Morphology - Done!

I took this project along with me to The Unique Sheep retreat, figuring it would be easy car knitting.  I finished it up while we were in Harriman, Tennessee.

It's a good thing, too, as the next shipment of the Rockin' Sock Club has shipped and I'm way behind on knitting them.  Here are a couple more photos.

I'm not quite sure how to wear these.  I just wore it around my neck this past Friday.  This photo shows the colors and stitches the best.

Pattern:  Morphology by A. Karen Alfke
Yarn:  Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Lightweight in Sprinkles and Shannanogins
Needle:  US 6 (4 mm)

Morphology - Nothing Left But The Blues

Having finished my test knit, my sample knit, and putting together the first 6 of the 12 clues for the latest Unique Sheep MKAL (The House at Pooh Corner) I picked this project back up.  It is pretty mindless and I don't even need to use a counter - just count the bars from slipping with the yarn in front.  With a little steady work I've made it through the section that alternates the two colors and am in the home stretch - 28 rows of the blues.  I'm not entirely happy with the color switches (they aren't horrible, but they aren't perfect), but I'm hoping that once the piece is blocked they won't be too noticeable.

Pattern:  Morphology by A. Karen Alfke
Yarn:  Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Lightweight in Sprinkles and Shannanogins
Needle:  US 6 (4 mm)

Morphology - Progress Check

I have been using this project as a default easy project when I don't feel like working on anything complicated.  The picture above shows where I was last weekend.  I do like the tighter tension I am getting on the smaller needles, even though it means I don't get the color pooling that I was getting on the first go around.  I know some folks don't like color pooling, but I always have.  This past week I got to the point where the second color is introduced.

The pattern indicates that you shouldn't cut the yarn between the stripes, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to carry the blue up without creating distortions.  I screwed up when I switched back to the yellow skein and ended up cutting the blue to fix the problem.  I have several more opportunities to figure it out.

Pattern:  Morphology by A. Karen Alfke
Yarn:  Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Lightweight in Sprinkles and Shannanogins
Needle:  US 6 (4 mm)

Morphology - Take Two

I knit a few more rows on this project on Tuesday and found myself growing more and more concerned with what I perceived as a mis-match between the yarn thickness and the needle size.  I found myself playing with the knitting, pulling it and stretching it and worrying about the stability of the resulting fabric.

What really worried me was the size of the purl bumps.  That is a lot of yarn sitting there, and a lot of potential for stretching.  There were a couple of statements in the pattern directions that I found particularly disturbing:

"Linen stitch pulls in dramatically as the work progresses".

This would be due to the bar of the slipped stitch, and would be exacerbated by a tight knitter.  I found myself working tighter than I typically do, just because of my psychological discomfort with the larger needles.

"You will find that the resulting fabric is stable when dry, but quite flexible when wet. You may find that with wear, the fabric may grow in circumference; with wet-blocking you can shape the fabric back to its original proportions."

These statements really got me wondering, so I dug through my stash for more "emergency" sock yarn skeins and knit another swatch on US 6 (4 mm) needles.  My needle size choice was driven by a simple consideration of the linen stitch - each stitch has to span two rows, so I used a needle size that was twice the size of what I might have used in a normal stockinette stitch garment.

The original swatch is on the left, the new swatch is on the right.  The original swatch is 32 stitches by 44 rows, binding off on row 45.  For the new swatch I cast on 32 stitches but bound off on row 44 because I didn't feel like cracking open a new "emergency" skein to finish off row 44 and bind off.  The new swatch was blocked to 5.5" wide by 4" tall, but it rebounded to 5" wide by 3.75" tall.  The original swatch was blocked to 6.5" wide by 4" tall.  The width rebounded to 6".  The new swatch still has some stretch, but not to the extent of the original swatch, which has considerable stretch, especially in the width.  Both have nice drape - so despite going down on the needle size, my new swatch is not stiff as a board.  You could get it there, if you went down even further on the needle size, but that was not my goal - I just wanted a garment that would have some stability.

If you look at the back side, you can again see the extra fiber in the purl bumps in the original swatch.  The other advantage of going down on the needle size is that I don't need to work a super stretchy cast on and bind off.

So, I'm going to frog what I've got and cast on again on the US 6 needles.  I've got to say, I love the colors.  They just make me smile.

Pattern:  Morphology by A. Karen Alfke
Yarn:  Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Lightweight in Sprinkles and Shannanogins
Needle:  US 6 (4 mm)

Morphology - Cast On

Some years back I caught the Sock Club bug that was going around and joined several - CookieA, Janel Laidman, and the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin' Sock Club.  I dropped the clubs for a while, although I did rejoin Janel's and actually kept up with the projects until the last one, when she disappeared due to a family emergency.  I tried to rejoin CookieA's sock club, but then she took off for a trip around the world.  Last year I rejoined the Rockin' Sock Club on something of a whim.  I didn't knit any of the shipments from last year, but decided to rejoin again this year - after pulling out all of the shipments and patterns from last year.  This is one of the patterns from last year's first shipment and is a Linen stitch cowl using two variegated skeins.

I had never done Linen stitch, so I swatched using the miniature "emergency" skeins that they include with each of their big skeins.  I really liked the resulting fabric.  And the colors, well.  That is one of the reasons that you join the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin' Sock Club.  I think they should start an ad campaign - "The Most Interesting Knitter in the World" - and the tag line would be "I don't always knit socks, but when I do, I knit Socks That Rock.  Keep knitting my friends."  I started this as something that would be mostly mindless to work on when I didn't have Hale-Bopp to work on, but then, well, things happened, so I haven't made much progress on it.  The needle size threw me - a US 9 with fingering weight yarn?  I did do a little research to see if I could find anything on picking the right needle size for Linen stitch, but had no luck.  I even played around with smaller needles while I was swatching, but decided that the fabric looked best with the larger needle.

Pattern:  Morphology by A. Karen Alfke
Yarn:  Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Lightweight in Sprinkles and Shannanogins
Needle:  US 9 (5.5 mm)