I'm moving! Okay, I'm only moving my knitting stuff. This blog is going to revert to being a personal journal, with friends-locked posts. All of my knitting stuff is moving to Blogger. That means you will have to read me there, if you want to continue reading about my knitting.

I know there have been several LiveJournal users who have friended me because they read my knitting posts. (And I can't express how flattered and surprised I am!) Don't worry - you can still read my knitting posts via LiveJournal, if you want to. You just need to add the feed I created to your friends list, and you will be notified every time I post about knitting to my Blogger blog. Click on this to do it: bowerbirdknits

For those of you who prefer, you can subscribe to my Blogger knitting blog via Bloglines by clicking the following button:



And if you prefer the relatively low-tech approach, you can just visit the site on your own from time to time.

(Or if you're a non-knitting friend who is sick to death of my knitting posts, you can just forget that they exist. Big sigh of relief, right? ;)


I will still be doing a big of knit blogging here. It's just a temporary thing. I'm doing a sock swap, and the recipient wants to be surprised with the finished product. I'll probably update that on LJ, just because I can put those posts behind cuts, so she doesn't have to see them. I'll link from Blogger, though, so if you want to see them, you won't miss them.

So, that's the story, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, and if you're wondering about where the new blog name came from, visit the site! The first post (scroll to the bottom, or clink the link in the sidebar) explains it all. Some of what's there are cross-posts from here, but there are also a few posts there that never appeared here. Have fun!

I've got more knitting pictures, today: the finished socks, and the beginning of Rogue.

( click for pics and details )

Tags: rogue

I knit way too much yesterday. What I did:

1. I finished the Lorna's Laces socks. Actually, I just realized that I may have left the holes formed when I finished the short row heels and started knitting the leg. I should close those up today.

2. worked on the advanced_knit-swap-socks a little bit

2. knit a swatch for Rogue
3. started Rogue.

( more here )

Tags: rogue
Current Mood: verbose

It's done! I finished Rhapsody in Brown this weekend. Seaming the sides was easy as pie. (Who knew that seaming reverse stockinette would be so easy?) I'm also about 10 minutes from finishing the Lorna's Laces socks, but alas, the camera is again joining its owner on a camping and hiking trip, so no pictures until tomorrow or Wednesday. (This time it's a work related camping and hiking trip. That's what you get for living and working in New Hampshire. ;)

( pictures and details below )

Well, the good knitting news is that sewing sleeves onto a drop shoulder sweater is easy as pie. it went very smoothly, and looks damn fine, if I'm allowed to make that judgment.

The bad knitting news is that seaming is just plain draining. There's something about it that just tires me out, even when it's going smoothly. It must be the intense concentration required. I was completely beat after attaching both sleeves, so I guess I'm leaving the rest (seaming up both sleeves, seaming up both sides of the body, weaving in ends, and other little tweaks) until this weekend. No finished sweater to await A. when he gets home tomorrow, but I suppose we'll both live. He wasn't expecting it, anyway, so the disappointment will only be my own.

Time for bed. I'll get pictures up as soon as I can. The camera and its owner return tomorrow! Yay!

Remember how today was supposed to be the day for seaming R.I.B.? Well, yeah, that's kind of not happening. I got seduced by the call of lace.

So while R.I.B. is still sitting in pieces on the couch (it has the luxury of splaying itself about in such an untidy manner, as I have the house to myself this week), I have picked the lace pattern(s), dug out my other size 1 DPNs, swatched, and written out the pattern.

( Cut because dierdreceilidh wants to be kept in the dark. So DON'T CLICK if you are her! )

Whoo! I started to set up a Blogger version of my knitting blog. I just made a couple of posts, with background stuff, for now. Maybe I'll wait a little bit before unveiling it, as I really would like it to have more content before I send people over there.

My favorite Blogger experience so far: their spell check didn't like the abbreviation "LL" (for Lorna's Laces). All fine and dandy, except it suggested I change it to LOL. *headdesk*

Oh, and I finished the R.I.B. collar last night. Seaming party at my place tonight!

1. I totally rocked in my knitting yesterday. The second R.I.B. sleeve is done, and I've started on the collar. Yet again I wish I had the camera here. You have to see the delicious mess that is the collar. A bajillion ends. Half a bajillion more than are necessary, due to me doing silly things like picking up stitches with the wrong strand of yarn, and then starting again with the right yarn when I was running out of the wrong yarn. It's a big mess, but will eventually be okay. Picking up the collar stitches was a bitch, though. They are not exactly evenly spaced (by design, not incompetence), and I had to pick them up in a manner that would make them kind of match the body. I'm not sure how great the spot where I picked up stitches is going to look. I'm sure it will be better than I'm imagining right now, but the whole mess of junk makes it hard to be too optimistic at this point. My goal for tonight is to finish the collar, and maybe start on some seaming, if I have the time. Each round of the collar is about as long as the a row of the top parts of the sleeves, and about as comlicated (or uncomplicated) to knit, so I kind of know what's ahead of me. Though doing these on DPNs with the stitches unevenly divided up will make things go a bit more slowly. (I choose unevenly divided stitches because it will make it easier to keep track of where I am in the round. Helping myself in one respect will always make something else more difficult.)


2. I'm starting to think a bit more seriously about post-LJ blogging solutions. My paid account runs out on October 10 (I think), unless there is another great LJ blackout or other disaster that convinces the LJ spirits to give us subscribers more extra time. I looked up what happens to things like my photo album, and it goes *poof* rather quickly after my paid subscription expires. This means I either have to extned my LJ subscription or get moving on finding other blogging solutions.

I think I'd rather move away from LJ, as it really has its limitations. It is a bit awkward to have personal and knitting stuff here, even with the use of a friends-only filter for the former. Also, peeking back at the poll I did a few months ago, I know there are people on my friends list who are not at all into my knitting posts. I'd like to stop bugging them with that stuff, since it's a large part of what I'm currently posting. Also, LJ has technical limitations - non-LJ people have to comment anonymously, and certain customizations that I want to make would be really difficult.

Money is really limited right now, and I'm not sure how much I want to pay to support my blog. One solution I thought of is just moving my knitting stuff to blogger. Blogger would let me host 3 times as many images as LJ does, at no cost. Also, I get the impression that it's easier to tinker with it to add stuff to the sidebar. And, of course, it allows non-anonymous commenting by people who aren't subscribed to the service.

I was also thinking about blog-city. I'd have to pay for the features I want, but it's a lot cheaper than many of the other non-free options. I signed up for a free account, but the features available with one of their free accounts is so limited that it didn't really tell me anything. Too bad they don't have a free trial period, as does Typepad.

Right now I'm really leaning towards Blogger. It's free, I think it has most of the features I want, and to some extent I'm reassured that it's now affiliated with (owned by?) Google.

Any thoughts on this? I've already signed up for a Blogger ID, and may play around with it some more, if I have the time. Whatever I decide to use, I think it would be nice to double-blog for a few weeks, so the new blog isn't completely content-free when I make the transition. I hate when I click on a link to a blog and find that it only has 3 posts, so it would be nice to spare any new readers (if any) of my post-LJ adventures of that content-less disappointment.

I went to the library and came home with some super goodies. I am planning on designing socks from scratch, for the sock exchange that eldil is hosting through advanced_knit. In this case, "scratch" being of the buy the pie crust and blueberries at the supermarket variety, not the actual grind the flour and pick the berries from the bushes variety. I'm planning on using a basic sock pattern, and nabbing a lace pattern from a book of stitch patterns.

In preparation for this endeavor, I checked out Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns and Barbara Walker's A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. I've done socks by the seat of my pants before (the Sockapal-2-za socks), using experience and some online resources to figure out the details. I thought it would be nice to take a look at Ann Budd's book, so I have more information floating around in my head when I get to the stage where I need to plan turning the heel, and other such stuff.

The Walker book is astounding. I must purchase this (and presumably the one that comes before it, and any that may come after it) at some point. It's pure knitting porn. Looking through the dozens of lace patterns made me want to take out some yarn and needles and go on a week-long no-sleep swatching marathon. Such beautiful stuff! I've already gone through and bookmarked some potential lace patterns for the sock. I'm not sure if I'm going to do an all-over lace pattern or a stockinette sock with one or two lace insert panels. I guess it will partially depend on how swatching goes, and what works best with the diameter I'm going for. Some of the patterns I really like are multiples of 15 or more stitches, which means I'd have to get lucky for them to work at a gauge I like for the circumference I need as an all-over pattern. If I really fall in love with one of those, I'd most likely make the sock stockinette, with that pattern as a panel on the front, which is carried on through the foot. That would certainly make the basic sock design easier.

Since this sock will eventually be for you, dierdreceilidh, do you have any thoughts on this? I know you wanted a lace leg, but do you have a preference for an all-over pattern, or just a panel or two? And don't worry, once I have something more specific to blather on about, I'll put it behind a cut, so you can stay unspoiled. :-)

On the way home from the library I stopped in at the local JoAnn's. It's right on the walk, and even though I know they have little there that I'm interested in, it's hard to resist the temptation of a craft store. Plus, I'd heard a rumor that the chain is starting to carry a line of higher quality yarns, and was curious if they had any. (The answer to that is a resounding NO.) Do you know what's scary? The one pound "super saver" skeins that are about the size of a 9 month old baby. Now, I'm not one to shy away from a lot of yarn. But huge acrylic sausages give me the heebie jeebies. They look like huge maggots. They're very much what I imaging blast-ended skrewts to look like, only without the fire and the biting.


Oh yeah. If anybody is in need of Knitty's "Branching Out" pattern, but finds themselves without an internet connection, just turn to page 312 of the Walker book. I had bookmarked another pattern on that page, and did a double take when I opened it up again just now. Whoa!

I'm going to be such a knitting tease this week. I anticipate that I will finish R.I.B. this week, and should also be able to finish the last bit of my pink Lorna's Laces socks. Unfortunately, the camera will be camping up in the White Mountains, as well as climbing as many as a dozen 4,000+ footers. No pictures for you! Funny how things work out, as part of the reason that I hope to finish R.I.B. soon is that the human accompanying the camera will be gone, leaving me with lots of lonely knitting time. Also, it will be nice for a completed sweater to be ready to greet my dusty and sore traveller when he returns with the camera on Friday. I hope I can pull it off!

Here is a puzzling thing: I was sure my row gauge on R.I.B. was 6 rows per inch. The first sleeve row count works out perfectly - it's 19 inches long, and the row count adds up perfectly for 6 rows per inch. I kind of felt sleeve 2 wasn't growing as quickly as it should, so I pulled out a ruler to measure gauge. It's close to 7 rows per inch. Uh-oh. then I pulled out sleeve 1, to compare length and width with sleeve 2. it looks like they match up perfectly, so far. How weird. Then I measured my row gauge on sleeve 1, and it's the same as on sleeve 2. So, if 19 * 6 = 114, which was my row count for sleeve 1, but my actual gauge was closer to 7 rows per inch, what the hell is happening? The laws of math are conspiring to drive me crazy, as the sleeve is obviously impossible. It should not be 19", but I am sure of the row count, and just checked the gauge. I think i'm going crazy. I have no idea how my sleeves can defy the basic rules of arithmetic, but they are. I guess as long as they end up the same shape and size, I can't complain...

Tags: rhapsody in brown
Current Mood: confused

Oh dear. My old Stitch and Bitch group has sold out to the man.

Okay, I wouldn't have such a negative reaction if it didn't seem like, recently, all I see next to that silly Lion Brand logo are atrocious fun fur patterns. Let's hope the group isn't pressured to, say, knit exclusively with Lion Brand products at their meetings. While I love the idea of the whole group having a community blog, the corporate sponsorship by a producer of mediocre yarns and purveyor of hideous patterns makes me worry a lot.

Current Mood: blah

1. I saw self-patterning sock yarn yesterday that I really, really like. Pigs are now ice skating in hell. I think I figured out what my deal with that stuff is. I hate the black and white schmutzy looking stuff that sock yarn manufacturers think is supposed to look like fair isle. (If my fair isle looked like black and white schmutz, I'd pull it out and try again.) These socks didn't have that. They had red instead of black for that part, and it wasn't as harsh. In fact, I was awed by the colorway of the yarn in general. It was beautifully put together. Seriously, I just saw a hog do a triple lutz. (He cheated it into a flutz, and his back was way too hunched on the preceding sit-spin, but it's still close enough for me.)


2. I really need to write a letter to the county fair people about their categories. They need more of them. For example, they don't have a separate category for socks. How sad. Also, they took some of the stuff intended for exhibit (because they had no category) and decided to award them ribbons and monetary prizes anyway. (Okay, I think the top prize is $5, but it's the thought that counts.) The problem? When your scarf pickings are so low (because you claim to not actually have a scarf category, and tell people not to submit anything that doesn't fall into one of their categories), you end up giving second prize to a generic fun fur scarf. Not to knock the woman who knitted it. I have a feeling it might not have been submitted if she weren't just digging out stuff for the general knitting display. But, still - it really rubs me the wrong way when one person's gorgeous cabled and beaded hat gets no recognition, and the garter stitch fun fur scarf gets second place. The fair people need to get their shit together, so knitters know beforehand that they can submit in a certain category. Also, I need to find out how many sweater submissions they got. I would love if they are getting enough submissions to break sweaters into several categories - colorwork, cabled/textured, "plain", for example. That means we can submit more items. Right now, you can only submit one item per category, and it has to be knit within the year. They need more categories, and I bet they might get more submissions if they had more categories. (I should have at least one colorwork and one cabled sweater to submit next year. I'd hate to have to choose between St. Brigid and Ingeborg, assuming that both come out well. Especially since, if I followed their rules, I'd have to decide between them and never submit the other one at a future year's fair.)

Why do I want to submit stuff at all? It seems like an awesome way to show off some really cool knitting to people who might not see cool hand knit stuff that often. (Thinking of how much an influence blogs like Wendy's were on me last year, I think this kind of stuff is important for the craft.) Even better, I don't think our names are prominently displayed on the items. Just a little tag, so we can get it back later. I don't want personal recognition at the county fair. Let the folks cheer and jeer, with me in relative anonymity. I just want them to see cool stuff, and know that regular ol' people did it with their regular ol' fingers. And the more categories, the more cool stuff there will be to see! (Plus, having a ribbon and a few bucks handed to me after would be kinda cool. They totally need to make big knitting trophies, with statues of people intensely whipping around the needles.)

I was just browsing through You Knit What?, and thought it would be fun to make a collection of the things I actually liked. (I like to push, and see just how much my sense of fashion is off the mark of the mainstream.) Not that I actively love all of the stuff I list, and not that I would actually knit most (or any) of it, but there are things I think are pretty darn cool in their own special way.

( What I like?!? )

( donkeysocks! )

Tags: socks

So I just became the last knitter with an internet connection to check out the new Knitpicks yarns. Still not sure how I feel about the company in general*, but they sure do have good deals.

One thing that strikes me as weird is the Palette yarn. It's supposed to be "fair isle" yarn. What is that supposed to mean? Anything can be used for fair isle. Looking at the recommended gauge, I suppose they mean jumper weight yarn, as that used in a lot of traditional fair isle designs. But their yarn isn't Shetland, which is also a traditional aspect of that same fair isle yarn they seem to be trying to emulate. I'm no expert, but after reading many discussions on KBTH about Jamieson and Smith (and Jamieson, which is confusingly a completely different company) yarn vs. the yarn at Virtual Yarns and Harrisville Designs, I'm pretty confident that there is a big difference between using Shetland wool and other types of wool.

While I do applaud the relatively generous color range they have available for Palatte, it by no means compares to the color ranges available for yarns such as J&S. To me, that's part of what makes a great fair isle yarn - the subtlety available in shading, to suit any of your color needs. Still, I could see their color palate being useful for more simple fair isle patterns. It won't work for a lot of Starmore designs, as she is the queen of gorgeous shading variations and matching. But I'd be tempted to give this stuff a go for a few simpler patterns I have my eyes on. (I am loving the six different shades of brown!)

Also, I question their "compared to" price bragging. The J&S I've seen for sale within the US goes for $4-$4.50 per 25 g. skein (and sometimes that's still a 1 oz. skein, which is a few grams more generous). They say to compare to other brands at $9.50, which would be $4.75 per 25 g. Now, maybe Jamieson (which I don't know as much about) goes for that much. But seeing as an extraordinarly popular brand goes for less (and half of that if you order direct from the UK!), it's a bit dishonest of them to use $9.50 as the baseline comparison price. Especially since they don't even use the same species of sheep for the wool! They're still a lot cheaper, but that's not an excuse to inflate the comparison price.

I'd be interested to hear reviews of this yarn, if any of you choose to use it. I may order a color card at some point, as I hear their colors are notoriously a lot brighter than they appear on the screen.

*** Ooh, and I just noticed that their yarn is about 28-29 yards shorter per 50 grams than 50 grams of J&S. I wonder about Jamieson. Must go check that out. Definitely something I'll need to take into account if I ever decide to try their yarn as a J&S sub.



* There's the copyright issue from a month or two back, which while not black in white after their partial apology and explanation, still strikes me as somewhat shifty. And then there's the issue of whether I want to support capitalism in general, or be loyal to smaller companies. Such moral quandries.

This site is the funniest thing I will see all week. I just know it.

It was the fuzzies that did me in.

* djanaba finally got her sweater (Elizabeth I) this weekend! I kept on putting off mailing it to her, because I couldn't stomach putting it in the mail. (Even though it will almost certainly end up being sent by mail back to NYC from Duluth.) She didn't get a chance to try it on, as it was opened during the post-wedding-day brunch, along with a bunch of other gifts, and because it was one of 2 days a year during which it actually felt like summer in Duluth. (People in Duluth don't do air conditioning. Wool sweaters on hot, sweaty people is a bad, bad idea.) I'm so glad to have it out my house and into the possesion of the person it is meant for. It was only when she unwrapped it that I felt like that marathon project was finally completed!

* The discussion of whapping one's knitting with a yardstick taking place on the KBTH mailing list makes me giggle to no end. If I ever take up spinning, I am now going to be obliged to say the word "whap" as I whap my yarn to set the twist. I'm almost tempted to take a yardstick to my knitting, just to get to say whap as I whap it. However, I care too much about my knitting to actually subject it to that.

* I had just settled in at the terminal at the Boston airport for our 1.5 hour wait to board, and caught something looming out of the corner of my eye. It was a little girl eyeing my knitting with eyes the size of saucers. I think she was actually more impressed with the pink and the purple than with the actual knitting, but it was still really cute. I told her what I was making, and showed her the finished sock. Thankfully, no adults loomed over me as I knit. Interest in knitting is all well and good, but only cute little kids are allowed to loom with jaws on the floor. :-)

* The pick up and knit discussion on KBTH is also interesting, although I didn't have the patience to read all of the long and sometimes snippy posts. Still, it made me realize how silly I was on the first sweater I knit. (Flashy Lace, from knitty.) I went through great trials and tribulations to pick up stitches around the armholes to knit down the sleeves. I now realize that instead of picking up and knitting (i.e. pulling through a loop), I was just sticking the needle through existing loops, and then tryign to knit off of those. TORTURE! NEVER AGAIN!

(Things might be pictureless for a while. I'm still in post-vacation chaos, and there is a chance that the camera may accompany A. on various mountain adventures during the next couple of weeks. I know, sucky blogger.)

Airplane knitting was a lot more productive than I thought! While I really dislike being in transit, at least those hours of geographic purgatory gave me a chance to catch up on my reading and sock knitting. I'm a couple of inches into the leg of the seconc pink Lorna's Laces sock, after having turned the heel yesterday afternoon. It will be done soonish. Even though the yarn is the same dye lot as the first skein, the striping is slightly different. Not different enough to bother me, but it is puzzling how much the dye lots do differ. For variegated, does dye lot just refer to the shades of color, and not to the patterning of the color? Reason number eleventy-two why I can't let myself ever really care about making variegated or self striping socks match perfectly. It would drive me nutty.

Did I mention last week that I used up barely more than half of a skein of LL for the first sock? That goes to show how much less yarn is used in a plain stockinette sock than a fancy chevron pattern, I guess. I kicked myself, thinking that I could have gotten a full pair out of just one skein after all, if I had made the first sock a bit shorter. Then I realized that I can just eventually use the leftovers of both skeins to make another pair of slightly shorter socks. That won't happen for a long time, though. I'm kinda sick of pink at the moment.

So do I work on the vest or R.I.B. this week? I just want the vest to be finished, but I'm tired of all of those color changes, and a bit scared of picking up stitches. I should just kick my butt into gear and do it. It's only wool, so there's really nothing to be scared of. It's just that after all of the fun of knitting the body, this seems like having to do a sinkload of stinky dishes after hosting a big dinner party. The longer you leave it, the less appealing it will seem. And in the end, I'm sure it will be much more enjoyable than dealing with greasy dishwater!

I visited Clickity Sticks, in Minneapolis, yesterday. I was kind of underwhelmed. That's okay, though, as going yarn shopping wasn't really high on my list of priorities for the trip. The store just happened to be within short walking distance from the folks who were hosting us, and it seemed like a fun side trip to our walk, yesterday. The shop was a bit low on stock, with more empty or almost empty shelf space than I'm used ot seeing in yarn shops. I didn't really do a thorough inventory, as I was mostly looking for Dale pattern books and Nature Spun sport yarn. They didn't have any Dale books, and while I was surprised to see that they actually had NS sport, they only had 2 skeins, in yellow. A far cry for the 6-7 black (err, "pepper") skeins I'm in need of. They also had luxurious but ridiculously expensive llama yarn, and some other local grown stuff. It kind of struck me as the kind of yarn shop that exists for the fun of the owner, not for commercial success. It also seemed like the kind of place that caters to fairly wealthy dabblers, not to your everyday knitting addicted person in need of a lot of reasonably priced basics in large quantities. It was fun to watch K. and W. marvel at the novelty and non-traditional yarns. They were very excited to find bamboo yarn, and I can totally understand the excitement a non-knitter has at nobbly and fluffy yarns. When you don't have to actually work with them, they are pretty cool and fun looking.

Someone in knitting just asked for blog recs. I made a very lengthy and detailed reply, and thought I'd repost here. I've been meaning to do this for a while.

( cream of the crop in blogs, as of today )

Ooh! I'm going to steal jessimuhka's idea, and write up some monthly knitting goals. It should be fun to see how far I stray. ;-)

( Read more... )

Oh, and for those of you keeping count, I talked about it with A., and finally decided to definitly rip out his Leo. The yarn must have bloomed like crazy when washed, because the thing was 4" wider than it was when I finished it. (Stupid me for not washing my swatch, eh?) I was really hard on myself for knitting crazy long sleeves for it, but I realized that the sleeves weren't the problem. It was the body that was the problem. When I detached the sleeves from the body, I realized they may have even been a bit on the skimpy side. (I don't think A. accurately measured his arm the first time around. It's definitely longer than 18", which is what I think he quoted me.) I disassembled and frogged about 3/4 of Leo this weekend. Maybe I'll frog the last bit today, if I have time, for closure. The frogged yarn was balled up on my ball winder, but I'll eventually make skeins (using my swift), then wash and hang them, to get out the basement smell and the kinks. I think I'll knit the yarn into a more fitted basic sweater for him. It's really nice stuff (silk/merino blend).

A. first suggested giving the sweater to charity but 1. call me snotty, but I'm not giving expensive silk/merino yarn to charity just yet, 2. we both have a sentimental attachment to the sweater, and now the ex-sweater, and 3. Due to the way the yarn bloomed, there are few people the sweater would fit well, anyway. He winced as I started to take the sweater apart, due to all the work that went into it. But such is the life of a knitter. (Especially an anal knitter.) He joked about being able to eventually wear a sweater that was two sweaters. Now to choose a basic body shape and whip something up using the Ann Budd book. I'm thinking raglan, but not sure yet.

Of course, soon after I started the Leo disassembly, the pattern for Eris went live. I think the yarn would be perfect for that. I think I'd knit either the cardigan or the pullover more fitted than the pattern suggests, as I agree with eldil that they might be too sacklike with a lot of ease. But the cardigan does have waist shaping, and I think it would look lovely on me with 2-3" of ease, in the Leo yarn. But I must be good and save it for A. It's his yarn now. I'm only the knitter. ;-)