I finally fixed the One Day One Skein Wonder Hat and you can download the new version here. I also knit myself another version alternating the cable directions. You have to switch the direction on the cable decrease but otherwise it’s the same. Shall I make a lucky hat now with horseshoe cables to prove that I’m more than one trick pony?
Sorry for my terrible sense of humor.
You have until Friday to enter the brilliant crafters contest. In the meantime, I will work hard not to buy something from all the great people you mentioned so far.
Here are some more pictures. I divided them into a couple of posts because this was getting very long. I had a very negligent blogging sumer and I’m still catching up. SPOILER ALERT: If you click on the more link, you will see what I got from Scout’s Swag for the sock yarn club for October.
Happy late Halloween. This is what my husband’s first-year class did.
This is the best picture I have of the Ostritch Plume scarf. I’m knitting it in Ella Rae’s laceweight merino, which is a fingering weight yarn. Basically, it’s sock yarn without the nylon. It’s beautiful and I will enjoy blocking it.
The Coriolis socks are back on track. Once I get the heels done, they will go really fast.
In the category of yarn that I haven’t shown you, when my inlaws were here in July, they bought some yarn for me to make hats for them. My father-in-law has a 24″ head and hats don’t fit him. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do just yet, but I’d better get going!
Here’s some Wollmeise I got from the Loopy Ewe Sock Club. I never photographed it. It was a busy summer. The color is called PIllars of Fire and there is a very generous 540 yards.
I added a lot more of the yarn to the shop. There are about 5 skeins left to go.
I’ve put one line called test sock. These are varying yarn bases and I’m really experimenting with colors here. It’s a lot of work – when I’m feeling like a pro, I will probably develop some actual colorways. In the meantime, benefit from the learning process and get some great yarn at a great price!
I will always be wiling to send your yarn via first-class mail. Just let me know that that’s what you want and I’ll make sure you get the difference in purchase price. The trouble is that it costs another .75 or so for the mailer, so most of the time you might as well have it sent via priority mail.
Lime Getaway
Sunset Confusion
Acid Pop
So I bought a couple more commercial sock yarn blanks over the weekend and am continuing to dye anything not nailed down. These are 430 yards / 100 grams of 75% superwash merino, 25% nylon fingering weight yarn. The nylon on them ought to make any pair of socks knit with them darn durable. I put them up over on Etsy for $23, not including shipping. These are non-repeatable colorways, since I’m still in the learning phase. During my last run, I thought I would learn more about pink since I spent so much time on red and blue during my previous attempts.
Here are the pictures.
I still own house cats and while I have not yet found a good place to skein and reskein yarn away from them, I will before I’m out of this learning phase. Therefore, I ask those of you who are allergic, to please be patient with me.
Ever since my first encounter with hand dyeing last week, I’ve been hunting around for my place undyed yarns that I could dye. Why on earth did I trade away the cream colored Mountain Mohair I have? Couldn’t I break into my Cascade 220 that I bought for the Masters Program? (No.) Who sells cream colored / unbleached sock yarns at a reasonable price?
When I was at TKGA I was surrounded by wonderful blank yarns, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy any of them with a huge order on the way. I haven’t really found much nearby either. I suspect a trip to Abundant Dyeworks could work out once in a while, given a recent conversation I had with the owner. (They can always order it for you too.) And if I really wanted to trek, I could always go to Knot Another Hat in Hood River; however, at that point you might as well go to the place in Washington where I’m ordering my unddyed yarn and do a pick up.
This is just to tide me over until my order shows up in a couple of weeks. There was some Happy Feet at the Purl District nearby but it was $18.75. Just knowing though what a wholesale price I could be paying has put me off buying anything for now.They are having one of their quarterly knitting dinners tomorrow night, which won’t work out since I’ve got other things going on. In addition, I’ve bought too much stuff recently and Oregon Flock and Fiber is coming up next week. And then I thought about overdyeing. Hooray! I have some Nature’s Palette yarn that is too pale a color for me. I fell in love with one of their rich purples yesterday and boy was I jealous. Read the rest of this entry »
Fiber day at Veneta’s Downtown Market (the link takes you to the slideshow in case you need more incentive to check out the market during September) takes every Friday afternoon starting at 2:00 p.m. and ending at 6:00 p.m. Look at all that yummy Alpaca! These are shots I grabbed last week with my old camera, which has now been replaced. And now with my AmeriCorps year gone and the project nearly finished, regular knit blogging should resume.
She dyes roving too! Obviously I will miss my old camera. Of course, any half-way decent camera is good during the day.
We had an Olympus Stylus 4.0, which died because of a problem with the sensor and the door. It was sad really, because if the door is open, it works fine. That being said, we messed around with it for a month or two and it finally stopped budging. After some hemming and hawing, my husband and I finally chose the Olympus FE340. It’s a nice camera; 8.0 megapixels with a 5x optical zoom and a sweet little super macro mode. The super macro mode is what won it over for me. We liked the old Olympus, even though it is a bit on the sluggish side. On the other hand, we were used to it and not running around taking action shots.
Here is a photo taken with the super macro mode of some recent knitting I did. It’s the Branching Out Scarf I finished during the Ravelympics. I unfortunately failed to post about the finished project so I will not be receiving a medal. It’s okay though; I love this soft alpaca silk (Blue Sky Alpacas) and the scarf is reward enough.
Despite only 14 days left until I need to leave my job and having a huge project to finish, I had to sign up for the Ravelympics. Of course this event provides great blog fodder so how could I not. I had not been around much when the 2006 winter games took place, but I have been training hard over the past two years and felt that I could be a contender. Read the rest of this entry »
Yes, it can be done. You can get a three-year old W.I.P. out of of your closet without having to make it into a R.I.P.
But first, a gratuitous photograph.
Sorry. Two.
Proof that though I was driving around with no idea whether or not I'd come out on the right road, that I was not LOST.
I decided I’d catch up on my Mason-Dixon reading this morning after realizing their new book is out. And boy I’m glad I checked out their blog this morning, because there is a brand new knitting magazine, twist collective, out! It looks fantastic and I can’t wait to go play. I guess I’ve had my head in the sand, because apparently they’ve been talking about it on ravelry for months.
I only had time for a brief poke around, but the pictures are amazing and the site appears to be easy to navigate. While there are some great looking articles, only a few of the patterns are free. Still, the free patterns are doozies! One is for a Giant Knitted Flower by Tatyana Yanishevsky. I don’t knit things like that but I do enjoy hearing about it and about the techniques required to do so.
This first issue includes There are sock patterns in it to, including Houdini Socks by Cat Bordhi. I particularly like how this sock is put together and it appears to be another new architecture, specifically an alternative to the after-thought heel. I agree with her notes; it does give you some freedom about which part of the sock you want to be the “top” and which you want to be the “bottom.” Those of us who knit socks with hand-painted yarns on a regular basis certainly get it. Read the rest of this entry »
Back in April, I mentioned that I’d had a moment of weakness at Sweet Georgia Yarns. Shame on me for not sharing. It’s 1100 yards of sweet georgia spun silk 20/2 in weld. Yummy.
I also bought some roving. It turned out to be not enough roving, so I guess it’s practice yarn. All my spinning is for practice anyway.
There were also some more moments of weakness more recently. At the beginning of July, I heard about another discount opportunity Little Knits. I found some Noro for my Lizard Ridge Blanket. And there was some Kauni yarn, which was good timing, since I just purchased this awesome Ruth Sørenson pattern!
Here is my progress on the Japanese Vines scarf as of June 23rd. I figure this is a long-term project. I’m knitting it in the Cherry Tree Hill I got the 2008 Loopy Ewe Sock Club.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene. Here’s the loot. I bought Socks That Rock Lightweight in Kawkaw.
I also bought Mediumweight Mill Ends. These are seconds so they are discounted. I love the colors.
The Grass is Greener on the Other Side
There have been some changes in WordPress recently to photos, so please bear with me while I try to figure out how to use their new system.
Baby Surprise by Elizabeth Zimmerman
It’s really driving me crazy. I put in text then pictures and then it puts the pictures over my text from before! Theoretically it should be really great though. And then the captions disappear and things.
And I got a photo of baby surprise #1 being worn. His mother is so sweet to send it to me. And, Happy Fourth of July!
Jacob wearing his baby surprise.
I received this letter from a friend in my email box a few days ago. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
“Last night (probably a whole 1/2 hour ago) I had a dream about you. In the dream, I was in a supermarket. You and Josh appeared, having come to visit me (well, Josh appeared first and then you about 1 second later) and you brought me a birthday present. Neither of you looked quite like yourselves, as sometimes happens in dreams; Josh was skinny (and taller?) and you were blonde with blue or green eyes (same hairstyle, though!). The present you gave me was in a white box, tied with a strand of sherbet-colored variegated yarn (slightly lighter than sport weight); the yarn had a sheen as though it were bamboo or polished cotton. (And now, you can start to see why this was a dream about you, not a dream about you and Josh…) The box was like a rectangular prism, about 4″ square on one end and about 6″ long. (Now we all know what was in the box, not that you hadn’t guessed…) In the box was (not a shock) a skein of yarn. But! The yarn was slightly fuzzy, not in the mohair sense of “fuzzy” but in in the nylon sense of “fuzzy,” round rather than ribbon, with a mildly glitzy strand sewn through it so that one could only see the sparkle at the right angle and such. So it felt not particularly nice. It was also slightly lighter than sport weight and variegated, but in dark magentas and purples and blues and reds. My conscious mind, in the dream, said to me, “Why is she giving me this weirdly yucky yarn? This is so not a yarn she would be attracted to…”
But the crowning glory of this dream was the ball band! I couldn’t guess from the feel or look of the yarn what kind it was, and I had to ask you because the ball band didn’t say—it did have the logo for the Gap on it, and fiber content. You didn’t remember the name of the yarn. And the fiber content? 98% some-word-that-isn’t-elastane-or-any-fiber-word-we-know-but-ended-in-ane, 6% something else, and, then I stopped reading the ball band for the (hopefully) obvious reason, and woke up and started laughing.”
Here’s a photo of what I’m busy with in my professional life. The market started last week and went well despite the weather. This Friday ought to be great though (including the weather). I’m planning to buy some more baked goods, strawberries and grass-fed pork. But also, I’m going to get some tomato plants. I bought some seeds earlier this year and lost them. Then I finally planted some others that I bought (from a much less interesting place, a.k.a. Loewe’s) and they are about 2 centimeters tall. So is the basil.
Having finished three projects last week and what with the mid-year sneaking up on us, I shall now tell you how many yards I’ve knit (in terms of completed projects). The idea was to knit in a way that only sustains and shrinks the stash. I’m allowed to buy up to 9,578 yards unless I’ve knit more than that.
I’ve knit 3,461 yards. I’ve bought 15,783 yards. Some of it came from the Earth Day Yarn Swap and I’d bought 300 yards and received 800 yards in return. So we can call it 15,283 yards right? And I gave away two skeins of Regia and a skein of JKnits last week. So that’s minus another 856 yards, bringing me down to 14,427. 360 yards was a gifty for being Earth Day Swap hostess. So that’s 14,067 right?
Then, I sold 137 yards of Craft because some poor sod needed it to finish a project. I know what that’s like! And I sold my Yorkshire Tweed to a collector (360 yards). That leaves me at 8, 153 yards for 2008 or more than twice I knit this spring.
Erp. Of course, it’s also true that the Pearl Buck Cardigan is unfairly stalled by the lack of adequate yarn and worth 1233 yards. And I’m working steadily away on the Katherine Hepburn Cardigan that is 1575 yards. (I can’t really call the right front a swatch anymore because I started on the armhole and neck shaping.
I started a pair of the Child’s French Socks by Nancy Bush (360 yards).
I should finish the mitered mittens. That’s 218 yards of credit for another 3hrs of work. Whee! This photo is a little out of date. I’ve finished the body of the mitten (and they are close enough in size for me to consider that part done). But now I have to cut into the mitten and put in the after thought thumb. I’m a little frightened that I won’t do it right, so I’m going to have my knitting group witness my efforts tomorrow night at knitting.
I’ve also bought more yarn, but I should save that for another day. I will point out though that it is for two more baby surprises. No more pregnant mathematicians or their spouses! I can’t believe I’m knitting four of these in one year. Everyone else gets something different.
The Simply Socks Yarn Company is holding a contest. They want to know what your favorite sock yarn is and why. Here are some of my favorites. The deadline is June
Anyway, knock yourself out!
I am painfully aware that I never posted my pictures from seeing Stephanie Pearl McPhee speak at the Oregon World Forestry Center on Earth Day. So here is a link to the set. Most of the pictures are from the Inexplicable Knitting Behavior scavenger hunt. I am not delinquent, I was preventing a colorway spoiler. (To which I say, I am a big liar.)
This colorway is called Knitters Without Borders.
It’s pretty. Yum. Mine!
I had to make it back to work the next day, so I had to leave without having spoken with her Harlotness in person, but its nice when your friends can get your book (Things I Learned from Knitting…whether I wanted to or not) signed for you. I know I had a really good time and I got my cool pin for free. I heard Duffy sing A Traveling Sock. Not only is she brave, but she has a great voice too. I’m sure you’ve already seen the video on You Tube, but here it is just in case you missed it.
For me, color is one of the biggest attractions of knitting. In the winter, I practically drown myself in it in an effort to replace sunlight. Unsurprisingly, I’m interested in doing some hand dyeing of my own. If you read this blog regularly, you may remember that I received several jars of jacquard acid dye for Christmas, although I have yet to dye a hank.
Over the past year, I’ve been picking up hand dyeing supplies. Kool-aid here, sponge paintbrushes or gloves there. I’m down to the big one – the pot, microwave or other device I need to actually cook the skein in.
So it was natural that I picked up a copy The Yarn Lover’s Guide to Hand Dyeing: Beautiful and Simple Knits by Linda La Belle. This book appears to have slid under the radar. There are three things I really like about it: comprehensive coverage, cute projects and interviews with professional hand dyers. It also happens to have clear instructions and well chosen photographs. Any one of these things alone would make a decent book. All three together make for a magnificent introduction to hand dyeing.
The book covers multiple techniques for hand dyeing – kool-aid acid dyeing, eucalyptus dyeing, cold pad dyeing, ktiton immersion dyeing, jacquard acid dyeing and the list goes on. Yep, it’s all there. It even lets you know the pros and cons of using the different dye types. The book coversJacquard Acid Dyes and Ashford Wool Dyes and Procion mx fiber reactive dyes dyes and you can see some sample results.
There is probably one too many ‘little projects’ in the pattern section, but I enjoy the fact that some are knit BEFORE the dyeing, while others used the finished yarns. All of the projects show the dye job beautifully, which is probably the important thing.
I think my favorite aspect, the one making the book worthy of being a permanent reference book, is the interviews with hand dyers like Cheryl schaefer, Maie, Taiu and Kersti Landra (Koigu), and Nancy Finn (Chasing Rainbow Dyeworks.)
Available through and from Amazon.Com for $15.28 – $19.80 US.
I’ll recommend this book at four and a half yarn cakes. Sweet!
On the downside, I’m home sick. I hate having a sore throat. I think tomorrow I’m just going to take whatever sudafed crud I can find (I’m NOT supposed to take this stuff for a variety of reasons) and go back to work. I’m movied out, bored and probably just have another sinus infection. Of course, my doctor is located near my job anyway. Read the rest of this entry »
I finished the heel flap of my Zombie Sock for Sock Madness 2 last night and now am staring directly into the maw of the foot.
These are surfer zombies by the way. As in, “Dude, I’m totally dead.”
I’m finding the Zombie pattern that I’m knitting as part of Sock Madness completely hypnotic. I guess the zombie state that one gets into after knitting for several hours straight is a lot like being hypnotized. Or maybe it’s the yarn. Or how it looks in this pattern. Of course my socks look more like rippling waves than a zombie, unless the zombie is pretty fresh and just bruised. I tinked out 8 rows, so I feel that way myself. Maybe the pattern will turn me into a knitting zombie.
After 3 1/2 hrs of knitting and tinking, I just finished pattern repeat #2, row 8. More tomorrow night after work most likely. Though maybe tomorrow lunch will be one of those longer lunch breaks. Good thing I’m being sent home early on a delivery mission!
Yep, Sock Madness started this afternoon. So I’m knitting as much as I can in between work and commuting home, which means I’ve done all of 7 rows of ribbing. Here’s a pic.
The yarn is Blue Brick Wall by Blue Moon Fiber Arts. My husband bought it for me this weekend at Twisted. That makes two shops in Oregon (other than the company itself and for that you have to place an online order) that I know of that carry Blue Moon. The other is the Farmhouse Knit Shop, which is in a Portland suburb (Beaverton). So I guess Twisted can claim that they are the only shop in Portland that carries Blue Moon. Regardless, they have a lot of it in right now and they’ve had it in for two weeks. I can only imagine what they must have gotten initially.
I know I owe you posts. They are coming 
. Now back to knitting those socks! I really want to make it out of Round 1 again this year and I musn’t let the fact that the new Knitty is up distract me. Nor that I want to tell you that I got into the 3-month version of Scout’s Swag Sock Club, which will start in October.
I’m getting prepared for Sock Madness. I really hope to make it past round two this year. And maybe even be a first knitter in a bracket (highly unlikely what with my lack of knitting speed and job). I need to have all the right yarns. I am enjoying going through my stash and trying to pick out
I seem to be in the UConnCastons Tennesse Twisted Knitters Division. I realized I was in there twice and had them remove the one with my real name on it.
So the yarn requirements look like this. And next to them I’m dropping in a photo of what I think I might use. I haven’t seen the patterns yet, so who knows what I’ll actually pick. It’s fun dreaming though.
| Yarn | Needles | Gauge | |
A |
About 360 yards of fingering weight yarn – Louet Gems Merino/Claudia’s Handpaint | US Size 1 | 8.5 st /inch |
| Read the rest of this entry » |
We’ve been discussing some interesting questions over at the Earth Day Swap on Ravelry like, ‘What makes a fiber planet friendly’ and ‘What are the most eco-friendly needles?’ I thought I should post my answers to the blog too, so here they are.
The planet friendly fiber question was so tough that I sent in a question to Sierra Club’s Mr. Green, who I hope is still mulling this one over.
Anyway, he’s looking into it, but here’s what he sent back. “Thanks so much for sending this info. Wow, it’s even more complicated than I suspected. For example, fiber made of soy, milk, corn, or bamboo is from a “natural” product, but if it is raised in an unnatural way with pesticides and land-eroding practices–which a lot of farm products are–then its value as a sustainable product could actually be quite dubious, and in some cases not significantly better than conventional cotton, which is notorious for its dependence on chemicals. (Even something like shrimp shells raises questions, because a lot of shrimp-growing damages coastal environments.)”
Here is what I sent: ”I’m glad you are interested in my question. Here’s a little background. In the past few years, many yarns have come on to the market claiming that they are environmentally friendly. Some are recycled fibers, but others are manufactured. Some is organic cotton. Many of the fibers are plant based blend. This is a particularly confusing issue because we don’t always what the source is for the “eco-friendly” portion of the yarn. Add to that the distances these fibers travel and the dying process…well the textile industry isn’t the most environmentally friendly. So we’d like to encourage it in whatever way we can.
Yarns and fiber claiming to be environmentally friendly may contain Soysilk™, Silk Latte™ , Inego, bamboo, milk-fiber, Tencel(R), organic cotton and hemp.
Fiber(s): Soysilk(R), Milk Fiber Brands: Soysilk(R) and Silk Latte™ Company: Southwest Trading Company Company Location: Australia Website: http://www.soysilk.com. Yarns: Tofutsies: 50% Superwash Wool, 25% SoySilk™, 22.5% Cotton, 2.5% Chitin (Shrimp and Crab Shells) Vicki Howell’s Craft: 65% Organic Cotton, 35% Milk Fiber They are working on two other fibers that are currently only available for spinning: Silk Latte™ is fiber and yarn made from Milk proteins and Ingeo is made out of corn.
Other companies of note selling Soysilk products: Patons.
Fiber: Milk Fiber Company: Cyarn claims to be the largest producer of milk fiber. I don’t know if they are tied to Craft. Website: http://www.cyarn.com/products/fiber/fiber_036.html
Fiber: Corn Company Website: http://www.ingeofibers.com/ingeo/home.asp Company Location: Minneapolis, MN
Company: Southwest Trading Company Location: Australia Yarn: AMaizing – 100% Corn Fiber (not sure if made from Ingeo I think).
Company: Crystal Palace Yarns Company Location: Richmond, CA Company Website: http://www.straw.com/cpy/yarns/Maizy-scans.html Yarns: Maizy – 82% Corn Fiber – 18% elastic nylon
Yarn Company: Kollage Company Location: Birmingham, AL Website:. http://www.paradisefibers.net/Kollage-Cornucopia-Corn-Yar… Company Address: Kollage Yarns 3304 Blue Bell Lane Birmingham, AL 35242 USA 888-829-7758 toll free 205-408-5815 phone 205-408-5813 fax info@kollageyarns.com
Fiber(s): Bamboo Company: possibly Bambrotex – may also have something to do with corn fiber Company Location: China Company Website: http://www.bambrotex.com
Yarn Company: Classic Elite Company Location: Lowell, MA Company Website: http://www.classiceliteyarns.com Yarn: Bam Boo – 100% Bamboo
Yarn Company: Alchemy Yarns of Transformation Company Location: Sebastapol, CA Company Contact Information: P.O. Box 1080 Sebastapol, CA 95473 Phone: (707) 823-3276 alchemyyarns@pacbell.net Company Website: http://www.alchemyyarns.com/yarns.html Yarn: Bamboo – 100% Bamboo
Yarn Company: Zitron Company Location: Germany Company Website: http://www.atelierzitron.de/ Yarn: ProNatura 75% Merino Wool and 25% Bamboo.
Fiber: Seacell(R) Company: SmartFiber AG Company Website: http://www.smartfiber.de/index.php Location: Might be Germany
Yarn Company Handmaiden Fine Yarn Company Website: http://handmaiden.ca Yarns: Sea Silk 70% Silk and 30% Sea Cell, Great Big Sea 50%Silk, 30% Wool 20% Sea Cel(R)
Yarn Company: Fleece Artist. Related to Handmaiden Company Location: Nova Scotia, CA Company Name: http://www.fleeceartist.com/ Yarns: SeaWool – 70% Wool and 30% Sea Cell(R)
Fiber: Tencel. Tencel is a trademark for lyocell and made of wood pulp cellulose. I usually see Tencel in products sold by Independent hand-dyers. I don’t know what their source is.
Yarn Company: Classic Elite Company Website: http://www.classiceliteyarns.com Company Location: Lowell, MA Yarn: Premiere which is 50% Tencel and 50% Cotton.
Yarn Company: Blue Moon Fiber Arts is a dyeing company. Company Website: http://www.bluemoonfiberarts.com/fiber_type_detail.php?fi… Yarn: Seduction – 50% Wool, 50% Tencel.
Fiber Organic Cotton
Company: PeruNaturetex Fibers Company Website: http://www.perunaturtex.com/ Company Location: Peru Notes: FairTrade
Company: Vermont Organic Wool Company Company Location: Middlebury, VT USA Company Website: http://www.vtorganicfiber.com/ Yarn: O-Wool(R) Notes: Certified Organic, makes fabric in addition to yarn
Company Name: Blue Sky Alpacas Company Website: http://www.blueskyalpacas.com/ Yarn: Organic Cotton – 100% organic cotton in natural and dyed colors. The natural cotton was bred for color.
Fiber: Hemp Yarn Company: Hemp for Knitting Company Location: British Columbia, Canada Company contact information: Lanaknits Designs / hempforknitting Melissa Duarte Suite 3B . 320 Vernon Street Nelson . British Columbia . V1L4E4 . Canada ph/fx: 250.352.6985 . tollfree: 1.888.301.0011 email: melissa@lanaknits.com info@lanaknits.com Company Website: http://www.hempforknitting.com
These are just some of the many companies that are using the new “earth friendly” fibers. Other fibers contain banana and coconut. And then there are companies that use recycled silk. A good one for that is Sari Silk which is made from recycled Saris.
Someone I know finally knit the One Day One Skein Wonder hat and found a mistake. She helped fix up the numbers, but I have to see what I’m doing sometimes, so I knit myself another hat just to figure it out. I changed the cables and moved some of the decreases up and down, but not the part that requires knitting the numbers. The swatch took about most of a full-day conference. Obviously I couldn’t knit during the networking bits, because you only knitwork at a yarn conference, yarn crawl or s&b. And I did need my hands at lunch. I sewed it at all up and just decided it’s too short. So, I frogged most of it. I knit it again, but for some reason I grabbed the wrong circular needle. I’ve now decided this yarn looks better on a smaller circular needle and well, I don’t know what I’m doing to do now. Read the rest of this entry »
It is 11:09 PM on Friday, February 08, 2008. The baby is due on February 10th. Assuming the baby is on time, which will probably happen because I’m knitting under a deadline, I have just over 25 hours to finish the Baby Surprise. What’s left? ~680 stitches, weaving in an end, sewing it together, finding and adding a button, washing and letting it dry, wrapping it and delivering it so that it will be at her house before she gets home with her new one.
I was doing really really well on Monday, until I realized I’d forgotten to increase across the back for fullness. Ten stitches is not the sort of thing you can flub on a little sweater. While it’s true that if I don’t make it, there is a back-up plan (a baby baseball tee in blue and brown), this particular project is a good one to give a mathematics professors. For some reason, perhaps because a high percentage of our pregnant friends are mathematics professor, I’m going to have to knit a lot of them. I must impress the topologists.
The sad thing is that I was granted an entire day off from work yesterday. Unfortunately, this was not for a fun reason. Someone came along and smashed the passenger window of my car. They did not steal anything (and now there is nothing in there to steal, trust me), but it took quite a lot of my time yesterday to deal with. And because I work quite a ways off and I live in a rainy state, it was better to leave the car in the garage and then take it to the glass shop. (Normally they come out to you, but this was the only way to get fit in on such short notice.)
I’m sorry that you do not get a photograph. Honestly, you are lucky to get a blog post. I must finish this sweater on time. It’s newborn sized! And he’ll probably be a big child.
Frankly, I thought these socks would be done by Sunday. As much as I want to be done with the Jaywalker socks and no matter how hard I try, I keep finding myself in the same place. The other day I was down at the toe of the second sock and realized that I’d failed to do the same decreases for the foot as the first sock.
My socks have to match! What’s funny is I don’t care if the yarn pools differently, but the actual stitches have to be the same. And I don’t like the toe for the first sock either. So as soon as I get down near the toe for the second sock, I will rip the toe out of the first sock and put both socks on to two circular needles. I will probably put in a star toe or a rounded toe. I like both of those.
I think the photograph is of the sock before I ripped a whole lot of it out, but it’s nearly back at the same place.
Still, I want them to fit and last and they will be so much better if I don’t find myself obsessing about so called mistakes in the future.
I got home an hour ago from an eleven hour marathon of work. I organized a community event tonight for different local organizations to get together and network. Of course it snowed! I was begging the weather. You should have heard me. Tonight was harder than I thought it would be and I definitely would recruit more volunteers next time (although that should certainly be easier next time). I think it went well though. It’s a good start.
I spent the day fielding phone calls, making last minute adjustments to agendas and table layouts, and juggling one of my other projects and running around like a mad woman trying to make sure we had everything in place. And now?
Now all I want is some knitting therapy before I go to sleep. Thank goodness I have a relatively easy sock (Jaywalker) all cast on and nearly done to work on. I knew there was a reason I had multiple projects going.
Is it startitis or finishitis?
This is Malabrigo Laceweight in the color Azul Profundo. I got two skeins the other day for Juno Regina.
I tried casting on with a pair of size 3 Addi Turbo Lace needles, but I’m pretty sure now that I want to use a size 4. I talked myself into buying the 3s because I don’t any and I didn’t have the 4s with me.
Don’t tell me you’ve never done that.
Does anyone want to buy a pair of size 3 Addi Turbo Lace needles? Or trade for a pair of size 5 or 6’s?
Raise your right hand if you became infatuated with Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Mitered Mittens (May in the Knitter’s Almanac) after seeing the pair made by Brooklyn Tweed. These will involve installing an after-thought thumb. Should be fun.
Why these mittens were a good idea.
I didn’t realize that I would need two skeins when I went to Knit Purl over the weekend, so I will have to go back and get another one. Oh dear. Another trip to Knit Purl. I already used up my Christmas gift-certificate. (Gift from husband.)
My other comment is that Jared has recently proved what a bargain the Knitter’s Almanac actually is. Where else can you get a dozen great patterns for $7.95? I only like two patterns (so far) and that’s a still a steal. It’s a good read on a cold day too.
After a discussion with my Monday night s&b in Eugene, I went to REI and purchased a Joby Gorillapod. I love this tripod. It’s cute, green and all bendy. Sort of like a space alien. I keep trying to tell myself it’s not an action figure and that it’s serious equipment.
I sat down and learned some more things about my camera features. I also dug out the remote control. So I’m taking slightly better pictures. I also realized I can amp up the resolution for when I want to take photographs of detailed stitch work. All this will go a long way to solving the lighting problem. I was just going to buy a couple of cheap clamp-on lamps, but I’ve been having trouble finding any in a store. The tripod helps a lot, although I’m still messing around with two 200-watt bare bulbs trying to get enough light on things. This isn’t strictly necessary I think though. More time will tell. I could also change the exposure time, but I don’t like what that does to the color that much. I learned how to use the WB (white balance) button and adjusted it for indoor photography. Voila. Lots of new pictures for you to ogle. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a skein of yarn dyed by the Accidental Knitter, I won at the beginning of 2008 from Rachel of Cattywampus for donating money to Heifer International. I give my Mom part of a knitting basket for Christmas every year. I saw the contest on Stumbling Over Chaos.The yarn is a bit pastel but I am sure I will find a good use for it. It is so soft.
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