Knitting Kninja

Good heavens! What are those lumpy masses? What lurks darkly in the Kninja home, waiting to strike? (Apart from Kninjas, that is.)

I’ve been leapt upon and savaged by the spinning bug. The mess of hideously misshapen artistically variable yarn you see here was spun by me on a CD drop spindle. And where would one get a CD spindle? Well, theoretically, one could make a CD drop spindle, or one could have gone to the Maker Faire in San Mateo and gotten a lesson in spinning from some very helpful folks in a booth there. I opted for the latter.

The Maker Faire was Mr. Kninja’s idea. Well, technically, it was the idea of someone over at Make magazine, but the Kninja family’s attendance was Mr. Kninja’s idea. He bought weekend passes for the lot of us. I, in my inimitable foolish fashion, was merely humoring him in going.  I didn’t think I’d be terribly interested.  Um, yeah.  I don’t know what I was thinking.

This is one of the first things that happened on Saturday.

We got there and met up with our friend Jon and the eldest of the Kninja children, Gabriel, decided to try some of the nifty experimental bicycles.   That’s Gabriel zooming along on the wooden vehicle on the right hand side of the picture.  On the left hand side of the picture is Steve Wozniak on a Segway.  That sort of covered all the awesome geekitude in one fell swoop.

The Faire was too large for us to see all of it, even with two days at our disposal, so I mostly stuck to the craft side, and Mr. Kninja and the boys spent a lot of time in the robot pavilion.  The first day we had the company of some really great friends and the second day we went on our own, but I ran into someone I knew in art school – Jenine of Jenine.net.  She’s doing some of the most spectacular work with glass that I’ve ever seen.  (It has been strongly impressed upon Mr. Kninja that if he wishes to get me some jewelry, one these pretties wouldn’t be a bad place to start.)

The crafters were displaying some lovely wares, but the one disadvantage I saw was that in showing it to a crowd of people who like to make things the response was likely identical to my own:  Wow!  I bet I can make one of those!   I also, as with Stitches West, found the vision of a vast convention center floor filled with crafts to be overwhelming, which actually limited my buying a little.  Still, I picked up two hanks of organic, plant dyed wool (before I ran into the spinning folks) just because it was so beautiful.  I’ve butchered the first batch, but hopefully my technique will improve with time.

There was more to look at than I can adequately describe a week and some days later.  A life sized robotic giraffe,  a disgusting spectacle, a Neverwas, robot battles, rides, flames, a giant Tessla coil, art cars, artists, creatively anachronistic people, puppeteers, a solar powered George Bush robot pulling a chariot, catapults, popcorn, kids, 3-D printers, including one that printed in sugar, vehicles that looked like cupcakes, stereo speakers that hugged people in a creepy enclosing way, cameras that made me seasick, reporters, friends, cyclists…it was an amazing scene.  We’ll definitely be attending next year.

________________________________________________

So you want to see some knitting, too?  Check it out.

That’s the beginning of Wenlan Chia’s Seaberry Shell from last year’s summer Interweave Knits, made in my Mother’s Day present – 100% silk tweed Muench Sir Galli.  I got a full bag because I am lucky like that.  The Seaberry Shell calls for Twinkle Cruise knit with four strands held together, but we at Casa de Kninja are not posh enough for Twinkle yarns.  The Cruise is DK weight while the Sir Galli is worsted, but I was able to make gauge with three strands held together.

I’m not sure if I’m going to love this garment or not, though it’s a spectacularly fast knit.  What you see there is about three days worth of work, mostly done during a two day viewing of Das Boot.   If it turns out to be unlovable (and I am concerned about a sleeveless garment this thick) I’ll unravel it and turn it into a skirt.  I think the silk would drape nicely and the tweedy aspect would make it satisfyingly nubby.  I love how the Seaberry Shell looks, though, so I’m willing to give it a chance.  I also like how the very thick stitches look like landscapes when you look at them up close.

Yummy, no?  The color is odd.  When I look at a single strand, it looks like a pale gold – really gold – but when it’s held together in multiple strands for the shell it takes on the look of a paper bag.  I’m not complaining about that.  I find it really beautiful and I love the idea of silk imitating grocery bag.  It’s just a very odd effect.

You can see the wonky way my SSKs turn out.  I’m not sure why this is, or if blocking will eliminate the problem, but no matter how careful I am, my SSKs turn out sort of lumpy and wiggly.

I added a little waist shaping to the shell.  Nothing too impressive, but I didn’t really like the idea of wearing a big blocky box made out of thick yarn, so I cut in by three stitches on each side.  That is the only alteration I’ve made so far, because the original looks pretty darn nifty as is.

______________________________________________________

Oh, yes.  I entered the Public Radio Talentquest.  I feel a little silly soliciting votes, but heck, it’s my blog.  If you’d like to hear what I sound like, you can do so here.  Henceforth you’ll be able to read and think, “Huh.  Her voice is deeper than I expected.  And man, she has got no recording equipment to speak of.  That’s too bad.”  I’d also add that this was recorded at six in the morning before the children got up, so I’m especially scratchy.  Yay.  I do sound better in studio.  I have a grand total of two (count ‘em) radio editorials to my name, and good equipment is the awesome.

Nothing about knitting in my entry, but one of the other entrants is running as the Punk Knitter.

____________________________________________________________

Lastly, since we’ve already gone down a pretty random road, here I am explaining to two of the children about the importance of the IT’S IT bar.   I believe the exact words used were, “It’s your heritage!” and “Are you listening to me?  This is important.”

Mmm.  IT’S IT.  I’d best go.

What is this? A seamless hybrid that will actually be finished?

Tis, tis! Oh happy day, calloo callay! I’m filled with joy at the thought.

We continue to have technical difficulties in Kninja Central, which is increasingly annoying. It was so much work to get these photos, upload them, and resize them, that I won’t apologize for their lack of quality. I’m just pleased that they’re here.

Knitpicks never responded via email (I understand that they, too, were suffering technical difficulties) but they did me one better and sent me my order, which included a ball of yarn that blended perfectly with what I had already. Yay, Knitpicks!

I came up with a way of binding off the stitches from the hem to the sweater that I haven’t perfected, but that saves a lot of trouble for people like me who hate seaming. I doubt it’s original, but I’m still chuffed as can be, because I came up with it all on my lonesome. I tried to take some pictures of how it works on the sleeve.

What I’ve been doing is picking up an inside stitch with the right needle and transferring it to the left needle. I then knit the purple stitch together with the next blue stitch and bind off. The only tricky part is making sure that the purple stitches I’m picking up are all lined up properly. I did a better job on the sleeve than the bottom edge, but I’m so ready to be done that all knitterly perfectionism has escaped me and I’m just going to leave Mr. Kninja with a slightly wonky hem. Sorry, Mr. Kninja!

I’m really looking forward to blocking for a variety of reasons. Here’s the crease I was telling you about across the chest – hopefully that can be blocked into submission.

Then there’s the collar, which is currently a little silly and floppy as rib is wont to be prior to a trip to the bathroom sink to commune with conditioner and baby shampoo.

Lastly, I made the sweater to Mr. Kninja’s specifications. I should have thought this through better. I went to art school – I was told about how clients work, and I have some experience in this area. Still, when Mr. Kninja showed me where on his body he wanted the hem to hit, I responded with a too mild, “Isn’t that a little short?”

“No,” Mr. Kninja claimed, “Most sweaters are too long on me. I’m short.”

Well, I was right. It’s too short. Not obscenely, horribly short, but it hits Mr. Kninja just where he said he wanted it to, and it looks a little silly. I’m hoping that I can stretch it downward during the blocking process and make it long enough to preserve whatever dignity Mr. Kninja still has. I’m seeing the advantages of a top down project, frankly, and having started on one of those, I’m seeing the advantages doubly.

You may notice that the decreases I used on the slanted bits are not the ones you’ve seen in most other seamless hybrids. EZ offers you a choice of two decreases, and I selected the simpler one, as I’d seen less of it. I’ve decided it’s not as attractive as the second choice, the one used by Jared at Brooklyn Tweed and others, but I’m looking at this project as the first of two seamless hybrids, and the one where I get to try all of the experiments and mistakes I wish to.

All in all, though, this sweater has been a marvelous learning process. I see so much to love about it, too, even with my imperfections and mistakes and odd creases and inability to convince someone that they don’t want what they think they want. I’d still like to make it over in a tweed, but I’ll do that someday.

Coming soon – a review of the Maker Faire!