Back at last

I have been silent because I've been travelling and not well. There is nothing worse than being ill while on the road.

I had good intentions. I took my camera to Madrona to record the event and blog about it but I didn't. I lost my memory card and so that plan came to naught. Then I was going to blog text posts but caught a cold or had a bad allergy after I left Madrona and went to the Bay area on a business trip. It was all I could do to keep up with work for the first couple of days and just wanted to stay in bed. But staying in bed in a hotel room is not exactly like staying in bed at home so I didn't.

After that, I got better with drugs but I was still exhausted and falling into bed after dinner without even thinking about blogging.

I came home early this am (12:15 am to be exact) and will now set about recording my doings over the past couple of weeks. There is a lot of exciting stuff to talk about but each deserves its own time in the spotlight so I won't rush it.

I am glad to be home.

I am one lucky gal!

I had two more acquisitions in the mail this week. I am tickled to death about both of them.This is from my friend Bettina. I mailed her a pair of socks that didn't fit me and looked as if they would fit her. I asked for some unusual (to me) yarns in exchange. She overwhelmed me by what she sent. The pink and lavender yarn on the left is a merino/cashmere sock yarn from Posh yarn in the UK. The other two are cashmere yarns from Hipknits, also in the UK. The center is a sock yarn and the one on the right is laceweight. I love the colors and the yarns are to die for.
Next comes another luscious yarn. I have always drooled over the Swan, ever since I acquired Poems of Color. It is finally available from Solveig Gustafsson at the original Bohus gauge. I really wanted the black version but it wasn't available. Solveig has also done a beige version but I didn't really like that. The white one would not look good on me at all. After some discussion, she agreed to substitute a pale grey for the white main color. So here's my Swan kit with the original pattern. in Swedish. The main color is true in the photo above but the yoke colors are better in the photo below.
I have been knitting away on my Wild Apple. It always starts slowly but then you build up a rhythm of how to work the colors and it gets more and more exciting as the colors build up to create the gorgeous yoke. Mine is just getting to the wild part. So far it has been varying shades of greens but I just did the first row of the apples and now I will be adding the vibrant colors that makes this yoke stand out.

Acquisitions

I'm past the neck band on the Wild Apple and have started the color work. I had forgotten how absorbing it is and how much fun. Here's a picture of the cast on. I am using 2 circs here as I didn't have a longer circ in the 2mm size I needed. I wanted to pass on a tip on how to avoid the dreaded twist while joining. This also helps with casting on large numbers of stitches. Place a coil-less pin (as I have) or a bobby pin or a paper-clip or something like that every so often. In this case I have put pins every 20 sts. You can easily count how many sts you have cast on. Also, when it comes time to join, you just have to make sure that all the pins or clips are oriented the same way with respect to the needle -either facing out or facing in. The weight of the pins also helps keep the cast on edge on the same side of the needle so it is less likely to twist.I now also have a 32" 2mm circular needle. I got my order of needles from KnitPicks. Here you can see the Harmony circular interchangeable set and the extra cords I bought. I bought the longer cords (40", 47" and 60") so that I can knit larger shawls with both this set and my Options set. I also got a few fixed circulars (you can see a couple below) as well as the ones I need for the Bohus sweaters - the 2mm, the 2.25 mm and the 2.5 mm. I have some of these but the length is shorter. I don't like using them because the joins are not nice, or I don't like them because I can't do magic loop as I get closer to the ends of the sleeves. I have realized I don't like doing color work with dpns and I want to put some color on the sleeves of the Wild Apple. So I need to either use 2 circs (also not a favorite for color work) or use 1 long circ. I didn't have the 1 long circ, hence the acquisition. I also went to NYC this weekend and acquired some very fine kenbo silk from Habu textiles. This cone represents 2 oz or about 1800 yds. It is a lovely eggplant color. True, traditional eggplant color. Here's some of the yarn stretched out next to a 2.25 mm needle. It is very much like sewing thread. I want to make a fine shawl out of a doily pattern. It should be interesting. The good news about something like this is that it is a relatively inexpensive experiment. It is also a good vacation project as one only needs this small cone to finish the entire project.
More pics of the Wild Apple later as the more interesting colors develop. Right now it is a blue that is not very photogenic.

On the fitting of vests and downsizing

Thank you for all your compliments about the vest. I tried it on my husband and it fit him better than the last vest I made. When I was knitting this vest, people were surprised about how narrow and small it looked. Of course that was partly because of the broken rib pattern which pulls in. But even accounting for that, it seemed too small to those who knew my husband's size. Well, the last vest I made him was too big. Men's vests aren't like sweaters. They need to fit under things and therefore need a lot less ease than a sweater. In fact, I think they need negative to no ease. The armholes need to be cut in more all around, and one has to take the bands into consideration. So the shoulders always look too narrow till the bands are done. I forgot these basics on that last vest, since I had not made him a vest a long time. I made him one a few years ago that hangs over his shoulders and is too long and too wide. I have to rip it out and re-knit it one of these days. Fortunately, I remembered that gaffe this time and didn't make the same mistake twice.

I haven't knitted a lot this week. I started the Wild Apple Bohus on Sunday but haven't knit much. I am on the boring neck band part. However, I don't want to start the colorwork till my new Knitpicks Harmony needles arrive. I need a 2.25 mm needle for the colorwork as my stranded gauge is looser than my single color gauge. I use a 2.5 mm for the single color body. My only 2.25 mm circs are from Crystal Palace and they are not nice. The yarns catch in the join. I didn't enjoy knitting the Red Palm on them so ordered KP Harmony fixed circs to use. I also ordered the Swan, the last of my much coveted Bohus patterns. I'm done with buying Bohus kits. I have all the patterns I've drooled over since I bought Poems of Color way back when.

I have been reading a book called 'How to Survive your Diet' by Linda Moran. In conjunction with The Beck Diet Solution, I am working on forgetting about dieting and becoming a normal eater. I have gone through decades of dieting and not dieting, but there has been one thing in common all those years. Food was always been front and center. Both these books are based on cognitive therapy and what I'm working on is to think about food when I'm hungry and stop thinking about it at all other times. I am an emotional eater, even when I'm eating 'normally' and what I want to do is break that connection. The downsizing in this case refers to portion size. Linda advocates giving up greed - greed to be thin, greed for food, etc. and also focusing on the fact that stress is tolerable. Judith Beck has a whole program on keeping one's diet goals front and center. I've been working with the Beck Diet Solution program since last summer but I've reshaped the self-talk to focus on normal eating rather than on dieting.

Tapestry vest photos

There it is! The photo is a bit fore-shortened because it is photographed from near the bed. I laid it out to dry on the guest bed so could not get up high enough to give you a close to 90 degree angle for the picture. The neck depth looks very small compared to the body length.This one makes the neck look better but of course you can't see the full length of the body. I love the way the striping worked out. Tapestry seems to have unpredictable amounts of each color. That wide light stripe near the bottom of the sweater is from the same ball of yarn. Of course the wider stripes on the top are due to the fewer number of sts in the fronts vs the body. I like the way the striping ended up around the neck and here's a photo to show the fixed symmetric rib at the V. This is what I messed up the first time. You can't just keep the pattern going as in k 2, k 1 (center st), p2 if you want symmetry. You have to do a k2, k1 (center st) and a k2 on the other side to create the balance. In this case, I ended up picking up 2 extra sts on each side so it wasn't exactly like that but that example illustrates the concept.

Don't knit when you are tired

I started to swatch the Bavarian design but the needles and yarn weight were wrong and I wasn't getting what I wanted. So I put it aside and decided to finish the Tapestry vest which just needed armhole and neck bands. I did the two armhole bands without any difficulty.

Here's a tip that I figured out yesterday and probably is something everyone else does. When picking up sts for something that needs to be symmetrical, count up as you do the first half and count down as you do the second. That way you only need to remember one set of numbers. For example I needed 82 sts on each side of the armhole. Thirteen of these were from the armhole BO. As I neared the shoulder, I realized I had to pick up a few more sts than the usual rate of 3 sts to 4 rows. So around st number 68, I started picking up every row. When I went around the back of the armhole, I just had to remember 68 and 13. I picked up every row till I got to st number 68, then I did 3 sts for every 4 rows till I got down to st number 14 and I was not only perfectly placed for the 13 bindoff sts but I also knew I had the right number. In the past, I would subtract 68 from 82 and add that to 82 to figure out how many sts I had to pick up using the every row ratio and so on. Much less arithmetic this way. Stupid, but then I'm slow when it comes to this sort of stuff.

Anyway, after the armhole bands, I started on the neck band. Did a great job picking up. Did a lousy job planning. The ribs on either side of the center st at the bottom of the V were not symmetrical. I was off by a st or two at the end of the round and decided I was just wrong in counting. Wrong! I found out on the next round that I had forgotten to keep in pattern at the V and I didn't even realize this till I finished the round. I was not in the mood to go back and re-do just that half of the V given I had only done two rounds. So I ripped it out and decided to start over this morning. I should have an FO at the end of the day to report.

Swatching, swatching, swatching

I haven't posted all week because I was knitting things that didn't inspire me at all. I am signed up for two of Jean Wong's classes at the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat. I had to do my homework for the classes - which consisted of lots of swatches. But not the kind of swatches I like to do. The swatch for the first class, Tailored Knitting the Japanese Way, IS my kind of swatch. I usually swatch in a couple of needle sizes, and I did so here. However, I ripped out the one I didn't like. The yardage in each ball of this yarn is so small that I used up one entire ball in my swatching. So I ripped out the entire swatch and re-knit it in the gauge I liked. The yarn is Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran in a color called Casket. A lovely color but its relationship with a casket is beyond me. The ball band gauge is rather loose and the ball band recommended US size 8 (5 mm) needles. I started with a size 7 (4.5 mm) but the fabric was too stiff. My usual method is to do a swatch in one needle size, then a few rows of garter st, change sizes and continue to do another swatch. This way I can compare the two fabrics. In this case, I went up to an 8, and I liked the fabric even though it was tighter than the ball band gauge. I am getting 4.8 spi here. I got 5 spi with the size 7 which was way too stiff. I think the ball band recommended 4.5 spi. Anyway, I ripped out the swatch, did one in the size 8, washed and dried it, and here it is above.The rest of the swatches were for Fine Finishing Techniques the Japanese Way. There are 11 swatches in all for this class, mostly in various ribs but a few in stockinette. There's 10 of them in the photo above. nine are on the circular needle, and one is sitting down by itself on a st holder in the bottom left. Swatches ten (above bottom left) and eleven are in the round. Each swatch is labeled with its number and needle size (something I have started doing for all my swatches) so I can find it in class when the time comes. These are done in leftover Encore. Last, but not least, the two little circular swatches sitting by themselves on stitch holders. They look cute.

Now I am on to more fun swatching. I am working on a design out of the Lisl Fanderl stitch dictionaries. I spent quite a bit of time redoing the pattern chart in various ways before finally deciding that Interweave Knits, which does a variation of the way these charts are traditionally drawn, was right and followed their example. I tried the usual way that twisted sts are drawn in charts (like Eunny Jang's charts in her blog) and found it way too confusing for the complex pattern I was charting. Here's what I finally ended up with and I think this is readable for me. The little 'b's are twisted sts and the red lines indicate the direction they are traveling in. The '-' are purl sts and the plain squares are regular knit sts. I spent a lot of time last weekend working on charting this in various ways, another reason I didn't have a lot of knitting to share with you.