« Pass the eggnog, please. PLEASE. NOW. | Main | Drop-stitch and felted join and cheetos and gnomes. And Bob. »

December 13, 2005

Loopy is the new crazy!

The muppet scarf got bound off and ends woven in and now it sits happily wrapped around a nice bottle of champagne in hopes that Karman will associate that fuzzball with bubbly drunkenness. Yum!

Obviously, upon finishing The Muppet I should have returned immediately to the still half-completed fuzzyfoot which taunts me each day with its partial existence.

Obviously, I started a whole new project.

This project has no pattern, no gift recipient in mind, and no real purpose at all ... other than the sheer joy of knitting it. I LOVE YOU, KNITTING! You make me happy. You know I'm crazy and you love me back anyway, with your 100% wool goodness, with your silly crazy stitches, with your never-ending world of possibility. I know you aren't even disappointed in me for stalling mid-fuzzyfoot. You're just happy to live in a moth-free ziploc bag and wait for me. Love you!

Yesterday morning I was running out the door to catch the bus and needed a project STAT! I reached into the stash (conveniently located right by the front door.) Two balls of Lana Grossa Caldo 100% virgin wool yarn jumped out at me -- they've been patiently waiting since March. A soft, dense lofty wool in a cheerful shade of safety orange -- well, it's deer hunting season somewhere, right?

This yarn is so bulky it's practically polar weight. Therein lies the problem -- I only have two very small balls of the Caldo, enough maybe for a hat. But a polar-weight wool hat in Los Angeles? I may be crazy, but I am not delusional (yet!) so this yarn has languished in the stash for months. Felted bag? Kitty pi stripe? Pompom trim?

For no logical reason at all, I settled in to my bus knitting groove and cast on ten stitches of Caldo with size 15 bamboo straight needles. And the only thing I wanted to do was MAKE LOOPS! Big fat fluffy loops!

I ADORE the loop stitch. I'm not sure I'd make a whole garment out of loops, but a few rows here and there are so much fun! Makes you wonder what the inventor of said stitch was drinking at the moment of divine inspiration. Whatever it was... I want some. Gimme. Now.

Making loops looks hard but it's really easy. It's not an exact science... the loops will never be EXACTLY the same length, and I think that adds to its mod, goofy charm. My loops are the beginning of a scarf because as ya'll know by now, my personal motto is "When in doubt, knit a scarf." (Far better than my old personal motto, "When in doubt, go to McDonald's.")

To make a loop, knit one stitch like normal -- BUT instead of dropping the yarn off the left needle like a normal knit stitch, you leave the yarn on the left needle.

Making loops takes more yarn than normal stitches, so I only made two rows of loops, one on each side of the scarf to give it a whacked-out fringe look.

As a scarf, this little guy was already looking pretty good to me, maker of dead muppet scarves. But the body of the scarf would have to be airy to compensate for A: the small amount of yarn I have and B: the denseness of the wool. Drop-stitch to the rescue!

Drop-stitch is another favorite stitch, because you get this lacy, airy look that knits up in crazy ways depending on your yarn. Ribbon drop-stitch looks totally different from mohair. Plus, it knits up at a pretty fast pace. So, drop stitch + bulky yarn + big needles = super turbo fast!

Progress after knitting on the bus ride home:

This is one funky scarf, the color and the thickness of the yarn make this stitch look almost like macrame, in a hippiefied 1970s kinda way. I'm not sure if I'd wear this ... but I love making it!

And because I haven't posted enough pictures yet in this one entry, here is Soba getting a little warmth from her personal heater and fur blanket, Roy The Cat:

Posted by laurie at December 13, 2005 9:28 AM