Category Archives: Knitting

Yeah, I know it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I just haven’t been in the mood, although I did get a good bit of knitting done.

What’s that you ask? Actual knitting?

Yep. I’ve managed to make myself a pair of socks. Who’s impressed?

I don’t actually have a picture of the pair, but I do have a picture of the first finished sock, which I had intended to post awhile back. Both Josh and my mom actually like the colors of the sock, which slightly baffles me, but I think that I can see their “crazy sock” appeal. One thing that kind of threw me off though: I used a sock tutorial I’d previously discovered online to make these socks, that gave different numbers for cast-on stitches depending on the weight of the yarn you were using. For my yarn weight it recommended 40 stitches, but also estimated that my per-ball yardage would be about 250yds. I only had about 160yds per ball, so it kind of worried me. I ended up knitting 2″ less of ribbing for the leg of the sock, so it was 6″ instead of the recommended 8″. In the end, it turned out that I had plenty of yardage left per ball, but it also meant that I didn’t have enough yarn per ball to actually make two socks out of it. So I was right to start each sock out on a new ball, but wrong to shave off 2″ of the leg.

They turned out nice though. I had a very slight laddering problem that got a bit better by the second sock, and my toe grafting was wondrous if I do say so myself.

I have to say that knitting (and wearing) your own socks is kind of fun, so I’ll try to acquire some sock yarn in the future and make another pair.

In other knitting news, it turns out that the box of stuff Jennifer left at the island house included a sweater that had a hole in it, which she’d put in because she thought I could recycle the yarn. How sweet! It turns out that I can, but it’s a mohair sweater so that makes things a tad difficult. I worked all day yesterday and the day before trying to un-seam it. If you have a sweater that wants to play nicely you can just cut a thread all the way up the sides and whatnot of your garment, in the middle of the seam, but this sweater seems to enjoy chain stitches all the way up, requiring me to use my size 1 dpn needle to kind of pick at it. So far I’ve gotten one sleeve all the way off, and the other is completely un-seamed up the arm, but not at the shoulder yet. That’s where I need to get it un-seamed so I can start unraveling it.

Once I get the sleeves done I can start to work on the body of the sweater, which should give me a lot more yarn. -grin-

Oh, and for the record: I worked so long un-seaming the damn thing yesterday that I think it gave me an actual real headache. Figures.

Yeah, Josh and I had another stop before we went to Ben & Jerry’s.  We went to Kirkland Yarn & Stitchery (you know, the one going out of business).  I saw their craigslist ad saying that they were for sale, and that if no one bought them they’d just go out of business… makes you want to save up and buy a yarn shop eh?

In the end we picked up some size 4 dpns (to make socks of course!), but they’re Susan Bates metal ones, and a pack only comes with 4.  There were 4 in a pack, they were size 4, and they cost $4.  Woohoo!

We also picked up a magazine (KnitScene Spring 2007) and a pattern book by Tahki Yarns, “20 Fun To Knit Designs” if that means anything.

Their yarn was only 20% off, so it wasn’t an awesome deal like the Cascade Yarns sale.  And, it turned out that the Kirkland yarn shop had a lot of the same full bags of yarn for sale (only as bags) as Cascade’s warehouse sale had.  You know why?  Because they got them directly from the Cascade warehouse, and were told to only sell them as full bags, and that anything they didn’t sell they could just return to the warehouse.

They had one of the yarns I wanted to buy more of at the warehouse sale, but they were charging $20 for the bag when I only paid $10 for mine.  Despite the fact that it was indeed an awesome deal, I didn’t want to pay twice as much, you know?

I’m thinking that I’ll e-mail Cascade Yarns and see when their next sale will be…. at least get a time frame so I’m not checking craigslist every day when they won’t have one until next year.

In other news, while we’re watching the movie tonight (at least before I started updating my blog) I started on my first pair of socks.  I can’t seem to find the howto sock instructions that Teena gave me, so I’m using this tutorial online instead.  At least for my first pair.  She gave me two skeins, so I should be set.  Although for the record I hate this colorway (precisely why I chose it, I won’t care as much about the end result and I don’t think Teena liked it much either).  I’ll post a progress picture tomorrow.

Oh I do like knitting so.

So it’s been a few days since a real post. It took me a bit to get up the energy to pull out all the yarn I got and take pictures of it, and I didn’t want to post until I’d done so. Just no motivation for awhile.

But I have to say that the expo was a lot of fun. Josh’s mom picked me up at 8am, and we headed south to the SeaTac Marriott hotel. It was about as small as I expected, but it was still nice to browse around all the yarn nevertheless. Newman’s Yarns was there and having a wonderful sale… $7/skein and 50% the retail price of cones. Both Teena and I ended up getting some stuff from that booth, although she bought a bit more than I did. I just got two skeins of this wonderfully soft brown/pink/cream/hint-of-blue bouclé yarn… and the sticker price was $16.50! Once we realized that it was only $7 each, I just had to get two. And in the end it was great that I only got two, despite how nice the yarn was. Teena got about 4 of one color and two of another color, to make a scarf for Thom’s dad.

That was about all we bought at the expo… most vendors aren’t about to offer special deals or anything… it’s just a nice way to have a bunch of yarn in one place, heh.

So the night before this expo at 11:30pm I went onto knittyboard and happened upon a post about a yarn sale at the Cascade Yarns warehouse, Saturday only, 10:30am-2pm. Turns out that this address (from the ad on Craigslist) was only 2mi down the road! A mere 5mins from where we were already going to be. And really, how much time can one really spend on an expo as small as that in the end?

Because of my good fortune to find that ad, we decided to check it out. I didn’t expect much, but after we killed some time getting coffee and headed down there, I was very surprised. Here was a nondescript warehouse with big sign taped to a truck saying
“Yarn Warehouse Sale Today Only” and a gigantic garage door open. There were about 6 cars outside, and a few people milling about.

Inside was pure yarn heaven really. I only say so because of how cheap everything turned out to be. I figured this sale would be remnants, or didn’t-turn-out-so-well colors, or something like that. Not true. These were overstock. Not bad colors or leftovers, these were just extras. Bags and bags of extras. The yarn was only being sold by the bag (10 skeins to a bag) but who cared? Each bag was only $2o! Every ball of yarn in those bags was worth between $7-$10 retail. One type of yarn there was worth $15/ball. But we were getting it for $2 each.

-sigh- It was so wonderful. There was some stuff I wasn’t interested in, like the ribbon yarns and eyelash yarns, but they did have Cascade 220 in black, which is a great felting yarn. They had some Cascade 128 Tweed in a light cream, so I got a bag of that too. They had a lot of felting yarn of some other type that they sell in many variegated colors and solid colors, so I got a bag of variegated mossy greens and a bag of variegated sunset colors (reds and oranges).

I got a bag of this purple/light blue/white colorway in a different yarn that is so bulky that they only sold it in bags of 5. But those bags were only $10, so buying two came out to the standard $20 for the sale. That was probably by far the prettiest yarn I got, but I only got the one bag. When buying in lots of $20 I had to skimp somewhere, so instead of buying two I just bought the one.

Wanna know how much I spent in the end? $90. Oof.

I had $10 left after I gave the woman all of my money. And that was a good thing because we had another stop on our itinerary. Kirkland Yarn & Stitchery is going out of business and having a sale all this month, and while there I ended up finding a nice sweater pattern for 30% off that I just had to buy. Good thing I had that $10.

The best part though? Josh totally understood! I had started out my day with $60, but before I left Josh was kind enough to give me another $60 “just in case.” And when I came home with a garbage bag full of yarn, he even said that next time there’s a sale like that we should save up and take something like a $200 budget. So very wonderful that man is.

In other knitting news, I’m getting further on my woven scarf, although I didn’t spend as much time at Tully’s this morning as I probably should have knitting it. But we’re getting along.

Oh, and my mom thought the sheep arm/hand -warmers were really cute, which is a good thing.

And I forgot, yesterday Josh and I went grocery shopping and while at Crossroads we went to JoAnn’s to see if they had any size 4 dpns. They didn’t, but we ended up getting some little beads instead, to put on the sheep as eyes. It should be cute!

That’s all for my knitting news as of late. Soon I’ll get some size 4 dpns to go with my 12″ circ and start knitting some socks. Mmm.

Remember that idea I had about the arm/hand -warmers with the sheep on them?

They’re finished! No, I’m not some jedi-knitter (though I’m sure a total of zero of anyone reading this actually thought that), but I think it’d be cool. Nah, I just haven’t posted in awhile and managed to plow through the two of them in about two days. Did the ribbed bottom portion one night, the rest and the sheep the next day, along with the ribbed portion of the second one that night, and the rest plus the sheep the next day. Confusing enough for you?

They’re totally cute, and now I want a pair for myself. Obviously this pair has to go to Josh’s mom, but man there’s a lot of reason to keep them eh? The more anal-retentive of you might have noticed a problem with (aka – lack of) a white eye on the right sheep. “But Bev,” I’m sure you’re thinking, “isn’t telling us about it just drawing attention to the issue? Most of us wouldn’t have noticed…” And you’re right. You probably wouldn’t have. But I am anal-retentive, so I’m definitely going to fix it. I figure that if I mention it here I’m more likely to remember to fix it before I give them to her.

My mom is positive that I’d be able to sell them for $20 apiece, but really, I spent all friggin’ day for two straight days working on these things! Sure, spending that money on yarn sure does sound nice, but still. If I have some left over from the yarn I got for my mom’s scarf (which is what I used for these), I think I’m going to make as many more pairs as I can, and if my mom wants one she’ll get one, and if I decide I want one I’ll get one, then the greedy bastards out there in the real world can have one if I feel magnanimous.

More about knitting tomorrow… but for now I have to get to bed a bit early because I’m getting picked up by Josh’s mom at 8am. Oof! It’ll be coffee for me in the morning! We remember why I’m getting picked up, right?

The Knitting & Fiber Expo!

I’ve updated my wishlist, although that doesn’t really concern anybody.

Other than that, I did get a package yesterday! Very exciting. Wanna know what it is?

Ahem. That’s right, my Classic Elite Lush arrived. And you want to know what? I’ve already started knitting with it. I know that sounds funny since I’m currently supposed to be working on my own scarf, and this yarn if for my mom’s scarf, but…

I’m making arm/wrist -warmers for Josh’s mom, for Mother’s Day. The scarf will only use 6-7 skeins and I have a bag of 10, and the arm/wrist -warmers claim to only need as much yardage as is in one skein. Good times.

I had taken a picture of the yarn the day after I got it in the mail, but I couldn’t get my photo gallery to work properly, so now that Josh’s 1337 programming skills have managed to fix it, I’m much more able to post a nice little picture.

There’s even more knitting news. I finished one of the arm/wrist -warmers for Josh’s mom! I even embroidered/duplicate stitched a sheep onto it! Oh I know, it sounds adorable, and it really is. But I can’t post a picture right now because I don’t have one. I’m going to start knitting the other one tonight.

So far I really like the Lush yarn… it’s so soft! I had a bit of a problem getting started, because I didn’t know what to do about needle size. The pattern I was altering called for 40 stitches around on size 4 needles. Lush’s gauge says to use size 8 needles! Just using the size 8’s would have messed up the overall gauge and made them entirely too big, and probably more suited for legwarmers. And if I used the big needles and started with a fewer number of stitches, I wouldn’t have enough around to put on the sheep that goes on the back of the hand.

To add the icing on the cake, I didn’t even have size 4 dpns! I had my size 4 12″ circular, but I tried knitting 40 stitches around on that and it just wouldn’t work. I had to use dpns. Rather than buy some size 4’s, I just opted to use my size 3’s. Such crazy-ness. I was using needles 5 sizes too small for the yarn, but in the end it worked out. It looks really nice, with a very cute sheep. The drape of the fabric is actually very nice considering my hack… tight without feeling too much so. I think it’ll actually keep off the rain nicely.

I just hope they fit her, they’re nice on my hands but I have pretty small ones.

Pics of the arm/wrist -warmers tomorrow.

Yep, I actually got somewhere on the scarf. I managed to take a picture this morning, so I thought I’d post it here on my blog. I opened the window to let in some sunlight, but the color is still a bit off. Better color representation is in the first picture of the yarn I posted.

I’m having fun knitting it, although using the size 4 12″ circ got a bit hard on my hands at the beginning. I think that’s what led to the soreness as the night wore on, even though I’d moved on to the first strip. Today I’ve been knitting about two hours and I seem to be fine, so here’s to hoping.

I think I’m about 24″ along on the first strip, maybe a bit more. If I manage to knit for most of each day I think I can get the first strip done by the end of the weekend.

So far the circular and an extra dpn are doing nice serving as stitch holders… none of the stitches have come close to coming off, so I might not even need to bother with those stitch cap things. This still is an awkward knit though. One big long string coming off of a disorganized mess (or what looks like one).

That’s about all the knitting news for today. I’ll post another picture once I’m done with the first strip.

I bought more knitting needles today. I decided that in order to do the bottom of the scarf properly, I needed to use a circular needle, rather than a set of dpns. I had the epiphany this afternoon as I was trying to decide what to do about the unfortunate ladders that kept appearing on the beginning end of the scarf that I’d started at least three times already.

As might or might not be apparent, Skacel (makers of the infamous Addi Turbo) makes a 12″ circular in a variety of sizes. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I ended up calling Hilltop Yarn and asking if they had any in size 4, which they did.

So this afternoon Josh and I went over there and bought a pair of Addi Turbo size 4 12″ circs.

The only problem with that is, well, Addi Turbos are expensive, and I have the receipt to prove it. $18 for a set of needles, and in the smallest length of circular anyone makes! Way more than the $8 for a set of Clover dpns… but I sure did have an easier time making the bottom edge of the woven scarf with those Addis.

I’m already about 12″ into the 90″ that I’ll need to knit for the first rope, which is good, but I’ve taken a few minutes off to write this entry because my left thumb is starting to bother me from all the repetitive motion, and I need to let it rest. For the most part it doesn’t do anything when I type anyway, and even if it did I figured that the different motion might help it.

I’ll post a pic of the progress tomorrow.

In other knitting news I started reading the Andean Folk Knits book that I borrowed from the library. It’s a good thing I borrowed it too, since it was one I kind of had on my wishlist to buy if I happened to become rich. After reading it and admiring all the bits of historical information, I’ve decided that I do not like the patterns enough to really want a copy for myself. If I like anything it’s just some of the motifs that are used, because the meaning behind them is explained.

It’s a good thing that I already have a set of size 6 dpns for the other part of the project (you use size 4s for the ends, and size 6s for the woven strands), otherwise I would have had to spend even more money on some needles. I was nervous at first to be spending that much money on a set of size 4 12″ circs, because, well, what other use will I have for them? But as it turns out, this isn’t the only scarf that I’ll be making in the near future.

I proposed to my mom that she buy some yarn that’s on sale at LittleKnits… enough for me to make a scarf for her. This is the actual called for yarn in the pattern, called Classic Elite Lush, but you need 6 skeins at $10 a pop, versus the yarn I bought for myself with which I’ll only need 4 skeins, and they were $9.75 each. The called for yarn is also 50% wool and 50% angora, which should be very soft. I hear it’s really nice yarn besides.

Anyway, LittleKnits is selling it at 40% off, and there are 4 colors available, 3 of which are available in bags, with 10 skeins in a bag. So you can get $100 worth of yarn for $60. It’s a great deal! So I proposed that she buy a bag, have it sent to our apartment and I’ll use my own scarf as the dummy scarf (in case I screw up). Then I’ll knit hers out of her yarn and take the leftover skeins as payment for all of my effort (this scarf is labor-intensive… it takes awhile to knit). I’m always nervous about running out of yarn, so if the pattern is made with a specific yarn and says you need 6 skeins but doesn’t tell you how much you’ll have left over, I’m liable to want to buy a 7th just in case. Because of that, 10 skeins isn’t that much more than 7, right?

Anyway, I should have some yarn in the mail soon if my mom got around to ordering it tonight. It’s all very exciting for me, I promise.

As if this entry wasn’t long enough, I have something else to mention. The stitch pattern book that I just got has a pattern for a sheep that is the cutest thing ever. And, as it turns out, if my mom gets the green yarn for her scarf I’ll have in my stash and what it leftover from the scarf all I’ll need to fashion some really cute arm warmers out of the green Classic Elite Lush with an adorable, fuzzy, sheep on the back of the hand.

It should be extremely cute, and sounds perfect for Josh’s mom. And with Mother’s Day just around the corner it could work out very nicely. Oh, and a former failed scarf design attempt left me with $50 worth of various yarns that I purchased on a whim in a range of earthy tones and colors… one of which (in texture and color) looks exactly like grass. You can see where this is going, right? I’m going to make a little line of fuzzy grass under the feet of the sheep in the arm warmers. So cute!

Enough knitting talk for now. I should get back to actual knitting I expect.

I said I’d finished something. And of course it was the baby blanket. I’m sure no one was guessing. I just spent today weaving in all the ends and cleaning up the look of it. Now I just have to block the sucker. At least I think… I haven’t actually checked to see if this type of yarn would actually benefit from a good blocking or not.

It seems that another baby sweater pattern made out of this same yarn called for some blocking, so I think that this baby blanket will benefit.

How is my woven scarf going you might be asking? Well, not so good at the moment. Josh and I went off to Pacific Fabrics & Crafts and got myself some dpns in size 4, but I managed to break one of those on the first night. -sigh- The whole evening started out with some issues anyway, because I couldn’t decide on a stitch pattern for the short ends of the scarf. I needed something other than garter stitch, and when I finally started knitting it up I didn’t end up liking it.

Off to a new stitch pattern: moss stitch. I think that one will work better, but I still had to rip out the project to put the needles back in the case. I called Hilltop this afternoon, and they have a size 4 12″ circular, so I’m thinking that I might be able to stretch the stitches around that instead and eliminate my awful ladder problem that I can’t seem to get rid of!

I know I should be practiced at this by now, but I just can’t seem to pull tight enough to get rid of them. I’ve tried the whole needles-are-right-next-to-each-other thing, and I’ve tried the whole pulling-until-you-think-the-yarn-will-snap thing, but neither of those worked, and those were the only tips I’ve heard of. So my new idea is just to switch to the circular and see if that works. And yes, I know I’m cheating.

Oh, and I figured out how I want to package up the finished baby blanket. The size is such that I can’t really make it into a nice small square shape… it’s either a floppy rectangle or it’s a too tight mini-square. Either way, I’m going to roll it up like a rug and just tie some string around it and be done.

Also, all the books that Josh and I borrowed at the Bellevue Library yesterday have been lots of fun. Of course I got all knitting books, heh.

As you might be able to tell, the blanket is getting huge. Well, for a baby-sized thing anyway. I’m really liking it so far, but I think I’ll definitely have to block it when I’m done. I’m sure I’m not the only one noticing the waves in the fabric.

Still very exciting though! I’m on about row 12 of 36 for the 6th (and final) pattern repeat. We’re getting close!

And since I happen to already have the yarn I’ll need for the awesome woven scarf, I’m extra-motivated to finish this blanket early, just so I can get started on the scarf!

Hopefully I won’t find too many goodies at the Expo this April. Oof.