Moth Heaven

Cranking Ain't for Sissies

Okay, I fiddled with the tension and got the fabric I wanted, and I threw some stash Regia (4 color #2032) on there and over the course of two nights, I cranked and twiddled and picked up dropped stitches (How hard is it to pick up a dropped stitch when the fabric is under tension?  It runs like a scared rabbit, my friends.) and cursed when I didn't move the heel fork up often enough (if you don't know what that means, don't worry) and counted rows to get them to match and voila! (as if that were representative of something effortless ::snerk::) socks.

Really?  They look like co-joined twins, don't they?  You have to knit everything in a continuous tube, so in there you might be able to pick out my red scrap yarn for the transitions, and four turnings, which will make up toes and heels when the tube is cut apart and kitchenered together correctly. 

Kitchenered?

Did the desirability factor just peg down another notch?  What, don't you fancy grafting together 30 stitches at a time? But look what you get for your troubles.

Real socks.  Picot tops, short row heels and toes.  Not too bad, eh? And that's just a beginner's sock.

So you don't think I've totally gone over to the dark side, I'll show you that there has been real manual knitting going on between the tantrums (mine and otherwise)

A Swallowtail shawl ( IK, Fall 2006) in the elusive sparkly green hand-spun (yes, Susan, it's true!) ready for the second chart.

 

And the scarf for the Teenager modelled by the resident scarf model, George (Standard Poodle, 12 years old, scruffy as a rule).

Some commented that the cables might render the scarf undesirable for the Punk-in-Training sensibilities of my step son, but I quickly found out that this scarf will probably never have just one owner.  The Mister raised his eyebrows approvingly several times in the direction of the scarf as it emerged from the needles, and Miss C asked if maybe I could knit her a scarf like that in her favorite colour.

"What's your favorite colour?" I had to ask because honey, I have no idea from one week to the next.

"Olive green."

Oh.  Of course.
 

Saturday Fiber Orgy, part The Second

After extracting myself from the delightful company at Yarns in the Farms last Saturday, I drove south to the Northboro library, and set up my newly-acquired green Harmony Circular Sock Knitting Machine in the company of about 10 other cranker and friends Kathy and Laurie who had come to watch. It seems that Mr Etherknitter may be a little bit interested in the things.  Could we have a sock-knitting husband in the works, hm?

It wasn't long before I was cranking away.  There must have been some sympathetic magic in the air because my machine, which when last you saw how it worked, made fabric that looked like this, in the company of so many other well-mannered and domesticated CSMs made fabric that looked like this!

Here it is turning a heel.  It was positively showing off. There was a lot of help and encouragement going around. Kelly was hopping between the newbies

and Barbara was tweaking for the more experienced among us, but not before she helped me make a picot hem and a "bonnet" which is a much quicker way to put new wok on a machine than the set-up basket I was trying to rig the thing with. 

Here she is (in purple) helping out Kat and Mona (in fair-isle), non-bloggers I know through the New England Textile Arts group.  Mona was cranking some spectacular ribbed dress socks for her husband out of some R & M yarn that looks like nothing on the cone, but when washed is something really special. I also admired the very sensible use of Black and Decker Workmate stations that Mona and Kat had set up, with extra light and room for a soda besides. Kelly's workstation was another thing altogether, hand-made by her talented Rick, who seems able to improve on everything in the world of fiber equipment through the judicious application of an injection mold and an arc welder. Pictures cannot do it justice, but it was something like cross between an old cobbler's bench and the duct work from the movie Brazil.  I want one, 'natch.

Have I mentioned yet how sensible my  sock yarn stash seems all of a sudden?  I may knit most of it in my lifetime after all.

Saturday Fiber Orgy, part The First

To tell you the end of the story first, which by no means ruins the telling, you should know that I have managed my first cranked sock. 

I haven't closed the toe, which is why you see that red sock monkey mouth hanging out there.  I won't be bothered since the guage is loose and the sock is unwearable.  I will be finessing when next I sit down to the CSM. 

Last Saturday, The mister and The Diva were off in London for Spring break pillaging the kinds of places acquisitive 14 year olds love to pillage and dashing through the kinds of significant cultural places where dads wished they weren't in the company of impatient 14 year olds. They did get to see the current Roundhouse production of A Midsummer Night's Dream which makes me jealous like Helena herself, but I managed my own kind of fun here at home.  Not to be bitter, I made fiber plans to drown my left behind sorrows, hired a baby sitter for the day, and went down to my favorite yarn shop for my own little rapture session: a class in needle felting with Jill Stover, fiber artist, children's book writer/illustrator, and ex-pat Texas gal. 

We had a blast frolicking with pointy tetanus-free objects.

I ran into Martha there!

And Jill let us watch her make magic with felting needles.

We admired the resident teenaged felting genius's dog portraits (want one? I bet she'd make you one for a price).

And I made a wonky looking dragon, which started out trying to be a cat.  But Jill says you have to listen to the wool.  The wool will tell you what it wants to be.  I like that about her.

And then there was more . . .

Circular Sock Knitting Machine, Part 1

Warning: picture intensive post.  My apologies to anyone on dial-up.

You remember this?

Harmony Circular Knitting Machine, purchased locally through a kind of magic intervention of the Fates. Since I posted about it a few weeks ago, I've been reading up on the lists and the book and getting all my ducks in a row so I could "crank", as they say.  I had the guys who are renovating my barn cut a machine-shaped divot in the side of the stool I had sitting around in the basement.  This particular form of mounting is one of the several orthodoxies of CSMers. One could also find a special table manufatured for the purpose, legs from the original machines, or even Victorian style battleship-sinking typewriter tables.  You just have to make sure the weight of the machine is centered so that the whole thing doesn't fall over and knock all the parts out of alignment or leave a huge hole in something precious. I held my breath in anticipation.  It's not something you can just slip into the household routine like spinning because there are so many more enchanting and moving parts, and it is so very interesting to children who want to help, and by help, they mean play with it until something snaps. I tucked it away and waited.

Then suddenly, one morning, I found myself  deafened by the silence of contented reading children all over the house, so I set the thing up.

I took Barbara Clorite Ventura's advice and used acrylic baby yarn to start, because this is inevitably the era of heartbreak for every new CSM'er.  I threaded the yarn according to the book up through the yarn stand

through the yarn carrier and what I think is called the tappet plate (that curved thing there with the white hole in it), into the realm of the needles. I wove the yarn according to the illustration between the arms of the "set-up basket" and the needles

and then I gave the machine a few turns.  What resulted made it pretty clear that whatever Barabara Clorite Ventura meant by acrylic baby yarn wasn't at all what I had used in the way of acrylic baby yarn. It looked like a cat had upchucked a yarn ball onto my stool. I unwove and snipped carefully and used a teeny little crochet hook to fish out some of the more entrenched bits.  I took a closer look at the needles.

Some of them weren't opening all the way, so I oiled them with sewing machine oil.  I suspect that I am making a big booboo in using sewing machine oil, since there seems to be some quibbles on the CSM lists about the precise kind of oil for various machines, but shoot me, it works well enough for now that the needles don't stick open any more and don't get gummed up in the operations that followed.  I may eat my words later, but hey, this is a blog.  What is a blog if not about the learning curve, right?

And there were a few that seemed to hang up a little.  I lifted them clear of the works (that line that curves around the needles there?  It's a spring that holds them in place, but lets them out if you disengage them properly)

and compared them to new needles.  You're looking at one good needle and one really yucked up one.  The difference was subtle.  Really subtle.  But I replaced them anyway. The whole shebang ran a little more smoothly without any yarn on it, so I decided to rig it up again, this time with crochet cotton which wouldn't snarl and split like the baby acrylic had.

This time I left more space between the set-up basket and the needles.  It takes an even hand to do this with consistent tension all the way around.  It took me a few tries before I got it right.  Then I gave it another go, fussing with the stitches, trying to make then behave.

I learned this time around that once a stitch is f*cked, it stays f*cked, no matter how delicately you try to make it work on the next round.  Swearing at it doesn't seem to help either.  Someone is going to have to teach me how to pick up dropped stitches, I can tell.  So I unwove and snipped carefully and used a teeny little crochet hook to fish out some of the more entrenched bits (does that sound familiar?).   I also changed the position of the yarn carrier (using a screw driver!  Add that one to your notions kit if you want to play, kids) ever so slightly to practically touch the needle heads so that the yarn was being fed right into the openings of the needles.  Before, the yarn was being fed right at the bottom of the openings.  It's a difference of about 2mm, but I thought it might make a difference.  Come to think of it, I noticed that the tappet plate had little skid marks on it, which suggested to me that the (successful) knitter before me had really choked up on that bat.  I was getting warmer. Then I rigged it up again (see above).

Better, but still, it's not exactly a sock. I have gotten every needle to make a proper stitch at least once.  That's progress, isn't it?

And so it goes.  I will get to be at a crank-in this Saturday at the Northboro library (10 to 5 y'all) for a wee bit, so I hope I can get some more experienced opinions about what adjustments I need to make.  In the meantime, is there a cranker in the house?  Any tips?

Just a Basic Scarf

On Saturday, the Teenage Boy -- now rounding 17 and driving a car he has on permanent loan from his mother (she maintains that she won't buy him a car, even though he is the only driver insured for the black Volkswagen BioDiesel Golf you see parked in our driveway on weekends) -- the Teenage Boy went out to catch the bus to get to his job at the Gaming store the next town over.   He had to catch the bus because the car was spot welded to the driveway by a bank of snow turned into ice overnight, and at 9 a.m. there would be no tool short of a jackhammer that would pry the thing from the Mastodon-sized stalagmite that had been shored up and reinforced by our friendly neighboorhood plough guy.  So secure was it where it stood that it would have made a nice bomb shelter I think, had the nuclear power plant up the highway decided to blow that day, but I digress.

The Teenage Boy, who looks these days like Chris Sligh (minus the glasses) might on punk rock night (when John Lydon guest stars to mentor the finalists on the finer points of the Sex Pistols and Public Image Limited songbook, of course) with his studded leather jacket emblazoned with a Cramps logo and many many silver studs about the collar and epaulets, was putting on his "outdoor" gear to go stand at the bus stop.  Keep in mind it was 15 F/-10 C out, and all he wanted to wear was a flannel shirt and the jacket.  The jacket may be outerwear technically , but when the weather has eaten your car, you have to admit that it's only as warm as a single thickness of leather can be versus a glacier.  Cows do freeze to death, you know?

He consented to big green Kamik boots we keep about the place for such occasions, but there was not a scarf in the pile of lovely hand knit woolies by the back door that he would consent to put on his person were he naked to the elements.  It has been over a year since he last wore the hat I made for him long ago and while he used to revel in the notoriety such a multi-appendaged hat brought him, he is a serious Punk now, and such rococo silliness is for hippies. Which brings me to the knitting. 

It is my justification to the family that all the wool is for them.  Or at least some of the wool.  Dinner is late not because I am immersed in a mere hobby.  I am in fact making clothes and making clothes is one fundamental of the holy human trinity: clothes, food, shelter.  In fact, it's number one on the list, before clothes, you will notice.  But sooner or later they are going to notice that the clothes in progress are all for me.  I should throw at least one of them a bone or they'll be onto me soon.  And what kind of knitter would I be if I didn't provide something to keep the neck of my children warm that they wouldn't be humiliated to wear? 

I asked the Teenager later about the ideas I had for scarves.  Something with a skull like Yorick or something graphic like Exchequered were both rejected.  "Just a basic scarf," he said.  "If it was soft but not made of that bunny stuff, that would be good too." So I am knitting a basic scarf.  With reversible cables (I have to slip something in there.  No one will know but me) from Jaegar Extra Fine Merino, just like the one in the Northampton Wools book.  Nothing exciting, but another easy lap around the track after the Aran marathon to work out the kinks.  I have to gather my strength.  I'll tell you why soon.

Saturday Sky

I've never posted a Saturday Sky picture before, even though Sandy is practically my neighbor, but tonight after the ice storm lifted and the sun peaked through to light the icicle covered trees, it was too good to resist.

And also, there's this, which I know some people have wanted to see.  Thanks to everyone for all the compliments lavished on the blocking board.  I am pleased, but a little compliment is always nice to hear.  Now, if you already chimed in, you really don't need to say anything more.  A girl's head can get turned by too much attention, y'all. ::grin::

Details:
Celtic Dreams pattern by Beth Brown Reinsel and yarn in colour Chesnutt bought from Blackwater Abbey Yarns.
Modifications: I never got the row gauge right, so there's an extra pattern repeat in the body, and I picked up the stitches for the skirt symmetrically rather than how the pattern is written (you'll know what I mean when you get there).  I also made fewer stitches in the skirt than the pattern calls for because I heard from other knitters that the skirt as written is "flippy".  With two cables fewer around than called for, it's still plenty full, but I like it.  I also changed the sleeve decreases to run the full length of the arm, and I altered the configuration of the cables around the cuff.  It's the prettiest sweater I've knit in years, and fits really well.  I think I may have finally figured out this gauge thing.

Now after the long haul of an Aran sweater, it's time for some instant gratification worsted weight socks:

Romney/Mohair Handpaint Block Socks kit bought from Cloverleaf Farms, at Rhinebeck. 

(tell me again why I normally knit socks on 0's?)

Celtic Dreams Home Stretch

On Saturday, I spent time with dear knitting friends welcoming little Ms Bookish, and I knit.  I knew the assembly wouldn't mind. Knitting friends are good like that. The wouldn't begrudge me my last three inches of a long-anticipated sweater because they understand that it is possible to knit and talk at the same time.  Muggles think you're spaced out and not paying attention to them when you're stitching away, even checking a chart or turning a cable.  But knit friends: they get it.

By the time I got home, all that was left was to knit up the neck as prescribed (neck modifications seem to be very popular on this pattern, but I went with it as written since I like the garter rib edging, and it matches the cast off at the wrists and the hem)

Sewing up the set in sleeves and the underarm seam since I had decided to knit them flat, a decision I stand by since wrangling an Aran sleeve in-the-round while attached to a whole sweater just to save a seam job isn't my idea of a labour-saving device.

Then a soak in kookaburra wool wash (you're right Carolyn, it is nice) in the family tub and

a sunny day on the woolly board.  You didn't know I had one, did you?  It was a gift from the Mister long ago when I was primarily a knitter of square sweaters.  It has been a decade since this baby has seen the light of day.  It took me a long moment to remember how to set it up, but eventually it came together, and 18 hours later the sweater is almost dry. 

And for those of you just tuning in in one way or another, that's Black Water Abbey in cinnamon.  That last picture in the sunlight is the best representation I've managed on the blog of what it looks like in person.  Nice, eh?

The re-Turn of the Wheel

I have had a hard time enjoying the spinning for the last six months since I was having a trial with the big wheel.  The wheel wouldn't take up, no matter what I tried, until a committee of opinions determined the problem lay not with me but with the bobbins.  I sent the lot back to Pat Russo, the wheelwright, and he drilled out the bushings more and sent them back better than new.  He theorized that this wheel, only the third mahogany wheel he's ever made, may have been susceptible to the cold and dry air of winter, and the wood  may have contracted around the bushings making them too small to play freely in the flyer.  He's going to make sure all his bushings are plenty big from henceforth. So now that I am past the blow to my spinning enthusiasm, I am spinning joyfully on both wheels.

On the Tina is some gorgeous flame coloured Wensleydale from Cloverleaf Farms I bought at Rhinebeck.  I'm spinning it as a sport weight single to make the Shoalwater Shawl that Cheryl also has a passion for at the moment (no surprise there: we seem to have a lot of projects in common these days.  I'll just call her my oracle from now on, me thinks).  On the big wheel is some polworth/silk blend called Stained Glass from Nancy Benda's The Spinning Bunny.  It isn't very photogenic at the moment, but it will be a lovely thing when it's done as you might imagine from the name of the colourway.
And then there's this: a vintage Harmony sock knitting machine I finally got time enough to go pick up from its previous owner.  It's in fine working order, and has all its parts.  I feel spoiled by the powers that be, but I won't count my blessings until I rig the thing up -- it's about as complicated as a schooner, and just as hard to sail.  I ran into Ruth and her charming youngest at The Woolpack on my way home yesterday and showed it to her, sitting on my front seat as you see it here.  Ooooh, she said, feeling sorry for me and the downward spiral I am obviously caught in with this.  She for one was remarkably calm, given what's been happening at her house lately.  But she was in a yarn store, self-medicating I would guess.  The wool fumes beat xanax in my book any day as long as you breath deeply enough.

As for the reigning sweater project, Celtic Dreams, I have several inches on that sleeve to go before it's fodder for the wooly board. There will be pictures, oh there will be pictures.

Sleeve Drama

Things I don't like about the way the Celtic Dreams sleeve is written:

First, I decided I didn't like the way the cuff cables fall.

They aren't centered lengthwise across the cuff,

so I ripped and added a few rows before I began the cabling.

Much better.

Then I decided that I don't think that the way the sleeve is designed is flattering for me.  All of the decreases happen above the elbow (or do they? I keep re-reading that part of the pattern and I don't get it.  That I chose to knit the sleeve flat instead of in the round may have had something to do with my confusion).  I sewed it up and looked at in on the body, and I didn't like the way the every fourth row decreases made the fabric behave all up in my pit vicinity.  The model who wears the sweater so alluringly is much smaller that the sweater they have put on her, and she is holding a lot of the fabric behind her.  The sleeve very well may be a tube from the elbow down on that original, and it looks just fine on her, but on me? . . . meh.

So I decided to rip it out

going

going

GONE!

It only hurts for a little while. The sleeve is restored by now, one decrease every four rows on alternate sides (to mimic the way it would fall knit in the round) but I ended up with about 6 stitches too many by the time I made it to the cuff.  No worries, I just flubbed it, and it worked out fine. 

The second sleeve is now under way.  I am breathing again.

CSM Update: The Boy was sent home from school yesterday with conjunctivitis, so I couldn't get away to check out that machine.  I'll try again tomorrow. And for those of you who spun with me on Saturday: I haven't caught it, so I don't think you have anything to worry about having been in the same room with me.   But gross, eh?.

Daughters of Liberty

Carole from the Island Pond Spinners put out the call last week for the annual spin-in to commemorate the Daughters of Liberty , the women who made the wearing of homespun a patriotic act before the boys did their own little burning man thing down on the quay in Boston harbour.  (By the way, it behooves my civic pride to make note that the Newburyport boys lead by John Lowell -- the man who built the house we live in -- burned tea here in Market Square a whole week before Sam Adams lead the charge on the Dartmouth, but I digress)

Since I had to miss Spa and The Mister was home for a few days, I announced I was going out Saturday in the name of patriotism, loaded my wheel into Alpaca Kathy's van, and off we went. I left my camera at home, but Kath sent me the pictures she took. 

Here's me, nattering on to Cheryl McC. We were discussing how patriotic we felt making our own yarn and eating through the box of Godiva chocolates someone brought. So what if they're Belgian?  The wool is domestic.

And Seedstitch Cheryl, hair looking Yankee Doodle Dandy in spite of recent trauma:

You'll recognize Terry, still shopping for that wheel trying out a Majacraft Rose.  I think she may have liked my Jensen Tina the best of the offerings that day, but she is still looking.  I can't wait to see what wheel finally wins her heart. Pssst: Terry?  The Jensen is American made!

And over in the corner, there were a couple of crankers, that is, people with circular sock knitting machines, Carole our hostess and Kelly. That's Shirley in the green apron who handles the Ships Project details for NETA looking over Kelly's ribbed pieces.

.

Kelly and Carole helped a newbie with a fresh from ebay Legare (one brand of sock machine from Quebec -- tres cool) make her first tube, and Carole turned a heel successfully. I am smitten with the CSMs (as they are called among the crankers), as I knew I would be when I first learned they existed about two years ago. Thanks to the small network of crankers,  I may already have a lead on a Harmony (a brand from Bartlett Yarns' hometown, Harmony, Maine) from a local woman.  I'm going to visit it Monday after I drop The Boy at school.  I'll let you know.

I feel the urge to hum This Land is Your Land all of a sudden, don't you?