Saturday Sky, Part Two

Sunset picture, taken at my daughter's request.

Sock Tips on Saturday

In one of the Socktoberfest threads over on Ravelry, someone asked me about dividing skeins in half to knit both socks at once. (Did I say that I'm participating in Socktoberfest this year? No? Well, I am.)

It occurred to me after writing a big, long post over there, that it would be a good idea to share my trick here as well.

I first heard of the idea to use a scale for dividing yarn from the “Wendy Knits” blog. Here is how I do it whenever I am dividing a skein of yarn in half.

Necessary equipment: Kitchen scale – a digital one with the ability to display in grams works best.

Nearly necessary equipment: Ball winder – definitely easier if you have your own to use for this, but would be possible to wind by hand.

Optional equipment: A swift for winding the original yarn ball, but the process works just as well to divide a ball that was wound by your LYS.

Instructions for Dividing a Skein in Half

1. Take the single wound skein of sock yarn & weigh it. Don’t just go by the number on the ball band, because sometimes it’s off by a few grams.

2. Divide that number in half. This is your target number to have each half-skein weigh when you are done.

3. Make sure your scale & ball winder are set up near each other. You will have the yarn cake still set on the scale while you are winding the second yarn cake.

4. Taking from the center of the yarn cake, begin winding a second cake from the middle of the first one. (This is so that both cakes of yarn are wound in the same direction – it wouldn’t do to have your socks be reverse color pattern from each other.) I use my non-winding arm as a yarn guide by propping my elbow near the scale, to help the yarn come up straight out of the original yarn cake.

5. Keep an eye on the scale. When it starts to read within 5-10 grams or so of your target number, stop for a little bit & double-check how much the original yarn cake weighs. I like to stop & pick the yarn ball up, let the scale go to zero, & then re-weigh so that the momentum of the winding isn’t effecting the scale’s readout.

6. Wind more slowly from this point, until you reach your target number.

7. If you want to double-check before cutting, remove the new half-sized cake from the ballwinder & weigh it before cutting the yarn. As long as both cakes are within a gram or two of each other in weight, they should have about the same amount of yarn in each.

Here is a series of pictures illustrating what I mean. I've been meaning to write this up for a while, which is why these pictures are from last Fall. I use sandwich bags to hold each of my half-skeins of yarn after I’m finished dividing them. The second picture shows how the original yarn cake looks after the middle half has been wound to the other one. This is why I contain the halves in sandwich bags – they don’t stay as neatly together once the middle is removed. Plastic bags aren’t very “green” but I do re-use them as I knit up yarn, so at least I’m not adding to the landfill.



The yarn is "English Garden" by Scarlet Fleece, purchased at the Loopy Ewe. Yes, it has been wound for a year but I have yet to actually cast these socks on. Last Fall, when I started wearing my Summer of Socks 2007 socks, I realized my sock wardrobe was sadly lacking in black/grey to wear with black jeans, so pink/green/cream yarn suddenly wasn't a priority to knit up.

This trick also works for any other need to divide yarn in half, such as for mittens or gloves.

Saturday Sky, October 25th 2008

From early this morning.

Friday Fall Folliage

The late afternoon weather was so nice yesterday that I decided to re-use an idea from an earlier October post.

Finished Object for Friday

Earlier this week, I finished my second set of Socktoberfest Socks.

These are my standard plain vanilla sock pattern, with 80 stitches around on size 1 DPNs. The yarn is Lime N Violet's Mermaid Sock Yarn, in the colorway "Suede Elvis", purchased at the Loopy Ewe during the big STL Raveler's Yarn Crawl on Mother's Day Weekend.

Please note -- I am working on UFO socks for Socktoberfest this year. Yes, after the UFOlympics, I still have plenty more UFO sock pairs to deal with. I have managed to resist the urge to cast on new socks, at least, so my total number of socks on the needles is going down. The first socks I finished this month had been on the needles for a year & a half, & 3 out of the 5 of my UFOlympic socks were started in 2007, so it's progress to finish one of the pairs that I started this year, that have been on-the-needles less than 6 months.


These are also a good illustration of the knitting problems that I won't bother to go back & fix. After I was already knitting the foot, I realized that the decreases had wandered over by a stitch part way down the gusset of one sock. There was no way I was going to try to rip back to it. I compensated for the shift when I did the toe of that sock, so the structural integrity of the sock was not compromised.
I doubt anyone will ever notice. In fact, I have to look really closely to figure out which side of the gusset & which sock actually had the slight mis-alignment in the decreases.

Saturday Sky, October 18th, 2008

Cable Fixing

Some cable errors can be left in if it's a matter of a wrong direction crossover 20 rows down. When an error in a travelling cable interferes with going forward in the project, however, there's nothing to do but to fix it. This time, I decided to document the fix, in case it helps anyone else who runs into a similar issue.

I thought I had the Susie Hoodie cable chart memorized, but a four or five rows later, it became apparent that I had started to turn the outside cables back towards the middle two rows early. Oops!

Because the body of the Susie Hoodie is knit all in one piece, tinking back all those rows would be a LOT of stitches. (Not to mention how much of a pain it is to frog mohair.) Therefore, re-knitting just the offending cable sections was the solution.

I put stitch holders through the stitches below the first wrong sets, as extra insurance. For the correct stitches on the very edge of the sweater, a stitch marker of the plastic safety-pin type was the perfect solution to hold only 3 stitches. Then I undid just the stitches I would need to re-knit.

I normally prefer metal DPNs, but wooden ones are great for something like this. When working with only a very few stitches, they stay in place better on wood, & the needle is less likely to fall out.


I re-knit the stitches with the cable travel starting on the correct row. Once the cable closest to the edge had been fixed, I used a wooden DPN to hold all the correct stitches while working on the cable closest to the body of the sweater.

For the side of the sweater where the yarn was, I did go ahead & tink back the entire purl-across-the-cable section, & re-knit all 20-something stitches before resuming work on the sweater.

The cable fix was a bit time consuming to do, but considering how long it takes me to knit each row of the Susie Hoodie, I think I came out ahead by fixing it this way versus frogging 5 rows & re-knitting.

The Main Event (a.k.a. Part 3)

Because I order the book & event tickets over the phone, I walked down the hill from The Studio at 6 p.m. to pick up my book & my tickets early. Here are pictures of the growing crowd, at 6:15, 6:30, & almost 7:00




I wore my Icarus shawl to this book signing, since no one in Kansas City would have seen it before. The hand-dyer of this yarn, Rachel of Dyeabolical, now has her own website for her roving & yarn.

(Excuse the blurry photo -- lack of experience modelling, plus Knitters have trouble keeping their hands still anyway.)




I first encountered Stephanie Pearl-McPhee when she visited St. Louis in 2006. At the time, I'd only recently picked the needles back up, & had yet to read any knit bloggers or knitting books, so the sock photo thing was new to me then. This time, I had a much better idea of what was going on. (Stash = yarn, for one thing. Not my first thought a couple years ago.)

The view from the other side of the sock, & perspective from the other side of the podium, can be found here, as if you didn't know that already.

Stephanie was her usual witty self. We all listened, & laughed, & knit. I haven't laughed so much in ages. My knitting may not care how loud I laugh, but I hope I didn't disturb anyone around me. They were laughing as well, so hopefully not.


In between the laughter, it was amazing how quiet the crowd became at more serious moments. There was a perfect blend of insightful in between the amusing.

It was great to be part of crowd where it was the most normal thing in the world for everyone's hands to be busy, & it was taken for granted that knitting adds to concentration, rather than knitting taking anything away from the experience.


We all kept knitting while waiting to wait in line. (I forgot to ask the bookstore folks if any of their other crowds for author signings were as patient as ours was.) I briefly considered counting a four hour drive as a special circumstance worth "pre-boarding", but decided against it for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I was having too much fun to cut the evening short. Besides, continueing to knit & wait meant that I got to see Delores On the Fibertarian Tour.

All in all, it was a wonderful evening, & well worth the drive from St. Louis.

The Event Before the Event. (a.k.a. Part 2)

A few blocks up the hill from Unity Temple is The Studio Knitting & Needlepoint store. Yesterday they had a Yarn Harlot Pre-party event. (Ravelry link.) They had a buffet of snack foods out, along with apple cider, which was a welcome refreshment after the long drive.

I'm always up for visiting new yarn stores, & yesterday was no exception. I found some gorgeous locally dyed yarn, which always makes the best souvenir yarn. In what has become a tradition, I also found another Dale of Norway pattern book, different from the one I bought at Nana's Knitting Shop on my Oak Lawn trip.

Road Trip (a.k.a. Part 1)

The drive yesterday went very well. The sky stayed overcast & did not really rain on us until we were almost to Kansas City. The best thing about it, though, was that my dad agreed to do most of the driving. That gave me a chance to knit & to take pictures.



The rain never got very heavy, & there were not the threatened thunderstorms. It was fine weather for travelling, thank goodness.

I'll post a full report later. For now, though, I think I need to go back to sleep. We pushed on through & made it home at 2:30 in the morning, but I'm not so much of a night owl as I used to be.

Happy Birthday to Me.

My mother managed to surprise me yesterday with a knitting book that I didn't yet own, Fair Isle Sweaters Simplified.



Today I'm using my birthday money to travel to see a certain someone whom I missed in Chicago.

Saturday Sky, October 11th, 2008

Early morning sky in Middle America.

What's On My Needles This Wednesday

I've managed to *somewhat* restrain the Cast-On-Everything-Possible impulse since
finishing the UFOlympics, but I have started two new, large projects to replace the two sweaters I finished.
Both newly-started sweater projects are using yarn that has been in my stash for quite some time. I'm doing the Susie Hoodie from More Big Girl Knits, in Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted yarn. I'm loving this pattern so far.
The other sweater I started is the February Lady sweater, in Colorado Yarns Knitaly. I'm stalled while I figure out how I want to place the increases in the eyelet increase row. I'm also not sure I'm happy with where the button holes ended up in the yoke. I didn't stop to think that the length between button-holes was written for the small size. I wish I'd left a couple more rows between the button-holes, but I can't decide whether or not I want to try to frog this yarn.


I also have some smaller new projects on the needles. I started a pair of Dashing mitts, from Knitty. They are further along than this picture shows. I'm waiting until I have some quiet time this weekend to do the thumbs, & I hope to have them done by my birthday.

I'm also playing around with making mitts from leftover sock yarn. As you can see, however, I made the thumb hole just a *bit* big on this one.

Saturday Sky, October 4th, 2008

It was another gorgeous Saturday in St. Louis. We are just starting to see some fall color in my area. Here is the top of one of my neighbor's trees.

Strange Folk, Part 2

(Otherwise known as, The Post With The Loot.)

Finally there is time to finish up the post I started last week about the Strange Folk Festival.

Since Rachel had a booth there, I decided to wear my Icarus Shawl & my African Grey socks in honor of the occasion, to show off how her yarn knits up. I should have asked my husband to take a picture of me all decked out, but I forgot. I did at least think to get a picture of my socks later on that day.


I had several people comment on my shawl, & I pointed them all in the direction of the Dyeabolical Yarns booth.

Rachel's husband was there too, making good use of his time by spindle spinning.


I had to buy some yarn, of course. I bought DK weight in "Blue Beetle" & fingering weight in "Christmas is Coming". (Her yarn is available at Knitorious or on etsy.)
The first 100 people at the Festival got free Strange Folk bags, but I narrowly missed getting there in time for that. They did still have some extra goodies if you bought a bag, though, so I got a free copy of Craft magazine along with my $3 totebag.

I also bought some project bags from Pretty Fun. I love the little gnomes on the ribbon -- very "in theme" for the Festival. This bag will always remind me of a gorgeous September Saturday.

Lastly, I bought some cloth baggies from Gnomeclothes. They are fabric versions of the old-fashioned, pre-ziploc plastic sandwich bags, & are the perfect size to hold a cake of yarn.