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So today's the day the critter goes into the machine. I have ruined one of these before, so I stuff the legs with old nylons as a precaution and sew the bottom shut with cotton. Sometimes the nylons bunch up inside and can lead to a misshappen leg, but that can be taken care of while it dries. Felting is the only reason I wish I had a top-loader.
So here he is, cute as a button. Hopefully he'll survive. Wish the two of us luck.
First, the giraffe. The convenient LYS was out of Lemon Drop, so Walter and Miss C picked up Sun yellow instead. It isn't a bad match, and frankly I like the effect of a paler belly. It's like the giraffe hasn't turned over in the tanning bed for awhile. I have the ears made too, so today I will seam.
Meanwhile, there's something strange going on with the Linen Drape. I'm beginning to like it. Well, maybe like is too strong a word for it. Let's just say that I have a healthy respect for it. I have settled into an even rhythmn with it; this is a yarn that doesn't take uneven tension kindly. There are four stitches in a row about five inches before the underarm cast off that are slightly looser than the rest, and they are screaming at me. But no way am I frogging to shut them up. However, the fabric coming off the needles is just elegant. I admire the definition of the seed stitch at the bottom edge, and I'm actually a little excited to get to the lacy bits around the neck when I conquer the front piece to see how that works up. I read a couple of reviews of the yarn on Kim Salazaar's Wise Needle site, and both knitters admit that it takes an experienced hand to work with this yarn, but claim that the finished fabric softens with wash and wear.
So I wouldn't say that Linen Drape and I are in love yet. I might say that it's a little like one of those Hollywood movies where two impossibly different characters who despise each other are thrown into an unusual situation--like, oh for example, a luxury liner that gets flash-frozen in a time travelling iceberg about to be hit by an asteroid--and have to stick it out, yet come out the other end happy to be together. Yeah. Just like that.
When I made the giraffe last time, I added the spots after felting with embroidery floss. This time I'm going to experiment with felting the spots. If you click on the picture, you can see how far my embroidery skills lag behind my knitting ability.
My husband has promised to actually walk into a yarn store all by himself and buy me another skein of Lamb's Pride for me on the way back from picking kids up from school this afternoon. This man is fearless. He buys me a digital scale, he gets my Ortho scrip refilled(granted, that is in his own best interest), buys me girl stuff at the supermarket. And now he buys me yarn. No wonder I love him.
So until this afternoon, I am working on my Griffindor scarf for the Azkaban knit-along that Iko is hosting. My NatureSpun arrived from Patternworks yesterday. I'm thinking I'll give it to my workout partner's youngest son who is a Harry Potter fanatic. My own kids are either too young (as in 2 years old) or too cool to actually wear a Harry Potter scarf, so I don't think anyone will want to poach it. That and the fact that the Griffindor burgundy and gold are the same colours as those of their lacrosse rival. It should be safe, but I may have to knit it in secret anyway.
Alison posted on her blog that I would post giraffe modifications for the Fiber Trends Felted Llama, and not one to make liars of my friends, I will offer the guidelines if people want them. I'm a little uneasy about copyright issues, y'see. It's basically a matter of adding six stitches to each of the legs, narrowing the body four stitches altogether, and adding 25 rows to the neck. The rest you can figure out for yourself, really. For horns, I make an 3 stitch i-cord, and bind it tightly but for the very end which bulges slightly to look like the crown on the top of a typical giraffe's horn. If there's demand for more details, I might email them. I'll show you more soon, but I've run out of the Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride yellow I am using. Time to buy more yarn!
Did you know that the closest relative of the giraffe is the Okapi?
That there are several species of giraffes each with distinctive markings?
That giraffes have prehensile tongues?
I'll leave you to ponder these on your own.
You may have noticed that I have a fear of three colours across a single row. And in the Insomnia Sweater, there are several occasions when this is required. In fact, when I put this sweater into the Rubbermaid Time Capsule several years ago, it was precisely on the brink of one of these dreaded three-colour rows. However, this time around I have figured out that three colours are no worse than two colours. I used to knit two colours one at a time, even in fairisle, which meant that I twisted them around each other. The colour being knit would always have to be "on top", as you can see in the somewhat blurry photograph here on the left. Each row resembles a barberpole because of the twisting. I always thought this was rather attractive. But when three yarns are being workd, the whole thing becomes a bit of a rugby scrum. The area highlighted is three colours, which you can see is just a mess of twisting yarn. Imagine what the rats' nest of the bobbins looked like.
This year I made myself knit two-colour mittens using the two-handed stranding method described by Alice Starmore in her book Fair Isle Knitting . The simple revelation for me there was that the strand of yarn about to be knitted does not have to wrap itself over the other strand as it comes to be knitted. The two strands seem to follow a parallel track behind the work, the stitches are secure as colours change, and no holes happen even if the two yarns never touch at all back there. The thing I learned this week is that the way that two colours fall in parallel tracks when one knits them in the two-handed method is transferable to three colours. I can't explain this well without a diagram, and since I can't draw well enough to make you a diagram, you might have to just trust me on this. You probably already know this, but for me it was a thrill to not have my bobbins all tangled together at the end of every row. I just kept the green yarn on top, the brown yarn in the middle, and the rust yarn at the bottom, like lines on a musical staff, if you can follow what I mean. And it worked beautifully, as you might be able to tell from this photo on the right. The three rows closest to the needle are the beginning of the same three-colour pattern that is highlighted in the blurry photograph above.
Meanwhile, I have worked on Jaipur in the reviled Linen Drape. I don't know why. It's like chewing on a hangnail: it hurts, but it sort of feels good at the same time. You know?
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I gave Simply Marilyn to The Divine Miss C this afternoon, and she agreed to pose for a snap. It fits just as intended: big but not baggy, not too long in the sleeves (I left out 3 inches of the ribbing) and the collar with a few extra rows is a fun accessory to fiddle with. Contrary to 'round table discussion at Knitsmiths, it does not want to sneak down the shoulders. Says The Divine Miss C "It's all warm and snuggly. I like it." 
And just because, here's a gratuitous cat picture:
Most colourwork is fairly straightforward in its requirements: does the knitter strand the yarn across the back in fairisle technique, or twist adjacent yarns together as the row moves across from one colour to the next in intarsia? And then there's the whole school of Fasset where the demands of the pattern upon the knitter's repetoire of colour techniques is opaque. Such as this keyhole pattern along the bottom border in Kilim, aka, the Insomnia Sweater.
When last we met said garment, the knitter in question, me, was ridiculing her former knitting self for her naivete in carrying the yarn all the way across and muddling the back of the work with unnecessary bulk when it seemed it would be obvious that the simple twist of intarsia would clear all this up. And then I reacquainted myself with the pattern as I cast on for the second half of the front. I faced this dilemma: worked in cotton, as this is, I know that woven ends never really ever are woven in to stay. They may rest there fixed behind for awhile, but they like to peek out on occasion just to see if that pesky Chibi Needle is still hanging around. So the fewer little ends, I say, the better.
And then I noticed when I was looking through the magazine again, the child's version of Kilim, (pity the poor knitter) with a telltale view of the sleeve that clearly shows signs of stranding across the back of the work(click for a closer view).
Hey, I wasn't as dumb as I think I was.
After a Tuesday Night at the Library session, here's where I am on the second half of the front:
Every once in awhile on the Sockknitters list, someone will mention the merit of postal scales for rationing precious skeins of particularly dear sock yarn. Say you have a 4 ounce skein of Mountain Colors: how is a knitter to know when the half-way point has been reached and the cuff or the toe should be finalized?(depending on direction you made the sok from, natch) . There are many ingenious solutions to this problem like knitting a tube to divide it in half and adding cuffs and toes and afterthought heels later. However, this gadget of postal scale appeals to the materialist acquisitionist that I am, so I mentioned this to my husband, King of Vacuum Tubes and Ancient Hifi Gear. (pause for an aside)
Walter builds his own sound reproduction systems. To call it a stereo would be a misrepresentation because some of them are in mono, and these days he's working on a three speaker system with a subwoofer that's bigger than most refrigerators. He solders like I knit. As often as possible. One of the things that he's constantly on the lookout for is old tube stuff, so if any of you have this stuff hanging around, maybe we can work out a Tubes for Yarn deal, like Kimberly's Pez for Yarn program.
Anyway, being on the prowl means that he's always off to flea markets, yard sales, and Ham Radio Fests. He tries to participate in the knitting thing as much as he can, but being a human furnace, he doesn't really need the few sweaters I've made for him. He likes the math part. Gauge he gets. So when I mentioned to him that I might want a postal scale for evenly dividing yarn between two socks, he brings me this home from the MIT Flea Market today:
It's a chemist's scale, accurate to three decimal points of a ounce. I should be able to get that yarn allocation accurate to the centimeter. Wow.
I have to say that it wasn't until I owned a chemist's scale that I considered how much the names of sock yarn sound like they could just as easily be for street drugs.
Opal.
Fixation.
Koigu.
Fortissima Disco.
Thrums.
No obvious jokes here about wool and addiction. You can make some though, if you want.
My husband loves me.
Maybe he'll wear a pair of socks.
