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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.

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…

Cold still, but above freezing.

If I could knit as well as I can buy, I’d be a superb knitter. I made my way over to Brooklyn General Store for the first time today. I just found out about it on Ravelry last week. I decided to count the five long block, eight short block walk as exercise—not to mention the heavy lifting required as I schlepped my overstuffed yarn tote back home.

In here you can see hints of some ridiculous projects I have in my head.

• In the foreground is Morehouse Farm Lace, which I strangely think could be a nice double-knit hat some year. Fingering, about the same weight, maybe as the Jameson & Smith I used on Feather & Fan, but one ply. The two browns are different: one is ‘natural silver’ and the other is ‘natural brown’. The two on the right are ‘natural oatmeal’
• The Manos on the left is Manos Silk Blend, which should be a scarf for myself. Sort of a putty color with greenish hues.
• The rich orange is Malabrigo Lace, which just looked too good to pass and there were only two.
• The big blob of off-white in the rear is Misti Alpaca Super Chunky, my fourth attempt at finding a wool suitable for he neck-warmer my niece wants. [I'm developing quite a stash of chunky yarns in the off-white range. I could make bath mats, but the above-pictured feline would just pee on them.]
• To its right, Trekking (xxl) in a manly color. Could be socks IF I COULD EVER KNIT TWO DECENT SOCKS THE SAME SIZE.

Which brings us to the current situation. My knitting lately sucks. Two socks with the same number of stitches on the same needles are two different sizes, probably because the first sock was knit two years before the second. I’m tempted to knit a third and hope it matches one of the others.

The Tunisian rib socks just look weird, even if they are the same size. If they fit I’ll be shocked.

The neck-warmer is a struggle on 10mm circs (US 15). I tried dpn’s, but the yarn-overs are hell. I swatched three different chunky and bulky yarns. One was too limp, two were too stiff and all were scratchy. The fourth selection, Tahki Baby, is stiff if relatively soft. It looks more like a cake than something to go around the neck.

Misti Alpaca Chunky, which I tried next, while soft, is too limp. I’m hoping the Super Chunky works out.

But mainly I hate fat yarn and fat needles. This brioche should be a no-brainer: on the needles, then off. I’m spending way too much time, money and mental effort on this.

And the cat doesn’t help. Her idea of playing with yarn involves chewing on it, or at a minimum sitting on it. If she’d only learn to wind it and find new places to store it.

More later. It’s late and I’m falling asleep.

Cold, still ice on the ground, but no more coming down, so far.

We’re back from Dallas and the Little Monster has never been happier. She follows us around the apartment like she’s afraid that we will leave again. She protested when just I went to the grocery.

The newfound love and affection hasn’t prevented her from adding a few more scratches to my hand. Three whole days without a hand to gnaw on. We had a service come in a feed and play with her as well as scoop out the litter-box, but we couldn’t ask them to sacrifice a limb. Only one revenge pee in three and a half days is pretty good though.

Dallas was fine. The trip was surprisingly hassle-free and all legs of the trip were on-time or earlier. The weather was perfect—80° on Thursday, almost as warm on Friday. I even got to knit outside for a while until I started to doze off.

We celebrated Mom’s birthday at Mario & Alberto’s in North Dallas—Tex-Mex, of course. There is certainly better in Dallas, but my sister and niece are not so adventurous. And no waiters were harmed despite their having sung Happy Birthday to my mom. I wouldn’t have dared.

Knitting

I had intended to finish the the second KPPPM sock in Dallas, but I left half the yarn here. I took some cream Austermann Barkarole to knit on the plane, trying to see what I could come up with in the way of a men’s scarf. I fell back on the Tunisian rib since I had neglected to bring a pattern book. It is a bit stiff on a 3mm, and it will take forever to knit the 475m I have in that stitch and I suspect that it will not be long enough if I try. This is one ball, knit out, 100 stitches, 14½”×3½”. That would give me a 5½ ft scarf in 38+ hours of the same stitch over and over.

Reducing the width to 75 stitches would give me the right length, but would not reduce the duration. What I would like is a slightly looser pattern, but not a basic k/p texture pattern. Any suggestions?

I could just move up to a 3.5mm needle.

I realized today that I finished my other sister’s socks without ever taking a picture. Damn.

Miscellany

1. I am too old to be chasing the Little Monster around the apartment.
2. The Half-Priced Books on Northwest Hwy in Dallas is worth the trip to Dallas.
3. Used book stores rarely have good knitting books. An entire book on duplicate stitch? I assume then that we are supposed to will the good ones to friends when we die?
4. Word Problem: The sweet twinkie, Sean, who was our flight attendant on the last leg of our trip (and admired my knitting while saying he had tried it, but didn’t have the patience for it) will be half my age no earlier than ten years from now. How old is he, assuming he is old enough to legally serve alcohol on an airplane?
5. Really, how does one flirt with a flight attendant?
6. Damn. I have to go to work tomorrow.
7. Having joined Ravelry, I realize once again that I can easily spend more time thinking about, reading about and writing about knitting than actually knitting.
8. How did my 16g stainless steel PA accidentally go through the airport metal detector undetected? I am now uncomfortable about what else can get through.

Ta ta.

Cold, light snow

This the third day in a row with some snow and it’s not melting. Last night’s snow was light and fine, but wet enough to stick to anything. Any everything was cold enough to hold on to it.

Knitting Content

The finished Tunisian rib socks

Yarn

Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Flames (#146)

Needles

Crystal Palace Bamboo 2.25mm dpn’s (US #1)

Pattern

my own, for better or worse; Dutch heel and round toe (modified) from Nancy Bush’s Knitting Vintage Socks; Tunisian rib from Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns, p.159.

This is the first time I’ve used a Dutch heel in stockinette. It seems too wide and too long. In case you are wondering about the proportions, these are for my sister, who has short feet and high arches. We’ll see how these do.

Detail of the Tunisian rib, which has become my favorite rib stitch.

☃

History

Going through the old photos I never posted I found this from April 2007.

Yarn

elsebeth lavold Silky Wool, color 15 Pumpkin

Needles

Addi Turbo 3.50mm, 40cm circ; Inox straights in the same size

Pattern

my own, again, using two lace patterns from Barbara Walker’s second Treasury and a variant of my own.

Still snowing.