Entries tagged with photo

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Thirty-One Projects On Needles? Good Lord! Cast On Something New!

Yes, really. Thirty-one projects on needles. And eleven of them are NOT socks! I am unrepentant. I'm also sure there are a few more around the house somewhere....

( Thirty-one Projects: Thirty-one Annotated Photographs! )

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KnitNation

I've spent the last two days helping out KnitWitches at KnitNation. It was a lot of fun, but very tiring, especially since I started the weekend with some kind of horrible stomach bug that didn't completely go away until sometime last evening.

If you've ever seen KnitWitches yarn at a show or perhaps at I Knit London, you know that it lives up to its name: "Seriously Gorgeous". Eirwen, the talented dyer and creates amazing colourways in luxury yarn that so many UK knitters, myself included, just lust after. It was loads of fun to watch her enjoying the pleasure people got from looking at and touching her work. She's not only an amazing dyer, she's a delightful person, and I enjoyed every minute I spent with her. Her husband, Richard, is also lovely. I'm not sure, but I may have earned the name "snood-chucker", which is probably right up there with "chicken-chaser" in the world of great titles. ;-)

There were loads of knitting luminaries to be seen, but as I was working (and couldn't have afforded any of the classes anyway), I didn't meet any of them. I did catch a glimpse of Beth Brown-Reinsel at the after party, as well as Cookie A, but I didn't meet anybody else. I did score a copy of Janel Laidman's first book The Enchanted Sole, which she apparently was on hand to sign, but ih. Honestly, the classes were so expensive that nobody I know could have afforded any of them, but there were a whole lot of knitters there spending a whole lot of money, so somebody must have been able to. It's too bad: I've been wanting to take BBR's Gansey Workshop for years. That's the only class that really appealed to me: most everything else was stuff I've done before. It didn't really matter; I got to see a lot of friends, and I really enjoyed working with KnitWitches. Besides, I already got to meet my Knitting Idol, and it was just as fabulous as I hoped it'd be.

Both days were busy, in waves. Wollmeise was definitely the rock star of the show; Eirwen said that on Thursday night's pre-show sale, the doors opened and the thundering footsteps down to the Woolmeise booth just made everybody laugh. Wollmeise is hard to get outside of Munich: while they have an online store, they post new wool every week, one a week, and they sell out in less than 24 hours. So, yeah. If you go to the store near Munich, you can get it, but otherwise you have to hope you know someone who's going to Munich (well, Pfaffenhofen) and doesn't mind stopping by Wollmeise for you.

Juno had some lovely things, as did Artisan, Old Maiden Aunt, Skein Queen, EasyKnits, and of course KnitWitches (but you know I'm biased!). Because the KnitWitches booth was just across from Loop, I got to talk to the Loop Ladies, and since the Knitting and Crochet Guild stand was just a little further on, I got to talk to and hang out with the lovely Vanessa, Jan, Yvonne, Penny, Roz, and Various Other People I Can't Remember Right Now.

Good things about the show: Cosy atmosphere, friendly people, mostly good organisation and communication, extremely helpful and ever-present crew. Good mixture of ages, though the event definitely skewed younger and hipper with loads of Ravellers and their youthful enthusiasm everywhere.

Room for improvement: Marketplace seemed cramped from the vendor point of view: even six more inches would have made folk much more comfortable. Shops seemed stacked, and the very smallest stall size was barely big enough for two people and a table. Location in general was not fabulous: hard to find, expensive neighbourhood that probably made accommodation difficult for out-of-towners, we were sharing the space with ICL students and staff, not to mention other events going on throughout the weekend, such poor acoustics in the after party that you had to shout to hear yourself and hearing others was impossible. Classes were £10 more expensive for 3 hours than the I Knit Weekender classes (I admit I may be feeling sour grapes here because I was interested in several and would never have been able to afford them-- I couldn't have afforded to go if I hadn't been working for KnitWitches, so that gives you an idea of exactly how poor I am).

Friday, I was on the stall most of the day, with a half hour break for lunch and little walks around the marketplace to stretch. It was a little annoying not to have a badge, as I kept getting stopped at the door and having to explain who I was again, but nothing's perfect. Marketplace was open 'til 8, but Eirwen let me go around 6. Of course, I spent the rest of the evening hanging out with the ladies at K&C Guild, and then

filceolaire brought me doughnuts! He and I had dinner out, then he went off to do night inspections, and I went home to fall into bed.

Saturday, I was on the stall most of the day, with a half hour break for lunch and little walks around the marketplace to stretch.

mokatiki came by, and we had a wander. She bought yarn. She helped Eirwen buy yarn. She didn't buy that much yarn. Honest. After the marketplace closed at 6, we had an hour's worth of teardown, and then Vanessa, Penny, Mary, and I went to Paper Tiger for Chinese buffet (£4.99, yay! long walk, boo!), then back to ICL for the Ravelry Party (which, unlike the Ravelry Talk, we didn't have to pay £10 to get into). We met Meg, whose Ravelry name has the word Smurf in it, and I finally actually got a Ravelry badge. I'm not all that active on Ravelry, but hey. There were lovely raffle prizes, which we didn't win, and some knitting luminaries, who didn't know us well enough to realise that we were much more entertaining than all the people we did know. We left a little after 10, having drunk our fill (a Diet Coke each!), and then we had to work to find the exit to the venue and walk back to South Kensington to catch buses home. I made a poor decision and caught a very slow, tiny bus that said it went to Elephant and Castle. I got off the bus at St. Giles Circus and caught a 188 to Canada Water, so I could get a closer bus home.

Here is a photograph of all the yarn I got, and an explanation of how I paid for very little of it. :D

Here's the yarn I scored at KnitNation. Top Left: Wollmeise Laceweight, in colourway Kornblume. 300g, 1,722 yards. 100% merino superwash. Payment for a lace class to be taught to S. Top Middle: KnitWitches Seriously Gorgeous Cash-anova Supersock, in colourway Woodland. 300g, appx 1,200 metres. Merino/Cashmere/Nylon. Payment from KnitWitches. Top Right: Wollmeise Twin, in colourway Förster's Glück, 100g, 311m. Superwash merino. For a sock for J. Top Righter Right: Wollmeise Twin, in colourway Feldmauschen, 100g, 310m. Superwash merino. For a sock for J. Smack-Dab in the Middle: Tilli Thomas Rock Star, in colourway Stony Mist, 100g, 150 yards. Silk with glass beads. Yarn-seller's gift to a friend who didn't care for the colourway. Below the smack-dab in the Middle: Wollmeise Lace, in colourway Golden Pear. 300g, 1,717 yards. 100% superwash wool. For my Dryad, payment for another lace class, as it turns out. Bottom: KnitWitches Seriously Gorgeous Laceweight Silk, in colourway Lapis Night. 300g, 1,800m. 100% silk. Payment from KnitWitches.

Current Mood: busy

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Skew!

Yeah, so I'm following the crowd of knitters who saw the Skew sock in the winter issue of Knitty and decided they must knit it, mostly to answer the burning question, "HTF did she do that?" And by following, I do mean 'following'; this was in the Winter Knitty, and Spring just came out. Hundreds of more dedicated sock knitters than I am have already completed these socks, and there are some great photographs on Ravelry (sorry, link only good if you're a Ravelry member). I was originally planning to do these with the Cortina Sock I bought from Lidl for practically no money last year, but when I looked at photographs of how this yarn knits up I realised it didn't actually stripe; it more like pools.

The designer suggested self-striping or hand-dyed yarn for the project, so I went back and looked at what other folks had knitted theirs out of. By far, the ones that looked most amazing to me were made not of self-striping yarn, but of self-patterning yarn (which sometimes employs stripes but also has jacquard-y bits). And do you know, I went through a heck of a self-patterning yarn phase when I was knitting mostly very simple socks; I love the stuff! But eventually plain socks got boring to knit and I couldn't bring myself to use a lot of it. I've since gone on a search for sock patterns that employ self-patterning wool in an interesting and new way. When I didn't find exactly what I wanted, I enjoyed designing it myself after a while.

Now, lots of y'all know that I ought to be embarrassed to say how many books I have that contain nothing but sock patterns and sock design techniques. I ought to be, yes. But the truth is, I'm fascinated enough by sock construction that I have been known to buy a book or pattern just to spend some time with it, reverse-engineer the patterns I like, and figure out how the designer did that.

So of course when I first saw this pattern, like lots of folks, I was intrigued. Now that I'm an inch or so away from heel point, I understand completely how she did it, at least to this point.

I am sure, having barely skimmed her blog, that like me, Lana Holden is a huge Cat Bordhi fan. Well, few people who like to design socks aren't; that's a fair bet. In fact, I can imagine the 'a-ha' moment for this design. See, you're knitting along, making your first pair of Coriolis Socks, and it comes to you that you could, in fact, do that crazy pattern band anywhere, for any reason, with anything inside it. And you get some ideas. Lana Holden got a really good idea. I can't decide if the shape came first or the "what if I just increase on one side; what would that do?". And it doesn't really matter. The shape itself is ingenious, fits well, and is interesting to knit without being impossible (though I do admit to losing my place in the increase/decrease chain a couple of times). Above that, certainly on the foot, which is all I've got to so far, it's simple. I'm envisioning skewed lace, little skewed cables, you name it, it can be skewed.

So anyway, thanks for reading, and thanks Lana! And here's a picture of my first Skew sock in progress. It's made from Opal sock wool, in the Dumbledore colourway from that Harry Potter theme limited edition they put out a bit ago. Yes, really. Because I couldn't resist, the Ravelry name for this project is "Skew Me Dumbledore" (Sorry, leads to link only accessible if you're on Ravelry). It's OK. You don't have to admit you know me. ;)

First Skew Sock
Just a few inches below heel point now, hoping to turn the first heel tonight.

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198 Yards of Heaven, all Finished. Laminaria, not that hard!

Laminaria, First Chart
Just a few rows into the Star Chart of the Laminaria Shawl, I'm finding the going fairly easy. I'm loving the Estonian star stitches; they really are lovely. And the mohair isn't pissing me off too much yet. Then again, I haven't made any mistakes (that I know of!) yet.....

198 Yards of Heaven, Lace Detail
The yarn is Manos del Uruguay Silk Wool, in bright purple. I'm sending this to the recipient unblocked as it won't stay crisp in the post and she feels confident to block it herself.

198 Yards of Heaven, Finished!
Well, for a project I thought I was going to finish on Friday night of Van der Filk, this was a fail. Of course, I did have lots of other things to do! I cast it off this afternoon, and here it is unblocked.

Current Mood: accomplished

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Stripey Toe-Up Socks!

Stripey Toe-Up Socks!
Completed today around lunchtime. :) These were a lot of fun to knit and part of my 'knit mindless stuff in MA classes' plan.

Matching Stripes and Peasant Heel
When I realised how lovely and even the striping pattern was on this great Trekking wool, I chose to put in a peasant heel (aka an afterthought heel) so as not to interrupt the stripe pattern. The socks were knitted straight up in a tube, and a marker was placed at the point where the heel would be inserted later.

Stripey Toe-Up Socks -- they're just so pretty!
I used a crochet cast-off to make these socks nice and elastic at the cuff.

Stripey Toe-Up Socks, some technical points
When I said these were mindlessly easy, I meant it! They were knitted on 68 stitches, on a 2.75mm circular needle. I used a 50% cast-on for the toe and added the heel marker at 2" shy of total foot length. After that, it was just a matter of knitting up to the top and gauging where the orange piece of the toe had begun on the first sock. I misjudged by a few rows, but I think they match pretty well, anyway. I started the ribbing one stripe before the orange started again, then did two rounds of orange plus the crochet cast-off. The heels were knitted by carefully removing the marking wool and placing stitches individually onto the sock needle, then knitting a short-row cup for the heel.

Ravelry Project Page

Current Mood: accomplished

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Harvest "Jeans" Socks!

These are completed. I can't believe they took only 10 days to knit: that's a record for me, the slowest sockmaker ever!

I love them.

( Four Photos Below Cut Tag )

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Effortless Mastery

Effortless Mastery is the name of a book subtitled "Freeing the master musician within." It's right up there with The Inner Game of Music and A Soprano On Her Head, as far as I'm concerned, for great books about becoming one with oneself as a musician. I've pontificated before in other places about Gerald Eskelin's brilliant Lies My Music Teacher Taught Me, and I won't go off on the intricacies of temperament or bore you with a discussion of modes. (For those of you who don't know, I'm also a bit of a musician, so I do actually think and talk about things like this.)

It's the term "effortless mastery" that I want to delve into here. I don't think the individual musician can ever know the moment or series of moments at which it is achieved, if it ever is achieved. Rather, he finds himself a few weeks or months or years later suddenly able to do something with such ease and facility that he realises he's pretty good at this. I think we can apply this term to lots of different disciplines: I'm remembering now the story of a student interpreter for the deaf at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He was in a biology class, merrily signing the lecture as the professor gave it. A difficult word came along, and he spelled it without thinking about it, then stared at his hand in disbelief. The deaf students applauded, and the class was briefly interrupted as he had to explain to the hearing students (and the instructor) what had just happened. That's as good an illustration as any of the moment of realisation.

I was thinking about the Spiraling Coriolis, after I made a plain pair. These were finished last Monday night, and Monday when I got home from class I cast on another pair. I used a Plymouth Sockotta I'd bought in the States in 2007 because I wasn't completely enamoured of the colourway and it was a prototype sock.

First of all, I was dead wrong about the colourway: It is gorgeous, and the other ball of Sockotta I have in different colours but similar patterning will become a pair of very plain socks to show off that lovely colourway.

It occurred to me that I could put that spiralling stripe in in any sort of pattern I liked: all I'd have to do would be to make sure the increases and decreases followed properly along. So, after I'd finished the toe (still in my short-term memory from the other pair) and increased to 100% (same number as before as I was getting almost exactly the same tension), I started a six-stitch braided cable on one side of the sock, bounded by a purl stitch on either side. I made the cable appear to move around the sock by adding increases on one side and decreases on the other. When I got to the point at which the 'gusset' increases start, I just changed the decrease to a twisted stitch to give it some relief and carried on. Rather than continuing the cable round the back of the sock, I twisted it back in on itself. This has resulted in some puckering on the front of the sock although it looks fine on the foot. I didn't want to have the cable be working its way around the back of the sock when I had to start the heel: that would have been awkward.

The one thing I don't like about the completed sock is that the cable, which is twisting around the front of the sock, pulls pretty tightly. Cat Bordhi suggests in the Coriolis notes that if you want to widen the leg, just leave out some of the decreases on whichever side of the spiral you're doing, but I tried that for a couple of rounds and it seemed to upset the rhythm of the cable in a way it hadn't done on the foot. For the second sock I'll make a series of invisible increases on the back of the sock above the heel, to see if that makes the fit of the cable more relaxed.

So.

Why was I going on about the moment at which we realise we have mastered something (in this case sock architecture and the beginnings of decent design)?

Because I made these socks up as I went along. And I achieved what is probably a new speed knitting record for me (I'm a slow knitter)-- one sock in two days.

( Two photos beneath cut tag )

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New Sock Idea?

( One photo below cut tag )

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Spiraling Coriolis Socks

You know what? I have a ton of self-patterning sock wool. It's because I love the stuff. Even though it's getting more boring by the second to knit a pair of plain socks and just let the yarn do its work, I love it. One of the reasons I designed the Razor's Edge Socks earlier this year was to use up some beautiful self-patterning wool that the prospect of knitting was just getting too boring to contemplate. But, even if they're a bit tedious to knit, I love to wear them. So I've decided that my knitting activity during MA classes will be to knit as many plain socks out of fabulous self-patterning wool as possible. For, you know, values of 'plain' that it doesn't tax me to knit in class.

These socks (there's a single photo beneath the cut tag) are probably going to look very plain to you, but look again! Do you see the sneaky little line that crosses the top of the foot? That's the spiral, and inside that spiral are all the increases you'd normally put in gussets for a traditional sock. I continued the spiral all the way to the cuff.

I cannot recommend any sock book more highly than New Pathways for Sock Knitters (sorry about the amazon.com link; amazon.co.uk didn't have a photograph). Yes, it's better, in my opinion, than Cookie A's admittedly brilliant Sock Innovation. I've had this book since it came out in 2007, and I have gone back to it I don't know how many times for inspiration, or even for straight-up patterns, like this one.

( One photo beneath cut tag )

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Lace Cocoon

( Four photographs below cut tag )

Ravelry Link to this project

Current Mood: annoyed

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[Knitting] So... What's the most annoying thing that can happen to a knitting project?

Aaagh!
See that on the left needle? That's the amount of space I have to finish doing the lace work for the edge of the Silk Garden Serina. See that little string coiled above the right hand needle? That's all the yarn I have left. :(

Current Mood: calm

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[Knitting] Two WIP photos, finally!

I haven't stopped knitting, promise. I've just been really busy with other things. Here are a couple of things I've been working on recently.

( Three photos below cut tag )

Ravelry project page for the Purple Pomatomus">
Ravelry project page for the Silk Garden Serina

Current Mood: sick

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[Knitting] Stash Enhancement! :-)

So, you know. I got yarn. I didn't pay for all of it, and what I did pay for was cheap, cheap, cheap.

( Eight photographs below the cut tag )

MCA Direct
The Knitting Goddess

Current Mood: accomplished

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[Knitting] Razors Edge Socks, Finished!

I completed these last night and wove the ends in this morning.

( Three photos beneath cut tag )

Current Mood: bouncy

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[Knitting] Zauberball!

I picked up this lovely wool on Wednesday at I Knit London, and now I'm thinking I may get a second ball of it if they still have it on Saturday.

Zauberball translates to 'magic ball', and I think that even in the ball it live up to its name. It's just alive with possibilities, isn't it? The wool comes in an astounding array of colours, not all of them this bright, I promise!

( Photos and pattern photo links below cut tag )

Current Mood: calm

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[Knitting] Easter Weekend Project!

As if I didn't already have enough to do, I thought, "Hey, I'll design a pair of lace socks that will work well with self-patterning jaquard sock wool! Yeah! Let's do that!" Well, they've at least given me a chance to experiment a bit more with the square DPNs, which I still like.

( Three photographs, plus technical notes, beneath cut tag. Pattern to follow. )

Current Mood: creative

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[Knitting] Razor Shell Lace Socks

Not just a modification; a "real" design this time. These were cast on last night, and they are moving pretty quickly at this point.

( Single photo below cut tag. )

Current Mood: tired

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[Knitting] Strangling Vine Lace Progress

Mm, this is a fun project.

( Three photos below cut tag )

Current Mood: tired

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[Knitting] Project Enumeration: I am fickle. Further, I have a lot of irons on the knitting fire.

Well, let's see.

I'm just not a monogamous knitter; it's obvious. And I neglect projects for months, sometimes years, at a time. Sometimes I come across a neglected project when I'm going through my stash, usually looking to start something new, and although I know in my heart I might never finish it, particularly that replacement pair of Camelot socks that I've lost the pattern for (and I had two copies of the pattern at one point; can you believe that? I should really just scan everything and turn it into .pdfs for my iPhone). Still, I can't bear to give them up. I think I can remember most of them.

It wouldn't be fair not to list those gorgeous Camelot Socks,* after having whinged about them up there;
There's the Ragna,* which I put aside because I was knitting Christmas gifts. The bottom mitres are all joined for the front, and I'm about to start knitting up;
There's filceolaire's spiral tank top,* which is temporarily put aside because I have to make a couple of design decisions and I'm not ready yet;
There's resourceress's Twisted Flower Socks,* one of which is complete. I just need to knit the second sock;
There's Harmarnii's (winolj) Malabrigo lace socks* from DROPS design, one of which is complete. I think I even cast on for the second one at one point. I was on the bus;
There's the gorgeous Rhiannon* knee socks from Cookie A that I have found to be incredibly frustrating and will come back to when I'm feeling like a challenge (yes, they are more challenging than the Ragna!);
There's bardling's Harika Socks,* one of which is complete and the other of which is at least started;
There's the lace cocoon,* which I've been concentrating on for the last couple of weeks;
There's the Pfeiffer Falls Hooded Scarf,* which I started in the dead of winter and which is going to be very warm and cosy. But I used stash wool, and I'm just not all that thrilled with powder blue. Probably this will go to an auction or a friend when completed;
There's the purple and green entrelac knee socks,* which I'm designing and knitting on the fly. They've been put aside because they're kind of boring to knit, and as I'm doing most of my knitting at home these days, I don't really need train knitting projects at the moment;
And as of last night, there's the Strangling Vines Scarf,* made of sockweight (4ply) Colinette Jitterbug, in the "Popsicle" colourway.

Wow. That's eleven projects, not counting stuff I do for knitting classes and whatever I've forgotten. If any sense, I wouldn't start another one for awhile. But, you know. I have lace yarn.

( One photo of Strangling Vine Lace below the cut tag )

Current Mood: anxious

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[Knitting] Lace Cocoon Progress

I took some photographs when I was home for lunch, so you could see how this is going.

( Three photos below cut tag )