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!

Dreaming of Stashed Yarn

Happy New Year! I'm starting 2008 with a small victory! My stash has been containerized under the bed. Does this mean I'll dream woolly dreams? I hope so.

I used some extra cedar planking left over from lining the Pottery Barn coffee table cubes to cover the bottom of each under-bed box. Of course before they could be used the planks needed to be cut roughly to length, sanded, and damp-wiped clean. I hope that this pungent wood will be enough to protect my precious collection. Really I had wanted boxes that snapped tightly shut as well. Once I tried these boxes out at home I found that they snap fairly tight on the ends, but are pretty loose around the middle. I'm thinking about adding a section of cedar along each wall near the middle of the box, but haven't gotten back to that yet. If anyone out there has any experience or thoughts, please let me know. We must band together against the flying vermin!

Here's the first box, all set for stash.


Here's some stash.
And some more stash.

And more stash.
And yes, more stash.
Hey! I've got two boxes left. Think I'll head over to the Loopy Ewe site…

My red Lace Leaf Scarf is completely knit. The 13.75 pattern repeats that I was able to get from each skein by using smaller needles actually gave me the 48 inches of length that the pattern called for. Plus I finished the project with two skeins instead of three. That's a good thing when two is all you've got, and when the yarn is pretty seriously expensive! It took me a while to figure out why each side was supposed to be ended after row 12 of the 16 row pattern, but the intent became clear when I matched the ends up. Row 12 is the closest you can get to having the leaf edges blend into each other. (Don't you wish patterns would give us the reasons for these things? It would save pig-headed knitters like me from ripping back extra rows added in defiance of arbitrary sounding instructions! Or maybe I'm just part of a minority that's always asking "why?".)

This project's going to be finished soon and I really don't want to face getting all depressed about project selection again, so I've already decided that I'm going to catch up on my Rocking Sock Club kits. The latest and last kit takes me back to a trip that I remember fondly, so it may be the first up in spite of the knit cuff from the Summer sock that's hanging out on the sofa and the already wound Raven yarn from the Fall kit. While I'm catching up on those kits I'll be thinking about designing a sock in one of Cat Bordhi's new "Pathways".

Of course the Surf sweater isn't far from my mind either. I want to swatch a different stitch for edgings, maybe garter, and put it into PaintKnit to find the most interesting color pooling.

Here's the blocking update. Playing with Fire's blocked, as you can see. I ended up wet blocking after spending a few minutes trying to steam the ridges out of the vertical lines. Wet blocking worked really well, but did involve hauling on the sweater's edges pretty vigorously. The sweatshirt-like fit that I had planned morphed into a tunic fit by the time I was done. I'm not thrilled with what it does for my figure, but then again I should really be doing something myself for my figure!!
I also blocked the RSC Summer Sock cuff. Wasn't sure why the cuff must be blocked before continuing with the sock leg, but I think it has to do with determining the length for the ribbing that's to be hidden behind the cuff. When I knit the second sock I'll skip the blocking step, and then I'll find out the hard way why it's in there!
By the way, have any of you lost a special hand-made glove? Check out this wonderful website, onecoldhand, for lucky losers… glove losers that is, in the Philadelphia area. Isn't it nice to know that there's a little extra insurance against the tragedy of separation for hand-knit gloves? What a fabulous idea! They've even started a branch in NYC! Now my gloves will feel much safer going to the city.

I've waited too long to write and now have to stop myself so that something actually gets posted! Next time there should be more on the red scarf, RSC Socks, and maybe even the Surf Sweater. And next time is planned for soon!

Messin' with Multi's

For anyone who was worried about me, no, the Stash didn't get me. It's still ruling my existence, but I continue to work, eat, sleep, and even knit at times. I guess I'm just happy it doesn't demand access to the TV remote.

I've actually been struggling with lining up my next project. An exercise that should be one of the most fun parts of knitting took on something of a dark overtone this time around. Even though my multiple myeloma is in remission, it's pretty hard to forget. This time I looked at all of the projects I want to knit and tried not to think about whether I'll really have a chance to do the ones I put aside. So I ended up not feeling much like communicating about the whole experience.

I'm glad to be back. Playing with Fire's finished and waiting to be blocked. My next projects are on the needles. The big project waiting beyond those is on paper and in my computer. All of these projects have a common theme, (predictable given the composition of my stash), and that's that they all use multi color yarn. Unfortunately none of the concepts I'm playing with right now are Fair Isle, but I'm enjoying them just the same.

The project that's getting lots of attention at the moment is a Lace Leaf Scarf. Even though the pattern's source is Vogue Knitting, the source of my inspiration is this posting by Grumperina about a beloved gift from a friend. I never gave the scarf a second look in Vogue because they showed it knit with a very open gage. The pictures that Grumperina posted show a wonderful ripply effect and leaves that have much more body. Very cozy and inviting, at least to me. By strange coincidence, this same stitch pattern showed up at about the same time on Yarn Harlot as a pair of socks called "Embossed Leaf". (See Stephanie's Dec. 7 posting.) When you're hot, you're hot!

Yarn for the Lace Leaf Scarf is a Cashmere Koigu sold only at String in NYC, shades of red closing in on black in spots. It's not as soft as I'd usually expect from Cashmere, but somehow it has an extra cushiness that's unusual and appealing to both touch and eye. This yarn's really been talking to me, wanting to cuddle around my neck while I drive to work and Christmas shop. I'm sure I've stretched its patience by taking so long to find just the right pattern. (I've had it for some months now from a city trip with Susan.) I didn't buy enough to do the full lacy length called for in VK, but by knitting it on smaller needles, (US#3 instead of US#5), I've decreased the width. Estimating by the weight that went into one pattern round, I'm only going to be a few inches short in spite of having only two skeins instead of three.

The Cashmere Koigu skeins are the two on the right. Their current competitors for my attention are Blue Moon's RSC Raven in color Lenore, then two by Hand Maiden, Sea Silk in Sangria, and Mini Maiden in Amethyst. (Loopy's pictures of the Sea Silk don't show the precious-metal sheen of this amazing stuff.)
I'm very happy with the way this scarf is turning out and also with the loops-through-loops experience. I can't wait to wear the finished scarf, but once again don't want to finish!
I also mentioned that Playing with Fire is waiting to be blocked. That will probably happen this weekend along with blocking of the first cuff of the Summer RSC sock. The exciting finish of the Fire project is all tied up in the strange behavior of the insanely varied multi yarn. Blue Moon's Fire on the Mountain color has a dark band across the middle of the skein with rainbow colors all around it. In the collar of my sweater the dark band hit three times so that each round alternated the forward and return colors in the skein loop. This was the resulting effect.Isn't that wild?! Even the lighting bolt effect is perfect for a project named "Playing with Fire"! I just enjoyed everything about this silly project. Hope blocking goes well. Also hope I don't double in weight over Christmas so that I end up looking totally dumpy in it!!

Speaking of crazy pooling effects, I've begun the analysis of my amazing Fiesta Boomerang Surf yarn. It's been a while since I raved about how much I love this yarn. Right now I'll just say that while the rest of my stash has been banished to the floor of the Knit Pit, Surf continues to enjoy a privileged and reserved location on the sofa with me. Yes, all nine skeins. Even a swatch of this stuff reduces me to tears with its beauty. I wonder if I should buy enough to decorate my house…

As a token of my great love for Surf I've set up my PaintKnits program to analyze how the multi will behave. I will settle for nothing less than perfection on this project, (even though I'm sure this yarn could never be ugly in any form). Here are some of the fun poolings I've come up with based on pattern width and the start point in the color banding. These could be button bands or borders.
Check out these lovely patterns.
And this one's worth setting up a design around just to see if it really happens!

I'm deep into sketching my design for this sweater and can't wait to feel that Fiesta slipping through my fingers. We'll just have to see if I can exercise enough discipline to finish up the C & G cardigan first. (Not likely at all! Notice I don't even mention all those ends that need tucking on Pyramids!)

These are all fun and wonderful things to think about, (except for tucking those ends). Maybe I'll be smarter this time about lining projects up ready to go before I run out. Or maybe more time spent swimming in Surf is what my spirit needs. The future will tell.