Of Hanks and Cables

I really want to make fingerless gloves. Z and I did not put the heat on until Thursday when the temperature dropped below 20 and the wind chill was hovering around the smaller end of the single digit numbers. I can deal with it being cold in the apartment by putting on extra layers and curling up under a blanket, but hands, fingers and toes are always, always freezing. Z of course does not notice a thing. He is fine in his underwear resting his bare feet on the couch with toes waving in the air and will frequently look at me in surprise when it’s absolutely freezing in here because I have on sweatpants, a long sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt, my bathrobe and am under a blanket. So, specifically, I want to make these fingerless gloves. However, they require a few skills that I have not even begun to learn yet including knitting in the round and cable knits. Therefore, I am first making this good ole cabled scarf for my friend that I recently visited who also has an extremely cold house.

First I needed yarn. I already had the cable needles from an earlier stop to a yarn store when I found out I needed a yarn needle to make Z’s scarf not have weird little tails all hanging off of it. The pattern says to use Rowan Cork, but I’ve recently found out that stores never have the yarn the pattern calls for and that I don’t know enough about yarn to figure out a good substitute. I’ve also recently found out that all yarn stores are their own unique little universes onto themselves and the place that I set out for yesterday near my apartment was no exception. It’s called Seaport Yarn.

I’ve walked down William Street many, many, many times and I’ve never noticed a yarn store. There’s good reason for that. There’s no way to tell there’s a yarn store in there at 135 William. It looks like an apartment building. There’s a door with the address written on the step and a doorman at a desk inside. No sign. No name written on the buzzer. Nothing. I almost went straight home but another woman walked in, signed her name at the desk and went to the elevator. Encouraged, I decided to try it. I walked in and asked the doorman, who told me to go the 5^th floor and then asked, “First time?” Inside the store are rooms and rooms and hallways filled with yarn. Almost like someone’s apartment with just bins and bins of yarn and some slightly office supply like things around. The women working at the store were very helpful. In the end, I wound up with Aussi Wool W 31 Peacock which was very affordable.

What I didn’t realize until I came home was that I had two hanks of wool, not two skeins and that I had to wind this up into a ball in order to knit. Debbie Stoller advises you to either use a friend's hands for this or your own feet. Neither of these options worked for me, but I managed to not make the yarn into a knot just by laying out the hank next to me. And then I started the cable knit scarf. Really the hardest thing about knitting cables is remembering what row you are on.

Here’s the beginning with some “action” shots. Of course after I took them I realized that the cable needle was supposed to hang down the other side of the piece on this particular row so I had to take all the stitches out and do the row again.

1. Put the next three stitches on the cable needle:

2. Continue knitting, letting the cable needle hang on whatever side of your work the pattern says (ha ha):

3. Then knit the stitches from the cable needle:

Front of work:

Back of work:

I really hadn't considered that the back of a cable doesn't really look like much. It's supposed to make the scarf warmer, but I really prefer scarves to be reversible.

The Beginning or How I Came to Want to Beat Knitting

This Christmas I told my boyfriend I wanted to start knitting. It seemed like a good past time for all that time I spend on the subway or rotting my brains with reality TV or annoying the boyfriend when he is type type typing something away on the computer in a language that I don’t understand or getting blown up online by his friends. I also thought it would make me less of a consumer and more of a maker. Boy, was I wrong. I’m even more of a consumer now. It seems I am constantly in need of more yarn, more needles, more patterns. Doesn’t matter that I’m only on my second knitting project – I have big plans. You see, I’m going to beat knitting. As if it’s a video a game, I want to progress through each level of knitting: double cast on – done; garter stitch – don’t bore me; rib stitch, seed stitch – done and done; cable stitch – done (or, um, in the process). Bring on the knitting in the round on circular or double-pointed needles, bring on the intarsia. My first project was a scarf for the boyfriend, Z. On my way to AZ for Christmas I knitted up my first swatch in garter stitch and decided to make Z a 2x2 rib stitch scarf. Z had gotten me Debbie Stoller’s Stitch 'N Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook and some beautiful Merino yarn from Knit, a very helpful store in the east village.

He must’ve looked very cute (and lost) in the knitting store by himself with no knitting knowledge. My entire family was amazed that although we can no longer bring water on the plane, there was absolutely no problem with bringing knitting needles. In case you wanted to know, knitting needles are also allowed in women’s prisons although I’m not sure about men’s prisons. Z and I pretty easily learned the knit stitch at home from the book but learning purl while sitting on the plane trying not to stab the person next to me with needles, the book perched precariously on my knees, and the ball of yarn threatening to fall off the seat and run down the aisle was not the easiest of feats, but within about two weeks my boyfriend had himself a very warm, soft wool scarf. It was also a pretty freakin’ expensive scarf. And that was the beginning of what is quickly becoming an obsession.

About the Title

For the purposes of alliteration and the promotion of the letter of K, both Ks in the title of this blog are pronounced. It has always been my feeling that there are not enough K words and, furthermore, there are not enough K words beginning with K sounds. This becomes especially true the moment I am sitting in some sort of classroom or conference and it becomes time to introduce myself and the professor, speaker, or facilitator wants to force upon us some insipid icebreaker where I need to use K words or K sounding words to introduce myself. My choices are way too limited. For too long has K stood upright and mute while N has stolen the glory. Why is K forced into submissiveness next N? Why not Kay-nife, Kay-nowlege, Kay-new? And certainly knitting should be in this category too. What would be more sensible than knitting beginning with a K sound so that it brings to mind the soft clicking of the needles as they march their way through soft twisted yarn. In fact, I would like to go even further and strike the letter C out of our words, for this pretender has no sound of its own but rather steals both the klick klack, krackle and krush of K and the soft slither and resounding splash of S. Although obviously K is the one that is more greatly wronged by this usurper. Ah, well onto the K-nitting.