New York Minknit

Oh hello, it’s only January 17… Sigh. I don’t know, I developed the blog flu and lost the will to blog for a while there. Though not the will to knit. So. 2009. Kind of a bummer for everyone I guess, but I don’t know if I exactly see it as a bummer, more like a year of thinking about the future. I don’t know, maybe that’s overly euphemistic, like “It’s not a problem, it’s a challenge!”

Also known as the year where my industry (publishing) officially died and fell into a giant canyon. Anyway, I managed to knit 12 things, some of which I never blogged about, but here’s a recap, with thoughts and in non-chronological order.

Top row, left to right:

Rowan Felted Tweed Helmet: The hat I made after reading Barbara Walker’s Knitting From the Top, knitted (obviously) from the top down. This yarn was from the closing sale of Yarn Connection, in midtown, which was near my office. Sadly, this was an ominous sign for both New York’s yarn stores and for my job. Yarn Connection was the first of many New York’s yarn stores to close last year and soon after I bought the yarn, I was laid off. Then my grandmother turned 80, and I ended up giving it to her for mother’s day. (I gave her a shawl for her big milestone birthday.) Adam and I went to Montauk for Valentine’s Day, hence the spectacular setting in the back.

NYU Stern Creativity Project: This was a child’s scarf that I knitted for a creativity study at NYU”s Stern Business School. This briefly led me to consider (a) going to business school and (b) working in a yarn store. I went to a meeting about applying business school and it was so horrible and un-fun-seeming that I was like, ugh no. I did apply to work at a yarn store and was interviewed, but sadly, I was not chosen. Let us be a little depressed that I could not get a job at a yarn store. Sigh.

Algae Cowl: In another bit of sad news, one of Adam’s grandmothers passed away and we went to Milwaukee for her funeral. I did get a chance though to go to a yarn store in Wisconsin, and bought this hand-spun yarn from Just 4 Ewe. I pretty much knit this whole thing in the Milwaukee airport while watching The Big Bang Theory. Embarassing secret: I find this show strangely enjoyable.

Second row, left to right:

Medusa Cowl: I knit this during a yarn entrepreneurial phase where I was convinced that my original designs were going to be my ticket to my fame and future. Too bad the cowl turned out to be kind of a loser.

Adam’s Civil War Socks: Aww, I finished these socks up in the emergency room waiting with my dad, when he very sick earlier this year. Fortunately, even though he has a very rare disease, he seems to be doing much better, but I remember the hours spent in the emergency room with him, after he suddenly got very very sick. So, actually, this was a period when I was glad I got laid off, because I got to spend more time at home with my dad when he was being diagnosed and going through all these surgeries.

Ugly Monkey Socks: I finished these socks during our annual vacation at the Jersey Shore. So something happened at the Jersey Shore that I never shared with my blog readers, mainly because I like to be kind of private and whatnot, but what the hell. Adam proposed! Yes, we are getting married this year. And yes, I am burying the lede, as they say in the news biz, deep into my post. Also, I am blogging about weddings (of course) on wedding.newyorkminknit.com and funnyweddingthings.tumblr.com. The first one is about my wedding and style and whatnot, and then the second one is just about ridiculous things I find about weddings. Maybe this is why I haven’t been blogging that much…I am putting all of my creativity into wedding planning? Oh dear, that sounds super super lame.

Third row, left to right:

Flamingo Socks: Okay, I don’t think there is any actual life significance to these socks. Though the yarn was from my FMIL, as they say on wedding boards. But these were just regular old socks that I knit. But this is probably the last photo I’ll ever take of my socks at Adam’s apartment because he moved in with me on New Year’s. Yikes!

Sherbe(r)t Socks: The socks where I couldn’t find any DPNs and was forced to learn how to knit two socks at a time on one long circular needle.

Seeded rib mitts: One of my 2009 projects I never blogged about because I am lazy. Also, why blog? Perhaps I developed some sort of blog existentialism in the past couple of months. Why blog, what does it mean to blog, is there even a point to blogging? Also, for knitters, Ravelry seems to do so much for us, blogging seems unnecessary. It’s kind of like this photo/cartoon. Also, Twitter. It continues to confuse me. Anyway, I did put this project on Ravelry, if you want to go see it there. It’s Patons Jet, knitted up into mitts. More yarn gifted to me by my FMIL that came with a one-skein project book–actually, now I will take the time to say that I am particularly lucky that my FMIL (future mother-in-law, in case you have not yet figured it out*) is not only very nice, but she always thinks of  cool knitting presents for me. Also, my hands look like mannequin hands in this photos.

* A friend of mine recently told me that she thought FTW stood for “F*ck the world” and not “for the win” and couldn’t  figure out why everyone kept using it on the internet.

Fourth row, left to right:

Adam’s Christmas Noro Hat: Another thing I never blogged. Adam and I ended up having a really belated Christmas this year, but I do try to knit him one thing each year, and his old Odessa hat was getting pretty old looking. It’s the Turn a Square pattern by Jared Flood, aka Brooklyn Tweed, aka the most famous male knitter on the internet. Whenever I tell people I knit, they’re always like, “Oh, do you read Brooklyn Tweed?!?” I’m like, yes, yes, we all know and love Brooklyn Tweed. He’s the classy Jackie Kennedy to the rest of us Mamie Eisenhower dowdy frump-a-dumps.

Here’s another photo. I guess you could say 2009 was also the year I really got into Noro. I’m like NORO!!! It’s so fab. Especially because of…

Noro Shawlette: This really is a spectacular project and probably my favorite from the whole year. There was a period where I thought I had lost it (well the past few weeks, but it turned out it was hidden underneath my wedding dresses that Adam had moved into my closet) and I was kind of depressed for a while. It’s fab. And I love it! And I love everything Kate Gagnon designs, especially because I freaked out one of my former co-workers who is also my Facebook friend and who happened to go to Kate’s wedding. I was all, “[male co-worker name!!!] I can’t believe you know Kate Gagnon! Did you know she is very famous in the knitting world!?” My male friend/former co-worker probably thought I was insane, also because I decided to write all this on his Facebook photo page.

Leafy Elf Hat: Nothing life changing associated with this hat either. I did knit it at Thanksgiving, but you know Thanksgiving. It comes every year.

Okay, New Year’s Resolutions to come tomorrow. Or uh, later this week.

It was pretty warm this year on Thanksgiving–I didn’t even have to wear my puffer coat. The day AFTER Thanksgiving, however, was very cold. So cold that I said to Adam, I am going to buy some yarn right now, even though I have a huge stash, and knit myself a hat. He scoffed, but I did it. I knit this hat in the two days after Thanksgiving, watching parts of Legally Blonde, Sleepless in Seattle, and Monster-in-Law, and strangely, all of Can’t Buy Me Love, which I had never seen before. (Yes, Adam has cable, and specifically, Oxygen or Lifetime, or some other woman-oriented channel. Can’t Buy Me Love was so cringe-inducing that I could barely stand to watch parts of it. And the fashion! Apparently high school seniors dressed like 40-year olds in the 1980s, with strange suede blazers. Monster-in-Law, well, the part that I saw of it, was ridiculous. I do, however, have a fondness for Legally Blonde, so I watched that happily.)

Pattern: Falling Leaves Chunky Hat, by Karen Clark or Choo Choo Knits. It’s free on Ravelry.

Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Bulky, in Misty Blue. Okay, this yarn is a great value–I bought it for $8 at a new-to-me yarn shop, Annie & Co, on the Upper East Side, and it knit this whole hat, with earflaps and pompoms, and I still had some left over.

Needles: Set of 5 size 10 bamboo DPNs.

Here’s a photo of the back.

Notes and mods: First, I knit two or three rows of purls after casting on, to give the hat more of an edge. After I finished, I knit two short-row earflaps in reverse stockinette, added two i-cord cords and some pompoms (not shown) at the end. Voila! Super-cute. My sister says it looks like a Hershey’s Kiss hat, which is kind of true.

The pattern was fine for me width and height-wise–some people found it small on Ravelry, but just right for me!

After my most recent comment from a member of what the late William Safire would have termed the Gotcha Gang* I did some internet research and found out that sher-BERT, though an accepted spelling variant of sherbet,  is considered the less classy pronunciation among linguists. (Well, at least according to some listserv that I cannot find again.) Who knew?

* The other day, Adam was like “There should be a German term for things you dislike, but read/listen/follow anyway, because you enjoy disliking them.” Things in this category for me include William Safire’s column (well, when he wrote it) and the Ethicist. Yargh, how I dislike thee, the Ethicist. I do, however, love Savage Love without reservation. I think that the people who write to Savage Love at least have legitimate problems–often crazy, but legitimate–whereas the people who write to the Ethicist have extremely ridiculous problems, like, “Can I use the address labels that come in the mail without donating to the cause?” Here, totally apropos of nothing is my ranking of advice columnists:

1. Savage Love (hilarious and mean)

2. Miss Manners (hilarious and mean)

3. Dear Abby/Ann Landers, back when the founding columnists were still alive (not particularly hilarious or mean, but at least people wrote in with common problems)

4. Dear Prudence (okay)

5. The Ethicist (Nooo!!! I think the NY Times should totally get someone else instead of the Ethicist to write this column. Even that catty social Q & A guy in Sunday Styles would be better. Though I do enjoy groaning out loud each week at the horrible puns made by the Ethicist in each week’s answers. Also, the questions that are not totally ridiculous–like the one about address labels–are essentially the same question over and over again: “Someone in my life is racist and wants me, the letter writer, to do X [some kind of vaguely prejudiced activity]. How can I deal with this?” I do not feel that the Ethicist has yet come up with an actually helpful solution to this legitimate problem.)

On another note, I am clearly the only person left in the world who still reads newspapers and the advice columns in them.

Pattern: Peak Experience, Mount Hood, by Betsy Lee McCarthy. (This is a pamphlet with two patterns.) I bought this pattern at a yarn store, but it seems like you can download it too.

I also learned to knit two socks at one time from the book  2-at-a-Time Socks. This book has errata, so be sure to download that first. I just followed the instructions in the book, but used the pattern stitch in the pamphlet.

Yarn: Luna Park by Ornaghi Filati, color 205, dye lot 77071. I used two balls at $7.50 each, from Seaport Yarn. So, $15 total.

Needles: I think I used a 40″ size 1 needle from Knit Picks.

Project started/finished: I think I started this project in early August and finished on Thanksgiving, so about four months.

Notes/modifications: Knitting two socks at a time is sort-of useful, but because it takes SO much longer to see any progress on the socks, it’s hard to feel like you’re actually achieving anything. On the other hand, it is impossible to lose a needle, and when you’re done, you’re done. I knit an afterthought heel and a round toe instead of the heel-flap heel and regular toe in the pattern. I also eliminated one pattern repeat in the leg (possibly not necessary), due to the comments on Ravelry that this sock knits up loose, and thus, decreased away the half chevrons necessary on the foot.

Also, I think because of the way I cast on, I was always one half of a round in the striping pattern ahead of the other sock in the patten, so as you can see in the toe, the stripes don’t quite match up.

Stay tuned for another surprise FO tomorrow!

I had high hopes for this cowl. I knit it in a week and a half from my own design, and in my mind, I was like “I’m gong to submit it to Knitty! To Classic Elite! It’s going to be the next Clapotis! This is my big knitting break!!!”

Instantly give yourself a knitted turkey neck with this fabulous new product!

Then I put it on. All the cables scroonch down so it looks like Medusa neck, and knitted worms are wiggling around my neck. Blech.

It looks better from the side. Oh well, I’m still going to wear it in the fall, because it will be useful, but I am not offering a pattern, because let’s face it, this one is kind of a loser.

Pattern: My own–this is a couple of repeats of a really pretty dropped stitch cable pattern from The New Knitting Stitch Library, by Lesley Stansfield.

Yarn: This is Wool Bam Boo, from Classic Elite, in the color Sachet. It is a really nice yarn–I could see a nice spring sweater made from it, soft and smooth. Quite drape-y though. One ball, $11, from Knitty City.

Needles: Clover bamboo 9″ circular in size 5.

Project started/finished: Started July 8, 2009, finished July 19, 2009. Only a week and a half…until Gorgon neck.

Project notes: I didn’t swatch, and this project took the entire ball of yarn. What I learned is that if you want to make a cowl with cables, make it a little shorter and with less drapey yarn, so the cables don’t smush down into weird shapes. I kind of knew I should make it a little shorter, but I wanted the vertical repeats to be symmetrical, hence the extra length.

Pattern: My own. They’re not really a pattern, just basic socks with a bit of ribbing. These are toe-up, with a short row heel. The body of the sock is *k2, p1, k4, p1,* repeat as necessary. Finish with k1, p1 rib. I used More Sensational Socks as a guide, but they’re pretty basic.

Yarn: Bonkers Sock Kit, color Flamingo. This yarn was a Christmas gift from Adam’s mom–I think she and Adam bought it at Yarn Barn, in Lawrence, Kansas.

Needles: Inox size 2 DPNs.

Project started/finished: Started December 3, 2008 or so, and finished July 13, 2009. I developed major second sock syndrome on these socks, but when I finally buckled down, I knit the second sock in two weeks.

Project notes: I like these socks a lot–the colorway knit up nicely, I think. I have another pair of thicker, wooly socks (as opposed to the smoother superwash wool of some of my other socks), the Spiral Socks, that are super-cozy in the winter. I find that the non-superwash wool, knit on bigger needles, result in socks that a little less sturdy, but cozier, for socks.

We came back from our annual trip to the Jersey Shore yesterday and it rained (a lot), but fortunately, not for the whole time. I turned the heel on the sock on the bus going down to the shore, and on one of the first days of downpour, we went bowling (photo 1). We did walk along the beach (photo 2) and bike ride, but we didn’t lounge on the beach, because it was basically mud. It was kind of a San Francisco-esque beach experience, one might say. We also went on the boardwalk, where this somewhat odd paintball shooting booth is a strange Rorschach test for the American psyche–in the past it has had “Shoot the terrorist” as a come-on for passersby, and this year, I think it had a mannequin of Dick Cheney (?). I’m not totally sure this is Dick Cheney, and I’m not sure I understand what his role is as advertising–is he a possible paintball shooter or a possible paintball shooter target? It was all strangely unclear to me.

We also went to a Ye Olde Time village called Cold Spring, (picture 4) which had various people in olde time clothing chatting about spinning (!), printing, farming, etc. I have to say that some of the people who worked there, were, ahem, a bit curmudgeonly, which led me to the belief that in Ye Olden Times, everyone was a grouch. We did love the printing guy though–he was cheerful and had a lot of interesting info, and showed us how to set lead type. Due to either an emphasis on colonial times in elementary school or my own personal interest in crafts, I think I actually knew a lot of the rather vague information dispensed at the village. Also, I think many of the skills demonstrated at the village are still being used today, which made the whole Ye Olden vibe a bit false. (That might be the point, I’m not sure–you know, living history and all.) When I was a kid, my dad used to occasionally take me to watch the Chinese newspaper being typeset, which, at the time, was still set using lead type, like in Ye Olden Times, and I took Intaglio in college, so I was familiar with the basics of the press. Adam even has a small press at home that he occasionally letterpresses with, so though that was definitely the most interesting stop in the village, it was not so novel. The “handicrafts” stop, was, obviously, a process (knitting!) familiar to me. The woodshop was run by a somewhat suspect tour guide, a young man whose thumb was wrapped in a giant bandage, which made Adam and I wonder if he really had any skills. My high school actually required wood shop, metal shop, and machine shop, as classes, and though I was pretty bad at all of the shop classes, even I could tell that our guide (a) had no chisel skills and (b) seemed a little anxious around a pedal-powered scroll saw. We will not speak of the tinmaker.

I think I might also have a rather large store of vague Ye Olde Time knowledge from a devoted reading of the Little House on the Prairie series (1870s-ish), The Great Brain series (end of the 19th century), and All of Kind Family series (1910s) as a kid. Visiting Cold Spring further convinced me that I would have hated life as a Ye Olde farmer, and would have rather made it as a city person, if possible. (I think in The Great Brain, the narrator’s dad was a newspaper editor/printer, and I have no idea what the parents did in All of a Kind Family, but at least the kids got to go roller skating and ice cream eating, whereas Little House on the Prairie was all crow-chasing and lard-hoarding. Lizzie Skurnick over at Jezebel, with her hilarious Fine Lines series, describes the Little House books as “frontier porn for the underaged.”) Adam was all, “Well, you could have knit all the time,” but I pointed out that it wouldn’t have been a fun hobby, but instead a horrible toil, where I would have been forced to knit socks for my many many children and husband non-stop as I stirred my lard soap day in and day out or something. Or hoped to scrape by with bits of gristle as a crotchety old spinster. (I recently read an Edith Wharton short story where a couple men were mourning a great beauty who had grown aged and grey in her dottage, and then I came across the shocking line that said something like, “At 32, her best days were far behind her,” and I was like, whoa, clearly I would have been put out to pasture in some old knitting hut in Ye Olden Times, since I am SO OLD.)

Anyway, back to the sock.

Pattern: Monkey, by Cookie A., in Knitty

Yarn: Toe Jamz, by Happy Hands, from Just 4 Ewe in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Color: Secret Garden. Price: $22. Each skein has a TON of yardage–450 yards. I had a lot left over. Enough to make a third sock, probably. Maybe even a second pair.

Needles: Size 0 9″ Hiya Hiya, and regular size 0 DPNs from Susan Batees for casting on, the heel, and the toe.

Project started/finished: March 9, finished June 25–so three months, since I had second sock syndrome for about a month in the middle there.

Modifications: Well, I knit these on a tiny circular needle, and I did a different cuff (regular ribbing instead of twisted ribbing), heel (short-row instead of flap), and toe (round instead of standard), but the body of the sock is the same. Since the ENTIRE online knitting community has knit these socks, I don’t really need to say a lot about the pattern except that it’s fun! And easy to memorize!

Photo shoot notes: The completed socks were shot in Cape May, NJ, in front of a WWII fire tower and on the beach.

Pattern: Silk kerchief, by Kate Osborn, of Zeitgeist Yarns

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden sock, 1 ball 269 (from the now-defunct Point) and 1 ball 245 (from Knit Therapy, in Park Slope, Brooklyn). (These are the colors that Kate used in her original version. I’m a follower, what can I say. Also worth noting that the ball from The Point’s original price was a good $3 more expensive that the one from Knit Therapy–though I bought it at 30% off.)

Needles: Um, I forgot–either a size 4 or a size 5 Addi Turbo lace.

Project started/finished: I started this in California, in the beginning of April and finished on May 23, so about two months.

Modifications: Since I used the same colors as Kate, I can’t really say I made any significant modifications. I used a bigger needle to make it a little bigger, and I used up both skeins to make it a bigger size. This is really a beautiful project and super easy to make–perfect for hospital waiting rooms and the subway. If I didn’t already have a huge stash of other yarn, I would buy a whole bunch more of Noro sock and make more. (Or a sweater with a similar garter stripe pattern.) Even Adam said that it was one of the cooler knit projects I had made.

Photo shoot notes: These are taken at the Bronx Zoo. This August, I will have lived in New York (on and off) for thirteen years, and somehow I had never been to the zoo. Anyway, it was nice, though it was a bit more like a giant park than a zoo–I only ended up seeing one tiger and some penguins. (Also, I didn’t miraculously start doing sit-ups, Adam just reminded me to suck in my belly when he was taking the photos!)

Recently I was at a party, and I was making fun of someone I had just met (I know, I’m so polite) because he had never heard of Hot and Crusty (it’s a chain of bakeries on the Upper East Side here), and I was like, “Are you not a New Yorker?” He didn’t seem particularly offended, and he said, “Well, I’ve lived here two years, and I guess they say ten years makes you a New Yorker, right?” I stopped, and I was kind of surprised to hear that. When I’m not in New York and people ask me where I’m from, I still generally say California, but when this guy said this, I realized that I’ve lived here almost thirteen years, which is 42% of my life–and 100% of my adult life. I like to joke about being old, but sometimes I come across a milestone, and I think wow, maybe I AM old. I went drinking at 1020, a college dive bar (that we used to actually drink at during college) with a friend for her birthday, and I was like, seriously? We used to drink here ten years ago? How can that be? But it did feel like a long time ago (even though they were still playing The Cure, just like when I was in college). I guess this time of year–graduation, prom, the start of summer–always makes me nostalgic, even for things that I don’t have particularly John Hughes-esque memories of. It’s like the movies implanted fake memories onto my own real life. (Though I do remember drinking at 1020 the night before my college graduation–a mix of champagne at parties and white russians at the bar–so I guess this week was weirdly reminiscent of my own actual past.)

Happy Memorial Day and cheers to the start of summer.

As I mentioned a while ago, I participated in a “Creativity Study” at NYU’s business school. I went to Purl, the yarn store, and picked out a bunch of Cascade 220 (they were pre-wound into little skeins) and then I was given a week to knit any kind of scarf I wanted (they provided size 8 straight needles) for a three-year old girl. Since I only had a week, and I also ended up going to Milwaukee at the end of that week, mine was pretty short:

Basically, you tied it around your neck like a weird cuff. The graduate student who helped administer the study was very nice, plus all participants received a $20 gift certificate to Purl at the end of the study. (This was during the period I was doing odd things like working as an extra on Law and Order, a state that I am returning to next week, after I finish this freelance project.) I actually did find the experience very freeing because I knew that the project was (a) not for me and (b) not made with yarn paid for by me (yet in colors chosen by me). When I make something for myself, I’m kind of a perfectionist about things turning out well. I doubt I would have ever knit something like this for myself and it made me realize I should try designing stuff for myself more, instead of just following patterns.

At the end of the study, the participants filled out a questionnaire about our feelings about creativity and making the scarf, and the graduate student administering the study explained that they were trying to judge whether consumers were more or less creative when presented with more or fewer choices of yarn colors. (Some participants had a choice of six colors to choose from and some had twelve, or something like that.) I asked how the scarves were going to be judged and she said by the professor in charge of the study; Joelle Hoverson, the owner of Purl; and….Brooklyn Tweed!!! The graduate student was all, “This guy named Jared Flood? He has a blog called Brooklyn Tweed?” And then I was like, oh no! But I never found out what happened with the study, so I hope my scarf did okay–go little scarf, go!

We were told not to look at knitting books and magazines, and I came up with a slipped stitch for the ends of the scarf, and an intarsia cable for the middle. Anyway, I thought I would blog it before I forget.

Pattern: Basic sock recipe from More Sensational Socks.

Yarn: Three skeins of Koigu, from Knitty City. Two in navy and one in grey. Two packages of navy reinforcing thread, one package of grey reinforcing thread.

Needles: Size 0, Susan Bates DPNs.

Project started/ended: Started December 1, 2008 or so, finished March 24, 2009.

I promised these socks to Adam a long time ago, and they finally were finished! In time for his birthday, at least, even if I might have promised them for his birthday last year. Oh well. Anyway, Adam took these photos himself in his office, so they seem to fit pretty well. They’re pretty standard top-down socks, with decreases along the back of the calf, a slip-stitch heel, and a round toe. Adam picked out the colors himself, saying he wanted more blue, because, as he said, the “North won the war.” I made each blue stripe 18 rows high and each grey stripe 7 rows high, but for some reason, I fear that one sock might have still come out shorter than the other.

By the way, if you’re not reading Errol Morris’s blog on nytimes.com, you really should. He’s got a great interview with this guy about this mysterious Civil War photo, and it’s really interesting. And I say that as an average person, and not as someone who went to see Mary Todd Lincoln: The Musical.

The one skill I learned on these socks that was really helpful was how to weave in the ends as you go, which is really useful for stripe-y projects. I followed the instructions on this site here. 

Pattern: HoneyCowl, by Fig and Plum

Yarn: One skein of Mona Lisa Fibers, a hand spun yarn, by the owner of Just 4 Ewe. Ninety yards of burly hand spun Corriedale, colorway Greensleeves, $30.

Needles: Size 10.5, 16″ needle.

Project started/ended: Started Monday, March 9, finished Tuesday March 10. This took me maybe five hours to make.

Modifications: I made this one repeat shorter and a little narrower than the pattern. It’s nice and warm, and a little funky.