Wendy Knits

Julia asked:

Abalone is going to be breath-taking. I can’t wait for the reactions out and about when you first wear it. Doesn’t the anticipation build once the sleeves are underway?

I’ve learned from experience never to expect any reactions to handknitted attire. Many times I get no comments whatsoever. I don’t think many people who see me day-to-day realize that my stuff is knitted by me.

Expect ye nothing and ye shall not be disappointed.

But the finishing anticipation is building. A couple of weeks ago I bought a lavender cotton turtleneck (thank you, L.L.Bean) to wear under Abalone on its first outing.

I’m working on the second sleeve now. So I am looking forward to Abalone’s completion. I still have some ends to weave in from the creation of the button bands, and I need to sew on buttons. But next week at this time, Abalone ought to be a fait accompli.

Assuming Lucy relinquishes control.

And now I have to decide what to knit next.

Andrea mentioned Norfolk in my comments yesterday. No progress on it at all, not since I abandoned it to knit the scarf I’m working on. The scarf is more than halfway completed. I meant to take a photo last night but forgot, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

When complete, I’ll return to Norfolk. I may knit on it for a while as a primary project. But probably not for long, as it’ll be very boring.

I’m thinking it’s time for another Dale.

The last Dale I knitted was Frogner. I have several Dales-in-waiting in my stash. Hmmmmmm . . .

Chuckle du Jour

A perusal of my site statistics shows me that someone reached my blog by doing a search on the phrase “sexy young lady.”

Who am I to argue with such honesty?

Nope, contrary to what it looks like, Lucy did not have Superbowl Fever yesterday. We watched movies instead.

Lucy inspected my partially completed Abalone sleeve:

Yes, I’m coming along on Abalone!

There was a question in my comments last week about why I complete the bands before the sleeves. It’s partly because I like knowing that when I cast off the last cuff, I’m done. It’s a psychological lift. And I think it’s a bit easier to knit the bands on when you don’t have the sweater plus sleeves flopping around whilst you knit.

Black Frosting!

Yup, that was black frosting on the birthday cake featured in Friday’s blog entry. Did you know that Wilton makes black food coloring? It took a lot to get the frosting black. The roses were more of a steel grey, but I kept adding the coloring to the icing to get the cake as black as possible. When we ate it, all our tongues turned black.

Dave was quite delighted with that cake as I recall. He made one for me a few years later that was also delightful, but as it was completely lacking in taste and was incredibly politically incorrect, we won’t talk about it here. Besides, I don’t have a photo of it. Though I bet Dave has.

Email and Viruses, and Worms, Oh My!

Just so you know, I have disabled all email addresses at wendyjohnson.net. I was getting many many worm emails, all coming in to fictitious addresses there. I had auto-forwarding turned on to send email through a spam filter into my real email address, but too many worms were . . . uh . . . worming their way through.

So if you want to email me, use the “contact me” link in my sidebar. Okay?

And while we’re on the subject of email . . .

I am now deleting without opening all email from people I don’t know that has no subject or the subject is something like “hi.” If you email me and I don’t know you, please put something in the subject line that has to do with why you’re emailing me.

The spam problem is getting out of hand . . .

It’s a sorry state of affairs when one has to go to such lengths.

And While We’re On the Subject of Email . . .

I’m getting more and more email from people with questions like: “I’m looking for x pattern. Can you send me a copy/tell me where to download it?” And the punchline is that 99 times out of 100 it’s a pattern I’ve never heard of or never used and definitely never mentioned in my blog.

Google, my friends. Google, google, google.

This is not directed at the majority of you. Close your eyes. Okay, to the rest of you:

People, I am not a free search and pattern retrieval service for anything and everything remotely connected with knitting. I am not the knitting oracle. My interests center around what I think is a relatively small segment of knitting as a whole — traditional fair isles, Norwegian knitting, and fisherman sweaters.

And lastly, and most importantly, I will not send you copies of copyrighted patterns. Period. End of subject.

If you have questions and/or want to discuss the type of stuff I blog about, by all means, drop me a line or leave a comment.

Thank you.

Okay, the rest of you can open your eyes now.

Q&A

I’ve had some questions about why the ThreadyBear sweater is no longer in my WIP list. It’s not there because I’m no longer knitting it. There were problems with the pattern that rendered it unknittable in its present form, so I sent the designer my critique and suggestions for change and sent back what I had completed up to that point.

Susan asked:

Is there such a thing as yarn that cannot be steeked?

Hmmmm . . . I dunno. I think you could steek just about anything, if you were going to machine stitch it and sew in a sleeve, rather than pick up stitches around the armhole. The question is . . . would you want to?

A really bulky yarn or a really slippery yarn are two examples that I would think would not be good steeky candidates. Several of you left comments about this yesterday. Anyone else got any steek stories they wanna share?

Lisa asked:

In regards to the fun fur question, I held some fun fur at the top of a booga bag and it changed the gauge enough that it made the top of the bag loose and wavy…have you not experienced that with the kitty beds? If so, how would you resolve the problem? A few decreases?

Both of the kitty beds I made felted with no problem. Anyone else have any problems? You certainly could do a few decreases around the top if your fur yarn changes the feltability of your fabric. You’d need to do a swatch to test it out — knit with just the wool for a few inches, then top it off with an inch or so of the fur yarn held with the main yarn. Then felt it and see how it turns out.

And there are even more new photos in the kitty bed gallery!

Joanne asked:

I’m starting Amphora in the blue colorway. It’s such a beautiful sweater. I’m worried that the border on the bottom would be unflattering, making the wearer look heavier, or even pregnant. Did you find this when you did yours? If so, would you do the border the same again, or would you change to ribbing?

I had no problem with the border around the bottom — it doesn’t seem to draw attention to that — ahem — larger part of my anatomy. But if you were concerned, you could certainly do a ribbed bottom and make the sweater a tad shorter (it’s sort of tunic length). If I were knitting it again, I’d do the same border as the first one.

Kathleen asked:

Sweet picture of Lucy. How many attempts to get that one?

I lucked out on that! I looked down while she was in my lap, and saw her peeking over my knitting. so I grabbed the camera and snapped her pic.

The moral of that story is: Always have your camera at your side!

Liz astutely pointed out:

I also just noticed that you switched over to those new ebony needles that arrived recently unless my eyes are deceiving me!

Yes indeed I am! And loving every minute of it!

But I’ve started an Abalone sleeve, so now I’m using a 40cm circular. Fortunately, I already had a 40cm long ebony in 3.25mm.

Speaking of Holz and Stein . . .

Susan, my ebony needle fairy godmother emailed me yesterday with this information. She phoned the woman from whom she ordered my needles to let her know a lot of people are interested in ordering.

1. The woman also received a lot of emails with questions in the last 2 days.

2. The needles are still produced and available, but the producer is very busy and can’t handle such a big interest right now, so delivery will likely take some time.

3. The shop-owner will create an english site with information about the needles and the charges (postal etc.) so it will be much easier to order.

4. She speaks good English so everybody can order by email.

What more can we ask for? Thank you Susan!

Abalone

Here she is, with all the bands completed. (Man, you had to read down far to actually get a photo today, huh?)

And here, for Mary, a close-up of the neckband:

I picked up the stitches for the neckband, and knitted back and forth. Then for each of the front bands I picked up stitches along the front steek, extending up and picking up stitches on the neckband edge. Each front band is knit separately.

And last night I picked up the stitches for a sleeve.

Lucy shows approval of Abalone so far.