knitabit

About Knitabit

Thanks for stopping by!

I'm Karen. I live in rural Weld County, Colorado with my husband and four kids. Besides doing the mom thing, I am an engineering consultant (water rights) and Executive Director of a non-profit organization for Colorado ditch companies. Yeah, it's weird but it's really cool.

I don't remember when I learned how to knit, but I know I did a fair amount of it in college. After college, I did some machine knitting but got tired of having to be chained to the machine in order to produce finished products. I start hand knitting again in about 1998 and am becoming more and more obsessed.

I track my progress on this blog - it's more for my own satisfaction than to create any kind of reader buzz or hit counter excitement.

Knew Year, Knew Knitting

I adamantly refuse to start a new project until I finish up that second Wildfoote sock - the one I left up at the cabin. It should be pony-expressed here sometime today (courtesy of my sister and her family) and it will be my New Year's Eve project. I think I can finish it up tonight (provided no one gets sick - see previous post!)

Then I will ring in the New Year with a clean slate.

Here are some of my fantasies for knitting in 2004:

1. A simple pullover (pattern from Vogue Fall 2002) made from my favorite yarn (Koigu KPPPM):

2. A fair-isle; perhaps this one (recently made by Wendy); I seem to recall her mentioning that this would be a good project for a fair-isle beginner.


(Faithful readers of this blog recall that I actually knit a fair-isle sweater back when I was in college - see this post.)

3. More socks - yarn currently in the stash includes Sockotta, Fortissima Colori, and a multicolor Regia. My kids are hinting around that they would like their mom to knit socks for them.

4. A felted bag or two - I've got some Noro Kureyon in the stash. And maybe some teeny-tiny ones to give as gifts.

5. I'd like to give gloves a try. Interweave (current winter issue) had a bunch of info on how to knit them. Here's what Booga J did with some Koigu:

6. More scarves! The ones I knit for my mom and sisters were a big hit; maybe I need to knit a couple for myself.

I think I will plan for a big expedition to a yarn shop in the next week or two!!

Happy Knew Year, Happy Knitting Everyone!!

Christmas Unpleasantness

No, I'm not talking about dinner with relatives (that part of our family celebrations is always fun!) No, I'm talking about a vicious strain of STOMACH FLU that my family has passed around over the past week. The victims include: my niece, my dad, my sister, and two of my kids. So far.

The 10-year-old came down with it Saturday night; I was up with him ALL NIGHT LONG. The 12-year-old came down with it last night (Monday? at this point I'm not really sure what day it is.) And I was up with HIM all night long. And in the more information than you wanted to know department, it was coming out both ends for everyone involved.

My husband was a real trooper; he was the initial mop-up guy; I was in there for the extended duty (less messy, but more tiring.)

So who will be next? That's what we're asking ourselves with every bite of food we ingest. It's a great post-holiday diet regime: ask yourself how this particular food will feel going backwards up the digestive track.

At last we are home, and can vomit in our very own bathrooms now!

In knitting news, I turned the heel on the sock. And that's it. Then, I accidentally left it at the cabin. My other sister will return it to me on her way home, later today or perhaps tomorrow. Assuming they do not fall victim to the horror.

Lochinver De-briefing and critique

Lochinver is from Alice Starmore's "Fishermens Sweaters." Here are the particulars:

Yarn, Pattern and Needles

I used Naturally "Aspiring" Yarn, a wool/alpaca blend DK weight yarn from New Zealand. At first, I thought this yarn was too soft but in the end I think it's just fine. It does have the longer alpaca fuzzy 'hairs' but they don't bother me at all. The yarn is a camel color - I would have preferred something a bit bolder but I didn't care for other colors in stock in the yarn store at the time. I was pretty much set on this particular make of yarn - the price was reasonable and it is SO SOFT.

I used Denise's Interchangeable needles, size 5 circulars. This is the smallest size in the system. I liked the way you could use the cords as stitch holders.

Once I got to the sleeves, I switched to double point needles; I don't know why I didn't buy size 5 circ's -- I hate dpns! I used size 3's (I had circ's in that size) for the cuffs and the collar.

My test swatch was pretty close to gauge; but I blocked it to a slightly larger size (more about that later.) I checked my gauge periodically as I was knitting and it was always pretty close.

I think the pattern is for men's sizes! I normally wear a women's medium or large, but I knit up the size small for this pattern, and it's PLENTY big enough.

The pattern is VERY well written and I can't recall any instance in which I had to guess about a vague instruction.

Modifications

I pretty much knit it up as per the pattern, including the cast-on recommended at the back of the book. I used a kitchener cast-off for the cuffs and collar and am really pleased with how that turned out.

Finishing and Blocking

This is the first time I've knit a sweater in the round and boy, do I love it! The only finishing I had to do was to hide fewer than a couple of dozen yarn ends, tack down the collar overlap (about 7 hand stitches!) and sew on two buttons. I really hate finish work, so it was a real treat to finish up knitting and have the sweater be virtually complete! I will try to look for patterns that work this way in the future, and will plan to learn all about steeks when I get to knitting a fair-isle sweater.

When I was done knitting, I noted that the purl ridges (the horizontal lines separating the different stitch patterns) were a little bit wavy. Most of the stitch patterns had enough of a rib-like quality to cause them to pull in a little tighter than plain stockinette or reverse stockinette. So I decided to block the sweater to a bit of a larger dimension to remove the wavies. And that worked just great! So that's why the sweater turned out a little bit larger than the pattern called for.

I might re-wash and re-block it to get it a little bit smaller. The neckline is especially stretched out, and I'd like to relax those stitches a bit. The pattern shows the collar coming up much higher on the model's neck; I don't mind the way it hangs lower on my version, however.

Workmanship

I kept a pretty constant gauge - even though I knit this over the course of nearly 4 months. (I'm proud of that!)

However, you can see on the sleeves where the dpn's were. Also, I don't think I picked up stitches around the neck as neatly as one could. I saw in the "Big Book of Knitting" some suggestions for neater necklines - I will try those on my next project. There were a couple of stitches around the underarm gussets that were really large - practically leaving a hole in the work. I had to pull the stitch tighter and tie little knot to close those holes.

Every time I made a mistake, I went back and fixed it - even when it meant ripping out rows and rows of work.

Wearability

This sweater is very warm. It's too warm to wear around the house doing busywork - like packing up suitcases, etc. But it feels really comfy here at the cabin. I probably won't be wearing it to the office or to places where the climate might get too stuffy. It will be great for wearing outdoors!

It's got a bulky, oversize fit to it, but I think that comes with the territory when you're knitting ganseys. The underarm gussets add to the bulky fit, I think.

The Verdict
I like this sweater! I also liked knitting it - I picked up a bunch of new skills. I am anxious to try a big fair-isle project, as I think it will be more interesting switching colors rather than switching between knit and purl stitches.

The Modeling Shot

OK, here it is (as photographed by my 12-year-old):

And I like it! The sleeves are too long (I have to roll the cuffs) but other than that it fits fine - very roomy, the way I like 'em. Of course, it would fit better if I had a bigger bust (yes, that is my front side), but Santa didn't bring me one of those this year.

Here's a closeup (as close as my camera can get) of the neck detail and buttons:

Will post a full de-briefing later.

Lochinver!

At last, she's done:

Here she is, sort of frumpled and rumpled after being crumpled around while I knitted it. I will hunt around tonight for a couple of buttons for the neck. I'm thinking I might have some buttons that have come off various pairs of men's dockers, and they would look real nice on the neckline. If I can find a matching pair...

Here is the new 'Wooly Board' (and some background Christmas clutter):

The upgrades, which my husband thought necessary, are the stabilizers at the ends of the arms. I don't think he ever really grasped how this thing was supposed to work until I actually put the sweater on it:

(The background is the big bulletin board in the laundry room.) As it turns out, the sweater itself provides stability, and the extra feature wasn't really needed at all.

I washed the sweater in the wash machine tub, but didn't let it agitate much at all. It's so much easier to have the machine do all the rinsing. The laundry room has a heater vent, and the room stays pretty toasty warm all night long, so I'm thinking it might be dry by morning. And I will wear it up to the cabin, where we will be staying for the next few days! I will try to find a moment to post a shot of me actually modeling the sweater. And I will also post a de-briefing about this project - what I liked, what I didn't like, and whether or not I like the sweater!

Santa's Coming...

...and he's bringing me a wooly board! With some custom improvements! (Will post pictures later this week.)

AND! I have a COMPLETED Lochinver ready for blocking!! Woo-hoo!! Will post before and after pics of it, also.

All I have left in my knitting pile is one Wildfoote sock. I will be starting the New Year with a clean slate. I can hardly wait to plan and shop for my new projects.

Happy Holidays to all!!

p.s. As I was knitting the title of this blog entry, I was typing really fast and misspelled 'Santa' and was reminded of the Saturday Night Live Skit when the Church Lady (Dana Carvey) told us something about rearranging Santa's name to spell...SATAN. That was a good one.

Half a cuff

In the midst of all this holiday craziness, I did manage to get going on the cuff on the second sleeve of Lochinver. I hope to finish this evening while watching the Bronco game, and maybe even pick up the stitches around the neck and get started on the collar.

This week, I had some MAJOR frustrations with the website I manage for my job. It is a cobbled-together mish-mash of regular HTML pages and three different open-source PHP/mySQL components. One of the PHP components has been modified to provide password security for the HTML pages, and it's just a real pain in the you-know-what to add a new page to the site - even though I've got some templates developed to do the heavy lifting.

I like using Movable Type so much (it's what I use for this blog) that I got to thinking, I wonder if there's something similar that could be used to manage an entire website? Well as usual the geeks are way out in front of us regular people when it comes to that kind of thing - of COURSE there are! After a little bit of googling around, I found the world of Open Source CMS - Content Management Systems. And after much research and reading and playing with demos, I decided to go with Mambo.

I thought about uploading it to this site to test and play with it, but my hosting provider does not have up-to-date PHP modules. Fortunately, the hosting provider for my work website has everything I need. After a couple of days of playing around with this thing and uploading some add-on stuff to it, I can see that this is EXACTLY what I've been looking for. So I think I'll take my work website down for the holidays and move it onto it's new platform.

So that's a very long and convoluted way of saying that I might not be doing much knitting here over the next couple of weeks.

For those of you who managed to stay awake or even stay with me through the above technical musings, I offer you our family holiday greetings (for a limited time only - I don't like having this kind of personal stuff hanging out there for just anyone to read - you fellow/sister knitbloggers are of course the exception.)

Other than knitting...

This week has yielded the lowest knitting volume since I started blogging about it this summer. I've knit maybe half a dozen rounds on the Wildfoote sock, and got down to the cuff on Lochinver. And there they sit...

So let's look at some lists:

In the Kitchen
Thumbprint Cookies
Swedish Pepparkakor (authentic family recipe)
Peanut Butter Balls (kids' favorite)
Green Bean Casserole for Christmas dinner (not the one with the french fried onions)
Swedish Rye Bread (authentic family recipe)

(...hmmm, did I mention that I'm of Swedish descent?)

Household Chores
A big general housecleaning
Wrap gifts
Pay bills, filing, etc.

Shopping
One more gift, for my sister's family
Regular grocery shopping
Novelty napkins, etc. for Christmas dinner

Work
Website update
Thank-you letters to workshop speakers
Quickbooks update
A couple of convention planning tasks
Tidy up basement office (oh, that should only take a week or two)

Of course, my busy week wouldn't be complete without the proverbial monkey wrench. That would be that my daughter is home sick today. :(

Taking a scarf for a test drive

Here's the knitting I was able to accomplish this weekend: one round of the Wildfoote sock. That equals 54 knit stitches and 18 purl stitches. And that's it.

But I did take out a scarf (the one I knit for my mom for Christmas) for a test drive. I wore it with my leather jacket to go the art museum. I thought it looked pretty snappy; I might have to knit one of these for myself. Don't tell mom I borrowed her scarf.

The highlight of the art museum was this painting:

The exhibit was more or less in chronological order; the farther along we went, the less I could relate to the art. (I did like Klee, though.) I do not have much of an artistic brain, I'm afraid.

Kno Knitting Knews

Unfortunately, the so-called "real" world has interferred with my knitting habit of late.

Thursday night, I had to review and comment on a 30-page report for a project I am consulting on. Last night, we went to a Christmas party (well, I guess that might not be the right word - the hostess is Hindu) for a non-profit that my husband helps with. And today, I am asssembling and mailing our Christmas cards, we are setting up the tree, and then we're going into town to watch the annual holiday lights parade, followed by dinner and a birthday party at my sister-in-law's. There's not much hope for tomorrow either, as we are going down to the Denver Art Museum to see an exhibit, followed by dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown. Some friends of ours have arranged this outing; being from Weld County, Colorado, such ventures into high culture (well, at least by Denver standards) are not part of our normal routine.

KIP, KID*

My 10-year-old had the lead in the school play this evening, so we got there early enough to get good seats. I've been carrying around my Wildfoote socks in my purse for several days. Unfortunately, one of the needles got pulled out, and stitches had dropped - it was just a big mess. And the lighting was too poor to make sense of it all. And as I may have mentioned a couple of days ago, the Wildfoote does separate a little which makes picking up stitches kind of tricky. So I stuffed it back in my purse and sat there for more than 45 minutes with nothing to do. Grrr....

Got home and picked up Lochinver; I'm now halfway through the last stitch pattern on the second sleeve. I might finish the sleeve tomorrow night!

*KIP=knitting in public; KID=knitting in [the] dark

Sweater Fatigue

I think Sweater Fatigue is related to Second Sock Syndrome - as you approach the end of a big knitting project, it starts to feel more like drudgery.

I really like this sweater, I guess I'm just starting to get sick of working on it. I think I'll have this second sleeve finished by the end of the week, and will hopefully get some renewed energy by the time I get to the neckline.

I gave my husband the plans and specs for a Wooly Board, which I found at http://www.knittingbeyondthehebrides.org/files/WoolyBoardInstructions.htm. I told him this would be a cheap Christmas gift for me, if he and the boys were interested in making something. Although this sweater will require hardly any finishing, I think it will benefit from some good blocking treatment once it's done.

Grey Regia's - DONE!

The yarn came in the mail from www.kirtlandyarnbarn.com (very nice; prompt service) and I was able to finish that second sock within an hour.

The finished pair:

And here he is modeling them:

Would you believe - the yarn that came in the mail today is the same dye lot as the first skein!

Last night, I finished the first sleeve on Lochinver, picked up the stitches for the second sleeve and am about four rows into it. On the cuff, I used a tubular cast-off, instructions courtesy of Flora from Brazil. This makes a beautiful and strong edge - just like a store-bought sweater. I'm kind of psyched about it!

This morning I was able to knit a couple inches of the leg on the second Wildfoote sock while at the basketball tournament. It's not particularly pictureworthy at present.

This has been the most productive 24-hour period of knitting I've had in quite some time!

First Wildfoote done

Finished the first sock of the Wildfoote pair:

The Wildfoote yarn (by Brown Sheep Company) has a bit 'meatier' feel to it than the Regia I've been using. It feels like a warmer and more substantial sock (of course, I'm just wearing one of them.) Might be a slight bit more itchy, but I'll withhold final judgment on that until they're both done and I wear them for a day. The first week or two that I was wearing my handknit socks, all of them seemed itchy to me. Now I don't notice it at all.

This yarn tends to separate a little bit, especially if you drop a stitch and are trying to pick it up. Other than that, I enjoyed knitting with it and I will plan to use this type of yarn again someday.

Now I'm going to go get Lochinver out of the closet and see if I can make sense of it after one and one-half of my Friday night beers. I'm such a lightweight!

Hey, if you're feeling a little insecure about your knitting skills, check out this page; then you'll feel absolutely suicidal, I know I do. She knitted all of this stuff in 2003 alone.

Christmas Knitting: Mission Accomplished

I finished the third scarf last night, and tidied up the ends on all three:

My seven-year-old daughter models them for us.

In all the years I've been knitting, I had never knit a scarf before! To be honest, I think it's because I had always considered them to be projects for rank beginners only. Well heck, what's not to like about a simple and useful scarf made from a fun yarn? I might even make one for myself!

I found an online source for the Regia yarn I need to complete my husband's socks, and ordered it yesterday from www.kirtlandyarnbarn.com. Pat was very helpful, and the yarn is on its way.

Tonight's assignment: Lochinver!

Knitting as therapy

I was responsible for an all-day workshop yesterday, attended by about 50 people. I had to arrange for the meeting location, the speakers, the handouts, the coffee, the name tags, the catering - well, you get the picture. When I got home late yesterday afternoon, I was pooped! My husband had a dinner meeting to attend, so I made the kids fend for themselves for supper while I laid on the couch in a trance.

The workshop went very well; these kinds of things just wear me out.

Anyway, I finally 'came to' at about 8:00 and picked up the last of the Colinette scarves and cruised along to within about 6 inches of completing it. I should be able to finish it tonight, and will deal with all the yarn ends on all three scarves. Tomorrow I will post a picture of all three of them together.

Isn't knitting a wonderful way to de-stress?

This morning, I found an online vendor for the Regia yarn that I need. I'm waiting to hear back via email to make sure they have it in stock. Boy am I glad I saved the label; I would never have found this particular type of yarn otherwise. It doesn't seem to be one of the more popular Regia lines.

I'm within just a couple of weeks of completing all of the projects on my WIP list (at right.) I am very excited about putting together a new batch of projects, maybe including a fair-isle sweater, the Koigu pullover, a pair of gloves, and another felted bag. Somtimes the best part of knitting is planning the next project!

Idle thought

I have some extra Koigu KPPPM lying around, and I might do this with it.

At last...a trip to a knitting shop

I finally made it to a knitting shop today. I've been hunting around for a back issue of Vogue for quite awhile so I could get ahold of this pattern:

Made with Koigu KPPPM - just yummy!

At last, I found it - the fall 2002 issue. This may be my after-Christmas project. The pattern looks super-simple; just hope it's not so simple so as to be boring.

Also got those size 0 circulars (although I've got another pair of socks going now) and a pair of size 10 bamboo's. That will probably be my last trip to a yarn store until after the holidays (what knitting will I take with me on vacation in January...?)

Shopabit, out of necessity

I am not a shopper, but it becomes a necessary evil this time of year. So a lot of quality knitting time got hijacked this weekend. I'm pleased to report, however, that I got a whole lot of stuff crossed off my Christmas shopping list. My husband and I decided that we would have everything done by this coming weekend, and we're on track to do it!

Four years ago, we went to Italy for Christmas (it's a long story) and we had to get everything done before December 18. The day before we left, I remember thinking Wow! it would sure be nice to stay home and enjoy the holiday now that all the work is done! Since then, we have tried to duplicate that effort but have never quite succeeded. This year, I think we'll make it, and we'll even be done before the 18th.

I did knit a little over the weekend:

I turned the heel and finished the gusset on the Wildfoote sock. The scarf got mostly neglected. I'm going to put off working on Lochinver until after Wednesday. I am in charge of an all-day workshop that day, and I need to conserve my mental energy and weekly stress quota. I suspect that taking the next step on Lochinver might send me over the edge.