New York Minknit

Knitting in front of the Coney Island MTA station sign.

In an attempt to liven up my blog, I came up with a new and exciting feature. Get ready, You Three Readers! In a totally original concept*, I will bring my current knitting projects around New York City and show it visiting exciting areas!

*In fact, so completely original, that Slate wrote an entire article about the lameness of the traveling gnome concept here. There is, of course, Yarn Harlot’s traveling sock, and if you have ever gone on vacation to any major city, you have probably seen a fellow tourist photographing their teddy bear/gnome/sock in front of a famous monument.

In today’s fascinating installment, the ugly sock goes to visit Coney Island in the pouring rain during a nor’easter. Coney Island is beautiful in inclement weather, though it also tends to make me whine. A lot. We went in the snow a few years ago, and it was really amazingly beautiful.

You should go this year though, because they are tearing down Astroland and building condos.

Pattern: Odessa hat from Grumperina

Yarn: Rowan Cashsoft Aran from Purl Soho, 1 skein plus just a little of the second skein. Color is foxglove. Each skein was $9.50. If you use the aran weight, you do need the second skein, but only barely.

Needles: 16 inches circular in size 4 and size 6 DPNs. The brand that is made of colored metal–um, Susan Bates, I think?

Modifications: I made this out of the aran weight instead of the DK. I also knit the ribbing for 2 inches instead of 1 inches, a la Brooklyn Tweed. I cast on 90 stitches and started decreasing at 5 inches instead of 5.5 inches.

Notes: This is a very elegantly written pattern. Every part of it makes sense. However, if you are knitting-challenged like me, it will turn out to be way harder to knit than it should be.

First of all, I wanted to make it out of a thicker yarn so it would be more manly, like the one made by Brooklyn Tweed. But since the yarn was heavier, how would this change my gauge? I decided to ask The Internets, and I emailed Mr. Brooklyn Tweed himself, Lickety Knit (who also made an aran weight Odessa), and Grumperina for help. The internet, allowing you to hassle people you’ve never met.

Anyway, Brooklyn Tweed gave me some helpful advice about knitting Odessa for a man’s head, Lickety Knit kindly contributed the advice that she had cast on 90 stitches instead of 110, and Grumperina also offered up her own head measurements for help.

Then I cast on three times. Like Goldilocks, I was convinced it was too big and then too small and finally just right. Then accidentally made the diagonal ribs flow out of the purl part of the ribbing instead of the knit part. And then I got confused during the decreases.

Anyway, I think it finally ended up working well. Adam likes to wear it like a Smurf hat instead of pulled down over his ears for some reason.

I make poor Adam crouch down on the sidewalk so I can take a photo of the swirling top.

The tag inside the top.

Look! Adam gave me an unexpected gift this week:

They’re from www.namemaker.com. I love the colors he picked, the brown on blue.

(It was drizzling when we took the photo, hence the splotches of rain.)

Also, Adam, who was referred to by his friend as “a Scientologist with Flickr,” has finally convinced me about the wonders of Flickr. I’ve joined some groups, and I’ve found a lot of inspirational photos. Here are some great things that I’ve seen: (Click on the links to see the flickr photos)

(1) It turns out that the cable in Log Cabin Socks are also available as something called Boyfriend Socks, and the pattern is available on slippedstitch.blogspot.com 

(2) These sweet mittens from www.doggedknits.com

(3) A beautiful knit/crochet nightgown, from www.purlbee.com/bamboo-nightdress/

(4) A totally chic version of the Baby Surprise jacket here made by The Daily Purl.

Taxes. Blegh.

Tax on yarn? Who knows the correct answer? Tien commented on this flickr photo that there were two taxes, which I didn’t even notice when I bought the yarn.

Adam was hypothesizing that yarn is taxed at half the rate since it has the potential to be clothing (generally untaxed under $110 in New York), but still has to be somewhat taxed since it is not yet clothing. (That sounded like a summary of a Greek philosopher or something. “It has the potential to be clothing, but it has not yet realized its potential.”) But recently, I went to Purl to buy yarn for Adam’s b-day hat* and noticed they charged no tax.

What was up? As tax season draws to its horrible end, I thought I would do some research. And here, my lovelies, is the answer, courtesey of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance:

“Beginning April 1, 2006, there will be a year-round exemption from New York State sales and use taxes for clothing, footwear, and items used to make or repair exempt clothing, costing less than $110 per item or pair. The exemption does not apply to locally imposed sales and use taxes unless the county or city imposing those taxes elected the exemption.”

If you click through to the whole document, there is a great deal of fascinating wording** like, “The exemption applies only to clothing and footwear worn by humans.” Though they go on to specifically list yarn as one of the items considered exempt under this law, I’m not sure what would happen if you were to announce loudly while buying your yarn that it was to make a sweater for your dog. Perhaps they would then have to tax you.

Under their FAQs, they also answer a craft-related question:

	Question
	I plan to purchase a single piece of fabric that will cost more than $110. I will use the fabric to make several items of eligible clothing that will each have a value of less than $110. Can the fabric be purchased exempt from tax?
	Answer
	No. A single piece of fabric that costs $110 or more is subject to both State and local taxes. However, if the fabric were purchased in multiple yardage pieces, each costing less than $110, the purchases would be exempt from the state tax and the local tax if the locality has elected the exemption.

So, Ithaca must have a local 4% tax that was applied to both items, and the additional sales tax was added on to the needles.

* I have added new projects to my sidebar progress bars.

** AKA why CPAs, actuaries, and tax lawyers get paid the big bucks.

Oh, and how is the yarn that started it all coming along? See here:

Kind of ugly. Yet spring-y. Hence its new name: Spring Socks. Also, because it looks like an Easter Egg.

By the way, when I bought this yarn, Adam said, “Oh, is that self-patterning?” And I was like “No, it’s just multi-colored.” But he turned out to be right.

In lieu of posting about Adam’s b-day present, which in my slow knitting way remains unfinished, I will show a photo of his Christmas gift, which I did manage to finish on time:

They’re a little pill-y from wear, but they’re holding up pretty well. Here’s a detail shot:

Adam gave me a gift certificate for a sewing class that I will be taking in a couple of months. The class, which takes place over several weeks, will teach me how to make a zippered bag, which is very exciting, since I have not machine-sewn since the eighth grade. My primary school had (and perhaps still has) a house on our school grounds that was used to teach sewing to seventh and eighth graders. It’s true, my primary school was preparing us all for future employment at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, and thus, an entire HOUSE was devoted to teaching us to sew.

Anyway, once I regain the muscle memory of my sweatshop skills* I am planning on making one of these cute little box bags I’ve been seeing.

I first saw them for sale at store.piddleloop.com, which someone had linked to on their blog. Misocrafty has some, too. I like the idea of the grommet hole on the piddleloop ones for feeding the yarn out, though it also strikes me as totally useless since once you started your project, it would be impossible to fit back through the grommet hole. Unless there’s a secret trick I am missing.

But if you already have sewing skills, here is a tutorial for making these same box bags, from a blog called dragoknit.

*Hey, my grandmother was/is a member of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union, so I mock because I am of The People.

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.