On the needles

What I'm doing: I am half a week away from a two-week vacation.  Why is it that the week leading up to the vacation is so hard to get through? You'd think it would be easy, since you know the respite is coming, but in fact it's harder, because you have to work the whole week to get there.  While I will be playing with fiber and we have a beach trip planned (during which we're probably getting married), the thing that I'm most looking forward to is the fact that I will have two whole weeks in which I can catch up on this ridiculous sleep deficit I'm currently experiencing.

What I'm reading: This weekend I started and finished both Maise Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman.  They were both excellent, although I found the narrator of Ocean more compelling than Ms. Dobbs, whose new-age self-reflection and unlikely rags-to-riches story I found rather unbelievable, despite the otherwise convincing depiction of WWI-era Britain.

What I'm watching:  Bomb Girls.  A Canadian period-piece about a group of women working at a munitions factory during WWII.  It is on-par with Land Girls or Island at War for soap-opera quotient, but that's probably why I mainlined the first three episodes in one sitting.  Meg Tilly is fantastic (I know everyone always goes so crazy over Jennifer Tilly, but I think Meg is a much better actress), and the other young ladies have the same semi-wooden, yet somehow compelling, acting style that appears in most Canadian tv.  I doubt it will win any awards, and it's certainly no Foyle's War, but it's entertaining, and worth watching if you're interested at all in homefront life during WWII.

What I'm knitting: Just finished my Debonair Jumper, which turned out to have more positive ease than I was expecting.  I think, much as it pains me to admit this, that I'm going to have to start washing and blocking my swatches before I start on my projects.  I knit more densely than most people seem to do, and so as soon as I wash the FO, it loosens and spreads.  So if I want garments with predictable negative ease, it seems I must swatch and block, rather than just swatch. Yuck.

Stashbusting: Pea Soup Sweater

I've had this Brown Sheep Cotton Fine cone in my stash since...2007 or 8.  It was part of a Patternworks sale that seemed like a good idea at the time, because I was convinced of my wool allergy (which turns out to be an issue solely with lower-micron wool - pretty much anything that comes from Peru makes me itch just looking at it) and thought cotton was the only alternative (this was before I learned about Amy Singer's No Sheep for You).  Clearly, as it has been languishing in the stash since 2007, it was not such a great idea.  Four cones of lace-weight, unmercerized cotton might be perfect for weaving, but it's not as awesome for knitting.

But finally, as part of the great stash-busting event of 2013, I took some time to match these cones with projects, and found the Pickle's Plain Cardigan pattern.

I made the smallest size, and even with the yarn held tripled I still didn't manage to use up the whole cone.  The only changes I would make if I knit this again is to make fewer button-holes, and to make them smaller.  They sort of overwhelm this small garment, and it makes it difficult to find appropriate buttons.  I'm still searching - I think dark brown wooden or faux leather would look nice, but I haven't found anything I'm completely sold on yet.

Overall, the yarn turned out to be much more pleasant to work with than I was expecting, and produced a fabric with much more drape than the feel of the cotton on the cone led me to expect that I would get.  For my first major Knit the Queue project of the year, I think it turned out quite nicely.  And it worked up in a single weekend, so I definitely can't complain about that.

Bayerische Socks

Modified Bayerische socks

Based on Eunny Jang's Bayerische pattern, but knit with Blue Moon Fibers Socks that Rock Mediumweight in Strange Brew.  The pattern calls for an almost lace-weight fingering, to accommodate the 90+ stitches you're supposed to cast on, but even using needles which were far too small to use comfortably with the thicker STR (1.5 US), there was no way I was getting down to that kind of gauge.  So I cut out two of the charts, and replaced them with a ktbl, p1, ktbl combination.  I was also concerned about yardage issues, since I was knitting these for the Boy, whose feet are rather larger than mine, so I knit mine from the toe up, rather than the top down.

For those interested in doing the same, my mods are as follows:

Magic cast-on 22 sts.  Increased to 61.
For top of foot, worked chart D2, ktbl, p1, ktbl, chart B, ktbl, p1, ktbl, chart D1.
Continued in pattern until approx. 2.5" less than desired length (for the size 11s I was making, that was 5 1/2 repeats of chart B).
Worked gusset to 51 sts, then worked a short-row heel with twisted knit stitches (which I achieved by a sl1 as to knit, p1 across the right side).
Worked the leg pattern over 64 stitches, as chart D, k1tbl, p1, k1tbl, chart B, k1tbl, p1, k1tbl, chart D,  k1tbl, p1, k1tbl, chart B, k1tbl, p1, k1tbl.
Worked a twisted k1tbl, p1 rib for the cuff.

It required some finagling to match up the transition from the half-charts of D1 & D2 to the full D charts, but I think it turned out nicely and is the part of the sock I'm the most proud of:

I have heard a lot of talk about how complicated Bavarian twisted stitches are, but if you can cable and you can twist stitches, then there's no reason why you can't do beautiful things with Bavarian twisted stitches.  That being said, you might not want to be crazy like me; I knit these while watching panels at Kalamazoo, and while I  managed to keep track of my charts without too much trouble, it's not really something I recommend.

I am thrilled with how these turned out, and how easily the pattern converted from top down to toe up.  And the Boy is actually wearing them!

On the needles

Sometimes I struggle with the idea of blogging.  What is appropriate to post and what isn't?  If people come expecting to read about knitting and yarn, is it okay if some days I'd rather talk about the fact that I'm struggling to decide if I ought to flip my classroom in the fall, or that the potatoes in my garden clearly think that we live in northern Ireland this year?  Because I don't always have yarn-related things to talk about.  Having recently begun the adventure of cohabitation, I find (like all my foremothers) that my knitting time is being severely impinged upon by the responsibilities of a good housewife (and my thoughts on that are something best saved for another day).

I suppose the reality is that it's my blog, and I can write about whatever I want.  If I want to rant about Steven Moffatt and his desecration of the Doctor Whoniverse (don't get me started on River Song, or the repetition of the "impossible girl" trope, or even how he kind of ruined the Weeping Angels through overuse), I can do that.

What I'm doing: I just returned from the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, which was quite an experience.  I split my time between panels about things I teach and panels about things I enjoy, meaning that I learned equally about the role of Jews in medieval society and how to analyze textiles from extant images.  My favorite thing about the whole conference was that during the textile panels (put on by DISTAFF), over half the audience was knitting, and one of the only questions I received throughout the entire conference was about the sock pattern I was working on (a highly modified form of Eunny Jang's Bayerische pattern, about which more will be said later).  Knitters.  We are everywhere.

What I'm reading: All the things.  My attention-span is shot lately (conference nerves, mostly), so I'm jumping between Fighting the Great War: A Global History, Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey, and Fitzgerald's The Lost Decade.  The only thing that's actually holding my interest is something I'm reading for work: Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe (which is a popular history that is rather suspect in places - his interpretation of Carolingian religious practices concerns me - but which references quite a few primary sources I had not come across.  This will, of course, soon necessitate the long and painful process of translating things from the Minge Patrologia so that I can inflict them on my students).

What I'm watching: Doctor Who, obviously.  We just mainlined the last of Series 7, and will soon be switching over to Game of Thrones.

What I'm knitting:  I'm working on secret knitting, which will be given as a gift next month (at which point I'll show a picture of it).  What I can say about it is that it was intended to be a stash-busting project, using a giant skein of Caron One Pound that had been lingering in my stash for ages.  For so long, in fact, that Caron has since switched the color of the yarn that goes by that name.  Which means that what was supposed to be a stash-buster has resulted in the purchase of three more skeins in the hopes of finding one that matched.  We have finally decided that said project will be ombré, and it will be a design feature.

Spinning

You guys.  In school, they warn you about pot by telling you it's a gateway drug.  How come nobody ever warns you about knitting?  It's totally a gateway craft.  Without knitting, I would never have learned to crochet, to needle-felt (not that I enjoy that, particularly, but it's a life skill I now have), or to dye.  And now, the gateway has opened that much further.

I've started learning how to spin.

Now, perhaps not all of the blame should be put on knitting, as a craft.  Some of the blame belongs squarely on the shoulders of my YEE (yarn enabler extrodinaire, to use the Jimmy Beans' phrase) mother.  I mentioned to her a few weeks ago that I was considering learning how to spin.  As she is an avid spinner herself, I probably should have known better, because when I stopped by for dinner last Wednesday, there was a braid of GnomeAcres Merino/Silk blend in Gnomey Nights waiting for me.  We promptly sat down at my mom's wheel and she showed me how to spin.

Here are the results of my first thirty minutes of spinning:

I realize these are terrible pictures, but it was late and this was my only chance to take the shots.  It runs the gamut between lace and sport weight, but is more consistently at the lower end of that spectrum.

I have already learned that I prefer to spin off rolags, rather than the braid, and I had a fit over the color transition from blue to yellow (I think the yellow dye damaged the fiber slightly, as it isn't drawing as evenly or easily, no matter how much I open it up before-hand.  You can see the lumps it created.  I'm sure eventually I'll be adept enough to prevent that, but this was only the result of my second time at a spinning wheel).  I'm a short-draw spinner, and I'm working hard on learning how not to overtwist.  But dang, it's fun!

And just to cement the habit, on Saturday, at the Fiber Fest, I picked up these:

Now I just need to buy my own spinning wheel.

NC Fiber Festival

If we liken being Cold Sheep to being on a yarn diet, then this weekend I binged.  I binged like someone who'd given up chocolate for Lent does on Easter.

This weekend was the NC Fiber Festival.  I had always planned to end my final three months of Cold Sheep this weekend, but I was thinking about it in terms of the last few years, when there were a handful of great sellers, but mostly a bunch of people trying to sell their 90 yd skein of worsted weight for $28 (I have no problem with people who charge reasonable prices for their work, I just object to 90 yd skeins - what are you supposed to do with that?)

But this year was not like the last few years.  This year, they moved it down to Sanford, which is a rather odd location in the middle of nowhere, about an hour away from anything else you might want to visit.  And while I'm not a huge fan of the new layout, it certainly seemed to me that there was an improvement in the quality of the vendors, much to the detriment of my wallet.

The results of the binge:

From the top: Delly Delights Farm merino roving (in the bag), Delly Delights Farm O So Soft Alpaca sport in Gray, Unplanned Peacock Superwash Merino Fingering in Coral, Knitting Notions Merino Superwash Sock in Ironstone, Taylored Fibers Merino/Silk braid, Cozy Rabbit Farm Merino/Tencel roving, and GnomeAcres House Gnome Sock in Polyjuice Potion (received as a gift).

For those curious about the roving, I may or may not have learned to spin on Wednesday and purchased all of this on Saturday.  More on that later.

On the one hand, that replaced all the stash-down I've done since Christmas and then some.  On the other hand, I have ideas for everything I purchased, so while I binged, I binged more thoughtfully than I would have pre-Cold Sheep.  And honestly, I can't feel guilty in the face of all those pretties. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go snuggle my skeins of alpaca.

On the needles

What I'm doing: The reason for posts (and knitting in general) having been so scare is that I'm moving.  One of my goals for the year has happened - the Boy and I now have a place together.  But that means that a lot less knitting has been completed while I've been doing a lot of this:

One more week and we'll be fully established in the new townhouse, with its natural light and spacious patio.  But until then, life is taking a back seat to boxes.

What I'm reading: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  This was the book chosen for this year's freshman read, so I'm trying to knock it out before the summer starts and the freshmen get here.  It tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who died of cancer in 1951, and the "immortal life" of the cells taken from her without her permission or knowledge, which have been used by scientists the world over to develop things like the polio vaccine, chemotherapy drugs, and otherwise make the drug industry quite wealthy.  I'm half-way through, and I must admit that the writing style is incredibly accessible and compelling, despite dealing with cell types and scientific research.  The tension between the treatment received by the Lacks family at the hands of the medical establishment, and what Rebecca herself is doing in writing the book, is fascinating to me.  I think the book works on so many levels, and even as a historian, recognizing the importance of accepting the past for what it is, I still can't imagine how scientists ever thought it was okay to treat people they way they did in the '50s and '60s.

What I'm watching:  Where Soldiers Come From - a documentary following a group of friends from their carefree existence in northern Michigan to sweeping roads for IEDs in Afghanistan and back home again.  I feel like it's only as groundbreaking as everyone claims because modern Americans have distanced themselves so far from the realities of war that the idea that young men go off to war and come back changed (and not always for the better) is a shock.  In the past, I think societies recognized that as a simple reality, and didn't need to make documentaries so people could "understand the horrors these young men have gone through."  You can't understand it.  You weren't there.  No amount of documenting and voyeuristic journalism is going to make you understand what it's like to be those men.  And honestly, I imagine if you asked them (or any of the millions of soldiers who came before them), they wouldn't want you to.  That said, it was an interesting documentary, and is worth seeing if only to get a better feel for how we treat our veterans.

What I'm knitting: Finished up my squares for Knitters for Newtown.  Managed to get them sent off on Friday, and will now switch gears back to queue-reduction knitting.

Expectations, great or otherwise

You know the saying "caveat emptor?" I feel like that is doubly true since the invention of the internet and the proliferation of monitors with different color profiles.  When you fall in love with the image of yarn on your screen, you can't always be sure that the color you're seeing is the color of the yarn itself.  We've all purchased yarn we thought was a certain color, only to find out it was in fact five shades darker or greener or what have you.

This is doubly true of hand-painted yarns, where each skein is unique anyway, without the added burden of color profiles.  However, I recently received a skein where it was not simply a matter of it being a just different shade or hue than had been illustrated on the screen.  This was a matter of it being almost a completely different yarn.  I ordered what I was expecting to be a vibrantly saturated yarn that resembled green rolling hills, and received yarn that looked like a sad Easter Egg.

I am not going to name any names, because we all have off-days.  These things happen.  But I will admit to being extremely disappointed when I opened up my package and saw pastels staring up at me.  This was not the yarn I wanted when I excitedly purchased it lo these many weeks ago.

So being a good diy-er, I decided to fix it myself.  I soaked it in vinegar and went at it with some blue dye, and this is what I ended up with: 

Which was maybe slightly more vibrant than I had intended.  This is why I don't judge.  Dying yarn is hard, yo.  But I'm much happier with my shocking blue yarn than I was with my pastel Easter egg yarn, and already have the perfect project in mind for it: Regina, by Carina Spencer.

However, those of you who intend to do this yourself, take note - BFL felts.  Which probably shouldn't have been as surprising as it was, but I am impatient, and like to touch my yarn while it's soaking.  That was a mistake.  As you can see, the yarn is still servicable, but it certainly roughed up and each strand got cozy with its neighbors while it was drying.  I had to do some gentle tugging to separate things as I was rolling up the ball.

So note to self: when rinsing out hand-dyed yarn after defacing it, don't swish.

Vintage Pattern Acquisition

Interestingly, being cold sheep does not actually seem to have saved me a lot of money.  The money that was previously being spent on yarn simply gets diverted into pattern acquisition.  And not just your average pattern acquisition, but fairly expensive, vintage British patterns. My relationship with pdf reproductions of vintage patterns is fraught with tension - I like that they provide access to rare patterns, but I hate having to search around them when looking for originals, and am also leery of the copyright issues involved.

 It should probably surprise no one that as a historian, I love vintage patterns.  There is something very thrilling about holding in your hands a pattern that a knitter from a previous generation liked enough to purchase and preserve. I find that the thrill is particularly strong for WWII-era British patterns.  Knowing the hardships that women of that period lived through, and the shortages and privations they had to deal with, I imagine that knitting booklets were one of the only bright spots in a frequently difficult, stressful existence.  When I hold a 1942 issue of Stitchcraft, I imagine the woman who originally received it with her post being as excited as I am to receive an issue of Interweave, and rushing inside to put on the kettle so she could sit down for twenty minutes to leaf through the patterns with her cuppa.

Bestway, Sun-Glo, and Stitchcraft are my favorites - all of which are on the pricier end of the spectrum, of course.  I love Stitchcraft in particular because of the adverts, for wonderful things like Potato Pete's Recipe Book or Bunco's Toilet Paper ("We ask your indulgence if your retailer is temporarily out of stock").

Material culture is fantastic, and as a medievalist, it is not something I'm used to possessing, so I have been - and still am - willing to spend ridiculous amounts in order to own original vintage patterns.  I just can't allow myself to spend time on Ebay and Webs within the same month.

Bates

Not all that long ago, I came across the Downton Abbey Luxury Yarn Club, hosted by Woolgirl and Curious Creek Fibers.  Now, while I recognize that it is a luxury yarn club, with awesome extras like Wee Ones Dowager Countess stitch markers, $550 is FAR outside my price-range for any club (no matter how much I might have wanted it).  So I lusted, but did not purchase.  

Since the pattern I was most interested in was the Mr. Bates socks, I decided that the next best thing would be to go ahead and design my own.  So I did.

I present you with Bates:

Constructed toe-up, with a combination of cables and twisted stitches on a reverse stockinette stitch background.  I had originally envisioned using a staggered cross cable (one with uneven numbers of repeats between each cable-row - to call to mind Mr. Bates' limp), but found that oddly, the roundness of the cables did not suit the design at all.

The heel is short-row, with a twisted stitch heel flap.  These are men's size 9, but were knit fairly narrow.  The pattern can easily be sized up, however, to account for more robust foot and leg circumference.

The yarn is Malabrigo Yarn Sock, in the Piedras colorway, which was meant to call to mind the khaki uniforms of the British army in the Boer war, when Mr. Bates was the Earl's batman.  This was my first order from Loopy Ewe, and I plan on buying more yarn from them in the future, if only for more adorable sheep drawings.  However, I think the pattern would hold up well in any gently variegated yarn.

The pattern is still being edited, and will be out for test-knitting soon.