Tidying up

I posted a photo on Facebook a couple of days ago, of part of my fake tortoise shell straight knitting needle collection.

I had a whole bunch more of these upstairs in a big crock. Some are paired up, most just loose and jumbled together.

These tend to get more fragile as they age. I found a handful of broken needles when I sorted through them.

I soaked the whole bunch in water overnight and am now working on pairing them up and tying them together with a bit of yarn. The ones that were already paired are held together with rubber bands, which tends to leave a sticky residue on the needles. Once they’re all cleaned up and sorted, they’ll be a lot more fun to use.

And no, apparently I don’t need to buy any more of these.

Really, I can stop anytime I want

Things often heard around here:

“I’ll just finish that white stripe and then go get some chores done.”

“Oh look! The green stripe! That’s so pretty, I’ll get that one done.”

“Oh man, I just pulled a whole yarn blob out of the middle of that ball. I better knit some of that up so it doesn’t tangle up in the bag.”

“LOOK! YELLOW! IT’S THE YELLOW STRIPE!” I’ve knit a whole sock worth of this yarn, I know damn well what color comes next.

“I’ll be just a minute, let me finish this row.”

John:

“You’re knitting in the round, the whole damn sock is one row. Put it down!”

Progress!

I’ve been knitting this shawl forever. It starts out with a big garter stitch triangle, then you pick up stitches on two sides and knit a wide lace border. I finally finished that part this morning.

The last section is a knitted-on lace edging, which is knit perpendicular to the shawl body, knitting the last stitch of every other row together with a shawl border stitch to attach it. It’s easier to do than to describe it.

Here’s another photo.

This yarn is so squishy soft that I want to keep knitting it forever. It’s from Blacker Yarns.

I might have a few more colors of this in the stash. It also comes in a DK weight, I’d love a sweater out of this.

In other shopping news, I’ve been coveting this bag forever. I finally broke down and bought it. It amuses me that it’s the same color as my Subaru. Army Blanket Green!

It’s Not My Fault

I’ve generally tried to keep the knitting projects down to three or four things. Usually it’s a sock, a sweater, a lace thing, and maybe a simple accessory item.

As of this morning, I had a sock, a sweater, 4 lace things, and 2 accessory items.

I bought a bunch of yarn a couple of weeks ago. I took photos of it today and got it entered into my Ravelry database. When I was closing the lid on the storage box, one skein hopped right out, rolled over to the yarn winder, then jumped onto the needles. So now I have TWO socks in progress.

IMG_7036 IMG_7032

The yarn is Signature 4 ply self striping, from West Yorkshire Spinners. It’s a BFL/wool/nylon blend that will make fine socks. The color is Owl.

John took one look at that and claimed it. Here’s where I got it, in case you need more sock yarn.

Spinning

I haven’t done much spinning the the past several months. I’m not sure why, since it is such a relaxing thing to do at the end of a stressful day.

This fiber has been on my wheel forever. I had just a little bit to finish, and sat down this morning and spun up the rest of it.

It’s a Polworth/silk blend, from Three Waters Farm on Etsy. I’m going to leave it as a single, there should be enough for a “neck thing”. This was a dream to spin.

I also dug out all of my spindles and played a little bit today. Here’s one.

That is a Golding spindle, which I love. The fiber is a very fine merino/silk/yak blend.

Last but not least, a photo of my wheel.

That is my treasured Watson Marie. Andrew Watson, the maker, sadly died a couple of years ago. His father, James, has found a new wheel maker, and they are back in business, but I am very grateful to have one of Andrew’s wheels. He was an artist, and a pleasure to work with. I was on his waiting list for a couple of years, and then it took several months for him to build the wheel.

I often joke about what I would grab on the way out of the burning house, but I think I’d try to save this, it’s one of a kind.

She also needs a good cleaning and a new drive band. That’s on my agenda for tomorrow.

I’d Rather Be Knitting

I get to go to the dentist again today. I’m in the midst of a root canal, I had the first stage of it done a couple of weeks ago. It was not painful, but just long and unpleasant. The second half is today. The first stage was complicated by the partial crown that had been on that tooth fracturing a couple of days after, landing me in my regular dentist’s office for an emergency partial filling to patch it up. That happened the afternoon before we left for 10 days in Mexico. The rest of the old crown has fractures in it, so I’m expecting the same thing to happen today.

I also had several hours of rather weird vertigo hit me after the first part of the root canal. John is driving me today in case that happens again.

Sigh. At least I have dental insurance. And I have an appointment with my usual dentist later this month for a new crown.

Here’s what I’d rather be doing.

New Project Tuesday!

It was actually New Project Thursday, but I’m way behind.

I have three “regular” sized lacy-lace shawls on the needles, and then that Balvraid Hap thing that is heavier weight, with a big garter stitch center and a bit of lace at the edges. The last thing I needed was another lace project.

Meet Miss Ivory:

I found this on the Knitting In The Loft Ravelry group. They have an annual year long lace project designed by one of the moderators. This one is a sampler scarf that features complex Japanese lace stitch patterns. I couldn’t resist, so went digging in the stash. I found a number of things* that would work just fine, but settled on this yarn.

It is an undyed Bluefaced Leicester/silk blend, fingering weight. I actually bought this to do some plant dyeing, but I like it as it is in the natural color. The yarn base is called Ivoire, from Acme Fibres.

The next chart gets more complicated. The lace is patterned on both sides, and includes a bunch of twisted and cabled stitches that should make me pay attention. This is definitely not cocktail hour knitting.**

I took updated photos of all the projects that are in the (mostly) current rotation. Next time I’ll do a WIP Update post.

*Who am I kidding? I had easily dozens of yarn choices that would work for this. I have more yarn than some yarn shops.

**Someone remind me of this down the road when I get cocky. I am putting lifelines in this one after each pattern section.

RIP

No, nobody died. I am knitting away on the big garter triangle section of my Balvraid Hap.

About two inches back, I noticed a couple of wacky yarn loops, but chose to ignore the better angel on my shoulder. The evil guy on the other shoulder kept saying “oh that will block out”.

This is one of those shawls that increases with every row. I am was almost at the top, and noticed that I missed a yarn over at the beginning of a row two rows back. That had to be fixed, so I finally decided to take it back and get rid of the ugly stitches.

There they are. One of them is actually a tiny knot where one or more of the plies were knotted. The other one is just a weird unspun bit.

So I’ll get it back on the needle and forge ahead. I’m certain that this would have annoyed me forever, so a couple hours of extra knitting is just fine.

By the way, this yarn is just divine. It’s Blacker Yarn Swan 4 ply. I want a whole bathtub of this stuff to wallow around in. You can buy merino wool a lot cheaper, but not as nice as this. If they have any left, go buy some. (I might have cleaned them out.)

New Sweater Friday

I needed another knitting project. I finished my Rogue sweater almost three months ago. I’ve been dithering around, trying to find the perfect yarn/pattern match since then.

Here were my criteria for the perfect Next Sweater. It needed to be stash yarn. I have sweater quantities of yarn for over 20 sweaters. I’m not buying more until I use some of that.

I want a cardigan, shawl collar sweater. It needs to be knit in pieces and seamed, just my personal preference.

After a lot of research, I settled on this yarn.

This is actually from deep stash. We took a trip to Orcas Island in 2005, and I bought this from a farm we found there. It’s a gorgeous natural brown wool alpaca blend. It’s been patiently waiting in the stash for just the right moment.

Here’s the pattern.

Isn’t that lovely?

Here’s the pattern link, it’s Shinsetsu.

And here’s my start.

The pattern uses a new-to-me cast on, a ribbed cable cast on. It’s like a regular cable cast on, except you do every other stitch knit or purl. It makes a nice firm lower edge that works well with knit one/purl one ribbing.

In other news, it’s our anniversary today. John and I were married 24 years ago today. Here we are in a recent photo from our Italy trip.

134 Rows

That’s how many rows I have left to finish this shawl. Of course I currently have 425 stitches on the needles, and that increases to 693 by the end of the shawl.

I have 2 balls of this yarn, about 1700 yards total. The shawl takes about 1600 yards. Plenty, right?

I went looking for the second hank of this just now. It doesn’t appear to be in any of the usual hiding places.

I can see a house tear-apart in my future. This is not helping the migraine that I woke up with today.

Half a pair

I don’t normally have two pairs of socks going at once, but when we left on vacation, the sock that I was working on was on expensive sterling silver needles. I didn’t want to risk losing them to the TSA, so I started this pair on cheap Brittany birch needles. I finished the first of the pair today (during a particularly unsatisfying Seahawks loss). The yarn is Paintbox Sock yarn, which I won from Kim earlier this year in the Knitters’ Hunk contest. This is fairly inexpensive sock yarn, but very nice. I think it will make workhorse socks that wear well, but are soft and comfortable. I’m finding that some of the ridiculously expensive merino sock yarn doesn’t wear so well for socks. This is 25% nylon, which in my sock-knitting experience lasts forever. This isn’t as tightly spun as Opal sock yarn, which is my all-time favorite for long wear, but still should hold up well. I’ll report back in a year or so.

John saw this yarn and immediately claimed it as good “guy sock” yarn. It’s been a bit since I finished a pair for him, so he gets these.

Sistine Chapel

We leave Rome today, headed to Florence. The highlight yesterday was an evening tour of the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel. There were 22 of us, plus our two guides and the Swiss guard that escorted us. We were the only people there, which was magnificent.

We saw an exhibition at home recently of many of the panels from the ceiling, but the real thing, all on one ceiling, was breathtaking. Being able to see it at night, without the crowds, left me speechless.

Not sure what the rest of the trip holds, but It doesn’t really matter after that.