Knititude

The happy cat hat

  Here she is, in profile:  the Happy Cat Hat, festooned with several dozen 1999* vintage rabies tags, which clink musically (though not alarmingly so, as they are carefully spaced) when the wearer is in motion.  I've outlined the cat's ear, which is difficult to see in this photo.

I realized early on that if I followed Sonya Laska's "Sparkle Hat" instructions in Stitch 'N Bitch, I would probably end up with rabillettes marching diagonally across the areas where the ears needed to be, so I tried to chart the positions of the rabillettes first.  This wasn't very successful because I couldn't figure out how to chart a hemispherical object very effectively (I started thinking about Mercator projections, which seemed a step in the too-complicated direction).  Finally, I ended up knitting this hat from the top down, following Barbara Walker's directions in Knitting from the Top, and knitted some of the rabillettes on the front and back into place.  I worked ear flaps and I-cord ties, adding a few rabillettes on the ties, and then added the ears to the hat, following Kitty Schmidt's "Kitty Hat" instructions in Stitch 'N Bitch.  Then I sewed on more rabillettes until I was pleased with their layout. 

*Should you wish to obtain some rabillettes for your own use, you could try your local vet's office; unless they employ a viciously organized office manager, they probably have boxes of old ones sitting around, perhaps behind those cartons of puppy and kitten care handouts that they ordered by the thousands to save $$.  Anyway, a rabies vaccination is officially good for 3 years at most, so if your vet suspects that you are trying to obtain a rabies tag without  paying for a rabies shot for your pet, you can lay those suspicions to rest by asking if they have any pre-2002 tags they'd like to get rid of. 

Free scarf pattern!

I like the "Pinnacle Chevron" pattern from Barbara Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns so much that I've decided to post the scarf pattern I created using it.  I've taken the liberty of greatly simplifying BW's directions. 

Pinnacle Chevron Scarf

The bottom photo shows the reverse side of the top photo; front and back are identical except that the chevron points are offset by eight rows.

Skill level:  Easy

Materials:  Trendsetter Yarns "Kashmir" or other similar borderline medium/chunky (according to the Craft Yarn Council of America, www.yarnstandards.com) yarn,  4 50 gm. balls; size 10 needles, or size to obtain gauge (although not terribly crucial with a scarf, if you ask me--just as long as you're happy with the finished width and length).

Gauge:  18 sts & 25 rows = 4 in. in patt stitch.  As BW suggests, I "pressed only lightly," so pressing heavily, or stretching while blocking, will yield a different gauge.

Scarf dimensions:  just over 8" wide and approx. 5 feet long.

Cast on 37 sts.  Row 1:  P1, *(k2, p2) twice, k1, (p2, k2) twice, p1; rep fr *.  Rows 2,3,4; 6,7,8; 10,11,12; 14,15,16: Knit k sts and purl p sts.  Row 5:  P1, *p1, k2, p2, k2, p3, (k2, p2) twice; rep fr *.  Row 9:  K1, *(p2, k2) twice, p1, (k2, p2) twice, k1; rep fr *.  Row 13:  K1, *k1, p2, k2, p2, k3, (p2, k2) twice; rep fr *.  Continue until desired length, keeping in mind that pattern looks best when bound off on a row 12.  Bind off in patt. 

 

The Art of Giving the Unfinished Gift

Good news:  the gas-powered patio heater arrived; the friendly local plumber figured out how to get it working, 2 days before Xmas; the husband liked it; it hasn't exploded--yet.

Bad news:  the husband's Xmas scarf could not possibly be finished in time.  What to do?  Utilize the Art of Giving the Unfinished Gift!  Pictured is what I presented to him, nicely wrapped, while scrupulously avoiding any comments like "If you weren't so damned picky, I wouldn't have agonized endlessly over what yarn and what color and what pattern to use!"  Left to right:  Noro "Hana" silk ribbon in a 3X3 rib; (top) Classic Elite "Inca Print", alpaca; (bottom) Alchemy "Synchronicity" silk/wool; both in "Moss Diamond and Lozenge," a reversible pattern from Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns; Filatura di Crosa "Elen" wool/viscose/cashmere/silk in "Seaweed" pattern, also from BW's Second Treasury; Trendsetter Yarns "Kashmir" cashmere/silk in "Pinnacle Chevron," a reversible pattern from BW's Treasury of Knitting Patterns. 

What I did say was, "I really wanted you to love this scarf, so I ended up making a bunch of samples, some of which I like better than others--but I thought I would let you pick your favorite."  Of course, he didn't really give a s*%& about the whys, so I didn't bother boring him with them (okay, I tried, but he'd already had a Bloody Mary, and in all fairness, one could barely hear a thing over the din of the overexcited children)--but here they are, along with a photo which more clearly shows the stitches.  Noro silk:  liked it a lot, actually--very lightweight and lustrous--but maybe too funky for him, plus it's a bit slow to knit up compared to a normal plied yarn.  Alpaca:  too itchy!  Plus the stitch pattern is wasted with this colorway.  Alchemy silk/wool:  soft, pretty, great stitch definition, interesting pattern; color somewhat bright for him.  F di C blend:  appealing pattern (thought not reversible, the wrong side is also attractive); yarn is just okay.  And finally...(drum roll)...The Winner:  the appropriately named "Pinnacle Chevron", far right--reversible, simple, quietly offbeat; and that Trendsetter yarn is yummy.

(Reader/visitor comments are encouraged, as he has not yet voted, and so I have not resumed work on any of them.)

 

Stop trichotillomania now!

Today I had to weave a bunch of ends into my finished "rabidly happy cat hat" (see my earlier post),  and I would certainly have been stricken with sudden-onset trichotillomania*, if I had not remembered this wonderfully easy way to thread a yarn needle: 

1)  Fold yarn over shank of needle and squeeze tightly (see top photo). 

2) Remove needle, leaving yarn pinched tightly between fingers.  (Please ignore embarrassingly dry skin on my fingers in photos--I tried to crop it out as much as possible.)

  3) Place eye of needle over pinched yarn and work yarn through eye just enough so you can pull it through.

4)  Voila!  Even thick yarn can be threaded without wetting or squinting.  Not sure where I learned this trick, but it works!

*Trichotillomania:  an uncontrollable urge to pull out one's hair.  I'm not sure it comes in sudden-onset form--that was just my feeble attempt at humor.  So if you really suffer from the disorder, my apologies; I realize it can be incredibly damaging and frustrating. 

Temporary holiday knitting insanity

Why did I decide, just ten days before Christmas, to knit my husband a scarf as a gift?  It may have had something to do with the fact that I spent hours last week trying to find a company that would deliver and set up a gas-powered patio heater--the only item he requested this year.  He wants to fire it up so he can sit outside and smoke his stogies in comfort during our long, cold New England winter (known elsewhere as fall-winter-spring).  I REALLY wanted to get one for him, too--anything to keep him from lighting up inside the house.  Well, no luck; I could have gotten one that had to be assembled, and normally I' m game, but when it comes to items that might explode if not put together properly--no. 

I'm not a speed knitter, but even I can knit a scarf in ten days; the complicating factors which have led to said scarf being stalled at six inches are as follows:

1)  No suitable yarn--meaning non-bulky cashmere, silk or some blend thereof (the husband is a definite fiber snob).  I had some lovely Alchemy "Synchronicity" wool/silk in "Madre Dios" (center ball) which I had purchased as a gift, and I gave that a try, but felt it was too variegated to work for him.  I then visited three LYSs looking for a dark-but-not-black suitable yarn--nothing--and in desperation had WEBS (www.yarn.com) overnight the other two yarns in the picture:  at right, more Synchronicity--too light, too teal (it looked darker in the website photo); and at left, Noro Hana, a silk ribbon.  Lovely color, but after trying a swatch in 2X2 ribbing, I decided the texture of the ribbon was most attractive in simple stockinette.  The resulting fabric is lightweight and attractive, but...shouldn't I be knitting something more complicated?  Will he really like the ribbon effect?  So I have two more yarns coming from WEBS:  more Synchronicity in a darker colorway, and Filatura di Crosa "Elen", a cashmere/wool/silk blend, in navy.

2)  Choosing a stitch pattern.  I knitted several swatches before deciding to go with the Noro ribbon (in stockinette)--meaning any swatch time was wasted--unless I go with another yarn after all.

3)  Other time-consuming holiday crap.  You know what I mean.

4) Other time-consuming non-holiday crap.

5)  Not being able to knit when recipient is around.

I just hope I don't end up like I did one year in high school, knitting madly away at 1 a.m. on Christmas Day, trying to finish a vest for my sister, in pea green Lopi (I'm getting itchy just thinking about it).

Barbara Walker & Georgia O'Keeffe

Isn't this an interesting painting by Georgia O'Keeffe?  It's called "Jack-In-The-Pulpit, No. IV."  It reminds me of something...with many names, none of them "Jack".  

Anyway, by now I've had a chance to examine my Treasuries of Knitting Patterns by Barbara Walker, and they are all filled with page markers referencing my favorite patterns.  "Frost flowers," "slipped plait cable," "vine lace" in the first Treasury; "seaweed," "dragon skin," "ribbed leaf," "Chinese lace," "dayflower lace" in the second; "the spider," "mirror cable," "looping waves cables" in the third; "flame wave" & "flame ribbing" in the fourth.  If there were just a few I'd scan them and post pictures (and maybe I still will).  BW also includes lots of slip-stitch color knitting patterns, which is one type of knitting I haven't gotten into--yet.   

I did scan one pattern, from the first Treasury, and here it is.  BW calls it "birdcage cable." 

Well, ladies, when I look at this I don't see a birdcage.  I see--how to put this delicately--let me consult my Stedman's Medical Dictionary--pudenda.  Can I say that here?  (I have also just learned from Stedman's that the Latin root of that word means "to feel ashamed."  Fascinating.)  I thought maybe it was just me, so I showed the picture to my husband.  He raised his eyebrows and said, "I'm not going to say anything."  I showed the picture to my teenaged stepdaughter.  She started laughing hysterically.  (Did you know that the Greek root of "hysterically" means "uterus"?)

I think there must be a better name for this pattern.  Normally, I heartily dislike the "c" word, but "c--- cable"--it's very catchy.  "C--- Cable Cardi."  I like it.

Knitting is not yoga.

Although knitting may be calming, meditative, etc., it is still at heart a sedentary pursuit.  Sure, you can knit standing up; in the car (as a PASSENGER!); on a boat; on a plane; on a train (yep, done them all).  As an inveterate multitasker, I have certainly tried combining knitting and other activities.  TV plus knitting usually works; phone-clamped-between-ear-and-shoulder plus knitting works (although after a long conversation, yoga is more needed than ever); online bill-pay plus knitting saves no time, and markedly increases the likelihood of sending your mortgage payment to the phone company. 

  The problem is that knitting is repetitive motion, and no matter how much I try to relax my shoulders and wrists, they insist on kinking after a certain amount of time.  Yoga (I do a modified Bikram routine), unlike knitting, removes the kinks; sadly, all of the yoga poses I can think of specify what you are supposed to do with your hands--and it's not knitting.  On a particularly hectic day, I did try to combine the treadmill and knitting--why not?  I read and treadmill all the time.  Well,  I'll let the photo speak...that's Grandma's scarf there, next to my sneaker. 

Hmm...maybe if I forgo the iPod....

Jet lag is so much fun.

  I just love being simultaneously wide-awake and exhausted at 4 a.m., simply because your body thinks it's still in Paris.  Oh well; if the husband insists that you accompany him on one of his business trips, then it's hard* to complain about being dragged to the City of Light (see why it got that name?).  Incidentally, this photo was taken from our hotel room balcony; the man does like to travel in style.

So here I am in my pajamas, blogging, working away on the happy cat hat and trying not to wake the children.  No photos of the hat just now, sorry; it's supposed to be an Xmas gift for the teenaged stepdaughter, and she has been granted blog access (although I'm sure she has better things to do than snoop around in Stepmom's blog).  "Trying not to wake...?"  Yes, those rabies tags clink together quite musically, reminding me of...sleigh bells?!  I fully expect the small ones to come racing down the stairs at any moment, yelling "Santa's early!"

*but clearly not impossible

Nightmare: Knitting a sweater for myself

Now that I have a few projects under my belt, it's time to knit something for myself.  It started as innocently as that.  And then I saw this Adrienne Vittadini ad in a magazine, and tracked down the pattern book at WEBS (www.yarn.com).  I found a gorgeous silk & cashmere yarn, horribly expensive, at the Black Sheep Knitting Co., in Needham, MA.  So far, so good, right?

(By the way, if a certain sense of deja vu is setting in, you may have read about Grumperina's AV sweater nightmare at www.grumperina.com.  Read on, read on--just be warned that your sense of deja vu will only increase.)

Anyway.  I did a swatch in stockinette stitch, and then I decided to start with a sleeve so I could see how the lace pattern looked.  It looked great!  So good, in fact, that I decided to block it and sew the seam so I could try it on.  This was back in, oh, January 2005, before I started obsessively photographing every stage of a project (before I had a blog, in other words), so I will have to rely on words alone:  the sleeve was long enough for an ape, and wide enough so that, instead of falling in a fluid line from shoulder to wrist, it wadded and wrinkled into something resembling an elephant's leg. 

I conquered my disappointment by figuring I had learned an important lesson:  openwork stitches expand after blocking!!  Undaunted, I frogged and started over, this time decreasing the width of the sleeve by omitting a partial repeat on each side.  Didn't take too long to reach the sleeve cap, but by the time I arrived there, I had realized that since I had changed the lace stitch repeat on the sleeves, I would now have to change the lace stitch repeat on the body so that the cables and eyelets would miter nicely at the raglan seams (see photo above).  At the time this frankly seemed a little over my head, but I did some calculations and realized my raglan seams should work if I just centered the body lace on a cable instead of an eyelet panel.

So I finished the sleeve and started on the body.  Here is a close-up of the end of the sleeve, and of the transition from stockinette stitch to lace on the front--which turned out to be my next problem.  My relief at seeing that the lace patterns would meet properly at the raglan seams was short-lived, as I held the front up to my body and realized that the lace started precisely at nipple level--not very flattering, not a look I'm comfortable with.  (Which is exactly how the sweater falls in the photo above--meaning the fact that I got so far before noticing this was entirely caused by my own carelessness.  HATE THAT.  Although in my own defense, the mannequin appears to have been constructed with only a faint suggestion of nipple--kind of misleading, really.) 

With much profanity, I did more calculating, having realized that since the gauge of the lace and stockinette sections was different, moving the lace up my chest was not as simple as just working a few more rows of stockinette.  Not only that, but I realized I was dissatisfied with the casual, tending-to-roll stockinette hem--the sweater seemed a little too dressy for that--so with a deep breath I frogged, and started the front over, this time adding a turning row for a more finished hem. 

I got all the way to the end of the front and then thought the neck just seemed too high, so I backed it down a bit, and then knit the back and second sleeve without incident.  Put it together, blocked it, and then--well, here it is.  Does it seem a little, um, sacklike to you?  BAGGY?  I don't look much like Ms. Mannequin in it, do I.  Only now did I realize that I had based the measurements on an UNBLOCKED swatch.  $#^^&%^**#!!!  In desperation, I actually wetted the thing (silk and cashmere, if you recall), and threw it in the DRYER.  Alas, that only made it short and wide, and closed up the lace pattern.  By the way, that slight fuzziness that is visible on the stockinette part started while I was knitting, and was NOT a result of the dryer--so if you don't like fuzzy sweaters, don't shell out $30 a skein for this yarn--or avoid stockinette stitch, as the lace sections look fine.

I did wear it once, out to dinner, and the thing was so awfully warm that I felt lightheaded.  After a couple of glasses of wine I looked into the mirror behind the bar and watched the beads of sweat rolling down my bright red face.  I couldn't wait to leave. 

I wonder how many others out there have their own AV sweater nightmare....

"The rabid kitty hat:

Prevents hydrophobia, excessive salivation, death, attacks of incoherent rage, and generally aberrant behavior!"  Maybe I should have gone into marketing.  Should "death" come last?   

Unfortunately, while thinking about rabies tags and what they signify--that the wearers have been vaccinated against rabies--I also came to the inescapable conclusion that "rabid kitty hat" should logically be "NON-rabid kitty hat."  Sounds kinda clumsy.  Think, think.  I guess I'll go with "happy cat hat," assuming that your cat would be happy if it knew it was safe from the dread disease.

Well, I'll get to work on the prototypical hat ASAP.  In the meantime (back to the recap of the last year's FOs), this Cotton Aran Sweater, again from DB's Classic Knits for Kids, was my next project, following the Aran Coat and the Chevron & Feather Scarf (see 12/3 post).  Since I'd made something for my toddler, I thought I'd better knit something for my older son.  He helped me choose the pattern and told me red was the color.  I used Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece (80% cotton and 20% merino) in Barn Red, and I did swatch this time.  The pattern called for a high crew neck, but as I neared the neck on the front, I realized that the center panel would stop at an unattractive point.  I decided to do  a V-neck instead.  That's it!  The only change I made to this pattern. 

Here is a close-up of the panels.  Very nice.  Sadly, this sweater hasn't seen much use because my son thinks it's too wide--and I have to agree.  I think I can blame this one on Debbie, because her designs generally go wide.  Okay, so I could have easily narrowed the double moss stitch panels along the sides.  Too late now. 

Maybe I'll take off the drop sleeves, cut an inch or so off the body sides, sew them up and then reattach the sleeves--although then the sleeves might be too short.  On the other hand, maybe they'll be just right, I'm not sure (that shows you how little he's worn it).  Maybe I won't take off the sleeves, I'll just angle into the body from the armpit and narrow from there to the hem...aargh.  Anyone want a nice wide sweater?