Finished: Brotherly Binary

 The binary scarf, she is finished.

I have knit the last bytes, have woven in the blue ends, and have knotted the grey ends.  As this is a tube scarf made of non-superwash wool, I am confident that time and a bit of felting will ensure that the ends stay put out of sight with that minimalistic approach.  I then finally turned the scarf right side out and added the fringe.

The pattern is Christine Dumoulin's Binary scarf, knit up with Cascade 220 sport yarn.  When finished, this project had consumed about 740 meters of yarn, which Ravelry helpfully tells me is the largest knitting project I have ever made.  It certainly felt like it as its bulk increased; the final unblocked length was 76 in/ 1.9m.  This scarf is longer than I am tall.  Luckily, it is for my younger brother, who is markedly taller than me.

I am proud of how this scarf turned out, and thrilled I didn't get bored with it.  The initial cast-on was followed by a long hiatus, but the entire scarf was knit in just over a month after restarting.

This completes my long stint of knitting scarves for my immediate family, a project which has taken most of the last year.  After I block the tilting ribs cowl and this guy, I will label and send the last of these projects to new homes.  Meanwhile, I am feeling the strong urge to go cast on a sweater for myself.

Still Knitting

Work on the Binary scarf progresses.

It has reached a mass great enough that it can be uncomfortable to hold the scarf on my lap on a hot day.  This scarf only works as commuter knitting because I typically commute with a mostly-empty backpack.

Surprisingly, I am not bored with the pattern, perhaps because it does not have a true repeat.  I must check my selected sequence of ones and zeros for each row of characters, but only for one set-up row.  The color sequence for other rows follows logically from there.  As I mentioned previously, the stretches of color are short enough that I don't have to worry about weaving floats or anything like that, and at this point I've done enough stranded knitting in this project and the Midna Mitts that I have picked up speed.  I try to finish at least two rows of numbers a day, but for most of the past two weeks my average has been closer to three.  I anticipate binding off this scarf in the next few days.

It is a timely finish for this project, as I am signed up for the August edition of the Geek and Nerd swap and am still waiting delivery of a few materials before diving into the handmade for that.  As the month is more than a third gone, I likely have a crafting marathon in store for me.  We shall see!

A Dress Starts with Paper

I have successfully unearthed my sewing table, and therefore been able to start my next sewing project.  It will be a latin dress using the pile of pink lycra I discussed previously.  To me, a dress project begins when I start one of these:

This pile of paper will be the project notebook for this particular dress.  The front page is where I sketch out and make notes about the different parts of the dress: what the front and back look like, a rough idea of how the underskirts and leotard will be put together, what fabrics will be used where, and some idea of what decorations or stoning patterns I plan to use.  I'm not a great artist, but the sketches capture my ideas and give me a sense of what pattern alterations I will need to do.  The plans for this dress are fairly basic, since it will have two only parts, dress and leotard, and I have made no plans for stoning patterns.  Below you can see some of the sketches I've made for other ballgown projects, which were more involved.

Me and Stash: It's Complicated

At the beginning of June, after receiving my partner assignment for the fantasy theme of Geek and Nerd Swap 2014, I decided to make the Midna Mitts, based on Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts with my own charts.  I dutifully trotted off to the best yarn store in town to pick out yarns in appropriate colors.  There two lovelies came home with me:

 

There was, of course, the possibility that this would not be enough yarn to complete the mitts, but it was three days into June and I had turned out fingerless mitts in under a week.  I was certain that I would have enough time to pick up more yarn if I ran out.

Binary Progress

The binary scarf has been my companion knitting for the past couple weeks, and progress has been made.  The scarf now measures about 25 inches or 63 centimeters, and I estimate that it is about 40% completed.  I should soon finish up the first half and start working ones and zeros in the other direction, repeating the same sequence of characters.

This is my second project with real, feltable sheep's wool, and I understand even better why wool is recommended for this type of project.  While not as buttery soft as superwash merino, this wool isn't all that harsh either, and I expect it to soften with proper washing.  The two colors cling together in a good way, and stitches are extremely loathe to drop or run (as I found out the two times I accidentally tugged the wrong needle and needed to recollect a couple dozen stitches).  Despite that, I don't have difficulties ripping out stitches either.

Ones and Zeros

I have run into a small problem with the pumpkin socks and gauge.  The pattern doesn't actually include gauge information, saying instead that a sock 64 stitches around knit on size 2 needles fits a size 6 and that this is a half size larger needle than the designer typically uses.  Now, I know what kind of gauge I get with the yarn I am using when I use my favorite pair of sock needles, and I know the finished size I like my socks to have.  If I had the gauge or some information on the finished circumference of the sock, I could calculate how many stitches I need to make a sock that fits and go from there.  Unfortunately, without knowing that information and without any experience on how much cables restrict a sock's stretch, I will need to do a bit of experimenting to figure out how many stitches I need to get a sock that fits well on my calves and then alter the pattern charts to match that number.  While I don't mind the calculations, the inevitable ripping out does not appeal. 

I spent several hours on the train over the weekend for a short trip, and felt like knitting rather than knitting and ripping.  The pumpkin socks were bumped out of active status in favor of the last remaining Christmas scarf, a restarted Binary.  Train travel is a great venue for complicated knitting in my mind; there is none of the hassle of security or baggage checks like those of airports and more space to spread out than on a plane.  The result:

Pumpkin Orange

I love pumpkins.  I have fond memories of coming home from school on Halloween, excited to go trick-or-treating, and smelling my mom baking pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.  Most of my attachment is to growing or eating pumpkins, but they are still the sight and smell of fall for me, from September throughout the winter.  While western Europe has some very nice squash, I maintain that they aren't the same as the pumpkin varieties from the US, and are not the same thing.

This explains why my reaction to seeing Sabine Ruppert's pattern for Little Pumpkins socks was to squeal "Pun'kin socks!"  I had to make them.  Finishing the Midna Mitts and other swap goodies meant that I was in need of a commuting project, and I cast them on last Saturday.

This is a particularly timely project for two reasons.  One, it has historically taken me two months to knit socks, which means these should come off the needles in September or so when it is fall. Two, this is the local weather:

Since fall weather is being delivered in such large, blustery, and wet amounts, I will go mix up a pot of soup and knit pumpkin orange socks.  Happy knitting!