Mason-Dixon Inspiration

And still more from last weekend's Knit-In:



After lunch, Marsha and I spent two hours with Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne, better known as the Mason-Dixon Knitting girls. They are even more delightful in the flesh than in their books and on their blog. In case you live in some cave that these knitter-friends have failed to penetrate: Ann lives in Nashville and Kay lives in New York. They met in chat room when the Internet was young and struck up a friendship that has yielded two delightful books.

Ann and Kay are just as charming in person as on the page. Example, Kay said that she can knit in a dark movie theater. "When I'm dead," she added, "I'll knit a few more rows."

I've only knit the Log Cabin baby blanket from their first book (see above). That will change. Seeing their projects in the flesh (in the wool?) was very inspiring. Their rugs and sweaters are truly beautiful.

I hadn't quite grasped their schtick. They promote Knitting Below Skill Level. In other words, easy projects can be fun and worthwhile. While I tend to knit wearables, they make a good point about how you really get a lot of use out of blankets and rugs. Kay brought some much-used washcloths. They were faded, but still sturdy and useful.

Their first book, Mason-Dixon Knitting: The Curious Knitters Guide, has just come out in paperback. To promite it, they posted a new video -- a spoof, of course -- on You Tube. It's called Grey Garments, and it's very funny.

If you haven't checked out their blog, do! You'll laugh.

Knit-In Serendipity

I can't say why, but apparently Madison is a knitter's mecca. Last week prolific designer Melissa Leapman spoke at our Knitter's Guild monthly meeting, and she kept marveling at the crowd. "I've never spoken in front of so many people," she said. Keynote speakers Ann and Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting referred to "the mighty knitters of Madison."

Maybe we have so many knitters because many Scandinavians settled here?

I don't know, but it is pretty wonderful to be able to bring some of knitting's best designers and writers to Madison.

My friend Marsha and I both signed up for a class on two-color knitting at this past weekend's Knit-In; she got in and I didn't. Instead I took a class on making stash-busting scarves from Carol Anderson of Cottage Creations, which turned out to be great. She taught us to knit reversible garter-stitch scarves with knit-in i-cord edging. It's very easy and the result is polished.

If you've ever heard of the Wonderful Wallaby, you know a little about Carol, its designer. Some of my classmates raved about her other patterns, including a doll named Sven.

For once, I didn't buy any new yarn for a project: This is all stash yarn:And here's a detail of the i-cord edging.Pretty nifty, huh?

Knit-In: Who I Rubbed Shoulders With

If you know who I'm posing with, then you are a true knitting nerd:


Yep, that's Sarah, The Plucky Knitter. I've been stalking her yarn online for months. She's one of those dyers who sells out in no time flat. Her yarn is so sought after that I became a bit obsessed. Fortunately I didn't look at the list of vendors for yesterday's Madison Knitters Guild Knit-In until the last moment, or I would have been crazed with anticipation of actually getting my hands on some Plucky Yarn.

Fortunately, my friend Marsha and I had already planned on arriving early so we could shop before our classes. We made a bee-line for Plucky and dove into the scrumptious yarn. There is a reason this stuff sells so fast. I picked out enough yarn for a shawlette, socks and fingerless mitts. My higher power clearly wanted to me to buy this much because the woman in front of me bought almost $300 worth -- proving that my purchase was quite restrained!

Here's my haul:
The pinks are for a Springtime Bandit; the purple for socks; and the green for fingerless mitts. I have to add that the photo doesn't really capture the richness of her colors.

It was quite a star-studded day. I also got to mingle with Carol Anderson of Cottage Creations and our speakers were those witty Mason-Dixon girls. More tomorrow.

FO: Glynis

Glynis and I have had a stormy relationship. She confused me from the start -- that whole thing where you move the marker at the beginning of the round. It just didn't seem like that could work. But, it did. I knit the pattern as written -- and any modifications could be called "mistakes." I used an orange colorway of Trekking XXL. It feels and looks beautiful. The colors are actually richer than they appear in the picture.
Will I make another pair? Probably not. The lace pattern was not intuitive to me, making for a slow project. Nonetheless, I'm glad we got acquainted.

Resolving the STR Problem

After blogging a few days ago about the way Socks That Rock yarn was pooling, I got really helpful feedback from my wonderful readers. The pooling really bugged me, but it was pointed out that the pooling would be hidden under my pants.

I was also worried about the durability of the yarn, based on some Ravelry comments, but the comments reassured me that I wasn't wasting my time.

So, I decided to stick with the socks as they were. At some point it dawned on me that there would be a benefit to knitting Kai-Mei with a variegated yarn: I am a mistake-prone knitter, and this yarn would hide quite a few errors!

However, this is how the socks look today:

Before continuing with it, I gave the sock one last look -- and noticed that I made three errors in the k3 p3 ribbing! I told you I was error-prone. The errors were too big to be hidden by the colors.

I decided that was a sign -- and I frogged. I went back into Ravelry and looked at the 1,084 Kai-Mei socks posted and concluded that this pattern really looks best in a solid or semi-solid. It just so happened that I had a couple skeins of Spud & Chloe Fine, so I started all over.

Sometimes it takes a while to figure out the right yarn for a project.

Books + Knitting + Friends = Yum

First, I have to thank everyone for their comments about Socks That Rock yarn and my Kai-Mei socks. I'll report on my decision tomorrow.

Today, though, was all about book club. I feel I can blog about because some of our members are knitters, like Tsela:

Tsela's sweater was three years in the making. She an artist, and even though this was only her second sweater, she designed it! The color bands are mosaic knitting -- and very pretty.

Marsha was wearing one of her handmade sweaters. I have to say that this picture is not accurate. Marsha is very petite and knits this same pattern in Cascade 220 over and over because it doesn't overwhelm her tiny frame:
Today I was working on a wash cloth from this:
I can't remember who steered me toward these adorable cloths. If you're interested, go to www.KrisKnits.com. You can buy the set of eight cloths for $3.25. A sweet deal if you ask me!

The host has the job of selecting a handful of books for the next month. We do our best to choose books that everyone is interested in reading. These were my nominees:
And the winner? Actually there are two. We're going to read The Space Between Us by Thrity Umriger for April and The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery for May. Today we discussed The Glass Castle.

And, last but not least, here was today's treat: the Coconut-Date Bars from the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts. They are excellent -- and could easily be made vegan.
As always, the discussion and other conversation was great. For once, everyone liked the book. I usually hate the books we read, so everyone was amazed. It's no wonder that there are so many books based around book or knitting groups. Our group has been meeting for four or five years, and I treasure the friendships I've made.

Does It Really Rock?

For a long time I avoided Socks That Rock yarn. I think it was the first indie yarn I was aware of. Almost as soon as I joined Ravelry, I started hearing a lot of buzz about this yarn. People professed profuse love for this hand-dyed yarn. I could see from the images that the colors were beautiful.

But then I checked out the comments on Ravelry. Many of them are not very positive, and the complaints are pretty consistent: The colors fade, the yarn pills, and the socks don't hold up. Besides, there were lots of complaints about pooling. Not interested, I decided.

Then in a moment of weekness, I bought a skein of the lightweight in Chapman Springs from a Ravelry destash. It arrived and I was excited about the saturated colors and the soft springyness. I decided to use it for a Kai-Mei. At about three inches, it looks like this:But turn it around and it looks like this:

Very weird pooling. I don't like it. I went back and looked at the comments on Ravelry, and I'm really wondering if I should put a lot of work into this yarn.

What do you think?