More Than One Way to Knit A Hat

Change of plans.

2010-03-21T09:26:00.000-06:00

I had planned to put in a small vegetable garden today, but when I woke up this morning, it was snowing. I ran outside to take some pictures before it all melted. Because that's what snow does in Texas.

But the last time I checked, it was still snowing. Hello, spring.

In other news, a friend of ours has opened a new Etsy shop selling handmade wooden cutting boards.

He gave us one as a housewarming gift a few years ago, and we just love it. It has become our main cutting board. Beautiful, functional, and durable. So if you're in the market for something beautiful and handmade for your own kitchen or a gift for the foodie in your life, stop by Wolfe Woodworks and take a gander. And if you don't see what you have in mind, convo Phil for a custom. I bet he could hook you up.

It's snowing even harder now. I think I'll snuggle in for the last winter nap of the season.

Happy birthday, baby!

2010-03-19T10:21:00.001-06:00

Eliza's birthday went off without a hitch. Her actual birthday was on a weekday, so we didn't have her party until the following Saturday. On her birthday we went out for a pancake breakfast, which is her favorite. When she sees pancakes on my plate, she starts rocking in her seat and going "Mmm! Mmm! Mmm!" because she knows I'll share with her. Actually, in the last few days, she's started doing that any time I'm eating, which means that we're going to have to start having healthy lunches at home rather than picking Daddy up and taking him out to lunch every day. What I deem good enough for me to eat and what I think is good enough for her to eat are two very different things, but they're going to have to converge.

In between her birthday and her party, she started pulling up. I just realized that I don't have a still photo of this yet, although I did catch it on video. It's hard to get a picture of her doing things lately because she's very interested in having her picture taken, so if she sees the camera, she stops what she's doing and gets all excited about that.

The party was a small affair with family. My brother and nephew flew in, and we don't get to see them often, so that was nice. We had homemade chicken salad sandwiches on homemade bread with homemade lemonade. I didn't do a lot in the way of decorations. I ordered a cake to match the dress that I made, and we picked up some balloons to decorate the dining room. Eliza loved the balloons, and kept signing "lights" at them. I couldn't stand to give her sugar or anything that might stain the dress that I made her, so she ate a carrot zucchini muffin with cream cheese and honey icing and sprinkles on top instead of the chocolate cake.

Lights!

Afterwards, she got her first haircut. More of a trim, really. She was born with lots of hair and almost all of it fell out when she was about 6 months old, leaving just one little strip down the center of her head that we called her mohawk. When her hair came back in and started getting thicker, the mohawk started looking pretty silly. Her father was very attached to it, though, and said I couldn't cut it until after her birthday party. Silly Daddy. I didn't tell him that I had done it, and when he discovered it, he said that I had scalped her. But I think he's gotten over it. She also had a single curly hair over her ear that was past shoulder length, but I haven't seen it lately. It must have fallen out, and that makes me a little sad. Silly Mommy.

Her one year pediatrician's appointment was on Tuesday, and the doctor said she couldn't be doing any better. He was impressed with how smart she is, and it was nice to know that someone who isn't family thinks so, too. Her vocabulary has been exploding lately, and it's so much fun to watch her grow.

Grandma and Grandpa stayed through Wednesday, so we've been catching up on laundry and slipping back into our old routine the last couple of days. I cut out the fabric for another little dress, but I haven't sewn it yet. Not that she needs any more clothes! Grandma and I went shopping and it wasn't until I packed up some of her too-small winter clothes and hung up all of the new stuff that I realized just what a spring/summer wardrobe this little girlie has. I think we'll be good until fall.

I don't usually do this, but

2010-03-12T19:51:00.000-06:00

Photo nerds, head over to Alexis Miller's blog to put your name in the hat for a camera giveaway. I know I'd love to win!

I made a dress!

2010-03-05T00:49:00.000-06:00

I don't think I've sewn a garment since my mother made me learn to sew in junior high. Wait, there was one dress I made for E while I was pregnant, but it doesn't count because I could barely get it on her and she never wore it. So I was really nervous about this because it had facings and box pleats and I was sure it would be hard. But it wasn't. The worst part was figuring out that putting in snaps sometimes sucks (apparently previous experiences with snaps failed to teach me that lesson) and then having to take them out without ripping the dress and learn to make buttonholes on a new-to-me machine.

You can't see it in this picture, but the hem facing is red.

The pattern is Oliver + S Birthday Party Dress, which is appropriate for an upcoming event, and the fabric is from Repro Depot. Because I'll take any excuse I can get to order fabric from Repro Depot.

Finished

2010-03-01T11:16:00.000-06:00

I finished casting off the Pi this morning. It's smaller than I had anticipated.

I carried on with the crochet cast off, even though I'm not sure I like it, because yarn became an issue. I had enough left for maybe one more round.

I may have gotten belligerent about it at the end, but whether I finished on time or not, the Olympics gave me my first finished knit of 2010*. In March. Can you believe that?

*Well, there is a baby sweater that just needs buttons, and this isn't blocked yet, so I guess those two are nose and nose.

No gold here.

2010-02-28T20:03:00.000-06:00

I started casting off in Friday, but I wasn't sure I liked it, so I put it down and haven't picked it back up. Oh well.

Now I can get back to sewing!

Many stitches.

2010-02-18T14:38:00.000-06:00

The Happy Stacker is complete! Yay!

Pattern by Heather Bailey, Cosmo Cricket "Girl Friday" fabrics, and lots and lots of ric rac (as it should be)

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to take a wee break from sewing and actually clean my house. Too bad it won't clean itself. I keep waiting.

And I've made it through the 48-row section of the Pi shawl. I now have 576 stitches on my needle. I only have to go around 40-50 more times, and then knit on an edging. I'm trying to decide if I should switch to a lace pattern now or not.

Probably not. And I clearly forgot that, when knitting lace, I do not like to pull from the inside of the ball. We're on the verge of a collapse, here.

Progress.

2010-02-16T20:23:00.000-06:00

Eliza is teething again, and we had a very rough night last night, so I was tempted to just sleep when she slept today (which wasn't much), but, coffee-fueled, I forged onward.

Don't they look like yummy little cakes?

I finished one more ring last night and two today. One ring tomorrow and the pole that they all stack on (instead of the stand-in four poster), and I'll be done. I might be a little sad. This is a fun project. I've been tucking jingle-bell-in-a-cage cat toys into the rings as I stuff them, so they make noise as well. I can't wait to see her play with it.

As for the shawl, I'm on row 33 of the 48-row section, and then I'll double my stitches again and knit 40 or 50 more rows, per EZ's directions, or until I decide it's big enough. I might put it down and tuck in early tonight, though.

Getting into the spirit.

2010-02-15T17:30:00.000-06:00

So yesterday I cast on for an Olympic project. I had a skein of handspun laceweight singles (Hello Yarn "Air" merino/bamboo -- another example of me turning a small spinning project into a long one) by my desk that was meant for an Elizabeth Zimmermann Pi Shawl, and when I looked at it this time, it said, "knit me." And I thought, "why not?" This is something I can do at night when I can't be sewing. Nothing could be easier than stockinette in the round, but it is the sort of project that I would never finish without a deadline. So I cast on and made up for some lost time. The rows are already getting really really long, but I only have about 70 or 80 to go. The real beauty is that I can always just cast off where I am on the last day and still win gold.

And I started another project today involving five rings. A fabric stacking ring set for Eliza's birthday. I just finished the first one, and it wasn't as tricky as it looked in the pattern. She's taking a late nap that may just turn into going to bed insanely early (she does this every so often), so I may have a chance to get ahead on this as well while I wait for the fabric for her birthday dress.

Housekeeping.

2010-02-12T20:10:00.000-06:00

I used to have Blogger comments. Then I switched to Haloscan, and all of my old comments got hidden. Haloscan no longer exists, and they want me to transfer my comments to some paid service, which I am not going to do. So I uninstalled it and now the original Blogger comments are back, but any comments left through Haloscan are gone. I almost decided the blog wasn't worth this headache, but it turned out not to be so bad.

The bad news is, Blogger doesn't always give me an email address so I can reply to comments. The good news is, I'm really bad about replying to comments, anyway, and now I have an excuse.

So I did finish the sock.

2010-02-12T19:25:00.001-06:00

And I started the next one. And I only ripped back the cuff part twice. Once for thinking I still had the chart memorized from the first sock, and once for not paying attention.

But it's OK, because these may be my favorite socks EVER and they're worth getting right. We'll ignore that one of the motifs starts in a different place on each sock (again due to thinking that I still had the chart memorized from the first sock), OK?

And it's time for the Knitting Olympics. I was a year late for the first go-round, and so I've basically been looking forward to the 2010 Olympics for three years. But now that it's here, I don't wanna. I have two pounds of wool sitting by ready to be spun into a sweater amount of yarn and right now I don't wanna. "Don't wanna" is probably not part of an Olympian's vocabulary, but this is my hobby and I don't want to make it suck. For one thing, I keep swearing off big spinning projects, and I keep starting them. I have a 3-ply sock yarn on the new wheel* now that's been going since December, and I am not a multi-project spinner. Also, someone I know has a birthday coming up soon, and her mama has decided to sew her not only a birthday dress, but toys as well, and I don't think she should put that off until the last minute. Especially since the party is at our place. And it might still be chilly, so she might need a knitted shrug to wear over her sleeveless party dress. So will I compete or not? If I decide I want to, I will. Maybe I'll finish that sock yarn and knit the socks. Some challenge, huh?

* Did I mention I got another spinning wheel for Christmas? No? Well, that's a whole other post.

I leave you with this image from today. Blurry spots are snow on my lens.

Snow angels, she says, are not so fun after all.

I may never finish knitting this sock.

2010-01-21T19:28:00.004-06:00

I've had this sock yarn (Lorna's Laces in Old Rose) in my stash forever, mentally tagged with this pattern (Nancy Bush's Traveler's Stockings). I think Grumperina knit that combo way back in the day, and I thought it was pretty. I think I maybe even tried the pattern in a different yarn somewhere along the way and got lost in all the twisted stitches. But not this time. This time, those twisted stitches were actually fun.

But, alas, the fun ran out all too soon, leaving me with nothing but stockinette and zigzag clocks. And as much as I love a sock with clocks, these clocks are driving me crazy. For some reason, I am obsessed with having one clock zig where the other zags, and it doesn't take very much mindless knitting for me to get them going at different rates. Which leads to dropping of stitches and fiddling and frustration, and, finally, ripping.

But at least I have this shiny new little nook in our bedroom in which to be frustrated with my knitting, accompanied by my favorite podcasts.

My mom bought me the chair at an estate sale. It's really too pretty to cover up with my lace, but you have to put the lace somewhere, right? How else do you enjoy something that you have knitted but will never wear? One of these days I'll even get curtains up in our room.

Oh, and that door behind the spinning wheel? That's the wool closet.

Um, happy 2010!

And to all a good night

2009-12-22T14:51:00.003-06:00

Between two new teeth (and more soon to appear), Thanksgiving at our place, vacation, a trip to my mom's, and more Christmas cookie baking than you can shake a stick at, there hasn't been much time for blogging the last month or so, but I have a feeling that things will settle down before too long.

Have a wonderful and safe holiday, everyone.

Toys

2009-11-05T10:12:00.005-06:00

We keep a small basket of toys in the living room for Eliza to play with. It doesn't hold much, so it's easy for me to keep the toys picked up and away from the dogs when she isn't playing, and I can rotate things in and out to keep her interest. She loves to pull them all out, one by one, and play with them. This can keep her entertained for quite a while. I especially love it when she pulls out a book and 'reads' it.

This morning, she finally got a new addition to the basket that's been hanging out in my "on the needles" sidebar for way too long. I knit this bunny and felted it early in my pregnancy, and he's been hanging out in the knitting basket waiting for a face and stuffing since.

Isn't he a dandy? I actually made all of those toys that aren't in the basket: Goldilocks, the patchwork ball, the puzzle ball, and the cloth book. I'm not sure what to take out in order to make room for Mr. Bunny. She loves the bear and both of the dolls.

She also likes to make a move on Mommy's toys every now and then.

Someday, little one.

Pixie

2009-11-02T10:56:00.002-06:00

As much as I love Eliza's Cubba Hat, it seems to be getting a bit small. And I liked that she had a blue/purple hat and a pink/orange hat, so one or the other matched any given outfit. So I flipped through my Vintage Baby Knits book (because I want to knit just about everything in that book) last week and cast on for the Stella Pixie Hat.

What a great little knit! Looking at it, I expected it to be shaped with decreases or short rows, but it's not. When you knit it up, it looks like this:

The "ribbing" on the top isn't really ribbing at all, it's purl welts. Because if you knit vertical rows of knits and purls, the purls recede, but if you knit horizontal rows of knits and purls, the knits recede. And these horizontal rows of knits and purls pull in, just like ribbing, only in the other direction. So you knit this rectangle with no shaping at all, just taking advantage of the nature of knits and purls, and then you fold it in half and graft the top. Voila! Hat. I am such a sucker for clever patterns.

Except when I folded mine in half, I didn't have the same number of stitches on each side. It's always something with me, isn't it? So I went looking and found my problem:

An error in the stitch pattern. Lesson: don't knit this pattern in semi-darkness.

What to do? That blip threw off the pattern for the whole left side of the hat. Should I rip? Of course not. I pulled it off the needles and dropped a whole section of stitches. I probably didn't have to drop even as many as I did, but I figured it would be more of a pain to keep track of exactly which stitches I had to drop how far, so I just pulled the needles out and started pulling.

Yet another reason to love double pointed needles.

Coming right along.

Oops, missed one.

Almost done. (And the munchkin woke up.)

Where I should have been an hour ago.

Grafting.

And, hat!

Now let's try it on.

Heh.

Side view:

See what I mean about the purl welts?

She didn't need the added height of a button band to fasten it, so I crocheted a quick chain and wove it through the cast on edge for a tie. I had some tension issues from the surgery, but a quick bath and run through the dryer (yarn is Cherry Tree Hill Supersock, so no worries about felting), it's mostly evened out.

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-30T10:08:00.002-06:00

Cisco Hat by Berroco
My handspun Corriedale, "New Day" by Spunky Eclectic

Maybe a little big for this year, but I think she can make it work.

Down to the wire

2009-10-27T14:01:00.004-06:00

While I was waiting on new yarn for more longies, I picked up this scarf that I started last year. I remember I started it because I wanted to make something from Nancy Bush's then new lace book. I had two balls of Kidsilk Haze, and I figured I'd just make the scarf as long as I could with that much.

When I picked it back up, I was surprised to find that I was further along than I had remembered. For some reason I thought I remembered figuring that I could get 23 repeats into the scarf with the yarn I had. But that was a year ago, and my memory is sometimes very faulty (and also my math), so I disregarded that and knit until it looked like I had about enough yarn for the top edging, which was 24 repeats. Except of course I didn't have enough for the top edging. So I picked out the (sticky mohair) cast off on the bottom edging and ripped back a few rows, cast off again, knit a few more rows on the top edging to even it up, and cast off again. And I still barely had enough to get it done. I was literally cutting yarn tails off the dangling ends and splicing them into my cast off, and I still had to knit the last two stitches together to barely have enough to finish. I've never been so happy to throw something in a water bath and call it done.

Triinu Scarf, Nancy Bush, "Knitted Lace of Estonia"
Kidsilk Haze, Fern
US3 needles

Thankfully, the fuzzy mohair hides the many ends. I think it turned out lovely. And it's just the right length.

KnitaLongies

2009-10-27T10:58:00.003-06:00

You know how you start knitting something and you just can't stop? At this point in the Longies Knitalong, we're supposed to be working on short rows and gussets. The timeline is slow going, because a lot of participants are new knitters and all have small children. I've knit three pair.

This pair, in Peace Fleece "Moscow Magic Pink", I knit in the medium size. The fit is about perfect, which means they'll be too small before long. In fact, the length is better with the cuff turned down. So for the rest I moved up to the large size and knit a 1.5" cuff that I can turn up for now.

Peace Fleece "Violet Vyehchyeerom"

I put the third pair ("Georgia Rose") on her today and thought we'd go for a walk and get some cute pictures, so I put her in the stroller instead of the carrier like I usually do so I could carry the camera around my neck.

She wasn't too impressed. We walked to the park and saw some geese.

She wasn't too impressed with that, either.

Life's tough when you're teething. Or maybe she just wants some mittens.

I think I can finish three more pair of longies before the knitalong is over, and then I'll make her a jacket from the leftovers. (Who needs to do housework when you can knit?) The yarn just came in the mail today!

Too much?

2009-10-23T10:16:00.000-05:00

More little girl knits

2009-10-19T18:43:00.003-05:00

I meant to be knitting something for me, right? Perhaps finishing up a 2 1/2 year old UFO? Well, I pulled that old thing out of the yarn closet, held up the front piece that I had finished oh, so long ago, and the thing darn near went down to my ankles. And I decided I didn't want a sweater quite that long. So if I was going to knit it, I'd have to start over. And if I was going to have to start over, why not do something new? But what? Well, I had to think about that. And while I was thinking, I figured I might as well be spinning. And I knew exactly what I wanted to make with the yarn I was spinning.

Ravelry

I split the roving (well, technically, the top) down into 20 or more pieces. Pencil roving, basically. And then I spun it into 450 yards of fingering/sport weight singles. What a lovely, quick way to get a finer gauge yarn! And the Corriedale was perfectly soft and happy to be airy singles. I just can't get enough of the colors. Adrian is a genius. They'll have to pry my fiber club membership out of my cold, dead hands.

For the dress, I started with the Little Sister's Dress pattern, but modified it a lot. Partly because my gauge was a little different.

I ended the yoke where it was supposed to be joined for knitting in the round, then knit 4 rows of stockinette on the front and back before increasing for the underarms, using the schematic and my gauge to calculate my numbers. Then I just increased every 7th row until desired length, which is longer than pattern calls for. I used one of her dresses as a template.

Oh, and the yoke and hem are in garter stitch. Because garter stitch makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

What next? I guess I'll just have to work on her longies while I think about that some more.

Perspective

2009-10-14T18:55:00.003-05:00

Today, while waiting for the yarn I finished spinning yesterday (Hello Yarn "Thrive") to dry,

I pureed some peas for baby food,

And the pumpkins from this weekend for pie (she already has pumpkin baby food),

Toasted the seeds for snacks,

And washed some Rambouillet (again) for carding and spinning.

Now I have to unload/reload the dishwasher, snap the green beans for dinner (part of those might end up pureed for baby food as well), and put up the laundry.

Why do I always feel like I never get anything done?

Little girls need handspun sweaters.

2009-10-13T10:42:00.003-05:00

When I said I was feeling overrun by projects, I wasn't just talking about knitting. My crafting world exploded this summer with lots of sewing, a little embroidery, some spinning, but very little knitting. It wasn't until a cold front came through last week that I really started to get the knitting bug again.

I started spinning up Spunky Club's January '09 fiber, Twilight superfine merino. It had all of these aquas and purples that I thought would match Eliza's fall/winter wardrobe well. I wanted to make longies, but I was afraid the superfine merino wouldn't hold up well. She will be crawling soon, after all. So I Navajo plied it for durability. I also tried to remember to spin a little finer than I normally would for a worsted-weight 3-ply, because merino tends to plump up on me when I finish it. Except this one didn't. I ended up with about 300 yards of sport-DK weight yarn. It still matched Eliza's clothes, though, so I went looking for a sweater pattern.

The Audrey Hoodie in Vintage Baby Knits was cute, and it looked like I had just about the right amount of yarn, so I cast on. It's knit up from the back, over the shoulder, and down the fronts. If you were to knit it in a solid color, you'd cut the yarn and knit one front and then the other. My handspun was stripy, though, and I wanted the fronts of the sleeves and the cardigan to match, so I put in a steek for the neck opening and another down the front of the cardigan.

As it turned out, I didn't have enough yarn for the hood. In fact, I barely had enough to trim around the front and hide my steeks, so the sleeves didn't get any crochet trim. Which is ok, because the sleeves are the perfect length as is.

I think I'm going to continue in the moss stitch tradition and pull out my oldest UFO, the first thing I ever blogged about, and finish it up. Mommy needs a cardigan for winter, too.

And of course, baby still needs some longies. If you have reason to knit little people pants, feel free to join us at the Eco Friendly Family Ravelry group for our longies knitalong, which begins this Saturday.

You can spot a knitter's baby anywhere.

2009-10-11T18:22:00.003-05:00

And possibly a spinner's too.

See the hat and sweater on Ravelry. Can you believe she's 7 months old? I can't.

Does this mean I'm returning to blogging? I don't know. I'm crafting at a slower pace these days. Or at least finishing at a slower pace; I seem to be starting things at the same rate and then feeling overwhelmed.

Meet baby Eliza

2009-03-18T13:36:00.002-06:00

Born Wednesday, March 11, 2009 10:28 am
8 lbs 5 oz
19 1/2 in long

Likes: breastmilk, handknits
Dislikes: diaper changes, socks

Everything but the baby.

2009-02-23T14:56:00.003-06:00

At last, everything is done, purchased, washed, sorted, and put away! It feels so good.

Here's kind of a walking tour of the nursery. It's a little crowded (there was much measuring and rearranging to get all of this furniture to fit!), but I prefer to think of it as cozy.

I'll be spending lots of time here! The chair is a rocker/recliner. The lever is cleverly hidden in between the right arm and the seat cushion. The upholstery was the inspiration for the whole room.

All supplies on hand: cloth wipes, meds, toys, books...

Cloth diapers (prefolds and fitteds with covers) all ready to go.

Diaper pail (with waterproof liner) and another basket we received as a gift. I'm not sure if I'll use it for laundry or toys or what, but it's super cute.

Birds above the window -- pattern from Spool Sewing (link to pdf). Branch from our front yard.

There's a trundle under that bed, but nowhere to pull it out! The twin bed and dressers were already in the room.

Tons of tiny clothes!

This dresser and the matching night stand were in my room growing up.

That's it!

Oh, and I did manage to knit a couple more soakers, this time from Peace Fleece.

I started spinning yarn for another one, but it looks like I need to order a new bearing for the Schacht before I can finish. :(

January Recap: Soakers are the new socks.

2009-01-31T12:32:00.004-06:00

Sorry to be so silent. I have been knitting and spinning quite a lot, but if I had blogged it play-by-play, you would all be drooling right now from all the redundancy. So let's just round it all up into one post, shall we?

Soakers are the new socks around here. They're quick, they're easy, they will actually get used (unlike a lot of woolens in Texas weather), and I can satisfy my nesting urge while sitting on my butt, which is much easier on my very pregnant body than, say, steam cleaning the carpets.

For those of you thinking, "what's a soaker?" it's a cover that you put over cloth diapers to make them waterproof. We all know the wonders of wool, but when used for this purpose, it really is like magic. When treated with lanolin, it makes a breathable layer that absolutely stops leaks. So, while knitting this March baby a bunch of sweaters would be a little pointless, knitting soakers is downright practical.

I spent all of New Years Eve and New Years Day spinning, and off I went. I haven't really stopped since. I have 4 newborn size, 6 smalls, and 4.5 mediums so far.

1. globe soaker, 2. Red Velvet Soaker, 3. Red Velvet Soaker, 4. Acadia Soaker, 5. E soaker, 6. Raisin Wannabe Soaker, 7. Raisin Wannabe Soaker, 8. Rainbow Ruffle Soaker, 9. Rosebud Soaker, 10. All-Star Soaker, 11. Hive Soaker, 12. Hive Soaker, 13. Forces of Nature Soaker, 14. Forces of Nature Soaker, 15. In progress

I did manage to churn out a couple of hats as well, one baby-sized and one daddy-sized.

Cubba, by Woolly Wormhead

Thorpe, by Kirsten Kapur, felted because apparently even a top-down hat isn't completely foolproof!

Given my to-be-soaker stash, I predict more of the same for February.

In other news, the nursery is 99% complete, but I can't really show you yet because the 1% that is incomplete is the lighting. We installed the ceiling fan and the blades turn, but the lights don't work. And the outlet where I was going to plug in a lamp on the changing table is also dead. So we need to do some troubleshooting. In the meantime, it's a little dark!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

2008-12-17T13:28:00.003-06:00

Thanks, everyone, for all the complements on my sewing. I'll show you the rest of it when the nursery is finished, which should be next month sometime!

I went out in the 80 degree weather this weekend and strung lights on the house, and we picked out a fresh tree and brought it home and I decorated it, and whaddyaknow, it's been cold and wintery all week. I've even been listening to a little Christmas music.

I've even done a little Christmas knitting and spinning. First, an ornament for a gift exchange.

It's the Cabled Globe Ornament from Knitting Daily, knit out of some handspun BFL and improvised with some Rauma Finullgarn holly leaves and berries. To make the leaves, follow the instructions for the Christmas tree in the August chapter of Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac, but three-needle bind off down the center instead of knitting the trunk. The berries are just tapered I-cord that's folded over and sewn on.

And you may remember that last year I knit stockings for all of the dogs based on mitten patterns. And then we traded Bruneaux to my MIL for Smiley? Well, sure enough, we were one stocking short. No longer!

Since she's a blue and white Aussie, it made sense to knit her a grey and white stocking, and I even found a chart in Selbuvotter that kind of looks like her. This was my first time using Dale Baby Ull (ack! superwash!) for colorwork, and at first I thought it was way too soft (give me my sticky Finullgarn!), but it all turned out ok in the end. Like the other dogs, her name and the year are knit into the cuff of her stocking.

Now, time to get back to that Christmas spinning!

Have a safe and happy holiday, everyone. I'll see you on the other side.

I've been sewing.

2008-11-25T14:37:00.003-06:00

I had planned to show off some baby knits this week, but my fabric came in for the nursery and I haven't stopped sewing long enough to take pictures.

Our living room ottomans are almost crib-sized.

Kind of like knitting, sewing is something I learned to do as a child and hated, but I think it sort of comes back easier if you have that background. Anyway, I haven't sewn from a pattern since I first learned, but since I couldn't find any girly bedding that I liked, I picked up Amy Butler's Little Stitches and decided to make my own.

So far I've made 4 crib sheets, a pillow cover, a bumper, and a crib skirt. I've got the panels for a matching twin bedskirt ready to be sewn to the muslin decking, and I'm still planning to make the changing table topper from the book and a quilt to go with the bedding.

The green floral and striped fabric are from Amy Butler's Lotus collection for Rowan, and the pink damask and pink floral fabrics are from Heather Bailey's Fresh Cut collection for Free Spirit. The front of the pillow is from Amy Butler's Nigella collection.

I've got lots of extra fabric, so I'll probably do a diaper bag, a window treatment and other random projects as well.

Stuff I sent my mom.

2008-11-17T10:19:00.004-06:00

I'm in a better humor than last time I posted. Even though my ankle was hurting worse on Friday, for some reason over the weekend it was a lot better. Still not in spinning shape, but fine to walk on. So I was able to get a lot done around the house over the weekend, which made me feel better about other things. The nursery isn't in any better shape, but I feel like we can get started on it this weekend, which is an improvement. And I am going to sit down and make a list and order fabric for the bedding and stuff, so progress all around. Although when we went to the store yesterday to buy some veggies for a roast, we got Flashlight Girl at the checkout again. Some things never change.

As far as the baby knitting, I ripped the sweater and started knitting a smaller version, then I got an outfit that was 0-3 months and realized that the original sizing was maybe not so far off after all. But I won't need a sweater for 3 months size. When she's 3 months old, it will be June. So I can either keep knitting more of a newborn size and hope I have enough yarn and hope it fits, or rip again and knit something that has a shot at being worn more than once or twice. I haven't decided which.

In the meantime, I've been knitting a little lace. Remember I ordered the new Nancy Bush Estonian lace book, and I was sitting, needles primed and yarn in hand, on the front porch waiting for the mailman to bring it to me? Well, I have about 1,000 yards of my precious silk lace, and it seems like almost all of the projects in the book use about 600 yards or about 1300 yards. The yarn was too expensive to just use half, and I don't want to get almost to the end of a project and run out of yarn that I can't get more of. So, I'm saving my yarn until more projects get completed on Ravelry and I can better gauge what the yarn requirements are. In a moment of weakness, however, I ordered some Kidsilk Haze and cast on for a scarf from the book. I'm about 11 repeats in, now, 18 more to go. I've never knit with Kidsilk Haze before, and I. Love. It. Fuzzy halo and stitch definition -- how do they do it?

Exhibit A: Fuzzy Blob with Not-Quite-Accurate Color

In other news, I got some long-time projects completed and sent off to my mother. I felt bad for a while that these were sitting around not getting worked on. Did I not like knitting for Mom? (Who am I kidding? I only really like knitting for me. Or the baby, but that's sort of for me, too.) But then I realized that I tend to bite off a bit more than I want to chew with projects for her. I like to knit stuff that's challenging, but, geez. Maybe I should have designed a sweater from scratch for myself once before getting someone else's expectations all wrapped up in it.

I think it turned out all right. I'm still not 100% completely happy with the neckband, but the weight of the clasps kind of pulls everything where it's supposed to be, so it wasn't worthwhile to rip and reknit again.

I also didn't like the yarn. At all. It's Plymouth Suri Merino, and if you've been reading this blog very much at all, you've probably heard me complain that it makes my hands itch. When someone says, I'll buy the yarn if you'll make me a sweater, you kind of know going in that you're not going to be working with great yarn, but there is better inexpensive yarn out there. This was full of knots and slubby spots (there's one right in the middle of the back that drives me nuts) and I just don't like it.

The overall sweater came out nice, though. I like the design. I wish I had taken better notes.

The other project was a meditation cloth. She was telling me about how the color gold and amethyst crystals were supposed to channel energy for better meditation or something (can you tell that I was the one who always fell asleep during the meditation portions of yoga class?), and showed me her crystals and a gold placemat she had bought to use while she meditated. It seemed to me that the placemat was kind of a mood killer, so I thought maybe I could do better. So I dyed and spun some tussah silk into, if I do say so myself, a beautiful champagne-colored laceweight yarn.

And then I knit the center motif of the Raku Suri Stole and began edging it with the Clematis Edging from Heirloom Knitting, placing a real amethyst bead at each point of the edging.

Even though a large center motif meant that I was tied to the chart for every single row, it went pretty quickly until I started fishing through Heirloom Knitting for how to handle putting the edging around a corner. Ms. Miller recommends that, beginning about 20 stitches from the corner, you double up the edging so it eases around the curve. So, instead of casting off one stitch for every two rows of edging, I was casting off one stitch for every four rows of edging. And, if I remember correctly, there were 57 stitches on each side of the cloth, so after knitting 160 rows to turn a corner, I got to knit 34 rows straight before starting the next corner. And the edging had a 24-row repeat, so I never quite got that completely memorized, either. When life got in the way, it was easy to put down. I am in awe of the baby blanket on the cover of that book, which has the same edging around a much larger body of lace. It must have taken an age to finish.

The decision to use real gemstone beads on handspun yarn wasn't one of my most inspired. Some of the beads had burrs inside the holes, and would snag and hang on the yarn as I slid them down, a process which, even if I had been using perfectly uniform yarn and smooth beads, I think I would have found annoying. It didn't rough up the yarn as much as I feard it would, though, and only caused one breakage.

Once again, however, the final product turned out quite nicely. I hope it meditates well.

The next time I think I want to knit a gift for someone, though, I think I'll seriously consider a hat.

I'm in a bad mood.

2008-11-11T15:51:00.002-06:00

1. We found out on Thursday that we're having a little girl (yay!), but now that we know, I'm feeling even more pressure to get prepared than before, and it's overwhelming. We have nothing in the way of baby stuff. We still need to clear out the nursery of boxes from when we moved in, move the furniture around, paint, order the crib, make the crib bedding, AAH! So much! Every weekend I think we'll make some progress and we haven't made any yet. And with the holidays coming up, it's just going to get even harder.

2. I spent all weekend spinning yarn (Spunky Eclectic August Club -- Thermograph BFL) especially for a baby sweater, even though my left Achilles tendon started hurting early on in the process. (Is this a pregnancy thing? Spinning never hurt before.) I had the perfect picture in my head of this sideways-knit garter stitch yoke sweater in self-striping handspun. Finally this morning the yarn was dry and I got to start knitting, only to discover that the 1/3 month size is going to be 60 cm, or 23 inches, around and 9 1/2 inches from collar to hem. It looks big, very big. By one chart that I looked at, that would fit a one year old. Even worse, I don't have enough yarn to knit it at that size, meaning I have to rip and redesign or find another sweater pattern. So I crippled myself for nothing. And I'm not even going to knit her that many sweaters right now, because she'll be born in March, and it will be pretty warm then, and I'd be better off waiting until next winter and knitting to fit rather than hoping that something I knit her now will fit when it's cold enough to wear it.

3. After giving the baby sweater lots of glares and dirty looks, I got up and limped around the grocery store to get something for dinner, and then got the checkout girl who insists on shining my keychain flashlight in her eyes when she scans my Thank You card and saying, "Wow! That's a bright flashlight!"

Duchess says that if I'd just learn to take a good nap none of this would bother me so much. Or at least if I'd stop posing my knitting with her while she's trying to nap, it wouldn't bother her so much.

Turns out I still knit socks.

2008-10-30T11:07:00.004-06:00

Between "I'm no longer interested in doing a lot of fancy work on socks that are hidden by pants and shoes," and "Stockinette socks are cute, but they sure are boring to knit," and "How many pairs of handknit socks does one person need, anyway?" (my count: 23) I was beginning to think my sock-knitting days were over, at least for a while. But then I got a case of cold feet (literally), and, suddenly, socks were appealing again. Before I knew it, I had finished three pairs of socks during Socktoberfest, without even meaning to.

First up, Spina di Pesce by Yarnissima (buy the pattern here or through Ravelry).

My Ravelry Project
Wollmeise yarn in "Tiefer See" [Deep Lake], the dark version
US1s

I started these back in March and knit the first one straight through, but then knew I would need a break. This sock also possibly led to the feeling of "All that? For a sock?" I was also worried that I had knit it too tight and too tall (even though I firmly believe Wollmeise socks should be tall), so I shoved it in a closet and forgot about it. But then I pulled it out and tried it on, and, yeah, it's a little difficult to get on, but it fits pretty well, and, for a tall sock, might just stay up. So I knit the other one, which came out slightly larger, even though I'm pretty sure I used the same needles. I guess I've mellowed out lately. The camera picks up on the skin showing through in spots more than is obvious in real life. Also, it doesn't define the cables that well, but they look sharp in person. I'd definitely knit another Yarnissima pattern.

Then there's the Retro Rib socks by Evelyn Clark, from Interweave's Favorite Socks.

My Ravelry Project
Koigu, with leftover Wollmeise for the contrast toes
US1.5s

My husband bought this Koigu for me late this summer. He had a work appointment on the same block as the Shabby Sheep in Dallas, and came home with yarn -- six skeins of Koigu. He said he didn't even ask for or accept any help in the yarn store, this is just what he picked out, because he was concerned I hadn't been knitting lately. He's a good boy. So I cast on for these socks, got a couple of inches into the cuff, and then left them in the Jeep for a while. I just wasn't feeling it. But now they're finished and soo soft. Once again, I knit a tall cuff, which meant I ran out of yarn before finishing, but some leftover Wollmeise saved the day.

And last, but certainly not least, while I was enjoying my handspun socks in New Mexico, I decided I needed another pair right away. Luckily, I didn't even have to wait to spin the yarn, because I had some lovely Fleece Artist spun by Karen at String Theory that I received in the HHHH swap. So, following some tricks I learned from the Yarnissima pattern, I whipped up some plain ribbed socks.

The color in the first photo is more accurate (and, look!, it matches my sock bag).
My Ravelry Project

I even knit a sock for my husband!

See Ravelry for details.

But he's going to have to wait a little while for the second, because I'm busy trying to finish Mom's lace. My Nancy Bush Estonian lace book should be here tomorrow, and I have some lovely silk lace yarn that I've been hoarding, and I'm sure I'll want to cast on for something ASAP.

Catching up

2008-10-23T13:57:00.003-05:00

I missed blogging last week because we were on vacation in New Mexico, and, even though I had internet and a camera, I didn't bring any means of transferring pictures from camera to computer. Which is probably just as well, because the ol' laptop is slow, anyway, and it doesn't react well to large photo files.

We had a relaxing time, though, and I got a lot of knitting done. I had planned on taking the spinning wheel, but we decided to bring the dogs along rather than board them, and to take the truck instead of the Jeep, and in the end, the spinning wheel wasn't practical to bring along. I think the dogs had a good time, though, and we enjoyed having them with us. They especially liked feeling the wind in their faces as we drove around some National Forest roads.

You may notice on the sidebar that a lot of things are getting completed, or close to it, around here. I'm knitting much faster than I can blog, and the UFOs are turning into FOs at a pleasant rate. In the interest of accountability, I've even dug up all of the UFOs that I've tucked away here and there and added them to Ravelry, so that I won't forget to finish them while I'm on this mad knitting kick. The sheer length of that WIP list would drive me batty if so many of them weren't finished and awaiting a good blogging, or close to it.

Speaking of FOs awaiting their blog time, let's get to it. Before I left, I had unearthed and finished Laminaria (Ravelry, my project details).

I made the full-size shawl, as I felt that the only other triangular shawl I've ever made was a bit on the small side. Or, I should say, the only other shawl I've ever completed, because I've knit 95% of a massively huge one that I know now I will never bother to finish, since this one is a bit on the large side.

The yarn itself, Valley Yarns 2/14 Alpaca Silk, has a rustic quality to it that I like. It's a cabled yarn, meaning in this case that it's two two-ply yarns plied loosely together. While knitting, the plied yarns sometimes wanted to split, and when you're doing, say, a three into nine increase, that can be a little annoying, but I lived through it. I chose the color to be more informal, and I think I achieved that, but I still don't know if I'll ever wear it.

I did make one small change to the pattern, adding an extra eyelet to the edging chart to avoid the alien head effect. Of course, now I just see an alien with a hole between its eyes.

All in all, it's a pretty object, it was a delightful pattern to knit, and I'm proud of myself for making it, whether I wear it or not.

Now, if you'll excuse me, the city has spent the last several minutes moving lots of heavy equipment onto our street, and I must go investigate what they're up to. And it's been hours since I have watched CNN.

Look who's blocking

2008-10-07T16:32:00.002-05:00

I pulled this out of the closet on Saturday, and I have been obsessed from then until I cast off the last stitch this afternoon.

Done!

2008-10-01T12:40:00.003-05:00

This may be a new record for me -- start to finish sweater in two weeks? It helps that it's a cropped sweater with elbow-length sleeves.

Only for you, dear readers, will I take a picture of myself from behind.

Pattern: Ballet Wrap, by Norah Gaughan, Interweave Knits, available at the Knitting Daily store
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Suri Merino in Crimson, from the stash
Needles: US 6 for the body, US 5 for the ribbing
Mods: No tie sash and therefore no split back, shortened sleeves to elbow length

Overall I'm pretty happy with it. It's a little big in the shoulders, but that's what happens when I knit to my bust size, and I honestly didn't know how to modify it without rewriting the whole pattern, so I'm just going to live with it. Right now it kind of balances out my belly instead of showing it off, but by the time I'm ready to wear it I'll probably appreciate that.

Ugh, no more pictures of me for a while. I'm giving myself a complex.

Change of Plans

2008-09-24T17:02:00.002-05:00

Remember last week how I was all gung-ho to knit the February Lady Sweater? Well, I pulled up the pattern, got out the needles and yarn, and changed my mind. The featured photo on the Ravelry pattern page with the pregnant belly poking out is just adorable, but I had to face facts and realize it won't look like that on me. I was already going to do a round yoke instead of a raglan, but I'd also have to change where the yoke transitioned to the lace pattern, or it would make the girls look huge and saggy.

So I started looking around at other patterns that might accommodate a pregnant belly (maternity sweaters suck!) and I went to the Knitting Daily site to see if the Mommy Snug was available for purchase. It's not, and I had actually purchased The Best of Interweave Knits thinking it was in there, and it's not there either. But I did come across Norah Gaughan's Ballet Wrap and thought maybe it had potential. It still risked putting undue emphasis on certain things I'd rather not draw more attention to, but it also is open over the belly, meaning there might be a chance that I could wear it during pregnancy and beyond.

Oh, the joys of the 'pregnant or just round?' stage. Hopefully I'll be decidedly pregnant-looking by the time it's cold enough to wear this sweater.

So I've been working away at knitting the back and fronts, which went pretty fast, and the long noodle of ribbing, which went pretty slow. Actually, in the original pattern, the noodle is supposed to be even longer, to wrap around and tie in front. I took out the split in the back (which allows the sash to cross over and continue around) and started and ended the noodle under the left arm, finishing with a half-graft for a near-seamless look. I worked all afternoon on sewing all those pieces together to see (breath held) if it was going to fit, and it does!

I don't have a picture (doing the mirror-shot of the front was pain enough), but the back is kind of rounded on the bottom and comes down to about my waist.

Now for sleeves. I'm thinking about making them short, because the alpaca is warm. I think it would look cute over long-sleeved tees. What do you think?

First Cool Morning

2008-09-15T08:57:00.005-05:00

I reluctantly rolled out of bed this morning to let the insistent dogs out, only to be greeted by the most wonderful cool autumn-like morning. I made coffee to celebrate, and the urge to knit got stronger. I've really been wanting to cast on for the February Lady Sweater (hasn't everyone?) for a little while now. I think it will be a good use of the Suri Merino that didn't work out in the High Neck Cable.

Only problem? I really feel like I should be finishing up old projects. The more I think "this is what I should be knitting," the more I don't want to knit at all, and the more I don't knit at all, the deeper these things fall into their UFO black hole and the guiltier I feel about them. I've especially been thinking that I should push through on Mom's cardi and get it finished for her birthday (in, um, a week), but I'm just getting over a bad case of hives and that alpaca yarn makes me itch. The Suri Merino is alpaca, too, but I don't remember it making me itch. Someone tell me it's ok to start a new project for me, please. I'm feeling guilty, but it's not getting me anywhere.

Hot weather and procrastination haven't been the only things keeping me away from the needles, though. We're expecting our first child in March!

9 weeks 5 days and 12 weeks and change
I'm 14 weeks 5 days now (Second Trimester, 4th month).

Crazy, huh? Anyway, I spent my entire first trimester feeling basically hungover, and knitting was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do. And spinning. When your nauseous, watching something spinning around very quickly isn't exactly fun. I got through spinning for the HHHH swap by forcing myself to do 10-15 minutes at a time until it was done. I was going to take it easy on myself and aim for a DK weight, but it came out fingering, anyway. Ha! Anyway, just when I started feeling better, I broke out in hives from some unknown irritant and was even more miserable for several days. But that's all over now, knock on wood :)

I have done a little crafting for kiddo. I knit and felted a bunny toy that still needs a face embroidered on and stuffing. I also started a sweater for the bunny, but it probably needs to be frogged. And I cross-stitched a little Peter Rabbit scene that needs to be washed, blocked, and framed. No pics of those yet.

I am planning to use cloth diapers, so I have crafted a little bit toward that end. Namely, some awesome wooly soakers (pattern from Buttknits.com), and some cloth wipes.

I am 3 or 4 half-finished wipes away from having about 2 dozen (in three different prints). They're kind of addictive. I think I could get into this sewing thing, even if I did have to youtube how to get the bobbin case thingy to go in.

That's probably all I'll do until we find out the gender in about a month. In the meantime, I've got just enough time to knit myself a sweater, no?

Spoiled!

2008-08-12T14:54:00.003-05:00

So I got my HHHH swap package in the mail on Saturday, and boy was I spoiled by Karen (Kittin on Ravelry). She sent me all kinds of goodies, including gorgeous handspun Fleece Artist, yummy Rambouillet roving that she dyed herself (check out her Etsy shop!), Canadian chocolate, hot sauce, dog treats, bath treats, tea, stitch markers, wool wash... I'm probably missing something, there was so much.

Thanks so much, Karen, I love it all, and I'm about to go dig into that chocolate right now. I don't know how I've held off this long.

Bad Blogger.

2008-07-27T18:58:00.003-05:00

OK, I'm awful. I took a little blog vacay, and I'll admit that this post doesn't mean that it's over. It's more like a quick catch-up. I'm just not feeling it so much lately.

First, I can't not mention that I got to teach someone to spin over the 4th of July holiday. We had so much fun, and I left her with a lot of information and plans to buy a wheel right away. She's actually a mohair rancher back home, so she's interested in taking her fiber to a mill and spinning it. I haven't heard from her since; I hope that means things are going well.

Second, on the Barn Raising front, I have 12.5 more squares, for a total of 27.5 out of 42. One, obviously is incomplete (more on that later) and four haven't been blocked yet, but here are the ones from the potluck yarn I posted about last time.

I'm stalled out on the last half that I started. I spun another scrappy on a spindle, and I way overtwisted it, so my square looks a little like a pinwheel. I think that may be ok, but I need to figure out what yarn to finish knitting it with, and somewhere along the line I lost interest a little bit. But since I'm 2/3 gone, I should be able to finish it with some degree of rapidity when I take interest again (and have more scraps or spin more yarn for it.

Lastly, I finally finished up my yarn for the HHHH swap. If memory serves, this may be my first true fingering weight 2-ply yarn.

I dyed the roving myself, and I've kind of always thought of the colorway as "Arsenic and Old Lace," a la the old Cary Grant movie. Let's hope she gets the reference and doesn't think I'm trying to poison her through the mail.

More Barn Raising

2008-07-03T13:49:00.004-05:00

Seven more squares:

I might've hit the halfway mark this week if it hadn't been for spinning this:

510 yards of Funky Carolina's "scrappies", spun one after another and Navajo plied. This way I can knit lots of squares from one yarn ball that are all different from one another.

In other news, the tree guys showed up again this morning. I told them they were finished and sent them away. Let's hope they don't come back.

I have lost.

2008-07-02T16:43:00.002-05:00

Regarding yesterday's post: The trees are cut. The best we could do with the electric company representative was to have them trimmed under his supervision, with assurances that no more than necessary would be removed. Not that you can much tell by looking.

I'm trying not to think of it, except for this: the trees have surely been trimmed before for this purpose, so maybe in a year or so it will look better.

Save the trees!

2008-07-01T11:20:00.004-05:00

Anyone have any experience trying to keep the electric company from doing this to your trees?

I took this picture just a few blocks away. I don't know if you can tell at this size, but it's a gaping hole out of what was a beautiful magnolia tree.

They're chopping up trees all over town and I just can't stand the thought of them doing that to my magnolia. Thankfully, the power lines don't run right through the middle of ours like that, but still, I'm not impressed with their pruning job.

They've already spent 8 hours in our yard hacking up trees I didn't much care about, relatively small growth that probably needed to go anyway, but I'm drawing the line at the magnolia. A little internet research shows that they're threatening homeowners who try to stop them ("we'll destroy your tree"), so I'm meeting with a rep tomorrow at lunch when my husband can be with me. I'm possibly a little hot under the collar to handle this rationally myself. But I'll be doing more research tonight so I'll be ready. Hopefully an offer to have the tree trimmed away from the lines at our own expense will do the trick. Wish me luck. In the meantime, my new parking place is right in front of the magnolia.

In other news, finished spinning.

580 yards of 2-ply Wensleydale, light fingering/heavy laceweight
Spunky Eclectic Club, April, "Perfect Storm"

Barn Raising

2008-06-26T14:16:00.002-05:00

Knitting has finally resumed, and the theme has been simple. Anything stockinette will do. The Barn Raising Quilt from Knitalong has dovetailed nicely into this mood. Small, simple, quick. I'm not sure I'm really capable of anything else. I tried to start sleeves on Mom's Cabled Cardigan (I want to be done with it already!), messed them up, put it back in the closet, went back to my squares.

At first, I thought I'd do a coordinated quilt out of the sock yarn stash. But once I gathered all of the coordinating yarns, my stash was pretty bare, and, of course, subsisting of my least favorite colors and yarns. So instead I pulled out the grab bag of sock leftovers, and I really think this was the way to go. Every square is different, which means that I'm entertained enough that this thing might actually get finished some day. And that's always a good thing.

Even better, each of these squares has a back story.

This one, for example, is from my first pair of socks ever:

Knitting and photography skills both much improved.

And this one is that same yarn mixed with the Koigu from my Embossed Leaves:

Grandma's birthday socks mixed with a yarn sample from Cider Moon:

Leftover singles from handspun socks, Navajo plied:

And so on.

I tend to like the two-color squares, both to knit and to look at. Plus, you can get away with less scraps.

I don't have enough scraps for 42 squares, but I can go a good long way, and I'm not opposed to cranking out socks just to have more squares. And I might sacrifice a skein or two to the blanket, but at this point I'd really like to keep all of the squares different. I also have some "scrappies" from Funky Carolina that I might spin up for squares. I'm thinking I could just spin them end on end and Navajo ply for potluck squares.

I'll try to post weekly updates of progress so it isn't all squares all the time around here, but if you only see me then, you know what's going on.

HHHH Questionnaire

2008-06-25T08:06:00.003-05:00

This is the questionnaire for the HHHH swap. If you're not a participant, feel free to move along. I'll try to do a real blog post sooner or later.

1. How long have you been spinning? What skill level do you consider yourself?
I started about a year ago on a spindle and moved to a wheel about six months ago. I'd consider myself intermediate. Lately it seems like some of my earlier stuff looks better than my more recent yarns, but I guess that's what happens when you start trying something new.

2. What kinds of yarn do you create (singles/2-ply/3-ply/art yarn)?
Singles, 2-ply, 3-ply.

3. What do you spin with (spindle/wheel/both)?
Mostly a wheel; I still get frustrated with the spindle.

4. What are your favorite fibers to spin with? Anything you don't like?
I'll try anything. I haven't tried alpaca yet because it itches my hands to knit with, but I'd give it a shot. I'm best at merino, because that's what I taught myself to spin on.

5. Who are your favorite crack dealers fiber sources (etsy or otherwise)?
AllSpunUp, Spunky Eclectic, Hello Yarn, Pigeonroof Studios... Sometimes I just go on Etsy and search "spinning fibers" and see what looks pretty.

6. What kind of fiber do you want to try?
Rambouillet -- that's the kind of sheep my MIL has, so I want to see what it's like to spin "ranch wool."

7. Are there any techniques you would like to learn?
I'd love to learn more woolen techniques. Sometimes I do a modified long draw, but I've never tried woolen-prepped fibers.

8. Do you dye fiber? If not, would you like to learn?
A little, it's not my favorite thing to do.

9. Do you have fiber prep tools (and like to use them) or would you prefer ready to spin fiber?
I have some handcards, but I prefer ready to spin.

10. What do you do with your handspun? What projects have you completed?
Some socks, lately a lot of scarves. I need to get out of the scarf rut.

11. Are you in need of any spinning gadgets (WPI Gauge, threading hook, etc)?
I don't think so.

12. What colors "fall into your shopping basket"? Any colors you just can't stand?
I tend to go for reds, purples, oranges, browns, and greens. Less so for blues and yellows and pinks.

13. What is on your wheel/spindle right now?
Spunky Eclectic's April club fiber: Wensleydale in "A Perfect Storm"
Will be a light fingering 2-ply.

14. What other crafts/hobbies do you have?
Knitting, reading, cooking, baking, gardening.

15. Other than crafts, what are you passionate about?
I'm supposed to be passionate about something else? See #14, I guess.

16. Do you have an online wishlist?
Yes, on Amazon. I don't want to post the link, but you can email me for it.

17. Is there anything that you collect?
Fiber and books.

18. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your hands on? What magazine subscriptions do you have?
I can't wait for the new Nancy Bush Estonian lace book. I subscribe to Vogue Knitting, IK, and Spin-Off.

19. When is your birthday?
January

20. What book or movie character do you most resemble in personality?
I don't know.

21. What is the climate like where you live around this time (need to know for careful shipments of anything meltable)?
Hot and humid.

22. Tell us one weird fact about yourself!
I hate questions like this and #20.

Favorites
favorite painting/picture(link): can't think of one off the top of my head, so it'd be weird to call anything a favorite

Candy: Butterfinger

Food: Mexican

Drink: Iced tea (unsweetened)

Movie(s): The Godfather

TV Show(s): House, The Office, Bones, Monk TV is mostly background for me.

Book(s): Anna Karenina, Atonement (loved the book, haven't seen the movie)

Guilty Pleasure(s): not getting dressed 'til noon

Sorry if any of this sounds a little grumpy. I just realized my husband had set the thermostat to 80 degrees. No wonder it was so hot in here! I thought maybe I was getting a fever.

Smiley likes it.

2008-06-16T13:56:00.003-05:00

This weekend I finished the handspun scarf that I had been working on since late April. I cast on right after I finished spinning it, and it went through a couple of iterations before I found this waffle stitch that it liked. I even made a special trip to my "local" yarn shop to buy Brittany Birch straight needles to knit it with, because it just wanted to be knit with wooden straight needles. It did not, however, want to be garter stitch. At least on the size 3s I was knitting it on. It really could have stood to be knit on smaller needles, but that's the smallest I could find in straights. It was my TV knitting for a while and then it went to San Antonio and got left in the Jeep for a while, but now it's done, just in time for the 100-degree weather.

I like how the texture lets the yarn be it's slightly rustic, fractal-striped self. It's not quite reversible, but I like the nubby texture on the backside as well as the cleaner "right" side.

Smiley likes it, too.

Or at least she likes the attention. She does so many cute things, but she's not nearly as photogenic as Bruneaux was. For one thing, if she sees you looking at her, she wants to be petted, and for another, she's scared of the camera.

The best thing about the new place.

2008-06-13T11:11:00.002-05:00

Our "new" house has one more bedroom than we've had before, but no garage. So my husband's hobby stuff that used to live in the garage now has it's own (tiny) room in the house. It's only fair, then, that I should get a whole closet.

Now, more unpacking.

Moving tomorrow!

2008-06-11T13:39:00.003-05:00

Just one more push through today to get the rest of the things here packed and some stuff pre-moved before the movers come tomorrow! The yarn, fiber, and one of the wheels are already living in their new space (the Symphony won't fit in the Jeep!), and I just have to tell y'all, my new fiber closet is beyond awesome. I'll have to get some pictures for you later, and also of some of the house stuff I have been working on nonstop for the last six weeks. It's really paid off.

In the meantime, since I finished the socks I had held back to work on (pictures forthcoming), I had to dig the handspun scarf project that I was working on on the San Antonio trip out of the Jeep. Pack a few boxes, knit a few rows, that's how things are getting done around here. I'm trying to take it a little easier than usual today because I know we'll be moving some heavy stuff tonight after my husband gets off from work.

I have a feeling that I won't quite know what to do with myself when I'm not home-improving 10+ hours a day. I plan to unpack at a much more leisurely pace! Hopefully I'll be able to step things up around here.

Handspun for Bea!

2008-06-01T21:43:00.003-05:00

Bea finally has her yarn (and likes it -- yay!), so I can show it off, now, too.

Spinning for a non-spinner is a little daunting. Especially when that non-spinner is also a dyer. I felt compelled to do something with color that can't be done once a yarn is finished. Hence the 3-ply. I can't wait to see what it will look like all knit up!

OK, so maybe I have a little idea. The middle bobbin was spun a little thicker and ran out well before the other two. And then I had about half again as much blue/green as remaining purple, so I didn't want to ply them together. Instead, I wound them into center pull balls and plied up two little yarn balls of very fine 2-ply, and then I had this idea to make Bea some perfectly useless little socks out of it. 16 stitches on size 00s. Fun!

I'm tempted to knit tiny socks for all my yarn now :)

The yarn came out at about 500 yards of sportweight, but it's so fluffy and squish I'm sure that it could be knit to sock gauge. Bea wouldn't tell me what she wanted except that she likes knitting socks, so I was really hoping against hope that it would come out in that range, and I think it all worked out all right. Since the yarn is a soft fiber and softly spun, the fabric would probably benefit from being knit a tight-ish gauge.

Sneak Peek

2008-05-28T13:06:00.003-05:00

OK, I said I wasn't going to blog about my swap project for Bea until she received it, but I am going to give a little teaser. My part of the trade was to spin up some merino roving she purchased from AllSpunUp. And the thing about spinning handpainted roving is, you never know what you're gonna get. It looks different as singles than as roving, and it looks different plied than it does as singles. So I think I can show you a little without giving it all away.

First off, I split the roving differently from what I've been doing. Instead of tearing it into strips of various sizes and spinning from the end, I laid out the roving and tore it into thirds. Because of the way it was dyed, this gave me two lengths of roving that were mostly purple and one that was mostly blue/green. I then split each of these three sections into fourths and spun them up successively on three separate bobbins, one bobbin for each third.

Almost looks like different colorways, no?

What does the resulting yarn look like? I can't tell you! It went to the post office today. What I can tell you is that this merino is like buttah. How long has it been since I spun merino that wasn't superwash?

Stay tuned.

It's going around.

2008-05-22T16:17:00.002-05:00

Bea tagged me with a meme, and since I just painted three rooms' ceilings by myself today and am quite tired of working over my head, I welcome the opportunity to play on the computer for a bit.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
Moving back to Texas for the summer after my first year of college.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):
a. paint the living room ceiling (check)
b. paint the dining room ceiling (check)
c. paint the front bedroom ceiling (check) (notice a trend?)
d. check the Memorial Day sale price at Sherwin-Williams (check)
e. laundry (yeah, right)

3. Snacks I enjoy:
I'm not a huge snacker, but I will occasionally have crackers and cheese, ice cream, or yogurt. I'm a huge fan of dairy.

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Buy a big ranch in the Pacific Northwest where my husband could have cows (he was raised on a cattle ranch) and I could have sheep and we could be total and complete hermits together.

5. Places I have lived:
What counts as living somewhere? Let's say three months or more.

Rural West Texas
Durham, NC
Broomfield, CO (suburb between Denver and Boulder)
Kerrville, TX
San Antonio, TX
Bristol, UK
Austin, TX
Dallas, TX
Small town East Texas

6. Jobs I have had:
web designer, university genetics department, university hospital neurosurgery department, university computer science department, law clerk, attorney

7. People to know more about:
I'm, uh, much too lazy to tag people today. If you want to participate, consider yourself tagged.

Just for fun, a photo I took one year ago, when I was on vacation with my husband for our anniversary in Smoky Mountain National Park, Tennessee.

I wish I was there now.

All knitting has stopped.

2008-05-21T14:02:00.004-05:00

But spinning continues for the time being. More on that later.

The house is coming along all right. The kitchen and bathrooms are painted, even the kitchen cabinets, and I've got the paint fume hangover to prove it today. We spent all last week prepping the rest of the house for paint and were going to spray it with my parents' paint sprayer on Friday but, even after messing with it all day, we never got it to work. So we rented a paint sprayer and my husband and I sprayed the rest of the walls on Saturday.

If anyone ever tells you that a paint sprayer is faster and easier than rolling paint, don't believe them. It takes way more prep, makes a huge mess, and, in our inexperienced hands, didn't give great coverage. What's worse, the beige I picked that looked beige in the store and beige in the sunlight looks positively pink on the walls. It's horrible. So, after all that, we have to buy 10 more gallons of paint and start over.

We debated whether to go ahead and hire someone to finish painting or whether I should do it. The cost of hiring it done would be offset by the fact that we could move in earlier and stop paying rent. However, reports are that the local painters kind of do a sloppy job, so my agony will not be ending any time soon. I'm taking a break today, but tomorrow I'll be painting ceilings.

When I get at home at the end of the day, I'm way too exhausted to knit lace without making a royal mess of it. I guess I could work on the easy scarf project, but it's still in the car from the San Antonio trip, and I'm just not that into it right now.

But spinning is still soothing.

440 yds/ 5 1/8 oz, I'm guessing DK weight.
BFL
Hello Yarn Fiber Club, January 2008 "Insect Wings"

I spun it for short color repeats, so whatever I knit with it should be really stripy. I don't have the imagination right now to try to figure out what that will be, though.

I also got this great swap package from Bea this week that just made my day. She really went above and beyond.

I got a knitting bag, a sock bag, a notions bag, and some pretty blue stitch markers that are the perfect size for lace. If you like it, also check out her Etsy shop. Warning: she also dyes some gorgeous sock yarns.

Now it's my turn to do a little something for her. Thankfully I get the last word, as it were, so I can make sure my part measures up. I've already gotten started, but I'm going to wait to blog it until she receives it so she'll be surprised.

Knitting content, at last!

2008-05-12T23:05:00.002-05:00

But no knitting pictures. My husband had to go to San Antonio for work last week, and I got to tag along, so pictures of that, instead.

Because my knitting doesn't look like much. And I haven't had a chance to take pictures of it. Spare time has been spent moving it toward completion.

I have a lace project for Mother's Day. Which is already late. Luckily, Mom is in town through this weekend, so if I can get the other 3/4 of the edging done by Saturday, maybe it will be blocked and ready for her to take home.

It's knit with the handspun I showed you last time. Knitting with this handspun is not encouraging me to move away from spinning laceweight. I hope I don't run out.

I'm also knitting a simple scarf from handspun. It's my easy knitting, and it got a lot of play on the drive down.

I didn't do any shopping in San Antonio.

OK, I bought two novels.

But I didn't shop on the Riverwalk, because I would rather check out the LYSes than pay tourist prices for stuff I don't need.

But I didn't go to the LYSes, either, because I'd rather buy wool than yarn. Spinning, it's a sickness.

See there, you got to take a walk around San Antonio in May without even getting hot.

More laceweight; somebody stop me!

2008-05-06T10:37:00.004-05:00

So I finally got around to finishing that laceweight tussah silk I showed you a while ago. I ended up scrapping what I had done so far, because after fondling the silk laceweight I bought at DFW Fiber Fest, there was just no denying it was overspun. So I sat down at the Matchless with the rest of the fiber and tried to walk the line for soft singles that have enough twist not to fall apart. I spun from the end of the strips I had pulled from the top and didn't have as much waste as I did when spinning from the fold. Once my left hand gets a layer of silk filaments on it, no more seem to stick, so it was the cleaning off that was my main problem before.

You know you're addicted when you come home from sanding ceilings, take a shower, and continue plying lace. I did wait until this morning to skein it up, though.

810 yards / 3 3/8 oz
~34 wpi
2-ply

I think I'll lay off the laceweight spinning for a little while now. If I can.

Panda food makes pretty yarn.

2008-05-05T08:30:00.003-05:00

Don'tcha think? I petted this bamboo roving almost daily since I received it as my March shipment of the Zen String fiber club. I knew what I wanted to do with it as soon as I first saw it, both how I wanted to spin it and what I wanted to knit with it. This is about 800 yards of laceweight singles, with long color shifts. What nice drape it has. Now I'm petting the skein every day. I need to finish another project or two before I get started.

Coffee Scarf

2008-05-01T14:45:00.003-05:00

Back in January, I was shipped some batts called "An Open Window to a New Opportunity" for my Flawful Fibers club membership. We've made some pretty big changes starting in January, starting with me getting out of a very bad (for me) job, my husband finding a great job in a new town, and us getting the heck outta Dodge, er, Dallas.

So I had some special feelings toward this fiber. And it had a few things to teach me. I spun it up as kind of a thick and thin singles yarn. I wanted it to be more even, but due to the nature of the batts, it just wasn't possible. Sometimes you have to give up a little control. Then I began to stress about what to knit with it. I cast on for a project, but it just wasn't working. I finally ripped it and tried a crochet pattern, and it worked. If at first you don't succeed, don't be afraid to try something completely different.

The pattern is Tea Scarf by pixeldiva, but I was drinking coffee when I finished mine, so it's a coffee scarf.

I made it a little longer because I had a little more yarn to use up, and use it up I did. This is all that's left:

See that other thing in the picture? The mouse? It's attached to (well, wirelessly attached to) a shiny new Mac that uploads my large photo files in the blink of an eye and lets me edit them on its big shiny screen. Since I don't have to sit around waiting 15 minutes for iPhoto to load anymore, y'all can probably expect more frequent posting. After this month, anyway. I'm going to be busy doing some home improvements and preparing for another move over the next few weeks.

Humdinger

2008-04-30T14:21:00.004-05:00

Last weekend we made an unscheduled trip back to West Texas, braving thunderstorms threatening golf-ball sized hail and tornadoes during our late-night trek across the state. Thankfully, we made it just fine. I got some knitting done, but I ripped it all out. I think I have to finish a thing or two before anything is going to go right on the needles.

My father-in-law is a bit of a bird watcher and puts out five gallons a week of sugar water in his many hummingbird feeders. They attract quite the crowd.

I stood out on the porch for a long time and got some pretty cool shots.

I also finally got a chance to take a picture of some long-finished knitting. I made this out of Cascade 220 a while ago, but it took me a while to block it and then it sat around for a while before it got photographed. I got it in just under the wire, though, before dropping it off for its recipient.

I made up the pattern myself, and I think I'll make another one out of the llama I spun up. I'll need to make a few modifications, since the original is already on the large side and I think the llama may be heavier than the Cascade 220. And I'll be doing some kind of contrasting softer lining on the second hat.

More spinning!

2008-04-24T14:58:00.004-05:00

Are y'all getting tired of this yet? Because I'm not. And I haven't much else to show you. I've started a new lace project, and it's coming along, but it doesn't look like much and I've got it all bunched up on a 24" needle, so I can't really spread it out and show you. No nupps on this one, but it is Estonian lace and uses a lot of the same k1, yo, k1, yo, k1, yo, k1, yo, k1 in the same stitch maneuvers. And, I gotta tell ya, I don't know if it's that or the crocheting of dishcloths or both, but my right shoulder is really taking a beating. So every day I tell myself no crochet or lace, and every day I sit down and think, "well, just a little," and then the next morning I wake up and can't turn my head to the right and swear I'll take the day off. But spinning still doesn't hurt, so that's a good thing.

Here's the first fiber to come off the new wheel. It's the llama that I purchased at the fiber fest. In retrospect, I should have started with a more familiar fiber on the new wheel, but what's done is done. I'm not entirely happy with it, and I don't know whether it's the fiber or my growing pains. All I know is it's not an airy woolen-spun and it's not a smooth worsted-spun and it just feels kind of heavy and lifeless. DH still likes it, though, and still wants a hat. I suspect it will look a lot better when it's knit up.

It's a three-ply and I should have just about enough for a hat. I got myself in one of those awkward positions when I was plying where the wheel just wouldn't take up, so I'd pull out more singles and let the twist flow up, adjust the tension and try again, and still, no take up. I was completely tangled up in yarn before I realized that the drive band wasn't over the bobbin. (Doh!) I don't know how it happened, but I think it means that spinning four ounces of fiber and trying to ply it is perhaps a little more than I can handle in one day.

For my second try, I chose some BFL I had purchased from AllSpunUp on Etsy (I like how she doesn't name her colorways). I think this was still the day of the wheel's arrival and my husband and I had gone out for dinner and margaritas and we came home and I was all, "My spinning wheel! Let me show you it!" So I pulled out the fiber and split it in half and spun a little bit for him. I chose the high speed whorl to see what it would do. Then later I was kind of stuck with that decision.

I decided to do the fractal thing and spun the one bobbin I had started from the end and split the other half several ways and spun them on the other bobbin. Because of the way the yarn was dyed, though, I didn't end up with a whole lot of solid-color portions. You can't tell in the skein, but the beginning is mostly green and the end is mostly the red/rose colors. I could use it for socks, but they'd be fraternal in the extreme.

I have about 520 yards of 22-wpi 2-ply. I'd call that a light fingering weight. I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with it just yet. I'm tempted to make an EZ garter stitch moebius, but I kind of also want to branch out from scarves, hats, and socks for my handspun. Any other ideas? There's not much on Ravelry for 500 yards of light fingering that isn't socks.

The ply twist might be a little funky on this as well, because about the time I was halfway through plying, I found (gasp! horror!) dirty footprints on my treadles. The Schacht is oil finished, not varnished, and my bare feet were leaving some grime behind. I cleaned it off and switched to a socks-for-spinning policy, but the ones I chose were slippery on the treadles and it was a completely different feel.

On the wheel is some bamboo from my Zen String fiber club. I'm spinning laceweight singles straight from the roving for really long color shifts, and I think I'll make a Montego Bay Scarf with it.

Lily of the Valley still isn't done.

2008-04-21T11:27:00.006-05:00

In fact, this morning I shoved it in the storage ottoman. I don't want to look at it for a while. The thing is so huge, I'm not going to be able to block it on our queen-size bed, and seemingly no closer to completion after several days' work than the last time I showed you. So I'm giving myself and the huge knot in my back a break from all the nupps. We're closing on a house May 1 and doing some painting and improvements to move in June 1 or so, so I think I'll try to finish it sometime in there so I can block it in the empty house. And then we can drape it over the roof and use it for insulation or something.

Luckily, it has not killed my lace mojo. Last Monday, I decided I couldn't stand it any more and printed out a pattern and cast on with my handspun laceweight. It was so refreshing to start at the top of a triangular shawl and increase four stitches every two rows and see quick progress rather than start on one short side and decrease one stitch every two rows. So I'd work a repeat of Lily of the Valley and then a few rows of the new shawl.

Before long I was at the good part, and started working on the new shawl full time. [Does it mean I'm crazy if I still think nupps are the good part?] Anyway, I cast off on Saturday and by Sunday morning it was blocked and ready for a photo shoot.

Spring Things Shawl by Susan Lawrence
2 oz. of my my handspun laceweight yarn (1134 yds/4 oz, 42 wpi, 2-ply) from the Spunky Eclectic Fiber Club - Think Spring South African Fine (February '08)
US5 KP Harmony needles
Ravelry project page

I still can't believe I made that out of a ball of wool.

Fiber Fest Spoils

2008-04-14T15:18:00.003-05:00

DFW Fiber Fest 2008 was the first weekend in April. I went last year and browsed the vendors and thereafter planned to take a class or two this year, but with the move going on I wasn’t certain I’d have the time. Turns out I was right about that, but we did have time to swing by as we were in town to finish packing on Saturday. I snagged some divine handdyed silk laceweight from Madeline Tosh, fondled some kid mohair yarn from Brooks Farm for a long time before talking myself out of it, and picked up 4 oz. of llama fiber that will become a hat for my husband.

But the best part? Walking around, my husband noticed all the little travel wheels that some of the vendors were spinning on and said, ‘we need to get you one like that, that you can take with you.’ And if just planting that bug in his ear wasn’t enough, he was serious about doing it right away. (Stay back, ladies, he’s mine!)

I didn’t expect to get another wheel for years. I was thinking maybe, if I was very good, Santa might bring me a Woolee Winder for the Symphony this Christmas. Of course I had thought about it, and hinted about it, but I just thought it would be a while. And I probably should have told him that it should wait, but, people, I am weak.

At first I was thinking I’d get a Little Gem – you can’t really beat that for portability. But the more I got to thinking about it, it seemed silly to spend so much for a wheel that I’d mainly use when I traveled. (And plying -- apparently they have huge capacity bobbins.) For the money, though, why not get something that I’d be happy to use every day, that was also portable? Why not examine my current situation and see if I can fill in any other gaps besides portability?

When I researched wheels the first time, it was really important to me to get a Saxony style wheel. In fact, the Lendrum Saxony was my first choice, and the Symphony was my second. Both met all of my criteria, I just thought the Lendrum was a little prettier. I still love the way the Saxony looks, but now that I know what I’m doing behind a wheel, I’m better able to appreciate the beauty of all styles of wheels. It’s more about the ingenuity and engineering of the design than the turning of the wood that gets me going these days.

The Symphony can be configured with the flyer either on the right or the left. At the time, I had never spun on a wheel and so didn’t know which way I would like better. I opted for the ‘normal’ setup with the flyer on the left, thinking that I would learn to spin to fit my wheel. Turns out, I spin with my right hand in front and I can only spin with my left hand in front about as well as I can write with my left hand or knit English. I can do it, but it’s not pretty. So I spend a lot of time twisted around in odd positions while spinning on the Symphony. I don’t even realize I’m doing it. If I had gotten the wheel set up the other way, I could pull the yarn across my body as I draft. As is, I pull it straight out and sort of behind me.

A castle-style wheel, besides being inherently more portable than a Saxony, also solves the problem of handedness. The flyer is in the middle; you can spin however you want. I flirted with the Lendrum DT and the Rose, but in the end I decided on the Schacht Matchless. I ordered it last Tuesday and it showed up today!

Ain't she a beaut?! I am like a little kid with a new bike.

Adrift on a sea of yellow lace

2008-04-13T17:26:00.003-05:00

I'm tempted to declare the Lily of the Valley shawl a black hole of knitting, but it's just too yellow. Aside from a few dischloth breaks I've been solely devoted to this process:

There are now quite a few lilies in my valley.

And yet, it's still a far cry from a triangle.

That's a 32 inch needle you see. The shawl is huge. If I put it on my shoulders in its unblocked state, the point reaches to mid-calf. When I block this, it's going to be as big as a house.

I think I've found the culprit of what started as a crick in my neck, creeped down my back, and then spread over my shoulder. It might be time to take a break, but part of me still thinks I can finish this week.

Next time I think I'll choose a lace project on a slightly smaller scale. Preferably one that has more than one motif and fewer nupps.

Sometimes I surprise myself.

2008-04-11T15:02:00.003-05:00

I used to think I would never knit a dishcloth. I just didn't see the point.

And I guess I haven't been proven wrong yet, because I didn't knit these.

I crocheted them. And it was fun! And they make me want to clean! Except I don't know if I can bear to use the granny square one; it's too pretty.

I also whipped up some Swiffer cloths. I've already used them, too.

Brightly colored things motivate me. As do quickie projects.

Spinning Spunky

2008-04-09T14:23:00.003-05:00

When I first signed up for a few fiber clubs, it seemed like it took forever to get my packages in the mail, and now it seems like I can hardly keep up. Just look what I have waiting in the wings:

I am on track with my Spunky Eclectic subscription, though.

Here's January, "Snow Squall" Icelandic wool, which became about 80 yards of 2-ply heavy worsted.

My husband wants a hat from it, but a long-stapled, tightly-spun, rough wool probably isn't ideal for a garment. Maybe if I line it with something softer.

February was South African Fine in "Think Spring." It became 1134 yards of 2-ply laceweight. It could have used a little more ply twist, but overall I'm happy with it for being my first laceweight.

I think I'm going to do a Rippled Baby Blanket in this, partially because there's an error in the pattern that I need to work out.

Then after spinning so fine, I went the other direction with March's "Mud Season" merino. Worsted singles, using my new extra-slow whorl for the Symphony.

It's so puffy, four ounces stretched to almost 400 yards. I could really make something with this. Maybe this vest? I'd use the handspun for the neckline and maybe ribbing on the bottom edge instead of the scallops, with a solid color for the body, I think.

Moved!

2008-04-07T18:52:00.002-05:00

I have lots of fibery things to talk about this week, finished knits, fiber fest purchases, finished yarns, but right now I just have to revel in the fact that we have furniture in our house.

Look what I get to sleep in tonight!

So much better than an air mattress!

Of course, there's this part of moving, that isn't so much fun.

Excuse me, now, I have to go sit on my sofa.

A Very Jane Weekend

2008-03-31T10:13:00.004-06:00

On Saturday I watched The Jane Austen Book Club, and then got to thinking that I have only read three of Jane Austen’s novels (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma), and should read them all. So I went to the local used bookstore to see what I could find. Let’s just say that it’s you’re place if you’re after romance novels of a much more explicit nature, but it was terribly bereft of classics. There was nothing to do but drive over to the nearest town of consequence and see if I could do better, and now I’m reading Mansfield Park and only missing Northanger Abbey. On Sunday, I figured I’d make a weekend of it and watched Becoming Jane.

I think I might have caught the lace bug. I mentioned before that I’m spinning some laceweight. The first project is tussah silk top, which is naturally a ‘honey’ color. Mine arrived a bit more on the beige side I dyed it to be more gold and it turned out sort of a champagne color that I like very much. Spinning it is kind of a pain, not because it’s fine or slippery, but because the fibers come loose and stick to everything. I can’t just spin from the end like I usually do, or it coats my jeans and anything else it touches. Worst of all, it sticks to my naturally sweaty hands. I spin a handful, then rub my hands together, and have a little fluff of waste that comes loose. Frustrating. But I have 4 ounces and the intended project is small, so I’ll stick it out.

The other laceweight project is the Spunky Club February mailing, Think Spring South African Fine. My first instinct was baby stuff, but I’ve been doing a fair amount of that lately so I wanted to do something different. I sat down at the wheel, and, well, laceweight happened. As it tends to do when you have things set at the smallest whorl. I’m thinking maybe a Flower Basket Shawl?

Speaking of whorls, I ordered the extra small and extra large whorls for my wheel from The Woolery, and I’m dying to try them out. They came unfinished, though, so I didn’t want to use them and get oil on them before I finished them, and it took me a while to come up with a good way to do that. Some pegboard thingies from the garage turned out to be perfect.

The stain I hastily picked doesn't quite match the finish of the rest of the wheel, but since these aren't 'original' parts I'm not too bothered. They'll look less odd this color than in the unfinished light wood. I’m really happy that I could expand the capabilities of my wheel with only a $30 investment. I can only imagine what the extra small whorl will produce. Cobwebs? And I can't wait to try for chunky singles with the extra-large whorl.

All this laceweight spinning of course got me to thinking about knitting lace. I finally do have enough alone time to knit lace, and I could even wear it if I wanted to since there’s no Bruneaux around to jump on me and snag it. Little dogs can’t jump that high, and Smiley is better mannered than that. Before I knew it, I had pulled out a project that I started last spring and finished the first repeat and am already halfway through the second. I think I might commit myself to one repeat per day until it’s finished. The good news is that it gets shorter with every row from here on out. And I think I’ve finally figured out how to read lace, so it’s going well.

How’s that for avoiding knitting sleeves or taking pictures for a tutorial? After all, it's hard to get into gloves and sweaters with this going on outside.

Think spring, indeed.

Bloggity blog

2008-03-28T19:54:00.003-06:00

I’ve been unmotivated to post lately; I don’t really know why. I used to spend so much time on the internet when I had a job I couldn’t stay busy at, and now I’m not working and barely spend any time online. I often wonder, what did I do all day? Which is funny, considering my current situation, in which the answer is pretty much whatever the hell I want.

The house is sold, for the second time. And we’re actually getting close enough to closing that I’m starting to have to think about moving for real. We got a bite within three weeks of listing, but our first buyers backed out, so we’ve been skittish about this second deal. Perhaps unreasonably so. We’ve also been reluctant to really move into this place when we feel like we’re going to be maybe buying something in some indeterminate short period of time. I tell ya what, though, it will be nice to have a real couch and a real bed again. I’ve had our washer and dryer for a couple of weeks, and I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed doing laundry so much. Living with almost no personal property has also greatly reduced my ‘requirements’ for a new place. I just want it to be so far down country roads that you have trouble finding the place (we had one like that picked out, but now it’s sadly off the market and we can’t really find anything we like nearly as well for as little, but there is a possible contender) and a dishwasher that works.

I took the handspun socks to my MIL for her birthday, but I didn’t have a chance to get a picture of the finished product. I loved how the roving spun up, but the socks were a little bit of a disappointment because of the uneven spinning between the first and second socks. And you can tell just by looking at them; the texture on one is much deeper and more pronounced than the other. I just keep telling myself that I didn’t muck it up on purpose, and it’s not like she knows whether I can do any better, anyway. It’s the thought that counts.

Besides, I think she’s just as happy with the trade we made on her birthday. Bruneaux for Smiley. My rough-and-tumble little-dog attacker for her sweet Australian Shepherd/Border Collie guinea-killer. I think everybody’s happy about the situation (including the dogs) except for maybe my husband, who had repeatedly announced his plans for leaving with three dogs and coming back with two. I got a big lecture on how if you see that a dog seems to spend its days tied up to a chair on the front porch, that you should expect that offers to trade will at least be considered, if not pounced on. Which I should have and did know, considering that Bruneaux spent his last weeks with us sequestered from the little dogs on the sun porch. Fine with me, I’ve wanted Smiley since I met her. She’s a good dog and gets along with the min pins and likes to spend her days sleeping on her back under the ceiling fan. Meanwhile Bruneaux gets to play rough with the other working dogs and live at the ranch instead of being cooped up inside and always in trouble for eating something he shouldn’t.

She's a little brattier than I had her pegged for. For instance, I just told her to go outside and she ran out, turned around, and ran back in again before I could close the door. Turns out she's named for the face she makes when she doesn't want to do something. And she wants to be petted all the time, but that's because she was rescued from a puppy mill where her puppies were fussed over and she didn't get any attention. Poor Smiley-face.

I’ve done a little bit of knitting and a good amount of spinning, but the knitting hasn’t been blocked or photographed and the spinning mostly laceweight and taking forever. And I’ve learned not to rush it.

This is why I shouldn't get in too much of a hurry.

2008-03-20T12:29:00.003-06:00

Even though I weighed the finished first sock and the remaining fiber and so determined that I should have more than plenty to knit another sock just like it, this happened.

I guess I was in such a hurry to spin the yarn for the second sock that I spun it a little thicker. And even though I had 1/2 oz. extra, I still came up short. Which led to this:

I still need to cut the cuff off of the first sock to match and redo the cast-on/off for both socks. You know, after one more row of this:

Delusional.

2008-03-19T09:04:00.003-06:00

So, I spun up half the roving for the MIL socks and told myself that I'd knit the first sock while I was spinning the yarn for the second, all multitasking like. Except it's hard to multitask two activities which require both hands. I vaguely remember thinking after I turned the heel that I should stop and go back to spinning, but I finished the sock anyway. And then I spun the rest of the yarn. And then I couldn't work on the project while it was blocking.

It's certainly not the end of the world; the first sock went pretty fast, so I should be able to finish by the weekend, anyway. And it gave me a chance to finish the 4-ply cabled handspun socks. This morning when DH woke up, he said, "I'm going to wear my new socks today!" and was disappointed when I told him I still had to weave in all the ends from the stripes, so I got to it first thing this morning.

I duplicate stitched a faux toe seam to tie in the stripes, and I think it really works. Rugged, manly socks. They feel slightly rough on the feet, but very cozy. The yarn was a little splitty to knit with, but worth it if the color placement or durability of the cabled yarn is a goal.

Oddly enough, aside from the colors, the rovings for both pair of socks looked pretty similar. It just goes to show what a difference the spinning can make. I don't think I'll ever get tired of that.

More of the same.

2008-03-17T14:53:00.003-06:00

I was itching to see what all that work would look like knitted up, so I started some socks for DH with the 4-ply cabled sock yarn. I started two at a time on two circulars toe up, but gave that up in a hurry because, 1) I hate knitting anything two at a time, 2) While I prefer two circulars to magic loop, I prefer DPNs better still, and 3) I'm not a big fan of toe-up, either, so I should stick to just one thing I don't like per pair of socks, I think.

I was able to work in an extra inch and a half or so in the cuff by adding some stripes in matching stash yarn. It's not superwash like the handspun, but, really, if these socks ever see the inside of a washing machine I think I'll have a coronary anyway. Ignore the odd blue yarn laying over the yarn ball -- that's a scrap from the shell socks that I didn't notice until I uploaded the photo. I'm such a poor housekeeper.

I've had to leave them by the wayside while I quickly spin and knit socks for my MIL, whose birthday is this weekend. Since she helped buy my wheel and has generously mailed me mohair and promises of wool are on the way, I figured some handspun socks are due.

This may be my best handspun sock yarn yet. I split the roving four ways lengthwise, predrafted two of the strips (unusual for me) and spun them onto a bobbin at the second-highest ratio, and then Navajo-plied them on the lowest ratio. I only meant to go down one ratio for plying, but I must have been tired, because I went down two. Anyway, I'm loving the colors and the softness of the less-tightly-spun-than-usual sock yarn.

If it wasn't for things like dinner, laundry, and dogs, I think I'd have no problem getting these done in time. As it is, I think it will be a little bit of a push. Bruneaux got out of the sunroom where he is sequestered from the little dogs this morning (turned the knob and opened the door!) and thankfully I saw him in the backyard before I hopped the fence. He's become quite the handful.

I also feel a little guilty about neglecting other projects that I was hoping to get done this week, like DH's socks, above. And I need to decide which of the two '07 holdovers to battle next. The gloves have sat stagnant since I finished the first and decided that I wanted to do a roositud tutorial on the blog with the second. Mom's cardigan needs sleeves and probably a new neckband, but since I'm making it up sort of as I go along, there's lots of room for error.

Personally, I think it makes a rather nice vest, but, alas, it was a cardigan that was promised.

No second sock syndrome here.

2008-03-13T13:15:00.002-06:00

I've been churning out socks like a mad woman.

First off, another 2007 holdover is finished:

Child's First Socks in Shell Pattern
Nancy Bush, Knitting Vintage Socks
Sundara Sock Yarn in Indigo over Aquamarine
US0 DPNs

I started these socks in December, and they were my purse socks. It took me about three months to finish knitting the first one -- actually, to even get to the heel of the first one -- because they had several perceived problems. First, I had decided to knit them on US0s instead of the recommended US1s because I wanted the lace pattern to open up a little more when worn, and I have this thing lately about snug-fitting socks, but then I was afraid that they would be too small. Second, the yarn tangled on everything in my purse, and the socks came off a needle or two more times than I'd care to count. I was just frustrated with them. But, since I am slowly knocking out the carry-over projects, and socks knit up pretty fast, they got moved to the top of the queue. And when I got the first one finished, I was so in love with it that I knocked out the second within another week. I really like how the subtle variegations in the blue yarn really highlight the shell pattern, and the fit turned out to be spot on.

The Cherokee-inspired Jaywalkers are also finished:

Jaywalkers by Grumperina
Knitterly Things Vesper Sock Yarn in Knit and Tonic
US1 DPNs

The Child's First Socks may be the pair that has taken me the longest to knit, and these may be my quickest pair of socks. Four days for the pair. There's something about self-striping yarn that just makes it go so fast. I think it's because I always want to knit a whole color repeat at a a time, or maybe because it's so easy to measure progress.

I did modify the toes on these, because I figured if I was doing decreases on the instep, why not work them into the toe shaping? So, when I was ready to start the toe (four color repeats from the gusset pick-up), I just left off the first and last increases on the instep and continued the chevron pattern until there was only one stitch on either side of the double decrease. Then I continued the toe as normal, abandoning the center increases as well. I think it looks pretty sharp.

In other news, we're going to have to find a new home for Bruneaux. :( He and Duke used to be best buds, but apparently the had a falling out when we weren't looking, because they've gotten into a couple of fights (which thankfully we were around to break up), the last of which ended in stitches for Duke. I don't think Bruneaux was trying to hurt him -- in fact, I think he was trying not to hurt him, or it would have been much worse, it's only a superficial wound -- but, nevertheless, he just doesn't understand how gently he needs to play with the little dogs. Duke, understandably, is terrified of him now, in that little dog I-think-I-can-take-you-but-I-can't way which is just sure to cause more trouble.

My first instinct was to just keep them separated and put Bruneaux outside a lot more, but he's figured out how to hop the fence. So, we can't keep him outside and he can't be inside with the little ones, which means we have no place for him. My MIL is going to look for a place for him on a ranch where he can be a working dog and get some of his energy out. I think he'll be a better dog for it, and happier, but I will miss him.

So this is what no car payment looks like.

2008-03-11T12:44:00.004-06:00

I used to drive a black and white Mini Cooper. It was cute, it was zippy, and it was perfect for city living. But I don’t live in the city any more. And I always said I wouldn’t have that car if there was’t a service center nearby, so it was time to move on.*

So, last week, I sold the Coop’ and set out to buy a Jeep Cherokee. I’ve wanted a Jeep Cherokee since I was in high school, and it just so happens that you can pick one up (a Jeep Cherokee from when I was in high school, that is) for about the same price as I had positive equity in my car.

As of this weekend, this is my ride:

It met all of our criteria but one: the color. Now, before you tell me it’s not that bad and you actually kind of like it, bear in mind two things. One, I have always always always had black cars, so this is extremely bright to my eyes. Two, that’s easy for you to say; you don’t have to drive it.

I think it’s already seeping into my subconscious, though.

* And, honestly, I found the service center was a pain to deal with even when it was nearby. My last visit was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

ISO the perfect handspun sock yarn

2008-03-04T13:45:00.003-06:00

I learned to knit socks about a year ago, and in that year I've managed to knit over 25 pairs of socks. So, naturally, when I picket out and received a spinning wheel, my first priority was to learn to spin yarn for socks.

My first attempt was a Navajo-ply. I split the roving in two, and by the second half, I was really cooking with gas. It resulted in some nice stripy socks.

For my next pair, I did a traditional 3-ply. I tried to spin strips at random to break up any striping. The result was a tweedy-looking sock with subtle stripes.

Both successes. But then I got to thinking, a lot of my favorite commercial sock yarns are 2-ply, so why am I focusing so much on 3-ply sock yarns?

Next up, 2-ply merino sock. The roving was merino from Enchanted Knoll Farms on Etsy, in the Fortune Teller colorway. The roving was slightly felted, which made it difficult to draft in places, resulting in a less uniform yarn than I would like, but it is so bouncy and squishy; I love it.

Then the Yarn Harlot wrote about a 4-ply cabled sock yarn, and of course I had to try that, too. I pulled out some superwash merino I had dyed, and I think it came out looking a lot like denim.

The difference between the finished 2-ply and the 4-ply cabled yarns is night and day.

For one thing, the 2-ply was much quicker and easier to make. Two singles, plied once. The 4-ply cabled yarn was much more involved. Four laceweight singles, plied three times.

The color interplay is also worth noting. The 2-ply should look somewhat stripy when knit up, whereas the 4-ply is all tweedy and marled.

The yardage also came out drastically different. I don't remember the yardage for my 3-ply yarns, but it was at least 350+. Enough for plain socks with some left over. The 2-ply yielded about 400 yards. The 4-ply cabled yarn? 278 yards. And you can see in the photo it's a little thinner overall than the 2-ply, too. I was *so* disappointed.

I agonized over what to do about this. Normally, if I thought I would run short of sock yarn, I'd do contrasting heels and toes. But the whole point of a cabled sock yarn is strength, so it would be pretty pointless to spend all that time spinning a super sock yarn and then use a commercial yarn for the places that would see the most wear. I had just about decided to dye up a couple of ounces in a contrasting color when my husband suggested that I just knit as much as I can with what I have (the yarn is intended for socks for him). I guess that's what I'll do.

I'll continue this discussion once I have socks knit out of these last two yarns, and probably again after a while when we've had a chance to see how they're all wearing.

In the meantime, I think I'll stick to the 2- and 3-plies. I haven't had a pair of socks wear through yet, so I think I will avoid the extra work and extra fiber required for the 4-ply cabled for the near future.

Surprised?

2008-02-27T14:27:00.003-06:00

Bet you didn't expect to see this:

I started it back in November, but had gauge issues and had to start over after knitting the body and one sleeve, and then the dog ate my yarn, but I've been slowly persevering since then. It just turns out that plain stockinette doesn't make good blog fodder, and then when I got to the yoke, it was like reading the last 100 pages of a good book and I couldn't put it down until it was done.

Specs:
Elizabeth Zimmermann's Fair Isle Yoke Sweater (Henley Neck Variation) from Knitting Around
Jamieson & Smith Shetland 2-ply Jumper Weight yarn
US 4 needles (US3s for the hem facings, which, by the way, are orange)

I followed the pattern almost exactly, no added waist shaping or anything. I don't think the sweater needs it at this gauge, and I didn't want it to hug my curves too snugly. The only thing I did a little differently was to use the updated, more subtle, decreases from the non-Henley variation to avoid puckering at the decrease rounds.

The yoke background would have been all in brown, as per the charts, but I was afraid of running out of the brown yarn. I considered trying to get another skein in the same dye lot from Schoolhouse Press, but then realized that that's not what EZ would do. In fact, one of her listed benefits of starting a pattern from the bottom is that, should you run out of yarn, you can insert some color patterning into the yoke. So I opted instead for the dark orange as the background, and I'm so glad I did, even though I probably would have had enough brown yarn to squeak by. I think it really adds something.

The only thing I would do differently would be to drop to a size 3 needle for the garter stitch placket and neckband. It doesn't bother me enough to re-knit it, but I think it would have looked just a little neater if it had been knitted a little more tightly.

It's my new favorite sweater. I love the lightweight warmth, the color, and the way the yoke pulls the eye up and away from 'problem areas.' I see more yoked sweaters in my future. In fact, if I had enough yarn, I'd knit this one all over again.

Baby, baby

2008-02-21T13:11:00.003-06:00

The February-ish baby sweater is complete, except for, you know, weaving in the ends and sewing on buttons, but since this was purely a process knit, I'm not too concerned with that.

When I told my mom that I was knitting a baby sweater for no reason, she said she'd buy it from me to send to a friend of hers. Only problem, her friend is having a boy, and this sweater is decidedly girly. So I spun up some roving I had dyed and knit this for her:

I'll be taking it by the post office today, since Mama wants to bring Baby home from the hospital in it. Which is so gratifying, but also a little scary. I just kind of made up the pattern based on EZ's baby proportions in Knitter's Almanac, so hopefully it won't be too far off. My husband swears that it's too small to fit anything, but I think it's a 0-3 mo size.

Thanks for all the comments about the roving in my previous post -- it really meant a lot, since I dyed that myself. As you can tell, I've got the bright colors down pat! I haven't been able to dye much lately, though, because I'm sick yet again. I usually never get winter colds, but this year I seem to catch everything that's going around. I think the next time my husband asks me to cuddle him because he's cold from a fever, I'll give him an extra blanket and go sleep on the sofa!

As a little matter of housekeeping, I've switched to Haloscan for comments since Blogger makes it really hard to reply sometimes, and that's hidden all of my old comments, but hopefully it will be worth it.

Love y'all.

2008-02-14T11:32:00.003-06:00

Special thanks to Kristy and Peggy for saying that I make their day. To anyone who reads this blog, leaves a comment, or posts something about knitting or spinning out there for me to read, thank you for making my day.

Home is where the yarn is.

2008-02-13T14:51:00.003-06:00

Remember how I said that in February I would start finishing up some WIPs? Well, apparently I'm not over the handspun obsession, because for some reason all I've wanted to knit is a baby sweater out of this girly Falkland wool that I spun up (Pipsqueak from FatCatKnits), even though there are no little girls expected among friends and family.

So the other day I pulled out the swift and ball-winder and, luxury of luxuries, found a place to set them up. In our old house, there was nowhere to clamp them both, so I clamped the ball winder to a desk and would hold the swift in my left hand while I cranked the ball-winder in my right and if the slightest thing went wrong I'd have a big mess on my hands. I marveled a little bit at the beauty of the whole set-up while getting ready to knit.

I cast on for a modified EZ February baby sweater. It became clear early on that I wouldn't have enough yarn to finish, but I figured I could use that little skein of leftover singles that I had plied to crochet on a lacy little cap sleeve if I needed to, so I persisted. Unfortunately I ran out of yarn while casting off, and the little yellow yarn is a little thinner than the rest, so I decided that maybe the yarn just wanted to be something else after all.

Back to the ball-winder I went, and ripped the whole thing out. And as I was walking out of the kitchen, I saw something on the floor under the swift. Another skein of yarn. Half again the yardage of the first one. Apparently, I had more than a bobbin full of the plied yarn, and I had twisted the two skeins together into one hank, and then dropped one when putting it on the swift. (So that's what my "150 yds +80" notation on the tag meant!)

So I cast on for the little sweater again. Luckily, it goes pretty fast. This time, I went for a cardigan instead of a pullover, and did YOs for the increases to make cute little eyelet rows. Aww. And I think I even have enough yarn for sleeves!

On Spindling

2008-02-08T15:50:00.000-06:00

I haven't had a lot of time for knitting or spinning this last week, but we did get moved and the house is listed and has already been shown twice, so we're very excited. Unfortunately, the handyman that we had called to do the last needed repair just got the flu, so I guess we're going to be doing that ourselves tomorrow. :-P

I did finish knitting the handspun socks and spinning the Flawful Fibers January shipment, so if you're interested, check out the sidebar.

I don't have much time, so I'm going to cop out a little bit and paste in a post that I wrote over the holidays when I didn't have internet and then never posted. I always feel kind of weird putting up how-to-type posts because I haven't been doing this very long and I feel like it's a little pretentious of me. On the other hand, if I have information that might help someone, I don't want to withhold it. I have learned a lot from reading blogs and seeing how other people do things. So here goes.

* * * * *

On Spindling

There are apparently people who can pick up a spindle and fiber and, without much trouble, create fine, even singles. Either that or a lot of people are lying on the internet (and that’s always a possibility).

Either way, I am not one of those people. When I took spindle to fiber, the result was something only vaguely resembling yarn, and I will not pretend otherwise. Just about everything I have learned so far about spinning, I have learned the hard way.

Not that I’m complaining. Spinning isn’t as forgiving as knitting – you can’t unspin the fiber and start over – but it is rewarding to stick with something and see progress over time. If I could spin commercial-quality yarn right off the batt (ha), it would just be a chore. It is it’s own craft, and learning it is half the fun.

In the interest of helping, or at least encouraging, others who are interested in spinning but off to a bumpy start, I will share what I have learned so far. Experts, feel free to chime in with additional hints, or to tell me what I’ve still got wrong.

Lesson 1: Maybe your first spindle should be a first couple of spindles, at different weights and from different makers and manufacturers. Play with them, and with different fibers. Experiment and see what you like and what works for you. Your first yarn doesn’t have to be yarn at all; it’s a learning experience. I bought some merino yarn and one spindle, and figured I wouldn’t invest any more until I could make good yarn with what I had, but making the yarn I wanted (sock yarn, natch) with the materials I had would be pretty difficult. If I had branched out earlier, I would have been less frustrated.

Lesson 2: Spindles are not one size fits all. Don’t feel like you’re doing something wrong if there’s a limit to how fine you can spin with a heavy spindle and a fine fiber. I was eventually able to spin a fine yarn on my 1.8 oz Cascade Pilchuk spindle, but I had to put so much twist in for the single to be able to support the spindle that the yarn itself was hard and wiry.

Lesson 3: Don’t think your yarn has to be thin to be good. Let the fiber tell you what kind of yarn it wants to be. That merino made a really nice, soft bulky weight on the Cascade spindle once I stopped being such a control freak.

Lesson 4: Spindles are not perpetual motion machines. Yes, it will spin longer if you can feed it a steady stream of drafted fiber, but eventually it will stop. A well-balanced spindle can spin all the way to the floor, but don’t be surprised if it stops and reverses (a lot) while you’re just figuring out drafting.

Lesson 5: It really does get easier with practice. The faster you draft, the longer the spindle spins without attention. And you’ll start to be able to tell when it’s slowing down or reversing and fix it before it takes all the twist back out of your fiber and drops.

Lesson 6: The spindle will still drop sometimes. I find that mine start to drop when I’ve got them pretty full of fiber. It makes sense; if you’re spinning on, say, a 1 oz. spindle, and you spin an ounce of fiber onto it, now you’re trying to spin the same kind of yarn on a 2 oz spindle. At some point, you reach critical mass.

Lesson 7: When drafting, hold the fiber gently in one hand, and pinch and pull with the other hand. I had a death grip on the fiber in my left hand for the longest time, and it slowed down my drafting and gave me snarls of fiber when I got to the end. Easing up was the single thing I learned to do that made the most difference.

Here’s what I can do on a spindle now, after a few months of inconsistent practice. The skein was spun on the larger spindle, which is, I believe a 1.3 oz. Golding. It’s a bit underspun and basically unusable – it drifted apart a couple of times when I was skeining it, and I just finger spun it a little and tied it back together – but I’m proud of it nonetheless. The smaller spindle is also a Golding (.6 oz?), with the same Shetland top.

An Open Window to a New Opportunity

2008-01-29T11:32:00.000-06:00

Just when I had all but given up, we found a house to rent! So I'm busy packing and cleaning and getting ready to move ASAP. Finally it feels like we're moving forward.

I finished and blocked the Chevron Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, and I *love* it!

I had about 550 yards of singles, which I was afraid wouldn't be enough, but I couldn't find anything to pair it with in my stash, so I just knit it with straight handspun, and I'm glad I did. The scarf is about 8 feet long, and I still have a little handspun left over.

Have you noticed this spin-knit project monogamy that I've been practicing this month? I've been having so much fun knitting with my handspun. In February, I plan to go back and start finishing the carry-over projects from last year. So it's a good thing I finished spinning this in time to cast on before February:

The fiber is from FreckleFaceFibers on Etsy. I bought a few tops from her with some birthday money because I loved her rich, saturated colors, and I wasn't disappointed. The fiber is a little coarser and crimpier than I'm used to in a merino, but it made a nice yarn.

I was lamenting the fact that my handpainted roving stash was dwindling when I got it, so I decided to spin a finer yarn so that it would last longer. I split the top six ways lengthwise and spun two segments onto each of three bobbins, varying the order as I went to avoid stripes. I just wanted a rich, semisolid purple, and I think I got pretty close.

Of course, as soon as I got myself started on a long, involved spinning project that uses all of my bobbins, I got packages from Spunky Eclectic and Flawful Fibers. The Flawful Fibers one especially made me want to hurry up and get the sock yarn spun, already!

The colors are based off of a little painting called An Open Window to a New Opportunity, and thats just so fitting right now that I can hardly wait to make it up into something that I can see and use every day.

So yesterday I spun and spun and spun and spun and plied and plied and plied and plied until my bobbin was too full to take any more, and I still have singles left on all three bobbins. I have about 290 yards of the 3-ply, so I'm thinking out of curiosity and to avoid leftover singles, I'll Navajo-ply the rest and maybe I can make socks and fingerless gloves.

Also, it's my 1-year knit-iversary! It was the last weekend in January last year that I decided to learn to knit. I did some research online, and contacted one of my LYS because they said they taught classes at X time, but if they didn't have enough students the class wouldn't make. So I emailed to see if they had enough students and they never emailed me back. Undeterred, I went to the big Jo-Ann on Friday after work and got myself some dishcloth cotton and a set of needles and sat down with the KnittingHelp.com videos and knit my first swatch.

Which led to my first UFO.

I think maybe every stitch in that blanket is twisted.

My first finished objects were all felted, which, in retrospect, was pretty smart, because I was able to learn a lot of techniques without my mistakes showing. Last night, Bruneaux decided to eat one of them, so here I am, almost exactly a year later, knitting another pair of felted clogs for my husband. It is interesting to be following the pattern again with some experience under my belt, remembering how challenging it was for me then. For one thing, the first time around, all of my M1s left holes, but I didn't know how to fix it, so I told my husband it was supposed to be like that. After a trip through the washer, no more holes!

Lastly, since I spent all morning packing it up, I might as well flash the stash.

That's everything in the plastic bins, including sock yarn and fiber stash, dresser stash and living room basket stash and ottoman stash. I might have one more bin for equipment and works in progress, or I might just transport that stuff in knitting bags; I haven't decided. And there will be a box or two of books and magazines.

Not too bad, right? I'm glad for it, though, because my fiber budget is about zero until the house sells, and maybe for a while after!

Award!

2008-01-24T11:17:00.000-06:00

Lise has very sweetly given me a blog award!

The rules are as follows: “Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times.”

So here are my nominees:

Bea at Baa Baa Blacksheep is so crafty with her sewing and knitting.
Rebekkah at Bowerbirdknits is very serious about knitting and spinning, in a good way.
Peggy at Chasing Bunny has been churning out the beautiful designs.
Janine at Feral Knitter inspires me with her colorwork projects.
Loribird at From the Wool Room cranks out the projects, and they're all beautiful.
Adrian at Hello Yarn makes me want to cast on whatever she's knitting.
Meghan has a new podcast, Stitch It, that is delightful.
Ami at Sour Cherries knits, spins, and takes pretty pictures of it all.
Sula at Sulala is always doing something innovative.
Whitney at WhitKnits makes such pretty sweaters.

Thanks, Lise, you made my day :)

EDIT: I totally feel like a spammer, leaving all these comments to come see my blog!

Lazy

2008-01-23T14:04:00.000-06:00

So how many days, exactly, is it appropriate to go around without getting dressed? I think I'm probably over that number. The thing is, we're really hoping to find a place to rent or whatever before we list the house so we can take our clutter and a little extraneous furniture and, more importantly, the dogs, and leave the house in show-condition. It's hard to make a house look like there aren't any inside pets with this going on:

So I've basically got the house base level clean so I can just pick up little messes and dust and vacuum here and there and keep it nice. Next step is packing up anything that we'd be able to take with us, but it's looking like it's going to be a week or 10 days before we're able to get into anything. And, I keep telling myself, we may just have to list it and I'll be driving around with three dogs and their food and other paraphernalia whenever it shows, so maybe I shouldn't start boxing things up just yet. Either way, I'm in no real hurry to get started on that. And my husband has run off with my Mini because it gets better gas mileage than his truck, so if I want to go anywhere, I have to drive something that's about 4 times the size of what I'm used to, and that makes me nervous.

So, instead, I wound up my Helleborus BFL singles and have sat on my tushie knitting a scarf all day.

I've never really thought of myself as a scarf-knitter, but I just can't put this down. I don't know what the deal is. I keep thinking, what will my husband say when he comes home and I'm still in my pajamas and this thing is about three miles long?* And then I think, ok, after this repeat, I'll get up and take a shower and run some errands. But I'm still here in my PJ's.

I have some squishee things to show you, though, and after I post this I can run one of them to the post office, so blogging is sort of like being productive.

Ta-daa!! Here's the Baby Surprise, with buttons and everything! The baby this is intended for was, last we heard, measuring in the 95th percentile for size, and his head was measuring in the 100th percentile. The daddy, a college friend of my husband's, is a big guy, so I didn't piddle around with any newborn sizes. The kid might never wear it. Instead, I went straight for the 1 year size.

As I've said before, the multicolor is my handspun (Summer Cabin BFL from FatCatKnits) and the brown is your standard Plymouth Galway Highland Heather. I followed the pattern and then, once done, picked up and knit an extra 5 ridges in brown on each cuff to match the solid button band, seamed it up, and then knit an applied i-cord on for the neckline. The neck looks to me like it might be a bit small, but since it's a jacket, they can always leave the top button undone, so I'm not terribly worried. What do I know about the size of baby necks, anyway?

The buttons are little leaves carved from coconut, and I think they're perfect. They're the same color as the brown yarn, so they're a nice detail without stealing the show.

When I was ordering fiber for this jacket, I got a few colorways that I thought might work because I didn't trust myself not to screw it up a couple of times. One was called "Sweet Promise" by FatCatKnits, and it was a superwash merino orange and brown and yellow, but when I got it I thought the oranges and browns were a little rosy for a boy's jacket. So, in the interest of learning to spin thicker, I pulled it out and practiced, and, voila, squishy, bulky 2-ply, about 80 yards.

I have no idea what I'm going to knit with it. Maybe a hat?

I don't know what happened when I was plying it, but I swear, I got stuck at a point where the bobbin was winding in a different direction from the twist. I could get it to wind on, but only if I spun clockwise, and then it would take the twist out, or I could get it to put more twist in, but it wouldn't wind. I had to break it off and start a new bobbin. Anyone have any clue how I managed that??

* Not that I need to feel guilty. Before last week, he was the one who was home all day, and he was not always productive with his time. And he's not really the type to berate me for my laziness (though he would tease me for it). Still, it's almost embarrassing. Almost.

Updates

2008-01-20T21:40:00.000-06:00

I can't believe it's been a week already since I last posted. The first half of the week I was working hard on the house, and the second half I've been knocked down with a cold. In fact, I'm typing this mainly to stay awake until I can have my next dose of Theraflu, so forgive me if I get a little incoherent. I did manage to get a little knitting and spinning in, though, so I have lots of pictures.

The Baby Surprise Jacket is finished, but this is the only picture I have, so I'll tease you with it. I noticed a discussion of this pattern on Ravelry, about whether it was a process or product knit and whether it was dated. Someone said that whether it was dated depended on the yarns chosen, and I think I have chosen some dated-looking yarns, but, in my opinion, it adds to the charm. Let's just call it retro. I have never been really drawn to the pattern, and knit it mainly because I had about the right amount of yarn for it, but I really like how it turned out. There's something satisfying about folding a mess of knitting into a jacket.

The handspun socks are finished, and they are just about my favorite thing ever.

There's a visible difference in spinning quality between the first and second socks, but you can't tell when you're wearing them. (Yes, I broke them in before taking the FO pic, I couldn't stand to wait!) I love them for their imperfections, just like I love how my very first pair are noticeably different gauges and the grafting sucks.

I spun up the other half of the Ashland Bay merino and plied it together. One bobbin had a lot more on it than the other, so I Andean plied the leftovers, and it wasn't as scary as it looked. Yay for new skills. Makes me want to pick up a spindle again.

I counted the wraps on the niddy noddy, but I didn't write down the skein length, so I kind of forgot. I think it was about 270 yards. I also didn't measure wpi or put a coin in the picture, but it's about a sport weight I think. Let's pretend the dog hair is for scale.

And then last night I did this:

Low twist singles at a fingering-to-sport weight. About 260 yards. This is half the roving, split down the middle like I like to do, and slightly predrafted.

I need to work on spinning thicker yarns on my wheel, and spinning them evenly. Right now the only way I can get worsted is to three-ply.

OK, the dogs are driving me crazy, and it's time for my medicine, so I'm going to take it and go to bed.

I leave you with this funny moment from earlier in the week.

Duchess, the little one on the left, won the tug of war. She's tiny and mean, and the boys know to give her what she wants or bear the consequences.

Surprises

2008-01-14T16:59:00.000-06:00

In spinning and knitting news, I've started a Baby Surprise Jacket using my handspun Blue Faced Leicester in FatCatKnits' Summer Cabin colorway, cut with Plymouth Galway Highland Heather in brown.

Since BFL is a longer-staple fiber, and, as such, needs less twist to hold together, I tried really hard to spin it loosely and keep it soft. I Navajo plied it to get it up to a worsted-to-bulky weight and to keep the colors separate. I had a hard time with it after spinning so much merino, and I was worried that it was going to look like the dog's breakfast, but I think it's knitting up pretty cute. I think the colors will look good on what will probably be a strapping little red-headed boy, expected next month. Here's hoping he likes 1970's appliance colors.

The other big surprise going on around here is that we're going to be moving. My husband got a job over an hour away, so we'll be relocating to East Texas in the very near future. What this means for the blog is that, amidst trying to sell our house, find a new one to live in, move, and job-search, I'll either be knitting a lot or not very much at all. If you don't hear from me much in the next couple of weeks, that means things are going well.

Second verse, better than the first.

2008-01-09T12:22:00.000-06:00

The second half of the sock yarn is finally spun, plied, and dried -- but not until after that first sock was knit! As for my other responsibilities, the outside Christmas lights are down, the ornaments and such are packed away, some laundry was done, but the tree is still up and dust bunnies still prevail. Actually, since we got the new sofa, and Bruneaux, come to think of it, the dust bunnies aren't bunnies at all, no fluff, just piles of dog hair that collect in corners. I'm sure you really wanted to know that. I'm trying to shame myself into vacuuming.

Back to the topic at hand, I think it was really helpful to knit up some of my sock yarn before spinning the rest of it. I could see which parts I liked, and what I liked about them -- because you know, being handspun, and amateur handspun at that, it was just a long sampler of yarn possibilities. But once I figured out what possibilities I liked, I had something to aim for. Which is much better than, "Maybe I can make it thinner. OMG that's too thin! It's going to break! Now that's too thick," that I was doing the first time around. I was also afraid the first time of falling into the newbie pattern of overspinning my singles, so I deliberately tried to take it easy, and went too far the other way. My singles drifted apart several times while I was Navajo plying, and I had to tie them back together to get going again. (Is there a better solution in that scenario than a knot? I did find that if I just left the tails hanging and plied them into the yarn, it was pretty invisible.)

So, anyway, lessons learned, I went back to the wheel, spun the thickness that I knew to be just about right, put enough twist in, and Navajo plied it like in this video (so much faster and more even that what I had been doing!), and I got this:

I didn't bother with hot/cold dunking or whacking the second time around, either. I'm not sure it helps with superwash wool, which makes perfect sense, but I figured I had to try it to really know. I just washed it in a little Soak and vinegar (the dye ran a little the first time), pressed out the excess water with a towel, and snapped it between my hands. The second skein was actually well-balanced (yay!), so it didn't take a lot of abuse to get it to behave.

Excuse me while I do a happy dance. Right now I think this is maybe the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I made that! I get it now. Knitting is just the gateway drug. This is the hard stuff. I'm done for. There is already talk of "my next wheel," at which, to his credit, my husband did not flinch. I guess it helps that his hobby is much more expensive than mine, and he has already watched me come home in a sour mood, sit in front of the wheel, and become human again. And every now and then he gets some woolly goodness. No new toys for a while, maybe a long while, just dreams and plans.

And yes, those are flowers in the background. Not winter flowers like pansies or camellias, either, although the buds on the camellia are getting fat, but roses. Lady Banks roses, which only bloom once, in the spring. Mine has gone haywire. The little pink roses in the front think it's spring, too. They say that we have four seasons in Texas: December, January, February, and summer. I'm really ticked that we've gone straight from fall to spring. I want my cold January! I live for ice days, when the whole city shuts down for no good reason and it feels like I have the whole frozen world to myself. Last year we went to the ranch for MLK weekend and got iced in and had to stay an extra day or two. Possibly my favorite birthday ever.

ZOMG - Sock Yarn!

2008-01-06T10:48:00.000-06:00

When I ordered this roving, I was thinking baby sweater, but apparently it wanted to be socks.

I split the roving down the middle and spun half of it up, then chain-plied it. I overplied it on purpose, because I had just read this, and I like how it looks.

I finished plying and started spinning the second single yesterday, and I could hardly wait for the first skein to dry. It came out at about 194 yards and 18 wpi.

I am just beside myself, I love this so much. Here's hoping the second skein is a reasonable match.

Too bad I actually have to be productive today. Stupid Christmas decorations. Stupid laundry. Stupid dust bunnies. All I want is socks.

4 oz. is a lot of fiber!

2008-01-03T19:35:00.000-06:00

Back when I first decided to learn to spin, I bought eight ounces of Ashland Bay merino in a heathered grey and four ounces in carbon. I knew merino wasn't recommended for beginning spinners, but I was hardheaded and bought it anyway. And for a while, I practiced with my heavy spindle and my fine fiber and made craptacular little skeins every day, worrying more about figuring things out than making good yarn.

Then we got Bruneaux and, fiber dog that he is, he interfered with the spinning. Since I could only spin if I locked myself in the 'yarn room,' I spun less frequently. Eventually I got some different spindles that I liked better, and some easier-to-spin Shetland wool, and I felt less like a klutz.

When I got my wheel for Christmas, I decided to spin up the rest of that original grey fiber. Since I had practiced with it a lot, I knew what I could do with it on a spindle, and I figured that it would give me a good idea what I could do on a wheel. I spun up two singles and plied them together, then fulled the yarn a little by dunking it in hot then cold water, which made it go from a fingering to more of a sport weight. It's tied with Knit Picks Palette, if that gives you a point of reference.

mmm... smooshy

I thought, since I had started with eight ounces, that I might have enough for socks, especially if I used the carbon color for heels and toes. I weighed the skein. Two ounces. 69 grams. Possibly enough for socks, especially with contrast heels and toes, but way less than I had expected. Who knew that I had spun six ounces already?

I pulled out the carbon merino, which was under four ounces since I had played with it some, too, and split it down the middle and spun half of it up onto a bobbin. I did spin it a little finer and a little more consistently than the heathered grey, but it felt like it took forever!

Four ounces is a lot of fiber! This late realization meant that I had greatly underestimated the amount of fiber I had ordered during The Great New Years Eve Etsy Raid of 2007. I got my first package today. Four four-ounce handpainted rovings from FatCatKnits. They're huge. And pretty. Good combo.

I started spinning up the Elfin Magic superwash merino already.

Isn't it delightful?

I had kind of intended to make a Baby Surprise Jacket with it, but I also wanted to try out the small whorl on my wheel, so, not surprisingly, it's coming out rather thin. Probably too thin for the BSJ. I'm thinking I'll Navaho ply it and make a stripy stockinette baby sweater. There are a couple of babies expected in February.

Considering I have 5 more 4 oz. rovings on the way, and new memberships to a couple of fiber clubs, I think I can hold off on the fiber consumption -- at least until shearing season at the ranch!

2007, adieu.

2007-12-31T10:30:00.000-06:00

Howdy, strangers. It's been a little while, so settle in with a warm beverage, or do like I did when I got back to the internet-connected world and just browse the pictures. I'll try not to be too wordy.

First up is Christmas knitting that didn't get blogged, mostly because it was still damp when I packed it up and hit the road. I actually didn't get a picture of it until last Saturday, but when I snuck it out of my father-in-law's house for a photo shoot, he ran out and posed for me even though he was on the phone. Hi, David! Glad you like the hat!

The pattern is loosely based on Elizabeth Zimmermann's Very Warm Hat. I charted out the lettering myself and decreased at six points every third round to create the pointy stocking cap shape. I considered pompoms for the ends, but the bells made it more easily reversible.

I had intended to knit it in acrylic so that it would be machine washable, and also because my husband was with me when I was shopping and he insisted that we could find yarn for the hat at the yarn store we were in, but I didn't get two rows in before deciding that it was too splitty to be bothered with. So I made another trip and switched to wool (Patons Classic Merino and Cascade 220) and was much happier for it.

The big news is that I got a spinning wheel for Christmas! It's a Kromski Symphony in the walnut finish and I really love it so far. That center picture is the White Finn Top that came with the wheel. It was a bit coarse for a garment, so I decided mid-spin to make a cozy for my french press that stays at the ranch, at which point I stopped trying for consistency and went for a more homespun texture. And then I made it three-ply, which evened it out a lot, anyway. Tell me all your places to get good rovings; I am on the hunt.

We also made a very quick trip to New Mexico to see some property in the mountains that my father-in-law had put an offer on. It was a lot of hours in the car, but so worth it to see some snow and breathe in the cold air. I was very happy for my mittens!

2007 has been a pretty good year; I found a new hobby that has kept my mind occupied almost non-stop. My hope for 2008 is to temper that a little with a little more attention to some things that have been neglected in the pursuit of fiber, such as cooking and housecleaning and perhaps even laundry. But with a new wheel in the house, I'm not making any promises.

Happy New Year!

Bird in Hand

2007-12-19T18:57:00.000-06:00

I have never owned mittens in my life, then I take up knitting and suddenly I have three pairs. My first pair are a little big. I'm thinking of giving them to my mother, but I don't know if she would wear them, or if I can bear to part with them. My second pair are a wee bit too snug. I'll probably be sending them off to the Dulaan Project. But this pair, this pair is just right.

The pattern is, of course, Kate Gilbert's Bird in Hand. I started on size 2 1/2 (3.0 mm) needles and got through the second braid on the first mitten before admitting that they were just too big, ripping, and restarting on 1 1/2 (2.5 mm) needles. I've knit worsted weight yarn on size 2s before, and the tight gauge didn't get me down too much. It makes a thick, cozy fabric that I'm sure is completely unnecessary in my climate, but my hands are always freezing, so I'm sure I'll appreciate it anyway. The wind is often what's brutal, even if the ambient temperature is tame, and I'm pretty sure these are wind-proof.

The only change I made to the pattern was to knit up the picot hem before starting the braids so I wouldn't have to sew it up later. I'll admit the braids were a little tedious. I've done braids like this a few times before, but never at this tight a gauge. I spent a lot of time trying to un-split stitches. And I'm not sure they even show up that well on the final project. If I knit the pattern again, I'd probably cheat and use a purl row instead, but I'm happy that I did the braids for this pair. I'm not one to shy away from "too hard," at least when it comes to sticks and string.

The red yarn is Berocco Ultra Alpaca and the white yarn is Cascade 220. I think I'm slightly allergic to alpaca. My hands itch when I knit with it, so it's probably good that it's broken up by the straight wool.

The pattern is full of clever little details. I love how the vine motif continues seamlessly on the thumb gore. The flower detail on the palm breaks up the plainer, more regular color pattern, and ties in with the swirly thumb pattern. Even the leaf and flower motifs on the cuffs are mirrored from hand to hand. And, of course, the bird. As I was finishing up the second mitten, I wished for a moment that I had reversed the colors so that I would have little redbirds on my thumbs, but of course doves are delightful, too. (OK, the left one looks more like a duck.)

So, I should be satiated with mittens, right? Well, I might be, if Adrian at Hello Yarn wouldn't tempt me with her beautiful Selbuvotter.

mmm, cashmere

2007-12-17T19:41:00.000-06:00

I used up every last inch of those two skeins of cashmere. The result? A beret and neckwarmer. I had planned on gloves, but I thought the light worsted yarn would be too thick, and cashmere should be where you can feel it, hence the neckwarmer.

I need a hat like this for myself. It's so perfect. An EZ pattern, of course, her tam o'shanter from Knitting Without Tears. I did a 1x1 ribbed brim with a tubular cast-on, but that was my only change.

Resorting to the mirror shot.

I used a tubular cast-on (and cast-off) for the neckwarmer as well, and went up to a size 9 needle for drapiness. The backside of the waffle stitch looks nice, too, so I sewed on two buttons to make it reversible. If this counts as a scarf, it's my first one!

Onward!

News Items

2007-12-13T18:31:00.000-06:00

Just a list today; too many things swirling through my mind to be truly coherent. I kinda just realized that there's only a little over a week left before Christmas, and I've only purchased a gift for my husband so far. I hate crowds, but it's too late now to order online, so I guess I'll have to brave the dreaded mall. Christmas isn't as much fun as it used to be. When you're not religious and not a kid any more, all that's left is the commercialism and the stress. I'm trying, though.

1. Went to a prescreening of Juno last night. Loved it; am changing my name to Juno. Go see it. If you're in Dallas, it opens at the Magnolia and the Angelika tomorrow.

2. After copious subtle hinting from the spouse (e.g., "I really love these socks you've knit me. I've been wearing a different pair every day."), I've made some progress on the Gentleman's Shooting Stockings in Fluted Pattern (from Knitting Vintage Socks). I've made some adjustments to the pattern, and I'm happy to report that they fit perfectly and I will have enough yarn to finish the pair.

3. I was able to sew my new bag back together. Luckily, Bruneaux just sliced through the handle with his razor-sharp teeth to get the bag down from the door handle so he could maul the yarn. Since he didn't actually eat any of the strap, it was salvageable. Kinda takes the new off of it, though. I'm thinking I might need a brown Sanibel to make myself feel better about the whole thing.

4. Sometimes the black hole that is the inside of the Namaste messenger bag yields gifts. I found an untouched skein of the brown J&S yarn for the Fair Isle Yoke Sweater, so I'm no longer worried that I will run out of yarn. I'm in the process of re-knitting the body of the sweater, but I keep getting distracted by more interesting projects. I was hoping to finish before Christmas, but I'm accepting reality.

5. The second Bird in Hand mitten is coming along nicely. I'm doling it out to myself in small doses. Should be finished this weekend.

6. I have decided to knit for Christmas. Just two things, both hats, so don't look at me like my head is about to start spinning around. I purchased the yarn today.

a. A cashmere beret for a work-related-person. She got me a really thoughtful gift last year, and I'm tired of giving her impersonal gift certificates. Like many Texans, she hates cold weather, and she mentioned the other day that she got chilled just walking across the street. So I'm thinking a nice hat will be the ticket. I'd really like to do a pair of gloves as well, but I'm focusing on the hat first.

b. A gag gift for my FIL, based on EZ's Very Warm Hat. Yes, I know that that's two hats put together. But hats are super-quick, right? Yarn is Berocco Comfort. That's right, I went to the yarn store and bought cashmere and acrylic.

Gotta go, must knit.

Anyone want a dog?

2007-12-11T20:01:00.000-06:00

Catahoula male, brindle, intact, approx. 1 year old, ~60 lbs and growing. Found stray, but healthy and current on shots.

Cute personality. Good with small pets and children.

Mild fiber obsession.

Has reached "chewing stage."

I couldn't resist.

2007-12-10T19:23:00.000-06:00

It seems like I've been seeing these mittens everywhere, but Ravelry says there are only 29 in progress, so I must have been seeking them out.

Anyway, I had to go back to the yarn store on Saturday because I got to looking at my account online and something seemed off, so I went for my receipt and, sure enough, they had charged my debit card for almost twice the amount that I had actually purchased. (Note to self: LOOK before signing.) I had to take the receipt back so they could fix it, so of course I applied some new yarn to the credit.

Once I had the yarn for the project, my fingers were itching to cast on, so I told myself, OK, but just the cuff. And then on Sunday, OK, but just to where you put the thumb on scrap yarn. And then I "just one more round"-ed it until the first one was done.

No, that's not a f-up in the palm pattern (Whew!), just a shy red stitch caught at a bad angle.

Cabled Zeebee

2007-12-08T21:09:00.000-06:00

This red Manos was one of my yarn store purchases last weekend, and I just couldn't wait to play with it. I swatched for a Zeebee, and it occurred to me that if I was knitting a hat sideways, I could stick a cable on it, and so I did.

Such a quick, fun knit, and sure to keep my ears warm this winter, if we ever get winter. Plus, it doesn't seem to itch like my Koolhaas does. Apparently, I'm sensitive to one of the many fibers in Road to China. I may have to make another one.

The garter stitch, of course, grew three sizes when it hit water. (Does this only happen to me?) But I noticed while it was still damp and threw it in the dryer and it bounced back.

What to do with the leftovers but make another mug cosy?

I think this will be my last one, though. I left out the last decrease row on this one and felted it a little bit, and it still doesn't want to stay on.

Heads up

2007-12-07T14:36:00.000-06:00

If, like me, you tend to stitch in a state of semi-darkness, do your eyes a favor and head over to Joann and check out their online lighting sale. Or, better yet, point a potential giftor in that direction on your behalf!

Stash: Busted

2007-12-05T13:30:00.000-06:00

Well, maybe not all of it. And maybe we watch a little too much Mythbusters around here.

I made this Clapotis out of Noro Silk Garden (217) back in April or somesuch; I remember I just had one cold day to wear it, and it was still damp and smelling like wet sheep and Kookaburra, but I wore it anyway.

I had a few partial balls left over that I've been meaning to do something with ever since. They were all picked-through as I had been very careful to preserve color repeats when joining new balls of yarn in the Clapotis. Finally, they are out of the stash.

The EZ Mitered Mittens are such a quick project, they should have been done long ago. You might recall, though, that the first mitten I showed you doesn't look like the completed pair. For that mitten, I used a square i-cord cast-on (kfb, p1, k1, slip 3 sts back to left needle, repeat) and started with 48 stitches, decreasing to 40 at the wrist because they were pretty big. When I went to cast on the second mitten, I just couldn't bring myself to do that again, so I ended up with a picot hem on 40 stitches topped by a purl row. Much better! Check how the one thumb on the one mitten follows the color changes -- that's pure luck. The other thumb blends in, but stays the same color throughout (and it's also over 12 stitches rather than 10 because I forgot to decrease two on the first row like I did on the left mitten. Whoopsie.)

All in all, I'm pretty pleased. They don't match exactly, but they do have the same set of colors.

The best part? I was able to save my favorite colors from the leftovers to make this:

Garter Mug Cosy from the Holiday Interweave. It came out a little large, but I can probably take care of that with some warm water. Now maybe when I make tea and sit down to knit, it won't get cold before I remember to drink it. And bonus on the built-in coaster.

Christmas Stockings

2007-12-03T12:41:00.000-06:00

Promise not to laugh? Really?

Ok. I made Christmas stockings for the dogs. I've had the itch (and the yarn) since I completed the Frostrosen Mittens. I oohed and aahed over Meg Swansen's and Feral Knitter's stockings, but I thought I had successfully repressed the urge until we were putting up the tree last Wednesday, and I came across these.

I was never very happy with them. And now Bruneaux needed a stocking, so I thought I should make one. But it would look bad if Bruneaux had a nice stocking and the little dogs had these things. Before long, I had cast on. And it was so much fun that I had all three done in short order.

Duke's is an adaptation of Maimu's Mittens from Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Estonia, Bruneaux's is a compilation of charts from Terri Shea's Selbuvotter, and Duchess' is from chart 109 in Lisbeth Upitis' Latvian Mittens. All were made from Rauma Finullgarn, less than one skein each of the red, green, gold, and natural, and some of the leftover white from the Frostrosen Mittens. Bruneaux's and Duchess' were 60 stitches on size 2 DPNs, Duke's was 64 stitches on size 1.5 DPNs.

Their names and the year are knitted into the cuffs.

It was a delightfully silly project, and yet more practical in this climate than if I had made mittens from all of these patterns. I had hoped that the stranded mitten/glove itch was scratched, but then this morning I saw these, and I knew that it was not. I guess I'll start them after I finish Anu's gloves!

Doesn't that look nice, all handmade? My husband's is the boot, made by my mother-in-law, and he's very proud of it. :)

And since we're on the topic, I might as well show you the first stocking I ever made.

I made this for my mom when I was in college. She had made mine and my brothers, but she never had a nice one for herself. I was mildly into needlepoint at the time, so we picked out this kit and I made it for her for Christmas.

I got lost on the way to the LYS.

2007-12-01T13:45:00.000-06:00

I hadn't been to a LYS since around April. I can buy yarn (and anything else I think I need) online, and often from work, leaving my free time for knitting and doing more enjoyable things than shopping. Or so I thought.

Today, DH and I were supposed to clean out the gutters, put up the Christmas lights, and do a little housecleaning. He decided to go do something with a friend instead. So I said, fine, I'll go to the yarn shops. He must have really wanted to go, because he seemed to think that was a great idea.

I hadn't been to the one in Plano in so long, I was sure that I had gone too far and missed my exit, and I forgot to exit where I should have going to the one near downtown, but when I got there, I found my way. Amid the yarn, the needles, and the hubbub of knitting chatter, I knew I had found something worth leaving home for. And I won't be forgetting that any time soon.

Today wouldn't have been a good day for cleaning out gutters, anyway. It's overcast and misty, and the leaves would all be wet from the light rain last night. But there was just enough daylight for me to take some pictures of the finished baby Tomten.

The pattern is, of course, Elizabeth Zimmermann's Tomten, as documented in Knitting Without Tears, Knitting Workshop, and The Opinionated Knitter. The yarn is Dream in Color Smooshy in Summer Sky, and the needles were US3s. The zipper is from zipperstop.

Have you seen this thing?

2007-11-27T10:11:00.000-06:00

I was highly suspicious of the new Amazon Kindle e-book when I saw it on the cover of Newsweek. I like books. Real, tactile books. Bonus if they smell like old paper, glue, and leather. Although I spend much of my day staring at a computer screen, I'd much rather read from paper. I don't have the same retention from on-screen reading, or the same enjoyment. I like to see the books I have read on my shelves. I like to keep them around me, like old friends.

But as I read this article in Newsweek and this article in Slate, I warmed up to it a little.

For one thing, it has a new kind of display, e-ink, that's supposed to look more like paper. I'm always skeptical of "more like" claims. As in, "Tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper." Than what? Gasoline? If this e-ink is all it's cracked up to be, I could be interested. It looks good in photos, but, as far as I can tell, the only way to see for yourself is to shell out the $400 and buy one.

Its potential uses for knitters, though, are what really intrigue me.

You could have your entire knitting library on this little device in your knitting bag. You could go to a local yarn shop while on vacation, pick out a new yarn to go with a pattern you already have and cast on right away. Need to consult a reference tome for help with a certain technique? No problem, the Kindle stores up to 200 books. And it does magazines, too. Imagine being able to word search through your Interweave Knits subscription. Everything you could possibly need in a small, portable device.

Perhaps the best part is that it's a book that doesn't need to be propped open. I don't generally buy hardbacks, and reading a paperback while knitting is somewhat of a challenge; you have to be willing to break the spine of your book, for one thing, and that's just hard for me. My reading has dropped off significantly since I became obsessed with knitting, and that bothers me a little. With the Kindle, though, you just press a button to flip between pages. Even better, I think, than the audio book, because it doesn't keep going on without you when you drop a stitch or need to count or someone needs to speak with you.

Maybe I'll keep an eye out for the second generation. Don't tell my books.

Yoke progress

2007-11-26T19:42:00.000-06:00

I'm making some uncertain progress with the Fair Isle Yoke Sweater.

When I swatched , I used my new 16" Inox Express US 4 needle that I purchased to knit the sleeves with, and got pleasing fabric at a gauge of 5.5 stitches to the inch. And so I pulled out my Options US 4 tips, attached them to the cable, and put them in my knitting bag with many skeins of my 2-ply Jumper yarn to take with me on my holiday trip. I noticed straight away that the Options 4 was a little larger than the Inox 4, but I figured some slight variation between brands was to be expected.

Finding some quiet time to myself on Thursday night, I sat in my favorite knitting spot at my MIL's house, cranked up the podcasts, and cast on.

After several inches, I began to notice that the body looked rather large. I compared it to a sweater I had brought, one that fits me a little loosely, and it was a little bigger. Hmm. After a few more inches, I pulled out the measuring tape and checked my gauge. Of course, I didn't take a pre-washing gauge on my swatch, so this is apples and oranges, but I was getting 5 stitches to the inch. I finished knitting the body while I decided what to do.

If I had 220 stitches at 5 stitches to the inch, then I was going to get a 44" sweater, when I had planned for a 40" sweater. I decided that I would make it a cardigan, and when I steeked the front, I'd take out 10 stitches, giving me a 42", enough ease to wear over a turtleneck or tee shirt. So I marked my side stitches accordingly (thankfully I hadn't put in any shaping), and recalculated the number of stitches to cast on for the sleeve using a base number of 210.

I knit the first sleeve. It came out a little snug for a sweater that was supposed to be 2" larger than I originally planned, partially because I increased at a slower rate than the pattern specified. Then I attached it to the body of the sweater, and it just looked wrong.

I was so certain that I had knit the body with 5s instead of 4s that I refrained from casting on the second sleeve on the drive back and wasted a couple of hours of perfectly good knitting time.

I just double checked, and I was using 4s all along.

At this point, I'm thinking I'll move one of the phoney seams and reknit the sleeve using the original numbers and the correct rate of increase.

If I eat as much at Christmas as I did over Thanksgiving, I'll be needing a larger sweater anyway.

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-21T07:58:00.001-06:00

I knit about an inch of the fair isle yoke sweater last night, but then I ripped it, so I don't have anything to show you. I can, however, give you a yummy recipe. I've been eating this for breakfast with my coffee.

Pumpkin Bread
Makes 3 loaves.

Ingredients:

1 (15-oz.) can pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1/2 c. canola oil
1/2 c. unsweetened applesauce
2/3 c. water
1 c. white sugar
1 c. brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla

3 1/2 c. flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground allspice

Optional: chopped walnuts, white raisins

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C). Grease and flour three 7x3" loaf pans.

2. In a large bowl mix together the pumpkin, eggs, oil, applesauce, water, sugar, and vanilla. In a smaller bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. Stir dry mixture into pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into prepared pans.

3. Bake for 50 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Have a wonderful and safe holiday.

Take gauge and cast on.

2007-11-20T08:15:00.000-06:00

As expected, my Jamieson & Smith Shetland came yesterday. I had intended to knit a swatchcap, but I decided to go quick and dirty instead.

I am so glad to see this thing in natural light. I was running around from lamp to lamp last night trying to see if I liked the colors, if there was enough contrast or if it was all going to blend together. But I think it looks ok. And if I switch the blue and the green in the design above, I think it will look even better. Now all I have to do is take gauge and cast on.

The yarn for the Tomten has, I fear, been delayed. I ordered it from the same place I ordered the first batch from, figuring that's my best chance at matching dyelots. But I have this thing where it's almost impossible for me to buy just one item. I've put stuff down that I really sort of wanted or needed and left a store because I couldn't find anything else to buy. So of course I looked around before checking out. And this bag fell in my cart. (Actually, I wanted to buy it a while ago, but, well, I couldn't find anything else to buy with it.) And I only noticed later that it's backordered.

Lastly, the November sock prohibition has ended. Sunday night I was too tired to knit anything with a chart (so no Aino's Glove or Mom's Cardi), I didn't feel like i-cord casting on for the second mitered mitten, and I was nigh out of yarn for the Tomten, so sock happened.

Sock is good.

Things are looking up.

2007-11-18T18:04:00.000-06:00

First, the front porch is painted and the back doors are repainted, both in exterior paint. Last night I charged the ol' iPod and downloaded some knitting podcasts to ease the pain. Repainting the back doors took one episode of Cast On, and Lime and Violet entertained me while I painted the front porch. I'm so glad not to have to dread doing that anymore. The best part: we can finally put the front porch light back up! A new mailbox and a trellis on the front post, and we'll be positively spiffy.

Second, we have a wee tiny reprieve.

When I posted earlier today, I had wet blocked the Tomten and panicked when the garter stitch grew and none of the things that I had hoped blocking would help were helped. Since I was pretty fed up with it, I threw it in the dryer. Behold the power of the dryer. Everything is squishy and cute again.

The ladders in the sleeve are less noticeable, which leads me to believe a run through the washer and dryer will work them out completely.

The armhole pick-ups have snugged up and look neat and tidy.

The hood glitch is still there, but I can probably live with it. I'm going to have to buy more yarn anyway, so I can reknit the top of the hood if I just can't stand it.

As for buying more yarn, I only need an additional 12 grams or so, so I'll have enough Smooshy left over for a pair of socks. That's not too bad. Since when do I complain about an excuse to buy sock yarn?

And there is really no such thing as "too big" for babies. He'll be able to wear it sometime.

Now, if you'll excuse me, the night is young, and I have knitting to do.

Let 'er rip.

2007-11-18T14:08:00.000-06:00

The wee tiny Tomten has run into some trouble.

1: I don't have enough yarn to knit the second sleeve, and I don't want to buy any more.

2: I knit the first sleeve in the round on DPNs I was afraid I wouldn't have enough yarn to seam it, and the purl rows laddered.

3: I don't like the way the sleeve looks where I picked up stitches on the front side.

4: The sleeve looks way too long.

5: It's coming out too big, and I know it's going to grow when washed.

6: I made a mistake on the hood, but didn't discover it until after I had grafted it, and then snipped the wrong thread when I went to fix it, creating a colossal mess.

So, I'll salvage the yarn if it's not in too many pieces, and maybe someday it will be something else.