Obsessed

The Big Red Blob…

I’m afraid it’s getting out of hand. It’s certainly taken over my life.

I started the final chart.



I need to wind off the second skein of yarn.



My husband is getting concerned, I barely stir from the couch.

Can’t type, gotta knit.

Back later.

PS: Artificially Mythic asked how big this is going to be. The pattern says 55 inches across… 173 inches around.

Please send a rescue squad with restorative whiskey.

The Big Red Blob

This is what I’m calling Centrino for now. With apologies to Laura Nelkin, the designer of this pattern. It may not be the kindest working title, but it is surprisingly descriptive.

As I showed you yesterday, this is what it looks like peeking out of the top of my project bag:



There are currently 432 stitches per round and it’s not getting any smaller. Oh no, I’m spiraling my way steadily towards a final count of 576.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Sorry, had to put my head between my knees and practice breathing slowly for a second.

This is what it looks like plonked down on the table and showing off the center motif:



And here are a couple of closer looks at the chevron-y pattern currently emerging.





That cut on my knuckle came during the Great Rose Pruning Debacle of 2009… through a pair of leather gloves, mind you. Not to worry, I won in the end.

This pattern is quite intuitive and logical, with the yarn-overs and decreases lining up just so. The knitting is easy to read, and I’m even getting quite good at tinking back through a centered double decrease… but I’ll try not to let it make me late for work again.

I wonder how much furniture I’m going to have to move when it’s time to block this…

Seeing Red

Something strange has happened in my knitting bag.

Every single project in there is red. Not just a little red, or red-ish, but really-very-extra-red.

It’s not that I loathe or despise red, it’s just not a color I have very much of. I tend more towards to cool side of the color wheel. My stash is mostly made up of blues, greens and purples, and those are also the prevailing colors in my house.

But by some strange twist of fate, all of my current knitting is red.



This is Centrino, aka The Big Red Blob. It’s a Year of Lace project, and one of the few certainties in the universe is that if you subscribe to a club there will be at least one shipment which is a color you never reckoned on sharing house space with. This yarn made me blink hard when I opened the package, but it’s certainly grown on me.

Then there’s this:



This is the nearly completed yoke of a February Baby Sweater, in Geranium. When an expectant mother requests a color, one does not quibble. One goes to the LYS and finds it. This baby is going to be visible for a good long distance, that much is for sure!

Oh look, there’s another red down there. But I can’t show you the project. It’s a Super Secret Sock Test for a friend who wants to submit the pattern for publication. All very hush-hush, dontcha know! But I can show you the yarn.



That’s some Dream in Color Smooshy, colorway In Vino Veritas. I bought this during the summer, praising myself all the while for stepping out of my blue-green-purple world. (Isn’t it funny the things we tell ourselves to justify buying more yarn?)

I’m enjoying all of my red these days, the yarns, the patterns, the way there are so many different reds in there. I’m beginning to think that I haven’t been giving red the attention and interest that it deserves, and I may have to remedy that on my next few trips to the LYS.

Tell The Truth

How many of you have been late for work because you were so involved in your knitting the time got away from you?

Oh come on now, you can tell me.

OK fine, I’ll go first.

I was working away on Centrino (aka the Big Red Blob) this morning when I realized that my count was off on the section I was working on. I tinked, I counted, I muttered, I counted, I cursed.

I finally realized that a dropped yarn-over had run down into another yarn-over several rounds below. More muttering and cursing ensued. I located my crochet hook, managed to isolate the relevant loop and very carefully hooked it up and back onto the needle.

Which is when I noticed that in the process of picking up one dropped stitch I had managed to drop another, which had promptly done a runner.

When I finally had the second errant stitch back on the needles, I looked at the clock and realized that I was supposed to leave the house in five minutes.

I managed to get dressed, brush my hair and teeth, pack my lunch, locate my iPod, kiss my husband and dash out the door in twenty minutes.

I was late for work… and to make it worse I was in such a hurry that I forgot to bring my pattern notes with me. Somewhere I can hear the knitting gods snickering into their tea.

Veteran’s Day

Match This

I know a few knitters who will go to great lengths to get their socks to match up as perfectly as possible. They’ll measure color repeats down to the millimeter, weigh their yarn to the quarter-gram when dividing their skeins, cast on with infinite care, and knit with a ferocious attention to gauge which is, quite honestly, a little bit intimidating.

I am not that kind of sock knitter. I tend to take a bit more knit-and-let-live approach to them. I like mismatched socks. And clogs . They appeal to my inner six-year-old, and as long as they fit (somebody’s) feet I’m good with it.

A couple of years ago, I bought three skeins of Knit Picks Memories, a 4-ply 100% merino fingering yarn, which has since been discontinued. I had fallen in love with the felted bowls in one of their catalogs and decided to make some for my mother, my husband and myself. I made one of them, it was fun and the bowl is sitting on my husband’s bedside table. But second-bowl syndrome bit me, and the other two skeins got tossed in with the rest of the stash.

Enter the Random List Generator, which has become my most-favorite way to pick my socks. I give the generator my list of sock yarns and it tells me which one to knit with. Saves a lot of agonizing and dithering, let me tell you. When it put one of the skeins of Memories at the top of the list I did a little happy dance.

I looked at the ridiculous list of sock patterns I want to knit, and settled on Mockery by Katie Grady. Oh, look, she dyes yarn too!

I made a few alterations to the pattern due to gauge issues (there was no way I was going to get 10 stitches per inch with this yarn), and subbed in my favorite eye-of-partridge heel. This pattern’s a lot of fun, interesting enough to keep my attention and yet simple enough to memorize after a few repeats.

So here they are, socks that emphatically don’t match. Check out the way they pooled around the gussett and then went right back to orderly stripes!



They fit well, and the yarn is cushy and warm. What’s not to love?



Project Details:
Pattern: Mockery Socks by Katie Grady
Size: Women’s US 7.5
Yarn: Knit Picks Memories in Yukon (blue) and Fly Fishing (green)
Needles: US 1 ½ (2.5 mm)
Dates: 2-24 October

Just Post It Already

It’s ironic how much time it took me to edit these photos, considering that I only shot about 30 of the silly things in three days. Note to self: lighten up a little bit!

The retreat was everything I could have asked for. The company was great, the food was (over)abundant and the weather even cooperated. There were 16 (17?) of us sharing the house, and I can’t remember the last time I got so much knitting done!



I shot this off of the back porch on Thursday night. There it was, the perfect evening. Tall pines, whispering winds, a beautiful sunset… and a kitchen counter covered in bottles of wine.

This is what the living room looked like when meals were announced:


A piece of advice for the uninitiated: do not stand between the spinners and the kitchen when there’s food in there!

Friday a few of us went for a walk. We went slowly at first, harvesting lichen for dyeing with.



As we were circling around the golf course, we came upon a small herd of deer.


Mind If We Play Through?

I baked a Tres Leches Cake on Saturday afternoon, and you would not believe the amount of grief I took while it was sitting on the serving platter absorbing its milk bath.


Naked Cake!

Then I covered it in whipped cream and toasted coconut… they quieted down after that.


I got so much knitting done it makes me regret that I have to go to work most days.

I cast on for a Braid & Bobble Hat, although mine will be sans bobbles, because I think they’re an abomination. This pattern comes without charts, so I took an evening a couple weeks ago and drew my own.



The brim is knit flat and seamed. Then I’ll pick up stitches and knit the top in the round. I’ll have to wait and see if there’s enough yarn for the braid, but it’ll work just fine either way. I’m using Malabrigo Worsted in the Vetiver colorway, and I’m completely in love with it.

I also started the third installment of Year of Lace. May I present Centrino. Designed by Laura Nelkin, knit with with Schaefer Yarn Company Anne, a 3-ply light fingering, on size 5’s.



Oh, did starting this ever give me fits! I ripped back five or six times before it finally occurred to me to rest the knitting on a pillow in my lap. That way I didn’t have to worry about the needles falling out or spinning around as I worked those first few fiddly rounds.

I was so glad when this got big enough to move onto a circular needle… Alwen, how do you do it?


Yarn bag by Celestial Fiber Arts

On Sunday I finally gathered up my courage and decided to go from being a reasonably accomplished knitter to a laughably inept spinner. Rovings, one of the vendors at the SOAR marketplace, was selling Polwarth fleece… and of course she was giving out samples too, just like any self-respecting vendor of highly addictive substances.

A friend was kind enough to surrender her spinning wheel to me, and patient enough to coach me through my first spinning. After much laughter, a certain amount of muttered cursing and quite a few admonishments from the entire room to slow down, I produced these:



On the left is 100% Polwarth, and on the right is a Polwarth/Silk blend.

I have this terrible feeling I may be rearranging my living room sometime in the next little while, trying to find room for a wheel and fiber. Because I obviously need another hobby, right?