All posts by Wind Cowles

Button scarf

knitting,

As I mentioned before, almost all of my projects are currently gift-related and so I’m reluctant to say too much about them. That said, the “beer” tag is threatening to overshadow the “knitting” tag, which I simply can’t allow to happen. I’m thinking that of the likely gift-recipients who might read this, the men-folk in my life are probably lower in the rankings. But, just in case, anyone of the grandpa persuasion who might be reading this in New York needs to stop now.

[…]

[…]

I mean it.

[…]

Okay, I’ve started working on another scarf of my own design, this time a manly scarf that’s short, with a button to keep it fixed in place. That means I have, looming large on my horizon… button holes (cue thunder and lightning and lone wolf howl). In meantime, I’m bopping along, seemingly oblivious and quite happy with my little pattern:

I’ll let you know how the button hole turns out. I think there is 100% certainty that I will learn a lesson or two.

Why I need to do two socks at a time

knitting,

Christmas knitting season is upon me and so I may have to go dark with reports on knitting projects, since almost all of them are Christmas projects. But, I do have at least once more recent project that I can talk about.

I recently finished a pair of “wristers” for my daughter, in her favorite color:

These are from a pattern in 60 Quick Knits. Can you pick which one I did first? Here’s the funny part (and a turning point for me, I think): I did better with the first one. I just lost steam on the second, and then lost count of my rows, and then just kept on going because I needed to finish. There was at least one hole big enough to cause comment from my daughter (on the increases for the thumb gusset) – so I just patched it up with some extra yarn.

Lessons learned:
(1) I’m not ready for prime-time cabling yet.
(2) I am developing strong opinions about increases.
(3)  I need to knit socks in tandem or I will have a lot of orphan socks.

Hat improvement

knitting, ,

Don’t let all of Redbeard’s posts about beer fool you – there is also knitting going on. (Okay, mostly along side the drinking – in fact, right now I’m looking longingly over at some lovely roving that I got from Earth Guild while drinking a Pumking as part of a pumpkin beer tasting that Redbeard and I decided to do tonight.)

I finished another Elf hat. This one is for the son of a good friend of mine (and novice knitter, another one joins the fold!). I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of joining the sides. I’m not sure I’m doing a mattress stitch, but I’ve decided that I don’t care. Here’s a close up of the seam:

Not exactly seamless, but then I don’t think it can be with this pattern. Even with the strange join, I still really like this pattern.

Another Earth Guild purchase that portends more knitting:  Melissa Morgan-Oakes Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks. I’ve been interesting in knitting socks for awhile, and there is something really, really appealing about (a) starting with the hard part first, and (b) doing both socks at once. So… now I just need some sock yarn. Yay – field trip to my LYS!

 

Resume spinning

Spinning,

After a brief, frustration-related hiatus, I have returned to spinning. Everything was going so well with my beginner roving, but when I tried to pretend I could really spin it all fell apart. (Literally.) Luckily, my friend and fellow spinning novice could see what the problem was: I was trying to spin roving that was too thick. Turns out beginner roving is already thin enough to spin, but grown-up roving is meant for people who know enough to pull apart the roving into thinner strips. People who were not me, but now are me, because now I know to do this!

And the magical process by which stringy fluff becomes yarn can continue…

So, I’m now figuring out how to spin steadily, instead of parking the spindle to twist the fiber. While it is more of a juggling act (and so I’m sure much more entertaining to watch), the quality of the yarn is surprisingly better – my width is a lot more consistent and I over-spin much less.

Also, my friend now has a spinning wheel. As I told Redbeard about this, I made to sure to reassure him that I’m not ready for a wheel yet. He replied that he has already “resigned” himself to making room for one. So…. does that mean I can have one now? Because I think I really am ready.

 

I know what a LOT of people are getting for Christmas this year…

knitting, , , ,

I am trying my best to show a little restraint when it comes to this hat pattern a friend gave me. But, oh sweet knitting gods, it is hard.

This hat is so cute and knits up insanely fast because you knit flat and then sew it into shape. What’s not to love?

Oh, that’s right, here is what is not love:

Way down at the bottom of the pattern, looking innocent, is the instruction to “mattress” stitch the ends together. I’m not sure why it’s called mattress stitching, though my current theory is because it makes you want to go lie down after you try it. Good thing this first hat (because oh yes there will be more, bed-related stitching or not) is for my daughter, who is not yet discerning enough to care about what a complete hash her mother has made of the mattress stitching on her new hat.

Of course, it doesn’t help that this first attempt is on a diagonal (the tutorials only show horizontal and vertical… how dare they not envision every possible orientation?). I’m making my son one next… it will give me another chance to see if I can work out how to join these things together.

Quick side-scarf

knitting, ,

I have so much love for thick yarns. I had a sudden, birthday-related need for a scarf. Fast forward roughly 4 knitting-hours, and I’ve got a warm, wooly scarf.

The color on this picture is way, way off. It has a lot more red in it than is shown here, but otherwise I think this nicely shows off the seed stitch that I used. I just sort of winged this scarf, and decided on the fly to do something a little more fancy that a garter stitch.

Even though this was an easy project, I still learned something (2 things, in fact – how embarrassing!):

(1) This scarf is 21 stitches across, size 13 needles with “super bulky” yarn. I should never, ever make a scarf this wide again. I ended up having to run out and buy another skein because it would’ve been way too stubby with just the one I had. If I had had the time, I would’ve started over with maybe 15 stitches.

(2) In my head, here is the pattern I decided to make:

CO 21
Rows 1-4: K21
Rows 5-??: K3, [k1, p1]* repeat until three stitches left, k3
Knit last 4 rows then BO

Okay, so in my head, this would give me a 3-stitch garter border. In reality, this gave me a 4-stitch border because, duh, K3 then k1… yes, that is K4. Plus, because I correctly figured out that I needed an odd number of stitches, the seed [k1, p1] actually ends with just a k1, so… yep: K4 at the end of the row. To be fair, I got what I really wanted, which is being able to knit the same exact pattern every row and still get a seed stitch with a border. The border is just a little bigger than I planned.

A lovely side-effect of this project (because I can’t learn three things from a silly scarf that took a few hours) – I can know really tell the difference between how a single knit stitch and a single purl stitch looks. I am ridiculously proud of this.

Around the block

knitting, , ,

I’ve just finished a cute mini-wrap using the Citron pattern (LGT Ravelry). I used some of the lovely mocha-colored yarn that my grandmother gave me (spun from a blend of her alpacas’ wool, although sadly not by me – more on the spinning front in another post…).

The knitting on this one went really fast – I finished it in two otherwise pretty crazy weeks – and only involved a small amount of cursing (mostly limited to the time I accidentally pulled a ton of stitches off the needles). The pattern itself is pretty AND pretty straightforward, but does require blocking the project at the end. I’ve never blocked anything and was little daunted by the idea, but it had to be done.

But… how to do it? A quick search on Google reminded me (with apologies to Tolkien): Go not to the webs for council, for they will say both no and yes. Some people say hot water, some people say cold water. Some people say dunking, other people say spraying. Some people say special equipment, some people say a towel and straight pins.  In the end, I based my plan of action on this really helpful page at Yarn Harlot. I will add to the chorus of comments at the bottom of that page that the yarn-through-the-top thing is genius. Pure blocking genius.

Here are the before, middle, and after shots:

Another ruffley success

knitting, ,

I’ve just finished another ruffle scarf, and I (obviously) love this pattern. The thing that I can’t get over is the transformation that happens between when it is on the needles and when it finally comes off. It basically looks like a lumpy snake to start with:

But, then the ruffles emerge stitch by stitch as you bind off, until you get this:

(Ugh – the colors are all over the place with these pictures – the first picture is the best match to the actual color!)

This particular pattern uses Yarn Overs to expand three times, going from 256 cast on stitches to 1024 bind off stitches in just a few rows. This also creates some very pretty, lace-like holes in the final scarf:

Despite carefully following the pattern’s guidelines about yardage and weight, I still had to run out to my LYS to get another skein of yarn half-way through the row just before binding off. Ugh. So I added a row with the sudden bounty of yarn at my disposal, which actually gives the outer edge a little more weight – a nice touch, I think. So, it was a blessing in disguise in the end, but still annoying that I simply can’t get the yardage right in my projects right now (more on the cursed market bag another time – let’s just say I was a little sheepish as I admitted I had not one but TWO skeins I needed to match dye lots on).

Now we get to wait

Mead, ,

Everyone appears to have their own personal mead recipe, with different — sometimes diametrically opposed — and strongly-held views about things like which yeast to use, when to pitch it (and how many times), and how much white stuff to skim off the top of the honey-wort.

We whipped up a gallon of our own mead and put it in for primary fermentation:

We kept it simple: we boiled a gallon of water and then took it off the heat, added 2 pounds of honey, and then pitched 5g of Lalvin D47 yeast (a wine yeast) and a bit of mystery yeast food that our LBBS supplied once the temperature dropped to 85F or so. (We have a fancy-schmancy coiled copper wort chiller, but realized at the last moment that it can’t attach to our new, fancy-schmancy kitchen faucet. Oops. Luckily, with only a gallon to chill, an ice bath in the sink is a perfect (and honestly better) alternative.

Now – we wait for some tiny bubbles to burble up from the airlock. In a couple weeks, we’ll transfer over for secondary fermentation for a few months. With luck we’ll have some lovely mead in time for winter. (Or December, whichever comes first here in North Central Florida.)

 

Have honey, will brew

Beer,

During our summer trip to upstate New York, my uncle gave Redbeard and I enough honey from his bees to make mead with. We’ve been toying with the idea of making mead for a couple years now, but have never before been able to get enough honey in one place at one time. So, in anticipation of an extra day off this weekend, we swung by our Local Beer-Brewing Store (LBBS?) and picked up some 12-14% wine yeast.

(Small jar on the left is some blueberry preserves I made earlier in the summer – not quite up to tackling blueberry wine, though it is popular among local vineyards here.)

I’m hoping this will take our mind off of our mash tun woes…