More pictures about pooled knitting

I'm thinking that pooled knitting is a lot like turning the heels on socks. You look at the directions and think WTF? However, when you get started they start to make sense.

Of course, that may only be me, but I don't think so.

Anyway, for those of you who need another illustration of this, I started another one as an example to take the guild last night, and I took lots of pictures this time.

The very first picture shows the yarn stretched out and making sure that it will pool the way I need it to.

The second picture shows that after I wound it into a ball, I pulled out several paint repeats and put knitter's safety pins where the rows end/start. You may ask, how did you make them stay? Easy, I put them through the plies of the yarn.

Gladys, who inspired all this, uses a backwards e-loop cast on to get started. I rarely use this cast on, but I did for my samples. I discovered something very interesting when I started swatching, but I didn't take pictures of it at the time.

What I will do is do another cast on and show you my discovery. It's so simple you'll smack yourself on the forehead and say, "Why didn't I think of that?"

In all honesty, I'm sure I'm not the first knitter to notice it either, I just haven't searched around to see where else it might be on the interwebs.

Picture number 4, the blurry one, shows my first attempt at matching up colors and getting gauge. As you can very easily see, gauge was off that time.

I tinked that first row and reknit it, using my cunning discovery, and as you can see in the final picture, I got it right that time.

Full disclosure time. I got it right in two tries on this one because the first one was so (and still is) very fiddly. I think this one will work without needing two different sized needles for gauge.

For the record, this colorway is one I dyed, but this was a test or seconds skein. As you can see in the first picture, the yarn didn't dye very evenly with those dye concentrations. I put it aside, thinking I'd probably overdye it at some point. However, with the vivid colors, I thought it'd make a great, easy to see, example of pooled knitting. I'm pretty sure I'm just going to knit it up to have as a show sample for when someone asks what does "pooling" on the label mean?

It's Friday! Have a great weekend! I'll be back with spinning pictures.

On Klingons and spinning

Yes, reading that you would think I've been drinking or have totally lost my mind.

What actually occurred is we went to dinner with a neighbor, and somehow the conversation veered into religion. Our neighbor said their congregation invited other faiths to come in and talk about their beliefs.

I think that sort of thing is wonderful, because communication is key in any good relationship, and that includes groups as well as individuals.

Yes, I'm getting to it. He mentioned that jihad as we see it in the news isn't really what jihad is. Me, and I'll admit to knowing very little about Islam, said, "That reminds me of a Klingon saying. The greatest battle is the battle within."

Our neighbor said yes, and Keith rolled his eyes because his wife is linking things to Star Trek again.

Anyway, it's the whole battle within that leads to spinning.

I don't spin nearly enough to be really good at it. I'm a sporadic spinner at best as it interferes with knitting time.

However, I've signed up for some spinning classes in August, and I need to improve my skills before I take them. I also need to be able to spend long hours in front of the wheel without my legs falling off.

Thus, I decided to unofficially join Tour de Fleece.

While I don't have mountains of fibers, what I have is more than molehills. I joined a fiber club awhile back, and anytime I've spent some time spinning, I inevitably buy more fiber. It doesn't help that I've got friends who dye incredible stuff.

I kicked off TDF with that black yarn you see with the red, grey, yellow and green flecks. It's name - Resistance Is Futile. Nothing like a Borg inspired yarn for a Star Trek KAL to kick things off!

They were spun and Navajo plied for a self striping yarn.

The two pastel bobbins were actually some fiber I purchased from Three Rivers Farm at the last SAFF. It's a blend of 75% BFL and 25% silk. I'd spun 3 of the 4 ounces, so I spun the last ounce and Navajo plied them to keep the colors separated.

Last night I started on some Moonbeams from Moonwood Farm. Moonbeams are batts from her own alpacas mixed with other fibers such as bamboo, milk protein and the sparkly stuff.

The colorway is Dark Crystal, and as you can see it's an amazing deep purple. (Did the opening for Smoke on the Water pop into your head? I can never say the words "Deep Purple" without hearing that riff playing.)

I'm still spinning too fast and overtwisting my yarn, but even if I only do a little each day, I'll improve.

The best part is it takes less brainpower than knitting does, and after I've been on my feel all day dyeing yarn, I find that I can spin. I can't always knit, but spinning is very meditative.

Stitches Swag!

Here are my goodies from Stitches South. As you can see, I actually did have some self control.

First up, the blue and burgundy are for a vest for Keith. He likes vests during the winter, and I decided that I needed to knit one for him. The yarn is Vintage by Berroco. It's a blend of acrylic, wool, and nylon. It feels very soft and is machine washable.


I had been thinking about his vest for awhile now, and I'd looked at a very nice superwash merino from Plymouth Yarn that Needle Nook carries. While it had a great price and looks like a really wonderful yarn, many of the colors are more solid. The Vintage ones are more heathery with bits of the burgundy in the blue and blue in the burgundy.

I found the yarn at Webs' booth, and they give you a discount if you spend a certain amount. The Vintage is a moderately priced yarn, so I went and picked up enough in this heathery green to make a vest for myself too.

While strolling along, Alma and I were enticed by some of the amazing weaving of Neal the Weaver. She let us gush about her weaving, and she said that while she'd sell them, that she was really there to sell yarn. Well, we were already fondling her lovely hand-dyed silk yarns. She had Tussah silk and a smoother, spun silk, and it is quite interesting to see how they dye up differently. What you see is the Tussah silk that I got. It's much more orange and brighter in real life. Of course what you see on your monitor will vary.

I also stopped by The Sanguine Gryphon. Her yarns, especially Bugga, are some of those that are nearly impossible to get. I bought some last year that is still hibernating in a yarn bin, but honestly, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to get a bit more. It's not all Bugga. I purchase an Eidos and Skinny bugga too.

I was at Stitches both Friday and Saturday. It was great to be able to see people I've not seen in some time. I had two friends mention that I've not been blogging lately. Oops!

I have been busy with Keith. Today we're off to get the fertilizer, vermiculite and some sulfur for the garden. I may have mentioned that my soil was more towards the neutral to alkaline that I would have ever dreamed it was. As veggies actually prefer it a bit more acid, I'll add the sulfur to slightly lower the pH. This should be interesting. I've never done this type of gardening before where I test the soil and add nutrients accordingly. With the canning class early this summer, I'm quite looking forward to growing some of our own food. I doubt we'll replace the farmer's market, but to be able to supplement our diet with homegrown will be great. I'd prefer to keep it all organic, so after menu planning for this week, I'll be calculating amounts and finding what the best organic sources are for soil building.

I do have more photos, but blogger was so very slow that I'll have to add them later. Have a great Sunday!

Getting back on track

With the picture taking and blogging. You may remember that I'm in the Nefarious Yarn Club by Cosmic Fibers Yarn, and this month when I opened the package there was this ever so cute bag made from button fabric. I must mention that I have signed up for the additional swag to go with the yarn. The swag has been really fun. I don't think I posted last month's goodies, now that I think about it. I'll attempt to remedy that soon.

Anyway, this month her nefarious character was the Other Mother from Coraline. There's nothing like evil pink yarn! I don't think you can see it very well, but Carrie also makes stitch markers every month using Shrinky Dink plastic. You can probably see it between the yarn and the bag if you embiggen the picture. (Yeah, blame Jebediah Springfield for my grammatical incorrectness, but I think embiggen is just a fun word.

On to other things. Yesterday Gale and I had planned to go see the knitted chickens at Knitch. We did go, with the addition of Alma, aka The Chicken Goddess. I always have fun when I go adventuring or shopping with Gale, but Alma added a whole new facet to it. One of the local Indian grocery stores, to be exact.

We had gone to lunch in a small plaza that had the Indian grocery store and a couple of Indian restaurants. Of course, we had gone there in search of lunch, but as you can see to your right, I also did a little shopping.

I've been wanting a pressure cooker for some time now, but (sorry Mom) my Mom instilled some odd fears in me as I was growing up. One of them was that pressure cookers are dangerous. Like you couldn't ever use one without it exploding. It would maim you, kill all your pets and blow the roof off the house. Needless to say, I was terrified of them for a very long time. (Fish bones too, but that's another story.)

However, Keith's mom used pressure cookers all the time. I've read recipes that give directions for using a pressure cooker, and I've been wanting to try one. When Keith's mom passed away, we got a couple of them, but they were older and missing parts. I didn't know enough to order the proper things online, so I've never used them.

Alma said that she uses hers all the time, showed me which one it was, and I bought the last one of that size that I could find. She also suggested a particular packet of sauce for cooking chicken and told me how this type of pressure cooker works. Apparently they build up a head of steam and release it all in a burst, causing the pot to whistle. The instructions on the back of the Butter Chicken Sauce say to cook your meal for 2 whistles. It just sounds so fun. Tomorrow night I'm going for it.

Why not tonight? you may ask. Easy, we've got lots of leftovers in the crockpot from yesterday, and I'm going to a baby shower tonight. Keith gets leftovers while I get Chinese food.

And finally, here is my sock in progress for Summer of Socks 2009. Yes, the yarn really is that bright. I'm not sure when I decided that the more obnoxious the sock yarn, the more fun it is to knit, but I'm enjoying this. It's Jitterbug in colorway Red Parrot. I've finished the heel flap and will be turning the heel later today.

Sock yarn agony

I started a sock on Monday night right after I finished the Spring Forward Socks.

I will admit that I do have 2 other socks in progress right now - Keith's second Wollmeise sock and my second Bearfoot sock. Nonetheless, I wanted a sock with some lace or texture to it.

And, I've bought a lot of pink sock yarn here and there over the past year, so I wanted to use some of it.

I had wound the Saucy by numma numma into a ball sometime over the holidays with the thought of making a multidirectional scarf for someone with it. I didn't like the way it looked, which is just as well as I wanted to keep the yarn for me.

However, I've been wondering if the yarn hates me.

On Monday night, who knows what I was thinking, I used the needles that had just come off the Spring Forward socks and cast on the Saucy. I had completed maybe half of the toe when I noticed the stitch gauge was much looser than I liked. I ripped out the work and fetched my handy needle gauge. Huh. I was using US size 2 1/2 needles. No wonder it was so big.

Next, I looked at the yarn and decided to use size 1 needles. (When will I learn to check Ravelry first?) I completed the toe, and now it was too small. OK. If I don't check Ravelry first, maybe I should have just read Goldilocks. I ripped it all out again, and went to see what most people used on this yarn.

Turns out they used 1 1/2 needles, which actually is the needle size I use 90% of the time. I started the socks again, the toe looked just right, and then I looked at the patterns.

I had decided not to do the knit along for Wendy's new book on Ravelry. It seemed every time I looked at the group, the moderator (not Wendy) had tweaked or flat out changed the rules. I don't have much patience for bullshit, and this was, in my not so humble opinion, exceeding my tolerance. Bull poop is great for the garden, but wading through it while she thrashed out her rules for the KAL is another subject. Besides, I know this makes me sound odd, but I don't care if I win prizes or not. Honestly, I'd rather pick out my own yarn. I had wanted to do the KAL for the challenge of it, but screw that. I'll just start knitting the socks from the book.

So I did. I thought the Dead Simple Lace socks would be an easy lace sock that would work well with the colors of the Saucy. At least that's what I thought until last night when I wondered how the Butterfly socks would look. Let me state here and now that while the Butterfly Lace looked very easy to do, it was not a good choice for the season finale of Fringe, complete with alternate realities and Leonard Nimoy. I had messed it up somewhere along the way, so I ripped out the lace, but left the toe.

Apparently, this ball of Saucy wants to be Dead Simple Lace socks, and I will bow to its will.

Purple handspun pictures

Stitches swag

For those of you who have been waiting for me to show my Stitches swag, your wait is over.

I did forget to take a picture of my Trindle, a really cool drop spindle made by a local physics teacher. I'll take a pic and post it on a day when I need some eye candy.

This is Dragon Sock Select from Dragonfly Fibers. I'll admit that I just could not pass by this wild color combo. I've been on a pink kick for some time now, and I just loved how "Preppy Handbook" these are.

Next up is Bugga by the Sanguine Gryphon. I'll admit to getting it since this is one of those yarns that is a little difficult to get, and I do like being able to have some boasting rights. (I didn't know I could be such a yarn jackass, but there ya go.) It really is a lovely yarn, as you can see in the photo. Bugga is named after different bugs, which appeals to the entomologist side of me. (Let's face it, if Gil Grissom was a sock knitter, this is what he would use.)

Next is Lisa Souza's Sock! You may think this is an odd color choice for me, but there is a method to my non-color madness. There is a knit-a-long on Ravelry for Wendy's new book, Socks from the Toe-up, and her Nanner pattern, based on bananas, is one of the first ones to knit. I wanted a sock yarn that made me think of the inside of bananas, not the obnoxious yellow of the outside, and this was the closest one I found, at first. Anyway, it's a pleasant enough colorway that I can use for something else.

This Anzula yarn is the one I found for the Nanners. I love the way it looks like the inside of a banana, but it also has some wonderful color variations. I can't wait to get finished with my current socks and get started with this.

I don't buy a whole lot of worsted weight yarns, especially in hand dyes since they can be so expensive for project quantities, but I just had to have this one. I may just keep it and pet it for awhile, but it will most likely become a hat.

Ok, how could I possibly pass up a sock yarn in a color called Pansy? Well, I've probably never mentioned it here, but pansies and violets are some of my favorite flowers. I just love them. Anyway, this comes from Ellen's 1/2 Pint Farm. I've got to find just the perfect pattern for this yarn. I think it's fantastic.

So there you go. Swag from Stitches South, and I didn't go too crazy. I suppose I'm rather jaded by a couple of things. 1. I spent a little over 3 years working in a local yarn shop. 2. We are very spoiled and fortunate here in Atlanta to have so many wonderful yarn shops from which to choose. I didn't feel the need to purchase massive quantities of sale yarns from Webs or the other large stores. I did want to support the small businesses and indie dyers as they are the ones with the interesting yarns.

Now, get out there and go knit socks. I see the end of Keith's socks in sight, and I'm ready to start my next pair.

By the way, did you notice I had help taking those photos? Look for the paw.

Pirate-y fun

Let me just go off on a tangent before I get to the crux of this post. As adults we very rarely get fun surprises. Right? Most surprises we get are at the least uncomfortable up to downright unpleasant. You know what I'm talking about. Things like "well, it's not the battery. It's such and such, and that'll run you $1500." Or "You've got hypothyroidism and hypertension, so you'll be on these medications for the rest of your life."


Yeah, not fun at all. The first one is only a fictional (I hope) example.

So when I saw the Nefarious Sock Club last year and read about it, I had to do it. What could be more fun that getting a yarn based on a villianous person each month? No warnings about who it would be, just a surprise every month.


On top of that, Carrie makes collector cards and shrinky-dink stitch markers to get with the yarns each month. While I may not love the colorway each month, I just love this sock club.

Her original plan was to run it for 12 months, and that was up this past March. We've convinced her to keep going, and this time she offered an optional swag bag to go with it.


Have I mentioned I love a good surprise? Something pleasant and fun to counteract all those less than pleasant ones we get? I checked out the etsy vendors she mentioned as swag suppliers and signed right up for it too.

I got the first installment of the new year yesterday and here they are:





Blackbeard sock yarn, fun and goofy swag, plus a close up of the skull and treasure chest stitchmarkers.



I really can't wait until next month.

ETA: Here's her etsy shop if you want to go check it out. She's doing Buffy yarns now, but go look in her past sales at the Dexter series too.

Picture time

Let me first show you Lady Eleanor. Once again none of my models volunteered to help, so I put it on the bench give you an idea of scale. It's at least 5 feet long now. I can't remember if it's taller than I am or not.


Next is Keith's Wollmeise sock. I have to play around with the settings on the camera as it's really much more blue than it shows here. Maybe next time I'll stand outside in the cold and adjust the settings more. (It was in the upper 30's-upper 40's while I was taking these, and I wasn't going to dawdle.)
Next is my next project. Maybe you remember this from my blog from 2007?

It's Basil, knitted from Rowan's Summer Tweed. While I love the yarn, I don't quite love the sweater. The body's too short. The sleeves are longer than I like. I don't like the way the edges roll. Yes, I plan several changes. I'm thinking a seed stitch edging. 4" added to the length of the body and shortening the sleeves to elbow length. As soon as Lady E is finished, I'm starting on a new, modified Basil in this color of Summer Tweed:

Left out yarn

The Silk Garden sock yarn picture was accidentally deleted from yesterday's yarn post. Here it is!

Sunday yarny goodness

First of all, a disclaimer. This is not a wild shopping spree. This is several months worth of yarn finally being catalogued in Ravelry, so I thought I would share them here too. First of all, on the right, you see an offering from the Nefarious Yarn Club, Lizzie Borden. Next is another offering from the same place, Sweeney Todd. Carrie really knows how to get a red that looks like blood. Of course, she says that this one is the red of the bricks in the town. Yeah, right.




As you can see, Sweeney Todd is a lovely blue with real sterling silver thread running through. I don't have the yarn label in front of me, but I think she said the blue is the murkiness of London.










Next, we have Casbah Sock yarn from Handmaiden. This is for the Loopy Ewe's second anniversary. I'm not wild about black and red blends, but this is quite nice. I think I'll probably use it for something for Keith. I'll admit that the main reason I ordered their second anniversary kit was for the too cute coffee cup.



I had some extraordinary luck in that I caught the Wollmeise's shop when she was having updates, and I was able to obtain all of the colors on my wishlist.


The green and yellow is Lowenzahn.













Rosenrot















Flower Power
















Maria's Deepest Purple. For one of the updates, I called Melissa and let her know it was happening. I ordered some of her colors, and she ordered some, as well as some different ones, and in the madness, there were duplicates. We worked it all out, and I ended up with 2 skeins of this one. I wasn't as thrilled with it, but when I showed Keith, he liked it. So this will eventually be socks for him. When I mentioned it to him today, he was not impressed. He said he needs to see some finished items. True. So far I've not made much for him.








Red Hot Chili














Soxie in Kiwi Kenny, 2 skeins. I bought this from another knitter who had purchased it for a shawl, but it wasn't working out. I'll find a good use for it.










Noro Kureyon Sock yarn.