LK Knits

I never really wanted to have a portfolio of blogs for my various interests, but as Knowledge Problem has enjoyed increased visibility for my professional writing and commentary, I have backed off of writing about my personal interests as much there as I used to 4 years ago when I started it. Thus LK Knits. LK also tris, but unless you are interested in other peoples' triathlon training and food logs I cannot recommend it for general consumption (although I have assembled a very useful set of triathlon resource links, if I may say so myself).

What jogged me to do this was attending Bonne Marie's Chic Knits trunk show at Arcadia Knitting last Sunday. For the first time ever I have decided to join a knit-along that they are sponsoring of Bonne Marie's new Ariann cardigan. I am not a joiner by nature, which is why I'm a bad S-n-Ber, an irregular KIPer, and why I don't tend to do knit-alongs. But this pattern is gorgeous and the yarn, Berroco Ultra Alpaca in 6275 Pea Soup Green, is just delicious in addition to being good value for money.

Then my friend Sarah introduced me to See Eunny Knit!, which moves her to the position of #1 Enabler in my life (thanks very much ... just when I should be focusing on things other than knitting!). And my friend Nancy has been a great inspiration and knit-buddy since I taught myself in 1997.

And now this, thanks to the ease of dealing with Movable Type's installation on my main server.

I don't have an exhaustive set of knitting links here; for those I refer you to the excellent set of links at Chic Knits. These are sites that I read daily. Three in particular regularly take my breath away with their ingenuity, sense of style, and creativity, and inspire me to achieve things that I had not thought possible for myself: Chic Knits, Brooklyn Tweed, and See Eunny Knit!.

OK, let's knit.

Like many knitters, I am occasionally afflicted with startitis, and consequently end up with too many WIPs languishing in the basket. I have a lovely diamond lace cardigan from Interweave Knits in the now-discontinued Classic Elite Follies, in a lovely shade of winter white. It's been in the WIP pile for 3.5 years (!), and for 1.5 of those years has been awaiting sleeves. In fact, I made it to go with a very cool winter white and black stretch floral BCBG Max Azria dress that I sold on eBay last year! How pathetic is that? Problem is, no matter how spatially gifted and mathematically inclined I am, I cannot do increases in lace pattern on the fly. I tried doing so in the car on the way back from our Boundary Waters kayaking vacation last August, to no avail. Thus it sits, and awaits my charting.

I have found that for me, the optimal number of WIPs is 3: one "attention to detail" project (which is currently the Rogue hoodie's hood), one "brainless" project (I am doing waist shaping on the Ariann right now, so it's not exactly brainless), and one pair of socks. With these WIPs I am instantly prepared for any knitting situation and environment. Right now I have 5 WIPs: the lace cardigan, a pair of socks for the KP Spouse (in Regia bamboo, love it!), the Rogue hoodie, the Ariann cardigan, and an unnamed WIP that will be identified after it is gifted upon its recipient. That's 2 WIPs too many, and I am not sufficiently disciplined about sticking to the "no starting another one until this one is done" rule. But the last one is almost done, and it's a Christmas giftie, so the only True Violator is the lace cardigan.

I acquired something today that will help me finish the lace cardigan: a graph paper composition book. I'll use it first and foremost to chart those bloody increases. Then I'll use it to play with charting Celtic knots and cable patterns and ribbing. I feel more confident about doing that after having taken Melissa Leapman's Celtic knitting class at Stitches Midwest this past August. Texture, texture, texture. I'll also use it to play with copying designs from sweaters I've seen commercially. For example, there's this this simple ribbed Donegal tweed turtleneck at Garnet Hill that has front waist shaping, so the ribs move. It looks great. It's the kind of thing I would have done off of the top of my head as a novice knitter, but now I have more respect for the value of charting it out first to form some expectations as to its behavior in situ. Not that I will ever be a designer, but I do want to be capable of applying more attention to detail than is my natural inclination.

[comment lost in reconstruction of post-ed.]

Well ... I was so happy with how well Movable Type 3.31 was working with this new blog that I decided to delete and restart my main web site. It turns out that I didn't do everything I needed to in order for that to actually work ... so I've just finished recovering from having my host do a backup recovery.

But it's all good now. I have finished my Rogue and it's great! I also snuck in a little green cashmere watch cap, and spent most of yesterday working on Ariann. Pictures to follow.

[cross-posted from Knowledge Problem]

There's this really great outfit called Blue Moon Fiber Arts that makes some of the most gorgeous hand-dyed yarn for knitting that you can imagine; gorgeous yarn born out of the vision of one woman. I bought my first Blue Moon yarn, a variegated rayon in amazing shades of olive, a year and a half ago at Knit Purl in Portland, Oregon (a very nice and friendly store). Over the past year, lots of knitters around the world have fallen under the power of Socks that Rock, variegated sock yarn from Blue Moon. Indeed, I myself have a large skein of Socks that Rock, in the Cobblestone Country colorway. As soon as I'm done with the bamboo socks I'm making for the KP Spouse, I'll be making these for myself.

Blue Moon runs a Rockin' Sock Club in which you can sign up to receive a bi-monthly fix of Socks that Rock yarn for a year, among other goodies. Like so many other hobbies that appeal to fetishists, things like this sock club for this coveted yarn produced a frenzy, so much so that ... Blue Moon's bank closed its accounts and refunded all of the money to sock club members because they were convinced that Blue Moon was running a scam!

Is this the Patriot Act and the Bank Secrecy Act run amok, or just incompetent bank implementation of said regulation? It is certainly poor customer service!

For the Reader's Digest condensed version check out this Yarn Harlot post and this post at January One. Just to give you a sense of how big a frenzy this yarn/club have produced, note the almost 200 comments on the Yarn Harlot post about the "scam".

Note also Mr. Dubner's notes on this event at Freakonomics. His wife's been bitten by the bug too; will we soon be reading Freakonomics posts about how comfortable his homemade socks are? And he does comment that

Levitt’s sister runs Yarnzilla, an online and brick-and-mortar knitting emporium; and my wife has recently become a knitting zealot enthusiast. (I am always intrigued that so many people have embraced menial tasks — knitting, cooking, gardening, e.g. — as high-end hobbies, but that is a whole ‘nother story.)

I'd like to read that post, please, because it intrigues me too.

How often does knitting make the big time in the media? This week Subway Knitter is getting quite a bit of attention (from Chicagoist, the Boston Globe, and Boston Metro) for her Commuter Mittens. These handy mittens have a pocket on the back of the hand for your T/CTA/Metro card. I might even want a fingerless pair for once winter has passed, because I'm always fumbling for my CTA card.

She even raffled off a pair of her mittens among people who donated to a local charity. That's excellent!

I did two virtuous things as a knitter this weekend: I picked up my swift and ball winder from Arcadia, using it to wind my Socks That Rock sock yarn for my next pair of socks, and ... I aired my stash and started a spreadsheet to catalog it.

The interesting thing is that I don't have as much yarn as I thought I did, and I do have pretty clear ideas about what to do with my stash. I put a column in the spreadsheet to capture the ideas, and they are pretty extensive.

The other interesting thing is that I have three or four sweaters that I want to frog that are in the stash. One didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, and that's a waste of Debbie Bliss cotton denim aran, and the others are older sweaters that aren't as well-made or well-finished as I am capable of now. So they are gonna get remade, with some modifications. But I'm having so much fun knitting right now that I don't want to spend any time frogging!

That spreadsheet makes me feel so virtuous, it's incredible.

OK, this is dangerous: I really like the patterns at Knit and Tonic. I have more patterns than I could ever hope to knit, but her Flair jacket in particular is wonderfully fetching.

Progress continues on the Rebecca cotton cable polo sweater. I have very particular ideas about how I like to knit that make projects like this more difficult than they need to be. For one thing, I prefer to knit in the round, so when I get to the armholes, that means either working back and then front, or working back and front at the same time with two balls of yarn.

I also prefer to do the back and the front at the same time so that the decreases all match and the length is the same, and then I do a three-needle bind-off at the shoulders. That means carrying two working balls of yarn, and then three balls of yarn if the back has neck shaping. Lots to juggle!

And with this sweater, it's a polo neck, so that means that right now I'm carrying two balls for the front and one for the back. And yes, there's neck shaping too ...

I don't really mind, but I was kind of amused at the strange looks I got in the Denver airport while I was juggling all of these balls of yarn!

I figure I have about 4 more inches of body to knit, then I'll do the shoulders and the collar before doing the sleeves. Another weirdness I have: I like to do set-in sleeves top down. Thankfully, the plaited cable is top-bottom reversible, so I don't have to futz with the pattern.

I can't wait to wear the sweater; it'll look great with white pants and the oh-so-preppy madras platform espadrille sandals I bought this spring!

... but I've also been doing too many other things too, so knitting is taking a back seat. I've even been too busy to be able to use knitting as workcrastination! Thankfully it'll be over soon.

In October I said I wanted to make a swingy tunic cardigan. My friend MissPrint reminded me of the Lion Brand cable tunic pattern, and there's also this Zara cabled tunic at Tahki Stacy Charles. Yummmm! Love them both.

Worsted gauge, takes about 2,300 yards, hmmm ... will have to keep my eye peeled on elann or KnitPicks to see if I can find a bargain!

Otherwise, it's just plug, plug, plug along with the destash knitting. I am 14 rows away from being done with the front of Fife up to the armholes. Hopefully I can get the arms done over the holidays (6 hour drive each way) and get this sucker done! A 21-st gauge is not my friend.

I adore Brooklyn Tweed. Jared is so creative, so careful, and such a good knitter and photographer that he inspires me continually.

Today he linked to M&J Trimming as a good source of buttons for cardigans. Now that Tender Buttons in Chicago is closed, I am on the prowl for buttons on the infrequent occasions that I need them. I have three (yikes!) cardigans on the needles at the moment, one of which has been fermenting in the WIP pile for years ... and they all require a single, lovely, dramatic button closure.

They are having a 20% off the whole store sale through the end of the year! So I bought six buttons, even though I only need three ... but I'm sure the others won't go to waste.

So now I have yet another reason to be grateful to Jared.

Check out these great, easy, quick iPod socks from i knit this. What a great way to use up odds and sods of yarn.