And Another UFO Becomes an FO!

For those of you keeping track, I’m trying to whittle down the UFO pile into something more manageable this summer. Here’s a list of what I started with, and a photo or two of the whole pile.

1) True Blood Faery sweater

2) Crazy King Cole Mohair thing, um, stole

3) Wollmeise Squashed Frog Socks

4) Grey Ribbed Peace Fleece Socks with red accents

5) Frootloops Morning Glory Stole

6) Puppy Mittens

7) Evenstar Shawl

8 ) Baktus Shawlette

9) Euroflax Linen Facecloth

10) Spirit In The Sky Beret

I think that’s it. The crossed through stuff is finished finished finished. There are a couple of things in that mess that will eventually get frogged and repurposed, but I think eventually most of it will be finished finished finished as well.

And here’s the last finished finished finished thing:

Spirit In The Sky Beret

Project Details:

Started: Hmmm. This is the second go-around for this yarn. It started as a pair of socks way back when in 2007. I took it with me to a knitting retreat in Idaho, and left the second skein of yarn under the bed or something when I left. It hung around as a half-knit single sock for awhile, since I was pretty sure that as soon as I ripped it out that I’d find the other skein. I finally ripped and started this in April 2008.

Finished: Last week.

Pattern: Here.

Yarn: Sock Hop sock yarn, color Spirit In The Sky. One of my favorite oldies songs, by Norman Greenbaum. Of course you can’t get this anymore. If you could, I’d have finished the socks, now wouldn’t have I?

Needles: Size 3.0 double points

For: ?? It doesn’t quite fit me, and I’m just not a beret person, really. It’s a little small for me, and will probably fit a kid in the family. It depends on who gets here first to claim it.

What I learned: Keep track of your yarn while on vacation. I’d have knit this to fit me if I hadn’t been worrying about running out of yarn. The pattern is pretty easy, but I’d be a little nervous knitting it with just one skein of Koigu, which is what the pattern calls for. If you want a slouchier beret, you might need a little more yarn. I thought about doing stripes, but I like what the orange yarn does all by itself, so a kid hat it will be.

And just because I want to, here’s a pretty flower photo I snapped today.

And I can’t for the life of me figure out why that smiley thing is in front of the Baktus shawl instead of a number 8, but I can’t get rid of it, so I guess it stays.

ETA: I fixed the smiley face, thanks to Chris!  8)

My Pretties…

But first, that FO!

This has been in the UFO pile long enough. It’s now done, and I can use it. It’s a linen facecloth. I’m not doing the whole Project Details thing on this one. The yarn is Euroflax linen, the pattern is from Knitters’ Stash. Here’s the Rav link for the pattern. This one is the Lacy Vine pattern. The needles I used were 3.75 mm. I probably will make more of these, if only because I have a bunch of this stuff in the stash, all in different colors, of course, so I can’t use it for much else. The Euroflax is sort of stringy and harsh feeling while you knit it, and splits like crazy. It softens up amazingly when you wash it though.

Enough of that. On to the “pretties” of the title. Click on these photos to really get a good look. Try not to drool on your keyboard.

Those are all of my spindles, out for inspection. Well, all of them except the Ashford boat anchor. Oh, OK, I’ll show you that one, too.

That thing weighs over 2 1/2 ounces, compared to less than an ounce for most of the other ones. Next time I get each of them empty, I plan on weighing them and recording it for future reference. Somebody remind me to do that. I usually think about it when it’s close to full and I’m wondering how much fiber is wound on. It would be very handy to know what the empty spindle weighed.

Here’s another photo of the pretty ones. Clickety-click.

From left to right:

1) My latest acquisition, a Greensleeves Damsel Monique. Very lightweight, great for lace. The whorl is redwood burl with purpleheart, and the shaft is mahogany. The fiber is an Abby Batt, in the color Glitterpigeon.

2) Cascade Spindles Mt. St. Helens. This is just a great dependable spinner. The fiber is a merino silk blend, I think it’s from Louet.

3) Bosworth Midi, in Zebrawood. I want a Bossie in every size and wood, really. The fiber is a merino-sparkly blend that I got at the spin-in on Whidbey earlier this year. I’m actually almost done with the plying here, fortunately. I’m not sure how much more I could get on this thing.

4) Another Cascade spindle, this time the Cougar. This one weighs next to nothing and is terrific for lace. The fiber is more Louet, 80/20 merino silk, color Golden Hibiscus.

5) Last but not least, my first Butterfly Girl spindle. This has a whorl made from Italian resin. It’s also quite lightweight. I say first since there might just be a second one from her shop on the way. The fiber is also hers, a merino/bamboo/firestar batt called Blue Morpho. There might just be some more fiber coming this week, too.

You might note that while I seem to be happiest with only three or four knitting projects going at any one time, I seem to have absolutely no problem having a spinning WIP on every available spindle and bobbin.

After I got my wheel, the spindles sort of sat around some. They’ve gotten a lot more use in the last few months, and I’m rarely without one close at hand. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my wheel, but if somebody put a gun to my head and made me choose, I’d pick the spindles.

I’m off to check the mailbox for the umpteenth time today. Have a good weekend, everybody!

Lunchtime Knitting

Just because I can.

This is another UFO out of that big UFO pile I showed you a couple weeks ago. It’s a washcloth, so you’d think it wouldn’t have taken me two years or more to finish the thing, wouldn’t you? I picked it out of the pile after the Baktus was finished as an easy one to get done. I’m on the last pattern repeat, then a simple garter border, and it’s done.

And done will be done, even if it’s only a washcloth.

By the way, John reminded me that I never shared our Williamsburg photos with you. He put together a Picasa photo album, if anybody is interested!

Baby Blue Baktus

Finally, something finished around Chez Knitting Doctor! This came off the blocking board this morning. We had a bit of a discussion about whether it was acceptable for John to take the photos while he was still in his bathrobe, but once we got past that, it was blog-ready.

What do you think? I even put on lipstick for the event. Per his request, we have no photos of John in his bathrobe.

Project Details:

Started: Um, how to answer that. I started a plain ribbed scarf with this yarn way back in 2008. It sat in UFO-ville for a very long time. I dragged it out earlier this year, didn’t feel the ribbed scarf love, and ripped it all out. I found the Baktus pattern and started over with that in February of this year.

Finished: Officially this morning. I finished the knitting on it last week, and washed and blocked it this weekend.

Pattern: Lacy Baktus. The pattern for the lacy version is on the Flickr page.

Yarn: Butternut Woolens Silk Garden. The color name is Blue Flax. It’s a 50-50 merino silk blend, and you can’t get it any more. I should have bought this stuff by the truckload. It’s a DK weight, and just the softest, squooshiest stuff you can imagine. This was 252 yards per skein, and I used two of them.

Needles: Size 5.00mm straight needles from my faux tortoiseshell collection.

For: Me

What I learned: Sometimes you have to experiment a little to get the right pattern-yarn combo. This yarn would have been totally wasted in a plain ribbed scarf. This is a pretty versatile pattern. You start with one of the corners and four stitches, knit and increase along one side until you’ve used half your yarn, then decrease till you have four stitches. I learned that being cocky, as usual, is a recipe for ripping. I knit till I’d used what I thought was half the yarn, started decreasing, and ran out, had to rip out half the knitting and start over. You can use any weight yarn with this pattern, and it works well with sock yarn, especially in the plain version without the lace holes. If you wanted to make a bigger shawl with this pattern, I’d probably recommend doing the increases and decreases at a more rapid rate. This one measures just a little over 8 feet long, and 22 inches down the center spine. If you did a full size shawl with this, it would have 10 foot tails.

Check out the Ravelry pages for the lacy version and the original to get an idea of what you can do with this pattern.

I’m more than happy with this one. I predict that this will be worn often. I also predict that this will not be the last Baktus around here. This would be a great pattern for those hand spun skeins that are accumulating in the stash!

More Williamsburg!

We’re still here on vacation, and I’ve managed to take hundreds of photos. There is a ton of stuff to see and do here, and we’re making a grand attempt to take it all in. Today is our last full day here, then we drive back to the DC area for a day, then home.

I did manage to find the yarn shop, and even bought a couple of things. Now there’s a surprise!

I also found some lovely sheep. These are in Colonial Williamsburg. They keep them in the pastures around the old reconstructed town. They shear them every year, and you can buy their wool in the shops. John drew the line at me buying a fleece and trying to stuff it into the overhead bin on the plane, so I settled for some finished wool. I’ll show photos of the loot in a different post when I photograph them. The sheep are Leicester Longwool, an 18th century breed from England.

This next photo might be familiar to those of you in the medical profession who use digoxin in your practice. This stuff (foxglove) grows all over the place here.

The nice thing about having a timeshare is that we have a kitchen. Even I can get tired of eating out for every meal. We tend to have lunch out, then cook dinner at “home”. That way we can have wine with dinner and nobody has to be the designated driver. Here I am stirring the stew pot.

Notice that like any good Colonial woman, I’m doing two domestic chores at once.

Speaking of spinning, I found the weaving and spinning cottage in Williamsburg yesterday. John gets the award of the week for standing patiently while I took photos and asked the very knowledgeable women every question I could think of.

The last place we toured yesterday was the Decorative Arts Museum, which has a fabulous collection of Colonial (and some later periods) furniture, pottery, quilts, and other household decorative items. I could have spent days there alone. The museum is on the site of the former Public Hospital, which was an insane asylum in Colonial times. A corner of the museum has a display of some of the items from the hospital. Here is John, demonstrating that perhaps I have driven him crazy after all.

Today we take the ferry across the James to the Smithfield area. It’s supposed to be hot and humid. The weather here makes me appreciate the Pacific Northwest. If I don’t melt in the heat, I’ll be back again with more photos next time!

Vacation!

We’re off on another adventure. This time it’s to Colonial Williamsburg. We’re using a week of timeshare as a base of operations. After a bit of a hectic week at work, I raced home, packed in under an hour, and we headed for the airport, where we spent the night. We got up Friday morning to catch an early flight. Here we are, starting the morning properly.

We went to the Jamestown Settlement yesterday and spent most of the day there. There’s a terrific museum that gives a very good overview of the Colonial period, and a reconstructed fort. We also visited the full size replicas of the ships that brought the colonists from Europe, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. I surprised the nice young man stationed on the Susan Constant by asking for his photo. I’m pretty sure nobody has ever handed him a partly-knitted sock before. He was a good sport, though, and smiled like this is a normal activity.

As you can see, it was a beautiful sunny day yesterday, even if it was a bit windy. I’m pretty sure that crossing the ocean on any one of these ships wouldn’t exactly be like a cruise. I never did find the bar on this one.

Our friend Byron lives near DC and is here for part of the week with us. Here he is with John and another friend we met along the way.

We’re off for another fun day. We’re heading back to Jamestown today to see the original historical site, then to Yorktown. I’ve already scouted out the yarn shop in Williamsburg, but don’t let the boys know that. I’m keeping that as a surprise for them.

WIPs and UFOs in Abundance!

OK, I finally got all the WIPs and UFOs out and lined up for a photo shoot. Here’s a photo of the whole mess.

There are ten unfinished projects in that pile. Let me show you a photo of everything out of the bags.

This is rather unsettling for someone who insists that three WIPs is my comfort zone. I clearly need to get to work and get some weeding out done. Rather than overwhelm you with descriptions of all of these at once, I’ll do them one at a time.

First up is the Lacy Baktus.

I’m about half done with this. This is pretty much mindless knitting, as long as I remember to keep track of what row of the pattern I’m on. I started this one back in February. Let’s see how much of this I can get done between now and the next post, shall we?

Sunbreak

We’ve had another of those weird spring days here. Cold, pouring rain, grey, and then all of a sudden, bright and sunny. That didn’t last, but it got me outside with the camera to try to get a decent photo of the color of my Evenstar shawl. This will have to do, since it’s pouring rain again. At least it’s raining in the front yard. The sun is still shining in the back yard. Weird.

That’s the best it’s going to get. The inside photos of this color just look pale grey-blue. In real life, it’s a pale clear aquamarine color. The yarn is a cashmere silk 2-ply light laceweight from Colourmart, for those of you not keeping up.

Oh, good, now it’s a downpour out back too, that was worrying me.

I never did show any photos of our trip out to Whidbey Island for the spin-in and visit with Dorothy. Here are a couple of Deception Pass, probably the most photographed spot in Washington. Click these to embiggen.

Here’s John, as usual, not following directions:

And here are a couple from the spinning day:

There were some serious opportunities for fiber stash enhancement, and I did not pass many of them by unheeded. Here’s one, already on the spindle.

This is a blend of deep red, blue and purple wool, along with some firestar sparkly stuff. There’s about three ounces of it total, and I think it will be a light fingering when I’m done with it. We’ll see. I think that would make a pretty little neck thing, either a scarf or a cowl.

I’ve been spending much of the last few days that I’ve had off trying to organize my fiber office. Fiber Office, that sounds sort of official, doesn’t it? Much better than the Pit of Despair, which is what it usually looks like. Now that it’s a bit more organized, I have discovered that I have way too many WIPS and UFO’s than my usual comfort zone allows. I really need to get knitting on some of them. Hopefully you all will see some progress soon on things.

One last thing. I’ve been looking at my blog stats. The funniest three search strings that got people here lately are “big stonking circular shawl”, “clean knitters stories”, and “goofy knitting”. I’m not making that up. I’m off to knit…

ETA: “pee blog knit”. One silly person actually got to my blog by typing that into Google. If you’re that person, please comment and explain exactly what you were looking for.

Everybody’s Doing It…

There might be a “real” post later on. I had a great weekend last weekend at the Spin-In on Whidbey Island. Dorothy and her husband Bill were great hosts, as was Maggie the Corgi girl. Dorothy unfortunately didn’t feel well, but she soldiered on and finished her sock yarn for the class anyway. When I get the photos together, I’ll post something. My sister will be here visiting this weekend, so I need to get my butt in the shower so we get to the airport on time. Have a great weekend!

Fires of Mount Doom

The Evenstar shawl project almost bit the dust last night.  I’m behind, as usual. This is a “mystery shawl”, and the clues come out every other Friday. Today clue 5 is due to be released, and I’m just starting clue 3. Every other row so far has been a plain knit row, and on the last row of clue 2, I put in a lifeline in case of trouble. In this case the lifeline was the trouble. I’m using a very fine crochet thread in white, as I was a little nervous about my usual dental floss cutting the near cobweb yarn I’m using.

Anyway, I had done the lifeline on the last row of clue 2, done the first row of clue 3, and set it aside a couple days ago. I picked it up last night, knit around the second row, then set it down while we had dinner. After dinner is where the trouble began. Actually it was after a couple of glasses of wine and a long phone conversation with my sister, so I could probably blame her, though I suspect it was more the wine. I picked it up and looked at it, mind you this was in a dark TV room with only a reading light, I noticed a long loop of yarn back a whole row or two. I’ve done this before, somehow getting a loop of yarn not pulled all the way through, so it leaves a loose loop just hanging there. Crap crap crappity crap. I tinked back, messing up a couple of repeats in the process, and got partway around the row, thinking that I was royally screwed.

Some Knitting Angel must have been sitting on my shoulder. Instead of continuing to tink deeper and deeper into the Mines of Moria, I decided rather wisely to set it aside and go to bed. I woke up this morning thinking about it, and reluctantly pulled it out of the bag to investigate. In the light of day, what I thought was a mistake loop of yarn back two rows, you guessed it….it was my long loop of lifeline hanging there. Nope, didn’t need to tink at all. This, as you might imagine, resulted in some well-deserved self-head-slapping. And now I was still left with the mess from tinking. On a couple of the repeats, I dropped a couple of stitches down to the lifeline. I counted around carefully, marking the offending repeats with pins, then had a bit more coffee before proceeding.

After a serious consideration of going out on a quest to cast this whole thing into the Fires of Mount Doom, I decided to suck it up and fix it. Armed with teeny tiny crochet hooks and teeny tiny double points, I got those blasted fracked up repeats fixed. Here’s a photo.

And here’s a photo of that lifeline.

I’m leaving it in, of course. It might just save my sorry knitting-butt yet.

We’re off for the weekend. Dorothy and her husband have invited us and the mutts up to Whidbey Island for the weekend for a local spin-in. I need to go get packed. I’ve got the camera packed, so you might even get to see some photos!

Weather Report

This is for Lora. She and her husband are moving to the Pacific Northwest this year, and I got a very plaintive email recently asking about the weather. (Remember when you did this, Kris?)

Here’s the photo of the day. It was cool and grey this morning, then all of a sudden I looked up and the sun was out, one of those famous sun breaks that we get.

Not the best photo in the world, but yes, Lora, the sun does shine here. This is not an April Fools’ joke. Of course it’s supposed to rain all weekend, and it’s only 40 degrees right now. It’s sort of a wimpy little sun break, but sun nonetheless. You can even see shadows on the lawn. All the trees are leafing out, the camellias are bloomed, the pansies are out in full force. I caught a Stellar’s Jay in our front tree right outside my home office yesterday collecting twigs for a nest, so baby birds can’t be far behind. The boy ducks on the lake are starting to jockey around for the attention of the girl ducks. I think spring might be my favorite season here, but then I say that about summer and fall when they roll around, too.

What’s your favorite season where you live?

Blue

As I was rummaging through projects this morning to take photos, I noticed a striking similarity.

Really, I’m generally more eclectic in color choices than this would lead you to believe.

From the top: Baktus, in a lovely merino silk blend DK; Evenstar Mystery Shawl; and my latest spinning project. This is Yarn Chef fiber, I’m too lazy to get up and find the band, but it’s a silk blend of some sort. I’ll post more about it some other time.

I had a little dust-up with those two knitting projects the past few days, both stupid bone-head knitting mistakes. Making an error and having to tink back on a near-cobweb weight shawl is a little more understandable, at least. I got stuck on one patterned row where the stitch markers shifted one stitch sideways all along the row. On one repeat my count was off. I counted, recounted, tried to figure out where the error was, and finally tinked back the whole patterned row, then back the preceding plain knit row until I got to the repeat where the count was off (almost all the way around the row, I might add). By the time I got it tinked back, the count was now right. I counted, recounted, said a few choice swear words, and proceeded forward again, holding my breath and counting every single blasted repeat as I went. There was no error, I just think I can’t count. Or perhaps one of the stitch markers had migrated temporarily under a stitch. Or who knows, the Knitting Goddess might be trying to teach me a lesson. There wasn’t even bourbon involved in this one, I swear.

The blue scarf mistake is really bone-headed, though, almost enough so that I don’t want to put it out here for all of you to laugh at me. I figure it’s my civic duty, however. If you click on over to the pattern, you’ll see that, after the initial set up rows, it’s a simple 8 row pattern repeat. Simple, simple, simple. I got 24 repeats done correctly earlier this week, did a couple more repeats, then picked it up to knit again yesterday. The repeat basically is the lace yarn over row with 3 garter stitch ridges in between. On the last two repeats, there were only 2 garter stitch rows. Damn. Out it came, and I reknitted another two repeats, and noticed that I still only had 2 garter ridges. Out it came again. I’m embarrassed to say that I did this drill one more time before I figured out the mistake.

If you’ll look at the pattern, the last two rows, rows 7 & 8, are plain knit. Because of the way the pattern formats, it printed out on two pages, with rows 7 & 8 on the second page. You can see where this is going, can’t you? I did the first 24 repeats with all 8 pattern rows, then inexplicably just changed the pattern to a 6 row repeat, omitting those last 2 rows. I figured this out last night during about the quintillionth NCIS rerun I watched, at about 1 AM, and just cracked up. If I was Tony DiNozzo, Mark Harmon would have smacked me hard on the back of the head. It’s now fixed, and I’ve hand-written those last two rows on the first page so the pattern is all together, and hopefully I won’t do that again.

It’s late, I’m off to bed. I’ll try to find some other idiotic knitting goofs to regale you with next time!

Blogiversary!

And I almost missed it, imagine that. Actually I started a post earlier today. WordPress has been nagging me to upgrade to the newest version for a while now, so I went ahead and clicked the button that said “OK, already, upgrade me and quit bugging me”*. Then I went to the blog to check to make sure everything happened like it should, and on first glance, it did. Then I noticed that all the little things that you click on,  like the words that should tell you to “comment here” were in German. Um, right. Turns out there’s also a new version of the theme that I use, which is by a German web designer. It ended up taking me the better part of a beautiful spring day to get it fixed. By that time I was done blogging.

Now I’m back, and no longer in a blog-induced snit. I think I’ve fixed stuff, but if you notice weirdness, let me know.

Six years. That’s how long I’ve been doing the knit-blog thing. I started a knitting journal on the computer several months prior to that, then just decided one day to do it. I have to say it’s been a nearly life-transforming experience. I’ve learned so much about knitting, about “computering”, and about writing. I’ve met some incredible people, both in real life and “imaginary”. I’ve shared food stories, travel stories, and just stories about life in general. You’ve all learned about my foibles, my inability to drink and knit at the same time, and about my inability to walk and drink at the same time. You’ve all perhaps perceived that I’m one of the slowest knitters on the planet, but that I make it up in enthusiasm for each new project.

I haven’t been posting much over the past year, but it’s been a challenging year of transition in many ways. Most of it is work-related, which I can’t really write about here. That has gotten immeasurably better with the new job, though it’s been a process getting there. I hope you will all stick with me, since I have no intention of giving up the blog just yet. I have a bunch of stuff to show you, both spun and knitted, so hang in there! Thanks for reading, commenting, and being friends!

*Well, it really didn’t say that, but you know what I mean.