January Updates

Man, oh man. I never get insomnia. My husband does (and not to be insensitive to his position, but try sleeping with an 800-pound gorilla with allergies and insomnia - it's more fun), but not me.

I do tonight. Let's make the most of it, shall we?

• I'm interested in talking to some small-scale indie dyers, folks with great skills who have maybe set up their own Etsy shop and may be looking for another outlet for their wares. Everybody, search your stashes: whom can you recommend?

• Everybody is already completely and totally aware that lots and lots of Rav designers are donating proceeds from their patterns to organizations participating in relief for Haiti. I joined in, and this is not a bid for me to get more sales. Honestly, if you want to make a bigger difference, donate directly rather than having part of your money sucked away to Paypal. If you were interested in purchasing my pattern or any of these other designers' patterns, now is a great time to do it.

• Did you see that Ysolda raised over $6000 in a weekend that way? Holy moly.

• I was amazed to see that the Fishens I knit on a whim in the fall have passed the 100-heart mark for favorites on Ravelry. That's pretty cool - and they weren't even the colors I really wanted.

• I've got a couple test knitters cranking away on a cardigan I designed. FYI: test knitters are good. They catch things like me putting the repeat in the wrong place on the chart.

Endpaper Mitts FO with hand-dyed yarn

Way back when, I tried dyeing for the first time with Kool-Aid. I really enjoyed the bright blue that came out. But turns out, it's really hard to match vivid robin's egg blue with anything else.

Fortunately, I'm married to a graphic designer who knows color theory. (He comes with other perks, too.) Sweet man: he sat down with me one day and went through some color sample books and some graphic design websites until we found the best combo possible from my stash. I typically go for two complimentary colors, but he reminded me that you can reach for another shade in the same general family, and sometimes those can "pop," too.

Last week, I finished these:

pattern: Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang
completed: January 12.
yarn: Knit Picks Bare, dyed with 2.5 packets of Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade, and Knit Picks Palette in Calypso Heather. What a shock, another blue-green yarn from Yours Truly.
made for: Now here's the thing. I ought to have used size 2.5 needles, but I don't own any, so I went down to size 2. Shocker: they're really snug on me, even after blocking with my handy-dandy new blocking T-pins. Not unbearably, but still. And I do have other gloves. Perhaps a gift for someone else.
mods: See above re: needle size. When will I learn?

Piecework Magaine: How could I almost forget?

It's a good thing in the life of a writer when you become so accustomed to seeing your work in print that you forget that it is still awesome.

And it is.

If you get a chance, pick up the current issue of Piecework Magazine. My article "Knitting for the Stage" appears.

Can you figure out what this gentleman is wearing that was in fact knit by hand?

Fredric Stone as Jamy in the Utah Shakespearean Festival’s 2009 production of Henry V. (Photo by Karl Hugh.
Copyright Utah Shakespearean Festival 2009.)

Read the article to find out!

Coming Clean

A Rav friend over at Briney Deep came clean about how big her stash has gotten. Six miles to be exact.

Huh. Well. You take the Rav stash feature, download it into Excel, sum up the column, do a little conversion...

Oh, mean.

THIRTY MILES. That's what I've got.

I did go to the yarn store this week -- research for something, honest -- but I couldn't buy anything. I just couldn't. The overwhelming feeling of knowing that I have THIRTY MILES of yarn at home waiting for me numbed my fingertips, I think.

I think I have my New Year's Resolution.

Things That Make Me Ecstatic

Not just happy. ECSTATIC.

1. chocolate truffles from Trader Joe's: Okay, that goes without saying.

2. unagi sushi: HOLY CRAP why didn't someone tell me about this stuff years ago?!

3. Ysolda Teague's pattern Vine Yoke Cardigan: I know it's creepy, but my blog is a place of safety where I can say this: I have never had a rush of endorphins quite like the one I felt last night as I worked the right front of this sweater. All those things people keep saying about Ysolda's patterns? True! All of it, true. They are both pretty and absurdly pleasing to knit.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be disappearing for the remainder of this sweater.

Merry Christmas!

FO: Emergency Stocking!

My family does stockings at Christmas. Always have. Growing up, my mother made each of our stockings. Now, there's a bit of a split in there, rather like geological strata can explain a past seismic event -- and not all of them match. I imagine she'd rather me not betray the detailed reality of our unmatching stockings, but here's the thing: she made them all, and they're all quite nice.

So it's ingrained in me that you make stockings. You do not purchase ready-made stockings at Target or anywhere else. Christmas stockings must be hand-made.

I got married last summer. The two of us will dash around the Central Time Zone for a total of four Christmases (five counting our own), and for the Christmas with my family, he'll need a stocking.

Thank goodness I had 4.5 balls of bulky green yarn in the form of SWTC Gianna (great stuff, bummer they discontinued it). I'm also of the belief that small amounts of novelty yarn can save your hide from time to time. This is one of those times.

Now, I'm the first to admit that this stocking is perhaps not the most beautiful stocking ever made. I can personally identify at least three major flaws, and as my husband pointed out, "The toes are stumpy."

Dude: That matters not when finishing a Christmas stocking days before it is to be put to use. I will probably frog it after it's done and put the yarn to use again on a better version some other December 14 when I realize suddenly that we are, as ever, a stocking short of a full-fledged Christmas.

pattern: Ann Budd's On Your Toes Socks (well, one of them, anyway)
completed: December 19, 2009
yarn: SWTC Gianna (discontinued, alas), a wool-soysilk blend; and Bernat Baby Boucle in white, an irritating yarn due to the tufty boucle bits but it worked for this.
made for: my fella
needles: size 11 for the Gianna and size 7 for the Boucle

FO: Giganamous Gloves

I want to start by saying I have very long fingers. In school, music teachers would see my hands and stare longingly at them, and mention how useful it is to have long fingers when you play the [you name it]. Store-bought gloves never fit me quite right. My index finger is 3" long, and according to the glove sizing in Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, that gives me man-sized hands.

This is how big I had to make my most recent pair of gloves:

The gentleman who asked for them has hands that are so big, they're literally off the chart. I had to work my own math to get the thumb gusset right.

As requested, the gloves have articulated fingers but no fingertips. (Thank goodness - fingertips are a pain in the rear to work.)

Here's another scale picture with the most recent pair of fingerless gloves I made, the Monet Mitts, in a women's M:

The new owner of these gloves happens to be an ENT surgeon, which is very impressive - although I'm not sure how he gets his fingers in there to do his stuff. You have to wonder, does he ever get one of his fingers stuck?

pattern: Basic Glove Pattern from Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns.
completed: December 13, 2009.
yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted. I bought this yarn at a trading post on the Navajo Reservation where they were selling it cheap. It's not locally spun, according to Brown Sheep - the store just doesn't mark it up much for whatever reason. But, the store was selling it in loose skeins, not wound up with ball bands like you see it everywhere else. That means, among other things, I can't be sure of the colorways. I used about 115 yards of the MC (Brown Heather?) and about 50 yards of the CC (Blue Blood Red?).
made for: a giant.
needles: size 7 dpns.