Demonic Progress

The Fabulous Fantastic Yet Simple Nautical Sweater Story, Part 1

It’s odd how a sweater design is conceived, sometimes. I am currently working on a sweater design that I *hope* to have completed to hand out to passengers on the knitting cruise. Hopefully I will have it done for both the June and the September cruises... but we’ll see how it goes. I did not, however, wake up one morning and say, “Wow, I want to design a sweater today!” .... no. It came about in a far more basic way. You see, I had this yarn I needed to use up or get rid of.......

It came about as a result of the Knitting Weekends we just had. Victoria had wound many balls of Renaissance yarn for her class to use, and I told her to wind more than the required number in order to allow people to have a larger choice of color they would want to use. So she did. Unbeknownst to us, apparently no one wanted to knit cables in the most traditional aran cable color of all.... off white. We thought it might be the most popular color, because it is traditional, easy to see, goes with everything..... but no.

So when I finally came down out of the stratosphere of post-Knitting-Weekend excitement, I noticed the basket of off-white Renaissance sitting forlornly in the office. What to do with it? It looked so pretty. There were 6 skeins. Unwanted, unloved, pristine skeins. I could have put them in the sale bin. I could have pushed them in a corner for a couple years and forgotten about them. Yet my immediate thought was, I could design something for the boat and use up this yarn!

Six skeins was not a lot. Maybe enough for a baby sweater, but I am not reallly a baby-stuff knitter, let alone designer. Maybe if I liked babies more, I would be, but in my experience they produce a good amount of bodily fluid in various forms, and they make a lot of noise when people are trying to sleep. They are harmless enough, I suppose. Please don’t send me hate mail ... I do not hate babies. I just eschew them. Luckily we had 4 more bags of this off white Renaissance stored downstairs, and I started thinking about the cabled sweater I started designing with Renaissance a year or two ago, but abandoned because basically the stitches I wanted to use together didnt like each other much. I brought the bags of yarn up and tried to see if they looked like the same dyelot as what I had (the tags, of course, were missing.) Sigh. Even in dim light I could see it was a different dye lot.

I pondered. I thought. I considered putting them in the sale bin again. Then, a vision of a navy blue sweater with an all-over white pattern appeared in my head! An all-over pattern of nautical motifs! Yes! For the knitting cruise! I am a genius!!!

But did we have any navy blue Renaissance? My heart trembled... but yes, we did. Yay! So I greedily set aside the navy blue and began thinking of a motif to use. A clever girl, a girl who likes to actually *think* while she designs, would have pulled out drawing paper, sketched a few things, translated them to a graph.... and would be very, very creative, not to mention hard-working. Not me, though. Nope. I planned to skim through some pattern and chart books and simply pull motifs that someone else had already made, and plug them into a plain stockinette drop-sleeve sweater. I do not like to agonize over things. I pulled out several books... Babara Walker.... Harmony guides....Dale of Norway patterns.... lots of books... and finally settled on Sheila McGregor’s Traditional Scandinavian Knitting and Traditional Fair Isle Knitting. I realized I needed a gauge to start with before I could go further (DUH DUH DUH).

I grabbed my circular #8’s and cast on a bunch of stitches and started working a two-color pattern to see what my gauge would be. About 15 rows into it I knew the #8’s would not work. Darn it. I wanted them to, because they would go faster.... darn it. So I knit a garter ridge and continued with #7 circs. It was perfect, looked just the way I wanted it to. I knit for a number of inches, measured my gauge about 12 times to make sure, and set the swatch aside.
In Sheila McGregor’s Traditional Fair Isle Knitting, I found two motifs I wanted to use. One is an anchor motif that I recognized as the one I used in my Anchor Socks pattern. That was good, so I put that on graph paper. I found a compass rose motif that I liked better than the rest of them, but it was too fat and chunky-looking, so I sighed heavily and set about re-designing it. Finally I graphed it out the way I wanted to look in the knitted fabric. One thing I learned a long time ago is that you just cannot use standard graph paper to graph knitted motifs.... they end up looking all squashed when you knit them because the knitted stitch is wider than it is high. Luckily I have a great software tool called Knitting Wizard from Black Cat Systems, that lets you plug in the stitches and rows per inch to create graph paper that you then print out & play with. It also lets you weight the lines every so many stitches, so if you have say, a 21-stitch repeat, you can make the lines of the repeated section be heavier than the other lines. It also does a ton of other stuff to make your knitted graph paper experience pure heaven! I highly recommend it.

I charted the compass rose and the anchor a couple times, and discovered too much empty space between them... too much space to carry the yarn strand comfortably. I needed to add a few small doo-dads to fill in the space. I didn’t want it to look too busy, and I wanted it to retain a nautical flavor. I came up with two small motifs (yes, darn it, I had to design them myself, too) to represent a ship’s anchor light, and seaweed. I scanned my working chart for ya:

Now I have to chart the motif repeat and figure out what sizes the sweater will be in. Sizing will be determined largely by width of the pattern chart. I can tweak it to make the sizing the way I want it to be. I have to be careful to have the chart centered in order to avoid a Quasimodo effect on the wearer. The sweater will most likely be a simple drop shoulder crewneck pullover because a) it is unisex, and I think a man might wear this sweater, and b) it is easy as hell to design and knit.

Of course, all bets are off as soon as I pick up the needles. That’s when the swearing starts. :D

I’ll keep you posted as to the outcome...... and hopefully I can get a new digital camera one of these days so I can share with you more of what I am knitting!

I Am My Worst Student

Gah. People tell me a lot that I am so patient.... yeah, sure, with other people. I can sit with a new knitter, a knitter wannabe, a person who is truly in danger of  impaling themselves on their own needles (don't laugh; it has happened) and be perfectly happy as they struggle with furrowed brows, making the same error time after time. I can smile sweetly as they become infuriated with themselves, and calm them down with true serenity in my eyes. It never ever bothers me to repeat things many, many times to people whom I am teaching, it really is kind of fun.

But.

When I am the learner, I suck at learning. I am whiney, petulant, indignant, angry, and distracted. I am angry because I want to just sit down and have it come out perfect the first time. I want never to make a mistake, even on the first time I am trying a new thing, or a new technique. And it wasn't until today that I realized how ludicrous this is, and how laughable I must be to any observers who notice me when I am trying to learn something new.

As owner of Unique One, I feel it is imperative that I should be able to knit every single sweater that we sell, if I need to. However for the past two years I have harbored a dark little secret.... there are some sweaters that we sell that until now I couldn't have knit for you myself for love or money. I just didn't know how. There are sweaters that have three colors in a row, and our knitting machines only can do two colors in a row... that means that the third color has to be "hand knit" on the machine, i.e., hand-manipulated to replicate the look of the knitted stitches around them. I got the general idea... but there also was the issue of wrapping the edges of the single motifs to prevent holes... and the exact placement of the needles was beyond me. So I lived in fear of the day when someone ordered, for example, a Belted Galloway sweater ... and Susan, the only one who knows how to knit them, might be unavailable to knit it. I really hated the thought that there was something I didn't know how to do. I mean geez, this is my livelihood, after all.

So today, it being slow in the store, and me looking to avoid doing any filing..... I sat down at the machine and cast on a Beltie swatch. The Belted Galloway motif is only 26 rows high. Twenty six. And I only cast on 48 stitches for the swatch. And I was, remember, knitting it on a knitting machine.

But oh, my God. It was like I was trying to tie my shoes and I had no thumbs.  The first seven rows were fine, just like any single motif sweater I've made before. And then the three-colors-in-a-row crap  fun began. Every row, I had to read the instructions Susan had written out for me.... several times. Every row. Several times. And then to actually do the task, to move the carriage across... to lift the yarn off the tops of the needles.... to hand-knit the white belt stitches, matching the tension....to REMEMBER to pull the dang white belt stitch needles back into the hold position ( I screwed that up twice.... how many times do I have to make the same blasted stupid mistake before I remember to do it right?!)... to wrap the contrast color and then the main color to prevent holes... man. It was hard. The whole time I kept thinking about how fast, how effortlessly Susan knit these belted galloway motifs... a matter of moments, and another little belted cow had appeared on a sweater. She makes it look so easy!  And I was struggling along at such a snail's pace. It was infuriating, to know how fast it was possible to go, and to see how slow I was. At one point as I was ranting about how slow I was, Tracy said, "See? That's how we all feel when you go zip, zip, zip and fix our knitting, and we sit there feeling so sloooooow." I have heard people say things like that as I worked on their knitting problems, things like, wow, you knit so fast! But until today I never really knew how they felt. Now, I do.

Guess! Guess how long it took me to knit one stinking swatch with a twenty-six row pattern on a  knitting machine?  Hmmmmmmm? I asked Susan to guess... she doubled what it would take her and said, "Twenty minutes?" I laughed. "Oh no," she said, "you were probably waiting on customers too... thirty minutes?" I laughed harder and also assured her I hadn't waited on any customers.

"An hour and a half!!!!!!" I crowed. "NINETY minutes!!!!"  I don't think she really believed me. But its true. I make a terrible student. However... I did do it! And it came out right! And now there is nothing Unique One sells that I can't theoretically make myself if I have to. Whether I enjoy it or not... well, that's beside the point. And besides, the more I do it, the easier and faster it will be. I just have this delusion that it should be easy and I should excel at it from the first moment on. Heh heh, I think I need to grow up. :D

So, y'all... go out there and learn something! Challenge yourself! If I can do it, you can!!

Wists!

Thank you to whoever put my Ribbed Leaves Lace Scarf up on the Wists Social Shopping site! I feel so special.... :D

Beth's Knitting Update & New Yarn at the Store

I finished the short-sleeved cardigan I knit from Tahki's "Dream" -- I think it is very cute. I still have to weave in the ends and sew on the buttons. Hopefully I will get a photo of it tonight at knitting group -- I knit a size small because it would be faster to knit, and maybe I can con someone into modeling it for me.

Last night I knit a rather extensive gauge swatch with another new yarn we have called "Linova" from GGH/Muench. It is 74% cotton, 26% linen, and comes in beautiful, soft colors. It's a very nice summer yarn to work with. It is 100 meters/ 50 grams, and we're selling it for $6.95 a ball. I am going to make Oat Couture's "Penelope Blouse" in color 022, a bright, greeny yellow which doesn't appear to be listed on the Muench web site. Aside from the fact that this yarn is beautiful and nice to work with, and a reasonable price, I think I know why Victoria ordered it: it is made in Romania. I think she was an exchange student in Romania for a while. Maybe she can verify that in the comments. Victoria?

I also have plans to knit a sock from Durasport, the new Canadian lightweight wool & nylon yarn, and I am looking forward to starting the Fiddlesticks Knitting "Flirty Ruffles" shawl using our new Graceful lace yarn.

This morning I tried out my new Weavette Loom -- I think we'll be selling these at Unique One this fall. It's a lot of fun:

Here's the sample square I wove this morning, using leftover Step sock yarn. Nora likes it.

More new stuff is arriving at the store every day. We got our shipment of "O-Wool", organic wool yarn from the Vermont Organic Fiber Company. It's beautiful! This 100% organic merino wool is soft and yet has a wonderful springyness to it. It is a pretty good deal for an organic product, too: 198 yards in a 100 gram skein, and we're selling it for $12.50. Compare that to non-organic Donegal Tweed, 189 yards for $11.00. O-Wool is a 3 or 4 ply yarn and it will show texture very well. I think it will be wonderful for aran knits and any textured knits. It comes in 13 gorgeous colors (we got all of them!) -- you can take a look at the colors and read about the wool by clicking here (you have to click on "Yarn" in the left menu to get all the information and see all the colors -- they won't let me link directly to the O-Wool Yarn page, for some reason).

In case you are wondering what makes a wool "organic", here is what it says on the yarn company's website about requirements for raising organic wool:

• Livestock must be fed 100% organically grown feed (grains) and forage (pastures)


• Use of synthetic hormones, vaccinations, and genetic engineering is prohibited


• Use of synthetic pesticides (internal, external, and on pastures) is prohibited


• Producers must encourage livestock health through good cultural and management practices.

In addition, organic wool processing restricts chemical inputs and requires the separation of organic and non-organic fibers throughout processing stages.

There is a LOT more info about organic wool and what it means to the farmers on the website, and you can read all about it by
clicking here. (Click on "Organic vs. Conventional Livestock" in the left menu.)

We also just got in another new organic yarn: Ecoknit Organic Cotton! This 100% organic cotton is a DK weight; a 50 gram skein has 100 meters; it costs $5.95. Ecoknit cotton is machine washable and dryable, BUT it will shrink, so you have to allow for shrinkage if you intend to wash your garment in the washer and dryer. It comes in 5 colors -- the cotton actually grows in these colors, they are not dyed:

One of the things I love best about this yarn is that one of my favorite designers, Dorothy Siemens, designed 5 patterns specifically for Ecoknits Organic Cotton, and figured in the shrinkage allowance for you, so all you have to do is follow the pattern! Four of the patterns are available now (we have them) and one is coming out in the fall -- a shawl, I think. (Note: since about 7% shrinkage is figured into the patterns, yarn substitutions are not recommended for knitting these patterns). Here are pictures of the designs we have right now:

Falling Leaves Shawl Ginco Leaf Tunic

Filligree Turtleneck Simply Fresh Tee

I want to knit that Ginko Leaf Tunic. A lot. A lot lot lot. Somebody, please save me from myself ...... ;)

Geeky Fun: The Jig Is Up

For a number of years, I have been wanting to make this one sweater, Lucy Neatby's "Cables After Whisky". It just seemed really cool, and long-time Yarndemon readers will remember that I have always had kind of a crush on random-number stuff in knitting. Finally, on the knitting cruise last week, I had the perfect opportunity to start it: I had time to knit; I had a huge bag of the perfect-gauge yarn in the perfect color; I had a bottle of very good whisky; and I had a friend who used to knit and drink Scotch with me back when we were younger. I decided to cast on for this sweater one evening on the knitting cruise.

'Cables After Whisky' operates on a simple principle: you knit an oversized, simple-shape sweater and randomly twist cables all over it. It looks like you knit an aran sweater after drinking a bottle of whisky. However, there is a subtle plan: basically, you work a cabled row with several rows of stockinette stitch in between. The cables sort of line up -- sort of. So it isn't totally random. But Lucy Neatby is clever; the teensy bit of organization makes the overall effect much more pleasing and less "bunchy". The fabric drapes better this way.

So the thing is, I started the first cable twist row. What you do on this row is, you randomly choose a number between 0 and 9. Depending on what number you choose, you twist a cable towards the back, twist a cable towards the front, knit the stitches plain, or choose another number (the equivalent of "roll again!" in a board game). I'm not too good at just thinking of random numbers, so I and my little group of scotch drinkers thought it would be fun if I just yelled out "Pick a number!" and they'd take turns shouting out numbers and I'd work across the row. And, that was fun for about 60 stitches. Then it was kind of lame. We couldn't have a conversation during that row, because the number of stitches each twist is worked over is relatively small, so people had to keep giving me numbers frequently. So I put it away for the night, halfway across the row. We finished the bottle of Scotch.

Next day, I decided to use the two pages of random numbers that came with the pattern -- a very good help! But you know how lazy I am. I had to keep looking at the page, finding my place, then translating what the number meant. For example, if it is "4", that means twist the cable to the front. It was still pretty slow, finding the number and figuring out what it meant. Plus, we were sailing, and the wind threatened to blow my random numbers overboard. So I put it away, but I knew what I needed to do to make these cable rows all sweetness and light.

My husband is a carpenter, and when he needs to do a repetitive task, he often makes a "jig", a tool or contraption that helps hold stuff in a certain way to make the work easier. I needed to make a knitting "jig" to spit out what to do on that cable row, something that I could just click on and it would say "Cable Back", "Cable Front", "Knit 4" or "Click Again!".

I am too lazy and stupid to learn how to program in C++ or Java (Although I did try to teach myself to program in Java a few years ago -- I needed a teacher who knew how to do it already, unfortunately; I was teaching myself, so my teacher was kind of an idiot about stuff). So I rely on Runtime Revolution's "Media" to create software when I need it, because it uses the same hypertext language I used to program in HyperCard, back when HyperCard existed. I made a little "stack" (that's what the programs are called, "stacks"; I could explain why but do you really care? I thought not) which solved all my problems. Now, when I get to the cable row, I set my laptop next to me, and all I have to do is click the mouse button, and the computer tells me to cable front or back, or knit on, or click again. Problem solved! Here's a screenshot of what it looks like -- it's VERY SIMPLE:

This Media software is really super. You can use it on any computer platform, including Linux, and it only costs about $50. You can use it to do tons of stuff, from creating demos, displays, adventure games, and simple software. It's very easy to use. For example, in my little jig for Cables After Whisky, I have one "card" with a "field" and a "button". The card is just the background that everything sits on. The field is a box which will display text. The button is the thing you click on to make stuff happen; I made the button large and invisible, so you just click wherever you want, no hunting for little buttons is required. The button has a "script" which you write, and the script is what tells the button what to do. Here is the script I wrote for my jig (do not be afraid, it is not as scary as it looks):

on mouseUp

put random(10) into it
if it = 1 then
put empty into field 1
wait 4
put "B" into field 1
end if

if it = 2 then

put empty into field 1

wait 4

put "B" into field 1

end if

if it = 3 then

put empty into field 1

wait 4

put "F" into field 1

end if

if it = 4 then
put empty into field 1
wait 4
put "F" into field 1
end if

if it = 5 then
put empty into field 1
wait 4
put "Click Again" into field 1
end if

if it = 6 then
put empty into field 1
wait 4
put "Click Again" into field 1
end if

if it = 7 then
put empty into field 1
wait 4
put "Knit 4" into field 1
end if

if it = 8 then
put empty into field 1
wait 4
put "Knit 4" into field 1
end if

if it = 9 then
put empty into field 1
wait 4
put "Knit 4" into field 1
end if

if it = 10 then
put empty into field 1
wait 4
put "Knit 4" into field 1
end if

end mouseUp

Notice how all the words are in English? no funny characters? no jargon? It's very simple. The oddest term is "mouseUp" -- that just means "click" -- as in, when the mouse button is released and goes back *up*. There is also "put random(10) into it". That just says to the computer, pick a number at random between 1 and 10, and then take the number you picked and put it in a holder called "it". Clever, eh? It's much quicker to say "put random(10) into it". The rest of the script is all "if the number you picked is such-and-such, then put what I'm supposed to do with the next few stitches into the field so I can read it and knit it, assuming I have not drunk too much whiskey!" The part that says "put empty into field 1" & "wait 4" tells it to blank the screen and then wait a second before putting the new thing in the box; that kind of makes it blink when I click. That way, if there are several of the same direction in a row, I'll know it isn't just stuck, that it really is choosing again.

Computer programming. It's not so hard, with Media. And there are tons of tutorials to teach you how to use it, too, built into the program, and more are downloadable from the RunRev website. Ya gots to love technology!

Anyone can run the program if they have the RunRev Media Player. If anyone out there wants to knit Cables After Whisky and wants to get a copy of my cable-row jig, just email me and I'll point you to where you can download the jig and the Media Player on yarndemon.com .

Now if there were only a way to write a Media stack that would open the door for the cats when they meooooow......

Out of the Bag

Astute Yarndemon readers may have noticed that the same four projects have filled my knitting bag for about two months now. Well, as of last night, all four projects are officially done!!! (And that includes weaving in all the ends.)

The Step socks came out great; I started them on the March Knitting Weekend. And yes, the stripes do match (pretty much). The hemp bag, of course, is done because it was for the spring newsletter. The Malva summer top is wonderful, it fits me perfectly, and it looks pretty darned cute on, too, if I must say so myself. Too bad it is a sample for the store! I might take it with me to wear in Indianapolis, though. And last night, I finished the very beautiful Heartstrings' "Zig Zag Mobius" scarf out of the also very beautiful Alchemy Alpaca Pure in a marvelous pink color. I love it! I almost wish it were winter -- or at least fall -- so I could wear it right away. It looks quite alluring to wear, and it feels yummy. It also will be on display at Unique One.

So now I have these other 47 projects hanging around my chair. I think I'll finish a sweater before I start a new project. I've got this worsted weight wool sweater project I'm doing in Nanny Kennedy's Seacolors yarn that is languishing because I am making it up as I go along. And, you know how that goes: I got to a point where I had to make a decision, and stopped. The sweater body is done; I just have to do the top yokes and sleeves, and needed to decide how to do them. But last night, I decided to just finish it off as a Penobscot Bay Pullover (a pattern I hand out on the knitting cruise). Once that's done, I have a little scarf I want to crochet out of new Alchemy's Silken Straw yarn -- very odd stuff, but in a good way, like yarn made out of silk grass. I also have another little summer cardigan to make for the store out of a yarn -- I think it is a wool crepe -- called "Dream". You use it doubled, on a size 7 or 8 needle. I think it will be nice, and should be a quick knit. And there's a hat, nearly done, and a pair of worsted weight alpaca socks, three-quarters done, behind my rocking chair.

I do believe my knitting bag is full again. :)

In the Bag This Week:

I'm baaaack, heh heh. Yes, I know it's been a few days since I last posted: it has been pointed out to me.

So, I thought you might like a peek into what's currently in my knitting bag. Hmmmm (rummaging around).... it looks like there are four separate projects here. With any luck, I'll soon have four completed projects, as it looks like all of them are close to being done!

Project #1:

The Unique One Spring Newsletter is going to be a little late. I fell behind in my designing, and didn't have a pattern ready to include! However, I quickly came up with an adorable little bag, very simple, pretty much two rectangles sewed together, and having a twisted-cord shoulder strap (although the shoulder strap may end up being knitted, if I decide that looks better; it might.). I'm adapting a knitting pattern called "Daisy Chain" for the textured stitch pattern of the bag, so the bag will probably be called something like the Swingy Little Daisy Chain bag, for summer. I will probably line the bag (gasp! sewing!) with denim, because the stitch pattern is quite open, so small items like dimes and pens and lip balm would fall out. If you only used the bag to carry your wallet, your cell phone, sunglasses and a large-ish bunch of keys, you wouldn't need to line it. The yarn I am using is the wonderful LaLana AllHemp 8, a dk weight, 100% hemp yarn that is fun to knit with. I really like it; it is not harsh on the hands, as I had feared it might be. And I love the colors it comes in, very earthy.

Project #2:

I LOVE this yarn. I don't usually like tape or ribbon yarns, or cotton yarns either, for that matter. I mostly just like wool. However, this is a little summer top called the "Bistro Shirt", a marvy little easy-to-knit pattern from Oat Couture. It's really easy to knit, and the pattern can be knit in worsted OR chunky weight yarn. I am using Malva, and I love the way this yarn feels as it slides through my fingers. Best of all, I love how the knitted fabric formed by the yarn retains the silky, soft feel that you get when you squeeze the ball of yarn. Usually ribbon and tape yarns feel kind of "crunchy" when you knit them up, no matter how soft they feel in the skein. This is the front of the sweater as of last Thursday; I am actually all done both the front and the back (no sleeves!) and am ready to just join it together and knit the neck.

Project #3:

The Step Sock. Again, I LOVE this yarn. It's the new sock yarn from Austermann that has aloe vera and jojoba oil right in the yarn, so it not only feels soft and springy and wonderful while you knit the sock, it will make your feet softer as you wear the socks, because the additives are retained in the yarn through 40 washings. These socks are for me, so I will let you know how the yarn works out, whether it softens feet, whether it keeps softening through 40 washings. This is the second sock of a pair, and actually since this picture was taken I have turned the heel and am at least halfway down the foot. So this little project will soon be done. Here's a free sock pattern you can download for Step sock yarn: Download the Step sock yarn pattern.(398.0K) Also, since the sock sizes are given in European sizing, you can download this shoe size conversion_chart. (28.7K)

Project #4:

I am knitting this Heartstrings pattern called the Zig-Zag Moebius -- it's a very fun pattern to knit! Learning the pattern stitch is easy and it would be a quick knit, for anyone who doesn't have 47 projects going at once and working 61 hours per week, like me. (I am not making those numbers up.) (Please feel sorry for me.) I am using one of my favorite yarns of all time, the Alchemy Yarn (how did you know it would be an Alchemy yarn? heh heh) called "Alpaca Pure", a 100% alpaca, hand painted luscious, yummy, luxurious, wonderful yarn. I am knitting this one a bit slowly on purpose, as it is the combination of a yarn and a pattern that I just don't want to be done with. This one is a sample for the store, so look for it soon.

So that's me. What are you all working on?

The Cable Thing

Three guesses what this is:

Yes, I know it's a cable. But what's it going to be, eventually? Hmmm?

I have finally gotten around to playing around with the very lovely Wendy Traditional Aran. This little item pictured above, is what I'm working on right now -- eventually it will be a pattern handed out on the June knitting cruise. Hopefully, with a matching item to go with it.

I love this yarn. It smells like a sheep. It leaves lanolin on my hands. It practically knits itself, it is so well-behaved and springy. And the cables it's making look exactly right. Now I want to design a sweater (aran, cabled, of course) in Wendy Traditional Aran -- and eventually, I will.

Now, back to my Cable Thing.

The Mitten Centerfold

Almost every knitter I have ever met has a copy of it somewhere, or they've seen a copy of it, or they've been looking to replace the copy they used to have. Here it is:

"Gloves and Mittens to Knit and Crochet for the Entire Family", currently published by Nomis, and I'm sure it was published by someone else before Nomis got it. I think it's been in publication since something like 1938. I have seen vintage copies of it with the printed price on the cover: twenty-five cents. I think it's $4.50 now. It is far and away the best, most favorite mitten pattern of knitters everywhere, and it's all because of this:

It's the centerfold to end all centerfolds, in the mitten-knitting world, anyway. "Classic Mittens and Gloves for the Entire Family", it proclaims, and it means it. Every size, from infant through large adult; directions given for both knit (flat) on 2 needles, and knit in the round on double-pointed needles. Configurations for both mittens, and gloves! All in durable, warm, worsted weight yarn. The directions are pithy, no-nonsense. Do this, fill in the number over there for your size. Follow the directions and you'll get the mittens, the good, basic, make-a-snowman in the yard mittens. Everyone grew up with these mittens. I've seen I-can't-even-tell-you-how-many copyright-infringing copies, photocopies, copied over and over from others' photocopies, well-worn, creased, wrinkled, coffee-spilled-on copies of this valued mitten pattern. Oh yeah, it's a glove pattern, too.

And that's the thing. The mitten pattern is so good, so valued, so versatile, so tried and true, that people forget about that other thing: you can make gloves with it, too. But surprisingly, they forget something else pretty amazing: that particular mitten and glove pattern book includes many other patterns for mittens and gloves. The centerfold pattern is only one little pattern in the book! Most people just figure the other patterns that fill the pages before and after the centerfold mitten pattern provide protective padding, ensuring the safety of the gem that is the centerfol pattern, which is what they want the booklet for.

A couple years ago I set out to prove, once and for all, that it is indeed possible to knit another of the patterns in that book, other than the centerfold pattern. Scary, I know, but that's the way I am, sometimes. Unfortunately, like so many of my other projects, I started it and set it aside. Today I was digging around in the office and discovered a shoe box waaaaay up on top of the office shelves. It was filled with the Mitten Book, balls of Shetland wool, and a mitten whose ribbing was all knit, and whose hand was yet to be started. I had decided to make the "Man's Fair Isle Mitten" (the picture is blurry because I forgot that my camera has a macro setting - sorry [I did remember the macro setting for the last close-up shot, though]):

"Oh look!" I said. "I remember that mitten.... " and then it took me a while to figure out what my Cunning Plan had been regarding the colors. The original colors called for in the pattern were 3 shades of brown and beige heather, white, red, and aqua. Very 1930's. I had balled up in the shoe box 3 shades of blue heather, white, dark red, and mustard yellow. Very I-don't-know-what, but there they were. And since they were all balled up and ready to go, I said "Oh well, that'll be fine, I guess." The pattern says to knit the mittens on size 2 double-pointed needles, but I noticed that I seem to have been using size 1 or 1.5 needles. Don't know why. It's probably what I had at hand when the mitten mood struck. Spontaneous mitten-knitting: it's usually safer than spontaneous combustion. Usually.

Here's what I had to work with:

So I figured out where I was in the pattern, figured out where my chosen colors should go in the chart, and proceeded to knit. I got about 8 rows done. Who knows how much I might get done on it in the next 2 years. :)

On a Luxury Fiber Kick

I finished my cashmere scarf, and it is luscious indeed. I wish you could feel it! I'll be wearing it to knitting tonight, so maybe some of my local readers can feel it. I noticed on the Wild Fibers Magazine web site that there is a cashmere workshop offered at Springtide Farm in April and in June. It looks like it's geared for people who are raising (or thinking of raising) cashmere goats -- which I am not! Hi Honey! Not thinking about getting another goat! -- so if you are one of those lucky people who own goats or are about to, it sounds like a nice workshop. I have to say, the Springtide Farms cashmere I used to knit my scarf is indescribably luscious.

Last night I knit half of a beautiful moebius scarf which is destined to be a sample for the store; the pattern is Heartstrings A76 "Mobius ZigZag". In Jackie's picture, it looks like she used some kind of textured yarn. I knew I was going to have a hard time climbing down from my cashmere high, so I am using the next best thing for my mobius: it is an alpaca, merino, and soy silk blend from a farm right here in Camden, Maine: Blueberry Farm Alpacas. This yarn is a luscious reddish-brown with silvery white highlights from the silk and the merino, and it feels SO good. It's $18.00 for 104 yards, and is a DK weight. This mobius will require 2 skeins, and you'll feel beautiful wearing it. Heck, I even feel beautiful knitting it! It's a good way to ease off the cashmere. I should be done the mobius by the March Knitting Weekend, so if you're coming to that, you'll be able to try it on. I love that Abby Fitzgerald of Blueberry Farm Alpacas not only raises her alpacas right here in Camden, but she also gets the fiber spun into yarn here in Maine as well, at The Fibre Company. The alpaca who provided the yarn for my mobius is a darling girl named Abigail Adams -- there's a picture of her by her yarn in the store. I think it is nice for customers to sort of "meet" the critter who formed the fiber.

I ran out of yarn halfway through the mobius because I had only brought home one skein of the Blueberry Farm alpaca, so I switched over to the crochet scarf I am making with the purple Frogtree Alpaca fingering weight and the beautiful hand-turned ebony crochet hook I got from Grafton Fibers. I love this project: it is beautiful but mindless; it is alpaca; it is being made with an elegant and well-balanced tool that brings me joy to look upon. I am a little over two-thirds done this scarf, and I'll be sorry to finish it. But finish it I will, and all too soon. Thank goodness, there's always another project or two (or forty-two) lying around for me to work on. :)

Oh, and Sharon in Nova Scotia, just in case you're reading this, I've even been spinning some of That Camel Fiber on my Grafton Fibers hand spindle. Yup, the camel fiber turned up again (for those of you who don't know the camel story -- it will make a good post sometime). I give up. I'll just spin it, two yards at a time on my spindle. Eventually, it WILL be gone. :)