New York Minknit

Yarn: sportweight Blue Sky alpaca in Toasted Almond and Licorice, 1 skein each. Total cost (before tax) $20

Needles: No. 6 Clover bamboo circular (these are knit flat and then sewn up)

Pattern: My own.

The color and pattern were inspired by andknitting.com’s scarf. After I started them (waaay back in Oct/Nov or so), I noticed Knitlit Kate made these opera gloves, which are also very similar. Knitlit Kate was smarter because she made them in self-striping sock yarn.

I am glad I knit them flat because (a) it was easier to deal with than DPNs and (b) the beginning and end of each row has two garter stitches which made a pretty garter stitch channel along the side of each one.

This yarn is amazingly lovely. It feels like butter (buttah!) when it is knit up. I think I might be sensitive to alpaca though, so I find it slightly itchy. Which is crazy, because it is so so so soft. Lickety Knit wrote a funny post about how she knit this luscious alpaca scarf that made her itch. Damn you alpaca, with your bait and switch properties.

Here they are in action today. They’re a little big, but warm.

As part of my never-ending analysis of this simple project, I shall now continue my epic recounting of how it came to be. So, anyway, once at The Yarn Tree (see below), I decided I could not figure out how to thrum a bonnet or hat on my own. My sister had requested a gray with blue thrummed hat, and since I had abandoned the thrum idea, I decided to substitute a mixture of two yarns.

I’m not sure about the marled result, though a couple people have pointed out that it looks like chain mail. It does, though for some reason, I couldn’t think of this concept (chain mail) and the only words that came to mind were “helmet liner,” “Monty Python,” and “Asterix and Obelix.” But if I were a little smarter, I would have realized the thing that connected these three ideas is chain mail.

Anyway, is knitted chain mail chic? I don’t think so, but it’s not that bad. So on a chicness scale from 0-10, I would say it is maybe a 4. On a utility scale, I would say it is higher.

I myself found the yarn combo sort of itchy, but I have sensitive skin, and since it seemed itchy, I gave it a good wash before I mailed it to my sister. I’ll have to wait till she wears it a lot before I give a judgment on its itch factor. The Joseph Galler yarn has tremendous yardage (665 yards!), and the Frog Tree yarn is relatively cheap. The Frog Tree is, I think, maybe the itchier one, but since I did use the yarns together, I am hesitant to blame it.

I am actually contemplating destashing it, but for the record, here’s how much I have left of the three balls of fingerling-weight Frog Tree and one skein of Joseph Galler (undyed sport weight). Both yarns are alpaca.

I think I would make the hat again, but in a bouncier yarn. The alpaca is too drape-y. Also, I would never use this yarn for something where you care about stitch definition, because it is quite fuzzy.

If I made the hat again, I doubt I would make the scarf, because it was boring to make. It required both concentration and repetition, not the most exciting combination. The hat took a week, and the scarf took two months.

So, in conclusion, is it a winner or a loser? I am not sure, and am going to take the wimpy Californian way out, and say, “There are no losers in life. It’s all about how you play the game.”

This is a very belated Christmas present for my sister. It’s kind of a knitted helmet-meshed with a scarf.

Pattern: The hat part is from this pattern here. It is the Amelia Earhart Aviator Cap, and apparently designed for chemo patients. Cute, even if you are not undergoing chemo. Some other knitter made it into a Princess Leila hat/wig here. You can see it in its hat-only form above. (I also think it looks like a helmet, hence the shot from the arms and armor room at the Metropolitan Museum.)
The scarf is a diagonal rib (k2, p2, scooting over one stitch every right-side row) for two feet, and then I increased on one side only for about half a foot and then decreased on the same side for another half a foot so it would form that triangle shape to fit into the bottom of the hat. Then I knit for another two feet.

Yarn: Joseph Galler Prime Alpaca (1 skein) and Frog Tree Fingerling Weight Alpaca (2 skeins) from The Yarn Tree, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Needles: No. 7 Addi bamboo circulars. I rarely hear people mention Addi bamboo needles, but I like them a lot. This is the only pair I have but they have a better cord than the Clovers, I think.

Cost: Well, I bought 3 skeins of the fingerling weight but only needed 2. So, if you bought 1 of the Joseph Galler ($26.50) and 2 of the Frog Tree ($13), your total would be $39.50. I will evaluate the yarn and yarn store in another post.

Jenny’s comment on my last post and a recent post of Knit and Tonic bring the discussion to a sad sad fact. Somehow, learning to love knitting means losing any and all fashion sense. I want to be chic and cool, but I want to knit frumpy frumpy things. Like shawls. And self-patterning yarns.

My name is New York Minknit and I like to knit ugly things.

And if you keep reading my blog this week, I’ll have some (or at least one) potentially-ugly finished object for you to observe. And as a preview of something I recently started, look at this sock that I started (and yes, I still have another pair of socks unfinished.) Ugly, yet alluring.

To attempt to end on an uplifting note, I will now promote The Sartorialist. This photo is from his site:

That sweater has cabling, yet is great. I’m not sure about all that naked chest-ness on top, but I salute Mr. Hipster for his fashion decision to BELT his sweater. I’m not sure all men should emulate this, but it is kind of awesome.

I always wanted to be someone who had an “inspriation” wall. No, not of quotes. Depending on my mood, I either find sappy quotes super-stupid or incredibly moving. I think I have bi-polar sappy card syndrome. There was one summer where my friend and I would send each other horrid cards (the ones that are marked “From loving wife to husband” or some such crap) because we thought they were so bad. But then, sometimes, I read them, and I think, *sniff!* “It’s so true! We are just little grains of sand in the world!”

But anyway, I thought it would be cool to have a interior decorating/closet inspiration wall. But I never got around to it. Instead I just pile all my crap around on various sofas (mine and Adam’s.) I told Adam–when he was trying to clear the corner of my crap–that he couldn’t throw away a Lucky magazine because it had a picture of this sweater above, which I wanted to copy. Anyway, I never scanned in the Lucky photo or anything, but I just found a blog, coloursknits.blogspot.com, that had this photo with links to people who had tried to copy it. (Her commenters had all sorts of useful information as well.)

P.S. I am aware I dress more like a homeless lady or Ugly Betty (as evidenced by the fact that Ugly Betty and I had the SAME coat–I replaced the powder blue version with a red puffer a year or two ago, but I digress) than a swinging ’60s mod girl.

I do actually occasionally knit, instead of just going to yarn stores on my vacation.

I’m almost done with a project, actually. Here’s part one of it (above). It’s a hat, that I’m going to attach to a scarf and give to my sister.

(That photo is taken at the Met–the art museum, not the opera house–when I went to go see the Nan Kempner show at the Costume Institute.*)

*Nan Kempner has the taste of a crazy 1980s diva. C’mon Costume Institute, get some cool clothes there, not just Dynasty-era suits.

I just received a comment from Steven Lee, who owns Knitting Etc. in Ithaca, NY, which I reviewed below, and I just wanted to make some comments about yarn store reviewing.

In my day job, I work in journalism, and I don’t consider my knitting blog to be journalism at all, but instead, a place to record my knitting projects and to practice this wacky new thing, The Blogging, that all the crazy kids are doing.

That being said, I’ve never mentioned my blog when chatting with yarn store owners. This is primarily because I have a whopping three readers, so it would be ridiculous for me to do so. (“Um, I have a blog? It has three very important readers. None of who knit. So, please, tremble in fear!”) But also, in a weird way, as an outgrowth of regular journalism ethics, where you don’t tell people you’re from the press when writing a review unless you’re going to quote them. That way you can experience a store as a “regular” person, versus as a member of the press.

On the other hand, I do feel bad because I do no reporting for this blog. I only put up my own impressions of a store, and I don’t try to figure out any background info on it, and I think that because of the power of the Internets, this information might take on more power than it should.

Adam Roberts, who runs The Amateur Gourmet, wrote a piece for Serious Eats (which, full disclosure, is my Adam’s [Kuban] new work site) about this for food blogging.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/01/the-power-of-food-blogging.html

Roberts describes it as “The Power of Food Blogging,” but I also feel anxious about wounding a small business owner, not so much by hurting their feelings, but by making an unfair assesment of their business.

On one hand, I do feel that Knitting Etc. was located in the Mall of Doom, and that was my honest impression. On the other, I was treated nicely there, (and the store was not gloomy or doomy) and I wouldn’t want to discourage readers from going to Knitting Etc. because they read that. It’s hard to run a small business like a yarn store, and I’m grateful that small stores exist.

In short, I hope that blogging encourages people to visit different businesses and share their own opinions, and that people take my blog posts in the spirit that they’re written: as off-the-cuff impressions. Though these posts are not the carefully-researched, well-thought out, copy-edited, and fact-checked articles that I try to write for mainstream media, I try to make them honest and unbiased as possible. I’m proud to be part of the Fourth Estate, and I hope that blogging works as a supplement to the main media, and that blog posts are useful to my readers (hi, three of you!), to me, and to the knitting community at large.

* That is a joke on Fox News, not a hossana of their reporting.

Our motel was located next to a Wegman’s, which we went to every day. Also. It was near a strip mall, with a Michael’s. MICHAEL’S!!

Adam has learned that Red Heart yarn is a metonym for “crazy ladies who make afghans that yarn snobs look down on.” Hence the photos.

But honestly, I love all craft stores. Red heart is cheap, and when I was a kid, there were no fancy yarn stores, just Woolworth’s. I love anonymity and unpretentiousness of the big craft superstores. If I only could craft from Michael’s I would be fine.

Also, they had this awesome machine, the Cricut, that could die-cut little confetti things for scrapbooks. It was totally unnecessary, but fascinating nonetheless. I own a Xyron, so craft gadgets are totally alluring.

And yes, Michael’s does not have all the fancy stuff, yarn-wise, but they do have all-wool yarns, I noticed, and knitting looms, and iron-on letters and all kinds of good stuff.

Also, Wegman’s? They had an entire magazine aisle with SIX quilting magazines and two knitting magazines, including the new Interweave that I haven’t seen here in NYC.

In summary, Ithaca, at least in the fiber department, had a bigger selection of knitting books and yarn than most New York city yarn stores. City mice, those country cousins are looking pretty sophisticated! Start packing!

Adam and I, we try to be cultured people. We went to the I.M Pei-designed art museum and appreciated the landscape:

The view, it looks like a Brueghel, no? Oh, so much culture. Everybody, pinkies out!

Okay, pinkies down. I enjoy a museum, but there’s nothing better I like during a vacation in a new place than (a) going to the supermarket and (b) going to the mall. Very soothing.

Fiber store numbero 2, was in a mall:

Triphammer Mall. One of the saddest malls we’ve ever seen. Most of the stores were closed and the thing was basically falling apart. But, its yarn store was actually very busy and hopping:

Triphammer Mall
2255 N. Triphammer Rd
Ithaca, NY 14850
(607) 277-1164

Home

If I went to business school, I think it would be interesting to do a case study about what makes a yarn store successful.
Homespun had location (the Commons, located in central Ithaca), a nice and knowledgable owner, a better selection of yarn, and a cozier store, but Knitting Etc. was packed with people, despite being located in the Mall of Doom. I would have had to visit both more regularly to figure out if this was an abberation, or a reflection of their normal clientele numbers. I’m not really sure why Knitting Etc. was so hopping (though it did have a class going on), but it’s worth contemplating.

Knitting Etc. does have a great website, as well as a regular newletter with some nice patterns that you can download off their website. And the store itself was quite big, with a great selection of books, and knowledgeable sales staff. I think that Homespun had a better yarn selection though.

Ithaca: A Hotbed of Excitement

Stay tuned for exciting fiber-filled posts all week! As a self-appointed expert in all things fiber-related in Ithaca (having spent three whole days there), I am going to share with you three possible yarn shopping experiences that you can combine with other fun tourist activites should you choose to go to this town.

First post, first store: Homespun

Homespun
Address: 314 E State Street
Ithaca, NY 14850
Phone: 607-277-0954
Website: No website

This is located on The Commons. The Commons has the same strange shopping available to every college town I have ever been to: several used bookstores, a cafe supposedly run by a cult, several stores that sell punny t-shirts (“Ithaca is Gorges”), and stores that sell imported ethnic fabrics and chunky ethnic jewelry.

Above: The store has a really excellent yarn selection. That’s their non-wool section on the right. Since the weather was a warm 30 degrees during my visit, I’m guessing that those shelves are not very popular.

Above: Cool fabrics arranged by color. Quilting is so going to be my next hobby.

If you go to Ithaca, you will probably go to the commons, since it comprises all of downtown Ithaca. (A chili cookoff in the commons made the front page of the Ithaca newspaper, the evening local news, and both Cornell papers.) It (the commons) is also located next to Moosewood, the famed vegetarian restaurant.