Happy Birthday, Principessa

Today is our college girl's 19th birthday.

She got her grades a few days ago -- 3.5 GPA! Especially impressive with her list of extracurricular activities. Great job, princess! We're proud of you.

We've just returned from a family reunion in honor of my grandmother's 90th birthday. We had a total of 31 people at a lake resort in southwest Missouri for 5 days -- 3 of her 4 children, with spouses, 6 of her 7 grandchildren & spouses, and 11 or 12 great-grandchildren. (Tricky little devils -- they're hard to count.) They came from Oregon, California, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Illinois, and Missouri.

Vacation knitting was a making-it-up-as-I-go, hoping-I-have-enough-yarn tank top.

I bought the yarn last year from ebay seller Over the Rainbow Yarns; it is Handpainted Rainbow Cotton yarn; the color is called Skygarden.

Vacation yarn purchase -- just one skein of Colinette JitterBug, in Bright Charcoal. Not that the yarn store (Simply Fibers in Springfield, MO) didn't have anything else I wanted... I'd have gladly taken some of everything! Just trying to exercise a little restraint, here. Besides, I'll be going back -- my daughter goes to school in Springfield.

I think this is going to be a plain vanilla toe-up sock (pair of socks, of course!)

Snowflakes in May

These are the Snowflake eyelet socks, from Susan's Spinning Bunny. They were the January shipment for her Sock Hop sock club. I'm just a little behind ;-)

The yarn is a lovely soft angora/merino blend. The eye-of-partridge heel works well with this design.

I was fingerprinted yesterday, for my background check for the school district. I was surprised and relieved to find there was no ink involved -- instead, they use a scanner, like a small copy machine, and just place your fingers on the glass. They can even do the one where they roll each finger tip from one side to the other. Ain't technology amazing. The last time I was fingerprinted was for my bank teller job, 16 years ago, and it was done the old-fashioned, messy way.

Got a little catching up to do

Why is it so hard to keep this up to date? Maybe I need to have a certain time each day that I do a blog post.

Absorba has been done since about 2 weeks ago. I immediately put it to use, and the family seems to like it. It's very thick and soft underfoot. I've even washed & dried it -- I think it took 3 dryer cycles to get it dry! (I dry everything on low heat, so maybe it wouldn't have taken as long on higher heat.)

The pattern is in Mason-Dixon Knitting. I really didn't have the problems I thought I might with hand pain. Once I got it onto the KnitPicks needles, I took off & finished it rather quickly. It weighs about 2 1/4 pounds, according to my kitchen scale. I suppose you could make 4 of these out of 9 1-pound cones of Peaches & Creme double worsted weight, which you can order directly from Elmore-Pisgah.

My Stonington Shawl is to the point where I need to start the edging, which is knitted on sideways.

This has been a very relaxing knit -- garter stitch, easy patterning in the center, no patterning on the borders.

My big news (boy, is this going to cut into my knitting time...) is that the local school district has hired me to teach high school math next year. I have just received notice that I have enough college math hours to accept the position; I need to take 8 more hours of math courses, plus the education courses required for alternative certification. I'm hoping I can get quite a bit of it done online. After 15 years as a stay-at-home mom (I worked for a little over a year as a bank teller before my 2nd child was born), this is going to be a big change for me. I'm excited -- I know a lot of the kids & teachers & administrators, so at least I won't be a stranger. I have really enjoyed Jean's "What I learned in school" posts on her blog (Needles, Notes and News) as she has been doing her student teaching the past 2 weeks. Since I'm going to be jumping in the deep end without my little water wings this fall....

Lots of needle options

My KnitPicks Options needle set arrived today! As soon as I got it organized, I put together the size 15 needles with a cable to make a 32" circular, and picked up the poor, neglected Absorba. It has been on hiatus since the connector broke on the Denise needle I was using. I was able to add another section to the bath mat. I think one section a day is going to be a good pace -- the exaggerated hand motions required to knit with 3 strands of double-worsted yarn make it hard to work more than one section without resting.

As I mentioned earlier, I ordered pretty much the whole kit & caboodle in the KnitPicks Options. In addition to the set, I ordered the 3 larger sizes of needle tips (13, 15, 17) and the 3 longer cables (40", 47", 60"), and one package each of the plastic pockets that go in the binder.
I discovered that the needles fit nicely in the triple pocket sleeves, one pair of tips per section. The 12 different needle sizes used exactly 4 pages. I used a permanent marker to write the size in US and mm on each section of the sleeve. I also put the needle size ID tag for each size in with the needle tips of that size (they're a separate item, but seemed like a good idea). I then put each size of cable into a single pocket sleeve, marked with the length. Ran out of single pockets, so I put the smallest cables into a double pocket sleeve. I'm not sure what I'll use the other 3 double pocket pages for (the one that came with the set, plus the 2 extras I ordered). I might see about storing the smaller sized circulars (0 - 3, available separately) into those sleeves.

I like the needles -- this is such an awesome way to have every size & length of circular needle you could possibly need (except the sock sizes, because they're too little to screw onto the connectors). They do make a clicking noise. I very rarely click when I knit, and the rhythm of stitches on Absorba is so slow, it's not all that noticeable.

It continues

The insanity, that is.
I spent some time yesterday looking for whatever helpful hints I could find about making Absorba (the bath mat) on the Mason Dixon KAL blog. One comment contained a warning that the knitter had broken the connector on her Denise needle while picking up stitches to start a new section. I happen to be using Denise needles, as well, so when I was picking up stitches this morning, I thought, "I can't figure out how she applied so much pressure that she broke the connector," and blithely continued what I was doing. Then I pushed the needle along through the picked up stitches in order to place the next stitch on it, and *SNAP* the connector broke. I know Denise has replacement parts, so I went to their website. Then I started thinking about getting extra cords and needles, and thought I might rather have the KnitPicks set. So I, uh, just went for the whole thing -- the Options set plus the 3 larger needle sizes, plus the 3 longer cable lengths, plus some extra pockets for the needle case. If I ever think I need to purchase another needle after this, someone may need to find me a padded cell. And I still need to replace the Denise cable I broke ($2.50, with free shipping).

I worked on my black socks today while listening to a podcast for almost an hour. Knowing I can usually do 20 rows on a sock in an hour, I was surprised at my lack of progress. I didn't count, but it didn't look like more than 10 rows. I didn't think I'd gotten that distracted looking up other things on the computer during the podcast. All of a sudden, it occurred to me... (scroll down & look at yesterday's picture & see if you can guess)
... I did 10 rows each on 2 socks! 10 x 2 = 20! Whatta genius.

(Temporary) Insanity

At least I hope it's temporary. I have way too many projects going. I want to be project monogamous, but still I persist in starting new ones.

Last night, I started Absorba from Mason-Dixon Knitting. I ordered the 3 cones of Peaches & Creme double worsted weight direct from Elmore-Pisgah online. Colors are eggshell, ecru, and earthtone ombre. Using size 15 Denise needles. Large needles and bulky yarn requires exaggerated hand movements, which make knitting seem very slow. I have done the center square and the first 2 1/2 of the 10 logs. This will be a lovely thick bath mat.
This is, um, the felted moebius swirl bag from Knitty Gritty, before felting. I've been married to this man for almost 25 years. Sometimes it's best just to go with the flow.
Here's the bag after felting, considerably smaller. The yarn is Araucania Atacama 100% alpaca from elann.com. I used less than one 50g/100m skein. I like the moebius twist in the handle. I'm thinking a larger bag would be nice. This little one was just a few hours worth of knitting, started & finished yesterday.
Snowflake eyelet socks using a yummy angora/merino blend. Pattern and yarn from Susan's Spinning Bunny. This was the January sock kit from her sock club, and I just started it a few days ago.
My 2nd pair of Big Black Socks for Socks for Soldiers, this time in KnitPicks Essential, on US1 needles. My 1st pair used a heavier yarn & fewer stitches, so the socks were quite thick.
The Stonington Shawl from Shawls and Scarves: The Best of Knitter's Magazine. I started this before I went to Italy, but it wouldn't have been very good traveling knitting because of the cone. The nifty cone twirly thing came from Bo Peep's Wool shop, which does not appear to be selling yarn or anything other than patterns now.
I'm expecting to produce incremental progress on all of these, so it may be awhile before we see anything finished.

Home Again

I have actually been home since Sunday, but busy catching up on reading email & other people's blogs. And then there was the little glitch in getting the pictures off the xD card and onto the computer, but I got that sorted out.
Projects completed while I was away:
The Fleece Artist socks for my daughter, the Princess. Color: Rose; Pattern: Central Air from BlueMoonFiberArts.

Baby Cable Rib socks in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock. Color: Tuscany

I also made a scarf from the Fleece Artist cashmere that had 1st tried to be a Moebius cowl. I'm not too sure about this scarf, either, although it is very soft, warm, and lightweight. Here it is, keeping me warm on a recent chilly morning.

So, where was I? Well, I was here:

And here:

And, well -- this one's a dead give away. I kept it because it's so bad... the person who took it couldn't see the screen on the camera because it was so bright outside, so it's kinda funny.

Ciao!

I'm off on an adventure for a couple of weeks -- don't know if I'll have internet access (maybe if I had a laptop...), so I'll catch up with everyone when I get back.

Misty morning

This is what our little corner of the world looked like early yesterday morning.


And I got the "Mad stripes" socks finished. The original pattern was called "mad cow", because the designer used a black & white variegated and a solid black for the stripes.

Lots of catching up to do

Well, time flies...

First up, we have cashmere socks. I had ordered yarn samples from ColourmartUK, and they also sent a 50g ball of fingering weight yarn. So I started a sock, and tried to order more of the same yarn. Unfortunately, they didn't have any more, so I got some that looked similar. Obviously, it's darker, and obviously, these would have looked better with the dark yarn as the heels & toes, and maybe the ribbing at the top, but I think they'll stay like this. I used the garter rib pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks. They may not be the most beautiful socks on the planet, but they are very soft, very warm, lightweight, and machine washable!

Next is the Nana Fascinator, from Mission Falls East+West booklet. The yarn is Mission Falls 1824 wool, in the color Heath. This yarn had tried to be a couple of other patterns, wasn't happy, and now has found its niche. I changed the edging on the pattern -- the fringey stuff. It was supposed to be crocheted, and looked a bit like flat mushrooms, so I knitted on a sideways fringe, which twists a little. I like it.

And here it is on Miss Shortstop. I guess she was going to trot off to wherever it is she stores her belongings outside. I got the scarf back before she got too far.

This lovely creation is the Moebius cowl that Cat Bordhi made on an episode of Knitty Gritty. I even got the Fleece Artist 4-ply cashmere specified in the pattern (I think the color is Renaissance). It really looks better lying on the deck than it does around my neck (hey, that rhymes!). Anyway, it was a very quick knit on size 10 circs, just one ball of the cashmere, several hours worth of knitting. I frogged it the next day. I think I'm done with moebius neckwear. I might try a basket or bag, though. Now I have to figure out what to do with the yarn. I'm thinking lightweight, narrow-ish scarf.

Felt clogs for me. See how the inside matches my pajama pants? Fiber Trends pattern, Elann.com Peruvian Highland wool.

And last, my socks for round 1 of Sock Madness. This is how far along I was when I found out my division was closed. Knocked out in round one. Oh, the humiliation. So, what do you think, Principessa? School colors? Would you wear them if they fit you?

And then there were two

I finished the Winter's Eve socks on Saturday, and wore them on Sunday. They are beautiful socks! (They hadn't been washed yet -- I think the little holes in the toe shaping will close up after they're washed.)

That's our old Sam dog on the right; the black spot where he seems to be looking is Shortstop, our (female) black lab. On the left in the background is the machine shed with large round bales of hay for the cows.

Then I cast on for another pair called Central Air, also from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. This was an extra pattern in the Rockin' Sock Club August '06 shipment, in case the main pattern, Titania's Revenge, required too much thinking.


I am using Fleece Artist Rose from The Loopy Ewe, and these are for the Princess, aka our College Girl. Instead of a standard heel, I decided these needed eye-of-partridge.

In case you're not familiar with eye-of-partridge, it's similar to your standard sl1, k1 heel stitch, but each right side row is offset by one stitch. In other words:
Row 1: *Sl1, k1, repeat from * across row.
Row 2: Sl1, purl remaining stitches across row.
Row 3: Sl1, k2, *sl1, k1, repeat from * across row, ending with a k (last repeat will be sl1, k2).
row 4: repeat row 2

If you lose your place and don't know whether you're on row 1 or row 3, do the first sl1, k1 and then look at the next stitch. If the stitch below the next loop is recessed from the surface, you need to slip it, and you are on row 1. If the stitch is raised from the surface, you need to knit it, and you are on row 3.

Almost forgot: eye-of-partridge draws up more than a standard heel stitch. How much? In order to do this scientifically, I made a standard heel out of the same yarn -- 32 stitches wide, 32 rows of heel stitch. It took 40 rows of eye-of-partridge to get to the same length. So if you're going to use this heel, plan on 25% more rows.

It seemed like the thing to do

So, I didn't go string beads for the second sock. I made a hat, instead. Voila:


The yarn is Noro Transitions, color #19. The pattern? Basically, measure your head, multiply by your gauge, cast on about an inch worth of stitches less than your head circumference, knit about 2", increase that inch worth of stitches, knit until the hat is tall enough (leave the edge rolled), then do the top decreases.

I frogged another hat, same pattern, same yarn, different color (#5):

It looks better in the skein than it does as a hat.

I wore my new hat this morning to drive my son to school. It was 12 degrees (F) out there.

Valentine flowers from my guys (that would be my husband and my son):

I did string the beads for the second Winter's Eve sock last night, and I cast on and knit the first several rounds of the sock this morning, then got distracted and started a scarf. Why? It just seemed like the thing to do.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Just in time to celebrate, here is the Winter's Eve sock, pattern by Sivia Harding, for the December 2006 Rockin' Sock Club. Yarn is STR (of course!) lightweight in Mustang Sally.

Try clicking to make it bigger. I can't seem to get a picture where the beads show.

Unfortunately, I am not wearing this today, as there is only one. Gotta go string the beads for the second one.

New Project

Mmm, pretty...

But what could it be? Look carefully, there's a little surprise in the purl ribs.

Pink socks, anyone?

I decided I need some pink socks -- sort of a Valentine's Day inspiration. So I went stash diving, and this is what I found:

Clockwise from top left: KnitPicks Gloss, Burgundy; KnitPicks Sock Garden, Star Gazer Lily (discontinued); Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, Get Knitted (this was a special colorway dyed for this seller, and I don't find it on their site right now); handpainted sock yarn from ebay seller kbrece; Fleece Artist (from the Loopy Ewe); Lang JaWoll color 82.0162 (from theKnitter.com); Socks that Rock lightweight, Mustang Sally; Gypsy Girl Creations, Painted Desert.

Now I just have to pick a yarn and a pattern! One possibility is the Gansey sock pattern from the EZasPi Yahoo group, which is hosting a Gansey workshop by Liz Lovick. One of the more solid yarns would probably be my best choice. I have just completed my first project from the Gansey workshop, a swatch pin cushion in Peruvian Highland Silk.

Snowy Evergreen Socks

The yarn (merino/angora blend -- yum!) & pattern for these socks came from Susan's Spinning Bunny. She started a subscription sock club last fall, and I managed to snag the last full-year subscription. I don't even remember how I found her website, but when I saw these socks, I just had to join! I started them right after the kit arrived, but was in the middle of Christmas gift knitting, so I put them aside about 4 rows into the tip of the trees on the first sock leg. A few days ago, I picked the sock up and switched from 14" straight needles to a 24" circular, working back & forth. Much more comfortable! After I finished the first sock leg, I decided to do the 2nd, then put them on a long circular needle to work both of the feet at the same time.
Finishing involved several more yarn ends to weave than I usually have for socks, and the seam up the back of the leg. I did that with mattress stitch, 1/2 stitch in from the edge, giving me an invisible seam on the outside:

and what appears to be a single stitch column down the inside. Gotta love that. Mattress stitch isn't the easiest thing in the world to learn, but it's definitely a technique that is worthwhile to have in your arsenal.

Sorting

Today has been a sorting & thinking day. Now that one big project is done, I am looking at what to concentrate on next. I keep all sorts of knitting-related lists on my Palm Treo, and as I went through the yarn & projects stored in little hidey-holes and some out in the open (trying to excavate the coffee table), I added things that I had forgotten to add to my inventory as they arrived, and deleted some things from my Works in Progress list (rrrriiiippppp!).

I have been asked to teach socks at our guild meeting this coming Thursday, so I have pulled out my sock books and the 3 pair I have currently in progress. And I swatched for another pair, so I can demonstrate casting on for two socks at once, toe-up on Magic Loop, using Queen Kahuna's Aloha Cast-On. One of the in-progress pairs could be finished by Thursday if I just sit down and work on it, but then again, it would give me something to show them for Magic Loop once you get to the sock legs. I think I'm just going to take enough needles & yarn that I can show them whatever method they want to learn, including dpns and 2 circs, toe-up, cuff-down, whatever. It's a small enough group that I could do all of the above.

The stole has passed its quality inspection:

I pinned it to 27" wide, but I just could not get it 83" long -- it's about a foot short, and I don't care! It more than covers my wingspan, and Mom & I are the same height, so it will be fine.

She is DONE!

Leda's Dream is finally finished. While she is bathing in Soak, I have made preparations for her blocking. Loaded the woodstove, carried in more wood to feed the stove for the next several hours, as the most direct route from the wood pile to the stove would take me directly over the living room rug where the stole will be blocking, and we wouldn't want to try to step over the stole balancing a huge chunk of wood and dropping wood debris on the floor. Sent the dogs outside, vacuumed & Febreze'd the rug. I'll lay a sheet on the rug before I put the stole down.

The smell of woodsmoke in the cold air outside reminds me of the little town in the Italian Alps where I learned to ski in 6th grade (um, 33 years ago -- yikes!). Just one of the perks of growing up as an Army brat. We lived in Italy for 3 years, a couple of blocks from the beaches on the Mediterranean Sea, in a little town named Tirrenia.

Finally got the College Girl back to school last week. They had an extended semester break because of the ice storm that came through on the 12th. There was so much damage and power outages were so widespread that the University, which had originally scheduled Spring semester classes to begin on the 16th, closed for an extra week. Classes started last Monday (1/22) instead.

Here she is, modeling the scarf I mentioned in the last post:

A closeup of the scarf:

Pattern: My So-called Scarf
Yarn: Handpaintedyarn.com I'm not sure which yarn -- possibly the handspun bulky. The color is "shells", which doesn't appear to exist anymore. I was quite pleased with the patterning -- it just happened, and even continued when I joined the second skein. You can see in the photo above, however, that there was a segment (below her left hand) that didn't pattern like that. C'est la vie.

Making progress

I have managed to keep up with my decision to do 10 rows a day on Mom's stole, and have just finished the 4th of 5 chart repeats. Each repeat is 84 rows, so I'll be done in something over a week! There are about 20 rows after I complete the charts, plus some edging, so it'll be several extra days, but the end is in sight!

I have been working on other things, as well. I thought my daughter would like the Calorimetry headband from Knitty.com, so on a recent trip to St. Louis, I investigated a yarn shop called Kirkwood Knittery (no website), and found some lovely yarn made by Malabrigo. But since I was too lazy to check the yarn requirements for the pattern, I bought the wrong weight of yarn. No problem -- I'm a smart girl; I can do math. I did my calculations and started the headband. Didn't take too long, and I had plenty of yarn. When it was done, I had the Princess try it on, and we decided it needed to be narrower and shorter. I frogged it and started over -- 64 sts on size 13 needles for the Malabrigo gruesa, a chunky weight yarn with a gauge of 2.25 sts/inch. I modified the short rows, too, because the turning holes were way too big with this yarn, so I left one as the pattern says to do it, which is now the buttonhole, and I wrapped & turned the rest of them. I repeated the short rows until there were 14 stitches on each end and 36 in the middle, then short-rowed back up to 64 and bound off. It's still pretty wide, but she seems to like it.

I made one for me out of Malabrigo aquarella, but decided I'd rather make some fingerless mitts out of it. I made these up as I went -- they're very quick & easy.

I also made a scarf for the Princess, but haven't gotten any pictures of it yet, so maybe that will give me a reason to blog tomorrow, hmm?

More knitting dilemmas

After a four-day knitting hiatus, I finally pulled Mom's stole out to work on last night, and I did 10 rows before I went to bed. Before I put the knitting down, however, I started calculating how much was left to do.... I'm on the 2nd of 5 chart repeats, each of which is 84 rows. I have 20 more rows in this repeat. That makes 272 rows, plus 21 more rows of edging before the knitted-on border. At 10 rows a day, this will take me another month, before I even get to the borders. I did give Mom a non-knitted gift, and told her that I was working on the stole, and I'd get it to her as soon as it's done.

I got some gorgeous yarn in the mail yesterday (charming son said, "You can have Christmas all over again!"). I'd love to play with it, but I'm afraid that if I do, Mom's stole will again be neglected. And there are socks in progress that I haven't touched in what seems like months.

It would probably be best if I keep plugging away at Mom's stole (Leda's Dream) -- it's not that I don't like it -- somehow it's just not very exciting. Could be the yarn, too -- I'm using KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud, in Mist, which is a pale pale purple. It's OK, just not very exciting, either. Aw, I really don't mean to sound so whiny. I'll go knit now.