poor blog

Abandoned for weeks, while I go off to have fun at work! Abused for facebook testing! A blog's life is hard.

I have tons of knitting to show you. I finished beautiful things. But now that my work is taking up a lot of time in my day, the amount of knitting I do has gone down of course. Not that anybody would see and I don't think most people would mind if I knit at work - but it's just not done. So I knit on my way to work, I knit in the morning before work, I knit in the evening after work.

The week before I started working, I celebrated by yarn shopping. I went to the yarnshop that is just around the corner from work - the wonderful Laufmasche and bought lots of yarn. And then I cast on immediately. ITO Sensai, a Japanese silk/mohair yarn, just can't be kept waiting. I picked up one little yarn cake of Blackberry and one of String and just knit whatever came to mind. Stripes, lace, cables, stockinette, garter stitch, on and on until I felt it was long enough. And it turned out beautifully, as you can see on the left.

The purple is such a beautiful, rare shade, the silk adds luster and depth, and the soft mohair just feels heavenly. The "String" colorway is not exactly grey, it has a subtle brownish touch, which adds warmth to the cold purple. I simply called it Blackberry String.

 
After I was done with this beauty, I somehow felt the urge to start a project I've had in mind since last fall. One of my favorite yarns, Lana Grossa Nuvola, has been discontinued and replaced with an updated version. The updated version is fine, too, but just doesn't have the same beautiful heathered colors that the original used to have. Good thing I bought plenty of Nuvola for two pairs of mittens and two jackets. But back to that project.

Back in 2009 I picked up some yarn at the medieval market happening every year at the Army History Museum in Vienna. It's kind of like a Renaissance Fair, but with a more military aspect. Anyway, there was a dyer who dyed with natural dyes that were available in medieval times, too. So I bought some yarn dyed with madder and some that was dyed with walnut. And ever since then I've been in love with the combination of light brown and bright red, with some white added to it, for good measure. Last year, Nuvola had those exact colors.

All that was left to do was pick some medieval patterns and start knitting. But I let the yarn rest. And rest. And rest. Until two weeks ago. Then inspiration struck.

This summer I bought a red shirt with little white bunnies on it. You can see it on the right, with the matching earrings. I love that shirt. And I quite like bunnies. So I looked at all the patterns I could find that seemed medieval to me and when I saw a bunny pattern, I knew I'd put it in my scarf.

In the end, it turned out like this:

I added some fairisle patterns I had copied from a book in Scotland for good measure and a much more medieval dog pattern, did some math (many times), cast on (many times) and knit. In the round. Yes, there was going to be steeking.

In the end, Le lièvre et le dragon took almost exactly the three balls of yarn I had, one of each color. For the white parts of the fringe, I needed a tiny bit of yarn from another ball, because I had used the white ball of Nuvola for Totoro eyes, Totoro stomach (twice) and skulls.

Isn't it gorgeous? I still need to even out some of the stitches, sew the steeked endings a little more tightly to the scarf, and once it is blocked, I need to see whether the scarf needs backing, but I'm already incredibly proud of it.

But what now? I have three big projects from last spring that need completing, two of which I actually want to finish, lots of small projects that need finishing, and little knitting time. But since the large projects are too large to lug around and the small projects need too many bits and pieces to carry with me, I cast on for yet another scarf, because I don't have one million billion kajillion scarves already. But who could say no to this color?

My Raspberry Broadside, made with the incredibly soft Zitron Unisono - the first sock yarn I've held in my hands that is actually soft enough for a scarf - is a bit of an experiment as well. I'm currently undecided whether I want to add a second skein, so I'll be weighing the rest of the skein to see how much yarn I still have left over.

There is lots more yarn waiting for me. There are many, many patterns in my queue. But I signed up to start working on my PhD and we'll see how it all goes with working, studying and knitting. One thing is sure: there will be no knitted Christmas presents this year - for the first time in ages.

unbearably warm

Ah, Vienna. Vienna in the summer is hot and humid (except currently it's warm and humid and stormy and partially rainy) and the less said about it the better.

Kuro has flown the nest (or yard) and has done so apparently so successfully that s/he lost her/his parents. They came to our yard to look for her/him, but no Kuro. And after all the love and care we gave that bird ... tssss. Anyway, I'm sure Kuro is quite alright and while I hope that the parents don't drop another baby bird in our yard next spring, I'm also kind of curious to see if they'll do it again.

In the meantime, knitting. Yes, despite the heat. I just do it where or when it's cooler (the country, Starbucks, during rainstorms). I finally knitted something that for some reason I haven't knitted for myself until now. Legwarmers, that is. When I restarted my knitting, after the first bad experiments (did I talk about those yet?) I made legwarmers for my mother and for a neighbour ... but not for me. And I have suffered cold feet and cold ankles for many years and always thought "Gee, I knit, right? Why am I not knitting legwarmers for myself?"

Actually, considering I don't wear my woolen socks that often, why didn't I just knit legwarmers with the sock patterns? I guess sometimes I'm so set on FOLLOWING THE PLAN that I don't even see how a very small deviation from that plan can make everything so much better. I'm pretty good at deviating in general, but sometimes ... sometimes it doesn't happen until quite some time later.

So, the Spiralling legwarmers. And how they paid off already. At first I thought a rather involved pattern like the very pretty Unraveling Ribs Socks would be cool, but that required a whoooole lot of purling and chart reading and the yarn just didn't really like the pattern. Then I looked at the beautiful Sinusoida socks and fell in love. I actually love the slip-stitch fabric so much that I'm wondering where else I could use it.

The yarn is an older edition of Lana Grossa Meilenweit "Party" and is therefore a little scratchy. But when I saw the colors, I just had to have it, although looking at them now, the pictures are again much too blue. Damn that camera! I really like this combination and the pattern just mixed up the stripes beautifully. And I just need to weave in two more ends and cut off that one end ... finishing ... never one of my favorite activities.

Now I need to get back to work - the letters are almost almost almost transcribed, but due to very complicated circumstances I can't print out the last ones. And tomorrow I start doing historical research for the book project about the recipient and author of those letters.

Celebratory kitty!

how about some socks?

Having three big projects on the needles is sometimes a little boring. I want to knit socks ...

Project 250 is going slow, but ok so far. After figuring out the armscye problem (and I finally remembered that the "skirt" is called a "peplum"), I wondered whether a diamond shape wouldn't solve the problem, giving me space and yet smaller armholes. So I completely unraveled the top and went to work. As you can see below, instead of a giant v, there's a somewhat diamond- or leaf-shaped section now. But!

But when I tried it on after knitting a good bit, I noticed that there was another problem. Instead of right below my armpit, the diamonds were placed further to the front. No wonder, since I don't have boobs on my back! But undoing all that knitting again? Instead, I chose to drop down the diamond section and reknit it 10 stitches further back.

The herringbone pattern is a bit complicated to knit back up, though, because the increases are unusual. Every row needs undivided attention, the only thing I could do was listen to a little music while reknitting. Still, the second section is almost done.

 To the right, you can see how far back I put the diamond section now - it's well into the back of the garment. I'm curious to see how it will all work out. But once the reknitting is done, I'll have to figure out a new problem: the new neckline. In accordance with the new look, my 250 cardi needs a new neckline to make it more Jane Austen than Jane Eyre. So I'll have to look at different patterns with the sort of neckline that I want and incorporate that into the cardi.

 
Sounds like a lot of work, no? Well, when I'm not working on 250, I'm working on my entrelac stole, called Quittez vos habits roses. When I can't think of a good enough name for a project (Why do they have to have such great names, anyway? Maybe I should start numbering them all.) I use snippets from folk songs (because I'm crazy about folk) and since I recently discovered a good channel for French folk songs, the titles of my projects are getting more and more incomprehensible. Quittez vos habits roses is from the song below, called "Marlborough s'en va t'en Guerre" from the beginning of the 18th century. 

If that song reminds you of "For he's a jolly good fellow", that's because the Brits stole the melody of this song and added their own text, a common and fun occurrence in folk. Most tunes for folksongs were actually dance tunes before they became song tunes. It's rare for melodies to cross borders, though, so this was a great find for me.

Anyway, back to knitting. On the left you can see my Quittez, it's made of Lana Grossa Qui and is soft and gorgeous, but due to my tendency to tighten my gauge once I'm comfortable with a pattern, the beginning of the stole is much looser than the section I'm currently knitting. Maybe in the future I should switch needles when this happens. But I'm hoping that it will even out in the blocking. Sadly, I've always found that the great texture of entrelac gets lost in the blocking, but maybe scrunching it up a little will help.

The other thing about Quittez is that I need daylight to knit it. Once one row of squares is done, I need to go back to every square and adjust the stitches. I still haven't managed to neaten up my edge stitches, not even with tugging and knitting some stitches tighter and some looser and whatever else - they remain uneven. So adjusting is required and for that I need daylight or at least good light in my room and ... anyway.


 
Third project on the needles is the Malagash Square Shawl that I'm calling Rose-colored Edges (because I didn't want to name it after yet another French folk song, frickin' a). It starts in the middle and is knit in the round and the pattern wants it to be garter stitch. But no way am I purling so much in a shawl that is knit in the round! And I also only have 600 meters of the main color, so I have to make it last.

So the main section has garter ridges every third row and three garter ridges every 7th ridge. I also wanted to do something with twisted stitches but decided against it. Maybe in a future project. But as this shawl gets bigger, it needs needles with a longer cable. Unfortunately, my best 3,5mm needles are occupied with the 250 cardigan, so I need to finish 250 first before I knit much more on this.

I want to knit socks ... I only have about 74 sock patterns in my queue ...

sneaky March - musings on baby shirts

The sun is shining right in my window, so I can't watch anime - right now I'm on the Deathnote bandwagon and it's a little disappointing. I guess if you haven't seen much anime, this might strike you as the awesomest anime ever, but it's rather plotholey, shark-jumpey and too shounen (male-targeted) by half. Interesting that they've made the evil guy so good-looking and the good guy so strangely bird-like. Also, the one smart female character is treated like shit by her fiance and is killed off in one episode right at the beginning, while the annoying fanservice female character stays on and on and on ... gah. It is still an interesting thought experiment, though, which is always the best thing about anime.

Ok, enough of that. On to knitting. Lately, I've kind of been inspired to knit a few more baby things. I think the intended recipient must have been born already, I'm just waiting for the email. I wanted to use up some of the cotton yarn I had bought and so at first, I thought about making a knitted dress with large block stripes in turquoise and red, but it didn't look so hot (different yarns) and it would have fit a five-year-old.

I've actually already made a baby shirt a while ago, in summer 2008, as part of a set of playclothes, to try and use up cotton yarn leftovers (Lana Grossa Toccata, to be precise). I never got around to the pants, though. I had to reknit this because I wasn't careful enough about carrying the yarn between the stripes and there were large gaps and it looked awful. So, reknitting. And reknitting. And reknitting. I hate reknitting with cotton yarn. But I really love these colors together:

This was knit from the top down, following the construction I had put to use on an unfinished project that needs a lot of rethinking. I decided to end it with a rolled brim, because nothing else looked good. Consequently, I've been using the rolled brim in all my other baby shirts, too.

Leftovers can provide a lot of inspiration. As I repeatedly mentioned when writing about the Snow Bunny, I love the Lana Grossa Latte yarn - they also make rather a nice blue. So when I ended up with over half (too lazy to measure) a ball of the white Latte, I decided to buy a ball of blue latte and give in to this year's fashion. Yes, the French blue and white stripes have returned in force (from doing a turn in the 80s and again in the mid-90s). I love that look. Can't wear it, but I love it. So, why not make small children wear it, they can't defend themselves and look cute in it. (Muahahaha). I give you the Classic Baby Shirt. Done bottom-up, because ... no reason. I love it, it's soft and beautiful.

After this, I was on a roll. Having decided to abandon the block stripes, I thought about how little texture I had been using for the baby clothes I had made so far (with a few exceptions, but still) and how little lace! That had to be remedied. I wanted some sort of smocking effect, but not too much. And something lacy and textured. Well, one of those stitches that is really, really easy and never leaves my brain is the Trinity Stitch. Makes little cluster balls that look like berries.

I gave it the rather stark name of One Texture, I guess a cuter name would be Summer Raspberry, but let's not get too twee here. The yarn is Lana Grossa Bingo and it has been in my stash for a long time, so yay! More space for new yarn. I wanted to do a different top construction and ended up with this kimono-like thing - I just hope it actually fits. As usual, worries about arm and head size abounded, since I don't actually have a real life baby to put this on.

From One Texture to Texture Two (aka Pie Crust Shirt or something). This time, I chose the Classic Baby Shirt construction again, but decided to do a twisted stitch rib on the straps so they wouldn't grow so much. The yarn is Lana Grossa Linea Pura Organico, which has plenty of beautiful colors. Originally it should have been a summer hat - yeah, just what a baby needs, a heavy cotton summer hat. Design fail.

I think I could go on and on knitting baby shirts. But actually, I've gone back to hats, since I decided to make a few more things that can be used immediately. It's rather boring having to wait to use all the handknitted stuff, no? A bit of instant gratification never hurt. So, because there must be some cutesy things, here's a cutesy Litte Flower Hat, knit using Lana Grossa Linea Pura Flora.

And that's it. Knitting a slightly larger hat with a bit of a lace pattern in the pink Flora and watching Deathnote. Maybe to get in the mood for the next baby thing (not for the same baby), which involves hot pink and black yarn and skulls ...

there's no end in sight

I have amazing projects in my (Ravelry) queue.

There's these, this, this one, this, and finally, this. I have the yarn and needles and pattern for every project. I have had the yarn for some of those projects for a long time. I've even swatched for some of those projects. But am I making any of these? No.

My main projects (those I'm supposed to be working on ... besides the thesis) are all for other people. There's the Tachikoma for my brother that requires undivided attention (as crochet always does)((Rav link), there's the headband for my mother (now finished), because the other one I knit got stolen - also needs almost undivided attention or at least a movie I know by heart and then there's the second one of the Aviatrix baby hats, just in case the first one doesn't fit. There are fifteen more baby things on my queue. Some of those won't be knit, others will be knit multiple times.

But I just want to knit this one again:

This is the Little Luxury Kimono, Rav link here. I love it. It can be made completely seamlessly, if you don't count kitchenering the shoulder seams (and I don't). You start at the bottom and oh, how many patterns I want to try out to make the bottom look all obi-like. For this one, I used one of my favorites, double moss stich aka broken rib stitch. Then you could use a cable or other cast-on for the ties, but I didn't because ... well, next time. Don't forget to make a hole for one tie to go through. Then separate the whole thing for the armholes, finish it, kitchener the shoulders and pick up stitches for the sleeves. Reverse the sleeve directions and ta-daa! Seamless kimono!

The yarn for this sweater is Lana Grossa Bingo, 100% merino and my favorite bulky workhorse yarn. This yarn has also been in my possession for ages. When I bought it, I had just come across Knitty, so it was 2005 and in Knitty's 2005 spring edition there was this pattern: Cleaves. I wanted it. I coveted it. But I didn't knit it, because I was busy knitting other things. I still wanted it. Then Ravelry came around and convinced me not to knit it. So what to do with the lovely yarn? I made a Springtime Bandit, which looked like nice enough, but ... I didn't like it all that much (Rav link). So, I decided to frog it and reuse the yarn for my vicarious my friend's baby. And am I ever glad I did.