Not a lot of knitting has been happening here, despite it being a long weekend. The beau and I have been moving stuff, so lots of driving and carrying has been going on. But I did manage to start the Liquorish Allsorts jumper sleeve, and even knit some of it during one of those car trips:

I always seem to end up knitting this at night. We have lamps at each end of the couch that are perfectly adequate for knitting and reading, but not for knitting black wool. So I’ve been marking the increase rows with safety pins to reduce the time I spend hunched over the work, strainging my eyes as I try to make out the stitches and count the rows.

I’ve also done some more weaving, and I’ve nearly finished the second strip for the red blanket. No photos yet.

Knowing that one of the knitters whose blogs I read likes sunsets, every time I see one I think of her and think “you should see this one!”. Usually that happens when I’m at my old house at Ferntree Gully. It has a very nice view. You can see the city through the neighbours’ trees. (I tell people my house has “city glimpses”.) On a clear day you can just make out the bay, and on clear nights you can watch planes taking off and landing at Tullamarine Airport.

The last two nights I’ve been at my FTG house when particularly spectacular sunsets have been happening, but both times I didn’t have my camera with me. But over the years I lived there I did manage to take some photos. So for Yarniverous’s viewing pleasure, I’m going to post a few.

Unfortunately, it isn’t always possible to avoid the powerlines. I managed it in the first shot, taken back in December 2003. It’s more of a photo of clouds than of the view from my house.

In another life, I paint. I have a gallery of oil paintings online here.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because
a painting of mine is for sale on Ebay. There’s a bit of a story to it’s creation. It was commissioned by former friends in exchange for a car.

The frame is worth about 70% of the price the seller has set, so it’s quite a bargain. I’d like to know it was owned by someone who appreciated it, but mosts artists feel that way about their work. Heck, most knitters do as well.

Actually, this has got me thinking about the differences between paintings and knitted work. While knitted items do wear out eventually, paintings don’t (though an oil painting will darken with time, especially in sunlight). But a painting hung on a wall is seen every day and viewers can tire of it, or redecorate and find it no longer suits, whereas a jumper is worn occasionally so there’s less chance the owner will tire of it.

But in the long run, a knitter and painter has to accept there’s a chance their work will eventually end up in an op shop or the trash.

I have a confession to make. I’m an obsessive list maker. I used to write a list of knitting projects I wanted to so every month or two. I updated it so frequently, that I never managed to cross off more than a few items.

But I haven’t made a knitting project list for ages. Yesterday, during one of the intervals between doing work and feeling too blah to do work, I started playing with my stash pic.

And after that a list was inevitable:

Tubey (from knitty.com)
Zhivago lace jumper (from Creative Knitting issue 11)
Squares Cardigan (in one of my previous posts)
Grey Dimmeys cashmere blend kimono top
Purple Shalisdair vest (wool I bought in the UK)
Black Bendy vest with black/green/gold handspun trim
Brown 12ply vest (op shop bargain)
Scribble Lace Slubby Silk shawl
Blue beanie to go with denim jacket
Brown slubby pillows/blanket
Facewashers out of leftover cotton?
Socks Socks Socks

4 large garments, 3 vests, 2 accessories, 2 homeware projects and socks. Only two projects require some extra yarn aquisition.

Looking at this list, I reckon it would take me about a year to knit everything on it. But knitting stash, and only stash, would be unnatural behaviour for me. There’s sure to be something new to distract me, or I’ll lose interest in a few projects, or I’ll buy a whole heap of yarn when I visit the Handknitters Expo or on my planned side trip to Australian Country Spinners on the way to Canberra later this year.

Despite knowing this, there’s something satisfying about knowing that knitting all this in a year is do-able. Nothing makes me more depressed than having tantalising creative projects to do, and knowing I’ll never find time to do them. My stash is in a state of perfect equilibrium when there’s not so much in it I’m overwhelmed, but there’s plenty to daydream about.

I’ve had some sort of virus since Friday, and between feeling too awful to do anything but lie on the couch croaking ‘Panadeine. Give me Panadeine” or feeling well enough to work a bit, I managed to do some knitting.

I finished the lacy cotton anklets:

So far in my knitting adventures, I haven’t suffered second sock syndrome. Boy did I come close this time. The weather took a sudden turn from cotten anklet weather to Koigu woolly goodness sock weather. I staved off these yearnings with the very warm Liquorish Allsorts Jumper until I finished the lacy socks and last night started:

Ribble Socks, in Koigu KPM (part of Peeve’s cat captioning comp prize), using my heel-flap toe-up socks pattern (more testing) and the Ribble Socks texture from Socks Socks Socks. The yarn is slightly shiny, which makes the ribble effect more noticable.

Liquorish Allsorts Report:
Over the weekend I finally got to the armholes. Today I cast on for the first sleeve. I’ve used 5 of the 11 balls of black, and it looks like I may have just enough, or just a bit too little. Ah, the suspense!

Friday was one of those days. My plans fell apart early and, since I was out of the house anyway, I gave up on them and went shopping. I even managed to buy yarn – some plain Patonyle for sock toes and heels.

At Bunnings I went hunting for materials to make the Self-striping Yarn Measure out of. All the pieces just fell into my hands, already at the right length, all in stock. It was amazing. I was on a roll, so when I got home I did a bit of drilling and a bit of sawing and a bit of sanding and ended up with this:

The distance from the top rack of pins to the bottom is the length of yarn I’d need to knit one row of a sock. The rods on either side are lengths of screw, so the distance can be adjusted to suit other sock row sizes. I added a normal, long screw to the base of one rack then sawed off the end, so the whole thing sits in the base of my music stand.

The yellow and red lines show how the yarn would be wound on if I wanted alternating stripes of six rows of yellow and six of red. Once the yarn was all wound on, I’d mark where the colours change with ties, slide the yarn off, and I’m ready to dye it.

Here’s the SSYM disassembled:

It can be disassembled furthur, by taking the pegs out, but that takes time and I’m lazy.

Assembled, it’s a bit wobbly due to the slight flexibility of the screw rods. I reckon a bit of elastic strung from opposite corners of the frame might fix that. We’ll see.

I have got some Bendy 4ply to dye up, but that might have to wait. I feel like that cold everyone else has suffered has finally found me.

The weather has taken a decidedly autumnal turn lately, and as a result my fingers have been drawn to the warm woolly goodness of the Liquorish Allsorts jumper.

That little bit of pink wool coming out of the top? It’s where the ball ended when I finished the stripe. Don’t you love it when that happens?

I’m not far from the underarms. When I reach them, I will stop and knit the sleeves. Then it all gets knit together. You’ve got to love Elizabeth Zimmerman’s writing style. She warns that measuring must be done accurately and conscientiously. “Otherwise you may sup the porridge of regret with the spoon of sorrow.”

I paused to measure the width of the jumper yesterday. It’s supposed to be 61cm wide. Somehow, though it was correct when I had knit 10cm of it, it has narrowed by at least 5cm. I may be doing a bit of that supping, if this doesn’t fit Dad.

Part of the reason I’m making good progress on this is because I’m proofing a manuscript. I discovered long ago that I can read and knit at the same time… if the material I’m reading will happily sit on my music stand and the knitting is stocking stitch in the round. In fact, I’ll get the proofing done faster if I knit, as I’m less likely to get restless and find domestic chores or website ‘research’ to procrastinate with.

Unfortunately, the cold weather brings in the Heat Seeker (cat), who curls up next to me and makes irresistable little sleeping noises until these subliminal messages had the desired effect, and I fall unconscious. Yesterday, when I woke from yet another cat-induced nap, an even niftier way to make a self-striping yarn measure (SSYM?) popped into my head. The previous one only worked for my gauge and foot size. I have narrow feet (my ex used to call them ice skates) and I knit on 2mm needles, so a row tends to take up less yarn than a row on the average person’s sock. My new idea lets me change the measurement for a row to whatever a knitter’s gauge, or recipient food measurement, requires.

And it’ll be much easier to make, too. It occured to me today that I could even make it out of thick wire, if I had to. But wood would be much prettier.

My hands are much better and I managed a few rounds of Liquorish Allsorts last night. Unfortunately my back and neck are doing their usual trick – as soon as one muscle group stops hurting another one starts. Panadeine is my friend.

Yesterday, during one of my rest breaks, I worked up some designs for a… a Thing. Basically, it’s a device to wind yarn around in preparation for space-dyeing. I wanted to make something that not only lets me measure and wind the big loops needed without getting out of my chair, but also allows me to measure and count the rows as I wind, can be used for repeats of up to 20 rows, and is small and compact. I’d heard that a warping board could be used, but I wanted something even more compact. The Thing I have designed can be folded up to the size of a collapsed camera tripod.

The trouble is, work and preparing for house renovations is going to keep me busy night and day for the next few weeks, and one of the tasks we have to do in preparation for the renovations is pack away all woodworking tools. I have to find time to make it soon, or it could be months before I can!

The other problem I have is: what the heck should this Thing be called? Any suggestions?

Last year there was a rash of stash flashing on blogs. Not long after that, I moved my stash from my old house to this one, re-sorting it into under-bed storage boxes so I could fit it into my office. I took advantage of the fit of organisation to take a photo. I was able to get it all into one image.

This time, though I didn’t sign up for the big flash your stash bash, I thought it would be interesting to do it again. It’s six months since I took the last photo. Once again, I managed to get everything except my current WIPs into the photo.

Big tub #1 (top): 99c balls of mohair, wool and cashmere/wool blend from Dimmeys
Big tub #2 (middle): special wool – everything from slubby to laceweight, including the single ball of Noro silk garden than I occasionally pat, some expensive slubby blue-black silk from the Isle of Skye, and three balls of Corriedale Clip that I bought to felt but can’t bring myself to.
Big tub #3 (bottom): 8 and 12 ply wool collection – Bendy wool on the left, Jo Sharp on the right.
Small tub # 5 (bottom left): My shamefully small sock wool collection.
Felt bucket centre bottom: Dark teal Zhivago for a lace jumper
Small tub #1 (top): More Dimmeys mohair
Small tub #2 (2nd from top): mixed leftovers and op shop finds
Small tub #3 (3rd from top): acrylic 8ply leftovers
Small tub #4 (bottom): cotton – currently all leftovers from projects

Comparing it to my old photo, I’m happy to see that more yarn is missing than new. I’ve found homes for some of the stash I didn’t particularly want, knitted up three FOs, and have two WIPs. There’s a little more Bendy 8ply in there now – in preparation for Tubey – and two more lots of sock yarn. At least two purchases of yarn never hit the stash, as I started knitting (or weaving) them up straight away.

Hmm, there’s still quite a bit in the stash that doesn’t thrill me. Particularly the Dimmey’s mohair. I keep eyeing it and thinking ‘e-bay’.

Dropping stuff off at the local op shop the other day, I couldn’t help having a peek at the patterns. I found these:

I like the design around the left-hand jumper.

The righthand pattern is in a book of patterns where most of the models’ heads are hidden in shadow, or cut off completely. Bizzare.

I don’t know why I like the jumper, considering patchwork has never thrilled me, but I do. It uses five colours. Looking at my stash photo, I’ve spotted those balls of Jo Sharp dk. I have Lichen, Amethyst and Renaissance (Aqua). I’ve been thinking that a nice rust colour would go well with them. I just need a fifth colour. Where’s that Jo Sharp website…

This is the best part of flashing my stash. I get all excited about the yarn all over again!

I’ve been dreaming about buying sock yarn via the internet ever since visiting Peeve last Wednesday. Friday night I was frustrated by finding beautiful, drool-worthy sock yarn and being unable to buy it because the maker didn’t sell to international customers. Last night I was on the hunt for cotton sock yarn, but every time I ordered some it turned out to be rope-like and inelastic.

I haven’t done much knitting, either. My hands and back are sore from work.