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I have enough yarn. For now.

For the second day in a row I have entered a LYS and thought, “There is nothing in here I really need/want.” On Thursday, in Knitty City, no less.

Don’t take that the wrong way. If you come to NYC and want to hit the yarn shops, Knitty City is a must see (and buy something.) And don’t think I left empty-handed, though two hanks of Claudia Hand-painted linen, a single set of Lantern Moon 4.5 mm/US #7’s and a bottle of unscented Eucalan, is fairly empty-handed for me.

Backing up, after I spent and hour and a half at the DVM yesterday re-registering the expired registration on my barely-used car—oddly, I was the only one in line constructively using the time to get some knitting done—I went all the way up to the Upper West Side to check out Knitty City. A busy shop. Lots of good yarn. Huge book and pattern section.

I probably would have spent more, but there were a few moments where I felt like I was in the staff’s way, like I feel at Met Food when stocking the shelves is more important than my actually buying toilet paper or canned tomatoes, but then I’m not used to busy yarn stores.

But yarn is not a necessity, nor is there only one option for buying it, and I do like to have my existence acknowledged once before I plop $90 of goods down on the counter.

Go to the men’s dress shirt section of the flagship Bloomingdales in Manhattan and three solicitous salespeople will mysteriously appear at your side the moment you even spy a low-end shirt you might think about buying. Higher prices should give you better service. And at Bloomie’s they do.

The woman behind the counter, the owner maybe, made me reconsider my leaning-negative first impression. She was pleasant and friendly, if not forward, which I appreciate, and tried to engage me.

Maybe it is just because this is the first LYS I’ve ever been to where no one asked if there was something they could help me find. Maybe this is the first store where they didn’t think I was going to shoplift something. Probably not. Perhaps this is the one shop where male knitters are common and don’t need minding (you know what I mean.)

I will go back. My impressions were probably clouded by the DMV. And I got a really good chocolate malt on Amsterdam Ave. practically across the street.

The Upper East Side

Where I went on Friday. I hit two LYS’s with plans for a third. I won’t name the first, but the elitism really put me off—me, the one who goes to Bloomingdales. The owner and staff were friendly and the yarns quite nice, but elitist. I bought yarn anyway. Really expensive yarn. It was my BD present (another one), and someone will get a really nice scarf.

I don’t like the Upper East Side. It makes me feel crass without feeling inferior.

The second shop, The Woolgather, was nice and attractive, with some good yarns and friendly staff, but not so much as to warrant the 45-minute trip from Boerum Hill (Brooklyn) to get there just to browse. If you’re on the East Side and north of 14th, it’s a good place to stop. Or if you need Addi circs or Crystal Palace straights, they have almost every size you could want.

New York was muggy and the next store on my list was ten blocks away and uphill, and the likelihood of seeing a yarn I could not live without was small, so I went home.

Practical Considerations

Every yarn that currently appeals to me is sport-weight or finer. Given the speed I knit and the expected number of stitches per inch, a little yarn will go a long way, and I have no little amount of yarn already. Every skein of lace-weight could represent another month or two of my life. When I saw some attractive Isager lace-weight at Knitty City, I did stop to think, “When will I get to that?” Then I bought the sport-weight linen I was already holding.

Vanna’s Choice is not Rose’s

First time the Little Monster has turned her nose up at yarn, even when waved in front of her nose. Others may disagree, and I respect that (somewhat), but I really dislike this yarn. Stiff, abrasive, worsted—okay, I’m not into worsted lately, but AARGH. Given an hour or so, one could saw through prison bars with this stuff. I’m no fan of Vanna, but I see her in a room with the manufacturers’ reps, presented with several bad options—steel wool, barbed wire, cotton— and she says “I choose that one”, pointing to the acrylic.

For some reason, I have not made it to Lion Brand Studios this week. There’s always tomorrow.

To be honest, at 6.00 mm or 6.5 mm instead of the recommended 5.5 mm, it is workable, if not delightful. The color is okay, too.

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.

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.

Cold, snow on the ground.

No, I didn’t take the whole month off. In fact the weather wasn’t that nice and I spent the day in conference calls. Got some knitting done during the calls, and several since.

I had a great post in mind about our Valentine’s Day dinner—Braised Beef in Barolo, and nothing says love like cooking eye of round in wine worth more than the current market capitalization of Citibank—and about how I enjoyed my first knitting meet-up at Brooklyn General Store, but a family member, somewhat obsessively private about his/her health, was taken seriously ill, and I’ve been somewhat distracted. The situation has improved slightly since. In the meantime I’ve done a bit of knitting, and I’ve been known to go to work and I’ve spent a bit of time being scratched by the Little Monster.

Our friends A— & J— finally got the call to go to Korea and adopt their new eleven-month-old baby boy. I got a baby hat knit in record time (for me), but now that I’ve seen pictures of him, I think he might be able to wear it once. He’s huge. Cute, but huge. I’m glad I abandoned the sweater. It would have been much too small.

I’ve also been knitting a pair of socks for my Mom’s husband. And knitting, and knitting. Why are there relatively few good patterns for men’s socks? Because it takes lots of yarn and lots of time and conservative patterns are a bit boring. I have discovered that large pattern repeats do make the sock go faster and row counting easier.

In other news, the beard is gone. Looking 55 and distinguished is not preferable to looking 45 and a little weak-chinned. I don’t feel as old as my beard.

warm enough to open a window for the cat

I got up at 5 to feed the cat, but she let me go back to sleep on the sofa. 9:30. She let me sleep until 9:30.

The Little Monster misses J, who has gone to the Crazy State (RI) for his dad’s birthday (81^st). He’s only been gone a day and she’s following me around wanting to be petted. J is usually the object of her affection; I’m her much-scarred playmate. How does she get those claws so sharp so fast?

The ice is melting! The parking lot out back is an icy lake. I think the drains are still plugged with ice.

I have a theory why the two socks came out different sizes. While knitting a third sock, I thought that the twist on the third cake seemed tight. I have finished the leg and I find that it matches the shorter of two existing legs. The two completed socks are the same length more or less, but the foot is longer on one and the leg longer on the other, by five-eighths of an inch or so. I switched the two balls when knitting the second sock and have tighter twisted yarn on opposite ends of the pair. It’s a theory.

If true, the getting a matching foot will be a challenge.

This is the scarf I’ve been working on for J for over a year. It’s now just an end-to-end garter stitch, but it is such a bore. It was garter stitch, knit entirely through the back loop, but that was never going to be finished—not enough stretch in this yarn—and I frogged and started over recently.

detail➥

J doesn’t think I’ll ever finish it; therefore, assuming I can knit on it in morning before he gets up, it will make a nice Valentine’s gift.

Yarn

elsebeth lavold Silky Cashmere, 003 Black, 005 Wine, 004 Rust

Needles

Addi Turbo 5.00mm (US #8), 150cm circ

Pattern

CO a lot, knit back and forth ad nauseum

BTW, I use the wooden spool on the circ cable (lower right) to push the work along the needle.

PS. One of my pet peeves is people who don’t show you what the back of a scarf looks like. It always shows when worn. (I’m guilty too.)

PPS. I’ve updated the reading list.

Back to knitting.

Moderately cool. Hat & gloves optional; the smaller patches of ice melting.

The brioche neck-warmer is a total failure. Too big, too stiff vertically, too limp horizontally, too many loose fibers (like putting a longhair cat over your head).

I dislike chunky yarn even more than I did before. And I think my reaction to alpaca is not imaginary. My eyes itch when I’m knitting it.

It’s just me and the Little Monster this weekend, and she, at last, has finally settled into her morning nap. I should get some knitting done.

9:30 am: started the third sock of the KPPPM pair for my niece. As I suspected, the third skein is patterning out much lighter than the other two. I know, I know. One is supposed to knit these yarn in alternating rows, but I hadn’t intended to use this skein at all.

4:00 pm: I had just washed the litter box and filled it with new litter and was washing my hands and…