kmkat and her kneedles

FO Friday.

Y'all saw the Citron when it was 99.47% done and I ran out of yarn. Well, thanks to the magic of the internet and Ravelry and family and friends, I was able to finish it exactly as written -- no fudging that last ruffle or binding off with a different color of yarn.

Behold!

btw, blocking wires -- or, in my case, welding rods repurposed as blocking wires -- are Da Bomb.

A few days after I posted about running out of yarn, I got a message on Ravelry from loftysara, who lives in western North Dakota but used to live in the Twin Cities and worked at Banana Republic with BGFE (remember her?). BGFE must have mentioned to her that I was knitting something for her and told her how to look me up on Ravelry and Sara started reading the blog. Remember, loftysara and I have never met. So I get a message from her saying she has that exact yarn and would I like it... but it is living with her parents in Minnesota. Yes, I reply, but I only need a few grams -- how can we work this out? Can I buy it/trade for it? I didn't get a reply and I kind of forgot about the whole thing. By this time tax season was whipping my ass and I had no time to knit anyway.

The next time #2 Son and BGFE came to visit, she handed me a hat crocheted from The Yarn! Turned out loftysara had gotten the hat to her but forgotten to reply to my reply.

Thank you, Sarah! Thank you, BGFE! Thank you, Ravelry! Thank you, universe!

Citron has gone to live with its new owner and I am contemplating knitting one for myself someday.

Readers, go give Sara some love and congratulate her on her engagement.

And loftysara, I have most of a skein of Misti Alpaca available for your use ;)

Weighing in.

Remember this?

It came to me that I had swatched this yarn a few month ago. That swatch had enough yarn in it to knit another row and a half! That would certainly help, but would it be enough?

Then I hit on the idea of weighing my remaining ball of yarn before and after one of those 500+ stitch rows.

Before: 11 grams

After: 9 grams

Assuming that the bind-off row takes a bit more than each of the other rows -- which is what I have noticed in the past; when I run out of yarn during a bind-off, ripping back exactly one row doesn't give me quite enough yarn (YMMV) -- and assuming that I used exactly 2 grams (scale doesn't go to tenths of a gram) I would be able to knit 8 of the remaining 11 eleven rows called for by the pattern, plus the bind-off row.

That might be satisfactory, but I thought I should at least explore the possibility of using ALL the Misti Alpaca Hand-Painted yarn and doing the bind-off in a solid color.

At left, all the solids I considered; at right, the finalists.

I am leaning toward either of the ones on the left side of the finalist photo, with a slight preference for the one at upper left.

Opinions?

As promised, knitting!

That, my friends, is a nearly finished Citron, knit from Mista Alpaca fingering weight. It is a bit scrunched up; know that when it is properly blocked it will appear less blotchy. (I hope.) I have knitted 2 of the 11 rows of the final ruffle. Each of those rows is >500 st.

And this is how much yarn I have left.

That ball is about the size of a golf ball. It will not be enough. The final ruffle, she will be... narrower than called for in the pattern. And the bind off may be a solid color. But it will be done. It is a gift, and when it has been finished and blocked and presented to the recipient, I can knit something for memeME!

Photography fails.

I thought I would share with you what I went through to get this photo:

I used my eBay light box because I wanted to get a good shot of it. As you all know, natural light is tough to come by in the winter, especially if you are like me and don't really get started on the day until about 4 pm when the light is already fading.

The first couple shots.

Notice how I forgot to use the background swoop inside the lightbox? But later, much later, I fixed that with the retouch tool in iPhoto. 

#2 Son rags on me because, even if I remember to use the swoop, it is always creased and wrinkled. This time, though, my iron and ironing board were already out and mere inches away, so I decided to fix that.

However, the swoops are nylon and the nylon setting on my iron is too cool for steam. And I needed really steam to get these wrinkles out.

The solution:

The iron is set on 2, even though the nylon setting is 1. From experience I have found that the labeling on the iron is conservative, and that I can iron things with it one setting hotter than the labeling would have me believe. With steam coming out of the soulplate holes I held the iron 1/4-inch above the fabric for a few seconds, then ironed it really fast. No problems.

Your results may vary.

Next, I thought that the yarn would show up best if I used the black swoop. After all, I had held it against every color under the sun to decide what yarn to contrast with it in the scarf I had originally planned, and charcoal was the best choice. So black should really make it pop, right?

Looks good, right?

The results:

This is just a sampling of the shots I took. In retrospect, I see that the contrast between the black background and the subtleties of color in the yarn made it hard for the camera to capture the latter. If you click on any of those you will see how washed out the yarn looks compared to the first photo. Perhaps I could have corrected it in iPhoto, but I didn't even try. While shooting I kept backing the halogen work light (the white triangle at the upper edge of the establishing photo of the light box) farther and farther away from the box, putting another layer of white fabric over the top of the box to filter the light, aiming the light at the ceiling, trying both the regular and the macro setting on the camera -- everything I could think of. 

Eventually I decided to use one of the original shots and to blur the background. At least my swoops got ironed. And stored in such a way to keep them that way.

 

If you can't knit big, knit small.

Many small projects are flying off the needles these days.

First was that headband for #2 Son's GF that turned out to be too narrow. I did some calculations, figured out a different edging, and decided that a cable worked in a panel of 14 stitches should be just about right. Paging through my Barbara Walker books, I came upon the perfect cable.

A closer look:

It fastens in the back with a button, a la Calorimetry.

I was inordinately clever with the button loop, if I do say so myself. As described in the post linked above, I had done a provisional cast on and worked until the length seemed right to begin the last bit, where the cable panel ends and the whole thing narrows down. I pulled out the provisional cast on and picked up those stitches (on the same circ, so for awhile I had both ends of the headband on the needle). I worked the narrowed end, improvising how to do it neatly and took a few notes so I could replicate it at the other end. When that was done, I tried it on my head and determined that it needed to be a bit longer. (My head is exactly the same sIze as GF. Isn't that special handy?) Another 20 minutes of knitting and the length was right. I followed my notes and decreased down to six stitches.

Next comes the inordinately clever part.

I put three of the stitches on a holder and made the button loop by working about an inch of i-cord on the other three stitches. Then I flattened the i-cord and kitchenered those three stitches to the first three stitches, thereby closing the loop. It turned out perfectly. Cat hairs added for verisimilitude; everything I knit includes animal hairs.

This is an awfully lot of blather about what is really a very small project, but since I designed it myself (and it turned out) I'm feeling rather proud.

* * * * *

Next up was the second hat for Warm Hats, Not Hot Heads. It is 2x2 rib, almost identical to the first one except that it is deep slate blue instead of brown. No photo, just use your imagination. I finished it Friday night. Given the fireworks in Madison this past week, I think WHNHH is a very timely endeavor.

* * * * *

After finishing the hat I knit on a sock for awhile. The Sunday a couple weeks ago before I went back to work I sort of panicked about how much the job would cut into my knitting time. Ack, less knitting time! What to do?

Clearly, the solution was to cast on for more projects: the headband, above; the hat just mentioned, the sock, and another little experiment that may or may not ever see the light of day.

Here is the sock in its present state of UFO-ness.

The sharp-eyed among you may notice that, while the toe of the sock has been reinforced with red reinforcing yarn, the half-done heel... has not.

Oops.

I was working on this Friday night at Knit Night at the Yarnery in St. Paul, a delightful place to be and to which I was introduced a couple years ago by my friend soxanne. (We met at a Yarn Harlot event when her friend canceled because of bad weather and I ended up sitting next to her. We chatted and discovered that we both had blogs, and the rest, as they say, is history.) This is only the second time I have been able to attend Knit Night, but my work schedule this tax season -- which I have lain out in exquisite detail -- may permit me to attend at least one more time. I say, Yippee!

Anyway, I was knitting away on the sock whilst chatting and was congratulating myself on how well my short rows were working... and totally forgot about the reinforcing thread. I hope my short rows work as well the second time around...

* * * * *

Last night I cast on for the second pair of felted slippers for my friend Colleen. It is a really fast pattern. I did the entire first slipper last evening, and I was in bed by 11:00.

Please excuse the shadow, bad photographer.

I should be able to finish the second one tonight, no problem. I'll see her on Wednesday morning; getting them felted and dried by then should be easy.

* * * * *

The latest thing I cast on is this, which will be Citron when it grows up.

It will be a gift to our assistant librarian (sssh, if you read this, don't tell her -- she has no idea she will be getting it). The yarn is a skein of Misti Alpaca fingering weight I bought a couple years ago on our anniversary trip to the North Shore. Souvenir yarn, ya know? It took me several weeks of hard thought before I could give it up for this scarf. The color is absolutely perfect for her (she has red hair and wears a lot of browns), but I had previously decided that the yarn was going to be the bright color in this scarf for me, with charcoal for the contrast color. I had seen it (I think) on sophanne's blog and loved it. Really, though, it is better for the gift; I am not entirely sure I could wear a wool/alpaca scarf indoors without sweating to death. Plus, I have wanted to knit Citron ever since I first saw it. And I'm not the only one -- there are 6,102 projects in Ravelry!