Fiber Musings

Are these bright or what? I like the way the light and dark bands formed. The yarn reminds me a lot of Koigu’s Kersti Merino Crepe that I used for these socks a year ago. It was a dream to work up. Those had become one of my favorite pairs of socks. Unfortunately, the Koigu did produce a lot of fuzz inside the socks. We’ll see how well these wear. And these are superwash to boot!

Just in case anyone is interested, here are some more pictures of the little felted purse that I’m dubbing The Iris Bag. Why? Because the colors remind me of the irises that we had along the driveway in our Seattle house. Dark purple to the point of being black.

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I feel like Goldilocks. This one is too big, and this one is too small. Sigh.

2 sailing socks for Martin (no, I haven’t finished the second sock for either yet). The green one is made from Mountain Colors Bearfoot. (I love this sock yarn, by the way. It’s wool, mohair, and nylon. It should wear very well.) It’s made toe up, so I really don’t have an excuse. The sock is 1″ too long for Martin’s foot. I don’t know what happened except that the short row heel is 3.5″ long, and I only planned for 2.5″. This has never happened to me before.

And I was down with the crud during the past 5 days. I was not in the mood to deal with little tiny needles, which tossed the second sock and my new spring T out the window. So, I picked up Hot Foot from The Village Spinning and Weaving Shop and my Brittany #2 needles. It’s a superwash merino yarn — about DK weight. This one is top down, using Lucy Neatby’s garter stitch short row heel. I think I was freaking out over how large the last sock was and started decreasing for the toe a bit too early. And it’s about 1/4″ too short. Actually, I remeasured the toe. It’s only 2.25″ instead of 2.5″, so there’s my 1/4″.

Sigh. I’ll have to rip both out and I’m not looking forward to it.

But they look nice, don’t they? Both have lovely hand. And both will be lovely sailing socks. Unfortunately, to comply with the US Sailing recommendations (they are really stressing it this year), Martin won’t be able to wear open toed sailing sandles while teaching. Only the cuffs will show about his new sailing shoes. And it’ll be too warm to wear when we go to the British Virgin Islands this summer. But they are lovely cuffs. Besides, there will be cruise outs that he can wear them to between now and then.

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I walked into the LYS at lunch yesterday for one ball of
black Lambs Pride and walked out with 5 balls of yarn.

They had a new kind of thick and thin yarn called Salsa
from Germany which I paired with a cotton cord for an
experiment in scribble lace. I am not fond of working on
large needles (15), but the results are worth the effort.
Now I have to go back to LYS to buy 3 more balls so my
scarf can become a stole.

On the outbound flight from LAX to Kona, a lady on the plane
had a copy of Debble New’s book, ‘Unexpected Knitting’.
The projects are a bit more involved than I would usually
undertake, but scribble lace looked doable. You knit
3 rows of thread or thin cotton cord and then 1 row of
a thick yarn in stockinette stitch on large needles. The
result looks like cobwebby lace.

I began with three armspans of the thick yarn, made a slip
knot, and then did a long tail cast-on until I had only 4″ left.
Then I knit 3 rows with the thin cotton cord, 1 row with the
thick n thin wool… Of course, this will only work with circular
needles.

(3 armspans should be enough yarn to cast on for something
one armspan long, slightly more or less depending on needle
size. Email me for the formula I worked out. But remember,
I was a math major in college.)

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I had to take a break from 3 mm needles on Sunday, so I made this. It’s a one skein purse made with Manos. It shrank a bit more than I wanted it to. All the other items I tried to felt needed 2 full cycles in the washing machine in our new place, so I didn’t think about it when I tossed it in with some laundry. I think I should have pulled it out about 1/2 way through.

But it’s cute isn’t it? I think this one is going to be winging its way south to Iris. It’s just the right size and colors for a little girl, doncha think?

(Although it’s a good size purse for those that like their handbags to fit snuggly under the arm pit, but I’m not one to carry that off. I’ll leave it to someone younger.)

Stats
1. one skein of Manos, colorway 107
2. US 11 needles
3. The finished size is 6″ wide and 3.5″ tall. The strap is 22″, end to end.

I’ll try another one as soon as I pick up another skein of Manos and try it for half the wash cycle. I really wanted this for myself. Unfortunately, it’ll probably have to wait until the weekend.

Gmail Update

I like it so far. I haven’t gotten enough mail to really see how well it works (slow mail days at Knitlist and Socknitters yesterday or was it typical?). However, it keeps the threads together so that you can view them all on one page instead of bouncing back and forth to see who said what, when. Unfortunately, this being the first day, I started in the middle of some of the threads, so I don’t have the full history of some of them yet. I’ll just have to wait for the next “what shops in Podunk should I visit while I’m on Spring Break?” thread to break.

Strangely enough, it’s identifying some emails, erroneously as spam. I’m still looking for patterns on these.

I almost missed the ads until I actually went back into it specifically looking for it. I guess I was just really used to ignoring the ads on Yahoo!Groups when I read the lists online. But the ads were well targeted. Yarn shops, knitting supplies for the most part. It brought up closet organizers during a discussion on organizing and displaying your stash. The really neat part of the “ads” section are the “Related Pages” section below the ads. I don’t think these are paid sites, but it was displaying links for ChicKnits and free knitting patterns at Knitting About and other related items. Occasionally, it would bring up something generic like leather briefcases when it doesn’t know what to do with the “me too!” emails.

Gmail doesn’t do folders, it does labels. You can apply one or more labels to each email (you can do this via filters). You can also flag a thread that you are interested in, and Gmail will place them in a separate section for perusal.

Now the really good part. This is for all you geeks out there. Gmail has keyboard shortcuts that are a blend of pine and vi. Nifty. You can navigate your emails without using the mouse. Cool.

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I’ve been on digest or no mail on all the Y! mailing lists that I’m on, because I just don’t want to deal with all that clutter in my mailbox. Not to mention possible viruses. So, I peruse the lists online when I have a chance.

Well, that all changed this morning. I created my Gmail account this weekend. I decided to put it to the definitive test. How well will it handle the volume of email that goes through Socknitters and KnitList? The experiment starts today. I’ll let it run for a week and post back with the results.

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