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Still hot, with pollen.

Sweat a lot. Cleaned the world’s pickiest cat’s litter box. Took some winter stuff into the dry cleaners. Finished this sock and started its mate.

Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Liberty.

Walked 23 (short) blocks at a good clip from the subway to my massage. Got massage. Walked four (long) blocks to different subway and considered all the walking a sufficient substitute for going to the gym.

Thought about yarn a lot, but did not knit a commensurate amount.

Actually considered that it might be too hot and am looking forward to tomorrow’s more seasonable weather.

Hot, like July. And the poor cat still has her winter coat. As now do most of the chairs.

Let’s see if I can finish this before midnight.

Gratuitous Cat Photo

Rose with Felted Object (let’s leave it at that.)

Another Nine-day Weekend (aka The Spree)

I always take this week off from work. This is the week where I used to spend a lot of time pitying myself for having gotten older without actually having ever gotten cooler. Having survived being 50 without miraculously having been transformed into Sting, Annie Lennox or Madonna (she’s right behind me, you know), I’ve given up on cool. I’ve settled for having disposable income.

And dispose of it I have. In a long-needed spirit of adventure, I’m visiting most of the New York yarn shops I’ve never been to, many of which take me above 14th St. (inside NYC joke).

Yesterday, in the wonderful April heat, I walked over to 7th Ave in Park Slope and disposed of income in Stitch Therapy. I met Maxcine, the LYSO, who has some nice yarns and made me feel comfortable. Bought some yarn, too. I then walked two blocks away to FiberNotion, a cute, tiny, and stocked-to-the-gills store, with fabrics (mostly), beads, buttons, fiber, notions, etc. And she has darning eggs, one of which I have to go back for.

Today, sadly, I went to the closing sale of the Point, in the West Village. Well, the 30% off wasn’t sad, but it was such a nice shop, and if it had been local I would have been there much more often. I got there just before it opened this morning, and I have to say I didn’t think it was possible to get that many people into a LYS. period, much less one that small.

I could only take about 25 minutes of that many people in one space—and I had zeroed in immediately on my favorites—so I had an hour to kill before meeting J for lunch at Mesa Grill.

Mesa Grill has one of the best burgers in NYC, but if burgers aren’t your thing at least order something with fries, or make sure someone at your table does. We took my niece and her friend there for Saturday brunch last month; I had the blue corn waffles and half of her fries. She’s was a 23-year-old girl ; it’s not like she was going to eat them all herself. I say “was” because we share a birthday and she is now 24, though I doubt that has had any effect on her eating capacity yet. Give her a couple of decades.

Then we went to Habu. Fifteen blocks in the July-like heat—love it—on a full stomach, but sufficiently lubricated. What an odd little shop(?)! The sale items are in low baskets in the center of the floor. The regular-priced items are on the wall in an alcove around the corner. Got some nice lace-weight. J went with me and was glad he did, because I could not have described it to him, even without the margaritas.

I will definitely go back, because I forgot to look for the silk/stainless steel yarn, which, if nothing else, sounds butch.

Off to School Products,two blocks away. If you need or want or desire Karabella, this is the place to go. Which, fortunately, I did. She had Aurora 8 in black, which no one does. The shop also has a good selection of proprietary yarns (no labels). I picked up some yak/merino worsted and some cashmere, both reasonably priced, I think.

Then home for a nice nap.

More Gratuitous Cat Photos

Rose going to town in the yarn cabinet. I had taken the yarn bin out to rummage through it and she was there in a flash. The picture would be clearer if she hadn’t kept squirming and rolling herself in the lovely wool odor.

Probably not the best place to leave yarn to be photographed. Yes, that’s two skeins of Trekking Hand Art between two shades of Punta del Este Merinocash.

Really, anyone want to come over and knit? There is way too much yarn in this apartment.

Flamborough Pattern I

This is the stitch pattern for my gansey. Working on the round swatch.

Woohoo. Finished w/ 10 min to spare.

About a minute ago. If you are lucky, you only have to be fifty for a year.

Really.

sunny, brisk, cool

Two and One Half Kilometers of Yarn

I’m plotting a gansey (or guernsey). I am fascinated with Gladys Thompson’s Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys & Arans, particularly with the guernseys. The patterning is subtler and the yarn finer than in the traditional Arans, which I think are too bulky for my frame¹. With British needle sizes and infrequent mentions of yarn weight or gauge, the book is also a bit of an interesting exercise in problem solving.

Going for the more traditional, I’ve bought dark blue yarn: Reynolds Whiskey in color 3608 (Webs calls it navy).

This is thirteen balls, to which I added one more to allow for swatching in the same dye lot. I purchased two other balls in lighter shades also for swatching, primarily to get a feel for the yarn.

This is a advertised as a sport-weight yarn and the manufacturer’s label suggests a US #5/3.75mm needle, but most sweater projects on Ravelry are on 3.25mm or 3.50mm needles. Knowing that I want a denser fabric, I swatched on 3.50, 3.25 and 3.00.

This is Filey Pattern I from Ms. Thompson’s book (p. 25) in Whiskey, color 098 (lavender). The portion knit on 3.50’s at bottom is noticeably looser and wider, while there is less of a difference between the 3.25 and 3.00 (top) sections.

In this photo, the higher density of the top section is more noticeable, but it was most apparent when I washed the swatch. I found the 3.00mm section harder to knit, but that might have been because I had been knitting all day and because I switched to a 16″ Addi circ from straights. Yet even on 3.00mm needles the fabric seems loose. Let me go and dust off the 2.75mm’s and 2.50mm’s. I might end up with the 3.00mm or 3.25mm if the yarn simply resists a tighter gauge, but it’s worth a try.²

I am concerned that on such small needles I will not be able to see the stitches.

In the swatch above at the top, the pattern repeat is 7.5″ in width. In Matt Cammish’s guernsey pictured on page 21 of the book, the three and a third repeats would yield a 50″ waistline. Seems unlikely. The gauge is clearly tighter, 7 to 7½ stitches to the inch, compared to the 6¼ that I am getting³. Note that the manufacturer’s label gives a gauge of 24 st per 4″ on 3.75mm’s. I’d probably get 20 or 21.

Once I get an acceptable gauge, the next step is to pick a structure and pattern. I am partial to the first sweater under the section Patrington and Withernsea, but I’m afraid the pattern requires a somewhat butcher build that I can carry off. I quite like Flamborough Pattern I⁴, but prefer the traditional plain waist of Patrington and Withernsea or Staithes⁵. After that I’m doing a hat, à la EZ to check gauge in pattern.

Obsessions

One reason I do not blog that often is that composition is such an effort for me. It’s not the typing, or entirely the organization of thought—though there is some issue there—, it’s the obsession with composing it properly in html. I’ve been working on this post for almost three hours, uploading pictures, looking up references and special character codes, rearranging paragraphs and making sure everything is HTML 4.0 strict compliant. I need a text editor that does all this for me. ⁶

I have also gotten up every now and then to see what trouble the cat is up to. She has a new fascination with the window blinds’ mechanisms.

Another reason is that I’m getting my yarn fix on Ravelry. I’ve clearly spent more time in looking yarn and knitting and reading about knitting than in knitting. I’ve even gotten 100% of stash cataloged. I do draw the line at photographing all of it. I’d have to get it all out and buy another pack of batteries for the camera.

I will credit Ravelry with renewing my interest in knitting. Now if I were only good at it.

Cat-related Question

When the cat licks the top of my head then wipes the cleaned spot with her neck is she drying me off or using my stubble as a brush?

Natural Progression

I just increased the default text size in my text editor from 11 pts to 12. Easier to read.

And two days ago my youngest brother turned 44. Why does that not seem old now? Seems a perfectly reasonable age.

I should go buy milk, start my spaghetti sauce and work up another swatch or two.