And this happens every semester, right around the middle. I have overdue gifts to knit, and fun, easy novelty projects as well, but I guess there’s only so much activity I can handle. Sometimes people see my finished projects and ask “How do you have time to do it all?” The answer is that I really don’t, and sometimes those limitations catch up to me.

Besides, usually when I have the urge to start several different projects, starting one or maybe two cures it.  I don’t have a problem with startitis…

I was listening to an old episode of the KnitPicks podcast last night (episode 97, I think).  I have become a big fan of KnitPicks over the years, and I love the podcasts, but I don’t always have time to listen, so I have gotten way behind.  However, I have recently been getting ahead of my husband in our audiobook novels, so I have been taking the opportunity to catch up with my favorite podcast.  I digress.  I was listening to Ms. Petkun debate whether she was suffering from startitis as she described casting on for four projects in a short span of time, and I did some counting.

I have cast on five new projects in less than three weeks.

None of them are “replacement projects” for something I’ve recently finished (an important dividing line noted by Ms. Petkun).  All five projects are gifts, and three are already belated, two were belated when I cast on, one quickie I finished just a few days after I started.

In the wake of the incredible rush of the steampunk swap, something seemed to snap in my head.  Or maybe a light went on (off?).  I don’t know.  But suddenly I felt like “if I can knit massive projects for internet friends on a deadline, why can’t I knit more for my family?”  Maybe the counter argument is that because for my family I seem to get inspired by the knitted-gift-giving bug only a week before each of their birthdays and I had three months to deal with the steampunk swap project.

So I have cast on five new projects in less than three weeks.  This wouldn’t be so drastic, I suppose, if I had no other things on the needles, right?  But wait, I do have things on the needles already!

Directly after the steampunk swap I grabbed, for travel knitting, a badly screwed up sock project that had been languishing for nearly a year.  I finished the second sock pretty quicly, and frogged the messed up original from last year.  I’m now cruising down the instep towards the finish line of the very first handknit socks that will be for me.

There is also a 75% complete brioche winter scarf and a 70% finished cabled wrap close at hand to my spot on the couch that I back-burnered for the summer, but I still intend to finish in the next few months.  And let’s never mind the 2 or 3 projects that are languishing in the “I’ve started it but so far it’s not as fun as I thought” category (two of them involve crochet, that’s probably much of the problem).

So depending on how you count such things, I have anywhere from 7-10 projects on the needles…

Only one of my current projects (the sock) makes a good commuting project.  The rest are couch projects… I am in such trouble!  I need to contemplate turning one of the gift projects that was intended for the machine into a travel project.  We are riding down to Columbus next week for a boardgaming convention, and I will have some serious knitting time to help me catch up.

Until next time, keep those needles clicking… mine will be clicking frantically!

Happy dyeing!

The inspiration started with a page of illustrations of Victorian capes that my “spoilee” had posted.  One caught my eye immediately.

Victorian Cape

So gorgeous!  I loved the high neck, the tailored look, the weighty drape of the luxurious fabric (presumably fur, in the original).  I imagined that this would be a lined cape that would keep a lady warm on the coldest winter strolls, and yet be easily tossed aside for a waltz with a beau.

So then I started to think about how to put my own spin on it.  A steampunk cape with a bit of my own flair.  I toyed with the idea of buying fabric and sewing, but I really wanted to knit it.  A yarn with a good drape should mimic the weight of the fur better than even faux-fur.  And what would a knitted cape be without a heavenly lace trim?

The neck caused me more trouble in all of the design stages.  I was pretty sure I couldn’t achieve the wonderfully ridiculous height in the illustration without wire, and I wanted this to be somewhat washable.  My spoilee is a tango dancer in real life, and I envisioned her being able to don this cape to keep of the chill after a night of dancing, and if she is like most of us that means she’ll want to wash it from time to time.  That nixes the possibilities of wires for my skill level.

Here are some other ideas that I kicked around for the collar:

• brocade or other heavy fabric (like the illustration)
• felting (thanks Kris! but I think that would have been too much challenge for me in this already challenging challenge)
• just knitted like the rest, allowed to flop over
• crazy ultra-stiff knitted fabric like some kind of superbobble or faux-weave knitted on teeny needles
• cables again knitted on teeny needles
• a lace panel over a contrast color knit (I held onto this one for a long time, and then it stopped making sense)
• stiff interfacing or buckram in the lining to keep the height (this idea was combined with most of the others in my imagination)

I’ll tell you what really happened with the neck in a little bit.  For the beginning design purposes, I decided to knit the neck part in red with the vague idea of putting black knitted lace over it, and using interfacing in the lining to help hold it up.

I got some direction on my spoilee’s color likes and dislikes, then fretted about that for a good long while.  Then I ordered the yarn and started making a muslin.

Cutting pieces based on my diagram for a muslin

It helps, when making a muslin, to have an idea of how shapes go together in clothing.  I’m not sure I could do well with this for, say, a fitted suit shirt for a woman, but I’ve made a few cloaks in my day and I was very confident about my ability to construct a cape.

I drew a picture of how I wanted the final piece to look, made some measurements regarding length/width/diameter, diagrammed how the panels would go together to make that shape.  Then I cut and sewed.

The beauty of the muslin is, that if you screw up, you just chop it off, or resew and trim, or throw it all out and start again, and you don’t have to feel bad at all if it didn’t work.  Muslin is fairly cheap, and if it’s not cheap enough, someone recently gave me the tip that you could buy bedsheets from the thrift store and that would work too, and I like recycling!  It only took me two tries to get something I liked.  I had my dressmaker’s doll all clicked into my spoilee’s size and tried it on.

Muslin version on the dressmaker's doll

Now that’s the shape I wanted!  I don’t think I had pressed it in this pic, but you get the idea.  It hangs nicely around the shoulders, there’s enough volume at the bottom that there are some nice folds without being excessively ruffly.  The neck has got nothing to stand it up here, but at least it gave me a good idea of the length to go for to get the neck height I wanted.

So with the muslin complete, the yarn in hand, it was time to cast on!  Because I was doing this on the knitting machine, and didn’t have a pattern, I started by knitting a gauge swatch.  I’m not 100% sure, but I think I even did the proper thing and washed and blocked it.  Machine knitting can change a lot when it’s washed and blocked.  I got the stitches per inch from the gauge swatch, and multiplied by the number of inches across the first two front panels.

Knitting the two front pieces of the cape

I decided to cast on the two front panels together, because any errors in symmetry would be most noticeable on the front.  They were also the only panels where I could fit two side-by-side on the knitting machine.  To do two pieces at once, you have to knit each from a separate ball.

Knitting all the pieces on the knitting machine took way longer than expected, about 2 evenings or 4-5 hours per panel.  The thing I should have remembered from my days of sewing cloaks is that the bottom width of a cape or cloak is deceptively huge.  So it also took a lot more yarn than expected.  I ended up having to order more half-way through.

So while I was spending many an evening cranking out panels for the cape, I was spending all my commuting time handknitting approximately 104″ of trim.  The trim pattern came from one of the indispensable Nicky Epstein “Edge” books, Knitting on the Edge, I believe.

As a true confession, I’ll have to admit that I didn’t math-out my panels ahead of time, and there were minor variations in each panel (other than the front identical ones).  My basic method was to figure out how many stitches I needed to increase or decrease to, and in how many inches, and then just work my way there.

I was inspired/corrupted by the book The Prolific Knitting Machine, which suggests making simple shapes and then “half-fashioning” or zigzagging, trimming to shape, and sewing up just like you would a purchased knit fabric.  The book argues that if you really wanted handknit-looking garments, you would be using regular needles, and that there’s no need to push your machine knitting to be something it’s not.  Thinking ahead to a future project, I can’t wait to try making myself a cardigan this way.

Cape pieces sewn together, before trimming

So once all the pieces were knit, I did indeed use machine zigzagging, sewing and appropriate trimming to “half-fashion” this cape.  Especially because I was planning to line it with a satiny fabric anyway, I saw no reason not to do this, as any ugly seams would be covered.

I trimmed to an elegant curve, cut and sewed a lining.  Affixed the lining and then finally tried to decide how to deal with the neck.  At that point, I had not yet sewn up the last open seam, so I could still press in an interfacing if it wanted more stiffness.  And yet, as I looked at the collar, I decided I loved it just the way it was.  The lining, due to a happy accident, was puffing out a bit at the neck, and the knitted outside was pulling down in an elegant curve.  In fact, all by itself it was opening up like a beautiful flower, and I suddenly felt that anything else I could attach would at best gild the lily and at worst look overwrought and contrived.

Finished cape on the dress-makers doll

Instead, I made a really simple neckband casing, and pulled wide black ribbon through it.  Done!  The neck turned out far nicer than anything I was originally planning to do.  My main concern was that the red not overwhelm my spoilee’s natural hair color, and because the lining puffed out, and the knitting curved away from the face, I felt that the red peeked out just enough to tie into the trim.

The only thing I didn’t like about how the project turned out, was that I wasn’t 100% happy with how bulky the lining and knit fabric felt along the base of the cape.  This isn’t a fault that is noticeable from the outside, but my spoilee seems to be an experienced seamstress, and I feel that the lining doesn’t look super professional from the inside of the garment.  Hopefully she can forgive that flaw.

So that’s the tale of the Victorian/steampunk cape!

Until next time, keep those needles clicking and needlebeds clacking…

Still hard at work on the steampunk swap, I had an inkling that my spoilee might appreciate yarn in a  colorway that resembled crow or raven feathers.  Blue Moon Fiber Arts has some amazing “Raven Clan” colorways that were the catalyst for this idea.  They are beautiful blacks with dashes of color, almost iridescent.  But alas, I’m on a credit-card diet for a while, so I could not indulge my spoilee’s and my desires for this particular yarn.  It’s not that it’s over-priced or anything, it’s just that I knew I would not be able to stop myself from buying several beautiful colorways, and that it would quickly get out of hand.  Sometimes it’s best for me just to not buy anything, rather than let myself get tempted to add just one more thing, and another, and another.

But I felt that I might be able to achieve something inspired by the crow feathers and the Raven Clan yarns with a funky dye technique using Wilton’s cake frosting tints and roving that I have at home.  I had wanted to do this technique for a long time, and my spoilee was giving me just the excuse I needed.

Wilton’s icing colors, like KoolAid, can be used like real yarn dyes to permanently (usually) color mammal-fiber yarns (ie. wool, alpaca).

Dye Day Adventures in KoolAid

You use an acid fixer like vinegar or citric acid, just like any other acid dye that you would use on animal fibers.  The difference is, because you are using kitchen ingredients, you don’t have to use separate pots for food safety (although you may dye your kitchen-ware funny colors).

KnitPicks has some nice, beautifully illustrated tutorials on dye techniques such as KoolAid dyeing, and Food Coloring dyeing (includes frosting tints).  They also have good instructions for dyeing with Jacquard dyes and other fun and popular dye techniques on their main dye page.  They also offer nice big skeins of “bare” yarns ready to take up dyes, if you’re looking for materials to work on.  Past yarn price comparisons have demonstrated to me that KnitPicks give you more bare yarn for the buck than other dye material suppliers, but Dharma Trading is another source of dye materials and they have a wider variety of undyed yarns if you are more interested in selection than price.  Wilton’s icing colors can be found in some larger groceries, and definitely in cake decorating stores or craft stores with a cake decorating section.

Wilton's Icing Colors

For my recent dye experiment, I started from the KnitPicks tutorials, but I wanted to do something that most tutorials warn against:  I wanted to break the black dye.

“Breaking the black dye” sounds like it should be a song title or something, right?  Well, some colors of food or icing coloring are not made of just one color, there can be several components in that color, and the right environment can cause the colors to separate, or “break” apart.  Black Wilton’s icing color, for example, has greens, reds, and purples mixed in.  Exposing the black dye to a highly acidic environment seems to help cause this separation.

From reading various forums, especially info posted by MunchkinMama on Ravelry, I have gathered that the Red #3 component is a key to making dyes “breakable”, so any food color dye with Red #3 should be a good option if you wish to find a dye to break.  From what I’ve read, the red will form small globs in a more acidic environment (ie. more vinegar, specifically to get it below pH6).  In chemistry, this is called “precipitation” when a solid becomes isolated from its solution.  Most dyers wishing their black Wilton frosting tint to dye their yarn black have to adjust the heat and acid levels slowly, and above all, limit the quantity of vinegar used to avoid triggering this precipitation reaction.

So if you want to trigger this reaction, use lots of vinegar!  However, the caveat is that the acidity should be lowered later in the process to make sure that the red doesn’t remain globular and stick to your yarn’s surface in little globs that will smear off later.

Broken black dye seems to separate by weight

So I dyed some roving and dyed some yarns with “broken” black frosting dye.  This involved several kettles of dye processes on my kitchen stove.  I discovered one new fact about breaking a color:  I believe the colors have different “weights” in the solution.  I say this because at first I wasn’t sure that my icing color had broken successfully.  The alpaca roving I had in the first pot wasn’t turning black, but it also wasn’t turning different blues and purples either.  It was all teal.  Confused, I started poking gently at the roving, and discovered that the bottom of the roving spiral had turned a deep maroon/purple.

Repeated experiments would be necessary, but I am guessing that there is some kind of weight difference between the dye that makes the teal (lightweight?) and the dyes that make the darker purples (heavyweight?).  I point that out because I think some neat effects could be generated by being selective about what goes on the bottom of the dyepot vs. the top of the dyepot.

Here are the weights and measures versions, since a good experiment should be repeatable:

Alpaca roving

It turns out that I didn’t take any pictures of the roving before I dyed it nor just the plain broken Wilton Black after it dried (bad blogger! bad!).  Instead I give you the final presentation, the broken black braided together with a separate batch of alpaca roving dyed with just (unbroken) Jacquard black.  But I think you can see the overall effect.  Mostly teal, with some purple, grey, and other colors.  The original undyed roving was a pale heathered creamy beige.

5 oz alpaca roving

Presoak:  8 C water and 1/2 C vinegar

Dyebath:  9 C water and 3 C vinegar

Adding dye:  mixed 1/2 tsp Wilton gel with 1/2 C hot water

After the dyebath exhausted, I added 2 C water to reduce the pH a bit in hopes that the red would not stay in suspension

I don’t remember this part, but my notes say that then I added 1 1/2 C water mixed with 1/2 tsp Wilton gel.  I think I was trying to get some of the roving to turn more blackish but it didn’t work.  Thus, after all that was exhausted, I did a completely separate batch of 4.9 oz alpaca roving with Jacquard black.

After: Braided broken black with jaquard black

I also overdyed a few skeins of pastel yarns for myself, since at the time I was out of bare yarn to dye and once you get all the dye gear out you might as well do a bunch of batches!

Unknown loose-spun pastel yarn from my stash

Before: Random pastel yarn from stash before dyeing (wetted)

5 oz of single ply random yarn from stash

Presoak:  4 C water and 1/4 C vinegar

Dyebath:  9 C water and 3 C vinegar

Adding dye:  mixed 1/2 tsp Wilton gel with 1/2 C hot water

After the dyebath exhausted, I added 4 C water to reduce the pH a bit in hopes that the red would not stay in suspension

After: Mystery yarn from stash overdyed with broken Wilton's black

Colonial/merino pastel handspun

Apparently, I didn’t take pictures of this before dyeing it either… argh!  I gotta get better at this photo-documenting stuff!  Anyway, I do have pictures of the stuff before I plied it, to give you a sense of the colors.  I liked the colors well enough as a single ply, but when I plied it, it got all muddy looking, and I fear it would be pretty muddy when knitted even as a single ply.  So to the dyebath it went!  And at some point when I spin up the rest of the roving, it will probably also get dyed.

(Way) before: Handspun Pastels (plied before dyeing)

I liked the previous unknown-yarn overdyed with broken Wilton black, but it was a little lighter and brighter than I really wanted.  That’s the funny thing about breaking the black, sometimes there’s no black left!  So for the second round, as I brewed up a batch of Jaquard black for a batch of roving, I poured a little of the Jacquard black over the skeins of handspun in the Wilton black dyebath.

4.8 oz in two skeins of handspun 2 ply yarn spun from 2/3 merino 1/3 colonial

Presoak:  12 C water and 3/4 C vinegar (soaked along with the 4.9 oz alpaca for the Jacquard black dyebath)

Dyebath:  9 C water and 3 C vinegar

Adding dye:  mixed 1/2 tsp Wilton gel with 1/2 C hot water

Before the dyebath exhausted, I added 1/4 tsp of the Jacquard black mixed up with water in little puddles along the top

After: Handspun dyed with broken Wilton black and Jacquard black

Using the Wilton’s icing colors and “breaking” the black (I feel somehow punk rock when I say that) was a lot of fun.  I love how the colors turned out!  Although we’ll have to see how my spoilee spins up the roving to know if our efforts evoke crow feathers or not, I don’t think the overdyed yarns really made it there.  But I think they are very pretty, and I could see the colorway representing a “clockwork crow”, a shiny anodized-metal vision of a bird.  I also look forward to scoping out additional “breakable” icing colors in the future, the unexpected aspect of the dye really appealed to me.

Until next time, keep those needles clicking, and those dyepots bubbling…

Now, I have been one of the really lucky ones who kept slim without trying throughout most of my 20′s. But suddenly what I eat matters to my waistline, and although the pounds haven’t increased beyond where I was at several years ago, I’m wearing the weight differently.

Clothes that once looked cute now make me look frumpy, dumpy or totally top heavy.  So I picked up The Body Shape Bible from my local library to try and diagnose my makeover needs.  For the record, I’m a “vase”, and the book did a great job of detailing all my problem points and assets, as well as what to look for in clothes.

Around the same time, I ran across a magazine article (KnitScene Fall 2011) pointing to the “Fit to Flatter” sweater design website.  The two went together hand in hand.  Susannah and Trinny of “What Not to Wear” fame helped me diagnose my body shape via their “Bible”, and then Amy Herzog of the “Fit to Flatter” helped me figure out what those shapes mean in terms of picking sweater patterns that will really look good on me.

Even if I don’t have time to knit myself a million sweaters (or even one right now), at least these tools will help me pick a better sweater off the rack.  And I also will benefit from not spending a million hours knitting a sweater that I ultimately won’t like.

For any other knitters who feels like they are a long way from midlife-crisis but still desperately need a shot of makeover goodness to feel better about their shape and wardrobe, I highly recommend both resources.

Better still, both resources also tell you how to modify garments to look better on you.  The Body Shape Bible explains a lot of tricks for upcycling dated or unflattering clothes, and the “Fit to Flatter” site tells you how to do everything from  adding a few short rows or modifying a neckline or hem, to designing a sweater from scratch.

Grad school is going to be interfering with my knitting life for a little while longer, but once that’s done, I really look forward to designing a sweater from scratch.  One that will be perfectly fit and totally flattering.  In the meantime, I’m cleaning out my closet.  I don’t need anything that makes me feel less than awesome.

Until next time (and I promise, I’ve got a couple of posts on the steampunk projects queued up), keep those needles clicking…

I hesitate to divulge too much information here, just on the odd chance that my spoiler peeks at my blog and happens to also be my spoilee.  But there’s only one such pairing apparently, so I am going to risk sharing a teeny bit of info here, because  I desperately want to share my excitement over the design challenge that I have created for myself.

I have reason to believe that my spoilee would look favorably on a cape.  In an early-on post, one of the swappers shared a very inspiring picture of a Victorian cape asking everyone if they liked capes, and my spoilee seemed very enthusiastic about them.

Victorian Cape

Now I’m taking this idea and running with it, it won’t be a fur cape but a knitted one.

I’m planning to knit it in Knit Pick’s Gloss DK, with a dash of Swish DK for some of the edgings, just because of a color that my spoilee expressed an interest in that I think would be overwhelming if it were the whole cape.

The first challenge, of course, is the over-all design.  Thanks to my “Project Runway design education”, I now value the glorious creation of “a muslin” to mock-up and perfect my designs.  Making a muslin was great for my steampunk jacket.  All these years of costuming, I never had the patience to try making a mock-up before, but having done it now I’m a true believer!  So I’m going to rock out the muslin for the cape this weekend.

Then it’s time to swatch.  I’m not sure yet if I’m going to rely on sturdy stitches to get that neck height, doubled yarn, good-ole interfacing, or what.  I have this image in my head of having at least the very top part be a bit of lace.  So maybe I need to wire it!

I’m going to bust out the main body of the cape on my knitting machine in basic stockinette.  I’m hopeful that the Gloss will have a great drape, but still feel sturdy knit up at a tight gauge.  I will probably do a moss-stitch button band for stability and for fighting the inevitable curl factor of massive quantities of stockinette.  I will knit lace around the bottom edging, probably in a contrast color, and probably lace at the neck also.

I have a lot of design problems to ponder, especially around the neck area.  This might be a very strange hybrid of techniques:  machine knitting, hand knitting, machine sewing, hand sewing… maybe a dash of beading or other embellishment for good measure.  I want this to look really cool.  Dramatic, but not so costumey that a reasonably bold person would hesitate to wear it out for a night on the town.

So that’s my design challenge of the moment, possibly the biggest design challenge I have set for myself ever!  What was your biggest design challenge ever?

Until next time, keep those needles (and needle-beds) clicking…

Time travel watch

Imagine an alternate history of the world where clockwork and steam remained central to technological innovation instead of moving on to more electrical and electronic technologies.  That’s where the idea of steampunk jumps off from, and from there various authors, costumers and enthusiasts have explored a myriad of speculative “what if” ideas.  Sometimes it leads to fantasy worlds where quasi-magical inventions are created on the spur of the moment by gifted inventors (such as in the webcomic Girl Genius).  Sometimes the inventions are more believable like the Nautilus in Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Often in steampunk, there is a utopian angle, such as the idea that women were given more rights in the victorian era and could participate in technical jobs as being mechanics or inventors.  Often the spirit of adventure and inventiveness is emphasized.  Often this alternative victorian era is depicted as a less colonial, more enlightened place politically.  Sometimes steampunk is fastforwarded to a sci-fi theme where everything we can do now could be done with steam and clockwork instead.  Or the question becomes one of “what if WWI never happened?”  Or perhaps there is a dash of magic instead of microchips.

A Steampunk Group

In art and costumes, this vision of the world lends itself to browns, brasses, bronzes and copper colors.  The clothing styles are often reminiscent of victorian, but with anachronistic touches.  Perhaps everyone wears safety goggles on their heads in case they will be called upon in a moment to do some delicate tinkering with an invention, or to go fly an airship to safety.  Sometimes the costumes are much more elaborate, like having an entirely clockwork arm.

I have also seen where people have created tea-brewing backpacks, mechanical wings, and brass/bronze jetpacks for their costumes.  If weaponry is your fancy, there are innumerable steampunk “ray guys” and “blasters” that clever prop-makers have created from brass doorknobs and candlesticks.

Steampunk Ray Gun

But you might be saying “thanks for the lesson in costume trends, but where’s the knitting angle?”  I’m getting there.

Not only is this a costume trend, this is a fashion trend too.  Akin to goth styles, neo-victorian, arm and legwarmers, mixed metal motifs, corsets, and victorian-style boots have all shown up in recent runway fashions.  And some of these accessories are knitable.

Right now, I’m gearing up for a gaming convention in which I will be sporting a steampunk look, but I’m very excited that most of the accessories are ones that I can also wear for weekday work as well (just probably not all at once).

One knitting project that I’ve just finished for the look is the Ruffled Wristwarmers by Kerin Dimeler-Laurence.  Pics coming soon.  I’ve also just started a knitted obi, which is a corset-like garment worn around the waist, this one is styled in a way to make it look a little more corset-like which will complement my steampunk look without giving me a backache .

Until next time, keep those needles clicking, and your time-machines at the ready…

1) All-shaped flatbed sock:  Knit from the cuff (hand manipulating the ribbing, because I don’t have a ribber) across the top of the foot down to the shaped toes then along the sole and finally up the heel.  This sock is seamed in the back for the leg, then down both sides.  The top of the heel is kitchener/grafted to the bottom of the leg.

Technicolor test pattern socks

• Pro’s:  All the shaping and all the knitting is done when it comes of the machine.  This is the pattern that came in my manual.  The heel/instep is comfortable.
• Con’s:  Hand-manipulating ribbing is a pain.  All those seams neither look attractive nor are particularly fun to do.  The top half of the sock does not match the bottom of the sock if you are using a patterned yarn.  Also, if your flat-bed machine does not have stitch sinkers (mine does!), I understand there is a lot of annoying weight shifting to keep the tension even on the small short-rows.

2) Flat tube-style sock:  Knit from the cuff (hand manipulating the ribbing, as above) down to the top of the toe, pausing half-way through to toss in some provisional yarn on one half of the width for a “forethought” heel.  Active stitches are removed from machine onto stitch holders.  One seam is done to form a tube, then toes are done on active stitches in any manner, and finally heels are added in “afterthought” method.

Flat-knit tube socks

• Pro’s:  The yarn pattern matches up nicely.  Only one seam and that seam can be planned for inside of leg.  Cranks out of machine pretty quickly.  Pretty easy to crank out both socks side-by-side.
• Con’s:  Hand-manipulating ribbing is a pain (as above).  Fore/afterthought heel is known (as I found out later, to my chagrin) for making a tight heel/instep.  More post-machine processing.

Now, granted this is a learning process.  I haven’t tried doing two “All-shaped” socks side-by-side on the machine, for example.  So I’m not sure that all my comparisons here are fair.  I also need to try some other variations, such as doing the cuff by hand either grafted on top-down or starting the sock on the machine with a provisional cast-on then knitting the cuff up afterwards.

Overall, I don’t feel that machine-knitting socks in either variation “fires” hand-knitting them.  Machine knitting, although not stressful to me anymore, is not relaxing like handknitting is.  Machine knitting is an active, forward-sitting, attention-paying kind of craft.  And with my very basic machine, I don’t feel it’s worth doing any kind of complicated stitch patterns (except maybe with my simple fair-isle trick) when for the most part I could hand-knit them faster.  So hand-knitting is the way to go for me and any kind of complex sock.

But for a simple sock that shows off a fancy patterned yarn?  In that territory machine knitting still has me intrigued.  So far, I’m pretty excited about how my sock blank has translated into a nice machine-knit sock relatively quickly.  I have several hand-dyed sock blanks around (in addition to my own, my mom just gave me two of hers from Dye Day 2010) and I have some commercial patterned sock yarns around too that I look forward to trying out.

What about you?  Have you run across a superior flat-bed knitting machine sock pattern?  Or do you hear symphonies when you turn a heel the old-fashioned way?  There is something inspiring, perhaps even poetic about knitting an entire garment out of a single strand of thread as in a traditional hand-knit sock.  What do you do with those wild sock-blanks then?

Until next time, keep those needles (and needle-beds) clicking…

Habu Textile’s Wool Stainless Steel A-148

Habu Textiles Wool Stainless Steel

It’s a thread-thin yarn which feels soft like wool, but has a memory.  You can essentially finger-block it on the needles to whatever 3-d shape that you want.  It’s very cool, and it’s a natural for making jewelry and other artsy accessories, but I’ll post more on my adventures with it another time.

Today I want to talk more about the other specialty yarn that I bought myself:

The Be Sweet Magic Ball

Be Sweet Magic Ball

Be Sweet is a yarn company that not only works with South African women to create jobs for artisans in creating the balls of yarn, they also give back a portion of their profits to support local educational programs.

The magic ball itself is a small skein of luxury fibers, specialty, and novelty yarns that are tied together in the skein so that when you knit with it, you are creating rows of different textures and colors.  The colorways are beautiful, and the knitted yarns are wonderfully soft and squooshy.  My Magic Ball had super-soft boucles, luxurious mohairs, fun “bobbled” yarns that had nickle-sized puffy knots, a little eyelash yarn and a segment of ribbon in the middle.  It was expensive, but it was worth it, and it feels good to know that some of the proceeds support a good cause.

The yarn lends itself to artsy accessories, so I knit up the quick Magic Cowl out of my one skein of the Underwater colorway.  I think the Magic Cowl was a perfect pattern to highlight the different textures of yarn, and it even has a special stitch to highlight the ribbon row.  I plan to give the finished product to my Mom, who has been in the hospital recently.  I think the colorway will suit her.

Be Sweet Magic Cowl

Magic Cowl Detail

Meanwhile, the Be Sweet ball gave me an idea.  What if I pull together some odd scraps of yarn from my own stash to make an “improvisational” mix of yarns?  I can’t match the luxury quality of the Be Sweet ball, because my stash isn’t that high-end.  But I decided that it would be a fun stash-busting adventure, anyway.

So I piled a bunch of odd ends of yarns on the table, and started sorting.  I knew I wanted a blue/grey mix with maybe a dash of purple.  First, I threw out anything that was bigger than worsted weight.  Then I played around with the order of the yarns until I got something that alternated the way I wanted, throwing out a few that I couldn’t get to play well in the mix.  Then I made sure that I had something easy to cast on on the outside of the ball, something ribbon-like in the middle, and something glitzy on the other end.  For the glitzy end, I strung some seed beads and plied together a couple of strands of mohair.  Then I started winding on my ball-winder with the beaded strands.

Yarn like Jazz Components

So here’s my recipe for an improvisational jazz yarn, inspired by the Be Sweet Magic Ball:

• Select yarns from your stash that go well together in color, but have a variety of textures
• Eliminate anything larger than worsted, and lean more towards the sport-weight side
• Line everything up in the order you want them to go in, thinking about your final look
• Do you want it to be stripey?  Then alternate strongly contrasting colors.  Do you want a smoother gradient?  Then choose colors in an order that will flow well together.
• Start winding with something glitzy if you are doing a magic cowl
• After you wind on a few yards, tie on the next yarn, and so on
• End with something relatively smooth for a more painless cast-on

As long as you are doing a simple accessory where “having enough” doesn’t matter, you don’t even need to pay attention to how much yarn you are adding to the ball.  But if you have a particular pattern in mind, you may want to measure as you go or otherwise keep track of how much you use.

Yarn like Jazz Magic Cowl in Progress

If you really care about ending stripes exactly at the end of the row, I would suggest not tying them all together, but leaving each small quantity of yarn separate.  But I think that takes some of the improvisation out, and will leave the finished object looking a little less spontaneous and carefree.

Whether you want to support a good cause and get your hands on some seriously divine luxury fibers, or whether you want to do some creative stash busting, I recommend that you channel your inner Thelonious Monk, embrace the serendipity and go knit yourself a jazzy accessory.

Until next time, keep those needles clicking…