10 posts tagged “knitting”

Hey, I just noticed in the Knitting group that many of us have loads of fairly new, in-demand knitting books. I was wondering if it would be possible to create a VOX knitting library among those interested. I'm not sure how to moderate it other than the honor system, but I'm open to ideas.

The general idea is that we could ping other VOXers if we're interested in borrowing a book from them, and if so, that person would mail it to the other. We could set down some general rules, like a polite timeframe for borrowing a book, etc.

With the US Postal Service, you can print shipping labels online. This means that, technically, I could pay for postage, generate a label as a PDF and email it to a VOXer that has a book I'd like to borrow. They could print it out and mail the book.

I'm here in Birmingham with the family, and other than not getting online until yesterday, it's been good. The girls have been fun, Grandma's doing okay and my aunt is her same rational, jolly self. I miss the spouse-unit terribly, but I'll see him next week in Copenhagen.

It's cold here, but not as cold as I thought it would be. My aunt has given me some of her handknit woolen sweaters, most cabled and one with a gorgeous intarsia butterfly on the front! Pictures as soon as I figure out how to download them from the camera with a USB cable.

I've picked up plenty of gummi coke bottles and bags of prawn cocktail skips. I have one suitcase and so many goodies, I don't know how I'll fit them all! Argh. And I haven't even been to a yarn store yet...

Shepherdsock

I have recently discovered the joy that can only be found in sock yarn. I never really understood the craze before because my pitiful attempts to knit socks on dpns always turned into a knitter's nightmare right around that god-awful "turning the heel" part. I'm sorry, maybe I'm slightly retarded, but I cannot follow a pattern exactly to save my life.

To birdwalk for a moment, I was commenting on that this morning to the spouse-unit. I had an idea for a scarfwrap for my mother-in-law for Christmas and was flipping through the 300 Crochet Stitches book looking for simple patterns. What makes for a simple pattern, you ask? Why let me tell you: 1) it has to have less than 4 row repeats, 2) each row pattern has to be easily committed to memory, and 3) it has to look more-or-less reversible. Anyhow, so I was flipping through the book and I realized I was reading the stitch charts with the same brainbits that I use to read code in programming books. I know this is a complete 'Duh' to all the knitter/crocheter geeks out there, but it only truly dawned on me in that moment just how similar coding and knitting/crocheting are.

Umm.. where was I? Oh, yeah - socks!!!

So I've always wanted to make my own socks. I think that was what made me learn to knit in the first place was wanting to make my own socks. About five or ten years ago (or somewhere in-between), I discovered the fun of wearing crazy socks, rather than the plain white athletic socks I'd worn with sneakers through grade school and high school. I had these knee-high clunky black platform boots, a little gothish, that someone (I forget who exactly) named my "come-fuck-me" boots. :o) I wore them with just about everything and found that one could happily get away with wearing hot pink and lime-green striped knee-high socks to work. Ever since then, I've always opted for fancy fun-looking (preferably knee-high) socks. My favorite was a pink pair that said "boys suck. throw rocks at them."

Shepherdsock2

So I tried making socks just about as soon as I learned to purl, but gave up after repeated attempts. But when I learned to crochet a month ago, it occured to me that maybe I could crochet my socks! I scoured the web for patterns and finally found this Toe-Up Crocheted Socks pattern from Grafton Fibers. The pattern starts with about 3 "flat" rows then shifts to working in rounds with increases to cover the toes, continues in rounds/spirals over the instep, leaves a hole where the heel goes by chaining half the diameter of the sock and reattaching on the other end and now you continue up around the ankle; reattach yarn at the heel hole and crochet in decreasing rounds to fill in the heel! Very smart! I whipped out a pair of booties in an afternoon, in a heathered gray shade of Cascade Eco Wool. They're a little chunky to wear in shoes, but I'm wearing them right now in my Earth sneakers and they're snug, warm and comfy. I'm working up a pair in a Cherry Tree Hill yarn, and have another, umm, ... *lowered voice* 10 skeins... of sock yarn waiting.

Socks are fantastic, really. (Just in case you didn't know that already.) The yarn & project is often small enough to fit in a jacket/sweater pocket, though I don't have any jackets or cardis that fit a 400yd ball, which means I'm going to have to make one. While I tend to rush through most of my worsted or bulky weight projects with fewer stitches, the thousands of stitches in the average sock humbles me to the point of crocheting slowly and serenely. :o)  People tend to look at you a little more strangely than if you're making something as simple as a scarf. Maybe they're impressed by the tiny fingering weight yarns, or by the sheer magnitude of making something as seemingly-tedious as a sock, or simply envious that you get to enjoy warm handcrafted woollen socks in this day and age.  No matter the reason, people will also wonder where you "get the time" to make something so time-consuming. Haha - puny non-crafters. I'll take a ball of sock yarn over my PSP any day of the week. :o)

PS - Dear Santa, I'll take any Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock or Cherry Tree Hill Superwash that might happen to "fall off the sleigh" on Christmas Eve.

Caps to the Capital - 4 tags

For those of you in the Caps to the Capital campaign, hugs and cheers for helping out!! I've got six or seven boxed and ready to ship, with another two set for a second shipment. (This is great practice for my novice crocheting skills!)

I noticed after the third hat that printing a whole page for the 3x7 strip that makes the tag was a terrible waste of paper, so I made a 4-tag PDF. Hmm. Looks like posting a PDF file is near impossible on VOX, so here's a 4-tag JPG.

Omnivore's Dilemma

Conventional sheep, kept in close confinement en masse, are often 'dipped' in highly toxic pesticide solutions to kill ticks, lice, blowfly and scab. (Google: sheep dipping) I can't seem to find much on how much pesticide residue is left over in processed conventional yarns, but the chemicals used in the process can cause central nervous system damage. And sheep are dipped not once in their lifetime, but at least several times, on average.*

FWIW, I can't say that I'll never buy conventional yarns again. There's too much variety missing from the organic market right now. But I will promise to buy organic where possible and affordable, and save my yarn money to buy more organic, rather than splurging on cheap conventionals. I'm also contacting all of my favorite yarn manufacturers (ie. Brown Sheep, Blue Sky, etc.) to find out where they get their wool/fibers from, and asking for specific farms and locations. At the very least, maybe it'll bring to their attention that people care about this stuff.

• O-Wool, by the Vermont Organic Fiber Company. Free shipping @ theyarngrove.com
• Near Sea Naturals carries a large variety of organic fibers, such as nettle, cotton, alpaca, wool, recycled silk, and hemp.
• Marr Haven sells their own, fresh-from-the-farm 100% chemical-free wool yarn, with minimum processing to keep most of the natural lanolin intact. (Lanolin naturally softens wool fibers with washing, and is almost completely missing from conventionally processed yarns.)
• There's a new shop opening later this fall, Organic Imaginings, which plans to feature organic yarns, including certified organic and fair trade yarns. Drop them an email and show them some love!
• Browse Etsy for homemade yarns straight from the sheep. Some of my favorite sellers that spin yarn from their own sheep are ritaswoolybatts. (The sellers I steer clear of are anyone associated with the Makah tribe, which cruelly hunts grey whales for non-nutritive purposes.)

In an effort to compile a master list of organic yarns, I've started to scour the web and save promising links to del.icio.us. If you're interested in my findings, you can find them and similar bookmarks from others with the keywords "eco organic yarn".

* If you're interested in more information about the real cost of wool, I don't recommend PETA's savethesheep.com site. I say this because while their sheep campaign targets Australian farms, it demonizes all wool growers with blanket statements like "sheep raised for their wool all over the world are castrated and have their tails cut off...". What about the few small production farmers that DO practice humane and ethical treatment of sheep? Or those that keep sheep or alpacas as pets and create homespun yarns? Add to this that PETA actually recommends the use of synthetics like tencel (according to the Green Guide, "the EPA rated Courtauld [the manufacturer of rayon] the sixth-largest producer of inorganic pollution in the U.S.") and rayon (Co-op America states that "about a third of the pulp obtained from a tree will end up in finished rayon thread"; the rest is thrown away).

Have I mentioned that my home office is freezing cold? It is. I'm sitting here right now with the oil heater turned up, fully dressed in jeans, t-shirt, sneakers, and my favorite sweater EVER: a zip-up black Betty Rides fleece hoodie. I have the hood up and wrapped right and must look like a freak, really. Especially odd if I look outside and see the sunny Hollywood Hills down below. Gaah.

I really need to learn how to knit socks. I can't believe I'm this cold all the time. Sheesh.

It's been quiet here lately. I've been so busy working on various sites and things. *sigh* I'm a bit tired, but a good tired. I've been sticking to my watch-what-you-eat diet, but I've been heavy on the caffiene like a bad girl. :o( And I'm tempted to have a naughty bowl of junky ramen later this afternoon, but we'll see.

Don't You Dare Have Kids Until You Read This! : The Book of Questions for Parents-to-Be

Corey Donaldson

I've been knitting a little more on the side. I can't wait for my recent order from Flying Fingers to come in. I ordered a few skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca in this soft brown shade for a sweater for my nephew. It's exciting really, because I've never made a sweater before. Well, a human sweater. I make plenty of dog sweaters off-the-top-of-my-head, and other small random things, but a sweater. In knitting or crocheting idealogy, knitting a sweater is a huge (and equally often over-rated) thing. Anyhow, if it goes well, I plan to knit one for myself in either Blue Sky Alpaca (an expensive choice at $150+ for yarn) or Lamb's Pride Burly Spun (a bit cheaper at about $110+).

I've also been looking more and more at various baby books. *sheepish look* I guess it's because the topic is coming up and as with everything in my life, I intend to read up and learn as much as I can on the subject before doing anything rash. The "Don't You Dare Have Kids" book is pretty good. Some of the questions are downright silly and obvious, in my mind, but others are pretty good for random thinking sprees.