The Independent Stitch

Knitting tool: Debra's Garden needle gauge

Have I sung the praises of Debra's Garden needle gauges yet? Even if I have, they're worth multiple mentions. (Finding the gauges on the website is slightly challenging; start with this page and go on to the next page as well. If you're budget-conscious, don't be daunted by the pricing on the gold and silver versions that appear first.

I'm on the road with my knitting. Once again, I brought the WRONG size needles with me, because I used a non-Debra's Garden needle gauge as I was preparing to leave. I was in a hurry and just grabbed the gauge that came to hand first.* The good part of this is that I'll have an excuse to visit a knitting shop. Not that I really have time, but fortunately I do have access to a car and I know where there are a couple of good shops in this area. The bad part is that I couldn't keep going with the socks I started night before last. (And do I really need more 1.75-mm needles once I'm home? I probably have enough. Then again, I do break them occasionally, so acquiring extras is not such a bad idea in the long run.)

* No, getting a set of interchangeable needles won't help prevent this problem. They don't come in the sizes that I use most often. And I prefer not to pack my suitcase full of all the needles I might need.

Here are some of the needle gauges I use:

The one that led me astray this week was yet another. It's plastic, like numbers 1 and 2 above. It's from Nancy's Knit Knacks, and it has some advantages, including a 5-inch ruler (no metric equivalents noted) and a wider range of sizes.

Here's an overview of the problems with most needle gauges:

Durability.

Over time, the holes in the plastic ones loosen up and you can fit a larger needle through a nominally smaller hole. Which means you get a wrong answer to the sizing question. This is mostly a problem with the smallest sizes (where I need the most help . . . it's far easier to accurately guess or gauge the size of a larger needle). I use a lot of small needles, because I knit loosely and often with fairly fine yarns (the afghan for the Dorothy Reade book being one of the exceptions that proves the rule).

Range of sizes.

The range of sizes on a gauge needs to fit the range the knitter normally needs. This will be different for each knitter, and Debra's Garden gauges get around this by making different types of gauges to fit a variety of knitterly preferences.

Mine is the

• sock-and-lace gauge (goes from .75mm/US 6-0, also known as 000000,** to 4mm/US 6)

It covers 99 percent of my knitting range.

** I list sizes 0000 and smaller with a number-0 marking, which is easier to interpret than counting zeroes. So 0000 is US 4-0, and so on.

Debra's Garden also has

• metric (2mm to 12 mm)
• US sizing (0 to 17) (also in a special Animal Rescue edition)
• crochet (2mm to size N)

By comparison, the ranges of the other gauges are:

• 1, Skacel Turbo—1.5mm to 10mm (US 000 to US 15)
• 2, Inox—2mm to 10mm (as I recall, the US sizes are on the flip side and should be US 0 to US 15)
• 3, Susan Bates—2mm to (probably about 11mm, not marked in metric) (US 0 to US 16)
• 4, bronze sheep—1.25mm to 10mm (US 4-0 to US 15)
• Not pictured—Nancy's Knit Knacks, 1.5mm to 19mm (US 000 to US 35)

I routinely need sizing as small as 1.5mm (US 000), and my needle selection goes down to .5mm (US 8-0). (The only needle gauge I have seen that goes that small comes from Lacis, the same place the needles did. But it's plastic, about which I hesitate these days.)

Complete set of size intervals.

I check needle sizes in millimeters because that's the only way to be consistent.*** In the smallest sizes, needles change by .25mm at a time.**** This generally affects sizes .25mm (US 8-0) through 5mm. Then they change by .5mm at a time, up to 8mm, and then 1mm or more at a time in the sizes over 8mm.

*** A US size 1 can be either 2.25mm or 2.5mm; a US size 2 can be 2.75mm or 3mm; and there are no US sizes for a number of the quarter-millimeter increments in other parts of the range.

**** A few needles, not in general circulation in North America, hit some of the .125mm intervals in the finer end of the range or fit into the .25mm intervals between 5mm and 6mm, but for most of my purposes a needle gauge doesn't have to accommodate those.

Here are the sizes that are MISSING from the gauges that I have:

• 1, Skacel Turbo—does not have 2.25mm, 2.75mm,4.25mm, 7.5mm
• 2, Inox—does not have 4.25mm, 4.75mm
• 3, Susan Bates—does not have 2.5mm, 3mm, 4mm, 7mm, 7.5mm
• 4, bronze sheep—does not have 2.5mm, 3mm, 4mm, 4.75mm, 7mm, 7.5mm
• Not pictured, Nancy's Knit Knacks—does not have 4.75mm, 7.5mm
• Debra's Garden—none missing; every interval is included in the range that the gauge covers

Summary.

For me, the most important qualities of a good needle gauge are that it:

• measures accurately, especially for the fine needles I use most often; this eliminates the plastic gauges (1/Skacel Turbo, 2/Inox, and 5/Nancy's Knit Knacks). For larger-size needles, these gauges are probably perfectly adequate. But they routinely cause problems for me.
• can handle all the sizes that I need to measure; this eliminates all of the gauges except Debra's Garden (although to meet all my needs, I should have both a sock-and-lace gauge and a regular-range metric gauge).

Essentially, the only gauge left standing at the end of the day is the Debra's Garden version.

One drawback is a relatively minor one that can also be seen as a plus: its small size. Although I took the photo as soon as I obtained this new gauge (which was several months ago), I bought an inexpensive chain for it immediately so I can keep track of it more easily. The chain is long enough that I can wear it around my neck, but it's also substantial enough that it makes it possible to find the gauge in my knitting accessories pouch.

Although it's substantially more expensive than the other gauges ($16 for the regular version—not the gold or silver, but available in a dozen pretty colors), that's less than the price of replacement needles for someone who ends up taking the wrong size on a trip, even after having used one of the less precise tools.

Conclusion.

So I've been to the knitting shop and I have the needle I need and my socks can continue.

Some day I may just invest in a whole flock of Debra's Garden needle gauges so I can't possibly pick up anything else when I'm in a hurry.

There's a whole lot to be said in favor of tools that do their jobs thoroughly and accurately and are aesthetically pleasing as well.

Knitting: Update on the sweater named Vivian

Now it's time for an update on my progress with the sweater called Vivian, designed by Ysolda Teague. I'm making it with Brown Sheep Lanaloft (the singles, worsted-weight, 100% wool yarn). Vivian was last seen on May 11, 6.5 weeks ago, so I'll recap the story a bit. Apologies in advance for the varied photo qualities. If I stop to adjust the images, this will never get posted.

I knitted along on the sweater until the body and sleeves were done to the armholes and it was time to join them and work the upper body (including saddle shoulders). That was May 9. I discovered a problem.

It became apparent that one of the sweater's predominant design features, the cables that run uninterrupted up the side of the body, was not going to work as planned on the size I'd chosen (38). I thought of a variety of ways to fudge to get things to work and didn't like any of them.

So I cast on for the body again at the bottom (it's knitted back-and-forth in one piece), changing the stitch count so that I'd have enough stitches to remove at the underarm without violating the flow of the cables (or creating what I envisioned as an uncomfortably tight underarm). Without ripping my first version, because I didn't want to trash my start in case I got a brilliant idea just after I started over, I began to knit the body over again to see how I felt about going back to the starting line.

Upper left is the first version of the body; center is the start of the second version, and that was May 11, the most recent day Vivian appeared here.

By the time I was 3 to 4 inches (7.5 to 10 cm) into it, I realized I was, indeed, going to abandon #1 and continue with #2. The only potential disadvantage was that the body would be an extra inch (2.5 cm) bigger, but I didn't perceive that as a problem, especially in a cabled cardigan. So I ripped out the first version, reclaimed the yarn, and kept going. That was May 13.

By June 3, after just over two weeks, I was back to the joining point. It took longer than I expected because other critical tasks took precedence over knitting. I don't get much knitting in anyway these days (maybe an hour or a bit more in the evening, three or four nights a week, on only Sundays and Mondays with anything resembling moderate regularity), and I got even less than usual during that time.

All was well until I reached the saddle shoulders. Again, the patterning was not going to work with the shaping in a way that would remain true to the designer's plan, which Ysolda describes in her post on the sweater's origins as "unbroken cables [that] run from the flared cuffs up the sleeves over the saddles and eventually join together at the centre of the hood" (admittedly, I haven't reached the hood yet, so I can't speak for that part). Shaping of the saddle was going to intersect with the cable sequence in very awkward ways.

I mumbled about this for a while, partially in front of some members of the Monday night knitting group (one of the times I do get to knit, when I'm in town). The solution for this wasn't going to be as easy as starting over by using a slightly different stitch count and just making wider seed-stitch panels along the sides. Which was both good and bad news.

Folks at the group began speculating about widening the saddle to incorporate more pattern in a way that would accommodate the saddle shaping better. Ultimately, I decided to narrow the saddle instead, which I thought was a better solution because of my particular body type. The shaping now occurs at a different spot in the cable sequence.

When you change the width of a saddle, you also need to change the amount of body you knit before beginning the saddle. The techniques for making saddle shoulders that work, and thus the key to escape from my dilemma, are described in Knitting in the Old Way. Fortunately, I have that bit of the book well memorized! When I narrowed the saddle, I had to lengthen the body slightly. To keep the sweater true to its shaping, that meant continuing to decrease along the body/sleeve join line. I have quite narrow shoulders, so this is okay. For someone with wider shoulders, it would have been the wrong choice.

So here's where I am—one saddle has been worked, and I'm ready to do the other. I'll need to be watchful as I prepare to do the hood, to make sure the cable transitions work there as well, after my modifications. I'll also have to monitor the neckline shaping, although the adjustments I'm making are minor enough, in the grand scope of things, that I should be within a couple of rows of where I need to be. The dappled light is because I didn't wait for the right time of day to shoot a photo without a nice tree-leaf pattern. I like the shadows cast by trees, although they don't do much for showing knitting clearly. So we're up to June 25.

I had planned to finish the sweater in time to wear it to the college reunion I attended last week. The project did go with me, in progress, and when I was at the book signing event two fellow knitters and Ravelry members came up and reminded me that it was World Wide Knit in Public Day, so I pulled Vivian out of her bag and put her on the table, but I didn't have time to knit (signing books) or occasion to think (required because what I'm doing now is off the plan). She was good company, though, at my table in the corner.

Almost as good company as my neighbor at the signing, Connie Berman, a history prof at the University of Iowa who has written some fascinating books on medieval topics, with special attention to women's roles and concerns. (She's also a knitter.)

On the other side of me (I really was in the corner) were Danny Proud, taking pre-orders for his CD of original songs (I can't locate a website), and Tamim Ansary, whose books I've mentioned here before. That was just the folks from my class!

We were especially well represented because it was a 40th reunion and there was a big push to get as many of us back to campus as possible. Even those who didn't graduate from the school, like me and Tamim, were included (I was in residence for almost three years, and learned a lot during that time). It's lovely to still be included, and I had a fantastic time. What an interesting group of people (and not just my cohort, because the reunion is for all alumni). One featured event sponsored by my class offered perspectives on the current situation in Afghanistan by three of "us" who had contrasting and complementary experiences: Tamim, who is Afghan-American; congressman Rush Holt; and Don Camp, who's been in the Peace Corps, foreign service, and Department of State.

I hadn't been to a college reunion before (I didn't actually ever go to a graduation anywhere, either, as it turns out, although I earned a couple of degrees). Two things were amazing: how interesting the people are, as reflected in the diverse paths they've taken; and how much they are the same as they were those many years ago—in personalities, body language, and speech. I went to one high school reunion (25th) and was not as struck by the consistency over the years; likely people are just that much more formed by the end of college. The exact paths people took could not have been predicted based on who we were then, of course (who would have predicted I'd be spending my days with rare wools?), but the qualities of mind were quite evident.

I'm glad to be back in touch.

__

And I do think I need to cast on for a simple pair of socks, for carry-around knitting. Especially since I have more work to do that involves travel, and the sweater (which I am supposed to be wearing by now) is too big to transport for the next trip, which involves airplanes.

Socks. Back to socks. Although I really want to finish this sweater!

Road Trip: Brown Sheep Wool Company

I've been on the road, and when I haven't been on the road I've been running to keep up with editorial and design-related questions from the publisher about the book, as well as the ongoing freelance work. So I've got piles of ideas for blog posts and they haven't been getting written.

But here's one.

On the road trip that I completed Tuesday evening about 5:30, I started by heading for Brown Sheep Wool Company, outside Mitchell, Nebraska, which is in the western part of the state (the panhandle), west of Scottsbluff. This is the factory. It's fun to visit, but not so easy to find because I hadn't been there before—even though I had printed out directions and maps from online sources. I went all the way into Mitchell and asked for directional help at the post office, then backtracked.

Here's what the entry to the factory looks like when you finally get there:

Here's the neighborhood:

I really like the sign, so I took a closer photo:

During "regular business hours" (roughly), there is a small but well-packed outlet store on the premises. It's not exactly marked, but if you look around and see what might be an office entry on the main building, that's where you go. It's up a few stairs.

Because this is the factory and Brown Sheep yarns are sold through a network of retailers, the store's stock consists of seconds. In this case, as Donna and Peggy Jo explained to me, "seconds" are one-of-a-kind dye experiments; dyelots that came out a little astray of the color specifications; ends of dyelots; and other oddball skeins. Some may have too many knots, but they said that's generally not the case.

The yarns are sold by the pound: one price for all of the solids and standard-run colors ($13 at present) and a different price for the hand-dyed yarns ($26). On the day I was there, the hand-dyes filled the better part of a wall, and while there were groups of similar skeins there were also a whole lot of one-off dye experiments . . . great fun. There were at least three times as many cubbies full of the standard colors. Both sections had a broad range of yarn weights, neatly organized. The one-of-a-kind yarns didn't have labels or tags, but if you're familiar with the Brown Sheep line you can tell by feel what the base yarn is.

I succumbed. At those prices, and when faced with yarns that I know I'll use because Brown Sheep is one of my favorite non-handspun yarns, it just made sense. My daughter gets to pick out the yarn for her next project from the collection I brought home. The frugal part of me concentrated on the standard colors. I only got a few of the hand-dyed skeins. Because of the per-pound pricing, sock yarn is almost a giveaway, and the rest is astonishingly reasonable. Here's what happened:

Lamb's Pride worsted-weight singles, which is a wool (85%) and mohair (15%) blend, all the same dyelot:

Lamb's Pride bulky-weight singles, also the wool (85%) and mohair (15%) blend, two different dyelots:

The four center skeins are one dyelot and the two outer skeins are another. I checked the lots as I was buying, and I know that I can easily work with different dyelots if I'm aware of the situation at the planning stage (I can also work with them later, but it's more complicated). In the store's lighting, the shade variations were not as obvious as they were later in daylight. Yet these colors are close enough to be used artfully and without breaking a sweat. My daughter is thinking of making a short-sleeved pullover vest/sweater. She immediately thought of using the lighter-colored skeins in a center panel that would already be distinguished by a pattern difference. If she does this, she'll get practice with intarsia-style joins at the edges of the panel, and likely no one seeing the finished object will notice the color shift.

Lamb's Pride superwash, 100% wool, worsted-weight two-ply, all the same dyelot:

Lanaloft worsted-weight singles, 100% wool, all the same dyelot:

Still browsing in the regular section, I found some irresistible sock yarn. It takes two skeins of sock yarn to make a pair. Of course there were single skeins here, so I'll have some fun with designing, putting the two upper skeins together and the two lower ones together. The upper skeins are Wildfoote, a blend of wool (75%) and nylon (25%), and the lower ones are Lamb's Pride superwash, in a sportweight (a bit heavier than the Wildfoote). At $13 a pound, these were $1.42 a skein, so I'll be making two pairs of socks at less than $3 each. I sure couldn't I pass that up.

Within the shop, the lower skeins looked almost the same at first glance, were more obviously different when I set them next to each other, and . . . neither has a dyelot indicated. Using up bits of extra singles by plying them together? Whatever, it's my good fortune to have found them.

The next photo shows what I couldn't leave behind from the hand-dyed selections.

The skeins on the left were among a large stash of one-off dye experiments. There were more skeins of the sock yarns on the right, but this is all I need (at hand-dyed seconds pricing, I'll get a pair of socks for less than $6). The single skeins may offer me an excuse to try out some of the patterns in Miriam Felton's new book, which features ideas that make optimum use of special yarns. . . .

From the hand-dyed section I also wanted to gather a bunch of gorgeously subtle autumn-colored Burly Spun (the extra heavyweight singles) so I could knit a second afghan in the design I contributed to the new book on Dorothy Reade's lace designs, but even at these prices that wasn't an option right now. Maybe next time I'm at the factory (because I'll be going back) there will be something equally appealing (in sufficient quantities) and my budget will accommodate the stretch.

Finally, I got two skeins just because I know they will come in handy. The seafoam (Lamb's Pride, on the bottom) is one of the colors I use to knit the swatches that are photographed for Nomad Press's books. The Nature Spun is just a weight and color that will find itself on the needles some time.

Brown Sheep was founded by a family and is still family-owned—Peggy Wells, one of the people I spoke with, is a fourth-generation owner (sheep have been in the picture all along, although only in the form of yarn-production for two generations). Brown Sheep has been a source of reliable knitting and needlepoint yarns since 1980, when her father set up a small spinning mill in a corner of a barn. A lot of the wool is bought from nearby sheep growers in Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming, although the factory obtains fibers from elsewhere if they're not available locally.

It was definitely worth taking a slight detour and also getting lost for a while in order to find the Brown Sheep factory. Next time I'll plan ahead and arrange to have a tour.

__

I'm going to give an update soon on my progress with the sweater called Vivian, designed by Ysolda. I'm making it with Brown Sheep Lanaloft (the singles, worsted-weight, 100% wool yarn).

The afghan comes home

Winter before last, I designed and knitted an afghan based on one of spinner/knitter/adventurer Dorothy Reade's original lace patterns. Now the afghan has come home, accompanied by the book for which it was knitted, Successful Lace Knitting: Celebrating the Work of Dorothy Reade, by Donna Druchunas (published a few weeks ago by Martingale).

Of course, as soon as it was finished the afghan went off to the publisher's offices, where it has been present through editing, photography, and layout. Two winters have passed without my being able to use it (in other words, to put it through its final test: does it work as an afghan? although it felt great and I was confident it would). Now, as summer appears, it returns. I thought I'd need to wait until next winter to give it a real test.

Not so! We are having a cold, wet week, with snow predicted (but, fortunately, not seen). So last night I put the afghan on my bed, snuggled under it, and went to sleep. It works perfectly.

Dorothy Reade, who was involved with the founding of the Oomingmak Co-operative and is briefly discussed in Donna's Arctic Lace, was an inventive knitter and researcher who, among other things, contributed stitch patterns to Barbara Walker's well-known treasuries. The first part of Donna's book discusses Dorothy Reade's life and legacy. The second part includes a collection of designs based on Reade's original lace patterns.

This was originally going to be a Nomad Press book, and I wish Nomad had been able to publish it. When I saw the wonderful finished projects arriving from the designers, however, I knew the book needed to have extensive color printing to do the work justice and Donna and I worked together to find it another publisher who could provide that.

So it has been interesting to watch its progress from afar, and I'm delighted to see that information on Reade's life is now available.

Here are the twenty-five lace patterns:

The stitch pattern marked with the red arrow is Filigree Diamonds, the one I worked with for the afghan.

Here's the afghan, home again, with part of its presentation in the book, including the photograph with the model.

The afghan arrived with souvenirs of its travels, including a tracking sheet for photography:

And another marker to be sure it wasn't photographed from the back (although the afghan doesn't care which way it's used, the pattern shows up as intended when it's seen from the front):

Before I shipped it off, I made and sewed a label onto the back (written with indelible marker on a piece of old sheet):

I wanted to be sure the afghan returned home. The label also carried a couple of pieces of information to assist the people who were working with it. It indicated the wrong side (as did the paper tag they safety-pinned to it) and, for the tech editor, showed which were the cast-on and bind-off edges, which are easy enough to determine (especially on laces), but it speeds the work to have the information supplied.

Anyway, the afghan's back. I love it. I would not otherwise have used this bulky a yarn—I tend to knit at finer gauges—nor would I have made myself a blanket-type object. (The closest I've gotten before was designing three baby blankets for Debbie Macomber's collection for Leisure Arts called The Shop on Blossom Street. The yarn, by the way, is Brown Sheep Burly Spun.)

Thanks to Dorothy Reade and Donna Druchunas, I was able to leave my routine and discover new territory. If you find and read the book (maybe knit one or more of its projects), I think the experience will do the same for you.

Book: Secret Science Alliance by Eleanor Davis and friends

So the work continues, but I essentially need to refuel in mid-air. One of the ways I do that is by reading things that come at me out of the blue (often recommended by my daughter). They can't be long. They have to be interesting enough to break through my fatigue, and different enough to provide rest and new perspective.

Sometimes that includes manga, with which I am often disappointed. Frequently I can admire some of the artistic vision and quirky concepts, while I often don't feel like the entire package has been integrated or realized its potential.

The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis (and co-conspirator Drew Weing plus some technical allies) is a graphic novel (not a manga, which is a subset of graphic novels) and it shows what can be accomplished when the text and images contribute equally to the storytelling in inventive ways.

The intended audience is middle-graders. The plot is nothing new or different. Who cares? It's fun. It's quick. It's well envisioned and witty. It works. I read the last page with a magnifying glass so I wouldn't miss much. I'm not sure I caught everything anyway.

Cover:

Inside:

Some spreads have significantly more dialog and text. I think the most enjoyable spreads are the most art-dependent ones.

Highly recommended for anyone who is not humor-impaired. That's probably most people I know.

__

Back to the wool for me.