whatifknits

These are the first two of my Mason-Dixon washcloths.

Aren’t the colors great?

I used their patttern for these two, but have been playing since with different stitches from the various Barbara Walker books.

When I was in fourth grade, my mother made me a sleeveless, dropped-waist dress with a little pleated skirt in a check (a sort of extra-loud gingham, if that makes any sense) in these colors. I loved that dress, and knitting something up in those same happy colors delights me no end.

Meanwhile…

My niece took a spill from her bicycle and broke her wrist. The good news is that it’s not a particularly bad break, but that’s also sort of the bad news. Since the break is minor, she wasn’t given a cast (which would be glam), but instead has to wear a splint for the next six weeks or so (which is anti-glam). My sister called me yesterday to ask if I could modify my wrist-warmer pattern to make a splint cover.

Well, of course I can, and I did. I knit up a version in the Denver colorway of Lion Brand Jiffy. I did the entire piece in 2×2 rib so that it would have extra stretch, and the colors cooperated, by winding up it candy-cane style, with no nasty pooling. The splint cover went in the mail today. Once I get a report on how it fits, I’ll be knitting up a couple more, so that my niece can have some choices. (Lime green will be coming up next.)

Warning: This post is 95% knitting-free, so if you don’t enjoy listening to the babblings of a besotted cat step-mom, feel free to wait for my next post. [Melissa is leaving her comments as well in brackets.]

I’ve been meaning for quite some time to give those of you who like cats a proper introduction to the feline members of our family. We’ll start with the Oakland cats—and promise to do justice to the Santa Cruz cats soon.

Behold Archy—

a somewhat skinny old guy, with a croak of a meow that lets you know right away when the service isn’t up to snuff. Archy has been involved in several passionate relationships with soft green things over the years, including Brigitte, a lime-green fake-fur pillow from Ikea. Like all our cats, Archy was a rescue. Years ago, Melissa kept finding him perched on her motorcycle in the alley behind her home. He was hardly beyond kittenhood then and had little trouble working his way into her heart and in the front door. [Much to the disgust of Lulu, my extra-toed cat from the east coast, who was still with me at the time.]
Because of his early years on the street (at least that’s what we blame it on) Archy has a bit of the wanderlust. Last fall, while Melissa hiked the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain, Archy took advantage of an inattentive (I can think of other words, but I’ll just stick with “inattentive” for propriety’s sake) cat-sitter and went on the lam. The cat-sitter was fired, friends were called in to look after the remaining cats, and I found myself driving from Santa Cruz to Oakland 3-4 times a week to wander Melissa’s industrial wasteland of a neighborhood, shaking a pouch of Temptations and calling “Archy… Arrrchyyyyyyy.” I also made more visits than I ever want to remember to the Oakland and Berkeley animal shelters. I left with a broken heart each time, not just because of Archy, but because of all the marvelous cats so desperate for a home and a chance to share their love. [Sarah-Hope is a saint! as are my friends.]
In an amazing stroke of good luck, a couple in the neighborhood found him late at night three weeks after he’d disappeared and one day before Melissa returned home. He’d lost almost a third of his total weight and had an abscess in his mouth, but he’s made a fully recovery, as these photos attest.

Here we have Archy close up…

…and in profile.

And this is Melissa’s portrait of Archy.

He was younger when she painted this, but he’s definitely grown into the air of crochityness and gravitas that the painting suggests. [It’s rather like Gertrude Stein growing to look like the portrait Picasso painted…]
And, yes, he’s named after the literary cockroach.

We now have the honor of presenting Maggie Gloriana Moo-Woozle, the queen of the household.

Maggie is stalwart in her affections. She spends a good part of each day looking after her “babies” (those stretchy, kind of terry-cloth-like pony-tail holders), moving them up and down stairs, lining them up at the water dish for swimming lessons and such.
Maggie was an unwed mother who’d just been quitted of both kittens and uterus when Melissa adopted her. She has a rather unusual build (short legs, long back) and favors dolman sleeves on her fur coat. [Maggie is very glamorous!]

Of course a cat as glamorous as Maggie is used to the paparazzi…

But she has to set limits sometimes, despite her public’s insatiable desire for her image.

I’ve already mentioned Damian. Now here’s the face to go with the description.

Melissa found Damian and his brother “B” (who sadly did not survive) abandoned in broad day-light, miserable in the heat and sun with eyes still closed and bodies covered in fleas. His rough beginning has not, however, had any lasting impact on his growth. (You will note in the above photo his exquisite man-udder, which spills over his feet with great majesty. He’s frightfully proud of it.)
Because he was bottle-fed, Damian is highly interactive and always willing to pitch in with the project at hand. In fact, his New Year’s resolution was “Be more helpful”—and he’s stuck to it with a vengance.
[When I first found the kittens, the vet was not at all optimistic about their survival, but I brought them home anyway, determined to nurse them back to health. But just in case, I only called them “A” and “B” at first, so I wouldn’t become too attached to them. As if!]

Here Damian is helping with the knitting. (Nothing improves the quality of a fiber more than a bit of judiciously applied cat spit, eh?)

He also likes to help with painting, cooking, mat board cutting, computing, and, of course, eating. His usual strategy is to leap onto the table, then keel over as if he is utterly weak and exhausted… which leads the poor boy to rest his frail head on the rim of any nearby dish… and then, even though he’s about to lose consciousness completely, he manages to find just enough energy to move his lips the least little bit—and you wouldn’t begrudge a dying kitty a last bit of food would you?
Actually, we do, so Damian often spends dinnertime in the bathroom. [The only room in the house with a door!]

When you come to visit, Damian will be glad to nuzzle you with his perpetually wet nose.

If you’ve made it this far, you must be as mad about cats as we are. Huzzah! for nature’s finest species.

Today, I’ve been knitting cotton wash rags, a la Mason-Dixon Knitting. Joann had Sugar ‘n Cream cotton yarn on sale for $1.50 a ball, and I’ve never actually knit these before—so it seemed almost like a sign or something. I find the wash rags inordinately pleasing. I’m using bright colors and every few rows I hold my work up so Melissa can admire it. Her comment: “There must be somethig really specal about those. These days, it usually takes more than a knitted square to get you excited like this.”

Yesterday, Melissa and I joined my mom to go to the musical at the high school I attended. While we were at my mom’s house, we shot pictures of my various yarn buys from Stitches West. So, here are the yarns I found most tantalizing, with my dreams about what they may become someday.

Skye Tweed by Classic Elite Yarns, 100% wool, 110 yards per ball, US 7 or 8 needles.
This yarn has that nice, sort of crunchy feel to it that some wools have, but doesn’t feel scratchy. Last fall I knit up some ocean-inspired hats, using knit stitches for the first pattern set, purls for the next, etc. Now I’d like to try working up the same pattern, using color changes instead of stitch changes to make the pattern more striking. I’m hoping Skye Tweed will be just the ticket.

Mmmmmmmmm…Malabrigo. They’re all 100% wool. In the back we have worsted weight (216 yards per skein, US 7-9 needles): 3 balls of Melilla and 5 balls of Col China. In the front we have a skein of lace-weight in Sealing Wax (410 yards per skein).
I love this yarn and its cotton-ball softness. I have a rectangular shawl pattern picked out for the lace weight. I’m not at all sure yet what I’ll be doing with the worsted weight, but I can tell you whatever I knit will be for me. Me. Me, me, me, me, me.

Silver Thaw by Noro, 50% wool, 25% angora, 25% nylon, 220 meters per skein, US 8-10 needles.
I knit a hat for Melissa in December out of a different colorway of this yarn and enjoyed working with it. The angora takes the edge off the roughness that that’s typical of Noro, making it more comfortable to wear against the skin. This colorway reminds me of fields of lavender or sage with its grey-greens (which didn’t show well in the photo) and purples. Again, I don’t know what I’ll be knitting with this, but the knitting voices in my head told me “Buy it! Buy two!”

On the left: Magallanes by Araucania Yarns, 100% wool, 242 yards per skein, US 6-8 needles. On the right: Caravan by Just Our Yarn, 65% wool, 35% camel down, 300 yards per skein, US 3 needles.
I felt compelled to get the Magallanes because of the color, which seemed simultaneously hideous and alluring: a melange of forest green, burnt orange, peach, and cream. These colors shouldn’t match, they don’t match, but they do—kind of like Peter Cottontail attending Octoberfest. This yarn will no doubt become a hat at some point, but I don’t want to reknit a pattern I’ve already written. I’m waiting for the right new idea to come along.
The moment I saw the Cravan I thought “stranded color-work.” I want to work with these separately, pairing each with a rich deep, brown or a warm gold. The skeins are big enough that if I make hats I can knit each pattern twice, once with the Caravan as the main color, then again with it as the contrast color.

Cashsoft by Rowan, 50% merino, 40% microfibre, 10% cashmere, 142 yards per ball, US 6 six needles.
With these beauties I’m again thinking stranded color-work, but I also expect they’ll show texture nicely, so I may just opt for a nice complicated scarf with cables or bobbles or both. (The upper yarn is actually a yummy butter yellow, not the off-white it appears in the picture.)

If any of you have worked with these yarns before and have advice or project ideas, I would love to hear them. I don’t expect I’ll start knitting with any of them for a few weeks—I want time to think about the possibilities first. Meanwhile, I’ve got cotton wash rags to occupy my fingers.

I’ve yet to knit my first pair of socks, but that hasn’t prevented me from starting to accumulate books about sock knitting and sock patterns and sock yarn. My first sock book was Sensational Knitted Socks, quickly followed by Knitting Vintage Socks. Since yesterday was pay-day, I took advantage of my momentary I-can-make-it-to-the-end-of-the-month hopefulness and ordered two more sock books: Knitting on the Road and Favorite Socks. (The sock yarn stash results from the fact that I like using sock yarn for hats because the small guage lets me fit more repeats of complicated stitches into a reasonably-sized finished product. )

When I started knitting, socks were nowhere on my radar, but that all changed when I got my first look at Sensational Knitted Socks. Not only are the patterns it offers beautiful, but the whole thing is written in a way that brings joy to my “what-if?” heart. What if I want to use a different pattern? What if I want to add colorwork? What if my feet are a funny size? What if I like part of one sock pattern and part of another? Once I get going on socks, this book will be suffering some significant wear.

My sock fascination was further stoked by reading Grumperina’s blog. She knits (and designs) so many pairs, and her beautiful work just makes me ache to go down that sock road myself.

My mom knows how to knit socks and would gladly teach me, but whenever I’m at her house, we always seem to have too many other things to do. One of my LYSs, The Golden Fleece, has a $10 sock clinic on Mondays, so I’m thinking I should just cast on a pair and knit until I’m confused, then head over there.

What brought up these sock thoughts? The March issue of Mag Knits, which features three sock patterns, including my favorite: the Rainy Day Socks by by Yuliya Sullivan. (Aren’t they gorgeous?) I’ll probably start with something simpler, but I want to commit to beginning my first pair of socks before this academic quarter is over. That way, I can go to the sock clinic over spring break.

P.S. If you’re looking for free sock patterns try here and here and here. That should keep you busy.

P.P.S. If any of you who are more versed in the art of the sock than I am have words of warning (or encouragement) to throw my way—go for it! I’d be glad for the help.

Let me tell you about hats. I can’t show you hats (because they’re in Santa Cruz and the camera is with Melissa in Oakland), but I will eventually post photos.

I finally finished my semi-Norwegian hat. I’d gotten quite comfortable with the whole stranded knitting thing and was zooming along, needing to pause less and less often to untangle my yarn—then the decreases hit, and I found myself switching from circulars to double-points. Ack!

At the same time that I began with the double-points on Friday night at Melissa’s, her cat Damian began a game of “Cannot-Touch-Floor-Evil-Floor-Must-Jump-Climb-Flop” and things went something like this—

Whunk! All 18 pounds of Damian came flying from the floor to my chest, obliviously landing on my work, to which I clung desperately hoping to prevent a needle-dropping, involuntary-frogging catastrophe.

Bamp! Bamp! He whacked his forehead against mine in greeting, giving me a nice rub with his wet nose (wet nose? isn’t that a dog thing?) in the process. Then he pirouetted a time or two, balancing himself on my knees, my shoulders, purring the whole while.

And finally—Oof! He bounced off me onto Melissa or whatever unfortunate person/object lay in his trajectory.

Now, reread the previous three paragraphs several times because Damian never settles for doing something once when he can do it repeatedly. I believe I got exactly one round done before giving up and hiding my work at the back of the closet.

On Sunday in Santa Cruz, I did get those last rounds done. I found it particularly helpful to distribute the stitches among my double points so that the first stripe of the three-stipe divisions between panels ended the stitches on one needle and the remaining two stripes began the stitches on the following needle. This strategy prevented any long bits of yarn jumping the break between needles, allowing me to maintain my tension more easily.

While the hat isn’t perfect (I did the SSKs wrong on the first 2/3 of the rounds, and my two yarns don’t stand out as distinctly from each other as I might like), I’m quite pleased with it as a first attenpt. And, having finished, I came up with a whole new set of “what if?” questions.

1. What if I use the variegated yarn for backgound instead of for the pattern elements?

2. What if I limit the double-stranding to the body of the hat and switch to a single yarn before beginning the decreases?

3. What if I alternate bands of double-stranded knitting with plain knitting?

After digging through my stash to find some appropriate yarns for answering these questions (a skein of navy wool-nylon Knit Picks Essential and a skein of denim-colored self-striping sock yarn in a cotton-wool-nylon blend), I got to work. So far the hat goes like this: navy ribbing; alternating rounds of the two yarns; an eleven-round band of stranded work; more alternating rounds; a nice wide stretch of just the self-striping yarn; more alternating rounds; and a five-round band of double-stranded work. I’m planning to finish up with a few more alternating rounds and will then end the hat using only the solid navy yarn. If you can’t picture this, don’t fret. Like I said, photos are coming.

I’m going to write about Stitches West in two parts, focusing first on the classes I took, then later on the yarn and other sightings from the market.

Increases and Decreases (326) taught by Elizabeth Fallone
The increases and decreases we covered could, of course, be applied to any kind of knitting, but in class we focused primarily on how to use them in constructing garments. Since I’m more interested in applying these to lace designs, I had to keep moving mentally from the work at hand to my own purposes, but this wasn’t hard. The class covered many single and double decreases/increases, and I particularly liked some of the increases, which I hadn’t encountered before (most directions for M1 call for knitting through the bar between two stitches or knitting front and back into a single stitch; the instructor included some other possibilities that produce a much smoother finished piece).
We knit up whole handfuls of little triangular swatches so we could see how the different stitches looked. I realized quickly that I wouldn’t remember what each swatch contained without some sort of system, so I tied knots in the ends of the cast on thread quipu-like. I now have pages of notes reading more or less like this: “one knot in cast on thread, wide base = K2tog on R, SSK on L.” I’ll have to spend some time counting knots and adding proper labels to all those swatches, but the swatches will be an immense help later when I’m working on designs. In fact, I’d like to add to my swatch collection, working up samples using simple lace stitches to compliment the stockinette ones I’ve already made.
My main concern with this class is that the handouts briefly described in words most (but not all—and that’s another problem) of the stitches we convered, but included very few illustrations, so I’m a bit nervous about whether I’ll be able to work these stitches correctly in the future. I practiced with one of the increase techniques last night (on an adaptation of an ear-flap hat pattern that I finally gave up on—the yarn apparently had no interest in becoming an ear-flap hat). At first, my increases were a bit hit-or-miss, but they looked quite nice by the end, even though I wound up frogging the whole thing.
If you’d like to see more of her work, Elizabeth Fallone’s designs are carried by Shelridge Farm.

Chart Reading and Writing (544), taught by JC Briar
This was by far my favorite class, which I hadn’t anticipated, as I’d figured it was the class most likely to cover things I already knew. In fact, much of the material was familiar to me, but the systematic way in which the instructor laid it all out (wonderful handouts!) helped me mentally organize my own knowledge. In the future I’ll be able to approach charts with a set of questions in my head to ask and answer before I begin knitting. Yes, I would be able to follow charts without these questions, but I would wind up having to do more problem solving as I went along.
By the end of the class, the teacher had us working on a set of exercizes translating written instructions into charts. These grew increasingly complex and really forced us to apply the full range of material we’d covered in the first part of class. When I write up my own patterns—particularly more complicated lace or cable patterns—this practice will serve me well.
If you ever have the chance to take a class with JC Briar—do it! Her organization is impressive, and she anticipates and provides answers for many questions, rather than waiting for these to come up on their own.
As an aside, the instructor was wearing a gorgeous short-sleeved cardigan and tank set of her own design that features all sorts of slip stitch patterns. This pattern is for sale at her web site, and I’ll definitely be ordering one. If you don’t want to knit a whole ensemble, but want to practice slip stitches, you could order this pattern and use the cardigan front pattern to knit up some really beautiful throw pillows. (Note that the picture on the web site makes this set look as if it’s knit in sort of deep, dusty pastels. the actual colors are brighter and more autumnal, a real visual feast.)

Hole-Istic Lace (529) taught by Maureen Mason-Jamieson
The class provided a clear, useful introduction to lace knitting. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really looking for an introduction to the topic. Still, I enjoyed playing with the class project (a lacey bookmark/bell pull), which gave me a chance to see several different decreases worked with lace stitches.
I would recommend this class for anyone who feels uneasy about taking on lace. The handouts offered a clear, detailed approach to the topic, leading students through a variety of single and double decreases. I particularly appreciated this instructor’s explanations of running markers (a sort of basting strand used instead of ring markers) and safety lines (a strand of yarn or thread run through the loops of a row to “lock” the knitted work once you’ve verified that everything up to that point is accurate). I’ll probably stick to my ring markers, but will definitely use a safety line when working on complicated patterns.
Besides knitting lace, Maureen Mason-Jamison designs lovely, colorful garments, including the Marmalade Sweater, which is as yummy as its name implies. I fell madly in love with it in the market.

Just to let you know, I may not be posting much for the next week. Tomorrow I leave town for Stitches West. Friday, I’ll be spending the day roaming the market with my mom. Over Saturday and Sunday I’m taking three classes:Increases and Decreases (326), Chart Reading and Writing (544), and Hole-Istic Lace (529). I chose these three because I want to continue developing and writing patterns and each focuses on a skill that will help me further that goal. I wish I could have taken the actual pattern writing class, but that one was full by the time I enrolled. Increases and decreases have been a particular concern of mine: I want to make sure that the increases and decreases in my patterns really compliment the design and aren’t just default choices. I love knitting from charts and have downloaded a charting program, but haven’t begun to use it yet and figured a class on the subject might get me going. And the lace class? Well, I’m assuming it will give me more practice with increases and decreases and, well, it’s lace—need I say more?

I’ll get home Sunday night, then begin a week of conferences with all of my students to review the written portfolios they’re preparing. I have a definite hermit streak in me, and all that human contact will leave me pretty fried at the end of each day, but I am counting on the reviving powers of knitting to see me through.

The semi-Norwegian hat is two-thirds finished. Once it’s done, I plan to knit a second hat from the same pattern and yarn (or part of a hat, if I don’t have enought yarn left) reversing the main and contrast colors so that the background is variegated and the design is in solid orange. I want to be able to compare the two and think about the relative merits of variegated yarns as MCs and CCs before I start working on additional designs. I’ll post pictures of these as soon as I can once I’m done with them.