Eskimimi Knits knitting blog

I have been avidly stalking my letterbox on the instruction of Stephcuddles , knitter, clay artist and blogger extraordinare, after having been lucky enough to have won her recent blog giveaway.  Now, I have entered a fair few blog competitions in my time but I am a serial loser.  You make your own luck, and the luck that I generate is always bad!  Maybe you only win if you want it bad enough – OK, that may be true of a competition, but this is a game of chance and so that doesn’t count, yet somehow, the morning after I knew the giveaway had been drawn I lay in bed thinking ‘I wonder if I could just have won that draw’.  And I know what made me think that, because only one thing could make me so irrational…

ZAUBERBALL!

Oh, Zauberball, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways…  No, too many ways to count.

But wait, there is something even more charming that was also part of the giveaway.  Stephcuddles has recently turned to polymer clay modelling (a love I can understand as it is another favourite past-time of my own) and as part of her blog competition asked entrants to name a favourite animal and fruit/vegetable.  Well, I was never going to say an animal other than monkeys, was I?  And fruit…  Surely there is only one companion fruit that a monkey would even consider…

Monkey and banana stitch markers by Stephcuddles

Can you believe how cute and well-formed these little guys are?  I have been awaiting autumn so that I can cast on for a very special Monkey Scarf with my monkey knitting needles and now these stitch markers will definitely be used for possibly the most monkey-ish project ever to be conceived.

A second ring of the doorbell heralded the arrival of a box I had been awaiting:

yarn

Lots of fresh yarn, ready for dyeing.  I opened up the box and plunged my head in for a few seconds, like one big meatball in a bowl of yarn spaghetti.  Now I have regained my senses I have lots of dyeing to do.  Once I have finished for the day I shall just sit and admire my zauberball for a bit and try to imagine what it should become.  I have decided to wait until I have finished my two current works in progress before casting on any more, and then I think I will be putting Lisa’s Shalimar sock and Stephcuddles’ crazy zauberball forward for two sumptuous and indulgent new projects.

Stephcuddles has a lovely little blog here so do drop by and say hi to her, she’s rather lovely.

There is a third realm outside that which we perceive through our senses and also outside that which embodies our minds and spirits, and that realm is known as the land of the Invisible Plains and Plainly Visible.  It is to this other dimension that all of those objects you have lost and sought again go.  Not the objects that are lost forever, or even those that are later found in a strange and forgotten drawer or suitcase – these are the things that you know where you have put them.  You have looked in the place where you last placed them a hundred times or more but they have just disappeared, and then one day, when you have given up hope of ever seeing that thing you miss, wonder how it became removed from that place you left it – it is there.  You are looking in that same drawer or cupboard as you have done a thousands times, but this time you are not looking for your lost treasure, you are seeking something quite unrelated, and there it is – right on top – in as plain sight as you can ever imagine.

These are the things that you cannot perceive when you are looking directly for them.  When re-discovered they seem all the more precious because it is quite obvious that they must be magic.

One thing I have searched my desk drawer for twenty times or more was my set of Boye Needlemaster interchangeable needles.

Boye oh Boye

I think they ran off and hid (sulked?) when Craig bought me the flashy Knitpro Symfonie set for Christmas 18 months ago.  It is true that I may have turned my attention and love towards the flashy new needle set, but the Boyes did not need think that I would never use them again.  It is true that they come in a case that resembles something that your grandad would keep in the car door compartment for storing oddments of maps and his breakdown recovery card, in that particular shade of orange-y brown fake leather that should never be used to manufacture anything, but just look inside:

Boye Needlemaster interchangeable knitting needle set

Each pair of needles has its own designated and labelled place.  Each pair is a different colour for easy selection and size matching, and the set arrives with a full compliment of 13 sizes and all the cords you could want, from the very short t the very long (and even longer still with the supplied cable-joiners.)  Where the needles definitely suffer, though, is with cable flexibility.  They are not the easily manipulated cords of the flashy Knitpros, unfortunately.  These cables are far more resolute in the shape that they want to be (which, to be fair, is usually quite straight as they are held in place in their dedicated case.

And here are the usurpers:

Knitpro symfonies - the new(er) kid in town

I do absolutely love my Knitpro symfonies and rarely use anything else.  Actually, I never use anything else unless knitting socks or other small diameter projects where I prefer to use DPNs, but sometimes I come across a project that I don’t have the correct needle size for.  The Knitpro were more expensive than the Boyes, but they are a joy to work with.  However, they did only come with 8 sizes of needle tips as opposed to the Needlemaster’s 13 brightly coloured sizes. You can buy intermediate sizes separately, but the price soon adds up.  One thing that has always disappointed me about the Knitpro set a little is the case.  As the needle tips are not marked with a size a case that had the sizes marked on each compartment would have been a great aid to organisation.  Likewise cables aren’t given and organised set of channels to run through as they are in the Boye set but are instead put into a little transparent wallet, and it just feels a little like an afterthought.  the one thing I most loved about the Needlemaster set, though, was this:

daylight rubbery

It lives with my Knitpro set now, but its home is with the Boyes.  It is a little rubber pad used for gripping the needle tips as you use the little key to tighten the join between tip and cable.  It is such a small inclusion, but it shows that Boye thought about how people were going to use their sets and shows that they tested them out themselves.  I think the same is true of the numbered sizes on the case – just little touches making things that bit easier.  They are such small things – a tidy, sturdy case that you needles stay securely in and do not fall out of, numbered compartments for un-numbered needles, a little tightening mat – but those little things make this unfashionable, unpopular set of needles a friendly, if slightly awkward, old friend.

There was something else that I found on my rummage – an old, uncompleted knitting project.  Actually, I didn’t ‘find’ it, I knew exactly where it was and see it often, I just try and ignore it.

When my grandad was ill I started to knit my nan a hot water bottle, because I thought it might comfort her, but when he passed away i found that I just couldn’t knit on that project any more.  It wasn’t the project myself or the thought of knitting something for my nan, but every time I sat down to knit, an activity which I usually found enjoyable, every stitch reminded me of that person so precious in my life who I would now never see again.  That project has remained ‘on the needles’ (literally, the needles were still attached to the knitting) for over a year now.

an old project, put away

Some of the unused yarn I had purchased for this hot water bottle cover found a new purpose at Christmas when I made these face cloths as a gift for my sister, but the actual yarn attached to the project in progress remained as it was – half knit and put away in a box where I didn’t have to look at it.  I knew that if I could just unravel the yarn and make it look ‘new’ again it might make me want to knit it into something.  So, Monkey went to work with the Jumbo Ball-Winder (for winding jumbo balls – I know, that will never get old) and came back to present me with this:

Monkey vs. the ball winder

Now the yarn feels fresh and ready to use I will re-purpose it into a couple of face cloths for me – it will make for some perfect mindless TV knitting, and will make for a perfect excuse to have a bubble bath so that I may ‘try them out’.  All good knits need to be rigourously tested, after all.

Progression is in the works

A lot of things are ‘half done’ at the moment and I feel the need to bring some of them to a finish to feel the satisfaction of a job well done. The good thing about having several Works In Progress on the go is that after a period of having no finished object to show you then find yourself with a whole avalanche of them, so I am casting on the second of each project today to at least get my foot on the stairway to completion.

No SSS (second sock syndrome) for me

So, the eagle-eyed may notice that I have already knit two of the dark blue ‘things’ in the top picture, but the first was a test knit just to see if I could get my idea to work and was really me knitting along as the idea formulated so I could make various notes and adjustments along the way.  As it was I decided to change the positioning of a few elements.

I’m sorry to only give these covert glimpses of one of my current projects, because there is nothing I like more than sprinkling my blog with loads of good, clear pictures and a lot of chatter about what I am making, but I am working on a new design and certain elements are quite complex to design and I want to be able to protect my design until it is published.  There have been a couple of occasions recently where designers have released designs so close to my own that I have felt rather uncomfortable in the similarity, though I am sure that co-incidences do indeed happen, and as such I suppose I just want to protect myself by not giving any chance that someone will produce a pattern so very close to the one I am working on before I do, after seeing the progression of my new design.

Of course, once it has been knit and blocked, ends weaved in and all written up I will be ‘ta-da!’ing all over the place.

I have one more thing to show you – an ‘exciting’ addition to the Tardis that is my knitting bag.  One of the other things that I always, always, always carry around with me is post-it note (or, really, their less-expensive equivalents).  They are so handy – for marking pages in stitch directories, writing notes and errata/revisions on patterns and, if you find the little arrow shaped ones, for pointing to specific lines of patterns.  So, you can imagine that I snatached these up when I saw them:

Sticky notes. Hundreds and hundreds of sticky notes

In fact, I bought two lots.

There are 1,600 little pointy sticky notes and 400 small rectangular ones, all in a little black sturdy leatherette case.  Ok, we’ll forgive the leatherette and just look at the lovely sticky notes.  Folks in the UK and living near a ‘Works’ stationery and book store may find them on sale there for the bargainous price of £1.99. Don’t pretend you’re not as excited as me when it comes to stationery. I know you are.

As regular readers will know, Eskimimi Knits is a very monkey friendly place, sharing a few familiar faces with World of Monkey, and recently the world of knitting and monkeys collided once again with the arrival of the newest addition to the troup, Sockmonk:

Sockmonk

Sockmonk is a traditional red-heeled sock monkey and as such carries forwards a long tradition of sock monkeys, and I’ve been asking him a little about his family lineage and ancestry.

Sock monkeys are a traditional folk-art toy originating in the United States and Canada, where they are still most popular.

The traditional red-lipped, white-limbed, marled bodied sock monkey stem from the invention of what must have been a wonderful technology of the time – a machine that would knit seamless socks in the round, patented by the Swedish immigrant, John Nelson, who set up his business in Rockford, Illinois.  Mass-produced, seamless socks targetted at workmen were extremely popular, due to the fantastic comfort that a seamless sock provides, and the market boomed.  Soon enough there were plenty of copycat socks appearing on the market, trying to grab a piece of that same market.  Nelson’s Rockford brand then decided to add their trademark red heel to their socks to mark them out as the original and best Rockford sock.

During the years of the American Depression, society reverted back to the make do and mend mentality and worn out clothes were re-patched or re-purpose, and some bright person soon cottoned on to using old socks to make small soft toys for children.  The distinctive red heel of the Rockford sock make it an obvious choice for a characterful monkey, and the sock monkey phenomena was born.

In 1952 the Nelson Knitting company, makers of the Rockford red-heel, were made aware of the popular craft of turning its socks into soft toys and entered into a dispute over the design patent for the traditional sock-monkey pattern. Two years later they won the dispute and decided to use the monkeys to their best advantage.  They were featured in a major marketing campaign and every pair of Rockford red-heeled socks came with a free pattern to instruct buyers on how to make their very own sock monkey, and the tradition was cemented.

Sock monkeys are still a traditional friend today, and their image can be found on many various kitsch items, from badges to hats, to compact mirrors, to small child’s tea sets:

Sockmonk arrived with a pot of tea already brewed.

One of the stranger elements of the sock monkey history, though, have been due to a recent crafting trend reversal.  Whereas necessity and then popularity once saw knitted socks being re-fashioned to look like soft toy monkeys, knitters are now knitting imitation sock-monkeys.  Where it is of course possible to knit a pair of socks and then re-fashion these into a monkey chum, a number of designers have produced patterns in which the ’sock’ step of a sock monkey is actually by-passed, allowing monkey-loving fibre fiends to get straight to the point and just knit the requisite parts to order.  Because a sock is never made in this process whether the resulting monkey companion is actually a ’sock monkey’ is a matter of debate, but they are often made to convey the traditional shape, style and colouring of a traditional Rockford sock monkey.  It is only one more step from making a knitted sock monkey without the sock to also making one without the knitting, and taking up the crochet hook instead:

Leisure Arts' Crocheted Sock Monkeys, ©1999

A Ravelry search on ’sock monkeys’ returns around 20 patterns for making the monkeys themselves as well as numerous hats, mittens and baby leggings, all in the sock-monkey style, so if you are not as lucky I am as to have your very own sock monkey pal (thankyou, dear Lisa) you can always whip one up with your trusty needles or hook.  I intend to crochet another addition to the monkey clan soon, but until then the monkeys are all welcoming Sockmonk into the clan, and asking if he brought any cake along with that delicious tea.

Yeah, we're like the shoemaker's elves, we actually do all of the knitting for Eskimimi Knits'

Thankyou for the well-wishes, everyone! I’m not sure if I feel a little better today or if I have just become used to being in pain, but either way I feel like I am able to give my needles a bit of a twirling, and as such I have cast on for a new project:

Knitting my all-new project

You can’t make it out all the way in the background there?  A bit blurred?  Well, I knew you wouldn’t be interested in my super-secret project when you could look at these two balls of yarn, wound on my all-not-quite-new Brother Jumbo Ball-Winder, for winding, er, jumbo balls…

Now, I have never had a desire for a ball winder until recently, as I have never found winding balls of wool by hand to be that much of an inconvenience. However, when my knitting buddy SmashingPuffin listed a ball winder among her tools I decided to investigate them and thought that it might be nice to offer buyers an optional ball-winding service so that their yarn comes ready-to-knit, should they wish it.

Talking of which I haven’t done a show and tell of my newer yarns yet, have I?

Eskimimi Knits new yarns

There are some new solid and semi-solid yarns, new hand-painted colourways and also a new line of ‘Twingles‘ yarns, which consist of two 50g skeins of yarn separately dyed but made to work together and are great for striping, colourwork or for making two different but co-ordinating socks/mittens etc – whatever takes up your imagination.  Some colouways (such as ‘Goldfish Bowl – have a guess at which of the pictures above is named that…) are a solid and semi-solid pairing, others pair a solid yarn with a handpainted skein – like Macaw:

Macaw Twingles yarn by Eskimimi Knits

They come twisted together is a neat skein, but as you un-twist the skein into a loop it falls into two separate skeins of yarn and you’re ready-to-go.  It is a Twingles yarn that I am using in the project at the top of the page, which you don’t want to read about when I can continue to wax lyrical about my Jumbo Ball Winder (for  winding jumbo balls), I am sure.

Mmmm, Jumbo

I didn’t need a Jumbo ball winder, but after some evilBay stalking for the last couple of weeks that is the one that appeared for the princely sum of £10, and that’s what turned up with the postman yesterday.  Now, rarely is Craig set alight by much in the world of knitting (Kaffe Fassett news aside) but I believe that even he was really quite impressed by the Brother Jumbo Ball Winder (for winding jumbo balls).  In fact he is standing here now saying how well made it is and admiring the smooth action.  Maybe it is the engineering instinct that is encouraged in young boys bought Meccano sets and similar toys, but it is rather joyous to find a relatively simple hand-powered machine that does a good job; and this does.  We made it work its magic on some Koigu:

Koigu Painter's Pallette Premium Merino (or KPPPPPPPPPPPPM)

The very basic instruction leaflet that came with the Jumbo Ball Winder (for winding jumbo balls) said that it produces centre-pull skeins.  Now, I have never actually used a centre-pull skein because I didn’t know that you could knit from the centre of the skein when I learned to knit and so just became accustomed from knitting from the outside of my ball of yarn.  When I joined Ravelry, however, I read many people talking about how great centre-pull skeins were.  The ball doesn’t roll around as you knit, it stops the yarn from getting dirty (this always confused me a little – my yarn doesn’t, as far as I am aware, get very dirty as I knit, but if the outside of the yarn were to get dirty I always imagined these centre-pull skeins of yarn producing yard after yard of pristine, beautiful clean yarn until the final, presumably filthy, outer layers.

Anyway, uncertainties about it’s usefulness aside, I have always been nervous of knitting from the centre of the skein in case I get to the last layers of yarn and find that the ball collapses into one giganto-tangle.  I don’t know how it is possible that this won’t happen, but if people love to knit from the centre of the skein, and the ball winder tells me to do this, then it seems only right to give this a go with my new project (which I’m sure you do not care to read about…)

So, here’s to the Jumbo Ball Winder, for…

winding jumbo balls

So now I am going to spend the rest of Sunday knitting that new project that I won’t bother you with details of.

Well, to be honest, it is a little bit of a secret project, because I’m not sure where I am going with it yet… I have left a few clues around and about the place, so if anyone pics up on these then I’d be mighty surprised. If it looks like it is going to go well I may give a few more indicators in my next post…

Thermal stitch cowl - stocking up the winter accessories

Here is the latest item freshly of the eskineedles – a thermal stitch cowl from the popular Thermis pattern.  I’ve enjoyed the look of this pattern for some time and cast on in a bit of a spur-of-the-moment blur when I was looking for a small, fast, satisfying project to work on a few evenings ago.  This is a fast knit.  A dedicated knitter who is less easily distracted than I could probably finish it in an evening.  I’m not so attentive, though.  I can be in full concentration about someth… ooh, look, shiny!

I hardly deviated from the pattern as prescribed at all on this one.  I changed the 1×1 ribbing to a simple twisted 1×1 rib as I always feel my 1×1 rib doesn’t look very attractive and find that twisting it neatens up the columns of stitches quite nicely. I also took a couple of rows out of the top ribbing section (I think there should have been ten and I knit eight) because I noticed that the buttons on a lot of the completed projects were a little distance from the top and that the ends of the button bands parted at the top a little.

Usually I would like to have taken a modelled shot of this, but I’ve been a tad poorly recently and today woke up with a very swollen face leaving me looking (as my darling other half charmingly put it) like a cross between Paul McCartney and Bagpuss.  When I feel less horrible I will take a picture of it on, though its concealing properties have not escaped me.  Hopefully tomorrow will be as cold and rainy as today has been so when I attend my medical appointment I will be able to hide most of my face beneath my new knit (so as not to scare babies and young children) and remain thoroughly buttoned up.

Button me up

My Knitting Bag

Bags can tell you a lot about a person.  The contents of a handbag, for example, can give you clues to the person carrying it – what they value most and whether they are organised, whether they are prepared for any crisis or carry only the bare essentials.  I don’t think knitting bags are very different from this.

Because I am an intensely curious person (‘nosey’ is such an ugly word) I have always been very interested in people’s blog posts about their knitting rooms and studios where they sit down and get creative.  Oh for the luxury of such a dedicated room I can hardly imagine.

My very small scale equivalent would probably be my knitting bag.  My knitting bag travels everywhere with me and holds all of the things that I deem essential to my knitting happiness.  It isn’t manufactured as a knitting bag but actually as a papercraft bag, but with it’s multiple inner sections, large bottom flat section and many outer pockets of all shapes and sizes, and the fact that it attaches to the top of my wheel-around suitcase, makes it perfect for me.

Many compartments a happy Mimi make

Inside are various objects that I have picked up over the years.  Many of them come from before I actually learned to knit, though I have decided that they are all somehow helpful to the knitting cause.  Let me take you on a tour:

(1) Knitpro Harmony interchangeables, (2) assortment of crochet hooks and stitch holders (3) Knitpro Nova sock needles x2, (4) stitch markers (tiny elastic bands from Claire's accessories), packs of 200 x 4, (5) nterchangeable needle connectors and sewing-up needles, (6) teddy bear appliques, (7) NES controller tin full of pins, (8) tape measure, (9) needle gauge, (10) Knitpro needle gauge + swatch gauge, (11) three small pairs of scissors, (12) packets of Kool Aid, (13) mirror with monkey patern, (14) a Smashing Puffin, (15) small digital scales

I think that most people can see how handy, if not absolutely necessary, all of those things may be to keep with you as you travel with your knitting – whether it be from room to room or city to city.

Three pairs of scissors may seem like too many, but really I wonder if i don’t need more pairs of tiny scissors with me at all time.  They do like to dematerialise into another dimension with very little notice, before turning up in your aunt’s kitchen, or onstage at the Old Vic.  The teddy bear appliques are, like so many things, little items that I have found for 50p or so in the sales and thought ‘I’ll use one of those some day.’  And some day I will.

Much like the rest of the bag’s contents:

(1) notebook and pens, (2) flower, ladybug and bird buttons, (3) large graphic buttons, (4) assorted fruit buttons, (5) beads, (6) silver wire stars, (7) green shell buttons, (8) large purse/handbag frame, (9) printed ribbons, (10) sellotape with sheep design... (11) assorted novelty buttons, (12) more buttons, (13) wet wipes, (14) D-rings or handbag handles and soft toy eyes, (15) heart and star shaped shell buttons, (16) wire circles and stars, (17) enough batteries to power the world should it ever run out of electricity, (18) packets of tiny cute stickers, (19) oval shell buttons, (20) post-it note tabs, (21) elastic, (22) pom-pom makers, (23) highlighter pens, (24) row counters, (25) more D-rings

Yes, indeed, all absolutely essential.  Who knows when I might go away for the weekend and absolutely need to make a large clasped handbag?  After all, you can never carry too many novelty buttons with you.

Things that were in the bag but didn’t make it into the photographs were the stitch holders in the very top picture, a roll of dental floss that was hiding in a flapped-pocket (dual-purpose – for lifelines and flossing teeth), and six packets of soup which I thought were too stupid to photograph as I couldn’t remember why I have been carrying them for the last three months.

You’ll notice the distinct lack of yarn or project on-the-go.  Well, of course these items deserve their own travel arrangements and now take the place of what space used to be designated for clothes.   Know your priorities, knitters and crocheters of the world!

So now I am asking you, how does your knitting bag/craft box measure up?

I have found myself these last few days longing for the winter months. I am not a child of the summer, and Eskimo Mimi was made for the snow, and the wind, and the cold. I like to wrap up warm against the cold, to envelope myself in warm and soft layers of comfort, rather then find myself in a hot and sticky climate that I cannot escape from. You can always put more layers of warmth on, but levels of nakedness are definitely finite. And there are laws against that kind of thing.

So last night, pining for the months I love most, I cast on Thermis.

Preparing for the winter

It’s a simple knitted cowl, started with a number of rows of 1×1 rib.  I usually avoid single rib like the plague as I find it the least attractive rib, but as with my Warden Bay socks I have elected for a twisted knit stitch in the ribbing which neatness things up considerably as well as adding a good deal of definition to the ridges and furrows.  Other than that I will probably stick to the pattern as written and enjoy a simple, no thinking necessary knit.  Roll on winter.