G. Knerd

Usually when I catch Monkey Kitty doing something hilarious, he’s too shy to keep at it while I turn on the video camera on my phone and start recording.  For example, we put a sheet with a bunch of little Tinkerbells on one of the couches to try to keep cat hair off of the couch itself, and Monkey Kitty loves to pounce on the Tinkerbells – unless the camera is rolling, in which case he just looks at you inquiringly and meows softly.  It’s almost like he’s saying, “Um, mom?  This is kind of a personal thing I have to do, I’d rather there not be a record of it later.”

But when there’s yarn involved?  Apparently that’s more important than a little dignity.

Today, we brought home a bag of yarn.  I thought the Blanket Thief had put it safely away in the office, while he thought that I had protected it.  Ten minutes after we got home, Monkey Kitty started meowing by the entry table, and then I heard a soft “thump”.

I went upstairs to find…well, it’s really just better if I show you.

And this is why I can’t leave yarn out unattended for even five minutes…

I really thought I was getting much better about not leaving yarn out for Monkey Kitty to find.  There haven’t been any major incidents in quite a while, to the point that I almost suspected that he might even have gotten over his love of yarn destruction.

Just goes to show that you can never be too vigilant.  I apparently let down my guard for one night, and what happened?

Now, I say I “apparently” let down my guard because I would have sworn that I had remembered to put the yarn and notions bag on the high shelf, but obviously Monkey Kitty got to it somehow.  The only alternative to me leaving it out would be that he’s figured out how to get stuff off of the 6″ tall bookshelf, and that doesn’t bear contemplating.

When I found the yarn, I might have lost my mind a little bit.  I picked up the whole mass and chased Monkey Kitty around the room, shaking it at him and yelling, “Yarn is scary!  You should hate yarn!  Run away, run from the yarn!”  The whole process probably made the yarn even harder to untangle, although after a couple hours I managed to take the pile of knots and turn it back into a ball of yarn.

For the record, while it did scare him, I don’t think he understood what he was supposed to be scared about.  I got the impression he just thought I was crazy, so he left me alone for a few hours before forgetting what had happened and curling up on my lap.

Yeah, I don’t think he picked up on that “yarn is scary” message at all…

I wish sometimes that I lived in Germany.  Not, mind you, that I know much German, but I think I could pick it up pretty quickly, and I know that enough people in Germany speak English that I could definitely get by.  Germany is where the sock yarn comes from, and is the only place I know of where you can get Soccer (aka Football) team inspired colorways in your sock yarn.

I bought this in Germany when I was touring Europe after college, and lucked out because the Soccer Team yarn was apparently last year’s style and was all on clearance – I scored this one for Portugal as well as some yarn for Germany, Denmark, and Brazil, and all on a former college kid’s budget (or lack thereof).

The ball looks a little rough, since it’s been marinating in my stash for almost five years and has already been through one failed attempt to become socks.  This time around, I’m going with something that I’m pretty sure will look awesome with just about anything:

A slightly modified version of Hourglass.  Basically, I changed the cuff to k1tbl p1 rib, added another repeat around to make them fit my feet, change the heel to my standard pseudo auto-heel, modified how the pattern edges work on the instep, and changed the toe to my standard smooth-decreases-around one.  But other than that I followed the pattern as written – oh, except that I moved the flower medallions inside the arches up a row so that they were more centered between the curves, rather than what was obviously written to be knitted flat with the YOs happening on the same row as the moving stitches.

Okay, so maybe these are more inspired by Hourglass instead of actual implementations of Hourglass.  Still, I love this pattern.  It’s saved me before from a failed attempt at sock creation, and as I’ve said before it knits up super quick.  I’m not sure why when it’s got plenty of fiddly one stitch cables and most of the stitches are purls, but there you have it.  Fast, fun, works with all yarn patterns, comfortable to wear, and interesting to look at.  You couldn’t dream up a better pattern if you tried.

Then again, I’ve only tried it with a tweedy solid, a marl, and now stripes.  It might not work on insane yarn…but even if it didn’t, I would still love it for all the other places it can be used.  And, really, who can blame a pattern for not looking good when used with a yarn that looks like clowns conspired to make us all sick?

I was honored to be one of the bridesmaids at my friend Erica’s wedding a couple weekends ago.  It was the first time I’d ever bridesmaided (I’m totally making that a word), and no one in my family has had a wedding involving bridesmaids, so I got to learn about all sorts of nifty traditions that I had never known about before.

Like, for example, not only do the guests give the couple presents (everyone knew about that one, right?), but the bride gives the bridesmaids presents!

Erica being the lovely woman that she is, she decided to personalize the gifts for each of us.  So, along with a bunch of other stuff that I found absolutely charming, delightful, wonderful, or all three, I found:

Sock yarn from Spud & Chloe, in the perfect shade of green.  This completely matches the wedding present my mother-in-law gave me when I got married, and has made me come to a realization.

All weddings should involve giving me yarn.  Or, at least, they should if I’m doing something more significant than attending them.  I guess it’s not a requirement if you’re just going to invite me to any wedding…

…although, quite frankly, I wouldn’t mind if it was.

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.

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?

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.

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…

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.