Catching up on 8 months worth of knitting projects: Part 1

I know that one post won't properly sum up all the knitting I've done since Christmas time, but I'll attempt at least to give you a rough overview in this two-part blog post. Using my rudimentary photoshop skills, I'll try to sort of group projects into themes. I've included links to my Ravelry projects pages for each of these in case you want more information.

The first theme is socks! I love knitting socks, and I love wearing hand-knit socks. They're great portable travel projects and can be as complicated or as simple as you like. And nothing is as warm and squishy as a hand-knit sock hugging your toes.



Clockwise from the top left, we have my Twisted Mockery socks knit in a mystery gifted yarn, my Nutkins knit in Austermann Step, my Johanna socks knit in Jojoland Melody Superwash, my Turtle Toes socks knit in Turtlepurl Yarns Striped Turtle Toes, and my Double Helix socks knit in Cascade Heritage and Fiber Charmer Chris Sock.

I'm always a fan of interesting heel construction, and with the Double Helix pattern, I was able to try an innovative spiral heel which turned out beautifully. On top of that, the Twisted Mockery socks provided me with the opportunity to knit my first heel flap! Can you believe I'd never knit one before? I can't say it's my favourite, but at least I've expanded my horizons. I'm always in the market for cool new sock yarns too, and the Turtle Toes socks are knit with my favourite sock yarn concept to date. You might have noticed that the stripes on the socks match up perfectly, and that wasn't an accident. The yarn came in two skeins that were dyed together so that the colours would show up at exactly the same place! What they can do with science these days, let me tell you...

The next theme is stuff I've been knitting for others!



Again clockwise from the top left, we have Evenstar gloves I knit for Ellie in madelinetosh dk, Evenstar gloves I knit for Daphne in Araucania Nature Wool left over from my Luxe Cable sweater, a toque I knit for Yeddi in various leftover yarns, a super cool dice bag I knit for Miranda in a mystery leftover sock yarn, and a catnip-filled hamburger I crocheted for Nick's kitty out of random scraps.

You probably noticed that I've knit the Evenstar pattern twice in the above picture, and let me tell you, I'd gladly knit it up again! The cables are just so addictive in that pattern, and the result is just stunning. The first pair I knit in the madelinetosh was so amazing (that yarn is worth every penny) I was immediately hooked. This was actually the third time I'd knit that toque pattern as well, and I had knit a dice bag for myself before I knit this one for Miranda. I used to hate knitting the same pattern twice, but I guess I've now found a collection of patterns that I can fall back on when I want to knit a certain type of gift.

And next up we have patterns I've test-knit for the Happy Seamstress. Joanna has been very prolific over the last few months, and I've been lucky enough to get first dibs at knitting them up!



Clockwise from top left, we have sushi I knit from a kit Joanna had given me, the Cafe Tank which I knit from Knitpicks Galileo, and my bright pink Bat Hat which I knit from Bernat Roving. The latter was part of my Halloween costume. I was a pink cat woman type thing.

By the way, Joanna is having her patterns featured as part of the Independent Designer Program on Knitpicks, so you should definitely check that out!

There's more, of course... Next time I'll talk about baby gifts, stuff I've knit for myself, and wedding presents. Hopefully that will cover almost everything!

Domaine Chambord

A blog post, you say? What is this madness?! I thought surely this blog had gone the way of the dinosaurs!

Yes, yes... It's been 8 months since my last confession... err... blog post, but I'm happy to say I'm back! I managed to get a PhD, run a 10k race, go to a bunch of weddings, and knit a lot of baby clothes in that time, and I'm sure I'll get to all of it in the next few blog posts. (Yes, I promise I won't just post once and leave you hanging.)

I'd like to begin again more or less where I left off. Over the Christmas holidays, my mom took me and my cousin to a lovely little farm and yarn shop called Domaine Chambord, located in the small town of Moe's River in the municipality of Compton in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.



It was an icy day in December, but the owner, Kathy, was more than happy to show us around to pet the animals. They had sheep, of course, both Shetland and Jacob...



And lively alpacas...



And funny-looking ducks...



And llamas, and cashmere goats!



They even had a cute little guy who (I think) is a cross between a llama and an alpaca. He was extremely friendly and kept making funny little noises at us.



After seeing the adorable animals, we headed towards the yarn shop. It wasn't very large, but there was plenty of yarn spun from the fibre of the animals we had just visited.



Each skein had on its label a picture of the animal that yarn had come from, which was a nice touch.



Mom couldn't resist fondling the cashmere (and I think she ended up taking some home with her).



And I had a hard time resisting jumping straight into this big basket of alpaca fibre...



At Domaine Chambord, they also sell some knitted products: a few hand-knit scarves as well as knitted socks made with these amazing antique knitting machines they have lining one whole wall of the shop.



They all appear to be in working order, and if you go to their Facebook page, you can see a bunch of pictures of the sock-making in action. I found it fascinating, and I hope to be able to visit Domaine Chambord again!

Crafting for weddings (part 2)

I am Canadian, and therefore I talk a lot about the weather. This last week, winter has really decided to flex its muscles in Toronto with whopping lows of -20 C and lots of snow to go with it. Despite the fact that I grew up in Quebec, I've never really appreciated the cold. As I was walking down the snowy street towards the subway station, pining for the warmer weather, in the meandering way my mind works, I was reminded of all the weddings I went to this summer... and I realized I had never finished blogging about all the crafting I did for said weddings! Well then. That had to be rectified.

So here we are, in the middle of January, reminiscing about some cool stuff I made waaaaaaay back in August and September. You might recall my first post about wedding crafting, where I mentioned that I had something ready for an upcoming wedding, which, at the time, was coming up in a few days. Well, this was the wedding of a very dear friend of mine, in fact, the brother of the wife in the happy couple we saw get married last year. For him, the boyfriend purchased an epic drinking horn. He enjoyed it very much at the reception...

For his lovely wife, I decided to make something slightly more practical, and yet incredibly nerdy... A Tardis shawl! I know the both of them are huge Dr. Who fans (I remember him watching the entire series from the beginning back in undergrad), so I figured it would be appropriate. I used the Bigger on the Inside pattern by Kate Atherley, and I absolutely loved working it. The "time vortex lace" was a little boring after a while, but the Tardis pattern, even with the super long rows, was incredibly addictive.

It blocked out to about 6 feet wide, which was almost too big for my blocking mats and also 2 feet longer than it was supposed to be. Whoops! Oh well, it's a beautiful scarf anyway.

The yarn I used was Cascade Heritage Solids in a perfect Tardis blue colourway (actually, the colourway is called "Marine"). This yarn is also a joy to work with! It's great for socks (I'll get to that in a later post), it's soft, it's sturdy-feeling, and it also comes in a wide range of solid colours (pretty rare for a sock yarn). I'm a huge fan, and I'd definitely use this yarn again.

The final bit of wedding crafting I did let me return to my wedding-crafting roots... I made a pair of potholders. It was for the boyfriend's sister's wedding, and shortly after the wedding, they'd be moving to Switzerland together to start a new life there. I decided to crochet these, since it was a bit of a last-minute decision to make them, and since the boyfriend and I are a little obsessed with molluscs of late (you should check out the boyfriend's band), I decided on a snail theme.

I actually combined two patterns for this one. I used the Snails Chart by Stephanie Law for the main design and then this Bluebird Potholder pattern by Doni Speigle for the general design. It's double-sided, so super sturdy.

The yarn is a Lopi which a friend brought me back from a trip to Iceland. It's kind of scratchy, but works wonderfully for colourwork. I'm looking forward to making something neat with the rest of it.

The Annual Christmas Knitting Post (Part II)

After spending a week in sunny Long Beach, CA for a conference (you know I just said that to make you all jealous), here is instalment number two of the Christmas knitting! It was actually a lot of crochet too, you know, to be fair to the craft which inspired this blog's title.

This first project was actually finished before I left for the holidays, despite deciding to make it at the last possible minute. I created it for the new baby of a couple with whom I have played many many games of Settlers of Catan. It therefore seemed fitting to create a Catan blanket for their new little bundle of joy:

This little blanket, which is approximately 3 feet in diameter (I didn't actually measure), only took me a week to crochet. I thought I'd get super bored of the repetitive hexagon pattern, but it was actually kind of addictive. I'd be willing to entertain the idea of doing a grown-up sized version in the future, potentially as a stash-buster.

I would love to tell you that I used up a significant portion of my stash crocheting this, but I would be lying if I did. The red, light green, grey, and tan hexes were made from yarns I already owned, but I ended up buying some big balls of Mary Maxim yarn for the rest of it. Bulky acrylic is all I remember... nothing noteworthy.

I couldn't really find a hexagon pattern I liked, so I made up my own. Here it is, if you're interested:

Ch 6 and join into a loop.
Rnd 1: Ch3, dc into loop, [ch2, 2 dc into loop]x5, ch2 and sl st to join to top of first ch3.
Rnd 2: Ch 3, dc into next dc (from previous round), [dc into ch2 loop, ch2, dc into ch2 loop, 2 dc into next 2 dc, dc in next ch2 loop]x5, ch2, dc into final ch2 loop, sl st to join to ch 3.
Rnd 3: Ch 3, 2 dc into next 2 dc (from previous round), [dc into ch2 loop, ch2, dc into ch2 loop, 4 dc into next 4 dc, dc in next ch2 loop]x5, ch2, dc into final ch2 loop, dc into next dc, sl st to join to ch 3.
Weave in ends.

Next up we have a ridiculous sheep hat created for a toddler that ended up way too big.

I've been told it fits the child, though I probably could have given it a lining to make it a snugger fit. I started with this Sheep pattern by Alexandra Cohen, but soon discovered that the kiddie has way too many toys. Easy! It's a hat now! I just kept increasing the body part until it looked roughly hat-sized and kept crocheting straight until it was roughly hat-length. Then I added earflaps (which I more or less made up on the spot and can't remember now) with super cool ties and tassels. Here's my mom modelling it and pretending to be a sheep:

Finally, we have one final silly project, this time knitted. I had originally planned on making a huge Appa (from Avatar: The Last Airbender) stuffed toy for my friend Ed, but I ran out of time and motivation, so instead went for the next best thing: an Appa toque! Because it's not fair to only have silly pictures of my mom, here I am modelling it:

I used the pattern Yip-Yip by Lesley Brownlee, only instead of the intarsia arrow, I opted for a sewn-on felt one (mostly because I didn't have the right colour yarn on hand). It's a pretty cool pattern, but I think if I were to do it again, I'd change the crown decreases because they were a little abrupt. Also, the toque doesn't quite cover my friend's ears. He's nice enough to wear it anyway.

And that's it for the Christmas knitting this year! Quite a bit of it for having only planned one project...

The Annual Christmas Knitting Post (Part I)

Happy New Year to all! Despite my blog silence, I've been extremely busy on the craft front. This year, I only decided to knit for one person, my dear old dad, for Christmas. And then, at the last minute, I realized I hadn't gotten anything for my friend Ed, nor my friends' new baby or his older sister. Whoops! And so the madness began, a mere two weeks before Christmas.

The one hand-crafted gift I had planned in advance was a pair of guitar socks for Dad. The reason was that the pair I had knit him a couple of years ago, through bad planning, had shrunk a bit and were unwearable. They had always been tight because of the method of construction (the top part is knit flat and sewn together, and the yarn choice was not optimal for socks (Knit Picks Palette), since it felts easily.

So this year, I actually got the right foot measurements (instead of just his shoe size), I went with a pattern I know will work (toe-up), and I bought a yarn that I know is machine-washable (at least according to Ravelry). The result, if I do say so myself, was perfect...

The yarn is Spud & Chloë Fine in the Green Bean colourway, which is a wool-silk blend that feels absolutely lovely both during the knitting and knit up. Instead of my regular short-row toe, I went with the toe-up cast on featured here, casting on 12 stitches on each needle, I believe, and increased two stitches on each side every other row until I had a total of 72. I then did a short-row heel with 12 wraps on each side and finished off with a 2x2 ribbing and Jeny's surprisingly stretchy bind-off.

The guitars were added using duplicate stitch using some left-over Knit Picks Palette. I discovered that I actually really enjoy duplicate stitch. It doesn't always look as perfect as when you do colourwork in the pattern, but it's always much stretchier, and I had learned my lesson from the last pair of socks. Here's the chart I made up, in case someone else ever wants to use it:

He seemed pretty pleased with them! (What a goof!)

Speaking of gifts for my Dad, I also whipped him up a hat, which I called a late birthday present. The last hat I made him, way back when I had my first crafty Christmas, was (again) a bit too small. So I picked up some Patons Decor at the local yarn store (Lennoxville has a LYS! Rejoice with me!) and whipped up a suitably manly hat. I used Claire Nordlow's 2x2 Rib Hat pattern, which is quite excellent, and did the ribbing for the whole 10 inches so that he could roll up the brim. I just love that simple little triangle on top!

Dad was quite happy with this one too. It's super cozy.

I think that's enough for the moment. Be prepared for some sillier gifts in Part II!

55 Cancri in the Skies with Diamonds

I was recently considered as an interviewee for Radio-Canada (I knew being fluent in French would pay off someday!) to be the "expert" about a recently characterized "diamond planet". I did a lot of research on this new discovery, but I didn't end up doing the interview. Since I hate letting good research go to waste, I thought I'd talk about it here!

Artist's concept of 55 Cancri e - Credit: NASA/REUTERS

This extra-solar planet was first discovered in 2004 (by McArthur et al.) orbiting around the star 55 Cancri A, a sun-like star about 40 light years away in the constellation Cancer. It has the designation "A" because it is in a wide binary system with a much smaller red dwarf companion. McArthur and company discovered the planet by the radial velocity method, that is, by looking at the Doppler shift of 55 Cancri A due to the wobble caused by the gravitational pull of 55 Cancri e. Sort of like this:

Image stolen from Wikipedia

The radial velocity measurement gave astronomers an approximate mass for this planet, and also the orbital period, but it wasn't until recently, when, in 2011, 55 Cancri e was observed transiting its host star (by Winn et al.), that we were able to determine how large this planet is. The transit measurements, by the way, were taken with the MOST satellite, which is the only Canadian Space Telescope. It looks kind of like a suitcase:

Image stolen from UBC's MOST website

Anyway, based on the transit and radial velocity data, it was determined that 55 Cancri e is eight times as massive as the Earth, and its radius is twice that of the Earth's. That would give it a surface gravity about twice as large as on Earth. In addition, its orbital period (or year) is only 18 hours long, which would give it a surface temperature of over 2000 degrees Celsius! We shouldn't go around calling this a second Earth any time soon... it's hot and heavy over there!

The most recent development, which made the news last week, is that astronomers (Madhusudhan et al.) now think that this planet might be made primarily out of carbon. That would mean that it would have an iron core, a layer of diamond (which might be 3 times as massive as the Earth), and a molten graphite surface. Previously, it was hypothesized that 55 Cancri e might have a rocky core like the Earth's surrounded by a layer of super-heated water. That assumes, of course, that it's made of the same sort of rocky stuff as in our own solar system which is primarily oxygen-based.

Fig. 1 of Madhusudhan et al.

The plot above shows the radius versus mass of several extra-solar planets, including 55 Cancri e as the red and blue dots (these represent two different measurements). The different curves represent various models based on the composition of the planet, and a primarily carbon-based planet seems to make sense in this case. It helps that the host star appears to have more carbon than our own sun, and that a superheated water layer would be extremely volatile. More measurements, of course, will help determine the exact composition of the planet.

This is the first extra-solar planet that is thought to be made of diamond (unless you count that "diamond planet" I talked about last year), and if 55 Cancri e turns out to be carbon-based, it would revolutionize how we think of planet composition. We usually think of planets being composed of mostly the same stuff as in our own solar system, but there's no reason why some planetary systems couldn't be made up of slightly different stuff!

Summer dying

Well, fall is definitely upon us. I can no longer get away with wearing my flip-flops without freezing my tootsies off, I have had the requisite seasonal cold, and the leaves are starting to turn shades of crimson and gold. Fall is a beautiful time of year (and it does mean pulling out the woollens!), but I do miss summer already. I thrive in the heat and sunlight, what can I say?

And this summer has been a particularly good one for me in terms of improving myself and learning new skills. I learned to run, I lost almost 30 lbs, and in the craftier department, I learned how to hand-dye yarn! This was several months ago, but I thought it would be worth sharing the process with you all.

First, we soaked the roving...

We used Dharma Acid Dyes, which were what Joanna had on hand. They worked quite well, I thought, though one of them ended up being grainy when mixed with vinegar and water.

Of course, all the special squirt bottles had to be labelled, since they weren't going to be used for anything else (at the risk of poisoning someone). We put a little vinegar in the bottle and then a bit of the dye we were going to use.

And then I went to town! Next time I'd probably try to saturate the roving a bit more with dye, but I'm pretty happy with my colour choices.

The final result was amazing. Here it is getting a rinse:

And then hanging out to dry:

Joanna also came up with a pretty colour combination:

And remember that yarn I tried to dye with Kool-Aid over a year ago? Into the pot it goes!

It came out a lovely shade of emerald green that I much prefer to the robin's egg blue it was before:

We tried many more things, and this was the final haul of the day. So many colours!

And now some glamour shots: