Oops, I Did It Again

Since I can't really do the shawl anywhere but at home, I've been knitting a sock for my subway project:

'bout time I used the wound-up skein that's been sitting on my coffee table for at least 6 months

It's not a bad pattern, and I love the design and the yarn.  Might have had to rip it out twice due to issues, but none of that was the pattern's fault (first time I screwed up the chart, the second I realized I had to make it a bit smaller to fit...well, ok, one size fits all isn't for socks, so that may be the pattern's fault). This is my first time doing toe up socks, and therefore the style of heel involved is completely new to me:

I'm not a fan of being blind to the pattern, but having got past the heel now, it seems like it'll work out, and at least now I understand how this heel works.  Well, I'm ok mainly because according to the swatch, this yarn will grow a bit so being slightly small for my foot is a good thing.  But I'll take it.

However, that's not what I'm hear to talk about.

I'm here to talk about another needle.  My brand new Knitter's Pride Karbonz circulars, size 0 since I tend to do a lot of socks on 0s.  I bought them a bit less than a month ago when my knit group made their what's turning out to be annual trip to WEBS.  I was being splurge-y, and since I tried out the Karbonz at VOGUEknitting Live, I've wanted to get one.  So I did.

I like them.  As someone who favors metal needles, I still liked them.  They're not as slick as other metals, but still slick enough for my comfort without feeling like I fighting it too much, yet not so slick it feels like you're slightly out of control. They feel solid, but not heavy.  It's an interesting sensation, and I find them very usable.

So when I had to rip out my sock the first time, I switched to my new needles as was happy.  Until today.  Because I broke them:

Oh, they don't seem broken, unlike the last needle I broke (also on a sock, of course).  But they are broke.  You see in that picture up there that the tips aren't the carbon material but are metal?  Sepreate pieces of course. So, I was knitting along on the subway into work today, only to have one of those tips dislodge just enough so that it wiggles back and forth with the slightest of pressure.  Including trying to pull a stitch back with it, because of course it was the side I was holding in my right hand. I managed to complete the row very carefully, then I put them away because I was afraid any more knitting would cause that tip to come off completely and anyway, it's not easy to knit with a tip that bends when put under the slightest of pressure.

Am I really that hard on my needles?  I mean, I'll entertain that thought because I know I'm a tighter, rougher knitter...it's why I prefer metal needles for most yarn.  Or just unlucky and got needle with an issue?

Anyway, there is a happy ending to this story.  I emailed WEBS and asked if they had a broken needle return-and-replace policy, because I couldn't find it on their site and, I mean, it's only been a month.  I was fully prepared to pay the shipping to send it back and have them send me a new one because it's still cheaper that way AND I won't have to deal with the switching needle gauge problem (because I do have a metal size 0 circular for socks here already).  They replied that they have a no-questions asked replacement policy on Knitter's Pride needles, and that they would send me a replacement right away.

Hopefully I don't break this one.  The only suck-y part right now is that I don't have a travel project to work on.  Unless I just finish this first sock with the metal needles.  How much could my gauge change for the upper part of a sock with a crazy design, anyway?

Vogue Knitting Live Debrief (2013 Edition)

I should've done this Monday, but I was too busy catching up on my sweater and having a battle of wills with a mouse that made its way into my apartment (which, unfortunately, is still going on.  Good news is that I didn't see any evidence from it this morning.  Bad news is that I still haven't caught it, and it escaped one trap and hasn't touched the others I set after that). 

Anyway....onto the Vogue Knitting Live debrief.

In General
I went in expecting more of last year.  It was not.  The whole...feel, I guess is a good word...was different than last year.  Last year was smaller, more fashion forward and had a summery feel to it.  This year was a lot more crowded (on Saturday at least), and the vendors and feel was way more diverse.  In some ways it was like a little Rhinebeck (with many of the same vendors), except with a slight more emphasis on fashion (instead of the more rustic feel of the NYS Sheep and Wool festival, which is to be expected).

I went both days, because like last time I signed up for a lecture on Saturday (and then met my knitting group to trawl around the marketplace), and then I went back to see the shows and the free panels on Sunday (and to trawl around the marketplace alone).  The one constant thing was that the lecture was fun, the panels were interesting (and I got a lot of knitting done), and the fashion shows were mostly horrifying.

The Lecture
I ended up signing up for Manipulating Stitch Patterns conducted by Ysolda Teague.  Unlike the last two times, I've heard of her before (actually, it was her page I found instructions to do those looped button holes for one of my last patterns, which saved my can't-be-bothered-to-plan-for-a-buttonband ass), but that's not why I picked this lecture.  I picked it because for the past four months or so I've been wondering if I shouldn't invest in a stitch dictionary, and if I do, what I will use it for.  You see, I'm pretty picky about my knitting.  There are few patterns I've seen that aren't cables or stockinette that I've liked.  But I keep telling myself I won't do cables in my next project (ha) and I should branch out a little more...or, if I don't find what I like, create it.  It's all easier said than done of course.  So I figured that this lecture should be interesting and help a bit.

While it started late (but it ended on time and provided some laughs, so I don't care), I was happy with it.  While a lot of the tips given seemed somewhat common sense (like calculating a new stitch count when adding or subtracting an element), there were still good tips for me to hear.  One of my major takeaways was an throwaway point, which is that the chart should represent what the pattern will look like.  Her example was a cable chart in that style I'm not too fond of, the one where the cross is a bunch of diagonal lines visually 'representing' the cable.

Now,  I don't like this style because it gets messy with more complicated cables.  I had to read one that had traveling cables, and I found it hard to differentiate between the K2, K2 cables and the K2, P1 cables (putting a tiny dot near the bottom left does not make a clear symbol).  Also, as many of them aren't standardized (despite what the link above tries; you'll notice that they have no traveling cables in there), they vary by just enough that it's confusing.  I can't imagine what a K4 with a P stitch in the middle cable would look like in that notation.  But Ysolda's comment of 'the chart should look like the pattern' made me realize why people like that style: taken together, the chart really does show the cable flow.  It looks like the cable, because many of the symbols look like the shape the knitting makes (of course, there are other similar styles.  Standardization doesn't exist here).

She also mentioned, in relation to that point, that the chart shouldn't be a code.  I think that's my biggest pitfall here.  I'm a programmer.  I see charts as codes, I'm conformable with charts as codes, and judge their merits as such.  I like clear, flexible codes over pictorial representation that just complicates matters.  This is why my currently preferred notation is one I learned in Aran Knitting, which looks similar to the chart in this link.

It doesn't really show the pattern when you see it as one object.  But it does give flexibility to represent all types of cables (as any cable uses a variation of the same symbols), and is much easier to write out when I'm pattern drafting (and on the computer without buying special software like she was using in the lecture).  But you do have to learn it and understand it to see the brilliance of it, which doesn't come easy to many knitters.

I also find it funny that crochet is more standerized than knitting in this respect.  But that's another topic for another day.

The other major takeaway I got was that you can fake cables with increases and decreases, and you can use ribbing to do reversible cables.  I had no clue.  That's great to know.

Fashion Shows and the Panels
I only ended up catching two full fashion shows (and bits and pieces of others), but what I saw was pretty much similar to last year.  Weird outfits, modular knitting, garments that don't flatter anything but the coat-hanger models walking down the runway (and then there was this thing.  No excuse for that monstrosity of a cardigan).  Oye.  No novelty yarns this year, though.  And there were a couple more outfits I wasn't revolted by.  Improvement, improvement.

There was two free panels, and I went to both.  One was on being a designer, which while being funny, made me really want to stay an amateur designer.  The other was on the change in knitting culture and where it was going, which was pretty predictable, but wasn't too boring.  Though one panelist had to repeat the whole 'crochet uses more yarn' myth. Ug.

Purchases
I was good, and only got one skein of yarn:

I bought it because not only was a  'oo, pretty blue!' one of a kind Madelintosh skein, it's from my old LYS (who were there, much to my surprise.  The other surprise was that they remembered me after a year of not going (while I had only been their customer for a little over a year)).

I also got another bottle of Soak to replace the one I left in my old apartment (that I bought last VKLive).  While Woolite might be cheaper, you don't have to rinse with Soak.  And it smells a lot better.

Also, the second day I texted my mom this picture:

It was a joke about big crochet hooks.  The next text I get, however, was 'do they have x size?  I'll pay for it.'  Cue back and forth texts where I realized they were Tunisian crochet hooks and attracted the attention of one of the shop people, who taught me to Tunisian crochet (which isn't that hard, but I also knit and crochet, and it's obviously a weird blend of those things).  I then, while waiting for my mother's answer as to if she really wanted the Tunisian version, got hustled into buying the crochet hook. For $40.

I later found a vendor selling normal crochet hooks in the size my mother wanted for normal prices.  I ended up buying those as well.  We'll see if my mom buys the Tunisian thing off of me.  I may get stuck with it.

Conclusion
Overall, I had a good time.  It was different than I was expecting, both good and bad, but I enjoyed it.  Hopefully they'll have better trends next year (ha ha ha).

Yarn Craft in Literature, or In Which I've Been Reading Tolstoy Instead of Coming Up with Good Blog Posts

Because I have nothing right now other than some pattern math and a couple of semi-defunct swatches for a certain baby sweater:

...rather expensive yarn I bought because I walked into a new yarn shop looking for buttons, couldn't find buttons I liked, and then felt bad:

....a story on how I managed to screw up the order of colors on one of my afghan squares because I didn't bother writing it down before going out and attending a knitting meetup, as well as my main idea of ordering these squares, which would mean I need to keep color orders the same:

...and very little actual knitting done, I'm going to instead mention that I've also been on a Tolstoy kick in books recently.  Being that I'm supposed to be saving money and own a Kindle (and have yet to claim the library card that got sent to my parent's house by mistake), I've been hunting around Project Gutenberg for free books to read.  If you don't know what Project Gutenberg is, click that link right now. You don't even need to own a e-reader to read these books; you can read them straight on the computer (this presumes, of course, that you can deal reading a book on a backlit screen. Personally, I can't stand reading long books and certain other things on a backlit screen, hence I was a semi-early adapter for an e-reader).

Anyway, to get back on point, I finished Anna Karenina recently (in two weeks. Yes, I can read fast when I actually decide to sit down and read).  I'm now reading War and Peace (because I'm nuts).

I really, really, recommend reading Anna Karenina.  It has a surprisingly addicting series of plots, despite the fact that they all meander.  Maybe has something to do with the fact that it's like reading a train wreck; you'll be horrified by all the characters' actions, but you just can't look away.  However, I will admit that I've never minded long wandering books as long as the wandering parts are interesting, well-written, and establish character, while I know others who hate any meandering. Tolstoy was the definition for the former on this site, so you have been warned.  War and Peace, on the other hand, I haven't read enough of it to pass opinion yet.  So far, while it has very little semblance of plot line, the characters and their antics have been amusing me.

You may be wondering what this has to do with yarn craft.  Well, one of the many details that pop up in these books is characters doing yarn crafts.  I found this more amusing than I should have.  After all, these books do take place in 19-century Russia, so of course people are crafting.  But it's how it's presented, and sometimes even who Tolstoy bothers to mention is doing such a thing, that makes it interesting.  That, and I know next to nothing on historical yarn craft, so all these references are interesting from that standpoint.  Anyway, I will provide quotes (though not page numbers since this is on a Kindle, sorry. I'll give location numbers for any other Kindle users out there, though note, however, that 1) I own the first version of the Kindle 2 (though if you have the newer Kindle Keyboard, the screen size is the same...and holy shit, you can now get it for less than $100. Can you believe I paid $320 for mine?), and 2) the version of Anna Karenina I have is the free Amazon download, but the version of War and Peace is this Project Gutenberg version.  There is a Project Gutenberg version of Anna Karenina as well).

First, you have your standard women knitting stuff, along with a case of a man not getting it.  However, I'll mention here that I think the male character not getting it is more due to the type of character he was. If you know Anna Karenina, the following quotes come from the part where preparations are being made for Kitty's and Levin's first baby, for which Kitty and her relations work and Levin doesn't want to get it.  So, yep, baby knitting:

"On the terrace were assembled all the ladies of the party. They always liked sitting there, after dinner, and that day they had work to do there too. Beside the sewing and knitting of baby clothes, with which all of them were busy..." (8996).

"He [Levin]...tried to turn away and avoid seeing the mysterious, endless strips of knitting..."(9702).

"She [Kitty] was sitting up in bed, holding some knitting, which she had been busy upon during the last few days." (11434)

"Kitty was walking about knitting rapidly and giving directions" (11453). 

I should note that the last two come from the part where Kitty is going into labor, no less.  Guess the knitting relaxes her, as this is the first time in the book Tolstoy mentions Kitty knitting directly.  Before this, she was always working on a type of lacework.

Beyond baby knitting, you also have a governess of Anna Karenina's doing some pretty standard knitting:

"The English governess...was sitting near the boy knitting a shawl" (6858)

As well as a main character (Dolly) consolidating herself with some knitting early in the novel:

"...she [Dolly] took up here work, a coverlet she had long been making.  She always set to work on it at depressed moments, and now she knitted at it nervously, twitching her fingers and counting the stitches" (1052).

However, they're not the only people knitting in Tolstoy's works.  In War and Peace, you have a man (granted, he was a servant) knitting:

"An old man...sat in a corner knitting a stocking" (1978).

Also, this isn't limited to knitting.  Turns out, Anna Karenina crochets:

"...and taking up the crochet work that was lying on the table, she [Anna] began drawing the hook out of it..."(5855).

Though I have yet to quite get what Anna is doing here with it (for background, this is the same crochet work as the above quote):

 "...pulled the hook at last out of the crochet work, and rapidly, with the help of her forefinger, began working loop after loop of the wool that was dazzling white in the lamplight, while the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously in the embroidered cuff" (5885).

So, now that I'm done whoring out literary references, I'll go back to this baby sweater now.