Vegan Knitting

I have a very good friend named Jack who is also a very angry vegan. In my efforts to cover all of my loved ones in hand knits, I decided to knit him a hat. Well, actually I decided that Andrew would knit him a hat. We went to the yarn store and Andrew picked out the yarn and began knitting. The yarn is Classic Elite Premiere, which is a 60/40 cotton/tencel blend. After about 10 hours of knitting, He had about 1 1/2". With only the mildest patronizing tone in my voice, I offered to finish it for him.

Let me just say that I hate knitting with cotton. I know all of the properties that make cotton the wonderful fiber that it is, such as it's ability to keep one cool and supa crisp stitch definition, but these very qualities make it an incredibly bad choice for a hat.

The first problem I came across is the blown out ribbing. The more I attempted to maintain even tension, the more it prolapsed into some unmentionable blob of stringy entrails. Whatever. I figured that once I got to the stockinette, all would be gravy. Like any good knitter, I used a jogless join for the stripes. With wool, this would result in beautifully even stitches. On cotton, it makes a really gross ladder of gaping stitches 100x more fugly than a little jog in the stripes.

In the end it came out okay. A hat was made using no animal products and therefore another vegan is kept warm.



Note: Next year he gets a juicer.

Crunch Time

Hey y'all! So, for the past three weeks I've been busting it in the studio, trying to get ready for a show on Sunday and finish some entries for a few film festivals. While I like to consider myself a relatively laidback kind of guy, when I have deadlines, I'm more of a wild-eyed, don't know if I'm gonna knife ya or cry kinda guy.

I will post some pictures after the show so we can all look, discuss, and determine if I'd be more suited to a career in the sitting at home and watching The People's Court industry.
Until then, I have this:



These are some t-shirts I've been dyeing for a project in May. There are 30lbs of 'em in 7 colors. While most every 12 year old can successfully dye a t-shirt, it took me three tries to get it right. Three freaking times. You would think that with all of my experience dyeing wool and reading about fiber that I would have been smart enough to realize that the dye I was using was acid dye and not cellulose-reactive dye. Hmmm. Strike one.

At least while I waited for each load of [7(colors)x3(dye failures)=loser] to wash and dry, I knit the sleeve of my Zipped Raglan. I would be able to show you said sleeve if I hadn't left it in my studio. Strike two.
However, I can show you guys the beautiful yarn I bought months ago to make my winter hat:



See that? My colorblind ass thought that was grey. If I knit a hat out of that, I'll look like a freaking easter egg. That's right, strike three. Damn.

So let's recap. Colorblind artist can't figure out why he can't dye cotton with wool dye on the first two tries. Thank god I love Judge Joe Matthus.

Alchemical Process

I know, lofty, convoluted title, but bear with me. I had a ball of Noro Silk Garden left over from a scarf project that was just sitting around with no apparent purpose, so I cast on to see what I could make.



The colors are amazing, no? They remind me of alchemical process changing lead into copper and gold. I was knitting at Main Street
yesterday and everyone asked me what I was knitting, to which I could only shrug and say "I dunno". Anita said, "Sometimes projects let you know what they want to be in time." To which the other James responded, "More so for James'(me) projects than anyone else, though."
That is a jab at my ability to accidentally screw myself over by altering patterns for size and loftier technical difficulty. They have seen more than one "Hey I have an idea!" turn out badly. I would have loved to remind them that I haven't made anymore major knitting disasters than they have, however, upon blocking my new one-ball masterpiece, I discovered that I have created my very own lace pattern.
The feather and fan pattern I had intended on using turned into a diagonal feather and fan due to some fiddling I did with my stitch markers to make the pattern easier to memorize. It didn't help that I forgot that I made said adjustments a third of the way through and didn't remember until I was two-thirds done. Oh well. It got me again. I've got to hand it to myself, though. Apparently I'm becoming increasingly adept at divining the intended existential destiny of fiber. I'm sure that this is exactly what this particular ball of yarn wanted to be. Join me tomorrow so we can figure out what the hell this object wants to be.