Silence.

I've got plenty of knitting content to post but I am without a camera until this weekend, so it will have to wait.  So today my post is only tangentially related to knitting.

One of the reasons I've finished up some projects recently is because I've allowed a little more silence in my life.  Usually I knit while listening to something - either an audiobook, the news, or some podcast.  This means that projects usually get stalled at the point that they require more concentration than I can devote while listening.

I realized that I felt guilty when I wasn't taking in information.  In a modern, fast-paced city, surrounded by people with completely different life experiences, and with my google reader serving up more content than I could possibly keep up with, my ignorance became obvious and oppressive.  I feel obligated to learn as much as I possibly could just to be a worthy member of the human race.

Recently I took a step back. Being a person isn't about trying to know everything about everything, but about carving out our own little niche in the universe and engaging with it the best way we can.  I've been forcing  myself to turn everything off once in a while and I notice so much of the world around me in a new way.  Even just taking a walk to lunch the other day *gasp* without cramming earbuds into my ears I noticed some things I hadn't noticed since I first arrived in Singapore - the symphony of the bugs in the afternoon, the creamy frangipani flowers on the path to the canteen, students studying and flirting at the picnic tables.  These are things worth noticing, even if it means I only listen to half as much political analysis as I used to.  (On a side note, I am so glad the US elections are over.  If I heard one more highly educated and possibly impactful journalist waste breath and talent making election predictions which are not useful or informative I would have puked.)

A frangipani flower.

I am hoping to make this a permanent life change, because I feel like I am a more peaceful and, counter-intuitively, a more productive person by taking time out.

Is silence a part of your life?

An abundance of knitting time :-)

Lately my schedule is such that I have almost every weekday evening alone at home.  I've been plowing through audiobooks, clearing out my WIP basket, and thinking about Christmas.

Since I'm on the opposite side of the world from my family and close friends and have all this time to knit, I figure if there's ever a year to try and knit a bunch of Christmas gifts, this is it.  So I've cast on a royal ton of things in the last week or so, even though I said I wouldn't start anything new until all my WIPs were finished.

Since I'm knitting gifts, of course I can't show them yet but I will talk about what I'm knitting for my immediate family, since I don't think they even know what a blog is hehehe.

Here's the deal. I've got all this Knitpicks Palette laying around (21 balls to be exact) from a kit to make a bag.  I really want to make that bag at some point, but even if I cast on today there's no way I would finish it before leaving Singapore, and it would become a headache come moving time.  Meanwhile, I've got six family members who live in a cold place (well, depends on your definition of cold I guess), the need to destash over the next four months, and a burning desire to knit colorful mittens.

The only rational thing I can do is try to knock out six pairs of mittens over the next two months. Right?

I'm going to take patterns from Charlene Schurch's book Mostly Mittens.  First up, surprisingly, is Mitten 1 from the book.  I'm not great at combining colors but here's what I came up with, if it looks awful I'll change out a color or two:

I've only knit one pair of  mittens before but it was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to this megaproject.  And if they don't get finished in time, oh well I'll send a gift card.

I also cast on for something to leave at my desk at work, something uncomplicated and time insensitive (I've been spending less time at the office itself lately, so I can't predict how much time I'll have for knitting at work in the coming months).  I cast on for a scarf using a pattern from Nancy Marchant's book Knitting Brioche.

 This stitch is called "Siemens stitch" in her book. I chose it because it combines brioche knitting, which is a new technique for me, with double knitting, which I've dabbled in before.  It was great to be working them in the same piece, and I think I understand both better because of it. Both require you to slip a lot of stitches, but the brioche sections put a lot more yarn on the needle:

The resulting fabric is thick, reversible, and cozy.  The yarn is Colourmart, by the way, but I'm not entering it in the current contest because I don't think I'll finish it in time.

Taking the pics for this post and the previous one were fun - I took bf to the gardens at my work on a Saturday afternoon.  Don't worry - I am not a crazy workaholic, but I live so close to my work that the gardens there are the closest pretty place.  The heat made us a little silly:

but it was better than staying home and taking pics in my cruddy little room.

We were not the only ones in garden.

I don't know how many of these little guys live there, but I see them all the time. They are lightning fast though, and I'm surprised bf caught a pic of one.

FO: Socks

I've finished two pairs of socks recently.  One of these pairs was originally cast on something like two years ago (or maybe more?) so it's a relief to finally  be done with them!

Both pair are plain, since the yarn is multicolored.  As you might see from the pic, though, they achieved this end via different constructions.  I'm slowly expanding my sock construction repertoire.  I think it's neat that such a simple functional item, which most (non-knitter) people don't think twice about, can hide a rich topic for contemplation and experimentation.

For the blue-ish pair (which I mentioned before, and is the pair I started recently) I followed the Gusset Heel Basic Socks pattern from Wendy's book. I tried to use up all the yarn but they got too huge, I've got some leftovers.  I usually use 2.0 mm needles, but for these I used 2.5 mm, since the yarn has nylon in it I'm confident these guys are gonna last despite the loose gauge.  This pair goes to my bf, who looks forward to living in a climate where all these things I'm knitting for him will actually be useful.

The yellow-y pair is not from any pattern, I just knit a tube and did an afterthought heel.  I didn't use a particular resource for the heel, but the Yarn Harlot has a clear description.  In fact the first sock's heel was done differently as I mentioned earlier, but the second heel was done as the YH did.  The end result is nice, and the color changes are remarkably uniform throughout the sock.  These will go to a good friend whose has probably forgotten that I promised him a pair of socks, it was so long ago.  I'm not going to remind him before sending these off, because the thought of my friend checking the mailbox one fine random day and finding a pair of handmade socks is too funny!

Anyway, of the two methods of heel construction, I'd say the afterthought heel is more annoying to make but does look prettier.  For self-striping yarn I might do it again, if only because it prevents the heels from messing with the color changes.  With solid yarn though, the boredom of knitting such a long tube from toe to calf of plain stockinette without even and increases or decreases is not worth it.

I haven't been blogging, but I have been knitting.


I think I can finish a few WIPs soon and then I'll write something about them. Really, I can only show the same half-finished blue sweater so many times. 

Hopefully this is the last time:

Works in Progress

The last week or two I've lost the knitting mojo.  Work has been a bit overwhelming, and apparently my coping strategy is killing Raiders and Super Mutants - I've been playing a lot of Fallout3 lately. I keep a plain sock at my desk at work and plink away at it when I take a break to listen to the news, but that's about it.

I'm hoping the mojo comes back now, as I've got two sweaters I know I could finish soon.  One of them is entered as a WIP in the round of the Colourmart contest (rav) which starts today.

It's a silk top, untouched since the last Colourmart contest ended a couple months ago.  I had all manner of trouble adjusting the bust to fit my measurements but I think the rest of it should be smooth sailing.  (Famous last words?)  Anyway, I'm planning to pick it up again tonight, maybe it will work some magic on me and I'll knock it out in a couple weeks.

The other sweater I'm working on is the Lily sweater for my friend.

I am so almost to the armholes.  This is like the home stretch!

By the way I switched out one of the stitch markers for this adorable thing I got from home:

He (and his several brothers and maybe a few avian friends) were just too cute to resist.  I'm lucky I didn't have a whole damn menagerie waiting in my mom's mailbox!  There are a bunch more in the etsy shop I got them from.

Anyway, my main problem is that both of these projects are going to need sleeves soon, and both are on the same size needles. Since I only have so many 3.75 mm needles, I'm going to have to finish one before starting the sleeves on the other.  I've chosen to work on the silk top, so that I have a better chance of meeting the contest deadline.

FO: Socks

Pattern: Bavarian Cable Socks, Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy

Woo hoo for finally getting these off the needles - where they have been since Valentine's Day. Yikes!

 First let me give a shout-out to my delightfully helpful boyfriend for the following things: being a patient and inspiring sock model, giving me free reign with his camera, showing me how to use some photo-editing software, and deciding that taking pictures of knitting is so much fun that he'll help me on a regular basis.  This is great news for anyone reading this blog because he's a much better photographer than me.  My next post will have some evidence of that!

About the pattern:  This pattern comes from Wendy's book and it's perfectly well-written.  For someone with average-shaped feet the fit is great.  But. My bf, I have learned, does not have average-shaped feet.  His heels are pointy.  As in, my leg makes a 90-degree angle with the ground and his make like a 75-degree angle.  The heel on this sock (and probably like half of the sock patterns out there) can barely accomodate the extra volume in the heel area.  See:

Luckily I've already found a different type of sock heel that fits him better and will probably stick with that one in the future.  These socks have already been knit though.  Oh well.

 I took so long for these puppies because all those twisted stitches making up the "cables" are painful to knit.  My right pinkie always cramped up after about 20 minutes of knitting.  This problem was probably exacerbated by the needles I was using - 2.0 mm circs with a short "needle portion" (the hard part at either end).   Definitely a fault of the knitter and not the design.

About the yarn: I have already mentioned that this yarn is a little disappointing for me.  I mean, the color is beautiful, really I could ogle this yarn all day.  However, the yarn itself gets quite thin in places, and pills like anything. Trying to compensate for the delicate yarn, I used much tinier needles than recommended, and this just gave me a pilly fabric that was also stiff. I guess the "Smooshy" comes from its being loosely spun, so perhaps I shouldn't complain about all this and use it only for low-wear items in the future.  But still it's a bit of a downer to finish my bf's socks after an eternity and have his first comment be, "they're kindof fuzzy, is it supposed to be like that?"

Considering that it's a pattern that I'd rather not knit again with a yarn better suited for something else, I would say the project turned out OK.  On to the next, I guess.

FO: scarf

Hey check it out I finished something!

Transpacific Scarf

I didn't the entire yarn, because I realized that I wouldn't be able to block the thing if I did.  Before blocking, the scarf was 59" long; it blocked out to 74".  Which you can see is the largest my blocking surface could accommodate. 

The process of blocking lace, which I hadn't had to do before, is pretty straightforward but I can imagine that it's a real pain for a more complicated piece.  But even on this simple scarf, it completely changed how the yarn behaved.  The lumps smoothed out, the YO holes became more uniform in size, the pattern itself became more clear.


I'm not exactly sure what to do with this scarf.  The wife of one of my coworkers is moving to northern Europe next month and I suspect a warm cuddly scarf would be welcome, but I'm not sure if I should gift it to her or not.  It's that weird social distance where we are friendly enough that we can have a conversation without my coworker around, eg when we cross paths at the bus stop, but not friendly enough that I would contact her on purpose.

Regardless, mostly I'm just excited that I finished it!