Arch-shaped stockings

My husband said that I should call these the Hershey Kiss stockings. I’m still trying to decide if they sufficiently satisfy my chocolate cravings.

Schoolhouse Press publishes a pattern packet called “Arch-Shaped Stockings” (if you follow the link, you’ll need to scroll down a bit) that contains 6 variations on a sock shaping that sucks itself right up against the arch of the foot. As my arches are quite high (plantar fasciitis, anyone?) I found the premise to be interesting; most of my socks are a little baggy under my arch. Lo and behold, the finished stockings fit my arches (and the rest of my foot, and my calves) perfectly!

The pattern was mentally engaging and lots of fun, although my somewhat extensive sock knitting experience was extremely handy; I wouldn’t recommend this pattern for beginners. They knit up much faster than stockings usually do; colorwork, in my experience, always goes faster than solid color knitting. I think that it is because the stitches in colorwork have more vertical height. Fewer rows are required to knit a given length, yielding a faster project.

I used the Vuorelma Satakieli yarn which is suggested in the pattern and also sold by Schoolhouse Press. Although the yarn was wonderful to work with, I wouldn’t use it for stockings I planned to give to anyone, or at least anyone that I wanted to still like me: it’s a bit itchy. I can and do wear uber-scratchy Shetland wool right next to my skin on a regular basis, so I’m OK with itchy. I think that I’ll have to wear them the next time I ride my bike to church!

Bike trailer rehab.

My big project for Christmas vacation this year was, surprisingly enough, not knit. Instead, I completed an over-due bike trailer rehab.

Last summer, I bought an aging bike trailer for very cheap on Craigslist. Originally sold as a Papoose Caboose, it had languished in a backyard for an unknown number of years. The seller rescued it, cleaned it up, made repairs, replaced a few missing parts, took off the canopy and built a wooden flatbed. I bought it from him in May with the idea that it would be nice to ride our bikes to the grocery store, or even haul home awkward loads from Home Depot that wouldn’t fit in our Honda Civic.

While the wooden flatbed is quite nice and sturdy, the crate that we put our groceries and other things in was much more stable when we set it down inside the old cloth trailer bottom. The problem here was that after so many years, the nylon cloth was rotting. So, I decided that over Christmas break I would design a new bottom for the trailer.

After five weeks and numerous trips to both the crafting and hardware stores, not to mention the bike shop, I have a great trailer! I won’t say that I saved much money doing this; new flatbeds on Amazon are only about $50 more than what I spent for the trailer plus parts, in addition to several extra carshare rentals to get groceries while the trailer was off-line. However, I’m very pleased with my finished product.

I had to first cut away the old nylon liner, and then unbolt the 20-odd fastening points where the nylon was bolted to the frame. I gave the frame a good cleaning, and also took apart and greased all of the moving parts while I was at  it. The frame is in solid shape, and I think that it will last for many years.

I sewed the canvas lining and originally thought to secure it to the frame with  Velcro straps. However, the Velcro that I was able to buy was not strong enough to hold anything other than the lightest load. I eventually came up with the idea of putting carabiner clips through the place  where the old corner posts of the trailer canopy had been, and clipping them to additional straps that I sewed on to the underneath of the canvas. The Velcro straps still provide a bit of additional stability. I also added new tires and tubes. The old tires were dry rotting and refused to hold air. I’m still contemplating what to add by way of reflectors. (Not that I ever plan to haul at night! But, it’s good to be prepared.) The original reflectors were in rough shape, so I threw them out with the old liner. A “slow vehicle” triangle could be problematic to attach. I might go with a combination of reflective tape on the exposed frame parts and a rear blinky from Planet Bike. I already use that type of blinky on my bike at night; it is insanely bright. I’d love to figure out how to attach one of those 6-foot poles with the orange flag on the end. Other suggestions welcome!

The wooden flatbed will come in handy at times, I’m sure, but for most of the hauling I do, I expect to use the sewn canvas liner in combination with a crate or two and some bungee cords.

Now I can go to Home Depot and buy that extension ladder we need!

Christmas Vacation

It’s been a while since I posted anything here – I hope that no one was holding her or his breath waiting to see my next project! I’ve still been knitting, however, so I’ve got a few finished things to share. I’ll be playing catch-up over the next few days, posting photos and writing about what I’ve been doing.

My big current project is the South Seas Stole. Since the instant I first saw a photo of this pattern, I’ve wanted to knit it. Tracking down the pattern itself, however, proved challenging; at the time, the designer did not have any information on where to find it on her website. I found it, finally, on Patternfish.

As you can see from the photos, the stitch patterns are very different from most of the lace I’ve knit before. None of them are particularly difficult, so this has been a fun pattern.

The yarn that I’m using for this project has been another adventure. I’ve read Fleegle’s Blog for some time now, and always enjoyed the lace projects. She recently opened a store on Etsy called The Gossamer Web, with lovely hand dyed lace yarns. I’m working the South Seas Stole with a yarn from this site called Love Potion No. 3, a cashmere/silk/merino blend. You can see from the scale of the knitting against my hands in the photos that it’s pretty thin stuff – I think that this is the thinnest yarn I have worked with to date. However, it has been surprisingly easy to knit up, and the knit fabric is wonderfully soft and delicate.

More to come over the next few days, I promise! But for now, it is time for the gratuitous cute hedgehog photo:

Yep, Harold likes to explore our shoes!

Aeolian Shawl

Every time I see the name of this shawl pattern, I think “How do you knit in natural minor?”

 

This is the Aeolian Shawl pattern, from the Spring 09 issue of Knitty. I found it to be an interesting and engaging knit, much like the other shawl I have knit by the same designer, Laminaria. Neither shawl ever got boring.

I knit this on US size 3 needles, using a lilac colored skein of Silk Lace from Claudia Handpainted Yarns. Although the yarn is a bit pricey, I’ve used it before and know that it will hold up well. I was a bit surprised, however, to find how much the yarn shredded when I had to frog a substantial portion of the shawl. I was also displeased to find a knot and a few slubs in my skein; at this price, I do not expect to find multiple knots or other imperfections.

This pattern calls for 2250 size 8 seed beads. I upped to a size 6 bead, but reduced the number of beads used by about 80%. I generally dislike both beading and the feeling of too much “bling,” so  I included beads only on the borders, and picked which beads I wanted for impact. I have listed my reductions at the bottom of this post.

 

For this pattern, I used a crochet chain bind-off. As this shawl is knit in stockinette lace right up to the bind-off, I would normally be concerned about the edge rolling. However, the edge contains both a heavy amount of open lacework, the beads help to weigh the edge down to prevent curling, and pure silk tends to take a block very well, so I threw caution to the wind and used the bind-off that I thought would look nicest. So far, no curling! At the end, I had about 18 inches of yarn to spare. Given that I started out with 1100 yards, that was a little close!

This shawl was challenging to block. My first attempt to block the shawl flat was unsatisfactory.

I own two sets of blocking mats – theoretically, enough to block just about anything. However, as you can see from the photos, this shawl is just a tad oversized. The edges ran off at multiple points, and parts of the border were quite distorted. So, I folded the shawl in half along its spine.

This enabled me to spread the border sections out properly. At this point, I found that the “tail” of the shawl needed to curve out, something that would not have been possible to do had I blocked the shawl flat.

This shawl blocked out to be quite large: 88 inches along the wingspan, and 45 inches down the back. If I don’t fold the top over, it hits me right at the knee! However, with the top folded up a bit, the wings are long and weighty enough with the beads that I can throw one end over my shoulder and be confident that the shawl will stay put without a pin – nice!

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For anyone is knitting this shawl who wants to follow my bead reductions, they are as follows:

Set-up chart: no beads

Yucca chart: no beads

Transition chart: no beads

Agave chart: Center beads only on rows 3 and 5 (these make a little triangle)

Final Agave chart: Center beads only as for Agave chart.

Left edge, center edge and right edge chart: all beads.

Edge set-up chart: Beads on rows 3 and 5 only.

Main Edge chart: all beads EXCEPT for row 43. In row 43, I placed beads on the designated stitches that were knit plain, but did not place beads on the designated decrease stitches. For row 45, I placed all beads as indicated.

Entrelac Stockings, and a fun project.

These stockings are from the pattern “Entrelac Socks,” by Eunny Jang, published in the Spring 07 issue of Interweave Knits. I finished these a few weeks ago, but didn’t get around to photographing them until today. Normally, I am excited to wear finished projects, or send them off to whoever they were knit for, but in this case, we have had a long stretch of 100+ degree weather and I haven’t worn any socks at all in quite some time!

I knit these with one lavendar skein of Regia 4-ply sock yarn, and two skeins of chocolate colored Lorna’s Laces, using size zero bamboo needles. I find that entrelac in general behaves much more nicely on wooden needles.

These stockings are knit toe-up. As I got close to the end of the first stocking, I found that the calf was uncomfortably and unbecomingly tight. Apparently, cycling 60 miles a week does good things for my calves! So I modified the entrelac blocks to include higher stitch counts. After turning the heel and rejoining to work in the round, I knit 4 CC tiers with 6-stitch blocks, 1 CC tier with 7-stitch blocks, and then knit 8-stitch blocks until the stockings were long enough.

The pattern suggests making a twisted-yarn cord with attached pom-poms to garter the tops of the socks. Um, no thanks. Not my style. I’m still looking for just the right decoration. Good thing I’ve got a long time until cold weather!

I’ve had another fun little project going recently. Although we are still sad about losing little Ned, we have decided to move forward with procuring another hedgehog. Our new little one should be coming home in late August. While we are hedgehog-less, I decided that it would be a good time to design a new house for him or her.

Many hedgehogs seem to enjoy sleeping inside of “hedgie bags” (basically, a hedgehog-sized sleeping bag) inside of pipes or tubes, or covered up by their cage liners. Ned also always used to enjoy burrowing through a blanket on the couch, all around under our legs and feet. Hedgehogs generally seem to feel more secure in enclosed spaces. So, for this cage, I decided to increase the amount of enclosed space by using a plastic bin meant to fit under a bed. It is connected to the top bin via a PVC pipe – can you tell that I had fun with spray paint this week? The bottom and top bins both have multiple large screened ventilation windows. For easy hedgehog extraction (well, as easy as it gets…) and yet more air flow I made a large screened door with a hinge for the lower bin. The wheel is a Cake Walk Supreme wheel and is really nice – totally quiet and easy to clean. (If you click on the link, and then click on “Testamonials” you will find on that page a link to a video of a hedgehog running on her wheel. Those little legs car really fly!)  Still to be added are food and water dishes, toys, a hedgie bag, and some ramp covers to increase traction inside of the slippery PVC pipe. I’m counting the days until we bring our new friend home!