First things first

I’ve participated in a number of knitting-related swaps in the past. They’ve exposed me to people and blogs I otherwise probably would have missed. I’m happy to be in touch still with nearly all of my swap partners. We keep up with each others’ blogs and swap e-mail from time to time. And I’m very glad about that, because I do these swaps in order to connect with people—I think that people who are in it just for the loot should save themselves and everyone else a lot of trouble and just buy what they want for themselves.

One of the biggest swaps out there is the Secret Pal series. It’s huge—to the tune of several hundred people, scattered around the world and organized by eight or ten or so volunteers. I first signed up to SP8, in the spring of 2006, and kept signing up through SP11. For the most part, my experiences with these swaps were great. I met some interesting and kind people, and I’m delighted to count them among my friends.

Last fall, as SP11 wound to a close, there was a big blowup on Ravelry about it. In short: the SP exchange rules specifically state that participants can not “bad mouth” their partners, the hosts, or the swap on their blogs. Some participants had less-than-happy experiences with SP11 (e.g., swap partners who didn’t fulfill expectation, swap partners who completely disappeared, hosts who did not respond to queries or concerns). Since they weren’t allowed to write about these things on their own blogs, they took the discussion to the Ravelry forums. And there, things got nasty.

They got so nasty, in fact, that the SP hosts decided to take a break from hosting the swap. Usually one round follows another, with just a few weeks between the end of one and signups for the next. But this time the break lasted several months.

When SP12 was announced in May, I took at a look at the blog set up for it. When I read the rules, I knew then and there that I wasn’t going to participate.

The rules are pretty much the same as they’ve been for the last several rounds, with one notable exception:

“Along with the changes previously announced for this round, we are also initiating a $2.50 participant fee to go toward ‘angel’ contributions for the participants whose pals drop out from the exchange. . . . If we end up not needing all of the funds, we plan to donate them to a charity to be determined later.”

I have two problems with this new rule:

1. I understand that partners do sometimes flake out and disappear. But I don’t like the idea of requiring participants to contribute to a fund to pay for gifts in those situations. Asking for up-front contributions assumes that people will be bad swap partners. Me, I like to have a bit more faith in people. The whole swap experience is predicated on trust: when I send a box o’ goodies to someone, I trust that someone will send a box o’ goodies to me. This sort of thing confirms my belief that people are essentially good. I don’t want to participate in something that starts with the belief that some people will definitely be bad.

2. I’m not keen on the fact that individual participants don’t get to choose where the excess funds go. Me, I’m very choosy about where my charitable donations go. What if the swap hosts decide to donate the money to, say, the NRA? Or to a white supremacist group? Or to McCain’s election fund? Or to another cause that isn’t aligned with my own values? It’s bad enough that my taxes (about which I have no choice) are helping fund American military aggression overseas; I’m unwilling to let money that I voluntarily contribute go to causes I don’t support.

When I first started knitting, I did what pretty much everyone else does: I made garter-stitch scarves. After three of ‘em, I decided to branch out. So I made a garter-stitch blanket for Sylvia.

And then I got the brilliant (ahem) idea of knitting a ruana for my mother-in-law. I had recently acquired Sally Melville’s very excellent The Knit Stitch and was feeling inspired to do something that wasn’t a scarf. But I was still a bit intimidated by increases and decreases and any sort of shaping. So I chose the one-size-fits-all Three-Scarf Ruana, figuring it would make an excellent Christmas gift for my mother-in-law. When I started it, I completely failed to realize that it is basically a scarf. A freakin’ huge scarf.

Melville annotates this pattern with “Lots of knitting”—and boy, she’s not kidding. It’s a lot of garter stitch. As I neared the end (after two Christmases had passed), I wasn’t really happy with how this thing looked. But because I was near the end, I doggedly continued. Some part of my brain thought, “If I can just finish this thing, then some miracle will happen, and it will actually look good.”

No such luck. I finished everything but weaving in the ends, then put the ruana in a basket on top of my armoire. It sat there for three years, a failed knitting project in every sense of the word. Finally, I decided to frog it and use the yarn for something else. But the thought of wrestling with a big tangle of yarn (and I knew I would be unable to frog this and get it into balls or skeins without creating some ginormous mess) made me pause.

Then I learned about the niddy noddy, a tool used to wind yarn into skeins. Then I found an excellent online tutorial for making my own—out of inexpensive PVC pipe. After a quick trip to the hardware store, I set up a little workshop on the front porch.
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Look! I HAS MAD SKILZ! See how a few deft cuts with a hacksaw (followed by a bit of sanding on the edges—don’t want to snag the yarn!)…
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…yields a niddy noddy that becomes flat for storage and cost about $2 to make!
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I was so pleased with myself (and had plenty of leftover PVC, since the store sold it only in ten-foot lengths) that I made another one for a friend. (There was even three feet of PVC left after this. It has been turned into a pole for Sylvia’s pirate flag.)

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The ruana is now frogged and all the yarn tidily wound into very curly skeins that make me think of poodles whenever I look at them. But all I need to do now is soak the yarn to get it all wet then hang it up to dry (with a can of soup acting as a weight at the bottom to stretch out the kinks). And then I’ll have ten skeins of Nature Spun worsted (in the Grape Harvest color) at my disposal. Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with it…

It’s been a busy weekend here.

On Friday, we celebrated our nation’s birthday by taking a trip to our nation’s first zoo. The Philadelphia Zoo doesn’t hold a candle to the zoo I grew up going to—both in terms of animal habitats and entrance fees (the St. Louis Zoo is free, whereas the Philly one is a whopping $18 for adults and $15 for kids 2-11)—but it’s what we’ve got. And Sylvia loves it, so there you go.

Yesterday morning my brother arrived for a two-day visit. He lives in Greenwich Village and almost always brings us a dozen fresh bagels that he picks up at the shop around the corner from him on his way to Penn Station. We’re so grateful for this gift, because even though it’s possible to get decent bagels where we live, nothing compares to New York bagels. (Seriously. They’re standing on the summit of Mount Everest, with all other bagels in the world stuck in the Mariana Trench. They’re that good. The other bagels aren’t jealous, though, because they’re in so much awe of New York bagels that they can’t help but admire them.)

This time, in addition to bagels, he brought a special treat that I’d asked him to find: vegan marshmallows. (Real marshmallows contain gelatin, which is made from animal bones and pig and cow skin.)* A few days earlier, I’d told him that Whole Foods stores in NYC carry them (but not any stores in my area), and because they need to be refrigerated it’s very expensive to get them by mail-order during the summer. “Don’t go to any trouble, but if you can find some, that would be great,” I told him. He took it as his personal mission to find these for us, and after visiting a few stores, scored two boxes of them (each holding about a dozen marshmallows for $7, if you can believe it). Thanks to her uncle’s efforts, Sylvia got to enjoy her first backyard s’mores yesterday evening. Which she loved, of course!

Once Sylvia was in bed for the evening, a few friends came over for some serious geeking out. Nine of us played a board game until 2 a.m. Yeah, I’d say we had a good time.

I also managed to get a lot of knitting done. Last night I finished knitting one new piece, and this morning I seamed it; it just needs a few more embellishments. Right now, I’m blocking Sylvia’s new sweater and hope to finish it up (finally!) this evening. A more detailed knitting update—with pictures—will be forthcoming later this week (I hope!).

I hope all of you, too, had a great weekend!

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*A few years ago, the excrement hit the fan in the vegetarian world when it was revealed the Emes Kosher Jel, which had marketed itself as a vegetarian gelatin substitute, actually contained animal gelatin. (CNBC did a story about this: part 1, part 2.) The few companies that made vegetarian marshmallows using Emes products went out of business, and since then only a handful of companies in the world have figured out how to make vegan marshmallows.

Here are the results of my second attempt to lengthen Sylvia’s sweater.

The first time, I followed the advice of a friend with loads more knitting experience than I have. They suggested I pick up all the stitches around the bottom, then do a K2P2 ribbing while decreasing on every tenth stitch on the first round and no further decreases the rest of the way. I could tell after six or seven rounds that the ribbing was going to be a lot “gappier” than I’d like. (I suspect this is because I’m using size 6 needles for yarn that usually takes a size 3.)

I showed it to my friend, who agreed that the ribbing wasn’t working and suggested I try again, using the same ten-percent decrease on the first round and just going with straight stockinette the whole way. I like how the stockinette looks, but I’m not keen on how the sweater pulls in at the bottom.

So I’m going to rip it again and try picking up all the stitches, doing no decreases, and knitting stockinette. (Fortunately, this is a little sweater, so reknitting this part won’t be a big deal. And the yarn—Baby Cashermino—is just lovely to work.)

Third time’s the charm, right? Stay tuned…

After cranking through one pair of toddler socks, I felt like I was on a roll. So I decided to knit another pair—this set for the soon-to-be one-year-old son of a friend. I used Wildfoote (in Master Grey), which was just lovely to work with. I knit the legs extra long, because socks almost never stay on babies’ feet once they are mobile (I used to find Sylvia’s little socks scattered throughout the house). Also, an extra-long leg can help prevent the “gap-itis” (particularly unpleasant in the winter, when it’s cold) that occurs when pant legs get scrunched up. These took just eight days to knit. I think I have toddler socks out of my system for now, though. My next sock project will be something for a grownup.

First, though I’m going to work on this sweater. I knit this a few years ago out of Baby Cashmerino left over from Sylvia’s baby blanket. I followed the Simple Boatneck pattern in Baby Knits for Beginners by Debbie Bliss.

Sylvia loves this sweater. She can put it on and take it off all by herself, and it has purple in it. Originally, the arms were way too long, but now they’re just right…and the body of the sweater is way too short. So I’m going to add some length to it by picking up stitches and knitting downward. It doesn’t have to look perfect (have you seen the seaming job I did on this thing?). Luckily, my friend Beth just happened to have two balls of Baby Cashmerino in a color that looks very much like one I used in the sweater!

I received a lot of wonderful comments to my post about which sock yarn to knit up first. (Thanks, everyone!) The suggestions were great, and I agreed with them all—even when they didn’t agree with each other!

I decided to start with the Trampoline yarn. This was given to me as a gift, and it definitely falls into the “these are so not my colors” category. But Sylvia really liked the yarn, so I set out to knit a pair of socks for her.

I followed the Ann Norling pattern for baby and kids socks. This pattern is written for three different gauges and is clear enough that even a sock n00b like me had no trouble following it (until I got to the Kitchener stitch instructions at the end, which made no sense to me, so I looked them up elsewhere).

These socks knit up pretty quickly, and I really enjoyed working on them! The best part? Sylvia is excited to wear them—as soon as her feet grow a little more and the weather cools. I think they’ll be just right for her this winter.

And now…on to the next pair of socks!

I finally finished my Artisan Vest.

The knitting was done a couple of months ago, but I had trouble finding appropriate buttons. The yarn (Double Twist in Potpourri) is a brownish-gray-mauve that is absolutely beautiful but very difficult to match. Gold and brass tones were out of the question, and silver and pewter didn’t work either. I finally settled on some mahogany-colored simple leather buttons, and I think they look great.

Unfortunately, my button placement was less than optimal. This vest has no significant button band; rather, the buttons go into little crocheted loops (which, along with all the edging, were crocheted by my husband). As I sewed on the buttons, I thought they look lined-up just fine, but once I finished I could see a little “gapping” between buttons. I think this is remedied by moving the buttons away from the edge a bit. I haven’t done this yet, though, because we’ve been having some unseasonably cool weather lately and I really wanted to wear this vest! Once the hot weather is here to stay, I’ll have all summer to tweak the buttons.

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Previously on “Marsha knits a vest for herself”:

The start of the vest journey.
Trouble with the edging.

Three weeks ago, the renowned knitblogger Franklin came to the Philadelphia area to take pictures for his 1000 Knitters photography project. His shooting location: Wool Gathering, in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Kennett Square is the Mushroom Capitol of the World, just down the road from the Brandywine River Museum (more Wyeths than you can shake a stick at), home to a Revolutionary War sites, and only about half an hour from my house. So of course I had to go.

Five people from my local knitting group (plus the mother of one of them) arranged to meet at the shop at 11:30. I got there first and found a very interesting performance in progress. The tiny store was packed with people (Franklin and his setup, though not huge, did take up a good chunk of the inside space next to the storefront window), and the sidewalk outside was covered with knitters, chatting away and knitting on various projects.

After I put my name down on the list, I looked around inside the store for a bit, hoping to find something that would work well for Sylvia’s sweater (I didn’t). Fortunately, just next door was a terrific cafe where my friends and I (and Jan and Sylvia, who’d tagged along for the outing) grabbed lunch while we waiting for our numbers to be called. Good thing the cafe was there, too, because we had to wait about an hour and a half. Franklin was snapping away as quickly as he could, but there were a lot of people there (several of whom, as I overheard, had traveled from a few states away, even!).

When number 78 was called, I handed Franklin the model-release form, shook his hand, picked up the scarf, and took my place on the stool in front of the white backdrop. When I looked at the scarf, I was surprised to find that the stitches were all “backward” (i.e., the right “legs” were behind the needle rather than in front of it). My far-more-knowledgeable-than-me knitting friends explained to me later that the previous knitter had used a different knitting style; me, all I know is plain ol’ vanilla knitting and purling, so I didn’t really know what to do with those stitches. So I just knit into the left legs—and found out later that I should have knit into the right legs. (Fortunately, my friend Debbie, who was number 79, said she had no trouble working with the stitches I’d left for her.)

So what was it like to sit in front of Franklin’s camera for three or four minutes? I’m fairly self-conscious in front of a lens and don’t feel particularly photogenic. But he did a great job of putting me at ease, and what impressed me the most was his ability to conduct a coherent, engaging conversation with me while I sat there. He posted in his blog later that he’d photographed 131 people that day (wow), and although I certainly didn’t see all of them I did get to see him interact with several people. And in all of those interactions, he was grateful (we are, after all, providing him with free material for this project, which he hopes to turn into a book), gracious, and actually interested in what knitters had to say and the stories they told him.

It was a very warm day (one of those too-warm days that hit before the air conditioning is turned on), and he was working at a pretty steady clip. But I was really impressed with his interest in the knitters as people, not just as photographic subjects. And the fact that he was able to talk with each one of them is pretty amazing.

So if Franklin and his photography project make a stop in or near your hometown, I very much recommend spending a few minutes in front of his camera. Aside from the opportunity to meets lots of knitters and participate in an interesting project, you also get a chance to meet a nice person. And you know, that sort of opportunity doesn’t come around every day.

Last night, my local knitting group met at 7 p.m. for our weekly get together. At about 7:45, I felt someone poke me on the side and looked down to see Sylvia standing there. I did a double-take. Maybe it was a triple-take. She’s usually in bed by 8. What was she doing there?

Then I saw Jan appear with some boxes in hand. My friends were grinning madly, and Jan said, “Happy birthday!” Sylvia, unable to contain the secret any longer, shouted, “Cupcakes! Cupcakes!”

With help from Gina (who communicated with the other knitters), Jan had planned a surprise birthday celebration for me. My birthday is still a little over a week away, so I had no idea this was coming. He woke up at 4 a.m. yesterday morning to bake (and clean up afterward, to hide the evidence), and I slept through it all—even the KitchenAid mixing!

We enjoyed the chocolate cupcakes with chocolate glaze and mascapone icing (Jan is a terrific baker, and everything he makes both looks and tastes great), had a little video chat via Skype with one knitting friend who’s in Belgium for a couple of months, and (once Sylvia headed home to bed after inhaling her cupcake) even did a little knitting. I had a great time!

Okay, here’s the deal: Last month, I started knitting a sweater for Sylvia, using yarn that was in my stash. The yarn is Noro New Ruby, which hasn’t been manufactured in at least a decade, as far as I can tell (it’s next to impossible to find information about it anywhere online). It’s a 40%cotton/40%viscose/20%nylon blend, which feels a bit like a cotton-silk blend and also has a bit of a sheen to it.

I’ve just finished the sleeves; here they are, curling like Cathy Overton-Clapham in their unblocked stockinette glory. I love how they’ve turned out, but now I need to figure out what yarn to use for the body.

I’m knitting a simple drop-sleeve pullover (Ann Budd style), and I don’t have enough of the Noro New Ruby to do the front or the back, much less both. (I may use some of that Noro to do an intarsia motif—a big star, perhaps—on the front, or maybe a couple of patch pockets.) I don’t mind using different colors for the front and the back, but I think that each surface ought to be a solid color (i.e., no stripes or all-over intarsia or fairisle). The sleeves were knit on #2 needles (my friend Pat says the Noro is sportweight yarn that would have done well on #3s, but I liked the tighter fabric that #2s produced), and I’d like the body to be knit on #2s or #3s, too.

I was thinking that a sock yarn might work, and so far that only place I’ve really looked is KnitPicks. None of their sock yarns (and sportweight yarns, too) have the same “jewel tone” quality of this Noro New Ruby. I have no objection to mixing and matching yarns, but I do want the parts of the sweater to look like they’re meant to go together. My friend Gina thought that Baby Cashmerino (which I lurve might work, but the colors in that line are too subdued for this project.

Help! Suggestions, anyone?