Happy Earth Day. Have you hugged a tree today?

Every year, the agency where I work has a week long spring cleaning event that coincides with Earth Day. We are all encouraged to clean out our files, recycle the recycle-ables, be mindful of the planet, et cetera and so on.

To announce the week-long spring cleaning in conjunction with Earth Day, a flyer was made. And thousands of full-color copies of it were printed, plastered all over the building, and given to every one of the approximately 5,000 employee.

Ironic, no? I guess it never occurred to the Powers That Be that a global email would be more appropriate and in keeping with the spirit if the day. They certainly send out enough of them announcing other stuff.

Twisted Logic Sock

Behold the first Twisted Logic Sock.

I actually finished this sock on Friday night, shortly after completing Lismore, but wanted to save it for future blog fodder because I knew that good blog fodder would be thin on the ground this week.

What? Doesn’t everyone have a disembodied leg on their dining room table?

I’m actually more than halfway done with the second Twisted Logic Sock. I just turned the heel.

Rats! What was I thinking? I should have saved that for tomorrow’s blog post.

These socks are somewhat slow going because of all the traveling and twisting that the stitches do, but I do love a good twisted traveling stitch, so that’s no problem. And I finished the prep work for my Spring Fling classes last night, so I’ll be able to work on the second sock a bit tonight. I hope. Don’t know if I’ll have it finished before the Fling, however.

This never fails to crack me up:

Thank you so much for all your lovely Lismore comments. I am delighted with the way it turned out.

There were, of course, questions.

Several of you asked how much yarn I used. I had purchased 4 140-gram skeins of the Kauni, and I went back and purchased 2 more, just in case there were major problems with knots screwing up the color sequence. I used my original 4 skeins and had this much left over: a total of 170 grams.

Only 1 of the 4 skeins had any knots — it had 2. I broke the yarn before the knot and pulled out yarn until I reached the proper place in the colorway to reattach it without messing up the sequence. I was fortunate in that I never had to pull out too much. Those small balls of yarn in the photo are what was pulled out to adjest the colors, because of knots, and for starting the sleeves.

I really lucked out the with sleeves. After completing the first one, the yarn was almost at the proper point for me to switch the skeins and use what was the foreground color for the first sleeve as the background color for the second sleeve, and vice versa. I only had to pull out a little bit of yarn to make the adjustment.

So I’ve still got 2 full untouched 140-gram skeins. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to break into them for Lismore because I thought I might like to make a rainbow shawl out of them, using a simple lace pattern.

Gwendolyn thoughtfully offered to model Lismore for you.

No, I won’t get a chance to wear it anytime soon — the temperature was well into the 80s the end of last week. I could barely stand to knit it — only with a fan blowing full force on me the whole time. Sorry, I won’t be bringing it to the Spring Fling. I am a minimalist packer by necessity (I am an old geezer who can easily strains her back by lifting too-heavy stuff) and my hairdryer is more important to me than Lismore.

Trish D commented:

Is it possible to upsize a complicated colorwork pattern such as a Starmore? And if so, what are some of the best tricks for doing so?

Is it possible? It depends. If it is a matter of a slight size difference, you can achieve a change by going up or down in needle size or by blocking. But if it is a large change, that’s more complicated.

The pattern repeat for Lismore is a big one (50 stitches) and the sweater has 6 repeats — 3 on the front and 3 on that back. To enlarge it, you really would need to add 2 more repeats because if you added only 1 repeat you’d have 3.5 on the front and 3.5 on the back and that would look odd. Two pattern repeats would increase the circumference of the sweater by 100 stitches — one-third of the original circumference — a very big change indeed.

You’d have more success altering a fair isle that had smaller pattern repeats.

The Knight in Knitted Chain Mail

The little cutie pictured in yesterday’s blog post is Ludvig, son of my friend Johanne. Yes, his talented mom knit the chain mail for him. I’m betting she didn’t use a pattern but improvised.

Lucy Sez

Make sure you read Sheri’s blog tonight — my Auntie L-B is in the Loopy Limelight!

Last week in the comments, AnnH asked me:

What are the criteria for your “must make” list?

Ooh, that’s a tough question. It’s based pretty much on a gut reaction to a design.

I am extraordinarily picky about the cabled sweaters I knit, but I can’t come up with any reasons why some designs that appeal to me and some don’t. I look through a book and automatically say “Love it, hate it, love it, hate it” and I never change my mind. Same thing with lace. Once again, extraordinarily picky.

What do you all think? What are the criteria for your “must make” list?

Lismore

I finished Lismore Friday night, while watching La Vie en Rose. (By the way, La Vie en Rose was an incredible movie and Marion Cotillard gave an amazing performance as Edith Piaf.)

I carefully laid Lismore out to photograph it, but I had some problems.

See what I mean?

My photo stylist seemed to have issues . . .

Finally, she seemed satisfied and let me get on with it.

The collar:

The ribbing:

A sleeve:

I’m not going to start another “big” project this week. Thursday morning I am going to St. Louis to participate in The Loopy Ewe Spring Fling, and I’m teaching 4 classes there. Apart from working on my sock in progress, I’ve got a fair amount of knitting I need to do to prepare for the classes, so I’ll be doing that in the evenings this week.

In other news, this handsome fellow wants to audition to be a Knight Who Says Ni:

I think anyone as cute as he who has his own knitted chain mail need not audition, don’t you?

In other, other news, Lucy is exhausted from helping me with the Lismore photo-shoot.

Because I spent a good chunk of my knitting time last night goofing off on the internet, there’s not much knitting progress to show today. So I thought I’d do a book review.

I recently got a copy of A Fine Fleece by Lisa Lloyd. I’ve been looking forward to this book (it was just published earlier this month) and I was not disappointed.

The book has 26 patterns, all designed to be used with handspun yarn. There is a lot of information on different wool types and spinning to help you create the yarn to knit the designs in this book. And each pattern is shown knit both in handspun and a commercially available yarn.

I’ll be honest — I’ve skipped over the spinning information to go straight to the patterns. A couple of years ago I was introduced to Lisa Lloyd designs when my buddy L-B gave me her Halcyon Aran pattern (and yarn to knit it) for Christmas.

There are a bunch of designs in this book that I love. The Halcyon Aran is here, as well as the Flyingdales Cardigan, which I’ll be making some day, and a few others. There are sweaters (suitable for men and women), socks, a hat, and scarves. This one is on my must make list (I’ll be using commercially spun yarn):

So is this:

As far as I’m concerned, this book is a keeper.

So, as I said, paltry progress on Lismore. But the next time you see it, it will be done.

Meanwhile, Lucy is exhausted from rehearsing her role as the Killer Rabbit.

She is such an artiste. She will settle for nothing less than perfection from herself.

Judging from the overwhelmingly positive response in the comments, I think we need to form a Monty Python and the Holy Grail knitting/touring company.

(This beats my previous idea of doing dramatic readings of The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, As Amended.)

Okay, so far we have me as King Arthur (because of all the Pythonites, I think I most closely resemble Graham Chapman, may he rest in peace, and because it is my idea), L-B as my trusted servant Patsy of course, and Rabbitch as Sir Bedivere. Several of you have volunteered to be Knights Who Say Ni, and some of you who can bring your own coconuts will be joining in as knights.

We’ll put Lucy in a little bunny suit and she can be the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.

Theresa in Italy kindly volunteered to be the moistened bint who lobbed a scimitar at me.

The KOARC, will need to weigh in and choose a role. Perhaps Tim the Enchanter? No, wait! The French Taunter!

Anyhow, there are still plenty of good roles are up for grabs.

Oh, and we are all going to knit our own chain mail from Tempted Stacy’s Glam Grrl yarn.

How . . . to figure out how to get rights to the script . . .

Onward . . .

Cindy asked in the comments:

How many stitches do you allow the non working yarn to float when you are knitting in fair isle?

Longtime readers may remember me waxing lyrical from time to time on the joys of floating. Lismore has got some pretty long stretches, so I do strand from time to time. My longest floats are 8 stitches.

Here’s the current state of the second sleeve:

And in sock news, I turned the heel.

Wheeeeeeee!

Lucy is a little nonplussed at the prospect of a bunny suit.