G. Knerd

The thing about making a sweater up from scratch, as I’m doing with the cARGHdigan project, is that there’s no one to blame but yourself when things go wrong.

For example, when (finally) started on the sleeves, I measured The Blanket Thief‘s wrists.  He wanted them pretty tight, so I added an inch, looked up the gauge I’d calculated earlier, figured out how many stitches to cast on, started knitting like a fiend.  When the cuff was done, I measured his biceps, the length of his arm, did a few more calculations, and kept knitting, increasing as I went.

The whole time, I kept looking at it thinking, “Something doesn’t look right.  It seems a little bit small, right?  It’s not quite right.”  And yet, I soldiered on, not one to let a little adversity sway me from completing a project.

On the other hand, I also didn’t want to let stubbornness force me to finish two entire sleeves before admitting that they weren’t coming out right – and something about having to increase on every other row certainly seemed very wrong.  After about 8 inches of knitting, I finally put it around The Blanket Thief’s arm and asked, “Sweetie, what do you think?”

He grimaced.  “It’s a little tight.”

Crap.  At least I can always trust him to be honest.

As for the sleeves?  I’m going to make them walk the plank, then I’m starting over.  At least I was only halfway up the forearms before I figured it out – that’s progress, right?

After writing my last post about my, er, somewhat gross experiment with spinning cat hair, I realized something.  I wasn’t trying to spin cat hair because I had something I wanted to make out of it, I wasn’t doing it because it brought me joy, I wasn’t even doing it because I thought it was a good idea.

No, my only reason for doing it was, in fact, to see if I could.

The “Because I Can” phenomenon can be a good thing.  It can lead to crazy-amazing feats of knitting, like a gas station cozy.  Or a car cozy.  Or any number of guerilla knitting projects.

Of course, to some people, all of those projects are crazy too.  It’s all in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

The real problem with the “Because I Can” urge is that it leads to doing things you really don’t need or want to do, just because you can.  I’ll knit a sweater out of my dog’s fur…because I can!  I’ll knit a sock with super-weird construction and uncomfortable seams on the bottom…because I can!  I’ll spin a fiber out of things I find in the street…because I can!

None of these things are necessarily wrong, mind you.  They’re just…well, they don’t align with my values, let’s put it that way.

So getting back to the original point – the motivation behind spinning cat hair wasn’t “Oh, I can get something nifty out of this”, it was solidly a “Let’s see if I can” (little sibling to the “Because I Can” impulse).  And, frankly, I just don’t have time for that kind of thing these days.  I don’t need to do “Because I Can” projects – I’ve got plenty of real projects with real outcomes to finish.

In short, the cat “fiber” is going in the trash, along with the little bit I’d already spun up.  Sanity has returned.

Bear Kitty’s response?  “Does this mean you’ll stop interrupting my naps to brush me?  ‘Cause that was pretty annoying.  Can I go back to sleep now?”

I don’t spend much time talking about Bear Kitty, but he’s really a very impressive cat.  For one thing, on one body he manages to fit enough fur to cover 6 normal cats – his coat is almost as thick as a sea otter’s (and nearly as waterproof).  This means he tends to shed…a lot.

In an attempt to combat this problem, I decided to try getting a FURminator.  This is one of the most amazing grooming tools I’ve ever seen – every time I brush Bear Kitty with it, I get a literal pile of fur.  Just one stroke of the brush (even after a full brushing just a couple days ago) gets an impressive amount of hair:

For a normal person, their reaction to a big pile of used cat hair would be “Ewww, gross.”

For a fiber-obsessed person, however, the reaction might be the same as mine, which was, “Hrm, that looks an awful lot like a free source of fiber….”

So, for the last couple months, I’ve been collecting the hair I brush off in a bag with the intention of spinning it into some kind of yarn.  What I’m going to do with the yarn once I have it is unclear at best, but I seem to think this is a good idea – I’ve started spinning it:

But then I look at the big pile o’ fur I’ve saved up, and I think that maybe – just maybe – this is all kind of gross and I really shouldn’t be doing this:

I might have to give this pursuit up – it only sounds sane if I don’t tell anyone about it.

Er…

….

…here, look at this cute picture of Bear Kitty instead of thinking about the dirty secret I’ve just revealed to you:

I love knitting humor.  Like seriously, love, love knitting humor.  Sometimes, in my deepest heart of hearts, I wonder if maybe I might be able to someday produce knitting humor for a living, a la Knitting Legend the Yarn Harlot.

Of course, then reality sets in and I realize that given my life and my particular priorities, it’s unlikely that my life will follow Stephanie’s path (an, really, that’s probably a good thing – who wants to be someone else?).

But that doesn’t mean I can’t share good knitting humor whenever I find it.  The Panopticon is also a hilarious knitter, who I only recently started following.  On Monday, Franklin posted a video that made even my non-knitting husband laugh out loud when he saw it – I suggest that all of you check it out ASAP, and then subscribe to Franklin’s blog.

Four months ago, I decided to give flap heels a try.  From the get go, I knew I wasn’t going to like the resulting socks – a good part of the reason I decided to try the flap heel on this pair is because I already didn’t like the yarn, so if the heel turned out badly, I wouldn’t mind too much.  And yet, somehow, the reality is worse than I could have imagined.  I now know, without any shadow of a doubt, that I will not ever knit another flap heel.

Why?

Because the damn thing tickles!

I’ve always had super sensitive feet.  I resisted making socks for years because when I tried my first pair (on size 2US/2.75-3mm needles) the purl bumps hurt my feet when I walked on them.  It wasn’t until I tried again on size 0US/2mm needles years later that I finally figured out what all the sock fever was about in the knitting community.  Even on the small needles I’m using, though, I still avoid cotton yarns most of the time due to their stiffness and the way the stitches hold their definition against my feet.

But flap heels!  They have ridges!  On the inside of the foot!  And OH MY GOD DOES IT TICKLE.  I can’t imagine willingly wearing these socks anywhere or for any period of time.

Not, mind you, that I would have anyway – the colors are likewise atrocious.

Luckily, taste being what it is and variable between people, one of my coworkers actually likes the colorway for these socks and her feet are the same size as mine.  It’s win-win: I get the damn things out of my house, and she actually wants to have them for her very own!

As for the yarn – this was another Deborah Norville yarn, and while it didn’t have the ridiculous number of cut ends as the first pair, it still wasn’t entirely enjoyable to knit with – it’s kind of rough on my hands (surprising when the first pair were so soft) and kind of splitty, and frankly it feels cheap (no surprise, given that it was ridiculous cheap when I bought it – we’re talking $5/pair of socks cheap).

So it looks like Deborah still gets one more chance with the last colorway of hers I have in my stash (eventually – I want a break with some nice Tofutsies before I go back to Deborah) before I pass final judgment on her entire yarn line.

As for the flap heel – no more chances.  One pair of tickle-y socks is enough.