The Kneedler

Away for awhile.

2010-07-10T07:50:00.001-07:00

Life is a bit hectic this summer, and I'm not finding much time to blog right now. I'm not sewing much either, and my knitting is progressing so slowly that I don't have much to talk about. Rather than try to blog and just not getting around to it each week I'm taking a break for the time being.

But I'll leave you with something I did sew, even if it's from a long time ago. I made this dress for my niece Madison when she was about 18-20 months old. According to the pattern it was the right size. But she was able to wear it for the first time when I saw her at my mother's house 2 weeks ago, now that she is going to be 5 in a few months. She is quite small for her age, but I think that the pattern was a bit off, too!

The fabric is a print of vintage little girl paper dolls and dresses and is perfect for Madi. She's at the age where everything must be pink (or purple if need be). It's a cotton print I bought at Poppy Fabrics, which is a clue as to how long ago I made this. I added a few vintage buttons at the front neck, and it's as cute as can be on her.

Hope everbody has a great summer, and I'll talk to you again in the near future.

Not much going on.

2010-06-20T13:43:00.000-07:00

I know this makes for a very boring post, but I've not made much progress on either of my knitting projects, haven't sewn anything, or done anything else of a creative nature.

I'm still finding that I am pretty much out of energy by the end of the work week and a 2-day weekend isn't nearly enough to fully recharge my batteries. So, I'm not doing as much knitting as I used to. But I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things as time goes by.

In lieu of anything more exciting to talk about, I will leave you with photos of the yarn I purchased while on vacation. The teal is for me, and the charcoal tweed is for TW. He wanted a vest with some detail on it, like a small cable around a v-neck and down the fronts and the wool tweed will be perfect for him. Not sure yet what the teal wool/silk will be, but as I only have 7 balls it will probably be some sort of vest-like thing as well. TBD later!

A great trip.

2010-06-06T11:45:00.001-07:00

Our trip to Montana was wonderful! In spite of driving through rain, hail, and snow on the drive there we had good weather while actually in the Glacier National Park vicinity. Montana is a beautiful state and we definitely will want to go back sometime.

My planned knitting project was perfect for the trip. It was simple enough to not need undue attention and the yarn has been a real treat to knit on. I neglected to take pictures while actually on the trip, but I've been using it as my ferry commute knitting and have made good progress since getting home.

To make the knitting more interesting and to eliminate any seams in this very textured yarn I decided to knit the vest from the shoulders down to the hem all in one piece. This will allow me to adjust the fit as well as to avoid seams. The white bits in the photo are from the provisional crocheted cast-on, where I started each shoulder separately and knit down to the armholes. Once the two fronts and the back were done they were all joined together into one piece for the body. I'm increasing a bit at the side "seams" (where the orange markers are) and increasing every other right-side row to create the wedge shaped center fronts.

While in Montana I stopped in Knits 'n Needles, the local yarn shop in Whitefish, the town where our hotel was. What a terrific little shop! Lots of charm, lots of great yarns, and a very friendly and helpful owner, Aimee. She had good sample garments scattered around, as well, which I can now prove to be a huge help in selling yarn. As I was poking around, Thomas spotted a sample child's vest made from a soft wool tweed (Berocco's Blackstone Tweed) and immediately asked me if I could make him a new vest suing this yarn. He's never looked at any yarn by itself and visualized what he might want from it, but seeing it already knitted up into a garment similar to what he'd want made all the difference. He picked out a beautiful deep charcoal grey colour with an almost purple undertone and tan, rust, and light grey flecks. I found for myself a beautiful deep teal silk and wool blend that glows like a jewel. It's from a yarn company I hadn't heard of before called Yarns Northwest. I really love souvenir yarn, and this time we got his and hers yarns!

Just getting started

2010-05-16T15:32:00.001-07:00

Considering that I'm quite eager to get some new projects underway, I'm going about it in a rather lackadaisical manner. I've been diddling with yarn and needles for these two projects for some time and while progress is discernible it's on the subtle side, shall we say.

The first project is Sandrine by Bonnie Marie Burns of Chic Knits. It's a pullover sweater with a pretty wrap bodice in a rib stitch, and a plain lower body. I'm using a bamboo/cotton blend yarn in a deim blue from elan.com called Bamboo Fusion. I like the contrast between the shiny bamboo strands and the matte cotton ones, but the yarn splits like crazy and so I eliminated all of the possible uses that included complex stitch work such a lace or cables. Simple ribbing and stockinette stitch I can handle so Sandrine is turning out to be a good choice for this yarn.

Sandrine is knit from the top down without any seams, which I really enjoyed while making my Spring Peasy so will try the technique again, this time in the round as there is no center front opening. The pattern also includes a wrap cardigan view which looks very nice in photos I've seen of it. So far, I've managed to get a gauge swatch done and the cast-on plus 2 rows of the neckline. Not much but at least it's now on the needles.

Secondly, I'm trying out some ideas for a project to take on vacation next week. For me, vacation knitting should be easy, uncomplicated, big enough to last for the trip without being too big to fit into a suitcase, and enjoyable to work on. At Stitches West last March I bought a couple of skeins of this wonderful silk/wool blend with an interesting thick/thin texture. It's called Ellie from Brooks Farm Fiber. The yarn changes very dramatically in diameter from very thin to really thick but overall works up at about a worsted weight gauge or a little bigger. The fabric alternates between very airy and light and quite dense. The colour isn't good in either photo; it's actually a vibrant deep blue/violet.

I had intended to make a vest out of it and have been searching for some time for the shape and style I wanted. After a lot of perusing of my knitting books and magazines I finally found the right combination of simple but interesting styling and yarn requirements in Vogue Knitting's spring/summer 2009 issue. It's style #11 and if all you look at is the photo you might never look twice. The neckline of the garment is edged with a very fluffy feather boa that hides everything in it's path, and in true Vogue Knitting form, the model is clutching the front of the garment with her had so there's no possible way to tell what this thing actually looks like. Only by looking at the line drawing could I see there was a very nice vest lurking under all the frou-frou.

The front pieces of the vest are shaped almost in a wedge form at the front edge and fall in folds from the neckline. In Vogue's version the wedges are sewn together along the center front line to make the vest more of a pullover tunic. I don't know if I'll do that or just let the fronts hang; it will have to wait until I'm done. I'm still tweaking withe the gauge to get it right. The vest is so simple that it's easily adjusted if my gauge is off but I want to like how the fabric looks.

So I will be off to Glacier National Park on my annual road trip with TW. I'll definitely not be blogging next week and may not the next one either, but I'll be back in June for sure. See you then!

Springing forward

2010-05-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

Given the blustery, showery weather today it seems more like February than May, but it's still spring in my mind no matter what the weather. So I have finally finished my first sweater project for the season. While it's quite a simple pattern it took a very (for me) long time to complete; I've been working on it sinch early March. No particular reason for the long time; I just didn't work on it as furiously as I usually work on my knitting projects. I've needed to slow down a bit as of late so it just means everything takes a little longer than it used to. But it's done, I've worn it, and I love it.

The pattern is called Peasy (I assume because its easy-peasy to make). The little vine lace at the neck is very simple - an 8-stitch repeat over 4 rows - and is a nice touch on a simple shape. I changed the sleeves slightly by adding more of the lace at the hems. It's the first top-down, all in one piece sweater I've ever made. This technique is nice because you can try on the sweater as you go, and now before you're done that it really fits. Always good knowledge to have!

I used 6 balls of Silky Wool yarn colour #9 Verdigris. I've made at least 4 sweaters from this yarn in various colours and will happily use it again. With 50% wool and 50% raw silk it's light, soft, and gently warm without being too heavy and bulky. As I bought this yarn on my Christmas trip to Mendocino with Thomas it counts as both special occassion and souvenier yarn so it's extra special. :-)

Speaking of special, aren't the buttons beautiful? They're vintage buttons of unknown age that I've had for many years, and they were perfect with the yarn. If it's not clear from the picture they contain a little scene of a bluebird feeding a baby bird in it's nest on the branch of a tree. I'm so glad to fianlly have found a good use for them.

Hats continued.....

2010-05-02T16:52:00.000-07:00

I finished another of the Piper hats for a Sew Group friend; this one for Judy L. I've made a bizillion of these hats by now,and this one really takes the cake. Judy's choice of colours was great, and the sunflower ornament is fantastic. It will get mailed to her this week, and I'm pretty confident that she'll love it.

For the knitters out there, here are the details:

Pattern: Piper from Twist Collective
Yarn: Summer Tweed from Rowan (cotton/silk blend)
Sunflower: purchased at Knitterly; it's by a company called Grayson that makes leather purse handles and other hardware for handbags (sorry; couldn't find a link for this one)

Spring clothes

2010-04-25T11:21:00.001-07:00

As it finally feels like spring is here some spring sewing is in order. I few years ago I had a wonderful linen tee shirt and linen vest combo that I half lived in during the warm seasons and wanted to revive the idea for this year.

I had a head start with a long sleeved linen top I made last year out of a window pane checked linen from my stash, using Textile Studio's Marseilles Shirt. To complete the look I made a vest using Simplicity 2539.

The pattern has been on my to-make list for some time but got a real push when I saw the version made by my friend Ellen at Sew Group's annual retreat to Bodega Bay. She'd made some major mods to the back but I was able to try it on and get a sense of the look and size. We agreed that it ran on the small side so that was helpful to know in advance.

Also at Bodega Bay, Lynn gave me some very large scraps of a gorgeous deep blue-violet linen left over from a project she had started. With a little fiddling and some creative choices of grain lines here and there I was able to squeeze the vest out of the linen pieces much to my delight.

I didn't need to make many changes in the vest pattern. I cut a size 12 for the neck/armholes and tapered out to a 14 fro the rest and didn't need to adjust a thing. The pattern already has a center back seam so I just curved it in toward the neck a small amount. Darts are built into the curved front seams (the pockets are also set into this seam) so I didn't add anything there. The length was good too.

The whole ensemble looks a bit baggy on Jezebel, my lovely vintage mannequin, but as she has a figure that would make a Barbie doll feel large it's not to be wondered at. I am very, very happy with the finished vest and the overall look over the linen top. I'll definitely make more of both pieces for the summer.

A Banner Day

2010-04-18T17:54:00.000-07:00

TW and I have been collaborating on a fun project - we're making 4 banners for the California College of the Arts to use in their Commencement ceremony in early May. We're both alumni, as well as TW being a professor there, so it makes for a special project for both of us.

There's one banner for each school within the College - Fine Arts; Design; Architecture; and Humanities & Sciences. They'll hang from an "L" shaped pole and will be carried in front of the groups of graduating seniors from each of the schools in the Commencement procession.

Plain fabric is being screen printed by TW, and then sewn into the banners by me. We found a drapery lining fabric that's coated on one side with a lightweight insulation layer that makes a surprisingly perfect choice for the project. It's sews easily, but it's quite opaque and has a nice drape to it. The bottom hem of each banner will have gold fringe across it to give some extra weight to them, and grommets along one side will be used to attache the banner to the vertical pole to keep it from swaying too much.

We did a bunch of scribbling and figuring; it took some time to figure out what sort of poles we would make and how the banners would hang from the poles, etc. (We're doing the fabrication for that part, too.)

Once we had the design and the materials, TW cut the panels and printed them, first with the seal of the College in gold, and then with black for the lettering. Meanwhile, I made a life-size sample banner to work out the construction kinks.

As of tonight we've gotten all the printing done and the sample banner is done. TW will get the poles from an aluminium supply tomorrow and get them assembled and painted over the next week, and I'll do the actual banner sewing next weekend. It's great fun to collaborate with my sweetheart!

Good friends

2010-04-11T18:03:00.001-07:00

Today was a great day spent with good friends. Patricia hosted an afternoon of sewing, knitting, and whatever else we wished to bring along, and for me, offered an opportunity to hand deliver hats I had knitted for Michelle and Lynn ( I had made one for Patricia earlier). So here we are! For some odd reason it hadn't occurred to me to bring my own hat so the hatmaker is the hatless one here.

The pattern is called Piper, and is from the Fall 2009 issue of Twist Collective, an online knitting magazine. If you haven't looked at it before I do recommend it. The patterns are available by purchase for download and feature a wide range of current knitwear designers. By being available for purchase pattern by pattern the designers earn more from their designs than if they were published in a print magazine.

Today's hat recipients chose their own yarns while on our Sewing Group trip to Bodega Bay in March. We stopped in Petaluma for a visit to Knitterly to give everyone a chance to pick their preferred colours and textures.

For her hat, Michelle chose Rowan Yarns "Calmer" for the main colour, and a deep purple-grey chenille called "Touch Me" from Muench Yarns for the trim, and a gorgeous vintage looking button in black and a touch of gold.

Lynn chose two Rowan Yarns for her hat; "Summer Tweed" in a brilliant turquoise with yellow and pink flecks, with LenPur in a solid turquoise for the trim. Her button was a large, contemporary ceramic button with mutlicolour stripes.

What I love about this hat is that every time I make it, always in a different mix of yarns, it always looks different, and always looks great on the wearer. This is a real winner of a knitting pattern, and is easy and fun to knit to boot.

Kathy was also at today's get-together, not being a hat person, chose to remain hatless. She worked hard at cross-stitching this afternoon. Patricia made a wonderful lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, Kathy and Margaret brought delicious salads, and 2nd Kathy brought tzatziki and pita bread (I can still taste the garlic!) and Lynn and I brought desserts. No one went hungry, needless to say. Except Freya, Patricia's German Shepherd.

Back at it again.

2010-04-04T14:44:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a while! I've been dealing with a serious illness over the past year but am now feeling better and am excited to be posting again. It's good to be back.

I'm planning on expanding my blogging to include more than knitting to include a wider range of my creative endeavors of all sorts; mostly, but not exclusively, focusing on textiles. So my first post is about a project that is combines crochet and sewing, old and new, past and present.

My great-Aunt Jessie was an avid crocheter and churned out acres of lace tablecloths, ruffled doilies, kleenex covers, and what have you in her long life. I treasure the crochet pattern book, published in 1942, which she left to me and that included her beloved pineapple-patterned round lace tablecloth.

My mother and I both have a number of pieces of her beautiful lace crochet, and mom recently gave me this cotton crochet tote bag that Jessie had made to see if I would use it. It had been lined it with some beige twill cotton, and was stiffened in the bottom with a piece of Masonite. The thing weighed a ton and was a bit on the dull side, but the crochet was in excellent condition and had plenty of potential to be made into something more chic.

So I rummaged through my stash of fabrics and notions and found some black wood oval purse handles and some solid black cotton. Hmm, here's a good start. What if I backed the crochet with the black cotton to really set off the lace and replaced the crochted handles with the black wooden ones? A good start.

But a black lined bag is impossible to find things in, especially once they fall to the bottom of the bag, so back to the stash I went and found an ivory and black cotton print that had the right blend of contemporary chic and old-fashioned charm. Now we're talking!

So using the old beige lining as a pattern, I made a whole new tote bag of solid black on the outside, the print of the inside, along with a handy zippered pocket. I stiffened the whole thing with some scraps of primed artist's canvas that where lying around the studio, using a double layer in the botton to keep it flat and sturdy. Loops of the solid black attached the handles.

Once everything was constructed I slipped the crochet over the outside of the bag and stitched it around the top. Voila! A beautiful new bag that both honors my aunt's skills and suits my own sense of style.

Taking a Break

2009-06-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

The Kneedler will be taking a hiatus for a while; there might be occasional posts over the next few months but not on any sort of regular basis. Have a wonderful summer, and I'll look forward to starting up again in the fall. Happy knitting!

Sunny Days

2009-05-03T12:11:00.001-07:00

Well, it has been a while since my last post! Times has certainly gotten away with me for a bit, so I'm just now getting around to posting about my Easter knitting. The Spring issue of Twist Collective (and for any one who is not familiar with this new online knitting publication, do take a look.) had a pattern for an adorable set of sunflower dolls, and I immediately wanted to make the girl doll for my niece, Madi. I had been recently gifted with a skein of the brightest yellow wool I have ever seen, along with a green and yellow skein of Koigu hand dyed yarn, and had the green left over from the dinosaurs I had made for her at Christmas, so all I needed was a skein of cream and I was off.

It's a simple pattern to knit, if a bit fiddly, but then knitted toys usually end up being that way. It's knit on size 2 US needles with Cascade 220, which makes for a very dense fabric that really keeps the polyfill stuffing from poking through. I did buy Cascade 220 in cream for the doll's skin tone, but all of the other colours were assorted other brands of knitted worsted. I ran out of the yellow and therefore couldn't do a double row of flower petals around the head as specified, but it really didn't matter. I also had to substitute another yarn for the dress and used the skein of Koigu in yellows and greens which did the trick. I made the dress much more full in the skirt than in the pattern and added a few rounds of eyelets near the hemline to make it more girly.

The only other changes I made (that I can remember by now!) are a picot bind-off around the edge of the cap and for the hem of the dress in place of the picot folded-up hem in the pattern. I also drew a more sophisticated face than the pattern used which suited me much better. I used a light brown worsted wool that I split into single plies to do the embroidery.

Bodega Bay and beyond

2009-03-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

Bodega Bay was wonderful. It always is, but this year it was more special than ever, for me at least. This year the trip was not about the shopping on the way, or the sewing projects I would make or the amount of knitting I would complete, but about being with my friends. This year is posing some major challenges for m e personally and to just being there with so many people who I love and respect meant everything to me. Ladies, you are all the best and I can't tell you how much of a difference all your love, support, and words of kindness, encouragement and wisdom make. You are all the best friends I have, and many of you I have known longer than any other people in my life outside of my family. Thank you so much for being there and sharing your time with me. You are all the best.

( I did take pictures of Bodega Bay, due to technical difficulties with my new phone/camera and a new computer, they absolutely refuse to upload into this post. This also explains in part the extreme tardiness of my post-Bodega Bay -post!)

But of course, I did shop on the drive up! I couldn't resist this gorgeous red Silky Wool by Elsbeth Lavold, found at Yarns on First in downtown Napa. I hadn't seen this particular shade before, and felt a huge urge to wrap myself in the gorgeous, rich, warm colour. I bought all 9 skeins that the store had and am thinking of making another cardigan with it.

Later on I found this fun purple heathered cotton, spun from 75% recycled cotton with 25% acrylic. I usually don't mind acrylic when blended with cotton, whereas I loath it when blended with wool. There are little flecks of red-violet mixed in with the purple that gives the colour a lot of life. This was from Knitterly in Petaluma, and they had lots of gorgeous shades in this yarn. But I bought all of the purple - all 10 skeins! I'm not sure yet, but I think this will become Pam Allen's Come Together from Twist Collective.

I did get a lot of sewing done while there. I didn't take photos of my sewing projects, as everything I made was in natural coloured linen and would just look like a bunch of beige clothes in photos. But I got a good start on the Tangled Yoke Cardigan by starting on a sleeve to double check the gauge as I went. I have since finished the first sleeve up to the armhole, and it's now residing on a string holder until the rest of the sweater is ready. The cardigan is knitted in one piece to the armholes, and the sleeves in the round, to the yoke, and then all the pieces are joined together. I must say, I really love this yarn!

Bodega Bay is coming up!

2009-03-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

Anyone who's known me for a while knows that one of the big events of my year is the annual retreat to Bodega Bay with my Sew Group. We've been making this trip every year for over 15 years now, and it's truly the high point of my year. This year's trip is next weekend, and a small group of us is going up a day early this year to have a whole extra day. The timing couldn't be better. Life has gotten a whole lot more complicated on the last few days and a long weekend in a beautiful place with my wonderful friends is a dream come true.

So, this will be a boringly picture-less blog post as all I have to talk about is what I am going to knit on over the BB weekend. I'll also not be posting next Sunday as usual as I won't be back from the trip until Monday sometime but I'll catch up when I can.

So what are my knitting projects going to be? (And of course, determining what my projects will be is one of the most critical pieces of planning that goes into each year's trip.) I've got 3 projects lined up, not with any idea of finishing any one of them but it's always possible a project just won't work out the way I planned so I always need a back-up.

A fairly quick project (I hope) will be the Krista Tee from White Lies Designs. I'm using a nice ivory shade of Cascade Sierra (80% pima cotton/20% merino wool) and the swatch is drying as we speak. I'm probably going to make the lace borders on the sleeves and body a little deeper butotherwise think I'll be making this one right by the pattern.

I'm also excited to finally be starting the Tangled Yoke Cardigan from Interweave Knits. I saw another Ravelry member Llyrmoon's version done in Elsbeth Lavold's Silky Wool yarn, and it looked great. As this is already one of my favourite yarns anyway I have been planning on using it for this sweater; just which colour? I ended up choosing a beautiful periwinkle blue - yes, the same periwinkle I used in my Moderne Log Cabin Blanket a while back. That blanket has been such a deep source of comfort for me, n an almost spiritual way, and that convinced me that now was the time too make this sweater n this yarn, and to stick to my favourite colour. I'm in need of a little portable comfort right now and I think this sweater will carry me through the summer in the best way imaginable.

Lastly, I am planning another knitted toy for my niece, Madi. Twist Collective's spring 2009 issue had this adorable Sunflower doll and I had almost all of the necessary colours in my stash, so how could I resist? I'll probably gussy up the dress on the doll a bit to make it more interesting but I love the petals on the head.

So, it looks like I won't be bored at BB. Not that that has ever happened.

It's finished!

2009-03-08T17:50:00.001-07:00

The Alpaca Striped Fringe Scarf is finally, finally done. It is soft, beautiful, oh so warm, and I love it. It has been a very lengthy project (I started it on Christmas Eve and just finished it this weekend) I really enjoyed it and only started getting tired of it on the very last few inches of the intarsia portion. The fringes on the second half flew by and then the knitting was over at last.

I gave it a good soak in Eucalan and warm water, spread it out on some towels on the floor to dry, the floor being the only place bug enough for the whole length of it. And now it's really, really done.

The only downside to this scarf was that I failed in my goal of using up al of the yarn. I weighed and measured each ball after I finished and found that I used just a little more than half of the yarn. I think I can feel a hat coming on to finally finish up all the yarn............

Finishing things

2009-02-22T17:41:00.000-08:00

With lots of rainy weather and and a damp chill in the air over the past week or so it has felt like a great time to finish things and to work on long-neglected or protracted projects. I have accordingly spent the last few days concentrating on projects that were close to being done but just needed a bit of a push to get them over that last hump.

The Delft Pillow is the most noticeable product of my self-imposed industriousness, and it is in fact now completely done. I even had an old pillow form lying about that turned out to be the correct size. The pillow came out much smaller than I expected - it's only about 13" square including the i-cord around the edge, but it's still big enough to be a respectable pillow. Aside from using cotton and linen for the yarns, my biggest change from the pattern was to make the back sections overlap by a couple inches; otherwise no matter how many buttons are on it once the pillow form goes inside it will gap terribly if there isn't some sort of overlap. I added an i-cord border and crocheted loops and buttons.

I've also made considerable progress on the Alpaca Fringed Scarf, and while it isn't exactly finished it's a lot closer to it than it was last time I blogged about it. The solid, unfringed center section is now at 46" with a goal of 50". The trick is to use up as much of the yarn as I can while still leaving enough for the fringed section at the end. I know the light apricot colour is the smallest ball, due to a small error in initially making that stripe 16 stitches wide instead of 14 stitches. I weighed that ball after finishing the fringed piece at the beginning and know that I need about 7 grams of yarn to make a comparably long fringe for the end, and I've got 23 grams left right now. So I'm going to keep going on the solid portion until I'm down to 7 grams on that one colour. The fringed section goes pretty fast as each stripe is 14 stitches (or 16, in the case of the light apricot!) so once I reach the fringe I'm going to be so close to done I can taste it. And it's about time; I wouldn't say I'm sick of this project yet because it's been the right thing for me to be working on as of late, but I am definitely getting pretty ready to finish this baby up.

After a long delay....

2009-02-15T17:18:00.000-08:00

....the Delft Pillow is nearly done! Over the holidays I got to within striking distance of the end of the charted design, but for a variety of reasons ended up putting the project aside worked on simpler projects for a while. Just yesterday I pulled it out again to see how far I really did have to go to finish it and was so close I sat down and got going again right on the spot. I finished the charted portion of the pattern this morning and am now on the final stretch. I have just commenced the devilishly difficult 3-needle-i-cord-bind-off (if you count the dpn that is used to move stitches around it could be considered a 4-needle bind off, I suppose) but as this marks the end of the journey I shan't mind it a bit, or at least as much as I would have if this was the beginning.

This has been a challenging project for several reasons. The charted design is part of it; it's not something that can be memorized like a traditional Fair Isle type of stranded design, but with the help of my magnetic chart minder from Knit Picks it wasn't too bad to follow. It still wasn't exactly TV-watching knitting, but was manageable in quiet times and even on my commute. The bigger problem was my choice of yarns. Using inelastic fibres - cotton and linen - made for very hard-on-the-hands knitting, especially the linen. I used Euroflax sport weight, doubled, and the fibrous strands were easy to drop or split, in addition to the lack of elasticity. Also, the unique method of knitting the icord around the edge of the pillow required either 2 circular needles, or a Magic Loop variation (I used the latter). I found this to add a significant additional annoyance factor to the knitting which slowed me down a lot.

While the knitting was definitely a challenge for all these reasons, the finished product is turning out very well, and I'm happy with it in spite of its difficultness (is that a word? It fits what I mean so I'm using it anyway). While I can't promise to make this again anytime soon - and using wool would definitely have made it easier - I am very pleased with it and more importantly, I am quite sure my mom will be happy to have it on her couch at long last.

In the bag

2009-02-01T13:12:00.001-08:00

While I really am still knitting on my Striped Fringe scarf, the progress is so incrementally slow that if I blogged about it again it would be hard to prove that any progress had indeed been made. I am still enjoying it, and the simplicity of it suits my pace these days, but to blog about it again at this point seems pointless - agreed?

So what have I done that might be of any interest to my friends out there? Well, I did a little sewing just before the end of the year so please let me present a new knitting bag!

Someone in my Sew Group (sadly I can't recall who it was) made this bag and it was so obviously perfect for a knitting bag that I promptly ordered the pattern - the Birdie Sling from Amy Butler. I had an oddball assortment of decorator fabrics and quilting cottons all in some combination of yellow, blue and white. I've been collecting them thinking that some day I'll have that blue and yellow Giverney-style kitchen I keep dreaming of. It's still possible that that will happen but I decided not to wait for it, and just go ahead and use my fabric stash for this bag.

The pleats in the bag body give it a full shape that will hold oodles of yarn and/or a big project. The pattern doesn't include a fastener, but I added a magnetic snap on the inside to hold it closed (they're very easy to put in).

I had to shorten the strap due to fabric constraints, which I did in the center of the strap, but the next time I make this bag I'll shorten it at the end that attaches to the bag. The strap flares from a wide bottom to a much narrower area where your hand would got to carry the bag. By shortening it at the top I ended up with a much larger area of the really wide part,which gets in the way a bit in getting into the bag, but otherwise I really liked the pattern.

I added piping on a lot of the seams and a pocket on one outside edge. There are two roomy interior pockets, one of which is large enough to hold a knitting magazine, for example.

I had so much fun making the bag that I added a small zippered bag with a clear vinyl pocket on one side to hold knitting gadgets (sorry, it's from a long-discontinued pattern).

Catching up on the New Year

2009-01-25T10:24:00.001-08:00

The New Year's knitting has gotten off to a slow start but things are getting back to what passes for normal at Chez The Kneedler. At least I now have evidence that I have really been knitting, at least a little bit. I've been slowly working away on the Striped Fringe scarf that I blogged about a couple of posts ago, and while it is indeed slow going (size 1 needles/1 x1 rib) it's the perfect project for my somewhat slow state of mind these days.

The centre solid section is now about 20" long (the fringes are around 16") and if I follow the pattern the centre will be 50" before I start the fringes on the other end. After holding the scarf as is up to myself, I think I might prefer the centre to be more like 60" but we'll see how well my patience and yarn hold out. I don't want it to be skimpy in length but I also don't want it to drag the ground when I wear it. I also want to navigate the tricky waters of using up as much of the yarn as possible, without running short on the fringes. I fortunately had the presence of mind to weigh several of the balls after finishing the fringes to give me an idea of how many grams I need to leave after finishing the centre section.

The centre section is worked in intarsia, the very idea of which often gives knitters a queasy feeling. The secret to a safe and sane intarsia experience involves two simple steps. If your yarn balls (and centre-pull balls are critical here) are held in an orderly fashion in some way that doesn't allow them won't move around half the battle is won. For this scarf, I have a small bag that is shallow, long and narrow with a zippered top and it fits the bill perfectly. Depending on your project and the number of yarns you are dealing with, , a large ziplock bag or even a shoebox with a lid will work. For the shoebox, punch a hole in the lid for each yarn and thread them through the holes. Needless to say, this method requires that the threading be done before you cast on, not after - and yes, this is the voice of experience talking here.

The second tip is to always turn your work from right to wrong side in a clockwise fashion, and then from wrong to right side counter-clockwise (if you're a lefty it might be necessary to reverse this order, depending on how you knit). These two steps really work wonders on those nasty intarsia yarn tangles.

Granted, this doesn't eliminate all tangles, especially for one as prone as I am to reversing left/right as much as I am, but it's a simple matter to occasionally spread out my knitting, carefully pick up one ball at a time, and unweaving them through the other yarn strands to straighten everything out again. Sometimes it only takes doing this with 2 or 3 of the balls before all the yarns are once again happily in order.

Ode to a Knitted Blanket

2009-01-19T09:29:00.001-08:00

No matter how beautiful, or well fitting, or skillfully crafted a knitted object is, at their most basic level most knitted objects are utilitarian items destined to a life of glorious service to their creators or lucky recipients. This is no small or inconsequential fate, and it's part of what I love about knitting. While of humble originals, knitting can so easily result in a finished work that extremely beautiful as well as extremely useful.

But there are occasions when a knitted object transcends itself and becomes something that truly makes a difference in the wearer/user's existence. Chemo caps, prayer shawls, charitable knitting, and the like are clearly examples of this. However, on a more personal and private level, may I tell you the tale of my own transcendent piece of knitting?

I finished knitting the Moderne Log Cabin Blanket last September (click on the link for my post about the completed blanket) from the Mason-Dixon knitting book and have enjoyed it as an occasional napping blanket, but mostly have enjoyed it for its elegantly simple beauty. The silk and wool yarn is also truly luscious - Silky Wool by Elsbeth Lavold.

But in recent weeks I have been quite ill, resulting in being both very cold and in need of spending many hours sleeping or simply lying about the house in a very languid state. Most of those hours have been spent snuggled under my Moderne blanket, and I can honestly say I think this blanket has contributed as much to my feeling better as anything else that I have done.

It is simply a perfect thing - it provides just the right amount of warmth without being as heavy as the big bulky comforter on my bed; just soft enough to make me love to snuggle it up under my chin; just the right size to cover as much of myself as I wanted. The yarn is gorgeous, the colours made my heart sing, and the design of the blanket has a quiet elegance that soothed me when I needed soothing. I dragged the blanket around the house with me like a 3-year old with her favourite blankie; when I finally returned to work I had to restrain myself from taking it along to work as well (I might have actually done it if there was any reasonable place in the office to nap, but the floor was my only option and I know how filthy that carpet is - yuk!) I have grown to love this blanket with a passion I don't often reserve for inanimate objects.

May I suggest that if someone in your life your life needs a little extra comfort and warmth that you knit them a blanket? And may I recommend the Moderne Log Cabin blanket in Silky Wool? Your recipient will thank you for years to come.

Holiday Gift Updates and Other Trivia

2008-12-28T18:06:00.000-08:00

I am very happy to report that my handmade holiday gifts met with much enjoyment - Madison looked adorable in her party dress (and being a complete idiot, I forgot to take my camera with me, and therefore have no pictures to show) and also LOVED her knitting dinosaurs; my Dad called to say how much he loved the Intricate Stag pillow; and my little felted Xmas Trees were enjoyed by all who received them. Thank you, everyone, for your appreciation and for being part of my life - I am very fortunate to have such wonderful friends and family.

I am still working on the Delft Pillow for my mom, which wasn't intended to be a Xmas gift. I took it with me when I went down to see her over the holiday and she was pleased with how it looks so far in it's current half-finished state. While the linen and cotton aren't the easiest things to work with for a stranded design the finished fabric is very appealing - it's more upholstery fabric-like in feel, than knitted, which certainly suits the pillow idea very well.

As the Delft Pillow is not exactly conversation-friendly knitting I started a long-pondered new project to have on hand for those times when my mind needed something more, well, mindless. I have long loved Amanda Blair Brown's Fringed Stripe scarf from Interweave Knits, but was not crazy about all that 1x1 ribbing together with intarsia in 7 colours. But I also had some luscious but no longer available vegetable-dyed alpaca yarn in just the right number of colours to do the scarf with. I finally took the plunge and started in the fringe sections.

Much to my surprise, the fringe sections are knitting up with surprising speed so I am feeling less trepidacious about actually finishing the whole thing. As I am short, I don't intend to make the scarf the entire 96" length specified so that helps speed up the knitting as well. Instead of making the fringed section approximately 20" long on each end, I am going with about 16", and keeping the center intarsia section at 50" as specified. That will give me a more manageable 82" in length; better suited to my pipsqueak stature, I think!

All the best.......

2008-12-24T15:39:00.001-08:00

I'm a bit off this week on my blogging schedule, it seems. It's such a treat to be on vacation for a couple of weeks and I was having too much fun to remember what day it was, and simply forgot to post on Sunday as usual. But, today, on Christmas Eve, I wish everyone the very best, whatever holiday you celebrate (or not). I am so grateful for my family, my friends, and for the wide, wonderful, and woolly community of knitters out there. Thank you all for being a part of my life.

My holiday knitting wasn't extensive this year, but it's great to see one of my gifts already in use. I gave my friend Bonnie one of my felted Xmas Trees, trimmed with vintage buttons, and she promptly realized that it made a perfect festive hat for her Ugly Doll, Poe. The tree is from Mason-Dixon Knitting - Outside the Lines (their 2nd book) and is easy easy easy, and so cute when done. I made several of them, each in a different yarn and with different buttons. By all reports Poe is extremely proud of his new hat, and also to hear that he would make a guest appearance on this blog.

Once they were all done, the Prehistoric Pals for Madi were also really cute. (Some of them looked really odd while in process; it wasn't until they were all complete that they really got cute. If you try the pattern, be patient.) They all benefited from a trip through the was to felt them slightly after they were stuffed and all the details added. The pattern is very easy to knit, if a bit fiddly with all the finishing, but not nearly as much so as I feared. I'm glad I chose a wool yarn instead of cotton as I originally planned to use; all of the seams and joinings would have been harder to do neatly without the forgiving nature of wool, and they certainly wouldn't have been able to be felted to help smooth away a lot of the little irregularities.

So instead, I chose to use cotton (and linen) for my next project, the Delft Pillow from Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts 2008 issue. Mom has been wanting some pillows for her couch, as it's a bit too deep to sit on comfortably without a little extra cushion behind her back, and she loved this pattern when I showed it to her. She had some Manos del Urauguay Cotton Stria yarn left over from a vest I made her some time ago that was a perfect shade of blue for her room, and I had some natural flax coloured Euroflax Linen yarn in my stash, which looked great with the couch, so we were all set on yarn without having to shop for more (not that I ever mind shopping for more!)

The pillow is constructed in an intriguing way so I'm very glad to have an excuse to try it out. The first step is an i-cord, which then becomes the piping along the bottom edge. The stitches for the pillow body are then picked up along one edge of the i-cord and the pillow is knitted in the round from there up, with a corded edge running up each side. This makes for a very tight turn on the edges of the pillows so it requires the use of 2 circular needles to work the pillow. This was really making me crazy; I have never liked the 2-circular needle method for socks or other things, so I finally switched to using a 60" needle from my Knit Picks Options set, and doing something like a Magic Loop technique.

Knitting stranded patterns in non-wool fibres doesn't make for the easiest or most forgiving knitting, but so far I'm very happy with how it looks. I made a sample using the design for the back and put it through the wash to soften the linen (which I am using doubled to match the weight of the cotton yarn) and it looked good enough to go ahead with the whole pillow. Now that the pillow is about half-way done I am very happy with it. I've just bound off and cast on for the opening in the back, which will later on be closed with a row of small buttons.

Dinoknitting

2008-12-14T11:10:00.001-08:00

Next on my list of things to finish for Xmas are a flock of knitted dinosaurs for my niece. The pattern is Prehistoric Pals from Knitting at Knoon (there are lots of cute toy and children's garments patterns on this website) and is much easier than it might first appear. There are lots of small pieces and sewing involved, but the shaping is simple and well thought out. I used Galway knitting worsted for all the dinosaurs. At this point I have completed three of the four dinosaurs, with one still to go. The last one was what was called a brontosaurus when I was a kid, but is now something like brachiasaurus.

The snowpeople I made a while back, using a free Knit Picks pattern, were finished in a way I hadn't thought of trying before. The bodies were knitted, stuffed, and then felted, so the stuffing provided a little resist and allowed the felting to keep it's shape a bit better than an un-stuffed body would have. After finishing the stegosaurus it seemed that a little felting wouldn't hurt this little guy, either. The polyester fiberfill stuffing showed through the knitting a little more than I liked, and the details, such as the spikes along the back, could use a little more firmness. So I decided to risk a little felting on the finished stegosaurus. This photo is before felting.

This one is the "after" shot. The difference doesn't appear to be that big on the photo but it's just what I was after. The knitting tightened up and got just a little fluffier at the same time. The seams are less obvious, and the pikes along the spine really firmed up. The legs are a bit sturdier, as well.

To do the felting, I put the entire, finished dinosaur into a zippered pillowcase protector, and added it to a load of laundry set to hot wash/cold rinse, with laundry detergents as usual for a load of wash. Once the load was done, I took the dinosaur out of the pillowcase and shaped it a bit (tugging the spikes into nice points; shaping the face and tail, etc) and let it air dry.

While they are in process the dinos don't look like much; I got lots of puzzled looks from my fellow commuters on the ferry while making them! Here's the T Rex before the legs and face were done (who knew that a T Rex head was shaped almost exactly like the heel of a sock?). In the first photo on this post he's in the background; done but not yet felted. He's in the washing machine as I write this post.

Once all the pieces are together, and the eyes embroidered, the dinos really come together. They're very cute in a slightly goofy way; I think they will be perfect for a dinosaur-crazed three year old, don't you? I think this fellow is just asking for my little niece to take him home and play with him.

Monday, 12/15 - A quick addition to yesterday's post. The dress for my niece appeared to have been lost in the mail (gulp) but mercifully turned up in a pile of other packages from my sister-in-law's family in Wales. The dress not only fit, but Madi loved it, so there is hope that she will actually consent to wear it come Christmas Day!

Holidaze

2008-12-07T17:09:00.000-08:00

Instead of concentrating on knitting over the past week I focused on a sewing project - a holiday dress for my niece, Madison. I had some fabric remaining after finishing a project for myself - a beautiful magenta crinkled metallic/cotton, and a magnificent piece of re-embroidered lace I had acquired at a fabric shop where I had formerly worked. Madison is a very girly girl so I think the deep pink tones will be a very pretty colour on her for the holidays. I managed to squeeze the bodice out of the lace, and it looked beautiful over the magenta crinkled metallic. (Sorry; I cannot manage to get that photo to turn right side up so just imagine that its facing the correct way!)

My first intention was to make a ruched ruffle around the lower edge of the skirt, but determined it would be too heavy for the dress. Instead, I made a rose out of one of the bias strips I had cut, added some buds dangling at the end of a bit of covered cord, and had myself one fine little party dress for a 3 year old.

I used a pattern I had already tried out - Burda 3025. I made the dress more or less right by the pattern, with a few exceptions. I left the lower edge of the sleeves ungathered to make a more ruffle-like sleeve, and added a self-fabric piping around the neckline and the waist. As the lace could possibly be scratchy as well as bulky, I replaced the back buttoned facings with a full lining in the bodice. I also used thread loops for the buttons instead of attempting buttonholes through the lace.

I was busting to get the dress done not only to mail off to my sister in law, but even more importantly, to share at the annual Sew group Holiday Party. Since I don't get to too many of the Sew group meetings any more (I live too far away to get to most of them) I never miss the Holiday Party.

And so, with dress in hand, I made it to Menlo Park for my Sew Group Party, and a good time was had by all. It was terrific to be with my friends - I have known many of them for over 20 years now, and they're the best group of friends anyone could wish for. As my contribution to the gift exchange game I included a scarf I had knit with fringe along the sides (I was told by one person that this blog was checked for clues as to what I was bringing, but still managed to surprise a few people. Now now I know to be discrete in my pre-holiday blogging!)

And now I get to look forward to my Knitting Group party on Tuesday (I know, the social whirl is just unending) and my more recent but no less wonderful group of friends. And if any of you are looking at this post for clues for that gift exchange you're not going to find them!

Stranded

2008-11-30T17:59:00.000-08:00

Most of my knitting activity this past week has focused on my ongoing stranded-knit project, the Intricate Stag pillow, which since it's intended as a Christmas gift does come with a certain time limit attached to it. Considering that it is also a thank you for my Dad's gift of 2 kilos of beautiful ready to spin roving from New Zealand, and that he gave me this wonderful gift at least 2 years ago it might be mentioned that my timing is already a little off, but that's the way gift giving can be in my family. We all make stuff, and make stuff for other people and each other, and I think it's fair to say that everyone in my family are either poor judges of how much time projects take; procrastinators; involved in too many projects at one time; or simply have no sense of time. Actually, for most of us, it's all of the above all of the time.

But I am pleased to say that my modifications to Norah Gaughans' Intricate Stag Bag (available through the Knitting Daily Pattern Store)have vastly speeded-up the process. I am knitting the pillow in the round rather than back and forth (a real sanity-saver when doing stranded knitting) and adapted the border designs to be something more interesting, and have also adapted them further to make this interesting diamond design on the pillow back. I have just worked past the deer panel in the center of the front and am now winging it on the opening in the back, which will have a buttoned flap to allow the pillow insert to be removed for washing, etc.

The chart is much easier to do than it might appear (assuming that one is knitting in the round as I am; it would be a nightmare to do from the backside in purl if done in rows). I have a handy magnetic chart board from Knit Picks that makes it very easy to follow the chart - I highly recommend this little gadget. It also helps a lot to photocopy the chart, enlarging it too a more easily seen size. The zigzag background is very rhythm, and would have progressed much more quickly if I was actually capable of counting to 2 on a regular basis.

Little things

2008-11-23T18:13:00.001-08:00

I've been working on a bunch of small things, mostly as holiday gifts. I downloaded this Snow Man pattern from Knit Picks web site and had a lot of fun making these little things. I used oddments of other yarns left over from other projects, added mismatched vintage pearl buttons and embroidered the features. The hat is felted separately from the bodies and sewn on later. The scarf isn't felted at all.

The felted tree behind this little guy is from the Mason-Dixon Knitting-Between the Lines (the 2nd book). It's knitted as a very simple cone; I changed it to knit form the top down so I could use any amount of yarn as long as I left enough to bind off with.

I sewed some vintage black pearl ball buttons with a rhinestone set into them all around the tree as decorations/lights. The tree gives me no end of delight, as the rhinestones sparkle beautifully in even very low light. More trees are in the works.

I also made Grumperina's new Tretta Hat pattern, with a few minor modifications: I added beads on the cast on (every other stitch) and put three beads on each leaf all around. My alpaca singles yarn was too fragile to handle sliding the beads along all the way through the hat, so I put the beads on one ball of yarn, and only used that ball for the beaded rows. It made for a lot less pushing of beads along the yarn, and made for a break-free knitting experience.

And lastly, I have gotten started on a pillow for my Dad and stepmother, using yarn I spun from the wool he brought me from New Zealand a couple years ago. It's based on Norah Gaughan's Intricate Stag Bag from Knit Scene; it's a simple matter to change it to a pillow. I'm knitting it in the round : i can't imagine knitting the purse in back and forth rows, given the complexity of the stag portion of the design (I'm barely into row 3 of the stag portion, so it doesn't show yet in the photo.

Magical time with friends

2008-11-16T16:47:00.001-08:00

What a great way to spend a Sunday - an afternoon with my knitting buddies, along with heaps of yarn, loads of cookies and cake, lots of laughs, and a fun project to work on together. Christy had recently asked me if I would do a little workshop for the gang on the Magic Ball knitting technique, which is what I have used in the 1,000 Petaled Lotus chair seat project. I was happy to oblige, and today was at long last the day to get together and have a blast making up our own personal Magic balls.

(Needless to say, there are endless jokes, insinuations, and other ribaldry that can be had on the subject of magic balls, and in the interest of maintaining a high tone in this blog I will restrain myself from making them. As all of the jokes we could think of were already made during the workshop the fun has pretty much worn off anyway. )

First came the obligatory indulgence in cookies and cake, coffee and tea. The ladies all sat very politely through my lecture on what the Magic Ball technique actually is and while I showed my samples. They had great questions and were an excellent class. The fact that several are former or current schoolteachers might account for their excellent behaviour. They even took notes.

I had a bunch of books out for inspiration - all of my treasured Kaffe Fassett books; books of charted designs for colourwork knitting; colour theory, etc. I can still remember vividly the first time I saw Kaffe Fassett's Glorious Knits - it was in the early 1980s, and I can honestly say that the book changed my knitting - and my life - forever. Stephanie brought some of her own to share as well.

I had asked everyone to bring yarn to contribute to a mutual pile to work from, and clearly, there as a group we must own a lot of yarn if the contents of this pile represents only the oddballs and scraps we were all willing to contribute. We started to consider how much money spent on yarn the pile represented but gave it up quickly; none of us could count that high.

All of us are handspinners, some for many, many years like Christy, Stephanie and Cathi; others of us for less time, but handspun yarns are perfect for this technique. Magic Balls look best best when they have lots of yarns with some subtle mixes of colours, like tweeds and heathered tones, and handspun yarns are so often beautifully irregular and rich in mixed shades. All of us have oddments of early spinning experiments that might not look good on their own but that mix in beautifully in a nicely shaded magic Ball. We had plenty to work with; as Kaffe says himself "If in doubt, add 20 more colours..."

So after a wonderful few hours spent with some of the best people I know, we all had a wonderful Magic Ball to kit with. It's great fun to see how we can recognize each others' Magic Balls just by the colours we each favour and use a lot, and agreed that sometime it would be fun to try this again and have each participant use a colour range deliberately outside of our personal comfort zone. Another workshop for another time.

Thanks, ladies, for spending your day with me! And to those who couldn't make it, you were missed, but we will try it again another time.

Bits, pieces, and other thoughts

2008-11-09T12:14:00.001-08:00

At long last the election season is over. While I can easily express my pleasure at the end of this long ordeal I have no words for how I feel about Barak Obama's election. It is the first time I have been genuinely excited and enthusiastic about a president. I'm still trying to take in the enormity of it all, and feeling very emotional about the great shift that has just taken place in the national psyche. Change won't happen overnight, but just in having such an unlikely candidate (as he himself said) prevail shows that change has already occurred.

So what have I been knitting this past week or so while so much was going on in the polls, the news, and elsewhere? In the absence of a big project I have been making scarves using batches of yarn I inherited from my Sew Group friend, Laurel, after her passing a year or so ago. There were lots of different yarns, primarily in the fuchsia/magenta and teal colours she loved so much, and in a variety of textures and fibres (lots of cotton, silk, and rayon blends) and while there was lots of yarn there wasn't any more than a ball or partial ball of any one thing.

I started with the magenta and fuschia batch, and made a lengthwise-striped scarf in seed stitch. I left a long tail at the beginning of each row, knitted across in seed stitch, and then broke off the yarn at the end, leaving another long tail. I did this on every single row, working anywhere from 1-4 rows in any single yarn or colour, and alternating the colours and textures as I wished. I knotted the loose tails together with an overhand knot every time I had 4 tails to secure them. The seed stitch does a wonderful job of blurring the edges between colours so the stripes have more of a woven effect. The scarf is about 65 inches long, not including the fringe, and each row took approximately 7 yards of yarn. Any length of yarn not long enough to go into this scarf went towards scarf #2.......

For scarf #2 I also knitted lengthwise and left long tails for fringe at each end, but used a simple basketweave stitch to play up the woven effect. This scarf is more of a decorative,, scarf in place of jewelry length of about 54 inches long,not including fringe. Once again, I changed colours and textures anywhere from every 1 to 4 rows. I forgot to check how many yards I needed for each row on this one.

By this time I had lots of yarn left, but most of it was in lengths too short to do a lengthwise scarf like the two above. The same was true for the teal yarns. Laurel had used a lot of these yarns for necklaces that she used to make, combining lots yarn into twisted ropes that were embellished with beads and such. Many of the yarns I had from here were already cut into 1 1/2 - 3 yard lengths. So how could I make scarves using such short pieces? I didn't want lots of knots on the back side of the scarf.

My solution was to knit a scarf the short direction as is more usual, but I left long tails at the beginning and end of each row as I did above, creating a fringe along one long edge of the scarf. I knotted the tails for fringe every 2 rows for this one. This scarf used up all of the scraps of magenta and fuchsia and was done in garter stitch, with a single back-and-forth per colour or yarn. I only needed a 1 1/2 yard length to do each garter stitch 2-row ridge. I don't have a detail of it, but in the first photo in this post it's the scarf on the far left.

For the teal yarns I did the same thing but made a slightly wider scarf using seed stitch once again, and once again varying the number of rows with any one yarn either 2 or 4 rows. I still leave a tail on one side at the beginning and end of each row, even if it is the same yarn. I'm knotting the tails every 2 rows for this one, as for the other side-fringed scarf.

mixes, so I repeated stripes of each of those yarns in somewhat regularly spaced intervals (in the In both the magenta and teal side-fringed scarves I am creating a repetition of sorts to help tie all the disparate colours and textures together. In each case, I had some chenille yarns that were fairly noticeable in theteal scarf you can see the dark navy blue chenille and the bulkier turquoise chenille in the photo at left.)

I used size 7 needles for all of these projects, and used up a lot of stash yarns to boot. As a pleasant bonus, I also like the finished scarves! The magenta ones are outside being blocked right now as can be seen in the first photo, but should be ready for action by tonight. I'm hoping to finish the teal one in the next couple of days. This is great sports knitting, needless to say!

Progress and Change

2008-11-02T16:30:00.001-08:00

The 1,000 Petal Lotus Chair seat is taking shape at long last. I've completed the main pieces for the backrest and really love how it's looking so far.

While I've shown the lotus pieces just pinned on the chair previously, here's what it looks like now that the slipcover consists of an actual front and back....

... and from the side, with the black and white checkerboard forming the gusset around the edges....

...and from the back with the two back panels completed. There will be some sort of button band joining the backs in the future but that will come much later.

I'm so excited to have this much done, and how it looks! A lot of the decision-making about how the whole thing would be constructed was answered by getting this far. From here, I will be knitting an open tube down from the bottom of the backrest to cover the metal bar which connects the backrest to the seat. From there, I will attach the seat cover and make some sort of skirt from the edges to the floor, design and details of which are still TBD. Once the whole thing is together the button band will be added down the entire back. I've got a slew of vintage mother of pearl buttons that I'll use for the fasteners. So that's my progress so far. The idea and design have changed frequently and probably will continue to until it's done.

Lastly but by no means least - Tuesday is Election Day here in the U.S., so please - VOTE! Whatever leaders, causes, and ideals you care about, just be sure to cast your ballot and make your opinions and your voice count. As for me, I'm sure looking for change.

2008-10-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

Since I missed another post last week I've got a lot of catching up to do! I finished the Simple Yet Effective Shawl from my last post, and it's really nice. The Noro Kureyon sock yarn does soften with washing, but I still wouldn't say that softness is one of its virtues but it's soft enough to wear. The pattern is as easy as it gets, and in the self-striping yarn is endlessly entertaining as the stripes change as the triangle gets wider. Of course, it would also be wonderful in a non-striping yarn.

It's somewhere between a scarf and a shawl in size (a shawlette?) and will be a nice colour accent on a grey winter day. Not that the 80 degree plus weather we're having in the Bay Area is even close to grey, but sooner or later wintry weather will arrive and a little warmth will be appreciated.

I've gotten a little side-tracked from the 1,000 Petal Lotus chair slipcover, but I have completed most of the backside of the chair back. I'm using the same magic ball technique as I used for the flower design on the chair seat and the front of the backrest but am using a very different colourwork design. The flower was knitted in a stranded technique, while the more angular stepped design for the back is being done in intarsia.

While the stepped design for the back is very different from the organic, curvilinear flower, the basic idea was to keep the same feeling in having a warm-coloured centre surrounded by the cooler blues and purples of the petals/steps. The hope is that the back will be a more abstract, geometric interpretation of a flower, while the front is the more literal version. Does it look like the idea is working?

Because the steps are more rigid in the number of stitches and the shapes, the individual colours in the magic ball make larger blocks of colour rather than a painterly flow from colour to colour. Once I get the second half of the back done I will start sewing the pieces together and figuring out the actual construction. I'm really looking forward to seeing what this ends up looking like in the long run!

And lastly, and ongoing and seemingly endless project is drum carding a big bag of alpaca that my friend Cat gave me some time ago. It's a beautiful creamy/beige-y colour that will eventually have some undyed silk noils and maybe tussah silk blended into it, but the first task is simply to card the raw fleece into manageable batts. I washed the fleece some time ago (it was pretty dusty) but am only now getting around to carding it. I neglected to weigh the whole fleece before starting so I'm not sure how much I have in terms of weight, but that big stack of batts there on the table is about half of the fleece. I am astonished at the quantity of alpaca that continues to come out of the single grocery sack.

Charity begins close to home

2008-10-12T17:34:00.001-07:00

My batch of hats and mittens have been delivered to Afghans for Afghans for their current drive to help kids, but I've had a few reminders in recent days to not forget friends and organizations that are a lot closer to home in my charitable efforts. Most distressingly, I heard from one of my knitting buddies that her husband has just been diagnosed with lymphoma, and as she described it herself, life feels pretty unfair right now, and I have to agree with her. But in the face of events in which I can do so little to help, I do what knitters have always done - knit something. I've gotten a chemo cap started and hope to finish it this week, but if anyone reading this has time to spare for some good thoughts for my friend and her husband it would be greatly appreciated. I'll post more on the pattern and yarn I'm using for the cap later.

I also am very active with the local historical museum, which is facing some tough times this year with reduced funding from the city as well as other challenges posed to everyone with the economic mess that is affecting us all right now. I am making as many items as I can think of to donate to the annual fundraising auction that will take place in early November. The auction will have a food theme, as we are also publishing a cookbook to sell as another fundraiser, so I'm making things like aprons (sewn, not knitted) as well as the string market bags I blogged about last week. They turned out very well, and I had enough of each solid colour to make a striped one, which turned out to be my favourite in the end.

And as a change of pace, I started a simple triangular scarf using Cosmicpluto's Simple Yet Effective Shawl, which is a free download from her blog. While the pattern was originally written for a heavier yarn, she recently made a version from Noro's sock yarn which looked great. I have a skein of the yarn in my stash which I had bought thinking that it might end up as a scarf rather than socks anyway, so it seemed like the perfect time to give it a try.

I'm not a big fan of self-striping yarns, but every now and then they are fun to play with, and the triangle shape is fun as the stripes will be very different as the triangle grows. This might be a gift or might not; it remains to be seen, but it's a lot of mindless fun to knit on right now.

Stringy

2008-10-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

I've often thought of making some sort of knitted mesh bags for taking to the farmer's market or grocery store but haven't gotten around to it until this past week. Spurred into action by a combination of seeing the Monteagle Bag pattern on the Mason-Dixon Knitting blog (it's a free download); remembering I wanted to make something more to donate to the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum's annual fundraising auction; and lastly, remembering I had 2 balls of J.P. Coats Royale Quick Crochet Thread in my stash (thanks to my friend MmmmYarn - thank you!) I finally sprang into action and got started on my bags.

While I did start off using the Monteagle Bag pattern, I must admit that I found myself defeated by the left-cross right-cross double-wrap drop stitch stuff and gave up without much of a fight. I dropped far too many stitches than were intended and this made for a real mess, let me tell you. I ended up winging it and working up my own pattern starting with a garter stitch square, then picking up stitches around the circumference and doing a fairly simply double-wrapped drop stitch with garter stitch rows in between. This made for a nicely meshy bag that wasn't too stringy and not too crazy-making to knit, either. I finished off the top with an attached i-cord border and an I-cord strap.

As can be seen by this photo with the bag full of several pounds of carrots, potatoes, and red onions (farmer's market stew for dinner tonight - yum) the bag can stretch to hold a lot of stuff! I've finished one out of the cranberry coloured string and have now embarked on a 2nd in a more neutral beige. Each ball contains about 400 yards and was 8.5 oz at the start, including a cardboard core; I used more than 1/2 of the ball of cranberry so I am guessing there will be enough of the beige to do a 3rd and final bag in a stripe of both colours for a total of 3 bags.

Muddling through

2008-09-27T21:05:00.001-07:00

I missed a blog post last week, unfortunately - after years of being more or less manageable, my chronic migraines have suddenly gotten all out of whack again, so I have not been feeling very well for a few weeks now. And as a result, I've been taking some new medications to try to get control of the situation again and they've had me feeling a little loopy, I must say, so I just never managed to get to the computer and get my thoughts out there into the blogesphere. But while I am still definitely not feeling quite myself I have gotten out of the migraine cycle, where one headache kicks off another, and another, and another..... It will take a little time but I'm sure I will be able to get back on track in the near future.

And I learned an important lesson. At one point I was taking a medication that had me very decidedly muddle-headed, and as can be seen by the unraveled mess in the photo above, this was definitely not a good time to attempt to knit even a simple lace pattern. I was doing okay while in the straight, unshaped portion, but as soon as I hit any kind of shaping at all it was all over.

So what is this lace I am knitting on? I finally faced up to the fact that the Teal Leilani was not going to work, and then got entranced by a pattern from Knitty called Hey Teach! that I saw progressing on several blogs, and it suddenly dawned on me that a much more fitted style like this might work for my limited yarn supply.

Once again, the gauge of this pattern is much larger than what my yarn can do, so I would need to do a lot of reworking, but I thought that if I did a provisional cast-on for the bodice, at the beginning of the lace pattern and knit the entire bodice,and see how far my yarn went, it would give me a very good idea if I really had enough to knit the whole sweater. If I was happy with the results of the bodice, then I could pick up the stitches from the provisional cast on and knit the remainder of the body from the top down. If need be, I could even leave off the sleeves for more of a vest-like garment.

So I started with that back and had no problems, and then knit the 2 fronts together, and had oodles of problems as evinced above with all the unraveling, but got passed them eventually. The shoulders were knit together as I usually do, and blocked the whole bodice pretty severely to open the lace out. After sewing up the side seams I removed the provisional cast on and picked up all the stitches to begin working the remainder of the body downward toward the hem all in one piece,with no seams. There's no doubt no - I have plenty of yarn.

And as an end note - I finished the 1,000 Petal Lotus Chair back and both pieces are blocking now. The two pieces will be part of a slipcover of sorts for my sewing room chair; now I need to figure out what to do for the back and lower portions of the chair to say nothing of how to actually construct the darn thing. But I sure do like how it looks so far!

Redecorating

2008-09-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

I have been doing an unprecedented amount of non-garment knitting in recent months for some reason. Perhaps this is due to my squirrel-like tendency in autumn to hoard, to nest, to make my home ready for winter. I often go through phases of introspection and home-based activity in autumn, so turning my attention to knitting for my home seems to me to be a logical extension of this state of mind.

The chair cover I began in last week's post has progressed very well and quite quickly - the top of the chair seat is done, and is pinned over the actual chair for the purposes of the photo. I also tried the piece on the chair back for size and was pleasantly surprised to find that, with minor changes to the shaping of the top edge, that I could basically knit the exact same thing to make the chair back. I always find it to be an agreeable thing to not have to recreate the wheel and no less so with this project. There are still many decisions to be made as to how the chair cover as a whole will actually be constructed, but it will evolve as I finish each knitted piece - one finished part will inform the next, and so on. I usually find three-dimensional objects to grow in this fashion; I've never really been able to plan them out in my mind or on paper in their entirety ahead of time. I need to see what I have done and then respond to that before I can plan my next steps.

My other homey project is at long last done. The Moderne Log Cabin Blanket concluded yesterday after a long stint as the perfect couch potato knitting project. During the recent spell of 90+ degree weather it was less enjoyable, but now that the evenings have cooled down it's been great to be able to sit under it while I slogged along on the final stretch. Just about at the point where I thought it would never end, it suddenly did - and all that was left was a simple attached I-cord border, which took only a couple of evenings to complete .

The yarn (Silky Wool by Elsbeth Lavold) is wonderful for a blanket - light, softly warm, not itchy at all, and the colours are gorgeous. I think I could knit very happily with this yarn for years without tiring of it. I acquired the yarn for m y blanket a bit at a time, and ultimately ended up using less than the original pattern from Mason-Dixon Knitting called for,resulting in a slightly smaller blanket - 42" x 54" instead of 50" x 60", but it's plenty big enough to nap under.

The blanket feels so good to sit under that TW couldn't resist hamming it up a bit for me as my willing model. There he is in all his glory, watching the Raiders (who won, I am happy to say), recliner fully reclined, remote in hand. Doesn't he look happy? (and no, he doesn't really wear the hat while watching TV).

Lotus blossoms in my sewing room

2008-09-07T18:02:00.001-07:00

I have a very practical and very unattractive chair in my sewing room that I have thought about recovering for some time. The photo shows that its unappealing appearance can easily be discerned. My thoughts had not yet resulted in any observable actions when last July Kay of the Mason-Dixon blog suggested starting a Ravelry group devoted to the idea of knitting upholstery. This was the very spark I needed to help me make the decision about how I was going to prettify my chair. I would knit new upholstery (or perhaps more aptly, slipcovers) for it.

As I still had a very large Kaffe Fassett-esque "magic ball" and a similarly large ball of beige/taupe yarn of a similar weight, the decision about yarn and colours was already made. I looked through my Kaffe Fassett Pattern Library book and chose the large Damask Flower design, which after blowing up on a photocopy machine several times turned out to be very close to the proportions of my chair seat. I was off and running on getting a new look for my old chair.

I have chosen to call this the Thousand-Petaled Lotus Chair Seat - the 1,000 petalled lotus symbolizes absolute reality, and a place where consciousness enters into a new realm of perception. As I spend so much of my creative and restorative time in this chair it seems to be the perfect image to use on my chair seat.

I haven't decided yet what exactly I will do for the sides of the seat, or for the back. I'm really winging it on this one so it will be an ever-changing project as I progress on it. At some point I will run out of one or the other yarns so it will be an eclectic project as well.

A long weekend is a wonderful thing.....

2008-08-31T17:54:00.000-07:00

I have got the back of the Leilani cardigan up to the armholes, and it looks great. Unfortunately, it has become apparent that I do not have enough yarn to actually finish it. The bit of yarn left in the ball in the photo is all I have left of the 1st ball; the remaining 2 are definitely not enough to finish the back, both fronts, and the sleeves. I haven't yet decided what exactly I am going to do about it, so it will go into hibernation for a while until I come up with a new idea. My original idea when I bought the yarn was to make a vest, but took a chance on Leilani to see if it would work. So it looks like I'm back to the vest idea. Any good suggestions?

I've made good progress on the Moderne Log Cabin Blanket - it's definitely getting bigger, though so slowly that sometimes its hard to tell. It's just about up to being square, and the goal is for it to be 50" x 60" once its done. But done-ness might be achieved in a different manner by simply running out of yarn at some point in the near future. But I am enjoying knitting on this. The yarn is so pleasant to work with and garter stitch is so soothingly mindless that this makes for superb coach-potato knitting.

Since I don't have much new getting started right now it feels like I don't have much to blog about, but seeing all the things I found to take pictures of reminded me that I've always got several projects going at once. I spent part of this weekend working on a couple of hats for Afghans for Afghans. These are intended as kid's hats and are knit with bulky weight yarns on size 10.5 US needles.

I work these scrap yarn hats from the top down, beginning with a bit of I-cord that gets tied into an overhand knot, and then increasing out from there. Using 4 double pointed needles makes it easy to plan the increases: I just knit into the front and back of the 1st and last stitch of each needle every other row until I have enough; the larger hat had 14 stitches per needle; the smaller one 12. I work even from there until it looks right (about 5" for the larger one, less for the small one) and then do the ribbing, and bind off. Doing the increases in this way makes for a somewhat squared hat top, which worked very well in these bulky yarns. While I didn't follow the pattern in doing this, I got the idea from brooklyntweed's Turn-a-Square hat.

And at long last I made the 2nd part of my baby gift for my coworker, Delphine's expected little boy, due in December. I made this sweater a while ago, and then decided it needed something to go with it. I found a nice little orange and cream checked cotton for a pair of overalls, and finally got them sewn up today. They turned out very well, but I think I made them in too big a size - I made the 3-6 month size but now I think the sweater is closer to a newborn.

But that's ok - they can both be worn at sometime, even if not exactly at the same time! Take a look at the 2nd picture for the carrot buttons - too cute.

Summer's end

2008-08-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

While I used to think of summer's end as being after Labour Day, or at least when school started, it now is marked more by a state of mind than by specific events. At work, it's time for the annual autumn grant deadlines looming very close, and for TW, faculty meetings start this week. I am feeling my usual pleasantly melancholic emotional sensation that always means fall is here. Don't get me wrong - melancholy isn't a bad thing in my book. During such moods I am even more than usually introspective, inwardly examining, and self-reflective. These are very powerful states of mind and usually productive of times of change and growth for me. Spring is usually thought of as a time of growth; for me it's always been autumn.

So how have I spent the last few days of my summer? Today I was with my niece for her 3rd birthday party, which was a blast. At least a dozen miniature human missiles masquerading as 3-year-olds shot around my brother's yard, fueled by raisins, lemonade, and birthday cake. My mom was there, too, along with my my sister-in-law's parents from Wales. My niece has known all of the children her whole life and it's great to see her grow up with such a cohesive group of friends from such a n early age. She's also old enough to know what was going on and to know that I was there, and very likely remember next year that I was at her party. She opened her birthday gift (the pink dress with bloomers from an earlier post) and wore it for the party. It fit perfectly and she was absolutely adorable in it.

As for the Ravelympics, I managed to fill 2 complete bobbins of spinning of my Dad's vanilla merino, which was exactly 8 of the 16 ounces I was attempting to spin up. While I did not fulfill my entire goal, I am very, very happy with what I did accomplish. In the parlance of the sportscasters, I didn't win the race but I did finish it. I'm also pleased that I was able to greatly expand my ability to spin with either hand, which was a big part of my personal goal. My right hand now has an equal partner in spinning!

Knittingwise, I am sadly without pictures but I am on the home stretch with the Moderne Log Cabin Blanket. I'm on to the last large intarsia-section at the end, and when I run out of the taupe colour I am done, with the exception of a border. It is definitely too big to take on my commute but it's getting lots of couch-knitting time. For commute knitting, the Leilani cardigan has actually begun and there will be better pictures soon!

It's the journey that counts

2008-08-18T16:59:00.000-07:00

My weekend in the mountains with my dad and stepmother was beautiful and restful, and even included lots of spinning, but unfortunately ended with a migraine that kept me form posting on Sunday as usual. But I'm back on track today and got some more spinning done, so where am I in my quest for Ravelympics glory? Well, there are lots of days of competition left, but I must say I'm really just happy to be participating.

My goal was to spin up 1 lb of my white merino top, which came out to completing 4 oz, or about 1 bobbin's worth, every 4 days over the 16 days of the event. It didn't take long to realize that this was not a very realistic goal. My back can't usually handle spinning for much longer than an hour at a time, and while knitting is portable on my commute, spinning on a wheel is just not really practical on public transportation. Granted, I haven't tried it yet, but I think it's safe to assume that I won't give it a spin (sorry, bad pun). I did spend several hours spinning while visiting with my folks; my dad is fascinated with my wheel and seems very intrigued with the whole process.

So what have I accomplished so far? I've spin a total of about 6 oz as of about 4:30 pm Monday evening. It comes out to 1 full bobbin and one about 3/4 full. Quite frankly, I'm pretty happy with this amount. I preferred choosing too big of a goal to picking something that I secretly knew I could complete easily. I would possibly also be a lot further along if I had not decided to spin with my opposite hand, as this has slowed my production down somewhat. But It has enabled me to become much more efficient with left-handed sinning, and if I had done all the spinning with my right hand as usual my arm would probably have been be too tired to have done as much as I have actually done.

And of course, there are still 6 days to keep working towards my goal. If some amazing burst of spinning mojo happens, along with the accompanying time, energy, etc., it still could happen. I will be away from home for more family activities over the weekend so I'm probably be spinning only in the evenings, but I will be thrilled with whatever I get done. It's been very gratifying to get even this much done toward spinning up a big batch of the merino.

What about knitting, you ask? Well, the Moderne Log Cabin Blanket is progressing very well but has finally gotten too big to carry around on my commute. Dragging along a big blankie is quite comforting and I certainly have had the urge to crawl under my desk with it for a pleasant little nap, but it's just too big to keep dragging about. But now I really need a new knitting project for commute knitting.

I'm planning on starting a project with the beautiful Brooks Farm Yarn's Acero I bought at Stitches West last spring (it's much more teal than in this picture). Does winding it into balls count as starting? Probably not. But I'm going to take a few different sized-needles with me tomorrow and get started on some swatching. The yarn is pretty fine so I'm guessing size 3 US at most. Right now the plan is to do the Leilani sweater from Berocco. The pattern was designed for a much heavier yarn (Linen Jeans) that what I have chosen, but it's very simple shape lends itself easily to reworking in a different gauge.

And the Games have begun.

2008-08-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

Anyone who is a Ravelry members is surely by now aware that the Ravelympics have officially begun, as of 8/8/08. The Ravelympics, for those not into fibre sports, consists of setting a personal goal(s) to be accomplished during the duration of the Beijing Olympiad. The official start time is whenever the actual start time for the Opening Ceremonies would be in the competitor's time zone (there's a world time converter on Ravelry, for those who need it as much as I did!) and will conclude at the Closing Ceremonies. For my time zone, that meant I could actually have begun at 5 am on the 8th, and will conclude at 8:59 pm on the 24th. I must admit that I did not start until 8 pm that evening while actually watching the Opening Ceremonies - the 8th was a work day after all, and I was A) far too sleepy to get up a 1/2 hour earlier than usually to begin, and B) not even remotely prepared yet.

But I have commenced on my personal challenge, which is to spin up 16 ounces of the 1 kilo (2.2 lbs) of beautiful vanilla merino top my Dad brought me from New Zealand a few years ago. I've already spun up 15 ounces of the deep brown Perendale he brought me, and once I finish the comparable amount of white I will make some pillows for his mountain house as a (somewhat overdue) thank you. I need to spin up 4 oz every 4 days on average to just spin up all the fibre; plying it as well will be a bonus. I'm going to be visiting my Dad next weekend for a long weekend and plan to take my wheel so hopefully I will get lots done and maybe get a little ahead of myself time-wise.

In the spirit of setting a personal challenge that requires a stretch of skills as well as a time commitment, I am trying something new. I use a variation of a backwards short-draw spinning technique, in which I control the fibre supply with my left hand and use my right forefinger and thumb to control the twist. This results in a strong pinching action in my right hand which over time makes that hand and wrist very tired. My new technique is this - I have a slight tendency to being ambidextrous and have experimented with reversing the hands while I spin - in other words, controlling the twist with my left hand instead of my right. It's become fairly easy to do with carded rovings but is a bit more of a challenge with a slippery smooth top as in this New Zealand merino. My technique is definitely a little different, and I lose the end of my yarn much, much more often this way, but about 1/2 a bobbin into the project I'm beginning to get the hang of it. The hardest part is resisting my perennial tendency to under-spin.

Other non-sports related news - I finished the Our Road Together scarf and it's beautiful. Jezebel is kindly modeling it for me here. I finished the scarf with a full repeat of the lace plus 4 rows of garter stitch, and had 12 1/2 inches of yarn left over. Once blocked the finished length is 62", which is exactly what I hoped for. My personal theory is that the ideal scarf length is the same as one's height - bingo on this one! The yarn is really beautiful - hand-dyed with natural dyes - and has subtle variations in tone. As is usual with vegetable dyes, the colour has a mellow patina that is very elegant and beautiful.

I've also been doing some sewing for little girls, and have indulged in all the pink, lace, and frills I can find. My niece Madi's 3rd birthday is coming up soon so I made her a jumper and blouse with two sets of matching bloomers. Too cute for words. The blouse and 1 set of bllomers is dotted swiss (the real woven kind, not flocked-on dots) with a pink embroidered eyelet for the jumper and 2nd set of bloomers. The lace is a scrap I've had from a fabric store I worked at in the 1980's - well aged stash by now, one might say. Madi's still small around but height-wise is about right for her age, so I hope the bloomers will work if she has dresses that still fit circumference-wise but perhaps are getting too short.

A 2nd sewing project was a gift for Suzanne - a museum colleague who is leaving for a new job this week. Suzanne has been a big supporter and very dear friend at the museum, and I wanted to give her something special as a farewell gift. She has a daughter who's just turned three, and she has always expressed admiration for a dress I made Madi long ago out of a fabric featuring a print of little 1930's style paper dolls and dresses. I had just enough of the paper doll fabric for part of the dress, but not all of it. But I ended up with a lot of the pink eyelet from Madi's dress to combine with the paper doll print, and ended up with something that I think Suzanne will like.

A quiet week

2008-08-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

It's been a quiet week, which for my first week back at work after a 2-week vacation, is a good thing. My department at the Museum went on a staff outing to the di Rosa Preserve, a former private estate in Napa County with a very extensive art contemporary collection that is now open to the public for tours. it was a perfect day - warm, with a cool breeze, and clear skies. I work with a great group of people and it was a lot of fun to spend an afternoon together doing something not related to our daily work. I completely forgot to take my camera so no pictures, unfortunately. But if you are in the Bay Area it's well worth a stop.

My primary knitting project for the week has been to work on my birthday scarf. I'm knitting with the birthday gifts Thomas gave me while on our trip to Seattle - a hand dyed slubby cotton/rayon yarn from Shoalwater Bay, using the Road Not Taken pattern from the beautiful A Fine Fleece book. (blogged about earlier). In this close-up detail the lace pattern shows up quite well - I went ahead and steamed this end lightly to get a sense of how the lace will actually look when finished, as unblocked lace is usually a mangled looking little lump and this is no different. But a little blocking works wonders, even in a non-elastic fibre blend like cotton and rayon. The pattern called fro 400 yards, and my skein has 345 yards so I'm just going to keep knitting until I run out of yarn and that's going to be it. I'm getting pretty close to being done. I got a quick start on this project as it's a summery sort of scarf and I didn't want to wait too long to make it so I could go ahead and enjoy it now.

I've also been spinning quite a bit this week, working on the singles for my 3-ply yarn that I blended all the colours for. Starting with the darkest/coolest of the three blends, I've spun up one fairly full bobbin so far, and have started on the 2nd bobbin. Each of the 3 blends has 8 batts of that colour, so I'm doing 4 batts per bobbin. It will be interesting to see how close the different bobbins end up being when I get to plying the final yarn. I had hoped to get all of this colour spun up this weekend but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. Best intentions, and all that.......

Vactioning at home

2008-07-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

There are few things I love better than having uninterrupted time in my own home, so the 2nd week of my vacation was every bit as wonderful as the trip to the Northwest. Since having a big chunk of time to spend at home is such a luxury I didn't want to be writing this post on the final Sunday wondering why I hadn't gotten much done, so I came up with a project to focus on over the whole week. More on that later.

The biggest news from the home front is that the Must Have Cardigan is finally done! It's a substantial sweater, so like the Hex Coat, it probably won't see any wearing action until colder weather arrives, but it's done and it's beautiful. It fits like a glove (Jezebel, my mannequin, is too small for the sweater) and the small effort in adding the waist shaping really paid off. Cables are often bulky, and the braided cables along the sides of the sweater are somewhat stiff. If I had made the body straight up and down it would have given me a much bulkier look than I wanted or needed. Otherwise I made only a few modifications to the pattern as written. I added about 4 inches in length to the body of the sweater to balance out my proportions better, but reduced the sleeve length by a couple of inches. I had read somewhere (sorry; I can't recall if it was on another blog or on someones' Ravelry description) that adding four of stitches to the armhole edges made for a better finish. In the pattern, the braided cable extends close to the armholes with just a couple of reverse stockinette stitches along the edges. To make that edge more stable and visually pleasing, I worked slightly fewer armhole decreases to enable 2 additional stitches in remain in moss stitch to form the armhole edges after the shaping was complete.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I had two button choices - 5 made of deer antler, and 7 from mother of pearl. I was leaning towards the antler choice to start with but ultimately went with the mother of pearl. The antler buttons ended up looking more yellow than I expected, and I preferred to have 7 buttons instead of 5. I did still prefer the heft of the antler buttons, so to give the mother of pearl a little more mass I stacked another very similar but smaller mother of pearl button on top of the larger one, which made them much more interesting. I sewed them on with the sweater yarn, first sewing down the larger one, than stacking on the smaller one with a couple extra stitches. The look is just what I wanted - interesting, but not distracting from the sweater itself.

I also finished a little project that got done so fast I didn't have time to blog about starting it! It's a baby sweater for a co-worker who's expecting her first child, and even thought the baby isn't due until December I was too excited to wait to make something for her. As of the last time I spoke to her before my vacation she didn't yet know the baby'sgender, so I chose bright colours that didn't scream girl or boy either way. The pattern is the One-Piece Baby Kimono (on Ravelry here)in Mason-Dixon Knitting, and is so easy-peasy it's hard to believe. I added the stripes and a neckband, but otherwise it's by the pattern. I used Mission Falls 1824 cotton.

So what was my major project for the week? I decided to drum card a big batch of fibres for spinning. After pulling out all of my available fibres (an embarrassment of riches, I must say) I found that I had a lot of corals, pinks, and red/orange colours, none of which was enough to do much with by itself but all massed together was enough for a sweater or shawl, or something much bigger than a scarf. I almost always do 2 ply yarns, so in order to try something different I deliberately set out to design a 3-ply yarn, mixing together as many of these analogous but different colours as I could without making a muddy mess out of them. I made a little swatch card of all the fibres I chose to work with, and got started.

I had a considerable amount more of 2 of the fibres than of the others - a bright coral Cormo and a pink wool/silk blend with lots of blue silk noil fibres. I first carded those 2 together to form a base from which to create 3 separate but related blends; 1 for each ply. The base colour ended up as an intense, cool salmon pink. For blend #1 (bottom) I used a touch of watermelon red along with more substantial amounts of marigold yellow and tomato red to make a warmer, lighter colour. Blend #2 (center) includes a lot more of the watermelon colour along with some red/blue/rust Firestar ( a metallicy nylon fibre) to add some sparkle; this blend is closest to the original base colour. Blend # 3 includes more watermelon red along with an intense blue violet and more Firestar; this blend is the coolest and darkest of the 3. In the photo a sample of the individual blend is shown on top of its corresponding blend, and the larger skein is a sample of the resulting 3-ply. While from a distance it is still very similar to the original base fibre in colour, up close it has loads of life and interest. The bits of silk noil in blue from the original blend really speak to the blue violet in blend #3 as well as adding a spark of a complimentary colour.

The goal for this week was to get the blend carded and ready to spin, which has been accomplished. I'll work on spinning it all up over the next few weeks so there will (hopefully!) be more and better pictures in the near future. What will I make with tis fibre? I have no idea. It will depend a lot on what yardage I end up with, and as doing 3-ply yarns is not as familiar to me I don't have a good sense of how far my fibre will go. All together I have about a pound if fibre so I'm hoping to have enough for a sweater of some sort.

Vacations and other delights

2008-07-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

After seven wonderful days visiting the Northwest including the Columbia River Gorge, Mt St Helens, Seattle, and Crater Lake, TW and I are home again. As always, I love to head off into the unknown for a vacation, and then am equally thrilled to return home again. Our annual road trip was filled with amazing sights, good food, new adventures, and best of all, time to be together, just the two of us. This year was the first time we included a city as a major destination point in the trip, and while we had a terrific time in Seattle and enjoyed the city very much, we both concluded that our biggest pleasures came from the natural environment - towering mountains, lush forests, beautiful rivers and lakes, and the like. Cities have wonderful things to offer, but they make for a very different type of trip, and we will keep that in mind for future planning.

The decision to include the stops at the Columbia River Gorge, Mt St Helens, and Crater Lake was a last minute one, which also precipitated our departure a day earlier than originally planned, but those were the parts of the trip that really moved us deeply. Mt St Helens was the highlight, I think - there's an observation center astonishingly close to the crater, with a panoramic view of the devastation area from the 1980 eruption. The mountain is huge, even with a significant portion of it having blown up during the blast, and it inspired nothing short of awe. The volcano itself is still completely barren, but the forests a little farther away have grown back (many of them re-planted by the lumber industries). The volcano is still technically active, but not in any kind of eruption cycle at the moment.

Part of the visit to Seattle included a ferry trip over to Bainbridge Island on a beautiful, sunny day. There's quite a nice yarn shop on the Island called Churchmouse Yarns and Teas, with lots of good yarns, sample garments, patterns, etc. A small section of the shop had a variety of tea for sale along with teapots, cups and saucers, etc. I always love to pick up some souvenir yarn while on vacation, and this time it's a double pleasure, as TW bought me a gorgeous skein as both my souvenir and a birthday gift. Along with several other brands of hand-dyed yarns the shop carried some yarns by Shoalwater Bay (I haven't been able to locate a website for them). The yarn is dyed with natural dyes and is a local company, so it's something I probably wouldn't be able to get anywhere else. It's a cotton/rayon slub yarn dyed a luscious aqua blue-green that will be beautiful with the turquoise earrings TW gave me last year. He also gave me a copy of A Fine Fleece, a beautiful book focusing on knitting with handspun yarns. There are a number of patterns based on traditional Aran and Guernsey designs, but each one is written for both handspun and commercially available yarns. While I would have liked to see some close up photos of the handspun yarns and/or fabrics, the sections discussing the author's thoughts on spinning, fibres, and design are well worth the price of the book. There are several scarf patterns in it, and the Shoalwater Bay skein is destined to become one of them.

And did I knit at all on the trip this year? Yes, I did! I got a good start on the Monkey socks, completing most of the leg. As I mentioned in last week's post I am using the variations from Cara of January One (see links in previous post), but did 5 repeats of the stitch pattern before starting the heel rather than the 4 she used. I also did a slip stitch heel flap instead of the plain stockinette in the pattern. I find hotel rooms to have poor sitting conditions and lighting so I didn't make a huge amount of progress but am enjoying the socks so far. This is my first experience with Socks That Rock yarn. The yarn itself is soft and spongy, which I like a lot, but I must admit that I am not really in love with such highly variegated yarns. The colour changes are quite frequent and are a little distracting from the stitch pattern. But I have decided to go ahead and use it for these socks as that was my original intention in purchasing it, so for once I will attempt to actually do what I set out to do, knitting-wise.

I am still on vacation this week, but will be spending it at home and am cooking up a major project to occupy myself for the week. What will it be? I'm not sure yet, but stay tuned........

On vacation!

2008-07-12T14:19:00.000-07:00

TW and I decided to head off on our vacation to Seattle and the Northwest a day early, so I'll catch up on my posts after my return in about a week. I'm sure there is mass anticipation out there in blog land to learn what my trip knitting projects will be. I think I am being the soul of restraint by merely taking 2 pairs-worth of sock yarn - Socks that Rock Lightweight in Purple Rain (this colour might be discontinued) that will be come a pair of Cookie A's Monkey socks, but using January One's version with a picot hem top and shorter leg; and Knit Picks Gloss is Concord Grape for a pair of Fool's Rush socks by Too Much Wool.

Last year I took along enough sock yarn to properly shod an entire village and ended up not knitting a single stitch, much to my amazement. I know some out there have doubts that I will actually knit what I am bringing this time, but the thought of traveling without knitting within reach is such an appalling thought that I simple cannot do it.

So, I'm off to the wilds of Seattle, Crater Lake, Mt St Helens, and other environs - a full report when I return!

Madison and Must Haves

2008-07-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

I spent the 4th of July at my mom's and had a great time playing with my niece, Madi. She's 2 1/2 now, and while still tiny for her age is now really a little girl instead of a baby. She's so cute, and isn't shy of me after the first few minutes. She's in preschool now a couple mornings a week and loves to read and do crafts of various kinds. I'm just bidding my time for a little longer before I teach her how to knit! (If my posture looks a little awkward it's because I am attempting to sit on a child-size rocking chair that my grandmother gave me many years ago, and now my mother keeps at her house for Madi. Needless to say, I can't quite fit into it any more.)

The Must Have Cardigan is progressing very well. I now have the back done and most of the left front. As the sleeves are already done (hurray!) there's just the right front and finishing left to do. My fears of running out of yarn appear quite unfounded. I still have 2 full balls of yarn left, and the fronts are only taking 1 ball so I'll have plenty left for the button bands, etc.

I'm still deciding between two button choices - a plain silvery white mother of pearl (simple, classy, a bit shiny, I have 7 of them) or creamy beige and white antler buttons (simple, more rustic, a great colour match, I only have 5 buttons + 2 smaller ones). As I also have 2 smaller ones, I could possibly use them in some interesting way in combination with the other 5. The pattern specifies 7 buttons, and since I am making the cardigan longer by 3-4 inches, I might need more than 7. By the same token, the antler buttons (which I overall prefer just on looks) are more weighty in appearance and it might be fine to use fewer of them, just spaced farther apart. I think I'll have to wait until the body is all sewn together to look at my choices and make a decision.

Now I have a major decision to make. What project shall I take on my road trip to Seattle next week???????

A good weekend after a tough week

2008-06-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

This past week verged on apocalyptic in California. An unusually dry spring coupled with a weekend of freak dry lightning strikes has brought the usual wildfire season to a ferocious and early start, with more than 1,100 wildfires burning throughout the state (Update - it's up to 1,400 wild fires as of Monday, 6/30/08. See news story here). While none of them have been anywhere near enough to me to be dangerous, that's not been the case for a number of friends of mine but as of the last I have heard everyone I know is safe, unharmed, and still has a home. But the air quality has been appalling. Smoke hangs heavy in the air, and the sun has been deep red at sunrise and sunset, casting blood-red streaks across the waters of the Bay and the Carquinez Strait near my home. It's an oppressive feeling having the air hang so heavy and making breathing difficult. But at last the winds have finally picked up a bit in the Bay Area to help clear out the air, so hopefully the scent of smoke will soon be swept away. Fires are still burning, but at least the air feels more normal now.
But life goes on, and I had a chance to spend some time with my friends from Sew Group today. We met at Patricia's house and had a nice sized group - 11 of us, which meant we had the opportunity to spend more time chatting with each other than sometimes is possible when the crowd is larger. As always, we had a wonderful time showing off our recent sewing adventures or bemoaning our failures, and I found new and happy homes for three of my items that were nice garments, but for various reasons just didn't work for me. Patricia's house is beautiful, the weather was comfortably warm without being too hot, our potluck was stellar, and the company fabulous. What more can one ask for?!

I have very few (as in, only 1!) knitting pictures of things as I am only working on a single knitting project at the moment (hard to believe, but true). I've been doing a little more sewing lately, but with mixed success, so there is no photographic evidence of that, but which partly explains the number of items I had to give away today. But the Must Have Cardigan is progressing very well - I've just started the armhole shaping on the back, so that piece will soon be done, and then I just have the fronts left to do. As can bee seen in this photo, I have added waist shaping to the back and will do likewise on the fronts. Cables have a tendency to be a bit bulky and stiff, and I thought a little shaping would help keep the cardigan from making me look bigger than I actually am.

I doubt I am going to make my goal of finishing the whole things before my trip to Seattle. TW and I plan to leave on the 14th, and time is getting a little short. But I don't really mind as I can now tell that this will be a very warm garment, and even with Seattle's cooler summers I don't think I'm going to need that kind of warmth.

Mounds of Wool in 100+ Degree Heat

2008-06-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

It's been extremely hot over the past several days in California - 104 degrees F/40 C on Friday in Vallejo. This would seem to be an inopportune time to decide to wind my entire cone of Webs Shetland wool into skeins, but I think the heat got to my brain and I indeed decided that this was the right thing to do. And now that it's done I'm glad to have the whole thing not only in skeins, but washed to boot! Coned yarn tends to be flat and ugly right off the cone and needs to be washed to bring out its true nature. The astonishing thing was how much the whole mass of it bloomed after washing. I knew it was going to be around 4,000 yards / 3.657 meters but the shear size of the mound was a surprise. This wild-looking pile is all 9 skeins heaped together after they had dried.

Using the wonderful clock-reel with built-in yardage counter that my Dad built for me, I wound off 500-yard /457 meter skeins at a time. I got 7 full skeins at that size, plus two smaller ones, off of the 2.2 lb / 1 kilo cone. After tying up each skein in 4 places to keep the yarn from tangling, I immersed them all in buckets of warm water with a generous slug of Eucalan wool wash. I like Eucalan because it's a no-rinse formula. The less handling given to wet wool the better, in my opinion, to reduce the risk of felting. I let the skeins soak for 30 minutes before carefully pressing out as much water as I could, and hanging the skeins outside to dry. Given the weather this didn't take long at all. So now the skeins are ready to knit whenever I decide what I want to knit, which is still very much an open question. There's a beginning gauge swatch in the photo; I've knitted up a bit on size 3 US / 3.25 metric needles, which makes a nice fabric, and have just begun on size 4 US / 3.5 metric needles, which is coming out a bit loose for a garment but might be fine for something lacy. The yarn is still not the softest stuff I ever handled so I doubt it will be knit into something that will be against my skin in any way.

Since I was already behaving inappropriately for the weather conditions, I continued the trend by working away on the Must Have Cardigan. Both sleeves are now done and the back has commenced. The only major modification I've made so far is to cross the centre diamonds in opposite directions so they will mirror each other. I'll repeat the mirroring on the body as well, especially since the back has two panels of the diamonds side by side. It would just look weird to me to have them both cross in the same direction.

I have also experienced a major frog attack. This pile of remains is what's left of a Chanel-style jacket I made a while back, and while the jacket looked great it made me look like a small, tweedy, purple whale. Not what I was after, so off to the frog pond with it. I have finally finished the unpleasant task of finding all the buried ends (lots of these as there are 3 colours of yarn in the jacket), picking out the seams, removing the extremely well-sewn-on buttons, and unraveling the double i-cord borders. Now all that's left is the rather pleasant task of unraveling and winding the yarn into balls. I find it easier to wind unraveled yarn into balls on my ball winder and/or nostepinne, and then will rewind it into skeins that I can wash to get the kinks out.

In addition, my good friend Catherine gifted me with a sweater she made but doesn't like that I will also frog. It doesn't fit me as is (it doesn't fit her very well, either, which is why she gave it away) so I will soon convert it back to being usable yarn. I haven't taken a picture of it yet, but it's knit out of a double strand of Plymouth Yarns Bulky Alpaca in a charcoal grey - very, very wonderful yarn! As it's doubled there's probably quite a bit of yarn in it but I don't know for sure how much, so I look forward to exploring it's possibilities once I have the reclaimed yarn in hand.

I will leave you with a picture of beautiful roses from my garden. The garden is an enclosed courtyard and is very much a work in progress, or more like a work waiting to commence. The building was abandoned for about 20 years before Thomas and I made our studio and home here, and the rose bushes somehow managed to survive all that time with no one taking any care of them at all. I have now found that in general the less I do to them the better, and this bouquet is the fruit of my non-labour. Enjoy!

Stopping (or rather, finishing) and starting

2008-06-15T10:41:00.001-07:00

At long last - the Hex Coat is done! And I am happy to add, I love it. It was a lengthy project ( I started it at Bodega Bay last March) but it wasn't nearly as much of a slog to get done as I actually anticipated. I did get pretty sick of moss stitch by the time the back was done (which was the final piece) and the hexagons were much more fiddly to do than I expected, but all things considered I never reached a point of not being able to stand the sight of the thing sitting around the house any more.

The hardest part of the hexagons was just the size and weight of the whole thing. Each hexagon is picked up and knitted right onto the front edges in the round on double-pointed needles, and that was a small amount of knitting to keep flipping around with a big weight in my lap. I did the majority of them before sewing the coat together, but it still was a lot of weight. But now it's done!

The neckline is really beautiful, sitting very high up on the back of neck. The photos in the book don't show the neckline at all so it was a pleasant surprise to see how it is shaped. After all of the hexagons for the front were done, I did a 3-needle bind-off for the shoulder seams, and then finished the last three hexagons that cross over the shoulder line and go around the back neck.

So to recap - the pattern is the Hex Coat from Norah Gaughan's Knitting Nature book. I used Cascade 220 worsted-weight wool instead of Lite Lopi as called for, which means I had to adjust the stitch counts, etc. due to my smaller gauge. Both the book and the yarn were gifts from TW - what a guy!

And as any knitter worth her/his wool would do, I've cast on for my next big project. The first sleeve of the Must Have Cardigan from Patons "Street Smart" booklet is well underway (actually, I finished it last night so the photo is a little out of date already). This cardigan has been very popular out there in blogdom, which is how it came to my attention in the first place. I'm even using the yarn called for (a rarity for me) but in a different colour - I'm using Paton's Classic Wool Merino in Aran Tweed, which is a greyed cream with tweedy flecks in blues, browns, and a little black; a great wear-with-everything colour for me. I'm doing the sleeves first to act as a life-size gauge swatch (the pattern just gives a gauge over stockinette stitch) as well as to get them out of the way sooner than later.

As is often the case with Aran-style knitting, the stitches in this cardigan are not as complicated as they appear. All of the row repeats are in multiples of 4 rows, and the wrong-side rows are simply knit the knits and purl the purls - nothing new happens on the wrong side. I did change the working method of smallest cable-like pattern that frames the larger central diamonds. The pattern had a fiddly slipping stitches from needle to needle while wrapping the stitches with yarn maneuver, while the final result was extremely similar to a stitch from the recently completed Loksins socks (in last week's post) that was far easier to work. Otherwise, I'm following the pattern pretty closer (also a rarity for me!) and so it's proving to be quite relaxing to knit.

What passes for normal around here

2008-06-08T16:35:00.000-07:00

As usual, lots is going around chez Kneedler. My mom is doing better; still pretty bruised up but the bruises are healing, albeit slowly. Mercifully she didn't break anything or (apparently) incur any serious injuries.

Last week TW was working like crazy on a big screen printing job at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, which is at long last having its grand opening today (read about it here). He's been printing wall text and signage directly onto the walls at the building, and as can be seen from these photos, it was a big job with a tight time schedule and a lot of challenges, as is usual with onsite printing. This is the 2nd time he's done such a job at a museum as it was getting ready for its opening to the public, and he does enjoy the energy and excitement of the behind the scenes activity.

On the knitting front, I'm happy to say that the Hex Coat is making significant progress. The hexagons around the neck are all done, at long last (in the photo I still had two to go but they're all done today). The hexagons are wrinkled little ugly messes once they're done but after a vigorous steaming and patting into shape start to behave themselves quite nicely. So now the knitting is officially finished; I just have the seaming and the finishing left to do. However, I am seriously thinking of doing some sort of small, discreet border around all of the edges; it feels just a little flimsy and raw along the neck and front edges, in particular. I will wait until all of the other finishing is complete before deciding, though. Perhaps just a row of reverse single crochet all around will do the trick. But I am definitely ready to be done with this project. I've enjoyed it, and I like how it's turning out very much, but it's time to move on, in my opinion.

And I finished the Loksins socks! They're really beautiful; a terrific pattern for someone who'd like to try a little lace but doesn't want to tackle a major project like a shawl. I'm looking forward to trying them again soon in a smoother yarn that will enable the lace patterning to show up better; the fuzziness of the this yarn (Knit Picks Palette) as well as the heathered colour obscures the detail a bit. A smooth, plain wool/silk blend with a little shine, perhaps?

Maybe next week

2008-06-02T20:17:00.000-07:00

Friends - sorry for missing my Sunday post; I feel strongly about keeping to a regular blog-posting schedule and dislike being unpredictable. But life has a way of being unpredictable as well, and this past week has lived up to that reputation. My mom took a nasty tumble late last week and ended up in the hospital for a brief but scary stay, and while I am happy to say she is home again and doing well I chose to devote this past weekend to her needs instead of to my own affairs. So, I missed my personal goal of posting on Sundays but I am pretty sure anyone reading this will not fault me for my decision.

I'll do a bigger catch-up next week, but for now I can say that I finally completed plying the brown Perendale wool that my Dad bought me from New Zealand last week, and today finished the Loksins socks whilst on my ferry commute. The only picture for today is of the plied Perendale still on the bobbins, but rest assured that all 800+ yards of it have been washed, dried, and are ready to wind into balls ready for knitting.

Until next week..........

Monday, Monday

2008-05-26T16:50:00.000-07:00

A quickie Monday update (it's the Memorial Day holiday so for once I am not too tired on a Monday to think about posting!) My friend Bonnie gave her sister the fluffy socks I had made for her, and not only did they fit, she loved them! Bonnie kindly sent a photo so I could see the socks on their owner's feet - don't they look happy?

Small pleasures

2008-05-25T12:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's the small things that make me smile and keep me going. A sock is a very small knitting project, and yet can give so much pleasure, both in the knitting and then in the wearing of it. I finished the first Loksins sock on Friday, and am very, very happy with it. (As the second one is already underway, I am fairly well assured that the single completed sock will become a pair in the near future.) It fits beautifully, and the Knit Picks Shetland-style yarn is very soft, warm and light on my foot. I don't imagine that these socks will be the sturdiest and longest wearing socks I've ever made, but as I only have 1 or 2 pairs of shoes my hand knit socks fit into they will be worn around the house much more than anywhere else.

I'll wait to block this sock until I have finished the pair, but already the stitches are nice and flat. The lace shows better when on the foot of course, but find that taking pictures of my own feet results in some pretty weird imagery and will decline to exhibit such pictures. The heathery colours in the yarn finally shows up in these photos; the base colour is a royal blue with lots of kelly green and fuschia blended in to make a beautiful rich blue-violet. As I've already said, the lace stitches in the Loksins pattern are very easy to knit and become very intuitive very quickly. For anyone who's nervous about attempting lace on a sock this pattern would be an excellent starting pair. And you'll end up with really wonderful socks at the end of it!

The hexagons on the Hex Coat are continuing apace; I'm almost done with the first side. I haven't yet done the shoulder seams (or any seaming for that matter) as I'm slightly puzzled about the way the hexagons fit across the back neck. I'm not completely convinced that I got the shaping right so once I'm to the point where only the last hexagon at the shoulder remains to be done I will then go to the second front and finish it up to the same point. Then I can hold everything together and take a look to see if that one last hexagon in the center back will really join up with the fronts in a way that will actually fit around the back of my neck. I'm really feeling ready to be done with this project, and I'm convinced that the weather here in the Bay Area will continue to revert to unusually cold temperatures until I have actually finished it.

The new-project-startitis bug really bit me hard a few days ago, and so I also began a really long-term project - the Moderne Log Cabin Blanket from Mason-Dixon Knitting. Instead of lots of small log cabin style knitted patches as in what one usually thinks of with log cabin quilts, this blanket is done in large, asymmetrical blocks for a very graphic, contemporary feel. I've been toying with the idea for some time, as the book's version is knit in Elsbeth Lavold's Silky Wool, and I just happened to have 3 balls remaining after finishing a project that used this yarn. I've picked up a couple other colours of the Silky Wool here and there, and while I don't have as much in total as the pattern calls for I have plenty to get a usable-sized blanket out of. And of course, I can always add more yarn as time goes on. It's a very free form design and will not end up looking like the one in the book, but will have the same feel. The yarn is terrific for a blanket - soft, warm, lightweight, and very comfortable against the skin. I'm guessing this project could run into the years in terms of length of time it will take to complete, and that's just fine with me.

Gardens, Hats, Hexes, and Loksins

2008-05-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful day - the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum's annual Garden Tour was today, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This event is a major fundraiser for the Museum and it was very heartening to see how many people were there. As I have been hoping to have happen for several years now, my mother was able to come up to join me on the tour. She's an avid and very good gardener, while I am more on the hopeful and somewhat bumbling amateur side, so it was terrific to get her input on what I was looking at instead of wandering about on my own. This is, oddly, the only photo I managed to take in the course of 9 lovely gardens, but it gives a taste of what was out there today. Mercifully, the dreadful 100+ degree F weather we have had recently dropped down to a much more manageable high 80s, which felt downright chilly compared to a few days ago.

One of the worst aspects of hot weather (to me, at least) is how unpleasant knitting can become during such high temperatures. Handling wool while dripping with sweat is just not my idea of fun. But the ferry was usually cool enough to knit, and as that's my primary knitting time I did get some good work in this week. My friend Catherine B is very active in 18th-century historical re-creation events, and will be going to Williamsburg, VA for an event in June together with her husband. John will be wearing sailor's gear for the event, and needed a traditional-style hat. Catherine has her hands full hand-sewing loads of garments for both herself and John, so asked me if I would be interested in making a knitted hat for John's outfit. It's very simple; she provided a pattern written from an extant example that is knitted very densely with heavy wool on small needles. I've finished the crown and have just started the brim. As the knitting is unusually tightly done it's a little hard on the hands so I've had to take a break over the weekend to give myself a bit of a rest. I think I can get the knitting done over the next day or two of commutes and will be able to give it to Catherine mid-week, or end of the week at latest.

As I am officially sick of moss stitch by now, I am pleased to report that the body of the Hex Coat is done and blocked, and now I am working on the hexagons around the front edges and neck opening. I am working on the 3rd hexagon along the front ( a sample hexagon is in the background in the photo) and find that they move along at a quick pace. While a tad fiddly, they are quick, interesting to knit, and contain no moss stitch whatsoever. A great combination, in my opinion. And of course, the irony of nearly finishing a wool, knee-length coat in 100+ degree weather is not lost on me.

And lastly, the Loksin socks are not forgotten. They were my commute project until the hat thing came up, which will soon be done and I will then be back to the socks. Sock number one is done through the heel flap; I'm just a row or two away from turning the heel. As with the hat, sock knitting is a little harder on my hands so I don't mind having an excuse to lay off for a day or two, and will pick the Loksins up again with pleasure once the hat is complete.

Once again, a woolly pair of socks in this weather has been somewhat unpalatable, so I don't mind the opportunity to delay a bit. Besides, the lace patterns are a real joy to knit (the 2nd photo shows the leg stretched to show off the lace a bit better). The colour in the 1st photo is much more accurate, by the way.

So I think that's all I am up to right now. I'm in a serious project-start-itis mood these days so am trying to rein myself in from starting everything I am thinking about. I keep having such an urge to start this project, or that project, or maybe ....... I think I'm in trouble.

Sock it to me

2008-05-13T10:39:00.000-07:00

Sorry for missing my usual Sunday evening post; TW and I had a small party for the print department faculty from the college where TW teaches (and of which we are both alumni) Sunday evening and I was too tired through Monday to even think about posting. It's amazing how tiring yakking with friends and nibbling good food all afternoon can be! But it was a great afternoon and everyone seemed to have a good time. And I am in shock over how much food we have left over.

The Hex Coat had reached a point where it wasn't really portable on the ferry any more, and I suddenly panicked late Monday evening, realizing that therefore I might find myself with 2 hours of ferry travel time without *gasp* anything to do! So I did what any knitter worth her or his wool would do. I delved into the stash, whisked out 2 balls of sock yarn, and threw into my bag the yarn, my trusty KnitPicks sock needle set, and Too Much Wool's Loksins sock pattern, and bright and early Tuesday morning, commenced a new pair of socks.

The yarn is KnitPick's Palette blue/violet/green mix called Blue Note Heather, which I specifically bought for this pattern about a year ago but am only now getting started on. The yarn is really more of a Shetland type than a smooshy sock yarn, and in the ball it seemed more navy blue. Now that I've knit with it a bit the colours are peeking through more. While I love blue I've never warmed up to navy blue, so I'm quite happy to see the increased liveliness of colour as I progress. The lace patterns in Loksins are very simple to knit and easy to remember and I'm enjoying working on them.

The other socks I have been working on are done - it's amazing how quickly socks knit in a bulky yarn get done! My dear friend Bonnie asked for a pair for her sister, who loves bulky, fuzzy socks, so we picked out an alpaca/silk boucle from Artfibers called Mackenzie in an interesting peachy-beige colour. They're almost dry from their post-completion blocking and will be in Bonnie's hands tomorrow.

It's challenging to estimate yarn amounts for bulky socks, and while one ball definitely wasn't enough two was more than plenty. I prefer to have a new ball for each sock, regardless of the yarn, so that I don't have to join a new end in part way through the second sock. This means I end up with two partially used balls instead of 1 larger remaining ball, but especially in a bulky yarn like this having ends woven in would be obtrusive, and less sturdy as well. It appears I have enough left over to perhaps do a pair of fingerless gloves for her as well, if she'd like them.

OK; back to the Hex Coat!

Spinnin' my wheels

2008-05-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

A long-term project is finally making discernible progress. I've been working on spinning the 2 kilos (2.2 lbs, approximately) of wool roving my dad brought me from new Zealand a couple years ago. The roving I have been playing around with is a very dark brown Perendale, with medium-length fibres, some grey hairs mixed into the brown, and a pleasantly earthy quality to it. The other kilo, which I haven't started on yet, is a luscious creamy white merino. (By the way, the colour in this first photo is very accurate; the others really got washed out for some reason.)

I am planning on knitting the yarn up into some sort of stranded colourwork that is still to be decided, so in the interest of being able to knit at a fine enough gauge to get plenty of detail I am spinning a fine yarn with much more twist than I usually use - both in the singles and in the plying (It's a 2-ply yarn). Of course, this takes a little longer to spin as the fibre goes a really long way when making a finer yarn, so filling up four bobbins of singles took a longer time than it should have. Having my back get cranky on me when I spin too long hasn't helped either, I must admit.

But I had a really good spell a while back and did indeed finish the 4th bobbin of singles, and commenced with the plying. Even though I have a plying head for my Lendrum folding wheel, it doesn't have small enough whorls for the amount of twist I wanted to use, and with it's very large bobbin and head it is very difficult to treadle. I really wore my back out one Bodega Bay trip a few years ago while using the plying head because I was determined to finish up a batch of yarn, and I really paid for it for a week afterwards. I didn't want to do that again!

So I have been merrily plying away on the standard bobbins, using the same whorl I used to spin the singles (I am terrible with ratios and can never remember what the ratios of any of my whorls are, so my apologies for this very unscientific and imprecise method of describing my process.) I now have three complete bobbins of 2-ply yarn. The last 2 bobbins of singles are close to half-way used up so I anticipate having another full bobbin plus a little more of finished 2-ply. I can hardly wait to see how much yardage I actually have when all is done (I'm guesstimating about 200-250 yards per bobbin, or between 800 - 1,000 yards total) as well as to see how the yarn changes once it gets wet. Given the tighter twist I don't expect a lot of bloom from the yarn, but I have been surprised before in that department.

It will be very exciting to finish this batch of yarn, and then think about starting on the white merino. I won't have used all of the brown roving by any means, but I'm hoping to play around next summer with doing some dying, and am curious to see what might happen with over-dying on the dark brown. In the meanwhile, I'm still spinnin' that wheel..........

Wastin' away in Ravelry-land

2008-04-27T16:45:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are already members of Ravelry, you do not need me to tell you how much time can slip by while poking around in that minefield of knitting and crocheting pleasure. For those of you who are not members, or haven't a clue what I am talking about, Ravelry is an online knitting and crocheting community; a social networking site for knitters, so to speak. Currently, one needs to sign up on the waiting list for an invitation to sign up, which happens in waves of up to 100 people per week. It's worth the wait.

If you are on Ravelry and would like to look me up, my Ravelry name is TheKneedler (no spaces between words).

I must admit to not having gotten into it too deeply when I first joined last July. I'm not really big on reading lots of online forums and list serves where people carry on online conversations of sorts about various topics, but there is certainly plenty of scope to do this on Ravelry if one wishes to do so. I have definitely enjoyed the access to lots of patterns and to see what people were using certain yarns for. But only since my Bodega Bay retreat in March have I fully succumbed to Ravelry's charms.

What changed? Well, after starting my Hex Coat project at Bodega Bay, I decided in a moment of time to kill to look on Ravelry to see what other people had done with that pattern. There were dozens of versions made in all sorts of yarns, complete with pictures of the finished coat; notes from the knitter as to what they liked, didn't like, would change, etc.; and most important of all to me right then, more close-up pictures of the coat front than the pattern book provided so that at last I could really see what those few stitches along the front edge should have looked like. (For a complete description of this unpleasant topic, see this post.) The hex Coat is coming along very nicely now, by the way.

The Aha! moment hit me, and I realized in a moment that I had a great untapped resource at my fingertips - I could connect with knitters from all over the planet (Ravelry has many international members) without even having to leave home. I can have a lot of contact with other people through the groups, forums, friends, etc., that are available, or I can remain my solitary self and use Ravelry only for my own organizing purposes. I can use it however I want.

As a result I have spent considerable time in recent weeks completing an inventory of my yarn collection (otherwise known as a stash) on Ravelry. I take photos of my yarn; upload them into flickr ( a requirement for posting pictures onto Ravelry) and then enter them one by one into Ravelry. I can enter in what the yarn is; where I bought it; how much I have in what colours, and any notes I want to include. Once this is done, I can then see how many other people on Ravelry have the same yarn stashed, how many projects are being knit with it, what they are doing with it, etc. I can differentiate my handspun from millspun yarns, and keep track of where it's stored.

The whole inventory can be viewed as thumbnail pictures, a list, or even be imported into an excel spreadsheet. I can also inventory projects I am working on, as well as create a queue of projects that I would like to do someday. To someone who loves to organize stuff, this is just a little piece of heaven.

I must admit to thinking that my stash didn't consist of very much stuff, but now that it is completed (at last!) I find that I own 77 balls of yarn that I deemed significant enough to bother with inventorying (I didn't include partial balls, scraps, or odds and ends of handspun). For any of you out there who gasped at that number, let me put it into perspective. My knitting buddy MmmYarn told me recently that she has 500 balls. She's even calculated how many miles of yarn that is, and while I can't recall the number she gave me, rest assured that it was very, very, impressive.

I think this means I need to go buy more yarn.

Coned yarns are a different ball of yarn

2008-04-20T17:12:00.000-07:00

I recently bought a cone of 2/8 Shetland tweed from Webs, and have been playing around with it a bit to see how the yarn behaves. As outlined very thoroughly by the Yarn Harlot a while back, coned yarns are different in some respects from yarns that come in skeins or balls. Until I read her post on the subject, I didn't realize that coned yarns still have spinning oils on them, which significantly changes their look and feel. But after washing they really come to life, softening and fluffing up significantly. (Oops - sorry; I thought I had a picture of a washed skein but it looks like I deleted it already. Please click here to see the difference in before and after washing).

Another trick of coned yarns is that while one can easily determine the total weight of the yarn, they're not usually labeled with the yardage. There are a few ways I can determine yardage. One is to skein off all of the yarn on my clock reel, which makes skeins that measure 2 yards in circumference, and (blessedly) has a yardage meter to count the number of revolutions it makes. I therefore know how many yards are in each skein I make.

Secondly, I can use a McMorran Balance (see the first picture in this post) to make an estimate of the yardage I have. A McMorran Balance has a small arm that balances on top of a base, like a child's teeter-totter. A length of yarn is laid over a notch in one end of the arm, with the ends hanging down evenly. This forces the arm down at that end, like the teeter-totter with only one person on it. I then snip off tiny bits of the ends of the yarn until it raises itself into a balanced position on the base.

It's a little hard to see, but the strand of yarn is lying right next to the tape measure in the photo, and measured 22 inches. I then multiplied 22 inches by 100, which gives me an estimated number of yards per pound. It's almost magic. By this estimate, I have 2,200 yards per pound (before washing). Considering that I have 2 pounds of the yarn, that gives me a whole heck of a lot of yarn.

Swatching has just commenced to see what gauge this yarn works up into, but at this point a single strand on size 2 US needles is coming out to about 6 stitches per inch. Given the sheer quantity of yarn I have I'm seriously thinking of using it doubled with larger needles. I'm not sure yet what it will be made into, but as it's not the softest yarn even after washing it will most likely be a cardigan that will be worn over other clothing, rather than a pullover or blouse-like sweater. However, I have just begun the back of the Hex Coat and have a long ways to go before I feel like I really have it far enough along to be able to risk starting another project. Here's hoping I can remain faithful to the Hex Coat before the siren song of new yarn gets to me!

Moving forwards again

2008-04-13T18:11:00.001-07:00

Today was a great day! I met up with my wonderful friends from Sew Group for an afternoon of fabric and yarn shopping in some new and unexplored shops. It's a real treat to have such good friends to shop with and spend time together, and I hope they all had as much fun as I did.

Piedmont Fabrics was started by a former employee at the now defunct Poppy fabrics, and East Bay institution that sadly closed last autumn. She's done a great job getting together a collection of interesting fabrics at a wide range of prices, with very knowledgeable staff to assist. The button selection was terrific as well. A definite go-back-to place.

As I can spend far more time in a yarn shop than can my friends, I headed over to Piedmont Yarns & Apparel while the gang was finishing up their purchases at the fabric store. It's a small shop, but with an interesting selection of yarns I don't see in other stores - many hand-dyed brands; some they dyed themselves (probably with Knit Picks Bare as the base yarn), as well as vegetable-dyed fibres from A Verb for Keeping Warm. I work with one of the ladies from this company at my job at the Museum, and she's a real sweetheart and her fibres are beautiful.

I was very restrained and contented myself with two skeins of Mirasol Hacho hand dyed wool. Ravelry thinks it's a DK weight but I'd call it a sportweight. I got one skein each of a magenta/fuchsia mix and a blues mix, and plan to do some sort of striped multi-patterned socks with them. I probably should have gotten 1 more skein to really be enough but if that's true it will be a good incentive to go back soon.

And the good news - TW's vest redo is all done and now it's the right length. The unravelling process was more painful than expected - i know that unraveling from the bottom up isn't really a smooth operation, but the stitch pattern made it worse than planned. But it's all done and we're both happy with it. Of course, now that it's really wearable we've had a heat wave and it's nearly 80 degrees outside but that will change soon enough.

A visit to the frog pond

2008-04-08T18:06:00.001-07:00

There will be no pictures in this post to enliven my sad tale or to document the wreckage. Suffice it to say I have been making serious backwards progress lately and feel the need to 'fess up to it, even if I can't bring myself to photograph it. But there is some major frogging goin' on here.

First, TW and I have faced up to the fact that his vest is too long. While it fits in every other conceivable direction or dimension, it is simply longer than really looks right on a guy. So it means taking off the buttons, frogging the neckband, undoing the lower part of the side seams, picking out the cast-on, frogging the pieces from the bottom up, then reknitting the lower bands, sewing the side seams back up, reknitting the button bands, and sewing the buttons back on. If all goes well no one will even notice that it wasn't knit that way to start with. Let's not discuss what can happen if it doesn't go well. The good news is that I now know for sure I have enough yarn.

Secondly, as I was merrily knitting away on the ferry last night, I started having the gnawing thought that the armhole shaping on the left front of the Hex Coat was looking a little, well, odd. I am using a lighter weight yarn than called for in the pattern and had refigured the pattern to suit the gauge I had come up with. While my gauge is different than the pattern, it's not a huge difference (4.8 st per inch instead of 4.25), so when I noticed that I was needing to decrease a lot of stitches to get to the appropriate shoulder width I started hearing those nagging little voices in my ear, hinting that perhaps something was amiss.

Now, to put this in context, I have already realized that I had messed up on the stitch sequence along the zig-zag of the front edge. For some reason I had simply not been able to figure out what was going on in the instructions, with the moss stitch, increases, decreases, etc. My mind sometimes descends into a dyslexic fog when trying to work through someone else's directions, and this was definitely one of those times. It wasn't until I looked at Ravelry and saw pictures of other people's finished coats that I realized that the front edges were supposed to have 3 stockinette stitches along that selvedge, instead of moss stitch all the way to the edge. Why I hadn't been able to figure that out on my own I don't know, but it did make the decreases/increases much cleaner looking and set off the row of hexagons along the edge very nicely. So I already had the niggling thought that I wanted to start over to make the front look like it was intended, which I also liked better than what I had done, but with the 1st front done to the armhole I decided I didn't want to frog that much moss stitch.

And then I noticed the size of that armhole. So I looked back at the schematic for the coat, and puzzled over what the problem could be. And then I suddenly realized what I had done. The schematic included 2 sets of dimensions for the fronts - one for the moss stitch sections only, and one for the fronts with the hexagons knitted on. When I reworked the pattern I used the wrong set of dimensions, and therefore had made the front a full 3 1/2 inches wider than it was supposed to be. I couldn't leave that, as it would make for a very oddly sized sweater to say the least, and there was no way to fix it any other way then to ....rippit, rippit, rippit. Can you hear the frogs sing?

Christmas in April

2008-04-06T17:09:00.000-07:00

TW's Christmas gift vest is done and fits him perfectly! He loves it (and is wearing it as I type, I might add). He's such a good sport he even was willing to pose for me in the vest while holding the little "paper doll" that I made as the actual gift I wrapped up for him last Christmas.

My fears about running out of yarn were well-founded but were circumvented by cannibalizing my gauge swatch to do the final armband. I am especially pleased with the fit, as this is the very first knitted garment I have made for TW (and that is due to his reluctance to have the sweaters, not to mine to make them for him.) I've sewn many shirts for him and so have a sense of what degree of ease he likes in his clothes, but knitting is so different that it still involved a certain amount of educated guesswork as I went along. He did give me the important clue that he greatly preferred erring on the larger than smaller side so anytime I was puzzled over how big/small/whatever to make something I always went with whatever resulted in the larger garment.

I am amazed how much larger men are than women, or at least bigger than I am. While I'm not the slender thing I used to be I am overall still on the petite side. TW is very broad in the shoulders and upper back and I was astonished to see how quickly the yarn vanished as I worked across those looooonnnggg rows. But it's done, he's happy, and so am I. What he doesn't know is that this is just the beginning of a wardrobe full of knitwear to come........

On the home stretch

2008-03-30T16:37:00.000-07:00

Thomas's vest is making good progress. Or rather, I'm making good progress on finishing it, but knitting projects always seem to take on a life of their own so I tend to think of them as accomplishing their own rate of finishing with me just doing the manual labour part. Perhaps it's time to admit that my knitting owns me, not the other way around. As I like knitting a lot, this doesn't bother me as long as I'm still in charge of the yarn purchasing budget. If my knitting starts having it's own ideas about yarns that differ from my preferences might be trouble.

But I'm wandering a bit. The vest is now complete about halfway through the 2nd front; I've got about 20 rows to go to reach the armhole and neck and then things really speed up. Good timing too, as I'm darn close to running out of yarn. I have that little tangle of yarn next to the unfinished side of the front, one intact ball, a very large swatch, and a tiny ball that I think is what is left from one ball after doing the swatch. So if I have what I think I have, two full balls are left to complete the 2nd front plus do some narrow garter stitch bands around the armholes and the front/neck edges. I'm holding off on working on the Hex Coat so that I can really crank on the vest, as the sooner I find out whether or not I have enough yarn the better, especially if I have to reorder another ball or two.

In case anyone is wondering, all of those little markers on the vest are my way of keeping track of what I'm doing when I am making up the pattern on my own. I write down some key details such as gauge, needle size, number of stitches I cast on, etc, and then mostly I use markers to keep track of the number of rows, etc. On this vest I am also working in a series of short rows on the front to make the center fronts a little longer than the side seams in order to accommodateThomas's physique; he's got a bit of a belly and if I make the fronts perfectly flat the hemline ill hike up in front. The short rows are like adding darts for the bust line; just a lot lower down.

This and that

2008-03-24T20:34:00.001-07:00

My apologies for missing my Sunday post; I had a wonderful day at my brother's for an Easter Egg hunt with my niece and utterly lost track of what day of the week it was! (One would think I would make the connection between Easter Sunday and Sunday, wouldn't one?) Madison is now 2 1/2 years old - such a cute age. She recognizes me and knows my name now, and is such a sweetie. She's still tiny so still doesn't fit into some of the clothes I've made her, but they'll fit someday, I'm sure. Aren't they a beautiful family?

I got a sudden bee in my bonnet to make something for her for Easter, and decided to make her a poncho using some very bulky chenille from Lion Brand that my sister in law had passed on to me. I used Barbara Walker's directions for a top-down poncho, and made a drawstring neck so it would be sure to be able to grow with her for a while. With the large gauge and size 11 US needles it was a fast, fast, fast project. I started it before lunch on Saturday, and finished it after dinner, including taking time out to go to the grocery store, get my car washed and the oil changed, and a few other errands. Sometimes, fat yarn and big needles are really, really great.

In my last post I completely forgot to mention anything about what I had worked on at Bodega Bay. I usually take knitting and spinning with me so that I can be independent of electrical outlets and perfect lighting, as that tends to be in short supply. This was the perfect opportunity to start the Hex Coat from Knitting Nature. Thomas gave me the book for Christmas 2006, and then gave me a very generous gift certificate to my LYS for 2007, which I used to by a whole bag of Cascade 220 to make the coat. I got a nice amount done on one side of the front - here it's just about up to the armhole shaping.

My other project was to spin more of the deep brown Perendale roving that my Dad brought me from New Zealand a while back. I already had 2 bobbins spun up, and managed to complete 2 more over the BB weekend. I now think I have enough to ply up into an amount of yarn that's actually enough to do something with. Now I need to move onto the cream merino roving that he also brought me. I'm looking forward to finally making something beautiful with this wonderful wool.

Bodega Bay was great!

2008-03-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

While there were some differences this year, the annual Bodega Bay weekend that Sew Group has been doing for 16 years now was as wonderful as always. We really missed the folks who could not be there, and the absence of Laurel, who passed away last year, was palpable. Laurel was a larger than life person and love her or not, her presence was always there and her absence was deeply felt. During her illness she was not able to come every year, but this time we knew she'd never come again and I think we all were aware of it. Others were unable to come due to changes in their personal lives and while we missed them very, very much, I know I am not alone in wishing them all the best as they move forward with their lives. We also had several new participants and it's great to have a new wave of people joining in - welcome to you all!

As is so often the case with wonderful experiences, there isn't a lot to say about the great time we had. As always, the environment is unbelievably beautiful. There were 20 of us spread out over 3 houses, and as the 3rd house (which I was staying in) was a few blocks away from the other 2 I probably spent more time out of doors than I ever have at BB before (which is not a testament to my outdoorswomanship, I must say). It was quite a stiff walk uphill from House # 1 & 2 to House # 3 and required some fortitude to make the trip.

We did lots of sewing, spinning, silk-flower-making; knitting; cross-stitch, and you name it. We ate more terrific meals than I count recount, we drank loads of wine, talked until we were hoarse, slept late ( or not), and had the time of our lives. Do you remember what it was like as a kid to look forward to Christmas, or you birthday, or some other meaningful event? That sense of anticipation, of thinking "the day" would never come, and of the delight when it finally did? Bodega Bay is for all of us what those events were like as a kid. We just wish we could do it twice a year instead of just once.

The hum of activity of all the needlework and handicrafts hardly stopped from Friday night through Monday morning. We churned out aprons, jackets, blouses, silk flowers, knitted coats (or at least portions thereof), pieced shirts, baby quilts, vests, tee shirts, and more. I am truly humbled by the creative genius of these wonderful women who I have been honored to know, in some cases, for over 25 years, and am deeply grateful for the friendship, support, love, and example of these extraordinary friends. I don't know what I did to deserve to be part of this group, but I am so glad I am. I wish I knew what else to say, but words fail me in an attempt to describe how much this weekend, and the Sew Group as a whole, means to me. I just hope you all know what I mean. Thank you all for being a part of my life.

It's time for Bodega Bay!

2008-03-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

Every year the sewing group I belong to goes on a retreat to Bodega Bay on the Sonoma Coast of California. We take all of our projects - sewing, knitting, needlework of all kinds, spinning (me, at least), take turns cooking for each other in teams, drink lots of wine, talk,laugh ourselves crazy, and generally have as great a time as can be imagined. There's usually about 20+ of us, and this year it's taking 3 houses to accommodate us all. We've been doing this for at least 15 years now and it's the highlight of our year for many of us.

I'll be taking off in about an hour and won't be back until late Monday so I won't be posting on Sunday as usual. But I will try to catch up on Tuesday with lots of pictures to go along.

I checked back in my archives and realized that my first real post with pictures, descriptions of projects,etc. was to do a catch up for last year's BB retreat, so that means I am fast approaching my first blog-iversary! It's hard to believe it's been almost a year. More to come!

Lace & Cables Cardigan

2008-03-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

It's done! When I started the Lace & Cables Cardigan there were two goals I was hoping to accomplish. One was to commit to an intensive, long term commitment with a knitting project, and the other was to replace a much loved cardigan that had finally needed to be retired. I am happy to say both goals were achieved.

Modeled by the lovely Jezebel, my vintage mannequin, the varied patterns that went into this cardigan are visible. There are 3 main patterns - a 4 x 4 cable bordered with seed stitch; a lace chevron; and a lace zig-zag. All were borrowed from an old Debbie Bliss design of children's garments with only one adjustment - I added a purl stitch on either side of the cable to set it off a little bit from the seed stitches on either side. I also more or less followed the shape and details of the original Debbie Bliss design, including the seed stitch front bands and collar.

I did arrange the various panels in my own combination across the body, which is knitted in one piece with no side seams. I centered the chevron patterns on the back and more or less on the fronts, with the cable pattern marking the side seams. However, being utterly unable to think in three dimensions, I arranged the three patterns across the body as if the sweater would be viewed in its entirety as a single large flat piece. All seemed fine until I got close to finishing the armholes, when it finally dawned on me that the patterns would not match up in any conceivable manner at the shoulders. If I had thought about it ahead of time, I would have mirrored the patterns on either side of the side cable patterns. Oops.

So what to do? Improvise, of course! A small detail such as unbelievable wonky shoulder seams was not enough to warrant unraveling the whole thing back to the beginning and starting over. But it did give impetus to creative problem-solving. I had, with stunning foresight, used the chevron lace pattern as the centre of the sleeves (which I had done before the body as a life-size gauge swatch) and this made for a perfect opportunity to do a saddle shoulder with the chevron continuing across the shoulder strap. Not only did this solve the dilemma of the wonky shoulder seams, but it looked darn good in the process.

With the sleeves being knitted in the round, and the body done in a single piece the only seams were the shoulder strap seams and the sleeve cap/armholes. I used vintage Czech glass buttons that had been salvaged from the original, now retired, blue wool cardigan that I was replacing, and the finished sweater is everything I had hoped for.

Server problems

2008-03-09T21:10:00.001-07:00

For some reason my pictures won't upload today. After several attempts it's just not happening. I have finished the blue cotton Lace & Cables Cardigan and planned to give a full description of this project (which I am very happy with) but without the pictures it's not nearly as interesting or effective, so I will try again tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed that Blogger's server problem will have been resolved!

The Three Stages

2008-03-04T16:18:00.000-08:00

I missed my usual Sunday post due to a sudden and unpleasant attack of the flu. While I'm still not up to taking pictures of my projects (the blue lace and cable cardigan has progressed nicely up until the onset of the flu) or writing about them extensively, I've had a chance to reflect on how being sick affects my knitting, and have identified three stages of illness:

Stage One: I can knit on basic projects or ones that have progressed to the point where not much thought is required;

Stage Two: I want to knit, but don't have the energy or thought capability to handle even rote tasks;

Stage Three: I don't even want to knit.

I shudder to contemplate any possibility of there being more stages after stage three. After all, once ceases to want to knit, what is left out there?

So, at any rate, I am ascending slowly upwards from Stage Three and am now back at Stage One. An update on the Lace and Cables Cardigan to come on Sunday. Keep well.

Recent Acquisitions

2008-02-24T17:16:00.000-08:00

As is usual for art museums, the museum where I work to occasionally has Recent Acquisitions exhibitions to showcase works that have been newly acquired and accessioned into the permanent collection. I went to Stitches West yesterday, and acquired a few treasures of my own, so I felt it was appropriate to hold a sort of Recent Acquisitions blog post, if not exhibition, of my own.

I had in fact resisted for some time the idea of going to Stitches at all, as I am so weak in the face of all the delights that are there that I spend too much money every time. All my ploys to control my spending have much proven too fallible to defeat my ability to circumvent myself and overspend, so I didn't go at all last year. It was hard to give it up for 2 years running, but my budget restraints combined with the other commitments I had for the weekend convinced me to forgo the pleasure once again. But then I found out that it was my only chance to catch up with Vickery, who is here on a visit from Wyoming, and and I couldn't resist that temptation, too. So off I went.

And what did I find? My first acquisition was my very first, very own skein of Socks that Rock yarn. I've seen it on so many blogs and have never been able to see it in the flesh (wool?) before, so I jumped on the chance to acquire my own skein at last, and to pick out the colour by seeing it in person rather than through the distortions of a computer monitor. I chose Purple Rain in the lightweight version; it's a gorgeous combination of blue violet, grey and fuchsia. I'm planning on making the Monkey socks by Cookie A, with some of the modifications Cara has made, such as a slightly shorter leg and a picot hem at the top.

I also found the single item I was actually looking for - it's intended as a gift for a dear friend, and as she reads this blog on occasion I won't show a picture as the colour will be a clue that it's for her and I prefer complete surprise in this case. I'll just tell you that it's a skein of Tilly Thomas's Plie yarn, a hand-dyed silk with glass beads. (sorry; I couldn't find a website to link to for this one).

My "big" purchase was from Brooks Farm Yarns - I got three skeins of Acero, a superwash wool, silk, and viscose blend in a sportweight. It's deep teal, with an intriguing heathered quality due to the different fibres taking the dye differently. It's one of those yarns that's not as splashy as a mutli-coloured handyed yarn, but has a quiet elegance that I anticipate being absolutely beautiful when knitted up. Each skein has 420 yards in it, so even three skeins is a lot of yarn. Not sure yet what this will be, but I look forward to experimenting with it very soon.

Other, non-Stitches additions to my collection (unlike the museum, I hope the collection is not permanent in the sense that the yarns never get used; I just hope that the stash remains an intact, if fluid, entity) were the result of my sweetheart, TW, giving me a generous gift certificate to the LYS, Benicia Knitting Circle, as a Christmas gift. I decided to use it to get yarn for Norah Gaughan's Hex Coat, from Knitting Nature (which was also a gift from TW last year). The pattern calls for Lopi Lite, which I don't care for, and I couldn't find a substitute that was exactly on in gauge, so I decided to wing it and use Cascade 220, even though it knits up to a different gauge. I'll have to rework the pattern a bit but I think it can be done without too much grief. Even if it just didn't work out I still have a full 10 skeins of a luscious ruby heather Cascade 220, and how bad can that be after all?

To finish off the full gift certificate, I also got a few skeins of Silky Wool to combine in some way with the cream I have leftover from an earlier project. This might be another sweater, or it might be the beginning of a log cabin blanket a la Mason Dixon Knitting's blanket, using the same yarn.

And that concludes our show for today. Please stay tuned for future exhibitions arranged along the theme of New Work.

Spring is in the air

2008-02-17T17:15:00.000-08:00

I know the weather for folks back east is still deep winter, but in California we're having a brief glimpse of spring that so often appears in late January or early February. Temperatures were close to 70 degrees F last week, and while they're back down to a more seasonable 60ish F the skies are still clear and crisp. If one can get out of the city and suburbs into the more rural areas it is so beautiful this time of year. Mustard flowers are blooming under bare orchard trees; sheep and cows graze on the lush green grass; the air is cool but the sun is so warm. It was a great day today for a drive to enjoy all this bounty, so that's what TW and I did today. We put the top down on the convertible, bundled up, and took off for Tomales Bay for a drive and lunch. My photo of the mustard field was taken while driving so it's a bit blurry, but the glorious colour should come through none the less.

So while the rain is due back in a few days and there's still winter weather to come for e few more months, I feel the urge to focus on spring knitting. I am well on my way with the lace and cable cardigan - this is the body done almost to the armholes; I'm going to finish the pattern repeat I am on and will begin armhole shaping at that point. The sleeves are already done to the point of starting in the caps. One I stop working across the entire body as I am now and just focus on the back and fronts separately the rows will feel like they're flying by. The front will continue straight up the neck, and there will be a seed stitch collar to finish it off - the cardigan will almost be a shirt in style when it's done. Or at least, that's the plan.

At Knit Night last week Giovanna brought a hear-shaped sachet she was working on from an Interweave Knits pattern, using mitred squares knit at a tight gauge to form the heart shape. Very pretty. I've wanted to make this for a long time so she gave me the kick in the pants I needed to try it. I used stash yarns that I had in small bits and pieces to make the mitred squares. This is definitely addictive and I am not sure how many I will end up making before I get sick of them. As can be seen in the photo, one is done and stuffed with rose and lavander petals and a little wool; the second one is almost done; it just needs the last 2 squares to make the points at the top and then finishing. This is a great way to use up small bits of yarn. I believe the original pattern was done in Koigu but my yarns are rayon ribbons, silk noil, cottons, etc.

And I've been spinning - I know have 2 full bobbins of the brown Perendale top that my Dad brought me from New Zealand last year and am ready to ply them up. I'm guessing I'll have about 300 yards out of these 2 bobbins. Next I'll spin some of the white merino top that he also brought me, and once I have enough of both yarns I plan to make a pillow for him using an adaptation of the Intricate Stag Bag from Knitscene's Fall 2007 issue. That should keep me busy for a while, don't you think?

Is it a bad sign when....?

2008-02-11T17:57:00.000-08:00

I was away from home visiting my mom all weekend, and am feeling a bit of a cold is coming on, so I haven't taken any pictures of my knitting for a few days and I don't really feel like doing it right now either. But I've had a few random thoughts in my head and now seems like a good time to put 'em out there, picture-less.

Is it a bad sign that perhaps I am overly obsessed with knitting when:

I get really excited, thinking I have spotted other knitters, when I see people on the ferry or walking around town that seem to be untangling large amounts of white yarn? Only to be bitterly disappointed when I realize that it isn't yarn they're untangling; it's their iPod cord?

I create a valentine for my sweetheart TW in which I intent to write "I love you" over and over, only to discover that I have in fact written "I love yarn" over and over?

I seriously start to think that it would be a good idea to expand my yarn storage area into the trunk of my car?

I don't count my hand-spun yarn when I inventory my stash, because, somehow, it's "different"?

Or that I think it's perfectly normal to reveal my failings in public via the internet, having faith that everyone reading this might actually not consider any of this to be weird?

And if any of you out there have other symptoms of over-obsessiveness with knitting, I'd sure love to hear about your "bad signs"!

So now it's really done.

2008-02-03T19:44:00.000-08:00

OK, it really is done now! I finally got the bias strip knitted, blocked, sewn around the cording, and sewn onto the pillow, and the ikat pillow is at long last finis, done, all over. I thought I had knit about 6 inches more of the bias strip than necessary, but ended up needing to knit about 4 inches extra to make the ends meet, but that was quickly done, especially since I had perfect knitting TV going on - football's Super Bowl. I find sports, especially football, to be excellent knitting TV and I do like to watch football anyway, so I get a lot done when there's a game on.

So what am I up to now? I'm still working on the multi-stitch, blue cotton cardigan but haven't taken pictures of it yet. The sleeves are done to the armhole, and the body (which I am knitting in one piece) is about 1/3 of the way to the armholes. It's a great project for the ferry so that's going along well, as I have 2 hours per day to knit on it.

I am also planning a major project in the form of Norah Gaughan's Hex Coat from her Knitting Nature book. Thomas gave me the book for Christmas a year ago, and this year gave me a generous gift certificate to my LYS (Benicia Knitting Circle) so I am spent a long time there yesterday looking for the yarn I wanted to use. The pattern calls for Lopi Lite, and since I am not fond of Lopi I wanted something else. I've swatched with Cascade 220, but it's too lightweight to get gauge.

I did find a new yarn - Cascade Pastaza, which is 50/50 Llama and wool, which comes in gorgeous colours. Upon swatching with a few needle sizes I find I can achieve the appropriate gauge, but the yarn makes a dense, heavy fabric that would make more of an outerwear coat then the lighter indoor cardigan I am after. So it will be back to the drawing board there. Normally I have little fear of adjusting patterns to suit the gauge and yarn I want to use, but given the complex hexagons and shaped fronts in the Hex Coat I am less secure than usual. It appears that much more swatching is in order on this one.

And last but not least, my Knitting/Spinning group has taken up the felted Bunad Mukluks as a new challenge project! The pattern, from Folk Style, is a great one to adjust to one's own taste and personal style so it will be great fun to see what everyone ends up doing with the pattern. I am using Cascade 220 (there seems to be a theme in my yarn choices, lately!) and as the colour in this photo is atrocious, it will be in a heathery light turquoise and black, with a little marigold colour as an accent. I had toyed with using stranded colour patterns in my first pair and have decided to go with that this time around. Not sure yet what the design will be, but I'm looking forward to playing around with some ideas.

Nearly a pillow.

2008-01-27T15:37:00.000-08:00

The ikat pillow has now been sewn up and is technically a usable pillow. The front is all in the ikat stripe pattern, with two different patterns on the back. The backs overlap with vintage mother of pearl buttons closing the envelope.

I find that this envelope style is easy to put on and take off, and looks good flat, but often pulls open and gaps when a pillow form is stuffed into it. So I like to use several buttons to keep the flap more neatly closed - 3 buttons minimum; preferably five. I've got oodles of these buttons so I might as well use them with abandon.

The pillow isn't quite done yet. I like having some sort of welt or cording around the edges of the pillow, somewhat like a frame around a picture. I've used I-cord in the past, either in a plain colour or striped, but since this pillow has a very strong striped pattern to it already I didn't want horizontally striped cording around the edges; it just seemed too potentially discordant with all those stripes that didn't line up.

So I'm knitting a long stripe of bias knitting in stripes which once it's sewn around a cord and attached to a pillow the stripes will be on an angle instead of horizontal. I've got the bias strip a little over halfway done; it's the last thing to be knitted for this project. Once it's sewn in place the pillow will be done. Oh, yeah. I still need to make the pillow form to go inside. A flat pillow isn't much of a pillow, after all. Ok, so it'll be almost done!

Newly almost-finished UFO

2008-01-21T13:12:00.000-08:00

In spite of my resolution to post more consistently on Sundays, I simply had to wait until today so I could get some better pictures of a newly almost-finished UFO project. It's now being blocked, and just has a little finishing left to be done, so as far as I'm concerned it's done.

In my post on April 29 I mentioned a Kaffe Fassett-like vest project I was thinking about. I actually got most of the back done before it began to languish in a most serious manner.

Now, UFOs are not usually a big problem for me - there aren't piles of them lurking in dark corners around the house and studio. Usually, if I don't finish something in a fairly reasonable length of time it's because there is a good reason - I don't really like the pattern I am knitting, or I don't like the yarn, or I made a bad decision in combining pattern and yarn. The trick is to realize why a project has become a UFO - once I figure that out the project usually gets unraveled and returned to the stash rather than becoming a fixture in my life.

Recently, after pulling the vest out and mulling it over on several occasions I finally realized that I wouldn't ever wear a vest that was as heavy and , well, woolly as this one was going to be. I realized it wanted to be a pillow much more than it wanted to be a vest, so I unraveled the beginning end and the slight amount of shaping that I had done, put the newly-live stitches on a separate needle, and got started again a week or so ago. And at long last I have the knitting done for the body of the pillow.

The pillow is knit in a single long strip beginning with the original vest back in the middle, which will become the pillow front. In the photo it's the center section with the broadest stripes, which were knit in an ikat-like pattern adapted from Kaffe Fassett's book of charted knitting patterns. the ends of the strip will become an envelope-style back for the pillow - it will have a flap at the top that will button closed over the lower end. The patterns for the back sections were invented ones of my own, but all the way through I drew off of Kaffe's approach - changing colours often, and not necessarily just at the beginning of a row.

Almost all of the yarns are handspun- mostly my own, with a few from friends. The browns, greys and whites are primarily test samples that were spun as part of my Sheep to Shawl team's practice sessions with various fleece types and preparations. I always love knitting on projects that I rely only on what I have on hand, and that use up lots and lots of little bits and pieces that are too much to throw out but not enough to do much with on their own. Once the blocking is done I'll sew up the sides and add some sort of border or i-cord piping, and then it will be a completely done UFO!

A new project.

2008-01-13T17:08:00.000-08:00

Now that all the holiday knitting is done I can turn my thoughts to bigger projects. I'm really looking forward to starting something that will take a lengthy amount of time and that I can just work away at. Since I do a lot of my knitting on the ferry commuting to work I need to plan ahead enough to be sure I have a project that is in a suitable state for such knitting. I get a lot done on my commute and so am while doing my small holiday season projects I am constantly needing to find new things to start. I am now ready to luxuriate in a slowly unfolding project.

So what will it be? A long-awaited start on a cardigan sweater. I had a well-loved blue wool cardigan done mostly in seed stitch with some lacy edgings. I loved that sweater and wore it to death, and sadly, finally realized that it was time to let it go. In preparation for this sorrowful turn of events I had ordered some blue mercerized cotton yarn from Elann some time ago but hadn't quite come up with what the design should be. I wanted something similar but not the same as my old sweater.

Over the holidays my mom gave me a Debbie Bliss book, Nautical Knits for Kids, that she loved but knew I'd be more likely to make something from than she would. In looking through it I found one design that, while it was sized for small children had panels of 2 different lace patterns and a seed stitch/cable panel that I knew I could adjust into something for myself.

So I've swatched and measured, figured, and fiddled, and am well into the first sleeve. As each pattern knits up to a different gauge I am using the sleeves as more accurate swatches before launching into the body, especially as I plan to knit the body in 1 piece (no side seams) and I'd like to be really sure what the multiple patterns are knitting up like before I commit to all those stitches. I'm really enjoying having a lot of knitting to look forward to!

A day of rest

2008-01-06T19:46:00.000-08:00

While my intention is to post on Sundays a quick perusal of my past posts reveals that I have been anything but consistent in achieving this goal. In the coming year I hope to become more dependable in this regard, so even if I lack photos, witty things to say, or endless lists of WPIs and UFOs I will attempt to post something. So today all I have to say is that I don't have much to say. I have had some health issues this week which have gotten in the way of knitting - I had a serious allergic reaction to some antibiotics that caused a nasty itchy rash from head to toe; so itchy that I could not stand the thought of anything even remotely woolly coming anywhere near my body. I am happily feeling much better after a solid week of itchiness and plan to stay well away from penicillin in the future. And I am deep into swatching for a new (cotton, still no wool for me!) sweater project that has been brewing for some time; I will provide updates soon. Stay tuned!

They're Done!

2008-01-01T16:13:00.000-08:00

To continue with what I accomplished on my vacation - I finished two projects that have been hanging around for a while, and I am so happy! Neither was intended as a Christmas gift but I'm glad to have finished them now any way.

First of all, I completed the long-awaited vest for my Mom that was a challenge project with my Knitters & Spinners group. I'm always amazed at how much better things look when all the finishing work is done, and this vest was no exception - especially all of the bands, buttons, etc. The armhole edges and front bands are all done in simple garter stitch with a needle size 4 US needles (the main vest knitting had been done on size 6 for the plain areas and size 7 for the stranded sections). The beige main colour yarn (Touche by Berocco) is very smooth but loosely twisted and almost string-like and I'm a little concerned that it will snag and stretch easily, so I wanted the bands to be good and firm.

I had intended to do a folded under hem for the lower edge, but after some experimentation determined that a hem would add far too much bulk. Since the vest was knitted from side to side rather then bottom up, and also had lots of garter stitch ridges it didn't curl at all on the bottom, so all that was really needed was something very simple to just clean up the edge.

So I picked up stitches all across the lower edge as if I was going to do the hem, and then bound off in knit on the first (wrong side) row, leaving a single garter stitch ridge on the right side. It worked like a charm.

The only blocking that was really needed on the vest was a vigorous steaming with a concentration on the chenille areas, which are also the stranded parts.

Buttons were a little challenging - the greens are all greyed/blue greens and I couldn't find anything in a toned-in colour that worked. I ended up with some antiqued pewter look buttons in a simple knot shape that were perfect.

And doesn't Mom look great in her completed vest! Zoey the gigantic Labrador Retriever thinks so too. All of the dart shaping that I did worked out really well and is well worth the trouble to do to get such a nice fit.

The other project I finally finished is the Bunad Mukluks from Folk Style by Mags Kandis/Interweave Press. I loved these boots right from the start, and was especially intrigued by the idea of the suede slipper soles being dyed to be a better colour than the usual chamois tan. However, the designer/Interweave provided almost no information about what dye they used or how they did it other then to dye with "fabric dye according to package directions. " I couldn't locate any fabric dye that sounded like it would work, and I certainly didn't want to risk a dye that might bleed if it wasn't thoroughly set (black footprints through the house just didn't sound like a good idea at all). So I tried RIT due, and sure enough, they did turn very nice and black, but also became twisted, rock hard little hunks that were also 2 inches shorter than they had been before. Sigh. Luckily, I found a new pair of soles by Fiber Trends at Patternworks that came in a perfect grey colour that didn't need to be dyed to look good with my boots.

As described in an earlier post, I substituted Cascade 220 for the yarn, and knitted a wide stripe on the leg to use as a base for the embroidery. (They look dark grey in this picture but are actually a dark purple with lavender, grey, and crimson trim.) I used duplicate stitch to work the floral design before felting, and then added a little surface embroidery and some beading after the felting. The soles are cross-stitched in place and I added silver beads to the ends of the drawstrings at the top of the leg rather than the tassels from the original pattern. Now that I have solved the problem of the soles I am thoroughly happy with my boots and have hardly taken them off since I finished them! My advice for anyone who's as puzzled by the dying problem as I have been would be to buy your soles first, and then choose yarn colours to coordinate with the soles, rather than the other way around.

What I did on my Christmas vacation

2007-12-31T17:42:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had as wonderful a holiday as I had - not too much craziness, lots of good food and good friends, time with my family, and 11 blissful days of vacation! This has been and eventful and sometimes challenging year, and I'm ready for a new one to begin tomorrow.

Now that I have given all my holiday gifts I can blog about my gift knitting and other projects. Admittedly I didn't do a lot of knitting for gifts this year; in part because my family chose give to charitable causes this year in lieu of presents, at least for the adults. But my mother and stepmother both requested some of my fingerless gloves to protect their hands. They both take blood thinners and their hands really suffer from bruising, small nicks bleed a lot quickly get re-injured, and generally getting pretty banged up. So I made a couple pairs using Elann.com's Esprit elasticized cotton yarn, which knits up into a dense springy fabric that hugs their hands tightly and doesn't itch or get them too warm.

Of course, I completely forgot to take pictures before gifting them, but I also made a 2nd pair for my stepmother using Elann.com's Den-M-Knit indigo-dyed cotton that I did get a photo of. As it's not a stretchy yarn at all I did baby cables in the ribbing and along both sides of the thumb gusset to give a little firmness to the fabric. They tightened up well in the wash so hopefully they will work out for her OK.

I made two things for my niece, Madison. Just look at this face; it makes the heart of her auntie glow to see her loving her gifts so much! I made her a poncho from the terrific little book Holiday Knits by Sara Lucas & Allison Isaacs of Imaginknit yarn shop in San Francisco. It has a pretty feather and fan stitch trim around the neck and hem and is worked form the top down. I made the 1-2 year size and found the shaping to be a perfect fit for Madi, who is still tiny for her 2 years. I used a blue and white Kersti merino yarn from Koigu that knit up beautifully.

I also did some sewing for her - the kitty Madi is sitting on is sort of a pillow/sort of a stuffed animal that I've been wanting to make for her since about the time she was born. Given it's size I decided to wait until she was big enough to play with it. The pattern is Kwik Sew #2339. Its sewn from polar fleece, stuffed with fibre fill, and has machine embroidery for the facial features. It was so much fun to make and even more fun to see her take to it so fast.

A gift that will keep on giving for a while is a vest for Thomas. He at long last expressed interest in me knitting something for him so I immediately swooped in for the challenge. As I wanted his input in the design of the garment all I did was pick out some yarn ahead of time and make a tiny vest to wrap up. I found a beautiful charcoal grey wool called Dolly by Cascade yarns that knits like a dream, and after knitting the mini-vest I decided to also make a little "paper doll" of Thomas to dress up in the vest before I wrapped it up. Making the paper doll took longer than knitting the little vest but it did the trick - he loved everything! I'm going to start swatching with the yarn to find a texture that he likes and that won't bore me to tears while knitting on it - it's a fairly lightweight wool that will knits up well on size 4 US needles, so it won't be a quick project. Stay tuned to see how this one progresses.

Joy to all.

2007-12-24T16:01:00.000-08:00

Regardless of what holidays you celebrate; whether your holiday has already concluded, is just commencing, or is to come later, I wish you all a life filled with joy, kindness, love, compassion, and peace. Happy knitting to all, and I'll catch up on my Christmas knitting and other projects in a few days.

Little progress has been made.

2007-12-15T09:53:00.000-08:00

I've finally completed the embroidery on the Bunad boots but don't have a picture yet. I'm still stymied by the issue of dyeing the suede soles. Being convinced the suede, heat, and moisture don't mix well I've tried other methods, including a traditional blackening method involving a solution of vinegar and iron which reacts with the tannins in suede to blacken it; brush-on suede dye, and simple wishful thinking (very ineffective, I might say) all with the same results. I don't have black suede soles yet. So I broke down, bought some RIT dye, and have just finished simmering the soles in a potful of black dye. They're outside drying right now, and I must say that the stiffness the wet soles confirms my fears as to what happens to wet hot suede, but being either optimistic or foolish I am holding out a little hope that they will be functional once dry. We'll see soon. If this doesn't work I'll just finished them as they are (sole-less, if not soul-less) and at least start wearing them while I hunt down some black sued to make my own soles. Which in hindsight would have been so much easier to start with.

So as I have no knitting pictures to show I am including one of my niece, Madison, who I recently spent a weekend with. Over the 2 years since she was born I have made her a variety of knitted stuffed animals, some of which I had forgotten about. Most of them are tiny cats; one is a large and well-worn rabbit. So here she is, surrounded by her companions......

I am fairly certain that the large white rabbit was from the book Last Minute Knitted Gifts ( a terrific book, by the way); the little blue kitten was an adaptation of the Bubba Bear pattern posted on Knitty a year or so ago; and the grey and the white/orange striped kittens were adapted from Knitting Daily's free knitted animals pattern - very easy, by the way. The primary adaptations I made for all the small kitties were mostly to use finer yarn and needles (for the Knitty pattern), and additionally for the Knitting Daily pattern, to cut the stitch/row counts more or less in half to get the smaller size. All of the little ones were stuffed with yarn and the rabbit has poly fiber fill stuffing.

These Bunad boots are made for felting.....

2007-11-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

At long last - an update on the Bunad Mukluks from Folk Style. I've been progressing a step at a time on this project, as it involves a few elements that are unfamiliar or new to me. But the knitting has been done and has gone through the felting process so it's long overdue for a progress report.

As may be recalled from earlier posts, the knitting has done with a striped section added in the leg portion to be sure I had enough yarn to complete the project. Of course, as fate would have it, it turned out I would have had plenty of yarn to make the Bunads in a solid colour after all. Bu I really liked the effect of the stripes, and once I worked the duplicate stitch embroidery they really started to come to life. This photo shows the completed knitted, embroidered, pre-felted leg portion. So onto the felting!

I must admit to having a slightly unorthodox approach to felting (or fulling, as it's technically considered to be but who's really that picky about this stuff?) When I felt knitting I find the whole process to be slower than many authorities would have us believe, so my 1st round of felting usually involves a cycle through a hot wash/cold rinse in the washer (enclosed in a zippered pillow cover), followed by a trip through the dryer. Gasp. However, this photo is of the leg portion after round 1 of the felting through the wash only. I must admit, though, that all my earlier felting attempts didn't involve trying to make something be a particular size. So I erred on the side of caution this time and forswore the dryer throughout the process in favour of more wash cycles than usual.

Everything I have ever felted needed more work than one wash cycle, so multiple trips through the washer were definitely in order. After each wash cycle it was time to evaluate the boots and see how much more might be needed. In the case of the Bunads, I ended up doing 3 wash cycles. This is what they looked like after the final wash but before shaping into a boot and allowing to dry. By what I am sure is absolute luck, they are exactly the right size for my feet.

As they are drying, I am pondering the next steps. The original Bunad Mukluk pattern calls for a solid coloured knitted boot with embroidered details added after the felting. Since I did an duplicate-stitch embroidered design in the pre-felting stage I am assuming I will need more details to be added later in the form of some more free-hand embroidery to pucnh up the felted, and probably somewhat blurred from felting design. So far I am very happy with how the boots are developing but there is still lots of room for exploration and experimentation. More to come...

The Final Installment of the Vest Challenge

2007-11-24T08:43:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had as wonderful a Thanksgiving as I did. This was my first time ever of cooking the whole thing (or most of it) myself and it was so much fun. I enjoyed every minute and feel so grateful for my friends, family, and my happy home.

And now on to the last batch of Vest Challenge photos!

Stephanie used her own handspun yarns for the gorgeous entrelac vest that she's very close to being done with. The purple/teal/magenta yarn is a blend of wool and silk, soy silk, or tencel - I can't recall which right now, sorry! Whatever it is, it made a lovely soft, shimmering, almost cottony feeling yarn and since she navajo-plyed it the colours remained distinct and vibrant. The back is striped all over as is the upper front above the armhole shaping, and she's working on the front bands now, which is why the front is bunched up - it's still on the needles. I know she started with some patterns as ideas but then branched out on her own to come up with this design. And it's amazing!

Terri finished at least one vest for Afghans for Afghans, which I unfortunately don't have a picture of as it's already in Kabul. So while her Vest Challenge project isn't completed it's not because she hasn't been doing lots of knitting. She's using a Noro yarn and is knitting the back right now. It's in garter stitch, and I think the stripes will be running vertically once it's completed. The colours are much richer than my camera captured here and it will be lovely once done.

Catherine wasn't able to join us on the night we showed off our vests, but as I see her project almost daily on our commute together, I can vouch for the fact that she had the back and most of one front done. Considering that she only joined in and got started in September she got an impressive amount done in a short time.

Duncan, Carol's very handsome apricot cat, is just amazed by all the work we did, as you can see from his picture here. And so am I - what a wonderful variety of styles, colours, shapes, and yarns we all came up with! When we started this project I wasn't sure how much scope for variety vests could have, but after seeing the results our group came up with I can see how much creativity can be put into a small garment. And the best part of all is friendship we all share. Thanks to all of you for being so terrific!

Knitters & Spinners Vest Challenge, No. 2

2007-11-20T07:09:00.001-08:00

The Knitters & Spinners group evolved through a complex combination of circumstances and knitting/spinning experiences. We came together as a group due to the illness and subsequent passing of a very wonderful woman, Elaine. We were all friends and acquaintances of hers, and after the diagnosis of her cancer we began meeting at her home every Tuesday night in what we called Elaine's Salon. We brought food, our knitting, spinning, and companionship, shared our time together and with Elaine and developed a deep friendship as a result of these special Tuesdays spent together. After Elaine passed away we then used her left-behind yarns, mostly handspun, to weave and knit pillows for everyone as memorials to her generous spirit. We have kept meeting long after the memorials were done and have formed a bond that has been very special to me. And now new faces have joined our group who didn't ever know our mutual friend but who recognize the great spirit we share.

So the Vest Challenge is more than just a group project. It is the outgrowth of a shared experience between those who knew Elaine for many many years, and those of us who knew her little or not at all. Some of us have knitted for years, and some have never made a garment before. The real purpose of this project is to celebrate a craft we all love as well as our friendship. So here's the next wave of vests from the Vest Challenge! It looks like there will be one more installment after this one to get every one's pictures in so stay tuned.

Lindy made a beautiful and very simple vest that, like Carol's jacket, looked different on everyone. Photo #1 shows the vest being worn, while photo #2 shows what the actual construction is - it's really just a rectangle with two large slits for the armholes. Lindy used a beautiful novelty yarn with lots of colours in it so the finished vest can be worn with almost anything.

She's adding a crocheted border in one of the colours to give it a little more finished but it is done and wearable as it is. My recollection is that she had a pattern and adapted it in some way but I didn't note what pattern it was.

My vest for my mom is almost there - I finally got the entire body together and the side seams done but still have all the borders and bands to do. Until I have a chance to try the vest on her and feel secure about the sizing I don't want to do anything with the borders - I've ripped and reknit oodles of times on this vest and am ready to get it right at last. I will hopefully have a chance to do that this weekend so it might be done before the year is out. The design is based on the Dineh Blanket Vest from Folk Vests, loosely interpreted to fit the yarn I had available.

Ruthie's vest is just about to the armholes so she's on the home stretch! It's being knit in one piece so there are no side seams and the biggest section of knitting is done. Her yarn is Elsbeth Lasvold's Silky Wool and the pattern is one that was suggested to the group as a starting point for the Challenge, but as it had several significant errors in it I will not name it here. Regardless, Ruthie's efforts are terrific and having used this yarn myself I can say it is a fabulous yarn for anyone who likes knitting on smallish needles (size 4 or 5 US). I'm looking forward to seeing the finished vest on Ruthie in December!

Knitters & Spinners Vest Challenge, 1st Edition

2007-11-18T13:42:00.001-08:00

The day of reckoning had arrived - participants in the Knitters & Spinners Vest Challenge had to bring their vests to Carol's house last Tuesday to show off what she had or had not accomplished over the past 5 months or so. The Challenge was simple - to knit a vest of any style of our own choosing beginning last June, I think - and we were to wear them to the November meeting. However, let's face it it- real life isn't so simple and we were all challenged in some way, even if not necessarily by our knitting. But we all made a great effort and great progress, as you can see by this 1st post about the Vest Challenge (as I can only include 5 pictures at a time there will be a couple of posts on this same topic.) And my apologies - I was so busy trying to get pictures of everything in the somewhat dim light available that I utterly neglected to note what patterns and yarns was used in each project and have only dim recollections of what people told me. But I can find out if there are any questions.

Firstly, our lovely hostess Carol. Admittedly she's wearing a jacket here, not a vest, but that's because she made countless items that went to Afghans for Afghans' October shipment. (Actually, almost everyone contributed something or many somethings to the Afghans for Afghans effort, thanks to Carol's and Giovanna's leadership). The jacket is entirely out of her own hand spun yarn and is really beautiful. It's one of those unusually constructed shapes that looks different on everybody who tries it on. If I recall correctly it was all garter stitch, and as she ran out of the original blend of wool she had to improvise to complete the jacket, which she did so perfectly it was not noticeable at all that she hadn't planned it to have the variations in it.

Aileen made a wonderful chevron-striped short fitted vest using a variety of yarns. Each half of the front has its own chevron, while the back is one larger chevron shape that meets in the center of the back. She chose colours that are perfect for her redhead colouring. Side panels in vertical stripes brought the fronts and backs together beautifully. I think the pattern was her own design.

Cathi is very close to finishing her long vest using a Dragon Skin stitch from one of Barbara Walker's books of knitting patterns. My recollection is that she's making up her own vest pattern or doing major adaptations to an existing one. Her yarn is Cascade 220 superwash.

Like Aileen, Lori finished her vest, which was a Rowan pattern, and maybe Rowan yarn as well. It's in a very open, mesh-like stitch that made for fast knitting and a very chic garment which really suits Lori's tall slim figure. The yarn has a little sparkle in it that will be very festive for holiday wear.

Giovanna, co-owner of our LYS, made a Japanese-inspired vest of her own design. She used a light-weight, self-striping wool in a variety of shades of green. She deliberately kept the darker sections of the yarn aside to use for the neck and front bands as well as the side edges. She also created the illusion of the back seam found in traditional Japanese garments by knitting with two separate balls of yarn at a time, changing them at the centre back to create the "seam. As the stripes varied on each side it made a much more interesting back than if she hadn't done the seam effect. The longer length was and overall style of the vest were very flattering on her.

Stay tuned for more on the Vest Challenge - it will take at least one more post to get in everyone, but it's worth the wait!

Busy, busy, busy!

2007-11-15T19:42:00.000-08:00

As can probably be deduced from the lack of recent posts, I've been busy! And it's still not even Thanksgiving. Admittedly I'm busy from self-scheduled activities so in theory my busy-ness (is this a word?) is self-controlled (as opposed to being under control, which I never am).

Where to start? How about my sale last Friday? As usual, this annual staff event at the museum where I work was a lot of fun; a very low-key, friendly way to sell my products and a great way to meet all of the people I don't usually see face to face in my usual workday. And also as usual, I had too much stuff for the display space I requested. This is 2 tables-ful of stuff - in photo 1, all the knitted things, and in photo 2, my handbound books, notepad covers, and other non- or barely-fibre related artwork. I basically consider paper a fibre product, as so much of it is made or historically has been made with rags and fibres of various sorts. So combining the two in a single sale never seems odd to me.

I have been on something of a mission lately to find ways to create something I would consider art as opposed to craft using textile techniques textile interests. Don't misunderstand me - I don't think craft is a dirty word. After all, I went to the California College of Arts and Crafts because the word craft was involved, and was a very strong part of the College's mission. And even though now the College has dropped the craft word form it's name my diploma still says that I attended CCAC, not CCA. Its just that I do feel there is a difference between art and craft, and I know it when I see it in my own work. Sometimes I intend to make craft and other times I intend to make art. it's not a better or worse scenario; its' just different and the difference might only be apparent and important to me.

In addition, the ranks of fibre-related vendors has increased by 1 - Adrienne had her beautiful naturally dyed fibre and yarn for sale in addition to the knitted items offered by me and Ms. MmmYarn. It was challenging indeed to keep from spending my hard-earned sales proceeds on all of Adrienne's fibre and yarns. The silk/wool rovings were especially delectable. I might have to take another look........

But sales were good and I am happy. The goal is to hang onto my proceeds until February and March so that they will fund both my Bodega Bay annual Sew Group retreat and Stitches. It's a tall order to make the $$ go that far, but I can be strong and do it. I think.

Speaking of sewing, several of us from Sew Group got together at Lynn's in Half Moon Bay over the weekend for a sewing day together. Many of us start getting a serious itch for Bodega Bay in November, so this was a great way to scratch the itch, so to speak. Since Lynn lives on the coast we get a similar feeling of the off-and-on fog vs sun that is the Northern California coast experience, as it is in Bodega Bay. Many, many thanks to Lynn for so graciously hosting us and providing the space, tables, chairs, irons, goat cheese, tea, and chocolate.

Several of us took the opportunity to get a head start on holiday gifts. I made my gift for my Spinners & Knitters gift exchange (no, I won't show a picture because some of you are reading this blog!) as well as got the quilting done on a coordinating set of large duffel-type bags that I have been wanting to do for a while (This time the lack of a photo is due to a brain lapse on my part. Sorry!)

And the Bunad Mukluks have proceeded apace! I'm writing about them on the Folk Style Knit-a-Long so please take a look there for the progress to date. And, there's still the update on the Spinners & knitters Vest Challenge, but as I'm out of room in my picture quota for a single post I'll have to do those separately. Coming soon, I promise!

Its getting to be that time of year.

2007-11-04T15:25:00.001-08:00

I tried to convince myself that I didn't need to knit and test-felt a swatch before plunging into the Bunad Mukluks - I am mostly using Cascade 220 (a well-known yarn in my stash) and have usually found with socks and sock-like objects that actually starting the project is so close to a swatch that I can wing it without a formal swatch. I actually usually love to swatch - I can get a fascinating dialogue going between myself,the yarn, and the stitch pattern that I really enjoy. But the Bunads were calling my name in such a sweet siren-like fashion that I nearly succumbed. The realization that I was intending to incorporate some stranded knitting into the Bundads is what called me to reason - I've felted several items using Cascade 220, but never something that had stranded work. Plus I was sneaking another yarn into the mix that wasn't a known quantity - some Dale of Norway Heilo in light grey.

So I plunged into a swatch (a real circular swatch on even stitches to be able to measure it flat, no less) and was amply rewarded for the trouble. Sometimes those knitting goddesses do indeed smile benevolently up on us. As can be seen be the ugly little wrinkly thing in the photo, the floats of yarn behind the knitting felted and shrank at quite a different rate than the knitting itself, resulting in puckers, wrinkles, and other horrors. The photo shows just one trip through the felting process, and I find at least 2 is usually needed. So I did another test - I clipped the floats in half of the swatch, and left the rest as it was, and sent it through the wash again, hoping that once released the knitting would felt up as it usually does without being hindered by the floats. The end result wasn't really any better than the first, albeit more solidly felted. So now I understand why the pattern was designed with embroidery on it instead of a stranded knitted in design. Since I still have the problem of not quite enough yarn I think I will resort to using stripes in selected areas of the leg and maybe foot, and still leave room for some embroidery. Stay tuned for more. (By the way, the colours are much better than in the picture - everything turned out much greyer and darker than it really is)

And what have I been doing with myself while I have not been knitting on the Bundad Mukluks? Getting ready for the annual holiday sales, of course! The museum where I work holds an arts and crafts fair for staff to sell their handiwork to each other every November, and I must say, I usually do quite well with my esteemed colleagues purchasing my wares. This is what I have ready now for the fair, which will be next Friday. My good friend Ms. MmmYarn likewise sells her handiwork at the fair; she makes lots of fabulous baby things such as booties and hats, along with handwoven scarves made by her husband. We try not to carry the same types of things so as not to compete too much with each other. While we both have scarves, I usually only bring the ones using my hand spun yarns. My biggest sellers are fingerless gloves which I first developed for myself while commuting on BART (the subway equivalent for the San Francisco Bay Area). My hands would be so cold while waiting on the platform for the train to arrive, but as I needed to get my ticket in and out to enter and exit the train any kind of fingered glove was too clumsy for handling the ticket. Plus, I can't knit in gloves and what kind of life is that if I have 15 minutes to wait for a train and I can't knit???? While my hands aren't nearly as warm without fingers on the gloves, it's a lot better than nothing and I can wield my needles with ease. My co-workers like them because their hands and wrists stay warm while typing on their computers in freezing cubicles.

I've also had loads of fun making miniature elf stockings as ornaments, package decorations, or just little things to make someone smile. (There's a quarter on the floor in the center of the photo for scale). Several people have suggested them as cat socks, but when I mention what the possible consequences of actually trying to put them onto a cat on might be that usually ends the conversation. They're an actual tiny sock; I just don't turn the heel , going right from the heel flap to picking up stitches for a gusset, and then decreasing until all the stitches are gone. Each one is the same number of stitches (16) - just the yarn and needle size changes. I think I'll just keep making these until I am sick of them. Right now they still make me smile a lot.

A pictureless quickie

2007-10-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

Life is pretty stressful and hectic right now, so this will be a quick post with no pictures -so dull. I have fully succumbed to the lures of the Bunad Mukluks mentioned in last week's post, and while in the dim recesses of my mind I haven't officially "started" them, a swatch has mysteriously appeared on my needles and inspirational books of various sorts have sprouted in my studio. I don't have the specific yarn called for in the patter on hand, and since that has never stopped me, I have pulled out all my basic feltable wools to see if I could conjur up something with those. It turns out I have lots of Cascade 220 on hand, but not enough in any one colour to make the boots as pictured. Once again, when has that ever gotten in my way? So the plan is to use the most plentiful colour, a deep purple, as the main colour, and to add bands of multicoloured patterns around the leg in a few related colours to stretch out the purple. The pattern has the boots knitted in a solid colour with embroidery added afterwards; my colourwork patterns will be in place of that, with perhaps some embroidery done on top of the colourwork later. I'm deciding between floral types of designs like the embroidery in the pattern or using more traditional stranded-knitting patterns. Right now I'm leaning towards a small repeating Eastern-European paisley pattern that I found in a couple books - stay tuned.

Something new?

2007-10-21T17:12:00.000-07:00

What is that - over there? Is that a possible new project? It looks like - like, wait, I know what that is - it's the Bunad Mukluks from Folk Style! And I just happen to have a pair of mukluk soles that my good friend Cathi T gave me (and they're in my size, to boot!)

And over there? What could that be? Could it really be a new colour of Blue Sky Alpaca? And is it really just the final colour I need to complete the design I had in mind, to go along with the deep blue violet, lime green, magenta, charcoal and ivory alpaca that I already have? How did that get here?? Did it know that I have been pondering a possible design for a patterned border to go on the hem of a pullover, and that I needed just one more colour to really pull it all together?

How are these new project ideas getting in? Yes, I know I wished recently for a major new project to present itself, but I'm supposed to be making gloves, scarves, bags, whatevers for my holiday sales! How can be even thinking of really starting a new project when I'm supposed to be doing all this other stuff?

OK, look over there - there's 21 1/2 pairs of gloves done (the last 1/2 pair will be finished tonight during Game 7 of the ACLS playoffs (that's baseball, for you non-sports types out there; if you don't already know it baseball is perfect knitting TV - the sound of the bat on the ball, the crowd, the announcers, and your non-knitting (usually male) partner will all clue you in if you actually need to look up and watch anything).

And there's a short scarf blocking over there (I'm not even showing you all the stuff that has been done in the last year) so if I want to start something new for my own uses and just because I love it (and I do, I do, I do) I can. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Best intentions

2007-10-18T20:05:00.001-07:00

My intention has always been to post to my blog on an at least a once a week basis, preferably on Sunday nights. A quick review of past postings reveals in hideous splendour the fallacy of my ambitions - I'm all over the place in timing on my posts. So forgive me for my trespasses, and be patient with my excesses (or something like that) while I try to have credibility of some sorts as a blogger. I'll get the hang of it someday.

I finished the EZ February sweater, and found some adorable ducky buttons at Full Thread Ahead to finish it off. I'll be mailing it off tomorrow, but I must say I am quite pleased at the finished product. The knit/purl triangle pattern always looks wonderful (it makes a great stitch pattern for a scarf, by the way) and after a trip through the washer it relaxed and became very appealing indeed. I always like to wash my gift knit items in the way I intend to recommend to the recipient before I send them off just to be sure what I say is a good method of washing is in fact true.

My excuse for not posting last Sunday was the busy, busy weekend I had. My alma mater, California College of the Arts (or California College of Arts and Crafts, the former name that was in existence during my student years) is celebrating its 100th year anniversary in 2007 and last weekend was a big reunion celebration for all alumni. My sweetheart, Thomas, is currently interim Chair of Printmaking (in the red T-shirt) at CCAC and had volunteered to lead a Printmaking Marathon Demo for the reunion festivities. My role was to be the photographer and documenter of the event, and if needed, the encourager to get people to draw and make prints. I was only needed as photographer - once people got going there was no stopping them.

Thomas demonstrated a very appealing monotype technique that produces very colourful, immediate, and exciting results for anyone who can make a mark of any sort. After a brief demo he turned the crowd loose to do their own prints, and everyone within earshot went just a little nuts drawing, printing, and getting excited about making art. It was wonderful! He had prepared enough materials for 130 people to make prints, and every single piece of paper, etc. was used - he cranked the press, encouraged, exhorted, and rallied the crowd for the entire afternoon and got a lot of people really excited about printmaking. What a guy.

After I graduated from CCAC I worked in the Admissions department for a few years, and had a number of work-study students working with me during that time. Hana was one of my favourites, and it was great to see her on Saturday - look at that smile with her print! This is what reunions are really all about.

So often "forward-thinking" administrators at the College decide that printmaking is a lost art and that replacing all the presses with a digital laboratory would be a great idea. It was wonderful to see so many people in the printshop get really excited about making real prints - putting colours on down on a plate and making hand-pulled prints - and to see administration folks there to observe the joy and excitement that resulted. Art is still a "get your hands dirty" activity no matter what trend seekers say or think; craft still matters in art making even when the College itself denies the word in its own name.

OK, the sermon is over; on to other things. Sunday afternoon was spent at a memorial for my long time Sew Group compatriot, Laurel, who died of cancer a few weeks ago. It was a lovely memorial, and the testimonials of her many, many friends gave me a fuller picture of her than I had known, even after 2o + years of acquaintance. It was an uplifting and simultaneously humbling afternoon, and I am grateful that I was able to be there.

Lots of little stuff (continued).

2007-10-08T08:25:00.000-07:00

I have a terrible hankering to start a "major" project but have been prevented from doing so by a) a lack of adequate yarn for such a project; b) realization that the Holiday season is coming up; c) lots of my friends are having babies; and d) a lot of UFOs and WIPs are hanging around the house. Now, my perception of having an inadequate yarn supply is perhaps simply a perception, and not based on reality. I do confess to having a trunk in my closet that often cannot be closed properly due to the yarn inside of it. But, as any self-respecting knitter with a stash knows, the yarn in the stash is not the yarn I need right this moment for the yet undetermined major project. Why, might a non-knitter ask, is the stash inadequate? If someone has to even ask that question they clearly don't knit and don't have a stash. It the Law of the Stash - it is never enough, what one has is never what one needs right now, and more is always better.

To address the Holiday question I am continuing to churn out my fingerless gloves. I've added 8 new pairs to the supply left from last year, and have another pair on the needles. These gloves are perfect commute knitting - I can almost finish a pair in a day, with the small bit left to be done by evening quickly finished after dinner. I think I have a total of about 15 pairs right now and am aiming for around 2 dozen. The very bright white pair in the picture is an elbow-length style in a very fuzzy yarn left over from a commissioned pair. The yarn is very soft, entirely synthetic, and so fuzzy that it is almost impossible to see what I am doing while knitting them. The solid black pair is the same yarn and if the white was almost impossible, the black was completely so. Copious use of markers is the only way to figure out where I was in the pattern. The remaining black fuzzy stuff became cuffs on a pair of taupe wool gloves - much more manageable knitting, and looks very nice as well.

The zig-zag gloves are my own very loose adaptation of a mitten design in Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Almanac. It's a lot of fun to knit and has a very sleek shape. The first pair I did used the same number of stitches from wrist to fingers, but for the tan and brown pair here I experimented with increasing the number of stitches in each zig-zag to allow a little more room in the finger area. Now I want to adapt the entire thing to being knitted from the fingers down to the wrist, which is my preferred way to knit these gloves. I'm usually using scrap yarn and often run out a little short of finishing, and I find I can work in some design variations at the wrist a little more elegantly than at the fingertips.

A coworker is having her first child in November, and I wanted to make something for her. Some stash yarn that indeed did prove to be adequate to my needs was some very bright white Cleo cotton yarn, which is now underway as a February baby sweater from, once again, the Knitters Almanac. It's begun at the neck and worked down to the lower edge, with the sleeves worked just after the yoke area.

As the mother in this case has chosen not to know her baby's gender I changed the stitch pattern for the body of the sweater to a Scottish Triangle stitch, which is less frilly and lacy than the pattern EZ originally designed the sweater in. The closeup of the sleeve shows the stitch (albeit sideways). I also adjusted the pattern slightly by knitting the sleeves in the round on DPNs, and picking up the underarm stitches once I returned to knitting the entire body, so that instead of being "practically seamless" as EZ called it, my version will be completely seamless.

An lastly (goodness, what a long post) my Mom's vest is still in progress. I don't know if it's more properly considered to be a UFO or a WIP. It is a unfinished object for certain, but it is also a work in progress; it's just progressing very slowly. Any thoughts?

Either way, I have completed one of the side panels that will join the front to back. They need to be slightly wedge-shaped and I've pondered a number of ways to adapt the very linear designs in the rest of the vest to an area that will include short rows, and therefor contain some slight angles. The panel I just did centered the largest of the body patterns, a Greek key design, in a field of the background colour, but added extra plain and short rows to create the wedge. Size-wise it worked very well, but the large expanse of plain background colour seems to be too much. In addition, the background yarn knits up very smoothly, while where I stranded the yarns for the two-colour area is very texturey. I don't like the contrast at all, but now that I know how many rows I have to work with to make the panel turn out right I am going to start the other side and rework the idea to include less plain background and have some other texture/colour in there somehow. I will also weave in the stranding less compulsively this time. Once the side panels are done then I can graft the side seams together, add the borders, and at long last it will be ready for my Mom to wear. Thanks for your patience, Mom!

Small things.

2007-09-30T13:58:00.000-07:00

The Tofutsie socks are done, and they look and feel great! The fabric is thinner than what most other sock yarns produced,which considering that they have a lot of cotton and soysilk in addition to the wool it's not surprising. I washed them in the morning and laid them on top of my dryer to block them, and was very surprised to find that they were completely dry by the time I came home from work that evening. I haven't worn them yet but anticipate that the thinness of the fabric will make them more adaptable to fitting into my shoes than most of my socks, which usually get relegated to being house socks. At least I can see and admire them that way instead of hiding them inside shoes!

I suddenly realized that it was getting to be time to start producing stuff to have for sale at the two sales I participate in each year. The earliest one is at the museum where I work; the HR department sponsors a crafts sale for employees to sell their wares to each other. I sell mostly hand-knit scarves and other knitted items, and hand-bound blank books and notepad covers. My best-selling item always ends up being fingerless gloves - my coworkers love them to keep their hands warm while typing in freezing cubicles on computers all day. The gloves are also popular with artists to help keep hands warm in unheated studios, etc.

I make them out of whatever yarn I have on hand, and especially enjoy using the limits of my stash to stimulate new ideas and styles. The versions shown here are my basic style - ribbing at the fingers and wrist, stockinette stitch for the body, and a buttonhole-like opening and a gusset for the thumb. The pairs shown here are basic sturdy tweeds in larger sizes that can fit a man or a woman with a large hand, which is why the one on my hand looks so ill-fitted - I have tiny hands so I have to remember to make a variety of sizes to suit a wide range of hand types.

The second sale I do each year is a holiday Open Studio that Thomas and I host in our live/work studio space. We first moved into this space in Vallejo in November 2002 so we hold the Open Studio each year as a celebration of another year together and in Vallejo. We are in the heart of the historic downtown district which was once a boomtown but now is slowly coming back after a serious decline precipitated by the US Navy closing the Mare Island Navy Shipyard. The shipyards were the primary reason for the town's existence for about 140 years, so the loss was significant for the community. The closure occurred before my move to Vallejo so I don't remember what it was like here prior to that but it has been very exciting to be a part of the downtown revival. So Thomas and I welcome all our friends and our now very large mailing list of people to the studio for refreshments, a showing of whatever artwork we have done in the past year, and my hand made items. This year will be our 5th anniversary in Vallejo so we're hoping to have a special celebration to mark the occasion.

By the way, I have abandoned the Einstein Coat for my niece. The gauge wasn't right for the pattern and I was having hideous problems trying to make the sizing work out for Madi, who is very tiny for her age anyway and the coat is sized as an oversize garment. So, I was juggling between the baby size and the 2-4 yr size and was just coming up with a mess. Supposedly the pattern makes the knitter feel like Einstein by making something so terrific out of very simple techniques but I was still distinctly in the raging idiot camp on this one. I yanked it out in a funk and hid the yarn back in my yarn trunk to wait until she's older to make her something out of it. Much older.

Newly finished and newly begun.

2007-09-20T19:47:00.000-07:00

The circular vest is now done and even has been worn! Desdemona, my ever faithful mannequin, is modeling the vest for me here. She has a seriously Barbie-doll figure (unlike me these days) but for this garment it doesn't really matter what your shape is as long as the wearer has shoulders to hang the garment from. I wore the vest to work on Monday and it was a big hit from a visual point of view - the drape and flow of the back, especially, got a lot of attention.

However, the vest is a big circle, with the armholes created in a way that is easy to knit, but not necessarily in a shape or angle that is anatomically correct for the human female figure. In a forgiving fibre like wool the vest would probably be just fine; in a non-stretchy fibre like the silk I used it was OK, but every so often throughout the day I found one side down around my elbow instead of up on my shoulder. I pinned the fronts together with a brooch, which did help a lot to keep everything more or less where I wanted it to be.

My suggestion is that if you like the look of a lacy shawl, but find them to be too difficult to keep on, try this vest as an alternative. It has the look of a shawl but with the armholes it stays in place better, but due to the lack of figure-conscious shaping it's not quite a vest either. Think of it as a shawl with a place to put your arms.

Now that the vest is done I have begun a little sweater coat for my baby niece, who just turned 2 last week. Before her birth I bought some Koigu Kersti Merino Crepe in a blue and white colourway to make a blanket for her but for various reasons ended up using Dale of Norway's Baby Ull instead, and have had the Kersti yarn hanging around in the stash ever since. It's beautiful yarn, but it wasn't quite enough for a sweater for myself, and the dye lots on Koigu are so changeable I couldn't really get more that toned in well enough for my personal preferences.

I've been waiting for the right thing to come along to use for Madi (my niece) and finally put a few things together to come up with an idea. I had some adorable hand-made ceramic buttons with blue and white cat faces on them which were too big for a small baby, but now that Madi is two she's big enough for the buttons to suit her. I have wanted to make Sally Melville's Einstein Coat from her The Knit Stitch book for a long time; the yarn and the buttons all come together and will (if all goes according to plan) Madi's Christmas gift this year.

Along with all the knitting is some spinning. My back has felt better lately and I can spin for longer periods of time. During a visit with my Dad and stepmother last weekend at their home in the Sierra Mountains I took along my spinning wheel and the deep brown Perendale wool my Dad brought me from New Zealand and got a good start on spinning up a batch of it.

My Dad is an engineer and is fascinated with how things work, so it was a good project to take along as it kept me occupied and interested him as well. (Last year he made me a clock reel with a yardage counter which is absolutely wonderful for figuring winding off my finished yarn and knowing the yardage at the same time.) I plan to knit some pillows for their home with the finished yarn and have spun it with a bit more twist than I usually do so that the yarn won't be too soft and prone to pilling. All of the furniture in the house was built by my Dad and it just seems fitting to have handknit pillows from handpsun yarn on the couch and chairs.

One pillow will have a deer pattern (based on the Intricate Stag Bag design from Interweave Knitscene) and another based on Hawaiian tapa cloth designs, as my stepmother grew up in Hawaii and loves the arts of the Islands. Tapa cloth designs are traditionally black, brown and white so the deep brown wool plus the creamy merino my Dad also brought me from NZ will be very suitable.