spud says hi

Two, too

Yup, the second one went much faster than the first.

Now, here's the thing.  I should probably redo the first one.  I knit the second sock reversing the hand in which each color was held.  In other words, for the first sock, I had the brown yarn in my left hand, and knit it continental.  The cream was in the right hand (more or less) and was thus knit English.  For the second, I reversed that.

What that means is that the yarns cross over each other in the back differently; they have to cross over to keep the fabric together, but the direction of the cross influences the way the front side looks.  It is apparently something called "yarn dominance."  In the way that I'm knitting, the yarn that is held in the right hand (which ends up crossing over the other yarn on the back) is less visible on the front... or less crisply clear, perhaps.  The yarn in the left hand (which ends up under the other yarn in the back) is dominant on the front.

In this picture, that effect is less apparent because the flash made all the cream look brighter.  But even in this picture I think you can see that the little crosses, especially, look brighter and clearer on one sock.

I'm also finding that this effect is not explained in some books I have, even if it seems like it should be.  In Knitting in the Old Way Priscilla Gibson-Roberts doesn't seem to mention it; in fact, she suggests that beginners at stranded knitting hold the more used yarn in their dominant hand (i.e., if they knit continental in the left, as I did) and the highlight in the other.  I'm not sure that that's actually good advice, because if you're normally a continental knitter, like me, that makes the highlighted design, er, lowlighted.

In other knitting news, I frogged what I'd started of the Jolie cardigan.  That was the beginnings of the back, seen here, and also about 10-12 inches of one of the front sides, basically all of which I knit while in New York.  I decided two things.  First, I tried doing the called-for butt flap.  Holding it up to my butt in front of the mirror yesterday, I decided that that was going to prove to be one of the most unflattering things I could do to myself.  Second, although I still quite like the low-front cardigan idea, and I like the diamond pattern (sort of visible here), I'm going to have to rethink this yarn and this gauge.  Basically, this yarn on this size needles makes a too-floppy fabric, I think.  To my mind, the sweater's going to need more heft to it in order not to look sloppy.  So, I'll either have to do this on smaller needles, or, as I tried swatching last night, doubled on larger needles.  The question is whether I have enough yarn for the latter option.  I kind of think I do, but I'll have to play around with it a bit before I decide.

What does this mean?  The only thing I currently have on needles is the Orenburg shawl, on which I've barely worked in the last month.  But last night I did two more rows, and I think I'm going to concentrate on that for a while, until I make it to half-way through.  At that point I'm going to put it on thread to see how big it's really going to be.

I did also wind some yarn last night for a couple more things.  I wound one of the Koigu skeins to start a sock, and also the pale green cotton to think about a tank of some sort.  For that one, I started a swatch of the Milanese stitch from Barbara Walker's second stitch dictionary.  It'll be a lacy tank, but the yarn is quite fine, so I think that's going to have to happen, no matter what.  Doing a stockinette tank in this yarn would drive me bonkers, as it'd be incredibly, utterly boring.

One done

Seriously, I think I've actually done enough knitting for two of these, so many times have I frogged the thing.  First time, down about five inches.  Frogged for tension.  Second time, seven inches or so.  Frogged for being too damn big.  Third time, all good to the heel.  But then, this is the fourth iteration of the heel, I think.  I tried two different versions of the the flappy heel thing that's more "traditional," or whatever, and ended up disliking the feel of it on my foot.  So, again, frogging back, and doing another afterthought heel (which was started once, then restarted whenn I realized I'd messed up the checkerboard pattern).  I actively like how they feel on my feet.  So, there.

Of course, this may be the more interesting thing.  The inside looks so cool!  Like, I almost want to wear them inside out, so cool does it look!

I won't, because, a) I wove the ends in on this side, so that'd be icky; and, b) because the little loopy bits where yarn's carried over would catch onto things, and that'd annoy me.  But, cool!

Much better!

That's more like it.

The Norwegian stocking, made to fit.

I cast on 68 stitches, added two after the ribbing at the top, had 70 for the blue pattern, which worked out perfectly for the repeats.

Then I decided to keep a straight line down the back, and decrease the pattern into it, as you can kind of see.  I decreased once on each side after each little motif was done until it got just about right.  It could be a little tighter at the ankle, but that make sit hard to put on.

Now, the heel's not perfect.  I'm going to have to tighten some of the stitches while sewing in the many, many ends when I'm done.

But, isn't it cute?

And, in other news, I'm heading to New York tomorrow for a conference and to see a friend.  So, no posts for a while.  But I'm sure I'll have to show off the results of my airplane and airport knitting once I'm back!

Too big (and another round of I'm a sap)

So, first, I'm proclaiming my celebration of St. Patrick's Day to be that I planted seeds that will eventually turn into green things.  Late this afternoon I made a run to the garden store, and when I got back I cleared off the leaves I'd used as mulch, pitchforked the soil to loosen it up (it's lovely and damp right now), pulled out the icky evil bindweed roots I came across, and planted two rows each of:  arugula, bok choy, chard, lettuce, peas, and spinach.  Yes, I did them in alphabetical order.  I'm a geek.

In other news, the Norwegian stocking are cute... but so very much too big.  I did indeed frog the first iteration, and this is what I've gotten done on the second version.

I'm in general much happier with it.  My tension is much more even, so the patterns are appearing more clearly (in the first version, the cream bits tended to disappear into the taupe because I pulled those stitches too tightly).  I managed to get rid of the little blip that had formed at the beginning/end of each round (again, tension).

But it's too big.  You can see it at the bottom of the picture on the left.  (Er, I mean the bottom of the stocking, which is... well, you get it.)  But it's a problem all the way up, as you can see in the picture on the right.

I've decided that I think I can get away with removing an entire iteration of the blue pattern; that's fourteen stitches gone, but that doesn't seem like it'll be too tight.  Probably.  That'll then require more thought about the cream pattern, and a different approach to shaping the calf.  (Hmmm... I'm suddenly thinking that the shape of these stockings as written is rather like the pre-felted Russian valenki... I wonder how they'd felt....)  So, I think that the next step is more frogging.  And then knitting, again.

I actually did something sort of silly while working on these.  I watched a long movie with subtitles.  And somehow, I managed it much better than expected.

And the movie was really something very good.  Called The Best of Youth, it's an Italian film about a family.  OK, it's a six hour long Italian film about a family, originally broadcast on Italian TV and then released theatrically around Europe and in the US (in two parts, of course).

Seriously, it was a very well spent six hours.  When I say a family, I'm not even talking about a huge multigenerational type thing.  It's mainly about two brothers, and then also their parents, their loves, their friends, their sisters, their kids, between the mid 1960s and the early 2000s.  There are politics, because there were fairly significant changes in Italy's political system during this time period.  There are family issues.  There are personal issues.  There's quite a bit about the treatment of the mentally ill, which sounds like a strange thing to have jump in there, but somehow isn't.

I can't really explain why I liked this so much.  Or, rather, why it moved me so much.  For the most part it's not melodramatic (with a few exceptions, but they kind of work).  The action is really pretty limited.  There aren't lots of panoramic shots of BEAUTIFUL ITALY, although there are some.  It's just, well, very good.

Oh, the sap bit?  Yes, it had me crying.  But it had me crying in the same way that the last Frederica book by A. S. Byatt (A Whistling Woman) did.  It wasn't entirely that due to sad things happening (though there's a bit of that).  It was more the sense of having gone through a journey with these characters and having it come to an end.

Spring break! Woo!

OK.  So.  I finished off a writing task on Thursday, and in principle planned to spend yesterday catching up on emails and cleaning up messes (like my desk, which always ends up a mess after a writing task), but that catching up spread to today, too, and also involved knitting.

What the hell, it's spring break. 

In reverse order of when I started working on them:

The Norwegian stockings!  I kind of like them.  I'm adjusting the pattern a little bit, in that it has one row with a ton of decreases about nine inches down.  That seems silly to me, so I'm doing a few decreases earlier on to give it a bit more shaping.

And, actually, I think that I may end up frogging this and starting over.  You can see here what happens with stranded color knitting (I think that's what it's called... or at least one thing it's called).  The two colors carry in the back over the stitches they aren't stitching.  That's an inelegant way of putting it, but I'm not sure how else to describe it. 

Anyway, it turns out I'm pulling too tightly at the sides, where the needles join, which means there's kind of a tucked thing going on there, which is not ideal.  I also kind of messed up the last two rows of the blue pattern on the last two repeats (not visible here), which is another reason to frog the thing.

A big part of the issue is that to do the two-stranded thing most efficiently, you have to knit both English and continental.  Or both throw and pick.  I'm very much a continental knitter, so this is making me learn to throw.  Which means tension issues, a bit.  Still, it's a very good skill to pick up (in the knitting world, at least), so it's kind of cool, really.  Just not perfect.  Yes.

Also?  Daffodils!

The booga bag is also progressing.  I'm to the last skein of yarn I have, so I'm leaving off the bag part itself, for the moment, and knitting what will become the strap.  It's "i-cord," which is kind of a tube in stockinette stitch.  The pattern calls for five feet of it; I'm thinking more than that's going to be needed.  But, whatever, it knits quickly and thoughtlessly.  I did what's there in maybe half an hour of watching TV last night.  Maybe less?  When I'm done, I'll use up the rest of the skein adding height to the bag.  Widening the bottom of course added significantly to the circumference of the bag, so each row is longer, which means... this may end up being a shorter bag than the original plan, but because the base will be wider and longer, it should still carry more stuff.  I hope.  We'll see.

And finally, the pinwheel sweater!  I made myself sit down and sew it together today.  It came out better than I expected, actually, at least so far.

Now, there are obviously still ends to weave in.  I've done a lot of it, but not all.  I also need to wash and block it now that it's pieced.  Then I'll finish the last of the weaving, probably, because I think I'll be trying to stretch and straighten the seams a bit in blocking.

I'm also not sure about the collar.  It might need more length to be a real roll-neck.  But, actually, it's sort of wide to begin with , so I don't actually mind the stockinette band making it smaller.  That's something I might even finalize after the wash and block.  Oh, and I'm thinking of crocheting a row or two around the bottom edge to make it look more finished; the way the pinwheel knits up is very uneven, so this might be nicer.

More yarn (for a reason)

I know I do not need more yarn.  I have yarn enough for multiple future projects.  The thing is, though, that most of those hypothetical future projects require extensive planning.  I've bought yarn because I've liked it, not because I've had a specific plan for it.  Or I have a vague plan, but have to sit down and swatch and calculate and basically figure everything out.

So, despite the fact that I've got plenty of stuff going on, when I saw these while browsing around a knitting forum, I decided I must make them.

I don't really understand why.  I don't wear knee socks.  They're going to be hot and heavy.  And yet, I want them.

So, I got the book from which they come (see, there's the thing... a pattern) from the library.  Folk Socks, by Nancy Bush.  I think I'll end up buying the book, actually, because it has a ton of information on sock construction.  But for the moment, the library copy will do me just fine.

And today, I stopped by the LYS and picked up yarn.  I'm doing totally different colors, because why not.  I wanted to stay in the brown family because I just might, I suppose, wear them under a pair of tall boots, and the tall black boots I've been wearing are too tight.

Man, I don't need to start these.  I have a conference paper deadline on Thursday, and am not near done with the paper.  Ugh.  I've turned into my students.