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moist

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.

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.

Sunny and 54° predicted.

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.

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.

Overcast, not as warm as I’d like, but so much better than last week.

Time to Get My Butt in Gear

Call me an optimist, but the weather doesn’t seem quite as antagonistic this week. I need to get the bike into the local shop for a tune-up and a new back wheel, so I can get these love handles out flapping in the wind once more.

I was in a cab on the way home from my biweekly massage, where if I didn’t make a conscious effort to relax I would probably feel like a blob of kneaded lard, and I saw throng of poeple going into the local gym. At 7pm! Spring is definitely coming.

I’d probably be more motivated if that throng hadn’t been, on average, twelve years younger than me.

However, I absolutely refuse to go up a waist-size. Those hideous gym walls will see me yet again. Soon. Right after I get over the fact that I now have to get up at 4:30, despite what the lying clock says.

And the Point of Starting DST Three Weeks Earlier Is?

And we save energy by having the lights and heat on earlier in the colder and darker early morning hours? I can’t help thinking somehow ExxonMobil, Chevron Texaco, BP, et al. are making money off this.

Lulled into Complacency

I’m having one of those weeks where people cancel meetings I have to attend and postpone deadlines and thereby open huge swatches of my calendar. I forget what I’m supposed to be working on. Doom, clearly, approaches.

There’s a schedule out there somewhere that says I’m required for 730 hours of requirements review over the next four months. 4 months × 21 business days/month × 8 business hours/day = 672 hours. Doom approaches.