New York Minknit

I voted and I knitted.

I was going to write up a free pattern for these mittens, but I have been busy with work and life, (and being obsessed with the election, like the rest of the country), so I’m just going to show them off. The cables are from The Harmony Guides: Cables and Arans, which Adam gave me for Christmas last year (along with the knit and purl volume of the guides). Let me say that I like this book and its clear photos, instructions, and charts. However, it is organized in an extremely illogical way. These two cables, WHICH ARE CLEARLY THE SAME CABLE, mirrored, are separated by a number of pages. I’m not sure whether the editor of the book decided to trick the reader by not grouping together related cables (and techniques) so that the reader would think they were getting more for their money than they really were, or he/she/they had some sort of life/work melt down, and just decided to throw all the pages together haphazardly, and be like, eff-it, here you go. So, though I like the book, I am warning you that it could be improved, organization-wise.

Pattern: My own. I’m calling them Waffle House Mittens, because the cables look like half a waffle. And I like Waffle House, though sadly, I do not live in the South, and thus, never get to go there. Why New York City does not have a cheap grits-to-go place is a tragedy I cannot understand.

Yarn: Less than 1 skein of Cascade 220 Heathers, color: 9452/summer sky. $7.25 from Purl. This is a common yarn, so you can probably get it cheaper somewhere else, I just happen to like Purl.

Needles: Size 3, Susan Bates. I knit super loose though, so the gauge on these is 21 stitches=4″ in stockinette.

Project started/ended: October 18 to 26. This was a quick project, it took me three days to knit each mitten.

Modifications: Well, this was my own pattern, so I don’t really think they were “modifications,” per se, but on the first mitten, my thumb gore came out weird because I increased every other round, which made my thumb look like it had a goiter. Also, the cuff was a little loose. I fixed this on the second mitten, by, respectively, increasing every third round, and knitting less stitches on the cuff, and then increasing before starting the hand, but then I decreased the top a little too pointy, even though I took notes on the first to try to make it the same. If you can knit a basic mitten, all you have to do is stick in the cables (on pages 100 and 104 of the new version of the Harmony Guides: Cables and Aran), but remember that if you’re knitting in the round, you’ll have to adapt the pattern a bit. (On even rounds, read the instructions from right to left, reversing knits with purls, and purls with knits, and crossing the cables in the front, instead of the back.)

Photo shoot notes: These photos were taken at Old Stone House, Brooklyn, which is a recreated version of a Dutch stone house located on the site of a Revolutionary War battle. Once, revolutionaries roamed Park Slope. Now, just yuppies.

I’m not normally into post revision, but I did change a post about Black Mountain Weavers. I have received a couple of negative comments, and I realized that I was inadvertently having a more powerful impact on this store’s image than I meant to.

I was tipped off to my secret super powers when I noticed that I would occasionally get a comment on that post, and when I noticed that it was turning up as a fairly common search term on my stat analytics. Basically, Black Mountain Weavers does not really have a web presence, so whenever anyone googled the store, my blog post would come up as the second item. So my somewhat flip assessment of the store was transformed, via the power of the Google search engine, from a review read by the three people who read my blog, to The Review that anyone looking for info about this store would read.

I don’t necessarily think my assessment of the store was unfair–it did have a pretty small and rather pricey selection–but I reviewed that store fairly early on in my knitting store reviews, and I didn’t necessarily have a sense of the full range of the prices common to indie yarns. Also, I visited it before I read Clara Parkes’ The Knitter’s Book of Yarn, which had a paragraph that I found particularly persuasive: “I’m always on high alert for anything indicating small-scale, locally produced yarn. Not only is it a chance  to get something totally unique in an age of increasing conformity, but it’s a small way to validate and support what these farmers are trying to do…by supporting a sheep farm–by making even one purchase a year–you’re helping sustain an important business and a rapidly disappearing agricultural way of life. You’re also helping ensure a richer, higher-quality variety of yarns for all knitters.”

Adam calls the woo version of the food movement “sustainorganica,” and though it’s easy to make fun of, and not necessarily what I want all the time (I went through a period of addiction to McDonald’s Fillet-O-Fish, despite having grown up in the  “sustainorganica” capital, San Francisco), I think the movement does have worthy goals. So, I put my original review in strike-through and moved it to the bottom of the post, so it wouldn’t show up “above the fold” on Google searches, and tried to write a slightly more neutral review of the store so that knitters who are interested in the store will not necessarily be dissuaded from visiting it.

I don’t necessarily agree with some of the comments on that post, but I think the real lesson is not whether you should or should not support independent yarn spinners and dyers, but rather, how all businesses need to make the internet work for them, not against them. Even if you are some sort of live-off-the-land business or one that was created as a response to our overly technical world (not that that is necessarily Black Mountain Weaver’s philosophy, just a hypothetical), it is important to establish a strong web presence so that when people search for you, they will find how YOU want to be represented on a Google search, instead of a third-party’s opinion. This includes learning how to properly tag and program your posts, so that your page will show up high on the Google rankings. Whether you like it or not, the internet is the future, and any business that wants to survive needs to be aware of the power of customer-generated comments, whether on their own blogs or user-generated sites like Yelp.

Did you know that Kansas’ motto used to be “Home of Beautiful Women“? Now, it has a potentially even more inappropriate motto: “Kansas: As Big As You Think.”

Anyway, we went to Kansas, Adam’s homestate, a couple of weeks ago, and I managed to finangle some yarn store visits in between the barbeque and Tylenol Cold–induced naps…I got off the plane totally sick! I did a little research on Ravelry, on their Kansas City group boards, which had some good suggestions. So here’s a quick summary of the ones I saw:

THE STUDIO

Address: 1121 W 47th St
Kansas City, MO
Phone: (816) 531-4466

Website: thestudiokc.com

Also sells: Needlepoint canvas and supplies.

This was the first store I visited, and I was trying to assess its quality (to better budget my souvenir yarn  buying) so I hassled Adam (who had visited Yarn Barn before) for his opinion. He said, “The Studio is to Purl as Yarn Barn is to School Products.” I was amused that he had been coerced into so many yarn store visits that he could make this analogy. When pressed he said, “Yarn Barn might have more yarn, but it looks like this store has a higher-quality selection.” And it was true, this store definitely had the most sophisticated selection, of both colors and brands, of all the stores we visited. Their owner/buyer has a good eye, I think. The store itself was also a nice, located on the corner of a little shopping area, just west of the Plaza. It was actually quite big as well, and there were a few customers sitting around knitting and chatting, and one of them swore up and down that this was the best yarn store in KC. The owner (I think that was her behind the counter) was also quite friendly.

(Yarn Barn is not actually spookily green…I think it’s just that this photo was taken at night when a street light shone on it.)

YARN BARN

Address: 930 Massachusetts St
Lawrence, KS 66044
Phone: (785) 842-4333

Website: yarnbarn-ks.com

Also sells: Looms and weaving supplies.

I was definitely wanted to visit this one because it was called Yarn Barn. Hello! Barn of yarn! Awesome name. Yarn Barn is in Lawrence, home of KU, Adam’s alma mater and winner of the 2008 NCAA men’s basketball championship, aka as the game that transformed Adam into a crazy sports fan. He gripped my arm so tight during the final minutes that I thought it might fall off.  Yarn Barn is quite big, and probably had a pretty big selection of yarn. It did not necessarily have the most sophisticated selection–I just felt it had more of a workhorse selection of yarn than The Studio. This is probably a good store for sweater knitters–they seemed to have a large selection of a lot of solid, basic yarns.

Yarn Shop and More

Address: 7309 West 80th Street
Overland Park, KS 66204
Phone: (913) 649-YARN

Website: yarnshopandmore.com

This shop was recommended by Adam’s friends, who live close by. This store organizes their yarn by color, which personally, I found a confusing system. I picked up a skein of Dream in Color, and wanted to see what other colors they had, but it was hard to figure out easily or quickly. I didn’t spend a lot of time in this store because we had just spent hours eating barbeque, and I was a little tired, but it did seem big, though a little sparse. That impression might have been because that they had a lot of cubbies, but they weren’t packed to the gills. (I like stores that pack their cubbies full.)

There was a big list on the Kansas City Knitters’ board on Ravelry that I found helpful, complete with addresses and store hours, so I would recommend that as a yarn resource if you are going to the Sunflower State. Next time, I’ll probably try to hit up more places mentioned in the Design*Sponge Kansas City guide too.

While at a party tonight, I was chatting with a respected journalist who also happened to be a knitter. She mentioned that she had never really gotten into it, and I said, “Ahh, so you’re not yet a ‘Nitter’, with a capital ‘N.'” And she said, “I think you mean ‘Knitter,’ with a capital ‘K.” And I was embarassed, but then I recovered, and said, “No! Nnnnnittting! It’s more than just knitting!” Oh my future is so bright.

I read the news today, oh boy. RIP David Foster Wallace. My friend Kim introduced me to him in college and she was one of the first to email with the news yesterday. Infinite Jest was an amazing experience–one of the few books I read as an adult that I really loved. I went to a signing a few years ago, and I asked him what happened to the grandmother at the end of The Broom of the System (the mysteries of IJ were too great to tackle at a reading), and he asked what I thought. I was all, “Um, she was in the basement of the building,” and he was like, “Sure!” At that point I slunk away, because I was too embarassed, and he called out, “No, why do you think that?”

On a different note, what is happening with Wall Street? Yikes. I went to college here in the city, so I’ve always had friends on Wall Street (and I even interviewed with Merrill Lynch years ago, right after graduation). The crisis doesn’t feel distant for me. Sometimes I get the feeling that people think of New York as this far-off place, filled with so-called hoodlums and elites, people who aren’t, to use an awful phrase, “like us.” Well, this is us. Hoodlums and elites both, I guess.

Anyway, onto the knitting, which is a bit like fiddling while Rome burns, but this is a knitting blog, after all.

Pattern: Aran Island Mittens, by Marcia Lewandowski, from Folk Mittens

Yarn: Patons Classic Wool Merino, about 1/2 ball. I think this was $7/ball.

Needles: size 3 DPNs, Susan Bates

Project started/ended: A long time ago? Maybe March or April of 2007, finished September 14, 2008.

Notes and Modifications: I developed serious Second Mitten Syndrome with this project. First of all, the gauge with worsted-weight wool is totally impossible, so I chopped off the side cables from the front. (I also eliminated the cuff cables because I thought they were ugly.) Secondly, I couldn’t figure out how to make the thumb, so I made an afterthought thumb, but that ended up pulling the palm’s patterning askew. So I was all “ugh” about making the second mitten. But last week I buckled down and made the second one–in just one week! They’re my first real cabling project and first closed-top mittens, so I think they could use some improvement, but at least I finished them, phew.

And on a final David Foster Wallace note, it’s worth getting a copy of his essay about John McCain running against George W. Bush in 2000–it’s a great read, and very apt for this year’s presidential season. *

* Though worth noting that DFW acknowledged that the 2008 McCain is not the same as the 2000 McCain.

Pattern: Jaywalkers, by Grumperina

Yarn: The elusive Regia Nation 5399, aka Rainbow. This color is a little hard to find (and now discontinued) so I grabbed two skeins ($8/each, for a total of $16) when I saw them at The Point.

Needles: 0 and 1, Susan Bates

Project started/ended: Started July 3, finished September August 30

Notes and Modifications: Since everyone has knit a pair of these (and many people in this colorway), I’m not sure anyone needs my notes, but here they are!

I cast on for the small/medium size and knit following the instructions for the red and orange stripe with a size 1 needle. Then I switched to a size 0 needle and knit for yellow and green stripe. Then I decreased eight stitches by working one row without the k f/bs, allowing the decreases to be hidden within the pattern. When I got to the purple stripe, I switched back to a size 1 needle (to try and increase the ankle area a bit, even though it’s still tight), and then back to a zero once I had made the heel flap and started turning the heel.

When I got to the toe, I knit a round toe, making six evenly spaced decreases (k2tog) every other row, because I find that the regular toe suggested in the pattern often results in stretched out sides when worn. Just something new I am trying.

I found this blog dlittlegarden that had a funny tagline: “Ugly things: all made by hand.” I’m like, hah! That should be the name of my blog.  Recently I’ve been thinking of knitting a dickey, and I realized that I may have totally lost my mind. I wish that I, like Brooklyn Tweed, only knitted beautiful and elegant items, but instead, I’m like ooh! Loud sock yarns! A hat connected to a scarf! Maybe a dickey! Knitting makes me weird, lose all taste, and turn into a granny living in the 1970s. I’m like a werewolf of tackniness; when I’m exposed to knitting, it turns me into a lover of weird shawls and other useless items.

This sock progress shot is actually from last week, I’m almost done, though not quite finished with the second sock. I have been watching a ton of Olympics and I think the commenters’ style of announcing is drilled into my head: “She’s approaching the heel turn, look at that precision! The picking of the stitches! Oh no! She’s dropped a stitch. A HUGE mistake, easily 8/10ths off. This may cost her a place on the medal stand.”

I’m watching the Olympics and knitting, but not joining Ravelrympics. Since knitting is a hobby, I try not to get all deadline-ish about it, because I would probably get stressed out (and not finish anything). I’m also trying to only knit from stash, but not go on an Absolute Stash Diet, because things like that also tend to be stressful. (I went on one diet in my life, when a doctor told me to cut out all acidic things for a month and I nearly broke down…kim chee! mustard on pastrami! tea! It was tough.)

I spent all day yesterday taking down wallpaper, which is a boring and time-consuming project. I did knit a few rows on my new project though:

It’s Anne Hanson’s “That Little Scarf” (started on vacation, as you can see above).

It’s interesting because I’ve been reading Anne Hanson’s blog, Knitspot, for a while now, and I’m very inspired by the work she does. Yet at the same time, I felt that a lot of her scarf patterns were essentially a stitch pattern picked out from a dictionary, and sold as a pattern. I found an interesting discussion on Ravelry [registration required] about this–is it really a fair  to charge $5 or $6 for a pattern that’s just a stitch pattern?

I thought the discussion was quite interesting, and one that made me rethink her patterns. Seeing a finished version of some of her projects–even those in a simple stitch pattern, like her Luxor socks–has made me consider using certain stitches (like a simple knit and purl triangle) with certain patterns (like socks)  that I wouldn’t have before. But is the pattern worth the price? I know for me, I didn’t have the stitch dictionary that had this stitch, and more importantly, it was the matter of convenience. I was heading out on vacation, I had the yarn, and I just wanted to know how many stitches to cast on and instructions. For me, it was worth the $5. I also was very inspired by her use of the yarn color (I have problems picturing patterns in other colors, which is why Ravelry has been so great) and fingerling weight yarn–I’m not sure I would have pictured a finished product just by looking at the stitch dictionary. (The Walker Treasury Project is a great way to see the Barbara Walker stitches in color, if you have the books…which I don’t, but am considering buying.)

What do you think?

We went to the Jersey Shore for a week, and I did a little knitting.

Here is Zoltar, the magical fortune teller who transformed Tom Hanks into Big. Well, or one of the Zoltar’s kind. He is skeptical about the sock. “But how can I grant your wish, sock?!?”

The sock appreciates the view down to the beach.

Keep out, sock!