Adamas Hat

My first Adamas Shawl in bamboo, worn
this summer at a cool Northern CA beach.

My second Adamas Shawl in baby Alpaca

The first lace project I ever did was the Adamas Shawl. It was a great first lace project in that it looks far more complicated than it actually is. In terms of lace, it's simple, easy, but not so repetitive that it's boring. 

Baby Mania

I turn 30 this month. While I shudder to think that my life mimics that of a 20 year-old (except of course that I can buy my own alcohol...and drink responsibly) the lives of my friends are not as stunted as mine. (Really, I wouldn't mind turning 30 except I'd always pictured my life at 30 being more settled - married, baby, house, the average 2.5 member American family dream in the works.)

Four of my married friends are having their first babies. Two just bought houses, one already owns a house, and the other is in graduate school, like me, but has figure out how to have the family and go to school at the same time. They are all wonderful people, and I wish I had my shit together as well as they did. But 30 is still young enough. I'll start worrying if I'm at the same place as now when I'm 40.

Knitting and Moving

Moving makes knitting (and writing about knitting) hard. Well moving, in addition to getting ready for two back to back science conferences that I'm presenting at, makes knitting hard. It's not something I'd like to repeat but I'm sure is going to happen again considering Partner and I are going into a field where we won't set roots down for another 5 years - if we are lucky.

But what I found out this time around is that knitting makes moving easier! Besides it's usual stress relieving abilities for me, the first thing Partner and I realized when we moved in was we needed a bath mat. I'd already been trying to figure out what to do with the Tee-shirt yarn I made back in February...

Tee-shirt Yarn made in February when I had ample leisure time.

To Craft or Not to Craft...

I am moving. The lease was signed yesterday and while the details need to be worked out I will be leaving Davis by the end of this month. This morning I was hit with a conundrum, do I pack my crafts (mainly yarn and knitting tools) now, or do I keep them out so I can start a new project?

I just happen to be without anything on my needles right now, so it would be less distracting. But several of my friends are expecting babies in the Fall and Winter.

Mac Lovin'

My wonderful sister and brother-in-law (BIL) gifted me a couple months ago with an iPad. I've preferred Macs to PCs for a while and fell in love with the iPad pretty early on. It makes me feel like I'm on "Star Trek" and my childhood crush on Wesley Crusher keeps rushing back. I suspect that I'm not betraying my extreme nerdiness by saying this...or by posting my new iPad case.

Braided Cap - Mixing childhood and adulthood

My real life took over for a while and I had to put knitting on the back burner since early April. In the last two months I've probably only knitted 20 hours. That's in comparison to my 3-5 hours a night on a typical night just before I had to set-up and run experiments so I can graduate.

Just before all the chaos with experiments started I ran into an old friend of mine who was going to start working up in the Sierra Nevadas soon. I love giving gifts that are useful. And I'd been looking for an excuse to once-again try to incorporate my childhood love of braiding into a cap. So old-friend gave me that excuse. I'd tried a couple of other times, but I just kept getting the cables wrong. Finally I was able to get it to look the way I meant it.

Start Shawl, Frog Shawl, Start Shawl Again

Last night, or I guess early this morning, I wrote about how I was going to pick up my hibernating chroma fingering shawl sampler project. But today when I grabbed it...it just didn't peak my interest. I think part of the problem is that while the switching of patterns is highlighting the color change like I wanted it's not a very pretty shawl. I can tell even with blocking it's still going to be disappointing. So I'm going to frog it tonight and try a rectangular shawl on bigger needles. Still not sure which pattern I'm going to use yet. But maybe something from Knitty, or maybe something from the Vogue Stitch Dictionary. In anycase, the colors on this yarn need to be highlighted so maybe something plain.

Update: I choose Renontuli-huivi/Northern Lights designed by AnneM and available for free on Ravelry.

Chroma Lights in progress

Stinking Rose! I'll make a shawl instead.

I think I need to put the flowers away for a while. The last rose came out okay. Still not what I want but I'm getting tired of trying to get the petals to line up just right and the center from poking up too high.

2nd Knitted Rose Tester

...And I'm feeling stupid for getting ahead of myself in planning a wedding yet again. Even though Partner and I have been talking about the wedding for a month now, he still hasn't re-proposed and until I get the ring back on my finger it feels stupid to be telling people my plans.

Knitted Rose

As I wrote in my last post I am in the journey to design and make the perfect rose for my upcoming nuptials, in a little over a year. I suppose more than anything this is an excuse to try something new with two sticks and string.

In the last post I wrote why I was making my own rose instead of using other designs. But I was disappointed with my first try.

A Rose by any Other Name

There's a long drawn out story behind this, but Partner and I tried being engaged once and decided to postpone it. Well, it looks like that's back on. So Hurray for me...um...I mean us. What does this new engagement mean? It means we're planning in ernest to get married. Although even this is unofficial right now since Partner wants to re-do the proposal. Seriously this was his idea. I just want my ring back. Man, I love that ring.

But back to the point. We're now (unofficially) planning the wedding! And I have all this extra yarn from the felting project that just happens to be in reds that would make lovely roses to decorate the reception and/or be used in the bouquet.

I started by making Nicky Epstein's Angle Rose.

It's absolutely beautiful. But I just couldn't get over the feeling that felting all that yarn just to cut out shapes was...not my style. Partner and I may still go out and buy felt from the craft store. But in the meantime I've decided to try to knit out those shapes and make my own knitted "angle" rose.

Angle Rose and my first Tester

The first tester was done with worsted weight yarn on size 10 needles, and in my excitement to assemble it I didn't bother to block first. It wasn't just excitement though. I wanted them to curl over to look more like a rose. It's not bad, but not what I wanted. There's a bunch of different things I'm going to try to make it work. The first of which is to try it in smaller needles and block it to see if that helps the definition. The second is to knit a much bigger version and felt the individual pieces.

The next tester is going to be using size 7 needles and with a couple of rows added so it stays about the same size. Eventually I'll work my way to a flower that looks good, at which point I'll post the pattern instructions in case anyone else wants to try it out too.

Felting Frenzy - Kinda Quick Knits for Feb and March

**Updated to included post felting pictures.

In case you haven't noticed I get a bit obsessed with projects or techniques and kinda go from there until a new type of project or technique catches my eye.

Lately that has been felting. First it was the French Press Slippers for my sister.

Humping Elephants - Done

They are FINALLY done! As much as I enjoyed learning the new technique (double knitting) and this pattern I'm sick of working on this gift. I've got a sampler shawl made from the new KnitPicks Chroma hibernating and I would really like to get back it it since it was turning out really nice. But that will go into another post.

Back to this project. The elephants looked pretty good unfelted, but I don't want any burned hands from the items pushing through the "holes" of the stitches so I went ahead and felted. Here are the before pictures.

Humping Elephants take 2...3...and 4: Some notes on double knitting

Yes, you got that right. I've knitted and frogged 2 times since Monday and I'm on my 3rd iteration of the re-do now. This is what I get for being too excited about starting a new technique. I watched the video from KnittingHelp.com, but because the video was so long the free version online didn't show everything.

So here are some notes about double knitting and modifications I made to the original pattern.

Take 1: Seven rows in of 100 stitches I noticed that I was basically making a bag that wasn't seamed together. In other words the front and the back were not attached to each other except at the cast on. Part of the problem was that I wasn't switching colors in between stitches so one side was all red and the other was black. I thought by having alternating blocks as top and bottom borders, similar to the first pot holder, I could fix the problem. So Frog 1.

Take 2: Because I was modifying the top and bottom and would be adding a few more rows I decided to chart it out and see what I could do to the pattern to make it more appropriate for my use (See below).

The modifications are this (but check out the original at KnitWithIt to compare and pick what matches your project better):

1. Added a top and bottom border with a gauge of 5 stitches and 7 rows = 1 inch square
2. Defined the male elephant's ear
3. Made the male's front leg look more like he's gripping her
4. Made eyes for both elephants larger
5. Made the female body wider

But this still didn't fix the problem with the edges not connecting which I realized could only be fixed by twisting my working ends around each other before starting a new row like one would for intarsia. So Frog 2.

Now I'm on Take 3. I've only gotten 4 rows in but now the edges are bound to each other, and I'm getting more use to the continental style of knitting. So it's going faster. I'm just hoping I don't have to frog yet again.

p.s. if you want to make this pattern (basically do a knit-along-with me) let me know and I'll send you a pdf and then we can compare notes on if it works.

Humping Update and Happy Valentines Day!

I still have 30 minutes, if I'm fast, to say Happy Valentines Day to you all.

Partner was not that impressed with the potholders. I think mostly because he wanted the eye to show up. So my two options are 1) use the left over yarn from these to make another pot holder with the same size needles and 2) dye the extra yarn I have from the French Press Slippers I'm making for my sister so that I have black and maroon and knit using two strands and larger needles with that. Either way I'm using the double knitting method.

I've modified the original pattern a bit so that both the eyes show up using method (1), the male ear and arm shows up more, and the female is wider. I'll post pictures as it comes along....the double knitting is a lot slower than my normal knitting. But hopefully that will speed up later.

In the mean time I've finished knitting the French Press Slippers. Just waiting to felt them and to find nice buttons for them. I also started a novel design for a sampler yarn using Knit Picks Chroma in Regency. Pictures and posts of those to come.

Humping Elephants continued...possibly finished

The pot holders are felted. I'm not completely sure I like it yet though. (For more about these potholders check out this post.

Pre-felting, the pot holders were about 12 x 10 inches.

Post felting they are more like 8 x 6 inches. The ruler is in there for scale.

Partner is coming over tomorrow night and will get his final say in. If he likes them I'll probably leave them. But if he agrees with me that they could be better I'm going to try a new technique.

The color work for this rendition of the potholders was a mix between Fair-Isle and Intarsia. It didn't really occur to me until after I'd made it that it would be a good idea to look at online videos on how to do these techniques well. I'd learned how to do fair-isle over 10 years ago from one of those Learn-how-to-knit books that you get at craft stores like Michael's and JoAnne's. I never really liked it because of all the yarn carrying you have to do and how that bunches up the back. So until now I never did any real color work.

I pretty much made up a technique that isn't that effective for these pot-holders. And by not effective I mean there are obvious bumps and unevenness even after felting. I had thought that felting would even everything out.

Also where I seamed the boarders to the pot holders is a bit obvious since the white lace-weight alpaca I used didn't felt as much and shows through in some spots.

On the upside this is the best felting job I've ever done. So shampoo is better than the detergent I have.

But I'm getting off topic. The other-new-to-me technique for the potholder that I want to try is Double Knitting.

Every time I need to learn a new technique I go to KnittingHelp.com. They tend to have good videos and instructions. It was from this site that I learned in 2008 that I'd been doing my purl stitch backwards for years and not compensating for it when I did my knits in stockinet stitches.

So I went to the site to check how real color-working knitters deal with changing colors at the same stitch over and over. That's when I realized there was another way to do color work besides Fair-Isle that I actually like. Most color work that I'm drawn to is Intarsia style anyways, but Double Knitting allows you to knit two sides of a piece in mirror image and colors at the same time using rib stitching. From what I could gather it's adaptable to any color-work pattern so long as you want the image on both sides.

So I'm tempted to just remake the potholders using the Double Knit technique. And if I do I'll post the steps and progress. Still, I've moved on to other projects already, so maybe I'll get to this in a few weeks..

Tee-Shirt Yarn!

Today, Partner and I were talking about garage sales and old clothes in prep for my move to the Bay Area. I'd already had three paper bags full of clothes I was planning on donating so we dragged them out to double check them. As I was going through them I realized a lot of my old shirts were pretty much crap - not even donation worthy. They had holes and stains and were misshapen from too many times in the washer and dryer. Truthfully, I think they were mostly in the bags because I didn't want these shirts in my closet anymore. These shirts became a pile on the floor. The pile on the floor became tee-shirt yarn.

I tried to conserve as much as possible, so the arms of long sleeve shirts were also stripped and pulled. The only downside of this was that all 10 of my shirts and tanks were done in the rib stitch so none of them curled on themselves like they were suppose to. Still they should make a nice rug when I have the time to knit them up.

Because I don't have and have never seen size 19 needles or bigger in circulars these will probably be knit into strips and the strips sewn together for the rug. But the nice thing about that is that I'll be able continually add strips as I wear the shirts still in my closet to rags.

For a tutorial on tee-shirt yarn check this out.

The "Adult Content" Post - humping elephants pot holder (in progress)

Note: This isn't actually that naughty - but I'm being extra cautious incase - and I'm sure I'll post things even more raunchy in the future.

My partner is also a graduate student - but in biochemistry. We use to joke that one day we'd be some nerdy science power couple. Well that was before my major burn-out in my second and third year. He still loves it. I don't hate it, but I can no longer see the rest of my life as a researcher.

I bring this up because his advisor is getting married this year. Partner is making beer for the wedding as a gift. I hate to show up empty handed, and since I don't even like drinking beer, the keg is not going to be from me too. So I offered to Partner to knit Partner's advisor and fiance a really intricate felted oven glove - something slightly artsy, a bit medieval looking (Advisor's fiance is a history major focusing on the middle ages), and that would use a new technique I'm not that familiar with (fun for me!). I spent a couple hours looking through Ravelry patterns search engine and picked 4 or 5 that I liked to showed to Partner and bought feltable yarn at KnitPicks.

When he came over the next weekend his response was, "What about the humping animals you showed me last week?" So I gotta give him props here. He wasn't uninterested - he was actually happy, appreciative even, that I was making something for his advisor. But we went from something tasteful and elegant to something naughty and well...funny. You can see I'm not the funny one in this relationship.

So back to Ravelry, where we search the mature and naughty patterns for humping/fornicating animals that I could turn into potholders. We finally found and agreed on humping elephants pattern that was generously provided for free by Didi B., and which can be found at Knitwithit.

The pattern looked pretty square on the grid, and

I will freely admit I hate making gauges - although enough disasters have me now feebly attempting to make gauges - so after finding out how many stitches per inch (but not rows per inch), I started in on the elephants. I thought they turned out pretty well...except they aren't square. The bigger problem is that felting causes things to shrink vertically more than horizontally. Meaning 1) these elephants may turn out really squat and 2) these would be really really rectangular pot holders. Not a huge problem. Just a bit of problem solving.

The original idea overall was to knit two sides of

the same thing but in opposite colors and stitch them together as the final project. It's bit more stitching, but instead I'm going to knit borders to attach to the top and bottom of each then do an I-cord attachment and loop and throw the sucker in the washer with some shampoo. I'd use my laundry detergent but the shampoo seems to work better. Yay Head and Shoulders.

If they turn out too squat or funky that's okay. It took less than 2 skeins of each color to at 1.99 a skein to make these. So I'll just order more yarn and try again. If that does happen though I may need to get some friends go in with me on the order. I always try to take advantage of KnitPicks free shipping on orders over 50 dollars. And I've ordered twice from them in January. And I'm once again limiting my spending limit on fiber related hobbies to 500 dollars for the whole year. So that's 10 shipments from KnitPicks...or one or two orders plus lots of visits to Local Yarn Stores (LYS) when Partner and I travel this year.

Hello Blog Readers! And January's quick knits

I've been playing with the idea of writing a blog for a year or two now, more seriously in the last few weeks. Mostly because I've been posting to a teaching blog through my school (ucdtaconsultants.blogspot.com) about my work as a Teaching Assistant Consultant (TAC) and really liking it. When I was younger I use to keep a daily diary with the intention of one day giving it to my child so they would know what kind of person their mother was. Not completely sure that's a great idea anymore, but I do miss writing.

The first question for creating the blog was what should it be on. I do love teaching and I hope after finishing my PhD I'll get a job as a teacher or as someone who helps others teach. But that's covered already in the UCD TAC blog. That leaves what I currently do as a student - ecology - or my favorite hobby, knitting. Personally, I think a blog should be enjoyable to the writer so hobby it is.

I don't make New Year's resolutions anymore. After almost 30 years on this planet I've realized that resolutions come at all times of the year and are more likely to be followed by me if they are made at random times. But at the beginning of this year I realized that the yarn in my stash that I didn't think was useful was not getting smaller. Actually, it was probably growing. Some of these were left over from larger projects (hence the growing), but the vast majority of them were from when I was a new knitter and didn't know what I actually liked about yarn...pretty much before graduate school sent me into the spiraling pit of doom that I only pulled out of by distracting myself with fiber. The skeins are abused enough that I wouldn't feel okay giving them away, but nice enough that they could make a decent small project. So the fact that I could still make something and that I'm finally motivated enough to do my graduate work (thereby having less time in my life for my hobby) had me resolute (is that even grammatically correct?!?) to use those "scraps" of yarn to knit little projects that I could throw in a gift box to be given as last-minute gifts later.

Oh, and I also decided to start making small Christmas ornaments for next year when I think I will actually have a tree.

Here are the things I made in January. Note that most of the items are the same color...that's cuz I'm working through a couple skeins of Cascade Yarns' Cherub collection. And I know the last one isn't knitted. It's felted soap. But I was also trying to get rid of some roving that didn't spin well.