…but at least I finished the sweater…

This has been a heckuva week. Lessee. Monday (which I had off from work), I got a call from the new daycare center about four seconds after Captain Adventure arrived there. Come get him NOW.

Tuesday, I got a phone call from the new daycare center saying, “Uh, yeah…his bus is here? But he wasn’t on it.” The bus driver sort of forgot him. But she didn’t realize she’d done it. So she drove on over to the daycare, and only when the teacher was climbing around in the back of the bus looking for him did she realize that she had totally not picked him up.

I know. Boggles my mind, too.

Wednesday, I got a call while I was standing on the platform waiting for the ACE train – he was pitching an epic tantrum about something. And as I hung up the phone, I realized that I was totally expecting the call. It’s become routine. Every single day, something. And I sort of went, Hmmmmmm… and then I counted up the days and I realized that what we had here was a Childcare Fail.

It’s nobody’s fault, really. It’s just a bad fit; their environment and his condition don’t go together at all. Unfortunately, his method of dealing with his unhappiness involves things that make him a danger to himself and others; and their methods of dealing with such behaviors don’t work for him, because his little brain doesn’t work like a typical first grader’s would.

Words are not your friend when he’s heading into a meltdown. Actions are. Pictures are. Touch is. A star on a behavior chart, about to head down a notch. A button being removed from the button box (fifteen buttons earns you a trip to the reward basket at home). Having someone take him into a quiet corner and rub his arms, scratch his back, stroke his cheek, help him reboot the system, be the lightning rod that focuses all that crazy energy into a harmless discharge – or, just leave him alone and let him calm himself down.

Today, I ran interference and just picked him up straight from the curb after school, snatched him right on out of his bus. And soon his bus will start coming to the Den instead of the center because guess what?

Captain Adventure and that daycare center?

Yeah. Parting ways.

And tomorrow, I get to start looking for something else for him. I have no idea what at this point. All up in the air, and starting over from scratch.

…I can’t wait…no really, don’t let the utter lack of joy and enthusiasm on my face fool you, I’m ecstatic…

But at the same time, he was soooo happy to see me this afternoon as the bus pulled up. He turned around to his driver with the biggest grin since teeth were invented and shouted, “OH YEAH! DAT MAH MOMMY! OH YEAH! DAT WHAT I TALKIN’ BOUT!”

And then he started chattering as he hopped down from the bus, putting his little hand into mine for a split second before the need to hop-hop-SKIP, hop-hop-SKIP took over his whole body. “Dat right, dat what I talkin’ bout! I am not going to {pffft!} center! Dat mah mommy! Yeah! Dat mah mommy! An’Iiiiiiiii’m going wif her! YEAH! DAT WHAT I TALKIN’ BOUT!!!”

It’s nice to be popular, yo.

So, yet again…the only constant around here is change. The husband and I are going to be tag-teaming the work-from-home thing for the duration (to the eternal joy of our managers, I’m sure) (although mine might actually be pleased…I get more done and work longer hours from home than I do when I’m in the office, and am considerably less constrained, time-wise) (yeah, the five hours of daily commute kind of tends to put a squeeze on your day – go figure), the Denizens are confused, the cat still thinks there aren’t enough laps around here, and I found another disgusting mass of moths downstairs in a basket of rotgut “practice my spinning” wool I’d forgotten I even had. (I’m sensing a pattern there.)

A million spent moth casings. A couple live moths fluttering weakly around. I don’t want to know how many live larva. All of them now out in the trash can in a plastic bag.

Although I have to confess, I did wonder: Can you spin moth-eaten wool? Because on the one hand, ew, but on the other hand, let’s say the world order has fallen apart and the social order has collapsed and there is no more mall and everybody has to make their own everything: I wonder if you can make serviceable yarn out of moth-eaten wool. Would the spinning process make up for the weakened fibers? Or would you be basically making pre-frayed yarn that way?

I do not intend to find out. I’m just going to sit here and idly wonder about it for a while. Because, ew.

{pause to ponder}

And then I’m going to show you a finished Petal Jacket:



After which, I am going to show you a close-up of those buttons because how cute are they, and every single one is different:



And then, I will show you a Boo Bug wearing it. (Boo Bugs are much cuter than wool moths.)



She likes it. Score!

So, you know, I’ve got that going for me. Everything Else may be falling apart all around me this week…but at least I finished the sweater. Yay me!!

Just to prove I still know how

Hey look, some finished knitting!

This is the Blackrose pattern from Knitty, and guess what? One skein of my sock yarn was plenty to make both socks and the wrist warmers. Which I kind of figured seeing as how, you know, I'm in charge of the yardage and such on them – but still. There's being pretty sure it has that kind of legs in it, and then actually having enough to finish them both.

I think if I were going to do these socks again, I would do two things: I'd use a darker variegated (or solid) (you know, like the designer recommends, ahem), and I'd throw in an extra repeat or two of the pattern on the leg. But that's because I like longer socks, and now I know I'd have enough yarn to do it, if I had yarn that was on the "generous" side of the yardage scale.

This was another good pattern – not too hard, not mind-numbingly simple (like the men's socks I'm making right now for my husband, with the straight stockinette for approximately eighteen feet around and around and arounzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…). It has a great combination of "pretty detail" and "letting the variegated do its thing," which was what I really wanted for these.

My knitting has been full of stops and starts lately. The ripping-out fates have been against me. Or with me. Hmm. Well, whichever it is when it seems like all you ever do is knit a swatch, and tear it out, and knit a swatch, and tear it out too, and knit a third and then, weeping and gnashing your teeth in rage, return it likewise unto the ball from which it came. Hence finally casting on a simple men's sock in size Orangutan – it's boring, but at least I'm not too likely to find myself tearing it out because the gauge isn't right or the color is pooling funny or it doesn't look at all like a bird, it looks like a vomiting bat…(I'm trying to design my own lace. It still isn't going particularly well. Possibly I am a little too stuck on what I want it to look like, and thus am being entirely too persnickety and it serves me right that I keep thinking my birds look like vomiting bats and my horses look like a very young child's drawing of a bloated sheep. Whatever! I refuse to actually give up! Because if there is any advantage to never learning, it is that you have no memory of why you probably should just give up.)

At last, a Finished Something!

I was starting to wonder if I had a terminal case of never-finish-nothin-itis or something. I’ve got more projects on needles right now (and less, erm, determination to finish them) than what passes for Usual around here…which is sad and lame and also I may just have to open my own yarn store just so I can pretend all those #6 circular needles aren’t just for me.

But then somehow, mysteriously, after several weepy declarations that I was never, no, NEVER! going to finish the @*^&@ing border on this unspeakable shawl and why did I decide to do this and gah, if I have to start a THIRD skein for just this WEE BIT OF I-CORD {threat trails off because honestly I can’t think of anything suitable}…it was finished.



The Peace Shawl, by Evelyn A. Clark.

Once again, Ms. Clark has put out a pattern I found pleasantly engaging – it didn’t make me cry (much), but it also kept me awake.

The only complaint I have is probably my fault entirely because I am not only using gray yarn, but gray alpaca yarn (KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud in Smoke Heather): The ‘PEACE’ banner lace doesn’t show up very well. See?



If you look at it closely you can totally see it…but with the slight fuzziness of the yarn plus the gray color, eh. Next time I’d go with something like what she actually used, the dark blue Zephyr.

But I love the trees and dancing people around the bottom – they came out fantastic!



It took two skeins of the aforementioned Alpaca Cloud , and it took all but a wee tiny little button of the second skein.

In other finished items news…I have been a hand-dyeing crazy person this week. In addition to a whack of solids (green, lavender, orange, yellow [which I think I’m going to use as a base to try some microwave-enabled painting] [research, people – vital research], a pink that will knock you right over, a red that I thought would never rinse fully and a really light sky blue), I’ve been playing working very hard indeed with a paint brush (and other assorted toys tools).

Here’s some of it:











Ahem. Yes. Etsy shop, coming right up. I already have too much yarn around the Den, and frankly if I don’t start selling some of this stuff my husband is going to start thinking that all this very hard work indeed is actually some kind of goofing off and playing with yarn.

*harrumph!* The very idea…a (allegedly) grown woman, playing with yarn…

Barbarian crossing…

A longish while ago, in a galaxy far, far away, in a land where I had disposable income…I bought a Viking Hat kit. (Along with perhaps a Dale of Norway pattern book or two.)

As is often the case with these things, the kit went into the “pending” file…and then a few other things piled on top of it…and then volcanoes erupted and created new land forms…and then the super-continent broke apart and there was upheaval and stuff, and things that used to be on the bottom went to the top and there were some shawls knit and some sweaters cranked out and sock after sock after sock…and then there was some kind of earthquake or something and lo! The kit was pushed to the surface again!

So I knit it.



This was a really fun project. It went fast, and has produced a hat that is good and warm. Since the barbarian I intend to give it to lives in the Arctic Lands of the Sierras, good and warm is highly desirable.

Since the horns are created separately and sewn on, you can also just leave ‘em off…if, you know, your resident barbarian is trying to go incognito and such. Personally, if I did them again, I think I’d make the horns a little bit bigger. But then, I long ago gave up such things as dignity and pride.

I’m back to working on the Old Lady Jacket Rustic Jacket, but I confess I’m having motivational issues on it. SEE, the sleeves? They’re, like, enormously wide? I mean, really, they are…designed for lots and lots and lots of freedom of movement.

Which, taken all by itself is a good thing. Who likes a jacket that binds your arms to your sides? Nobody. So the fact that these sleeves are kind of extra wide at the top and going into armholes that practically go from shoulder to hip isn’t such a bad thing. It’s a jacket that would go over a sweater. Good thing.

The bad thing is, they’re done in double moss stitch, which I have decided is a kind of knitting purgatory. Yards and yards and yards of knit, purl, knit, purl, knit, purl…yarn forward, yarn back, yarn forward, yarn back…yawn…I’m about an inch from being done with the first sleeve, BUT THEN, I have to do the other sleeve.

And it’s taking for-ev-ah.

And I’m just sort of in an instant gratification kind of mood lately.

But I’m also in a finishing things up mood. First of all, I have no available #6 needles, because they are all attached to in-progress projects. Secondly, most of my canvas bags (which are supposed to be for shopping) are likewise unavailable because they have been pressed into project storage.

And thirdly, finishing up projects that are already well underway should be fairly close to instant gratification, shouldn’t they? I mean, when you’ve got the front, back and most of one sleeve done, you’re practically there, right?

…except for that conflabbed double moss stitch thing, with the k1-p1-k1-p1 on and on and on…

But! Nevertheless! I knit on bravely! Because I need my needles and my bags back, and also I would like to get this finished before it becomes shorts and tank top weather again.

…but I think I will make a point of avoiding things with moss or seed stitch bases for a while…

Knitting on

Well, actually, to be honest…my knitting time has been badly impacted these last couple weeks by This and That. There’s been so much going on and going down and spinning around. Literally spinning around, since I lost my mind and told Danger Mouse’s teacher that SURE! I could totally bring my spinning wheel and some wool in to the classroom and do a demonstration for Prairie Days, coming up in March!

…and then it occurs to me that my spinning skills are not exactly what could be termed mad skilz and that while I can produce (somewhat) useable yarn, I do so like this: “Whirr, whirr, whirr DAMN! {fiddle, fiddle, splice, smooth, smooth, fiddle} whirr whirr whirr DAMN! {fiddle, fiddle, splice, smooth, smooth, fiddle} whirr whirr…@*^&@ it, I need a drink…”

At the very least, I need to practice not yelling “DAMN!” every time the thread breaks. Because, you know, not every parent appreciates having their child come home with excited stories about how when you spin? It goes whirr whirr whirr DAMN!

But I do have The Most Awesome! Fleece to bring in for the demonstration. It comes from Meridian Jacobs, and is just…a rainbow. OK, not a rainbow-rainbow…but it has all these patches of black, white, red, brown. It’s gorgeous. I haven’t dared touch it yet (despite all kinds of dreams about how cool a sweater I could make from it) (eventually) because my spinning is so “eh”…but it’s a whole fleece and a great thing to show kids who have probably never seen such a thing.

I also have sliver for the actual spinning demonstration, and a whack of ‘eh’ raw fiber to ruin use to show how you wash, card and spin from raw fleece. I’m bringing a ton of drop spindles and of course will let the kids try their hand at the wheel.

I did a similar thing a few years ago at a preschool, and one of the teachers was extremely nervous about the kids touching the wheel and the skein-winder and so forth. “Aren’t they antiques? What if they get broken?”

Well, my wheel is not an antique. It’s a modern Ashford. The skein-winder I had brought was an antique, but it’s not that kind of antique. Abraham Lincoln didn’t use it as a foot-rest or anything…it’s a working tool made about a hundred years ago to do a job that darn it – it’s still good for today. It’s fairly indestructible, and anything they did break, my husband can fix. Since it’s not a “for show” antique but a working tool in my collection of tool, I don’t mind if it has been glued here or there, or if an old hand-carved wooden peg has been replaced with a new hand-carved wooden peg.

That’s just how I roll, people.

Nothing I own is so precious that children aren’t allowed to lay their grimy little hands on it…not even my harp, which is very unusual in the “harping” world. I once had another harpist literally recoil in horror when she saw children pressing around me on my break at a restaurant Touching! The! Harp! She thought I was crazy, and didn’t hesitate to tell me so.

How often do children get to touch a harp? They read about them, some of them even dream about them, but they don’t get to touch. Sure, I have to really monitor and make sure they don’t get too hyper-crazy with the glissandos (that’s the thing where you just “whoosh!” your hands up and down all the strings), I know the grime on their little unwashed fingers makes the strings break sooner, and yeah, I’d better be sure to give the old girl a good rub-down with polish afterward to keep the inevitable dirt, grease and whatnot kids have on their little bodies from damaging the wood…but heck, keep some Handi-Wipes in your gig bag to get the worst of the ketchup and French fry grease off and then let ‘em have at it, sez I.

Just don’t forget to turn the mike off before they start. Trust me on that one.

Who knows what beautiful dreams you might plant, in that ten minutes between sets…who knows what magnificent trees those children might grow in their souls.

…who knows how many parents may take out contracts on your life after listening to “PUH-LEEEEEEZE, can I have a harp, daddy? Please? PLEASE? PRETTY PLEASE? Harp harp harp me me me want want want…” for a few months…

ANYWAY. Undaunted by mere lack of time, I am wedging some time into my day to work on some knitting-things. Right now, I’m a couple fins short of finishing yet another Fish Hat…what? You don’t know about the Fish Hat?

Where. Have. You. BEEN?!

It comes from the latest issue of Knitty, right here. And I am going to humbly submit a couple of my “learnings” on the pattern: It tells you to break the yarn after the ‘mouth’ to begin the short rows that form the mouth. I found that doing one round in the new color before beginning the short rows makes the turning points much less obvious, but doesn’t seem to impact the overall look at all.

Also, when doing the stripes, I moved the starting part of the color to the point under the belly (where it hangs down over the wearer’s head, instead of being on the side in plain sight). Even using Meg’s Jogless Jog, the hiccup between colors was just a bit obvious to be sitting there on the side – especially when I started doing smaller bands of color.

Other than those nit-picking points, it’s an easy pattern that works up pretty quickly. The short rows aren’t nearly as intimidating as they might sound to someone who has never done them – this is a great project to get your feet wet on that whole ‘wrap and turn’ groove. I made this one to give as a gift to a sixteen year old boy man:



That’s not the sixteen year old. That’s Boo Bug. And this is Danger Mouse.



OH NO!!!!! IT ATE HER WHOLE HEAD!!!! (OK, yes, we’re easily amused around here…your point being…?)

The hat was actually a gag gift – we taped an iTunes card in its belly, attached the card to a fishing line and makeshift pole (big branch from outside), stuck the fish into a gift bag and made said sixteen year old boy man go fishing.

You should have seen his face when he pulled that dead knitted fish out of the bag. And then we told him it was a hat, and the look was even more precious.

He was way not sure how he felt about a dead fish hat. (He warmed up to it a bit before the end of the party. A bit. I don’t expect he will actually wear it, but he has a small sister who will probably lurve it.)

Be warned: if you make even one of these and a child between the ages of 2 and about 14 sees it, you will be making one for not only that child, but every child s/he knows because these things? They tickle their little funny bones something fierce.

Boo Bug wore the “practice” one I made out of the Ugliest Yarn Imaginable from my stash, the yarn that I kept almost throwing away due to sheer hideousness, but then I’d say, “Who knows? Someday, I might stumble across a contest where whoever makes the ugliest afghan with vintage 70s acrylic wins $10,000! It could happen! And if I’ve thrown away that ugly vintage 70s acrylic, WELL! Where will I be, huh?”

(This right here is the one real downside I’ve found to this whole Yankee-thrift thing of mine: I tend to packrat an awful lot of stuff I probably will not ever actually use, but YOU JUST NEVER KNOW. It takes serious concentration and willpower for me to throw away anything, even tiny balls of leftover sock yarn that I swear you couldn’t even make a 2x2” square from…you never know, I might someday want to make an afghan out of 1x1” squares of sock yarn IT COULD HAPPEN!!!)

(And then, of course, when I do go through the forty hours of meditation-confirmation thing and the repeated mantra of less is more, less is more and I weed out the special pans I haven’t used in fifteen years and the strange kitchen utensils whose purpose I can’t even remember and the sheets we haven’t used since Noah was a pup…I promptly have a pressing need for them again, thereby reaffirming my unfortunate belief that I need to keep everything I ever get, “in case.”)

ANYWAY. Where the heck was I? Oh yeah. So Boo Bug wore the UGLY! (which actually increases the hilarity) dead fish on her head to school one (1) day.

I have about forty kids sucking up to my kids now in the hopes of getting their very own dead fish for their heads. Because who doesn’t want to walk around school all day with a dead fish on their head?! Especially when you can pull it down like that and it looks like the fish ate your head?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The other gift I made for that same party was this blue scarf, made from really soft hand-dyed alpaca from Brentwood, California:



I almost didn’t give it away. I almost gave her some little bracelets I unexpectedly won at an auction. Y’all know that “thing” I have for alpaca anyway…this was so soft, and so sweet on my hands, and it just flew into shape on the needle…when I was checking it for length I started loving it and then it blocked so nicely and I was saying, “Wellllllllll…after all, it’s not like she’s going to know I stole her present…”

But then I had a stern word with myself about the value of friendship and I put it in the box, handed the box to my husband and said, “Wrap it quick, and put it away somewhere so that I don’t have to look at it!”

And then I went upstairs and consoled myself by embracing some Atacama hand dyed (variegated brown alpaca, which was going to become a hat for my shivering little pointed head until I suddenly developed a love for lace scarves) and rubbed a skein of Schaefer Andrea (100% cultivated silk) on my face until I felt better. (Reason #152 why makeup and I do not get along: you can’t rub hand-painted silk on your face if you’re wearing makeup. And if you can’t rub hand-painted silk on your face when you’re feeling a little bereft, what is the point of living?!)

I’ve got another fish hat on the needles (because World War III has broken out around here over who “owns” the Ugly Fish hat), and then I need to move on to the The Viking Hat for The Boy Who Is Staying With Us, because I promised (and forgot) (whoops).

Oh well. At least I can honestly say, I am never, but never, bored.

No cold feet!

This Christmas, I declared war on cold feet and made socks for those (thankfully few) adults on my gift list.



My favorite of the bunch has got to be these, which are made with Lorna’s Laces Shepherd sock in Country Christmas:



That’s the Waving Lace pattern from Interweave’s Favorite Socks. The lace broke up what would have been a plain stripe color and made it kind of funky fresh.

Typically, I was frantically finishing the toe of the last sock on Christmas Eve. Not only did Christmas pull its usual thing where somehow, in spite of being there in plain black and white ink on the calendar, December 25 snuck up on me and came at least three weeks sooner than I expected, but also…well.

It turns out that I apparently do not believe in the space-time continuum. Or at least, do not respect it as pertains to my knitting.

For perfect (and extremely recent) example: It takes me between eight and twelve hours (depending on complexity and size) of hands-on knitting to finish a (one, singular) sock. A pair of socks, therefore, takes me between sixteen and twenty-four hours of work to complete.

So when I cast on the last pair, which were for a man (larger size), and also decided to use the Retro Rib pattern both because it makes for a handsome finished sock and is interesting to knit, I said gaily to myself that Ha, ha!, these were probably going to take the whole twenty four hours to knit up, HA HA!

So I cast on Monday, and expected to be wrapping them Wednesday morning. Because in my world, one can find enough time to put in sixteen hours of work-work, keep the family fed and in clean clothes, do the last-second Christmas shopping, pay the end of month bills and deal with approximately sixty thousand insurance and contract related questions WHILE ALSO getting in twenty four hours of knitting and perhaps a few hours of sleep…in a forty-eight hour period.

Imagine my surprise when Wednesday morning rolled around and, in spite of neglecting the housework in a truly shameless way and perhaps attending a little less…attentively…to our business for two days, PLUS staying up until nearly midnight twice, I was only just turning the heel and starting the longer-than-I-expect-somehow jog to the toe.

Stupid space-time continuum. It’s so…inflexible.

However, by ignoring the housework even more (the Den looks like a dump truck drove through it with a troop of rabid monkeys having a party in the open back hatch) (also, nobody has any clean clothes) I did manage to skid my way to the toe as Christmas Eve was inexorably ticking into Christmas Day:



There were a few tense moments in our relationship – the purls felt too slow and I was regretting choosing an “interesting” pattern before I hit the heel of the second sock because I was on! a! schedule! dammit!, but I forgave them when they turned out so handsome and since they are inanimate objects, it turned out that for their part there was nothing to forgive.

And then I promptly tossed them into a box, wrapped them and handed them to my brother. Possibly still warm from the dryer, since I blocked them Christmas morning.

As I was grafting the toes, I told myself happily that now I could take some time off from knitting. Because really, that was an awful lot of knitting and whew. Yeah. A little break would be good.

Which is why, an hour later, I was squinting at five different skeins trying to decide which one was exactly right for a nice, lacy scarf, not too fancy but maybe just moderately, you know, interesting.

This knitting thing. It’s a disease. (But at least it is a warm and fuzzy one.) (REALLY fuzzy, as it turns out – I selected a 100% alpaca that is almost as furry as mohair, which would ordinarily annoy me no end but since it is not sock yarn, I am perfectly content to keep a lint brush handy and enjoy the novelty of the thing.)

Happiness is a finished project

Creatures of the Reef is finished.

I had my groovy blocking wires for the top (cleaning out the garage: it's a good thing). This is the first time I’ve actually used them, and overall I really did like them…although I wish they were longer. I used both the thin wires I had in the kit (I don’t remember when or where I got it, actually), and they still weren’t long enough for the entire top.



I tried to drape it on the harp but she kept shrugging it off. So I hung it on the wire storage cubes that are still in the bedroom, even though the remodeling project was finished two weeks ago and really…we need to get this crap out of here and…uh…wherever it is going to end up living. (I foresee a very long posting to Freecycle pretty soon…)



This has been a really fun project. The patterns are interesting, but not so hard they make you cry. The designer has even made things extra-easy for you by suggesting you put stitch markers at the beginnings of each pattern repeat. It’s like the ‘to save time, check gauge’ thing – sometimes you don’t want to “waste” time doing the gauge swatch, and sometimes I didn’t want to “waste” time placing and otherwise futzing around with markers, but they were in fact huge time-savers in the end.

Blocking has done wonders for the clarity of the patterns.


Crabs and seahorses…


Starfish…


Fishies!

My personal favorite part to knit, though, was up here at the top:



This was just plain fun to do, and a stitch I’d never done before. On the odd row, you did a yarn-over thing: yo, k1, yo twice, k1, yo THREE times, k1, yo twice again, k1, yo, k1.

Then on the even row, you knit those k1 and just dropped the yarn-overs. It was just fun, you know? Whip-over! Knit one. Whip-over, whip-over! Knit one.

OK. So. Yeah. I’m easily entertained.

But I’m very pleased with the shawl. It was fun to knit, the instructions were easy to follow, it was a relatively fast knit (time available for knitting was scarce, otherwise I wouldn’t be surprised if I could actually have done this shawl in a much shorter amount of time), and it turned out beautifully.

I’m also very happy with the Knit Picks yarn. This shawl took two hanks of Knit Picks Shadow, in Snorkel. At $2.99 a hank, YES THAT’S RIGHT, this cost me $5.98 for the yarn. I paid more for the pattern than the yarn…how often do we get to say that?! The dye was nice and even, the yarn itself is of perfectly decent quality, and the end result is light, airy and warm-like-wool.

I’ve still got a fair amount left of the second hank, too – enough for a small lacy scarf, possibly.

Finished: Pacific Northwest

Here it is, the Pacific Northwest shawl, this time done in KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud:



I really like the way it came out in the solid color. While I loved the Claudia silk I used last time, the intense color variegation did hide the patterns. With the solid gray of the Alpaca Cloud, the pattern really pops.



I have to confess, I am enjoying this pattern in a way that may be a touch unhealthy. I want to make yet another one. It is just an extremely pleasant knit with a beautiful result.

The fact that this is the first lace-as-such pattern that I have actually managed to do without mangling it beyond hope may have something to do with my passionate love, here.

Now, of course, I have to decide What Next. Other than another shawl, because really now. Moderation in all things, right?

Finished!

Oh, I am pleased. I am so very pleased. This afternoon when I should have been doing other things (like tending my pathetic excuse for a garden), I charged through the i-cord on the top of the Pacific Northwest shawl. I’d finished the last of the Endless Edge Scallops over coffee this morning (they actually started going pretty quickly by the end, there), and thought I had hours and hours left because of the i-cord.

Oh, the whining! You would not believe how much whining I did over that i-cord…it looks awesome, though, makes for a very nice, finished look at the top.

Once I got started on it, it went by in a flash. Seriously faster than I expected – in about an hour, I’d finished the whole thing and it was taking a quick ride on the ‘silk’ setting of my front load washer.

And then, the blob became this:



The magic of blocking strikes again.

The only thing I’m not 100% delighted with is that the patterns don’t show as nicely in “real life” as they do here. The variegated yarn kind of makes them vanish – I don’t think the ‘seagulls, pine trees, silver dollars, waves, bubbles and fish’ thing is going to be that obvious when it’s being worn around town. If I do this again, I’ll try a solid color.

But frankly, the colors are not being done justice here, either. They are rich purples, surprises of orange and red, flashes of yellow, some rich royal blues…gorgeous, gorgeous colors.

I’m in such a happy knitting-head space that I took Lillehammer out of the penalty box and got back to work on it. Pulled out the sleeve back to where I messed things up and started fresh.

I think we’ve forgiven each other. Or at the very least, when I took the main sweater out of my knitting basket and looked at it, I found myself saying, “This really is a stunning pattern, and how lovely that dusky green is at the hems…”

And then the wool obligingly frogged and gave me two inches of quick sleeve-growth while we watched the new Spongebob episode (sadly, I was not forced by the children) and the news.

This is the knitting equivalent of kissing and making up.

Hopefully, I’ll have some progress pictures to post on that project soon…

Baby knitting

Hey look, it’s some knitting!!

This is the baby sweater I just (all-but-buttons) finished for Captain Adventure’s preschool teacher.

I love this sweater. It came out of Knit Layettes for Little Darlings, and it is a wonderful combination of “cool looking” and “not really that hard”. It also has a back opening with two buttons for closure, which eliminates that whole thing where you imagine baby’s head will be this big and then it is actually THIS big and the mother has to quietly donate it when you aren’t looking because it could not possibly ever fit over her child’s head.

That big fancy looking cable pattern on the front is only eight rows, of which only two actually involve cabling. It was fast to memorize and knit up pretty darned fast.

I just started the bonnet tonight, and it likewise is moving right along. At this rate, I might actually get the whole sweater/bonnet/booties thing together before she goes on leave next week!

Hey, it could happen. After all, it’s supposed to rain like the dickens out here tomorrow, and all weekend, and I’m heartily tired of trying to go places in the rain.

And as long as I’m doing pictures, look! Two 5-hour baby sweaters!

These are the “boy” version from Gale Bable. Cute, huh? These are always a pleasure to do, because they knit up so darned fast. It makes me feel very…productive. And talk about stash-busting! Used up two balls that have been loitering around for eons, probably smoking and drawing graffiti on the back of the drawer. Hopefully having a real day job of keeping a baby warm will straighten them out and put them on the path of Good Citizenry.

Hoooookay. And with that, I’ve probably revealed that sleep and caffeine deprivation are not helping me with my rampant imagination. Thank you, goodnight, and may your God go with you.

Irish Diamond II

Finished Friday: The Irish Diamond Shawl from Cheryl Oberle’s Folk Shawls.



This is the second time I’ve made this shawl. The first time, I used a baby alpaca sportweight. That one turned out very soft and warm, but a little…overly delicate? Kind of stretchy-bouncy? It’s better suited for using as a blanket than a shawl, really. If you try to wear it and walk around, it’s just not built for endurance.

This time, for the sake of extreme novelty, I used the yarn called for: Harrisville Designs Shetland, in dove gray. I know, this is a tremendous departure from my usual method of deciding that on the whole I think there should be no problem substituting this Aran-weight alpaca for that fingering-weight silk.

I think this is a great yarn for this purpose: Being wool, it is warm for its weight. It is a crisp-handed two-ply, so the lace shows up brilliantly. Given the well-documented struggles your faithful correspondent has suffered trying to do lace, I have to say that this is a great yarn to use – it isn’t too “drifty-lacy” or “fluffy”, so you can clearly see what you’re doing at all times.

That said, even after a thorough washing it is not a particularly soft and luscious yarn. It is old-school wool, a bit scratchy and definitely not something you’d want to use for things intended for right against the skin.

I remembered this shawl pattern as being very challenging the last time, so I’m a little surprised to report that it went super-fast, and without any major tribulations. I ended up only using half the yarn I bought, so hey! I could make another one!

Uh, later. Maybe. Because! It is one of the sneaky ones – you cast on a small number of stitches, and then increase by eight stitches per right-side row until suddenly, you’ve got some obscene number of stitches and each row is taking half an hour or more and this is usually when the children get extremely needy and then somebody plays with your row counter in the middle of row 133 while you’re changing a diaper and you come back all distracted and think you’re on 147 and don’t realize the problem until two rows further on and it just doesn’t end well.

When I decided to cast off, it was 9:00 Thursday night. By the time I finally pulled the last loop off the needles (with a few interruptions from kids demanding ‘drinks’ [pronounced, “We don’t want to go to bed, we’d rather hang here with you”] and suddenly realizing I hadn’t started the dishwasher…or, er, filled it up yet), it was 11:30. Keeping in mind that I get up at 5:00 in the morning, every morning including Sunday – you can imagine what state I was in by this time.

But it was worth it – I washed and blocked it Friday and it spent the day lounging around on my bed drying, and then I picked it up and draped it over my bedframe and it looked positively elegant.

SCORE!

And now, I’m moving on to a cabled scarf. Only at Christmas, people, only at Christmas…

…scarves…meh…

The Finisher Strikes Again!

I like to celebrate when I finish things, because it is a rare occurrence. I’m more of a ‘starter and then forget all about it’-er. A ‘find it years later and put the finishing touches on it’-er. So when I actually start and finish things within a reasonable time period – I boast! LOUDLY!!

I finished the Wool Peddler’s Shawl…



It turned out nicely; the wool isn’t quite as soft as I’d like, but I suspect another bath or two will straighten it out.

I also finished a hat in the same wool and lace pattern. (Dead batteries + Pointless discussion with mate about whether or not we have more batteries and whether or not there WAS a box of them in the downstairs closet and where the heck they could have gotten to and whose fault this is, precisely = No pictures until I motivate myself to the store to buy more batteries, so that the box I just KNOW we do actually have will resurface with its tongue waggling impudently at me) (Sorry.) (Here’s the lace pattern, though…)



I also finished my bedroom, which was a tremendous feat of organizing skill and I am very, very proud of myself. For a few days there, walking through this bedroom required both a keen memory (to remember where the mines were placed) and the balance of a Cirque de Soleil performer.

There were actual needles, on the floor. Not knitting needles – needle-needles. You know, like, for sewing fabric? The kind normal people keep on high shelves inside boxes with locking lids? Yeah. Those. I had them on the floor of my bedroom in a pincushion.

**sigh**

Darwinism at work, people. That’s all I can say about that.

ANYWAY. I got it all cleaned up and the shelf moved in so I could pick the books up off the floor and put them, you know, on a bookshelf, picked the needles up off the floor and put them away in a latching box, and then I vacuumed!

It was a very exciting moment.

Then I started doing laundry and was so unmotivated about the whole thing that rather than hang up the clothesline outside for the wet delicate things, I plopped a drying rack in the middle of my bedroom floor and hung Unmentionables and lacy little girl dresses that can’t go in the dryer all over it.

Not to digress, but why, Oh Designers of Children’s Clothing?! Why would you EVER, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, design clothing that must be line dried?! The letters 5T and the words ‘line dry only’ (or ‘hand wash only’, for that matter) should never, ever appear on clothing labels! Seriously! (says the woman who hand-knit sweaters out of hand wash, lay flat to dry Merino for all four of her children last year) (never mind! Do as I say, not as I do!).

Anyway, that kinda ruins the ‘perfect, well-organized room’ effect, you know?

But under all the drying laundry, it’s a very clean, well-organized room.

And no. You don’t get to check back in two weeks. Let’s just take it as read that it will be in a state of utter Chaos and I will be unable to find so much as a pair of socks, let alone a set of #8 circular needles, OK?

OK. Glad we had this chat.

Carry on with your lives, people. I’m going try to dig up enough motivation to make dinner for the Denizens. They haven’t turned their noses up at my cooking in at least four hours now, and I’m worried about their lack of exercise.

Meanwhile in knitting news

I finished the baby blanket this morning. The colors are most emphatically not as eyeball assaulting as they appear in this photo – my cheap digital camera just can’t seem to handle “subtle” very well – remember how my black and white sweater kept looking blue? Someday, I swear to Dog, I will lighten up and get a real digital camera. One that cost more than thirty bucks. Or came free with something else. Which is, uh, where this one came from. So I suppose I really shouldn’t kvetch too terribly much about the picture quality.

But I digress.



It measures 36” by 32” and is very soft and warm. The color is Red Heart Soft #7962, ‘Gem’. Which I do believe is discontinued, no surprise since it came out of that box of decade-old stuff my Gran brought back home to the stash.

I am exceedingly glad it is over now. Endless stockinette stitch is why the knitting machine was invented. Knit-knit-knit-knit-knit {flip!} purl-purl-purl-purl-purl {flip!} Lather rinse repeat until thank $DEITY you are out of yarn.

I do actually have one of those manual knitting machines, and about one skein into this project I was grousing to myself that I should have used it for the middle and then done some kind of knitted or crocheted border on it. Of course, first I would have had to find the knitting machine, which is another whole ball of angst-ridden screaming about why I can’t be more organized around here, so we’ll just pretend I didn’t want it in the first place some more, shall we?

It went fast and it is actually a sweet color for a baby or toddler. Some baby will love this blankie. Actually, a couple Denizens have hinted that they like it (Captain Adventure kept trying to pull it over himself last night while I was working on it), but it is going to be washed in Dreft and sent to Warm Hearts, Warm Babies, along with the preemie blankie and booties.

Booties are my personal mission until the end of May. Booties, booties, everywhere. I have an entire ball of random sock yarn – not enough to make even a pair of anklets for a grownup, but it will make a ton of booties. And a fairly good-sized remnant ball of nice, soft, fine-weight baby yarn as well. BOOTIE ATTACK!!!

I’m using a marvelously simple pattern for these, which produces a pair in roughly one movie’s worth of knitting (a pair and a half if the movie is boring and/or stupid, not quite a pair if it is fascinating or subtitled) – click on the picture to be taken to the pattern:



These stay on little feet pretty darned well – the one thing I always hated about booties was the way they never, ever and I mean NEVER stay on those wildly thrashing little tootsies. The crocheted chain is the key to success on these. And all my whining aside, it is a very simple thing to crochet a (unevenly tensioned) single chain 16” long.

Now that I’ve talked about actual knitting…OK. See, after I’ve finished a project, I like to completely empty out my knitting stand and “reset” the contents for the next project. It gives me a feeling of control, you see, and also my knitting stand has a Junk Magnet in it. Not only my own junk, but that of the children ends up in there. I have found entire sets of magnetic building toys, Capri Sun wrappers, sippy cups – you name it.

But I was still a little bit taken aback by what-all came out of there this morning. Check it out:



Some made sense. I mean, there was way too much of it in there, but at least it had something to do with projects I was either actively working on or had recently worked on or had worked on in living memory. There were eight sets of knitting needles. Two balls of miscellaneous green stuff that a burn-and-felt test indicates is probably wool. A big purple ball of Wal-Mart ‘Mainstays’ acrylic. Three patterns out of my pattern binder, encased in nice, neat plastic sheets. One ‘rogue’ pattern. Two pattern books dating from 1968 (those were from the box Gran brought back). Eight stitch markers. Four clips designed for holding together knitting while you are seaming it. Three random buttons. Several used-up post-it notes (used for keeping track of chart patterns). My wrapping-paper-cutter-turned-yarn-slicer, which I like to use on yarn because if Captain Adventure gets his mitts on it and starts running wildly through the house with it, he can’t fall down and impale himself on it the way he could even with a small pair of scissors. Two pens. Two sets of DPNs, one in size 8, one in size 0. Ball bands from at least four different projects. Two stitch holders. One measuring tape. The obligatory Susan Bates Knit Chek (the thingee with the holes in it, for checking gauge and needle size – important when one “somehow” ends up with EIGHT SETS of knitting needles in close sizes in one’s knitting stand).

And then…there were the ‘hmmmm’ things.

A piece of red felt (no idea).

A medicine dropper.

And a hat from somebody’s doll.

Artwork from Boo Bug. A picture of Boo Bug dressed up like a bunny.

FIVE CROCHET HOOKS. (Reminder: I don’t crochet.) (ONE I could understand. But FIVE?!)

A grocery list.

A spelling test Eldest brought home.

An embroidery hoop. (C’mon. Whence? And more importantly, Why?)

And, my personal favorite, a three page long flyer begging parents to consider taking one of the many, many, MANY positions currently open on the parent-student association. They only need a president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, sergeant at arms, fundraising coordinator, volunteer coordinator, and donations coordinator.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but does that not pretty much cover all possible board positions?

So, it is perhaps a bit possible that I have been less than diligent about cleaning out the knitting stand after each project lately. But it is now nicely cleaned out and has only what I need to make a whack of booties.

Because no baby should go home with cold tootsies.

Finished Object: Celtic Lattice Vest

OK, the vest is done but for the buttons, which I will be attaching as soon as it finishes drying. They are pewter buttons shaped like trout – a little more ornate than what I’d usually put on them, which was why I went with just plain black button bands instead of the pattern. I don’t want them to get lost – they’re nicer than what I generally put on my projects.

So! Here it is! Being blocked…



And here’s a close-up of the detail:



This was a sheer delight to knit. The pattern was not too challenging, but not boring either. It was knit in the round all the way up, with steek stitches (excellent article regarding these over here at See Eunny Knit, if you’re curious about how they work / why anyone would be crazy enough to use them / how come they aren’t nearly as scary as they sound).

The one change I would make if I did it again would be to widen the steek stitches – Cheryl uses three, I think I’d use five. I know it uses more yarn, but I found it difficult to run four lines of machine stitches down that narrow a band. I accidentally cut through the machine stitching in a couple places (oops), but didn’t realize I’d done it until I was picking up stitches and the loose ends pulled up and created A Problem. FEH!

Fortunately, the yarns I used are very old-style wool: They fuzz together and hold onto each other, so I don’t expect I will be punished any further for my misdeeds now that the cut edges have been covered with the facings and washed. Also, thanks to the wool being of this style, I had almost no ends to run in at all – whenever I needed to join in a new ball, I did the ‘splicing’ method (great explanation here in spit-splicing via Little Yarn Shoppe of Horrors), where you unravel each end, overlap the two unraveled ends, moisten (yes, I used spit) and rub like heck between your hands to twine them back together. If you spin, this makes perfect sense. If you don’t, you’re going “huh?!” and really ought to check out the link. The wool felts a little tiny bit with this mistreatment, and you then carry on knitting with it as though it was always one continuous strand. It works brilliantly on wool, and the ‘stickier’ the wool (e.g., more likely to felt) the better.

Another interesting technique I haven't used much: Instead of casting off and then sewing up the facings, Oberle has you tack down the live stitches to the inside. I found it was easier to keep track of what needed to be tacked down where, and that the finished product was "stretchier" - none of that 'oops, now the armhole is pulling in' afterward. Nice! I'm going to remember this little trick for my Dale of Norway sweaters, which always-always-ALWAYS seem to end up with too-tight neck openings for the Denizens (entirely because I cast off too tightly and then tack down with a vengeance).

I didn’t find any other surprises in the pattern; I did my usual thing when instructed to “pick up X stitches” along the button bands, neckline and armband: I worried more about picking up evenly than “X stitches” and adjusted on the second round – but the only adjustments I had to make was to remove one stitch on one armband, and add two on the other! That, friends, is a bulls eye.

The Dancing skein was more than generous enough to finish the project – I have quite a little bit left over. I’ve really loved this color. The finished vest has a lovely ‘wash’ to it, with a lot of depths and shallows throughout.

All in all, a fun project. And there are a few other vests I’ve got my eye on in this book; I’ve got some great alpaca that would make a gorgeous Stone Walls. Oberle now has two books out that I'm finding more than one or two things I'm interested in making. Yay! Another designer I can stalk. Er. I mean, watch for new things. (She does have a book of knitted jackets coming out soon, if memory serves...)

But first…an 18” preemie blanket, in good old purple acrylic (suitable for machine washing, drying, and washing, and drying, and washing, and drying, and washing, and…)