FO: Knitted Spa Set

I have never been able to understand why someone might knit a facecloth. That is, until I picked up an almost complete ball of Rowan’s new ‘Lenpur Linen’ at a charity shop for just 30p. My trusty miniature scales told me that this little purple ball of yarn weighed in at 42g, meaning I had 96m or thereabouts to try and make a project out of, so it was going to have to be something quite small. Firstly I had to work out what the heck ‘lenpur’ might be, and a bit of investigating revealed that it was ‘Rowanese’ for rayon (albeit rayon specifically from white fir cellulose). Having recently worked with some (bamboo-based) rayon I knew that it was very absorbent, and along with the linen content would have all the requisite properties required for a gift facecloth.

I found the pattern for Gwen Steege’s ‘Spa Set’ in the book 101 Luxury One-Skein Wonders – a fantastic depository of patterns for those short on ideas, time or money, and it just so happened that I was lacking in all three departments.

The yarn that the pattern called for had more meterage to the skein than a complete ball of Lenpur Linen would have done, and mine was part-used, so I didn’t know of I was going to have enough to complete the soap bag as well as the face-cloth, but I did in fact have plenty. I knit the actual graphic design of the face-cloth and small drawstring bag slightly differently from the way that the pattern prescribed completely out of pre-considered design choice because I was too lazy to read the instructions properly, omitting the seed stitch rows that run throughout the pattern. I made a few modifications to the bag as well – 10 rows of seed stitch were added to the open end of the bag, and a row of eyelets allowed for a thicker, three stitch i-cord to be threaded through a lot more comfortably.

Though I cannot imagine ever knitting such an item for myself, I think it gives a nice spin on the tradition of luxury bathing goods (or ’smellies’ as they are known in my family) as Christmas gifts, and not being too extravagant or showy I think it will make a nice gift for my brother’s girlfriend in a couple of months. I’m currently revelling in the fact that I have added to my completed gifts list. I think it is only right to celebrate by knitting something gorgeous for me.

Pattern: Pamper-Yourself Silk-Linen Spa Set by Gwen Steege
Yarn: Rowan Lenpur Linen

The Minefield Of Giving Knitted Gifts

It is that time of year when many knitters will be looking towards their stash with an air of panic, remembering the drunken resolution of last New Year’s Eve that saw them swear they’d pace their seasonal gift knitting through the entire year, and realising that they broke their promise almost straight away when they abandoned Uncle Jim’s socks when it got to the heel flap.

If you knit gifts for friends and family to be given during the festive period there is a good chance that your mind will currently be filled with a swirling mass of ideas for presents, but maybe also a nagging nervousness. Will your brother like the novelty jumper with the complicated intarsia motif you have planned for him? Will Auntie Nell appreciate and care for the shawl you have spent weeks diligently knitting? Do your family and friends deserve your hand-knits?

There is an ever-more vocal group of ’selfish knitters’ (this is not a slur, it is often the title that they give themselves), who think that the best person to knit gifts for is yourself. Maybe only you (and perhaps other knitters) can understand the effort and value of a hand-knitted gift. The time spent not only knitting, but planning and gathering, creating and perfecting. Maybe only somebody that knits can understand the worth of a hand-knit. I say good on them! If you enjoy knitting for yourself alone, then wrap yourself in your squishy hand-knits and enjoy every moment.

On the ever-lively Ravelry boards I regularly read threads started by distressed and angry knitters, decrying that the recipient of their lovingly created gift was disliking of their new knit, or (and this might even be worse), that the recipient was totally nonplussed. Knitting allies, supportive of the gift-giver and their art, will declare the gift recipient unworthy of future hand-knits, and then often indulge in a strange ritual by which they will weigh and measure the worth of a hand-knitted gift. ”She clearly doesn’t understand how long it takes to knit a _____, she doesn’t understand its worth. If you value your time at £___ per hour, multiplied by ___ hours, plus the cost of materials…” Wait, wait, wait… That’s not a gift, that’s calculating wages.

I tend not to think in these terms. An average pair of socks might cost me £8 in materials, and take me 10-20 hours to knit but I do not measure a knitted gift’s worth by either criteria. I enjoy knitting, otherwise I wouldn’t bother knitting gifts. I wouldn’t bother knitting at all. I would no more try to work out the cost of my knitting time than a model railway enthusiast might measure the worth of his miniature version of Didcot station by timing himself on how long it took him to arrange his plastic trees and replica grassy embankments.

I am grateful that any time I have given a knitted gift the recipient has been graceful and joyous in receipt (at least to my face, anyway), but I try not to get too hung up about it. I also try to be sensible in what I give to people, and who I knit for. Much as I would love to knit my brothers a pair of socks each they are 16 years old and like video games and football (they also have size UK13 feet, and there isn’t enough time or yarn in the world) and I know that, really, they will be much more appreciative of something disc-shaped that fits inside an Xbox 360.

FO: Pirate Treasures Mittens

Attention, ‘ye sea-farin’ lot

Yarr, scurvy land lubbers. We pirates keep be keepin' arr hands warm with mittens, and both Bones mittens are now complete. I had some obvious issues with the suggested beads being too big to knit comfortably in pattern, but after strenuous and forceful blocking I think even Blackbeard himself would be accepting of them into his treasure haul. Ok, maybe they are a bit ‘emo’ for Blackbeard, but I reckon Johnny Depp would be all over them…

I’m satisfied with these and they are now going into my little box of knitted Christmas treasure which I am going to bury before I am tempted to put these on myself, to keep my scurvy hands warms whilst I swab the decks (or clean the oven, whichever task presents itself first).

Pattern: Bones by Jane Burns
Yarn: Regia Uni / Solid 4-ply / 4-fädig

Beaded Skull and Crossbones Motifs Now Tamed

In my previous post I was in the process of experimenting with inserting pins through the vertical columns of beads on the fingerless mitts I have just finished knitting. As I had written, the beaded skull and crossbones designs, as well as the surrounding knitting, were quite distorted and unattractive. Perhaps I understated that just slightly. I have just downloaded the photos:

The knitting in the picture above is not sitting in an ungainly heap – the larger gauge determined by the beads pulls the surrounding knitting so far out of shape that the knitting puckers quite uncontrollably. The gloves were un-wearable and uncomfortable with a big lumpen mass of beads on the back of the hand, but blocking has worked its usual magic:

I am really very pleased with just how much blocking has improved these mittens. I thought that this ill-fated yarn was due for another trip to the frog pond, but instead I will be able to add the mitts to my little box of finished Christmas gift knits once the second glove has finished drying and had its blocking pins removed and I have taken some obligatory pictures for blog documentation.

Oubliette

Oubliette, from the French ‘oublier’, to forget.

In the immortal words of Hoggle from The Labyrinth:

An Oubliette is a place you put people to forget about them.

I have an oubliette, not for casting away annoying people that have done me wrong, but for projects that just never came to be, for whatever reason. It’s not so much a dark and distant dungeon which I can walk away from to such a distance as to not hear the piteous sobs of what lies within, but a small cylindrical box that resides on my desk.

It's a place I put knitting, to forget about it.

As long as items are concealed within I do not feel guilty about their unfinished state. ’Out of sight, out of mind’ works just fine as far as I am concerned, but today I decided it was time to open up the oubliette and find what UFOs (unfinished objects) still resided within, and if they could be completed, salvaged, or if the yarn could be re-imagined in any way.

To be fair to myself I am a pretty monogamous knitter. Every now and then I will have to lay aside a complex piece of knitting, such as the Red Admiral I am working on, because I have a knitting deadline to meet (the current one being Christmas – how did that creep on on me?), but under normal circumstances I only have one project ‘on the needles’ at any one time.

Despite this I found a few things inside:

There’s the leg motif of the Pine Tree socks I was knitting for my brother-in-law, the rest of which I had ripped out to make some mitts for my mother (but I couldn’t bare to unravel the tree motif for some reason, and I found I had enough yarn to complete the mittens without doing so). There is also a half-finished hot-water bottle cover I was making out of pink cotton as comfort knitting when my Grandad passed away, and which I couldn’t bring myself to later complete as it somehow brought back the feelings of sadness I experienced as I knit when his death was imminent. I have decided to unravel the pink cotton and make a few fun and frivolous things for Christmas, to repurpose the yarn into small but cute things for a few of my siblings, to make the yarn into something happier.

Also in the oubliette were a few knitted sunflowers I had made from old yarn scraps that I didn’t want to throw away as waste, so I am going to have a think about how I can use those as embellishments on a project. Hoggle would be proud.

To Bead, Or Not To Bead?

I said goodbye to the 85% complete Edward’s Socks after finally coming to terms with the fact that I never had enough yarn to finish them. I decided that the yarn needed to be re-purposed into something completely different, and so settled on a pair of fingerless mittens/arm-warmers, mostly because I already had the beads that the pattern called for rattling around the bottom of my knitting bag.

Knit in 4-ply sock yarn at 32st to 4″ I thought these would be a fun gift for my mother for Christmas, who likes this sort of thing (because she is still a teenager, it would seem).

I have never knit with beads before, and so used the ‘crochet hook method’ recommended in the pattern instructions. This method of beaded knitting is simple, if very, very fiddly, not helped by the fact that the beads are constantly jostling for position in the row. Sensing something wasn’t quite working I measured to make sure my gauge was still on and it was perfect, and then I measured to see how many beads would comfortably fit side-by-side in the same 4″ area. 28. So, you are required to fit 8 stitches to every inch in the pattern, but that same inch will only accommodate 7 of the recommended beads. The beaded motif is quite distorted where the beads are jostling so tight against each other and it is also causing the surrounding knitting to warp and balloon.

I am going to try and suspend my disappointment for a while and just hope that some creative blocking will help a little. I tried simply wet blocking the first mitten and easing it into shape by hand, but it was apparent early on that this wasn’t going to be sufficient, so I had to get crafty.

With the pins in situ the beads are laying in a much more uniform and orderly manner, but I shall not know the success of the experiment until they have dried and I can see if it has sufficiently coaxed the fabric around and through the beads into submission.

FO: Jaffa Scarf After Blocking

A couple of days ago I finished a scarf made from some yarn which had been hanging around me, ignored, since I started knitting.

A simple feather and fan scarf it was simple enough to knit, but exciting for the fact that it gave me my first opportunity to try and block some simple lace. I wanted to really open up the lace pattern so tried to block the scarf quite aggressively, and I've had some successful results.

The before picture, which I know I have shown you before, but it is useful for the comparison to show it again:

And the 'after' picture:

In lieu of blocking wires I used a technique that I’d heard mentioned once in which embroidery thread is run long the outside stitches and then that sturdy thread is held in place by the pins pushed into the surface upon which you are blocking the item. I’d really love to get some blocking wires one day, but at the moment an old skein of embroidery cotton provided a much less expensive alternative, and it seems to have worked very well.

Considering the lack of trust I had in this skein of yarn I am not unhappy with the resulting scarf.

The colour settled into a striping sequence where brown waves of colour emerge from each side, looking not unlike tiger stripes, and although I might not choose to try and tame such a yarn again, at least the sequence stayed consistent throughout the knitting, which I am grateful for.

Pattern: Marialis End-to-End Scarf by Myrna A.I. Stahman
Yarn: JL Yarns Salvia.

New Kid On The Block

I have blocked a few things before. In fact, I block most things, from socks to cushion covers, just because I like them in their perfect flat form, but I have never used the process of blocking to fundamentally alter the structure and appearance of a piece of knitting beyond tidying and refining my stitches and the drape of the fabric I have created, or to stop a bit of curl on the edge of some stockinette.

The power of blocking never seems to be stronger than when it is applied to a piece of lace. So, when I finally cast off this crumpled piece of serpentine untamed mess I decided that I was going to block it rather aggressively. I was going to block this scarf to within an inch of its life.

Currently, if you were to visit Castle Mimi, you’d find seven 1ft foam boards linked together with a very, very long scarf stretched between countless pins, propper up against the hallway wall. It’s in the hallway as this is the only wall long enough to accommodate its length. Amateur to lace blocking that I am, I hadn’t accounted for just how much added length you can get out of lace by blocking it. I had assumed it would be a decent amount, but I had clearly underestimated when deciding upon the finished length of my knitting (a scientific decision arrived at by the following calculation:)

ul= f2 x Q

___________

a

where: ul= unblocked length, f = how fed up I am of this scarf, Q = finish time of Question Time with the lovely David Dimbleby and a = alcohol quota.


Inputting the relevant values gave me a finished unblocked length of about 5ft. I’m looking forward to unpinning the scarf and seeing what the actual finished length will be. I can’t quite tell how the scarf will look at the moment as the background of the child’s foam hopscotch tiles I am using as blocking mats is breaking the patterns of the colours and the lace pattern up too much for me to be able to discern what the finished result will be. I’m looking forward to the surprise because I think it is either going to be shockingly busy or absolutely wonderful.

Jaffa Cakes and Painted Ladies

During what will go down in my personal history the ‘yarn drought’ of Late September 2009 I found myself slowly working towards my last ball of yarn. It was always going to be the very last ball of yarn I tackled, because I had made up my mind that it was decidedly unlovely, and something I did not want to resort to unless I had to – like the very last dry, stale biscuit as the stock cupboard runs dry.

The yarn itself is not unlovely – it should be perfect for the season with its rich autumnal hues, but I am just so useless at working with it. I have tried many times – I cannot count the occasions on which this has been frustratingly unravelled and put back into the cupboard for ‘another time’. It was bought when I was but a brand new seedling with my single pair of needles, and I could see all of the possibilities of the forest of knitting laid out in front of me for the first time.

The fibres, the weights, the colours. A yarn shop was like walking into a grotto of jewels, as colours danced from the walls and treasure troves of tone and hue sat in baskets on tables. The choice was almost endless, and choosing a single colour all but an impossibility.

But… look this way, young apprentice, let me tempt you with the magic that is many colours in one ball.

This was too much… Of course I wanted a ball of yarn that was more than one colour, who wouldn’t? I saw this yarn and thought of Jaffa Cakes and the Red Admiral butterfly dancing around a summer meadow with his Painted Lady.

I didn’t understand what ‘pooling’ was, and this single skein and it’s many attempted blotchy outpourings scared me off of hand-painted yarns as I slowly and painfully learned that lesson many times over. Now – I know that many knitters love pooling – there is a long and on-going thread on the Ravelry Knitting and Crochet forums that will serve as proof of this fact, but it’s just not for me. I like to make the decisions with my knitting, not let the yarn decide what is going to happen, but I’m trying to find a compromise with this skein. It’s been my companion for long enough now for us to have reached a compromise, I feel.

I have asked if it would mind applying itself attractively to the Marialis End-to-End scarf from 101 One-Skein Wonders essentially a very simple feather and fan scarf with a moss stitch border. It’s not too pretty at the moment, but I’m hoping this is just the misshapen and lumpen caterpillar that it will unfurl its regal wings like a Painted Lady when the time comes for it to be blocked. Either that or turn into some Jaffa cakes – ether one would suffice.

Gnomey Hat (Pattern)

Here's a cute and very warm hat, and an especially fast knit. Made from a single 100g skein of bulky yarn (Álafoss Lopi was used in the hat pictured) it is a perfect instant gratification project for the onset of the colder months of the year. With cute elfin shaping at the top of the crown, earflaps and warm close shaping around the back of the neck it will keep out the wind and cold, helping you stay toasty.

Cute hats help you keep out the cold!

download the PDF for the Gnomey Hat

Pattern: Gnomey Hat by Mimi Hill
Yarn: Ístex Álafoss Lopi

I'm Sick Of Knitting

Strap yourselves in, this post is likely to be quite long…

A few evenings ago I cast onto some exciting new needles with a head full of ideas and visions of projects. After casting on and knitting merrily away for a row or two I soon started to notice a tingling fatigue in my left hand, and a numbness which I’d liken to when you are riding on an old rattling bus and the seat is shaking, and the vibrations cause your fingers (and sometimes your bottom) to go numb.

Every row or so I found myself massaging my fingers and shaking some feeling back into my hand. A few rows later I put it down as my arm was aching and I felt a bit nauseous anyway – probably the result of a long and stressful day.

The next day after rudimentarily completing my chores to the satisfaction of a very casual observer, I grabbed all the accoutrements of knitting comfort and, wrapped in a blanket, got a bit of sneaky knitting done. About ten minutes into my knitting I found my left hand felt numb again, exactly as it had done the preceding evening. My fingers ached and I found myself unconsciously squeezing parts of my left hand to bring feeling back into it, and shaking my arm to try and rid the numbness and to dispel the aches that were working their way up from my forearm. I quite soon felt a bit sick of this. Actually, I felt a bit sick, full stop. I had another wave of nausea and had to lay my knitting aside for a second time.

This was odd. Actually, no, it was terrifying… Was my knitting somehow affecting my health? Was I becoming literally sick of knitting? No, I couldn’t be. It would be like Rolf Harris being sent into spasms at the sight of a paintbrush… This blog is called ‘Eskimimi Knits’ – not ‘Eskimimi sits and ruefully remembers the days when she could knit’. So what had changed? Was I knitting with a type of yarn that was new to me? Nope, so it couldn’t be that. Had I changed the way I was knitting, how I was sitting, the light conditions… Nope, nope, nope. The only thing I had changed was the needles, but it couldn’t be that. I mean, they were a bit ‘grabby’. Well, really quite grabby, actually. Size 3.5mm flexible acrylic needles… I’ve used plastic needles before, but these were a different form of plastic to those which I was used to. I found that the grip of the yarn on the needles was slowing my knitting down very considerably, that the stitches causing such friction in their ambition to move down the left needle that, combined with the flexibility of the material used for the needle, it was causing micro-vibrations down the length of the needle tip. Could those vibrations be what was making my hand numb and tingly, making my fatigued arm ache? I couldn’t see how this might be possible. I switched to wooden needle tips of the same size… Odd – I felt fine… Maybe it was just a passing wave of tiredness…both times… Hmm… It would be best to give those new tips another try just to make sure… Yes, it was back again.

Multitasking by knitting and divining water
Luckily I know a friendly group of nerds who are always on hand to help research and investigate, like a large internet-enabled think-tank. They won’t mind me calling them nerds because they know I love them, and they are inescapably nerdy (‘Hi’ any Beex’ers that stumble this way…)

Some of the answers suggested are below…

Err, static electricity maybe? Van-de-Graaf generators use acrylic collectors and a belt made of silk or something like that. Could be whitefinger, but I don’t think that explains the nausea.

The vibration of the needle is at a frequency which is affecting your middle ear after a long enough of an exposure you are feeling sick in the same way you would if you were on a boat and the small sacs that dangle in your middle ear were aggravated by the motion of the boat.

The numbness in your arm is caused by the vibration and is unrelated.

Whilst I am unclear as to the actual vibration-inducing mechanism that’s at work here (probably a combination of low needle stiffness as you describe = low resonant frequency, lack of needle damping and slip-stick friction at the needle tips, combined with your particular needle grip, speed and the type of materials being used), what is clear from the symptoms you describe is that it’s not going to do you any favours in the long term.


The symptoms you describe (pins and needles, numbness, aching – finger blanching and coldness would be next) are classical early onset ‘vibration white finger’. Whilst it should be no problem if you stop now and shouldn’t be anything to worry about at this stage IMO, you don’t want to continue exposing yourself to this ‘occupational vibration’.


Here’s a linky for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration_white_finger


[...] The pins and needles and numbness are classical early symptoms of neural stress and as you should know, an individual’s susceptibility to occupational vibration varies enormously.

And then the chief the science-nerd-in-residence pulled up this link for me to have a look at. Here, the blogger echos one of the science bods’ ideas about ‘vibration white finger’ – something which I had never before heard of, also mentioning that she was a sufferer of Reynaud’s syndrome. Bingo. I suffer from Reynaud’s syndrome. Actually, not so much as I used to – when I was at University I used to get it very often, but it was always triggered by cold – I had never heard of any other trigger for the symptoms, and now I have struck upon the possibility that I may have found a trigger for a similar condition in my knitting. Whatever the details of the problem may be, my needles seems to be vibrating under the friction caused by the reluctance of the stitches of the left needle to progress to the tip, and I seem rather sensitive to these vibrations.

I have since tried another size of the acrylic needle tips, and the much larger diameter of the needle (9mm) means that there is practically no flexibility in the needles at all. Though the needle is still vary grabby, the inflexible nature of the thicker needles means that the vibrations caused by the friction are not amplified as they are with the smaller needles.

So, now I am continuing with my project on my trusty wooden tips, and I shall pass the acrylic tips onto someone who can hopefully use them with more comfort than myself. I’ll also try to stop being so weird.

I’d like to thank my friends on the beexcellenttoeachother.com forums for their help, and their gentle jibing at my random problems.

Knitpro Spectra/Knitpicks Zephyr Needles

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to try the new Knitpro ‘Spectra’ needles (known as Knitpicks Zephyr in the US). Widely anticipated by the knitting crowd, many people have been eager to give these needles a go. So far the reception seems to be good. Many people regard these new additions to the Knitpicks/Knitpro brand as a lightweight and comfortable (and relatively inexpensive) alternative to the other needle collections offered by the company – the wooden ‘Symfonie’ needles (sold as ‘Harmony’ in the US) and the nickel-plated ‘Nova’ range (sold as ‘Options’ in the US) have been popular for some time now. I have very much enjoyed using my wooden Knitpro interchangeable for the last 12 months, and was looking forward to this addition to my little collection and as the tips for the interchangeable set fit on the same cords as both of the other ranges, so it gives perfect opportunity to pick up a single pair of tips for experimentation.

I had a minor set-back in that I managed to run out of yarn a few days after receiving my needle tips, so I had a few days to sit and admire them. Aesthetically they are pleasing – many people will find the clear acrylic helpful when working with dark yarns or with tired eyes. At first inspection the tips did not seem all that lightweight to me, so thought I’d see just how lightweight they were. I called upon my trusty precision electronic scales and found that a pair of 5.5mm plastic Spectra tips weighs in at 11g, as opposed to 6.8g for the wooden Symfonie tips of the same size – so nearly double the weight of the wooden tips. What else could I examine without yarn? OK – flexibility. Well, I can feel there is a little bit of ‘give’ in them, but they don’t feel as flexible as, for example, the old Denise interchangeable set I used to own. And now I have run out of things to examine. I’ll just sit here and look at them. Maybe I can make a mobile out of them?

Fast forward not very much time, but what seems like a lifetime when you cannot knit, and some yarn has come into my possession. I am extremely lucky, and humble. A kind and thoughtful Raveller, whom I shall not embarrass by naming, (but lets just say I think she is Smashing), has sent me the most winsome parcel I have ever received, full to the brim with all sorts of wonderful yarn. Time to cast on!

So, I’m knitting with a pair of 3.5mm tips and some 4-ply merino – just to give the tips a try. The first thing I notice is how ‘grabby’ these tips are. Far more than any other needles I have tried, in my own opinion. This may be a boon when knitting with slippery, hard to control yarns, but with this merino it is slowing my knitting considerably, and I can now appreciate the flexibility that people have been mentioning – in the smaller diameter needles at least. I’m not sure if it is helping or hindering my knitting. I’m having to stop every few stitches to coax the left hand needle stitches along the needle with my thumb. As they reluctantly shuffle down the needle, the friction is causing micro-vibrations in the needle. It is a strange sensation to start with, but (and perhaps I am particularly sensitive to things like this) after a short while it becomes bothersome, and I have to stop as my hand is numb. I’m not feeling too good anyway, so I put them away to try again another time… And that’s where I’ll pick up from tomorrow…