Socks Photo

Here's the photo I promised, showing the first seven pairs of socks I knitted. Actually, there's another pair, made with the same yarn as the baby socks, that I didn't get a photo of. I gave the socks to my cousin and forgot to photograph them. I managed to get a big pair and a little pair out of one ball.


The purple socks on the right end are the first real pair of socks I knitted. My sister-in-law, for whom I made them, says they're great and fit perfectly. I'm proud of that.

It Was the Socks' Fault, Not Mine

My blog seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. I blame it on two things: facebook and sock knitting. The thrill of the first has worn off a bit, although I used its messaging to arrange a huge surprise for my husband's birthday. I got his brother, sister-in-law, and niece to fly out from Iowa for his 70th birthday (26 December) and our 40th anniversary (31 December).

The thrill of sock knitting lives on. I finally tried it, years after it became so popular. I got Melissa Morgan-Oakes's two books on knitting socks two at a time, cuff down and toe up, using Magic Loop. Then I sent off to KnitPicks for worsted weight yarn in approximately the colors she used for her sample socks. Carefully following each well-illustrated and well-described step, I discovered that sock knitting is easy. Then I did a little shopping and discovered that it's fun and pretty, too. I've just finished turning the heels on my twelfth pair of socks.

I can't recommend these two books enough. I've collected a bunch of other sock patterns and it's very easy to adapt any of them to her techniques.

The bitter irony of this new-found passion for knitting socks is that I don't wear hand-knitted socks. Mostly I wear thongs because I live in fairly warm places and sandals work just fine. On the rare occasions when I do wear socks, I wear Katie Bell socklets that I buy from Costco in bundles of ten pair. Or I wear a pair of cotton socks from my vast collection from Lands End, as these socks, bought before I retired in 2002, show no signs of ever wearing out.

So what do I do with all these socks I knit? I give them away, of course. I have friends and family in cold climates who love my socks. The first pair I knit, a lovely pair in purple, went to my beloved sister-in-law. My niece, my cousin's wife, my goddaughter, my cleaning lady, my friend Pat, e-friends on Usenet (alt.fan.cecil-adams, to be precise)--all of them get my hand-knitted socks. I buy colors of yarn with each of them in mind. When my sister-in-law and niece were here we went through my four bins of sock yarn and pulled out an entire bin for the two of them (plus four balls for my brother-in-law). Every one they liked was one I'd bought with them in mind, which made me happy that I'd picked so well. My dear goddaughter finds wool too itchy to wear, so I buy non-wool yarn, like bamboo, for her.

I was going to post a photo of some early pairs of socks, but it's not working from flickr and I can't figure out where I put the original. I'll dig out the memory stick, which is probably in the camera, which I think is in a knitting bag somewhere here, and get photos posted. I should probably photograph some of my yarn, too. I discovered Trekking XXL and Zauberballs, to add to the KnitPicks and Elann sock yarn. I have stopped going to my favorite sellers on eBay and Etsy because I absolutely cannot buy more sock yarn until I've knitted up at least a bin's worth.

Oh, No, Not Another Kindle

OK, I admit it. I bought the latest version of the Kindle, the higher-contrast graphite DX. My excuse is that I dropped my original DX and now it hangs up and has to be restarted every few days. Some of the real reasons are that the dark gray version is very attractive and that I like the higher contrast of the new display. That this version will work internationally isn't really a reason because I don't plan to travel outside the US.

I managed to drop my Kindle 2 and kill the display screen while it was still under warranty. I bought a two-year extended warranty when I made the leap into e-bookery. By the time I bought the DX I was familiar enough with the Kindle to think that I didn't need to buy another warranty. Of course, I waited to drop the DX until about two weeks after the one-year standard warranty expired. Oh, well.

I finished my first pair of real socks a few days ago and I'm going to send them to my sister-in-law early next week. Photos will appear here once she's received them. I'm going to ask her to be relentlessly critical of them, particularly of how they fit. I'll be asking her to go against her nature but it's really for her own good. If she doesn't give me feedback she may be in for a lifetime of badly fitting socks. It seems to take me about a week to turn out a pair of socks, knitting them two at a time, so this isn't an idle threat.

My husband claims I've bought every sock pattern book that Amazon sells, but I really haven't. I don't particularly care for either intarsia or Fair Isle color work, so I haven't bought any sock pattern books that only have such socks. I have bought a bunch of sock yarn from Knit Picks. They reliably sell good yarn, often with luxury fibers like alpaca, at very reasonable prices. I also picked up some cotton and wool Regia sock yarn from Elann.com. I have resolved to buy no more yarn, not even an inch, until I've knitted up all the sock yarn I've got right now.

Coming Out of the Knitting Closet

I have finally come out of the knitting closet. I have knitted socks. OK, only four and they were the little practice socks knitted from worsted weight per Melissa Morgan-Oakes' two books[1], but they're still socks. The books are spiral-bound and lead the new sock knitter though knitting the practice socks step by step, with really good photographs. I used the books in the order printed, starting with classic cuff-down socks and then going on to toe-up socks. I'm still not sure which I like the best, but I know these two books are what led me astray. Photos will follow, but my little socks are still packed away from the yearly spring move back to the High Desert.

This afternoon I started an actual pair of socks. They seem to go really quickly. I'm not quite sure who I'm knitting them for, yet. The pattern is from one of Wendy Johnson's toe-up socks books[2], which are the other two sock knitting books dear to my heart. I've bought some others and will probably add more favorites, but right now it's just Melissa and Wendy.

I have a variety of fingering weight yarn in my stash, because it works well for lace shawls. I think some of it is going to be redirected into socks. I pretty much wear flip-flops year round, so I'm not going to be knitting socks for myself. Fortunately for SoCal me, I have friends and family in South Dakota, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

As a side note, I dropped my Kindle 2 from a height of ca. 30 inches onto a tile floor, flat on its face, and pretty much killed it. Fortunately, I'd bought it a supplementary warranty (it's about 18 months old), so the replacement was free. Still, I was really glad I had the Kindle DX to pick up the slack until I got everything set back up.

[1] Melissa Morgan-Oakes' two books are 2-at-a-Time Socks: Revealed Inside. . . The Secret of Knitting Two at Once on One Circular Needle Works for any Sock Pattern! (2007) and Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks (2010).

[2] Wendy D. Johnson's two sock books are Socks from the Toe Up: Essential Techniques and Patterns from Wendy Knit and Toe-Up Socks for Every Body: Adventurous Lace, Cables, and Colorwork from Wendy Knits.

Like Cool, Man

Well, it's taken two return trips by the techs and 20 ft of PVC pipe, but the ductless a/c seems to be working. The system startled us by suddenly dripping a lot of water on the floor. The water spread out to be quite a large puddle, although not very deep. Just proves they did a good job when they laid the slab.

It turned out that the way our ceiling is built, they couldn't get a good downhill slope the way they originally tried. So now the drain tube goes the other way, out over the double doors from the patio. It drains into an elbow on a run of PVC that goes across above the window over the sink, around the corner, over the other window, and then drops down to nearly ground level. I'd take a photo but my kitchen counters, which you can see through the windows, are an absolute mess and I'm not going to display that to the whole world. More spring cleaning to do, of course.

As for the other problems, the technician suggested checking the second remote (my policy is to buy a second remote at the time, not wait years until the replacement is no longer available) and all the other problems went away. We're not sure if the first remote was bad or if it was the wrong remote. The remote that came with our system had been robbed out of the box and they'd brought us a substitute. The second remote was dropped off the next day and we didn't even put the batteries in it, just put it into a drawer with the paperwork.

So now the system is working perfectly. We close the doors to the family room and use it during the day and it's cool and comfortable. Meanwhile, the rest of the house stays fairly cool because we've had the windows open all night. Here in the desert, the nights get very cool; a temperature drop of 40°F is common. We use that natural cooling to get the house cool enough so that we can ride it out until it starts cooling off the next evening. With the help of a few fans, that works pretty well.

I had a panic with my Kindle the day before yesterday. It wouldn't wake up, although I did manage to turn it off completely, not just sleep it. I went to the Kindle help site and immediately found the answer. It booted up, very obligingly, and has been working just fine since. I was pretty upset, since I was in the middle of a great book. However, I have a number of regular books that I need to read, so it wouldn't have been a catastrophe if I'd had to send the Kindle for repairs. It would have been inconvenient, because my husband is a light sleeper and clicking the Kindle is much quieter than turning the page of a book. How quickly we adapt!

So all's well here, electronically and mechanically. At least for now.

My husband's little laptop is starting to act a little oddly, so I just bought him a replacement from eBay. These laptops were last manufactured about four years ago and he's not ready to change over to a newer model (he runs a dual boot, Linux and XP). I'm using an even older laptop and am on my third replacement. I'm still running W2K. I have a 1600x1200-pixel 16.1" display and I'm not ready to switch over to the letterbox-shaped displays that the newer laptops have. Fortunately, we still have a couple of replacements in reserve. We'll both have to give up eventually, I'm sure, but we'll probably manage to skip another generation before we do.

Gordo the Wonder Collie is doing well on his new medication schedule. We've reduced the doses and he's a great deal more lively. He got a floppy rhinoceros from Orvis for his birthday. He's very fond of it and takes it to bed with him at night, using it for a pillow. He also got a dog nest and an outdoor dog bed and he's using them both.

I've taken most of the photos I promised in the last posting and will be putting them up soon. I think I've found the right lace pattern for the beautiful silk and I'll be getting back to knitting. Now that it's so cool in the family room, I'm ready to knit again.

Mac the Knife

We're having some unseasonably hot weather right now. Although it's really not that unseasonable because we haven't hit the local record high temperature yet. It's probably going to be 100°F at the peak, although there's a slight breeze picking up, meaning that we may get the marine layer here early.

Updated to add that we did indeed set a new record for the local high for the day, by 4°, at 99°, so far. It may get another degree or two hotter.

Anyway, we put the ductless a/c unit in on Thursday, but it's not working. There's a problem with getting the remote to work and, of course, it only works with the remote. They're coming over on Monday with a new remote and an electrician to sort everything out.

Meanwhile I'm struggling with a constant problem that has kind of gotten out of hand. I do a lot of shopping on the Internet. It's mostly because of the dog; between his epilepsy and the weather, I don't like to go off and leave him for very long at all. Shopping is no fun if you're in a panic to get back home. So UPS and FedEx and USPS keep delivering cartons of shopping to my house. I've been buying a fair amount of clothing because nothing I had would fit and that really added the boxes. The two most recent deliveries were a new HP all-in-one from Amazon and a pair of utility knives from Overstock.

I needed the utility knives because I've used up all the snap-off blades on my U-Haul box cutters. Cutting up cardboard with a dull knife is dangerous and frustrating. All these cartons that keep showing up have to be cut up and put, along with most of the packing material, into the recycle bin. I'd gotten really behind and I had cardboard boxes everywhere. My housekeeper and I made a good start two weeks ago, clearing out the stuff in the guest room. We only stopped because we ran out of space in the recycle bin. So last week I borrowed my neighbor's recycle bin and filled up both bins, but that still didn't take care of all the boxes.

Yesterday afternoon I cut up another half a bin's worth. And the new utility knives really work well. The grip is very comfortable and it's easy to change blades. Plus they each came with fifty spare blades, which should last close to a lifetime. You should have seen me slashing through the carton they came in, with the razor-sharp blade making it effortless. Just call me Mac the Knife.

As soon as it cools off I'm going to go cut up enough to fill the recycle bin so it will go away on Tuesday. Then I'm going to polish off the rest, get it all out of my entry hall and living room, and never let myself get so far behind again. I don't have any real problem keeping up with the household recycling, mostly from the kitchen, just with the inundation of cartons.

Updated to add that I did get all the big cartons and the packing material into the recycle bin, with a little room left over for the kitchen stuff. The worst part was going out into the heat to transfer it from the large carton I'd put it into as I cut it up to the bin. It's not just hot, but more humid than normal. I just couldn't bear to wait until it got cooler. I've gotten a little compulsive about all this cardboard.

UPS bringeth,
USPS bringeth, and
FedEx bringeth,
But none of them taketh away.

It's Spring and my house needs attention and I'm restless. I've got another two 33-gallon bags to donate to the thrift store and I'm starting to be able to hang clothes in my closet without prying apart what already in there. I'm saving the guest room closet for when my cousin comes, in July. She'll help me be ruthless with the dressier work clothes that went in there when I outgrew them. I of course had hopes of losing weight and wearing them again, but I didn't know it wouldn't be until I'd been retired for six years and no longer had anywhere to wear them.

I will get back to knitting, I promise. I'll take photos of all the new yarn I've gotten (I have to put it away, now that it's out of its cartons) in the next couple of days and put some photos up here (and add all of them in Ravelry). I've even got two FOs to photograph and post. Plus two triangular shawls that just need blocking to be finished and a circular shawl ditto. I'm saving the circular shawl for when my cousin is here, since it's for her. After we get it blocked, we may have to shorten it. She's my height and this is supposed to be a circular shawl to keep her shoulders warm in over-cooled restaurants, not a mid-thigh-length cape. It's knit top-down in a modified fan and feather, so shortening it won't be difficult.

Birthday Cards

I got a birthday card and note from my favorite niece in the whole world (she's actually my only niece, but I still recognize her superiority at being a niece). She told me that she bought herself a Kindle 2 after reading my posting on mine. She has always been a great reader, like me, which I think has made us closer over the years. I have to admit to having aided and abetted her reading habit; I would buy her books when we visited Iowa and even now we give her Amazon gift certificates.

Still, to convince her, with just a few words, to buy a Kindle 2.... Fortunately for my auntly reputation, she loves it with a passion. I am so pleased to hear that from her, since I love mine, and her, so very much.

She is a wonderful person. She's really good at dealing with people, which is a large part of her job (she's a fairly high-level manager at the hospital system of a big Midwestern university), and she's very intelligent. She got her MBA at that same university while working full time, with excellent grades. We are so proud of her and her success. She's also a wonderful aunt to her four nieces and one nephew. She graciously gives me a much-needed outlet for knitted goods, by accepting and wearing warm woolly scarves.

Maybe she'll start leaving the occasional comment here. I didn't even know she was reading.

Miscellaneous News

I thought I'd update everyone on what's going on here. Not that it's a lot, but there are a few little things I've written about earlier.

The crown that I thought would be cemented a day or two ago still isn't here. I finally called and asked about it; I'm sorry to say that the mother of the lab guy passed away and everything has been delayed. However, I have a really good temporary on the tooth, so I'm not in too much of a hurry. I would like to be done with all this, but another week or two isn't going to make a big difference in the long run.

Gordo the Wonder Puppy is doing well. He hasn't had a seizure for a month and he seems to be less drugged than he was when he started on the Keppra. This latter is a mixed blessing; he's recently learned to tip the recycling bin over and fish out something interesting to drag into the family room and dismember. On the other hand, he's sleeping through the night, which has greatly improved my sleep.

My Rainbow Argosy Afghan is about 80% done. Well, maybe not so much, since I dropped a stitch about eight rows back and am tinking back to that point, two rows at a time. I can't just drop the stitches near the error and re-knit, because there's a yarnover in every other row and I don't have enough yarn to make it. Very annoying, as there's also a new ball of yarn joined in the the rows that have to come out.

Anyway, here's a photo of it at about 70% done.


And here's a close-up to show you the pattern and how the variegation works out.


This yarn is really soft and puffy. The afghan is going to be nice and warm. I do like Lorna's Laces yarns. I got a skein of Helen's Lace, which is 50/50 merino and silk. It's a big skein, maybe six ounces, 1200 yards (three-quarters of a mile), and beautifully dyed. I also got a shawl pattern for it. Unfortunately, I've got a number of projects that I absolutely must complete before I start another big lace project. It doesn't help that I have four other lace wraps that I really want to knit and another six or eight that I have in mind.

Busy Week This Week

Well, my week started on Sunday, getting a new toilet installed. It's a Kohler toilet that only uses 1.6 gallons, compared to the original toilet that used 6 or 7 gallons. As it was being installed, I was doing laundry and I noticed water running down the side of the water heater. We looked and the pipes were so corroded that it was a wonder that any water was going the right way. I spent the afternoon doing as much laundry as I could and going to the supermarket.

Monday I went over and had the first crown prep done and then came home to meet the plumber. He agreed immediately that we needed a new water heater and we scheduled it for Tuesday afternoon. He cut the insulation jacket off to be sure we had the right size (50 gallons) and that set the water hiding in the fiberglass free. By this morning it was really wet and messy in the garage.

So this morning I had to take my husband by the blood lab for a test first thing (fasting test, you know how that works). The guy is installing the new water heater as I write. The corner of the garage is sodden. There's no other word for it but that. Fortunately the wallboard around the water heater base is purely for looks and the 2x4 frame provided the real structural strength.

It turns out that the old water heater was installed in 1980, making it 28 years old. Apparently this is beyond geriatric for water heaters, which have a normal lifetime of about a dozen years. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't really think much about my water heater. It just sits there in the corner of the garage, working away. I try to drain it once a year, but I suspect I really only manage about once every three years.

So we're about to have hot water again and I'm going to get the laundry finished, hopefully today. You see, I have an appointment for my third crown prep tomorrow (Wednesday). I'm hoping it goes as well as yesterday's did and I can get the laundry put away, etc.

Then on Thursday I have another dentist's appointment, to fill some cavities. The crowns won't be back from the lab for another couple-three weeks, so I'll have some time off until it's time to glue them on. A year or two back, I got a crown replaced and when we tried the new crown on, it was such a perfect fit it wouldn't come off after the trial fitting. Of course the dentist didn't want to do anything extreme to it so it took some time before it finally popped of. Then I nearly swallowed it. What a farce that was. Funny now, but not so funny at the time.

I'm almost done with the central section of the dramatic stole I'm knitting for a friend. I've taken so long to get even this far that I'm going to give her the Forget-Me-Not Shawl just to tide her over. The shawl has been finished except for blocking for literally months, so I've got to get myself in gear right now. I got a new blocking set, with wires and pins, etc, from Overstock.com for about $20 (I'm a member of their club and get an additional 5% discount and free postage). This shawl is vastly oversized compared to the original pattern, because I read it wrong.

Abut five minutes ago I got my copy of It Itches by Franklin Habit. Wonderful book. So much truth in it, too. I recommend it highly. I've only read the cartoons, not the essays, because I want to get this published before I get distracted by something else.

No-Roll Stockinette Scarf

This is my pattern for a no-roll stockinette scarf. The latest version is made of Debby Bliss Cashmerino Astrakhan, which is a very textured yarn. There's no point in wasting a pattern on it and I prefer stockinette to garter stitch.

The pattern is more a recipe than a pattern. Pick your yarn and select the recommended size needles. If you know you're a tight or a loose knitter, adjust the size accordingly.

You want a nice firm fabric with some drape to it, not too loose (it won't keep the wearer warm) and not too tight (it won't drape around the wearer). I make my scarves about seven inches wide and seven feet long, because I'm knitting them for Iowans, South Dakotans, and Pennsylvanians.

Compute how many stitches it takes to make eight inches (look on the ball label) and subtract 10%. Cast this number of stitches on, using any cast-on method you like.

Bottom border:
Knit six rows (three garter ridges on each side), slipping the first stitch purlwise, with the yarn in front.

Body:

1. Slip the first stitch purlwise with yarn in front, knit 4, purl to 5 stitches before the end, knit 5.
2. Slip the first stitch purlwise with yarn in front, knit to end of row.

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until the scarf is about five stockinette rows shorter than the final length you want, or until you're almost out of yarn.

Top border:
Knit six rows (three garter ridges on each side), slipping the first stitch purlwise, with the yarn in front.

Bind off, using a method that doesn't cause the end to flare. I like the knit two together, knit one, knit two together bind-off that Cat Bordhi uses for her Moebius scarves.

Weave in ends, wash gently, roll in dry towels (or spin in washer), and pat out into shape. Let dry, out of the sun.

Shawls, Gordo, and Dog Food

I met a bunch of knitters and crocheters at the Lancaster Panera today and managed to get the ends sewn in for two shawls and one scarf. One of the shawls was made with only two skeins, though, so I can't take much credit on that one. I have two more shawls to go, one with four joins and one with seven. The first is black and I didn't think the light was good enough there to mess with and I just couldn't face doing the second.

Gordo went over on Monday for neutering and repair of his umbilical hernia. Because they had to do two separate tasks, they anesthetized him fairly deeply. We went over and picked him up at 5:00 pm and he was pretty groggy. He came home and wobbled around a bit before lying down. He looked so miserable and was whimpering so pitifully that I picked him up and put him on my lap. He promptly went to sleep, with nary a peep, and slept the sleep of the just for almost four hours. I just held my poor 35.5-lb baby, shifting him occasionally so that my various body parts wouldn't go to sleep.

He perked up a bit when he could finally have water and a light dinner, but went to sleep fairly easily. Now, a week later, he's quite back to normal. He hasn't really needed the awkward Elizabethan collar at all, as he's shown no inclination to lick the incisions. The prickly metal stitched might have something to do with that.

Speaking of dogs and just having fed mine dinner, it's interesting what the current trends in dog food are. I feed what's called superpremium food, because it greatly reduces the amount of waste that the dog produces and I have to pick up. The latest thing is no-grain foods. The position of those who formulate these foods is that dogs didn't evolve eating grain, which is pretty hard to argue with, except that they've lived with people for over 10,000 years and they have to have had the occasional bread crust during all those millennia. The foods do have carbohydrates, like sweet potatoes, fruit, and other vegetables. They also seem to have a variety of meats and meat meals, not just one kind.

Gordo definitely prefers one brand, Evo, over the other, BG, that he's tried. This kind of ruined my idea of puppies being willing to eat everything they can get in their mouth. However, he has, in the last ten minutes, proven that he'll eat aluminum foil and Stouffer's boxes, so I don't think he's all that picky.

So I, being so insensitive to my puppy's tastes (he's only a dog, what's wrong with the stuff they sell at the supermarket), just went by the feed store and picked up a big bag of chicken etc EVO. I only got a few coins back from the $50 I tendered. Fortunately, the superpremium foods are of such high quality that the dog actually eats less for the same number of calories, making this bag last longer than a similarly sized bag of the more common foods. I have checked this out myself, reading feeding tables on every bag of food I've seen. One of the things I discovered doing this was that IAMS cut its serving sizes when they started selling in supermarkets. There was no reformulation of the food to go with the smaller sizes, though.

Forget-Me-Not Shawl

Forget-Me-Not Shawl
Originally uploaded by Mary The Digital Knitter

Here's the latest photo of my Forget-Me-Not Shawl. The pattern, like the yarn, is from Elann. The yarn is a fingering weight yarn made from soybeans. They use what's left from making tofu, which is, based on the recommended acid dyes, protein. This yarn only comes in the cream color you see here. It's intended as a base yarn for hand dyeing. I really like this yarn and I've ordered a bag (ten skeins) of it for another lace project.

I've finished 114 rows, comprising the setup and three repeats of the first pattern. I'm going to add another repeat of this pattern before going on to the three repeats of the second pattern. I'm adding the repeat because the shawl is 66" wide when made with six repeats and I'm making it for someone who is taller than average and would look better in a larger version. The original six-repeat version calls for five skeins of yarn. I bought six and I think that's exactly how much I'll need for the seven-repeat version. However, if I'm wrong it'll be OK, since I bought the additional bag.

Edited to add: According to the triangular shawl progress calculator, I'm about 30% done. The person I was making this for expressed a burning passion for brighter colors, so this shawl has a new recipient. She's shorter and more slender than is the original recipient, so I'm knitting it to the pattern, not larger.

Gordo helps me by grabbing any piece of the shawl or yarn he can reach and pulling on it. His long puppy canines are very good at snagging the yarn. Fortunately, I'm fairly quick and he doesn't get very far with it. So far all the snags have smoothed out very nicely. I'm glad it's resilient yarn in fingering weight and not a more delicate fiber in lace weight.

More Lace Yarn

This is all Knit Picks lace weight yarn. It's very inexpensive compared to a lot of others. This is heathery yarn and the colors are a bit light. The skein in the middle is actually very greeny-gray and the other two skeins are darker. I have twelve skeins of this, or at least twenty-four shawls.


This is Knit Pick merino lace weight. It's hand dyed (but not hand-painted, which is an important distinction). It's a very nice yarn and I like some of the colors very much. For some reason, totally unknown to me, I have thirty-eight skeins of this. I had forty, but I knitted the Angel Lace Shawl from two of them.


This is the Knit Picks 70% alpaca, 30% silk lace weight yarn. It's finer than the all-merino yarn above it. It makes a very pretty scarf, like the Forest Canopy Scarf I knitted from two skeins of this in turquoises. I currently have eighteen skeins of this.

I also have four skeins of a beautiful teal alpaca heather lace weight from Knit Picks. And I have four skeins (100 g, 880 yd) of their lace weight merino Bare, in natural.

I probably have more Knit Picks lace weight yarn than I really need.

Here's the lace weight yarn bin. It's a twelve-gallon bin from Costco and except for the apricot cotton at the back, the tangerine skein center front, the alpaca in the left corner, and the hand-painted Morehouse Farms merino in the bag and to its right, this entire bin is filled with Knit Picks lace-weight yarn.


I'm considering making about half of it available for trade or purchase on Ravelry. I've already sold about twenty skeins of yarn there. If anyone sees anything they'd like here, let me know.

Down In The Low Desert

We got back to Palm Desert a week ago and it's been unseasonably warm here. It was 85° today. The lemon and the clementine are absolutely covered with buds and blossoms and that whole corner of the back yard smells heavenly. The clementine is also covered with orange fruit, but they've been on the tree too long and they're kind of dry. The lemon, which did poorly after the hard freeze, has exactly two lemons on it. I expect a lot more this year.

I've got three shawls and a scarf to block and about a dozen boxes of books to put away and I've been buying lace yarn and fingering weight yarn and Aran weight yarn. I don't know quite how it happened, but I bought four skeins of five different Elann Baby Lace colors. That's at least ten shawls. That wouldn't be so bad, except that the twenty new skeins are sitting on a twelve-gallon bin full of lace yarn and there's six skeins of Zephyr Wool-Silk (three shawls) on the way. I also bought three shawl patterns to go with the Zephyr. All I have to do is hold off from starting another shawl before I get the blocking and unpacking undone. That may be very difficult as knitting shawls is sort of addictive.

I got a copy holder from Office Depot to hold the lace charts. I've been fiddling around with markers and correction tape and magnets. Right now I think I like the copy holder best for knitting here, particularly on long repeats. I think I prefer highlighter pens and multiple copies (a lace book, to use the proper name) for shorter repeats.

The repeat on the Dramatic Shawl is 80 rows, for example, and the copy holder really works well. I've just finished the half-way row in the third repeat. Photos will follow as soon as I find my camera. I know it's here someplace and I think it's in a knitting bag. I'll also take photos of all the lace weight yarn on hand.

Another Finished Lace Shawl

Here it is, the beautiful Angel Lace Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark. It's knitted from two skeins of KnitPicks Gossamer in Caribbean. This yarn is 100% merino wool, 440 yd (a quarter of a mile) per 50-gram skein. This shawl used almost exactly two skeins, half a mile; I don't think there's more than two yards left over. As I was binding off, I was starting to wonder if I'd make it. Not that it would have been the end of the world or anything, since I have another half a mile in the same dye lot. It just would have been a nuisance.


In this photo the texture of the lace is a lot easier to see. Of course, that will all vanish with blocking, but it's pretty. It's just that to retain it, I'd have to make the shawl about twice as large and never wash it. That's not practical.



I'll get it blocked in the next couple of weeks, along with the two other shawls that are waiting to be blocked, and put up photos of all three of them in their final glory. Two of them are for me, the only ones I've kept of the eight lace shawls I've knitted so far. I hadn't realized I'd given so many away until I just counted them up right now.

Here are two close-up photos, showing the angels and their wings. They also show the colors of the yarn.



I've had the pattern and the yarn for a while, although they weren't intended for each other. What inspired me to get both out and start knitting was seeing a beautiful version, knitted in variegated blues, on Wendy's site. You can see it here, just as I did. In other words, it's all Wendy's fault.

I looked at that and said to myself, "Self, you've got that pattern and you've got an entire bin of lace-weight yarn, so what's stopping you?" My self replied "Nothing, but it won't look just like that because there's no yarn just like that in the bin." (My self is fond of pointing out the obvious.) So I picked out an interesting yarn and started knitting. I pulled the first version back because I had the wrong size needles, but it still went very quickly. I was going to give it to a friend, but decided to keep it for myself instead. I'm not sure how fond the friend is of chartreuse, which is a color about which most people have strong opinions

De Source For Denise

I've mentioned before that I use Denise needles, particularly for Moebius scarves, and really like them. In all my tidying up and sorting of needles, I discovered that I've lost one US 11 tip. I've looked in every project bag, turned my knitting accessories bin upside down, and moved furniture looking for this tip. It's gone.

When I took Cat Bordhi's suggestion and bought the Denise needles and long cables for Moebius scarves, I looked all over the net and asked several people for recommendations. Based on this, I bought everything Denise made from The Patchwork Frog all at once. I got the basic set, the companion cable set, the three long cables, and the US 15 and 19 tips. The transaction was quick and graceful and the shipping was practically instantaneous (although this wasn't exactly surprising, as we're on opposite sides of Los Angeles County). The needles were all I expected and more and everyone was happy.

Then I lost the tip. The Denise company doesn't sell the individual pairs of tips separately, I discovered. What to do? Remembering how well the original purchase had gone, I sent a forlorn yet hopeful e-mail to The Patchwork Frog. She replied immediately, offering to take a pair of tips out of one of the sets she had in stock and send it to me, while ordering a replacement from the company. Doing this means that she now has a set in stock that she can't sell until the replacement tips arrive. She's willing to do that, rather than make me wait for the replacement tips to get to her.

That's a lot of stock to tie up for a $4 pair of tips and she doesn't know me at all. We had one transaction ages ago, is all. Yet she's more than willing to go to such lengths for me. Folks, this is what customer service is all about. Let's reward it and shop at The Patchwork Frog.

I'm just a customer, by the way, and have no other relationship with her. She, I, and over nine million people live in this county, so we're not what anyone would call neighbors, even. I've never met her in person and probably never will, but I recommend her highly.

Sorting Needles

I've been tidying up my rolling bin full of knitting needles and other accessories. I got pretty much everything but the needles done and finally gave in to the inevitable. I have too many needles. I had too many before my mom died and I inherited hers. I'll probably still buy more needles for specific projects.

Among the circular needles my mom had were two with metal cables. Fans of Elizabeth Zimmerman may recall her writing about the first time she saw and, briefly, used a circular needle. That needle had a braided metal cable, as I recall, and one strand of the braid had broken and would snag the yarn, but still the needle was regarded as a wonderful tool that EZ wanted. My mom's two needles are in extremely good condition, a beautiful bit of knitting history.

She also had some 14" plastic single-point needles in US 2 or 3, which probably date from the '40s. A lot of knitting back then used much lighter yarns and much higher stitch counts than we do now. I think of worsted weight as being pretty standard for sweaters, but then it was sport or fingering weight.

She kept up with the times, though. There are a lot of larger needles, including circulars. I remember using a one-piece nylon circular in about a US 13 to knit a top-down raglan sweater in coral Spinnerin Frostlon. It had a vee neck and was a perfect color match to a straight skirt I had. That was when I was in high school. I also remember knitting a lace shell in avocado at about the same time.

My mom knitted a lot of slippers from a pattern popular in the '50s. They used a US10½ needle and two strands of worsted weight yarn in the adult size. Smaller sizes used lighter yarn and smaller needles. They were really simple and I, too, knitted a fair number of them. I could probably reconstruct the pattern without much effort. Anyway, she still had three or four pairs of 10-inch US 10½ needles, the ones we used for these.

Obviously there's been a lot of nostalgia involved in this needle sorting. It's been thirteen months since she died and I still miss her acutely. The probate closed last week, incidentally. It had been complicated by one particular asset that we had a little trouble getting transferred or it would have been done last year.

Another reason I have too many needles is that I have a personal quirk that I like to have complete sets of things that come in sets. I bought the larger tips and longer cables that weren't included in the KnitPicks Options and Harmony sets, for example, and I'll probably finish out the 16" circular needle set one of these days (I'm missing US 6, 7, and 9, which were out of stock earlier). I also really like sets that come with nifty storage systems for all the components, like the Options interchangeable circular needles. Fortunately my quirk is controllable and I can limit it to inexpensive sets. About the most expensive knitting set I have is the Weldon's Magazine facsimile set, all twelve volumes of it, and I bought at least half of those as Interweave Press brought them out.

The Dramatic Stole Is On My Mind

It's kept me awake a couple of nights, fretting about it. My friend J. picked up some Lion Brand Incredible yarn in the Rainbow colorway when our local Hancock Fabrics closed up. She wanted a Dramatic Stole and she's exactly the right person to wear one. She's tall and carries herself beautifully. Drama becomes her.


I, being a knitter who is always looking for projects, said I knit a dramatic stole for her and we went to the new LYS and picked out some Blue Heron Rayon Loop in Blueberry, which is a very nice boucle. I haven't knitted much boucle, so this promised to be an interesting experience. And the colors are so luscious. Boucle knits up into a unique fabric in garter stitch. It's too loopy to knit into fancy stitches, as they won't show.


For a textural contrast, we chose Yarn Place Vivace (bamboo) in Purple Rain. Believe the promise of the yarn in the skein, as you pick it up and feel its soft slinkiness. It truly is soft and it has that wonderful heavy drape of rayon and silk. It also holds a stitch nicely.


So here's the total collection.


My first thought was symmetric stripes in random widths starting at the center back, sort of like the spreading zone in the middle of the Atlantic. I tried that, starting with the Vivace and following with the Rayon Loop, but it really didn't work. The Vivace needed more of a pattern and the gauges were just too different.

Even that little bit of knitting with bamboo yarn had kind of hooked me, so I'd gone back to my LYS and picked up three balls of SWTC Bamboo, which is DK weight, and restarted Faina's Scarf[1]. I got about halfway though it and had an idea for the Dramatic Stole. I decided to make lace panels in the Faina's Scarf pattern in Vivace and join them with garter-stitch panels in the Rayon Loop. I've knitted two lace panels. The panels are about 11" by 22", although I can change the size a fair amount.


Here's a close-up of one of the panels. I should point out that this pattern is copyright Fibertrends, so I won't be showing the whole thing in loving detail or anything.


And here's a close-up of the other.

Chevrons and diamonds, to summarize. You can probably just see that there's a chain selvedge on the side of the panel. I'm going to knit a Rayon Loop panel, picking up the selvedge stitches, to join these panels. There will be five lace panels and six boucle panels. Then I'll edge the whole thing with Incredible, in a knitted-on i-cord, and add the Incredible fringe. That should be dramatic enough, even for her.

[1] More about the Faina's Scarf soon. I need to take photos in good light because the yarn is all blues and lavender, which doesn't photograph well in poor light. The colors are beautiful and I want them to show up in all their glory.

Another New Scarf

I started another quick scarf, after buying three balls of SWTC Bamboo yarn from my LYS. This isn't a very good photo, partly because the yarn is very shiny (and soft) and partly because it's been cloudy here. These are also difficult colors for the digital camera. The yarn is variegated from a light lavender to a medium teal via light green blue. The colors are actually very pretty and not all faded out, the way they look in both these photos.


The colors are a little better here. The pattern is Faina's Scarf, from Fibertrends. This is at the end of the first chart, the increase at one end.


See the pretty seed stitch border? it's also got a slipped-stitch selvedge that is visible along the left side. While this is lace, it's not very lacy, which sounds contradictory, but isn't. I started this scarf once before in red Lion Brand Microspun, which is very nice yarn, but was way too heavy for this scarf. The Bamboo, which is DK weight, is really a bit too heavy, too, but it's a lot closer. The pattern wanted sport weight, but I didn't have anything really pretty in sport weight.

I'm actually almost done with the second body repeat, but it's too cloudy to get a better photo. As soon as it clears up I'll snap a photo to show it off in its true colors.

Rain, Rain, Hang Around

It's been raining all evening, a slow, steady rain. I hope this is what they're getting in the burned off areas, as it's not heavy enough to get the hillsides moving. I think Los Angeles has had about an inch of rain and we've had a quarter or a third of an inch.

It's been snowing heavily at the Grapevine since 1100, according to the TV reporters, and I-5 is quite firmly closed in both directions. The CHP was running escorts for a while, but as the snowfall got heavier and the day wore on they gave that up and shut the whole thing down. Those big heavy tractor-trailers that fill half the road were slipping and sliding and who knows what the people in SUVs were doing.

The Grapevine is at about 4200' and the snow level is somewhat below that. We're at 2356' and it's 40°F here and dropping. This is the kind of night when you go to sleep to the pitter-patter of rain on the roof and wake up to a very quiet neighborhood, with every sound hushed by the snow on the ground. I used to like snow days when I worked, but not any more. I ran all my errands early this week, partly in the hope that doing so would stave off the snow. It's sort of like washing the car to get it to rain, I guess, only backward.

I've finished all the setup and increase rows on Clapotis and actually dropped the first stitch, which is a little short ladder. As soon as I get enough stitches dropped to make it interesting, I'll put up a photo. Right now it just looks like a variegated triangle in stockinette stitch. I have great hopes for it, but I have to admit it's a little unimpressive so far.