::runs off to check blog posts::

…um… right… so I made another hat! Uh, I guess I’ll post about that later when I find the photos… wait I never blogged the yarn either… or the holidays… ::grumbles:: I’m doing badly with this blogging thing.

Right, anyway, NOW I’m back to knitting the sweater I’ve been designing… ::pauses:: I did tell you about that, right? Um… yeah, designing a sweater. Because clearly the most intelligent thing to do ever is to design the first sweater you ever knit.

Fumbled my way through the first sleeve. Changed a few things with the increases to make them more even and knitted the second sleeve… and screwed up my math. Disastrously. Balloon arm. So pulled it out. That was right before Rhinebeck.

Just got around to re-casting on for the second sleeve. I figured that with an almost hour commute each way, I’m going to have a lot of sitting time. So it’s either spindle spin in 2.5 foot increments between my knees, or maybe finally get some knitting done. So I cast on.

Done with the ribbing, will be starting the pattern in another… row I think.

Under the knitting, that’s my black book, my grimoire if you will. In that book lie my secrets. Dye recipes, knitting notes, some random science (mammalian estrous signalling pathways!), a few sketches, fiber mill notes, maps from worlds I’ve created… an eclectic collection of all manner of oddity from my brain. Heck, there’s even a few runs of learning to write the Arabic alphabet (which I’m terrible at). It’s no Necronomicon, but it might still drive a sane man crazy to try to understand it.

More later, apparently including the details of all the projects I haven’t been telling you about. Whee?

Gobo, being a lap dog. Usually this is Mokey’s trick (she’s convinced she’s still 6 inches long) but every once in a while he needs his turn too. Yes, I have spoiled dogs. Sorry the light is bad, flashless in the near dark is hard. That’s me under him.

That’s all for now!
~The Gnome

A: What I mean is actually “cable” ply. For some reason I keep calling it chain plying, which is the same as Navajo plying (plying via a giant crochet chain). Cable-ply is when you take a plied yarn and ply it to another plied yarn. A 2×2 cable-plied yarn would be two two-ply yarns plied together. So, a 4 ply yarn, made of 2 2-plies.

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Ted: What is “hosiery twist?”

A: Hosiery twist is a tight plying. In most technical terms, it’s 15.35 tpi (twists per inch)

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Feel free to ask any more questions you’ve got!

EDIT: Fixed the bit about cable/chain plying.

That’s all for now!

~The Gnome

A friend of mine is in Afghanistan, being a Corpsman and keeping people duct taped together. But it’s been cold there in the winter!

So, I set out to make a hat. But unlike my other hats, this one needed to be as durable as possible. Ideally it would hold up to regular hot washing and drying in the military dryers…

So I knitted myself up a swatch of a couple of the superwash yarns I have marinating in my stash and ran them through the washer on hot and then the dryer on hot with jeans and towels. I eliminated a few of them just during the knitting for falling apart while knitting.

I wasn’t terribly impressed. I tried three yarns, and they all felted some, and all of them got very fuzzy very quickly. You can see one example where the curling and fuzzing is pretty evident. The felting is less obvious in this one.

So, someone pointed out I have, you know, yarn. Oh, yeah, right! I’m a dyer! And that’d mean I could do it in whatever colors I want! Why didn’t I think of that?! I knit up a swatch of that in double-knit and sent it through the washer/dryer a bunch of times. It survived MUCH better, being a sock yarn designed for hard wearing!

So, I skeined up some double-strand skeins, and dyed up some yarn! The Phouka is a sock weight yarn, so I figured a double knit would work. Look everyone, it’s a hat! Ok, so it’s a Schroedinger’s Hat, a collection of yarn the quantum waveform of which might collapse into the “hat” superposition (Ok, all you normal people can look back now, nerd joke over).

So I started to knit! This is a lighter hat. If I wanted a slightly heavier hat, I could have trebled the yarn, but I didn’t want it to be too heavy. Lookin’ good, quantum wave function is collapsing…

Woot, it appears to be collapsing to “hat” and not to “yarn barf madness!”

Yay, it’s a hat! Yes, it’s a simple hat. I tend to make those because the people I mostly make them for like simple hats. This is a 3×2 rib hat. I do need to learn to make them six to six-and-a-half inches before making the crown… though the recipient has… much less hair than I do.

So that’s my latest knitting. I’ve also had some other projects in the works. More about those later.

And, because everything is cuter with a puppy… Mokey hat!

That’s all for now!

~The Gnome