Ten Things I Would Rather Do Than Weave in Ends

I signed up for a Reddit hat swap in r/knitting a month or so ago, and the person I'm sending to has her heart set on a fair isle hat.  That's cool, I like fair isle.  The hat, based off the DIY Fair Isle Hat pattern by Meg Myers, was really interesting to knit.  I had a chance to flex my creative fingers as I used five different colors of yarn rather than a solid and a variegated, and I also modified part of the pattern so that the top would be a flat square because my partner specifically asked for the hat not to be a beanie.  

It was fun, I have a lot of leftover yarn to play with, all is well.  Except.  Except the inside of the hat.  It's full of loose ends that require weaving in.  I count at least 23.

What a mess!

Uggh.  It's my least favorite thing to do.  I mean, really, I hate weaving in ends and generally go out of my way to avoid it by knitting things in one piece rather than seaming, limiting colors or using creative joins to switch between colors, or simply knotting yarn together and leaving the ends to hang out in any item that's for my personal use.  But none of those are options this time around.

Top Ten Things I'd Rather Do Than Weave in Ends:

1. Donate blood
2. Stare at the wall
3. Pick at hangnails
4. Give my cat a bath
5. Scrub away the grit that builds up behind the toilet
6. Sigh at my yarn stash and dream of other projects
7. Write something for my actual job
8. Drink
9. Rant
10. Pay someone very much money to do it for me

I have another week to finish this up and ship it out (deadline is May 1), so I guess I'll just have to suck it up and get it done.  But I really don't want to.  

FO Friday: Royal Tenor Cami

As promised, I'm gonna show you what I made with that purple linen while I was away, my version of the Razor Cami.  It's pretty.  It fits.  It... can't be worn on its own because it's rather see-through.  But I love it, and I hope you do too.

Just as I expected, my slightly large gauge resulted in a S/M size, just right for me.  The straps might be a little bit long, but I prefer to have extra room in the armpits, and since I'll have to wear another cami under this one anyhow that's even better.  

Props to the designer, Katie Marcus.  Her pattern was easy to follow, and I'll never be able to express my full gratitude for designers who give their work away for free.  

The best part about this FO is that it has really strong memories attached to it.  The lace is knit together with the ringing chords of the choruses, the sweet sound of the quartets, the laughter that accompanied the Open Division contestants, and all the excitement of taking the stage for the first time.  Every time I wear this cami, I'm going to remember the people I met, the songs we sang, the late nights and friendship and fun.  

How to Become Lifelong Friends with a Knitter

If you read my last post, you know my chorus went to Regional Competition last weekend.  Awesome job, Sound Harmony!  We had a fabulous debut, and I'm really proud of the sound and energy that we produced on that stage with such a small group.  Check out these beautiful, smiling faces:

Thank goodness for knitting, though, because I did a lot of sitting.  All together, I sat through a 6-hour drive from Seattle to Spokane, 26 quartet performances, 23 chorus performances, a couple of hours worth of judge deliberations, intermissions, and setup breaks, and a 5-hour drive back home.  On Friday, I'll reveal my wonderful creation from all that knitting.

Today, though, I want to tell you how I made crafting friends while at this competition.  Are you ready to hear my method?  Here's what I did:  I held knitting in my hands.

Well, okay, so that's not exactly all that I did.  At one point during a break, to keep myself pumped up about the next quartet, I spotted someone knitting and yelled out, "What up, my Knittah!?"

My chorus promptly disowned me.

I'm not ashamed, though.  Every knitter knows the best way to make a knitter friend:

• Approach knitter, knitting in public.  
• Say, "Hi, what are you working on?" 
• "Can I touch it?"  
• "Is that wool?"  
• "Wanna see what I've been knitting?"

It's foolproof.  We all love that connection.  Anytime I bump into a knitter in the wild, it's as though we've been crafting together our whole lives.  And really, we have.  

FO Friday: Indian Feathers Shawlette

I'm in Spokane at the Region 13 Sweet Adelines Convention, and my group doesn't take the stage until tomorrow.  It's a really... interesting experience.  Lots of glitter everywhere.  But that's not what you're reading this for.  You want to know what I've made!

Last week, I finished a shawlette that's been sitting in a sad little bag, waiting for someone to block it and let its true colors shine through.  This small shawl / large scarf is based off the Indian Feathers pattern by Alina Appasov.  The pattern included an option for either knupps (a complicated little detail that can be really tough on your hands and requires extra yarn) or beads.  It wasn't even really a choice for me; I will always choose beads.  I used less than a skein of Silky Alpaca Lace by Classic Elite Yarns and 175 beads of different shades.  Here's what it looked like before blocking:

Kind of sad, right?  But watch is it gloriously unfolds after a 20 minute soak and some quick pinning.

Mmmm, that's good blocking!  And check out the drape on this beauty:

So, you can't really see the beads, and the top of the stockinette area curls (as stockinette will do), but I really love the subtle variegation in the red yarn, the halo from the alpaca, and the way the ends turn into a lovely ruffle when it's not pulled tight.

Travel Knitting

I've been sort of panicking all week because I don't have enough knitting to last for a 10-hour round-trip car ride.  Tomorrow, I'm heading off to Spokane to compete with my chorus in the Region 13 Sweet Adelines convention.  Yep, alongside my knitting, I sing sweet, sweet barbershop harmony.

But seriously, what was I going to do with all that time in the car?  Twiddle my thumbs? On top of that, I'll be sitting in an auditorium for many hours watching other groups perform.  I need something to work on, and I didn't have a project ready!

So I spent way too many hours on Ravelry this week looking for a pattern that

1. I already had the yarn for
2. Would take a significant amount of time to make
3. Didn't require me to look at the pattern the whole time
4. Wouldn't be enormous by the end of the weekend so I could pack it away when necessary.

It seemed impossible.  Socks are too finicky.  I found a LOT of lace options, but I couldn't immediately memorize any of the charts.  Hats I would finish in the first few hours (though I did consider bringing enough yarn to make 14 hats while I'm away).

Finally, I settled on a tank top.  I have this lovely purple yarn from Newton Country Yarns that's 75% Tencel and 25% Linen, perfect for a Summer project.  I found the Razor Cami pattern on Ravelry, and it only requires me to memorize a single round of lace!  I checked my gauge, and it came out a little bit big.  "No problem," I told myself; the pattern is for an XS-S, and I probably want a S-M, so that should work out.  I cast on yesterday, and I already like it (though it still seems a little small).  

Here's hoping it lasts through the weekend.  Maybe I'll pack some extra fingering weight yarn and needles just in case.  Mawata doesn't take up much space in a bag...

You Stood By the Wall

You were waiting for someone to come out of the bathroom at Lincoln Square Cinema, staring at your phone.  You wore a brown sport jacket, jeans, and flipflops.  But the thing I can't get out of my head, the reason I may remember you forever, is your socks.  You wore toeless socks, obviously handknit with much love and wool.  They looked a lot like this:

I wanted to ask you if it was you, the tall, burly man with hipster glasses, who knit such beauties, or if it was the woman in your life, perhaps the person you were waiting on.  I wanted to ask about the yarn, the pattern, and perhaps most importantly the feel of the finished object between your toes.  I wanted to engage you in conversation and count you as a friend forevermore.

But I didn't.  I was too shy.  And my bladder too full from sitting through the latest Captain America sequel.  

So I write this missed connection to you, just in case you read knitting blogs, just in case you remember that bit of wall, just in case your toeless socks, those great stinky cousins of fingerless mitts, are still feeling the love.

FO Friday: Blocking Is a Lot Like Finishing

I found a shawl in my crafting closet this week that was mostly finished.  It only needed a good blocking and to have the ends woven in.  But it had been waiting for those last couple of steps so long that I forgot I'd even knit it!  Seriously, I remember enjoying the pattern while I made it, and I remember looking forward to wearing it for something, but I can't remember when I actually knit it.

So I put it in a cold Eucalan soak, dried it a bit by rolling it in a towel, then pinned it out to finish:

This is the Myrskylintu shawl, and the yarn is KnitPicks Gloss Fingering in colorway Winter Night.  The yarn was actually gifted to me by a stranger in a superhero-themed swap (my favorite super hero is Superman, and this is for his cape).  Check out the detail on this baby:

After I put that shawl away and while I had the blocking boards out, I went ahead and blocked a shawl that I finished more recently while I was in San Francisco.  This is the Sewanee shawl in madelinetosh tosh merino light.  To give you an idea of what blocking can do for your knitting, here's a before picture:

The picture is a little blurry, but you get the idea.  The edges are horribly curled and messy, the lace is closed up, and the overall shawl is a bad shape.  You can't tell from that picture, but the stitches are also misaligned or malformed because it was knit on square needles rather than round ones.  Here's what blocking did for it:

Now, you can see the true shape of the shawl, a heart.  You can see all the lace and the edges have those sharp points.  Everything is opened up, the sides are no longer curling, and each stitch is aligned properly for a smooth finish.  It also grew so that it's a proper shawl size, whereas before blocking it couldn't fit around my shoulders.  

This took me twenty minutes to set up, and half a night to dry.  It is so worth your time to block, knitters.  Just do it.  

Color, Color Everywhere

The other class I took at Vogue Knitting Live was called Slip Sliding Away, and it centered around using slipped stitches to create interesting texture and color combinations.  Melissa Leapman, a famous designer, taught the class in her characteristically laid back, slightly funny, almost meditative way.

Now, this class came with homework.  That's right, homework.  I felt like I was back in college.  Even worse, the homework was boring.  We had to knit 5 test swatches, each a different color, of 21-25 stitches (respectively), in K1P1 ribbing for one inch.  Uggh, so boring.  But I faithfully knit the swatches in the ugliest colors in my scraps bin because those are the scraps with the most yardage.  Look what they became:

Sorry for your eyeballs.

The first swatch played with texture.  Each row moves the slipped stitch over just a tad so that these zigzag patterns emerge in the fabric.

Oooh!

The second swatch is also a texture piece, with elongated stitches creating little boxes that stick up slightly.  I'd love to do a baby blanket with this stitch pattern.

Aaahh!

Then we started to get into playing with color.  Swatch three used three colors, but only one color was worked with at a time.  It made a sort of chevron pattern that looks like a castle to me, but it was way easier than actual chevron with much less counting involved.  I might use this technique to make a hat.

Wow!

Next is this sort of dragon scale stitch.  It doesn't look so great in the swatch, but the samples that the teacher brought were fantastic!

Mmmmmm!

The last stitch we practiced is definitely not something I'm likely to use.  It has cables between columns of colorwork.  Obviously, it's awful with the colors I used (thank you, scrap bin), but even the samples Leapman brought didn't really wow me.  It might be good to use in a man's sweater pattern, but even then it's a bit too much work for the result.

...eeeww...

I would definitely recommend this class to anyone who wants to learn these techniques.  Even if you think you could easily eyeball these swatches and reproduce the stitches, it's still worth your time and money because of how incredibly inspiring it is.  She blew our minds with some of the stitches she's come up with, some of the different ways we can play with color, and it's all so much easier than you'd imagine.  

If you're interested in learning more about these techniques, I would highly suggest Leapman's books, Color Knitting the Easy Way and The Knit Stitch Pattern Handbook, which includes 300 (three-freaking-hundred!) different stitches you can make with knitting.