Jon's Knit Blog

Ebony and Ebony!

Well, turns out that String carries the ebony DPNs, and they had the 2.5mm size in stock, and for not much more than Herrschners. So I picked up a set yesterday on my way into work and now I can take the Waving Lack SIP (sock-in-progress!) to Texas with me.

My flight's at 1:30pm, so no time for blogging... I have to go pick up the laundry and decide which things to shove into a suitcase.

I'll be posting intermittently between now and my return on May 8th. Don't miss me too much!

My, How You've Grown

Well, I sucked it up since I couldn't work on my lovely lavender sock, and I really wanted to save the Noro for the vacation. I picked up PPD. Finished the back, and finished the armhole shaping on one of the fronts. Still have to finish the neck shaping and the tank strap there and then the rest of the other front... which will be followed by the lengthy process of picking up the 320 stitches for the edging. I can do that. After all, I already did this:

A question regarding shaping from a guy who really doesn't "get" how garments fit women: Will this cover my sister's tatas? It damn well better!

On another note, a BIG thank you to everyone who went to Washington DC for the March yesterday. I'm so proud of you all, and I really wish I could have been there with you. One of my all-time top memories was when I Marched in 1993 for Gay Les Bi rights. I'll never forget that. And I hope none of you will ever forget what you accomplished in Washington DC this weekend.

Not Good

So I was socking along last night... and "Snap."

That's the problem with the small DPNs, at least in my world. Well, I never had one break before, but I have had a lot of bamboo ones bend something stupid. It's a shame, because now the sock is on hold until I get another set of these needles. And I was really in a nice groove with the pattern. Things were coming along so nicely.

The bright side? I started playing with the Kureyon. And my biggest fears about it, turns out, were not an issue. It felt very scratchy to me in the skein, but it feels a lot softer when being knit. The yarn doesn't seem to be of the highest quality, though: it, too, broke once, and the yarn, in general, just doesn't feel well spun. Eh, maybe that's just part of its fun. And at least in this particular colorway (40), the colors are lovely.

Still, my vacation knitting plans are now up in the air, because I was relying on the Waving Lace as a main part of the fun. I'm planning on taking two scarves (the Kureyon, and the Seed Stitch Colinette Prism scarf that's been on the back burner for ages), but I need something else, too. Maybe I should take the eBay silk and play with it. Trouble with it is I don't even know what needles I need for it...

Well, I'll keep you posted anyhow.

Now In Cucumber Melon

Ever since I saw the ad on TV, and I have no clue what it's about, I just wanted to say that.

Anyhow, cute story... I work as a hotel concierge here in NYC, and yesterday, two women came up and looked me straight in the eye and said, "Do you know any knitting stores?"

I was all, "Oh, you asked the RIGHT person!" and proceeded to give them quite the lecture on the various knitting stores in New York City. I ended up directing them to Purl, Downtown Yarns, and Knit NY. I hope they had fun!

In other news, I would like to just congratulate Avem for her cable-fix-a-thon. I can't believe what she did... have you seen it?

So How Long Will This Vacation Be?

I met a friend this afternoon, and a big chunk of my afternoon ended up involving iced tea and sitting with the Waving Lace sock-in-progress at Knit NY. I got an entire pattern rep done.

Then at home tonight, I did another half-repeat. And we're here:

I thought it was going to be my 'vacation' project but it's moving way more quickly than I anticipated. My other sock-in-progress is moving much more slowly.

See Other Blog

I just wrote about the play I saw tonight over at my non-knit blog. Please take a look, and consider seeing the play if you're able.

Vacation Knitting

So my excuse was, "I'm going on a trip in a week and I need to have a trip-worthy project. Easily portable. One color of yarn. Simple pattern I don't have to think about."

Well, two out of three ain't bad.

It's the Waving Lace Sock... well, at least it's the first 9 rows of the Scalloped Edging for it. It's a challenging pattern in that it's an actual lace pattern. Yarn overs. Decreases that are never in quite the same place. And there's some sock patterning thrown in there too, just to confuse me. So you sock experts out there, prepare for me to send you frantic "Please help me" emails. Actually, I think I can pretty much figure it out for myself.

Loving the Shepherd Sock so far (Thanks, Matt), and I'm using some 2.5mm ebony dpns which I (think I) got from Herschnerrs.

OK, so the real reason I started the socks? I really wanted to wind some yarn. I was at the opera this evening (think "Don Giovanni" at the Met Opera) and for some reason, in Act Two, I was fixating on my Colinette yarn for the BGWA. Plus, I knew that the lovely Rowanspun DK for the Tumbling Blocks pillow (hooray for being a Rowanette. And I have to say, I can't blame anyone who's joining the Audrey-a-long that's starting up. Bee-uuuuuu-ti-ful sweater!) had arrived today and would eventually need winding... But I really want to finish a couple things before I "allow" myself to start either of those projects, so I figured I could allow myself a sock.

Interesting side note about the opera -- I was reading my Lonely Planet "Britain" book during the intermission, and the woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, "I couldn't help but notice that you were looking at the page about Wales. Don't go to Wales. It's terrible. All they have is a bunch of sheep." Exactly!

And now I can allow myself to sleep, happy in the knowledge that I am going to meet up with someone who I hope will become a friend... and as I am meeting him at a LYS, perhaps I can bring him over to the fibery side.

[A post script: I did knit a bunch on PPD this afternoon -- I separated for the back neck. So it's not exactly on the back burner or anything.]

Holy Crop Top, Batman!

I was planning what I was going to call this blog entry for a couple days. "Divide and Conquer." "Separate but Equal." et cetera...

But then I actually divided PPD for the front and back, and all the stitches that were bunched up on my Addi Turbo unbunched and started to look a little nicer. And I knit the armhole shaping and the first 13 rows of the back, and I reveled in the fact of how much faster it is when there's only one section to knit, and there are no little "seed stitch faux seams" and stuff like that getting in the way. And then I decided I was done for the night.

So I laid the mess-o-knitting out on the sofa, across a yummy black silk chenille blanket I bought last year in Bangkok last summer, and I realized that this big chartreuse piece of whatever it is...

...actually looks like it's a real live garment. (Or at least a decent portion of a garment)!

Send a Message

The March for Choice is this weekend.

I can't be there, myself.

Rachael will be there. My mom and dad and sister will be there. And my message will be there.

Your message can be there, too: Message a Marcher.

Thank you.

More Stars. More!

So I'm about to go split the fronts from the back on PPD.

But in the interim, partly inspired by the fact that Emma is having an "unofficial" St*rmore-along and the fact that I found a really cute pattern on Virtual Yarn and the fact that I don't already have enough things to knit and the fact that I have an extraordinarily cute young'un in the family who I'll be visiting (hopefully) later this summer, I ordered a kit for this:

Tell me that's not cute.

Of course, now I'll get addicted to St*rmore-y things, too, which I don't need, but whatever. Should we take any bets on how long it takes me to order this?

PPD photos soon. Really. And if I hadn't had to spend three extra hours at work tonight, there'd probably be a photo already. Blame my boss. Really. It's her fault.

The Knitful Leftorium

So last night at work, I was trying to teach a colleague how to knit. She actually picked up the knit stitch OK, but trying to show her how to purl didn't go quite so well.

Turns out, she's a lefty and I'm a righty. Any advice on how to best teach her? Or should I refer her to an LYS with a lefty-teacher?

Not Worth Photographing

Although it looks lovely in my newly installed OttLite, and it's growing at a nice rate, and tomorrow I'll get to the fronts/back separation, PPD isn't really any different looking from the last time I photographed it. Maybe tomorrow, when the fronts and backs go their seperate ways, it might merit a shot or two...

So instead, I thought I'd just be silly and give you this link, which is the first site to come up when you Google the words, "Pretty Sweater."

In other news, I will be going out of town from April 27 to May 8. I'll be in Houston, Austin and San Antonio. I need to plan my "travel knitting." I'm thinking that the Waving Lace socks might be the way to go, but it might also be nice to take the Kureyon and start the Multidirectional Scarf. The thing about the Kureyon, though, is that it just doesn't feel all that nice and soft against my hands. I know a lot of people love this yarn, but isn't it kind of... coarse? Anyhow, any and all opinions re which project deserves a trip to Texas are most welcome.

The Funny Thing Is...

So a lot of people seem to have something to say about the Colinette yarn I recently purchased for BGWA. And as has been clearly demonstrated by most of the project photos in this blog, I really have a passion for vibrant colors. So I'm really rather astonished that no one has had anything to say about the fact that, given all the gorgeous colors created by Colinette, I went and purchased the all Ecru throw kit. In fact, all the yarn I purchased at Knit A Round is in shades of Ecru, so it was an extraordinary purchase for me.

But I have my reasons. After all, they're all for bridal purposes. The yarn I now know to be a lambswool/cashmere blend from China, as well as the Kid Seta, these two are for bridal shawl purposes on behalf of my sister, so color is not quite the right thing there, and as for the AbFab Throw Kit, I think that the Ivory kit makes a really elegant wedding present. I'm thinking that the scallops pattern from their book is the way to go, by the way... this is a modified feather and fan pattern. (And I'm quite pleased to see that the price I paid is less than the one I found when I did a websearch to track it down. I do think, upon examination, that if I make another one of these, which is 95% likely since Anne has threatened me with the curse of the AbFabAfghanAddict, it will be in the Rhapsody in Blue colorway.

Have no fear, though, I have not merely been finding Colinettey links for you. I did get some knitting done. I made it through 6 rows on PPD last night, and I'm getting dangerously close to the front/back separation, at which point it will grow much faster. The thing about this pattern which will suck, though, will be picking up the stitches around the front edge. The pattern calls for having over 300 stitches on the needle, which have to be worked in seed stitch, then two rows of k1, sl 1 wyif. Then the stitches have to be alternated between two needles before a kitchener stitch bind-off is executed. That may not be the only thing getting executed around here... But I really do want to finish PPD before I get too involved in anything else. I've been having a very tough time not playing with my Colinette, though...

In other news, I have my summer vacation dates approved now from work (Augst 3 - 22) and the United Kingdom is looming in my horizon, largely because I want to visit Zach, the soon-to-be one year old son of my first cousin, which makes him either my second cousin or my first cousin once removed. Either way, he's an astonishingly cute baby and he looks super gorgeous on the blanket I made him, which was, I do believe, my first F.O. It's a honeycomb garter stitch blanket in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. And the most gorgeous baby ever, no?

So when I'm in England, I'm thinking of making my way to Wales. I head that the Colinette mill shop is quite the experience - and that one can get one's hands on yarn for quite the lovely price at Ye Olde Mill Shoppe... Anyone with any personal knowledge?

Spring Has Sprung

Which means that my allergies are in full swing! This meant that last night, I didn't really feel like knitting a stitch. I contemplated winding the Ecru Colinette yarn for the BGWA, but didn't even do that. I just went to bed.

Note, though, that I'm not a total waste -- I did manage to knit a few rows on PPD on Thursday evening... and it still appears to be on gauge! Yay...

Now, where is my Allegra?

Performance Art

Anne asks us to do the following:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the sentence in your journal with these instructions.

"In this case, Evelyn Soder didn't have the cash on hand for the bond."
(The book is Hard Eight by Janet Evanovich. These are the most hilarious mystery books you will find.)

Oops.

Why do I keep succumbing? I went home to visit my mother, and she said, "Oh, there's a yarn store in Ann Arbor. Do you want to go there?"

"Sounds fun."

How fun? Well, who was it who warned me about the Colinette "Absolutely Fabulous" kits? Sorry, but I did not heed your advice.

Which is a detail of this:

This kit will be made into a wedding afghan/throw for my friend Jason and his fiance, Brad. It will be referred to as the Big Gay Wedding Afghan, or BGWA for short. Look for it coming soon, as the wedding is in September.

And you would have thought that would be enough. But you would be wrong. Because before I called Jason to enquire if an off-white throw/afghan would be acceptable, I had already discussed lacemaking with the nice people of Knit-A-Round in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Because I had been, with my mother, discussing the planning of the wedding shawl I intend to make for my sister. (He bought the ring, so the engagement is impending and the lacey thing needs to be contemplated.) And I advised that I had some silk at home waiting for the project but wanted to look at some books and patterns. I ended up with this:

Yes, the box has some strange Japanese looking words on it (and lots of smaller Japanese text. And a picture of some sheepy creatures.

But look what it has on the inside:

It's cashmere. It's laceweight. It's yummy. And I even made up a little swatch so that I could (a) see what it's like to knit with and (b) show Mom what it looks like when it's made into lace and (c) place on top of my black pillow and photograph for you all to make nice comments about. Remember, this is my FIRST lace. Be gentle.

And to ensure that I don't go blind trying to create more of this stuff, I purchased an Ott Light! Yay. I decided you probably don't need to see a photograph of my new light. Hope you don't mind.

So yes, it's all fun. Tons of fun. Especially for the fool who has to pay the credit card bill this will come on. And for the idiot who's going to have to knit it all up. Oh wait... I get the bill and this is my yarn. Ooops!

T.G.M.I.F.

Thank God Mercury Is Finished:

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a lovely scarf, and I got many kudos today at Knit NY when I took it in to discuss details of weaving in loose ends with ribbon yarn show it off.

The question now is, which of my many WIP's do I pick back up? I assume it's going to be PPD. We'll all find out soon!

In the meantime, I'm going back to Ohio tomorrow morning, and I won't be back home til Thursday. So whatever knitting I take with me had better be easy travel knitting (and I don't really think any of my current WIP's are all that simple, so I may take the Kureyon I recently purchased and start a multidirectional scarf even though it's getting to be spring...)

Almost There

So I'm into the final blue (ok, lapis) square of the Mercury Scarf. I'll finish it tomorrow. Then I just have to weave in a few loose ends and I'll have a new scarf to wear. It's really drapey and heavier than I thought it'd be, but I think it's interesting how the colors go together. I'll have a pic of the FO for you tomorrow, if all goes according to plan!

Hope you all had a fabulous Easter, except for you Passover-celebrators, in which case I hope that the matzoh doesn't have you too constipated.

P2tog tbl

Today's entry is named in honor of a rather bizarre decrease that I think I finally understand. The problem with so many of these decreases is that they just don't show you enough pictures of the process to be able to figure out what they're doing in any of the knitting books. I swear, I was never entirely sure how to do a YO until I saw Theresa's Tech Knit on YF then K...

Anyhow, I've been knitting away. And some purling, too. No P2tog tbl's lately, but I have finally figured out (I think) the right way to do it if I have to in the future.

I've been knitting, though, some. I started an intarsia afghan square (I made a diamond shape and will photo when the square is done), and I also am almost done with the Popsicle Colinette Mercury. Two more blocks to go, and I will be praising the powers that be that I am done with this yarn. I mean, I love it, it's beautiful, and I love the colors. But I just am so sick of this yarn. I have knit other Colinette yarns before (I am particularly a fan of Colinette Prism, recall my seed stitch scarf and my hated top down raglan), and I have some Point 5 sitting around waiting for a project. I'm also coveting one of the beautiful needlepoint kits they have on their site. Theresa made one of these kits, and it's really quite lovely. They're evidently not easy to get in the States, though. I have a relative in London, but she's rather busy with an 8 month old baby (yes, I knit him a blanket when he was born), so I don't want to ask her. Hopefully I'll be going to London for a bit this summer, and maybe I can just get them to ship it to the hotel... Or maybe I can visit the mill shop... bwahahahahah...

In other news, it's my "regular" blog's 1 year blogiversary today!

Restraint

I have more yarn than I know what to do with. Actually, I know what I want to do with most of it, but you know what I mean. I think my stash has its own stash.

So tell me, please, why do I have this alarming desire to plan my day around going to a yarn store?

4/7 of a Scarf

I made it through the rest of the first skein of cardinal, all the Neptune as well as the Floretina.

Here is a close-up, which has decent-ish color representation...

The yarn, while lovely, is, as I have said before, truly a pain to work with. It will create a great spring/fall scarf. I love the weight of it and the way it drapes, and the colors are lovely. But winding it?

Here are the instructions from the "ball" band:

"Mercury by name: mercury by nature. This yarn is liquid and will flow into its own form and tangle if set free. So be in control! Undo label and holding the yarn by the ties place over the back of a chair. Wind into a ball: do not attempt to wind this on a yarn swift. Place in a small plastic bag and tie the back tightly around the ball. Punch a hole in the plastic and feed yarn end through. You are now ready to get knitting tangle-free..."

Yeah right. Granted, I haven't used a plastic bag, but I tried a sock. (I didn't even FIND these instructions until the winding of the fourth ball.) The sock didn't work great. There is another problem besides the liquid nature of the yarn, which is the fact that the ribbon yarn is hypersensitive to being twisted, so you basically have to stop knitting every few rows and un-twist the section between the knitting and the ball.

For the next skein, I'm going to try leaving it on the ball winder and just "unwinding" it from there directly to my knitting fingers. Still, I'll probably have to rewind it a couple times. Heck, I had to wind the second and third skein three times each, and luckily the fourth skein only once. Oddly enough, the first skein, once I got it wound, knit up fairly cleanly. Let's hope the rest are more like the first... And let's hope that the next time I choose a project to be "simply mindless knitting," it really is.

PS: Isn't it ironic that I'm posting this entry, called "4/7 of a scarf" on 4/7? Hehe...

Living Up to Your Name

Mercury is supposed to be the god of speed. Well, Colinette's version does not live up to this appelation. It is quite the slow, difficult yarn to work with. The skein takes about as long to wind and deal with as it does to knit. I'm muddling through, though, and will take a photo for you later this evening...

Don't Tell!

OK, it's a secret, and I'm really rather too embarassed to have anyone know, but middle of last week, I actually bought more yarn. It was Wednesday, and I had to visit a relative in a hospital on 19th Street. And of course I had just found out about a knit shop on 14th Street so I had to stop in. And I fell in love with the look and feel of this stuff called Colinette Mercury. I bought three skeins, not really worring about the fact that that probably wasn't enough yardage to build a real scarf.

Well, I got the stuff home and wanted to play with it, so I attempted to wind the first skein. Can I just tell you it was the most difficult skein of yarn I ever had to mess with? That is, until I got to the second skein... The yarn is a knitted 100% viscose ribbon/tape. It's very slippery and has quite a sheen to it, which means that if you touch the "yarncake" once it has been wound, it falls apart. And gets tangled. Man, does this yarn know how to tie itself into knots. So it's a good thing that I decided to only wind one skein at a time.

It's not a good thing that I had to take the yarn back down to the knitting store because I realized that my orginal design scheme would neccesitate an additional four skeins of yarn if I wanted this scarf to actually be scarf-length. And in the taxi, the wound ball unwound itself. I spent some time at the shop rewinding it, but the course of getting it home (and leaving it, undisturbed, in its bag, in my locker at work) did not make the yarn happy. I have successfully disentangled it once again, but the problem now that has arisen is that the yarn has really decided to twist itself rather fiercely. So rather than wind the yarn into a ball, I have wound it around a piece of cardboard, and I am just knitting a few stitches and then unwinding the next bit... Luckily, I'm almost done with this skein and then can move onto the next skein -- which I will wind and knit within rapid succession so that I do not have to move the next ball. And I will probably use a sock as a makeshift "yarn-bra" since I, as a man, have no bras sitting around the apartment. Yarn or otherwise.

I do have this, though:

Which will soon be joined by this:

The colorways, as they will be placed in blocks across the finished scarf, are:
Lapis, Cardinal, Popsicle, Florentina, Neptune, Cardinal, Lapis.

Now can someone please help me figure out what I have to do to stop buying yarn and actually finish something?

On Corrections

This is funny. Quite droll, in fact.

I just went to the Vogue Knitting Corrections Page because there was a pattern I had a little question about. Even though I read through it, there was something I thought was poorly written, so I figured it might be posted as a correction/clarification.

But what I found out instead is that on their Corrections page, VK hasn't even spelled "Knitting" properly. They prefer "Kintting." I about fell out of my chair!

Now the question is, do we tell them about it?

The Tale of the Alchemist's Sleeve

So I should be working on PPD. I should be working on a lot of other things... but instead, I have six inches of sleeve # 1 on the Alchemy Synchronicity Crew.

Click here for a close-up shot. I am really enjoying the intarsia so far... let's hope that when I get to the more "complicated" panels that I keep enjoying it. And yes, I am designing my own intarsia design here, using a pre-exisiting sweater pattern (although for a slightly different gauge, so I guess I'm totally making it up as I go along.

Don't worry, though, I have lots of other projects to distract me throughout the process!

Eternal Sunshine of the Flawless Knitters

So I saw "Eternal Sunshine..." last night and am mentioning it here because there was some wonderful knitwear in the film. In fact, it's the first movie I've seen in a while where I really noticed that there was a lot of really wonderfully knitted clothing. I was particularly amused by Jim Carrey's "Galaxy" sweater, not that I'd ever want to make it, but it did give me a chuckle.

Yesterday's other highlight was meeting Kay to hand off some afghan squares. Kay is, simply, a fabulous woman, and it was quite lovely to discuss knitting (and a few other topics) with her.

I also got a bit of knitting done yesterday as well. I knit a row or two on my current sock project - in public, in the Whole Foods Cafe while waiting for Kay - which is coming along. I also picked up that lovely red cuff from yesterday and was moving nicely into the intarsia portion. I was on the fifth stockinette row in the sleeve when I noticed the knitting wasn't moving along the way it was supposed to, and I realized that the brass "flange" which eases the transition from the plastic portion to the ebony portion had become separated and was no longer doing its job. So I'll take the needle back this morning before I go to work which, while it'll be easy to do, will be an extra $5 or $6 for a taxi as I do not forsee having time to walk the entire way.

And I wrote a bunch more stuff but MT went all garbagey on me, and I don't feel like resuscitating it right now. Over the weekend, maybe...

See Jon Knit. Knit, Jon! Knit!

Even though I spent a good chunk of the day running errands and such like, I did manage to get this out from the needles:

It's that variegated Primo, on #8 ebony DPNS. The pattern for each diamond is:
|O|||||O|
|O|||O|
|O|O|
if you know what that means. It's right in the middle. I didn't get the cast-on exactly right, and I didn't do enough extra stitches in the bind-off, so the garter stitch edging pulls up and in... making this look like a yarn dish as much as an afghan square, but the yarn is pretty and I learned something! And it's likely that if someone who's a good blocker gets their hands on this piece of knittage that it could turn out to be relatively flat!

But just so I'm not solely in afghan square mood, I started in on the Synchronicity. I'm adapting a pattern from the Jaeger book I bought a few weeks ago. Granted, the pattern is for a simple crew neck, but I'm going to do some funky intarsia between the self-striping and the solid yarn. If all goes well with my evil plan, a lovely sweater for moi should result.

What do we have so far? A cuff!

"Hey, I may be just a cuff, but I'm drinking milk, and one day I'll have a whole sweater coming out of me and I'll be big enough to beat you up."