pepperknit

A Detour is a choice between two tasks, each with its own pros and cons. In this Detour, teams have a choice between two methods common to knitters: Chart It or Read It.

In Chart It, teams will take a pattern out of Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting Patterns, which is written in a row-by-row, spelled-out manner, and convert it into a chart. The pattern as it’s written does not account for being worked in the round, and teams must write the chart so that it can be read this way. The task is challenging but ultimately rewarding, though it could take a long time.

In Read It, teams will take the same pattern out of Barbara Walker’s Treasury of Knitting Patterns, do a swatch to familiarize themselves with the pattern, and simply use the printed pattern as a guide. The task is not as rewarding, could still take some time, but may be slightly less challenging.

“I think we should just Read It. It’s too complicated to write up a chart like this, especially since it’s not obvious where those extra 4 stitches the pattern requires (’multiple of 8 plus 4′) are.”

“No, I think we should Chart It. Charts are so pretty, so straightforward, and if I wanted to write the pattern up for this sock later, it would be really useful. I’ll just keep drawing out the pattern until I can figure out how to place each stitch correctly.”

“Alright Minty, if that’s what you want. But even though you’ve read the Knitty tutorial on charting and Eunny’s Majoring in Lace series, I’m not sure you are familiar enough with charts to make this work. Plus those resources don’t really give step-by-step directions for how to write out a complex pattern. You might need to go look at some actual books on lace.”

“I’ll make it work. I’m spatially oriented! I adore graph paper! I can do this. I’ll just do it—why stop to gather more resources? It’s important for me to learn, anyway. Isn’t part of this Lace about me growing as a knitter?”

The team sits down with graph paper, pencil, eraser, and the pattern book.

Multiple attempts . . . different techniques . . . getting no closer.

“Oh my god! The stitch count changes on every row. No wonder I can’t make it all line up right! I have no idea what I’m doing. I know there’s a ‘no stitch’ often used in lace charts, but how do I know where to place it? Where’s the ‘extra’ stitch? I can’t do this. Sock yarn, there’s no way I can do this! It just makes no sense! I’ve tried. I’ve tried! Nothing lines up. And when I go to knit it, I can see where the stitches go, but I can’t seem to find them on the chart. (Really: I can ‘read’ the knitting itself but can’t make it into a readable chart for some reason.) My brain is going to explode!”

Go to slow-mo to heighten the drama before cutting to commercial. Will Minty pull out what remains of her hair? Will she manage to figure out this stupid detour? She’s going to have to break for some extensive research. Hopefully, in true Amazing Race style, when we come back from the commercial break we’ll discover that all the drama was an editor’s manipulation: Of course she was going to figure it out. (”Um, I’m not so sure!”—Minty)

This weekend was the wedding for which I knit Kiri. We drove down to Lexington, Virginia, super-early on Saturday morning and just returned yesterday afternoon, after a whirlwind of work by us in the wedding party: bridal shower, rehearsal dinner, wedding planning, organizing centerpieces, carting tables, doing hair, seeking the groom’s lost car keys, etc. (The keys were found by a bridesmaid, after hours of concentrated searching all over the property the morning of the wedding day, in a trash bag from the rehearsal dinner. Everyone cheered!) The wedding was atop a mountain in the Blue Ridge mountains and was positively gorgeous—the weather was unparalleled.

I did wear Kiri at the reception, and she provided warmth against the cool mountain air, but it seems no pictures of me with it on were taken with my camera. Of course, I was so sloppy drunk, I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to just ask for a photo. But it turns out when they were helping me down the hill after the reception, my boyfriend grabbed it for me, because I found pictures like this on the camera later. (Did I take this? I do not know, as I have absolutely no recollection of the walk down the hill.)

As for knitting while on the trip, I knit only a little on the way down (I drove the majority of the way). But on the ride back, despite being exhausted, I knit for a few hours. Here’s the progress I made . . .

What is it, you wonder? Why, it’s the third Sunrise Circle Jacket, of course! I couldn’t quite believe it when I made the decision to pack only it. (Wool of the Andes in Chocolate brown.) But it’s my most mindless project these days, and with straight-up stockinette, it couldn’t be beat for car knitting (since I don’t really have to look). I considered knitting the sleeve in the round to avoid that little bit of seaming later, but my needles aren’t big enough for either magic loop or lazy loop. I started it on Saturday, but I’m not sure how keen I am to keep working on it!

Welcome to this first episode of a race through several lace socks, here on The Amazing Lace.

“Hi, I’m Mintyfresh. I’m from Philadelphia, PA. (I also just got my hair cut today and yoiks it’s shorter than I wanted, and I’m freaking out.)”

“Hi! I’m some sock yarn. I’m originally from Italy, actually. Please tell Minty that her hair looks just fine.”

“So yeah, we’re doing the Amazing Lace. This is going to be the adventure of a lifetime.”

“We haven’t really been together for very long, you know, so this will be a real test to see where our relationship is going to go.”

“I think that our relationship is just going to get stronger and stronger as the Lace progresses; we are allies in this. By the end of the Amazing Lace, we may have 3 or 4 pairs of lace socks*!”

“One of our weaknesses is, I think, that Minty doesn’t really know what the hell she’s doing. I mean, she’s decided to apply lace patterns she likes (from the Barbara Walker Treasuries 1 and 2) to making socks (based on the useful Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch), but one of her big problems is the tendency to overanalyze. She’s going to be knitting me up and ripping me out repeatedly this summer, I fear.”

“You’re right, sock yarn, you’re right! I’m going to work really hard on this part of myself. I think that not only will this Lace teach me a lot about working with lace, and socks, but it will teach me a lot about myself. I need to just go with the flow, commit to one idea, and see it through. But there are so many different laces that call out to me.”

“I think that other teams are going to underestimate us, because we don’t have a really long history with each other.”

“It’s true; I’ve only ever been with one other pair of lace socks before. Not only is this a test of my ability to successfully do lace, it’s a test of my ability to overcome Second Sock Syndrome.”

“You’d better not have SSS! I was designed to be a pair of socks.”

“Sock yarn’s right. In the end, it will be just me and the socks standing at the finish line. That’s all that really matters.**”

*using different sock yarns, of course; not just Essential. We’re on a bit of a relay here.
**gibberishy overstatements and hyperbole courtesy every contestant of The Amazing Race, ever.

Last night I tooled around with a gift for my friend LK’s baby. LK is perhaps a bigger Buffy fan than I am; she owns all 6 seasons on DVD, whereas I stalled out at the first 3 (and she bought me season 3!). Now, I don’t know if the baby will be a boy or a girl, but I think she’ll like a Buffy-themed gift even if she has a boy—maybe he’ll grow up to have all the good qualities of, say, Xander (but not the dumb ones).

So I knit up a baby-sized Mr. Pointy.

I’m also giving her this Buffy toy. This package cracks me up, especially because it “Includes Rocket Launcher, and Right Arm of the Judge.” (So this is early Buffy; season 2.)

I took notes while I knit up Mr. Pointy, in case someone else wanted to make one, but honestly it’s not something that really needs a pattern. Here’s a vague pattern for what I did, which took about an hour to do:

Mr. Pointy
Yarn: Lana Gatto Wool Gatto, in brown (or pick whatever you have on hand)
Needles: US 3 circular for I-cord and magic loop (or dpns)

Stuff as you go—it’s easier.

• Cast on 3 stitches; work I-cord for 5 rows
• Start randomly increasing stitches—don’t increase evenly around. A stitch here, a stitch there, maybe 3 here, 2 there. Be erratic.
• Knit even for a few rows between increases.
• On some increase rows, increase several in one spot and decrease (k2tog) a little later in the row. (Mr. Pointy is kind of gnarled when Kendra gives it to her; this makes the effect more erratic and gnarled.)
• Continue until it’s about 4 inches long, or the length you’d like. If you make it longer, keep increasing as you go so it feels proportional.
• Increase until you have an even number of stitches.
• At the end, k2tog around
• Knit one row even
• k2tog around
• k2tog around again, if you want
• Break yarn, draw through, and hide the end inside the toy.

I’m quite happy with the result, and it continues my budding trend of giving completely weird and seemingly useless gifts to expecting friends. I originally thought I’d be making a sweater or something else for this kiddo, but I’m going to see the parents this weekend at a wedding, and I wanted to give something now. Plus this is so LK-inspired, I have to do it!

Both Goodkarma and Laura asked me about picking a size for the Sunrise. Here’s what I told them:

My mom is a 34″ bust, and the 33.5″ was so snug the jacket fronts wouldn’t have overlapped much at all. The 35″ will, hopefully, give her an extra inch or two of overlap.

My bust measures about 35″ around (with clothes on; bra is 34 band) and the 35″ jacket felt too snug to me; the fronts don’t overlap much and the sleeves are too tight (my arms are very average-sized). So when I make one for myself, I’ll make the 37″. This is a jacket, after all, and I’ll wear a shirt underneath it.

I hope this is helpful!

I’m sorry I’ve been relatively silent lately, at least as far as the knitting content goes. Because I was redoing the Sunrise Circle Jacket, progress shots seemed useless; they would look the same as the progress shots I took for the first one!

First let me thank you all so much for your kind words and sympathy over the bathroom crisis I had last week. When I got home from yoga, my boyfriend had mopped the entire first floor. I worked from home on Friday so I stripped the couch cushions of their covers and ran the covers through the wash. I ended up washing them twice; the first time they came out still looking dingy from the rusty water and years of accumulated grime. The couch is like new now! Nothing seems to have been irreversibly damaged, though the boy broke our lamp while mopping, so today we walked to Ikea and bought a new one. But back to knitting:

Knitting this jacket has taken longer than the first one I did, mostly because of other commitments. It’s all done except . . . I don’t want to put the buttons on without having some kind of fitting with my mom (for whom this is a mother’s day gift) directly. The sweater is still just a tad too small for me to wear comfortably (now I know what size to make for myself!), so I can’t really make a good guess.

Still, I’m very very happy with the results. (Sorry for the low quality photos; it’s late, our apartment is dark, and this is the best I can do.)

Pattern: Sunrise Circle Jacket from Interweave Knits; participated in the knitalong.
Yarn: KnitPicks’s Wool of the Andes in Fern
Balls: Bought 9, used all; have probably 1/2 ball leftover
Needles: US size 7; used a circular throughout
Size: S (35″)
Started: Monday, May 8
Finished: Sunday, May 21 (buttons will have to happen later)
Notes: This is, as I’ve mentioned, the second Sunrise I’ve made for my mom. The first turned out to be too small. I went up one size and made a few other modifications:

• The k2togtbls were all made as ssks, wherein I essentially slipped both stitches knitwise and then knit into the back loops. But I did it by wrapping the yarn backward on the purl row before each decrease row, so that I only had to knit into the back loops of the twisted stitches to get the same result. See my experiments with left-leaning decreases here. (I didn’t try slip 1, knit 1, psso, but whatever, I’m happy with these results.) The arc on the right front is now a million times nicer and more professional looking than the straightforward k2togtbl.
• I knit the two fronts first, mostly because it’s nice to have all that shaping to keep me occupied. (I did this for the first one, too.)
• When I knit the back, I did not do the double decreases (and double increases) the pattern calls for. I felt the result in the first sweater was too flared, so I did single decreases (k2tog then k2togtbl, in that order). I also knit more rows in the space between shaping, so I’d have the exact same number of rows for the back body as I had for the sunrise shaping on the fronts (72 rows). When I made the first one, the sides didn’t match up quite right; I had to fudge it a little to get it sewn up. In order to cut down on any flare as well as to make my life easier, I made sure to have the same number of rows for the back. It worked out great, and the seaming was a breeze.
• As before, I knit down the bottom hems as I worked, but I sewed the other hems post-blocking. I sewed the seams before I did the hems, and I think it was easier the other way around (to hem before seaming), but it was not a big deal.

I’m going to cannibalize the first Sunrise to nab those buttons for this one. I don’t know that all 4 are necessary—that top one would probably never be buttoned anyway. I’m debating sending the sweater to mom with the buttons and extra yarn for her to attach herself (mom is an accomplished knitter, after all), but that does seem a little crappy, to give her a gift that she has to finish herself! I’m not sure when I’m going to see her next, though, so if she wants a jacket with buttons, she may have to suck it up :)

In other news, my stat counter is broken—I spent all day astonished that not a single person had visited my blog. Now, I don’t fancy myself a biggie in the world of knit blogging—not by a longshot—but I get a standard, base amount of visits. So I turned off the cookie that blocks my own visits, clicked around, and woah! no activity present. I can’t figure out what has happened—the other blog I track has had activity today. I reinstalled the code and am hoping there’s just some delay in transmittal. I hadn’t realized quite how much I’d come to depend on seeing the little bar graph of visitors every day. I miss it. Sniff.

Edited to add a better photo, that better shows off the jacket’s color:

This morning, the tube that connects the toilet tank to the pipe came dislodged—I guess years of sitting still got boring. A geyser of water came shooting out (thankfully, I was home at the time—unthankfully, I was alone) and immediately flooded the bathroom, the hall, and the guest room.

When I ran downstairs to find my phone to call maintenance, it was raining on the first floor. Leaking all over the living room, through the spaces between the hardwood floors of the second floor (yay(?) for exposed beams and thus no real ceilings in the apartment). A half-inch of water on the floor of the living room, all over the couch, just . . . just . . . raining.

I had no wherewithal (or time) to take a picture, as I was too busy sobbing on the phone with my landlord, but I did manage to drag my yarn stash out of harm’s way. Amazingly, I got to it before the water had traveled far enough to drop onto that side of the couch. Also amazingly, I recently straightened up, so all the “beside the couch” stash was in the “beside the couch” basket, and I just had to pull one thing out of the way. Any other day, knitting would have been sitting on the couch proper and would have been ruined (I start to shake when I think how the Sunrise Circle Jacket might have been wrecked). The water is rusty. It’s gross. It’s everywhere.

After I got the valve shut off it “rained” for about 10 minutes more. I called my boyfriend, who was on his way to work (his commute is a long one, remember), and I shouted and sobbed to him a little more. While I was shouting I heard some alarmed shouts—I think it started leaking into my downstairs neighbor’s apartment. Egads. I called a friend, who let me come over to her place to pee (and wow, with all that water I had to go so badly).

It’s all over. The yarn is safe. Phew!

I spent most of the day today baking & cooking, not knitting. I made this:

The edges of the cake aren’t perfect, but the taste? Delish. You too can make this banana layer cake (and if you use 9-inch pans, as the recipe calls for, you might be able to make it the 4 layers it’s supposed to be). We made this for our Christmas Eve party, and I had been wanting to make it again. I had a bunch of overripe bananas and saw my opportunity. There’s nothing quite like the salty pecans with the caramel-laden cream. Mmmm, salt and caramel. (Speaking of which, this company makes the most amazing chocolate truffles, my favorite being the one filled with silky caramel that has sea salt on top. Oh, how I recommend it. From what I can tell, all the boxes contain at least one salt-caramel, and currently he only sells the mixed boxes. Occasionally a box appears at the office, and I race over to claim this one for myself.)

I also made fried rice, for lunch for the week (should make 4 meals at least!), and a roast chicken, for dinner tonight. I was so exhausted that when I sat down to knit while the chicken was roasting, I just plopped down and fell asleep with my row counter clutched in my hand and parts of the Sunrise Circle Jacket strewn about me. I’m about 30 rows from the end of the second front, and the ssks are looking good. I’m thrilled with the results of my test.

My daily commute is a whopping 1-mile walk. If I do the Gmap Pedometer (play with it, it’s fun!), it comes out to 1.03 miles, guesstimating from door to door. I walk with a coworker friend, who lives nearby, and we chit chat for the 15–20 minutes it takes. Needless to say, it would be impossible to get anything else done during this time.

My boyfriend’s commute, however, is significantly longer—approximately 1.5 hours door to door, requiring walking to the train station that’s about 1.5 miles away and then sitting on regional rail for another 50 minutes. He complains bitterly, but I can’t help feeling jealous sometimes. I know it would wear on me, but forced knitting time? I could go for some of that. (Occasionally I take the bus, but it’s generally so crowded I have to stand, and the trip is only about 8 minutes long anyway.)

Last night, I took the train out to meet the boy at his office, then to go out with some of his coworkers for dinner and to see the band of one of his coworkers play at a bar. I happily packed myself a little bag with the second sleeve of theSunrise Circle Jacket. (Yes, I finished the first sleeve and front already. I’m cranking away!)

A very nice woman sat next to me, and I couldn’t take a picture until she had gotten off the train—I didn’t want to have to answer any questions! I knit down the hem and just a few rows past it while on the train. I didn’t get as much done as I’d thought I would, since 50 minutes of train time doesn’t actually equate to 50 minutes of knitting time, but it was satisfying nonetheless.

I’ve seen people knitting on the subway in NYC, and it’s pretty amazing how they manage to keep their elbows in tight, keep the work right in their laps, and quickly shove the work in a purse when it’s the moment to get off. I have such a resistance to stopping in the middle of a row that I will decide how soon before my stop I need to stop knitting. But if I had something commuting-dedicated, perhaps I would be more lax about that.

Do you knit on your commute to work? What kinds of projects do you work on (if you have “commuting projects”). Do you wish you commuted to work? What would you knit if you did?

Now that I’m redoing the Sunrise, I’ve decided to work on all the little things that could have been done better the first time around. I’m also being as OCD as humanly possible—I’ve already taken part of the sleeve out once! (I forgot which M1 was R and which was L, but went ahead without checking, and turned out to have had them backward. This would have meant nothing in the grand scheme, but I wanted it to be right. My boyfriend gave me an intense ironic face and said “this is for your mother. are you going to settle?” :) ). So anyway, fixing the k2togtbls is a high priority, because they’re all fat and ugly in the original (look along the right shoulder of the jacket, to the left in the photo, here)—it’s a constant problem for me all the time with those ssk/k2togtbl decreases.

I knit up a swatch, and here it is:

I tried 4 different left-leaning stitches. They’re the stitches that are slightly ‘bigger’ than the others along the left side of the column, and they appear every other row—if you click on the photo you can see the Notes I made on the photo in Flickr. The right-hand side of the column are normal old k2togs. Starting from the bottom, we have

* A standard k2togtbl. I was trying to keep the stitches only on the tips of the needles, but I’m not sure how successful I was. This stitch looks big to me, and it’s exactly how all the stitches on my completed Sunrise look.
* An ssk. For this one, I slipped just the first stitch knitwise, then k2togtbl.
* A true ssk. Here I slipped both stitches knitwise and then k2togtbl.
* An off-standard k2togtbl in which I worked the purl row before differently: I wrapped the yarn backward on the two stitches that would be knit together, so that when I came to knit them they were already turned and the tension was taut. I got this tip from the Knitty boards.

I didn’t try an ssk in which I slip the first stitch purlwise and the second knitwise; I should have tried that. But I kind of doubt that it will fix the problem any better—it’s the first stitch that always ends up looking ugly, and this method 1) manipulates the stitch more than might be necessary and 2) doesn’t actually change anything about that first stitch.

I think the best two are the straight-up ssk (the 3rd from the bottom) and the off-standard k2togtbl (4th from the bottom), which are really just the same stitch but produced via different means. I think I’m going to use the method of the off-standard, mostly because it means less moving around of the stitches and because it won’t be hard to know where the two stitches that need to be wrapped wrong are. I could still use to finesse my purl tension vs. my knit tension for those stitches, but all in all this creates a nice, smooth, tight little decrease that I’m pleased with.

Maybe this experiment will help you, too, the next time you have to do a left-leaning decrease! I hope so.