Category Archives: Knitting

Alongs, Contests, Knitting

Sock maniac

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Just a Knit Wit is heading off to college next month (after a few years away) and is a bit nervous about the whole thing. Leave her a comment with a funny college story and you could win a very cool prize package. Comments must be received by July 20.

The Cat’s Mum is celebrating her 200th post and upcoming blogiversary – leave her a comment telling her what you’re obsessive about and you could win something “noice.” Comments must be left by midnight, Australian Eastern Standard Time, August 4.

Sockamania is open for new members! Update 7/13/07: Membership is now closed. Anni’s adding members slowly to make sure she can keep up with the admin. She says she’ll open it up again in the future.

I’ve been a member for three months and I’m extremely impressed by the patterns Anni’s creating for us. Shall we review?

The May sock – I didn’t get very far, but the pattern is lovely and I will finish the socks.

The June sock – I finished and I love the pattern. I’ll definitely knit this pattern again.

The July sock – I’m off to a good start! This is also my Tour de France Knitalong project. I did modify the pattern a bit – its 68 stitches weren’t going to fit me, so I added three stitches to each of the plain knit columns (for a total of 80 stitches). The plain knit columns looked really boring when they were twice as wide, so I added some right and left twists to liven things up. The yarn is Sundara Lenten Rose, a Petals Club selection from earlier this year, which appeared briefly as an RPM sock.

The little gold row markers I’m using are omega row markers from Entrelac’s store. Oh, and Spindlecat has kitty magnets in stock… And… Whoops, spent $31.50. Darn it. Etsy is dangerous!

Yesterday Janna commented that May seemed to have a literary bent, what with the stationery and the diary. You could say that…

“This blue book looks to be especially tasty, but I’ll wait until Mom’s not looking before I check…” -Mayhem

Contests, Knitting, Reading

Gasp! Some actual knitting content…

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Today Diane celebrates her first blogiversary with a contest! Leave her a comment with the best compliment you’ve ever received to participate. Comments must be left by July 13, nood EDT.

Reading Update
Murder of a Botoxed Blonde by Denise Swanson. Yet another Scumble River mystery, featuring school psychologist and police consultant Skye Denison. Loved this quote from the book: “Chocolate is the catnip of the female world.”
Moon Called and Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs. Werewolves and vampires and fae, oh my! Well-written and set in the Tri-Cities area of Washington, this is definitely a series I’ll keep reading. The main character is VW mechanic Mercy Thompson, who is a “walker” (she can turn into a coyote, but isn’t controlled by the moon). You really have to ignore the covers on these books – they feature an extremely tattooed Mercy, wearing revealing clothing. However, as far as I can tell from the books, Mercy has one tattoo (a pawprint on her stomach) and she spent about 2/3 of the first book in a t-shirt with a cocoa stain on the front…
Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Kitty Goes To Washington, and Kitty Takes a Holiday by Carrie Vaughn. I picked these up on vacation in part because they were used and were by a Coloradan (it’s common for my souvenirs to be by local authors). I’m glad I did, because they were good – I’m already looking forward to the next one (out later this year). They feature werewolf talk radio host Kitty Norville, and the first and third books are set in Colorado.

Knitting Update
I finished my June Sockamania socks last night! (We got the pattern late, so we have until Saturday to finish June’s socks.) Since I didn’t finish May’s socks, I was especially pleased to have these done.

The yarn is Kraemer Jeannie that I dyed this spring. I like the color (very Project Spectrum), but I hated the yarn. Not only does it feel too soft and loosely twisted to wear well (even if it does have nylon in it), it was also extremely splitty – especially with my Inoxes. Turbos would’ve been perfect – too bad Addi doesn’t make a 2.25mm Turbo… Anyway!

“Socks, socks, socks, socks. Ho hum.” -Mayhem

“Oh no! My toes are dirty! Please, no one look!” *mwmph* -Mayhem

Alongs, Contests, Knitting

Vacation knitting

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Have a special knitting friend who could really use some gorgeous sock blockers? Nominate her/him in the comments over at Leggy Creations before noon EDT, June 30, and he/she might receive a set of special friendship sock blockers.

Kristi’s got a new etsy store, where she’ll be selling handcrafted personal care products. Leave her a comment about your favorite scent before midnight EDT on July 4 and you could be randomly selected to win some of her concoctions.

You can join the Tour de France KAL anytime before the Tour officially starts on July 7 – and you don’t need to be a bicycling fiend to participate. 🙂

Knitting
Oh, I had grand plans for all the knitting I would get done over vacation! I took all sorts of things along toward that end. Ha! I did about 2″ on my first July Sockamania sock (left, below) and I started the Meilenweit Colortweed sock (right, below) at Michaele’s Stumbling Over Chris party. That’s it.

“Knitting needles! Oh, how I missed our special time together while you were gone, Mom.” -Mayhem

“See? See how much I missed you? I am hugging your foot!” -Mayhem

“Whatever, May. You’re such a goof.” -Chaos

“You take that back, big kitty! I am not a goof!” -Mayhem

Contests, Knitting, Randonymity, Reading

Oh, the felinity!

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Things are gonna get kinda irregular around ye olde blog. We’re going on vacation scheduling here – erratic! I will have the SoC mobile blogging station with me, but I’ll tend to have time to post when nothing very interesting is happening – like from my motel room in Lincoln, Nebraska, tomorrow night! Wild times. Needless to say, I shall get very behind in bloglines and probably never catch up. 🙂

I’m packing. I almost have the knitting projects figured out. The book bag is filled and waiting. My ipod is loaded with Harry Potter books 1-5 and the His Dark Materials trilogy. I even have a backup book on tape (Wuthering Heights), just in case. What else…. D’oh! Clothes!

Whoa, flashin’ – and not just the yarn stashin‘! (Before this gets too out of hand- no human tummies, of any age, ‘k?)

JessZ is having a contest while she and Dv are in suspense to hear whether the offer they put in on a house has been accepted – complicated backstory and complicated point awarding system to determine the contest winner. (“Triple points if either one of us shoots a beverage out our nose while reading your comment.”)

Carol of Go Knit In Your Hat is having a contest looking for ideas for her imaginary line of greeting cards: “How I Really Feel”TM. Email her your ideas before midnight, June 25. Only emailed ideas are eligible for prizes! Also, she will have prizes for the non-knitters, so don’t let that stop you (yes, Tink, Van, TB, MamaT, Deb B-M – I’m talking to you).

Michaele is featuring some interesting things I could see on my drive from Minneapolis to Denver, should I so desire. Tragically, Carhenge would require quite a detour.

Nichole has a nice post about animal protection that includes information about the ban on ivory, which expires very soon.

Reading Update
Smitten by Janet Evanovich. Another of Evanovich’s romances from back in the early 80s. Cute, but not worth exerting any effort over.
Murder of a Sleeping Beauty, Murder of a Snake in the Grass, Murder of a Barbie and Ken, Murder of a Pink Elephant, Murder of a Smart Cookie, Murder of a Real Bad Boy by Denise Swanson. A whole bunch of Scumble River mysteries. They’re light and cute and reading them is sort of like eating potato chips…

Knitting Update
Finally finished my pink’n’black socks. Whew! Plain stockinette foot and slip stitch rib on the leg, just to break things up a bit.

“Just out for a living room stroll, dum-de-dum-de-dum.” -Mayhem

“What have we here? A new kitty bed?” -Mayhem

“Lots of support. I like that in a kitty bed. And such a flattering color for me!” -Mayhem

Contests, Dyeing, Knitting, Project Spectrum

And finally, some knitting

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How perfect is this? I Can Haz Cheezburger is having a caption contest! C’mon, u noes u wantz to. Contest ends June 6, 11:59 pm – and it’s a black cat you’ll be captioning. You know you can do it!

Aw, Mayhem really appreciated all the sweet birthday wishes yesterday! For those who are wondering where the heck the year went, I didn’t get her until September last year. Whew! No lost summer of 2006 for y’all.

A few details I neglected to include in my dyeing post earlier this week… I used an assortment of base yarns – some left over from last year and some I was just curious about. I had a lot of Kona fingering superwash, some Schoeller Zimba Top (picked up on Destash from Jennifer), some Kraemer Jeannie, and a random skein of Malabrigo donated by Yarnzilla. So far, my favorite superwash fingering sock yarns to dye are Louet Gems Pearl, Wool2Dye4, and Treadsoft.

We use Country Classics acid dyes, which have citric acid mixed in with the dye – much less stinky than using acetic acid (the acid in vinegar). Our technique is pretty fancy – we mix the dye in plastic cups and pour it onto the yarn, trying to use the minimum amount of water that we can. Then wrap the yarn in plastic wrap and nuke the yarn to set the dye. Make sure you use dedicated utensils and containers for mixing the dye and nuking the yarn! You can use use your regular microwave, but make sure the yarn is well-sealed in plastic wrap and air out the microwave afterward. Wearing gloves is a really good idea, too, unless you want to be mocked at work for your technicolor hands. Right, Jeanne?

Knitting *gasp* Update
I’m part of Sockamania, and we’re supposed to be knitting a pair of socks each month. I loved May’s pattern, but I got distracted by other things and didn’t get very far. I got a lot less far than it looks in this picture, actually, since I’ve decided the heel is way too tight and I need to rip back and start the gusset earlier.

The yarn is Regia Bamboo, color 1072 – I picked it because it had the April-May Project Spectrum colors of pink and green. This sock is probably on hold until after I knit the June Sockamania sock.

I started another, simpler sock, which fortunately covers one of the April-May PS colors and one the June-July colors.

“Hmph. So what if it wasn’t my birthday? What am I, invisible?!” -Chaos

Nope, I didn’t dye that yarn – I picked it up before we really got into dyeing. It’s from ebay seller lotusblossom, but it doesn’t look like she has anything now with Treadsoft superwash as the base.

“Teeheehee, big kitty! I am the cutest!” -Mayhem

Knitting, Project Spectrum, Tunes

Iced java jacket pattern and Project Spectrum mix cd contest!

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Project Spectrum
Last year, Anjo the Crafty Modster made and gave away awesome mix cds for each month/color combination of Project Spectrum. Alas, Anjo hasn’t posted since October (I hope she’s ok!), so Heather made the first two PS mixes this year and I will be making the second two.

The colors for June-July are red, black, and metallics – each song or artist will have one of these colors in title or name. If you are interested in receiving a copy of the cd, please send email to my contest email address by 6 pm CDT, June 1. Three winners will be randomly selected. Only entries sent to my contest email address will be included in the drawing! You will not receive a confirmation email back. You do not need to be participating in Project Spectrum to win a cd.

Curious about what music will be on the cd? Some of the artists include Okkervil River, the Builders & the Butchers, the Mountain Goats, Blue Skies for Black Hearts, Joseph Arthur, the Sad Little Stars, Pete Yorn, Joseph Plunkett & the Weight, Thin White Rope, and Radiohead. Hey, I have notoriously eclectic and obscure taste. 🙂

Knitting: Java Jacket Pattern
To avoid having cold, soggy fingers when drinking iced coffee drinks in the summer, I knitted some java jackets from leftover Cascade Fixation. I have one at home, one in the car, one in my purse – you get the idea!

It’s a quick pattern for those of you who drink iced coffee or 20-ounce bottles of soda. For cans of soda or beer bottles, I would recommend casting on fewer stitches.

Materials

  • Cascade Fixation or Elann Esprit
  • US size 4 dpns/long circular/two circulars, depending on your preferred method (or size to get an approximate gauge of 5 st/in)
  • Beginning of round (BoR) marker
  • Darning needle

Cast on 36 stitches for seed stitch border or 37 stitches for ribbing. Join by knitting the first and last stitch together and place BoR marker before this stitch: 35 stitches (seed stitch) or 36 stitches (ribbing) remain.

Knit 6 rounds of seed stitch or 2×2 ribbing. Knit 20 rounds plain. Knit 6 rounds of seed stitch or 2×2 ribbing. Bind off and weave in ends. My bind off edge is a bit tighter than my cast off edge, which works well with a tapered cup. If you are planning to use these on cans or other non-tapered beverage containers, make sure you bind off loosely.

For a change, the cats were completely uninterested in all of this.

“Birds!” -Mayhem

“Darned screen. We could so get those birds… although since we are on the third floor, maybe the screen is a good thing.” -Chaos

Alongs, Knitting, Randonymity, Reading

Haphazard Thursday

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Deb likes to knit for babies, but there’s a baby shortage in her life. Rather than creating her own baby to knit for, she’s going to knit baby items to donate. But it’s hard for Deb to knit baby items without a specific baby in mind… so she decided to knit for Chloe and Morris’ baby and created the 24 Baby Knitting Shower. Drop by and leave her a comment if you’re interested in knitting along with her!

Do you read I Can Has Cheezburger? Don’t click unless you have a lot of time on your hands! (If you’re at work, please recognize that you will be giggling aloud. This may or may not be problematic.) Here’s one of my favorites – guess why! And here’s another.

How cool is it that there’s a community radio station in northern Minnesota called KAXE (pronounced K-AXE)? It’s eclectic and excellent and you can even listen to it online. Saturday night from 7 – 9 pm CDT, check out Green Cheese, an extremely fun call-in trivia show. Not all callers are entirely sober, but many have Fargo-worthy accents! (And hey, you can even buy sports bras emblazoned with their logo!?!)

Reading Update
The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. Quite some time ago, Sachi sent me a first chapter excerpt of this book. I read it, but wasn’t that compelled to rush out and read the rest of the book. Finally picked it up from the library and decided that the first chapter doesn’t really do the book justice – it gets quite a bit better after that. It’s not world changing literature by a long shot and some aspects of the book are a bit predictable, but overall I enjoyed the read.
Now May You Weep by Deborah Crombie. Kincaid and James again. 🙂

Gluten-Free Update
If you have celiac disease like I do, I highly recommend subscribing to Gluten-Free Living. (Although I’m horrified at how out-of-date their webpage is.) They do a great job of actually researching celiac disease’s urban legends, providing information about new research, keeping up with legislative developments, and reviewing new products. The Spring 2007 issue featured an article about gluten-free beers – I didn’t know that Anheuser-Busch was making a gluten-free beer (Redbridge)! I was familiar with Lakefront Brewery’s New Grist, which I actually tasted before those darn migraines convinced me to go alcohol free. (It was tasty – even my gluten-eating beer connoisseur brother agreed.) The same issue also mentions a few restaurants where it’s possible to get gluten-free pizza. Woo-hoo!

Knitting Update
Does anyone even remember that I knit? 😉 The laptop bag is knitted – I just need to sew it together and felt it. And I’m working on two different socks, but it was too darn dark last night to take decent pictures. Maybe tonight it won’t be stormy… although the forecast is inauspicious. Instead, shall we take another look at the lovely Mayhem and her cute ‘tocks?

“What? Yeah, so I’m flexible. I coulda been a gymnast! Or a master yogi.” -Mayhem

“I don’t know why you think this is so interesting…” -Mayhem

Knitting, Reading

In which I introduce a new family member

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Don’t forget to regularly check in on the Pet Connection Blog! Over 5500 products from more than 100 companies have now been recalled. Let’s not even get started on the contaminants being in the US and Canadian human food stream.

Reading Update
Kissed a Sad Goodbye by Deborah Crombie. Moving right along through the Kincaid and James mysteries.
Don’t Mess with Mrs. In-Between by Liz Evans. I’m reading these mysteries about British PI Grace Smith completely out of order – oh well… If you like mysteries with smart-alecky main characters, give these a try.

Knitting Update
Last Friday I accidentally bought a new laptop. Well, ok, not exactly accidentally, but close. CompUSA is closing its stores in Minnesota and finally dropped prices down to interesting levels. (Hang on, you’ll see how this relates to knitting in a bit.) One of the stores is about a mile from work and I wandered in over my lunch break to discover they still had a few decent in-the-box laptops for very good prices. Very good prices. So now in addition to my laptop “Kenshin” (more of a desktop, actually – poor Kenshin has so many things connected that it is not worth unplugging him to go mobile), I have “Rurouni.” (Rurouni Kenshin is an anime series about a wandering samurai named Kenshin – “Rurouni” roughly means “wandering,” which seems a very good name for a laptop.)

Anyway! I decided that I needed a laptop sleeve to protect Rurouni in my bag. I knew what I wanted and found it in AlterKnits, which was only the fourth book I pulled off the shelf – bonus!

I pulled out some Kureyon (color 81 – forest green, purple, black, grey, and rust) and cast on. It’s not much to look at yet, but when assembled and felted, it will stripe in the same direction as the bag above.

“Hey, big kitty, I think Mom is finally making us that cat bed!” -Mayhem

“Really? I’ll believe that when I see it, May!” -Chaos

Knitting

Enough with this Monday stuff (now with dishcloth pattern!)

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Last Monday I mentioned that I would soon post the pattern for the dishcloth I was knitting. I think I’m running out of time on “soon,” so here goes. My pattern for this is more of a rough guide for you to use as a starting point. When I knit garter stitch bibs, I use a US6 needle. I knit these cloths on a US7. I’ll try a US8 next time – this is a tight pattern and it is much easier to knit if you use needles that help the knitting stay loose. Also, if cotton bugs your wrists, you’re going to need to do this in small doses – or skip straightaway to knitting a wool scarf using the stitch pattern.

The stitch pattern is from my beloved Mon Tricot Knitting Dictionary, procured from the thrift store for $0.69 a few years ago. If you ever come across a copy of this, snatch it up immediately. You won’t regret it.

The stitch pattern is the woven basket stitch, featured on page 54:

I first discovered this stitch while trying to knit Bamboozelle a while back. Something was very awry with the pattern (at least as I was interpreting it) and I dug through many stitch guides before I found the equivalent in good ol’ Mon Tricot.

You need to cast on an even number of stitches using the long-tailed cast on. I cast on 46 for this cloth, and it turned out a bit small – I would probably try 56 or 60 stitches next time. (My lovely assistant Chaos indicates the cloth of which I speak. The other one was knitted when I was trying to sort out the Bamboozelle confusion.)

“Hmph. This cloth is clean. It has no intriguing smells. What’s the point of this if I can’t have a snack?!” -Chaos

Row 1 (wrong side): P1, *purl the second stitch on the needle, purl the first stitch on the needle, slide both stitches off the needle*, P1

Row 2 (right side): *pass the right-hand needle behind the first stitch to knit the second stitch on the needle, knit the first stitch “in the usual way,” slip both stitches off the needle* (On Row 2, make sure you get both stitches off the needle! I had trouble with that if I wasn’t paying close attention.)

Knit until you like the size, then bind off. I’m still experimenting with bind offs. Whatever you do, don’t bind off in pattern! You’ll end up with a very wide bind off row. Trust me on that one.

As written, your cloth is going to curl a little bit. I couldn’t figure out an edge treatment that really went with this stitch pattern, so I decided to live with the curling. Hey, no dishcloth curls when it’s being used, right?

Please let me know if you have questions about this or if you come up with a really spiffy edging or bind off!

Contests, Knitting

Lucky healing thoughts

46 Comments

Stephania is having a blogiversary contest. Leave her a comment by midnight CDT, May 6, about what your favorite post or project of hers was and you could win sock yarn – possibly even a skein of Sweet Georgia! If you live in central Minnesota and are interested in attending Stephania’s blogiversary party on May 5, let her know. Alas, I have a prior commitment on Saturday. 🙁

Frarochvia is having a contest. You can see the amazing prizes in her post of yesterday! Contest closes at 8:30 am CDT, May 11.

My dear friend Frarochvia is also having surgery today to remove some infected metal plates from her face. Please send lucky healing thoughts her way!

I sent my thoughts to her in the form of a comfort shawl. This shawl was mostly the Eyelet and Garter Shapely Shawlette, although I added an extra few rows at the bottom of the shawl and I knitted back across the wrong side instead of purling back (no time for purling – I had a deadline!). I used Brooklyn Handspun sock yarn, color Black Cherry. Yup, I was working on this at the same time I was working on the baby dress. Sneaky, huh? 😉

And of course, the modeled shots…

“I hope this this my good side.” -Mayhem

“I wonder what Black Cherry tastes like?” *munch* -Mayhem

“No! It’s a gift! Stop!!” -me