G. Knerd

In my last post, I mentioned that I was just about to start blocking the border for Wedding Blanket the First.  This was a somewhat momentous occasion, as it’s been months since I finished knitting said border, and at no time did I actually measure the in-progress or finished border against the blanket it was intended for.

Can you see where this is going?

It all started with a pile of border – when I was knitting it, it seemed like miles, but in retrospect it was really only several yards long.

The border got the customary dunking in water, was squeezed out, and then I laid it out in a rough rectangle on the floor.

This was when I started to get nervous.  This seemed…large.  In fact, this seemed like the size I had wanted the blanket to be, although I was pretty sure that the blanket was not, in fact, this large.

Laying out the blanket only confirmed my fears.  Somewhere, something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The width is about right, but the length?  Not so much.  No amount of fudging is going to bring that back into alignment, either, unless I want to make the long-edge border ruffled.

So there’s going to be some knitting surgery in the near future.  I need to extract almost a foot from both long edges.

After that, the slog to attach said border will commence.

Just between you and me, I don’t think I’m going to get this done within a year of the wedding.  Maybe we should make the new deadline 18 months?

I thought I had posted something on Monday about this, but apparently the app I installed on my new phone did not agree with me about said post.  Sorry about that, I won’t be trying that procedure again any time soon.

Anyway, I haven’t had much time to knit, and what time I have had has been spent on the Wedding blanket for Erica which I can’t really show you all much about (it was much easier to blog about a Wedding blanket when I was sure the recipient would never ever even pretend to like a knitting blog).  However, Monday was my birthday, and I did take some time to bake myself a super delicious salted caramel chocolate cake.

It started with a couple super rich, amazingly moist cakes, which I cut into two layers so there were four total layers of cake.

That, by the way, is a pre-sliced cake.  Each layer ended up being less than an inch thick.  Then, of course, there was ganache…lots of ganache.

When I started assembling the cake, the ganache was actually almost up to the brim of that bowl.  But the thing that I love most about this cake, the thing that had me drooling for more?

The caramel.

This was the first time I’d made a caramel sauce from scratch, and I was amazed at how fun it was.  Basically, you heat sugar syrup until just before it burns, then dump cream into it.  The steam nearly burned my hand,  but the bubbles were incredible – a great lesson in thermal dynamics and what happens when you mix something rather cold with something ridiculously hot.

Each cake layer had a layer of ganache spread on it, followed by a ring of ganache to hold the caramel in and then a thick layer of caramel sauce, finally topped with a sprinkling of salt.  It looked like art, and I’m not exactly sure how I managed to assemble the full thing without eating half of it or drooling onto it (I will not make any assertions about my drool level in general, just that it did not get on or in the cake in any way).

Really, the worst part about this cake was the fact that I’m not a good cake decorator and I didn’t get any decorating icing, so after the cake was frosted – with ganache – I tried to do something pretty and ended up making something silly looking.

However, it still tasted divine.  If I hadn’t spent a little time realizing that each slice has about half a stick of butter in it, I’d be making this every week.  Luckily for my waistline, however, I’ve decided that this is to be a very-special-occasions-only kind of cake.  Like, you know, my birthday.  I think my birthday should absolutely always have a cake like this served at it, don’t you?

(Note: for those of you who are alarmed by this extremely non-knitting-related post, don’t worry.  I have no intentions of turning this into a food blog, nor do I really cook/bake anything special all that often anyway.  Normal knitting related posts will resume their normal weekly schedule on Monday.  I’ll finally be getting around to blocking the border for the first Wedding blanket – you know, the one that I’ve never actually laid out next to the blanket it is intended for?  While I don’t have any reason to believe that there will be any problems, the Knitting Fates really do like to kick you when you assume something will just work.  I’ve been assuming for months, so…

…okay, basically, I’m screwed.  Tune in next week for the details on how it goes.)

One thing that’s very dangerous about going to Germany is the yarn.  Germany is where the sock yarn comes from (Regia, Stoller & Schall, Trekking…), and as far as I can tell the German culture still embraces the idea of handicrafts like knitting.  You can be strolling around a department store (which might span several city blocks), minding your own business, when – suddenly – you find yourself in The Yarn Section.

That’s right, it’s completely normal for a department store to have a selection of yarns on par with a modest local yarn shop.  Just, you know, because while you’re out shopping you might end up needing a few balls of yarn, right?

Why can’t we figure that one out in America, huh?

I actually didn’t break my yarn diet too badly while I was there, though – I had very limited bag space, and somehow I managed to remember that fact whenever I was fondling a particular skein.  In the end, I returned to the US with this:

My favorite is the blue and white striped yarn.  Not because I like stripes (I’m finding I actually dislike them immensely except in rare circumstances), but because the dye pattern is based on the Swiss flag.

Yarn based on flags!  Why don’t we have that here?

Unfortunately, they only had Switzerland.  This will join the Danish, Portuguese, and Brazilian flag yarn in my stash that I found last time I went to Germany, all of them to eventually join the pair of German flag socks I made.

The other two yarns are both Woole Roedel, which is apparently a chain of stores in Germany.  If you speak German it seems that you can order online, but I can’t actually tell for sure.

I did also pick up a bit of yarn for my favorite knitting friends.  Erica (of the Wedding Blanket II) asked for “strange colors, and lots of stripes”.

Wish granted.

Shruti, on the other hand, was much harder to shop for.  She’s allergic to wool, which is bad enough in a muggle but just tragic in a knitter.  Also, the German sock yarn industry is pretty dominated by wool – they don’t really go in for cottons or synthetics (except insomuch as they can be paired with wool).

However, perseverance and a careful lookout for hot pink eventually yielded success in some synthetic-but-still-unbelievably-soft yarn:

It’s a little on the thick side for socks, but it might be great for gloves or a cute little hat or something.

And…that’s it for yarn from Europe.  Feels a little light now that I’m back at home – maybe I need to go back to get some more?

The Blanket Thief complains that I have a messed up view of karma because I basically think it works like a bank – that you  can take withdrawals in the form of good things happening to you, that you make deposits by both living through shitty things and doing good to others.  I think he thinks I’m taking the system too literally.

I’ve always had a problem with being too literal.  He knew that when he married me.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago a woman in my choir sent out a call to all the ‘knitters’ for any spare yarn or supplies they might have.  She works with at-risk youth, and apparently one of her new charges is living on about $30/month.  She’s also a knitter.

Can you imagine trying to sustain a yarn habit on just $30/month?  And that’s assuming you don’t have to pay for anything else, which is certainly not the situation this young lady is in.

Now, I have more knitting paraphernalia and stash than is really healthy for me to own, so I jumped at the idea that I could both de-stash and help out someone less fortunate.  I dug into the supplies first:

Even though I haven’t used straight knitting kneedles in who-knows-how-long, I have a relatively impressive collection of them.  So impressive, in fact, that I could put together a complete set from 0 to 11 for this young lady and still have multiple sets of most of the sizes still in my possession.  Not quite the same story with DPNs, but close.

Then I broke into the stash.  I tried to give her a range of weights and fibers – any young knitter should have some options to play with.  I didn’t give her anything too expensive (I’m not that generous), but there was some brand names like Lamb’s Pride and Cascade 220 along with some cheaper yarn I’m not likely to ever use.

All in all, it ended up being about 2 cubic feet of yarn and supplies.  I hope, wherever this girl is, that it’s bringing her some joy.

And hey, if it adds up to a little more positive karmic balance for me, I’m not going to say no.

Several years ago when I graduated from college, I went on a tour through Europe.  I stopped in on my Mormor (Grandma for those of you who don’t speak Danish) while I was there, and bestowed this upon her:

When visiting her again during our honeymoon (yes, the Blanket Thief is awesome enough that he let us spend the first few days of our honeymoon visiting my Mormor and not partaking of, erm, honeymoon-ly activities), I noticed that she still has this scarf, and she actually uses it whenever it’s cold (which it apparently was quite often this winter).

Of course, I completely forgot to take pictures of it when I saw it again, just like I apparently forgot to take pictures of it the first time when I gave it to her.  In fact, it seems like the only pictures I have of it are from when it was blocking.

I think I actually followed a pattern for this one, and I thought that pattern was from Knitty, but I can’t seem to find it in their patterns section.  I remember that I used alpaca yarn (possibly even Frog Tree), but I don’t remember what the name of the pattern was at all.  Did it have “leaves” in the title?  Maybe “branches”?  I may never find out.

Maybe I should call it Lethe, for it has made me forget everything about it.  At least it seems to have had no effect on my Mormor, who is luckily as sharp and spry as ever.

I’ve been spending some more time exploring my newest obsession with yarn dyeing.  And I’ve learned something very, very important – apparently, yarn shares some traits with babies, in that just because two skeins of yarn go through the same exact dye bath at the same time, that doesn’t necessarily make them identical.  Just like twins, which also might not be identical even if they’re gestated at the same time.

Sorry, I’ve had babies on the brain lately.  It’s apparently a consequence of reaching my mid-twenties and finding myself in a stable living situation.  Damn hormones.

Ooh, look, yarn!

For this dyeing session I decided to try doing a purple.  I’ve heard that purples are really hard colors to dye yarn, because the red and the blue get absorbed at different acidities/temperatures, and the color tends to “break” into a not-quite-even red-purple-blue mixture.

Frankly, that sounded perfect to me.  I lean strongly toward the not-quite-solid colors – they don’t have enough variation to hide a pattern, but they have enough variation to look interesting.

I actually decided to emphasize the effect by using not just purple dye, but also red and blue dye separately.  I rarely do things halfway.

What I thought was really fascinating was just how quickly the red was absorbed – it was mere seconds after pouring the dye into the water before the water turned blue and the sections of yarn that had been near red or purple dye turned pink.  It took much longer for the blue to be absorbed.

And when all was said and done, what did I have to show for it?  A couple skeins of a color that the Blanket Thief has dubbed “Pixie Dreams” – given their differences I’m going to say these are lots 1A and 1B.

That picture is pretty true to color, but it’s easier to see the fraternal nature of the skeins if I show you the non-flashed picture:

Which just goes to show you – sometimes it’s all about location, location, location, even within the dye bath.

I’m sorry for the long delay since my last post – the Blanket Thief and I decided to finally take our honeymoon, which took us through many yarn shops in Europe (we saw some culture too, but, you know…yarn).  I did a relatively good job of not buying too much yarn…but that’s a subject for another post.

Now, when we were last here, I was talking about my latest adventures in dyeing yarn.  We were mid-dye soak, and the yarn looked like a wonderful green spaghetti soup.

This is when the real magic happens.  See, the heat causes the dye to react and bind to the proteins in the fiber, so after some time the water goes clear and all the color is in the yarn.  I yet again risked felting the yarn and turned it over to see the underside and inside of the yarn I had in there – apparently, the pot was too packed, because the yarn that had been on the inside or bottom of the clump didn’t get much dye penetration.

I dunked a bit more dye on to get full coverage, set it to cook some more, and then…

Magic.  Gorgeous, lovely, magic.

As proof that the water really is clear – not slightly green, not tinted clear, but clear – here’s a shot of me pouring off the dye bath.

It really just looks like tap water you could drink.  You probably shouldn’t, though – not that it would kill you, since I was using food dyes and vinegar, but I doubt the vinegar water is very tasty, and there might be something that washed off of the wool or something.  Still, it’s a nifty trick – I can’t wait to do it with small children around so I can explain the science behind it.  After all, I didn’t get that chemistry degree for nothing…

Anyway, after a few quick washes to get the vinegar smell off I hung the yarn up to dry on the shower rod.  By the way, those tiles you see in the background?  I totally did those during my Home Improvement week last year.  It’s probably not a coincidence that the tiles match the yarn.

Once it was dry, the moment of truth had arrived – just how felted was the yarn, anyway?

I won’t say it wasn’t felted at all, because that would be a lie, but at the same time the felting wasn’t that bad.  Actually, most of the felting seems to have been within the yarn strand itself (the plies felting to each other) than between strands.  There was a bit of a fight getting each skein onto the niddy-noddy, but that had as much to do with my lack of ties within the skein and my decision to wind off of a pile instead of having someone hold the yarn than it did with me stirring the yarn while it was dying.

And at the end of all of that?  A little bit of Worsted Weight Awesome.  The Blanket Thief and I both think this color should be called Seafoam, and it’s just gorgeous with all different colors of light green throughout.

I’ve got two skeins – roughly 400 yards.  Any suggestions for what I should make?

This weekend, I decided to finally bust out the crock pot and do some yarn dyeing.  I’ve dyed yarn once or twice before, and I’ve always enjoyed it, but I’ve never really been serious about it.

I think that’s about to change.

It all started with some nice white wool yarn, which I wound into super long skeins.  I’m not exactly sure why I decided to hang them from the curtain rod, but Monkey Kitty sure was curious.

After taunting the cat a bit more, I plopped the yarn into the crock pot and added some water and vinegar.  Turns out, my crock pot will hold about 450 yards of worsted weight yarn (although it would probably prefer less, the crock pod doesn’t actually get a vote in this scenario).

After letting it get sufficiently warm and steamy, I decided to start with some blue dye, in a relatively random pattern.

Then I added some green dye, because green is the best color.  Anyone who says different is lying or delusional.

Then I did something that anyone who knows anything about wool or dyeing or washing sweaters would tell you was wrong: I took a chopstick and I gave it a good stir.  I didn’t like the white spots in the original color placement, and I didn’t want such distinct color patches either.  Plus, I figured this would be a good experiment to figure out if it was really that easy to just felt yarn.  Worst case scenario, I was out a couple of skeins.

Then, I added some yellow.  Because, you know, I’m never satisfied.

I also totally stirred it again after that.  And then I let the yarn soak up the dye in its nice warm bath.

What happened next?  I’m going to save that for next time.  Here’s a hint, though: what do you think I could make from 450 yards of worsted weight awesome?

I try hard to think about finishing even when I’m starting things.  One of the worst feelings when knitting is getting partway into a project and realizing, “Oh crap.  If I’d only done X when I started, I would have been able to do Y, which would have been virtually invisible.  But like an idiot I did Z, so I can’t do Y, and now that’ll be the only thing I see when I look at this project.”

You don’t have those thoughts too?  Just me then.

One of the places where obvious seams tend to drive me absolutely bonkers is within borders.  I don’t mind the seam between the thing-being-bordered and the border itself – after all, that seam is supposed to be there.  It’s the seam between where-you-started-the-border and where-you-ended-the-border that tends to get to me, which is why I spend a lot of time thinking about how to avoid that.

I was apparently spending so much time thinking about it, in fact, that I only remembered to take one picture of the entire process with Marissa’s Wedding Blanket border.  So for lack of pictures, I’m going to describe it, then I’m going to show you the results.

The border I decided to go with is a leafy edged border from Knitting on the Edge (an excellent book, by the way, although I’m convinced there’s an error in the particular pattern I chose).  It’s got a few stitches in garter stitch on one side to keep it straight, and on the other side leaves continuously form and taper off.  It looks really elegant, especially when executed in a cream colored yarn.

When I cast on, I decided that I would use a provisional cast on so that when I got to the other end I could join them invisibly with kitchner stitch.  And then I started knitting.

And knitting.

And knitting.

When I got to a corner, I figured out how to turn a mitered corner in pattern so I wouldn’t have to break there either.  And I kept knitting.

And knitting.

And knitting.

And eventually, after months had passed, and over a hundred leaves, and nearly two dozen feet, suddenly I was done.

Of course, I reached the end of the second ball of yarn exactly one leaf away from the end.  I was sorely tempted to just quit and fudge it.  The only thing that stopped me was the understanding that doing so would bug me until the end of time.

Now, you know all those instructions for knitting in the round that say “Join, being careful not to twist”?  And you know how difficult it always is, in that first round, to determine whether or not a twist exists?

You should try it with a varying width 22-foot-long knitted border.

I triple checked to be sure that I didn’t have it twisted anywhere and even though I’ve checked it twice since joining, I’m still not entirely convinced that there isn’t a twist in there somewhere.  But after checking and rechecking, I eventually decided enough was enough and used a regular kitchner stitch to join the beginning to the end.

Anyone want to guess what went wrong?  How about if I remind you that part of the border pattern involves garter stitch?

I ended up with what looked like three rows of stockinette within the garter stitch portion.  I quickly ripped that back, did a more advanced kitchner where one side ended up looking like purls while the other side stayed plain knit, and voila…

…we have a nearly perfect join.  A non-knitter wouldn’t even be able to find it.

Now, all I have to do is block it, seam it onto the blanket, and call it beautiful.  It’s like I’m nearly done (we’re going to ignore the fact that we’re talking about 22 feet of seaming, okay?)!

I just hope it’s not twisted…

In my last post, I restated the rules that I’d put in place for starting work on Erica’s new wedding blanket.  To recap:

1. Finish Marissa’s wedding blanket first
2. Finish Tristan’s cARGHdigan first
3. Figure out the schedule for knitting, so I would know when I was slipping

I’ve now broken all three rules.

Whoops.  I’m sure no one saw that coming, right?

The thing is, I had a choir retreat I had to go to over the weekend.  And Marissa’s wedding blanket is too big to reasonably go anywhere at this point.  And the Blanket Thief’s cARGHdigan…well, I’m winging it as I go, so it’s really hard to get very far on it without him sitting next to me to measure against.  So, actually, it was with his blessing that I went off to my choir retreat weekend with the neat little knitting kit I made in my last post.

Of course, I promptly took my first beginning and frogged it, as I realized the finished product would be much too big.

And then I tried making a small square using the dishrag method (cast on 1, increase one on each edge every other row until desired width, then decrease one every other row until one stitch is left).  Turns out, that method works great for dishrags, but not for things roughly the size of a quarter – it looked less like a diamond and more like a drop, actually.

So I went back to the original construction, but then I had some trouble with picking up the triangles after the center squares – I wasn’t picking up enough, and it was kind of starting to bubble up in the middle.

Can’t you see the dome forming?  I’m making a blanket, not a series of turtles, so this was off to the frog pond as well.

It’s looking much better now, but I’m not going to show you that.  Erica requested that I do something between radio silence and complete disclosure when it pertained to her blanket (because she’s actually a reader here, and she wanted some element of surprise), so these are about the most detailed pictures you’re going to see until after the blanket is delivered.

I have no idea how I’m going to do that either.  We’ll just figure it out as we go.