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Cheap is Good, Free is Better

Best Quote I Heard All Day
Money cannot buy health, but I'd settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.--Dorothy Parker

It's time for a Dot quote. She once reviewed a play by writing "If you don't knit, bring a good book."

She's the original Jersey Girl, sans big hair and painted claws.

FREE! Suckah!
So, here it is. My Yeti Socks, the plain vanilla worsted-weight pattern that I promised to make available to ya.

 

 You can check out the pattern, the directions format, and if you want, give me your dollah-three-eighty thoughts. I'm always open to ideas.

Fucking Up

I do it frequently, at least with my knitting. My theory is, the more experienced a knitter you are, the more likely you are to make mistakes by being too poor to pay attention.

So I'm working on an Aran design, a rework of last year's, and lo! I screwed up while watching TV, talking to Jerry, petting the cat, and drinking the caffeine needed to jump-start my state of being.

Ever corrected a cable fuck-up without ripping out row after row? For those who haven't, here's how you do it.

 

First, you rip out the rows of the miserable fuck-up and put 'em on a double-pointed needle the same size as your main needles. Note all the connecting row threads.

 

Now I'm fixing the cable twist that I screwed up, using the two dps to reknit the eight stitches that comprise this motif. The one thing you have to watch is to use each ripped out row thread in its correct order.  It's very easy to use the thread one row above the one you're correcting.

I've always caught my mistakes early on--I'd puke if it happened a few rows above the ribbing.

So I put this question out on FaceBook to my friends and now I'll pose it to you: Which would you prefer for an Aran sweater--one complete chart that includes all of the motifs and filler stitches or individual charts with directions that include the fillers. Or have the whole damned thing written out? If you look at the first picture, you'll see my chart above the knitting. I charted the whole front, with bold red lines demarcating each section, including fillers. I've found this to be very easy to follow. I printed it out on legal size, works for me. 

Here's the almost completed front, still in progress. The yarn is Louet Gems Merino DK.

Haven't decided yet where the pattern for this sweater will go. I need to ask a certain designer friend of mine where she thinks I should submit it. And if it's worth submitting.

Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles

Yeah, I'm of German descent. Dad was born in Hamburg and because his father was a non-practicing Jew married to my Oma, a Gentile, they beat feet out of Germany in 1938, to London, and then to New York City. I speak some German, nicht sehr gut aber ich bin noch am lernen.

So just for the hell of it, I did a little research on knitted German clothing and found trachtenhose, which are socks worn with traditional German costumes, both by men and women.  When I was very small, I remember my grandparents giving me lederhosen and a beautiful loden cape that they brought back from a trip to der Vaterland.

The next design in my head is a pair of trachtenhose, which will contain traveling stitches found in German knitting plus embroidered flowers such as the ones found on German costumes--simple, bright, and pretty. Kristin Nicholas's embroidery on knitting has always interested me and it's a technique that would work beautifully on these socks, using crewel yarn.

This one will go to Patternfish.com, as will another sock design that I'm currently doing in Marks & Kattens' Fame Trend. And then, there's a toddler cardigan on the design board that resides in my head, plus a redo of the Jezebel lace socks. Shit, I've got more ideas than time. And no, I won't hire anyone else to knit for me at this point. I'm too fucking picky.

Da Mags

I gotta say, lately I'm liking Vogue tremendously. The quality of the designs has improved enormously. And of course, friend Carol has her first design published in the Spring issue! Yahoo! OK, I'm a bit biased. But still, Vogue is now well worth buying. But as Loopy said to me, do we really need 4-5 pages of how to do Kitchener in both VK and IK? Well...some do, I suppose. I've never had a problem grafting.

My new favorite is The Knitter. If you like Rowan magazines, buy this one--you can't beat designs by Martin Storey or Kaffe Fassett. I found it at Barnes & Noble. Not cheap but worth the money.

Out of Work, Out of Sight

Well, got the unemployment check last week. Feh. I keep getting contacted by these insane Indian recruiters, who permeate the IT employment market. Listen, if you don't leave an intelligible message on my cell phone, I ain't calling ya back because I can't fucking understand your phone number. Sheesh. And recruiters contact me for jobs for which I'm totally unqualified. If I wrote stuff for SAP users, that doesn't mean I'm an SAP developer. Read the fucking resume! OY.

So I'll be teaching some workshops at my beloved Stix-n-Stitches. That will help and I enjoy teaching, having been a software trainer. Working with knitters will be better, hopefully. At least the people who patronize S-n-S are rare and handy. I met this fabulous woman at the last Sit 'n' Knit I went to at the shop, Lucy. I almost fell off my chair when we talked about graduating from Montclair High School, and she told me she was in the class of '46. As she sat there knitting a complex pattern and looking no older than 65, maybe. 

There's hope for this babe, then. Birthday's coming in seven weeks. Urp.

Noodling Wid Needles

Best Quote I Heard All Day
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.--Pablo Picasso

I don't see myself as an artist. However, I do see myself as childlike. I still love cartoons, still love "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass", rock 'n' roll, and doofy, whimsical anything. (Yes, I'm hot to see Tim Burton's version of "Alice" on March 5.) 


I've been charting, knitting, fiddling with color and texture, and letting the childish shit that circulates in my bipolar brain go into my design notebook. I'm actually very orderly about taking notes and writing/editing directions as I go along. My experience as a tech writer and editor is enormously helpful when writing knitting directions.


Freebie for You Lovely Fools
I decided to test-drive one of my patterns by offering it for free here, by next week most likely. This is not an original design but plain vanilla heavy socks that I've made for family and friends using Jarbo Garn Raggi sock yarn.

 

I took advantage of our loathsome snow as a backdrop for the photo. I froze my ass off.

The pattern is sized for women and men. I may at some point do some kiddy sizing if the demand is there. In any case, you'll get something for nothing and get a look at Fiberality Design directions formatting. The reason I don't submit to magazines is this: I can add Designer Notes, do larger size charts, and add my sense of humor to an otherwise straitlaced pattern. Not to mention accuracy.

Stash Trash

Talk about being pissed off, though. In my stash, I had enough Jawoll to make the Nudge Nudge socks, the black and pink lace, which I've renamed Jezebel socks (yeah, I watched the movie last week and decided that Bette Davis would have worn the socks to the ball). I finished the prototype sock, wrote the directions, and then went to check the yardage online. SHIT. The shocking pink has been discontinued. FUCK.

So off I went to find some plain sock yarn. Guess what, kids. It's not easy to find. I finally went to KnitPicks and lo! They have plenty of colors, including shocking pink, in their Palette fingering weight yarn. The Stroll sock yarn didn't offer me enough selection, although I generally prefer a 70% wool/30% nylon blend for socks. Fuck it. I may submit these to the KnitPicks Independent Designer Partnership Program, although I'm more inclined to submit it to Patternfish.com.  Here's a not-so-wonderful picture of the unblocked sock.

  

Obviously, the photo for the published pattern will be much clearer and will be modeled. It's rather hard to see the diagonal lace pattern and the lace cuff doesn't show too well. Here's a lousy closeup.

 

It's sitting on its blocking bowl. Anyhoo, once I redo the design, you'll see better pictures.

 

Blogger Sucks

Well, they sent me an e-mail last week, informing me that they will no longer support FTP bloggers. What this means, to the uninformed, is that the 5% of us who use Blogger to publish to our own domain will have to migrate all our files over to Blogger.  No more www.knittingcurmudgeon.com by March 26th. So I'm waiting for them to send me migration directions.

In some respects, working directly on Blogger will make it easier for me. I won't need to do as much coding, I'll be able to use widgets, and I suppose there are more features available. I'll keep you posted. If nothing else, knittingcurmudgeon.com will have a redirection page for a long time.

New (and Old) Books Be Bountiful

I increased my library again by buying Selbuvotter, Biography of a Knitting Tradition, by Terri Shea. 

 

 

An unbelievable book! Not only is it extremely well written and interesting but the traditional designs are striking and challenging. Plus, Terri self-published this book and did a damned fine job, too. This is the kind of book that's worth adding to your library if you are a serious knitter. If you're not, there are plenty of dopey books out there. This is quality.

Besides the republication of She-Whose-Name-Cannot-Be-Mentioned's Book of Fair Isle Knitting, another must-have if you are into colorwork, I was so please to see Susanna Lewis's Knitting Lace republished too.

 

This is the original cover, as opposed to Book of Fair Isle Knitting, which has a new cover.

Back in the 80s, I worked with Susanna when I was the knitting editor of MacKnit, a glossy, over-the-top mag for machine knitters. Susanna was then working on the book, which is based on a Victorian lace sampler owned by the Brooklyn Museum. Susanna was and is an amazing technician, although she has been involved with Sasha dolls for a number of years, selling them and knitting for them, and no longer designs for knitting magazines. This is the only book she ever wrote about handknitting, but her handknitting designs were published early on in Knitter's.

Susanna and I did a machine knitting workshop together back in 1985, and she stayed with me for several days. She's a wonderful person, has a decent sense of humor, and inspired me to further my knitting education, although I no longer machine knit. I'm rather sorry we lost touch--I spoke to her about four years ago and she had moved from Brooklyn to a town in upstate New York, not terribly far up but in the country. I've been so fortunate to have met so many great knitting people. My greatest regret is not having met EZ or Meg. In any case, add this one to your library too. 

Maybe I'll make a point of calling her. I'd love to see her again.

Back on Ravelry

Now that I'm unemployed, I've had the time to revisit Ravelry. Working means sacrificing certain activities, and that was one of them. I had not visited the site since August 2008 and it's so improved. It will be good to check out the groups to which I belong and be able to connect with readers who are on my friend list. So glad that some of you have connected with me on FaceBook too.

Did You Know?

The German word for cellphone is Handy. Is that rare or what? Ich habe mein Handy immer dabei.