what to knit?

It's been too long since I've knit anything. James and I got (big gay) married July 4th so life has been full of non-knitterly things.

My friend Kate gave me a lovely skein of Dream in Color Classy for my birthday: 250 yards of berry colored superfine merino and it's superwash! It's gorgeous yarn but I have no idea what to knit to best suit it. I've been perusing Ravelry in hopes of some inspiration.

I haven't finished the glittens I started months ago, but I keep coming back to these 'Under The Tree' fingerless gloves. I had a sweater vest when I was really young that my grandmother made me with the same owl cables. I'd forgotten about it until I saw something on Ravelry recently with the same cable. It wasn't something I'd wear, but these totally are.

I think I just convinced myself.

glittens, glomitts, muvs...

ok, maybe I made up muvs, but either way, I'm making some.

I'd been lacking much knitting motivation the past few weeks. The weather here in the rainy Northwest as been teasing us with occasional glimpses of the sun. The promise of spring and summer to follow makes it hard to concentrate on indoor, sit-down pursuits. Spring often brings a lull in the knitting until I remember how capable I am at multitasking.

My break from knitting would have continued if not for my sister's wedding on the East coast and the requisite 5 hour plane trip. I searched last minute for a pattern I could take on the plane that I already had yarn to make. I was having trouble finding inspiration and then I saw my mittens.

I made these mittens a couple of years ago out of super bulky yarn I got when I first started knitting. They are warm and great for walking in the snow, but awfully impractical when it comes time to do anything other than just walk. To begin with they are mitten, so I'm working with a crab claw, but then the bulkiness makes things even more difficult, but like I said, they keep my fingers toasty warm. I do love them; it's just time for options.

Enter the Glitten.
Not a mythical beast as one might guess, but a genius combination of fingerless gloves and mittens. The flip back mitten top (not to be confused with muffin top), makes these perfect for walks in the snow as well as fishing keys out of my pocket. They are also made in worsted so not as bulky.

I'm using Subway Knitter's Urban Necessity glove pattern. Of course I am using the magic loop method. After such success on the socks (which, as you can see below, I've finished!) how could I not. I will be sure to post pictures of the glittens when I have finished them. I'm alternating between them and am just beginning the thumb gussets, so it will be a while. Besides, with my knitting, blogging and life ADD, who knows how long it will take for pictures to actually be taken and make their way up here.


SOCKS!
and my new wisteria which is blooming. I do love spring.

Not knitting- Tesla

I know this is a knitting blog, but I have to break from the knitting for this. I feel it relates at least in terms of creation without limiting oneself.

I have a deep fascination and love for Nikola Tesla. He had an amazing mind and his research and experiments, even 100 years later, seem like the stuff of science fiction. He is the black sheep of the technology world. No one seems ready to admit how much of a genius he was and schools overlook him completely in favor of Thomas Edison, who may have been a more stable mind, but certainly not a greater one. The world readily forgot that it was Tesla's alternating current that won out over Edison's wasteful and impractical direct current.

Out of many projects around the world, only Tesla's lab and wireless transmission tower in Long island, known as Wardenclyffe, currently remain as evidence of his most massive endeavor, part of a plan to carry news, voice and (kept from the investors) free electricity to the world. Tesla was against-the-grain thinking was hard to swallow (not to mention non-profitable) and he ran out of money before his tower could ever be completed for anything other than experiments.

The Agfa corporation currently owns the land on which the dilapidated lab and tower stand. The recently announced plans to sell it, completely razed, to the highest bidder. This would effectively erase all material evidence of Tesla's Experiments aside from obscure and far less impressive to the lay person notes and writings.

The Tesla Wardenclyffe Project seeks to preserve the lab, tower and land as well as restore it to act as a museum. From the website, their goals are:

* placement of the 16 acre site on the National Register of Historic Places
* restoration of the building and stabilization of the tower foundation
* conversion of the site into a science museum complex to be known as the
Tesla Museum and Science Center at Wardenclyffe.

The fact that even the first goal has never been done is appalling. The group needs donations to achieve these goals. I mst admit that I have some selfish motivation as well. I've never seen this place. It's one of the things I have always wanted to do. It can't be destroyed before I see it! If nothing else, go take a look at the site. Tesla was one fucking awesome freaky dude.

Socks mark 2

A couple of weeks ago I decided to try my hand at knitting socks again. I thought this was something that would never happen. When I started knitting, I had no desire at all to knit socks. None. I didn't understand why anyone would put so much time and effort into something that no one ever, or hardly ever, sees.

That feeling lasted until I ended up with some sock yarn.
Really, sock yarn is amazing. So many knitters have gone absolutely crazy for socks that sock yarn is some of the most awesomely patterned and best thought out yarn. Of course this is entirely my opinion, but few would argue that the stuff doesn't appeal to a knitter's desire for awesome looking and feeling yarn. See the picture at the left? It just DOES that! Plain old knitting and no fancy techniques. The yarn patterns that way. It's just cool. How can a knitter not just want to collect the stuff?

So, stuck with sock yarn and kind of wondering what all the bru-ha-ha was about, I set out to try knitting a sock The picture above is of that attempt: toe-up on size one needles. I used this pattern/tutorial/formula from Knitty.com which is truly amazingly written. It is clear and easy to follow while appealing to the geek in me (knitting with math formulas anyone?). Despite this, by the time I got to the heel I hated myself and everything to do with socks, not to mention size one double pointed needles!

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I was at my friend Rachel's house for a knitting group. I was looking through her knitting books. I found 2-at-a-Time Socks. Now, I don't live under a rock, I'd heard of using magic loop to knit small diameter on circulars instead of DPNs, but I had never really had a desire to try it. I found the pattern in the back of the book for Ragg Hikers in worsted weight yarn. No DPNs, size 3 instead of size 1, worsted weight instead of fingering weight yarn, cuff up instead of toe-up construction... I kind of wanted to try it again.

I'm not knitting them on the same circular as the book teaches. I couldn't find 40" bamboo circs and I hate knitting with metal. I'm knitting each sock on it's own circular needle and just switching back and forth between them. I'm almost done with the gussets and I'm actually really enjoying it! I don't know if I will ever get into making the thin little fingering weight socks, but I'm not hated worsted weight ones. It's pretty sweet.

See?
and there are two of them! They aren't done (duh), but I'm actually enjoying knitting them. Also, they match a hat I just made. That's more weird than anything, actually.

TKGA and Christmas Project Photo Dump

I am completely obsessed with knitting. I'm not sure how it happened. I went very quickly from "hmm maybe I'll give this a go" to all out crazed yarn whore. It doesn't make a lot of sense. My personality is that of a dabbler, jack of all trades, master of none, dilettante, etc. I pick things up, learn a bit about them and never get particularly good at anything. Except knitting. I don't know why but it stuck.
To further my obsession, I got the TKGA master knitting program level 1 course from my dad for Christmas. I'm pretty damn excited about this. I'm hoping to learn a lot fro it ad move even further out of the realm of "dabbler". I think it will cause me to look at me knitting in terms of actually improving and learning rather than being a solely project oriented hobby. Plus, I miss the critical thinking of being in school and this also involves writing a paper. :)

I am worried about knitting and my hands. I recently started a new job that involves much more computer use than I'm used to (despite being on the internet constantly). I was working on the Fake Isle hat around the same time. The stress on my hands was not so good and I started to get some very slight carpal tunnel symptoms: mild tingling in my thumb and burning up my forearm. It went away as soon as I finished the hat and I haven't had any of the nerve issues since. I do still get some serious hand and finger fatigue. It's gotten a good bit better with a new mouse and just getting used to what I'm doing. It terrifies me though and has made me realize just how much I love knitting. I don't know what I would do if I ever had to stop. It would kill me.

The hand and wrist issues came at a very bad time as I was trying to get Christmas gifts finished. I couldn't get them all done by Christmas and I still have my dad's neck-warmer to finish up.

I'm about half way through knitting it, but then I need to line it with some fleece fabric so it isn't itchy. He is sensitive to the scratchiness of wool. The yarn I'm using is a wool-silk blend, but I didn't want to take chances on something that will be against his neck. That's a pretty sensitive area. It is much farther along than the picture, but you can see the cable pattern.



Branching Out

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, but this is the scarf I made for my mom It's just under 6 feet.




Scrunchable scarf

I made this for my sister out of the leftover malabringo from her hat (below)




Foliage

My sister's hat. I made one in a chunky brown tweed for her fiance, but I didn't get pictures of that one. I also don't have any good pictures of the scarf I made him. I'll try to track some down. I think my sister posted some pictures with him wearing it.



Erik's scarf

edited to add it. Not the best pic, but it's all I have.







Fruedian Hat

This is the fake isle hat pattern, but I modified it, taking out the second stripe and changes the colorwork pattern very slightly. As a result I managed to accidentally knit woman symbols into my hat as well as male symbols and giant phalluses depending on how you look at it. Fun times. I love this hat.




Lace scarf

least inventive name for a pattern ever.

Made this for Cake Kate. Hopefully she'll get it before seeing this. It got sent out just a few days ago.







Knitting

yup.

My first forray into dying (the not so emo variety)

I tried yarn dying for the first time the other day. I wanted a particular color and yarn weight for a project and couldn't find it in my price range. There had recently been a post in a livejounral community about dying hair with kolaid (something that people do with yarn a lot), so I decided that perhaps dying my own yarn would be the best course of action. It would save me a ton of money and just be fun.
Lish, having been pretty damn excited about the fact that the water turns clear during the process, wanted in on the action, so I toted yarn and koolaid up to Seattle and dyed away while watching movies and Sunday night TV.
That round turned out pretty mediocre, so there was a second round last night.

	How it began I started out with two skeins of Knit Picks Bare- Merino Wool/Silk Fingering Weight (on the right. duh.). Much hilarity over "bare" and "fingering" ensued. I have very mature friends.
	an attempt at dying This was the first round of dying. I used 7 packets of unsweetened koolaid- 1 packet per ounce of yarn. This turned out to be no where near enough and the yarn ended up a coral color. Very pretty, but totally not what I was going for.
	second round of dying. 14 packets of koolaid this time. I wish I had gotten a picture of the coral color of the yarn the first time. oh well.
	Oooo purdy Now this is what black cherry should look like.
	The cool part Now this is the really cool part. If one were to actually make koolaid to drink, this amount of water would have about two packets. I'm sure you can envision the color of black cherry koolaid. This has FOURTEEN PACKETS of the drink mix we all know and love.
	It's Clear! And yet! The water is clear! The yarn soaks up ALL the dye in the koolaid. Pretty freaking rad.
	so clear Totally clear water. pretty red yarn.
	and pretty red pot :)
	cupcakes! what yarn dying project would be complete without cupcakes? These are what was in the oven while the dying was taking place.
	amazing cupcakes They also look like nipples.
	And the finished product: Black cherry koolaid yarn. It, and my whole apartment, smell like black cherry.

Yarn challah A little oranger than the color really is.

It still isn't as dark as I was expecting. I think the silk didn't take the dye as well as the wool. It is still pretty and perfectly acceptable. There is always the option of overdying the finished product once I knit it. It is hard to know how this is going to look once it's knit up.

Noro, hulahoops, "and whatnot"

...and whatnot" is one of the most incredibly irritating phrases IN THE WORLD. It seems to be everywhere these days and it drives me up the wall every time I hear or read it. I don't know why. There is really nothing about it that should irritate me, it just does.

I've decided that I need a giant hula hoop. 1. I would have amazing abs (they are sorely lacking now). and 2. I could get really good at it then light it on fire. Perhaps I should get out my staff every now and then before accumulating more things to light on fire.

I can't stop knitting Noro scarves and washcloths. I swore I would never knit a wash cloth. That was 7 of them ago. I guess everyone is getting washcloths for Christmas. I already know several are getting Noro scarves, but those take significantly longer and cost ahelluva lot more in yarn purchasing. It's actually kind of exciting that I have a bunch of Christmas presents already knitted and ready to give. Considering that I'm not going to have the money to purchase worthy presents, it's really nice to still be able to give my family things that are nice.

I have a Noro scarf and a Foliage hat for Eric (my sister's fiance). I made the hat out of Brown Donegal chunky Tweed so it's still somewhat masculine despite being lace. My sister is also getting a foliage hat, but it is in sky blue malabrigo- like knitting a cloud! I want to make her a scarf to match as well. The first things I ever knit were a super chunky scarf and hat set for my sister. They are well loved, but, damn, I knit so much better than that now!

My dad's BF is going to get a Noro scarf as well. My mom is getting Branching out (finally). All I can say is thank God for knitting. Not only do I have presents for people, but I have something to do between sending out resumes and going to worksource workshops.

Now if I could just find James' camera cable, I could post pics