My last CMS knitting

Every Thursday of the academic year for the last six years, I've gone to two seminars: CMS, the graduate student seminar in my department, then tea and cookies followed by Colloquium, our department-wide seminar (which is almost always a guest from outside our university).

I've brought my knitting to almost all of these talks (with the exception of several weeks last Fall when I brought my job applications because I needed more time to work on them).  Last Thursday was my last CMS.  It turned out that the week before was my last colloquium, since the speaker scheduled for last week fell ill and was unable to come.  I'm graduating!  I might have to come up with a new excuse for some kind of weekly update post.

My knitting last week wasn't particularly interesting.  I knitted most of the gusset on the first sock in the pair I'm knitting for my husband's birthday next month.  The black/navy yarn is pretty hard to see.  Knitting men's socks is much more time consuming than women's socks - I'm really noticing that this sock is going much more slowly than the purple knot theory socks I'm knitting for my advisor!

CMS/Colloquium knitting

I finished the leg and knitted the heel flap on the first of Robert's birthday socks.  I ended up just sitting with nothing to do with my hands for the last 20 minutes of Colloquium on Thursday, because I didn't bring the More Sensational Socks book with me, and I needed it to tell me how to start the heel turn.

I also brought this with me to church this morning and knitted in between the services.  I finished the heel turn and started the gusset.  It's zipping along!

CMS/Colloquium knitting: Secret Socks

I started a new project in CMS last week - a project I'm not working on at home, because these socks are going to be a birthday surprise for Robert.  The yarn is Cascade Heritage Sock in a color that I think is navy but other people seem to think is black.  I cast on 70 stitches and I'm working a stitch pattern from the More Sensational Knitted Socks book (which is a fantastic book!).

I made a good start on it in my two hours on Thursday afternoon, and it came to church with me this morning.  I have a bit over a month to get it done, so I think it's definitely doable!

Last week's CMS/Colloquium knitting

My birthday was at the end of February, and my mom gave me a knitting kit she assembled herself: a skein of hand-dyed yarn (naturally dyed with madder) that she got while she was travelling earlier in the month, and a choice of three fingering-weight shawl patterns.  I chose one of the patterns ("Happenstance") and cast on.  It's moving pretty quickly - this is what it looked like at the end of my seminars just over a week ago, and it's grown quite a bit since then.

The yarn is a single-ply merino-silk blend, and it has a really beautiful sheen.  I think this is going to be a really lovely shawl once it's finished and blocked out!

CMS/Colloquium knitting

I started a new project in CMS on Thursday: a Trellis Cardigan in Lindy Chain yarn.  It is not the same Trellis cardigan that I recently knit for my nephew!

I want a new dressy-ish lightweight cardigan.  For years, I wore plain cotton cardigans from Land's End.  I had a navy blue one and a magenta one and loved them both, but eventually they wore out.  I currently have a yellow cable cardigan from Eddie Bauer, but I don't love it.  It doesn't seem to have enough body, so it just droops in front, and I can never seem to get the shoulders to sit right.  Since I can knit more sweaters than I need, I decided to try to knit the sweater I really want to wear.

I'm not sure that this yarn is the best choice for this sweater, but I'm going to give it a try.  I didn't knit a swatch, but I'm thinking of doing that before I get too much farther, just to make sure I'm knitting the right size (although the projects I found on Ravelry noted that gauge didn't change much after washing).

CMS/Colloquium knitting: Stripey Socks!

I don't have any CMS knitting to report on from this week, since I finished my self-striping socks in Colloquium the week before.  I'm thrilled with how they look and how they fit!

I spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of heel I wanted to knit - I didn't want to interrupt the striping pattern, so a traditional heel flap and gusset was out.  I tried a fleegle heel on the first sock, and that made the stripes very narrow in a way I didn't like, so that was out, too.  I thought I didn't want an afterthought/forethought heel because those tend to be way too tight around the arch of my foot.  I ended up doing a lot of internet research on sock patterns for self-striping yarns and ways to make short-row heels fit better.  I settled on a mini-gusset for a forethought heel, from a fantastic sock article by Kate Atherley in Knitty (link below).  Then I knitted a round heel.  I was a bit amused to see that the round heel put a green dot on the underside of my heel - it's visible in the picture above.

The round heels pucker when the socks are flat, but they fit really well on my feet.

Here's how much yarn I have left over.  I used almost all of it!

Pattern: My own toe-up, forethought heel sock pattern, using the toe from Fleegle's basic recipe, the section of Knitty's Socks 102 article on "Adding Gussets to a Short Row Heel for Better Fit," and for the heel, the round toe/heel instructions from More Sensational Knitted Socks
Size: 64 sts for foot and leg
Yarn: KnitPicks Felici self-striping sock yarn in "Wizard"
Needles: 2.5mm sock DPNs
Started/Completed: July 2015/January 2016
Modifications: I added an additional 6 stitches on each side of the top of the foot for the gusset.  Then I started the ribbing on the "back" half of the leg (the half without the extra gusset stitches) immediately after knitting in the waste yarn for the heel, while keeping the front half stockinette until I had decreased away all of the gusset stitches, then switched to 1x1 ribbing for the front as well.  This helped eliminate a bit of bagging at the back ankle, without drawing attention to the fact that gusset decreases were happening.

CMS/Colloquium knitting

 This is how my sock looked at the end of CMS (the first of two seminars) on Thursday afternoon.

This second photo is what it looked like when I got home Thursday evening.  I spent the first ten minutes of colloquium ripping back to the foot, because I realized that the foot was way to long.  By an inch.  This is the first time I've used this particular heel pattern, so it's not that surprising that I had to figure out the hard way how much length the heel adds to the foot (if you're wondering, I now know it's 4.25").  What is surprising is how long I was in denial about the need to rip it back and re-do it.

I don't mind, because for me socks are about process - after all, in this hot humid hot humid climate I don't wear socks very often - so it just means I get to knit with this wonderfully soft beautiful yarn for longer.  And even if I were knitting for product, it's so much better to have a product that fits!

CMS knitting

This photo shows my Swans Island sock after CMS last Thursday. Comparing it to the photo in the last post, I feel pretty good about how much progress I made in less than 90 minutes of knitting time! (I knitted on the bus to school and in the first of my usual two Thursday seminars; the second seminar was cancelled last week.)

CMS knitting

This is last Thursday's CMS knitting.  The foot of the sock went a lot faster than I expected and I wasn't sure where to stop for the heel, so I put it aside for the second seminar.  It turns out I stopped at exactly the right place to start the gusset!

Sweater dilemma

This is a current picture of my Lofoten sleeve, taken after Colloquium the Thursday before last.  The measurement that prompted my dilemma is the length: 18.5" from the purl turning row, with four more increase rounds to go before I get to the stitch count for the top of the sleeve for the 40" size.  The schematic gives some ridiculously short length for the sleeve.  I don't remember exactly what it is, but under 17".  I am at least 5'10".  I cannot wear a 17" long sleeve, no matter how much ease there is in the body (the pattern suggests at least 4" of ease).

This discovery, Thursday morning just as I was trying to grab my knitting and get out the door to go to work, prompted me to think about my gauge, and to calculate out the intended gauge of the pattern.  I really think it's ridiculous that this pattern (which is not free!) only specifies the gauge for the colorwork sections, even though the plain stockinette takes up WAY more of the sweater.  But I'm a mathematician, so I can figure these things out.  The gauge for the stockinette is supposed to be the same as the gauge for the colorwork (WHY?  doesn't the pattern writer realize that people are likely to get wildly different gauges for dense stranded colorwork and plain stockinette?) - 25 sts/4".  I got stitch gauge easily for the colorwork bracelet, so I figured I was fine.  But my stitch gauge in the stockinette portion of the sleeve is 21.5 sts/4".

I did a little bit more arithmetic, and even if I knit the smallest size (36"), I now expect my sweater to come out a bit more than 40" around.  Good thing I'm not twig-skinny!  So my plan now is to start the body using the stitch counts for the 36" size.  I'm not sure yet what to do about the sleeve.  I might end up frogging it and starting over, or I might just frog the stockinette part, or I might make it work to use what I've already knit, depending on what the stitch count is supposed to be at the end of the sleeve.  I'm trying to tell myself that this is why I started with a sleeve - so it can be a swatch that might just end up being part of the sweater.  

CMS knitting

I worked on my first Lofoten sleeve on Thursday.  It's zipping along!  I'm at least one third of the way through the sleeve (based on row count, maybe not based on stitch count/yarn use)!  I've almost used up the first skein of black yarn - the table is just visible through the skein in the picture.  I'm a little bit concerned about having enough black yarn.  I have 12 skeins, including this one.  I'm trying to tell myself that I'm making one of the smaller sizes, so the kit should be plenty of yarn, even with lengthening the sweater!

CMS/Colloquium knitting

After I cast off my Gradient Multnomah last week, I didn't have a single knitting project on the needles to take with me to CMS and Colloquium!  It is really rare and a little weird for me to not have ANY knitting to work on ... so I cast on something new.  This is the beginning of the hemmed cuff for the first sleeve of Lofoten.  The bottom black part (up to the purl ridge just below the colorwork) will be folded under.

I'm making a few modifications:  I'm knitting the 40" size (this sweater is intended to be worn with 4" of positive ease), but I think I'm going to want to lengthen the sleeves (and possibly also the body), so I started the sleeves and the bracelet pattern with the chart for the 36-38" sizes.  I expect to just make the increase section longer, to end with the right number of stitches for the 40" size at the top of the sleeve.  The instructions say to just knit even at the top of the sleeve increases for extra length, but I don't think I want the extra bagginess at the top of the sleeves.  I'd rather have them a bit narrower for the length of the sleeve.  I hope this works out!

Now I need to get working on finishing a few of my UFOs - I'm up to 7 (EEK)!

CMS/Colloquium knitting

I keep working away at my Gradient Multnomah, and I'm getting close to the end!  I did almost two repeats of the lace in my two hours of seminars this past Thursday (last week I did just over two).  I added two more repeats on each side of the shawl, so the rows are taking longer.  I now have more repeats than the pattern calls for, but I'm going to keep going until I run out of yarn.

Last night I was reading an Interweave Knits magazine, and drooling over all the lovely patterns.  I can't wait to finish at least one of my embroidered pillowcase projects so I can start knitting a sweater!

Two weeks of CMS/Colloquium knitting

This picture is from last week, but I didn't manage to get one between my seminars on Thursday afternoon and church this morning.  It looks pretty much the same, just with three-ish more repeats of the feather and fan lace.  I'm getting to the next color change!  I'm really happy with how it's turning out, and from now I'm just chugging along until I run out of yarn.

CMS/Colloquium knitting

I started the lace edging of my Gradient Multnomah shawl this week.  It feels like it's going a lot slower now that the rows are so long.  I weighed my remaining yarn after the first feather and fan pattern row, and I had 48 grams left (of a skein that claimed to start at 75 grams).  When I was choosing the pattern for this yarn, I came across a pattern with a wide lace edging that said to start the border when you have 50% of your yarn remaining, so I'm guessing that my lace edging will be quite wide.  That's okay with me!  I'm really enjoying how the shawl is turning out and how great the shifting colors look.

CMS/Colloquium crochet!

I finally finished weaving in the many many ends on the back of my mitered square blanket-thing last week, so yesterday I took in to work on the edging during my Thursday afternoon seminars.  I'm getting two rounds of single crochet around the edge.  I was working on it just now, and I ran out of black yarn with about a foot to go on the second round.  I don't want to rip out the whole second round, so I'm using some of the leftover tofutsies yarn from the squares to finish it out.  I think I'm going to finish this tonight (and I finished another long-term UFO this week)!

Last week's CMS/Colloquium knitting

I knitted about two and a half repeats of the faux argyle pattern on the leg of my second sock last Thursday.  I started with the second row of the leg (after the ribbed cuff) and was pleasantly surprised when the first talk finished that I had knitted almost 20 rounds!  The faux argyle repeat is 16 rounds, and I am putting 4 repeats on the leg. 

I realized yesterday that I'm not at all ahead in terms of starts and finishes.  Since the beginning of February, I've finished 16 projects and started 8, so according to my self-imposed rule I need to finish two more things before I start the next new project.  But I have at least two projects I want to make for Christmas gifts, and I haven't started either of them yet!  I might have to go into project-finishing debt this December ...

CMS/Colloquium knitting

I finished the foot and toe of my first Business Casual sock on Thursday.  I decided to continue the faux argyle pattern into the beginning of the toe, because I wanted the last point to be a center one.  Now that I see it in the picture, I'm not 100% sure that was the right choice, but the toe is now drafted so it's too late to change and I don't think it's that important, anyways.

I took it with me to go to a math conference and visit family this weekend, and the ribbed cuff on the second sock is now almost done. 

I saw a woman knitting at the conference on Saturday!  I was kind of excited.  She was only knitting during the break between talks, not during the talks themselves.  I haven't ever brought knitting to a conference, and I don't have any plans to (although I did see something online about a knit-in or something at the joint math meetings?  I might bring knitting to something like that, but not to the rest of the conference).

CMS/Colloquium knitting

My Business Casual socks are the only knitting project that I currently have on the needles, so that's what I took to school with me to work on during CMS and Colloquium this past week.  I started on the second row of the foot (after the end of the gusset decreases) and knitted about two thirds of the way to the toe. 

Last Week's CMS/Colloquium knitting

I finished the mitered square part of this knitted object last Thursday afternoon. I have a very small amount left of three of the colors, but certainly not enough to do another row. I'm pretty happy with the size (I did measure it, but I didn't write down the dimensions and now I don't remember what they were).

 My task now is to weave in all of the many many yarn ends on the back. When I first started this back in college, I was very disciplined about weaving the ends in as d finished each mitered square, but since I picked it up again I've only woven in the starting end for each square I which I do as I'm knitting the second row. I've taken this home and I'm trying to do 5 ends every time l sit down to watch TV, so I never feel overwhelmed with this huge and unpleasant task. After the ends are all woven in I'll put a black border on it somehow.