Knit Dice

When I started to knit, I was short of ideas after my first garter stitch scarf, but rapidly realised that with increases and decreases, I could knit shapes. Then I decided, well, I'm a gamer, and I like dice. Why not work out how to knit the faces of dice?

The results turned out well:




And now, I've released the pattern, so you can work out how to do it yourself. Have fun, and feel free to share pictures!

A blast from the past.

When I first began knitting, I had trouble deciding what to knit. I finished up making dice, which at least introduced me to the basic techniques. I documented them on Ravelry, before I pretty much stopped remembering to document projects.

Now, someone has found them, and begged me to write up the patterns.

Fortunately, I did make good enough notes at the time to extract the formulae needed to let people work out how to do it, and so I spent this morning writing up the patterns and providing worked examples. There's a little more work to be done, but fairly soon, I should have my first pattern available for download.

Continuations

It seems that in the nearly two years I've been a temporary permanent resident of the US, the rules have changed. Two years ago, an immigration attorney told me that I could apply for citizenship when I applied for permanent permanent resident status (the earliest I can do that, incidentally, is 90 days prior to the expiration of my temporary permanent residency; the start of next week), but now I need three years of permanent residency (since I'm a spouse of a US citizen; otherwise, it would be even longer, and I'd have had a harder time gaining permanent residency) and I don't know if the two years I've had will count. Be that as it may, I can still apply before my British passport expires, even if the 2 years don't count.

Meanwhile, I'm currently working on my second sock. The first one went reasonably well, but there were some niggles. Things I didn't get right. First, the cast-on (figure-8; I do socks toe-up, to avoid a need to graft and so I can cope with running out of yarn) was horribly loose. This was partly because it's not a great cast-on, and partly because doing it with DPNs has a tendency to mess things up and loosen it to the point of its degeneration into holes. For this sock, I switched to a circular (but still square; I much prefer squares at this needle size for their controllability and even tension) and to Judy's Magic Cast-On, and the combination has eased things tremendously. The short-row heel works well for me, but on the first sock I started it a little early. Easily fixed. The final problem is that the 2x2 ribbing I used for the cuff of the first sock is too loose and floppy. I'll still be using it for the second sock, but for future pairs, since I'm using the nice simple sewn bind-off, I can just switch to a 1x1 rib that'll fix that easily.

And eventually, I'll start doing fancy cabled socks and the like. Not yet, though.

The long weekend.

The LA and I had a very long weekend. In fact, the recovery is still going on. On Thursday, we headed down to San Jose and toured the Winchester Mystery House, an historic architectural curiosity which was under continuous construction for several decades. On Friday, having spent the night in a Santa Clara hotel, we spent most of the day not buying yarn at Stitches, and then on Saturday we spent the day buying yarn. The LA got a lot of alpaca and some nice wool, I got some wool and a nice amount of variegated red cotton which I shall be using to make myself a sweater-vest, or a sweater if there's sufficient. On Sunday, we hit Stitches again, but my knees had given out and we finished up heading home early.

Today, we've been recuperating.

And over the weekend, I had a thought: why are books only numbered in ascending order? Many thick books would prove far less intimidating if one could see at a glance just how many pages were remaining.

On completion

I have now completed a cat plaything.

From Ravelry photos

Sheba has yet to actually play with it, but she does accept it. It doesn't roll very well, but it does roll.

On inertia

Fun with Yarn! from Silas Humphreys on Vimeo.

This is what happens when you get the ball winder going really fast and the swift is spinning freely.

Onward!

So the swatch last night came out as close as it gets to exactly the size I thought it would. Hooray for swatching! This means that it's currently in the washing machine, felting. It will felt easily, and hopefully I worked out the proportions correctly to have it felt into a square. For now, I shall save this post and see what it does.

Meanwhile, the ski cap has become a bust due to twisted stitches necessitating a frogging. I just didn't want to start again. I shall find some other use for the yarn...



I rock.

On the d6

OK. This is getting mathematical, not to mention repetitive. Here's the summary:

Last night, I knit up a swatch on 8s. Far too loose, and far too spendy; I only have 69g of yarn to play with, so my swatch must not exceed 9 grams. Hopefully, it'll be a little less, and felt square, which will give me a huge margin to play with, but that would be lucky. So, I'm assuming it'll be a bust that I might be able to make a catnip pouch out of. Anyway, 8s are too much for this yarn with my tension; 7s are much better. I get a lovely fabric, and I'm close to figuring out the right size. I've just frogged another swatch, in preparation for a go with a narrower width. This swatch was 18 stitches by 24 rows (including caston and castoff) and came out to four and three quarter inches wide by four and a half tall. It also came out to nine grams dead on, so I carefully wound it into its own ball (leaving it attached, though; I won't cut it off until I felt it). If my tension stays even, I'm looking to try 16 stitches by 26 rows, which should (fingers crossed!) felt square and use up the same amount of yarn. If it comes out roughly the right shape knitted, it'll be time to felt it and correct from there...

On the latest project

I've started swatching, and it's going to be (hopefully) on size 7 needles. The yarn is knitting up beautifully, especially now I've stopped twisting the knit rows (thanks to Barbara for pointing that out; I figured out what I was doing wrong, and it was slowing me down as well - easily fixed, but I might use it for effect, and I'll deliberately keep doing it in the hat since I don't want to frog that) and it's giving me a lovely fabric. I may want to try some socks for myself in this yarn, once I've finished this project.

The intention is to knit up six swatches which are sufficiently off-square that when I felt them, they'll come out as near square as I can get them; then, I'll figure out what to do for pips (probably a contrasting yarn, felted), and then sew it up, stuff it, and let the cats at it.

Then, I'll start figuring out patterns to make triangles numbered from 1-8. That, I may not felt.

You'll know I've become really confident when I start doing patterns for pentagons numbered 1-12. That pattern, if I can pull it off, I shall type up and make available...