triskellian knits...

Purple things for me

2008-08-14T09:43:55Z

Bellatrix FO pics! They look more twisted than they feel, which is ideal. What's not ideal is the obvious colour difference despite matching dye lots :-( Still, perfect matchingness isn't high on my list of priorities, and I love them. And there's enough yarn leftover to make another pair of something else :-)

Black alpaca and purple merino sample

I'm not sure how well this picture has come out, because the colour details are quite subtle even 'in the flesh', but this is my latest beginning-planning spinning project. It's about two-thirds natural black alpaca hand carded with about a third purple merino, and then rolled sideways off the card so the fibres are roughly aligned, then spun and plied. In person this is really quite lovely, with black bits and purple bits and blacky-purple bits, and somewhere around DK weight. I have about 400g of the alpaca and 250g of the merino, so together that should be enough for an actual thing, possibly a gothy lacy shawl.

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One and a bit Bellatrices; various musings

2008-08-04T22:13:39Z

Yesterday I finished the first Bellatrix, and I've just now finished the toe of the second :-)

The first picture is the non-gusset side of the first sock, the second is the gusset side - since this is Cat Bordhi's sidestream sockitecture, the two sides are very different. There's a yarn over section near the beginning of the gusset, from before I decided to leave it in plain stocking stitch, so I'm intending to go back and work the loose yarn along the row to remove it. It looks fine as is, anyway, so it's not a big deal.

I've been thinking about how Ravelry's 'percentage complete' box works with socks. When I finished the first one, I triumphantly changed the project to '50% complete', and now, even though I'm sure the toe doesn't actually constitute 10% of a sock (and therefore 5% of the total project), I've just changed its status to 55%, to signify that I've begun the second. I only permit myself to reach 25% and 75% once I've completely turned the heel, even though that's probably more like two-thirds than half of a sock. This is also complicated by my uncertainty about whether I'm estimating percentage of stitches or percentage of time - the toe and the heel both take much longer per stitch than the foot or the leg do; with the whirlpool toe this is particularly obvious, since each plain knit round takes much less time than the corresponding increase round, especially at the beginning. If I'd had a stopwatch to hand as I was thinking these thoughts while knitting the toe just now, I would probably have started timing rounds and calculating seconds per stitch ;-)

I've also been enjoying my 'progress report routine'. When I reach a stage in a project that I feel is worth documenting (which is often as much to do with how I feel about a project as reaching milestones in it), I take photos, download them from the camera, import into iPhoto for editing, then export to the desktop. From there I drag them into my Flickr uploader, title, describe and tag them, then upload to Flickr and put into appropriate sets. Next I add to the new photos to the Ravelry project, change the project's percentage complete, and if I want to show the photos or have something to say about the project, I blog them here. I started this blog to provide a structure for me to keep track of projects and write about them, and the combination of the blog and Ravelry means I'm able to think much more critically (in the neutral-not-negative sense) about my knitting and my spinning, and apply my innate geekiness to them. This makes me happy :-)

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Bellatrix continues apace!

2008-08-02T22:25:12Z

Having a wool gathering with White_Hart and Dyddgu earlier, I finished the heel on Bellatrix, and now with an evening's TV viewing behind me, I've knit a couple of inches of leg as well (photos below were taken a couple of hours ago) - this goes surprisingly fast :-) I love the eye of partridge heel (even though it doesn't really suit the yarn/pattern perfectly), and I like how the sidestream sockitecture makes the foot part look slightly twisted (it doesn't feel twisted, just looks it). The pattern is lovely - I really like how it messes with the colour changes, and leaves big fat blobs of colour in the middle of the stripes.

Very happy with these, and hoping to finish the first sock this week, although the wool gathering has made me feel all spinny again, so I'll be doing some of that too :-)

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Introducing Bellatrix

2008-07-19T22:34:26Z

Bellatrix

Having made my decision, I did not wait to put it into practice. I started knitting Bellatrix as written, but the cast on edge was too tight, even as a tubular cast on, and I wasn't sure about about the gauge. So since I was frogging anyway, I switched to toe-up, with Cat Bordhi's beautiful whirlpool toe. I've got a different number of stitches, so the dropped stitch sections don't line up the same way as in the pattern, but I like it anyway :-)

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Shopping in Hay and its consequences

2008-07-17T20:51:52Z

Ages ago now, I went to Hay-on-Wye with friend-R. I bought second hand books, as you do in Hay (it's a small village in Wales with dozens of second hand book shops), including some vintage knitting books. I bought them for various combinations of because they're funny and because they're useful - one has marvellous mini-stories about Little Johnny and Little Susie* and how they feel about each other, their clothes, and their mother who knit them. Another, while having deeply humourous seventies-ish fashion photography also contains what looks like good and useful advice about designing and adapting patterns, although I confess I haven't read it yet.

What I didn't expect to buy was yarn or fibre, but buy them I did!

The fibre is undyed grey alpaca, the ball of yarn is Trekking XXL sock yarn in a colourway that reminds me of starlings, and the skein is Opal Handpainted sock yarn, bought by R, and intended for socks for her (I think she wants Coriolis socks, but I'm not ready to knit them again yet). I want to use the Trekking for something for me, but I now have serious amounts of sock yarn in the stash, so I should probably get on with knitting some of it. Counting on Ravelry just now, I think I have about twelve pairsworth of sock yarn in my stash, and that's not counting the leftovers which are probably enough for at least another pair. Although I've made good progress on the purple cable cardigan recently, I'm stalled on it again, so maybe I should cast on for some socks in the meantime. The question is which...

Dyed alpaca

The alpaca fibre is still somewhat in limbo, too. I dyed it with two different shades of purple cold water dye, which may have been a mistake because the colour didn't take very well, hence the pastelly shades it's turned out. I like it though, and it feels lovely. I've also supplemented it with a big bag of natural black alpaca from my local alpaca farm! Yes, I have a local alpaca farm. It's in Great Milton, about eight miles away, and their natural black actually mostly is black, unlike the natural black shetland I've spun before. I've been making various sample cards of the two alpacas, which will be the subject of another blog post soon.

*Names may be misremembered.

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A gift!

2008-07-17T16:35:19Z

Purple stripy sock yarn

Yesterday I hosted a crafting evening, at which two friends - K and S - came over, K did her mending, S learnt how to to do the purl stitch, and I knitted, sewed and spun (of which more in a post to come). Excitingly, K came bearing gifts from her and her boyfriend J - the sock yarn to the right :-)

They've recently been on holiday - I'm ashamed to admit I can't remember where to, although northern Europe/Scandinavia rings a bell - had seen this and thought of me. K had told me the last time I saw her that they had bought me a present of wool, and although she is a person of good taste, and with an interest in clothes (and therefore fibres), I felt the usual trepidation of a knitter told by a non-knitter about 'lovely wool'. Would it be acrylic or eyelash yarn?

Purple stripy swatch

I should have known better :-) This is lovely sock yarn, 80% merino and 20% nylon, and it's gorgeous knitted up in the tiny swatch I've begun. I explained to K about the deep philosophical problem in sock knitting with the tension between beautifully variegated yarn which is shown to best advantage in simple, boring-to-knit patterns, and intricate, complex sock patterns which are fun and challenging to knit but work best with plain, boring yarn. I think she was slightly disbelieving about the depth of this problem, as well as being amused that knitting has philosophical problems.

However, thanks to Frax's Ravelry projects list, I think I have solved it. This yarn might be destined to become Bellatrix. Of course, I have lots of sock yarn, and lots of plans, and my plans often change along the way, but this is the current theory!

(Oh, and I had a text message from S today telling me that she's holding me entirely to blame for her subsequent purchasing of needles and yarn on the internet. Score!)

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Resurrections

2008-05-27T18:25:05Z

In the last week, I've had two crafting dates with different groups of women, and I've resurrected two old projects. In the first crafting date, with one knitter, one mender and one, umm, court jester ;-) (R did bring some work with her, but in the end she didn't do any of it), I swatched yet another stranded project, with the leftover Coriolis yarn, which produced a much better swatch than either of my previous stranded attempts. The next day, I cast on for the project.

Swirly slipper

The second crafting date was with two knitters (Dyddgu and White_hart), one of whom had come to play with my spinning wheel. I gave a mini-spinning lesson (and my student produced a mini-skein of genuine yarn!), learnt the Norwegian purl technique, and talked a lot about knitting as well as about many other subjects. I knitted on the new stranded project, which you can see to the left. This is going to be a slipper rather than a sock, and the swirly pattern is from "Kiehkuralapaset - Swirly Mittens" by goldenknits / AnneL, which I found on Ravelry. I'm really happy with this project so far. The colour contrast is much better than both of the previous attempts, I love the swirly pattern, and I'm really starting to get into the two-handed knitting thing. I even, with benefit of Dyddgu's Norwegian purl lesson, added some short rows on the sole at the base of the toe, to lift the pointed toe up slightly.

Also inspired by the knitterly conversation, I've taken up the purple cable cardigan again, and am making solid progress. For once I seem to be doing quite well on having two projects actively on the go at the same time - this is now nearing the point where I can split off the sleeves, and it will then go much more quickly.

Part of the reason I'm now making progress on this cardigan is that I've finished spinning the yarn for my next purple cardigan, but I am being strict with myself and not casting on until I've finished another one. Three cardigans in progress is too much! And to minimise the chances of me cheating on this, I haven't yet washed and set the yarn, so I can't just cast on on a whim - it'll take a few days of washing and drying first, by which time I might be able to summon up enough sternness to tell myself off ;-)

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FO and holiday knitting

2008-04-05T10:54:31Z

The wisteria socks are finished. I've renamed them 'dissertation socks', because the spinning and the knitting of these has been very much bound up with the dissertation I've been writing since the beginning of the year, and because I finished them yesterday, on deadline day (having handed in two days earlier). I'm wearing them as I type, and am enjoying them greatly - I do really like the contrast between the two yarns (thicker three ply in the cuffs, thinner navajo ply in the main sock), and I don't care that the stripe sequence somehow realigned itself during the heel.

And now I'm going on holiday for a week, and need to decide on holiday knitting to take with me. The purple cable cardigan is going, although I don't know how much of it I'll do - it's a bit big for role-playing knitting (I henceforth coin an acronym: RPK). And Juno isn't too big, but is too chart-following. I'm taking it, but I probably won't knit it in-game.

The obvious solution is to start a new project! I am going to knit socks (Bartholomew's tantalising socks, to be precise) for the GM, which might make him feel more kindly towards me knitting in session, and is bound to mean I get all kinds of GM favours. So I've told him, anyway ;-)

So three holiday projects - two largeish ones that I've already started but still have loads to go, and one new one which could itself easily occupy me for the week and is small and simple enough for RPK. Hooray for holidays!

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Purple progress

2008-03-29T18:07:41Z

I have turned the heel on the wisteria socks and begun on the leg. Both heels, both legs, because I'm still knitting these in parallel, which seems so far to be an excellent cure for the dreaded Second Sock Syndrome. The cable panel is still mostly indistinct, but it's clearly a different texture, so that's all that matters really.

And I only had to add my last skein (about two-fifths of the total) partway through the heel, so these will still be navajo-ply for a good amount of ankle before I switch to the thicker three-ply for the ribbing.

I'm still really happy with these - they're soft and pretty and I made them! I'm all impatient to finish, and since I'm taking the rest of the weekend off from the Dissertation of Doom, maybe I'll knit these socks instead :-)

Plum merino singles

I've also been spinning more purple singles - I'm now at nearly 700m, but it's not going to be enough, so I'll have to buy another bag of fibre (oh, the hardship). And then I'll have to start planning a pattern...

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Assorted purple things

2008-03-24T10:14:50Z

Wisteria socks part way through gusset increases

The Wisteria socks have about half of a gusset, in the shape of the ridgeline increases from New Pathways, and a small cable panel acting as the ridgeline. I'm actually not wild about the cable - its details don't really show up very well, but it doesn't really matter.

Wisteria socks with lots of little bundles of yarn

I've exhausted the first ball of yarn, and tied the next one into lots of little bundles so I could work out what was going on with the colour sequence; when I exhaust the other original ball, I'll attach the other end of the bundled ball so I'm knitting both socks from one ball, to maintain something a bit like symmetry without being too wasteful of the yarn. There's one more skein of the navajo ply that's not currently attached to the socks, but it's a big one (about as big as both my two starting skeins together, so that should keep me going into at least a bit of ankle before switching to the three ply.

I now also have new photos of the purple cable cardigan, since I've done a bit more knitting on it. It's actually a bit more cardigan-shaped than it looks in the first photo - it's a bit squished up to fit on the needles.

The second photo is a close up of the cable so far, and the third is a view of the variegated silk of the collar facing. I still really like this cardigan, so I must try to motivate myself to finish it, although it's currently at about the same place as the interminable red cardigan: longer and longer rows, and the split at the underarms feels like centuries away.

Plummy purple singles and fibre

But just in case I don't have enough cardigans-in-progress, I've started spinning for another :-) This was inspired by the discovery that one of my favourite bought cardigans - a long, loose, drapey lacey black thing - weighs slightly less than the amount of this purple merino fibre I have in the stash...

This yarn is the first I've spun to be singles - and the first deliberately somewhat varied and slubby in texture - since my first attempts at spinning, and I'm really happy with it. Depending on how much yarn the whole lot of fibre produces, and on design decisions as yet unmade, I might put contrast bands of a different yarn into the cardigan, for example at the wrists and hem. This contrast yarn might be the silk cut. Or might not. Anything is possible ;-)

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