First things first

I mentioned earlier that I was a little disappointed in how much knitting I did in 2010, as compared to 2009. A few astute readers have reminded me that planning and participating in a wedding does tend to cut into one's knitting and spinning time, but this year I will have no such impediment. As Brenda Dayne said in her final podcast of 2007, this year I will start as I mean to go on. So here we go!

Goal the first: Finish the g.d. blanket





I know three isn't really a large sample size, but I'm seaming one block per day at this rate. I wonder how long I can keep up the pace? Whether I keep up the pace or not, this really ought to be a reasonable goal to meet.

Goal the second: Fair Isle

Okay, so that's a really nebulous goal. But the fact remains that I purchased Fair Isle Sweaters Simplified back when I was still in college (2003? 2004?), have acquired four books of Alice Starmore patterns (only the easy-to-get ones) and Anne Feitelson's The Art of Fair Isle Knitting, but have yet to make anything more complicated than a pair of fingerless gloves. I, like so many other knitters, have a deep-seated fascination with the technique. So I'm starting the year by cataloging my stash of Shetland wool:

Here's the leftovers from those fingerless gloves, along with two straggler half-skeins from the Squirrel Sampler mittens:


Here's yarn I have stashed away for the Polar Chullo hat from Twist Collective (which may never become the Polar Chullo hat):


Another batch of yarn, this time for the Autumn Tam from Simply Shetland (I have both tam patterns, but only yarn for the Autumn one):


And finally, some new stuff that I have vague notions of turning into actual gloves:



There's 30 colors, and at least three projects worth of yarn in there. This year, I will stop dreaming about fair isle tams and gloves and sweaters and am determined to actually knit some of the darned things.

Goal the third: Get serious with this design stuff

And for that, there are not too many more logical places to start than this:



Book and DVD courtesy the in-laws, who gave me a very generous gift certificate to the LYS I haunt whenever we visit them. It was generous enough, in fact, to pay for the book and DVD and something else besides. After flipping through the book for approximately 4 minutes, I learned two new fundamental things about knitting, and had one of my long-standing suspicions confirmed about the backwards loop cast on and the long-tail cast on. I have three days this week and all of next week to myself, and I plan to knit right along with EZ in my living room. Somewhere in the region of my lungs I've got that feeling of drive and determination that I used to get at the beginning of the new school year. Time for another adventure.

3 Years, 48 Colors, and 6,156 yards

The blanket squares are done.



This last batch, 7 squares in all, were completed during this most recent spring-and-summer bout of finish-it-up-itis. After the most recent update in June, I realized how close I was to the finish line and swore to be faithful to the project until the squares were complete. I was on the home stretch, I could see a light at the end of this unpredictably long tunnel. I mostly stuck to my guns (except a little pair of socks. But they only put me out for five days, and besides, it was my birthday).



While working on the squares this time, I started envisioning the blanket as a finished object. It's exciting and daunting to think of all the sewing, but I still feel that this is a significant turning point.



I uploaded the first set of photos in March of 2008. At the time I'd been working on the blanket on and off for about a year, and had 15 squares. I thought that would be half the finished blanket, and estimated it would take another 6 months to finish knitting (ha!). I uploaded 2 more in April and May of that year, then 4 more in March of 2009, 2 in October, 3 more in November, and 3 more in June. I've shown many blocks before, and blogged a bit about the project here in case you're feeling nostalgic.



In that post, I speculated that it might take another two years to finish the blanket. Thankfully, sewing the squares together into their blocks of 4 will still be highly portable. I will almost certainly sew all the blocks together before I decide on the final layout of the blanket, and I have my photos of each block to remind me of the placement I like best for each square.



Cara, my inspiration for this project, blocked all her squares and tucked in the ends before photographing them. As you've probably noticed from my photos, I'm nowhere near that neat. I still love reading through her journey with that blanket. I think we were both driven to this crazypants project by a love of colors and their interplay, but executed things so differently. She finished her squares in 46 days, whereas I took about 38 months to get everything off the needles.



Now, I'm more worried about the knitting of the border. By my calculations, if I'm picking up stitch-for-stitch around the edge of this massive thing, I'll have 1,728 stitches in one round of blanket. Numbers like this make me gasp for breath. I'm thinking about single crochet edges. But I really love to imagine using this blanket. It'll be huge, and machine washable because of the mercerized cotton yarn. I have fantasies about sewing a fabric lining to the back, so we can use it as a beach blanket (and to hide the wrong side).



I gave up keeping track of the squares by spreadsheet about two-thirds of the way through. I suspect that allowed me to finish sooner than otherwise. As it is, I ended up with more leftover yarn than I thought.



There's probably 5 or 6 skeins' worth of yarn there. I'm going to save it for sewing and knitting the border. The funniest thing to me about all this is that skein of white. I bought that in the first batch of yarn, and never ended up using it. I might still save it. It's bright bleached white, and I guess I think it would end up dingy-looking after some harsh use. For now, I'm giving the blanket a break for a few days. That's about how long it will take me to decide which of the five projects screaming for attention in my break to cast on (one of them, I kid you not, is another blanket). In the meantime, flickr will have to keep my humongous blanket fantasies satisfied:

Weekend fun times!

I had some pretty good knitting time over the last week. On Friday I finished the knitting for a pair of insanely cute slippers:



I know they don't look like slippers right now, but once they're sewn up and felted they'll hopefully look a little bit like this. The knitting goes super-fast on huge needles, and it's perfect if you have lots of worsted-weight yarn leftovers. These are so cute, I'm making more than one pair. But I can't justify having three pairs of felted slippers... helloooo, more gift knitting!



My knitting group and I all cast on for these together last week, and this week we're going to sew them up. But last weekend I finished Damson earlier than I thought I would. I was able to wear my cute new shawl on Sunday morning, but I'd expected that the project would last me until at least the day before our knit night. So in the meantime, I pulled out an old, sleepy, cobwebby (not really) project:





I think I've given up on the spreadsheet, the one I made about 1/3 of the way through the project as a way to keep track of how to maximize the number of miters I could eke out of each skein of yarn. It's getting down to the wire... at one point I optimistically thought I would make a 6x6 blanket (36 squares with 4 miters to each square), but now I'm thinking I may only get 5x6. If so, then I've done 75% of the knitting.

Oh, and we carved pumpkins on Saturday:



We carved two pumpkins, and saved one for eating. I've never cooked a pumpkin before (except for baking the seeds), so this will be an adventure!

Life, Upside-Down

Holy Macaroni, I knew I hadn't blogged in a while, but nearly 3 weeks? Just seems wrong. Like someone else has been asleep at the wheel, not me, no sir. I haven't picked up the camera much recently, either, which is probably part of the problem. However, the fact that there has been a distinct lack of yarn, fiber, or knitting photos taken since my stitches post really just points to the same conclusion as my lack of blog posts: I have been neglectful.

Okay, enough wallowing in self-pity. Time for the update! I have been dealing with hectic life changes and those blasted gloves by starting a few easy projects. In the picture we have another mitered square, a cowl, and a scarf.



Don't let the mitered square fool you, I probably finished it in early February and just kept forgetting to take its picture. I'll still need to properly photograph it in all its proportionate glory so I can keep the flickr set looking nice and tidy. The cowl and scarf are both made from handspun yarn: the AVFKW merino/angora/silk blend that I blogged about here and Falkland wool from Girl on the Rocks that has been marinating in the stash since... last August (?!?!). The cowl is another variation on the Dolores Park cowl, but on size 11 US needles and with only 60 stitches around. A few rounds of seed stitch at either end. The scarf is a variation of the strips used in Olive's Afghan (Ravelry link) in the book Knitalong.

I have five skeins of handspun gray fleece, waiting for life to give me a pause (and hopefully, if all goes to plan, a new, better, shinier job *knock on wood*) so I can start swatching for my handspun cabled sweater. For now, cables would just get tangled up in my head. I've needed simple projects. I've also gone back to the second glove. I'm releasing myself from the need to finish them before I start something else.

In the spinning front, I've had a few weekends at home to spend some quality time with my Ladybug. By the way, has anyone else heard of the Anniversary Edition Schacht Matchless? Lots of folks are selling their standard-edition matchless wheels around Ravelry, so it seems like a good time to pick one up if you're interested in trying to find a bargain. I think the matchless is a fabulous wheel and the all-cherry wood version sounds absolutely beautiful, but I'm sticking with my wheel. I can't really justify upgrading to a wheel that costs double what I paid after only a year! We've been having lots of fun with the extra bobbins and new high-speed whorl, too. Here, take a look:



These aren't all on the high-speed whorl, or even all on the wheel! We've got from left to right: Smoky Mountain Spinnery Baltic Merino, Creatively Dyed wool/milk protein/seawool, Pigeonroof Studios BFL in "Autumn Cherry", Hello Yarn Superwash BFL in "Starry Night" (club fiber from December), and last but not least, A Verb for Keeping Warm Shetland and Silk in "Prudence" and "Shirley Temple", plied together.

You can see the progression of my spinning desires over the last six weeks: the baltic merino was done on my spindle, so afterwards I jumped right to the wheel to get a quick project. Next came the wool/milk/seawool blend, which was done on the high speed whorl to get a feel for how it works. Next, the Pigeonroof fiber is trying to be as thin as possible, but I ended up plying the yarn to get a more consistent final yarn. Next, I wanted something bulky after the teeny-weeny singles so I spun the superwash BFL fast and loose. Finally, I settled into a more concentrated project: the shetland and silk. I had these two fibers in mind for a combined yarn after seeing them at Verb's Workshop grand opening, and being inspired by Kristine's yarn. This one is my favorite, and I had a little bit of silk singles left over that got n-plied right on the same bobbin. It was awesome. I may still be on a roll with these cowls, we'll see if I've got enough yardage for another one! I won't be ready for a more complex project for at least another few weeks yet.

Being sick is lame, but at least I could knit

So first the significant other got sick (this was two weeks ago), then I got sick about three days after he recovered. And by recovered, I mean that most of his symptoms were replaced with a persistent cough. Now, I may be reaching the coughing stage. So neither of us were sleeping well, and last weekend was mostly devoted to chilling out, doing laundry, and catching up on sleep. In the meantime, I've been knitting mitered squares. Behold, square #19:


square #20:


and square #21:


I've got them all in one Flickr set so that, when I'm done with the knitting, I can drag the pictures around and get a feel for what the entire blanket will look like. I'll definitely have enough yarn to do a 6 squares by 6 squares blanket, and it's nice to be making headway on this project again.

I am thisclose to being finished spinning my fleece! And by finished, I mean that I will have enough yarn for a cabled sweater, not that I will have spun up the entire fleece. Remember way back when I separated out the darkest and lightest locks from the rest of the bunch? Yeah, that fell by the wayside. I spun up all the middle-gray locks, and was about 300 yards short of my spinning goal for the sweater. Hopefully my makeshift blending of light and dark locks won't be too obvious in this last skein. I am cutting it pretty close on the yardage, but I think I'll be okay. I'm about 85% sure that I want to knit the
Halcyon Aran (second link is to Ravelry). Instead of doing the pattern exactly as written, I am already planning on shortening the sweater by a few inches, probably by taking out one repeat of the large center cable. 26 and a half inches (the length as written) would put the lower hem of the sweater below my butt, which wasn't a good look for me in the late 80's and isn't any better now. Plus, I figure this will be a heavier garment and it'll stretch a little under its own weight. I've got one more bobbin of singles that will get plied back on itself (hopefully this weekend), so next week I can start swatching! Hooray! I'm so excited to think I might actually have taken this project from raw fleece to finished sweater in a year. Given my timing, I'll probably finish the sweater in June...

The Ever-Present Blanket

So way back in the day, I got crazy inspired by Cara's mitered square blanket. I cannot now recall if I already had a copy of the first Mason-Dixon Knitting book, or if I picked it up later. But the colors! They were awesome, some planned, some unplanned, but all gorgeous. I had to have me one of those.



So I started buying Tahki Cotton Classic, which comes in a boatload (literally) of colors. Not trusting myself to come up with good color combos by choosing randomly, and being secretly worried I would be paralyzed by too many options, I limited myself to colors I associated with irises (flowers, not the part of the eyeball): purples, greens, yellows, and blues. A second rule: I would only use one skein of any given color dye lot + color number combo (this rule did not last, but was helpful at first). I began with something like 8 skeins of yarn, and the idea that I was going to be economical and mathematical about the process. I would keep track of how often I used one particular color and for what combination of stripes, calculate (roughly) how many mitered squares I could get out of a single skein, and thus be able to predict how many squares total I could get out of a given amount of yarn. Behold block #1:


(The colors are off, the "background" color should be a deep royal purple, not the dark blue it appears to be here. This was way before I knew how to edit photos properly).

Oh, and I have a knitting-pattern rule. All four squares in one "block" would have the same main color, and I could basically do what I felt like with the contrasting colors. I've been a bit all over the map here. All four different contrasting colors, three contrasting colors (one repeated over two squares), one strip different from all the other contrasting colors (this arose in an attempt to use up tiny little leftover balls that I started accumulating at about the halfway point). So far I haven't used more than three colors in a single square, and no more than five colors in a signle four-square block. With my yarn in hand, I started to knit squares and collect new colors of TCC whenever I saw them in yarn shops. With my no-repeating-colors rule, it got to the point where I had to carry a list around of what colors I already had, so I wouldn't accidentally buy a second skein of lily pad green or pale lavender. All my data made its way into a spreadsheet, where the computational/archiving/obsessive side of my brain could indulge in all the minute details. Meanwhile, the visual, creative side of my brain is pleased by other aspects:


(One of my favorite blocks, especially because the purple is so unexpected. The blanket's theme is Irises, but this block reminds me of water lillies.)

The blanket has been my fall-back project for almost two years now, spanning five yarn stores, 48 unique colors, and several days' worth of knitting time (72 squares at about 2 hours per square). I've turned its hibernation tag on Ravelry on and then back off twice since I entered it into the database. I tend to bring out the project bag when I've just finished something big, or when I can't think of what I want to knit next, or when all my projects are complex or fiddly or at a sticky bit and I just want to knit something mindlessly. Several of these factors coincided in my knitting life recently: I'd just finished the two Noro scarves and a ton of spinning. With no idea of what to make next, not wanting to go back to the sewing-intensive Brie gloves, and needing something in a flash for my knit night, I grabbed a few colors at random and my size 6 (4 mm) Addi Natura circulars a few weeks ago. This morning, I spent about two hours updating the spreadsheet: adding in recently purchased colors, entering in two newly finished squares, checking totals, and re-estimating how many blocks I could reasonably get out of my current stash. I also planned out the next five blocks. I'm now past the halfway point, whether my ultimate goal is 30 blocks (5x6 block blanket) or 36 (6x6 block blanket), and I got all excited about the color combinations and the prospect of finishing the dang thing. While going through the completed blocks, I noticed this:



My first inadvertent duplication. (Ok, I'm using the word duplication loosely. There are actually no repeating colors from one block to the next. I swear. I checked three times.) The formula: lighter purple background with one dark green contrast color, one dark purple contrast color, and two washed-out green contrast colors. I even photographed the blocks with the same orientation of the contrast colors (although one is rotated 90 degrees compared to the other), completely unconciously. I started to wonder if I'd been knitting this thing for too long, when another voice in my head reminded me: It's going to be an enormous sewing project after it's done being an enormous knitting project.

For the rest of the currently completed squares, here's the Flickr Set. I know I don't need to buy any more yarn, and I hope now I can power through the rest of the squares. They certainly don't take long. On the other hand, when I started this project I neither belonged to Ravelry nor owned a spinning wheel. Maybe it'll take another two years.