Nonplussed -Brilliant.

So I just had one of those knitting moments where, nearly 8 inches into a sweater, something didn’t quite seem right. It looked just fine. I liked the fabric. So I took out a spare needle and knit the back stitches onto the spare.

Yep, you guessed it. Somehow, this sweater was made for someone with a 42" chest measurement. Ha! Only 3"-4" off. Which is massive my friend.

And I’m using handspun, so this is one of those rare cases where I actually care.

The funny thing is that I did do a gauge swatch to test for this kind of thing. The best one I’ve done in years.

My thought is that the handspun is irregular enough that it mucked up the swatch. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I pulled the needle and will frog in the morning. On the upside, it’ll go quicker now, when I cast on 20 fewer stitches. (Sigh.)

I’m going to go knit socks and write in the mean time.

Cheers, Sam

Sorry for the lack of updating here the past few days, I’ve been all over hither and yon, and until today, I haven’t had much of a chance to sit down with Zoe (the computer). So no updates. Though, I did drive a good thousand miles: I left Nashville, spent the better part of a week in Beloit doing some unpacking cleaning, spinning, and crucial summer unraveling. Then I came back down to St. Louis where I’m having some Old Home Times, before I get back to Beloit and it starts all over again.

Summer it seems makes people happy, or at least increases any latent tendency to be happy: it’s sunny out, school’s out, all we have to do is sit around and wait for the plants to grow. Which of course is a complete lie: our current interpretation of the agrarian calendar is so warped, but whatever, I’m happy, and that’s good enough for me.

This is one of those TealArt posts that lingers open on my desktop for a long time and I come back to it a couple times a day, hoping to get something respectable. My computer’s a bit full at the moment, I have a lot of things open in the “needs attention” category, and in some ways that’s become somewhat daunting. Like, for instance, my inbox with 180 emails, many of which just need to be deleted, but I have a number of not particularly urgent replies that have been nagging at me for a while.

But I’ve been milling over writing projects and that’s brought be back to the keyboard. So rock on. I posted a list of “to-do” things for the knitting book project, but it’s nagging at me, and it’s mostly in my head anyway, so I think that one gets deleted, and I’m just going to plow on.

Let me see if there’s any other random tidbit that I can throw into this post: The knitting projects are all reasonably advanced but in a stage where the new-nes has worn off and the end is not yet in sight. In recent days and weeks I’ve grown quite excited about knitting socks, which I think I will be doing a lot more of in the coming days and months and the prospect of spinning all the yarn I knit with.

I really enjoy knitting sweaters, that’s for sure, but I think I’ve reached a point where, there isn’t a huge score of sweaters that I’m just dying to make. Sure there are a few. The one’s I have cast on right now, plus a “peasant” version of Starmore’s “Henry VIII” (two colors in natural gray heathered colors), one of the Dale of Norway olympic sweaters, and that’s about it. There are other sweater’s I’ll make, for sure, I’m not saying that I’m running out of knitting, but I don’t feel the same rabid experimentalism that I had a year or two ago. I also know what I have to do to get a sweater to work, and I have a foundation of 6 main design forms that can provide me with thousands of variations: enough for a life time. I also have more sweaters than I know what to do with… (and yes, I do plan to start giving my sweaters away more)

So I think I want to move on to knitting socks more, because I enjoy sock making and I haven’t made enough, by a long shot. I need to increase my stash of sport weight yarn though. I’ll be getting myself to a wheel soon to begin this, rest assured. Spinning my own yarn, allows me to knit with fibers that would other wise be completely out of my reach--and I’m talking about nice merinos and wool/silk blends here, not cashmere, or even really alpaca. I also think that, unless I commit to spinning my own yarn in a serious and consistent way, I would never get around to knitting what I spin, or spin nearly as much. I’ve begun the first sweater in this pursuit and the yarn is bulkier than I’d like, but the yarn is heavenly soft, and it’s going quick, so I can’t complain.

Ok. I’m done for real this time. Maybe I’ll post about something less esoteric later. But then I have a co-conspirtor again, hopefully, so it doesn’t just have to be to keep you happy. Ha!

Cheers, sam

I am something of a hand spinner, and have been for about a year and a half, though this is very much a secondary hobby of mine. I knit constantly, or nearly so. I spin in spurts, usually in the summers.

I’ve sold a bunch of my hand-spun in the past, and generally I think this is as good a use of the yarn as anything, because I tend to like really fine yarns, and really regular and sturdy spinning, so as a knitter handspun yarns aren’t really my thing. Which I’ve been totally content with. I’ve also said, that I didn’t want to knit something out of a yarn that I spent a lot of time making only to have the sweater not come out.

As my mother will surely attest, I’m something of a yarn compulsive: I tend to fret endlessly over yarn requirements and running out of wool, even though I have no gumption about dye lot changes mid sweater. So using hand-spun doesn’t work particularly well with these tendency, at least in my head (where it counts!).

So to recap: time is a major concern, as is the weight of the finished yarn.

In the past two days I spun up 8 oz of black “hat merino” from R. H. Lindsay wool company. I spent less than 2 hours each on each 4 oz ball, and I’m pretty pleased with the results. It’s not quite dk or sport weight, but a little heavier is just fine. By my math, I could have spun the yarn for a stranded sweater in… 16 hours. (I figure 2 lbs should do it.). If I spin for half an hour a day, this is about a month. I generally take 6 weeks or 2 months to knit a sweater of this type, so I think this is something I could easily do.

This of course means that I could conceptually spin enough yarn so that I only knit my own hand-spun. Which would be pretty nifty. I don’t think I’d actually do this, on account of, wanting to get finer yarns and more consistent yarns for some projects (socks?) but it’s a cool idea.

Before I go, I think I should give a progress report of sorts.

I’m to the ribbing at the bottom of my grey, accent cabled, endless sweater using fingering weight yarn and size 1 needles. I have sleeves and the yoke. Plus the second half of the ribbing (again the first half took two days of intermittent knitting. And I’m going to knit hem’s on this one I think. I still have a lot, but I’m almost completely done with the most tedious part of this sweater, so rock on for that. I’m making this sweater using a “middle out” construction, which is pretty cool. The pattern is going to go in the book. I might make a worsted weight version of this sweater at some point, Maybe out of hand-spun.

Speaking of the book, I haven’t worked on it much. I think the ticker is at 13,000 words, unedited. I’ve written about 3 sweaters, and I need to get another one done. I also need to make charts for the patterns, but that isn’t as pressing, and requires freeing up a little RAM. I’m pleased with this, and my next phase for this project, is to get it over another hump (another pattern or two) and then do a little work in promoting myself. This includes a little pod-casting and more blogging, which I want to do anyway, as well as writing additional patterns to publish.

I’m also working on the coat. I’m a little worried that the ribbing pulls in too much (ie. that the difference in number of stitches between the ribbing and the sweater is to great.). If it were a pullover this wouldn’t be an issue at all, but it’s a jacket/cardigan, and this might affect how the hem lays. and acts, and I want to avoid fucking up another cardigan. Having said that the math looks right from the notes. so shrug. It might be worth it to do some preliminary blocking to see how it’ll act. We’ll see.

Faroe is on hold till I figure out what’s supposed to happen on the gussets. My memory isn’t that good.

I finished the Teal Tunic sweater I have some ends to weave in. It’s nice enough. I think I’m going to give it away, because I made it very intentionally to big. That is, it came out the size I wanted it to be, I just for some reason had this notion that I was bigger than I am. By 4 inches. sigh

Oh yeah and I have to get into graduate school too.

Chris' back. Woot! You get to hear someone other than me blather on.

Cheers, Sam

As I’ve said elsewhere on this blog, I’m working on what I think will be a knitting book project. To get it published I’ll need to lift and retool the material and push it in knitting magazines before making a getting book out of it, but that’s a technicality. Right now, I’m working on getting a number of patterns and narratives drafted. They’re a lot of fun. A slightly more focused and retrospective version of the kinds of things I sometimes write for TealArt Knitting, along with patterns.

I’ve written a bit less than half of what I want to get done in this series of writing. I’ve written patterns for 2.5 of the sweaters, and my basic sock recipe (because every good knitting book has to have one). I want to write patterns out for two more sweaters, before I take a pause on this project. Now that I’m in the grove of it, I can get about a pattern done a day. My one major concern is that I don’t have a stockpile of sock patterns in the same way I have a stockpile of sweater patterns. When I knit socks, I mostly knit plain socks, so rather than giving a detailed description of a bunch of different socks want to go through sections on a number of different design features. A number of ways to knit toes, heels, in addition to a cabled sock and some other designing ideas.

Here’s what I think this project has that no other book or other collection has: The patterns are accessible to knitters of an advanced beginner starting to knit their first pair of socks or first sweater, and to more advanced knitters interested in traditional color work and inventive but elegant/classic constructions (as opposed to most inventive constructions which look like they were designed by a gremlin suffering heroin withdrawal whilst being held a gun point.) It also combines the best features of my favorite knitting writing patterns: the instructions are written in a conversational style which encourages and enables knitters to take charge of their knitting, and the patterns are accompanied by explanations of my design process and communicate my memories of the design process, which I think locates the process of knitting in my life and memory: a very important aspect of knitting for me. These are the things I can share (and some great patterns too.) Having said that, the essay sections are very closely tied to the patterns, so it’s not as if I ramble on and on about my life and knitting, and then give an unrelated and bland pattern. This project is about the patterns, not the stories: the stories just make the patterns better. And frankly given the nature of the patterns, I can’t fathom the patterns without the stories.

And above all I’m having fun.

In other news I’m driving back to Wisconsin on Sunday. A change will be good.

Cheers,

Sam

ps. So I’ve done it again: I started a TealArt post with the intention of posting a witty line from today’s writing, only to write a meta post which compleatly missed my intention. Sigh.

So here’s something from one of the little narratives/essays I wrote today. Enjoy!

In my more starky moments I am tempted to say: “if knitted sweaters were meant to be tailored, we’d be tailors not knitters.” Thankfully, most of time, cooler heads prevail, and I attempt create the best fitting knitting garments I can, though I do attempt to recognize the limits of my craft, and concentrate on playing to the strengths of this craft.

Knit and (live on) in good health!.

pps. Sorry Chris, apparently my best guy friend ;) heh, for all the crap on the home page for you if you’re getting it. And I don’t, really…

Hi all, I’m sorry I haven’t been writing here; or at least, I’m sorry that I haven’t been writing here so that you can see them. Over the past few days I’ve been doing a lot of writing about knitting, and I’ve been using TealArt as a repository for this writing, but I’ve kept those categories hidden. I think this is cool, as it allows me to edit and organize a lot of my thoughts and drafts using an existing (and mobile) software system that I can access from any computer with an internet connection. I’ve set up a hidden tree of categories for various writing projects, but you probably don’t care that much.

I’ve written about 40 pages worth of knitting pattern and discussion. The idea behind this project is to record patterns/recipies that I’ve made up over the past year and basic forms that I use frequently. (I think Stephanie calls her basic knitting pattern’s recipes, I like it.) Additionally, I’ve always wanted to write patterns that I enjoy in basic conversational styles that aren’t intimidating and hopefully can be inspiring to knitters, wheather they are interested in knitting the patterns or not. It’s fun. I’ve written 2 patterns, and I want to write two or three more before I put together something to shop around. Mostly because what I have right now are how to knit x object in a very plain way. Which wouldn’t be representative of what this project is.

When I wrote fiction, it could be like pulling teeth at times, and this hasn’t even felt a twinge like that. A very good thing. A lot of fiction writers say “write what you know,” which always rubbed me the wrong way. I wrote/write science fiction, and I sure as hell didn’t know a thing about life on a space ship, I don’t know anything about telepathy, and when I wrote it I didn’t know very much about a lot of the stuff I wrote about. Some of it came off just fine too, because if we only wrote what we know, there would never be anything new. Fiction is about synthesis and creation. So the “write what you know” directive, seemed defeatist.

Having said that, knitting writing, is very much something I know, and writing is fun and comparatively easy. So I’m going to work on this project and see where I get from it. I’d still like to write fiction again. On that note I should go dig up a copy of The Great Gatsby.

I haven’t been actually knitting much outside of my head. I’m working on a sock that is progressing with acceptable speed. I’m still on sort-of-hiatus of a few days from my bigger sweater project as I suspected I would be. I’m going to be driving up to wisconsin on Sunday, so things are starting to get hectic around here and I’m not going to have as much free time over the next 4-5 days, after that I’ll have more free time.

Stay tuned.

Cheers, Sam

Heh.

Ok folks, so when I wrote that last post, I started out with the intention of giving you a few links and send off a personal message in response to a comment I got.

First off. I wanted to link to R. H. Lindsay Company, which is a wool provider. This is great stuff. A friend just got an order and some of the “Black hat Wool” and some of their other products. It’s divine wool. Really great for all you spinners and felters. I’ve you’re interested in spinning pre-dyed fibers than this is probably not for you, but there are a limited natural colors. And the prices can’t be beat.

As a spinner, while I like spinning yarn from dyed rovings every now and then as a change of pace, I must say that I think natural colors are really the best bet. I like naturals on princpal, 5 of the 6 sweater’s I’m currently knitting or have just knit, or plan to knit next, are some combination of black gray and white. In terms of dye jobs, I think kettle dyed yarns are really the best in the world, so it’s useful to dye after spinning and not before.

Check them out!

The second thing. Is that I want to publicly shame Ken for having not seen the Star Trek movies. Geeze. I say, people these days. What’s up with that?

Cheers, Sam

Just because it really needs to be recorded, I have another story about Rodney for your enjoyment. Enjoy.

I went to the bathroom and when I came out I saw Rodney lying on her bed (it’s this rather nifty bed with a sewn in cover so she can burrow underneath. This is a bed that she loves dearly, so the bed alone is kind of cute.

To add insult to injury, though, she (the Dachshund) was lying in her bed on her back with her short stubby legs folded and lying there limp. Her eyes were closed and her tongue was sticking out. It should also be noted that Rodney has a slight under-bite so her tongue sticks out much of the time.

So I said (to R.M.), “you really have to see the dog, she’s being cute again.”

R.M. came over and Rodney noticed us after a little while, and roused, but didn’t move much. So R.M. bent over and poked at the dogs tongue to get it to stick in, as it (the tongue) as a tendency to get all crusty and dry if she doesn’t keep in her mouth.

This was generally an ineffective strategy: the tongue stayed out, and Rodney started to look with bewilderment at us because we were both starting at her, and poking her tongue.

So I did the only thing I know to get her to retract her toungue: I griped it gently between my thumb and index finger and pulled slightly.

Violia! The tongue retracted.

“Great, now on top of everything we have a dog with a slide projector screen tongue!” R.M. said.

Sigh. It’s true.