where are your gloves and your helmet?

Got it into my head the other day that I wanted to try making a mitered square blanket for my actual bed, rather than just an afghan. I tried mitered square knitting years ago when I lived in NJ but did not clue in to the fact that I was supposed to pick up and knit stitches along the edges of existing squares, then cast on the rest of the stitches I'd need, and sort of knit three or four squares with the intention of sewing them together before deciding to declare the project a lost cause.

I've gotten things straight since then and recently bought three skeins of what is billed on the Lion Brand website as Wool-Ease Cakes (80% acrylic, 20% wool, machine washable but lay flat to dry, light worsted/heavyish doubleknit weight) yarn. I had wanted something more variegated than self-striping, but tbh the variegated wool/acrylic blends I looked at were mostly of bulky or sock weight, and those that weren't had the distinct downside of costing way more per yard. So I bought three good-sized cakes with the intention of seeing how the results looked before buying any more. I figured if I got to the end of it and was disappointed there'd probably be an animal shelter that didn't mind having something to let the critters curl up on. (As opposed to donating it to a people organization; if I knitted something and decided it did not look like the first part of a blanket I wanted in my house, it seemed unfair to me to inflict ugly on a person who was already economically unfortunate.) I don't really care that buying another batch of skeins means a different dye lot. It's mitered squares. The colors are supposed to vary from unit to unit.

The yarn arrived with Mandala as the line name rather than Wool-Ease, but it's the same colorways with the same names, so okay, yeah. For some reason they decided to name the colorways after six major Greek deities, plus Tyche. The colorways are here; I went with a cake each of Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. I really have no idea what they were thinking with the colors that got named Hecate. Maybe someone meant to say Hestia instead and named the wrong goddess by mistake?

I'll post a picture when I get my first nine squares done.

So I started knitting a cat bed to felt for Shula (or whatever cat I'm going to adopt) on my way down to the beach last Thursday, as something to do on the train. Finished the knitting a few nights ago. Didn't have the quarters to do two hot water washes until yesterday. It's finally been felted- after covering the inside of the washing machine with so much blue lint that I felt honor-bound to get in there and swipe it all out two or three times over. I had to wrap my wok in plastic and then a bath towel to get something round that was large enough for effective blocking. The bed's drying out now.

Understand, Shula normally sleeps wherever he damn well feels like, and I doubt he'll change his mind for this. I did this mostly because I plan to adopt from Bide-a-Wee, and the cats there have beds in their cages, and I'd like to make sure that whoever gets adopted has at least something comfortable- that or Shula has something to move into when the new cat decides his sleeping spaces look like fun. It's also been a while since I did any knitting in general, and a project that amounted to 'knit big yarn on big needles in circles that you don't have to pay much attention to' seemed like a good place to start getting back into the hobby. I like to balance out computer learning with low-tech stuff, too. When I took my county college courses to get into the Kean master's program in MIS, I was taking one computer class and one cooking class per semester for my sanity's sake. Knitting balances out Cisco, more or less. I'll be knitting for humans soon enough, as I've got more yarn than I intended and I have the urge to do some fingerless gloves up for hands much smaller than mine, not to mention that my nephew saw me working on the cat bed and persistently asked to knit a scarf of his own. He's five and a half. I'm gonna get him a nice size 11 or larger circ (so he doesn't lose one needle or drop too many stitches off the wrong end) and a skein or two of Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick to teach him on, and I'm going to find whatever documentation I can on historical Scandinavian knitting done by guys because his parents worry at times about gender roles and it's hard to beat Vikings for manly.

yeah, I know, it was more the Viking women doing the knitting than the men, but I have to start somewhere, and I don't think the rehabilitative programs where modern day male prisoners knit toys and small blankets for hospitalized children are the best example of manly men knitting. People get weird about words like 'prisoner' no matter what the guys are doing or why. And I already heard my sister objecting to Rosey Grier being held up as an example of a manly guy doing a womanly craft. Mom tried that one on her, and it didn't take. If my nephew were skilled enough to do color or pattern knitting I would have him work on something with Godzilla in it, but he's still so young that he hasn't quite figured out if he's left-handed or ambidextrous or what...

I personally don't see anything particularly wrong with a kid his age learning to do something that comes across as girly, but then I was given a copy of the Free To Be... You And Me record when I was about five, and that kind of thing does a good job of stomping on gender roles. And it's not as if I'm exactly known for being much good at social conceptions of the female gender anyway. When my nephew and his sister are older I'll see about things like model rockets and archery sets for both of them and then I suspect his parents will beg me to stick to teaching him to knit.

Anyway. I was going to say that once I get home tonight and verify that the cat bed's dry I'll take some pictures of it. The only picture I thought to take of the work in progress pre-felting is here, and most of it's under the cat anyway. Alas. Next time, perhaps.

I am well into the pattern section on the Socks of Rassilon. THe seal is not going to be as obvious as I had hoped. This is because the Sixth Doctor yarn is a rainbow colourway, with the occasionl blue or dark purple section; those bits blend right in with the blue yarn that comprises the rest of the sock. The blue yarn also features the occasional dark purple or greenish bit. Still, I shall perservere, and hopefully I will be able to produce Socks of Rassilon with a more blatant pair of colours somewhere along the line.

And yes, I do think this sort of calls for a Mitten of Omega design somewehre along the line.

Going to the knitting store at lunchtime. This is the second time I've lost track of one of my size 0 needles. I'm sure the damn thing is probably on my desk at home or something, but I found out yesterday that size 0 needles are remarkably skilled at slipping through the fabric of the tote bag I use as a purse, and I'd rather not lose any more. I'm going to get two size 0 circulars and knit the Socks of Rassilon on those.

Also I shall get some point protectors to avoid bag puncturing.

I've started on the Socks of Rassilon. I'll post the colour chart once I get it rendered into a format that'll scan properly. I broke down and used KnitPro to cough up the chart this time; yours truly is a bit of a wuss when it comes to really complicated designs. KnitPro, however, uses actual knitting graph paper proportions for its grid, and then you have to go through and decide which of the grey squares you want and which you don't, so... it'll be a bit before I get the colour chart up.

Not that it matters, because the first part of the Socks goes as follows:

1. Get your size 0 needles out. That would be the 2.0 mm needles. You want four size 0 double-points, plus a fifth to work with.

2. Get your contrasting colour yarn. This is the skein that made you go 'Ooh! Sixth Doctor!' in the store.

3. Cast on 92 stitches.

4. Divide the 92 stitches up so that there are 23 stitches on each needle.

5. Making sure not to accidentally get a twist in the sequence of stitches somewhere, because we are not knitting Moebius socks, join the stitches up...

6. ... by means of purling two in the Sixth Doctor yarn, then knitting two in the main colour yarn.

7. Do this all the way around, that is, purl two with the contrasting yarn and knit two with the main colour yarn. In fact, do it for ten rows.

I'm currently on about the start of row three. When you are working with size 0 needles it takes a while to accomplish much. But I will keep you posted.


... I'm gonna need an icon for this.