The Church of Bluegrass, 2009

Well, it’s all over. I still have banjos ringing in my ears, but Wintergrass is done for another year. 2010 tickets are already on sale, and though I haven’t gotten mine just yet, I will soon. Gotta get those early-bird prices, you know!

Highlights of Saturday and Sunday? The festival Saturday ran all afternoon and evening, at five different venues in and around the hotel, including the Rialto, an early 20th century movie house that has been restored as a performance hall. That venue, as well as one of the oldest Baptist churches downtown, are likely everybody’s favorites, both audience and performers.

My favorites on Saturday included another Mike Marshall group, Choro Famoso. He had a Brazilian mandolin player, Danilo Brito, playing with him. They played a whole set of mostly choro music which was just fabulous. Another one of those surprise groups was Cody Bryant and the Riders of the Purple Sage, playing good old fashioned cowboy music. They were a lot of fun to listen to.

Sunday’s festival was just at the main pavilion, and started out with a bluegrass gospel show, then finished up with Laurie Lewis, the Isaacs, and Blue Highway. I would have trouble picking just one of those as a favorite, though I’d never heard the Isaacs live, and they are just terrific performers.

Best of the weekend? This year it’s nearly an impossible choice, which is a good thing. In the not-quite-bluegrass category, it would have to be Mike Marshall and Choro Famoso, though there were a lot of very close seconds. In the more mainstream bluegrass category, Blue Highway is my favorite, though again, it’s a tough choice!

In the category of festival knitting, here are my winners:

I finished one sock and grafted the toe on Saturday (during Choro Famoso!), and then got the whole cuff of the second sock done yesterday. Since John likes his socks a little longer, I knitted the cuff of the first one as long as I dared. Yesterday I started getting a little concerned about yardage, so out came the trusty scale. I weighed the first sock, then the second half-done sock and the remaining yarn, then subtracted the weight of the needles.

Enough to finish the second sock, with several grams to spare! Whew!

Wintergrass, Day 2

Just a quick post, since I’m headed out the door. Last night was yet another spectacular WG evening. Lots of good music, bad festival food, and mindless knitting.

Picks of the evening for music? Three Ring Circle, with Rob Ickes on dobro. They were so good that I listened to two sets. And Scythian. They’re at best a distant cousin to bluegrass, but if you ever get a chance to hear them live, just go. Somebody should figure out how to bottle their energy.

Later!

Wintergrass, Day 1

As usual, the first evening of Wintergrass brought some great entertainment. The festival starts Thursday night, then continues Friday evening, most of the day and evening on Saturday, and all day on Sunday. Thursday is sort of the “warmup” session, but there are always a couple of “sleeper” groups that turn out to be great. Last night the Tallboys, a string band from Seattle, were my favorite. It’s an old time string band, and as they point out, are neither all boys, nor all tall. They have fiddle, banjo, bass, and a clogger girl. What more could you want in a group?

The other hit of the evening was Mike Marshall and one of the many group iterations that he plays in. This particular group was the Big Trio, playing acoustic string music that is difficult to pigeonhole into one genre. Mike is also playing with a Brazilian acoustic group tomorrow, and that should be terrific as well.

As to knitting, I worked on True Blue last night. I’ve finished the back piece, and cast on the front so I was ready for the evening. I managed to just finish the bottom ribbing and the increases last night, so now I’m ready to just knit mindlessly back and forth on the body without having to pay much attention. The ribbing is a twisted rib (P1, K1tbl on the front, K1, P1tbl on the back), so I had a bit of trouble with it in the dark, but from here on it should be easy. Here are photos.

The back, done.

Those little clips holding the extra yarn on the shoulders? They are from a set of bag clips that we got at Ikea. The smaller ones are just a little too small to work well on food bags, but are perfect for this application!

Ribbing done:

What? You don’t have a pirate pencil case??

I suppose you want to see inside, too.

Well, of course it came with the pirate pencil sharpener and the pirate eraser.

Arrrgggh, matey. I’m ready for the weekend.

Wintergrass

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Wintergrass, the annual bluegrass festival held in Tacoma, starts tonight and runs through Sunday evening. As usual, I have tickets for the entire festival. I also have my knitting lined up.

The Peacock Shawl is not one of the things that I’ll be taking. It’s not so difficult that I can’t work on it when chatting or being sociable, but it is definitely not something I’d want to work on in near darkness while the fiddles are playing. Here are a couple of progress photos.

It’s just really difficult to get a good photo of this at this point. It is going to be one huge shawl when it’s done, since the pattern calls for laceweight yarn, and this stuff (Blue Heron Mercerized Cotton) is somewhere between a heavy laceweight and fingering weight. I have 50-some rows to go, and the rows are close to 400 stitches at this point. It’s taking me a little over half an hour to get across one of the knit-side rows. The wrong-side purl rows go a little faster, but not much.

What I am taking to Wintergrass is socks. I have two pairs of socks in progress, both at a point where I can just knit around and around in circles mindlessly. I’m also still working on that True Blue sweater, and have just finished the back and have the front started so I can knit away on that as well for a little variety. I’ll show photos of those next time.

I’ll leave you with a photo of Lewey. He frequently can be found sitting by our kitchen windows, with his chin resting on the window ledge. He just likes watching the animal activity in the back yard, especially the birds.

I’m off to listen to the banjos!

The New Brown Socks

OK, I figured I’d better get knitting, since you’re all expecting Man Socks here. I found the perfect guy-approved hank of yarn, in the stash, no less, which appealed to my guy’s sense of frugality.

The yarn is Mountain Colors Weaver’s Wool Quarters, a sport weight 100% wool yarn. I bought a bunch of this for socks way back when, before MC came up with their Bearfoot sock yarn. At 100% wool, this stuff has to be hand washed, and it felts like nobody’s business. It makes great socks, though. They are a bit thick to wear in dress shoes, but since I almost always wear Birkenstocks, that’s OK with me. John pretty much lives in his Birkies, too, so these will work for him as well.

Here’s what I’ve got so far. One advantage of sport weight yarn is that it knits up relatively fast.

The color is Red Tail Hawk, the pattern is my own, this time using 60 stitches and my trusty Ivore needles, in 2.75mm. The gauge I’m getting is about 7 stitches per inch.

And here’s the old next to the new:

In case you were wondering about the size of the new socks, I’ve tried these on, and they fit me with a bit of ease, meaning they’ll fit John perfectly. I think you may now be getting a sense of the full ugliness of the old socks. He was sweet to say he loved them, though. The new ones will actually be socks he can wear in public.

And in the category of small victories over my tendency to enhance the stash in the middle of the night with internet access and memorized credit card number: After I started knitting the new socks, I was reminded of how much I love this Mountain Colors yarn. In no time, I had an internet shopping cart full of new skeins. I then turned around, opened the sock box, and found 9 more hanks of this stuff already in my house. I emptied the cart, turned off the computer, and went to bed.

Next time: An update on the Tidepool Peacock shawl!

Better Get Out Those Sunglasses!

Or,

Project Update

Since I have one less thing on the needles by finishing those Arctic Monkeys, I started two new things. The first is a pair of plain socks. Here’s where you will need the sunglasses. This yarn is so bright, you don’t need a pattern stitch.

This is Tempted Good Grrl sock yarn, in the color Wicked Witch. Even that photo doesn’t do this stuff justice. I think it glows in the dark. I got mine here, and there’s still some left. This will just be a plain sock, that same old pattern.

By the way, I did have another sock on the needles back in September, that orange Trekking stuff. This was in a burst of excitement over knitting something besides plain socks. I got so sick of the pattern that I ripped them out, in a fit of pique. I’ll re-do the yarn eventually as a plain sock, but this skein just called to me when I opened the yarn box to find a new sock.

Next up is the second new project, Dog Mittens!

These are just the cutest things I’ve ever seen. They will be for my sweet dog-walking hubby. The pattern is by Jorid Linvik, and the Ravelry link is here. Here is her pattern shop. Of course, while I was shopping, I bought the Cat Mittens and the Talullah’s Heart Mittens too. The yarn is Rauma Finullgarn, purchased from Nordic Fiber Arts. It figures, I get excited by patterned mittens and have absolutely no yarn in those fourteen boxes that would work. That’s why the Stash Knit-Down counter moved.

Just as a warning, these are a little on the small side. As written, the pattern would probably fit a small woman’s hand. I’m going up a needle size, and they will be snug on him, but should still fit. (Did I just say that out loud?) I also put a little longer cuff on them. If you want to make these in a larger size, you could go up to a bit heavier yarn.

I have gotten a little done on True Blue, though I haven’t even looked at anything else since I got that mitten yarn. Here’s a photo. I’m not saying anything about whether it’s going to fit or not. At this point, I’m thinking that it would be easier to find a new man that the sweater would fit.*

The Peacock Shawl is still in the rotation, it’s just taken a back seat for awhile. Maybe I’ll show you a photo next time.

*Just kidding, dear. You know I wouldn’t trade you in!

Some Actual Knitting Content

I know, I know. I bet you thought I forgot that this is a knitting blog. You can always tell when bloggers are behind on their knitting; they start posting the results of internet quizzes.

I have been working steadily on that Not-Quite-A-Cobblestone sweater, though. I finally have finished the neck shaping and am nearly done with the collar.

Here’s the sweater with the collar nearly finished.

Here’s what I ended up doing for the top half of this. This sweater started out as Jared Flood’s Cobblestone sweater, and I knit it as written up to where you attach the sleeves at the armholes. The top half is a simple raglan style, using Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Workshop instructions. I decided to just follow her instructions for the neck shaping without questioning her wisdom, and it worked out perfectly. The collar is more plain garter stitch. I can’t begin to tell you how much I despise knitting collars in the round on stubby little 16″ circulars. I tried double points, but it was even more awkward. Fortunately, a collar is only a few rows. Now it’s on to the cast off.


I’m using June Hiatt’s instructions for a Half Hitch sewn cast off, which works well for a collar, where you don’t want the bind off to be too tight. EZ describes this in the Knitting Workshop, but she does it in the other direction, from left to right, in the opposite direction of the knitting. I tried that, and it seemed much more awkward than June’s way. Basically, you take your needle and yarn through the second stitch on the left needle as if to knit, snug it up, then through the first needle as if to purl, tighten and drop the first stitch off the needle. It matches a long tail cast on nearly perfectly.

I’m off to forage for lunch, then more novel writing. I’m only at a pitiful 6110 words, which is half what I should have at this point. I work much better with a deadline, though, and when I get closer to the end of November, I can predict a few 8000 word writing days. I have a couple of really annoying drunken twin brothers that I plan to kill off in the next chapter. That’s always fun, and good for a thousand words.

The Great Stash Knit-Down

I have a new item over there on the sidebar. Now that the economy is in the toilet, I’m very excited that I have boxes and boxes of stash to knit from. My sister-in-law Ena is visiting, as I mentioned in my last post. After she got settled in to our guest room, she came upstairs laughing. First she had to move a bunch of stash boxes around in the closet so she could have room to hang up clothes. Then she noticed Lewey talking to something he imagined was under the bed, so she got down to look. Yup, more yarn. I didn’t take her upstairs to see the 2 huge boxes of sock yarn, and the huge box of lace yarn in my office.

Anyway, I’m not committing to not buying any more yarn. You all know me better than that, and that plan has never gone well. I am simply committing to publicly keeping track of all the forward (or backward!) movement in my stash yardage. If I use a skein of yarn, the yards get added. If I buy a skein of yarn, the yards get subtracted from the total. Let’s hope it stays out of the minus numbers. I’m starting out with adding all the yarn I’ve used so far for the not-Cobblestone sweater. After this I’ll update it as each ball of yarn is used/added. My blog, my rules.

Ena is also a beginning knitter. She is knitting dishcloths as practice, and brought her knitting with her. Here is her first fine effort, and a photo of her knitting. Will you all please welcome the newest member of our fold, and encourage her on her progress?


She finished the first dishcloth in less than two evenings, so I’m pretty sure she’s hooked. I actually heard her say “just let me finish one more row” a couple of times. We went to the LYS today so she could stock up on her very own needles and more yarn (and stitch markers, tapestry needles, etc!).

Last but not least, here’s my hippie car, just to let you know who I’m voting for this fall.**

We vote by absentee ballot every year, and finished our voting this morning over coffee.

Whoever you are planning on voting for this year, get out there and get it done!

**Yes, I have a license plate, I’m blocking it out for safety reasons!

And The Fun Begins…

…As EZ says in her book, Knitting Workshop. As you all may recall, I’m knitting a not-Cobblestone sweater, and have been for months now. I did the body as written up to the underarms, then tossed out the pattern. For the rest of it I’m using EZ’s directions in the above-mentioned book, though I plan on modifying the neck shaping when I get there, using Jacqueline Fee’s Sweater Workshop. I finally finished the body and sleeves.

I now have the whole thing knitted together, with about 2 inches done on the yoke.

I’m enjoying the challenge of knitting a sweater in the round, but I’m not sure I’d do this often. The whole thing is pretty unwieldy once it’s knitted together, and makes it entirely a non-portable project at this point. The only advantage that I can see is not having to sew things together at the end, but I really don’t mind sewing knitting together. (Don’t send me all your sewing to do for you!)

John’s sister Ena is here visiting for the week, and we’ve been cooking up a storm. Here’s part of last night’s dinner. We had fresh steelhead salmon from the market, grilled, along with braised kale and risotto. The risotto was made using fresh chanterelle mushrooms we found at the farmers market, and was delicious. Unfortunately we didn’t get any photos of the whole meal on the plate, but here’s the in-progress shots of the risotto:

Yes, it was yummy. I’m off to enjoy the sunshine!

Project Roundup, Part 3

I just realized that I’ve been talking about my latest lace project for the past couple of weeks and have never posted a photo. I’ve updated my Ravelry project page as I’ve gone along, but never here. That’s what comes of trying to keep up with both, and doing a half-assed job of it at that.

The lace on the needles is the Peacock Feathers Shawl, a Fiddlesticks Knitting pattern by Dorothy Siemens. (Ravelry link here.) The yarn I’m using is Blue Heron Egyptian Mercerized Cotton, in the color Bluegrass. I bought the yarn from Kris at Sonny & Shear, and as soon as I got it I knew it needed to be a Peacock.

And here’s what it looks like now, at row 95 of the pattern.

I can’t say enough good things about this pattern. It does require a bit of attention, as the stitch counts change on a few of the rows, and the repeat markers shift back and forth frequently. However, the whole thing is clearly charted, and the pattern notes are quite explicit. Though the charts look quite complicated, they really aren’t. It’s one of those patterns that you just want to keep knitting, as it’s not just the same old thing on every row.

I also love this yarn. I’ve never used mercerized cotton for lace work, so we’ll see how it blocks, but the shine is just spectacular, and it takes color marvelously. It also looks like Jello. Here’s proof. John had a little procedure this week that required a clear liquid diet for 36 hours, and we made him some blue and yellow Jello. When the dishes were partly emptied, we just tossed them in together.

Proof that I’m easily amused.

And speaking of John, here’s a photo of several of my housemates out on the deck yesterday, enjoying an early fall nap.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Project Roundup, Part 2.1

Or, Over The Edge

I’ve finally done it. I’ve been making plain stocking stitch socks for almost as long as I’ve been knitting, straying into pattern stitches only a couple of times. Now I have not one, but two pairs of patterned socks on the needles. I feel like a lemming who has jumped off the cliff.

Here’s the first pair. That Irish Girl Arctic Circle yarn from a few posts ago just didn’t want to be a plain sock. The stripes were just a bit too weird even for me, so I fired up the computer* and printed out Cookie A’s Monkey sock pattern. I’m likely the only knitter on the planet that has not made a pair of these. I originally started the plain sock on 68 stitches, and because this yarn is what I would call a heavy fingering weight, needed to rip back and restart on 64 stitches. I still didn’t like the striping so ripped to the cuff and I’m now Monkeying around.

Irish Arctic Monkeys!

The second pair isn’t really my fault. I joined Sock Knitters Anonymous over on Ravelry, and the Sockdown challenge for September/October is to knit orange socks.** Well, boy howdy, do I have some orange yarn in my stash, so I couldn’t resist. I started this one as a plain sock too, but it was entirely too boring, so plugged in a stitch pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch.

You can’t really tell from that photo, but there really is a pattern stitch. It’s Stansfield #10 from that book, which I think is a really dumb name. I’m not about to call these my Stansfield #10 socks for the next 2 months. I think it looks like Morse code, so they are forever hereafter my Orange Morse Code socks. This is lovely Trekking XXL sock yarn, in the color 145. Otherwise known as Orange. Just go ask Debi, the Queen of Orange.

Actually both of these qualify for the current Sockdown challenge. You could either knit orange socks, or knit a pattern by Cookie A. So there you have it. When I go lemming, I go all the way.

Next time in the Roundup, the Peacock lace!

*That’s of course not really true. My Mac is always fired up. It behaves very well even when I leave it turned on indefinitely, so I only shut it down completely when we go on vacation.

**If you want to get on the good side of Debi, the moderator over there, post a photo of some yarn and ask her if it’s ORANGE ENOUGH?? Just don’t tell her I sent you.

Project Roundup, Part 2

Or, Not Cobblestone

Whatever did happen to that Cobblestone sweater, after all? I started this eons ago (January, actually), and it’s been in time out for awhile. You all know what it’s supposed to look like, right? Here’s a link, in case you’ve been living under a rock. Many fine knitters have made this sweater, and I think it looks great on nearly every one of them.

Here’s the rub, though. Most of those fine knitters have made this sweater for men, as the pattern designer planned it. Here’s another great example, by Tiennie, for her husband. Now for women? Not so many great ones. Hardly any, in fact, and I didn’t really think much about this when I started the pattern. Here’s one, by Lynda, that proves me wrong, though hers is modified as well, and quite lovely. Anyway, I just wanted to knit it, and it was time for a nice wooly sweater for me, and that was that. I didn’t take into consideration that this might not be so flattering on a woman, especially a woman with, shall we say, voluptuous curves in the top half.

This thing is knitted all in the round, in plain stockinette up to the underarms, with a wide garter strip for the side “seams”, then in garter stitch for a round yoke. That garter edge falls right at the “boobage” line, not such a great idea for those of us with a generous front porch. I got all the way to that point, decided that this wouldn’t be a good idea, and decided to drop that garter line down to where my waist would be, if I had a waist. Rip rip rip. Reknit, reknit, reknit.

I kept looking at this and looking at this. All those miles of garter stitch in a round yoke, even with the line of demarcation dropped lower, are going to do nothing but accentuate that front porch even more. This is a nice idea if you’re selling your house, not so much if you want a flattering sweater. It was time for some rethinking.

I’ve decided to keep the bottom half of the sweater as it’s written, up to the armpits. I’m dumping the round garter stitch yoke, and going with a raglan style knit all in stockinette, a la Elizabeth Zimmerman. This has required some serious consulting of a couple of her books, and a little math work with paper and pencil to rewrite the rest of the pattern. I’m also re-doing the sleeves. As they are written, the cuffs are very wide, with a circumference of twelve inches. My wrists
are six inches around (the only skinny part of me, and I’m damned proud of them, thank you). So while I had the EZ books out, I used her method of calculating sleeve stitches.

Rip rip rip. Out came all that garter stuff in the round that I had reknit. I’m now back up to the armpits, and I’ve started the first sleeve. I might just have this done for winter!

I will tell you that I love this yarn completely. It’s Classic Elite’s Skye Tweed, and I have no flipping idea why they discontinued it. Even after ripping and reknitting, ripping and reknitting, the stuff looks brand new. This sweater should wear like a champ, if I ever finish it. I just wish I’d bought a couple more sweaters worth of it while I was shopping.

Next time, Project Roundup Part 3, the latest lace project.

Project Roundup, Part 1

But first, here’s what’s going on at our house this week. My sweetie, John, had surgery on both of his feet earlier this week. We planned this for a week that I had off, so I could wait on him hand and foot, or foot and foot, in this case. Here’s what he looked like the evening after surgery.

Those are icepacks on his feet, and would you just look at those fashionable shoes! He’s doing pretty well, all things considered. Here’s Lewey, consoling him.

In between running errands and fetching things, I have gotten some knitting done. I have three projects actively going right at the moment. First up is the new sock.

The yarn is from Three Irish Girls, from their Sock Yarnista monthly sock club. This is my first club shipment, and I am more than pleased. It’s very squishy, lovely yarn, and Sharon sent a coordinating contrast color for heels and toes if you’re one of those people, like me, who won’t use the included pattern. The club is a monthly offering, and has either a variegated colorway or a semi-solid, and you can choose on a monthly basis which one you want. The pattern this month is a lovely cabled sock that will look much better in the semisolid yarn, so I’m substituting, you guessed it, my favorite sock pattern over there to your right in the menu bar. I’ve decided to use the darker yarn for the tops, heels, and toes, just for a change.

And the needles, you ask? Those are my latest acquisition, sterling double points from Celtic Swan Forge. It’s hard to get a decent photo of them, but here’s an attempt.

These are just fabulous. They are not for everyone, I’d guess, though. They have a rather blunt tip, for one thing, which doesn’t bother me in the least, but some people might hate them. If you insist on a sharply pointed dpn, these are not your needles. They are also substantially heavier than any other double points I’ve used. They are also very expensive, so you have to really want them. And I really wanted them, so I got them. If you have a special occasion coming up, and need to give your significant other a gift idea for you, this might be it.

Next time: Whatever happened to that Cobblestone thing? Stay tuned to find out!

Whitewater Blocking

Before I get to that, it’s 56 degrees here today. In August. Our furnace came on this morning and John looked at me suspiciously and asked, “did you turn that on?”

No dear, it’s just fracking cold here.

The lace is done, ends woven in, and it went for a swim this morning. As I’ve said before, I believe in full-immersion blocking. Besides, this one went down the Green River and the Colorado River, and needed a bath.

I use Kookaburra wool wash, and soaked this for about half an hour, then rinsed. I’ve used both the regular and the delicate versions of this product, and really can’t tell much difference.

Ready for the pinning ceremony:

I used a combination of blocking wires for the straight top edge, and pins for the side points.

Yes, that’s a lot of pins. It would be even more ridiculous without the wires on the top edge.

I’m going to find a wool sweater to wear. Project details and the requisite artsy photo when it’s dry.

Sock Pattern! Free!

Ok, this is really a knitting update of sorts, but first, there is a free pattern over there to your right, in the sidebar. It’s Lorette’s Wordy Generic Sock Pattern, now new and improved! This is just my cobbled together pattern that I’ve put together over the years. It has instructions for both a picot top and plain ribbing. I just put it up today, and hopefully it is relatively error free. It’s just a plain vanilla sock, so don’t expect anything fancy.

Now for the update.

Here’s one of those Generic Socks. I haven’t gotten much done on this since my last post, but I am done with the gusset decreases on the first sock. I still love this yarn. It’s endlessly amusing to me to see what color comes next. For the curious who want to know, the end of the first repeat in the color sequence was just in the middle of the heel flap. I have no idea if I’ll be able to match the second sock exactly or not. Oh, the suspense!

Next up is my alpaca lace shawl. Here’s where I am:

I did end up taking this with me on our Utah trip, though I didn’t take it on the second leg of the trip down the Colorado. I had dropped a bunch of stitches before we went on the trip, and finally got the whole thing straightened out and back on the needles. I pulled it out one night sitting around the campfire, and did exactly the same thing, dropping about 15 or 20 stitches off the needles, then spent the next two nights before dark getting it fixed yet again. For the record, the first time I did this, I just frogged back about 20 rows to my last lifeline. Getting those stitches back on the needle, even with a lifeline, was sort of a bitch, to say the least. The second time, I decided not to frog. I just got as many of the dropped loose stitches back onto a spare needle as I could, then patiently tinked back row by row, until I got to a section where I had everything back on the working needle with a correct stitch count. It was actually less painful than ripping all those rows again.

For those of you not following this saga, this is made using Evelyn Clark’s book, Knitting Lace Triangles. I did the whole first section with the Medallion stitch pattern, and have just switched to the Ripple pattern for the next section. This is a 20-row repeat, and I think I’ll do 2 or 3 repeats, then the edging, then it’s done.

And the shawl finally has a name: Whitewater Shawl. Of course, it was obvious, once it came to me. I’ve decided that the Ripple section represents the flatter sections of water, I think the Medallion part looks like the rapids. There isn’t anything in the pattern that represents me nearly drowning in Cataract Canyon, but you can’t have everything.