First things first

So here’s what I’ve done with the yarn I won at Knitters’ Day Out 2008. (Some of it, at least. There is a lot of it.)

After knitting the We Call Them Pirates hat last summer, I was eager to try my hand at more Fair Isle, and the Squirrel and Oak mittens had long been on my to-knit list. (Like the pirate hat, this pattern is a freebie from Hello Yarn. This site is where I also found the hat that inspired the Totoro hat I made for Jan’s Halloween costume.)

I really wanted to make mittens for Sylvia, and I figured that subbing fingering-weight yarn for the sportweight called for in the pattern ought to yield something the right size for a three-year-old, as long as I chose the correct needle size. That seems logical, right?

So last September I picked up my #1.5 DPNs and knit away. The result was too small (just barely) for her hand.

So then I moved up to #3 needles and knit another one right away. This time I used the purple yarn for the dark spots on the chart and the green yarn for the light spots. (I had reversed them the first time around and ended up getting confused every once in a while, which required some tinking here and there.)

This time I ended up with a mitten that was too large. D’oh!

After putting this project aside for a couple of months, I decided on December 20 that I really wanted to get them done by Christmas. So I tried again, this time with #2 needles.

And it worked! The mitten fit perfectly (with “perfectly” being defined as “there’s just enough extra room to insure that she won’t outgrow them this winter”). After trying on this mitten, Sylvia was so happy with it that she wore it (yes, just the one) around the house for half an hour.

I finished the second one after Sylvia went to bed on Christmas night. I am thrilled with how they turned out.

I love this yarn. Linda at Bearlin Acres grows, spins, and dyes some mighty fine fiber. If you have a chance to throw some on your needles, go for it. This stuff didn’t split or snag or anything, and it flowed wonderfully as I knit.

I love this pattern, too. It’s very well written, and the result is something worthy of a post on Cute Overload.

See the fuzz on the palms? That’s the result of some post-Christmas snowman building. Sylvia loves her new mittens. That’s the best part of all.

Last September I attended my very first knitting conference/festival thingy: Knitters Day Out, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Ever since I first learned of KDO a few years ago, it’s managed to land on the same weekend as my wedding anniversary, and last fall was the first time the two events were several days apart.

My morning class was on knitting a top-down raglan. The instructor was not as organized as I’d have liked and padded her income a bit by charging us a $13 “materials fee” for a mini notebook from CVS, four pages of photocopies, a paper folder, and a skein of acrylic worsted yarn. (We also wasted spent the first forty-five minutes of the three-hour class knitting gauge swatches—which we could have done at home ahead of time.) Each student was asked to bring an eight-inch tall stuffed bear to class. I borrowed Sylvia’s bear Tiny Teddy and learned how to measure for this type of sweater. I knit most of this sweater during the class and finished up the rest a few days later.

I thought he looked a little sad with just a sweater, so I knit him some pants, too. No pattern—I just winged it. I think they turned out nicely! Tiny Teddy hasn’t complained about them, at least.

I enjoyed learning about the top-down technique—enough to track down a copy of Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top through interlibrary loan. (And I ended up liking that book enough to request—and receive!—it as a Christmas gift.)

My afternoon class was on finishing techniques. The instructor, Margaret Fisher, was amazing: knowledgeable, articulate, professional, and efficient. Given the opportunity, I would take any class with her—even this one again. (She just published her first book: Seven Things that Can “Make or Break” a Sweater . It was another one of my Christmas gifts, and I highly recommend it.) We learned about the tubular cast-on and the tubular bind-off and short rows…and we learned how to (gasp!) cut our knitting to lengthen it. There’s something rather unsettling about wielding a pair of scissors and snipping away at something that took a while to knit. But Margaret talked us through it, and the results were pretty amazing.

KDO is held about 90 minutes from my house, so it’s an easy day trip there. I carpooled with three friends, and we arrived early enough to browse the market before our classes. When we picked up our registration materials, we learned that we’d each won a door prize. Mine was a $25 gift certificate for one of the market vendors, Bearlin Acres Farm. I stopped by there during the midday break and found myself facing an incredible array of locally grown, spun, and dyed yarn. I had a lovely chat with the owner (whose name escapes me, I’m afraid), and when she learned that I was the person who’d won her gift certificate, she became very interested in seeing what I chose.

After much deliberation, I decided on two four-ounce skeins of her hand-dyed Cheviot/Alpaca blend (50% wool/50%alpaca) two-ply sockweight yarn. They were $13 each, so I was set to add a couple of dollars to my gift certificate. I told her I was going to use the yarn to make something for my purple-crazy daughter and asked which yarns in her stock would go well with the purple I’d chosen. She replied, “Anything would work, I think! Look around and see what you like. And you know what? Get three skeins. It’s on me.” Wow. How amazingly nice.

So I chose a green (a sweet-pea color) and a jewel-toned red called Summer Cherry. Want to know what I did with them? Tune in to the next post…

Last spring, I set out to knit a pullover sweater for Sylvia. I had a few balls of Noro New Ruby in a vibrant (but not blinding) color, but the yarn had been discontinued years ago, and there was no way I’d have enough for the whole sweater. So I used the New Ruby for the sleeves and solicited advice for what to do about the body.

From the many very excellent suggestions I received I opted for Gina’s idea of using a solid Dale of Norway fingering-weight yarn. She even gave me the yarn for my birthday—two balls of purple, and two balls of light forest green. I finished up the sweater during the summer, opting for a simple boatneck at the top so the sweater would be reversible. (Aw, who am I kidding? Purple-crazy Sylvia will always choose to wear purple in the front…) Since it was high summer when the sweater was completed, it went right into a drawer. A few weeks ago it emerged as temperatures started to dip, though, and now it’s Sylvia’s sweater of choice.

A finished object? And one that a three-year-old actually chooses to wear? Wow.

Turn old bedsheets into yarn. This tutorial has great pictures and clear instructions to make the whole process look easy-peasy.

Turn old newspapers into yarn. This method does require a spindle…

Recycle old sweaters (from your closet or thrift stores, for example) by taking them apart and using the yarn for something else. This site shows you how to take them apart, and this site has a PDF for a generic ball-band you can customize for your new(ly reclaimed) yarn.

Those of you who’ve been around here for a while may recall that during my family’s annual trek up to Vermont last summer, I knit a Wonderful Wallaby for Sylvia out of Rowan All-Seasons Cotton. If you take a look at that old post, you’ll see one of my first—and last—attempts to carefully document the parameters of a knitting project (e.g., start date, finish date, needles used). I jot down these things in a pocket-sized notebook that lives in my knitting bag, but somehow I just don’t manage to get that information into my blog, too.

When I was packing my knitting bag for this year’s trip, I brought stuff to make socks, mittens, and a Sylvia-sized sweater. The day after we arrived at the cottage, I suddenly felt the urge to knit another Wonderful Wallaby for her (I dunno…maybe it’s something in the water up there?). So I did. This one was made mostly out of Noro Kureyon, but I knew I wouldn’t have enough of it for the whole thing. So I knit the pocket in some dark green local Vermont yarn. And about halfway up the hood, I ran out of the Kureyon and used the green stuff there, too.

Yeah, the finished sweater is a bit large on her. But that gives her plenty of room to grow into it. And she loves it, so I’m happy, too!

You’d think I’d have the Wonderful Wallaby out of my system by now, right? Nope. I bought some local yarn to make one for Jan, too. I got started on it right away, and by the time our two weeks in Vermont were up I’d nearly finished both sleeves.

And I bought some local yarn to make myself a Wallaby, too. We’re going to be one of those families who wear matching sweaters—well, slightly matching, at least. I like that all three of our sweaters will include yarn from our favorite place.

My yarn expenditures weren’t that huge during this trip. The local worsted I bought was only $4.50 for each four-ounce skein. This stuff here, merino made from sheep who live at Shelburne Farms, cost twice as much—which is why I bought only two skeins. But Shelburne Farms is one of Sylvia’s favorite places (at our first visit there, last year, Sylvia had a memorable meeting with a chicken), and Jan suggested it might be nice to knit something for her with yarn from there. I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with it (Jan thought an intarsia sheep or chicken on a sweater made of other yarn could be fun). Suggestions?

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…

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!

Today’s mail brought not one but two delightful packages.

First, wrapped in even more packing tape than even I use (and I like to use enough to ensure that any package I send will survive a nuclear winter), was a small envelope from my friend Mary Ann, whom I’ve known since we went to college together. About a month ago, she sent me a birthday card in which she’d written a promise to send me another tacky magnet for my collection. When she and her family went on vacation to Great Smoky Mountain National Park a couple of weeks ago, she made doubly good on that promise by picking up two of the cheesiest magnets she could find. (Note the use of Smokey, a misspelling that ratchets up the tackiness quotient for this duo.) I’m putting these on the fridge right next to the Bass Pro goodies that another college friend, Frank, sent me in April.

The second box contained lots of yarny goodness. About two weeks ago I won a contest at Yarn Is My Metier. Karen asked people to compose haiku poems for her birthday (which was May 29), and the random number generator chose my entry as one of the winners.

Next thing I know, I get an e-mail from Karen asking my for my snail-mail info and all about my yarn preferences. Sending along my address was simple, but answering the other questions was tricker. I had a bad case of option paralysis. It was like standing in front of the counter at a Baskin Robbins. Fortunately, Karen was very patient and, after a few e-mails back and forth, announced that she would send me enough burgundy yarn for a shrug (a project I’m interested in trying) and enough taupe yarn to make something for Sylvia.

The taupe yarn? Four balls of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran. I received a Jo Sharp book as a gift from a friend in Australia two years ago, but have never tried any of her yarn before—or even handled it, for that matter. This stuff is so soft. It’s 85% wool, 10% slik, and 5% cashmere. (Interestingly, the care instructions say “Dry flat in shade.” That’s the first time I’ve seen that variation. What happens if you dry it in the sun? Does it get a sunburn?) I’m thinking I might turn this into a little vest for Sylvia, or perhaps some legwarmers for her. Ooooh…maybe cabled legwarmers!

Also in the box were a panda pencil sharpener (which was of course immediately appropriated by Sylvia) and three balls of Jaegar Shetland Aran in a beautiful burgundy color. This yarn is 80% wool and 20% alpaca and it, too, is very soft and totally new to me. I haven’t quite decided what to do with this yarn, but I’m eager to get it on the needles. Karen suggested I look at her Mia Shrug pattern (available in the sidebar on her blog, and also a popular knit on Ravelry). It’s awfully cute and may be just the sort of dive-in-head-first plunge I need to get over my reluctance fear sheer terror of lace knitting!

So thanks, Mary Ann and Karen, for making my day!

One of Jan’s coworkers is a guy named Frank. He’s always very friendly whenever Sylvia and I stop by the office to meet Jan for lunch, and never takes it personally when Sylvia gets a case of the toddler “shies” and refuses to talk to or look at him.

He’s a hardcore Mac user and an amateur photographer, so when he learned about my own interest in photography, he started sending digital photography books home with Jan. For me to keep. What a nice guy.

I wanted to repay his kindness, so with Sylvia’s help (she chose the projects: “Frank needs mittens and a hat!”) I did some knitting for him. After verifying that he can wear wool and loves blue, I used Patons SWS in Natural Indigo, with some stripes in Natural Wood. (I should mention that I am forever in debt to Lynnette, my upstream SP9 partner, for introducing me to this fabulous yarn.)

The mittens and the hat are both straight out of Ann Budd’s Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns. I knit the largest size in each pattern (making Jan try them on from time to time), and I think that worked out pretty well.

Sylvia and I went to Jan’s office last Friday, and she eagerly presented the box to Frank. I’d wrapped it in some white packing paper saved from IKEA, and she’d decorated the box with ink stamps, stickers, and crayon markings—including an S for Sylvia and an F for Frank. He seemed pretty pleased, so I think this is one knitted gift that will definitely be worn!

I have a bit of sock yarn in my stash.

To date, I’ve knit only three socks. I don’t have anything against socks—I just haven’t gotten around to starting a new pair. Considering the amount of sock yarn in my stash, though, my current non-sock-knitter status is getting to be embarrassing. (In all fairness, I should point out that about 90% of the yarn you see here was given to me by swap partners and friends.) So I’ve decided to cast on for some socks soon. The problem is, which yarn should I use?

I’m thinking of going with toe-up socks, knit in simple stockinette with ribbing at the top. So I don’t want to use yarn for this that would be better suited for a different, perhaps more dramatic stitch pattern (because one day, I will try my hand at one of those!).

Click on the photo to embiggen it (and my shoes in the bottom of the frame—I was standing on Sylvia’s picnic table when I took the picture) and let me know which yarn you think I should use. If you want more info on what any of the yarns are, just holler and I’ll tell you.