Put a ring on it

Pattern: Ailbhe by Caitlin Christine
Yarn: Dream In Color Classy (100% superwash merino), colorway In Vino Veritas
Needles: U.S. 6 Harmony wood Options 32″ circular (magic-loop style)

When you fall in love with a yarn, there’s no quitting it. After finishing my Rangoli hat, how could I put the half-skein remaining in my leftovers drawer? Mitts have been calling me for months. Just to keep on knitting with Classy, I gave in.

This short version of Ailbhe was just right. Textured cables that look like ribbing gone sideways. Eight different cables to keep you guessing. But quick as a wink to knit up. From start to finish, six days. Still at least 25 yards left on the skein; if I had to guess, I’d say these used 80 yards.

I made them to give away, specifically to the nice lady who hands me my breakfast at the drive-thru a couple of times a week. But it always happens — it’s so hard to let go of what you love. Soft as a cloud, thick and cozy, stylish and bold and easy to wear. Will I pledge my troth to these beautiful gloves, or will I let them go and burn with untoward jealousy?

Give this song another listen

Pattern: Cabled Rangoli Hat by Desiknitter
Yarn: Dream In Color Classy (100% merino), colorway In Vino Veritas
Needles: U.S. 5 Harmony wood 32″ circulars (magic-loop style)

Oh, those beautiful skeins of Classy. They feel like a cloud, and they look like a painter’s palette. And this hat took just over half of one. I almost can’t commit to make anything in particular out of Classy. Nothing seems like it will use enough of the yarn and show it off to greatest effect. But I must say that this hat comes close.

The kids at my knitting group believe they could never do cables. I believe I can never stop doing them. Slip, knit, then switch places with a stitch (or two or three) magically hanging in midair as you accomplish it. So fast and so utterly beguiling.

Those are my first bobbles, and half-hearted little bumps they are. Rather than attempting p5tog, I did p3tog, slip back to left needle, pass next 2 stitches over, sl back to right needle, continue. The texture is there, but I wouldn’t call it a bobble, exactly. More like a nub.

It’s kind of ridiculous to be able to make something so luxurious, so subtly shaded, so textured. But that’s not all I made.

Pattern: Not Quite Straight Scarf by Nicole Hinds (Rav link)
Yarn: Knit PIcks Andean Silk (55% alpaca, 23% silk, 22% merino wool), colorway Fedora
Needles: U.S. 9 wooden straights

This was my don’t-have-to-think-about-it knitting for a few weeks. It accompanied me to church, to class, to meetings, to the library. I had to start it three times to get the tricky knit-purl-knit-knit-purl-knit repeat down, but once I memorized which rows were which (purl on 2 and 5, increase/decrease on odd rows) and as long as I kept my StitchMinder handy, it practically flew by.

The idea was to make a manly scarf in a manly color. But now what to do with it? Is there a gift recipient in my circle of gift-giving that would appreciate it? Or should it go to the Red Scarf Project?

Not to worry. Whatever becomes of it, whoever receives it, the important thing is that I produced it. I enjoyed myself thoroughly doing so. It’s soft, warm, and stylish. The value is in the accomplishment more than in control over the recipient. A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Send her my love

Pattern: Checkmate by Emily Ivey (official dishcloth pattern of Son of Dish Rag Tag 2009)
Yarn: Lily Sugar’n Cream Stripes (100% cotton)
Needles: U.S. 8 alumnium straights

For want of an early mail delivery, an advantage was lost. Anxiously did I await the little box containing my Son of Dish Rag Tag assignment. It had been bouncing around the country for more than a month, and I was its second-to-last stop.

But when it finally arrived at 2:30 pm on Saturday, the post offices had long since closed. I had all weekend to knit, even though I only needed two hours to turn the enclosed stripey yarn into a Neopolitan ice cream sundae of a dishcloth.

So I had plenty of time to peruse the blog and Ravelry profile of the intrepid anchor of the Peaches & Speed team, who shall remain only S.G. and linkless until she’s received the surprise Stephanie from Columbus, Ohio. Hm, she likes elephants. Do I have any elephants around the house that will fit into a Priority Mail small flat rate box? No?

Wonder if I could make one?

Pattern: Little Elephant by Christine Landry
Yarn: Lily Sugar’n Cream leftovers
Needle: U.S. 4 Harmony wood Options 24″ circular

It’s my first ever toy, and it turned out really cute. My sewing-up skills are negligible at best; the Kitchener stitch on the back is pretty bad. I almost ran out of green (one of her favorite colors) leftover dishcloth cotton, and had to dig up another leftover ball in my leftovers bag to finish the second ear. I wanted to do French knots for eyes but gave up after not really understanding the internet instructions I found, and ended up with some improvised embroidered dots.

I call her Raggie. And now she’s stuffed in a box that’s almost more tape than cardboard, guarding a treasure trove of goodies for the aforementioned S.G.

We might not win, thanks to the enforced weekend delay. But we had a great time. Go Peaches & Speed!

From a mess to the masses

Pattern: Springtime Bandit by Kate Gagnon
Yarn: Knit Picks Andean Treasure (100% baby alpaca), colorway Olive
Needles: U.S. 9 Harmony wood Options 36″ circular

Everyone’s wearing these triangular scarves these days. And I’ve been dying to knit one. Here’s a cloud of alpaca lace to drape around the neck and over the shoulders, a perfectly addictive little project.

Once I started making my way back and forth across the chart, increasing steadily and forming beguiling leaves and shapes, I could hardly make myself stop. In less than two weeks, I was finished.

And I find myself imagining a new style for myself, one that includes beautiful lace tossed casually over a t-shirt, tank, or blouse, under a coat or jacket, anywhere, anytime. I imagine myself as a woman with accessories, with insouciance, with comfort and adornment. Knitting has given me quite a gift — a new vision of self, a new sense of accomplishment, a belief that I can remake myself with sticks and string, fabric and air.

That’s my speed and direction

Pattern: Enjoyable Rib Scarf by Anne K.
Yarn: Yarn Bee Bamboospun (77% bamboo, 23% polyamide), red colorway
Needles: U.S. 9 bamboo straights

Things are not good at my workplace. No, I’m in no danger of losing my job. But the control I have over the conditions of my job seems to be dissipating.

At times like these, knitting is truly redemptive. Especially when you are knitting for someone who has not had as much control over their lives as I have enjoyed.

My first Red Scarf Project scarf for the year, and I hope not the last, is the therapeutic Enjoyable Rib Scarf in plush, cushy Bamboospun. The fabric produced by this combination of yarn and pattern feels like chenille. It’s comfort food for the neck. You just can’t help stroking it, burying your fingers in it.

The Red Scarf Project sends Valentine’s Day care packages to orphans attending college. Could there be any more perfect charitable cause for me? I work closely with college students. I adore and feel very parental toward my students. I love my children, and my highest ambition for them is that they feel loved and valued.

Life is unpredictable. Sometimes you have to ride the waves; sometimes your head is barely above water. A little thing — a handmade scarf, a warm embrace, created out of love — can be all you have to hang onto. Each stitch is a tiny moment of control. Each gift is a relinquishing of the need to have control.

Perfect smiles unaffected

Pattern: Three Tams10 by Angela Sixian Wu (Tam A)
Yarn: Classic Elite Bazic Wool (100% wool), colorway Citrine; Ella Rae Classic Print (100% wool), colorway 77
Needles: U.S. 5 and 6 Harmony wood Options 24″ circular (magic loop style)

When you’re not a very adventurous dresser, it can be mighty hard to imagine how an unfamiliar style — no matter how classic — looks on you. My decision to knit this tam had more to do with frustration about what to do with two pesky yarn purchases, both impulse buys from the last year or so. After I got tired of staring at them during my periodic attempts to turn my stash into knittable packages, I hit upon the idea of using the variegated yarn for “fake isle,” the practice of using a multicolored yarn to produce the illusion of complicated colorwork. I wasn’t really sure the green wool would compliment it — the two yarns have a completely different construction and texture — but in the absence of any other ideas, I thought I’d give it a shot.

Turns out that the combination of colors lends the bluish variegated yarn a jewel-like brightness. The whole effect is of harmonious colors that are nevertheless quite distinctive, given how rarely they’re seen in accessories these days. While reminding myself how to do colorwork, I learned (or made up, I’m not sure which) how to twist floats when the contrasting color had to be carried behind more than five stitches. And although there were a few places where the plies of the Bazic Wool had separated, I only had to cut it once, leaving a minimum of ends to weave in.

Not only am I thrilled with the knitted results, but the way I wear this little tam is a happy surprise, too. If I’ve ever sported a hat of this shape, it was back when I was a girl. Now I see that there’s a reason it’s a fashion perennial. It combines crisp structure with a casual slouch, creating a hat that can go from dressy to weekend with style. And I’m emboldened. If I can wear a tam, who knows what else I can pull off?

Somewhere over the water next to a harbor

Pattern: Gloria Cowl recipe by Orinda5
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Mediumweight (100% merino wool), Lapis colorway, held doubled
Needles: U.S. 8 Harmony wood Options 16″ circular

Why do people knit for years, decades, and lifetimes? Because there is always something new to see.

Take this beautiful yarn, which I bought at Knitch in Atlanta while visiting the city for a committee meeting. I tried to knit a sock with it. But as so often happens with gorgeous variegated yarn, I wasn’t happy at all with the look of it after a few inches. It was … garish. The colors pooled. The result was unpleasant — not at all what I was hoping for when I picked it out of all that beautiful sock yarn at that beautiful store.

When I ran across pictures of this simple cowl on Ravelry, I thought immediately of this yarn. The idea is to hold two strands of the yarn together, but to stagger them so different sections of the color sequence are next to each other. If the strands are different colors, there will be multiple colors in each stitch, minimizing the probability of pooling.

What a revelation! Watching the big stitches form so quickly on the big needles, watching the complex color sequences recombine and march across the stockingette, it was mesmerizing and magical. Before I knew it, the yarn had dwindled away to almost nothing and the cowl was done.

I refuse to believe that beautiful yarn can’t become a beautiful knitted object. Thanks to a failed pair of socks and an inspiring photograph, I found the one for this very special skein. It’s like a circle of love, formed from color and warmth.

The sun melts the chill from our lives

Pattern: Chain Chomp Hat by Knitting Ninja
Yarn: NaturallyCaron.com Country (25% merino, 75% acrylic), colorways Black and Silver Service; Berroco Comfort (acrylic and nylon), colorway White
Needles: U.S. 9 Harmony wood Options 24″ circular, magic-loop style

Pattern: Official Kitty62 Hat by Kitty Schmidt
Yarn: Berroco Comfort (acrylic and nylon), colorway White
Needles: U.S. 7 Harmony wood Options 24″ circular, magic-loop style

His sister got Archer a Mario Kart lunchbox for his birthday, because above all else Archer loves Mario. Her brother got Cady Gray a Hello Kitty lunchbox for her birthday, because above all else Cady Gray loves Hello Kitty. Their mother knit them both hats that celebrate their above-all-else loves: a Chain Chomp hat for Archer, a Hello Kitty hat for Cady Gray. And she rejoiced that the internet gave her such marvels to emulate and give to her children.

The main part of the chomper is light worsted weight held double; the chain is five-stitch I-cord; the teeth are white worsted-weight held single, left over from Cady Gray’s hat; the eyes are felt circles sewn on. When Archer pulled it out of the gift bag, he said, “It’s a hat.” I said, “Do you know anything that looks like that, with teeth and a broken chain?” With a smile slowly spreading over his face, he said, “It’s a Chain Chomper.”

I was so taken by ridiculousknit’s version on Ravelry — it’s even her Ravatar — that I copied it, with her kind help. The eyes and nose are buttons; the whiskers are half-assed embroidery; the bow is leftover Plymouth Encore from her Drive-Thru sweater, knit into a long rectangle which is folded, wrapped with a smaller rectangle, and sewn down.  The pom-poms are the same yarn done up with Clover’s absolutely magical little pom-pom maker in one of the medium sizes. I knew Cady Gray would adore this hat, and she didn’t take it off for the rest of the day.

This is precisely the picture I’ve been looking forward to ever since the beginning of the month, when I started working on these hats. It’s the image I’ve had in my head right down to the last toothy smile. No need to thank me, kids — I’ll thank you, instead, for making my dream of birthday happiness come true.

You should spend your life with someone

Pattern: Magic Mirror Socks by Jeanie Cartmel (PDF link)
Yarn: Koigu Painter’s Palette Premium Merino (100% merino wool), colorway P419
Needles: U.S. 1 40″ nickel Options fixed circular (two-at-a-time magic loop style, toe up)

It was the last day of July. For the whole month, cheered on by fellow members of Team Welcome and all the nearly 700 participants in Ravelry’s WIP Wrestlemania 2009, I’d been focusing exclusively on finishing my works in progress — all the knitted items I had going simultaneously, or those that had been set aside to wait for sewing up or grafting or attaching buttons, or those that had been abandoned months or years ago.

As part of that commitment, I hadn’t cast on anything new since June. But in June, I did start a few things … some fresh projects, some knits of a more recent vintage, so that the parade of ancient unfinished objects didn’t get too dispiriting. The random number generator picked 24, and in bag 24 I found this pattern and this beautiful yarn, which I bought in Chicago while there for the American Academy of Religion meeting in November 2008.

I admit that I neglected my older WIPs, the ones the event was designed to help me conquer, because of the siren song of these socks. They progress slowly, a few lines of the chart at a time. Luckily I had many occasions when this careful knitting wasn’t in the cards, and the mindless rows of a baby blanket or a pair of handwarmers were the only activity that fit the bill. Otherwise I probably would have knit little else in July.

Last night I decided that I had enough length on the legs and began to knit the cuff ribbing. The hours ticked by as I knit the twisted rib, first one sock, then the other. I thought I might finish the knitting before Wrestlemania expired along with the month of July, but not the bind-off, which required me to choose a stretchy one at minimum, and find supplies that weren’t beside me on the couch at maximum.

But while chatting in the Luau Lounge with some of my teammates, I began to feel as if quitting with only the bind-off to do would be a crying shame. I could count the socks as done for the purposes of Wrestlemania if I chose, but I knew I’d never be able to live with that; socks still on the needles are hardly finished. And if I had time before midnight, why not go for it and gain a legitimate victory?

At 11:56 pm on July 31, as the judges were getting ready to ring the final bell, I pulled my tapestry needle through the last stitch on the last sock, completing Elizabeth Zimmerman’s sewn bind-off and my socks. I had been worried pretty much since the short-row heel that they were too small, but as July turned into August, I coaxed them onto my feet for a blurry iPhone photo.

One way or the other, these socks would have gotten done; if not yesterday, then today, or tomorrow, or next week. But the benefit of an event like WIP Wrestlemania is that it imposes a certain discipline on the participants. Its austerity pays off in a feeling of accomplishment, and the banishing of disorganization and haphazard approaches to production.

And of course, beautiful, beautiful socks.

You can dance if you want to

Pattern: Fish Hat [Dead Or Alive] by Thelma Egberts
Yarn: Plymouth Encore Worsted (75% acrylic, 25% wool)
Needles: U.S. 7 Harmony wood Options circles, magic loop style

Pattern: Knit Coffee Sleeve by MissKnittyPants
Yarn: Knit Picks City Tweed HW (55% merino wool, 25% alpaca, 20% Donegal tweed with viscose naps), Jacquard colorway
Needles: U.S. 6 aluminum straights

As WIP Wrestlemania 2009 enters its last hours, I have two final finished objects to show for my labor. Archer’s fish hat has been waiting for its felt and embroidered eyes since late March. The coffee sleeves (gifts to be sent to my teaching assistants with Starbucks gift cards to thank them for their assistance in my freshman final exam competition this spring) were simply waiting on a final grafting session. (Not pictured: the Malabrigo sleeve already given to Karyna, since I had dinner with her earlier this summer).

My tally: Out of 11 works-in-progress I tagged in June to be part of the competition, I completed nine. One was over two years old. Six only needed finishing (ends woven in, buttons sewn on, etc.).

I know I never would have finished the Dragon Sleeper baby blanket if it hadn’t been for this three-ring circus of a Ravelry event. And I’ll bet a few of the others that just needed the finishing touches would still be sitting with bags of notions at their sides, while I indulged in knitting instead of the sewing they required.

So I’m enormously grateful to WIP Wrestlemania 2009. And I’m proud of my record. But oh, the cast-ons that will be coming tomorrow! First up, I’m thinking novelty hats for the kids’ birthday party in three weeks … a Hello Kitty hat and a Chain Chomp hat … I have everything I need except for black yarn …. [and so the yarn buying cycle begins anew. It is nature's way.]

I’ll let Archer’s magnadoodle have the last word.