Melanie, the stole's designer, said that the theme would be best expressed in a black or white stole. (we now know that the theme is Swan Lake; a ballet I have not seen.) I chose to make a very dark green kettle-dyed yarn. This swatch is a pretty good representation of the result, which ended up more blue-green than green.


I kept up with the clues, knitting the stole, up through clue 3. Does it look swan like?


It's nice, but I am not feeling the love. Perhaps I am just not a stole person. Or maybe my idea of a stole is more like a wrap --- wider than 20 inches. My finished Leda's Dream is a generous 24 inches wide and I love how it wraps around me, but this one won't. The yarn, Henry's Attic Carrera, is lovely, but I just don't think it's the right weight for the stole. So I set it aside for a bit.

Meanwhile, after finishing Leda's Dream, I've been hankering to start something new --- Fiddlestick's Peacock Feathers Shawl. I dyed some yarn, Zephyr, thinking that I wanted something similar to the Carrera, a subtle variegated blue-green but also with an occasional blip of red and yellow, peacock-like. Well, I , um, forgot to add black so I got completely different results.


It's pretty, but not what I had in mind. So now I am stuck. What to do now? Should I keep going with the Mystery Stole and the Peacock Shawl or should I frog the Mystery Stole and use that yarn for a new peacock shawl?

Times like these sure make me wish I could knit faster. Then frogging wouldn't seem so harsh.

Mysteries

I have already finished Mystery Stole Three Clue Two!
just kidding! But it is downloaded, printed and 28% completed.

Since two of the big wheels in knit-blogdom, Bonne Marie and Stephanie, blogged about joining Mystery Stole 3 (signups close any minute now) the number of members doubled in a couple hours. I trust Melanie can take the excitement. Why would so many people be willing to invest their knitting time and money into a project where they don't know what it will look like? And me, I even dyed yarn specially for this.

The first two clues have each have about 5000 stitches. Not too overwhelming, especially in installments. I do expect to be finished with clue two today or tomorrow. Lace provides such a fun challenge. Melanie has added to that with a hidden theme. She won't reveal the theme for a while, but we do know that a stole closely following the theme would be either white or black but she warned us not plan to use this as a wedding shawl. Most likely the theme is a tragic love story. (Madame Butterfly? Swhan Lake? Othello? Knitters have been guessing.)

I do enjoy knitting for intellectual puzzles. New stitches, new stitch patterns, new yarns, new yarn combinations, new colors all stimulate the desire to knit. Erika offered a different sort of kntting challenge, when a while ago she discovered a handwritten cryptic pattern in her great aunt's knitting books. Numbers, letters in knitting shorthand and just a few words. Two important words --- sleeve & body --- told us that it's a sweater. The 'k' is clearly a knit stitch, but nothing else was evident. Page one seems to be missing, this starts on row 29. What's the size, the gauge, the cast-on? Can we reconstruct a pattern from it? To follow the discussion so far, go to Erika's blog, find the search box in the right hand column and search for Helen.

If you do, you can see many different interpretations were considered. I took a mathematical approach. How many k's, o's, sp's were in each row? How did the number of stitches change from row to row? In answering those questions, I finally narrowed it down. The only way I could make it work was to identify the o's as yarn overs and the sp's as a double decrease. That's the crux. Who, at first glance would think of a double decrease?

Basic pattern. multiple of 6 plus 3.

DD = double decrease. I slip two together knitwise, knit one, pass two stitches over.

Row 1: K3 *yo DD yo K3* repeat in asterisk til end of row.
Row 2: Purl
Row 3: K6 *yo DD yo K3* repeat til last three stitches, K3
Row 4: Purl

repeat for pattern.

Helen's notes look a lot more complicated because she's making a sweater from the top down, with raglan increases following the stitch pattern. Can you see in the swatch below where I increased? Swatch is done with Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece on US7s. This would make a nice simple lacy summery sweater.

What about the Monkeys?

I realized too late that my last post's title was inaccurate, since monkeys never get mentioned. Here they are:



The net's latest viral sock. Cookie's Monkeys in knitpicks bare fingering, one of the first skeins I dyed last spring. Brittany US 2s. The pattern is easy and addicting.

some knitting content

Vintage undyed Bawneen became this:



Inspired by Vicki's Fibonacci Sweater, I wanted a boxy, deep V neck cardigan.



Knit in the round using Elizabeth Zimmerman Percentage Formula.

• provisional cast-on 160 stitches. worked body upwards til decided to start V neck. Steek planned for end of round where colors change
• Body worked on US9 addi circulars at 4 stitches/6 rows per inch
  
• V neck created by decreasing on stitch at each side of steek every 6th row.
• at underarms, put 12 stitches on holder and provisionally cast-on 40 stitches
• worked the usual raglan decreases til done
• reinforced steek using crochet method
• cut steek
• picked up the live stitches at the bottom, worked K1p1 ribbing back and forth on US7 addi circular needle
• picked up button-band/collar on US7 addis, worked 6 ridges of garter stitch including three buttonholes.

Now I am working the sleeves on DPNs top-down. I was too impatient to finish the body and see if it was actually going to fit. As kmkat noted, changing direction using a provisional cast-on does shift the stitches a half-stitch. I swatched to make sure this wasn't a problem, and sure enough, given the stockinette stitch and the rustic nature of the wool, this is not noticeable.

Wanna buy a horn?

Gulp. We just acquired a new used french horn and discovered that our old horn is not able to be fixed after we spent an arm and a leg on it. Sigh. So you don't want to buy my horn. How about buying some yarn? My biggest challenge this past week has been photographing it adequately. Everyone knows that monitors vary and cameras are imperfect with regard to color, but still, I wanted better. I've got about 8 skeins with photos that aren't too bad, so here goes.

Photos on flickr. They are a 100% Merino DK weight yarn. Spun like Aurora 8, very soft. Supposedly washable, but I'd caution care. Each skein is 4 ounces (except for a couple which are two 2 ounce skeins) approximately 290 yards. My green socks weigh 3.8 ounces.


I'm asking $18 per skein, plus $2 for shipping. Interested? Send me an email, address in my sidebar.

Ready for a toe

I am caught up knitting the Seriatim sock, in fact, I have two socks waiting for tomorrow's Toe instructions. A pair of socks in less than a week. Before I show the pair, I need to explain.


See this? Genuine Bawneen Knitting wool. Genuine Fisherman's wool that is at least 40 years old. The label says it was spun for Merino Wool Co, 1140 Broadway, New York. No Zip Code. I have over two pounds of this wool, a craigslist purchase. While the photo shows some of the yarn still in its original package, much of it had been knit and unknit. Oh the stories it could tell. How many knitters have owned this lot? The woman I purchased it from had gotten it from Craigslist herself, so the provenance is unknown.

What to do with it? I haven't decided yet. The other day when Nancy suggested we resurrect our dyeing adventures, I grabbed a couple 2 ounce skeins of the Bawneen just to see how it would dye. I painted them boldly and separately. It was only afterwards that I thought about Susan's sock pattern. 4 ounces, just enough for a pair of socks. A Fraternal pair.

Seriatim

A little late, I started Susan's knit-along in honor of her remodeled blog: a serial pattern. Pattern calls for worsted weight yarn that knits to 5 stitches per inch. I am using a bit heftier yarn, some vintage báinín --- authentic Irish fisherman's wool--- I found on craiglist and dyed. It knits up nicely to 4 stitches per inch on US9s. Without a swatch or a care, I started these on US4s. This will be a thick, scratchy, stiff sock, just what I want to keep my feet warm while puttering around at home. Perhaps the tropical colors will add to the warmth factor.

I started the sock last night and expected to get caught up this afternoon. Alas, the problem with reading a pattern on-line: what to do when the power goes out? We lost power for just an hour or so, but it was that 'free' hour between running errands and starting dinner. So I'll have to knit the heel flap and pick up the gusset tonight.