I realized this morning that I haven’t actually finished a knitting project since late January. That is somewhat embarrassing for someone who claims to knit all the time.
On the needles currently:
Rogue sweater. I need to finish the hood and sew the sleeves in.
Mind the Gap socks, one done, second about a third done.
3 lace shawls in various stages.
Trillian:
I think the problem, if you wish to call it that, is the three lace shawls. I’ve gotten sucked up by the shiny and started too many, so I’m not finishing any of them.
I’m going on a marathon to finish Trillian. It’s a brainless knit, all garter stitch except for the lace edge at the end of each row. I need to knit until I have about 8 grams* of yarn left and then do the lace border and this is done.
23.1 grams left. I’ll post updates along the way.
For those of you who don’t follow me on FB, we have a new family member.
Meet Ripley. We rescued her from the Humane Society about 10 days ago. She’s probably about 8 months old. I think she’s settling in nicely!
*I’m not stupid. I’m going to give it a bit of a cushion, maybe stop the main body section at 12 grams or so.
Today was the first day around here that really felt like spring. John’s kids and grandkids were here, so we took advantage of the sunny day to go to the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. This is a huge wetland refuge at the Nisqually river delta, and is a glorious local treasure about fifteen minutes from home.
This was in the parking lot. I have no idea why there’s a skeleton on the front, but it seemed like it was a good sock photo op.
The trails through the refuge are well maintained, with a long boardwalk through the marsh areas.
We heard and saw a bevy of birds, including my favorites, the red winged blackbird. There were baby goslings, frogs, snakes, and a fine turtle.
I did take my knitting.
And the family group shot at the end:
Those of you who follow me on FB might have seen my news about Will.
That’s one of the most recent photos we have of him. The last we saw him was on Wednesday. He does go in and out, but always comes back in at night, especially as he’s gotten older. He was about sixteen, and starting to show his age, so we are pretty sure he went off by himself to die. I’m sad, but we knew this was coming. I think he is probably in kitty heaven, chasing bunnies and mice.
After a couple of false starts, I have the first sleeve well on its way. Normally sleeves are the most boring thing on earth to knit, but these cables are more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
The first false start involved my apparent inability to count. I finished that whole ribbing hem and then realized I had too many stitches.
The second false start only involved undoing a few rows. The ribbing is knit on a smaller size needle, and I was a couple of rows into the sleeve and realized I had never switched to the larger needles.
Here is a close up of the cable that goes from the cuff up the side of the sleeve.
And a gratuitous photo of Lewey doing what he does best on Saturday.
And she's ditched another collar and blingy tag. That's the second one, which is our limit for cat collars. Will lost about six of them before we gave up. The cats are all chipped, so the lack of collar won't make a lot of difference.
It figures. I actually finish a couple of knitting projects and then forget all about blogging it.
First up is John’s Crazy Hat of Many Colors:
Project Details:
Pattern: Toboggan Hat, modified for the current Peace Fleece worsted weight
Yarn: Peace Fleece mini skeins
Needles: US 6/4.0 mm
Started: October 16, 2015
Finished: Noivember 21, 2015
For: John
Modifications: The pattern is written for wider two-color stripes. I went all out and did four row stripes in many colors (33!). I bought all the mini skeins that Peace Fleece sells, and didn’t repeat any of the colors. I also did ribbing instead of a rolled cuff at the beginning.
What I Learned:: Hats go quick in heavy worsted weight yarn. I also learned a new trick to do a color join right where I want the color to change at the beginning of the round. It was fidgety, but not as fidgety as weaving in all those ends would have been.
Next up is socks. Tiptoe Through the Tulips Socks
Project Details:
Pattern: Same old same old. Plain vanilla pattern, let the yarn do the talking. 72 stitches around. Picot tops.
Yarn: Zitron Trekking XXL
Needles: US 1/2.25 mm
Started: April 19, 2015
Finished: January 22, 2016
For: Me
Modifications: None
What I Learned:: Socks shouldn’t take this long. And I’m still not tired of white bread socks.
Zoe is settling in just fine. She came home for good on Monday. There is a bit of hissing and caterwauling going on, mostly by Will, but things are getting calmer.
I have discovered that it is NOT ok to leave anything knitting related laying around with her here. Yesterday she knocked my knitting gadget bag on the floor, then tried to get in my big knitting bag. And I was merrily knitting away on a shawl and looked down to find her chewing her way through the working yarn. The adventures of having a kitten!
Guayabitos, to be specific. We spent a week at exactly this same spot last year. We loved it so much that we booked for this year as soon as we got home. I won't do a long post with lots of photos, since the wifi is a bit slow, but here's my morning.
And that's pretty much been my week. Sunshine, ocean in the background, knitting, practicing flute, siestas, and a cold Pacifico or two. Happy hour daily with margaritas at sunset. Strolls into town for lunch and/or dinner.
We go home tomorrow, which will be OK, since you can't really stay here forever. And Zoe is patiently waiting for us! She became officially “abandoned” by her previous so-called family on Wednesday last week, and we left Friday for here, so she is being boarded with her vet family. We'll pick her up and bring her home on Monday!
It’s a real finished project! One of my coworkers had her baby very early a couple of weeks ago, at 25 weeks. (Baby Helen and mama are both doing OK.) I didn’t have anything hand knit ready for her, but fortunately preemie baby sweaters don’t take long to knit.
Project Details:
Pattern: Design D Cardigan; that’s a really catchy name
Yarn:Dale Baby Ull in hot pink
Needles: 3.25 mm (2.75 for the edging)
Started: 12/23/15
Finished: 12/27/15
For: Baby Helen
Modifications: The neckband as written in the pattern is just plain fidgety. It calls for casting on a few extra stitches along the front bands, knitting a long strip to reach the center back, repeat on the other side, then sew it down and graft together. For a freaking baby sweater that might get worn a handful of times before she grows out of it, that seems like major overkill. I just finished the neck decreases, changed to the smaller needles, did a few rows of garter stitch to match the bottom edge, then did a yarn over /knit 2 together eyelet row, knit another row, then bound off.
What I Learned:: Baby sweaters don’t take long, especially in preemie sizes. This pattern was a mess. It worked, but the instructions for the raglan decreases were written out in a fashion that made them nearly incomprehensible.
I just realized while doing this that I never did a finished project post for John’s Toboggan hat. I will remedy that soon.
In other news, I finally splurged and bought myself a late Christmas present of a really nice wooden swift and ball winder. The rickety plastic ones that I have are just not a lot of fun to use, especially for finer yarns. I’ve had to rewind more balls of yarn by hand to fix total screwups than I can count. Here they are.
I bought them both on Amazon. The winder is the Heavy Duty Ball Winder by Nancy’s Knitknacks, the swift is a large size Swedish Glimakra. They are lovely. And it inspired me to clear off this wooden shelf to make room for them.
Last but certainly not least, we are 99.9% certain of bringing home a new family member. Those of you who follow me on Facebook have already heard this story. Last Saturday evening we had a knock on our door. Our neighbors had a black kitty show up at their door, they thought it was Willie and brought him down to our house. It wasn’t Will, but a little lost girl kitty. Nobody in our neighborhood has a black cat (except us), so we kept her over the weekend. Monday we took her in to our vet clinic where they checked her over and found she was microchipped. They contacted the owners, who apparently live a few miles from here. They didn’t sound very enthusiastic, but promised to pick her up and take her home on Monday.
Of course by this time we’d fallen totally in love with her. She is adorable, very silky fur, about 8 months old, and as sweet as she can be.
Five days later, today, and three phone calls from our vet to the so-called owners, and they still haven’t come to get her, and are not answering calls. The vet has to keep her and give them ten days to claim her, though it’s almost certain at this point that they have no interest. We strongly suspect that she was dumped in our driveway. It was a very cold night, and she hadn’t been outside for very long when she came to us. I just wish they would step up and say they don’t want her so we can bring her home. Though everybody at our vet clinic has fallen in love with her as well, she is getting a lot of love there too.
Here are a few more photos from today, we went to the vet to see her.
Her new name is Zoe! In 5 more days we will be her people!
Yarn: Bouton d’Or Songe, in PINK. 3 skeins. I bought this in a yarn shop in Nice, France when we took a cruise that left from there in 2006. Deep stash. 570 meters out.
Needles: 3.75 mm
Started: December 6, 2014
Finished: June 7, 2015
For: Me!
Modifications: None. This is one of those patterns that you can adapt for pretty much any yarn. I knit until I had just enough left over to do the bind off.
What I Learned: Note to self. Please remember to check the lot numbers on ball bands in the future. This was knit with 3 balls of yarn, after I blocked it, I noticed that the center ball of yarn is just a shade off. Not enough to notice when it’s around your neck, but still.
Here’s another photo.
That one shows the shape better. It starts from one point (the one at the top in this photo, then increases at both sides, then binds off at the long straight side. If you look carefully you can see the very slight shift in color in the center section.
Last but not least.
Lewey says “Happy Fathers’ Day!” He adores his human dad.
I posted a photo of my Evenstar on Facebook yesterday, and got a nice “I love the cream color” comment. The problem is that it’s not cream, it’s a pale aqua blue. Of course then someone had to ask “is it really blue or is it white”, which cracked me up. But I’m easily amused.
It is notoriously tough to take photos in the Pacific Northwest in the winter time and end up with anything close to the right color. Fortunately we’ve had some gloriously sunny early spring weather here, so I dragged my lace outside and got a few photos. There are some shadows from the trees, and our patio table is filthy, so I covered it with a white towel, since I am way too lazy to clean it now when it’s not going to be warm enough to eat out there for awhile.
I’m posting all of those, since I can. Of course it’s not blocked, so you really can’t see the lace pattern all that well, but that is pretty close to the right color. Click on those to make them bigger so you can see the beads!
Beads! Thousands of them! The edging to this sucker is taking forever, and it is very boring, let me tell you. It’s knit sideways onto the shawl, it’s a simple 20 row repeat, I have about 22 repeats left. Each repeat has 50 beads. Yes, I know how many rows and beads that is. It is going to be stunning once it is done, but this is just the really boring part. And I sort of have to pay attention for a couple of reasons. First, it is fine thread, and it’s a cashmere silk blend, so it has no memory and wants to jump off the needles if it gets a chance. And then I have to focus on putting on each bead. So it’s not really good TV or movie knitting. It’s not really whisky knitting either for the same reason.
If it looks like there is a stray white thread in there, there is. After I finished the body of the shawl, I put in a fine lifeline since I’ve never done a knitted on border before. I figured if I screwed it up, I’d have somewhere to go back to. I probably should put one in now after one of those repeats as well. When I get all the way around the circle, I will have to graft the beginning and ending of the edging together, so there will be a lifeline there as well.
And just because I can, here is Lewey. He wandered outside while I was taking photos.
By the way, Wintergrass was a total blast. We had a great time. There were lots of great bands, including some old favorites and new-to-me groups. My favorite of the weekend was Mark O’Connor, who is a terrific fiddler/violinist. He is originally from the Seattle area, though has never been to Wintergrass before. He is a fabulous musician, and plays in multiple genres, including jazz, swing, classical, bluegrass, and American folk. I have been following his music career for years, so it was fun to see him perform. And we got to meet him after the show, he is as nice as he is talented.
My other favorite, which was one of those new-to-me groups, was Steel Wheels, a band from Virginia. They are very high energy, and great musicians. They were a crowd favorite, so hopefully they will be back. Give them a listen, this was one of my favorites that they did.
And another one. This is not as good of a recording, but this was simply electrifying live.
If you want to see some photos, check out my husband’s blog, One Eclectic Guy!
I promised a new project. This is yet another pile of incredibly soft and warm alpaca out of Stash Box 1.
That’s 4 skeins of Classic Elite Inca Alpaca, in a shade of brown that is close to coffee with just a splash of cream. I started this Sunday, and I’m about to finish.
The pattern is “22 Little Clouds”, a free scarf/shawl pattern by Martina Behm. It’s a simple triangular stockinette scarf, but with a doubling of the stitches for the border so it makes ruffles. I increased the size a bit since I wanted to use all of the yarn, so this adds up to over 600 stitches to bind off.
Tomorrow is the last day of this marathon conference, which is a good thing. I’m not sure I can stuff any more facts into my brain before stuff starts falling out the other side. We leave late tomorrow to head for home, then back to work next week to apply all of this new knowledge.
By the way, everybody wish Lewey a happy birthday! Tomorrow is his seventh birthday. We brought him home to his “forever home” 6 years ago. Here’s what he looked like in the car on the way home:
I sort of missed most of the past month, didn’t I. Oh well. I’ve been sick, then busy, then more busy. And I haven’t even knit all that much. That crazy bug that I picked up on our cruise has really hung in there, and more or less knocked me on my butt. It turned out to not be whooping cough, according to the test; didn’t get much better with a round of antibiotics, and has turned me into a total slug for the past few weeks. I’m still coughing though it’s finally getting better. All that whining is my latest excuse for not blogging.
I did start doing NaNoWriMo in a fit of insanity. I got to about 7000 words before I decided I really wasn’t having any fun, and wrote another 2000 or so words before I REALLY decided that, no, in fact I am not having fun with it this year, and abandoned ship.
Enough of the pity party. Here’s some fun stuff. My latest socks.
Click on that to get a better photo of the wild and crazy that is Lewey.
Getting that model to cooperate was no easy task. He was not one bit interested in helping me blog, he just wanted to eat the yarn. I didn’t take the time to shoot any more photos since the mutt smelled a little funky when I got close enough to tell. He just had a bath too, so I’m sure he thought it was necessary to roll in something at the dog park. Lovely.
I’ll forgive you if you’ve forgotten what yarn that is. It’s Frolicking Feet, from Done Roving (I got mine here), color is Pot o’ Gold. Do me a favor and go buy her out so I’m not tempted to buy more of this.
Here’s more fun. I needed some new shoes, and found these.
Closer…
Click on that one, too.
Knitted shoes! How cool! They have these on Amazon, here they are. Danskos are not cheap, but they are seriously some of the most comfortable shoes you can buy if you are on your feet all day. Take a clue from hospital nurses, Dansko clogs are what many of them wear. You will note that I’m wearing mine with hand knit socks, too.
I’m off to knit. I get to work the weekend, so I want to stockpile some stitches today.
Kim at filleverywindow is doing her annual Knitters’ Hunk contest. It’s only into day 2, but the competition is fierce. There are some prizes involved, but mostly lots of eye candy. There was a little dust up over an uncooperative blog platform involving a do-over, so the contest is just getting started over. There’s plenty of time left to ogle vote!
In fibery news, here’s what that Army Blanket Green Polwarth is spinning up to be. It’s really a nice soft sage color. I’m not quite half done spinning the fiber, it will be a two ply when it grows up.
And here’s what’s in the dye pot today.
That’s the first round, and there’s four ounces of Lincoln wool 2 ply handspun that I did awhile back, and four ounces of unspun BFL roving. Once that’s out of the dye pot, I have a hank of rhubarb-mordanted yarn that Birdsong sent in the first CSA shipment, and four ounces of BFL-silk roving to toss in. It will be interesting to see the difference in the two batches, if any.
Once again, it’s impossible to capture reds with a camera, at least with my mediocre photography skills. That’s close, but it’s a little bit less orange and more garnet in real life. The dye plant is madder root (but not from my CSA box).
Last but not least, a cat photo for your enjoyment. I heard some rustling around on my desk yesterday, and here’s what I found.
I forgot to post two great photos of the closet remodel. Lucy mostly hangs out in our upstairs, rarely venturing downstairs unless there’s Dungeness crab on the table for dinner. She’s a bit weird about where she chooses to hide, but it’s usually someplace back in my closet. The lady that designed the closet had instructions to mostly keep the hanging stuff high enough so it wouldn’t be covered in matted cat fur, and I ended up with a perfect spot for a kitty bed, right next to the heat register.
Want to see closer? I thought so.
And that’s where Lucy spends most of her day.
If the mailman cooperates and gets that package to Arizona, I’ll have a finished project post soon.
And here’s what it looks like in western Washington this morning.
A little different than the last several photos, eh?
It’s actually good to be home. At least I have today off and don’t have to go back to work until tomorrow. That gives me time to get all the sand out of my clothes and get back on a normal sleep schedule. We got home late last night and really didn’t do much except greet the pets and collapse into bed.
Lewey had a little accident while we were gone. We have a house sitter that lives here while we’re gone. She emailed us that Lewey had gone off on a mad dash to chase Willie one day, catching his toenail in the process and ripping it mostly off. He bled all over the place, and she rushed him to our vet, where he proceeded to bleed all over their office as well. He also bit Nancy, our house sitter, in the process of the rescue and scooping up to the vet, though that wasn’t too serious. He ended up with a general anesthetic and surgery to remove what was left of the nail, and is now in a bandage and a fancy plastic protective splint. He’s limping around, and not his usual perky self. He’s on antibiotics and pain meds, and needs to be carried up and down the stairs and out to do his “business”.
He gets the bandage off tomorrow. He also has a “cone of shame” to wear when we’re not around to keep an eye on him. Willie of course is swishing around like the King of Siam, pretty pleased with himself.
I’m off to empty the suitcases, not my favorite part of a vacation!
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