In Deep with Double Knitting

Let me start by saying thank you to Susan for finding a full picture of the Love and Loss sculpture picture on the internet. Nice to see that it is as I remembered it.

With so much time passing since my last post there had to be something happening in my knitting world. Here’s what I’ve got:

The Escaping Squares Vest is finished! I actually finished it late at night while hanging out with Susan from WormSoup at the BMFA Sock Camp. I wore it to the “Stump Tina” event, thinking she might not guess the discontinued Rolling Stone colorway, but of course she tagged it almost as quickly as I could stand up. (She’s scary amazing when it comes to color.) Here are two pictures of the back showing it in its double-knit, reversible glory. (You’ll get pictures of the front when the thing finally gets blocked! I guess I exagerated slightly about it being "finished".)

Escaping Squares was a PaintKnits TM experiment to see how pooling would react to double knitting. It’s kind of a preparation to see if I could create superimposed images over pooling. Most colorwork will distort pooling by radically changing gage for the dormant color, as in Fair Isle floats. That makes a silhouette effect nearly impossible to achieve.  Double knitting keeps the stitches flowing at gage regardless of which color’s visible.

I’m calling the experiment a success even though my ability to hold gage in this new knitting method wasn’t that great for controlled pooling. A careful look shows the bands of color continuing through the squares. I'm happy... plus I've got a new use for PaintKnits!

I’ve also started a new project. Double knit technology has completely seduced me so now I’m knitting M’Lou Baber’s “Oceans to Cross” coat. My plan is to knit it exactly to pattern, which is pretty bizarre for me, but I’ve buffered that by choosing wildly different colors. I don’t wear blue and white particularly well so I’ve substituted black and a blonde brown. I see gold colored fish over deep water or black fish over a shallow pond bottom.

Did you know that it’s considered good luck to have at least one black koi in a koi pond?  I'll have a school of them on my coat!

The yarn came from Delly’s Delights Farm and is 100% alpaca. I purchased it at Rhinebeck last year for this particular project. That was after some serious searching. With the insane variety of yarns out there it’s amazing how hard it can be to find exactly what you want.  Of course it doesn't help when you *know* in detail exactly what you want.

Anyways, I’m loving the yarn, and here’s how the Fish Coat looks so far.

I did come across a double-knit problem which led me to believe that I may not completely understand all of the book’s instructions for the first rows. I’d be interested to hear if anyone’s got some insight. According to the pattern and the book instructions you cast on a slew of stitches which all get knit-purl doubled in the next row, then in the row beyond that the end stitches each become selvage. So your doubling process gives you (K P) (K P) (K P). You turn and are looking at (K selvage) (P K) (P K) (P selvage). Your selvage gets a K stitch, and then the first paired stitch is a P. Of course on my first pass I messed up and had double knit pairs with the P’s in front!

I frogged and tried again just putting K’s on the P’s and vice versa in that first double knit row. That left me with opposing color dots in my edge. Yuck! I frogged again and for lack of a better idea cast on an extra selvage stitch and didn’t double those two end stitches. My doubled row then looked like (K selvage) (K P) (K P) (K P)… (K P) (K selvage). Flip that and knit the selvage stitches and all’s well. So it worked, but I’m left wondering what I missed. That’s definitely not the recommendation in the book. Any ideas?

I’m also sweating how to tuck ends. The final tail can be buried between the front and back fabric, but how do you get to the inside of the fabric to anchor the ends? With Escaping squares I was able to divide front and back between two needles and tuck ends as I went. The color areas were large enough. That’s been really tough with the Fish Coat. Can anyone offer me suggestions?

PaintKnits hasn't been completely dormant while all of this is going on.  I've tested it on a Mac computer and found that it works.  Yay!  And I'm incorporating some suggestions and improvements that came out of doing two new long distance installations.  A little more clean-up and I should be out looking for beta users...

Love and Loss

That’s the name of a sculpture by Roy McMakin in the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. When I visited the park after the RSC Camp two years ago I thought it was interesting, but it wasn’t nearly one of my favorites. Recently it’s been in my mind a lot of the time. I guess I get it now.

Last post I mentioned that my Dad had been struggling with a string of medical problems which all started in October with a ruptured Achilles tendon resulting from taking the antibiotic cipro. On top of the rehab difficulties from the tendon, he fought back several infections picked up in the hospital and rehab center. We, the family, were forced to face somewhat unexpectedly that he wasn’t going to win the last battle. Dad passed away on February 7.

I won’t bore you with a long testimonial about how great he was, but I miss him terribly. He was not a knitter, but he loved the socks I made for him. Plus he was a computer savvy blogger, another hobby shared. I’ll have to stop there or I won’t be able to stop.

Anyways, the last few months of my life transitioned from being overwhelmed with a schedule that included lots of hospital and rehab center visits, to making final arrangements, and now to the unbelievable work of getting his finances settled with Mom. Not to whine and complain, but I add this to my normal overload of a full-time, high stress job and the on-going battle to survive Multiple Myeloma. It hasn't been fun and the exhaustion and frustration often prevents me from being the person I want to be. (Isn’t it ugly and predictable how that always seems to be the case?)

So my progress on PaintKnits and my knitting have both taken a hit. I’ve done most of the knitting on the Escaping Squares vest but can’t seem to buckle down and do the finishing work.

On the bright side, I have signed up for the first session of this year's RSC Camp this year and will stay in the area as a tourist after the camp is over. Of course right now even the travel arrangements seem to add more stress than anticipation. I expect all of that to melt away when I get off the plane in SEATAC and meet up with my knitting mentor, Susan from WormSoup. Let’s hope.

Just so this post is not completely without pictures, let me throw in a couple of shots of the Escaping Squares vest. (It's double knit so both sides of the fabrid are presentable.) As you might remember, this is a PaintKnits TM project. The pooling started out matching my PaintKnits computer model, but didn’t hold. My ability to stay on gage in this, my first double knit project, wasn’t that great. Fortunately I made provisions in the pattern for that kind of problem, so the vest is still interesting and attractive.



I also wanted to find a picture of the Love and Loss sculpture, but searched the web without luck. The few pictures I found just show the neon “&” that hovers above the benches that are sculpted from the intertwined words. We want love to have no connection with loss, but there’s that inescapable neon “&” reminding us.

Loopless

Usually I wait until I’ve got some knitting progress before posting, but there’s no actual news of that kind right now. I do have some interesting things to talk about though.

Important items first: Thank you to Suzanne and both Susan’s who left me such encouraging comments about PaintKnits TM!

Also important: I had a new question from Stephanie on the Mermaid Fingerless Gloves Part 1 post. She wanted to know how to do the gusset on the left glove. (I went through the detailed steps for the right glove only.) I’m not sure where you’re stuck, Stephanie, so I’ll note a few points that change and maybe it will get you through. Comment on this posting if you’re still stuck. (A return email address will get you a quicker answer if you’re in a hurry. I’m pretty sure there’s a way to show it just to me on a comment.)

The first thing that changes would be where to start the gusset. I’d suggest placing the started glove on your left hand with the knot at the middle underside of your wrist. You should then be able to identify which pattern group needs to become the gusset. In that block you’re once again going to omit all of the tog stitches just like for the right glove. That means you’ll need to replace all of the increasing stitches with the closest stitch type in a single stitch version.

Here’s another change. On row thirteen add the M1 following the eleven mirrored K tbl ribs instead of before. I’d suggest putting it before the existing purl stitch for perfect symmetry.

Those are the only differences I can see so I think that should cover it. Send some detail on where you run into trouble if I haven’t clarified it for you.

*********************

Now on to my knittingless knitting news. Let’s start with excuses. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been consumed with working on the PaintKnits website. The possibilities are really exciting and the more I do the more I think of that I want to do. Of course that all makes the thing more expensive, so once again I’m focused on doing as much as I can myself in a feeble attempt to keep the cost down. I have to admit though that my motivations could be more pure. I’m really just having fun.

I did spend some time on the double knit vest pattern. As you might remember I’m locked into a vertical dimension in order to get the pooling I want, (20.35 inches). In addition I expect the fabric to be fairly stiff with the double knitting in heavyweight sock yarn, so the dimension around must be just right. Too large will hang around me like a weird shell and too tight will just pull on the buttons or not close at all.

I pulled a bunch of vests out of my closet to judge the best fit in the length I’m using. I want to pick a circumference that will look right in that length. Currently I’m in trouble because the length is shorter than I was imagining so I have to decide whether to add a bottom border and if so, how long. So here are some vests of widely different fabric and styling:

First vest, my own design. Love the yarn, hate the vest shaping. I should frog it from the bottom and knit it back in a new stitch. Anyways it’s 21.5 inches and probably about the same stiffness as I expect from the double knitting.

Second vest, also my own design. It’s extremely flattering and one of my favorite garments, handknit or not. The length in the back is 20.4 inches, but it doesn’t work nearly as well with the front points rolled under. Also it’s very soft, flowy, and tight. Not what I expect from the double knit fabric.
Third vest, not my own work product. It’s a Woolrich garment but has stiffness and styling close to what I imagined for my double knit vest project. This one’s 22.8 inches.
Fourth vest, Shy Sheep Vest by Shelridge Farms. The long length is flattering, but works because the fabric is the softest and flowiest of the bunch. Fit is a little loose, but again it works because the soft fabric finds one’s figure. (I’ve actually knit this project twice. My mom liked it and wanted one too.) Note that it’s a shadow knit pattern of scattered sheep which you can only see from a side view.
Based on the above I’m thinking that I’ll match the design to the Woolrich circumference, (38 inches), and length. My PaintKnits pattern is at 38.34 inches and the row height is .15 inches from the PaintKnits gage info, so I’ll need to delete two rows from the width. (It’s knit from side to side.)

The length will need to be extended by about 2.5 inches. I’ll now need to decide whether to use the contrasting color, matching color, or color patterning for a bottom border. It's going to be hard to like the added edging when I’m so happy with the pattern as I’ve sketched it. That just means more sketching to be done. Oh well.

***************************

That’s a lot of mental work for me at the moment. I’m facing a group of personal challenges which have me a little overwhelmed. My cancer metrics aren’t looking so great so I’m totally stressing over the possibility of adding a new chemo on top of what I'm taking now. My dad’s in the hospital with a ruptured Achilles tendon. My job took this past Saturday from me for a trip to NYC for the AES conference, (well worth it though). And I’m frantically trying to pull myself together for the Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival this coming week. It's just too much.

Still I’m looking forward to the Fest. I always do. 363 days a year actually. As usual I’ll be hanging out with my knitting mentor, Susan from WormSoup. We’re signed up for a Lily Chin class on diagonally knit pattern elements. You could guess that the topic intrigues me if you’ve looked closely at the Rhythm of Surf cardigan. By the way, the second vest, my favorite in the pictures above, was the result of a class I took with Lily some years ago about finding design inspiration. I’m very excited to be able to take a class with her again.

So I apologize for a total lack of loops through loops. And I’ll warn you now that the next post has a really good chance of being filled with Fest pictures instead loops!!

Swatch Success

With my blocking activities caught up I’ve jumped back on my double knit vest, the one I’m designing to show off controlled pooling. (I’ve got to come up with a good name for this project!) At last report I had laid out a pattern in PaintKnits TM that really showed off the yarn colors in pooling plaid. (See the screen dump in my post from August 9, 2009.) The more difficult task was to swatch double knitting in a consistent gage.

Well I started feeling more comfortable about the gage so it was time to move to the next step… confirming the stitch count for the pooling effect. This next swatch would also confirm that I was on gage for both colors, since I still had doubts.

I decided to swatch just the stitch count for the panel under the armhole. This project will be knit from side to side, so that part of the knitting is the narrowest area. The PaintKnits layout called for 40 stitch pairs in this area, so my swatch would be 40 stitch pairs. I didn’t add color changes because the main point of the swatch was to confirm the pooling. (Actually any excuse would do to avoid that confusion!)

Here’s the bright side of the swatch, (BMFA STR Heavyweight, Rolling Stone colorway on US#7s):

And the dark side, (BMFA STR Heavyweight, Rook-y colorway):
I love the color pooling. It shows up on both sides, although it’s very subtle on the dark side of the fabric. The diagonal bands have roughly the same angle on both sides indicating that my gage is reasonably close on both sides. Amazing!

Once I'd knit some distance on the swatch I needed to use it to confirm my computer model in PaintKnits. Easy enough. I built a simple pattern of 40 stitches across. Next I needed to figure out where in the skein loop I’d actually started knitting. Here’s my model for the skein colors:
Here’s a close up of the yarn’s entry point to the swatch:
Looking closely at where the yarn enters the swatch you can see that the actual knitting starts with the pink, right after the khaki color. In the model the pink starts at 10 inches, so that was my estimate for the start point in the color loop. (The screen dump above shows 17 inches. That was the number I changed to 10.)

Next I painted the pattern in PaintKnits. Here’s the result:
I shouldn’t be surprised, but it still feels like magic to me when the knit fabric matches the computer model so closely! The blue bands in my swatch are preparing to bounce off the edges of the swatch exactly as shown. Green forms a wide diagonal band. All of the colors are where they should be.

Now I’m ready to finalize my pattern. I’m way too lazy to chart the whole thing, so I’m thinking that maybe I’ll dimension it in stitch and row counts. I have to make some decisions about the button bands as well since those are in line to be cast on / cast off regions. This design work still stands between me and actual knitting, but I’m very happy with my new swatch and my progress.

Of course anyone who’s checked Ravelry to see if I’ve finally posted the Rhythm of Surf Cardigan may have some other things to say about my progress…

Hot Hot Hot

After spending so much time in the windowless cave I call an office I usually like to spend my weekends outside. It doesn’t matter much what task I turn my hand to as long as it’s under the sky instead of a roof. But for the last two weekends it’s just been too crazy hot.

So last weekend I finally finished up with the crocheted edge on my Surf cardigan. It was tough to stay indoors in the AC, but every time I stuck my nose outside it nearly melted off my face. (Some will say, “It’s not the heat. It’s the humidity.” Well we’ve got that too! I’m fortunate to have the AC, but nothing beats getting outside.) This weekend I’ve blocked Surf and plan to put on the fancy handmade glass buttons I’ve selected for it… indoor tasks all.

It will truly be amazing to be done with this project. The creative effort goes back to before I started working on PaintKnits TM. I originally wrote the software specifically to create something truly different with this Fiesta Boomerang yarn in the colorway Surf. Things have dragged badly in all of my knitting projects thanks to the chemo drugs. I was actually getting close to wondering if I’d ever finish anything. Now this one will be finished for me to wear to Rhinebeck in October.

I’m even making some progress on my double knit vest, although I’ve discovered yet another challenge in the technique. Once I started incorporating color changes into my swatch I realized that it’s extremely difficult to keep track of whether a stitch is paired with the one before it or after it. Yikes! Turns out that that’s really important to the color work. This poor swatch is turning into quite a mess! Here are my latest mistakes.

I’m having trouble accepting that the dark side can be right while the light side is wrong. Each block, dark and light, should have four stitches. See how the middle block has switched to five light and three dark in the top photo, but in the bottom photo all’s well? Double knitting is definitely very freaky!

My only idea for dealing with this trouble is to populate the knitting with a ton of stitch markers so that I’m never far from figuring out whether a stitch is even or odd. I’ll try it on my next swatch. I’m pretty close to being ready to knit a swatch in my pooling stitch count to confirm that the gage matches my PaintKnits model. Let’s hope I can do a better job on this next swatch. That’ll clear the way for casting on the actual project.

Beyond the swatching I’ve continued sketching color patterns and think I’ve finally got one that I like. It has large color areas that will show off pooling, no diagonals to conflict with the pooling, and enough color area size variation that I hope it won’t be mistaken for intarsia or Fair Isle. In my rough sketch it actually has sort of a Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass feel too it, (IMHO). I still have to work out stitch counts and shaping details to match up with the pooling I want, but suddenly the project is starting to feel real.

There’s even been progress on PaintKnits LLC. This weekend I finished the last LLC activities having to do with New York State. There are still a bunch of not so fun things that have to be taken care of, but the creative parts of this effort are coming back to the top. I’m thinking about a logo and also about what I want the website to be like. I’ve even started learning some html for fun at the W3Schools website. (Some may question my idea of fun, but I really have no trouble admitting that I’m a geek at heart.)

Overall that’s an amazing amount of progress for me. And look! I’ve even managed to blog about it!

Double Knitting – Fun and Frustration

Right now the fun is mostly on the virtual side and the frustration is with reality. Isn’t that so often the case?

I’m knitting a 50 stitch-pair swatch, currently with no color pattern, in order to learn the double knitting technique and get my gage consistent and solid. There are really four stitch motions, right hand knit and purl, and left hand knit and purl. The book that I’m using to learn is Double Knitting, Reversible Two-Color Designs by M’Lou Baber. Aside from liking the clear instructions, I’m also finding that the lovely and unusual designs are inspiring me to learn. I really want to be knitting one of those patterns!

So I swatch away. Originally my left and right hand each wanted to have their own unique tensions, with the right hand knitting up much looser. I worked at that until it was just the right hand purl stitches torturing me. Now I’m finally getting pretty close to even tension throughout. Of course pretty close probably won’t cut it for the ambitious project I’ve got in mind.

Here’s my swatch. (Vanity kept me from photographing the multiple swatches that came before this one! Please don’t think that I learned this technique in these few stitches.) The yarns are Blue Moon Fiber Arts heavyweight Socks That Rock in Rolling Stone and Rook-y colorways. My needle size is US#7.
It may be hard to see in these pictures but the dark side becomes less ridgy as the swatch progresses. Those ridges are the right hand purl rows.

That brings us to the virtual and totally fun side…

I’m planning a double knit vest using PaintKnits TM to take control of the way the multiple colors in the yarns flow onto the fabric. As I mentioned in my previous post, the concept is to have controlled pooling across an arbitrary two-yarn color pattern. I picked a near black Raven to contrast with a multi, and hope to see Raven silhouettes with pooling in the foreground against a pooled background color when I’m done. The critical factors are 1) the selection of two yarns with the same loop length, (easy… two STR heavyweights) 2) nearly dead-on consistent gage (yikes!), and 3) planning the design around stitch counts that will give me the color effects I’m looking for.

After I’d characterized one of my early swatches for yarn usage I dug in on some PaintKnits analysis. I scanned through a bunch of widths searching for those that would give me the most blatant pooling. Here’s a highlight of what I came up with:
The first and third widths I thought were ok. I really liked the second and last.

Now I needed to plan a vest using rectangular areas that would show off this pooling. At first I was stymied by the sizing. The pooling I wanted would only show up on fabric widths that simply would not go together in a vest that would fit me. Not in panels and not going around the body. The project wanted either too much width or too little.

Finally the answer came to me… I needed to knit the vest from side to side to get the flexibility on length! (Ok, so I also considered gaining a whole lot of weight, but that seemed to be a bad idea somehow.) Here’s a very rough first pass at what the pooling might do on the vest: I’m calling this a rough pass because my gage is still all over the map. To make this work I’ve got to get that under control. Then I’ll re-measure my yarn usage, tune up my computer model, and re-do the computer modeling as needed to plan the vest.

I suppose I’m still a long way off, but those colors on the computer screen sure are exciting. And that’s without any superimposed pattern from the Raven yarn yet. I’m psyched! Now if only my reality would match my virtual world of computer models! Maybe soon…

PaintKnits LLC is Born!

It really exists! PaintKnits LLC is a real business as of May 29. I decided in the interest of controlling costs that I would do the LLC work myself instead of getting a lawyer or accountant to do it. Total cost to do the LLC myself so far is roughly a third of what the lawyer quoted. Mostly it’s been easy, but with my energy kind of low, it taken up a significant bit of my free, conscious time. Still it’s very, very exciting.

The big expense and scariest step will be getting a website set up, but with everything else falling into place I’m starting to think I might be able to share my color control software before the end of this year. Wouldn’t that be outrageous?!

That’s my big news. I’m sorry there are no pictures to go with it.

My new knitting project, which unfortunately is moving along ever so slowly, is to learn double knitting. I want to learn it holding a yarn in each hand, but I’m not getting enough tension from my right hand, so the technique needs a lot of work. (Any suggestions?)

The brilliant idea that led me to try this new skill is the idea that I should be able to get pooling going in both colors so that shaded silhouettes show up in the knit fabric. Pretty exciting possibility, isn’t it? No results yet, so no pictures there either.

********************************
Anyways, I guess this is where I admit that I was nudged into posting because of a new question that came up on the Mermaid Fingerless Gloves.

“Anonymous” asked me about my reference to a “migrating stitch”. Wow. It’s been a long time since I knit these, but I read through the pattern carefully and that brought back some memories. Go back to the Pomatomus sock pattern by Cookie A, (linked in the post that has your question). In the section labeled “Leg” she’s got some text that gets applied after row 22. It starts with “Rearrange stitches as follows:” If you go through those steps you’ll realize that you’ve migrated a stitch in order to keep the pattern flowing correctly. Please let me know how you make out.

Now a suggestion... I’m happy to answer questions, but posting answers is really a pain. When you send me a comment there’s a setting that allows you to show your email address so that only I can see it. I guaranty you’ll get a much quicker answer if I can email you!

That’s all for now. Next time some pictures!

Time

It does fly, doesn’t it? The last time I posted I was just back from Rockin’ Sock Camp ‘08. It’s a year later and I’m feeling hugely jealous of the knitters who went this year. Obviously I’m not one of them. I hope I’ll hear from some of the people I met last year and missed seeing at this event, but I also hope they’ll lie to me and tell me it just wasn’t as good. (Fat chance!!!)

Looking back, the year gone by has really been a mixed bag. I put a huge effort into getting my knitting program translated into Open Office software and adding the features that I knew it needed to make me happy. That even pushed aside most of my actual knitting.

It was all coming together last September when my world caved in. Only a year and a half after my stem cell transplant the cancer was back in force. My annual bone marrow biopsy revealed that the multiple myeloma had taken back a third of my bone marrow.

Time. Thought I’d have more before having to deal with the chemo drugs again. I’d actually hoped there might even be as much as five years. And of course there was the huge stress of wondering whether this next chemo drug was going to work at all. Good news there... It’s working great. It did a better job of knocking down my numbers close to normal than the stem cell transplant did. What a relief!

Unfortunately this particular chemo has an insidious side effect not mentioned in any of the literature. It didn’t make my hair fall out. It didn’t make me anemic, (well not too badly anyways). It didn’t even make me nauseous. It just drained away every ounce of the motivation and focus that normally powers my life. I was able to keep my job mostly on track, but outside of work I became a true zombie, staring blankly at the TV or the insides of my eyelids and not remembering what I saw or might have been thinking. Knitting stopped. Programming stopped. Yarn purchasing stopped. (Yes, even that!)

I grasped one last straw before slipping into the chasm completely. I called Tina from Blue Moon Fiber Arts to see if she was still interested in PaintKnits TM. Her answer was “yes” and she was kind enough to talk me through the steps I should consider in getting the thing available to my fellow knitters. I sketched out a plan and immediately became a bullet from the movie “The Matrix”, screaming along at bullet speeds while my target moved away infinitely faster. It’s the passage of time. It’s just freaky.

Pulling myself together to get to Camp didn’t happen, and finishing up PaintKnits didn’t look like it was going to happen either. I went back to my doctors and begged and grovelled and whined for dosage reduction on the chemo. Amazingly my numbers cooperated and all of a sudden one evening in February I realized I was knitting again. Next I was finishing up PaintKnits and even had gotten a license agreement set up. I set my sights on sending Tina a copy before camp. I guessed she’d be too busy to deal with it but I wasn’t going to let the cancer win. That was my mission and I was gonna make it happen!

So Tina, on the long shot that you’re reading this, I apologize again about the timing. It was just one of those weird little battles that cancer sets you to fighting. We celebrate smalll victories in my world. I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you when the dust settles in your world.

Now let’s talk some knitting!!

As I mentioned, my knitting’s picked up again and I’ve made some really good progress on my beloved Surf cardigan. I’ll flatter myself that some of you might remember that I started writing PaintKnits because I fell madly in love with a particular yarn, Fiesta Boomerang in the colorway Surf. (No one remembers? Oh well.) I refused to knit a splotchy, random sweater out of this amazing fiber. My goal was control. I needed an analysis tool that would allow me to bend the play of colors to my will. Hence PaintKnits.

This project isn’t finished yet, but here’s the back as planned in PaintKnits TM …

And this is the back of the cardigan. The center panel is done as intarsia, so the back is knit in one piece from three skeins. I've added a purl motiffe to help the center panel stand out.And here the analysis for the sleeve center panel...

The sleeve was also created using intarsia, same technique as the back. The shaped sides were designed in PaintKnits TM to minimize pooling while otherwise looking random.
I’m so excited about the look! Next I want to do something with STR yarn and the ideas are making my head want to explode. If only there were more time…

Vacations Rule!

First things first. I want to send thanks out to the anonymous reader who left a comment on my Mermaid Fingerless Gloves, Part 1 post. At the time you were getting ready to attack the thumb gusset one more time. Any news on how it worked out? I really hope you had success.

Thanks also to Curlytoot who left such a nice comment back in January about my program PaintKnits (Copywrite 2008). Yes, I did write the code. It's a crazy hobby that sometimes competes with my knitting. In this case at least it's complementing my fiber habit.

I was really surprised by the excitement PaintKnits caused at Camp Crow's Feet, with the Yarn Harlot herself even writing about it on her blog! (I feel totally famous! Thank you so much Stephanie! And thank you to Tina for your offer to help me with this project!) With all that enthusiasm for it, I know I'll have to find a way to get the thing out there. I've only started to think about it, since catch-up at home and work are still getting in the way.

My big concern with the program is that it's written for Excel, so there could be Microsoft issues with selling my toy. That's on top of the fact that anyone who wants to run it would have to invest in Microsoft Excel. As much as I deeply love Excel, it's not cheap and it's not for everyone. I think the answer is to rewrite the code for Open Office, which is open source code. Of course I have no idea yet how to write macros for Open Office or whether I'll be able to make it jump through flaming hoops the way my beloved Excel does for me, but on an initial look it does look doable.

I'll post my progress here for those who really are interested. Feel free to send encouraging words… Learning a new programming language is going to compete big time with my actual knitting!

Anyways, I've been missing from my blog and missing from knitting for some months. I think my resolutions overwhelmed me. Plus I've been stressing over whether I was physically ready to take on this trip to my favorite part of the world. My commitment had been made however, and it turned out that the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rocking Sock Club Camp was exactly what I needed.

Since the camp is held where I'd choose to vacation anyways, I went out a few days early and came home a couple of days late. I'm sure lots of campers are already posting camp details and photos, so I'll be different and just post a few pictures from my sightseeing adventures. (Glad you asked Linda!)

Here's Seattle. Well kept secret that the sun does shine!
Scary encounter with wildlife in Hoh Rain Forest.


Rialto Beach, my favorite beach in the whole world.

Cape Flattery, most northwestern point of contiguous states.


A yarn shop! The Artful Ewe in Port Gamble. What a wonderful surprise! And lovely yarn!! Wish I could take it all home... And yes, it is housed in an old firehouse.

The top of Mt. Constitution on Orcas Island.

Tulip Festival. Beautiful flowers, but cold snowy weather.

The Mukilteo Lighthouse, also a favorite.

The Olympic Sculpture Garden in Seattle. Breath-taking.

And I still didn't get to see everything I wanted to. Next year...

Can this Year be Different?

I've never been big on formal New Year's resolutions, but there's a part of me that can't resist the urge to effect change in my existence starting with the change over to a new year. This year I'm going to admit that there are definitely changes that need to be made and I will risk public failure by admitting them here. You can be witness to how well I do.

1. I want to pick up the fight again to improve my daily existence. Even though I feel much better than I did in the months following my stem cell transplant for multiple myeloma, I definitely do not feel good. The doctors I'm working with aren't interested in my current problems. (In their defense their area of concern is cancer. They're satisfied with my blood work and expect me to talk to someone else about my new problems.) I need to find a doctor who'll help me live a more comfortable life and I need to take better care of myself.

2. I need to pull myself together as far as the tasks that we must do to survive in this world. That means getting work done on the house as needed, taking care of nasty paperwork (flex spending forms and medical billing problems), finding someone to do my taxes professionally, and even making time to enjoy my social relationships. I haven't always been good at getting all of that done, but working through it while feeling unwell all the time has been a hike up Mt. Everest barefoot.

3. I want to enjoy more of the technology of the on-line knitting world. My Ravelry account languishes with the only visible proof of my existence being the list of blog entries. I haven't gotten things going with Flickr either, which has to precede Ravelry. Susan's help has allowed me to add the buttons that you see to the right, but I'd like to add more and would like to personalize the blog with a logo. I'd like to learn more about html and maybe even set up a website to play with, but that might really be setting sights too high.

4. In addition to growth in software competency, I know that I must replace and upgrade my computer. My ancient machine and Windows 98 just don't cut it anymore, plus I need to be able to do mechanical design work at home with my employer's new 3D CAD program. (Maybe I should resolve to do less work at home, but we won't even go there!) Anyways, I've already bought a new camera and am in the process of learning to use it. Can I be a techno-wizard by the end of '08? Doubtful, but I might be able to have more fun with tech tools.

That's a pretty intimidating set of goals for someone who doesn't do New Year's resolutions, isn't it? No guts, no glory.

Here's my new camera. I absolutely love it, by the way. It's a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX55. It requires a little more interaction to get some of the weirder shots my Olympus would take easily, but it also takes some pictures that the Olympus refused to. Overall a very satisfactory trade-off.

I've got it snapped onto a Joby Gorillapod stand from Best Buy for these pictures. The Gorillapod's been a blast to play with as well. My Dad got this same camera for Christmas and says that the addition of the Gorillapod also helps him hold and steady the camera.

Check out the generous size of the LCD!
Here's where I have to admit that none of the pictures you see here come from this wonderful camera yet. My tried and true Olympus D-450 captured all those presented here. I still haven't figured out how to download the pics from my new FX55! (See item 4 above!)

My immediate knitting goals are fortunately much more modest; finish up my 2007 RSC socks and plan the most amazing sweater ever for my Fiesta Boomerang Surf yarn. Last night I finished the RSC Summer Socks except for blocking. (These require that the lace cuff be blocked, and yes, it is needed.) The right hand sock has its cuff blocked.

I also swatched one of the amazing color effects that my PaintKnits spreadsheet discovered. Here's the PaintKnits patterning.
Here's my swatch.
Pretty cool, huh? I still need to swatch and measure the other stitches I want to use in this project so I can model them too, but the design is firming up. I want to set up this sweater design so that the color effect that comes from the multi yarn serves as a design element, not just a random, fun, let's-see-what-happens afterthought.

My Knit Nest sofa continues to be inhabited by the C & G cardigan and Pyramids. I guess my resolutions should include finishing those up. Unfortunately neither one is inspiring enthusiasm right now, so they'll probably wait for a bit. This month the Rockin' Socks are on a roll!

Pooling Mermaids

Looks like I've got a use for my PaintKnits program already! Jo's Mermaid Fingerless Gloves are pooling. We're not talking puddles. We're talking giant Olympic sized pools. All of those projects where I was dying to have the colors pool, but they refused. Now I'm looking for stripes and I end up with a total swim meet!! The photo above was edited to show front and back next to each other. (I only wish that I were that far along with the second glove!) I really do like the pooling shades, but they're not what I expected or discussed with Jo. If you've been following along you know that my determination to produce gloves that she'll love is making me a little bit batty.

Of course I'm also having a little issue with gage, (as always). The ShibuiKnits wool looked a tad fatter than the Blue Moon Fibers medium, plus my first pair of Mermaids was just a little tighter than I'd like. To compensate I moved to a US #1 and kept the knitting real tight. (Su at WormSoup: This was a big US #1, not the small. I wanted to use a small, but couldn't find one in my collection. Long live metric!)

The result has been pretty strange. The gloves are coming out slightly smaller than my first pair but are much more stretchy and comfortable. Weird. I'm sure Su will explain it to me. (The pressure's on, my expert friend! :-) )

At this point I think the key to this whole adventure is to have the second glove pool similarly to the first, so I'm going to see if I can take some control of these multi's. I've set up the Mermaid gloves in PaintKnits to simulate what's happening now, and plan to check the next skein to see if it's going to do the same thing.

The hardest part of this exercise is re-establishing the skein as it was looped for dying. Unfortunately ShibuiKnits is one of those wools where the wool is re-skeined after dying so that it's not as simple as untwisting the thing. In addition the shadings are subtle in strand form, showing up strongly only as they're knit. Here's what I came up with:
The loop at the bottom of this picture shows the re-established skein. It's looped into a horseshoe so that both ends are on the right. Once I figured out where the loop ends were I tied a loose knot at each end so that it would be easy to handle for measuring.

Now here's my simulated glove modelled on the skein that's currently in work. The program opens the circular knit and lays it flat so that the image shows the pattern all the way around. I'll admit that I'm surprised at how close this is to my results with the yarn! I'm one happy programmer!
I have two skeins left for this project. My next step will be to pick the skein which best matches the first one, especially in dyed loop length. That should (theoretically) give me similar pooling, all else staying the same.

Of course while I'm working on all of this my Comings & Goings cardigan is languishing for its finishing work. If I don't hustle it won't be ready for me to wear to the Dutchess County Sheep and Wool Festival, and that will be a huge disappointment. I'll have no new FO to show off! Very upsetting… but not upsetting enough to motivate me into tucking ends and sewing sleeves!!

Knitting Geek

It was bound to get out eventually so I finally added it to my profile. Yes, I admit it. I'm an engineer. Mechanical by training. And I really like being a mechanical engineer. So that of course means that there's no escaping the fact that I'm a geek.

If you really love knitting you find that it interacts with all of the other important aspects of your life, whether it's wrapping itself around your loved ones or distilling inspiration from the other hobbies that excite you. In my case, my most recent knitting adventure has been to write a computer program to simulate the way a multi-colored yarn will flow onto a particular stitch pattern. (Geek!) I'm working on an Excel spreadsheet that takes information about a skein of multi, some pattern details, some gage information, and then paints a view of how the colors will lay out on the knitting.

Now that I'm doing it I'm sure I'm not the first. This is just the kind of tool that someone would need to create a self-patterning sock wool, but as far as I know, there's nothing on the market like it. (That's probably because no one would actually pay for it.) But it sure is fun to play with! My spreadsheet works, so now I'm writing in some features that will make it easy and fast to use. I'd like it to be able to paint-knit an entire sock, but that may be a dream.

This whole thing came from running my brain on "My Big Knitting Problem", mentioned in my last posting. I have purchased a big pile of Fiesta Boomerang in the color "Surf", but am really having trouble planning a project for it. My "Playing with Fire" sweater fair isle stitches a multi with itself, but that just didn't seem right for my Surf Sweater. I love the colors so much that I want to actually paint the sweater with them. It became obvious that I needed a tool to help me design.

Anyways, when I finish this program I will gladly share it with any other knitting "control freaks" who just have to know how a multi will act on a given group of stitches. There are plenty of knitters who live for the surprise and spontaneity of multi yarns, alternately cursing and raving about pooling and striping. I intend to bend these colors to my will. (Evil laughter echoes in the background…)

After such fiendish thoughts we need to take a happy sheep break, so here's some original art I purchased this weekend at the Long Island Apple Festival. The artist, Judy Lambros, belongs to the Peconic Ruggers Guild which apparently is open to new members. It all sounds wonderful, but too much for me right now. If anyone out there wants more info just leave me a comment that I can reply to. Getting back to the story of my sister's gloves: This past weekend I introduced Jo to ShibuiKnits "Midnight" wool, hoping like crazy that she'd love it for her Mermaid Fingerless Gloves. Oh well. Another dream shattered. She waffled between that and the Wollmeise "Gewitterhimmel" and didn't seem thrilled to pieces with either. I have been hugely leaning toward the ShibuiKnits, so I suppose I somewhat convinced her to go with that one. Mostly I was concerned that I might not have enough of the Wollmeise, and Germany's a long way off if I run out!

Anyways it's a done deal. I even started knitting this next pair of Mermaid Gloves last night. The ShibuiKnits is very pleasant to work with and I am liking the color more and more as I knit it up. Of course now I'm worrying because the shadings are pooling. I like that a lot, but will Jo? And will the right and left pool similarly? The stress never ends!!
I've dug in on the left glove first so that I can write up Mermaids Part 3 as soon as possible. The extra wait has been worth it. The creative break triggered an inspiration for solving one of the rotten problems with this mirrored thing. Soon, soon…