Blogging and jogging llamas

This blog has been the prime motivator of my knitting habit for just a little over two years. That means this is my third summer of knit-blogging. Summer is a dull time for knitting blogs. There's not much traffic. There's not many scrumptious woolly projects. There's a definite loss of interest in knitting during the heat and activity of the summer months.

Even though I had planned a blog milestone gift for all the wonderful readers who read my ramblings, I didn't forecast much blogging excitement this summer. My projects have been classic (i.e. dull), my progress has been slow, and my enthusiasm lacking.

It's like I've been standing still.

Until this past week. This week, during one of the busier times of my life, my obscure little knitting blog was hit hard. Some sort of odd traffic found my blog and hit it to the tune of several thousand visitors in a few days.

Maybe it was people in tie-dyed shirts that run with llamas?

Just when I thought it was a dull summer, I got unusually high stats right when I was ready to post my 200th entry. After I put some controls on the blog, the traffic seems to have gone back to normal. I'll keep my fingers crossed that whatever it was has moved on to bother someone else. I think it was targeted because the blog title and site name begin with a number. That puts it up on the top of any alphabetical list. There's something to consider when naming a blog. Stay away from those numbers.

Watch out for the llamas, too.

Not that I mind blog traffic. I'd love to have thousands of visitors read each post. However, I want them to read because they are interested in the knitting, and only the knitting. Admittedly, I'd also like to see a lot of admiring comments, even though I have lost interest in answering each comment with an individual response. I've considered disabling comments for a while now, so it didn't bother me to disable them for the few days following the recent traffic blitz. Blog commenting is back on now, just so I can get a quick comment if there is an error in something I've posted. I've just blocked anonymous comments.

I'm taking it all in stride. I've learned to expect the unexpected from people.

What I expected yesterday was burro races. What I got was llama races. It's an annual event for Burro Days in Fairplay, Co. The llamas and their partner humans run 3 miles through an obstacle course that includes three river crossings.

Both the llamas, which are supplied by local llama ranchers, and the runners, who are promoting organ donation, seemed to fare pretty well. I was surprised to see what I think are alpacas running with them, but I could be wrong. Maybe they are just young llamas? At the last, two of the smaller ones were getting the best of two of the younger runners. They were just a few blocks from the finish line but the animals didn't want to go. Carrying, pushing, pulling and prodding didn't work. At one point, the smallest alpaca (or llama) just crumpled up and sat down in the middle of the street. Tired. No go.

I sympathize. Sometimes I lose interest, too. It helps to remember that there are people out there who bother to read what I write, look at my pictures and praise my knitting. Because they do, I have written 200 blog posts.

In the past two years, my blog has had over 30,000 visits from 20,000 visitors from 112 countries. The stats don't match because about a third are return visitors. I know why most of them click to get here. Free knitting patterns are the most popular posts. That's why I chose to post my latest free pattern for my 200th post, as a small payback to my readers. So far, it seems to be a big success. Once I feel sure it is relatively error-free, I'll try posting a pdf version.

The burro races were this morning. If you feel sorry for the llamas, consider the burros who have it a bit tougher, racing 30 miles up Mosquito Pass and back down. There's a short race for those with less endurance--15 miles. The rain here this morning put us off going to the burro races. I hope it didn't rain at Mosquito Pass.

Knitted Guest Hand Towel Pattern

Bubble Up Towel
(click here for pdf printable version)

Materials:

Yarn--4 50 gm. hanks (88 yds.) Pakucho cotton, color Natural (very white). Available here. (I don't get any benefit from touting this yarn. I just like it.)

Small amount of contrasting yarn, about 20 yds ea. of 2 colors. I used Blue Sky Organic Cotton.

Needles--size 7 or size needed to get gauge.

Gauge: 20 st./4 in, gauge is not crucial.

Begin:

Cast on a multiple of 5 stitches plus 1. For a finished size of 15" wide by 22" long, allowing for shrinkage when washed, cast on 81 stitches.

Begin with a turned hem, so if you are careful about such things, use a size 7 or 8 needle to cast on, then knit on a 6. You're going to sew or knit this hem down and you want a loose edge to sew or pick up, and you want the back side to be fairly tight so the hem will lay flat. For me, I think, "It's just a towel" and use a long-tail cast on, starting with a size 8, switching right away to a 7. Draw out an extra long piece for your "tail" and you can use it to sew the hem down.

If you are really particular, use a provisional cast on, so that you can knit the loose stitches from the provisional cast on with the live stitches and eliminate sewing the hem. This is really overkill for a towel, but is one way to get a neat hem.

Abbreviations:

k - knit
p - purl
k2tog - knit two stitches together as one
k3tog - knit three stitches together as one

p1w - purl one, wrapping the yarn loosely twice around the needle, producing a stitch that has two loops around the needle rather than one

sl 1 del - slip one stitch purlwise, dropping the extra loop you wrapped around the needle on the row before, producing a long slipped stitch (lss)

Border Pattern:

Knit 5 rows in stockinette. If you haven't already, change to a larger needle, the needle you will use for the front of the towel.

Knit 1 row on the wrong size, forming a purl ridge on the right side.

Knit 4 rows in stockinette. Knit a RS row, knitting the cast on or live stitch from provisional cast on together to turn hem, or just sew the hem down later.

Begin border stitch pattern, "Bubble Wrap":

Stitch Pattern Notes: This stitch pattern is from Nicky Epstein's Knitting Over the Edge. It is a great book, and I am indebted to Ms. Epstein for the cute pattern. I've not seen it in any other stitch dictionaries, but am hopeful that it is ok to use it here. Using this stitch pattern will make 15 bubbles, which are actually bobbles with the purl side showing. They are made from one stitch. On wraps, wrap yarn twice, loosely. Be sure to slip stitches with yarn in back. After all bobbles are made, pull the slipped stitches on each side of the bobble to tighten it and loosen the slipped stitch.

Row 1 (WS) With A, p1, *p1w, p2, p1w, p1* repeat 14 times more.

Row 2 (RS) With B, k1, sl1 del, k2, sl 1 del, *[k1, yo, k1, yo, k1] into next st, sl 1 del, k2, sl 1 del* repeat 14 times more, end k1.

Row 3 With B, p1, sl 1, p2, sl 1, *k5, sl 1, p2, sl 1* repeat 14 times more, end p1.

Row 4 With B, k1, sl 1, k2, sl 1 *p5, sl 1, k2, sl 1* repeat 14 times more, end k1.

Row 5 With B, p1, sl 1, p2, sl 1, *k2tog, k3tog, pass k2tog st over k3tog st, sl 1, p2, sl 1* repeat 14 times more, end p1.

Row 6 With A, k1, *drop first lss off needle, sl 2, drop next lss off needle, then with LH needle, pick up first lss, sl 2 sts from RH needle back to LH needle, then pick up second lss with LH needle and k5* repeat 14 times more.

Row 7 With A, purl all stitches.

Row 8 With A, knit all stitches.

Rows 9-16 Repeat rows 1 through 8 once more, changing color B to color C.

Row 17 With A, purl

Row 18-19 With A, knit.

Towel Body:

Now you are ready to knit the middle portion of the towel. I used plain stockinette, but you can substitute another stitch pattern if you prefer. If you use stockinette, you need a border to prevent the edges from curling. I've tried garter, but it was too tight lengthwise. I then tried seed stitch, but it was too wide. In the manner of Goldilocks, I'm now trying the border stitch pattern from Arietta. I mean to use it in my next sweater, and need to practice it.

If you like a selvedge edge, use your favorite, such as slipping the first stitch of each row purlwise.

Body Pattern:

Knit one row, placing two markers, one after the first 10 stitches and one after 71 stitches, before the final 10, then begin edge pattern--

Row 1 (WS) Knit 10 stitches, slip marker, purl 61 stitches, slip marker, knit 10.

Row 2 Knit.

Row 3 same as Row 1.

Row 4 Knit.

Row 5 *p1, k1* 5 times, purl 61 stitches, *k1, p1* 5 times.

Row 6 -7 Knit the knit stitches and purl the purl stitches.

Row 8 Knit.

Continue the edge pattern (or the pattern of your choice) until the entire towel measures 15 inches in length, then begin the border pattern for the opposite end, first knitting a row on the wrong side then knitting 3 rows in stockinette. Repeat Rows 1-19 of the bubble wrap pattern, knit a wrong side row, knit 5 rows in stockinette, using a smaller needle if you like, and bind off and sew the hem. Alternatively, bind off while picking up purl bumps from the towel to attach the hem without sewing.

Sallie pullover, knit and finished

Now that my excessively-modified version of Louisa Harding's Sallie pullover is complete, it's time for a review:

While the pattern from Harding's Summer Classics book is cute, with its jazzy stripes and wide sleeves, I felt I had to add some length to both the body and sleeves to make it more classic. I planned to increase the length from about 20" to 22" and the sleeves from about 13" to 18". I also wanted to add increases and decreases. To begin, I embarked on a complicated combination of the two versions of this pullover.

One version has a straight shape, one flares into a peplum at the bottom. The peplum version echos the flare below the waist with bell sleeves. I began with a more modest flare, adding stitches to a few of the ribs, then decreasing them away before I began the stripe pattern. Along with the shaping calculations, I had to make sure the stripes lined up on the sleeves and the sweater.

While it seems the waistline shaping was successful, the stripe pattern played havoc with sleeve length. Since the main stripes and the sleeve stripes had to line up when I joined them for the yoke, my choice was between 7 stripes on a 19" sleeve or 6 stripes on a 16 1/2" sleeve.

Counting the stripes will explain why my elbows are bent in all these photos. I went for the longer sleeve. Ah, well. Loooong sleeves are in, aren't they?

The sleeve length is probably compounded by my decision to use the saddle yoke from Veronik Avery's Skater Undertop for the shoulders. I thought it would be fun to knit a saddle yoke and wanted to avoid seaming in a cotton yarn that knits up as firmly as this Jaeger Aqua does. These photos show me that I should have decreased the front and back a bit more before beginning the sleeve cap shaping. The shoulders are a bit wide and allow the sleeves to droop down even longer. Still, considering the multiple changes I made, it's a wonder this sweater fits as well as it does.

I had to rework the stitch counts a lot, since my yarn gauge for the brown yarn was closer to 22 stitches/4" rather than the 20 stitches for which the pattern is written. That was easy enough, since the pattern suggests over 4" of ease. That's right, it recommends a 40" sweater for a size 36. For most of the stitch counts, I just knit what was recommended for a size 36. My version, with my smaller gauge, measures about 37". It's nice to have a little ease in a cotton sweater--it's so likely to shrink with washing.

While it would be easy enough to rip out the yoke and re-knit it with more decreases, I think it more prudent to wait and see if the sleeves will shrink lengthwise after a few washes. Until then, I'll enjoy the funkiness of long sleeves. They fold up nicely, proving that a quick fix of cutting off the excess and re-knitting the edging would probably work.

I've written up all the mods I made. They are so extensive, it's almost as though I wrote up the pattern. You can see them on the Ravely page for this project.

Edited to omit many of the references which seemed to attract unwanted readers. Still, I will keep comments on this post closed. It's not worth the bother.

Independence Pass

One of the members of my knitting group told me that there was a statue of Mike, the headless chicken, in downtown Fruita, Co. Since I was there on our last business trip and couldn't find a yarn shop, I put some effort into finding Mike-

You can thank her for this photo. It took us a while to find the statue, partly because it didn't look quite how I expected. It was worth looking for, just as a novelty. I was amused to find it had, among the odd bits of scrap iron, a pair of scissors in it. The link above will take you to Mike's story. It's a little gruesome, so don't click if you're eating, especially if you are eating chicken right now.

On leaving Fruita, we drove home in a roundabout way, crossing the continental divide at Independence Pass. It was cloudy, but that just added to the beauty of the mountains, the bits of remaining snow, and the wildflowers.

It is a lovely, easy drive over the pass this time of year, with lots of places to stop along the way. Creeks, campgrounds, overlooks and the like dot the road all the way between Aspen and Granite.

This drive never dulls, since the same mountains on the same road offer different views from every angle.

Once home, I got back to work on my knitting. It looks like it has wound down to cotton, a good thing to knit this time of year. While it doesn't offer the tactile pleasures of wool, it is much more pleasant to have on your lap.

A big lump of knitting like this long-sleeved sweater doesn't bother me at all in the heat, unlike the little 3/4-sleeved cardigan I just finished. If that little lump of wool lay on my lap as I was knitting it in the the last week or two, I had to move it around to seek some relief. I started with the Sallie pattern from the Louisa Harding book you see beside the sweater, but am now hybridizing it with the saddle shoulder from the Skater Undertop from Avery's Knitting Classic Style.

Alongside the sweater you can see another dish towel that I've reluctantly started. After last year's numerous dish towels, I'm not in the mood for knitting dish towels. Only the desire to write up the pattern for this one has me knitting it again. The nice Pakucho cotton and the fun of trying out a new stitch pattern for the edging do offer some small compensations in the task of knitting over a foot of boring stockinette.

It's not all cotton knitting here, though. I've cheated and impulsively cast on for a kerchief in some fine silk merino. It's going fast, since it starts out small. I could have it done soon, but will likely hit a wall as the stitch count increases. You see, I might have enough yarn to make it a full-blown shawl. That, plus the beads I'd like to knit into it, might take a while, maybe 'til summer's end. I'm using the Springtime Bandit pattern and the blue yarn I blogged last summer. It's lovely.

Ripple Cardigan

There is a new divide among knitting designs, a division between the simple and the complex.

I favor the complex. I've no hamu, havi, zen design here, although I honestly hoped for that effect. With its wide sleeves and loose lines, I thought this sweater might have Asian tendencies. Scratch that. The simple lines are outplayed by the dynamic ripples and with their curly borders. For something cobbled together from a small stash of dk and sock-weight yarns, it is surprisingly cohesive.

It started with this year's Summer issue of Vogue Knitting and the Ripple Pattern Cardi pattern, which requires four different colorways of variegated fingering-weight yarn. Since it is knit from the top down, substituting dk-weight yarn wasn't a big challenge. I began with the purple Koigu Kersti I had bought a couple of years ago when I was innocent enough to believe that 5 hanks would make a sweater. I continued with the coordinating variegated Kersti and two hanks of hand-dyed fingering-weight KPPPM from my sock-yarn stash. Thowing in some leftover Brooks Farm Duet (dk weight again) wasn't enough. I had to buy two hanks of Reynolds Soft Sea Wool in brown to complete the design. As a bonus, one real advantage to using multiple colorways is that it goes several of my shirts.

This brightly-lit photo comes the closest to capturing the perfect deep purple of the semi-solid portion of this sweater. It's not a trick of the lighting, there are different buttons in this outdoor shot. This cardi has been through a lot since most of the knitting was finished a couple of weeks ago. Sewing, blocking, two different applications of buttons and buttonholes, reblocking and two photo sessions, plus being pressed into immediate service when our local fireworks show coincided with a cold front.

The initial blocking seemed to work wonders for the ripple portion, bringing a overly small 30" midriff to nearly 40". As an experienced knitter might expect, it snapped back after a couple of hours of wear. The ripple portion is now 36", large enough that I didn't try to stretch it back out during the second blocking. The bodice, knit completely in dk weight, is more generous. It was chancy, but looking at the back shows all is well, fit-wise.

The ripple pattern and the fingering weight yarn in it pull the midriff portion in too much for the two coconut-husk buttons I originally chose. The second button kept popping out of its buttonhole. Luckily, indecision had led me to purchase another set of buttons. A little resewing easily converted this to a one-button cardi.

I was glad to revert to my first choice of button. I had two of these, but initially thought them too large. Now I've settled on just one clear plastic button with a brown center on a metal shank. Sturdy, with a bit of gleam, it's a little attention-getting, but not too much.

I can't imagine mixing complex buttons or cables with those rippled colors. My zen is blown away already. If I hadn't run out of yarn, I might have added the collar. Leaving it off was my only real pattern modification. Sure, I changed yarn, gauge (a little), and added a 5th stripe, but those are simple changes to make. Since I couldn't knit the collar, I used the brown to knit the first portion of the collar as a collar band, including the short rows at the back of the neck. Once the band was 1.5 inches deep, I knit the rolled edging to finish it.

I also ran out of purple Kersti, forcing me to use the brown for the rolled edging on the sleeves and the body. For the same reason (no purple yarn) the final border on the body is blue rather than purple. Running out of yarn wasn't a problem, since the project ended with a sweater success and a few less odd hanks of yarn in my stash. For more yarn details, see my Ravelry project page.

Going (and knitting) my Own Way

I want to share this photo I took at the finish line of the FibArk raft race. There is a bit of a rough spot at the finish line, offering good photo ops. I knew the instant I'd snapped it that I'd gotten it. Most times, if it's a halfway decent photo, that's the way it goes. Once glance at the tiny screen tells me, even without my glasses, that it is that lucky shot. I wanted to show it any of our visitors who are considering trying a raft ride, perhaps as as a "full disclosure", maybe to discourage, but K says that wouldn't be nice. Darn. Instead, I'll show it here.

To really understand this photo, you have to know that it was taken at the end of a 26-mile river race. The river was pretty high that day, not as high as it has been this last week, but pretty high (well over 2,000 cfs for the statisticians, but it has been as high as 3,500 cfs since then). Raft racing is not easy. These guys have been paddling this bulky raft for about 3 hours. They are at the finish line, and they choose (I suppose) to blast through the biggest rapid there. If you click on it, you should be able to make out their expressions. They are pumped!

It's interesting, the parallels this brings to mind. Looking at the photo, you might not think of the same comparison as I do, but that's only because you didn't see them paddling over miles and miles of smooth water for hours, as I did. Sure, there were some very rough spots, but those were quickly over. The long slog is the main part of the race.

A long steady paddle in the hot sun, burning muscles and backs, through crazy rough spots and boring smooth ones, brings them to the end and they are so elated! Like knitting up miles of yarn, no matter how long it takes and how boring it is, to get a sweater, or blanket, or even a pair of fine-gauge socks. Phew! It's so great to have done it.

Of course, just as knitters have different ideas of fun, so do these rafters. There's the big rubber rafts, the skinny little fast kayaks,

and the snub-nosed tricky ones. They each offer a different way to travel the river. Then there's this guy:

I have to admit, I don't get it. (It is a Paddle Board, like a surfboard.) It's got to be back-breaking, standing and paddling for hours. I have no idea how they manuever through the rapids with these. That's something I'll have to check out next year. I assume there will be some paddle board entries next year. There weren't any last year. There were three this year. While it doesn't appeal to me, it apparently really rings bells for some. I'll look for them in the rapids next year.

This, too, has a parallel. There's so many approaches to knitting. From simple garter stitch to complicated knitted lace, it offers something for everyone. I've been trying it all, but have felt less enthusiasm this summer. I've pushed through projects while my old burning passion for the task went missing. I think the problem was that I was knitting according to pattern, maybe modifying the length or shaping, or substituting the yarn, but with no real innovation.

While some don't understand how or why I change the patterns I knit, for me the changes are the best part. I spent a couple of hours the other day devising this chart for my next project.

I'm using a fairly simple pattern for a wool sweater. Instead of the embroidery along the yoke, I'm going to knit a fair isle panel, following the chart above. Instead of wool, I'll use cotton. Along with the recommended dk weight yarn, I'll use fingering and worsted weight. I'll add stripes to the shoulders and knit the body in stockinette and in the round, instead of flat in garter stitch. I'll add a band to the bottom, using a stitch pattern from a cardigan I like. I haven't decided what to do with the sleeves, but I know I will figure it out as I go.

I'm enjoying my knitting again. This hodge-podge of a sweater is just what I need. It is my treat--the paddle boarding of knitting. It has been fun to celebrate the independence of our country with the independence of this project.