Tricotomania and more

Thanks to all those who gave advice about the purple fluff frustration. I will pick it up again and try some other things. I’m now thinking that if I can spin enough to do a bit of cuff edging on a pair of kid’s mittens, I might then use the rest for thrums. Or maybe I’ll actually find a way to spin this stuff without so much frustration. Either way is fine.

To calm myself down, I pulled out the blue-faced leicester roving that I got at Rhinebeck. This was dyed orange and brown (more orange than brown) and was not so loose and airy as the Persimmon Tree. I recalled that Cate had said that, while I could spin the Persimmon Tree right out of the bag (which I have been doing with much success), I should pre-draft the orange stuff.

In the meantime, I’ve actually read a few things about pre-drafting and space dyed roving. I found Sarah’s advice particularly helpful. She explains things in a way that suits my style. No right and wrong here. Just if you do this, you’ll get this effect. If you do this other thing, it’ll turn out this way. I have also been reading what Ted has to say though I think it was an e-mail to a list we are both on that was most helpful.

When you look at this stuff I have, it has clear vertical strips in it. When I did that initial sample back in October, I just ripped off about a foot or two of one of those vertical bits and spun it up. So when I picked it up the other day, I broke off the whole width at that point and then stripped what was left along those vertical lines. That section was predominantly orange with a little band of brown. When predrafted, spun up, and plied, I ended up with about 30 yds of very orange yarn (though with a nice depth of colour).

I then broke off another section about the same length and did the same thing. This 30yd skein was much more brown, probably because there were two brown bands in this section and so several brown sections in the singles and more distribution of the oranges and browns in the plied yarn.

Both of those skeins are actually quite fluffy and some of it looks a bit underspun (and the orange broke when I was winding the singles into the Andean bracelet so is actually 2 x 15yd skeins).

After that I was talking to my partner about what I was doing (he thinks all of this is magic, BTW) and noticed that I could just strip the whole roving along those vertical lines, predraft it and wind that into loose balls, and then spin it. So I did that. I now have two more 30 yard skeins but they look very different from both previous ones (though similar to each other). One thing is that I seem to have put more twist in. Certainly at the plying stage but possibly also in the singles. It is still soft but less lofty and underspun looking. They are quite brown but look very different from the browner of the previous skeins.

Both skeins are very similar in colour though so I’m hoping that this means that continuing to strip the whole thing vertically, predraft, and then spin with a reasonable amount of twist, will yield several matching skeins and thus enough to knit something with. The resulting yarn is quite fine, which is bothering me somewhat. I’m wondering if I should try making a cabled yarn by plying 2 of the skeins together. I might spin up the whole thing first and see what the yardage would be. If there is enough that I could get a hat out of the resulting yarn, I might try that.

As for the first 2 attempts, I’m beginning to think that I could pair it with some brown alpaca from the stash to make a nice hat or something. I don’t wear brown and orange so although I like this roving and the resulting yarn, I’m having trouble imagining what it could be or who would wear it. My partner does wear those colours, though, and you can never have too many hats for an Ottawa winter. Done like that, I might also be able to get mittens in brown alpaca with orangey brown stripes. Another option is to pair it with the Persimmon Tree (in colour Caribbean which is very turquoise). I know this works well because the kid knit up a stripey doll scarf with the samples I did in October.

Overall, I am really enjoying spinning the blue faced leicester. My first attempt at spinning was with this same breed (in a natural brown). That attempt was very thick and lumpy but I didn’t know about predrafting and, hey, it was my first attempt. I went on to spin Corriedale which I found much easier to draft but, now that I have more experience, I think I could go back to that and make very nice soft yarn out of it. I may need to order some more.

An interesting story

That reminds me that you folks might be interested in this little story I saw in the Guardian Weekly last week. It was part of a regular column entitled My Two Cents. The author was making a point about the new citizenship tests in the UK which was, basically, that the ‘right’ answers might vary depending on how you were located in society (regionally, class, ethnicity, etc.). But she started her argument with a story that is interesting in itself. She claims it is true but even if apocryphal, it is funny.

A young teacher from Leeds (industrial heartland of Northern England for those whose grasp of geography is sketchy) takes a job in Bangor (town in north Wales, which has a very large sheep population). She is teaching 4 year olds and one day the lesson is about the letter ‘S’. She holds up a picture of a sheep and asks what it is. No one answers. She asks again. The kids look somewhat nervous and no one puts their hand up. She repeats “Surely someone knows what this is” (I’m sure she is thinking that she is in Wales and there are sheep everywhere, these kids must know what a sheep is) and a little boy reluctantly puts his hand up. He hazards a guess. “Is it a 3 year old border leicester, ma’am?”

Those of you who have been dragging your small children to sheep and wool festivals should consider yourselves warned. You may need to chat to them about the acceptability of just calling them ’sheep’ in school.

I am frustrated. My spinning is pretty good. I’ve just knit a really nice hat with yarn I spun myself. And it was only like the 3rd thing I had spun. Honest.

And I have been spinning that persimmon tree stuff that Cate enabled at Rhinebeck and it is going really well. Every once in a while I hit a little clump of mohair that won’t draft very well but I either get rid of it or live with a few little soft lumps in the yarn. It is all good.

But today I’ve been trying out that yarn Sara sent and I dyed purple. And it is NOT working. Hard to draft. Has little balls in it (like the pills on a sweater). Not producing even yarn. It has put me in a grumpy mood.

So, here is the story. Perhaps you can help me work out why it isn’t working. And what to do about it (if anything).

Sara sent some fluff for J. to practice on before she started spinning the lovely coloured fluff she bought at Rhinebeck. There was pink fluff (from a sheep named Bo, apparently) that I inhereted because I had dye and J. doesn’t like pink. And 2 types of white fluff. The stuff J. took looked like reasonable roving though it probably needed predrafting (I didn’t look to hard; she got first pick and gave me what she didn’t want). I got some other white fluff which seemed to be combed and then rolled, was quite stuck together, and felt a bit sticky.

I decided to dye both together in Aster (which is purple; see a couple of posts back). I worried that the white stuff had felted when dying but I pulled it apart before drying and it seemed fine. Maybe not. Felted wool wouldn’t pull apart, would it?

The dyed fluff was not as light and airy as the stuff I had worked with before but it hadn’t been before dying and then it had been in hot water. So I thought maybe I needed carders. Sara said that Cate would say to use dog brushes and since there is a pet store near me and I could get two dog brushes for about $20, that is what I did. I pulled out the PGR High Whorling for carding instructions and tried to card a bit. So far so good.

Today, I decided to spin a sample of what I’d carded. I’d started with what had been white so I started spinning that. Not nice. If I didn’t know that I could spin better than that I would think it was me. The yarn did not want to draft. There were little pills in it. It kept breaking. Nasty. I spun up a bit, plied it and skeined it (there is maybe 3-5 yards of plied yarn hanging to dry now).

Since the pre-dyed texture of the pink stuff was different I thought I’d try that to see if it was something about the wool. I carded a bit. And it drafted a bit easier but still was frustrating. I didn’t even ply that. I’ve washed the singles which are also drying.

My questions, as you can imagine, are numerous. Is it the carding? If so, what am I aiming for with that? What should well carded wool look like? Feel like? Where are the pills coming from and will carding get rid of them or do I need to pick them out? Did I partially felt this stuff in the dying process and ruin it for spinning? If so, how do you make sure not to do that when you dye roving (particularly since you need the heat and you need to keep poking it under the water and flipping it to get even colour)? Or is it my spinning technique? Have I been fooling myself into thinking I’m a decent spinner because I’ve been using well prepared fibre?

I know most of you folks are off celebrating the Festival of Housework (go see the comments on the Knitting Curmudgeon’s post for an explanation of that renaming of Thanksgiving) so I’ll wait a bit for some response. I’ll go back to the Persimmon Tree while I wait. Or maybe dig into that lovely orange blue-faced leicester…

I guess there is a bit of this going round. What with Cate’s magpie tendencies and all. Mine aren’t bright and shiny but I’m getting distracted by small new projects. This is not startitis. Because I’m also finishing things. Photos will be taken. And that should finish the film, so they will be posted before Xmas.

Project 1: Multidirectional scarf for my NYC host. In Fleece Artist sock wool. Brown, mustard, red. some of the brown parts are very pale and some of the transition from brown to red is kind of maroon. Knit up very nice though one end of the scarf is paler than the other. But a good pattern for that sort of yarn. Yarn purchased on Wednesday. Scarf finished on Friday.

Project 2: Hat. Using that handspun I dyed on Tuesday. Started out being for the kid but since I’m of the no-swatch brigade and this was handspun yarn, I guessed. I guessed a needle size (4 mm — made a tight stitch but that’s good for hats because it helps keep the wind out). I guessed the number of stitches to cast on. Thought hard enough to make it divisible by 6 so I could decrease in 6 sections. It turned out big enough for me. And my winter parka is red so it matches. Roll brim. Incorporated some white mohair left over from another project making it up as I went along. 2 stripes with a row of diamonds in between. I had a crisis on Saturday where I didn’t think I’d have enough to finish it, so I ripped back what I’d done that morning and started the decreases sooner. Also, after 2 decrease rounds my total was divisible by 8 so I switched the decrease frequency. All looks good. And enough left over to make some corkscrews for a tassle on top (see the Epstein book for instructions). Started Friday. Finished Sunday morning (though all that was needed on Sunday was weaving the ends in.)

A chart for the diamonds (over a multiple of 6, so good for hats; if you are knitting back and forth you probably want to do a multiple of 6 minus 1 and add some border stitches).

Main colour = x
contrast colour = o

xxoxxxxxoxxxxxoxxx
xoooxxxoooxxxoooxx
oooooxoooooxooooox
oooooooooooooooooo
oooooxoooooxooooox
xoooxxxoooxxxoooxx
xxoxxxxxoxxxxxoxxx

Because the hat became my hat, I’ve now been requested to make a kid hat that is similar. I have some different white mohair (a blend but it’s white and fluffy) and some blue merino and possum that the kid was going to use to make a contribution to the blanket but never did. So I’ve said she can have a blue one. I’ll still guess at the cast on but I have an idea now. (I know, you swatch mavens are cringing because I’m using a different yarn. It’ll be fine. It’s a hat.)

And I have more 2.25mm needles so I could cast on MY socks. Can you tell I’m not that keen on the Leicester City socks? They’ll get done. Honest. Maybe not for Xmas (though there is a long plane journey in there) but the recipient has a birthday at the end of January.

I’m saving the shawl for the hospital waiting room. A friend had ‘irregular cells’ in her last smear and has an appointment this week. I’m going to take her and then wait for her. I think they are burning off the ‘precancerous’ cells or something. Whatever. It seems like good shawl knitting time. And she needs a drive and a friend.

I also made a new friend yesterday. The knitting (that later got ripped) was done in the coffee shop while the kid had her drama class. There was another mom dropping her kid at the same time and she joined me for coffee. We got on fabulously well. She’s a human rights lawyer and a feminist and we had great conversations about kids and feminism and whatnot. All while drinking coffee and knitting (well, I was knitting). And she’s off work at the moment, so we’ve exchanged phone numbers and talked about getting together for coffee during the week.

Attn: Bloglines users

I don’t know much about this techno stuff (I am one of those v. strange people who owns neither a cell phone nor a microwave; and have you noticed I sponge this blog and guests can’t fancy up the sidebars and I think that’s great as it would just take time and figuring stuff out). But I am reliably informed that if you subscribe to this blog using bloglines this feed works better than some other feed.

mamacate.typepad.com/jo/atom.xml

Thank you Jenna for letting me know about that.

In response to M-H’s comment I have proofed for spelling and fixed it. Alive and well. No need to worry.

Tuesday actually. I decided to try dyeing. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. We bought 2 pots of Gaywool dye in Gemini Fibres this summer (back when I bought the spindle) — Aster and Crab Apple. And a couple of months ago the kid and I went to the thrift store and picked up a big pot on which we wrote in permanent marker ‘Not for Food Use; Dye Only’. But it’s all been sitting there.

Recently Sara sent a spindle and some fluff for J. via me (because the kid had left something in her car at Rhinebeck that needed to be returned) and said we could share the fluff. Some was pink. J. doesn’t like pink and left it to me along with one bit of white/natural. I don’t much like pink either but I knew I had that blue dye and figured it could be saved.

So Tuesday. I got out the pot. Found some rubber gloves. Chose a wooden spoon to sacrifice (it now lives in the pot away from the cooking implements) and got going. I forgot to weigh the fleece before I stuck it in soapy water so I guessed. There is nothing I hate more than pale colours so I overestimated. I followed the directions on the container but modified a bit to fit with what I’d read elsewhere (I put the wool in sooner so it could warm up with the water).

Wow. Aster is not blue it is purple. A very nice purple. Over pink it is a pinker nice purple. I was somewhat worried that I had felted the wool but I yanked it apart while still wet (but after spinning in the machine so it wasn’t really dripping wet) and it seems okay. Only I think it needs combing or carding or something before I can spin with it. HELP

After that, I decided to dye the two skeins of natural white Corriedale in Crab Apple. What a nice red that is. Amazing. Not too orange. Not too pink. Very good.* I now have two skeins of lovely red yarn with which I think I’ll make a hat for the kid, incorporating some white mohair left over from a blanket square knit for a friend a couple of year’s ago. She’s excited.

And even though I had all those other projects on the go, I went to the LYS on Wednesday. My stated purpose was to get a set of 2.25 mm bamboo dpns. I already have a set but they are metal and only 4. also I wanted to cast on the Socks That Rock for me without having to finish the Leicester City socks first. (apologies to any football fans who have ended up here by accident/google; I dislike football but love my BIL who is a Foxes fan) And also to buy another set to go in a gift I’m assembling for my mother (Nancy Bush Knitting on the Road, 2 skeins Lorna’s Laces Shephard Sock in sage and cream, possibly some koigu…). I was also feeling bad about not having a hostess gift for my hostess in NYC and had decided to maybe knit her a scarf (Cassie had agreed this was a good plan).

The LYS was out of 2.25 mm bamboo dpns! Don’t worry. They called the other store and I picked them up yesterday (before knitting in the pub with some friends). But they did have some Fleece Artist sock yarn in a colour I thought my NYC hostess would like. So I bought that. I’m almost finished a Multi-directional Scarf (knit on 3.5 mm needles if you care).

And I got invited to join a group of women who meet to eat, drink and knit in another pub one Friday a month. They meet about 6 or 6:30 so I can bring the kid with me. Tonight is the Friday for this month. I’m looking forward to it. The kid is excited. She says she’ll bring knitting and a book. I SOOOOO appreciate her self awareness about the lack of attention span for knitting and forethought re. entertaining herself while mummy knits.

*No, there are no photos of the dyeing. And even if there were, they would be useless. Between the camera, my monitor (on which I might adjust any colour), and your monitor (on which you would view it), the chances of accurate portrayal of the colours are so slim as to be pointless. Use your imagination.

It felt like I had only just returned from Ohio when I was off to New York City. I can get a direct flight there which reduces the risk of delay considerably. Nevertheless, one is required to check in 90 minutes prior to a flight. If there isn’t a big line up at either the check in desk, security, or customs (we Canadians can usually go through US customs in the airport prior to departure), that’s a lot of knitting time.

I decided to work on the shawl since I didn’t need to pay attention to anything else. And between these two trips, I think I might get it done in plenty of time for my sister’s wedding. I have about 20 rows left and then the edging along the top. Of course those are the longest 20 rows, but still. I’m enjoying the pattern (Ethereal Fichu from Heartstrings; I’ve linked before) but then I like geometrics.

My only delay on the outbound journey was the taxi rank at Penn Station in New York. I waited over 30 minutes for a taxi. Luckily I had arranged for Cassie to meet me at my friend’s place so she was indoors chatting to my friend. When I arrived we had a cup of tea and then made our way to Downtown Knits followed by Purl.

Both are very small shops with shelving right to the ceiling. though laid out somewhat differently, they both display the yarn well. And there are swatches and scarves and things hanging around the place so you can see how some of the things knit up. Both were also quite crowded with customers late on Friday afternoon.

As Cassie has already said, we didn’t buy much. I bought 2 skeins of Lorna’s Laces Shephard Sock in Purl in a sage green and cream self-striping colourway. I’m not keen on green but this colour was one I know my mother wears. I had already ordered Nancy Bush’s Knitting on the Road and will put the sock yarn with it as a gift for my mother. (Yes, she already knows how to knit and does knit socks.)

When I got to the cash to pay for the yarn, there was a large bowl of beautiful buttons. One set in particular caught my eye — swirly blues with red. They are hand-blown glass and $7 each. That is a lot for buttons but not much for hand blown glass. I considered the price and the potential use and decided to get 2. Not sure what I’ll do with them but I suspect a sweater will need to be designed to set them off.

Cassie then took me to a favourite restaurant of hers. It was Tibetan. It was a bit dark in there and reading the menu by the light of a small candle was not the easiest thing I’ve ever done but the food was well worth it. Thank you Cassie.

The rest of the weekend, and the purpose of the trip, was taken up with a board meeting for the Alternatives to Marriage Project. I knit a substantial amount of a sock for my partner’s brother during that meeting. Most of the other board members were fine with the knitting though some said that they were surprised I could concentrate on the meeting while knitting. This was said kindly as they had noticed that I could indeed do so.

Of course my meeting finished mid afternoon on Sunday and I couldn’t fly out until much later. So I spent a bit of time hanging out with one of the other board members and knitting and then went out to the airport. Knitting time was severely restricted by poor signage and long check-in lines. But I arrived home at the scheduled time.

Yesterday, with the shawl that close to done, almost at the end of the first Leicester City sock, and the sleeve for the Classic Slant cardigan started, I inexplicably cast on and knit a worsted weight sock for my partner. Gee but those go quickly. I had divided a skein of purchased handspun into two equal balls and did the sock toe up until I ran out. I finished the first sock earlier today and have started on the second. I’ve also finished the first LC sock and started the second of those. I have a lot of waiting around to do tomorrow as I need a new passport before my Xmas trip to the UK.

In other news, it snowed today and actually stuck a bit. I suspect it won’t last but it was pretty coming down — big wet flakes. Also, the kid seems to be Croaky McCroakerson, Jr. and was home from school all day. She seems a lot better this evening so I’m sending her back tomorrow and going to line up at the passport office.

Well folks, I told you someone would take photos at the wedding. Thanks to the lovely Jim (he who knits and is related to fibery folks) for these photos and for having the presence of mind to get me to stand in front of that white garage door. These were taken at the end of the reception (but not the end of the evening, we went on to somewhere else). I think they are pretty good given the time of day.

You get a bit of a sense of the border on the shapely tank. I was warm enough indoors (what with the dancing and all) that that is how I wore the shawl for much of the evening.

I’m not just a knitter. I’m a sociologist, too. I no longer teach and do research but sociology has disciplined the way I think and mostly I think that is a good thing. My area is family, gender and sexuality. I’ve written about things like family and gender relations (including who does what housework) and feminism and heterosexuality. And when I taught about family, I always included stuff about queer families. As my PhD supervisor once said, I didn’t just write about this stuff, I lived it. And I still do.

Family is not given in nature. We are social beings and we create families. But we often go to all the trouble to create it in circumstances where we think it’s going to be worth it. There is a level of cultural expectation that you will do that work for certain people — like blood relatives. And then there are formal social occasions to add people into your family and make all that work safe for everyone else in your family — like marriages. And for those of us who take this active creating thing seriously, there are other means to do this. And time often lends a hand. Once you’ve been around long enough, other people start to figure they can take the risk of becoming closer without having their relationship cut off by the ending of the mediator relationship.

So family is usually an ‘opt-out’ relationship. You can decide not to spend much time and effort maintaining a relationship with your cousin (or even your mother) but if you don’t some minimal relationship will get maintained through you and other mediating relatives. And family is also ‘opt-in’ for higher levels. It’s like you get the basic relationship free and with some of those folks you put in more time and effort to have a closer relationship. Kath Weston has argued that because gay and lesbian folks are more aware of the fact that folks can opt out (it is a major element in almost all coming out narratives), they actively choose family even when they choose folks they are related to by blood. (This is in a book called Families We Choose published by University of California press. She is an anthropologist so it is a pretty accessible read even for non-academics.)

With your chosen family (those folks that are not blood relatives and their spouses) this works, too, as I discovered this weekend. Folks just assume that you are okay, and that you must have something in common because you have all been close to this common person for ages. The friendship is there already. You can opt-in to higher levels (unmediated by the common person) or you can opt out. But you don’t start with that awkward ‘Is this person going to like me? Is it okay to just hang out with these people all day?’ feeling. Everyone assumes you have things in common and conversations search out and gravitate towards that. No one is really looking for a reason to opt out. And maybe you find reasons to opt in to that other level.

As you know, from the shapely tank saga, I went to a wedding this past weekend. The groom is a friend that I met in 1988 when we were both exchange students in England. We became very close and have remained close friends ever since. Over the years I have met his parents, his brother, and some of his friends from back home (for him) in Michigan. This weekend was one of those occasions.

I was picked up at the airport by my friend’s dad. When I first met him several years ago I was warned not to talk about politics with him because he was ‘to the right of Ghengis Khan’. He has a photograph of Margaret Thatcher with a member of his family in his kitchen. I am very left wing and feminist. At that time, I worked out that (1) they were exaggerating and (2) it didn’t matter. This weekend, we spent an hour driving back from the airport and then 3 hours eating lunch and chatting. I get a kick out of imagining how nervous that made everyone. But we didn’t argue (not that either of us would have found that problematic) and we didn’t avoid politics. And we discovered that we agreed about lots of stuff. It was really nice to spend that time getting to know someone in the ‘family’ better.

There were 4 of us who had left our partners and children at home (including myself). On Friday evening, I got introduced to the other 3 and ate dinner with them. They asked if I wanted to join them on Saturday during the day (we didn’t need to be anywhere wedding related until 6). I did. And they drove me to the reception. And we all went to a bar together afterwards. And ate breakfast together both days. And they would have driven me to the airport if I wasn’t too hungover to want to get in a car at the time they were leaving.

We had a great time. I had met all of them previously sometimes more than once at other ‘family gatherings’. We had never spent much time together before. We discovered that we had lots in common. One of them knits. He knew what Rhinebeck was. He is related by marriage to these people. They all truly appreciated the shawl and the shapely tank. I also brought the peacock feathers one (in case I was going to hang around in the hotel knitting) so I changed into that between the reception and the bar and they appreciated that, too. We had lots of conversations about other things. We have kids similar ages.

We have talked about getting together again even if the friend that brought us together isn’t there. We’ve exchanged e-mail addresses. I’m keen to opt in to that. And blessed to have the opportunity.

BTW, photos of that shawl and top were taken. By one of the guys. When he sends them, I will post them.

And much knitting on a new shawl got done. There is a distinct possibility my sister will have it for her Dec 23rd wedding.

Two developments in this area to report. First, I finished the grey tank. You may recall that I got to almost finished once before and it was too baggy so I measured, learned (or maybe just accepted) some things about my body, rethought, frogged to 2 inches from the bottom, and restarted.

I am really happy with the resulting top. It fits well. My partner says it shows off my figure to advantage. And it feels good. Dale Svale is very soft silky yarn. Splitty when you knit with it so can be frustrating. But drape and feel are wonderful. Be careful to choose a pattern that works with that drape instead of against it.

I had a bit of trauma about choosing an edging. The pattern I based it on just has garter stitch and the bottom edge is shaped a bit with short rows to give a bit of a shirt tail shape. I had done a provisional cast-on so I’d know how much yarn I had for the edging. In the end, quite a bit was left. I prefer seed stitch to garter for plain borders but I wondered if I wanted something fancier. I leafed through Epstein’s Knitting on the Edge several times. And what about the relationship between the neck and sleeve edgings and the bottom.

In the end I decided on Shark’s Tooth, partly because it is very similar to the edging on the Diamond Fantasy Shawl that I am wearing with this tank. It was my first knit on sideways lace edging and it went well. In retrospect, it would be better on a straight bottom so in future I’d leave out the short rows at the bottom. Also, I might have thought more about how many repeats. I played it by ear. It’s okay and I can fudge the extras at the side so they lie flat. I did simple single crochet edging on the neck and armholes, eyeballing the distribution.

And it looks good with the DFS. Not overwhelming. Very nice. So that’s the outfit for the wedding reception in Ohio on Saturday sorted (though I think I need to move the hook on the waistband of my pants to make them a tiny bit tighter).

Second, I’ve decided to scrap the chenille ribbed v-neck for my daughter. I had cast that thing on a few times and when she tried it on the other day, it seemed too tight. The ribs were all stretched out. I did start on the sleeves anyway but the proportions were not good. And the chenille was uncomfortable to knit with and the stitches were uneven. The ribbing looked a bit funny.

I do like the design though there are a few things I’d do differently the next time. So I’ve decided to scrap that version all together. At some point in the future, I will order some nice wool in a DK weight and try again. The cable detail will work better in wool, anyway. And the v-neck and 3/4 sleeves (she takes after her father and his mother both of whom hate having long sleeves and roll up any they do own) keep it from being too hot. I need to do a bit of work on the cable and the way that it segues into the v-neck. A selvedge stitch at the neckline would be good to add. And I need to know how many to cast on and how to get the front and back to match up properly at the shoulder. Shouldn’t be a problem but requires more thinking before casting on than I did the last time.

My biggest issue with this is how to measure gauge in ribbing. Precision seems to be impossible. The problem is in deciding how stretched or not it should be. All advice on that gratefully received.

In other knitting news, I have started an Ethereal Fichu shawl for my sister in laceweight icelandic I bought at Rhinebeck. It is variegated in navy blue and burgandy. The colour pooling in the pattern is actually rather nice and I think that is partly because the colours are all the same tone. It is very relaxing to knit (in the way that knitting patterns you need to pay attention to can be sometimes) and I think it will be good travelling knitting (and sitting around in airports waiting for persons unknown to pick me up knitting).

I have also test knit a pattern for Steven and have another one sitting around. The patterns are designed for a ‘beyond beginners’ class so they are interesting but I get a bit bored with them before long. They are initially for a class he is teaching at his LYS. Interesting to think about teaching in a knitting context (as opposed to a sociology context).

And I’ve started a scarf for myself out of the romney/angora I spun up after Rhinebeck (though I didn’t get the fleece there, I got it from Kerry at the Prince Edward County FibreFest). I’m using the wavy triangles pattern from the spring/summer 2005 Vogue Knitting. I’ve knit that before for a gift and like the pattern. It is turning out very well and is sooooooo soft. I think this will be a warm and useful scarf as well as a beautiful use of some of my early handspun. For those of you who are tackling spinning, this is also a good pattern to knit with singles. The combination of knits and purls and the wavy nature of the pattern, in general, means that any tendency of your singles to bias will be minimized (or not noticeable).

I have a pair of socks on the needles in my handbag. They have been started more than once too. Knitting socks for grown men with wide feet in JaWoll is going to take a lot longer than knitting socks for 8 year olds (or man socks in worsted), that’s for sure. But they are also good for planes and other forms of transportation.

I still need to cast on the Classic Slant cardigan. I am also planning to order some yarn for an Eris, and maybe some for socks for me too. I want to try the heather sock yarn from Shelridge Farms.

Some spinning of the Persimmon Tree fleece has happened and there are two medium skeins in the bowl with the romney/angora and the white corriedale.