Wednesday 21 March 2007

Tonsils and garter

I have tonsilitis. Again. Early last year I got it once, went back to work too soon and got it again. So this year I am determined to be sensible and stay home until I am well.
This bout is particularly unfair because I took Friday off as annual leave so that I would have 3 days off in a row, only to wake up feeling awful on Friday and have one of my worst nights on Friday night: a shivering, feverish, lungs hurting, can't sleep kind of night. Around 5 am I did think dying might be preferable, but I got over that eventually.

On Sunday I picked up knitting needles and made a swatch:
a) I have never knitted in cotton, and wanted to give it a go
b) I wanted to swatch to see if this yarn and needle combination would work for EZ's baby surprise jacket
c) I have always had what amounts to a phobia of picking up stitches, but if I want to make this jacket there is no escaping it
d) it seemed like a good idea to finally learn that long-tail cast-on that everyone else uses.

Yarn: Texere Yarn's Kilsney soft cotton in Leaf and Bottle
Needles: Susanne's ebony 4.5 mm
Result:
This cotton needs metal needles, the wooden ones don't feel safe.
I like the long-tail cast-on, but I need to work out how much of a tail to leave before I will feel happy using it on somethinig real.
I'm still wary of picking up stitches, but I don't feel the need to actually run screaming at the thought any more. I'm not 100% happy with the results I got, but they will do.
Can anyone tell me which is the 'right' side of a long-tail cast-on? The one that looks as if you don't have a cast on at all, or the one with the pretty diagonal stitches?
I learned that you have to be careful when changing colours in garter stitch (which I already knew, but had illustrated to me very clearly).
I now feel a little more confident about the anatomy of garter stitch.
Gauge ended up at approx 4 stitches per inch. I am going to need smaller needles and finer yarn if I want to knit the baby surprise jacket: it's supposed to be 6 stitches per inch, and knitting this any tighter, while giving me a great fabric for oven gloves, would not not be suitable for baby wear.

Kilnsey swatch rs


Kilnsey swatch ws


Instead, I moved on to 4 ply merino, little needles and some pattern variation to make a tiny version of Tychus from Knitty. How tiny? Small enough to fit a small child? A baby? A doll? No. An egg.
A couple of years ago, issue 14 of the Australian magazine Donna Hay featured little egg-cosies on the cover. I wasn't actually in a knitting phase at the time, but I looked at them a bit and realised how easy they would be to knit. If you don't mind the 'wrestling with a hedgehog' feeling of knitting objects of small diameter on dpns, they really are quick and easy.



blue fluff egg cosy
spiral purl egg cosy


Admittedly the egg cosies I knit actually spend most of their lives acting as hats or horn-covers for the resident population of dragons (function depends on dragon size), but they do occasionally fulfill their original function.

I liked the look of the pattern and thought it might also be a way to try grafting in garter stitch. Because I am a masochist with sore tonsils. That's why.
garter grafting in progress
garter grafting complete
I did a test run from the base up (bad idea: conical objects get narrower at the top) in sewing thread with the provisional cast-on still attached and a thread running through the live stitches. I had started at the second row of the pattern in my burgundy yarn, with a very long tail at the top of the hat. I then used this to graft: the grafted row is both the first row (after cast-on) of the original patt and the last row.

I'm not sure that I'd really want to make this pattern full size. Maybe it was the yarn and scale I was using, but the turning without wrapping did seem to leave some sizeable holes.

There's not really one thing that is wrong with this grafting. Not one. But it annoys me immensely. It is so much neater than my actual knitting.

presenting mini tychus complete


mini tychus abstract

Thursday 8 March 2007

Alone in a hotel room with a plastic fork...

Last weekend, I was stranded in a hotel room with
  • a knitting machine
  • a skein of KnitPicks Memories yarn in the Redwood Forest colourway
  • a set of plastic containers with lids
  • some hand soap
  • a source of hot and cold water
  • a plastic fork
I did what any sensible fluffy geek would do in these circumstances: tried out the knitting machine by knitting a swatch and felting it. With a plastic fork. I'd like to point out that it's a very sturdy plastic camping fork with many excellent qualities. I had washed it thoroughly after using it to eat my dinner. The yarn felts beautifully. I just wish I could be more enthused about the colour range.

Monday 5 March 2007

A fortnight in Boston

Well, I didn't get two rows of the SSSS done. It's sitting forlornly in my suitcase as I write, halfway through one of those unspeakably long rows. Never mind. Hopefully by next winter... because we're rapidly getting to the stage where scarves are irrelevant. (Although it looks like Tuesday and Wendesday here will be quite cold enough, I'm not even going to pretend to myself that I have any chance of fininshing it before then.)
This is how the striping is working out. A little more subtle than I'd hoped, but I don't mind it all all.

SSSS striping


(Photo taken in hotel bathroom: nowhere else is light enough.)
Clapotis, too, has been neglected. I just pulled her out this morning to manage a couple of rows.
So what have I been doing? I was home in London for two weeks between arriving from Denmark and leaving for the US (Boston). I am allergic to London. I have long suspected this, but it seems that if I leave for more than two weeks I get ill when I return. Sinus infections and/or migraines. The joy. So I didn't get a lot of knitting done. And work was busy, so I was tired.
I've been in Boston a week: my partner came along with me and left on Wednesday, so not much knitting was done, but we had a car, shopped for most of our summer wardrobe in Lane Bryant, explored Cambridge (which I approve of heartily) and generally enjoyed the snow and ice. (That is not sarcasm. We really, really like the cold.) I did fall over on the ice, which terrified my partner, produced small bruise about the size of a thumbprint, and probably contributed to my back giving me hell on Thursday and Friday. I spent most of Thursday kneeling backwards on an office chair, leaning over the back to get to my keyboard. It was the only position I could stay in for any length of time.
I managed to get to Cambridge again this weekend, and dropped into
Woolcott & Co. which I had seen the previous week, but didn't really want to drag my other half into for an extended period of time. We have Malabrigo: two skeins of a lovely dark purple, and another skein of bluish green. Plans may be afoot. I also have a skein of Cascade 220 in a beautiful emerald green. I am contemplating making a Elizabeth Zimmerman's baby surprise jacket out of it, as I think I have enough wool. If not, I'm sure it will find another home.
Yes, I also succumbed to a book: EZ's Knitting Workshop. Woolcott and Co. didn't have the individual pattern left... and I have long heard about EZ but done nothing about her. They had a completed baby surprise jacket on the table... how could I resist?
I then walked to the Wholefoods on River Street, bought a whole lot of food (I have a food sensitivity to wheat, corn and soy: living on hotel food in the USA for two weeks is not an option I can face with equanamity) and, after a mix-up with the taxi, got home at nine. And watched two hours of Law and Order: SVU. I very rarely see this show, but it seems to satisfy my need to watch something mindless every now and then. Most comedy makes me cringe, and I've read murder mystery books as a method of relaxing since I was ten, so I suppose it makes sense.
While I was here, I have been receiving packages, one of which was an ultimate sweater machine. Due to BA's skimpy luggage allowances, I may have an interesting time getting it home, but I will see what I can do. At least for the US I'm allowed two checked in bags and two carry-on pieces of luggage.
Which brings me to a small but important rant. I'm a stately girl. Stately in the way that Queen Victoria was: what I lack in height I make up for in width. If you divided women over a US size 14 into three groups of Queens, Empresses and Goddesses, I'd probably be an Empress. Lane Bryant has clothing that's too large for me, but not much. Every now and then people have a go about fat people in my hearing and sometimes to my face. They're not talking about me, they honestly seem oblivious to the fact that I'm one of the people they're talking about. I find this strange and wrong.
Anyway, one of the common areas of complaint is that they (non-fat people) should receive an enhanced luggage allowance because of the extra weight a fat person carries on board a plane. Surely they should be able to make up this difference in body weight with luggage? This is wrong in so many ways that it makes me want to scream.
The main reason, though, is simple arithmetic. If I take the same number and type of pieces of clothing as you do... my suitcase is going to be heavier. My clothing consumes more cloth. It's really quite simple. The same would be true if I were tall... but being tall is obviously involuntary and is socially acceptable.
Let's not even go into the whole debate over whether being overweight is voluntary or not.

Enough ranting. I need to do some work. It's mostly quite interesting work... but it's work. On a weekend.