My first project is Pele (link to pattern), a Berroco pattern for a pair of convertible mittens. Flip back the mitt, and viola!! Fingerless gloves. I’ve never knit gloves before—oh sure, I’ve knit mittens and wristers and fingerless mitts, but never anything where fingers were involved. Since I’ve been telling Matt for at least a month now that I would knit him gloves, I figure this would be the perfect challenge.

I am also a meticulously slow knitter, and projects tend to sit on my needles for quite some time. I mean, how long have I been working on Aquaphobia? While someone else may be able to whip up these gloves in a few hours of watching Law & Order on one of the many cable channels, I know I will need a deadline to turn the yarn into something wearable.

I’ve got at least two other patterns on my must-knit list for the Olympics, and a few more in the queue if I really feel up to it, but the point is to be realistic while still being challenging. I think three projects in 17 days is challenging enough for me. But who knows? Maybe I’ll catch the Olympic spirit and push myself to try knitting even more awesome stuff.

It took a little effort on my part to get into stranded knitting. There is no denying it looks hard. Sometimes handling one yarn is hard enough, but add a second color that’s getting carried along and worked at the same time? That’s just crazy! And what’s even crazier is seeing people working two colors at once with one yarn in each hand. English AND Continental knitting at once? WTF? I could NEVER do that.

Guess what? I can do that. And damn, am I proud of myself for working it out.

This Friday marks the start of the 2010 Knitting Olympics. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee started the Knitting Olympics in 2006. The idea was to cast on a challenging project during the opening ceremonies of that year’s Winter Olympics and work on and complete that project throughout the Olympics time period – about two weeks.

In 2006, my goal was to knit my very first adult sized sweater. I made it, just barely. Being on vacation for half the time was a huge help.

This year my project is a little weirder, having to do with cyberpunk and corsetry. I’m going to design and knit myself a cincher out of wire and electrical cables. It’s a challenge as I’ve never knit with anything other than traditional yarn before.

The past couple of years, Ravelry has hosted many Knitting Olympics topics and groups (search on Ravelympics) with icon prizes, award ceremonies and all. Sadly, I don’t think I’ll be joining any official ‘teams’ there. I love Ravelry, but only have enough time to devote to the forums to which I’m already barely particpating. Instead I’ll be posting my progress here and on my personal blog.

What knitting limit do you want to stretch? Are you going to try the Knitting Olympics? Leave a comment or call and leave a message on the feedback line. I really want to know. :)

Additional Photos:

The Clap – or Clapotis – is a scarf/shawl that is knit on the bias with dropped stitches that make for perfect Twitter updates as progress reports.

I’ll update more later, or someone else will. I’m going to go eat dinner, watch Lost and knit some more!

**Enter Joanna**

This is my third Clap. The first, I knit for my mom and I nearly didn’t give it to her, I loved it so much. The second, I wear as a scarf nearly all the time in cold weather or in my chilly office. As a matter of fact, I wear my blue Clap so often, I decided a few months ago that I needed a second one in a different color. When the idea of a Social Knitworking Clapotis Knit-Along came up, I was all in.

I’m using fingering weight yarn for a lighter scarf than the pattern suggests. In the photo at the left you can see I’ve completed 8 drop stitches. Isn’t it pretty?

Modifying the Clapotis pattern for different yarn weights and amounts is very easy since some genius discovered The Rule of Fifths. Here’s how the rule works: Weigh the yarn you’re using. Take that weight and divide it by 5. That number, 1/5 the total amount of your yarn, is the amount you’ll use to knit the Set-up and Increase Rows of the Clapotis pattern (Sections 1 and 2). Section 3 of the pattern, the Straight Rows, will take 3/5 the total amount of yarn, and Sections 4 and 5, the Decrease and Final Rows, will take the last 1/5 of your yarn.

In my case, I’m using three skeins of Knitpicks Stroll Multi in the Hearth colorway. This yarn comes in 50g skeins, so I have 150g in total. 1/5 of my total weight is 30g. So I used aproximately 30g of yarn in the Set-up and Increase sections of my Clap. Since that took less than a full skein of yarn, I’m using the last of that first skein and a full second skein in the Straight Rows. I’ll also start the last skein in the Straight Rows, but I’ll start weighing my skein as I knit. When I knit down to the 40g point I’ll get ready to start the Decrease Rows.

If our knit-along were a race, Nysssa would be winning. If you follow her tweets, you know she’s already started the decrease rows. I think that’s crazy awesome. And here she is, Evil Genius Nysssa, wearing her mostly finished Clapotis.

She’s using Halcyon Yarn, Victorian 2-Ply in black. Since she has a ridiculous amount of this yarn in her stash (5 skeins), she’s not using her total amount of yarn for her Clap. Rather, she worked the increase rows as written and knit the straight sections until she got to a length she liked.

But I’m cheap and knitting from my stash.

I have a pair of fingerless gloves, but having all your fingers exposed all the time is chilly. Flip top mittens are great, I even have a pair on needles. But they too, will be a little clumsy when it comes to using my phone when I’m out and about at wintertime. What I really want, is a pair of mittens with a single exposed thumb pad.

Around the same time I started thinking about knitting up a pair of thumb exposed mittens, a link came across the Historic Knitting Yahoo Group where I lurk.

The Worshipful Company of Glovers of London has a beautiful collection of antique gloves and mittens, most of which they have photographed and published online. Of particular interest to me are the gloves listed about midway down the webpage. Take a look at item number 23401 + A.

This pair of gloves was knit in 17th century, Italy. Take a close look at the fingers on the left hand glove (the one on the top in the photo). The thumb, index and middle fingers all have slits in them to expose fingertips. And on the right glove, there is no thumb tip at all. The site says this is likely for the annointing of holy water or oils. How crazy cool is that? :-)

Using these gloves as inspiration, I now have a pair of opera length gloves on my To Be Knit list. I’ll use a button hole technique to knit slits into to a couple fingers of right hand. Granted, I probably won’t get to this glove project until the end of next year, but they’ll be made.

* Note: Regarding fancy gloves for touch screens: It is possible to stitch a small square of conductive thread on to the fingertip of a glove. Spools of conductive thread run about $20, however, I did find an online source for short lengths of conductive thread for $3.95. By the way, this would make an excellent stocking stuffer for a crazy person like me.

Can you guess who has a fondness for vintage clothing? Yeah, that would be me.

I knit this from a pattern, the Side Slip Cloche from Boutique Knits. (The hat is featured on the cover of the book if you click the link.)

I used some yarn I had in my stash (2 skeins of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in Painted Desert) and the flower embellishment was found in a sale bin at Michael’s on Friday night. All told, the supplies for this hat cost $6.

It was a rockin’ quick knit. I started the band on Friday night, getting as far as joining the two ruffles. While watching a couple movies Saturday morning (Netflix catch up day) I finished the band and started picking up stitches for the crown. Over the course of a couple hours on Saturday, over conversation with friends, I picked up all the stiches and got about an inch into the crown. Sunday, I finished it all off while watching tv, doing laundry and tidying up. (Why no, I did not block the band as the patter suggests. Does this make me a bad knitter?)

The pattern was fairly easy to follow. The only bit I had trouble with was understanding exactly where to start picking up stitches from the band. For some reason the way it was described in the pattern wasn’t exacly clear to me. The pattern notes say the hat is meant to be worn with the ruffles facing forward. I prefer it the other way (as you can see in the photo). I though it was funny that the cover of Boutique Knits also has the model wearing the hat ‘backward’.

Considering the cost and time spent, this would make a fantastic last minute holiday gift. But I’m keeping this baby for myself. :)

That $6 supply cost makes me rethink my stance on selling knits. Maybe I should knit up a box of accessories, rent a table at a craft fair or two next fall and see what happens. It could be a fun experiment. If I can coax some other crafters to join me, it may be worth it. But that’s a topic for another post. (Of course, I wouldn’t sell anything that wasn’t my own design. Just thought I’d mention that before I get comments about selling knits from other people’s patterns.)

There is only one problem with a hat like this. I now want a scarf, or some other type of neck warmer, to match. I like to match. For that to happen, I have to be just a little creative.

I have about half a skein of the yarn left. I also have about 30gm of a complimentary variegated yarn. Between the two yarns I should be able to come up with a pattern that will look nice with this hat as well as the hat I made in the variegated yarn. One neck warmer that works with both hats? That would be a wonderful thing.

My initial thoughts for a pattern: Make a short scarf using the band pattern of the hat. It should be at least two ribs wider. The bottom, larger, ruffle knit in the variagated yarn. I’ll keep you all posted on my progress. :)

Just before we got in the cars to go for the day, Connie told us about a sign on the bathhouse door that she had just seen. Sadly, we couldn’t get a clear photo of the sign but the gist of it was: “Please do not take a shower as you may get an electrical shock.” There had been no sign when I was in the bathhouse half an hour earlier. It was very weird. As we were pulling out of the park we saw power company trucks arriving. We figured whatever the trouble was, it would be fixed by the time we got back in the late afternoon.

The New York Sheep and Wool Festival is big. To quote Douglas Adams: “You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is.” Okay, maybe that’s a bit much, but it’s still pretty damn massive.

Connie-Okay I’ll take over from here. And yes… HUMONGO! I was a Rhinebeckian Virgin and had no idea what I was in for. Sure, other knitters TRIED to warn me but I could never imagine such a huge festival.

We waited in line, got our tickets and regrouped. There were cute Sheepies and Llamas and Bunnies. There were even Kangaroos! And 2 big tortoises. Why? I do not know. But still, it was awesome!

As much as I loved all of the animals and the pretty piles of yarn, my favorite was the food and the free samplings. Here’s my top Five eats from the fair.

5. Apple Dumpling Thing – I don’t know exactly what it was but In the morning I had a few bites of Jo’s apple dumpling strudel thinger with cinnamon and it was full of tasty nom.

4. The Cheeses – In one of the show buildings there were a bunch of tables set up and covered in maybe 20 different kinds of cheeses. I had a blast sampling a lot of them. I bought some of the Habanero Jack.

3. Wines and Meads – One table had these delicious chocolate wines that I could just die for. And another booth had some really tasty meads. I love me some mead!

2. Lamb Burgers – Fan-fucking-tastic. The end.

1. Maple Cotton Candy – It’s like an orgasm for your tastebuds. This shit is the bomb-diggity of cotton candy. Heaven!

So after roaming around the festival and getting videos of alpacas and kangaroos and buying some yarn I decided to take a nap in the car until the rest of the group was ready to leave. My Rhinebeck cherry had been popped and I just needed to rest up before we’d be heading out to dinner for the evening. My car group made it back shortly after I had gone to car and we headed back to camp. This is where the story gets iiiiiiiinteresting… But I’ll let Jen tell that part of the story in the next post. :)

A few of us went to Rhinebeck last year. We had rented a cabin at Margaret Lewis Norrie State Park and spent the Saturday on the fairgrounds. Wow! What a good time! As soon as we arrived home afterward, we started planning this year’s trip. I use the word ‘planning’ here very loosely. We all sort of suck at this thing called firm decision making. There’s a lot of “yeah, that’d be cool!” going on when we plan, but not so much “this is what’s happening” being decided.

This year we had a few more people hoping to join our merry band. Since the year before had been so nice, we rented two cabins at the same state park near the fairgrounds. As we got closer to our departure date, we figured out what we were bringing, and worked out who would be driving.

I couldn’t believe it when we met up and left the city on time. I know, amazing isn’t it? The Friday afternoon trip up was a lot of fun. I was riding with Jenn and Connie so you know there was silliness and girl-talk to be had. The only thing missing on our trip was Andrea. Sadly, she couldn’t make it. Of course we sent her love notes via Twitter. I had forgotten to bring a mug, so I asked that we stop within New York so I could pick a up a cheesy “I Love NY” mug from a gift shop. I got a pink one.

The trip was timed perfectly. Both cars arrived at the campground at just about the same time and even better, it was still light out. We figured out who was sleeping in which cabin, unloaded our stuff and headed out for dinner in nearby Tivoli.

It was an excellent evening. Highlights included meeting Charlie, the shop dog at the local yarn shop, browsing in a great used book store, and a laughter filled dinner. No one had a tire blow out. No one had to go alone to the marina with the creepy park ranger. No one got lost driving in the wee hours on one of the half-dozen different Route 9s. By the way, what the hell is up with the Hudson Valley region and all the main roads being Route 9?

Fuck yeah, we’re going.

But now I have a stack of questions: Do I bring a knit mascot to pose in pictures I take at the Invasion? What is the Social Knitworking knit mascot? Do we make people drink Elbows to the Taint? If I finish that Dr. Who scarf in time do I use it for costuming?

I’ve got a month to figure this stuff out.

Here’s the official press release:

Pensacola is certainly no stranger to occupation. Indeed, the “City of Five Flags” moniker that accompanies the city name is symbolic of the number of sovereign groups that have laid claim to the port city. But in early November, a new force plans a campaign of occupation for the city… And they won’t use guns or political tactics; they come armed with algorithms, video games, and microphones. Pensacola is being invaded by nerds! NERD INVASION is coming to the Pensacola Silver Screen Theaters on November 6th!

NERD INVASION is an all-night nerd music and gaming extravaganza running from 7pm on Friday, November 6th to Noon on Saturday, November 7th.

Nerd Invasion highlights:

The Top of the game in Nerdcore music from all across the country

-Schaffer the Darklord (Queens, NY)
-Dual Core (Cincinnati, Ohio)
-Zealous1 (Oceanside, CA)
-Dr. Awkward (San Diego, CA)
-Kabuto the Python (San Francisco, CA)
-MadHatter (Salina, KS)
-Chester (Wichita, KS)
-Benjamin Bear (Orlando, FL)
-Krondor Krew (Orlando/Tampa, FL)
-Marc with a C (Orlando, FL)
-Shael Riley (Brooklyn, New York)

All-night gaming in many formats

-Card games (Magic the Gathering, Versus System, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc.)
-Video games (Retro and current generations)
-Board games (All of your favorites, plus demos of new systems)
-Role playing games (Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire, Mage, LARP, etc.)
*With thousands of dollars in prizes to be given away by our sponsors Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf Publishing.

Additional Features

-The Miss Poindexter 2009 contest
-Video and card game tournaments
-Cosplay/costume contest
-Screening of the “Nerdcore Rising” documentary
-Science, technology, media, and costume Panels
-Vendors
-The world premiere of George Clinton’s “Gongafunkadine”
-Nerdy movies
-Open mic lounge

Plus much, much more dorkiness.

This is not an event to miss! Come on out and get your geek on. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. For more information, please visit www.NerdInvasion.com

Are you ready for the Invasion?

***Nerd Invasion is brought to you by a collaboration between independent nerd clothier Nerd Rockstar (NerdRockstar.com – Pensacola, FL) and Nerdcore music label extraordinaire Scrub Club Records (ScrubClubRecords.com – Wichita, KS)

Last month I said the following to our audience, “If you’re not a member of Ravelry, you’re a fool.” It may have been a little strongly worded as there are many perfectly understandable reasons to not participate in in the site. However, for a knitter like me, Ravelry has been a godsend.

The pattern database is extensive and easily searchable. If I’m looking for a lace jacket made with worsted weight yarn, I can narrow the list down with those variables. And then to be able to see other people’s results when creating the projects, reading their notes on changes they made or types of yarn used; that curiosity of “I wonder how this will look in x size or in x yarn” happens far less often.

I’m also a big fan of the yarn database. It’s a virtual yarn shop only with more information. There are descriptions of yarn, lists of what projects have been made with yarns and links to what’s available for sale or trade by other Ravelry members.

And let’s not forget the community. Frankly, I’ve made brilliant and wonderful friends on the Ravelry forums. Our weekly Tuesday night knit and crochet group formed from a post a few years ago & from there the Social Knitworking Podcast. The Cult of The Blankie has it’s own forum for trades and pictures and Blankie discussions. I can talk to other toy knitters. There is always someone to talk to about life or craft.

So my dear Ravelry, thank you for existing and growing and being the super community you are.

With much love,
Joanna

Make your way down to National Mechanics and join the ladies of Social Knitworking this coming Saturday (9/5/09) at 11am as we taste our way through several brunch beverage options, including Make-Your-Own Bloody Mary Bar featuring the National Mechanics signature bacon vodka.

Post your RSVP in the comment section, or head over to the official Facebook event page.