Recently in blogger Category

Well, I spent some of the day preparing for my move to my new home: www.keyboardbiologist.net. I'm still working on getting Movable Type to do what I want it to, so it will probably still be a little while before I stop posting at my blogger space. I'm looking forward to the move though, because Blogger just doesn't always work when it should. Tonight, for instance, I can't upload a new template so that I can update my links. Not sure why.

I am still making gradual progress on several projects. Not enough to be worth using up bandwidth on pictures though. However, I do invite you to check out a little something I put together this afternoon: a pictoral guide to Yarn Forward, Knit

It's been one of those knitting weeks where I spend time going from project to project to project working a little bit on each one. The result? Nothing gets finished fast.

A lovely phone conversation with a good friend whose baby was supposed to be due today got me motivated to get back to the secret thing I was making for her. I'd gotten it most of the way through and then was sure that it wasn't going to look good, so I didn't even block it. Well, after blocking it, I discovered that I shouldn't have waited so long to block it, because the blocking really did make a difference. So now I am working on the border in hopes that I can finish it and get it together before the baby is too old. Here's a pic of the border:

When I first started knitting this I had no idea how neat it would turn out. The more things I do by Debbie Bliss the more I really like her stuff. I learned something new with this border as well -- how to handle a yarn forward while knitting. Before this little piece, I understood the part about bring the yarn to the front, but I was sort of baffled as to where the stitch increase came from. Not any more! Thanks to another Debbie Bliss book Learning to Knit that has great pictures (I've learned several techniques from this book), I finally was able to figure how the yarn forward/knit thing works. So after I finish up a few of my current projects, I should be ready to take on Neroli again.

TV time means simple project I can knit in the dark time, so I got back to Mom's sock. Here's a picture of the progress so far:

I'm liking the colors in this sock better than I did when I put up the first pictures. Especially, since the more I look at it, the more I think how well it will go with my mom! The Koigu is so soft and easy to work with, too. It was hard to put the sock down so I could blog tonight.

And, last but not least, for those of you who love quizzes and have been confused about what your gender might be, I bring you the most entertainment I got from the web today:

The Super Scientific Remarkably Accurate Gender Test

Answer some questions, let the test tell you where you fall. I fell right on the middle between male and female (it thought I was male), but my husband got the right prediction. Definitely worth the 5 minutes, even if you don't get some HTML and a cute picture at the end to post on your blog!

Happy April Fool's Day to Everyone!

A Major Sequencing Center (Sanger) in the UK Released the T. rex Genome Sequence today.

Check it out at Ensembl T.rex

I've been subject to a lot of April Foolishness today, but this is the only one that got me -- probably because it would be so totally cool if it really was true. Even if you're not a biologist, it's fun to check out.

Be sure not to miss the section on Unique Dinosaur Genes. You don't have to like science to be amused by some of the entries they created.

Have fun!

Not too much knitting today, but I do have a picture of the progress on the pullover for John:

This is the sweater after casting on the shoulder rows. I'm really quite surprised how nice an edge this makes. Now it'll be pretty much smooth sailing down the armholes and to the bottom.

And what was I doing instead of knitting.... configuring Movable Type at my new webhost. I registered keyboardbiologist.net (I know, you're all heartbroken now that this domain isn't available any more) at GoDaddy for $8.95/year. I'll be at blogspot a while longer while I set up my new place but I am having a lot of fun re-decorating in my new home!

I was promising myself that I would not start another project. Really I was. And then I found a lovely sweater pattern in Sally Melville's The Knit Stitch that John liked at first glance. And then I discovered that Elann had very nice prices on Austermann Rubino - a merino/acrylic blend that has a delicate look, but I think will hold up to being worn my favorite guy.

Only once I got the yarn, I discovered that in spite of it being considered "Worsted" weight by Elann, it's probably closer to a DK weight, which meant that my first guage swatch was a little too airy for the husband (even I agreed with this assessment). So I went down a few needle sizes (to 4.0 mm) and this time the fabric knit up to a better density. Well, I knit up my second swatch on my Swallow Caseins. Nice looking fabric buy way too much drag. Apparently Rubino and casein don't interact very well. So after casting on once with the Swallows and getting very annoyed very quickly with the drag issue I ripped and decided to try another pair of needles.

Since I had a 4.0 mm AddiTurbo conveniently at hand, I decided to try out the Addi. I was worried that the metal surface would over-compensate for my drag problem and give me a much looser than desired fabric, but actually, I got the exact same gauge as I did with the Swallows. Go figure. The Addis are much nicer to work with and the Rubino moves very nicely over them, so it was definitely worth the time re-swatching.

One of the neat things about this sweater is that it is a top down pattern. So I am starting with the neck and working towards the bottom. For those of us who cast on tightly, this can be something of a scary proposition. Sally, however, has a nice solution -- the crochet cast-on. For pictures of this cast on, take a look at pp. 74-75 in The Knit Stitch or check out this site. You'll have to scroll about 1/2-way down for the method and pictures. I really like this cast-on method -- it comes out nice and loose and it does provide a very nice looking edge that looks like a cast-off edge. Here's a close-up of the cast on edge from the sweater:

I just love how smooth this cast-on edge looks, and how nice and loose it is. It does take a little more time to cast-on than a long-tail cast-on, but not too much more time. It also has the extra benefit of not needing to figure out how much yarn you need for the long-tail. You just make a slip knot and cast on until you have enoug stitches, leaving whatever length tail you want. Probably the hardest thing about this cast on is making sure that you keep your tension and spacing even, otherwise you end up with areas with different tensions on the edge, which doesn't make for a very nice way to start a garment. I don't have the pictures, so you'll just have to trust me on this one.

Here's the collar, with stitch number adjusted to take into account my gauge (6 st/inch instead of 4 st/inch):

This is the perfect height collar for John, who hates things binding around his neck. The next thing to come will be figuring out the shoulder shaping. It shouldn't be too hard, but since this is one of the first times that I will have had to totally alter a pattern to do what I want with it, I am hoping that I won't miss something critical and be forced to frog back to the beginning. I think I am definitely going to put a life-line in at the base of the collar, just in case. If everything works out, I'll post my pattern modifications for anyone who might like to do this sweater in a finer gauge yarn.

I'm feeling especially motivated to work on this sweater because John has spent most of the weekend working on getting a webserver set up for me so that I can move my website to a place of unlimited disk space. It will also give me a chance to play with MovableType (which now supports PostgresSQL!)... a girl can never have too many fun computer software toys! I especially like that Moveable Type is written in Perl -- which is my current language of most expressiveness.

This is not a knitting related post. If you're looking for knitting, scroll down. This is a science geek related post.

I was browsing through our journal collection at work when I came across something that struck me as really amusing:

Now you might think that I am making a not so nice jab at my unmarried counterparts looking for partners. I'm not. Really. I actually met my wonderful, awesome, incredible husband through a now defunct web-personals site (at least in the incarnation that I posted to it on): www.love.com. So I really have no problem with people finding people through the web! In fact, I know several friends who found themselves the software engineer of their dreams this way. No, what amused me most about this is "Singles In Science" nestled in between "Brain Histology" and instrumentation ads in the (mostly) biological news journal The Scientist. It just seems so out of place to me, and that's what made if seem so funny. One stop shopping for HPLC purified oligonucleotides, pre-owned lab equipment and spouses!

The link to Science Connection does work (click on the image to take a look for yourself).

Okay, I know I am late for the Academy Award thing, but I finally did decide on what pair of socks to start next.

This is the colorway I described as berry sundae in my previous post. Here's what it looks like cast on:

This is interesting yarn, because you would think from looking at it that the reds would stand out. Instead, it's the browns, as you can see from the little progress I have made on the cuff of the first sock (below). I am a little disappointed. The brown is nice and all, but the reds and blues are what hold my personal interest. However, I'll reserve my complete judgement until I get past the ribbing.

I would have had pictures of this up earlier, but I cast the thing on about 4 times before I was happy with it. You see, I cast on very tightly. I learned a good trick from Julie for a looser edge: doing a long-tail cast-on over two needles of about the same size as the needle you plan to work on. This was the cast on I used for the 3 other paris of socks I did or still have on needles. But Sally Mellville's The Knit Stitch turned me on to the crochet cast-on. The swatches I tried with it had a lovely, much looser edge. So I decided it would also be good to try with my socks.

I cast on the first time: much too loose, sock would have been big enough for an NFL linebacker
I cast on the second time: too tight. I might have been able to get it on, but not comfortably
I cast on the thrid time: just right on one side, too tight on the other

So I went back to what Julie taught me and it was "just right". I do like the crochet cast-on, but I think it works better for me on larger needles. I'm looking forward to testing it out again when I start John's sweater. Probably I will have to re-swatch for that project again. I did a little test using the Swallow Casein needles and they really have a high drag coefficient with the Rubino -- almost like the yarn is sticking to the needle. I have a feeling I'll be fighting them the whole project, and I am not up to fighting my needles for the entirety of a man-sized sweater.

Tales of speedy Elann delivery times were impressively demonstrated when my Rubino arrived on Saturday morning:

13 skeins of soft, white Austermann Rubino. It reminds me a great deall of Rowan Wool Cotton. Elann describes it as being of "Worsted Weight", but it seems a little finer than that. Of course, I couldn't resist pulling out a ball and swatching it up for John's sweater. In this case, it turned out to be a good thing that I did.

This picture gives you both a glimpse of my knitting journal and the two swatches I did for the sweater. I did the swatch using the stitch pattern for the sweater. The swatch on the left is done on US 8s (bamboo), the swatch on the right is done on US 6's (Swallow Casein -- as an aside, I found that the yarn was very "grabby" on these needles, I liked the bamboo feel better). Since it was John's sweater, after I did the first one, I handed him the swatch and asked his opinion. "Too open for a white sweater" was the response, "I'll have to wear a T shirt under it." Now, the first swatch was definitely smaller than recommended gauge, but even I didn't think that it would be good to go up a needle size.

Since I liked the stitch and the sweater pattern, I decided to go down to the smaller needles (incidentally, the size needle recommended on the ball). I figured that since I wasn't getting guage with the bigger needles, I was going to have to alter the pattern anyway, so what could it hurt to go down a little more?. The swatch done on 6's met with much more approval from the intended wearer. It had just one small drawback: it's exactly 1/2 the area of the original swatch. So I made a quick "trip" (sometimes I love to shop on line) back to Elann and ordered 5 more skeins -- I made this estimate based on the pattern's estimates, increase in area and the free patterns for the yarn that Elann sent along. That gives me ~2500 yards to work with (900 g!).

I managed to get all this accomplished before taking my trip out to see Julie to make stitch markers. Julie let me dig around in her wonderful collection of beads and then showed me how to play with pliers to achieve the desired results. Believe it or not, these little fellas were all made by me:

Julie is a wonderful teacher of plier arts! By the time I set off for home, I felt like I actually knew a little bit about what I was doing with the tools. The hardest part is wrapping the tail of the loop around the wire and trimming it so that it won't snag knitting. I initially wanted to make a bunch of different markers, but fell in love with the little bears and decided that I wanted to make a collection of matching markers with them. The markers in the picture are shown haning from a US 7 needle, and they could easily swing from an 8 or a 9. For anyone who is interested in a source of beads, much of Julie's stash came from Caravan Beads in Chicago.

Woo hoo! I finished my first pair of socks for myself using Regia 5042. They are definitely fraternal, but with this yarn, it is easier to identify that the yarn is the same than the pattern is different.

Of course, the real test of a good pair of socks is how they look on the right pair of feet:

After I took the picture I just couldn't take them off. They feel so soft and nice on the inside -- nicer even than I thought they would. I bet you can all guess which pair of socks I will be wearing tomorrow! I like the way they go with my jeans -- the blue comes out very well with them. I think I am definitely going to have to go in search of some more of this pattern in a different colorway... maybe 5047 and 5048.

Now I have to decide which socks to cast on next... the names next to the Koigu are my made up names to give some description to the colorway. I am currently leaning towards the Koigu, just because I really haven't knit much with it yet. Opinions anyone?

• Grey Opal (for John)
  
• Koigu PPPM p514 "John Deere" (for Dad)
  
• Koigu PPPM p201 "Chocolate, Raspberry, Blueberry, Vanilla Sundae" (for Mom)
  
• Koigu PPPM p500 "Ripe Vine Tomatoes" (for me, in Crusoe pattern)
  
• Brown/Grey/Black/White Jacquard Regia (for John?)
  
• Black Colored Stripes Regia (for me)
  

I'll close my post tonight with a picture of my Beezle-Weasel doing what I should really do very soon (although not in a shoebox) since I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow learning how to make stitch markers with Julie. He looks so cute you might forget for a moment that he is a bamboo knitting needle terrorist who will actually drag them out of mostly sealed containers.

Yesterday I made my first purchase from Elann -- 13 Skeins of Austermann Rubino in white -- way more than I should need, but it was so affordable, that I decided to make sure I had a little extra. I can always turn it into a nice winter scarf. I really can't get over the fact that I will get a man-sized sweater for less than $40. I think even John, who is a bargain hunter extraordinaire, was impressed.

Since I had not registered with them before, I was also pleasantly surprised to find out something else about Elann that I don't remember seeing on the blogs -- for every $500 you spend with them, you get $50 back. Not bad. Of course, with their prices, it will take me some time to get to $500, but it definitely makes me want to come back!

It is an odd time for me right now. On one hand, I am feeling very tired and lethargic because of some stressful things going on at work, so even my simple sock projects are not progressing. On the other hand, I find my creative side clawing to get out... I've been sketching sweater designs. I have one in my head and on paper that is really just a matter of finding some wonderful ribbon yarn to swatch with and then taking some measurements and going forward. I'm thinking Tagliatelli or Giotto... but need to wait a while before I do any purchasing.

So please pardon the lower than average content as I deal with other things.