Introducing Jesse the Wonder Knitter and her Amazing Expanding Stash!

I have been hopping all over the country lately, and doing a lot of knitting. I've also been listening to a lot of podcasts, and knitting while doing that. The Blankie of Wonder and Magic had become my official zoning-out-watching-tv-or-listening-to-limenviolet project, and it shows!
I had to stand on a deck chair to get the whole width in the frame. It's quite wide. I was a little worried back when I first joined up the base row of squares and saw how much it stretched, but I've gotten over that. I want this to be about as large as a twin bed blanket.

I took the Forest Path Stole on both of my big trips, and got a lot of work done on it.
Last time you saw it all I had was the bottom triangles! I must confess that I didn't make all of this progress on my trips, but still the majority of it. I'm going to the beach next week and that would be a wonderful opportunity for some more progress, but I already have my projects planned out. One of those projects is this,
the Seascape Stole from the spring Knitty. The pattern calls for laceweight yarn, but you know how I like to buck the system. I'm using sport weight, Louet Gems in colorway Carribean Blue to be exact. It's perfect for my mom. She loves all things beachy.

I didn't buy any yarn on my Vermont trip, but I did buy this roving. It's 4 oz. of Louet Gems merino/silk, and the color is even more gorgeous in person. I'm going to be spinning this up and selling it on Etsy, because as much as I would love to have this yarn, I want a spinning wheel more.

It is kinda hard being spindle-dependent, but I can make some pretty neat things:

Roving from http://shunklies.etsy.com, colorway Monsters Inc., with some hot pink from another batch of her roving, Raspberry Soda.

The absolute most awesome thing I did in Vermont was to have a private spinning lesson from a friend of a friend who sells her handspun at a local market. I already knew most of the process in theory, so it was just a matter of getting my hands and feet to work together to make it happen. The spinning wheel I used is the exact kind I'm saving for, an Ashford Traveller. It was everything I'd hoped for, though I've decided to get a double-treadle instead of single, which was rather hard to get going and keep going.

Behold, aroundabout 25 yards of 2-ply, shetland/mohair goodness! I'm so happy with this yarn.

I'm really sensetive to fibers on my neck. Even a baby alpaca which feel soft to the hand will prickle and itch a bit on my neck. The only fiber I've found that never does that is angora, which happens to be quite expensive. Mohair sometimes works, but it's really a crapshoot. This yarn? A cloud. Not a single itch. Not one. Sooo happy.

What we have here is a skein of handpainted sock yarn that Tita brought me from Alaska, where she and Mom went while me and the Small Ones went to Washington with our dad.

It's really soft and though I'm not much of a pastel girl, I really like this yarn.

Compared to most knitters, I have a tiny stash. And not by choice, it's just that I have very little money to work with. I make pretty good money at my job, but 90% of that is going into my life savings. The other 10% is going into my spinning wheel fund. That leaves only my $10 per week allowance for all my personal stuff that my mom won't buy. In truth almost all of what I buy is yarn, but still.

I am pleased to say that I am finally starting to acquire a nice little stash, which is divided into 5 main categories:

1: Handspun. Very fulfilling but a rather slow means of stash enhancement.

2: Sock yarn. Doesn't take as long to get but I use this up much faster.

3: Sock yarn leftovers. These are all going to the Blankie of Wonder and Magic.

4: Crap. Stuff that I bought before I developed some taste, that I know I'm never going to use but just never get around to throwing away.

5: Other stuff. Non-sock leftovers, a few balls with a project already attatched, and 6 skeins of undyed wool.

I don't think I'll run out of yarn any time soon, but still, it's nice to have a backup plan.

A field trip (in which my knitting gets out and sees the world)

Saturday was Steeplechase, a day of horse races that's a really huge deal around here. Our local newspaper says there were around 35,000 people there this year. Of course, the point of going is not to watch the horses, but to hang out and show off your fancy clothes. Kind of like high-class tailgating.

We got there around 10:00 and set up our tent and table with chips, cheesecake, baked beans, and the usual tailgating munchies (plus some wierd pasta salad that Tita made). We brought along my three best boys Patrick, Tyler, and Jeremy, and had a grand old time walking around and people-watching. I knit a little bit...
...during the few dull moments, on a sock in hand-dyed KnitPicks Bare Essentials. The astute among you may notice that I'm shaking things up a bit with a waffle rib instead of my usual stockinette.

Funny story: Last year at Steeplechase, there was a huge group of drunken college kids in the spot next to us. Now we have a railside spot which is bigger than most, but not big enough for 30-40 drunken college kids. All day they were slowly creeping over to our space and we were getting pretty fed up. Eventually we had the fantastically genius idea to use some of my yarn (black acrylic) to make a barrier and discourage potential invaders. The funny part?

It was still there this year.

In other news, I finally got my package of leftover sock yarn from Shelly!
(Darling that she is threw in some little chocolates.) I got right to work, and now all the squares at the bottom edge of the Blankie are joined together.
This blankie is kinda sorta maybe a little huge. Well, not exactly huge in blankie terms, but bigger than I thought it was going to be. I'm okay with that, though, because I always did want it to be big enough to cover a bed.

First time posting a video, took forever but I knew you guys would love it!

(Tyler and Patrick doing a Man Hug)

Spring in My Step

Finished the socks with my hand-dyed self-striping yarn!
I luvs them to death. I just can't get over the stripes, it's like a magic trick. I decided that for this pair, I really did care if they matched. Only had to give up a couple yards of yarn, and the stripes are perfectly aligned.

One thing that was rather aggravating, though, was the heels. I didn't want to interrupt the striping sequence, so I originally planned to do Elizabeth Zimmermann's Afterthought Heel. Started at the toe of the first socks, knit my way merrily up the foot until the place I'd usually start the short-row heel, but instead knitted in a bit of waste yarn that I could take out later and have live stitches for the heel.

Halfway up the leg, however, I decided that I really didn't like the look of an afterthought heel and that I would just do a short row heel, accepting the fact that it would take a bit of grafting. So after I finished the leg(sewn bindoff, a la EZ once again), I picked out the waste yarn and put the live stitches back on the needles. Working from the other end of the ball of yarn, I started short-rowing on the lower half of those live stitches, then Kitchenered the other side of the heel to the upper half of the original live stitches. (Sorry if this doesn't make a lick of sense to some of you, I once again prove myself a moron by forgetting to take pictures of this process.)

So now that I knew I didn't want an afterthought heel, and was even more firmly resolved to have a matching pair of socks, I took a different route on the second sock. Heel and foot as usual, but when I got to the heel, I just knit it as usual, but from the other end of the ball of yarn. Once the heel was done, I just cut the yarn and picked up where I left off with the foot.

(I swear they really are the same size) I can't really tell the difference. The only way I found to distinguish was to turn them inside out and very closely examine the stitches. I think the one on the right is the first one, with all the grafting, but I'm certainly not willing to bet.

Aside from knitting for just a moment, I must introduce my newest obsession:

Yes, it's yogurt. Thick & Creamy Key Lime Pie yogurt! Empty, unfortunately. However, my saint mother went to the grocery store today and we have a lot more in the fridge. I am very likely to have another tonight and will definitely have another in the morning.

Well the first hints of spring are finally in the air down in South Carolina, and lemme tell ya, it couldn't come soon enough for me. (In general) I like cold weather more than hot weather, but I am so sick of winter right now. After Christmas, and down here where we don't have snow or anything, winter is just not fun anymore.

I am responding to the spring "make things" vibe by buying stuff, namely yarn. Yesterday I ordered 2 skeins of undyed sock yarn and 3 skeins of undyed laceweight from KnitPicks, and a pattern to go with the laceweight(the Forest Path Stole, since you asked) from The Alpaca Yarn Company. It's an Interweave pattern, but the issue is sold out and I'm not going to pay $16 for The Best of Interweave Knits when the shawl is one of only 2 or 3 pattern in it that I like.

Also, right after I finish typing this, I'm going to order some undyed merino top from Hello Yarn. After I dye it up, it'll help satisfy my urge to spin something other than my plain brown romney.

I'll have a lot of mail to look forward to for the next few weeks, including the package from Shelly(the Heathen Housewife, see sidebar since I can't get the links right on this blog). You may have heard of Shelly and her sock yarn blanket. If not, go see it right now, it's amazing. She just finished last week(or maybe the week before) and still has leftovers. She said on her blog that she'd love to give them away to anyone else knitting a sock yarn blankie, and I am one of the 6 or so people who responded. I sent her my address a few days ago and I can't wait to see what she sends me!

Just Call Me 'Jenny'

First off, update on the Blankie of Wonder and Magic:
Yes, it is progressing quite nicely. I want this blankie to be at least big enough to cover a twin bed, and it's already wide enough for that. This is the first time I've measured the width of all the squares together and it's just a hair over 4 ft. I think I'll just add four or five more squares to this row, then start joining them with the next row(they're not attatched in this pic, just laid out in a line).

I got 2 skeins of KnitPicks Bare Essentials for a good bargain from a nice lady on Ravelry, and I dyed one of them with red food coloring last week.

It's a good thing I was aiming for pink, because that's all the red dye we had. I'm knitting it up into socks for Thing 1's birthday. They're top down, since I did a picot hem at the top and didn't want to have to sew it down.
It's very neat, and deceptively simple. I learned the technique from watching Knitty Gritty, and you can find it on their website (diynetwork.com/knittygritty).

The other skein is sitting on my worktable, waiting until I can get some blue food coloring. I'm going to do this one in blue and green stripes, with narrow undyed stripes between them.

So here comes Jenny(extra IQ points to whoever guesses the refference first): The week before last, I decided to try my hand at plying. I haven't done this before because I am dependent on my spindle, and only my spindle. Nothing else. No Lazy Kate, no nothing. So, I had to improvise...

Yes, I know, that's the most ghetto Lazy Kate I've ever seen, too. A cardboard box, 2 knitting needles, a drinking straw and the cardboard spool that a ball of crochet cotton come wound on. But it worked... barely.

Now, I know all you spinners are going to hate me for this, "beginner's luck," you'll say.
This is all I had left on one cough bobbin when I was done. Beginner's luck, that's it.
I am quite proud of my little skein, for all it's faults. It's much more even than any single I've spun yet.
I also tried 3-plying, by the Navajo method. I didn't need the Ghetto Lazy Kate for that, but I did have to wind the single onto my umbrella swift to hold it while winding the plied yarn back onto the spindle.
Not as even, but far more even than the single was.

Immortality-- sort of

An interesting thougt occured to me last night at around 12:20 am (having stayed up until midnight reading blogs) that concerned the sock blankie: Socks are not a permanent thing in any way. If you use them right, they wear out. But in a blankie, the memory of socks can be immortalized through their leftover yarn. Blankies don't usually wear out if you be nice do them. Cool, huh?

A journey of a thousand miles...

...begins with a single square.
This is the start of a project that will probably take me many years. I'm going to make a blanket out of sock yarn, like the one made by Shelly, http://www.shellykang.com/. *chirp chirp* Yes, I know that sound quite crazy, thank you very much. I am fully aware of the commitment I am starting, but that's the beauty of it: I am not going to rush this, I will knit it at my leisure and infuse it with good karma and happy memories, and end up with a piece of art that will keep me warm on a cool night. It also seems fitting that the first square of this enormous endeavor should be leftover from my first pair of socks(that were actually usable, that is).

First memory: Today I got my application for Lead 2008, a developmental program for a week this summer, by invitation only, for teenage girls who display good leadership potential. I've been selected as one out of five girls in my whole class(and my school is pretty big) to go to this thing, and gosh darnit I'm going. I think it will be pretty useful, as my plan is to own and manage my own business after college(a yarn shop, since you ask). I'm really psyched.

By the way, if you have any oddments of sock yarn you are not really attached to, I'll be glad to take them off your hands. I'm going to need all the help I can get, since this is what I have as of now:
But let's not forget the ineveitable leftovers from the socks for Thing 1, in this yarn:
Socks for young girl+good yardage of Tofutsies= plenty of leftovers

And of course the leftover from my latest pair of socks, basic toe-up in Trekking XXL, colorway 186.

Another pair of toe-up Trekking socks, this time with a twist(pun intended).
These are in colorway 188, which reminded me of stormy weather the moment I saw it.
I did a 3x3 rib and moved it over one stitch every 2 rows. The effect is lovely, but I found that I really don't like having to pay that much attention to my socks. I'll stick to stockinette, thank you very much.
The first handtowel of the set, and yarn for the other two. I really like the stitching at the ends that ties all the colors together. At first I tried to do the stitching as I went, but decide it would just be easier and faster to wait until I was done and use a darning needle.

These towels are quite simple, just stockinette with a nice wide seed stitch border. They require just enough concentration to keep my brain from turning to mush.