G. Knerd

When I decided that I was going to knit Erica a wedding blanket, I said there were a few rules:

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

On the other hand, just because I decided to wind some of the Cascade 220 hanks doesn’t mean I’m actually starting, right?

As soon as I took that picture, I realized it looked slightly phallic, so I tried to fix it by reordering some of the blue…

And ended up with Yarn Leia instead.  Apparently my talents lie elsewhere.

You might be asking – why are there eight of them?  Well, I figured eight hanks would be a decent start.  The pattern I’m using is knit with four balls (two of each color) at a time, so with eight hanks it’s like I have two sets of knitting.  Not, you know, that I could actually use two sets of knitting at once, but…well, if I could, I could, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of sets, I then took four of them and put them in the bag from a sheet set – I love that it fits the yarn perfectly, has a pocket for the needle, and even zips closed.

It’s like having my very own blanket kit!  So exciting!  I can’t wait to use it!

Not, mind you, that I’m allowed to yet.  I still have miles to go on my other projects first…

…crap, I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to resist this.  It’s new and shiny!  Pretty please can I knit with the new shiny yarn?

A couple weeks ago, I got a lovely large package in the mail.  At first, I was confused, because the outside of it said it was filled with chocolates – I might have a bit of a weakness for chocolate, but I knew I hadn’t broken down and bought over a cubic foot of it.

However, I suspected that this was the yarn I’d ordered from WEBS – mostly based on the fact that WEBS is also located somewhere in the Northeast – and I was not disappointed.

I may have emitted some squee-ish noises when unpacking this box.  But can you really blame me, when I now had, in my possession, this lovely hank of Araucania sock yarn?

Or this, a simply divine soft and light Berrocco sock yarn?  I didn’t realize this when I ordered it, but it’s also made entirely of nylon and acrylic – Shruti (or any others of you who have an unfortunate wool allergy), you could knit/wear socks made from this….

There was also a cone of blank sock yarn – I’ve decided to try my hand at dying, and this will get me off to a great start.  I can’t remember if it’s one or three pounds, but either way I’m going to be making a bunch of one-of-a-kind skeins for socks.  I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep them or sell them yet – it might depend on whether I can part with them once I’ve fallen in love with the colors.

And, last but not least, the reason why I was ordering from WEBS in the first place: the yarn for Erica’s blanket!  We’re talking multiple pounds of Cascade 220, and I’m really loving the way the colors look against each other now that I’m seeing them in person.  They’re unique yet complimentary, much likely the lovely bride-to-be and her fiance.

Now, I know I said originally that I was going to wait until the first Wedding Blanket and the Blanket Thief’s sweater was done….but I’m pretty sure I’m not actually going to hold myself to that.  Would you be able to, if confronted with pounds of freshly minted Cascade 200?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

(I thought I’d posted this from my phone last Thursday, but it turns out that I apparently only saved it.  Damn technology.)

Reading the directions is important.  It’s a life skill that I’ve only had spotty success with, both in knitting and in life.  In knitting, it usually manifests in me going off pattern within the first few inches – and, of course, I usually claim it’s actually on purpose.

In life, this failure to read directions often manifests in a vague sense of where I’m supposed to be and when I’m supposed to get there, without any clear understanding of how I’m going to make that happen or what exactly I’ll do once I get there.

Today, for example, I was really excited to be able to attend Ignite Seattle for the first time.  (Even if you can’t make it to an in-person Ignite, you should totally check out the videos on the site – they cover all kinds of topics, are usually funny, and are always limited to 5 minutes.)  I looked up where I needed to be, I looked up the start time, and I kind of ignored everything else.

Because I knew where and when I needed to be, I rushed over from work to get to the theater at 7.  I didn’t have a plan for dinner, but I figured I could have bar food since the theater had a bar.

First lesson: there’s a difference between liquids and foods, and bars are only guaranteed to have the former.

Once I got into the theater, I found a seat and started wondering when the festivities would start.  And kept wondering, until eventually someone got on the mike and announced that we were going to work on mouse trap-powered cars until 8:30.

I thought for sure that must be a mistake.  Surely he meant 7:30, meaning I’d only have to wait 15 minutes.

Nope, dead serious.  One hour of car building, fifteen minutes of car racing, and then the main event would begin.

Second lesson: when you see random posts about an ice-breaking activity to build mouse trap-powered cars before the talks, don’t assume “ice-breaker” means “quick”.  Apparently, some people are quite passionate about their mouse trap-powered car racing and can’t be rushed in the building thereof.

Luckily, I’ve at least learned enough to always have my go-everywhere, emergency socks with me.

It’s validating to know I can at least plan for emergencies like this.  Now if only I had some food…

I was unpacking some stuff I hadn’t touched in a very long time, and I came across the ball bands for some Cascade 220.  I apparently wanted to remember something about the colors I used, because I made sure to write a note about the color on each one of them.

For those of you who can’t read it, this one says “Purple!”  Apparently just “purple” wasn’t enough – oh, no, I had to both capitalize it and make sure to give it an exclamation point.

On the other hand, my favorite was this one:

It took me a while to figure out what the second word here was – at first, I read this as “Pretty Ole!”, which didn’t sound right at all (I may not have the best handwriting either…).  Eventually, though, I was able to determine that this, in fact, said “Pretty Blue!” – notice that I carried through the capitalization and the exclamation pattern here too.

Now that I’ve found these, I wish I could remember what I was trying to remind myself about.  If only I’d, oh, I don’t know, written more on the inside of the band or something?  Maybe just another word like “Sweater!” or “Hat!” or “Blanket!” to give me some direction to go in.  But I guess that would make it too easy, right?

Stoichiometry is the part of chemistry that involves calculating the numerical relationships between various things in a reaction.  When I was studying chemistry, it was always my favorite part, because it felt a little bit like alchemy – if you could find a chain of relationships between any two things, you could convert that thing into the other.  For example, although you can’t convert apples into shoes, both apples and shoes have a relationship with money, and so you could convert apples into money and then money into shoes.

I may be a bit of a nerd, actually.  If that’s a surprise to you, you might want to double check what the name of this blog is…

Anyway, I finished the swatch for the Wedding Blanket II, and I got Erica and her husband-to-be to pick out yarn colors, which meant that I was all ready to buy some yarn…as soon as I figured out how much I needed to buy.

So (avert your eyes if math makes you woozy)…

I started with 0.75 skeins of Cascade 220 and created a 10″ x 16″ swatch, or 160 square inches:

160 in² = 0.75 skeins Cascade 220

1 skein Cascade 220 = 213.3333 in²

I want to make a blanket that’s about 5′ x 6′, or 60″ x 72″, or 4,320 in² (NOTE: if you want to keep your sanity, never calculate how many square inches or number of stitches are in your current project.  That way lies madness.):

4,320 in²/(213.333 in²/skein) = 20.25 skeins Cascade 220

To account for the margin of error on my original weight measurement, the fickleness of the swatch, the whimsy of the Knitting Gods, and the fact that I’m using two colors, I decided to order 30.  I’d produce some kind of snappy remark about how there’s no way I’m going to run out of yarn now, but I’m smarter than that.  I’ll just posit that, based on my calculations, it would appear that I’ve probably procured enough yarn to be able to finish this blanket.

While at WEBS, I may have also procured some yarn for myself…but the Blanket Thief was sitting right next to me when I did it, and he totally nodded his head when I asked him if it was okay.  He might have been playing video games at the time, and it’s possible he wasn’t actually nodding so much as focusing on the TV, but that totally wouldn’t stand up in a court of law…

So it’s about time to get yarn for my friend’s wedding blanket (heretofore referred to as Wedding Blanket II), and I’ve already scheduled some tentative time to go to the yarn store with the bride-to-be and pick out the colors she likes.  However, before we do that, I need to figure out how much yarn to buy, which means I need to know how many square inches I can get out of a skein of yarn.

I dug through the stash and unearthed some random yarn – pretty sure this is Cascade 220, also sure this is not a whole skein.  I weighed it on the kitchen scale, though, and (assuming I trust the scale, which I don’t) this is about 75g, or roughly 3/4 of a full skein.  My plan is to knit garter stitch (as the pattern I have in mind for the blanket is pretty much pure garter stitch) until I run out of yarn, then measure how big that is to figure out how many skeins I’ll need for a 5′ x 6′ blanket.  I’m hoping I get at least a foot and a half per skein, but it would be even better if I get two or more square feet – we’re looking at a rather high yarn cost here.

Luckily, at least garter stitch goes super quick – after about an hour or so of knitting, I’ve got a 10″ x 4″ swatch.  As for how much yarn I have left:

You can’t really tell the ball has changed dimensions.  I’ve got a long way to go on this swatch (here’s hoping for 20″+).

I finally got a chance to catch up with a couple of my very best friends and exchange Xmas gifts with them.  I think I got the better part of that exchange, because I walked away with this:

“What is it?” I can hear you asking, in awed and shushed tones.  That, my friends, is Mountain Colors sock yarn.  And it is glorious.

The colors couldn’t be any better if they were dyed with me in mind, and, frankly, I’m not entirely sure the people at Mountain Colors haven’t been spying on me for months in order to learn my preferences.  The greens are lush and glowing, the blues pop, the purples add a nice richness and deep tone.

I think I’m in love.

The only problem is figuring out what to make out of it.  It seems almost sacrilegious to make socks and walk all over such prettiness.

So I’ve been working on the pattern for the Garden Party Socks, and I’m at the point that I need to add some pictures of the finished product.  I’ve got a theory that the most famous knitters are currently the ones who produce the best knitting porn.  And I want to be one of the best knitters, so…

Can I just say that I’m so glad that people I know read this blog?  Because there’s no way on earth they’ll tease me for implying that I want to be a knitting porn star.

I’ve apparently also decided I never want to run for public office…

Anyway, it’s become time for me to take a few pictures of the socks.  And I want them to be good pictures, you know, really lush and sexy.  I want the knitters who see them to crave these socks, to go mad with wanting to find yarn and needles right now so they can cast on and find the release of knitting this pattern.

Okay, apparently my mind is stuck on a single track, and it’s not a great one.  Why don’t you just look at my current sock picture while I give my brain a thoughrough scrubbing?

(By the way, those are the new sock blockers that The Blanket Thief gave me for Xmas.  I had an inordinately fun time trying to hang these in various places in my house.)

I’m thinking that the perfect picture for my garden party socks would be a nice spring garden in the late afternoon light, with lush greenness everywhere.  Maybe hanging nonchalantly in a tree with budding leaves, or possibly tucked in amongst a bunch of flowers.

The only problem with that plan is that it’s currently January, and we’re still a couple months away from new growth on the plants.  And I don’t want to wait that long.  I’m impatient.  I demand instant gratification.  I want my sexy knitting porn, and I want it now!

Anyone have any ideas for where I could do a great winter knitting porn photo shoot?

This holiday season, I had not one, not two, not even three, but four family Christmas celebrations to go to.  Luckily, they were spread out over the course of a week – I’m not sure how I would have survived otherwise.

Also luckily, the people in my family know what I like: yarn and knitting stuff.

I indeed get some sock blockers, which will serve me well with all the socks I’ve managed to create over the years.  Not that I actually block socks – I’m way too impatient for that, just like I can’t stand sock yarn that’s hand-wash only.  However, I think these will go a long way towards helping me take better pictures of my socks, and really, that’s what it’s all about, right?

The yarn deserves it’s own close up – first some yarn from my step-sister-in-law:

It’s Woodland yarn in some gorgeous, subdued colors.  The yarn is part wool and part nettle (but the good part, not the stinging part) and entirely scrumptious.  I don’t know what I’ll be making with it yet, but I’m kind of leaning towards hat & glove (dare I stretch to scarf?) set.

My new mother-in-law got me a very different kind of yarn:

The colors are super bright, and there are all different colors of flecks throughout the yarn.  Plus, the yarn is apparently dyed somewhere close to where my parents-in-law live – it’s super dangerous for me to know that there’s a yarn making operation anywhere near their house, so I’m going to do my best to forget that as soon as possible.

As lovely as the yarn and sock blockers are (and they are, indeed, quite lovely), they pale in comparison to the last knitting gift I received, the one you can’t see in the first picture because it’s in this box:

Can you guess what that is?  That, my friends, is a circular needle case.  I’ve been wanting something exactly like this for years – I knit almost exclusively with circular needles (and by “almost exclusively”, I mean that the last time I knit with something that didn’t have a cable was probably in 2009), and I’ve never had an adequate sorting mechanism for them.

But now?

I feel more organized just looking at it.  It’s so trim, so smart, so perfect for me.

(It might have helped that I slipped the ad for it into the Blanket Thief‘s pocket…and told him which color to get me…)

Now, if only I could find all of my circulars to put into the different pockets, I’d be set…so far, I’ve only got one in there.

In other news, happy new year!  Here’s hoping your holidays were great, and that your 2011 is even better.

I’ve been meaning to post this for, um, an embarrassingly long time.  A few months, in fact, because this picture was taken in early October, when the Blanket Thief and I joined his family to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving.  My mother-in-law took us to the local Buy and Save, which is possibly the most disorganized, bazaar-esque shopping establishment I’ve ever been to.  We were almost done shopping when we looked up and saw this:

That’s yarn, surrounded by cookies (or biscuits, depending on who you’re talking to), hoagies, bread, stuffing mix, and giant bathroom displays.  How all of these products were brought together, we have no idea.  The current theory is that when the Buy and Save runs out of something, they fill the hole with whatever happened to come in last.

I think next time we go up, we’ll play a game where everyone gets the same list and we time how long it takes them to find everything on it.  Now I know I can put yarn on the list, too.