Dorothy Marley's Journal

After a pause for bronchitis, I started in on the Cathedral Mittens again. I got all the way to the end of the first mitten, and all I have to do now is the thumb.



The decreases caused some thought and planning. I caught on pretty quick that the instructions would leave a very nice gold-black-gold three-stitch symmetrical border at the decreases. This worked great for the window pattern rows. Where it didn't work so great were the two black rows in between the window pattern. I concluded, after some squinting at my crappy black and white photocopy of the pattern (because, yes, I forgot to check while I was home and in the same room as the book), that the black rows didn't include the gold stitch. Which is fine with me, because it was enough of a pain to carry the black all the way across the row for two--count them two--stitches per round.

I'm still really pleased with how these are turning out. They're going much faster than I had ever imagined, bronchitis aside, and they're truly beautiful. I'm amazed at the work that went into developing this pattern.

Because I have nothing else to do today, such as get dressed, finish packing, help daughter do same, and drive to Atlanta, I'm going to talk a bit about my new knitting project.



I've wanted to do Lizbeth Upitis's Cathedral Mittens for fifteen years. I've been making projects out of the book Homespun Handknit for at least that long, and the Cathedral Mittens were one of the ones that had to wait a while. Thanks to Maggie Righetti's Dumb Baby Bonnet, Stupid Baby Sweater, and Baby Booties, I did have a good basic skill set, but the Cathedral Mittens were completely out of my league. Furthermore, I didn't even have access to needles small enough to knit at twelve stitches to the inch, and if I had I didn't have access to good enough yarn, either. So the mittens waited.

As the years passed, I got better at knitting, and from time to time I'd look at the Cathedral Mittens and think, "Yeah, I could probably do those now." But there was always something else to do before tackling such a finely knitted project that would be only for myself. I had, apparently, a lot of selfless knitting to get through first. And I still hadn't found any yarn that said, "Hey, remember the Cathedral Mittens? Use me!" For one thing, I really wanted to do the mittens in the actual colors from the original pattern--which I rarely do--and finding a fine yarn in just the right shades of gold, purple, blue, orange, and red that also came in black proved harder than it might seem.

A few months ago, though, events converged. I'd added 000 and 0 size needles to my tools some time ago, and had knitted a couple of projects at twelve and ten stitches to the inch, so I knew I had the dogged bloody-mindedness required. Not to mention the insanity of the 160-fish fish blanket. Then I spotted some Garnstudio Drops Alpaca black, gold, and other cathedral-esque colors, and my brain finally dredged up "Cathedral Mittens!"

( More technical stuff )

Pattern: Boo's Sparkly Socks.
Yarn: 1 100g/425m skein South West Trading Company Tofutsies (50% superwash wool/25% Soysilk fibers/22.5% cotton/2.5% chitin) in #730 (Light Foot). 1 87yd skein Lana Gatto Crystal (63% viscose/20% Nylon/17% Polyester) in #4112 (Pinks)
Needles: 2.5mm (US 1)
Gauge: 9 sts = 1"
Notes: Flush with the success of the Fixation socks, I decided to make Boo a pair of pink socks. I showed her the pink yarn I'd bought, and she asked if it was "sparkly." I said I'd see what I could do. The next day, I went back to where I'd bought the Tofutsies, and found a matching pink eyelash yarn that certainly qualified as "sparkly." (And it was on sale.) So, I cast on more stitches than I needed, added the sparkly yarn, and ribbed the cuff in sparklies. After the cuff ribbing, I reduced the stitches to a more normal circumference and just knitted a basic sock. If I had it all to do again I might not double the yarn, and I almost certainly won't rib the eyelash parts, but the effect of the cuff was exactly as I'd hoped: big and floppy and foldable down to a nice anklet, but also capable of staying up.

( More Pictures )

( More Pattern Details )

The final tally: 9 scarves, 3 hats. Not bad for two weeks work. :)

The pile of scarves is bigger, but the bucket of yarn appears no emptier. Is this some kind of new knitting physics?

I've run off eight scarves on the machine now, two for each house. I'm making a third Gryffindor scarf because I ended up with one old-style scarf and one new for each of the houses except Gryffindor, and I'd like to keep the symmetry. Besides, the first scarf I did has all the expected flaws of a prototype, and I'd like to have two non-crappy scarves for each house.

I've ordered yarn to make some Jayne hats, but I have no idea if it will arrive in a timely enough fashion. In any case, I've met my minimum Harry Potter production goal, so that's something. :)

Six days to Hypericon!

So, in light of all the serious issues surrounding fandom, fanfiction, and Livejournal, I've decided to talk about knitting. Specifically, the knitting machine, because nothing says Serious Business like a knitting machine.

( The anatomy of a knitting machine )

So far, I have completed:

4 socks (please note, I did not say "2 pairs of socks." This is an important distinction.)

1 hat

It may not seem very impressive, considering that my holiday knitting list includes:

10 more socks

1 scarf

1 hat

1 set of wrist warmers

That, or it might seem a bit premature to be knitting for the holidays in September. But my non-holiday knitting due on December 30th--a shawl for my sister's wedding--has necessitated a bit of a fore-planning this year.

To that end, I'm going for quite a few projects with larger gauges. The finished hat, for instance, was made of Colinette Prism to the gauge of 3 stitches per inch, and took me a day to make. The socks for my nieces were 8 stitches to the inch for slightly smaller than adult-sized socks, and the socks for my stepsister are hitting about 5.5 stitches per inch. They're going pretty darn fast.

The scarf should be a fairly quick project as well. I'm making Knitty's Branching Out in cashmere, which is a good project to get to use some really nice yarn without going bankrupt. The hat and wrist warmers will also take not a whole lot of time, and one pair of socks will be knit at a fairly large gauge. No worries there.

It's the last three pairs of socks that will be the time-killers. I don't have elaborate plans for either of them in terms of stitch patterns, but they'll be knitted at around 8-10 stitches per inch, and that will take time. Also, two pairs have to be finished for Chanukah (gee, I wonder what Boo and Albert are getting this year?), which ends on (I think) December 22nd this year.

Still, it's only September 23rd. That's three months. No need to panic. Yet.

I decided on Wednesday that I needed to make my mother some doilies for her birthday. She plays bridge every Monday, and when she hosts she buys the little paper doilies to put under the snacks and so on. Well, I hadn't had any ideas about what to do for her birthday and was going to just get her a book when the words "knit" and "doily" collided in my head.

( Little old lady lace knitters are not to be messed with )

I finished the replacements for a pair of cursed socks tonight, ones I started at least five times and then found out were too small. So, I put the obviously cursed yarn away and did another pair for Al using Lane Cervinia Forever Jacquard, in a blue, gray, black, and white colorway. I like it a lot more than most self-patterning sock yarns because the colors change more quickly, especially the short bits where the colors are supposed to mimic alternating stitches. Plus, it's slightly cheaper.

I immediately started on a pair of socks for Boo that I'd been dying to get started. I bought a skein of Schaeffer's Anne in a bright pink, red, orange, and purple colorway, just the thing for the discerning toddler. When I say "immediately," of course, what I mean is "immediately after winding 560 yards of fine sock yarn into a ball by hand." (The alcohol had nothing to do with the fact that it took me something like two hours to accomplish this.)

Because the Anne is a bit thinner than the sock yarns I'd been using, I had to go down from the 0's I'd used for Al's socks to a some 00's. This isn't really a problem, except that the only 00's I have are two sets of steel double-pointed needles. Again, not a problem, because I've knitted fifty billion pairs of mittens and hat tops on double-points, no big deal. And, yay, I have two sets, so I can still work on both socks at once, which is my preferred method.

Well, okay. So it's been probably six or seven years since I've actually used double-pointed needles, not since I learned about the technique of knitting on two circulars and let out a whoop of joy at the thought of never laddering again. It didn't take me long to invest in a duplicate set of circulars, and I've never looked back. I still carry my double-points around because they're very useful for picking up and fixing, but I haven't actually knitted in the round with them for some time.

So far, I've knitted one (1) round. It didn't take long for it all to come back to me, the needles sticking every which way and flopping around, the winding the yarn around the wrong needles, the dropping the emptied needle under the desk five times. Plus, these are, in case I haven't mentioned, very thin needles. Very thin, 7" long needles, which is an inch longer than the ones I'd normally use, on a project that's 2" shorter around than the average adult sock, which means that there's a lot more extra pointy bits waving around than I'm used to.

Still, one round down, and while it's not quite the whizzing along I can manage on two circulars, the enjoyment of working with double-pointed needles is still there. Plus, I don't have to worry about whipping my needle around and smacking a cat in the face like I do when I change from one circular to the other. There's always a bright side, after all.

Inspired by a Blogspot meme, here are my current knitting Un-Finished Objects, such as they are.

1. The Seaweed Afghan From Hell. I don't know if I'll ever finish this. It's an enormous afghan done in--you guessed it--a pattern called Seaweed. I started it in 1997, and it's the only project left from the Great UFO Finishing Drive of 2006. I'm still thinking I might just bind it off where it is and call it a lap robe.

2. St. Brigid Sweater. Moving along quite well. I've got the back almost done, just one more pattern repeat to go.

3. Al's socks. Proceeding apace. For a while the purse sock was way ahead of the computer sock, but I started toting the latter around and now they're about even. (I keep one sock at the computer and work on it while waiting for web pages to load--yes, I'm on dial-up. The other I carry around in my purse for working on while chasing Boo around the library and waiting in line, etc.) Both socks are now about two inches away from the toe decreases.

And, er, that seems to be it. I suppose I could count the Sweetpea dress I started and then ripped out, since I still intend to make it, but seeing as it's currently in the state of "piled in a heap of yarn bobbins," it's more an Un-Done Project than Un-Finished.

I am, at long last, knitting a sweater for myself. I've lusted after the St. Brigid sweater in Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting for many years, and today cast on to begin the back.

That may sound simple, but there were a number of factors that made said cast-on something of a triumph.

( Remember, gauge is important. Really. )

Onward and upward!

The first time I made a fish blanket, I thought it came out puckered and wavy because I had used two different weights of yarn and tried to make them match with different needle sizes. This was, apparently, not the case. I'm not quite to the end of the first row, and already I see puckered fish in my future.

It's possible that this is due to the fact that the seams are crocheted, not knitted. I'm capable of crocheting, but I'm not terribly experienced and I may be committing some basic crocheting error with the tension or the twists of the stitches and not be able to correct it because I can't see it. Or it could just be that the destiny of this creation is not to lie flat.

One thing that seems to have helped already is to move up two hook sizes. I knit pretty loosely, and typically drop down two needle sizes to get to a suggested gauge. I finally theorized that this doesn't mean that I crochet as loose as I knit, and maybe I should use the crochet hook I *would* use if I were knitting to an "average" gauge. Or something. Anyway, it seems to be helping a bit.

Most important news first: Boo's been standing on her own! She's not taking steps or anything, but she can let go and stand up on her own pretty good.

I discovered this a couple of days ago, when she was standing holding on to her World Conquest Command Center (one of those little Fisher-Price table thingies with the knobs and shapes) with one hand and holding a toy in the other. I offered her an apple-flavored wagon wheel, which she wanted, but for which she wasn't about to relinquish the toy. So, she let go of the Command Center, got the wagon wheel, and stood there to eat it. The only downside was that I couldn't get to the video camera before she sat down.

Froze 14 cups of bananas last night. The local international market sells bananas for 25 cents a pound, and I got over 12 pounds. 14 cups of Gerber bananas cost $34. I paid less than $4 for the ones I froze. *Pets freezer*

Updated my knitting gallery on the website. It's been about four years since I added new pictures, and most of the stuff up there is older than that now. This update is something of a monument to geekhood. There's a Dr. Who scarf (and the pattern), a Predators scarf, and a hat with Earth's Stargate address knitted on it. When knitting and geeking collide....

( Saturday Gaming Report )

Edited to fix cut tag. I always forget the quotation marks....