One year (almost) gone

What better way is there to celebrate the completion of shockingly pink socks than with a shockingly pink drink? The day that I’m too old for Shirley Temples is the day that I’m just plain…too old. I’m very happy with the way these socks turned out. The yardage of the Twilight Sock was generous enough that I could get a pair of tall socks out of one skein with a comfortable 25 yards left over at the end. If I had made them taller, I would have had to mess around with calf shaping, which was beyond the scope of these socks, as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t show up too well in the pictures, but the cables and twisted stitches really “pop” in this yarn, and I’m pleased with how soft and smooshy it is. All I have left to do is to wash and block them so I can wear my socks out of the house.

Now that I’m finished with the “Rib Her to Shreds” socks (sorry, Debbie Harry!), I decided to go through my stash to find some inspiration for my next pair. While I was looking at my sock yarn, I realized that I really must know what shades and colorways I like, because I keep buying them over, and over, and over again. That’s actually not even a complete set yet, and I think I can do something sort of similar with my collection of teal and green yarn as well, although there is a good bit less of that. I feel like maybe I should branch out some, but I’m not fond of warm colors like reds and oranges, so that limits things a bit.  Perhaps I should just continue with my “yarn fast” for a while after Easter until I can work my way through more of it.

I finally decided to stick with more happy springtime colors for the next set of socks that I cast on:

It’s the closest possible thing to carrying some of the flowers that are currently in bloom around with me in my purse. Of course, it’s also a lot neater, what with not having to also carry around dirt and mulch to keep said spring flowers alive. It’s a win-win situation all around.

It’s amazing how fast time gets away on you. Just a little bit over a year ago, I started this blog after going to one of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s book launches and being inspired to start writing about my knitting. I’d like to thank the Readership for their advice, patience, and proofreading, because I’ve had so much fun staking out this little corner of the internet in the name of knitting and the Yankees. I know that it’s traditional to celebrate a “blogiversary” with a Very Special Entry, and I hope to do that next year. This year, however, it’s a holiday weekend, so instead of updating I’ll be celebrating by choosing to follow some wise advice that I found scrawled on a subway wall:

Be true to your scarf

Remember the garter stitch swatch I had going a couple weeks ago? The true identity of the project can finally be revealed. It’s a little something that I call the “Be True to Your School Scarf”, which I designed and knitted for J for his birthday. He’s a big fan of The Ohio State University sports teams, so I decided to make him a sideways-knit garter stitch scarf in that school’s colors to warm him up during March Madness, and any of the other New England weather that would precede or follow it. It took a couple of tries to get a stripe sequence that I liked, but I think the effort was worth it. J seemed to like the scarf very much, and I think it’s fair to say that he looks rather dashing in it. Someday I may even post a picture of the scarf in action. Until then, a not-terribly-flattering picture of me modeling the finished product will have to suffice.

In a happy coincidence, the school colors for Ohio State and MIT are very similar (a mere substitution of MIT’s “cardinal” for OSU scarlet), so the scarf can serve double duty and be true to our alma mater as well.

The yarn that I used was Cascade 220 in Silver Gray and Christmas Red, but the yarn comes in so many other colors that the scarf should be infinitely adaptable.

I also got to interact with the knitting community quite a bit this week. I’m a member of a knitting website called Ravelry, and recently I got a message from a fellow knitter who had run out of the yarn she was using to make a sweater asking if I could spare any. I could, of course, because I had over half a pound of yarn left over from my Tangled Yoke cardigan, so we set up an exchange–four ounces of my yarn for four ounces of this:

Dream In Color Smooshy in Wisterious. The picture doesn’t do the yarn justice. The colors are just luminous in person, and the yarn definitely lives up to its name. While we were getting everything set up, we found out that we were both huge fans of both knitting and baseball, although we’re on opposite sides of a rivalry. But that’s part of the beauty of knitting in general, and Ravelry in specific–it brings together all sorts of people who might not ordinarily meet.

I also brought my traveling sock to my first Sit’n'Knit NYC event, a large social that can be best described as “speed-dating for knitters”. It was pretty nifty, and a lot more fun than I imagine that “speed dating for real” could ever be. I got to move around the room and meet a whole bunch of local knitters, and see what they were all working on, or had brought to show off. I had a great time, and I have so many ideas for new projects. The Sit’n'Knit seems like a really cool group of people, and I’m really looking forward to future meet-ups that they have. I’m even considering participating in the sock exchange that they run every spring. I’ve never done anything like that though, so I’m a little bit apprehensive about meeting the deadline and making socks that are up to snuff.

And finally, because I haven’t done it in ages, a little eye candy to conclude the post. We’re in the throes of some real winter weather now, so I got to take some pictures of frozen water droplets on the ornamental kale in front of a local building.

Catching Up

It’s been a busy month, but I’ve still had time to get a little bit of knitting in. I’m currently working on the Racer Pullover from Shelridge Farms, and for the moment, I’ve been stuck in the knitting doldrums. I’m about halfway done with the sleeves, but I’ve set those aside to work on the body, which has been very slow going. The cables at the sides have been keeping it sort of interesting, but I’m almost starting to look forward to having to divide for the front and back because that will change things up a bit more. I will have to remember that in the next entry about this sweater when I’m complaining about all the purling I have to do, though. I just bought the yarn to make Eunny Jang’s Ivy League Vest from the Winter ‘07 Interweave Knits, so I’m hoping that the rest of the Racer Pullover will go very quickly so I can try colorwork and steeking.

After last year, I promised myself that I wouldn’t do any Christmas knitting this year, but that went out the window when I heard a suggestion that my cousin might like a scarf because the winters at her college are brutal. So after checking out what the Penn State school colors were, I decided to knit up another My-So-Called Scarf using Cascade 220 held double, and 10 mm needles. Much like my first scarf, it knitted up very quickly (which was good as I had lost a week of knitting time to a cold), and was a nice, cushy fabric. I got a scarf that was 64″ by 6″ out of two skeins of Cascade 220, with a little bit to spare. The gift seemed to be well-received, so I hope it holds up well.

Finally, since it’s been a while since I did Eye Candy Friday, here’s Grand Central Terminal and the Chrysler Building at night.  It’s not a view that I see often, but it’s nifty to turn the corner and see that part of the city laid out before you.

Picking up the pace

I’m nearly at the finish line for my Tangled Yoke Cardigan. After spending a few evenings knitting the neckband and picking up the stitches for the folded hem, I’m left with just the two button bands to finish. After some measuring and math, I figured out that I’ll have to pick up just under 300 stitches total to account for the changes in length that I made to the cardigan.

Picking up stitches and I do not get along very well. I had to do it for the Tubey that I made last year, and there are some fairly obvious errors, although none that are worth ripping out the entire body of the sweater to fix. Picking up the purl bumps for the neckband was bad enough, and this is in a much more visible location than “the inside of my sweater”. So buoyed by another tutorial from knitty.com, I proceeded to attempt to evenly space my stitches and make sure they’re in the same vertical line. The way the neckband pulls in made all this rather tricky, but after many attempts I got all of the stitches picked up for the left buttonband. Great, right? Except I’m pretty sure I picked up the wrong loop and will have to rip everything out as it’ll look funny. I’m going with it as it is now because I have a feeling that I miscalculated the total number of stitches and will need to do it all over again to get things the right size. I also have a feeling that given how sore my index finger is from being poked with a 2 mm needle repeatedly, if by some miracle the band is the right length, I can live with having picked up the wrong half of the stitch.

This is what I’ve started doing as a way to put off picking up those stitches.

It’s my new traveling project, a slightly narrower version of the My So-Called Scarf from Sheep in the City. I like my scarves on the long and skinny side, so I cast on 26 stitches instead of 30, and it’s amazing how fast it’s been going–I’ve knit 3 feet of it in two nights. I’m using Manos del Uruguay in the Mar colorway that I purchased at Knit-A-Bit in Westfield, NJ. I met one of the owners and several of the knitters from Knit-A-Bit at Stitch ‘n’ Pitch at Shea in August, and they were so nice that I wanted to check their store out whenever I got an opportunity to. I was very impressed–they had a great selection of yarns and books (including many colorways of Manos and Lorna’s, and a wide variety of sock yarns), and were incredibly helpful. I went off my pre-Stitches yarn diet because the yarn I bought was perfect for a scarf to go with my navy peacoat, and I’d definitely go back when I got a chance.

The Manos feels much softer than I remembered it feeling (and than what I already had in the stash feels like), so I hope it’ll still wear decently. As with most handpainted yarns, there’s enough variation between the two skeins that I bought that I decided I ought to wind both skeins into one big ball and alternate between knitting from the center and the outside.

And finally, a splash of color to counteract all the gray we’ve been having the past few days. It may have been in the high 70s earlier this week, but it’s still nice to be reminded of summer.

Yarn Candy Friday

Last Saturday, my mother and I went to Stitches East, in Baltimore. I…may have picked up a few things while we were there.

I got some Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Mediumweight in Highway 30, most likely to make something out of Cat Bordhi’s new sock architecture book.

I also couldn’t resist the candy cane-like striping of some of the STR Silkie, in Mystic Kelp. The BMFA booth was seriously decimated by Saturday afternoon. I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d even have anything to sell on Sunday, but I was fortunate to find colors that I really liked among what was left. I guess it pays to have “different” taste.

I also stopped by the Lisa Souza booth, and got a skein of Sock! in Wild Thing. . .

And Sock! Merino in Berry Poppins. I’d been admiring this yarn from afar for a while because of all of the pretty colorways, but I like to get to feel the yarn before I’ll order it online, so it was great that they were there.

Another nice thing about Stitches is that you get to meet producers that you might not have heard of before.

I got a skein of Storm Moon Knits’ Twilight Sock in “Rip Her to Shreds”. I figure what better way to break out of my blue/purple rut than with some hot pink (and, uh, blue and purple) yarn, right?

I also got a pair of skeins of Green Mountain Spinnery Maine Organic for the Tyrolean Stockings from the Fall 2007 Interweave Knits.

And then there was my really big purchase: 6 skeins of the Wool/Cotton from Shelridge Farms. I bought it as a kit for a sweater with cable detailing on the sides and sleeves that should be very cute in the light purple color. The people at the Shelridge booth were incredibly nice. I had swapped out the yarn originally in the kit for the size and color that I wanted, and after I had paid, they gave me an extra skein because they weren’t sure if the amount of yarn listed for the smallest size was going to be enough. If I had extra, I could bring the skein back at the next fiber festival we were both at. The yarn was just lovely, though, so after conferring with Mom, we decided to buy the skein outright, and if I have leftovers, I can then make a hat.

I also got some Elsebeth Lavold Classic AL and Kathmandu Tweed on deep clearance from the Webs booth, so I’m going to be in very, very good shape for whatever sweater patterns strike my fancy in the upcoming months. I’m thinking one of those might get turned into a Mr. Greenjeans, but you never know.

Eye Candy Friday

After all, fruit is like Nature’s candy, right?

In the conservatories at Longwood Gardens, they recreate some of the house gardens that the Du Pont family had to provide them with fresh tropical and out-of-season fruit all year long.  I’m sure that outside of Longwood, strawberry guavas are not that common in Pennsylvania.

In the room called the Orangery, they had a number of planters of grapefruit trees set up, while the other greenhouses had plenty of other citrus varieties, including several different kinds of kumquat.

Of course, when you want the most perfect fruit specimens possible, you resort to some interesting tactics. They had signs posted about how the family employed gardeners to thin out bunches of grapes so the individual grapes didn’t touch one another, and they also had these:

Melon trees that had been trained up the walls of the greenhouse, and whose fruit had to be supported by net bags, so it didn’t touch the ground.

And of course, no tropical greenhouse would be complete without a group of pineapple plants, complete with adorable mini-pineapples.

I’m still making progress on the Tangled Yoke Cardigan. Pictures will follow soon, now that I’ve finally joined the sleeves to the body and have started the cable pattern.

Monarchs on the move

There’s been a patch of campus that has been under construction for about as long as I’ve been going to school at this university. I say “about as long” because this summer, they finally took down the temporary wall around it and planted a butterfly garden. There have been plenty of butterflies (and moths) taking advantage of the garden all summer, but now that autumn is officially here, the most common butterfly around these parts has been the monarch.

This has actually been the first time that I’ve managed to get a picture of the butterflies in this garden–I haven’t been quick enough on the draw in the past, but as the monarchs start their annual migration, they’ve become more and more common. I have to admit that I’m very impressed with how resilient these little insects are. That something as delicate and fragile looking as a butterfly can make it all the way from the northeast to Mexico to overwinter is just amazing to me.

Eye Candyapple Friday

Even though we’ve been having a week of very, very summery weather, fall can’t be far away. The rows of decorative crabapple trees that are planted along one of the paths here at the university are starting to bear red, jewel-like fruit.

I’ve been making progress on the sleeves of my sweater, albeit very, very slowly. I’ve got about eight inches of each sleeve done, which means I’ve finally hit the stockinette portion of them. I do hope that they start to go faster now that I only have to worry about purling once a round, but all the rearranging that knitting two sleeves at once entails really cuts into my knitting speed. Perhaps the best thing that I can say about the technique is that I’m guaranteed to have matching increases and sleeves that are the same length, because it sure does take a lot of patience

Eye Candy Friday

First, another glimpse at some of the waterlilies from Longwood Gardens…

And then a peek of sleeve for those adventurous enough to click through.

Eye Candy Friday: How Do You Like Them Apples? Edition

The summer months are clearly starting to wind down–the days are getting shorter, the nights cooler, and the football season started last night (sigh). When you live in the “concrete jungle”, it can be easy to miss other signs of fall, but sometimes you just sort of stumble across them in the most unexpected places.

Take this apple tree for instance. Seemingly neglected, in a part of the city not known for its agriculture, it was nonetheless loaded down with fruit when J and I came across it while searching for the entrance to a New York City landmark. And what landmark might that have been?

Does this narrow it down a bit?

How about this view?

We found the tree while we were walking around the Lower East Side, meandering our way towards the pedestrian entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. Later on in our trek, a kind police officer pointed us toward the staircase that saved us a couple of extra blocks of walking and some intimidating street crossings.

We only meandered about one third or so of the way across the bridge. It was very hot that day, and we wanted to give ourselves enough time to eat a proper dinner before our evening’s activities instead of trying to find a subway stop in the immediate vicinity of the bridge on the Brooklyn Side. I definitely do plan to go all the way across someday, to see if trees grow in Brooklyn as well.