Fun in the Cold - Mitten Edition

When there's snow on the ground, I like to pretend I'm walking on clouds.
-Takayuki Ikkaku

Aren't these beautiful? And who thinks it's weird that I've now made as many mittens and gloves since I've moved to San Diego as I did when I lived in Providence?

To your left, starting at 12 o'clock: Tweedy Diamond Mittens from Knitter's Best Shawls and Scarves, thrummed mittens from Prince Edward Island, Selbuvotter gloves, my first ever gloves (blue), Bird in Hand mittens, Lopi mittens (mostly hidden), and Green Mountain Spinnery stripes and Manos cables in the middle.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I ignored the manly hand warming knits - those hands are twice as big as mine! You may recall the mittens from last year. It's nice to have a husband who likes traditional knits.

And the gloves. You will see in these photos two pairs of gloves from the Selbuvotter book. And there's even one more. They are so delightful and lovely that they deserve their own post. Note to self. At least it's reminding me about some of the posts I still need to write.

Harrumph!

When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping.
Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking.
-Elayne Boosler

Knitting for men is hard!

I'm having a bit of a dilemma. I believe I mentioned that my second anniversary is exactly 250 days away. And we all know that the second anniversary is one of the knitter's anniversaries - cotton. (This is not a secret, if you're worried that the sandstorms have calmed down and my husband's internet might actually be working, by the way.) Well, I've been trying to prepare. And this is the scene:Pure chaos. I had ordered the yarn for the Tree Bark Pullover, which no one seems to have ever made. I've loved this sweater ever since the magazine came in 2002. But we (the husband-recipient and I) thought maybe some nice neutrals.See the problem? That brownish musk color is a non-starter, so just look at the other two. Apparently color cards from 2001 aren't entirely accurate since my color #104 looks exactly like the color #103 on the card - the strange green-ish undertone to the khaki. Ugh. Not a good color. Time to explore Ram Wools' return policy . . . Although the ivory and musk were from Webs and I think will be repurposed as baby yarns.

So now I'm left reconsidering everything about this project. The pattern. Definitely the yarn. OK, let's think. Yup, you too.

What do we need? A sweater. In cotton (the 2nd anniversary thing, plus he might actually get to wear it while we're still living in San Diego).

What else? Well, he does seem to have somewhat more adventurous (but still classic) taste in clothing than the husbands of my knitting group friends. Note - he bought no fewer than FIVE Hawaiian shirts in Hawaii. And he really likes heavily patterned designs. I tried to talk him into a Cobblestone once, but he thought that was too boring. "What was the point of knitting it if you could buy something like it?" He even bought a traditional Aran sweater in the British Isles, way before meeting me.

Option 1: Stick with the husband-approved Tree Bark sweater, but in the original colors as pictured in the link above.
Pro: Who needs neutrals when it looks so nice in blue and green?
Con: The last sweater I made him was green.

Option 2: Go with second-choice Anniversary Sweater from Knitty, in a yarn to be determined. Rowan All-Seasons Cotton perhaps.
Pro: Easy pattern to memorize, even if it is a lot of cables.
Con: What yarn? And no one on Ravelry seems very happy with their finished project - a big red flag.

Option 3: Perhaps the most daunting option - a cabled Aran. When asked to point out patterns he liked, the sweater-loving husband loved Kristin Nicholas (good taste, right?) and her book Knitting the New Classics. While "new" is a misnomer, most of the (cable) patterns transcend the early nineties.
Some contenders (Rav links): Banjo Pullover (I have a Jo Sharp DK cotton in a bright Navy that would work), Evergreen Aran, Aran Family Cardigan (and there's a matching women's cardigan!)
Yarn Matches: most of these are made in a cotton-wool blend, so Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, or Rowan Wool Cotton or All-Seasons Cotton, perhaps
Pros: lots of lovely cables
Cons: lots of lovely cables

Wow - long post. Please give me any input on this most difficult of decisions. In the meantime, start getting excited. Tomorrow is my last CCU call of the month AND I'm doing NaBloPoMo again. Welcome to November!

Falling Off the Wagon

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs;
it's jolted by every pebble in the road.
-Henry Ward Beecher

. . . The stash wagon, that is.
And so it begins. (Yup, there's more on the way.) The problem with developing a passion for colorwork is that it requires so many colors. Might seem obvious, but I just ordered the yarn for the Bondegard pullover, a baby sweater that requires 15 colors of Dale Baby Ull. Yes, that's right - One-five. And it requires 2 balls of a few of those. So you know that most of them only need about 30 yards of that color, but it's absolutely integral to the design.

Why did I order them now, you might ask? There were a lot of changes to the baby ull color line in the last year, and some of the colors were discontinued. I snapped them up while I could.

And that's not all . . . a sweater's worth of yarn for my husband's second anniversary sweater is coming. Let's just say I qualified for the Webs 25% discount . . .

The stash is there for knitting, right?

Works in Progress

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth
until the hour of separation.
-Khalil Gibran

Thanks for all the good thoughts you've sent to us - me on the homefront and my husband on deployment. I definitely plan on knitting to keep me busy while he's gone, and getting used to it is a bit of a work in progress.

As the long time readers remember, last year when he was away I knit him the Dale of Norway Salt Lake City sweater, and a bonus welcome home present of the River Forest Gansey (same post). Is that why you're all wondering what I'll knit him this year? Well, our second anniversary is coming up next summer (probably right after he gets home), and the second anniversary is COTTON. So, a sweater of course. I gave him a few pattern options and we decided on the Tree Bark Pullover from an old IK (Rav link here). I'll be making it in Mission Falls 1824 cotton like it calls for - I think it's a good match, but in more subtle colors - ivory and sand. Should be classy.

I will, of course, have to order the yarn for this project. Which is worth it. Especially because I've been making really good progress on the stash. I'm now down to 469.5 skeins and 95,560 yards, with lots of stuff on the needles. Now that I'm under 100,000 yards, I have to start thinking about how big my stash should be at a comfortable size. I know I'm not there yet, but it's getting close.

Over the next couple of weeks we'll catch up on all those FOs that have eaten up the stash, but for today I'll start with a photo of my favorite work-in-progress:I get a Dale of Norway sweater, too. This is my Park City (Rav link), which is from the same year as Salt Lake City. As a bonus, my sweater is way faster than the sweater for my 6' tall husband - it's flying along!

The Sweaters You've All Been Waiting For

When a wife has a good husband, it is easily seen in her face.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

. . . Betcha didn't know that there were two! This is a little secret only known to me and the ladies in my knitting group who saw me working on it. No tempting mentions on the blog of a "secret" project or tantalizing photos of heathered twisted stitches. Nope, not when the recipient has this blog as his first bookmarked page. I originally thought that the Dale was going to take me pretty much until next Christmas, so I thought I'd whip up a simpler sweater for the interim, like for a certain birthday coming in June. Turns out that I knit faster than I thought. Turns out I married a man who wants nothing to do with a plain stockinette sweater. As he put it - "If you're going to go to all that trouble to make it, why should it look like something you can buy?"

River Forest Gansey
Pattern: from Handknit Holidays
Yarn: Cascade 220 in Lichen Heather - about 8.5 skeins
Needles: US 7 for the body, US 5 for the edging
Notes: I measured against a sweater he had here, which worked pretty well. The sleeves are maybe a little long, but nothing dramatic. This was a fun, easy pattern. Love the all-over texture.
Best Thing About This Sweater: The utter surprise.

And now, the masterpiece that has really occupied my entire winter (one can easily imagine worse things, can't one?) . . .

Salt Lake City
Pattern: Dale of Norway Olympic Sweater for Salt Lake City (tragically out-of-print)
Yarn: Dale Heilo, almost all of 17 balls of the MC, 3 of the natural, and 2 each of the red and green
Needles: US 2, 3, 4
Notes: This may be the most knitting fun I've ever had.
Best Thing About This Project: "I never imagined I'd have a wife who could make this."'

That was so fun, I feel compelled to knit another. This time is mine. Park City in the natural colorway with a slightly brighter blue accent.

Well, the sweaters are packed to show off to the folks. We have a wedding to catch. See you next week.

January is for Mittens

Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.
-Leonardo Da Vinci

January is for many things - you've already seen my Manos Throw, Salt Lake City sweater (more coming on this soon), and my new Bearfoot socks as a promising start to a new year of knitting. I've also bought into the premise of A Loose Knit Group (Yahoo/Ravelry), attempting to knit ahead for the holidays. There's a theme to every month, and this month it's mittens and gloves. How handy that I'm currently in the middle of a mitten-fest! The first pair of mittens was actually started even before I heard about the group.

You may recall the complaints of my poor husband who doesn't have enough handknits (or so he says) when I ripped out the Baltic Mittens he'd claimed. I promised him another pair, and sent him a long list of links for his perusal. His choice actually surprised me a bit. Turns out that he's a traditionalist. (Which I suppose makes sense given his interest in Dale sweaters . . . This could be very good.) Turns out I have a lot to learn to knit for tall people. It's a good thing he was around to try them on as I went, because I was seriously underestimating how much larger his hands are than mine. So seriously, I had to re-do one of the cuffs. But it worked - do you see how happy the recipient is?
Sedestal Mittens
Pattern: from Folk Mittens
Yarn: Cascade 220 - 1.25 skeins of the green and approx 0.2 skeins of the natural (most, but not all, of the leftovers from the Hallard Mittens
Needles: US 2 dpns
Notes: I made several modifications, all for size. I knit on US2s at a gauge of approx 7 sts/in instead of the 9 sts/in called for. This gave me the hand circumference I needed with the 80 pattern stitches. The pattern, however, makes almost no allowance for the cuff to be smaller than the hands, which didn't make sense to me. So I cut out one pattern repeat of the snowflakes and started with 70 sts and then increased for the hand. If I were to make any other mods, it would be to recongize that my row gauge changed as well, and I would have started the thumb gore a little earlier.
Best Thing About This Project: This photo - I love these mittens, but I'm not sure they qualify for my Loose Knit givne how quickly they were snatched away. So I started another pair I'd had my eye on, and am contemplating a third. Coming soon, with photos, something far less traditional. You'll love it; I promise.

A Future of Fair Isle

And every shepherd tells his tale,
Under the hawthorn in the dale.-John Milton

Thanks for all your wonderful comments on the Ladybug Sweater. I learned a lot knitting it, I adore the final product, and it's been my happiest knit in a while. And my husband even likes it, which is good, considering the (eventual) recipients.

That husband o' mine, being the smart guy that he is, however, realized that if I'm already making sweaters for future hypothetical children, he'd better clamor to get his sweaters now. He figures (probably rightly so) that once any children are more than hypothetical, he'll be totally out of luck. He is, after all, substantially bigger than 24 mos.

Turns out, he's always wanted a Dale of Norway ski sweater. Ironic, given that he's always hot and we live in San Diego, but I've always wanted to knit one. And he does legitimately ski.

There were many contenders, but he chose the Salt Lake City Pattern. A discontinued pattern. After swimming rivers, climbing mountains, and calling all over the world to get this pattern, I've decided. Any Dale pattern I remotely like, I'm just going to buy right away. As soon as I get my hands on the Salt Lake City one, that is. They go out of print so fast, and they're hard to find later.

On a related note, there are places that sell this in kits - but they're all kitting them with Falk, the superwash version of Heilo. Ugh. Other than Dale Baby Ull, I am not overly fond of superwash. And for a big steeked sweater, I definitely want the real stuff.

And for our second topic of the day, I had a little yarn indiscretion last night. Instead of clearing the slate for the big Dale sweater coming my way (Denim Aran, anyone?), I had a mitten accident. Leftovers (lots!) of Green Mountain Spinnery Mountain Mohair. Striped mittens to match this hat. Less garish in real life, really adorable. Oops.

Big Foot

It's not about retro or modern.
It's about this note or that note, which sounds better?
-Dan Hicks

While most of my plane-car-and-other vacation knitting was occupied by the Chuppah, I did have a chance to knit a little on the Retro Ribs for my bethrothed. It's a truely lovely pattern, as so many of you had recommended. Easy to knit, but still interesting. Fun. And even though it's shown in a solid-color on the samples, it's really showing off the varigated Koigu very well.

So far the only modification I've had to make is that I did have to add an extra repeat (8 stitches) to accomodate the large feet of a certain someone. The pattern claims that there is much stretchiness within it, and there is, but not quite enough to make a men's large.

In other news, I'm still working on sorting out the sizing thing for Ribby Cardi. But in the meantime, is anyone out there a size 34"-36" and under 5'2" and want a (ever so slightly) fulled Ribby Cardi? Yours for the asking; just email me.

By Your Leave

The ant is knowing and wise,
but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation.
-Clarence Dey

First things first - I am now officially on leave! I heartily endorse even the first 15 minutes - very relaxing. And there's plenty of excitement coming - I believe I mentioned last week that the fiance and I are off to Madison early tomorrow morning. We're looking forward to getting away for a bit, but also for home cooking, visiting yarn stores (ok, that would be the royal "we" here), and possibly even snow. I'm bringing lots of sweaters!

. . . And reading. And knitting. Which is probably why you're here, right? You wanted to see the beau's new socks in process. And I'm happy to oblige. The Retro Ribs from Interweave's Favorite Socks in a nice grey mix Koigu. The beau gave his seal of approval to the pattern, so they're coming along for the vacation. . . . for the times I can't be knitting on the Chuppah. For once, choosing the knitting is an easy part of packing!

And now for a completely gratituitous photo from a morning in La Jolla last weekend: If we're this happy on a day off, just think of a whole five days!

Manly Socks

I don't have a photograph, but you can have my footprint.
They're upstairs in my socks.
-Groucho Marx

Thanks for all your patience with waiting for the results of the Manly Socks contest. It took me so long to compile the list that I've actually already started my next pair of manly socks. I'll hold you in suspense on those just a little longer. In the meantime, here are all the great suggestions:

Yarns:

The Clear Winner With 15 Votes:

• Trekking, Trekking, Trekking

Second Place With 6 Votes:

• Mountain Colors Bearfoot

Third Place(s) With 2-6 Votes:

• Opal
• Socks That Rock
• Regia
• Jawoll
• Online Supersocke
• Austermann Step

And with one vote each:

• Wildfoote
• Louet Opal
• Louet Gems
• Cherry Tree Hill
• Lana Grossa Boseo
• Fixation/Esprit
• Real Vermonter from A Piece of Vermont
• Meilenheit (and Boot Stretch!)
• "DK or larger"
• Sundara Semisolids
• Knitpicks Gloss
• Paton's Kroy
• Fearless Fibers (great yardage!)
• Lisa Souza sock yarn (450 yards!)
• Regia Tweed
• Calmer
• Schaefer Anne
• Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock
• Fortissima Socka

Patterns:

Most Commonly Mentioned:

• "just plain rib"
• "plain vanilla"
• "nice wide rib"
• stockinette stitch
• "anything simple ribbing"
• "good old traditional top down, heel flap"

Actual Patterns Mentioned More Than Once:

• Retro Rib from Favorite Socks
• Thuja from Knitty
• Boyfriend Socks by Slipped Stitch
• Gentleman's Fancy Stockings (made here for my dad)

Other Patterns:

• Father-Son Socks from IK Fall 2006
• Simple Trekking Socks by Miriam Felton (PDF here)
• Jaywalkers by Grumperina
• Campfire Socks by Cidermoon
• Celtic Braid Socks

"Nancy Bush all the way:"

• Gentleman's Plain Winter Socks (made here for the beau!)
• Gentlemen's Half Hose from Knitting Vintage Socks
• Conway from Knitting on the Road
• Chalet Socks from Folk Socks
• Madder Rib Socks from Knitting Vintage Socks

The Winners:

• Donna - She was the first to suggest the pattern I chose to knit first (shhh . . . it's a surprise!)
• Stuntmother - Because she just listed so many nice socks and yarn. Plus she's been making beautiful socks lately. Go visit Two Sharp Sticks.

Congratulations to all - now we have a great list of manly socks to knit! And the winners should email me their addresses to collect their prizes. And for the rest of you, stay tuned to see what the beau is getting next.